September 18th

I wrote this about 8 years ago.

At last, finally, thank God, a gray and dreary day. I drive into nothingness today. I only see a gray line of trees where yesterday there was the green and red and gold of early autumn. At last the day reflects my mood. Finally, the trees appear to cry, dripping with thick morning moisture and I know it's okay to cry. They cry with the millions, who mourn for the thousands, who came from the 80 countries, who worked in the two towers that fell in just a few hours, one week ago.

The days since have mocked me with warm nights, with sun and blue sky, absent of cloud and plane. That blue sky has angered me to cry out, "Don't you see!" and ask, "Where are you God? Won't you do something? Aren't you listening?". When that anger is not relieved, I turn it toward my radio, to the talk show host and the man on the street who want revenge and even closer to my neighbor who talks without knowing and is ready to send my friends to war, and I am ready to bind them and gag them so they can only hear what is inside their own heads when suddenly I realize that that is how it all began, and withdraw into shame. People speak, but I can't quite connect, and I am further withdrawn into the isolation. The isolation that it is to be a human being.

But on this day, I am comforted. Comforted by the gray blanket that covers the road ahead of me as I drive to work. The world is reflecting what I feel inside and it feels like I can hide here for a while. As I come over a hill, the sun filters through. Through a sugar maple in it's golden September glory. The gold dances off the drops in the air, all the way to me and all the way through me and into the fields around me. In the fields, it hits wet webs and they glow like tiny lanterns.

Have You Read It? The Actual Post.

When I’m not writing my own blogs, I often read others and engage in online discussions on similar topics. Julia Sweeney has a forum that grew out of her public discussions of becoming an atheist. Someone in that forum supplied a link that sent me through a wide spectrum of doubt and belief. The link was to another blogger named Greta, defending her anger towards Christians. It made a lot of sense. Her theme was well developed and I could see how even in a non-violent movement, for example the civil rights movement, anger and violence play an important role, such as getting on the national news when your peaceful protest is broken up with night sticks and fire hoses.

She also included an extensive list of what made her angry about Christianity. This included all the killing in the name of God, suppression of birth control, oppression of gays, it was a long list. Then she linked to an earlier list she had created of all the references to hell in the New Testament.

I followed it. I was surprised at its length because I had just read The Gospel of Inclusion by Carlton Pearson, a preacher who suddenly stopped preaching about hellfire and damnation. Greta and I are very different, but we have a similar problem; finding good authors, with good historical, psychological as well as canonical information that are willing to point out the flaws of religion today, without bashing it as a whole. One excellent exception is “Jesus for the Non-Religious” by John Shelby Spong, a retired Bishop.

Having these books in my reading background kept me from being convinced that Jesus wanted me to love him or go to hell, but Greta’s list was strong evidence to the contrary. I had to figure this out for myself. I pulled out my NIV study Bible and started looking them up. I thought I might have to go back to my King James version to match up the language, but no, it was right there, have an evil thought, go to hell. My study Bible is heavily footnoted, so looking there on the first passage in her list, I found the hell in this case was a translation from Gehenna.

Gehenna was a part of Jerusalem in the time of the New Testament. It was what today we would call a bad neighborhood. There was a lot of garbage, sometimes it would catch fire, a lot of thieves hanging around, you get the idea. Just a few generations earlier, that part of Jerusalem had been used to make human sacrifices to Moloch. Moloch was a god who is featured in a story in the book of Isaiah. In other words, this is like a high school football coach today encouraging his players who live in or near the inner city, saying, “work hard, study your playbook, or your going to end up living in the projects the rest of your life.” It may not be the most appropriate motivation, but it certainly is not threatening someone with eternal damnation in a lake of fire.

Continuing on, I started to hit more parables. Some of these seem to say that actual people will be thrown in to actual fires. One of them, the Parable of the Talents, I am very familiar with and have found scholarly articles explaining it and written my own pieces on it. For example, the person who is “cast into the outer darkness” is actually an analogy for a follower of Christ, not an evil person being punished. I did run in to one parable, The Sheep and the Goats, that I could not refute or explain. But there was a time when someone had told me that the Parable of the Talents was about capitalism. It didn’t seem right, so I studied it and can now argue with logic and context and references to authorities that the interpretation is wrong. I can’t say for certain, but I would be willing to bet that I can do the same with the Sheep and the Goats.

I started skipping through the list a little quicker now and then skipped down to the comments. She graciously left commenting open and included her replies. It is an unusually respectful conversation. I was happy to see some very helpful comments. Of course there were others that were the standard, “Jesus is coming, hang in there” response too. In brief, the comments I liked said that you need to watch for “..it is as if” or “..the Kingdom of God is like” and other clues to when a story is a parable, not literal.

Finally, at the bottom of the comments was a refutation of the refutations. This started out by simply re-listing some of the same passages that Greta had and claiming those could not be explained by what the commenters had said. It seemed that the discussion had devolved into contradiction instead of debate, but he provided a link to an essay of his own, so I followed it.

The essay represented a tremendous amount of work and I really felt his pain. What is unfortunate is that he did something that Thomas Jefferson had already done when he created what is now known as the Jefferson Bible. Their conclusions however are very different. The author of this essay found some rules that he thought were pretty difficult to follow, and couldn’t let go of the parables that seem to say you will be thrown in to the fire if you don’t follow them.

I still recommend this essay. Especially if you are atheist, or undecided. One of the problems of researching the Bible is, when reading a seemingly scholarly work, every now and then the author inserts something like, “God in all his glory” or “the one and only true Christ” or similar phrases that don’t seem to fit. This essay definitely does not do that. It does break down what Jesus suggested one do with one’s life in to some very concise lists. He does use some subjective language and sometimes I think he misinterprets, but try to ignore that and decide for yourself if the advice seems reasonable. He also concludes that Jesus was an apocalyptic, and many scholars agree, that’s a little harder to work around, but try to defer that judgment until you have done further study.

Have You Read it? Part 4

There are many versions of the Bible available on the Internet. One of them is known as “The Jefferson Bible.” It is named for the man who edited it, one of the founders of the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was a big supporter of the Unitarian church. He was sure that the world was moving in that direction and that within his lifetime the majority of people in the world would switch to that form of Christian study.

He looked at the Bible, and had a problem with all the miracles. He did not feel that was necessary for modern man. This is particularly troublesome with the New Testament because it is a mix of references to confirmed historical figures, names of cities that still exists, and miracles. So he sat down with the original tools of cutting and pasting and started working on his New Testament. When he was done he found a collection of common sense sayings. In his words, “There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

I’m sure many would argue with that statement. Perhaps he had not read every code of morals ever written. I don’t see much value in engaging in that argument. Nor do I see any value in taking the opposite step that some do and claiming that the code is so perfect, it proves that Jesus was God. All of that just takes us away from what would be valuable, that is discussing the code itself.

I’m sure there is more to say about this, but for now I just wanted to introduce it so I can finish this multi-part post. I will leave you will Thomas Jefferson’s own words on what I believe is a great way to approach the study of the Christian God.

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you."
--Thomas Jefferson, to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

Have You Read It? Part 3

Okay, the “Have You Read It” series is not just a bunch of book reviews, but I will discuss another book in this part.

Actually, the first time I came across the story of Carlton Pearson was on a radio show “This American Life”. It is a weekly program on public radio that has a wide variety of story tellers. Sometimes it’s a ghost story, sometimes it’s a humorous tale of a dysfunctional family, sometimes it’s the inside story of some current event. Usually they break the show up into several stories, but for Carlton Pearson, they did a full hour.

Carlton Pearson is a preacher. He started out poor and rose very high in the structure of the Oral Roberts ministry. Oral Roberts sort of adopted him. Every Sunday he preached to thousands. He travelled the country with his message, even to the White House. Part of his message was that if you don’t accept Christ in your heart, you will burn in hell for an eternity. In fact it was quite central to his preaching. Until one day when it wasn’t.

He was sitting in his nice house, on his nice couch, with his children in his arms, eating his dinner. On the evening news, a story of children starving to death in Ethiopia. He was always thinking about saving souls, so he saw that and immediately wondered how he could save these children. How could he get to them before they died and tell them of the love of Christ? Of course he couldn’t, so he turned to God and asked why.

Why would God allow this suffering to occur? Why create this world where that happens and it is nearly impossible to fix it? Carlton felt that he could talk to God, and God’s answer was, “yeah, why would you allow that?” He, Carlton that is, not God, realized what he had been doing all his life, and almost immediately stopped doing it. His ministry suffered, he lost his church, he lost a lot of friends. It would really be best if you hear him tell it. You can listen for free, or download for a small fee. “This American Life” is very deserving of your support, so please do so.


Click here for This American Life

He has also published a full version of his story. You can read that if you like, but I’m not endorsing his theology. I asked my pastor to read it and he also has some troubles with the details of his theology, but I don’t want to focus on that. What is important to me, is that someone so entrenched in his beliefs, can, in a moment change his mind. And he was smart enough to re-evaluate his own education and re-educate himself on why. He is still a preacher, but he now preaches about inclusiveness, about love and understanding, and that we are all one.

Click here for his book
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Have You Read It? Part 2

In part 2, I will do a quick book review.

It is hard to find someone who has studied the Bible for many years and still loves it, but also is willing to look at it critically. David Wolpe, Terry Eagleton and John Shelby Spong are a few exceptions. My first Spong book was “Jesus for the Non-Religious”. I thought, here’s a nice book that will help me talk about Christ to my non-religious friends. It took me years to get comfortable even saying Christ, let alone talking about it in mixed (believer and non-believer) company. I figured it would have some of the usual glowing language about how great God is and I would have to work around that, but I hoped it would have some advice I would use too.

I could not have been more wrong. He went through all of the major stories, one by one, and broke down what is historically and contextually wrong with each. About a third of the way through, I started Googling Unitarianism and Buddhism. I was rehearsing what I would say to my pastor when I told him I was no longer going to be attending. Spong kept making references to how he still loved Christianity, so I kept expecting for him to somehow build the stories back up again, but he never did. Very near the end of the book he says choosing how you view or relate to God is ultimately a personal decision.

This is definitely not a book that tries to lure you in and do a sneak attack conversion. The title says it is for the non-religious, and I expect anyone who started out that way will remain so. For the religious, it has some excellent discussion about how the church came to the state it is in today and some suggestions for what needs to be done about it. Chief among them is to stop trying to get people to belief in things that most likely didn’t happen. These are good stories, and Spong gives good guidance on why they were written and why they are still relevant. But he doesn’t need to believe that anyone was actually raised from the dead for that to be true.

If you have questions like, why is there so much effort put in to claiming that Jesus was the Messiah of the Jews, or why are their differences between the four gospels, or why is the gospel of John so unique, this book is a good one for you. If you are interested in how a classically trained theologian can come to understand modern views of war, spirituality and even sexuality, John Shelby Spong is your man. I highly recommend Googling him.

Have Your Read It? Part 1

I have a story I want to tell, but I need to tell a few other stories so that one makes sense. If I were Garrison Keillor, I would just regress in to each one, and come back seamlessly to a humorous and witty ending. But I’m not him. Hopefully each is entertaining on its own. I will introduce a film, a couple books and a document from American history then bring them all together in the story of someone else’s blog. Here goes.

Julia Sweeny is a former character from Saturday Night Live. She was there in the years when the show was not doing so well. Her character, Pat, is fairly well known. For you non-SNL people, Pat was a person that no one could discern the sex of. The joke was that everyone danced around saying she or he and other gender issues. Anyway, after SNL, she did a couple one woman acts, one of which discussed her spiritual history and how she ended up an atheist. It was made into a movie titled, Letting Go of God.

In the movie, Julia completes a course that studies the entire Bible. She is appalled at some of the things she learned. There is a lot of violence in there. She recalls sitting at a stop light and seeing some young people walking toward a church, all in uniforms and carrying their Bibles. She wants to scream, “Have you read it!”

While I’m eating my cereal some mornings, I turn on the TV and watch a very low budget religious program. It’s just one guy, sitting at a desk, reading scripture and explaining Hebrew translations, giving historical context and spiritual interpretation as he goes. I have never watched it long enough to get his point, if he ever gets to one. Every now and then he pauses and says, “You see, you have to follow the law, that’s how you get to heaven, the answers are in here, have you read it?” and he tilts the Bible up toward the camera.

Both of these people can’t be right, and I don’t think both of them are all wrong, but I can’t completely agree with either of them. I have more trouble understanding the televangelist, because I have read “it”, and have not found all the answers or even a consistent set of rules with which to agree or disagree. I have had Julia’s experience of reading something, like the book of Joshua that seems to say God avenges the righteous by helping them kill women and children, and have spent many days and weeks considering radical turns in my spiritual path.

I can’t explain every violent act of God, but I have spent time researching specific passages and found interpretations that are valuable. This does not require explaining away the violence, but it does require understanding the context and purpose of the writing. These can be found in earlier blogs and I’m sure there will be more to come. I can say for sure that the books that come before Kings are bound by time. That Moses did smite the Levites in no way justifies any violence toward current occupants of those same lands.

I will leave you hanging with the “have you read it” question and return soon with part 2.

How to fix Christianity

Okay, so, I was going to build up to this, but since my readership is fairly low, I thought I’d just jump to it. Part of the reason for this blog is for me to organize my own thoughts. You get to observe that and comment as I go. I will make several broad statements this time that require considerable substantiation. If this were a book, that would come first, but it’s a blog, so here goes.

Ultimately, Christianity needs to redefine what it is to be a Christian. That is, accepting Christ as your saviour. Currently, the requirement is too strict, and not relevant to 21st century culture. Understanding Christ as the Jewish Messiah was a mistake of history. It made sense to the people who needed to make sense of what they experienced in the 1st century. It then quickly became something that needed to be explained. Within in a few hundred years, it was irrelevant but ritualized.

People who go to church today understand that the teachings of Jesus have value. They don’t need to first be told that they will go to heaven if they accept Christ in their heart. As an entry point, this is problematic, because the immediate question is, “is that it?” The answer is, “Yes, but, you should follow the teachings too.” Following the teachings is really where we wanted to get in the first, but now this entry point has been artificially added on. The entry point could be, “here are some teachings, let’s learn together.”

Getting churches to change that requirement is probably not going to happen anytime soon. A more likely starting point for change is in the area of tribalism. The Christian cultures and the Jewish cultures before them are based on defining a group of people as special. When that group of people is a family looking to find its own spiritual path, or a race of slaves looking to form its own egalitarian country, I can back that. When it is a small nation looking to conquer other nations to gain power, I can’t. The Old Testament has all of these stories.

I find very little real dialog in the Christian world about the battles in the book of Joshua, or the severe punishments for minor crimes in Leviticus. I find plenty of yelling about it, but not much dialog. The most common responses are defensive and poorly supported, along the lines of, “God says he will punish people for breaking some arbitrary rule, then he does it, that seems fair.” These are rules that defined and controlled a certain culture in a certain time, and they should be viewed only in that context.

That does not mean they are not useful. Parts of the ten commandments for example, are very useful. They are not legislation, but they are good starting points for discussion. The Bible has many stories of a new generation looking back at what earlier generations did, discussing it and deciding to keep some of the ideas, update some others, and toss the rest. It would be nice if it was calm discussion, but its not. Calm doesn’t make a very good story anyway, so it probably happened, we just aren’t reading about it. In those stories, there are usually some who say the only correct thing to do is to keep all of the old traditions. With 6,000 years of traditions in one book, that is pretty much impossible, but there are still people who say it today.

The rules that were once entry points, are now barriers. Many of them are dropping away, but when that happens, there are always those that dig in their heals and scream louder than anyone else. This gives the appearance that these are actually the important issues, and the barrier is strengthened. The opportunity for calm discussion becomes increasingly difficult. One place to look for help on that is to read about cultures that have been through this before, ironically, in the Bible.