Less theology, more love April 24, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Islam, Jesus, Theology, Truth.5 comments
Love God and love people.
Jesus said it. Others said it. It seems to be the core truth. Maybe this is what Plato was searching for.
I’ve been reading about Islam. My knowledge is still very basic, but I see a few things. Mohammed started out in a good direction, pretty consistent with Judaism and Christianity, pretty consistent with loving God and loving people. But along the way he became more political and then more militaristic and then he started making exceptions to his earlier teachings and he began to justify violence.
Christians have done it, too. The Crusades are a great and terrible example. Christianity started out great, pretty consistent with Jesus; but along the way he became more political and then more militaristic and then started making exceptions to Jesus’ earlier teachings and began to justify violence.
True religion for me is summed up in Christ, and His teaching is summed up in loving God and loving people. Hate, killing and hurting in the name of a good cause perverts the cause, whether it be Christianity, Islam or any ideology. It seems we may need less theology and more loving.
The challenge of studying Jesus April 7, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Bible, Christianity, Church, Emerging church, Jesus, Scripture, Truth.1 comment so far
Since our understanding of the time of Jesus is growing, then we need to keep an open mind in our interpreting of Scripture. Some of our long-held assumptions may be incorrect. Some things we have thought of as literal may need to be seen as metaphorical.
That’s my paraphrase of a section from the first chapter of N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus (p. 17). He, of course, would not want to take credit for those exact words and might even question the accuracy of them; but it’s what I think he’s saying. The first chapter is titled “The Challenge of Studying Jesus.” I would like to unpack its meaning a little.
Another paraphrase:
Post-Reformation theology created a new set of dogmas that have been sustained as institutionalized beliefs, and these have created people with interests at stake in maintaining these dogmas. (p. 20)
I’m involved in this exercise of paraphrasing because I believe Wright has a great deal to say to believers today. I put parts of his book into my words in order to try to better internalize it.
Paraphrase again:
When the church stops trying to understand, it begins to slip into idolatry and idealogy. (p. 21)
Why does the church stop trying to understand? Fear, I think; at least that has impacted me. I have, at times, been afraid that my faith would be shaken, that the theological ground would fall out from under me if I explored too much outside the safe havens of my faith group. By the grace of God, I have been able to overcome those fears and explore. My fears have never been realized. Whenever I read outside of my own Christian tradition or outside of Christianity, I find my faith strengthened. Of course, the content of my faith or my theology has changed, but I feel more firmly rooted in the truth. Despite this experience of growth, there is still fear at times.
Another paraphrase:
The Enlightenment created a divide between faith and reason. This is an unnatural divide but it has shaped much of the discussion for 200 years. (p. 21)
I have been aware of this divide but have always thought it unhelpful, probably because I have been a person who valued both faith and reason and the interplay of the two. Apparently, I should be thankful, and I am.
Three more paraphrases:
There are many misunderstandings of Scripture that have been enshrined as church tradition. (p. 27)
And he’s not just talking about Catholic Church traditions. We Protestants have ours, as well.
It takes courage to read the Bible in new ways. (p. 28)
The community of Christ is called to tell the story of Jesus and model it. (p. 32)
Now a quote:
“Do not be afraid of the Quest. It may be part of the means whereby the church in our own day will be granted a new vision, not just of Jesus, but of God.” (p. 32)
The violence of freedom April 1, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Buddhism, Jesus, Movies, Violence, War.add a comment
My wife and I finally saw “300″ the other night. Well, I didn’t see all of it; I hid my eyes. Peeked a couple of times and saw stuff I didn’t want to see — often seemed to be heads flying assunder from their bodies.
Bloody, bloody, bloody; but beautiful, too. It’s odd to see a film that is both visually alluring and disgustingly violent, and it was not the violence that was alluring. The visual was a frame for the disgusting.
Why did I close my eyes? Afraid? Yes. Not of being grossed out, though I was, but of what that violence does to one’s brain and spirit.
I listened recently to an audio book titled Living Buddha, Living Jesus, by Thich Nhat Hanh. He talked about Buddhism as teaching that a person should only bring good into his or her body. Food and drugs, of course, fit into that; but Hanh also spoke of bringing violence into our minds through the things we watch, reach and see. I kept thinking of that book as I watched “300″. I felt polluted, that I was allowing a crafty filmmaker to pour evil into my soul.
Of course, the basic point of the movie is good — freedom is worth the sacrifice of one’s life. At least that’s what we in the West or the United States believe. So maybe in order to sustain a culture of freedom we must continuously be reminded that our liberty required deaths in the past and will require more.
One thing I like about today’s war movies, like “300″ and ”Saving Private Ryan”, is that they do not make war seem only to be a heroic affair. They show it to be grossly vicious, unbelievably dehumanizing, even animalistic behavior.
Freedom requires war and death because there are those who fear freedom or want power or harbor ethnic prejudices.
I don’t know how to completely hormonize freedom’s need for defensive war with Jesus’ turn the other cheek. Jesus, I’m convinced, points us to a heavenly world that is not this one; but I think He’s given us insight to begin creating shades of the heavenly even now.
Summation: War is terrible. Freedom is good. Jesus, and Buddha, would want freedom and not war. It’s a shame that some people want only war or freedom, but I’m afraid you cannot have freedom without war when you live in a fallen, sinful world. This is not heaven, “300″ reminds us; but I hate the violence of it.
Looking at a Jesus-centered future March 15, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Church, Jesus, Religion, Truth.2 comments
If we think about a future-church possibility, what might it look like? If we can learn anything from the temple-to-church transition then we can surmise that the church-to-future church transition will involve a carrying over of the truths of the church into a broader understanding of God’s means of shining His light into reality.
Jesus said He didn’t come to do away with the law; He simply gave us a new way of understanding what God was doing through the law. If a new transition were to take place, God might say to us that He is not doing away with the Old and New Testaments; rather, He is giving us a new of understanding what He was doing through those revelations.
And if He does that, what will he say about other religions. I suspect He might say that He’s been revealing truth to mankind in many different ways through the centuries and that some of that truth is expressed in other religions. He might also help us to see that other faiths are linked to specific cultures. Just as some parts of Gentile, pagan culture was absorbed into Yahweh workship, what if some parts of Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic culture were absorbed into Yahweh worship today?
Brian McLaren comes at this differently, but makes a good point.
“… [I]t should be possible to be a Christian and yet be culturally Buddhist, Muslim, or Navajo,” says McLaren’s Neo character in A New Kind of Christian. “We have to realize that Buddhism is more than a religion, more than a culte. It is also a culture. So I can’t see why Jesus couldn’t invade Buddhist culture, just as he invaded Jewish and Greco-Roman culture in the first millennium and European cultures in the second. … That to me is the missionary challenge of the third millennium: not eradicating Buddhist or Islamic or tribal cultures but blessing them with Christ–letting Christ enter them and drive the evil from them. … And my guess is that each will bring something that will enrich our Christian heritage, too.” (p. 75)
Of course, Jesus is driving some of the evil from Christianity, as well.
However the future shapes up, with Jesus at the center it will be good.
Something is right March 14, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Church, Jesus.3 comments
The other day I wrote about the shortcomings of the church writ large. Today I’m writing about the greatness of the church in the local sense.
I’m the member of a great church — not a perfect one, but a great one. There are self-centered people, there are petty disagreements, there is too much money spent on buildings; but it’s still a great church for two primary reasons — there are some wonderful, loving people in it and the church is commited to reaching out with love to meet the needs of hurting world.
We have a 40-something pastor, very intelligent and highly educated (has a real Ph.D. but doesn’t “doctor” himself or expect others to do so), energetic, creative, open to new ideas, patient with the older members, with a passion for missions all over the world. He is not slick handsome, so he doesn’t fit the megachurch plastic pastor mode. He’s also not great at pastoral care, but a guy can’t be perfect. Quite simply, he’s challenging and fun to be around. He has been our pastor for 10 years. It was a good church before he came, but it’s a great church now. He has patiently followed his heart’s desire to reach people and give some others time to make adjustments.
His leadership is so good that the greatness of the church is not centered around him. It’s centered around Christ and loving people.
So while I wonder about the future of “the church” on the large stage, I do not wonder about the future of this type of church. There will always be a place in this world for exalting Christ and loving people.
Those of you who do not have such a local church, I offer a blanket prayer — that you will join God in creating one.
Something’s not right March 12, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Church, Faith, Jesus, Religion, Spirituality, Truth.4 comments
My friend at the a-muse-ing blog has again gotten me to thinking. She responded with the following to some of us writing on a previous post:
“Thanks to all of you. I needed to hear this today. I grow and learn from my online community, but how I wish I had people like you to spend time with in person. I have become so weary of people adding so much of their crap to this beautiful message of love that Christ has given us, that I have no desire to go to church anymore. I love Jesus, but have become hurt too often from christians.”
I wonder if God is as fed up with the church as is my friend.
N.T. Wright says the following about Jesus and the kingdom of God:
Jesus “was announcing the kingdom of God for which Israel had longed, but it was an announcment that warned of immient judgment rather than imminent rescue.” (The Challenge of Jesus, p. 67)
The people of God in Jesus’ time were waiting for the Messiah to deliver and exalt them, but they rejected Him because they didn’t recognize Him and thus sealed their own doom. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans about 30 years after Christ’s death.
Christians today are waiting for the return of Christ and His deliverance from this perverse age. I wonder if Christians, who see themselves as the “people of God” today, are failing to recognize God at work in their midst and are thus doomed to have their “church” destroyed.
Make no mistakes, the real church, the people of God, will survive and thrive; but the outward edifices of inner faith seem prone to at first help the people, then distract the people, and then stand in need of distruction by the God of the people.
If God decides to destroy the outward “church” — not buildings necessarily but the organized facade — then He will do it, I think, in order to release His real people, His real followers to something new and better, just as Jesus did 2,000 years ago.
Jesus “believed that the time had come for God’s kingdom to dawn and that with it a new agenda had emerged diametrically opposed to the agenda that had taken over the symbols of national identity and was hiding all manner of injustices behind them. Jesus … declared solemnly in deed and word that the divine judgment was now inevitable.” (Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, p. 67)
If God shifted gears at least once in history (from temple to church) might He be desiring to shift gears again (from church to what)?
The way of peace in the Middle East March 10, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Jesus, Military, Peace, Politics.Tags: Middle East
4 comments
I’m not an expert and am only informed at the popular media level, but I think the United States will never be “successful” in the Middle East as long as we continue to pursue military solutions to the problems there. With the military, we solve one problem and create others — more difficult and more intransigent.
As with just about everything else in life it seems Jesus has an answer. N.T. Wright captures this well. Wright helps us see that Jesus, in talking about the kingdom of God, was primarily talking about the here and now, not the hereafter.
“… [J]udgment would come, not as an arbitrary ‘punishment’ by God for Israel’s failure to obey some general moral standards but as the inevitable result … of Isreal’s choosing the way of violence, the way of resistance, rather than following in the way Jesus himself had grasped and articulated in his own life and message. If they would not follow the way of peace, they would reap the consequences,” Wright says. (The Challenge of Jesus, pp. 49-50, IVP Academic)
Many Israelites in Jesus’ day thought the way to overthrow Roman rule and restore their national pride was to fight the Romans’ at their own game. Jesus had another way. Just imagine, what if the Israel of Jesus’ day had followed Jesus’ example. History would be very different. As it was, they didn’t and their temple and their national hopes were destroyed within about 30 years.
Taking an agnostic’s challenge March 9, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Evolution, Homosexuality, Jesus, Prayer, Religion.17 comments
I have an agnostic friend who doesn’t understand why more Christians do not stand up to intolerant, judgmental Christians. She has a point
“When I hear intolerant Christians having a public fit about people who believe in evolution or are gay or who don’t agree with prayer in school, saying that such people are doomed to hell and ought to be silenced, it makes a difference when I’m thinking about heading to church on Sunday,” Holly writes.
She has a point. I accept my own responsibility for failing to speak up against such voices. I think those of us who are more tolerant are hesitant to publicly criticize a fellow believer; but maybe that’s just an excuse.
Let me go on record regarding the things Holly mentioned:
– I do not think faith in Christ rules out acceptance of the theory of evolution. In fact, I suspect that’s how God did it; but I don’t know. I don’t trust those who rule out evolution, nor do I trust those who have more faith in a theory than in God. History has shown science to be just as fallible as Christians.
– I think Christians who have a fixation on the gay issue have deeper issues at work. The Bible says homosexual behavior is wrong, so that’s what I think. The Bible also says pride and gluttony are wrong, but I am occasionally guilty of both. Jesus came to die for gay people just like He came to die for me.
– I think prescribed prayer in public schools is a bad thing because the state has no business telling people how to pray. If Muslims ever out-populate Christians, I would hate for the Christian kids to have to pray in a Muslim fashion. Of course, any child can pray any time in public school; but they simply need to have God as the only hearer. That’s who it is for anyway.
– As for condemning people to hell, I’m going to leave that to God. I believe in a God of justice and grace. I kind of go with the old line that if someone goes to hell it’s because they chose it, not because God sent them there. Do you have to trust your life to Jesus or you go to hell? That’s what the Bible seems to say, but I trust God to do what is right by His children — that’s all of us.
Holly then mentioned the recent story about James Dobson and others seeking to get Richard Cizik, a vice president with the National Association of Evangelicals, fired for leading the organization to speak out about man-made global warming. I was disgusted by Dobson and compatriots. Three cheers for Cizik and for his boss, Leith Anderson, refusing to fire him.
Thank you, Holly, for reminding us Christians to stand up publicly to oppose the un-Christlike behavior of our fellow believers. Of course, my behavior is not always Christlike either, so I am depending on grace, the grace that came to Earth through Jesus of Nazareth.
Of course, I remain anonymous because I fear the retribution of intolerant Christian fundamentalists. I wish it were not so.
Seeing Christ and more March 6, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Baptists, Christianity, Jesus.Tags: Pope John Paul II
2 comments
Twelve years ago, Richard John Neuhaus wrote that Pope John Paul II “never tires of repeating that the revelation of God in Christ is the revelation of God to man but also the revelation of man to himself.” (“The Public Square: A Pope of the First Millennium at the Threshold of the Third,” First Things, January 1995)
Baptists don’t talk this way, so these were rather memorable words for this Baptist. Because of the passage of time, I’m not sure exactly what point the Pope or Neuhaus were trying to make, but I can extrapolate my own meaning from the comment.
I think I do see myself more clearly when I “look” at Jesus. This seems to happen in two ways.
First, I see shadows of Him in my life. I see a little of the goodness, a little of the love, a little of the sacrifice, a little of the purpose, a little of the faithfulness to the Father. I’ve been “looking” at His life for almost all of mine, and I think I see in me that I would not have had the goodness, the love, the sacrifice, the purpose or the faithfulness if not for the model of Christ and for the connection with His Spirit.
Second, I see how little goodness, love, sacrifice, purpose and faithfulness are present in my life. While He has helped me become more than I would have otherwise been, I still have so far to go. Sometimes it’s hard to “look” at His life and then at mine because I know people label me as one of His followers and yet I follow so imperfectly.
While “The Lost Tomb of Christ” television show focuses our attention on the pivotal event of Jesus’ life, I do not want to forget the pre-crucifixion life that is revealed in Scripture. In that revelation we see something timeless, God, and we see something very much in our time, ourselves.
Day after the tomb’s opening March 5, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Faith, Jesus, Truth.Tags: Resurrection
5 comments
I waited about 24 hours after watching “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”. I waited to make sure the theoretical walls of Christendom did not crumble under the weight of television “journalism”. So far, they still seem intact.
I’m already reading and hearing some interesting responses, but I have not seen the follow-up show yet because my beddy-bye time precluded it Sunday night.
As a mental exercise I want to explore some options. What if it turns out that filmmaker James Cameron and crew are right? What if Jesus did not physically rise from the dead? What are my options of response? Here’s a go at it:
1) Ignore the truth and go on believing and teaching what I’ve always believed and taught.
2) Ascribe to only a spiritual ressurection and still affirm that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah.
3) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah but affirm him as a great teacher and continue to build a God-faith around his teachings.
4) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah but affirm him as a great teacher and begin to build a God-faith around the teachings of all great teachers.
5) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah but affirm his as a great teacher and begin to build a godless life philosophy around the teachings of all great teachers.
6) Reject the notion that Jesus was the Messiah or a great teacher and disregard all vestiges of his teaching and look for truth elsewhere.
7) Stop looking for truth.
I’ve always been one who likes to look at options, so this little exercise helped me. Did I miss any in general terms?
Please do NOT think I’ve drunk the James Cameron Kool-aid and bought this story line. I surely haven’t. But I’m willing to look at it. As this blog’s subtitle says, I’m listening for truth in an amazing world.
By the way, I still prayed this morning and felt the presence of a loving God in my spirit just like I had the day before seeing the show. While godless options are intellectually possible, I simply cannot imagine living with one.
