5/16/12
The Darkwood Brew question of the week on Facebook posed was: If you were some other religion than you are now, what would it be and why? Someone posted a link to a quiz you can take to see what kind of religion you truly match. Simply taking the quiz was more educational of what my own belief system is than getting the results. I mean, really, when is the last time you sat down and thoroughly reviewed your theological beliefs? I found myself thinking, “Huh, never really considered that before.” But then I realized I’m new to this liberated free-thinking gig, and it’s okay think outside of the proverbial locked Christianity box I’ve been living in for a while. It’s okay-er to start expressing some of those beliefs here. So, it feels safe.
I grew up Methodist, converted to Catholicism, gave up being Catholic for Lent one year (it IS supposed to end up being carried out as a practice, right?), hung out with the Universalist Unitarians for a while and then found my match at United Church of Christ. All of that without the quiz.
Still, the quiz results intrigued me – matching me with 100% Mahayana Buddhism. Some may say, I’m too wishy-washy on my faith. I believe that the more I learn about myself and open myself to the possibilities of other faiths, the more my faith should shift – or wish-wash as it may be. To sit stagnant doesn’t make sense to me.
I’ve always had this other very upscale academic theological theory that I call the Diet Coke theory. I don’t even drink the stuff any more, but still, my theory bodes true – and very academicky: How do you know that Diet Coke is your drink unless you try all the others? Coke with rum on the rocks is delicious. Dr. Pepper is super sweet and yummy. And God forbid (figuratively, not so much literally) that we mix Pepsi and milk together. GASP!
The last part of our reading this week in Deuteronomy kind of stuck with me: “As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions,
the Lord alone guided him; no foreign god was with him.”
As I read that on Mother’s Day, I read the parallels into this:
As a mother stirs up her nest, and hovers over her young; as she spreads her arms out and takes them up, and bears them up into this world, the Lord guides her; no foreign god was with her. Because, here’s a theological question – do eagles worship the Lord. And if so, which one? Just curious.
This Mother’s day, this eagle spread her wings and dropped her kids into a track meet. I definitely stirred the nest at 6:30 a.m., which, for me, is fine, but my 9 year old twins were a bit disturbed. Eagles fly, I’ve got my minivan, which is equally cool transportation to Lincoln, Nebraska, I’m sure. I kissed them on their cheeks (Max allowed it since I cited it was Mother’s day) and I told them to do their best in my super motivating mommy voice. To which they obliged.
This week, they are high jumpers. It helps that their dad is the coach. It was quite the Mother’s Day treat to watch Chris coach Max and Lucy. Max is doing very well at high jump. But this was Lucy’s first week to even attempt high jump. She got fifth place. I’m super proud, but not at her placing in the track meet. Have you ever done high jump? There’s a literal catch there – if you miss, you knock the bar off and typically end up landing on it. And by physics or geometry or gravity or whatever, you land on the bar on the small of your back. It’s a fiberglass bar and it hurts. Lucy landed on the bar in practice. So, she knew what was eventually coming at the actual track meet. But she kept going, and the pride on her face after she was done said it all to me. To see all of that in your child’s eyes: the hesitation, the confirmation of why she hesitated, pain, perseverance, doubt, attempt, and then pride – Best. Mother’s. Day. Ever. And I didn’t even get breakfast in bed, y’all.
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It seems in this age, parents are having their kids specialize in a sport or discipline by age 9 years old, if not sooner. We refuse to do that here. I’ve spoken to college coaches and two of their main issues is one-sport-discipline injuries and burn out. So, what coaches are finding is that if kids can balance more than one sport, it literally shapes them to be a more well-rounded athlete. What they are also finding is it not only prevents injury, it promotes muscle-twitch stimulation, cognitive and critical thinking skills, and makes a better athlete. For example, a running magazine encourages endurance runners to train for triathlons because it takes impact off the body in swimming and biking. But it also trains different muscles in your body that benefit your running. In short, it’s not just preventative therapy, it’s progressive training.
How do you know that you are the best at that sport unless you try the others? See the Diet Coke theory here? And how do you know YOUR god is the Most High until you attempt to understand where that statement came from or understanding other “gods”? Who’s to say that learning other disciplines won’t catapult your understanding to the Most High?
I think when people read Deuteronomy- some only see the part about “God is the Most High”. But they forget the part about the eagle. It’s our part to be the eagle and to be the baby eagles (eaglets? I dunno). We need to get our nest stirred, and God picks us up in embrace and drops us into the world. Got it. But we also need to be the eagle, and do the same for our kids, our friends, our neighbors.
***Note of defense: It’s not just sports around here. We try to expose them to as many academic, cultural arts, traveling experiences as we can so that the kids eventually come up with their own theory of Most High.
5/13/12
I love language. This is a good thing for a writer, and a Christian, because language matters as much to one way of life as it does to the other. The text we’re studying today comes from the Gospel of John, and is probably the most frequently quoted text in the Bible, at least among Christians trying to convince others that they hold the only key to heaven. I read John 14:1-7:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Questions. I have them. Some pertain to the text, others are caught up in the general cultural assumptions woven through what it means to be a Christian. Just so you get a sense of what a crowded and frequently crazy place my head is, I’ve written down a few of them.
1. Does the text actually say that Jesus is going to heaven? He says he goes to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. Does he mean our interpretation of heaven? How do we know that? If he did, why didn’t he say so? If not, when and why did we begin to link Jesus to “heaven” and “heaven” to salvation?
2. Jesus says “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Putting aside the “where”, what’s the way to the place? Is it a belief system? Is it a way of life? A road, like Route 66, or the Via Dolorosa that ends in a cross? What is this way?
3. Thomas says “we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” and boy am I glad to know I’m not the only one who’s confused. If people who were THERE, in the ROOM, didn’t understand, hearing the words directly from the horse’s mouth, then how can we be so sure we do?
4. And Jesus says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Wow. And whoa.
Let’s talk language. The first part of #4 is a metaphor, which is a powerful and much-neglected component of language. A metaphor, for those of you who promptly forgot everything you learned in 10th grade English, is a “figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.” (not literally applicable. Think on that for a while, but don’t try to find the right answer, or even an answer, because that’s not what metaphors are about. They’re about comparing two dissimilar things and opening your mind to a new way of seeing those things. See also: poetry.)
The second part is a statement that turns on a word that can be either a preposition, or an adverb, depending on how it’s used in the sentence. Before you protest that prepositions and adverbs are dinky little words that don’t mean much because they’re not big, powerful VERBS or clear, identifiable NOUNS, just note that there’s a big difference between your two-year-old being “in” the house or being “on” the house. One means you can mow the lawn with Rhianna blasting into your ears. The other is cause for panicked calls to 911 and your neighbor with the extension ladder. In this case it’s used as an adverb, which are relational words, and they matter when we’re talking about our relation to and with God.
Let’s also remember that John didn’t write in English. He wrote in Greek, a language I don’t know, so I’m working with someone else’s translation. Tricky, that, because I’m trying to understand Jesus’s words as written down about seventy years after his death by someone speaking another language and living in another time and culture, then translated into English. So, what does it mean to go somewhere through another person?
How many different ways can we use “through” in a sentence? Using just a few of the definitions (copied and pasted from whatever dictionary is embedded in my Mac), we can have some fun with what it means to come to God through Jesus:
• moving in one side and out of the other side of (an opening, channel, or location) : (coming to God through Jesus by transitioning from one space to another (earth to heaven), or one way of life to another.)
• moving around or from one side to the other within (a crowd or group) : (Coming to God through Jesus by using his teachings to weave through obstacles like sin, or a crowd of people offering false teachings. I don’t mean the Buddha or Confucius or any of the Hindu teachers. I mean Abercrombie and Fitch, or Audi, or the people who sell Arby’s as “good mood food” which might be a metaphor, or perhaps just a blatant lie.)
• so as to be perceived from the other side of (an intervening obstacle) : (Coming to God by using Jesus as the lens through which we see God, and if you’ve read any parables, you’ll know that even Jesus didn’t teach like he was clear, flawless glass. Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen!)
• expressing the position or location of something beyond or at the far end of (an opening or an obstacle) : (Most frequently understood definition of Jesus and through. We walk through Jesus like he’s a gate. Well…what does THAT mean? And is, perhaps, the key word “walk”?)
• continuing in time toward completion of (a process or period) : (Lengthy process, that “through”. Not a single moment in your life, but an ongoing process over time that indicates transformation, growth.
• so as to be connected by telephone : (My personal favorite: Jesus as iPhone).
Now that I’ve ensured I’ll never get invited to another casual dinner party, let’s explore, which is what those of us who went on the Turkey Trip 2012 in April did. We walked in the footsteps of Paul and as we did we explored Paul’s vision of what it meant to be a Christian in the early years after Jesus’s death. Well, we rode a very comfortable bus, but we had two weeks, not two years. We toured Turkey like we were shot out of a cannon, and it was the most powerful, transformative experience of immersion in the Spirit in my life. I can’t imagine how the Spirit worked on Paul as he walked and was beaten, walked and was stoned, walked and talked to his companions and fellow believers, seeking the Way in the risen Christ.
My experience, having walked where Paul walked, is that coming to God through Jesus can’t possibly be about a confining belief that makes Jesus smaller, not bigger, or easier to understand, not harder. It’s about an inner journey that opens your interior world like a boat on the ocean, creating a sense of space and love and joy. Traveling through Turkey gave me a sense of the vast territory and grievous obstacles Paul faced, and imbued meaning into his words and his passionate commitment to the risen Christ as one body in which we are all members. Below is one of my favorite pictures from the trip (taken by Scott Griessel).
That’s me, in the red pullover, and Anna Griessel, wife of Darkwood Brew producer and blogger Scott Griessel, in the playful red scarf. We’re leaving Assos, talking over what we’ve just seen.
That’s what it means to come to God through Jesus. Salvation hinges on walking the way, like Paul did, talking with companions, like Paul did, his life lived to the fullest while on the move. This is a vast, complicated blessing, one we’ll immerse ourselves in for the next two years as we investigate the series By This Way of Life. Let’s not make it simple and cheat ourselves out of the opportunity to live not only the questions but the mystery that is the risen Christ.
5/12/12
by Eric Elnes
I. Christians Behaving Badly
On February 26, 2011, a two-minute-fifty-eight-second video was posted on YouTube to promote a forthcoming book that, within hours, sparked a firestorm. Two prominent evangelical leaders, Justin Taylor and John Piper, raised an immediate cry. Taylor posted an entry on his blog which stopped just shy of reporting that “the sky is falling” (Taylor). Piper simply posted a three-word Twitter message that bid “Farewell” to the video’s creator.
By the end of the day, the video was the tenth hottest topic on Twitter. In less than a week, over 2,500 blogs had been posted in response and countless forums were gathered on Facebook in heated debate. Within a month after the video’s initial posting, more had likely been written about the video, the book it was promoting, and its creator, than was written concerning Martin Luther in the decade following his posting of the 95 Theses. Very impressive considering that the book had not yet been released!
At the center of all this controversy was Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Michigan – one of the fastest growing evangelical churches in the country. The simple statement that set off all the alarms was Bell’s suggestion that a non-Christian like Mahatma Gandhi may not be burning in Hell.
To some, the idea that anyone who is not a Christian could go anywhere but hell for eternity is, well, for them hard to swallow. If this belief strikes you as cold-hearted, consider that people who hold such beliefs don’t generally hate non-Christians. No, these conservative brothers and sisters neither relish violence nor harbor glee over what they perceive to be the fate of non-believers. In fact, many are some of the most generous, loving people you’ll ever meet – people who are simply trying to do the right thing, based on their beliefs. Compassion compels them to save souls from eternal torture.
Now this debate over salvation created a very curious affair. It polarized Christians of both sides of the theological divide. The irony is that any of those who resonated most strongly with Rob Bell’s belief that “love wins” (which was the title of his book, incidentally) tended to be just as abusive in defending their beliefs as the fundamentalists were in attacking them. As Christian blogger, Rachel Held Evans noted in an interview on Darkwood Brew, “One thing I noticed from some of my more progressive friends who loved Rob Bell’s book was [an attitude toward opponents] like ‘Love wins. Eat it!’”
II. I’m Telling Mom!
This being Mother’s Day, I wonder how God would handle the controversy if God were a Mom.
When I was young, my brother Scott and I fought constantly. When Scott and I would fight, the most offended party would go tell Mom. This would inevitably put one or both of us into “time out.” Mom’s approach generally stopped the fight, but not the fighting, which lasted clear through high school. We didn’t become true friends until I left for college, and thankfully we’ve remained so.
When it came time to have children myself, I felt relief to become the father of two girls. But I quickly learned that it’s not just boys who fight. Girls can be every bit as vicious and brutal, though their tactics may differ. Thankfully, Melanie’s approach to sibling rivalry was more effective than my mother’s. Melanie did not separate the girls. She sent them to the bathroom. To the same bathroom. With the command not to come out until they could get along.
At first, behind that door we would hear some blaming and name calling. Then silence. Then a small giggle followed eventually by boisterous laughter. Within five or ten minutes we’d be telling the girls it’s okay to come out. But they wouldn’t! They were having too much fun in the bathroom.
After a few of these bathroom sessions, the girls learned to tame their arguments or quiet them so we parents couldn’t hear. After a dozen sessions, they worked their fighting almost completely out of their system. Maren and Arianna have been best friends since they were roughly six and eight respectively.
I wish God would send Christians into the bathroom once in awhile when we’re fighting, with the mandate that none of us can come out until we get along – really get along. (No fooling God!) Can you imagine Pat Robertson in there with John Shelby Spong? Can you imagine yourself in there with your theological opposite?
Shy of conversion, what would cause a liberal and fundamentalist Christian to move from disdain to positive regard?
III. By This Way of Life
There are any number of ways that two people can change their hearts about each other despite differences of belief. It’s not uncommon, for instance, for Republicans and Democrats to marry each other. Do you know such couples? (Darkwood Brew producer, Scott Griessel, once created a hilarious video on this theme.) Christian liberals and conservatives marry each other, too. At my church, Christians are also married Jews, Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.
I don’t mean to minimize the difficulties such couples may experience. Sometimes differences of belief, particularly profound ones, cause significant pain and hardship in a marriage. Sometimes they even break up marriages – or at least people claim they do. But if you’ve ever met a couple who remain madly in love with each other and faithfully committed despite profound differences of belief you know the special magic they exude. And why wouldn’t they? However it happened, whether their awareness came easily or through trial-by-fire, they’ve discovered that when True Love comes into conflict with something as well-armed as Unshakable Belief, well … Love wins. They begin to apply this discovery to their whole relationship, by which they model a way of life that is literally beyond belief.
Now, if imperfect, human couples can find ways to love each other despite vast differences of belief, can’t God find ways to love us as well, despite what we believe or fail to believe?
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). What? Except through Jesus? Most Christians assume this means through belief in Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t say through belief in him. Jesus simply says “through me.” What could it mean that we come to God through Jesus if it’s not through belief in him?
Actually, John tells us what it means. Here are the opening lines of his gospel (John 1:1-5):
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The Word, according to John, is Christ’s true and highest identity. John’s Gospel claims that all things come into being through this Christ. It says that apart from Christ “not one thing came into being.” John makes it pretty clear that we and everyone else, belief or no belief, fit into the category of all things. So coming to God through Christ has nothing intrinsically to do with our belief in Christ. Christ does not reveal that through belief in him we can have a relationship with God. Christ reveals that we are in relationship with God whether we choose to believe it or not.
We might better grasp Jesus claim in John 14:6 if we understand Jesus as revealing not “the way,” which many mistake as “the belief,” but “the way of life” that all people live when they discover, embrace, and trust their relationship with the Source of all Love, whether Christian or not.
You may be sensing a sudden decline in Jesus’ ratings on the scale of importance. Does this mean Jesus is unimportant? Not to a Christian! After all, who reveals this way of life to a Christian? Not Krishna. Not Ganesha. Not Lao Tzu or Confucius. Jesus reveals it. He shows what it is like to fully accept, embrace and place trust in our relationship with a God who loves us beyond our wildest imagination. In so doing, he shows us what it means to be fully alive. Through Jesus – and particularly through his love for us that not even a Cross could defeat – we find the assurance that this love relationship we have is trustworthy, and that God is faithful to this relationship even when we are not.
IV. Jesus Is My Mylar
Now, imagine yourself with your theological opposite in a bathroom with a window open on a sunny day. And you have a piece of Mylar with you
Mylar is a kind of stretched polyester film that is both transparent and highly reflective. It is so highly reflective that it can reflect enough of the sun’s light to actually look at the sun – briefly – without going blind.
Once in the bathroom, stop crossing your arms, sticking your tongues out, and huffing and puffing at each other just long enough to open the window. Find the sun and feel its warmth on your faces. Is the sun warming just one of you, or both of you equally? Hmmmm. I guess the sun doesn’t really care which one of you is right …
By the way, how do you know it’s the sun warming your face and not a heat lamp? Of course, you know through long experience, not belief. Hmmmmm. So belief alone is not that makes it possible to feel the sun’s warmth … In fact, the sun will warm you whether you believe in its existence or not.
Doubtless, the two of you have snuck glimpses of the sun over the course of your lives. How long have you ever been able to look at it before turning away? A couple of seconds? Now, hold the Mylar between yourselves and the sun. You can see it more clearly than ever – and without looking away [Note: This is just an illustration. Even looking through Mylar long enough will blind you!]
This whole thing is a metaphor, of course. It’s a metaphor created not by me, but by St. Augustine to describe the Trinity in the 4th Century (minus the Mylar!). God the Father (or Creator) is like the Sun. The Holy Spirit is like the light of the sun on your body and the warmth you feel from it. Jesus is like the Mylar. By looking at Jesus, we are able to see God more clearly, and keep our gaze fixed on God longer without being overwhelmed by God’s radiance. Through Jesus we discover that God’s love is not round like the sun, but Cross-shaped. It is Cross-shaped love – self-giving love, full of grace and forgiveness – that fills the world with light that even the deepest darkness cannot overcome.
A Hindu living in New Delhi does not need to believe in Jesus to experience God’s love, grace and forgiveness anymore than she needs to hold Mylar up to the sun to experience its warmth. But when she experiences that warmth – that love – she will need to decide whether or not to accept its offer to remain there or shrink back to the shadows.
What, then, is the benefit of following Jesus as opposed to Krishna or Ganesha? Truly, I cannot tell you the relative benefits because I’ve never been Hindu. All I can say for sure is what the benefit of Jesus is to me. He is one who walked fully in the light. It is by his invitation that I have had the courage to step out of the shadows into the light. And it is only through his living, loving Presence – which I know as the Holy Spirit and other faiths know by different names – that I have the courage and trust to stay in the light rather than rush back to the shadows. It is the incredible warmth I feel that moves me to invite others to step out of the shadows as well
It is BY THIS WAY OF LIFE that I have come not only to know God, but to know others and myself most fully. And not only to know, but to love.
