The Word of God I have always balked at the Gospel of St. John describing Jesus as the Eternal Word of God. Today I heard those words being said and realized that it ties in with my earlier posts about being some sort of Zen Christian. The Word of God is Eternal, since God is Eternal, and Jesus, finding the Word deep in himself was tied into that Eternal stream, letting himself go. Perhaps that Eternal Word is buried deep within all of us, and we have to make an effort to let ourselves go and listen to the Word, that shard of Creation that lies in all of our souls.

As the sermon today went: "Lent is a time to strip away the things that separate us from God."
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  Temptation and Challenge Is God the only one who can save us? Are dependant upon God alone for salvation? Spong states that we don't need rescuing, we need empowerment. Can we save ourselves and present ourselves to God and say "Glory be to you, Almighty Creator! I have purified myself and come to give you thanks and praise!"? Can we say this? Does it assume that we expect God to treat us as equals with God? Is this act still too full of a persons Ego and not enough humility before our creator?

I think that we can save ourselves. I imagined what I would say to the Devil if I were being tempted in a way that Jesus was tempted:

"I can pay all your bills, give you a line of credit, and get you a good job. All you have to do is worship me."

"God doesn't give us points for doing things the easy way."

"I can set you up for life, you can spend all day lounging doing whatever you want, all your desires will be filled, all you have to do is worship me."

"That's a good offer, but there's no such thing as a free lunch."

"I can make all sorts of bad things happen to you. Look what I did to Job. Do you want to live like that? Do you want everyone to abandon you and think that God has abandoned you too? Do you think that God will come to your rescue?"

"No. God would not intervene directly on my behalf, but someone else would. God doesn't protect me from all harm because he doesn't need to. My Love is not for sale."

And so it goes. I don't think that I would perform so well if I were truly tempted in such an obvious way, which is why temptations creep up and act really sneaky. I must find the strength in myself to resist temptation and keep my mind, body, and soul pointed towards God.

Other analogies are running through my brain. I hear Luke Skywalker ask Yoda "is the dark side stronger?" and Yoda's response: "No, it is quicker, easier, more aggressive. You must feel the force flow through you." In Christian terms we have to let the Holy Spirit flow through us. We cannot save ourselves, we have to let go of the control we want to exert and let the Holy Spirit carry us away. Go with that flow. We have to trust God and the Spirit even when we cant' see the end of the road, and that is the hardest challenge of being a Christian.  ¶ 3:43 PM 0 comments

  Turning towards the Narrow Path My parish prints most of the service in a bulletin, so to participate in the service we don't need much more than the bulletin and the hymnal. We use a lot of supplemental liturgies and we don't have copies of these books in thew pews, probably because they aren't meant for pew use. I have taken to using the BCP, especially the prayers starting at 814, as I sit in church.

Take a look at prayer 64 on page 833: "Deliver us, when we draw near to thee, form coldness of heart..." I've frequently noted that I can have a bit of a cold heart. It's not really a cold heart, but all of the personality tests I've taken over the years point out that emotions are not something I deal with a lot. I'm more of a logical type, so I appear to be cold hearted.

As I read this this morning I began to think about drawing closer to God and being drawn from coldness of heart. I think that this is a two way street, that is, by turning away from coldness of heart you can come closer to God. When having a warm and open heart and mind are the result of Connecting with God we have an outward visible sign of God's grace working in our lives. Simply having a warm heart and an open mind does not necessarily bring you closer to God. Take Ebeneezer Scrooge as an example, his heart warmed up, but we don't read The Christmas Carol seeing it as the work of God in Scrooge's life. I also take into consideration the fact that Christmas was celebrated quite differently when Dicken's wrote the book, and the way God was seen was also quite different then as He is now. Scrooge may have turned to God. It certainly seems that way when you read the book or watch any adaptation of the story.

Turning away from a cold heart turns you in the right direction (that is, towards God) but doesn't guarantee that you're exactly right. I wonder if this is what Jesus meant by the Narrow Path. We can turn towards God but there are mayn ways in which we can miss our target and walk right past God. If our actions come from a warm heart but our intentions are still impure, we miss the point.  ¶ 3:27 PM 0 comments

  The Passion of Christ I just saw a segment on MSNBC's Scarborough County about the Passion and the Pastor that bought a movie theatre so his 'flock' could go to the movie in special showings. They had a few 11-13 year olds on the show, giving their reactions. First, a 12 year old boy claimed that he felt the Love of God after the movie. A 13-year old girl said that the movie depicted a true story, and that the violence wasn't anything new to her, comparing it to Jurassic Park and the Lord of the Rings. It was clear that this girls was reading a prepared script. The 12 year old boy was a much better actor. There was also an 11 year old girl who looked very angry and I think they decided not to let her talk because they couldn't control her tongue. She looked angry.

The 12 year old claimed that the movie shows God's Love. The pastor claimed that the movie is violent, but it was contextualized violence, and we're all desenstitized to violence because of MTV. C'mon, MTV only desensualized us to soft core porn and degrades our countries overall taste in music.

They also claim that there are people who "accepted Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior" at the end of the screening.

Y'know, I'll have to see this movie, but I don't want to. There is a difference between watching an action hero blow away 30 or 40 people in a few minutes and watching one man being flogged for who knows how long. Of course, I don't think that the crucifiction is so important to the Christ story that it demands two hours of movie. These people in this interview claimed that it ends with the resurrection, but I've also heard that it ends at the burial. I'm trying to find out now.  ¶ 8:01 PM 0 comments

  Ash Wednesday I went to the service this morning and a few thoughts about mortality came to mind.

Mortality is the price we pay for Life
Religion is pyschotherapy to help us come to grips with our eventual death.
I have always disliked Lent because of the focus on our negative aspects, but I have always appreciated the bleakness of Good Friday and the Light of the Vigil. There is a time and place for everything and the time to look at what is wrong with our lives is during Lent. It is a time for purification and healing and remorse.

Lent does not have to be the forty days before Easter. My best friend has done several '40 days' in the last few years. He gave up swearing for 40 days and hardly swears at all now, in fact, I feel a ping of guilt when I use foul language around him. He gave up television and movies, which took up a great deal of his leisure time, for 40 days and now he has a better persepective on the curse of the glowing box. He does not follow liturgical calendars, but he knows about them. I don't know if this gives him greater freedom to observe Lent any time of the year or not.

I also was imposed with the Ashes, as I am every year. When I was a child we went to a service early in the morning, and Mom always let us wash the ashes off of our faces before we went to school. I am not washing the ashes off as an adult. I do wonder about the reading for the day, which is Matthew 6:1-6, where Jesus tells us to pray in private and not pray or fast in public as the hypocrites do. Yet I walk around with ashes on my forehead. My friend thought that it was an inky thumbprint at first, but he remembered what day it is. I am also walking around a Catholic University and I see several people around me who have very dark, very bold ashes on their foreheads, so I don't think I'm out of place. Ah, tis interesting.  ¶ 1:28 PM 0 comments

  Socrates and Jesus I have a book series called "The Great Books of the Western World" compiled by the Encyclopedia Britanica. The first book lists a ten year program of reading through most of the series, pinpointing important parts of the series. I started reading through them ove the last few weeks, following their suggested order.
The first reading is Plato's "Apology," which I call 'Socrates Last Stand.' Socrates has been charged with corruption of the youth and sentenced to death. In the Apology he makes his defense, but to no avail.
I remember hearing that Plato and other Greek philosophers were found with versions of Holy Scriptures in the Gnostic texts, which were considered heretical and the Gnostics were not well liked. I wondered if they had a story telling of Jesus' trial and his defense. THis story, if unique to the Gnostic tradition, would also be repressed and left out of later versions of the Bible.

I have another text called "The Lost Books of the Bible" which was published in 1926. One of the books is attributed to Nicodemus, who was a pharisee yet he followed Jesus. This book tells of Pilate charging Jesus and Jesus defending himself in a manner similar to Socrates.

The problem with this is that I don't think that the collection of books "The Lost Books" are wholly authentic. I even suspect them to be 19th or 20th century forgeries. I have looked at the early cannonical lists of the early Christian church and I dont' see a lot of similarity with those lists and the table of conents of "THe Lost Books." But the Lost Books also has writings of Hermas, which I have heard mentioned by Biblical scholars, so perhaps these texts are truly ancient, but I can't find evidence that they were even considered for inclusion into the Bible, or even mentioned in the debates.  ¶ 8:23 AM 0 comments

  Bumper Sticker Revisited I just reread some old posts and this remark from Bishop Spong struck me:

Why do people say "There is only one way to God, My Way"? Who says "there is one way to God, and that's his way, that guy over there"?

The disciples said this, they said "The way to God is through Jesus." Nowadays we don't say this, or we distort Jesus into our own ideas, so Jesus becomes our puppet. That's worse than idolatry in my book.  ¶ 9:32 AM 0 comments

  Transformation and transfiguration Sunday was the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, which meant lessons on transfigurations. I began thinking about it, and I wonder if the crucifiction is a transformational moment in the life of Christ, or is the resurrection a transforming moment? I know some Christians will argue against the idea the Jesus changed while he was teaching, and other Christians will see Jesus change his ministry at certain events: The Samaritan woman, the Woman from Cana, etc. I suppose that this can be another idicator of where a Christian is on the 'Progressive-Traditional' scale.

I also began to think about the differences between transformation and transfiguration. It seems to me that the transfigurations are done for witnesses, they are not internal changes, and therefore they are things we probably should avoid. After all, we are charged to pray privately in our rooms, and not publically so everyone can see how pious we are.

One thing that I have been stuggling with lately is the whole concept of Easter. I've gone so far as to say that the crucifiction doesn't matter (since we are coming up to Lent and Gibson's 'Passion of Christ' movie is coming out tomorrow, it's been on my mind). I've begun to wonder if the resurrection doesn't matter. I know, I know, Paul states clearly that without the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth our faith is in vain.

I think I might be able to call myself a 'Zen Christian.' I've have to do a lot more research into this to know if this is truly what I mean, but I think I think about Jesus in many of the same ways that Buddhists think of the Buddha. I know Marcus Borg has published a small volume that shows the parallels of the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the Buddha. This, in my opinion, shows that both Jesus and Buddha knew more about the truth than others have. I guess this also comes back to one of the basic tennants of my personal faith that the message is more important than the messenger. Jesus is Teacher before he is Savior. Is this heretical? I don't think so, but I'm also not one to cry 'heresy' all that often. Okay, I might if some Gospel reading gets used to justify something I consider to be a social crime or crime against humanity. I have to be honest about that.

So Jesus is Teacher, and if I can allow myself to look for the message over the messenger then I can hear the voice of God in more places than my Church, and I can hear it in unlikely sources: strangers, friends, people I don't like, etc.

I don't want to be transfigured, I want to be transformed, and I accept that transformation is a constant in life, not a one time only deal. That line of thinking can also undervalue Baptism, so I'll have to think about that more in the future. On a final side note (of which there are many in these posts) most statues of Moses depict him with horns on his head because of a mistranslation of 'aura' or 'halo', so many Christians through the years thought that having horns coming out of the head was a sign of divine providence. Now we see them as signs of evil. Go figure.  ¶ 9:26 AM 0 comments

  Short Sighted Christian I was cleaning up my web site, preparing to upload a new version of most of it, and I came across this page on a
Short Sighted Christian.

The link on this page is broken, and should habe "Religion" instead of "Relition".  ¶ 2:41 PM 0 comments

  Joan and Joshua Last Friday we watched a great episode of Joan of Arcadia. Saturday I read an e-mail on a mailing list about a young woman who passed away. One of the e-mails in repsonse quoted fromt he Book of Joshua 1:9.

"I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or
dismayed, fo rhte Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

I told this to my wife and she quoted the show "Come on Joan, I'll walk you home."
Sometimes serendipity just hits you on the side of the head and yells 'Pay Attention.'


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  My Theology Journal I got an e-mail this week from a woman who was trying to find information about Atonement Theology and she found my site. Apparently my journal entry was around #9 on Google. I had forgotten about it, but this blog was supposed to supercede that journal. Here is a list of my entries:

God in a Box

4-15-02. This essay explores how we have put God in a box.

Good Intentions, Bad Theology

4-21-02. I explore a strange conflict I felt while reviewing a book on doubt.

Volitional Doubt

4-25-02. I have been reviewing a book and it has sparked a few reactions. This one rambles a bit. It has some good seeds in it that I will have to look at extracting to a more suitable place.

As A Little Child

4-28-02. I have always struggled with this phrase, so I've started to tackle it in this piece. I also make a few startling confessions.

Neutering God

5-3-02. I begin a discussion about male and female images of God and Wisdom.

Idolatry

5-10-02. I try to continue the thread started in God in a Box.

A New Trinity

5-21-02. This is a sorting out of some ideas I discussed with my wife about spirituality, religion, and theology.

The Language of Sin

7-6-02. I follow a religious mailing list and there has been some debate about same-sex marriages, but it has evolved into a discussion about sin. Here is my rejection of the traditional 'sin' doctrine.

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  I went to a lecture given by Bishop John Shelby Spong. Here are the "bumper stickers" I culled from my notes:
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There is a difference between the experience of God and the epxlanation of that experience. Explanations are time-wrapped and time-bound.

The theistic definition of God is an immoral idea and an unbeleivable idea in the 21st Century.

If you beleive in Theism, then you must place responsibility for all tragedies on God.

God and Santa Claus are confused. God as record keeper is strange.

Your problem isn't that you've fallen. Your problem is that you haven't evolved. You dont need rescue, you need empowerment.

Why is that Churches who claim to have all the answers don't allow questions?

Modern religion is pyschological abuse.

All those claims about Truth are nothing but power making propaganda.

Why do people say "There is only one way to God, My Way" Who says "there is one way to God, and that's his way, that guy over there."

We cant make an image of God because we can't understand God. All words are inadequate. Definitions are idolatry.

We have a distorted vision because we look for God where he isn't.

There is a bias towards consciousness in creation. Creation is wanting to communicate with it's creator.


People who convert are not friendly. Conversion of others breeds a sense of superiority over others. Our job is not to impose a definition on people but to empower them.

Being born again means we go back to childhood. We need to grow up.

We describe God in personal terms because they are the only terms we have. The tragedy is that we literalize scripture and use it as a weapon.

The Jewish tradition is our mother, and you don't spit on your mother.

Jesus calls us beyond the power of fear, where the difference between the Jew and Greek, Male and Female, Staight and Gay, disappear. Redemption is about empowerment to grow beyond our insecurities.
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