Christ Enlight

Free Teleseminar

2011-09-22T18:17:00.001-07:00

I am pleased to announce that I will be a guest on Nancy Battye's upcoming teleseminar on Forgiveness. The seminar takes place from October 3-14. If you are unfamiliar with teleseminars, they are absolutely free of charge. You can listen either by calling a telephone number or going to a website link. All speakers will have a free 24 hour replay that you can access at any time during the replay period. To get emails informing you of the schedule and the link to listen in, as well as to learn more about the series, please visit http://www.nancybattyementorseries-forgiveness.com/

Please forward this email to anyone you feel would be interested in learning more about the important, foundational spiritual practice of Forgiveness!

Thank You!

+Craig

The Most Rev. Dr. Craig Bergland, EFR
www.UACMilwaukee.org - The friendliest, trendiest, most radically inclusive and welcoming spiritual experience in SE Wisconsin!

www.ChristEnlight.org - Followers of Christ in Consciousness and Principle

Check out the Christ Enlight Podcast on ITunes!

Presiding Bishop, The Universal Anglican Church - www.TheUAC.net
Bishop Craig Ministries - www.BishopCraig.com

October 2nd at 1pm - The Milwaukee Christ Enlight Gathering!

http://www.christenlight.org/TheMilwaukeeChristEnlightGathering/Home.dsp

A Letter from Jesus

2011-08-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

I need to say that I have had about enough of much of the nonsense that passes for Christianity today. Clearly, I need to clear some things up.

When I said that I have many sheep who are not of this flock, that meant that I had and have sheep who were not Jewish. I was not, however, referring to Christians because there weren't any yet. What's more, I was never a Christian.

When I said many would come to sit at God's table from the east and west, north and south, once again I was not referring Christians because there weren't any yet. I meant people from all over the world, not from any particular religious perspective.

The only people I was ever critical of were religious leaders who sought to entrap people in the bonds of legalism. It had nothing to do with the fact that the Pharisees were Jewish and everything to do with their role as oppressors of the common person - people like a good number of your clergy.

I never taught salvation in the sense that contemporary Christianity teaches it, nor did I teach hell in the way that contemporary Christianity teaches it. If I told you today that everyone goes to heaven, most of your churches would have nothing to talk about.

I did teach social justice and a preferential option for the poor. Get over it and start living it.

I never directed anybody to judge anybody else. Stop it.

When I said you must be born again, I was not referring to a sinner's prayer or any of the nonsense that you people are doing. I was talking about conversion and renewal of life, not ratification of your pre-existing prejudices.

To be quite honest, I don't think you'll pay attention to this letter. You'll find a way to twist yourself out of its requirements just as you do the scriptures.

I still love you.

Jesus

Keeping the Baby but Changing the Bath Water

2011-08-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

Most of you have probably heard the old expression, "throwing the baby out with the bath water." It's often an apt phrase, and many a reform movement in many a field of human endeavor has done precisely that - managed to eliminate the good while attempting to get rid of the obsolete. In fact, every now and then, it seems like a reform movement only manages to get rid of the good while keeping the obsolete. More often, the latest and greatest revision that is sure to revolutionize a field of endeavor turns out to be something of a fizzle that never catches on completely. Baseball fans will remember the advent of the designated hitter that was to be tried in the American League and eventually implemented in the National League, too. We're still waiting for that day, and many of us hope that day never comes. Fashion trends are an even better example. Who among us over fifty years old didn't believe that the leisure suit was going to revolutionize men's fashion forever in the 1970s? What about the Yugo GV automobile, imported from then Yugoslavia in the 1980s? I was the proud owner of a Yugo GV for the non-negotiable sticker price of $3995. The GV stood for "Good Value," which the Yugo clearly wasn't and the car was only imported for a few years.

Christianity is in the midst of a great reform, and Christ Enlight is a part of that reform. That having been said, we aren't prepared to throw Jesus out with the bath water. We are merely saying that we haven't understood Jesus, or the Christ, correctly and any claim of religious supremacy - regardless of who is making the claim - is simply wrong. I still consider myself very much a Christian, even as I also appreciate the teachings of the Buddha, and Krishna, and Lao Tzu, and a host of others. When, as Presiding Bishop of The Universal Anglican Church, I have the privilege of consecrating two new bishops and ordaining several new priests - and, who knows, maybe a deacon - this Fall at our General Assembly I will be ordaining Christian clergy, even as our understanding of what it means to be a Christian clergy person may be very different from the mainline, institutional definition.

Theologian Jaroslav Pelikan said that there was a difference between tradition and traditionalism. Tradition, he said, is the living faith of dead people. Traditionalism, he said, is the dead faith of living people. I am a big believer in tradition, but for it to be alive it has to grow and evolve. For tradition to be alive we have to be open to new understandings of who Jesus was and who the Christ is and was. I would hasten to add that the latter is much more important than the former, and that all of the effort of some scholars to define the historical Jesus has entirely missed the point that it is the Christ that impacted people since long before Jesus was born and will continue to impact people long after you and I have transitioned. When we start insisting that the understandings of yesterday are the only permissible understandings for today and all of eternity we move firmly into the camp of traditionalism - the dead faith of the living!

So I am a Christian not in the sense of a sinner's prayer praying traditionalist, but in the sense of one who has been - and continues to be - impacted by the Christ. I see that Christ having been incarnate repeatedly throughout history, some times more visibly than others. It doesn't make me disloyal to the Christ (the Anointed One) to say that I believe that Krishna was a Christ, Moses was a Christ, Buddha was a Christ, Elijah was a Christ, St. Theresa was a Christ, St. Catherine of Siena was a Christ, Muhammad was a Christ, Dorothy Day was a Christ, Mother Theresa was a Christ, Dr. King was a Christ, and many more. Mind you, I am not saying they were Jesus the man, but I am saying that the same Spirit which lived in Jesus lived in these great men and women as well. Authentic Christianity has nothing to do with what the late George Carlin called arguing about whose God has a bigger penis, and everything to do with seeking the divinity that dwells within each of us waiting to be discovered and uncovered!

It is only by being open to new discoveries and new understandings that we can hope to have a faith and a spirituality that is honest and able to speak to our day. The July 2011 issue of National Geographic has a fascinating article about a religious Temple that archaeologists have uncovered that may pre-date humanity living in cities or towns. The implications of this discovery are staggering in that this Temple pre-dates the pyramids, the development of the wheel, and the ability to forge metal, but has smooth stone pillars with carvings of animals on then. How does one accomplish that without metal? I mention that article because it is evidence of how motivated human beings are by their spirituality, and how much potential people that are so motivated have to achieve what would seem otherwise impossible. I find my spirituality equally motivating and equally important.

There will always be those who will call people on the leading edge of reform movements heretics. If you want to call me a heretic, that's fine with me - I am far too busy communicating the truths that I have discovered through Spirit to be worried about people calling me names. I understand the fear that accompanies letting go of our usual way of looking at things and so entertaining change, but having looked around the corner into the future I simply cannot turn back. What I've seen around that corner is the Christ waving me on. I'm taking Jesus with me, too.

God "Out There"?

2011-08-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

The notion that God isn't "out there" somewhere, but rather dwells in and among what I call the created order isn't a new idea, despite the fact that it may seem very new to many within the confines of institutional Christianity. In fact, the idea that God is not removed from humanity is at least as old as the New Testament. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God was among humanity. He also said that he was in God and God was in him - and that he was in his disciples and his disciples in him, which meant that God was in Jesus' disciples and his disciples were in God. Institutional Christianity has never been comfortable with those ideas, most likely because it has recognized that if people really came to understand that they could access God without the need for the Church then the Church would lose it's ability to control and manipulate the masses.

The notion of God dwelling within rather than far away is known as panentheism, or the notion that God is in everything, which is different from pantheism which says everything is God. In the middle of the last century theologians like Paul Tillich were writing that God is the Ground of All Being. The Church continued to teach that God was "out there," floating beyond the clouds - even after both the Soviet and American space programs had been "out there" and found no trace of God. Can there be any question why people began to find the Church less and less relevant to their experience?

Even more damaging, institutional religion in all its forms continues to insist that their particular brand of religion is the only true religion, that members of other religions must be converted at any cost, and that those who refuse to be converted must either be ostracized or eliminated because they belong to a mythological character called the devil. Of course, different religions have different names for the devil, but the fiction of the devil is perhaps even more common and celebrated in religious traditions that the truth of a God is! The vast majority of the wars of history have had as at least a contributing cause, if not the primary cause, religion - this despite the fact that no honest reading of any major religion can justify such actions.

The truth is that the major problem confronting humanity in the west today - perhaps the only authentic "original sin" - is selfishness. Selfishness causes us to be willing to get ahead by stepping on the backs of others - killing them, if necessary - so that we might climb one rung up on the ladder of success. Statements and teachings encouraging mutual understanding and compassion are mocked, and people are more than ready to come up with the most absurd justifications for ignoring the moral imperative present in every religious tradition to care for those less fortunate than ourselves. We have retreated to a tribalism that is even more potentially destructive than the tribalism that led the Hebrew people to rape and pillage their was into the land of Canaan - more destructive because our journey through the wilderness into the promised land is one we make carrying nuclear weapons. There's no little irony that the religious voices that support such tribalism are the very voices which claim to be loyal to God by being loyal to a book, which is not unlike being loyal to your auto mechanic by declaring the yellow pages to be infallible and inerrant.

I believe the time has come when we simply need to step away from the debates in which conservative, institutional, religious voices would seek to engage us. If you see the Bible in a way that massively distorts its meaning and intention then we have nothing to discuss. The world is moving forward, and responsible spiritual leaders must be lifted up to teach the important lessons of compassion, service, love, and the interconnectedness of everything, because such spiritual lessons are essential to our survival as a planet. There will always be those who seek to side track this important work by wanting to debate "biblical truths" such as Psalm 75:3, which says the Earth is flat and supported by four pillars. I leave them to their arguments and certainly honor their right to waste their time with a pre-scientific world view if that is what blows their skirts back. What I am no longer willing to do is waste my time debating such nonsense, because there is much to be accomplished that is a far better use of my time, energy, and talents.

The truth is that God does love all people. How can I be so sure? I am so sure of that truth because God dwells in all people, and a self-loathing God would be no God at all. God also loves all things for the same reason, which means that we have a responsibility toward our environment that is a spiritual responsibility and a spiritual imperative. Because God dwells in everything and everybody we have an obligation to ensure that human beings everywhere have enough to eat, a proper education, adequate clothing and shelter, and adequate medical care. If that means that those of us privileged to live in the wealthy west need to make due with less, then so be it. One simply cannot watch another living creature suffer and not take action while at the same time claiming with any truth or validity to be a spiritual or religious person. If anybody wonders how to fund this, the answer is clear - cut defense spending.

We live in a world in which most of humanity has allowed politicians and the defense industry to create a climate of fear so that they can manipulate and control humanity. How ironic is it that those are the same tactics used by institutional religion toward the same end? We have the ability to feed the world. What sane person is going to attack the system that feeds them? We can also provide medical care and adequate shelter to the world. All that is required is the decision to do so and the courage to carry it out. Those who resist such efforts must be honest and admit that they are simply to selfish to try. There would be some integrity in that honesty, if not in the decision to fail to act.

It isn't hard. It doesn't require complicated theologies. It merely requires an honest assessment of who God is and where God is, followed by the courage to act on the knowledge gained. Will we have the courage?

A Letter from a Biblical Literalist, and My Reply

2011-08-02T10:07:00.000-07:00

I received this correspondence today from someone who objects to my position that there is no hell. I have corrected most of the spelling errors, which were plentiful not because the person isn't intelligent but rather because of the passion with which they wrote. The letter I received is in italics, my response is in regular font.

Bishop Craig I am not a theologian all I know is that I have a relationship with Jesus Christ through the cross. All I believe that God’s word is the truth the bible is God’s word if I didnt believe in it or the creation then what good or use is the word of God. Jesus says I am the way the truth and life no man can come to the father except by me.

Adam and Eve were made with free will they disobeyed God and that way man was born into sin. Man has always tried to get right with God who is Holy and can’t stand sin by scarificing animals Abraham would have sacrificed Issac but God said no at the last minute but instead as a total atonement for sin God scarficed Jesus who is the Son of God and sinleess. HE took our place on the cross so we didn’t don’t have to face eternal damanation the wrath of God. if we accept this and ask for forgines and acknowlege Jesus took all our sin and pain and shame on the cross and ask to go his way and turn 180 round from our ways and ackowledge Jesus conquered hell and that he rose again on the thrid day we have hope the promise of eternal life and are raised into new creations.

We are either for God or we arent for God if not we face hell
A horrible terrible place. To enter God’s house he asks us to give our lived to him and change from our sinful ways and ask for forgivnees. Would you want a murdere in your house or a theif or someone you didnt like that spoat at you and called you names NO so why should God allow everyone in his house?

God is ligth hell is dark, Jesus brings living water the enemy bring death and no water but thurst and fear and everything oposite to God. If Jesus died on the cross it was for something if not to save u from Gods wrath what else did he have to die for?
zacheriah 9 v 11
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Lev 17 v11International Version (©1984)
For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life. in hell there is no blood so you are in pain constantly
Job 13 v 6
Judges 16 v 7
Isaiah 14 v 10
Job 7 v 14

there is a place called hell and heaven and we must remembte that if you died tonoght where would you be going do you know Jesus do youn have a rtealtionship with him. Can you call him saviour have you repented and gone Jesus way If you think theres no hell then you are wrong its through Jesus going to the cross we are sanctfied saved and unless people beieve they will go to Hell

Dear _______,

I didn't realize you were Jewish. Every one of your citations is from the Hebrew Scriptures, which you apparently find carry more weight than Jesus does, despite your claim of love for Jesus. Curious. Since you quote Leviticus, I wonder if you are wearing clothes made of blended fabrics right now or if you have a garden in which you plant two different plants (LV 19:19), for if you do, you are sinning. When you have a sore on your skin, do you present yourself to the priest so that he can sacrifice two live birds on your behalf (LV 13)? Has it been your constant practice to, during your monthly period, not allow anyone to have any contact with you - even shaking hands - and to have anyone who touches anything you have touched during this time immediately bathe (LV 15:20-27)? Eight days after your monthly period, have you always taken two young pidgeons to the priest so he can sacrifice them on your behalf (LV 15:28-30)? When you have found mildew in your home, have you gone to the priest and informed him as required in LV 14:33-53, and did he purify the house with the blood of a dead bird?

My point is this. You claim to be completely compliant with the "word of God." There are two problems with that assertion. The first is that the Bible is not the word of God (cf: John 1:1), Christ (not Jesus) is the Word of God. The Word was with God in the beginning, which means that Word is Christ, since neither Jesus nor the Bible came onto the scene for many years. The second problem is that we can use the Bible to prove anything. If, as you suggest, the Bible must be followed completely and in its entirety, then you are in violation of several Levitical prohibitions that I listed above, and I didn't even get to eating pork or shell fish. The punishment for these things is, by contemporary standards, barbaric - but if we are compelled to follow everything the Bible says then we are most likely going to have to isolate you from the community and, quite possibly, stone you to death. Do you believe the Earth is flat and supported on four pillars? If not, you are rejecting Psalm 75:3. Those pictures from space simply must be wrong. Your argument fails because its method is faulty. If you have children, when they disobeyed you did you stone them to death? I hope so, because the Law requires it and you are a biblical literalist.

I would encourage you to read the Gospels again, leaving behind as best you can the doctrine and dogma you find there. Jesus said the entire Law and Prophets, which means the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures, hangs on two Laws: Love God with all your heart, and Love your neighbor as yourself. I believe it's reasonable to assume God finds these two Laws good. Please tell me how it's loving to place someone in a customized torture chamber for all of eternity. Adolph Hitler burned six million Jews until they were dead, but couldn't hurt them once they were dead - yet some would have us believe God is torturing people from death throughout eternity, making God a bigger despot than Hitler! Can you reconcile that with the God of your experience?

Genesis tells us that God created everything that is. It does not say that on the first day, God created a part supply house. Therefore God created everything out of God's own self. Would God cast a part of Himself into hell? How could that be?

There is no hell. Jewish thought didn't contain a heaven or a hell. Hell was a later addition by Greek philosophy. In Jewish thought, everyone went to Sheol when they died. Sheol was more or less a state of limbo. After Israel was conquered and taken into captivity, they started believing in an afterlife - what you and I might call heaven - but still there was no hell. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of heaven is among us, is on earth, is right now - and never taught an eternal hell. These things are perversions of the biblical record, yet many use the Bible to try to prove that hell exists.

Don't take the word of your priest, or your doctrine, or even me. Read the Gospels, really read them. Read Jesus through your own eyes, over and over. Don't use Paul to interpret Jesus, use Jesus to interpret Paul - after all, Jesus is Lord, not Paul. You will see the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Much love!

+Craig

Tragedy in Norway

2011-07-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

Over this past weekend, a self proclaimed Christian Supremacist Fundamentalist carried out two acts of terrorism against the people of Norway, resulting in the deaths of dozens of people. Many of the victims were children, whom the terrorist shot in a cold blooded attack on a youth camp. The motivation for the attack? The confessed attacker is a Christian who hopes to start a civil war in Europe to stop multiculturalism. He says he is a member of The Knights of Malta, an organization that was active during the Crusades and the purpose of which was to rid the Holy Land of Muslims. Whether he is clinically psychologically disturbed we do not know. What we do know is that he clearly was influenced by the teachings of small minded bigots like John Hagee and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, whose anti-Muslim rhetoric - allegedly in the name of Christianity - continues unchallenged in many corners of America, particularly Christian Fundamentalist corners.

While many would say the problem is extremism on both the left and the right, the truth is that in contemporary America there is very little leftist extremism in the eyes of anyone who is not a disciple of Fox News [sic]. The current trend not just in America, but also in the Global South thanks to American Fundamentalist influence, is Christian Fundamentalist extremism. The fact is, you would be hard pressed to find an extremist socialist (a far left extremist) getting much attention in America. It is regrettable the same can't be said of Christian Fundamentalist Extremists.

Fundamentalism began as a statement of five fundamentals of Christian faith, considered as essential in order to achieve salvation. They are:

1. The Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:1; John 20:28; Hebrews 1:8-9).
2. The Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27).
3. The Blood Atonement (Acts 20:28; Romans 3:25, 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:12-14).
4. The Bodily Resurrection (Luke 24:36-46; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 15:14-15).
5. The inerrancy of the scriptures themselves (Psalms 12:6-7; Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20).

Now there isn't anything wrong per se with those five things - although, if I am going to be honest I must tell you that - at least in the way fundamentalists hold those five things - I don't believe in any of them. Sure, I believe Jesus was and is Divine, but I believe you and I are as well, which puts me outside the fundamentalist meaning of the first fundamental. Interestingly, and as an aside, the passages cited very often to not prove the "fundamental" they are cited to prove, most especially number five. If you don't believe me, check them out.

But I digress. There isn't anything wrong with the Fundamentals. The problem lies in the next two steps fundamentalists take. The first is: "And those who disagree with any of the above doctrines are not Christians at all. Rather, they are the true heretics." On the most simplistic level, we need to ask ourselves two questions about that statement. The first is, "who cares?" The second is, "When did God die and make you the arbiter of what is and is not acceptable faith?" After all, the evidence is clear that neither God nor Jesus were ever Christians. Are they heretics, too? In fact, Jesus denied his own Divinity in scripture - is he in hell, too? Even characterizing most of the world as heretics would be relatively harmless if it weren't for the fact that fundamentalists of every stripe take it upon themselves to ensure the orthodoxy of others and to work to either change or, failing change, eliminate those who do not believe as they do. Again, the question arises, "Who died and left you in charge?"

After Norway, we see that the problem isn't Islamic Fundamentalists. The problem is Fundamentalism, period, if it is the basis for a world view or a political stance. Conservative religious forces are very interested in theocracy, and we saw this past weekend exactly what could happen were they allowed to implement such a theocracy. Fundamentalism in all its forms is intolerant of free thought, intolerant of open discussion and questioning, based in the fear in the hearts and minds of its adherents, and failing conversion, seeks to influence and control the world through violent tactics designed to instill fear in others. When I am afraid, I will be tempted by the certainty that Fundamentalism pretends to offer.

I'm not proposing we outlaw Fundamentalism. We do, however, need to speak out loud and clear against any voice which preaches hatred in the name of religion. We need to speak out loud and clear against any voice which claims that there is only one true religion. We need to speak out loud and clear against anyone who claims to be speaking for God, unless they are speaking on behalf of their own divinity and allowing every other person to do the same. We can no longer remain silent, because the threat is real and coming not from somewhere overseas. The threat is right here at home.

Progressive voices tend to be overly concerned with being "polite" and "kind." While those things are certainly good qualities, very often they are synonyms for maintaining a superficial relationship to the things one knows is right. This is no time to be politically correct, no time to be more concerned for our own social safety than for the lives of the children who died in Norway. We must stand up on behalf of innocents everywhere.

Turn Off Your Porch Light for Caylee

2011-07-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

I make no judgment about the guilt or innocence of Casey Anthony. The court has rendered its verdict, and in the American system of jurisprudence that means, legally at least, she is no guilty. I'd like instead to examine the reaction of the public. Are you upset about the verdict in the Casey Anthony case? Obviously, many people are upset and there have been a number of postings made and groups forming on all sort of social media and other websites. The one that got my attention, and about which I have resisted commenting but can no longer hold my tongue, is the well meaning "turn your front porch light on for Caylee Anthony so she can look down from heaven and tell you care." It's the kind of thing we do when we feel helpless - we come up with some meaningless act that accomplishes nothing so we can feel as if we aren't quite as helpless. May I suggest a better alternative?

Caylee Anthony is not floating on the clouds looking down at the earth checking for porch lights. She has been reunited with God and so sees our intentions and concerns without our increasing our electric bills. I believe that campaigns such as porch light campaigns create the illusion that we are doing something to help the situation - an illusion that is not borne out in fact.

If you want to "help" Caylee Anthony, turn off your porch light. Contribute the money you save to a local domestic violence shelter. They will do more to help prevent cases like this from happening again, whereas the electric company will just pocket the money and increase your rates due to an increased demand for electricity. But the ways to help go way beyond throwing a few dollars at a local shelter.

If you really want to help, then you need to fight for universal health care including full mental health benefits so that people who feel the need to kill children can get affordable help before they act on those needs.

If you really want to help, then you need to fight for full funding of all family planning and birth control services, including Planned Parenthood, so that people who have some sense that they may not be good parents can ensure that they don't become parents.

If you really want to help, you really need to fight for full funding of Child Protective Services in your town and around the world, so that when children are at risk there are enough appropriately trained individuals waiting to respond before the situation gets out of control and lives are lost.

If you really want to help, you need to fight for economic justice for all people so that nobody has to try to parent without the added stress of wondering how to feed and clothe their child.

If your really want to help, you need to fight for fully funded pre- and post-natal care for mother and child, so that mothers who suffer psychologically or psychiatrically can get the help they need.

Finally, if you really want to help, get yourself to a local shelter and volunteer so that you can understand first hand what the effects of violence, abandonment, and other tragedies are on the people who suffer from them. I promise that you will not be the same after doing so. I also promise you that you will see funding the safety net in a whole new way.

The ironic thing about this situation is that many will feel very good about turning their porch light on and then continue to work against funding the programs that would actually make a difference. That's the danger in well meaning campaigns such at the porch light idea - you can fool yourself into thinking you are making a difference without really changing anything at all. Caylee isn't watching from just beyond the clouds in some mythological heaven, but in her current state of union with everything she is well aware of your heart. If you want to show her something, show her some sincerity. If you're not sincere, all that's burning on your porch is a hypocrite light.

Patriots often begin as traitors.

2011-07-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

On this Fourth of July, when Americans celebrate their Independence (although decreasing numbers of Americans can actually identify from who we won our independence) we are often confronted with the image of a patriot as the ultimate "yes" man or "yes" woman - but nothing could be farther from the truth. On this day when we celebrate patriotism, we often hear a lot of "my country, right or wrong" messages. Ultimately, such messages are not patriotic but rather precisely the opposite - nationalistic.

A nationalist is never a patriot, because a nationalist has abandoned critical thought in favor of conformity. You might say that a nationalist is a political fundamentalist in that the facts simply don't matter, what matters is defending the status quo no matter the cost. Nationalists would never be accused (by most people, anyway) of being traitors, and yet they quite often are a kind of passive traitor in that they willingly ignore the ideals upon which a nation was founded in favor of maintaining the status quo - even when that status quo stands in direct opposition those same founding values!

I believe that all great patriots are initially perceived to be traitors. Let us not forget that America was formed through an act of treason against the British Empire. Paul Revere, who did not "ring those bells to warn the British they weren't going to take our arms," but rather warned the colonists that the British were coming, was not only responsible for the undoing of Sarah Palin's presidential aspirations (perhaps his greatest act of patriotism) but was - as a British citizen - betraying his Empire in favor of the American Revolution! The same can be said of George Washington, all who fought in the Revolutionary War, and all who signed the Declaration of Independence - most everyone save Benedict Arnold, whom we call a traitor but who was actually being loyal to his citizenship! You see, the label of patriot or traitor is often applied by the victors and has little or no relationship to loyalty to one's Country. Most Americans would be shocked to know that the "patriotism" they espouse is really nationalism, the poster child of which is Benedict Arnold.

True patriots call their country into wise decisions and right actions for the welfare of the whole world. Patriotism isn't about some pious declaration that if people don't like it here then they should leave. Patriotism is about defending, among other things, the statement in the Declaration of Independence that all men (which at that time meant all people) are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. At times like ours, when conservative legislators seem hell bent on passing laws and Constitutional amendments to take rights away from American citizens, true patriots are those who work against all people who try to take away freedoms, no matter the reasons they assert for their fear based nationalistic actions.

Happy 4th of July! Try not to blow off any fingers or toes, and for God's sake don't poke your eye out with those bottle rockets! Whatever you do, take a few moments to reflect on how you are called to respond in a patriotic - not nationalistic - way!

Religious Language

2011-07-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

I find that the more my personal spirituality evolves, the more I struggle with much of traditional religious language. I suppose that has been true for a while now, but up until recently I was able to rationalize it or translate it internally into something I found more accurate even as I said words I found to be inaccurate aloud. After having taken a hiatus from parish ministry and now returned to it, I am no longer able to turn off my mind and engage my mouth. Perhaps some examples would help explain the kinds of things I am talking about.

Many traditional Baptism rites have a question such as this in them: Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? My problem is that Satan is a mythological character that doesn't really exist. I might as well be asking: Do you renounce the Boogey Man? Moreover, what exactly are the "spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God"? If God created everything that is (no matter whether you understand God to be the energy present at the big bang, or hold to one of the Genesis creation myths, or some other explanation of God's involvement in creation) then everything has to be good because it's all God. Where do these "spiritual forces" come from? Who or what are they? How is it that such forces could threaten God's power or sovereignty? Don't misunderstand, I believe that human beings make bad choices because they lose sight of their own divinity. I believe that some people do things that are in fact evil. Such things are a far cry from "spiritual forces," however, Human beings are not iron filings being pulled this way and that by magnetic forces both good and "wicked."

What about Confirmation rites? Here's an example from The Book of Common Prayer: "Defend, O Lord, your servant N. with your heavenly grace, that he may continue yours for ever, and daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more, until he comes to your everlasting kingdom. Amen." Defend your servant? From what? Who, precisely, is going to steal us away from the very God who created us out of Godself? Another one of God's creations, also created of God-stuff and therefore also inseparably connected to God? Sounds like more iron filings to me!

Here's a prayer I stumbled across just the other day:

Lord God,
when our world lay in ruins,
you raised it up again on the foundation of your Son’s Passion and Death.
Give us grace to rejoice in the freedom from sin
which he gained for us,
and bring us to everlasting joy.
through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever. Amen.

I have several questions. The first is, could any image be more depressing? When, precisely, did our world lay in ruins? I've checked the history books and can't seem to find a clear place when that way the case. Apparently, it happened before Jesus' Passion and Death. This prayer is loaded with an antiquated view of God as an abusive heavenly parent who created a system of Laws that were impossible to keep and so would have had to wipe out the world had he not committed child sacrifice. It's called Atonement Theology, and moderate to progressive theologians have rejected it for some time now as a culturally and time bound explanation of the death of Jesus. Good thing, in the view of this prayer, that God is a child killer, because now we can all rejoice - our sorry behinds have been saved! Exactly how immoral would we have to be to dance a little jig because someone killed their son, even if it meant we got a pass for our bad deeds?

Of course, some people still get great comfort from this stuff. If you are among them, I don't want to burst your bubble. You are free to believe whatever you like and I will defend your right so to do. However, if you have the same problems with this that I do, know that you are not alone and that there are people who are working to develop ways of expressing what we believe in more accurate - and far less grisly - ways. Integrity demands that we say what we mean and mean what we say, especially when trying to share our beliefs!

This One Time, at Band Camp...

2011-06-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

My wife Erin and I returned last night from the Music for All (formerly Bands of America) Band Camp she has been involved with since the year we met. Many years, except on those occasions when I forgot to put the camp dates in my calendar and booked a wedding, I have travelled to camp on a one way ticket on Thursday so that I can be present for the Drum Corps International show and the final student performances. Since Erin is the camp nurse and on call twenty four hours a day, I'm usually a bit more rested than she and can help her drive home from camp.

This year was significant in many ways, not the least of which was that the back surgery I had in February made it possible for me to be much more active than I could be last year - though my back does still protest some of the bumps on the golf cart that Erin uses at camp! Another change was the camp moving from its former location and Illinois State University to Ball State University. ISU was a wonderful home for many years, but (in my admittedly uninformed opinion) Ball State's campus and staff were excellent hosts and offered a much more updated facility, particulary in the dorms where campers and staff stay while at camp. If you know of anyone looking at a college, I would recommend they check our Ball State University.

The truth is that my experience at camp is always one of spiritual renewal. Most of the camp staff are volunteers - they are called SWAGS, the meaning of which is a closely guarded secret - who travel at their own expense to camp and receive no monetary compensation of any kind. I have learned over the years that they are compensated in a way that money simply can't buy. They return year after year, working long hours and getting very little sleep - and at breakfast on Sunday morning as they prepare to leave there are inevitably tears. The atmosphere is unfailingly positive and supportive, and campers are greeted by a friendly face wherever they go. The campers themselves, ranging in age from entering 8th to 12th grade, are extremely polite not only to camp staff but to University staff as well. Time after time I heard Ball State staff remark how polite the kids were and how much they enjoyed having them present. How often do you hear that from people working with High School students?

There is also an almost unimaginable level of peer support among the campers. I could not have imagined receiving a standing ovation from my peers in High School, but during performances (many with professional, touring musicians) that is precisely what happens. Imagine receiving that kind of affirmation at any point in your life! At camp it's a daily event.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I have taken away from Music for All is that the atmosphere is so unlike anything we experience in our daily lives. Most of our daily conversation is cynical, jaded by years of bad experience - exactly the opposite of what happens at camp. How do they do it? In my estimation, they succeed by making a decision to be different - a choice to be welcoming, loving, and accepting. It sounds too simple, doesn't it?

We need to understand that we make choices that determine how we will live. We choose our values, and we choose how we will implement them. We decide what is important to us, and then we live out those decisions for better or worse. Music for All is an excellent example of what happens we people choose to be loving and accepting - and what happens is that everyone benefits. It's an environment that no religious system has been able to create, mostly because religious systems are so geared toward defending their institutions and converting people who see it otherwise. Music for All doesn't have to defend or evangelize anything - for who could criticize loving kindness? Can you imagine anyone saying to you, "I don't think you should be so nice?"

Lay your doctrine down. Know no rule except loving and accepting the other, no matter who the other is. Choose to create an enviroment of unconditional love. It does work - I'm privileged to see the truth of the reality that it can be done every time I go to band camp. Thank you, Music for All, for demonstrating what I claim to stand for without ever needing to say a word because you live it!

Christian Impostors at The Pearly Gates of Pridefest

2011-06-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me this morning that the main gate at Pridefest is an excellent metaphor for the gates of heaven. The gospels contain several stories of Jesus addressing those who were absolutely certain they were going to heaven and others were not. In each of those stories, the righteous rule followers who judged others were told that Jesus would deny that he ever knew them. When I was younger, I thought that Jesus was telling them he would lie about meeting them in the past. As I have grown and had more life experience, I have learned that there is a lot more to knowing someone that just meeting them and being able to recognize them on the street. After all, I have read many biographies of many people and if those people were to walk past my house I would certainly recognize them. I know a lot about them, but I can't say that I know them - mostly because I haven't ever met them.

Each year at every Pridefest there are Christian impostors standing outside the main gates. They carry signs that say the most awful things, they are filled with rage and hate and express that rage and hate through the things they write on their signs and scream at people attempting to enter the grounds. Their primary reason for being at Pridefest is that Western Christianity in its fundamentalist forms created the notion of a culture war many years ago. The fact that there is no biblical evidence for a culture war doesn't stop culture war true believers from distorting scripture and then claiming it supports their poor behavior. For example, the verse "be in the world but not of the world" is hardly justification for hate, anger, or rage. It doesn't say "be obnoxious and inappropriate in the world, and do as much harm to others as possible."

Let me be clear, everyone is free to believe whatever they like. I have no issue with that whatsoever. If you want to believe that seven or eight biblical verses about Temple purity codes and Cultic prostitution (not sexual orientation, as the impostors claim) mean that homosexuality is a sin, then I will gladly allow you to celebrate your misinterpretation of the scripture. I hope, however, that you aren't running around in blended fabrics or grilling ribs on the BBQ this Summer for if you do you shall surely be subject to the same judgment you imagine the Temple prostitutes were subject to. God forbid you eat a shrimp cocktail!

The thing I will no longer permit to happen without challenge is for those who worship hate, range, anger, and ego to continue to purport to speak for God or Christianity. Those who claim to worship the Prince of Peace simply cannot be following his example by screaming, raging, or attempting to diminish others. What these people are is Fundamentalist Extremists, a name that require no denominational qualifier because Fundamentalist Extremism in all its forms exhibits the same behaviors and attitudes - attitudes that are inherently life denying and narcissistic, which seek to eliminate everyone and anyone who is not just like them. If they can't scream or cajole you into compliance, the next option is to kill you by blowing up your clinic or house of worship, shooting you in your house of worship, or crucifying you on a fence. Fundamentalist Extremism is motivated by two things: Fear and Hatred.

The Pearly Gates of Pridefest are a foretast of the gates of heaven. As Jesus said, many will come to me and say, Lord, Lord, and I will tell them I do not know you. Those who are intellectually and emotionally honest and mature enough to evaluate the scripture without the censorship of their own Fundamentalist Extremism will have no problem identifying those who know Jesus. Ultimately, it is a choice between those choosing to celebrate love and those celebrating hatred. There is more, however.

We can choose to look at heaven as a life-after-death dwelling place. That has been the traditional view - but it is not consistent with Jesus' oft repeated assertion that the kingdom of heaven is a here and now phenomenon. He always spoke of the kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God (interchangeable terms) in the present tense. I believe that hell is an earthly phenomenon, too, only rather than believing that God sends us to hell I believe we create our own hell and inhabit it completely voluntarily. Our classic images of hell come from Dante, not from the Bible, but I have to ask: Who looks more like the classic images of hell than the angry, screaming, contorted facial expressions of protesters outside of Pridefest? Who resembles most the image of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth? The truth is that Fundamentalist Extremists in all their forms have already chosen hell and moved into the neighborhood! Honestly, their situation is tragic and would be sad if it weren't that they are so hate filled.

The Christian Scripture is clear that perfect love drives out fear. The fear that I see outside the Pearly Gates of Pridefest are not the people going into the Pridefest grounds, but rather those screaming vitriol at those going in. In fact, fear rules the day for those protesters. If they really wanted to change hearts and minds, if they really wanted to do any sort of viable ministry, they would buy tickets and go inside to learn more and enter into relationship with the people inside the festival. Of course, they don't go inside and I suspect there are three reasons that they don't. The first is that they have some fear that they might become enlightened and in doing so lose all of their friends - and Fundamentalist Extremism encourages its adherents to only socialize within their own organization. The second is that they loathe their own sexual identity, whether that identity is a heterosexual or a repressed LGBT identity. Fundamentalism has never had a healthy sexual ethic even for heterosexual people, and its not lost on many that the most strident voices against the LGBT community often have a "fall from grace" when they are outed as gay themselves. As evidence I offer Ted Haggard and Bishop Eddie Long, two notable recent examples but far from the only examples of self loathing hate preachers. Finally, they don't go inside because it's much easier to be angry than to love. Love implies sharing of myself, love takes work and commitment, love requires open hearts. Rage requires little, and the adrenaline rush makes rage addicts feel good. It doesn't matter to the rage addict that their rage is life denying because they can't see beyond their own fear and anger.

This year was my sixth or seventh year at Pridefest, and the third year that we have had a booth in the Health and Wellness area. Every year I learn how to love over and over again. Each year I hear some tragic stories of the damage that Fundamentalist Extremism has done to countless people, how many of those people who have discovered their own sexuality and now struggle to step out from under the poison of years of brain washing in Fundamentalist churches. Each year I meet new people who transform my life by their presence in my life. And, each year I am saddened that people feel they have to thank me for being there. I am saddened, because in truth there is no other place for me to be - and not because I am gay (I'm not), but because I have experienced exclusion and oppression myself and been loved through that experience by my LGBT friends. To be honest, I can't imagine anyone who screams hatred at another person ever being capable of loving anyone through anything.

The scene outside any Pridefest gate is a foretaste of heaven, perhaps most especially in that those who are most certain they are going to be accepted by God being most astonished by who is beloved of God. They may well be even more surprised to hear Jesus say, "I never knew you" to them

The First Christ Enlight Gathering Report

2011-06-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

We held our first Christ Enlight Gathering here in Milwaukee yesterday, June 5th. We had a nice turn out, and a great time together. My thanks to Gordon Kirchoff for the excellent music he shared with us, and to all who took the time to join us. The good news is that we have advertised our Christ Enlight Gatherings on Meetup.com and the response there has been very encouraging. I've promoted, and will continue to promote our Gatherings, because I believe our message is extremely important.

What is that message? To explain, I need to ask you to step out of the box for a moment. Lay aside your preconceived notions about spirituality and religion, and allow me to ask you a question: What if everything and everybody shared an unbreakable connection to Divinity? What if humanity was inherently Divine rather than inherently flawed - Divine by virtue of the fact that the stuff from which we were made was Divinity itself, and so it's all good because it's all God? What if we were perfect and getting better all the time? What if we are just who we were meant to be, and if mistakes and challenges were lessons to be learned and never punishment from on high? After all, why would Divinity punish itself? Finally, what if we allowed ourselves to use our reason to ask questions about our understanding of religion, spirituality, and God - questions like, "Does that even make sense?" That's precisely what we do at a Christ Enlight Gathering!

We examine our assumptions to see if they still ring true. We encourage each other to catch ourselves doing something good instead of always looking for flaws in ourselves. We look to our human (and Divine) potential and recognize that spirituality isn't a passive journey in which we ask an external God to either rescue us from our problems or bring us the things we need. Rather, we believe that we co-create our reality with God, and so while prayer and meditation are essential components of the spiritual life we also need to take responsibility for our lives. We recognize our own prosperity, a prosperity that comes not from the endless search for more, more, more; but rather a prosperity that comes from learning that we already have everything we need.

This is a very radical stance, one that challenges many of the traditional assumptions of religion. Interestingly, it is a stance that is supported by the scriptures of every major religion, if not by the institutions that perpetuate religion. Speaking of religion, you may wonder what our religious perspective is - are we Christian? "Christian" is a term that means many different things to many different people. We come from many traditions, Christian and other, but our religion is loving kindness, compassion, and truth. We exist in the creative tension that exists when people of differing beliefs come together in honest, respectful discussion and sharing. We speak of and teach about Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Mohammad, Moses, and all the great wisdom teachers from many traditions. We do so to learn about the Divinity that dwells within us and all of creation. We find labels less helpful than relationships, and we believe that all beings come from God and return to God after transitioning this life. We are spiritual beings having a human experience, we were never born and we will never die. Most importantly, we do not believe a loving God would create a place called hell where It would punish people eternally - though we do acknowledge that many of us create and live in a hell on Earth.

If that sounds interesting to you, check out our website at www.ChristEnlight.org.

Most of What We Worry About...

2011-06-03T18:56:00.000-07:00

...is completely inconsequential. I was reading a post on Facebook tonight about an appeals court lifting a Texas ban on graduation ceremony prayer. Really? People get all kinds of exercised about the inconsequential, non-issues that are so peripheral to faith while at the same time refusing to get energized over what is important. Consider Jesus' admonition that when we pray we should go into our rooms, close the door, and pray in secret to God who will hear our prayer. Nothing about big public prayers, in fact he was critical of those who made a public scene of their prayer and their piety saying that in achieving public recognition they had received all the reward they would get. Never mind that, self-identified "Christians" are willing to go to court for the right to say prayer in a way that Jesus told us was ineffective. Am I the only one who finds this more than a little bit odd?

Of course, the reason that self-identified "Christians" behave this way is that it costs them nothing, is very easy in that they sit on their ever expanding rear ends while lawyers do the work, and they can congratulate themselves and their like minded friends for their achievements which aren't really achievements at all - at least, not in the eyes of Jesus. In fact, if scripture is any indication Jesus would call it all the massive waste of time that it is. Then again, it's probably not a complete waste of time in that it keeps those people from getting up off their sofas and knocking on your door to ask you where you would go if you died tonight.

The truth is that what Jesus talked about was transforming our world and building the Kin-dom (family) of God here on Earth. He summarized his plan for doing so in Luke's Gospel:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me.
He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,
to proclaim release to the prisoners
and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed,
and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He must have forgotten the part about, "Litigate over nonsense on behalf of the ego."

You see, real transformation begins at home, within each and every one of us. We must do battle with the ego, not celebrate it in a court of law. We must spend time in real prayer and meditation, not the public prayer that just puffs up the ego, but the work of meditation in the silence where God, who hears in the silence, will speak to us. As our compassion grows through our practice, we will be drawn to get up off the sofa and establish new relationships. We won't have time for bullying others in court so they are compelled to listen to our nonsensical ramblings, we will be too busy loving others into wholeness. We will work to end poverty, violence, racism, hunger, discrimination, and all the related societal ills. Of course, doing so requires getting our hands dirty, something for which the couch potato, litigious, pseudo-Christian doesn't have a stomach.

Jesus said something else pertinent to this topic. He said, "Many will say to me Lord, Lord, and I will answer them, 'I never knew you.'"

So What?

2011-05-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

The American Idol results are in, and once again the wrong person won.

Of course, it doesn't really matter. American Idol and things like it are a huge distraction from real life - but I'm not at all convinced we don't need a distraction now and again. Some spiritual teachers, I call them frustrated purists, suggest that we must engage unfiltered reality all the time - every moment of every day. Most will allow that such a perspective is easier in the monastery that for folks living in the world, and I agree - but I also have serious doubts about whether monastic enclosures, and especially cloistered monastic enclosures, represent living in reality or whether they are little more than another form of distraction. While it is certainly an acceptable choice, I'm not convinced that monastics (whom I have deep respect for, by the way) are qualified to comment on what constitutes fully engaged spirituality. While monastic life brings with it a unique set of difficulties, they aren't the difficulties of family, employment, bill paying, child rearing, and unexpected car breakdowns that aren't in the budget that most of us living in society have to cope with.

I'd like to suggest that distractions such as American Idol and similar programs can actually be a part of a healthy spiritual life, providing we keep them in perspective. Mind you, they don't take the place of intentional spiritual practice, but I have severe reservations about whether a spirituality that is ignorant of contemporary culture (or, what passes for culture) is very functional. A certain amount of mindless entertainment can actually help a person relax and clear the mind for time spent in meditation, spiritual reading, and prayer, even if the guy who wins looks like Alfred E. Newman and George W. Bush's love child. That having been said, six hours of television or more every day (the American average) isn't distraction, it's addiction.

For those of us who are called to live in society - the vast majority of humanity, by the way - it's not realistic to expect we will live the same kind of lives that cloistered folk do. In the same way, it's unrealistic to expect that cloistered folk have the new Lady Gaga album on their Ipod. A healthy spirituality is one that is appropriate to the lives we find ourselves leading. The assertions of some spiritual teachers notwithstanding, it is just as possible to develop a healthy spirituality while living in society - even if we can't afford to go on retreat and watch American Idol. The grist for the spiritual mill is life itself, however it may find us.

Oh, and American Idol? Winning hardly guarantees commercial success, as just about every winner except Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Jordan Sparks can attest. On the other hand Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson, Kellie Pickler and others who "lost" are doing just fine, thank you. You see, it's not real. Reality is what happens over the next three years, and you can be perfectly spiritual as you watch and wait with me for James Durbin's first album.

Who Will Your God Be?

2011-05-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

Who will your God be? Will your God be a God of love, or a God of fear? Will your God truly want to see what's best for you happen, or will your God be a force of manipulation and control in your life who seems to be most happy when you are least happy? Will your religious institution claim to serve God while really representing God's wrath and judgment? Will your God be a force for unification in the world, or a source of division? Will your God be a God of Peace or a God of War? Will your God be a force from which you often feel compelled to hide in fear, or a source of comfort you can turn to when you struggle? Will your God be a God of abuse or a God of healing? Will your God be a God of the living, or a God of the dead and their primitive superstitions?

There are many more questions we could ask ourselves about who our God will be, but the point is that we have to make some decisions about the nature of the God of our experience before we begin to interpret things allegedly written about God.

I met a man over the weekend who told me that his church "only teaches the Bible, nothing else." Had it been socially appropriate to our context, I would have had several questions. The first would have been, "how is that possible?" In fact, unless someone in his church just stands up and reads Bible passages and then sits back down, they do much more than "teach the Bible." You see, when you preach a homily or sermon you are by definition interpreting the Bible. Even the inflections we add in just reading the scriptures add meaning. Perhaps more importantly, what we believe about God will determine how we interpret the Bible and everything else about God. If I believe that God is wrathful and judgmental, then the stories in the Bible that share that perspective will resonate with me and I will interpret those that don't share that perspective as if they did. More practically perhaps, if I don't realize that Jesus was Jewish but rather believe he was a white Anglo-saxon Protestant then I understand him in a very distorted way. If I don't realize that God has never belonged to any religion, I can easily become very arrogant in my religion.

The good news is that the perspective of humanity is changing during our life time. We see the evidence of that in the now five decades long decline in church attendance and in the rise of popularity of spiritualites that portray God and loving and accepting of humanity. We see the evidence in the people who will no longer tolerate mistreatment, much less abuse, from their religious leaders and who no longer blindly accept their attempts to characterize their felonies as misunderstandings rather than the crimes they are. We see the growing number of former victims of spiritual abuse who now refuse to listen to so called "authorities" who attempt to manipulate and control them through mischaracterizations of God as an abusive parent. Finally, we see this transformation in the anger of those who are heavily invested in the status quo, those who would characterize the transformations described above as coming from a fictional character in red pajamas and carrying a pitch fork.

We live in exciting times. Don't let fear keep you from enjoying them! Trust yourself to ask the tough questions, don't stop until you arrive at answers, and never feel you have to surrender your power to discover truth! The Universe is big enough to endure your questions!

Repackaging Expired Food

2011-04-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

Every now and then you hear a story about a restaurant or grocery store that changes the dates on food that has "expired" so that they can still sell it to their customers - at least, until they get caught. This kind of thing is usually the result of perceived financial despair and the poverty mentality that usually preceeds it. As a solution to a problem, it most often backfires because sooner or later the practice is discovered - sometimes someone gets sick from the food, other times an employee calls the health department - and the fallout from the deception is much more costly than doing the right thing could ever have been.

Christianity has been guilty of the same kind of deception, often repackaging old messages that no longer resonate with people in new wrappers. If the tradition in question has always had their clergy wear robes, they take them off. If they've never worn robes, chances are they will put them on. The organ goes out the door and is replaced by guitars, drums, and keyboards. The hymals are discarded in favor of "Song Books," and the pastor gets a new hair style. The problem, and the reason that three out of four people who profess to be Christian aren't in church any more, is that changing the window dressing does nothing to affect the message - and the message is the substance within the packaging.

Despite the fact that many religious types with an ulterior motive of protecting their tradition in the face of fact would deny it, people evolve. Particularly in the last one hundred years, humanity has made tremendous advances - most especially in the areas of technology and medicine. If we look back just a few years beyond one hundred, we encounter the industrial revolution - which surely changed the face of our planet forever. Looking back a mere twenty five, we see the Internet doing the same. Is it reasonable to expect that changing the window dressing on any religious system is going to be enough for it to speak to a humanity that has changed so much in little more than a century? If we don't teach mathematics that way we did in 1911, what in the world makes us think that we can teach spirituality the way we did in 1911?

Of course, our understandings of our received faith change over time as well. For centuries people believed the earth was flat because the Bible said it was. When Christopher Columbus proved that view false, we had to change our understanding of what had previously been "biblical truth." In contemporary times, other once-held "biblical truths" are yielding to new understandings. Most notably, many people are struggling with the idea that a loving, just God would torture anyone for all eternity. Another "biblical truth" that is being reassessed in contemprary culture is the notion that God not only tolerated but actually ordered genocide on the inhabitants of the Land of Cana as the early Hebrew people moved in to settle there. Many of us find that a God who commits war crimes for which a human being could be brought before an international tribunal to not be God at all, but the historic projection of the worst human behaviors onto God.

Changing externals isn't going to make the expired food that passes for religion in most of the churches in the West taste any better. In fact, like expired food, continuing to insist that the earth is flat and that God is an abusive tyrant just waiting for humanity to slip up can - and has - actually made us sick. That's why ministries like Christ Enlight seek to encourage an open, honest discussion of what people have experienced on their spiritual journey - a discussion without fear of punishment or rejection, but rather looking toward enjoying the creativity that results when people with differing opinions share them with each other. As Bishop Carlton Pearson has said, "we don't have to go along to get along," but if we don't soon learn to get along we stand a very good chance of destroying ourselves and our planet. We need to throw out the spoiled food!

What Do You Expect?

2011-04-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

We get what we expect. You may or may not believe that, but most of us will readily agree that if we don't expect a particular outcome from our efforts then we won't get that outcome - or if we do we will attribute it to random chance or to circumstances beyond our control. Nobody who ever started a business expected it to fail, but I'd be willing to bet that more than half of the people who start a new business aren't sure that it will succeed and so they go into their new venture with a certain ambivalence regarding the success or failure of their business. In my own life I am coming to see the truth that we do get what we expect, and so if we begin a new venture of any kind with anything but an expectation of success we will get precisely what we expect - anything but success!

I don't mean to suggest for even a moment that expecting success is enough. If you open a restaurant but know nothing about the restaurant business and don't surround yourself with people who are experienced in restaurant management, no expectation of success will overcome your own ineptness. If you don't do the work required to reach your expected success, your expectation will not overcome your laziness. I would say, however, that if you don't put the required work into your business you don't really expect to succeed, no matter what polished and positive language flows from your lips.

The same is true for our relationships. If you don't expect your relationship to succeed, I can almost guarantee that it won't - and if your partner doesn't expect your relationship to succeed then your relationship is doomed. You can attribute what I am saying to a kind of power of positive thinking, which is part of it, but it's better to say that if we believe something is going to succeed then you will take actions that lead to success! If you think your relationship is doomed to be a six month disaster, why would you put any effort into its long term success?

You see, we do get what we expect, provided that we also follow up by putting the work into that success and avail ourselves of the help and resources that come into our awareness. Too many of us sell ourselves short, and the result is that we have failure after failure to look back on in our past. The technique is to forget about the past. It's gone and you can't change it anyway. Look in this moment to the reality that right now is the beginning of your success. You'll be amazed at what a difference it makes, but try not to be too amazed. You'd be better off to expect the difference!

We can no longer afford tribal religion

2011-04-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

When it comes right down to it, if we are completely honest - and there is no reason to be less than honest - the world can no longer afford to turn a blind eye toward the kind of tribal religion that teaches that other people must be converted at all costs. Equally bad are those religions or spiritual teachers that teach that people who are members of other religions, or no religion at all, are somehow defective. This notion of the other as inherently defective easily leads to dehumanizing the other and failing to recognize the divinity that we all share and bear. Once we convince ourselves that the other is less than fully human, we feel justified in heaping all kinds of abuse on them because, after all, it's not as if they were anything like us!

I don't presume to say that we all have to believe the same thing. I believe that the very presence of religious diversity throughout the history of our world is a good indication that there is a reason for that diversity. The reasons for that diversity are many, but the reasons are less important than acknowledging the fact that religious diversity exists. As Bishop Carlton Pearson has said, "We don't have to go along to get along." Stated another way, if a belief system works for some people, there isn't any need for outsiders to try to fix it. When we try to "fix" someone else's understanding of their faith we at best create resentment. The longer and harder we try, the more resentment we create - and the more resentment we create the more likely it is that violence will erupt.

It is clear to me that the trend of the present and future is pluralism - both in the spiritual arena and in other areas of life as well. The advent of the Internet made pluralism all but inevitable because people were exposed to the great diversity that exists in our world. Once exposed to that diversity it was inevitable that some of us would find meaning in previously unknown systems of thought and belief. Those with an investment in the status quo have spent the last twenty to thirty years attempting to put the genie back in the bottle while those with an interest in a truth based future have grown to the point where they no longer fit in the bottle!

Whenever we see someone disparaging the beliefs of another - whether the people doing the disparaging are doing so out of a fundamentalist fear of hell or out of a supremely arrogant and narcissistic belief that they are more spiritually and intellectually developed and perceptive - we have a responsibility to speak up and stand with those being attacked. Authentic faith, authentic religion, and authentic spirituality all share a loving acceptance of the other. If we are going to make our world a peaceful place, we must be willing to speak up on behalf of anyone being marginalized for their beliefs - whether or not we agree with their beliefs! There is too much at stake for us to remain silent!

Milwaukee Christ Enlight Gatherings begin June 5

2011-04-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

As you may have heard by now, The Milwaukee Christ Enlight Gathering begins June 5th. I am so excited about this new venture, which will be held at:

The Marian Center for Nonprofits - Second Floor Chapel
3195 S. Superior Street
Milwaukee, WI 53207

The Marian Center is the former St. Mary's Academy, which in the past was, among other things. an all girl's High School in Milwaukee. The building is lovely, and filled with history. Our Gathering will be the first Sunday of every month, except for months where the first weekend is a holiday weekend. For a full schedule, you can visit http://christenlight.org/ChristEnlightGatheringMilwaukee.dsp

What is a Christ Enlight Gathering?

Simply stated, a Monthly Christ Enlight Gathering is a unique experience that has arisen out of a number of experiences and insights our diverse Christ Enlight team has accumulated over the last few years.

Craig, Denise, Jeffrey, John, and Lynette respresent an extremely diverse collection of spiritual traditions and practices as well as a shared interest in healing and transforming the lives of those they encounter using a variety of techniques and modalities - perhaps the most important of which is loving kindness. With backgrounds in both Western and Eastern Spiritualities and a combined experience leading or facilitating more than ten thousand events, the Christ Enlight Milwaukee team has experience that is not only diverse but also has the depth that is acquired only though extended practice.

What is a Christ Enlight Gathering? A Christ Enlight Gathering is good music, featuring both recorded tracks and live musicians and vocalists. It's music that is easy to sing, spiritual in tone, but quite often drawn from the pop charts - songs that we all remember and love. A Christ Enlight Gathering is good people who come from a variety of spiritual backgrounds and traditions. It is hard to define the average person who attends Christ Enlight Gatherings because they come from diverse backgrounds. What binds us together is an interest in spiritual transformation and self improvement.

How do we achieve the goal of spiritual transformation and self improvement? After all, these are lofty goals! We achieve our goals through spiritual teachings that equip us to transform ourselves, our communities, and our world. At Christ Enlight, we believe that we are all inseparably connected to God, that we all bear within us the very DNA of God because we have come forth from God with the purpose of living into the fullness of the people we were created to be. When we fall short of the fullness of our potential, it is because we have lost sight of the truth that we are all God bearers. When we lose sight of that truth, we lose sight of our role as co-creators with God of the Kin-dom (family) of God on Earth.

In other words, a Christ Enlight Gathering features interesting, entertaining spiritual teachings that are applicable to daily life. We believe you will discover our messages are unlike anything you have ever heard. They are grounded in the teachings of Jesus and in all the ancient wisdom traditions and teachers. They incorporate solid, practical applications to our daily lives in accord with the best insights into human nature and behavior currently available. Our messages will expose you to both ancient wisdom and newer wisdom, always expressed in a contemporary, relevant, entertaining way.

Christ Enlight Gatherings also feature special themes or events from time to time, including Gatherings that offer anointing and other healing services, guest speakers, and special classes when desired such as meditation instruction. We also will have CD and DVD copies of all Christ Enlight Gatherings available for purchase. You may order your CD or DVD after the monthly Gathering and we will ship it to you by the following Friday!

I would like to invite each of you, if you live or travel to the Greater Milwaukee Area, to check us out - you won't be disappointed! If you're interested in holding a Christ Enlight Gathering in your town, feel free to contact me!

Military Chaplains and the Repeal of DADT

2011-04-03T16:28:00.000-07:00

Many conservative military chaplains and their supporters are whining. They are whining because of the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell," the policy in the United States Military that unfairly required lesbian, gay, transgendered, and bisexual service members to remain silent about their sexuality. In return, other service members were not supposed to ask anyone else about their sexuality, the theory apparently being that ignorance is bliss. Does anybody honestly believe that ignorance is bliss? More importantly, has asking a bigot to not act on their bigotry ever been an effective intervention? The answer to both questions is, "no," and so the Obama Administration did the right thing and repealed DADT. The military is now in the process of training its chaplains to not traumatize the LGBT community anymore.

Has it occurred to anyone that is shouldn't be necessary to train anyone who claims to be a servant of God to not traumatize anyone? Apparently not.

The result of this all is that conservative chaplains, of which there are plenty since the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest denominational supplier of clergy to the military (apparently even SBC clergy can't stand being in SBC churches and so they flee to the military), are whining and crying crocodile tears because they are being required by the military to teach something (that gay people are human beings) which conflicts with the conservative chaplains' beliefs. They would like your sympathy.

There are two problems with the Southern Baptist chaplains crying in their (non-alcoholic) beer. The first is that when you join the military you give up a lot of rights. That's one of the reasons a lot of people don't join the military. For chaplains, one of the rights they have to give up is to preach pacifism, which actually is a Christian value, unlike hatred and bigotry, which the Southern Baptists seem to prefer. Everyone who joins the military knows that they are giving up some rights, including chaplains. They'll get no sympathy from me on that count.

The second problem is that there really isn't a problem. The conservative chaplains can believe whatever they want, they just shouldn't tell anybody about it if it conflicts with military policy. I'm sure others would agree not to ask them about their feelings on homosexuality, too. If nobody asked them and they didn't tell anybody about what they believed, everything would be fine! Excuse me? What did you say? That wouldn't be fair to the chaplains. Let's see if I have this right: Chaplains can't abide by a don't ask don't tell rule regarding their beliefs about homosexuality, but homosexual service members should abide by don't ask don't tell about their identity?

There's a word for that, and it's hypocrisy. Conservative religious folks have always been big on hypocrisy, so it shouldn't come as any surprise. Of course, hypocrisy isn't a Christian value or teaching either, but let's not let facts get in the way of religion! If we did, that would make us, well, Christ-like. Apparently, the SBC chaplains want to avoid that like the plague.

See you in civvies, boys.

Natural Disasters and God

2011-03-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

It is perhaps the ultimate faith question. Books have been written about it, sermons preached about it, and endless debates have surrounded the issue. It has been expressed in many ways, some of which are very general and perhaps even too general to adequately address. Some years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a very interesting book entitled, Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People. While I think his book is very good, it is probably too general a question to be able to provide a satisfactory answer.

With the recent 9.0 earthquake in Japan, the ensuing tsunami, and now the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the most pertinent spiritual question might be stated something like this: "Why does God allow earthquakes and other natural disasters to happen?" I say this is the most pertinent question because it was not one, but two natural disasters that has created the nuclear crisis.

When we ask about God's involvement with natural disasters, we are asking the wrong "person" the wrong question. Earthquakes, and for that matter hurricanes and tornadoes, occur because pressures build up in our planet and atmosphere that need to be released. When those pressures occur in subterranean tectonic plates, the plates slip across one another causing what we call earthquakes. Earthquakes, when a number of other factors including tides are right, cause tsunamis.

I was asked recently why the planet was "designed" in this way. While I am most definitely not a scientist, my understanding is that all planets are designed in this way. This may be the only possible design that would work, given the truth that our planet is subjected to gravitational forces that hold it in orbit around the sun. To a certain extent these questions, while they may make interesting fodder for discussion, are irrelevant because the planet we have is the one we are stuck with!

What, then, is the role of God? The responsible, progressive Christian view is that we have learned through Jesus that our God is a God who journeys with us - and suffers with us as necessary. It is a simplistic perversion of the Christian story to say that God is an interventionist who sends disaster and then rescues some, but not all, from the very disasters God sent. While it certainly is true that there are parts of the Hebrew Scriptures that do so, it is nothing but anthropomorphism to attribute to God human misbehavior such as rages and revenge to Divinity. We cannot at the same time say that God is a God of love and also claim that God is a God of vengeance and eternal torture.

In short, the disaster is Japan - at least as pertains to the earthquake and tsunami - is the result of living on this planet. There were no misdeeds that brought it on, no punishment that lies behind it, no Divine action involved in the disaster. There is Divine presence in many places in the recovery, however. Since God lives and acts in us, through us, and as us, God is present in the form of the recovery workers, those who care for the displaced and the injured - and also in the victims of this horrible event. The God of Love and Compassion is always present in human experiences, loving us back to wholeness. We are seeing the truth of this in Japan in a special way right now, but the truth is that the love and compassion of God in and through other human beings is present in every place, every day!

Charlie Sheen: Another Feeding Frenzy

2011-03-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Charlie Sheen's one man show, "My Violent Torpedo of Truth," which will open in Chicago and Detroit, sold out in eighteen minutes. That represents a feeding frenzy on the misery of a tragic individual, and is perhaps a gauge of how miserable much of the American population truly is.

A few months ago, in response to the Bishop Eddie Long sex scandal, I wrote and podcasted about Christian Cannibalism - the tendency of self-proclaimed Christians to respond with a feeding frenzy not unlike a piranha in a fish tank that contains a pound of ground beef to the fall from grace of Christian preachers. While the tendency toward cannibalism certainly does exist within Christianity, it clearly is also a part of the broader culture, although in a different way. Christians eat their young. The broader culture chooses to prop up suffering and enable it so that as many people as possible can witness the pain of the suffering person or persons and enjoy it, thereby convincing themselves that they aren't so miserable themselves. It's as if they are saying, "Sure, I'm a miserable wretch, but look at this slob - he's so messed up he makes me look good!" The problems with that perspective are legion.

One of the biggest problems with that perspective is that it is self deceptive. If I am miserable, then I am miserable. The relative misery of other people has no bearing on my misery. Propping up Charlie Sheen so that others can feed on his misery is nothing more than a distraction from my own situation. It doesn't change my situation, and in that it enables Charlie Sheen's own delusion it actually causes others harm.

Another problem is that this perspective devalues human life by saying that other human beings exist for our amusement. In this case, our amusement involves enabling an addiction and other self destructive behaviors. In the end, we don't really care what happens to Charlie Sheen. When his self destruction is finally complete we will look for our next victim. Six months later, Charlie Sheen will be a tragic afterthought, if we think of him at all. Human beings, however, are not pawns in our individual misery plays. Human beings have intrinsic value, which we deny and damage by our callous indifference toward their wellness.

Perhaps most importantly in terms of long range impact, like all kinds of self medication this perspective fails to address the underlying problem - our own misery! To borrow an expression from AA, we need to take a "fearless moral inventory" to determine the source of our misery. Healthy people respond to the misery of others with compassion, not by taking actions that enable the other to continue deepening their misery.

Much of our dissatisfaction with life results from the unrealistic expectation that bad things will not happen to us. Bad things may happen to others, but we somehow suffer from the delusion that we are exempt from dissatisfaction. Twenty five hundred years ago the Buddha taught that unsatisfactoriness exists, and the we contribute to our own dissatisfaction. (He also taught that there was a way out of unsatisfactoriness and taught the path out of dissatisfaction.) One of the ways that I believe we most contribute to our own dissatisfaction is by feeding on the misery or others - and those others are most often celebrities.

From People magazine, to the National Enquirer, to Entertainment Tonight and other celebrity based media offerings, we are bombarded by an ample supply of celebrity misery. A trip to the grocery store checkout lane offers a variety of gossip rags at arm's reach that a shopper can take home and read during the commercials shown while watching TMZ on television! The problem is that none of this is real! It's all manufactured. We believe we "know" celebrities because we have watched their movies or bought their music, and this leads us to believe we are being concerned about our "friends." At the same moment, our neighbors could be suffering through some personal crisis and we are completely oblivious because we are busily distracting ourselves with our "celebrity friends." Is there any chance at all that, in the middle of all this distraction, we know what we ourselves are feeling?

Real life may be unpleasant at intervals, but it has the advantage of being real. For most of us, Charlie Sheen is essentially a fictional character of our own creation who we will never meet. It's time we all take a step back and engage our own lives and stop all of the distraction. If we don't, we will continue to be absent to our own lives. Imagine the tragedy of reaching old age only to realize we missed our own lives over the likes of Charlie Sheen!

Japan and Interconnectedness

2011-03-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

If there is a positive take away possible from the earthquake, tsunami, and aftermath in Japan, it would be that we might actually see and remember that this incident is clear evidence of the Interconnectedness of everything. Every person, every living thing, even inert materials, are all interconnected. An earthquake and the resulting tsunami has devastated part of Japan. Far beyond Japan, the tsunami caused damage on the west coast of North America and many places in between. As of this writing, at least two of Japan's nuclear reactors are in partial meltdown, and the world waits with baited breath for the Japanese authorities to regain control of all of their reactors. For the record, the Japanese are among the most responsible nuclear powers in the world and have an unparalleled record of nuclear safety. This situation has developed because Japan experienced not only the strongest earthquake in its history, but also because that earthquake caused a tsunami - something not every earthquake does.

As of this writing nearly seventy countries have offered assistance to Japan. According to Answers.com, there are 196 countries in the world. Many of those countries are so poor that they have nothing to offer in a situation such as this, and many others are part of the developing world and simply lack the technology to offer anything. The fact that more than one third of the world's nations have offered assistance to Japan is heart warming, indeed, and an indication that beyond all ideologies, beyond all politics, beyond all of the nonsense that normally separates us one from another, human beings respond to suffering of other human beings when that suffering occurs on a large scale. I would suggest that, since we are capable of responding with compassion and empathy to large scale human suffering, we also have within us the ability to respond to all human suffering on any scale.

We have seen a glimpse of the common humanity we all share. We have come to understand through the world wide economic turn down of the last few years that we are all interconnected economically. We recognize, even if we are reluctant to talk about it, that if one or more of these reactors goes into complete meltdown and the containment building fails, many more people will be affected by this disaster. Nuclear fallout is no respecter of national boundaries or ideology. Of course, all sane people hope and pray it doesn't come to that.

Through this disaster, and without wanting to minimize the tragedy of it in any way, there is the potential for good to arise - if we choose to remember. Will we choose to remember the lesson we have been taught of the Interconnectedness of All That Is? Will we recall that everything on Earth is connected to and affected by every other thing on Earth? Most importantly, will we make decisions based on that knowledge? Will we see the truth that when we declare war on the other, we declare war on ourselves? Will we see that when we deny food or education to one child, we hurt all children?

If we remember, then those who have died will not have died in vain. They will have died changing our world. Let's all work to ensure that is the case.

Creating Positivity

2011-03-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

Our culture has devolved into a culture of criticism, a culture of negativity in which the media in all its forms seeks to report what's wrong with someone or something. In fairness, the media aren't doing this because it doesn't get ratings or sell magazines - the public seems to have an endless appetite for negativity. We can't get enough, apparently, of Charlie Sheen's self destruction or what incredibly ignorant thing Mike Huckabee said today, as he continues what for all the world looks like a well planned move into political oblivion under the guise of preparing for a Presidential campaign.

All of this reminds me of a conversation I had with a hospital chaplain more than ten years ago. He told me that, in his opinion, the role of a chaplain was to take in the pain of the patients they serve, to feel it and own it as the chaplain's own and then released. I told him he was insane, that what he was recommending was a recipe for burnout, and that what was needed was a certain amount of professional boundaries. One can be compassionate without owning the pain of the world. The analogy I used was of sewage flowing through a pipe. It sticks to the sides, as does the pain of others taken into ourselves and then "released." The same is true of the negativity that dominates our culture - one can't be exposed to it without being affected by it!

Unfortunately, our "culture of negativity" has permeated the spiritual arena as well. So much of contemporary spirituality, especially of the conservative Christian variety, seems to spend all of its time telling us what it opposes. On the liberal side the negativity tends to manifest in criticism of the conservative side. How many of us, asked to state three beliefs of "Christians," would be hard pressed to name something positive, something they would like to see added to the culture. Most of us would say they oppose abortion, oppose single mothers (Huckabee), and oppose the LGBT community. Certainly, one of the functions of spirituality is to function as a social critic, but an agenda that features negativity without promoting at least an equal amount of new positive practice is like a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Sooner or later, it will run dry.

There's no small irony that spirituality, which should be leading all people toward the same general goal of wholeness, has so fallen into the other dominant feature of Western culture, competition, that it would seem that our spiritualities are hell bent on destroying one another as if there was some sort of competition going on. The public has voted with it's feet, as church attendance figures clearly show. If the public wants negativity, infighting, and endless criticism, they can watch the evening news. They don't need to attend a spiritual meeting to find it.

The future of spirituality and religion is pluralism, which includes the ideas of inclusivity, ecumenism, tolerance, and diversity in spiritual practice. A significant number of Westerners since the advent of the Internet have incorporated elements from a variety of religions into their personal spiritual practice. The more people learn about different religions, the less tolerant they will be of misrepresentations and misinformation about world religions and spiritualities. Voices that do not contribute positively to the dialog will soon simply be ignored.

In the meantime it is incumbent upon those of us who represent religions and spiritualities to check our own message and look for ways to positively contribute to the dialog. I'm not advocating adopting a Pollyanna perspective. I am saying that if we are going to criticize something, we should be prepared to offer a constructive alternative. It's easy to say something is wrong. It's much harder to offer a solution - but it can be done. If we say we need to better fund education, we need to be prepared to say from where the money to do so will come.

It may well be the case that the spiritual voices in our culture will be the ones to lead the way toward a more positive public discourse, especially since we are the ones who have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, in doing so!

Pro-Fetus Extremism

2011-03-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

It's finally happened. I have finally been pushed around the bend by a pro-fetus extremist, who posted on his Facebook page last night that it would be morally preferable for a three year old child to be beaten to death by three adults rather than to abort a baby. The reason? He said the reason was that the three year old might be able to yell for help and so might be heard and rescued.

If you are a parent or grandparent, or even an aunt or uncle, I hope you are feeling as sickened as I did. I felt so sickened that I responded to this lower order from of life, just before removing him from my "friend" list, that I found his post to be morally reprehensible and completely indefensible. The notion that it could, in any way, shape, or form, be a lesser evil for a three year old to be beaten to death, reflects a person with such distorted thinking that I can't imagine they could possibly be less than psychopathic. (This idea also reflects the danger of this kind of political rhetoric - and make no mistake about it, for the pro-fetus crowd abortion is not a moral issue, it's a political one - the danger being that people are tempted to play God, and believe they have the right to decided not only who will live and who will die, but also who will be tortured in the name of their political agenda.) I say political agenda because moral issues are resolved through discussion and debate, and the conclusions that are arrived at are spread through spiritual teachers. Political issues are decided at the polls or through legislation and court decisions. The pro-fetus crowd don't really want to win your heart and mind to their cause, they want to shock you into complying with their political agenda.

You may be thinking this was simply the isolated ramblings of one sick, twisted individual, but you would be wrong. After posting my response, I received a message from a very angry woman who recommended a propaganda video to me, said I was an invalid bishop (she's one of these conservative Roman Catholics who run around Facebook befriending bishops, assuming we are all Roman Catholic, and collecting us as if we were a talisman against evil forces) and said she was praying that I would learn what the Fifth Commandment was. It is she that doesn't understand the Fifth Commandment, which says that Hebrews shouldn't kill other Hebrews but allows for the killing of non-Hebrews without penalty. She repeated the argument that at least the three year old could cry for help.

The truth is, as Daniel Maguire's excellent book Sacred Choices so very effectively points out, every one of the major religious traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Indigenous or Native Spiritualities, are historically in favor of family planning, birth control, and - when birth control fails - abortion. No less a figure than the father of Catholic Scholasticism, St. Thomas Aquinas, was a supporter of abortion. There is no small irony that one of the largest proponents of pro-fetus politics, The Roman Catholic Church, currently teaches that birth control is prohibited - which contributes to the need for abortions! Apparently, logical consistency isn't the strong point of the Curia.

Another reason that we know this issue has become political and not moral is that, as the Facebook post so aptly points out, in the mind of some pro-fetus advocates, child sacrifice is acceptable while abortion is not. The irony is that the Bible is silent on abortion but quite clear on child sacrifice - it is prohibited.

Fundamentalists of every stripe have adopted abortion and human sexuality as their only topics of focus. Since the Bible is silent on both of these issues - the seven or eight scripture verses usually cited about sexuality have nothing to do with sexual orientation, a concept that didn't exist in biblical times, but are rather about presumably heterosexual males engaging in homosexual behavior, most often with heterosexual male Temple prostitutes. At the same time, they blithely ignore the more than three thousand biblical verses that instruct us to care for the poor, the destitute, the widowed, the orphaned - yet more evidence that all of this business about abortion is politically, not spiritually, motivated. If the Bible was their motivation, they wouldn't be ignoring the poor.

I don't know of any responsible ethical or spiritual thinker who would advocate abortion as a primary means of birth control. There are, however, always going to be people - either because birth control failed, or because the man "didn't believe in birth control" and at the last minutes didn't use it (a clear case of violence against the woman), or because the woman was assaulted, or for reasons of the mother's health - who will need abortions. Making abortions illegal will not stop abortions, it will simply make them illegal and more dangerous because there won't be any regulation of the providers. This is yet another indication that the real issue is that the alleged pro-lifers are really pro-fetus - the only life that matters is the potential life of the fetus. The mother's life doesn't matter, they aren't willing to educate the child once born, or provide medical care to either mother or fetus post-partum - and all of the three year olds out there don't matter either. In fact, under this logic, the three year old they are willing to allow to be beaten to death to save a fetus today may have been, three years and six months earlier, a fetus that they had been willing to sacrifice another three year old to "save." It's all so very distorted, all so very inconsistent, all so very sick.

I am eternally grateful that my educational background, from secondary school through university, included courses on debate, argumentation and logical reasoning, and philosophy. In short, I learned how to think and to reason. While some ability to think and reason is no doubt innate, the more complicated the issue becomes the most difficult it can be to understand the full implications of a particular argument. In the current political climate in North America, argumentation has given way to character assassination and irresponsible, unfounded accusations that are lofted over head in the hopes that the public won't do their homework and will believe whatever they see on TV. Fox News [sic] has been built on that hope.

Healthy spirituality wants us to stand on our own two feet. In fact, healthy spirituality helps us to do precisely that by encouraging us to check out the facts for ourselves. As the Buddha famously said, "Don't believe anything just because I said it. Believe it because you have investigated it and found it to be true."

Those words are spiritual marching orders for contemporary humanity.

Socially Engaged Christianity

2011-02-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

If you follow my work in any of its myriad forms - The Christ Enlight Podcast, Christ Enlight on BlogTalk Radio, video blogging, this blog, and/or any of my various websites - you know that I have been struggling to find a name to define the kind of non-born again, rooted in mainline Christianity, socially responsible, historically connected Christianity that I have been a part of most of my adult life. This is a Christianity that is not the one hundred year old invention of so-called "Born Again" Christianity, not the Christianity that sees its primary duty to fight a "war" against contemporary culture, not a scientifically ignorant Christianity that insists against all the evidence to the contrary that the world is six thousand years old, not the Christianity that has its nose pressed up against our collective bedroom windows. Rather, this is the Christianity of Jesus, who himself was not a Christian but rather a Jew. This is a Christianity that has at its core the command to love God and neighbor - and which recognizes that everyone is our neighbor. It is not the Christianity of excommunication and bombing abortion clinics. It is the Christianity of the very Jesus who cared, and cares, about "the least of these." It is the Christianity of the downtrodden, the poor, the marginalized, the excluded, the oppressed, and the rejected, and it calls those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to do so to reach out to those groups that Jesus did, the very groups I just mentioned.

In the Fall of 2009, I launched (with my colleague and co-founder, The Rev. Susan Gaines, EFR) the Christ Enlight Movement and Spirituality. At its core, Christ Enlight seeks to embody the kind of true-to-Jesus Christianity I described above. It sees Jesus primarily as a wisdom and enlightenment teacher who sought to establish the Kin-dom (family) of God on Earth. Christ Enlight is a part of the kind of Christianity I describe, but not the totality of it. There are many other movements, traditions, schools, and teachers who remain loyal to the undistorted teachings of Jesus.

Today, as I sat in prayer, the name came to me. I am going to call this vision of Christianity "Socially Engaged Christianity." Because Socially Engaged Christianity is concerned about the very things that Christ was and is, one of its primary emphases is creating the Kin-dom of God on Earth. It seeks to do that by establishing true social justice through peaceable means, including non-violent protest when necessary. Social Engaged Christianity recognizes that to do the important work that is so desperately needed in our world, we need a strong spiritual foundation - and that the single, most essential part of a strong spiritual foundation is a strong prayer life that includes a daily period of silent prayer. That silent prayer may be known by many names, but it simply must be present for our work to be effective and for each of us to have the vision and the strength to make the right choices.

Watch for more to follow!

Reichsfuhrer Scott Walker, and the Demise of Wisconsin Labor

2011-02-25T11:39:00.000-08:00

It's in the news, it's on Facebook, in the papers, and, if you live in Wisconsin, every night at 5pm and at other unscheduled times during the day, Reichsfuhrer - oh, I meant Governor - Scott Walker appears for another press conference in an attempt to win the battle of public opinion. He spins, he lies, he does everything but actually say what he means - that he intends to bust Unions in the State of Wisconsin. He also keeps relating anecdotal stories of isolated individuals who support him, individuals that he supposedly has run across in the last week or so as he strolled the highways and byways of Wisconsin undetected. The odds of The Fuhrer and his party moving about undetected are very slim indeed, especially given the fact that he is all but proceeded by a band playing "Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles."

I have listened to the stories from both sides. Walker says that unions are not being fair, as they rush to get contracts signed with local communities before Walker can disband them. What would he expect them to do? Could he possibly be so naive as to believe they would sit passively by, waiting for the hatchet to fall? Does he believe that the local communities are compelled to enter into these agreements? Is he really that ignorant of the process? Sadly, he may just be that naive and just that ignorant. This is a man who recognizes that he has control of both houses of the Wisconsin Congress, and so he intends to ram through whatever he chooses to stuff down the throats of Wisconsinites.

I live in Milwaukee County, where Walker was County Executive before running for Governor. As County Executive he went around cementing public swimming pools and doing just about everything he could to cripple what was one of the finest County Park systems in the Country. How it is that removing County assets would make anyone want to move to Milwaukee is beyond me. It's very telling that Milwaukee County did not vote for him for Governor. He is ego run amok, and the only thing secondary to his ego is his arrogance. The truth is, he doesn't care what people believe, or feel, or need. He is going to exercise power at every opportunity, more indiscriminately that perhaps any politician in the history of America.

No matter how both sides attempt to spin the question in Wisconsin, this is about collective bargaining. Americans have a pathetically short memory, and so every one of us needs to re-read the history of the development of labor unions. Labor unions didn't develop because workers were greedy, labor unions developed because employers - yes, even government employers - took advantage of workers and treated them in a subhuman manner, including children. I find it unbelievable selfish that any human being would deny the right to collective bargaining to the people who haul away your trash. If you disagree, go stick your head deep into your garbage can, take a deep whiff, and then we can talk more. Human beings died to earn the right to collectively bargain. Have we become so callous that no longer matters to us?

I have heard the argument that union households as a percentage of American households have been in steady decline as our economy has transitioned from a production to a service economy. That's just fine, but it doesn't logically follow from those statistics that the unions that remain should be outlawed.

As a person of faith, I am not moved by Fuhrer Walker's urgent need to balance a budget that he, in fact, unbalanced with a big tax cut for the richest people in Wisconsin and for corporations. I am of the belief that when you create a problem, you are responsible for cleaning it up - and not at the expense of other people. I also believe that as the gulf between rich and poor continues to grow, and as the middle class continues to disappear, we are going to need labor unions to work on our behalf, perhaps more than ever.

Jesus Christ stood with the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, and the forgotten. Teachers are among the forgotten, and they are public employees who remain vastly under compensated as we spend billions of dollars every week on a war we can't win in Afghanistan. We value killing in this Country more than we value education. Jesus would slap the shit out of us, and rightly so. I believe that teachers most certainly need collective bargaining. I do not believe that Jesus would support Fuhrer Walker's strong arm tactics.

Make no mistake about it, the debate in Wisconsin isn't about balancing a budget. It is about power, pure and simple, and a Governor who believes he was elected dictator. It has to stop, and it has to stop now.

When I Say Inclusive, I Mean Inclusive

2011-02-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I come across an article or blog written by someone who has benefited from the Church becoming more inclusive - perhaps they are gay, or lesbian, or a woman who has been ordained in a tradition that during her lifetime didn't ordain women, or some similar thing - who then turns around and starts arguing that the Church shouldn't go too far with this inclusive business. They are concerned that Buddhists might be let in, or that other "non-Christians" might be allowed in, or some sort of "non-Christian ceremony" might take place in a Christian Sanctuary, or even that Christians who don't believe the right things might be allowed into the Church.

There's a name for such people. The name is hypocrite. Most often their hypocrisy springs forth from ignorance, but not always. Often it springs forth from the mouths of clergy. For these people, inclusivity is a fine thing as long as it benefits them, and once it has benefited them they feel compelled to start narrowing the door through which they passed. It's been called various things, such as Oppression Sickness, but I have this tendency to call things what they are, so I prefer to call it hypocrisy.

The real irony underlying most of the suggested limitations on inclusivity is that the actual implication of nearly all of the litmus tests of orthodoxy that these writers suggest in their attempt to limit inclusion are tests that Jesus himself could not pass! For that matter, God the Creator couldn't pass them, either!

You see, Jesus was an observant Jew, not a Christian. God never belonged to any religion. Jesus did not believe himself to be the Son of God, or to be the Messiah. Human beings proclaimed these things about him post-mortem. He never participated in a Christian worship service, and was never baptized for the forgiveness of sins - and not because he didn't sin, but rather because this understanding of Baptism didn't exist until years after his death. Jesus never believed in the Trinity. Jesus believed that one drew closer to God by being a Jew, not a Christian - because there weren't any Christians in Jesus' day! It wasn't an option!

It seems to me at the root of all of this kind of nonsense is a profound misunderstanding of Grace. If you were once excluded from the Church and are now included, it's not because you are so very special or deserving. It's because of Grace, which is God's unmerited - and that means undeserved, my friends - favor. Please stop this nonsense of fighting for inclusion for yourself, and then once you are in working to keep anybody out. You make those of us who have been working for your inclusion, at no benefit to ourselves, wonder why in the world we fought for you only to see you turn around now and work against us! All people are God's people. It is perhaps the height of arrogance - and a profound lack of faith - to appoint yourself as the gatekeeper on God's behalf.

Maybe, just maybe, you might find it in your heart to do some ministry instead, and leave the being God part to God.

Extra-Marital Affairs or Why "My Marriage Matters," Doesn't

2011-01-31T10:58:00.000-08:00

Most of you by now have seen television advertisements from a group of right wing fanatics called "MyMarriageMatters.org" founder Ryan Hill. The advertisement's only apparent purpose is stopping the website AshleyMadison.com from existing. Since many people have no idea what AshleyMadison.com is - at least until Mr. Hill's advertisement, wherein he explains that AshleyMadison.com guarantees its members a discreet affair (in truth, the "guarantee" only applies to the most expensive membership option), Mr. Hill is doing what so many right wingnuts do. He is calling attention to something that many people aren't aware of, and so in trying to stop something actually serve as its best promoter. Congrats, Mr. Hill! Welcome to hypocrisy!

The ad, if you haven't seen it, features scenes from the Ashley Madison webiste in the background with Mr. Hill, looking like the stereotypicl politician, in the foreground. When Mr. Hill speaks of his site, WhyMarriageMatters.com, the background images change to the American Flag waving in the breeze. To point out that the ad is an oversimplification of the issues is to proclaim the massively self evident. However, I am sure his advertisement will raise some money from his target audience, the simply minded, conservative, reactionary masses.

At issue here is not Ashley Madison. Extra marital affairs have existed since marriage began - and at different points in history were considered a man's perogative. He didn't even have to hide his concubines! That means affairs have existed before Ashley Madison and will continue after "she" is gone. In fact, Mr. Hill's campaign isn't about marriage at all. Rather, it is about the culture war that so much of what passes for Conservative Institutional Christianity spends all of its resources attempting to conduct. Mr. Hill's campaign is all about censorship and gaining control over the freedom of expression on the Internet.

You see, the truth is that nobody who is happy in their primary relationship cheats. Nobody otherwise not inclined to have an affair is going to have one just because they heard about a website that offers "guaranteed discreet affairs" any more than somebody who doesn't eat chicken is going to eat chicken because they saw an advertisement for the local fried chicken restaurant. The biggest problem with simplistic, black and white morality like Mr. Hill's is that the world is not a black and white place. The problem with the "culture war" that so many conservative fundienuttalists battle is that it is completely contrary to the life, ministry, and teachings of the very Jesus whom they claim to follow. In fact, such campaigns much more resemble the behavior of the Pharisees, the only group that Jesus was directly critical of while he walked on Earth!

In a country founded on freedom, I find it curious that there are so many members of the morality police who would love to convince us to surrender as many freedoms as they can, as quickly as possible. Who would they put in charge of the decisions we now make for ourselves? No doubt moral midgets like Mr. Hill. That should scare the hell out of all of us.

Jesus the Hell Raiser

2011-01-27T12:09:00.000-08:00

It is time for a revolution. Christ Enlight is leading the way in that revolution for people who have rejected mainstream, mainline, institutional Churchianity. We stand in union with all those who have rejected Church as usual. We stand in recognition of the fact that as he walked on earth Jesus was not some namby-pamby voice of the establishment. Neither was he a proponent of violence, however. He did not support the status quo, either in religion or in politics - and, oh yes, Jesus was and is a political figure. Jesus isn't a political figure in the way the religious right would have him be a political figure, by having him blindly and thoughtlessly support political conservatism. Quite the contrary, in fact. Jesus was politically motivated by non-violence and his primary issue was that of social justice. I am going to borrow a term from contemporary Buddhism and call that non-violent call for social justice Engaged Christianity. If we claim to follow Jesus, and here at Christ Enlight that is precisely what we claim to do, then we need to allow our beliefs to lead us to Engage society and speak out against what it wrong - and if we are claiming to be Engaged Christians, then we need to address the issues that Jesus held near and dear to his heart.

Admittedly, there is no shortage of people willing to tell us what they believe Jesus held near and dear. They usually lead with human sexual orientation and abortion, two issues that are not addressed by Jesus (or anyone else) in scripture. This leads me to ask, where in the world did those people ever get the idea that Jesus even knew about those two issues? The truth is, when he walked on earth those two issues didn't exist, so he couldn't possibly have taken a stand on them. If you want to know what issues were near and dear to Jesus' heart, you have to read the Bible. More precisely, if you want to know what issues were near and dear to Jesus' heart, you need to read the Bible with secular eyes. You need to throw away the doctrine and dogma that you bring to the text, the meanings you have been taught to see in the text, so that you can see what is really present.

We here at Christ Enlight are in the early phases of production on a DVD and CD series that uses the Gospel of Luke to examine the things important to Jesus. We will keep you abreast of our progress, and hope to have this wonderful program ready for distribution by Summer. If you would like to learn more about how to reserve a copy, email us at ChristEnlight@gmail.com

The Ego and Disability

2011-01-24T14:56:00.000-08:00

I have just come to the full, complete realization that not only have I become more and more disabled over the last three years, but my denial about the extent of my disability has not served me well at all. I have decided to write about that part of my experience now, two weeks before the surgery that will hopefully improve my condition dramatically, not because I want anyone's pity or because I am feeling sorry for myself, or any other such nonsense. I have decided to write about it because I feel fairly certain that I am not alone in my denial and so I hope to be of help to others who find themselves in similar situations.

I grew up in a household where the parents were both alcoholics and supremely dysfunctional in other ways as well. Add to that recipe a fairly strong German heritage and the stoicism that accompanies it, and the result is a family in which expression of feelings was strongly discouraged. It didn't matter if the feelings were positive, like love, or negative, like pain, we were not to speak about them. If we did, we were told we didn't know what we were talking about ("what do you know about _________?"), or were told that men didn't talk about such things (my only sibling is male), or that our experience was somehow inauthentic ("I'll show you what pain is!"). As you might imagine, we learned to not talk about what was bothering us, or causing us to celebrate, at all. I resolved during my early teen years to be a different kind of person than my parents were. Chief among the ways I decided to be different was that I resolved that I would be a person who said, "I love you" frequently to the people of whom that was true, and also to be appropriately physically affectionate to the people I loved. My children would know what it was to be loved and hugged by their father.

When I was twenty-five years old, on a Monday, I sprained my back at work. I continued to work until Friday (my twenty-fifth birthday) when I could no longer feel my feet. Since I drove fifty thousand miles a year for my field service job and lost feeling in my feet about three hours from home, I went to the Emergency Department as soon as I got home. I chould have gone to the nearest hospital but reasoned that, since my pain was becoming worse by the minute, once I stopped for treatment I was going to be stuck wherever I was. Continuing home to Newburyport, MA, I was diagnosed with a sprained back, given muscle relaxers and pain pills, and sent home to spend the weekend on a bed of ice. For almost twenty two years, other than having my back go into extreme spasm two or three times a year, it wasn't that big a deal. I had occasionally tried to get some treatment that would make being laid up two or three times a year unnecessary, but was not successful. Then, Christmas 2007, the walls came crashing down.

It was the day after Christmas, and my wife and I were visiting her family, as we do most every year, over the Christmas holiday. We most often go to the Mall of America for the day after Christmas sales. This was before the economic collapse, and the mall was busy. My back was bothering me, but I attributed it to the hotel beds, which are not a bad back's best friend. Suddenly I could only walk about twenty-five to thirty feet without being literally forced into a crouching position from the extreme pain. There weren't any wheelchairs available because of how busy the mall was. I spent most of that afternoon walking from bench to bench, stopping in between to squat as needed. No bag of ice was going to resolve my problem this time.

As I mentioned, one of the consequences of growing up in the kind of household I grew up in is that one learns to deny pain. If you can't express your pain, you certainly can't show your pain in your facial expressions, and so you become fairly adept at denying that anything is wrong, both to others and to yourself. Despite the fact that I live in a very different environment now, thank God, old habits die hard. Some of the mythology of our western culture exacerbates men's struggle with pain. I call it the cowboy mentality. A man is a man if he keeps going and does whatever is necessary to accomplish the task at hand. I had owned that myth completely. In my professional life, owning that myth served me very well during my twenties, even better in my thirties when I returned to school full time while also working full time at a hospital, and it even served me well in my ministry. I was able to take on monumental workloads and accomplish everything I did with flair - until that fateful Christmas.

If I may digress for a moment, allow me to say that I am an extremely well adjusted person, except when it comes to limitations. I had my share of therapy to walk into wholeness after a childhood that was lousy and of which I remember very little as a result. I am the someone rare male who is in touch with his feelings and is nurturing to others. After my divorce from their mother, I raised my children. Physical pain and limitation of an intensity that I could not deny, that I could not overcome, and finally that I couldn't hide from my wife no matter how well I thought I was hiding it, proved to be my Achilles heel. Rather than slow down, I kept right on pushing. At times, the pain stopped my from doing all that I hoped to, but one thing was certain: I wasn't going to stop voluntarily. It all sounds so macho, filled with bravado, such dignity in adversity.

Today I realized I may as well have been hitting myself in the back with a hammer for the last three years. In my quest to keep pushing, ignoring what my body as saying, I was actually hurting myself! There is a word for that, and it is insanity. This morning I woke up with pink eye (which, I realize, has nothing to do with exertion), and so I rolled back over and went to sleep - until noon. I had kept a full schedule on Friday and Saturday, and then woke up Sunday to do my morning Ustream Internet TV show, and stayed up late to boot. I can't do this!

As I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, this isn't about me seeking your pity. This blog is about advocating a culture shift. We now live in a world where it isn't necessary for men to fight off predators to survive, to build his own home single handedly, or to compete against other males in contests of strength to win the attention of the most fertile female. We need to teach each other, and our sons and grandsons, that authentic male-ness is found not in brutalizing our bodies, but rather in listening to them. After all, God speaks to us through our bodies (and in other ways as well). It's time for the foolishness to end. the ironic part of my journey is that my special gifts are found in my mind, my spirit, my writing, and my speaking - generally speaking in my creativity, none of which require me to be faster than a speeding locomotive like Superman was.

We, as men, need to be very intentional about starting a dialog about what it means to be a fully integrated male, and we need to do it right now. In the 1980s the mens' movement sought to put us in touch with our feelings and to reestablish archetypal rights of passage. That's all well and good, but I think we might do better to support each other in learning to honestly answer the following question in all its aspects:

"How do you feel?"

As I have learned, it's not nearly as easy as it might seem!

What is God?

2011-01-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

What is God? Please read the question slowly, "What is God," not who is God. It's an important question, especially in the oncoming age of spiritual pluralism, which I believe is the spiritual path of the future - thank God!

Is God a person, place, or thing? Is God spiritual or physical, or both? Is God a state of mind, or an experience, or something totally different? If God is a person, do we mean person in the philosophical sense of "a self conscious or rational being," or in the more common usage of a human being - in the case of God, most often a super human being? Please don't avoid the issue by saying that God is Jesus, for while you may believe that Jesus is part of the Godhead you most likely don't believe that Jesus is the entirety of God. Another way to avoid the question is to answer with a function of God, as in, "God is the creator of all that is," because this tells me what God does, but not what God is.

I believe that how we understand the question "what is God?" to be so foundational to our spiritual journey that we can't really proceed very far without answering it, despite the fact that many of us have never considered the question. I also believe that our answer to this question may well change over the course of our lives and our journeys.

To help you get closer to the question, you might ask yourself, "Where is God found?" This helps because the kind of thing you are determines where you are found. You don't find living fish outside of water, at least not for very long. If you say, "God is in the Bible," then you are either saying that God is in paper and ink or you are answering a related, but different question, "Where is evidence of God found?" which may be interesting in itself but is not our objective here. If you answer is, "God is found in heaven," you should be prepared to identify where heaven is so that we can investigate for ourselves. If you answer, "God is found everywhere," then you should be prepared to offer some more precise examples of where I can go to find God.

It's a very difficult question, isn't it? Most important questions are difficult. I know what my answer is, but in theory we all could have different answers. I would be curious to know what your answer is, so if you'd like to share it you can email me at ChristEnlight@gmail.com.

Why I am Interspiritual

2011-01-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Those of us raised in the three "Religions of the Book" - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - will remember reading stories in the Torah (The first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament are recognized as Scripture by all three religions) will recall that, after wandering around in the Sinai peninsula for forty years or so, our shared ancestors finally found their way to the promised land of Cana. One of the things that these early Hebrew encountered as they went about committing what they understood was the God-ordained genocide of the Canan people were little statues known as "household gods." As they raped and pillaged what we today call Palestine (some things never change) they were directed to destroy these household Gods, which they were told were not really gods at all. As they encountered other nations throughout their biblical history, most often these nations had their national Gods. These were Gods writ larger than household gods, and were supposedly more powerful than household Gods (no doubt they had done well for themselves and received promotions). "You fools," they said to these other peoples, "Our God is the God, yours are just pretend gods, and because we worship the real God, we are going to kick your collective butts, because our God is the REAL God."

Needless to say, a fair amount of rationalization had to kick in from time to time, as throughout its history Israel was conquered now and again. In fact, by seventy of the Common Era, Israel was wiped from the map until it was recreated by the peace treaty that settled the Second World War in 1948. During all this, Christians blithely forged on, believing that God had pretty much shifted allegiance from the Hebrew people to the Christian people. Christianity took on the mantle of having the only real God, the rest of the world presumably chugging along to namby-pamby land looking for some self esteem with their little, inferior gods and goddesses. You can actually find members of all three religions of the book who still believe that they are the sole possessors of the REAL God, even over and above the other religions of the book - somehow ignoring our shared heritage.

So, WE have the REAL God. The Big Guy, the God of the Universe. Apparently, God hasn't had time to drop in on the rest of the world yet, but we can just write that off to the will of God. After all, if God had made it over there, they would no doubt call God by the same name that we do, and their bad religious art would no doubt attribute to God all of the same things our bad religious art does, and they would worship the same way we do (despite that fact that between and among the three faiths of the book there is tremendous diversity in worship and prayer practices). After all, WE have the transcendent God who is omni-present. It's just that God (despite operating outside the confines of time) has been a little busy and hasn't quite gotten over to those heathen in the East, except perhaps within Orthodox Christianity, though some of us have our doubts about that. Or, when the all powerful, all knowing, infinitely vast God of the universe of whom we have sole possession did manage to wander over to the East, they just missed the point and preferred their household Gods and little Asian looking statues - and THOSE certainly could be God because God is a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (who may or may not like you Catholics, too).

That all sounds a little silly, doesn't it? And yet, that's exactly what religious exclusivism says - that my God is God and yours isn't, and that settles it. If someone said this about anything or anybody other than God, we would laugh them off of the world stage, but our passions and our insecurities are so bound up in our understanding of God that we seemingly lack the ability to take a step back and look around. unless...

Some of us looked around because we have been betrayed by our tradition, or because our received faith tradition didn't answer all of our questions. Others looked around because they have moved to a different neighborhood or part of the world and have met people who are members of a religious tradition other than their own who were pretty fine people. Others of us went to one of those no-good liberal arts colleges and found ourselves in a comparative religions class. Still others saw something on Facebook, or YouTube, or elsewhere on the Internet that intrigued them. Whatever the case, we looked and - very often much to our surprise, we found God there!

When we told our friends and family, the odds are nearly all of them were sure we were bound for hell and tried to talk us out of "all this nonsense." That strategy rarely works, particularly when you have truly experienced God - and more and more of us are experiencing God outside the religious confines of our family of origin. In fact, I believe the religion of the future is religious pluralism.

In 1999 I became the pastor of a small church called Community of the Living Spirit. Each year, during Lent, they did a book study. As a good pastor, I wanted to know what sort of thing they had been doing under my predecessor. The year before my arrival, they read Thich Nhat Hanh's Living Buddha, Living Christ. I read it and was instantly hooked. I saw the truth that what separates the religious and spiritual traditions of the world was cultural differences. I saw the commonality of the shared teachings and knew that what I called God was the same Spirit that was behind the teachings of the Buddha - the essential teachings of love and compassion. Others have found the same commonality within other traditions, and once you find them you simply cannot ignore them. Your friends and family can come to you and quote chapter and verse of scripture and recite dogma and doctrine until they are blue in the face, but when you have experienced God somewhere, none of the humanly created rules about religion can possibly matter to you.

Here We Go Again!

2011-01-14T09:28:00.000-08:00

Oh my, what great news! And so surprising! John Paul II will be beatified (the first step in moving toward being declared a Saint in the Catholic Church) on May 1, 2011. Get your tickets now! Come see the last step in the cheapening of Sainthood as they beatify the man who began the process by Canonizing (the second and last step in officially being declared a Saint) just about everyone who every said "God bless you" after someone else sneezed. In a way, I can't believe it, but in another strange way, I expected it.

The Institutional Church Universal has been digging its own grave at an amazing pace of the last few decades, with the Roman Church at the front of the line operating the heavy equipment. They are about to Beatify and will certainly Canonize the one their fanatical conservative contingent calls "John Paul the Great." He certainly was great, at least in two ways: In turning back Vatican II, and in being at the helm during what may be the greatest felonious cover up in the history of organized religion. It is no small accident that Benedict the XVI will beatify JP II - he is paying it forward in a unique way. Since Benedict XVI, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, actually carried out the cover up of the Roman Catholic Pedophilia scandal on JP II's watch, he is going to Beatify the one who doubtless ordered it so that nobody can object to Benedict's own Beatification after his death. Isn't it lovely?

Why do I care? That's a very good question. I suppose I care because Sanctity still matters to me. I suppose I care because my understanding of Church and of Jesus involves a dedication to social justice, and this action will actually reward injustice. Finally, I care because I care about victims - both those already victimized and those yet to come.

In the end, I take some small consolation in that you can't fool God, you can't fool the Universe, you can't fool Goddess, you can't fool the Divine; no matter what name you use for the Transcendent, it won't be fooled. Personally, I believe that John Paul II has been reincarnated as befits the negative Karma he has accumulated. I can't be more specific than that because no matter how disgusting the example I thought of, it didn't seem bad enough. I can hear the blood pressure rising on any conservative Catholic who reads this, and to them I say that my intent is not to raise your blood pressure. My intent is to speak the truth, and if the truth bothers you then you should have done something to correct the wrongs that were done under JP II's reign rather than sweep them under the carpet because you are so dependent on your Church being right that you would lose your identity if even the possibility of wrong doing by the Church were to surface and be confessed.

I suppose that the tragic lesson from JP II's pontificate will be that we are all human - pious declarations of infallibility notwithstanding - and that while power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Authority always opens the possibility of abuse of power, and absolute authority virtually guarantees it. A review of Papal history proves that truth, as in all of Papal history one would be very hard pressed indeed to find twenty Popes that could be held up as the paragons of virtue their office deserves. Gandhi famously said that "I love your Christ, I do not like your Christians." When the Catholic Church, as it often does, calls all other Churches to "return home to Rome," the real sticking point is always the Papacy. Given the history of the Papacy, perhaps they aren't leading with their strongest selling point.

As for me, I love your Catholics, it's your Pope I do not like - and with good reason.

Tragedy is Compounded if Nothing Changes

2011-01-10T16:29:00.000-08:00

The news over the weekend was filled with reports of a tragic shooting in Tucson, AZ. Reports of the apparent primary target of the shooter, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, have focused on the history of political discourse during the last election cycle. The use of violent language by many candidates, from no so thinly veiled threats such as "it may be time to exercise our second Amendment rights" to remove Harry Reid from office; to Sarah Palin's website picturing Congresswoman Giffords and other political leaders with targets drawn on their faces; to the support of such tactics and employment of violent language themselves on the religious right and the Tea Party (more than 50% of whose memebrs are also members of the religious right; has finally come to the attention of at least a plurality of Americans. Sadly, while responsible voices are calling for an end to the violect actions and rhetoric, the individuals and groups who have employed such rhetoric and are at least partly responsible for this tragedy are denying that their inpropriety had any influence on the shooter. Ms. Giffords' primary opponent in the last election, a Tea Party candidate, was pictured dressed in combat gear and holding and M-16 rifle. His message to his supporters? He encouraged them to be prepared to fire their weapons in support of him.

As Sarah Palin's staffers were scrambling to remove the targeted faces of her political opponents, the spin doctors were claiming that the shooter is mentally ill and none of these improprieties caused him to pull the trigger. As anyone with even a modicum of experience working with the mentally ill can tell you, there is nothing about being mentally ill that makes a person unable to watch television or read political materials. Even more importantly, if Ms. Palin's "targets" weren't inappropriate, why would her staffers remove them from her website?

Of course, the problem here isn't only Sarah Palin, or the Tea Party, or the Religious Right - although they assuredly are all a part of the problem. The problem isn't even that we live in a culture of violence - although, most assuredly, we do. The problem is that as war mongers, hate peddlers, and spin doctors have increasingly ramped up their rhetoric, those of us who are from moderate to progressive on the political and/or spiritual spectrum have remained silent as our current culture of violence was growing. The truth is that all of us are part of the problem. If we have any hope of fixing the problem before it is too late, those of us who have been silent must speak up. I propose three areas is which we all exercise due diligence and speak up regularly:

1. Christianity. Those of us who are Christian must speak out against any and every self-proclaimed Christian who does not understand that Jesus was called the Prince of Peace for a reason. We must educate our ignorant brothers and sisters (and there are more than enough of them) that while the Jewish people expected a Messiah who would be a violent military conquerer, the Messiah we Christians find in Jesus whom we call Christ was a peaceful man of non-violence who was no supporter of the status quo, no supporter of the regime in power, but rather advocated for the full inclusion of all people without exception in the full life of religion and society. He spoke against inequality of every kind, including but not limited to inequality of economics, social status, gender discrimination, and oppression of the sick or disabled. The only people Jesus spoke harshly of were the religious authorities of his day, who put massive burdens on the backs of the faithful in an attempt to control their thinking and behavior. Finally, Jesus was not a Christian, he was an observant Jew.

This is who Jesus was, and when anyone tries to cast him differently or to use him to defend positions that Jesus would never have defended, we must speak out against such a misrepresentation of one of history's most important spiritual figures. If we fail to speak out, we will be complicit in the violence that is justified through misrepresentations of Jesus.

2. Politics. Regardless of our political affiliation, we must speak out against every political candidate or elected official who uses the rhetoric of violence. We must demand their censure by their political party. We must act decisively and non-violently, including engaging in acts of civil disobedience when necessary to change our current political rhetoric into what it should be - peaceful and fact based - not what we currently have - an exercise in making untrue, absurd claims that candidates know are false in the hopes that some fools may believe them and change their vote because of these lies.

3. Society. We must all work to reduce and finally eliminate the use of violent language and action in society. This is no mindless call to political correctness. It is a recognition that when human beings say something long enough they start to believe it. If we are to change from our unacceptible level of cultural violence, we must begin by immersing ourselves in the language of peace. Our greatest obscenity must be, "I could kill you/him/her/them." We must work to end violence wherever it occurs: Domestic violence, gang violence, police brutality, and every other exampple of violence of speech and action.

These changes will not occur over night. We cannot know how long it will take to implement the changes we so desperately need, but however long it take we must persevere. Our society is regressing to a day long past when everyone on the street was carrying a weapon because there was no other way to guarantee the safety of person, property, and family. Before that day returns, we must regain control.

Some years ago WWJD? bracelets were very popular. The answer to that question today is crystal clear. Jesus would stop the violence.

What's Our Job as Church?

2011-01-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered what the purpose of Church is? I don't mean the spiritual purpose of Church. Quite obviously, the Church exists to build faith communities and serve her members. I am asking what the purpose of the Church is in the world that surrounds it. Assuming that our faith calls us to act in the world around us in a particular way, what can we say about the nature of that call?

Generally speaking, I suppose one could argue that the job of the Church is to evangelize the world. Not all Christians would agree with that being the job of the Church, but even if we accept for the moment that it might be, you would be hard pressed to find a Church that's only intersection with the world, strictly speaking, was going around asking people to join their Church. Most of them, perhaps as a recruiting tool, are acting in the world around them.

I have watched the Church with some interest over the last twenty five years, and it seems to me that there are essentially two answers to the question of what is the job of the Church in the world. The first, and in recent history the most popular by far, is that Church exists to identify and combat what it identifies as problems with the morality of the world around it and to attempt to coerce compliance with the Church's vision of appropriate moral behavior. The attempted coercion takes place through proposed legislation, by supporting candidates for political office who support the Church's vision, and through bring pressure to bear on those who do not comply. The primary issues that have occupied those who share this view of Church in the world over the last twenty five years have been human sexuality and abortion.

The second answer, and least popular in recent history, is that the Church exists in the world to bring about social justice. Under this vision the Church exists to lift up the down trodden, the oppressed, the marginalized, the poor, all those whom we believe are "the least of these" that Jesus referred to in Matthew 25. This goal is accomplished in two steps. The first is that the Church attempts to meet the urgent and immediate needs of marginalized populations. The hungry are fed, the naked clothed, the sick and imprisoned are visited. The second step is working for change in the systems that create poverty, racism, sexism, oppression, violence, lack of access to services, and anything else that is life denying in the life of human beings.

One thing I find especially interesting about these two perspectives is that they seem to be mutually exclusive. It seems, in practice at least, very difficult to help people with essential needs if you can't look beyond their behavior and whether it corresponds with your expectations or not. Conversely, if you are trying to feed, clothe, and shelter people you don't have much time left for worrying about their sex lives and whether or not they have ever terminated a pregnancy. The first anwser to Church seems to create a situation wherein I am responsible for your behavior in what we generally believe are the most private of moments - in your bedroom and in your doctor's office. The second answer seeks to be responsible for keeping you alive, and other than hoping that you won't do harm to anyone else isn't terribly concerned about who you sleep with or whether you enjoy it when you do.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, conservative believers tend to endorse the first understanding of Church in the world, while more progressive believers endorse the second understanding. Since conservative believers claim to be much more in touch with what the Bible has to say and claim that progressive folks don't even belive in the Bible, it might be interesting to see what Jesus has to say about all of this.

Would it surprise you to know that the Pharisees were very concerned about the moral behavior of their day? In fact, in one notable encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees they bring to him a woman caught in adultery. The first question you might ask is how they caught this woman in adultery and whether or not they set her up - since a man could have sex with whomever he wanted, a confederate of the Pharisees could easily have been convinced to seduce this woman while the Pharisees themselves lurked outside the bedrooom window to "catch" her. However it happened, they bring the woman to Jesus and point out that the Law of Moses states that they should stone her to death.

It would seem that most who favor Church as morality police stop reading the story here. In fact, if you drive around your town and look at the sign boards in front of conservative Churches, you will most likely find that most conservative pastors are preaching from the Old Testament this weekend, despite claiming to be Christian. They apparently have missed that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, and that the Law and the Prophets can be summed up in two commandments: Love God with all you heart, mind, and soul; and love your neighbor neighbor as yourself. I'm not sure how you lovingly throw stones at your neighbor.

Getting back to our story, Jesus answers that the man present who is without sin can cast the first stone. Not surprisingly, one by one, beginning with the oldest, they all walk away. Jesus then tells the woman that he does not condemn her, and that she should go and sin no more.

Regarding social justice, Jesus is very clear about our responsibility to care for one another. He himself fed the hungry masses not once but twice. How does that become less important that doing the very things he spoke out against? The truth is, short of a retreat to the Old Testament to the exclusion of the New Testament, it can't be done biblically.

One of the things we can be sure of about the Church is that it has been in a state of steady decline since the 1960s. Today, despite 80% of Americans claiming to be Christian and 96 claiming to believe in God, less than 20% of Americans are in Church on a regular basis. The reasons for this are many, but I can't help but wonder if a large part of the reason is that, after a period of feeling quite superior to we sinners, policing the behavior of others just isn't that interesting. It may be, in a twisted sort of way, exciting to hear about all the forbidden things that people do in a sermon, but after a while cheap thrills aren't enough to bring people back. Finally, it has become increasingly apparent over the last few decades that all of this focus on "appropriate" sexual behavior by conservative pastors hasn't kept more than a few high profile (and who knows how many lesser known) pastors from being found with their preaching gown around their ankles.

Every generation has been sure that the current generation is going to hell in a handbasket, just as their parents believed they were going to hell in a handbasket, no doubt all the way back to the beginning of time. Having as your religious focus the goal of controlling the behavior of others is a way of avoiding reality and the pain of the world by, in fact, creating more pain for those who are the target of your moral angst. Avoidance isn't faith, however, and unless your relationship with God is moving you to make the world a better place in a way that decreases the amount of pain then it is nothing more than a kind of spiritual solitaire. Jesus didn't look at the Pharisees, who had descended into a shallow legalism, and say, "carry on!" He rather insisted on change for the better, for the lifting up of the oppressed and the inclusion of the marginalized. The book of James tells us that true religion in the sight of God is to help widows and orphans in their distress. In fact, over three thousand verses of scripture speak of God's wish that we care for the poor and marginalized. Since the Bible contains just over thirty thousand verses, that means that ten percent of the Bible asks us to care for the poor and marginalized. The Bible is silent on abortion, silent on birth control, has eight verses about straight men having sex with other men but none about gay or lesbian men and woman having sex with each other.

Do you suppose we have missed the point?

Yet Another Reason to Avoid Christians

2011-01-01T18:04:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching this year's Rose Bowl and saw my Wisconsin team get beaten by a good TCU team. TCU, for those of you who might not know, is Texas Christian University. Any time I hear the word "Christian" in the name of anything I tend to get uncomfortable because I am pretty sure there's a good chance somebody is going to say something that reminds me of why I identify as a follower of Jesus rather than a Christian. The reason: You Christians are really awkward, misinformed, obnoxious, and just make me generally uncomfortable.

What happened? TCU's quaterback was asked about the win, and to my dismay he began, "There's a verse in Bible, in 1 Peter 5, and it says, 'Be alert, wake up!' and that's what we did." Really?

During halftime of the game we learned that it costs more than $41, 000 a year for room, board, and tuition at TCU. They didn't say if biblical misinformation training was included in the tuition or if that costs more. I suspect it's included at no extra charge, in which case he would still be paying too much.

What bothers me about this? The first thing that bothers me is that the interviewer asked him about a football game, and I don't care how hard you look, the Bible doesn't speak to football. His little holier than thou scripture quotation is absolutely ridiculous in that context. Even worse, little Mr. Christian QB apparently didn't read the whole verse, which is 1 Peter 5:8 for those who care: "Be on the alert! Wake up! Your enemy the devil, like a roaring lion, prowls around looking for someone to devour." Presumably, the University of Wisconsin football team is the devil. I'm sure that will be news to them.

Can't we just play football and have all you scripture memorizing lunatics sit together in a corner somewhere you can't be heard by the rest of us? That way you and all of your socially awkward Christian friends can amaze one another with your ability to butcher scripture and compete for the coveted title of Nerd of the Month. This kind of obsessive nonsense is yet another reason that I beg you, please - don't call me a Christian. Call me a follower of Jesus.

Internet Ordinations: The Future of the Church?

2011-01-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across a discussion on facebook last night wherein someone was looking for a quickie Internet ordination to allow him to marry gay and lesbian couples when it becomes legal in his State. Someone recommended a well known on line ordination mill* and offered that he believed that this place is, "...the future of the Church." Normally, I avoid such discussions like the plague. This time, however, I couldn't remain silent and when I woke up this morning it was clear to me that something needed to be said about both the idea of getting a quickie Internet ordination to do weddings and the organizations that offer such ordinations being the future of the Church.

Regarding marriages and Internet ordinations, there are concerns in many States about the legality of such ordinations and the marriages that are performed thereby. I would refer you to a New York Times article on my website www.BishopCraig.com. To me this is not the most important issue, but it certainly is an issue of which people need to be aware. I think the question that people really need to ask themselves is why they want to be married by a member of the clergy. The answers are many, but most often are that people want a sense of spirituality in their ceremony even if they aren't attending a Church. Some will speak of a sense of God's blessing on their marriage. Others, and this may be the only negative reason, want a member of the clergy to marry them to appease their grandmother. I say that's a bad reason because your wedding day is your day, and you should plan it to make yourselves happy, not someone else.

Accepting for the moment that you want a member of the clergy to marry you, why would you want someone who has cut every corner possible - including the corner of adequate training and supervision and the development of a spiritual life of their own? There's nothing wrong with a secular wedding officiant, and there's nothing wrong with a wedding officiant who is a member of the clergy, but I can't help but feel that if the only effort your alleged clergy person is willing to put into getting ordained is filling out a free form on the Internet there is more than a little deception at work.

The truth is, there are Churches that offer alternatives to a three year seminary program as preparation for ordination. I happen to be the presiding bishop and co-founder of one of them, The Universal Anglican Church (www.TheUAC.net). Since our clergy are bi-vocational, you don't have to leave your day job to persue ordination or to be a member of the validly ordained clergy. We are also radically inclusive, which means (among other things) that we do not discriminate in the ordination process on any basis. We also adequately screen, train, evaluate, supervise, and provide continuing education for our clergy - something that no Internet "church" can adequately do! Our clergy are experienced in performing a variety of religious and spiritual ceremonies, and also trained in pastoral care and counseling. All of this means that we - and other Church bodies that are legitimately Church - can professionally handle whatever issues may arise.

You may have noticed that I wrote "legitimately Church" above. Both theologically and legally, a "Church" that is comprised only of clergy is not a "Church." It may be a religious order, but a group that does not have a constituency is not a Church. Throughout history, the legitimately ordained have been raised up by a Church, not an Internet advertisement or a billboard. By definition, then, Internet ordinations can never be the future of the Church. They may be the future of some kind of pseudo-church but, not unlike comic book advertisements that claim you can get an MBA by studying for six months on-line, the amount of effort you put into securing a credential will determine how useful that credential will be to you. Your Uncle Fred may decide to get an Internet ordination so he can perform your wedding with all of the best itentions, but he has neither the training nor the skill to ensure everything comes out well.

Perhaps most importantly, regarding the marriages of gay and lesbian couples I have a question. After waiting so long and fighting so hard for the right to marry, don't you think you deserve the kind of ceremony that only a professional can provide? With no offense intended to well meaning people who want to "help," there are many very well trained, experienced, validly ordained clergy waiting to help your friends and provide them the wedding day they will remember for all the right reasons - and not because of something that happened that you were unprepared to handle.

Finally, it is important to me that I say that there are some ministers who have Internet ordinations who have on their own initiative secured adequate education and training to function as clergy and do a fine job - but they are the exception to the rule. If you are one of those people, I would invite you to contact me regarding seeking ordination in The Universal Anglican Church and securing a credential that will reflect the effort you have put forth! We are known, after all, by the company we keep!

*The term "ordination mill" refers to any orgainzation that ordains people without adequate training or supervision, the goal being to ordain as many people as possible as quickly as possible, very often for a fee.

Happy New Year

2010-12-31T14:47:00.000-08:00

This next year, 2011, will be a year of taking God out of the Machine. Deus ex machina, a concept spoken of with disdain by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is perhaps the dominant view of God in the world today. It is misguided, it does not reflect the God of Christian scripture, tradition, or reason, and yet it is a God that has been popularized over the last one hundred fifty years or so. In short, God in the machine views God as one who comes from on high and rescues us from our mess, imposing Godself to solve problems on our behalf and then departing. This is the God of fundamentalism, the God of popular pseudo religion such as the likes of Joel Osteen preaches. This is a God who will get you that promotion at work, removes obstacles in your personal life, and essentially step in where you find you can't quite handle things yourself. It is a God with no regard for personal boundaries, and a God who is at the disposal of people - a God almost forced to respond to our perceived needs and our personal perspectives. To many people that all sounds pretty good, I suppose, except that it is a gigantic fiction produced by small and large time hucksters and those not willing to really engage life.

The truth is, as anyone who has engaged life for a couple of decades or more can tell you, sometimes life just sucks. We get sick, accidents happen, loved ones leave us, we fall prey to email scams and lose our savings, we fall prey to politicians and lose our economy, people we love die - all manner of uncomfortable situations come up over the course of an engaged life. By engaged life I mean a life engaged with reality as opposed to a life spent in an imaginary world of one sort or another. Nobody especially likes dealing with these things, and yet deal with them we must if we are to live authentically.

Some escape by postulating a God who, if I ask in just the right way, will remove from me the natural consequences of life. Those who are honest about their experience with such a God will admit that God never seems to deliver for them, and for a very good reason - that God is a fiction. There is no God who will rescue you if you just have enough faith, if you just send my ministry enough money (although sending my ministry money can never hurt ), light enough candles, or pray enough. The real God, the God of Christian tradition, is a God who suffers with us and never abandons us - and is evidenced most clearly in Christ Jesus.

What good is that?

First, let's recall that being rescued from our mess isn't an option. We are here to live our lives, good and bad, orderliness and mess included. The good of the real God is that we never have to do so alone because God is always present. The inconvenient truth of my last statement is that if you want to be able to see our God who is always present, you cannot start looking for God when you are knee deep in dung. What is true of humans is often true of God, given that we are created in God's image. Why in the world would you expect to be able to locate God in an emergency, in a time of stress, if you have never looked for God when all was well? Would you set out looking for a friend when you were in crisis, or do you build friendships along the way in the hopes that they will be there for you when the chips are down?

Those who spend time developing a spiritual life when all is well are the people who have learned to access God - and when they find themselves suffering, they find God there as well - not because God is there as some kind of a reward, but because they recognize God from their time spent with God in meditation and contemplation. If I sent you to look for a poodle but you had no idea what a poodle looked like, your odds of finding one would not be very good. Why then do we suppose that, having never spent a moment in search of God, we will recognize God when we are in crisis? The beauty, of course, is that God is always there whether we recognize God or not. Some of us even manage to find God for the first time in our crisis, and that is beautiful indeed. If, however, you think God is going to rescue you, riding in on a big white horse to pick you up and carry you off to safety, you will never find God because you have no idea what God looks like.

I suppose all of this isn't very convenient. It's not the kind of light weight tripe that sells books in popular Christian bookstores. It is, however, truth.

Many years ago Baptism was thought to be a kind of "get out of jail free" card. As a result, many people waited until they were on their death bed to be baptised because they believed doing so would allow them to do whatever they wanted to during life and still go to heaven. They thought they could trick God at God's own business. While I don't believe in the traditional view of either heaven or hell, this "God as rescuer" theology is little more than another "get out of jail free" card. I don't have to make good choices, I don't have to meet my responsibilities, I don't have to prepare adequately for life's challenges, all I need to do when I get into a jam is ask God to fix it and God will be compelled to do so.

It's never worked that way, and it never will. Let's spend 2011 coming to understand how it does work, and in doing so come to live authentic lives! We can know that we are never alone, and if we spend some time learning to see, we will even see the evidence.

Public Broadcasting and Dictatorships

2010-12-25T13:33:00.000-08:00

I would hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, because there are few things more misguided or boring than conspiracy theorists. But...

This morning during breakfast the television in the hotel lobby was on the local PBS television station. They were showing beautiful choral music for Christmas that tugged at my heart strings and made me miss parish ministry.

Then I thought of the political threats coming from the newly elected Republican Congress to pull funding from public broadcasting and how that might impact my ability to watch this kind of thing. Then I thought of the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I am reading.

You see, when dictators come to power - be they socialist, communist, republican or democrat - the first thing they seek to control is the media. King George II already started that process when he forbade the news media from reporting on the dead bodies of American troops returning from overseas. The major news media are now under the control of corporations with political aspirations of their own. When you add to this that Americans have willingly ceded their rights on a daily basis since 9-11, the future looks gloomy indeed.

Now come the Republicans. They don't like public broadcasting because it tends to espouse a different world view and they can't control public broadcasting. The job of the media, however, isn't to please politicians (no matter what FOX and MSNBC seem to believe). The job of media is to tell the truth. Public Broadcasting won't capitulate to politicians, and so the Future Fuhrers of America would like to pull funding from public broadcasting to silence it.

Given that the other objective of dictatorships seeking to gain power is control of religion, those of us who are spiritual need to start standing up for a free media, lest we find ourselves quoting Martin Niemoller:

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Socialist.

"Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Trade Unionist.

"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.

"And then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."

Before they could come for anyone, including Rev. Niemoller, the Nazi's controlled the media and in doing so controlled public opinion.

Anytime we hear a politician trying to silence anything but hate speech we should be very concerned. As post World War I Germany discovered, times of economic crisis are times that are ripe for power grabs by people who would otherwise never be considered for public office.

What is a Bishop doing writing about these things? All people of faith need to be concerned about these issues because with them come the things Jesus spoke very clearly against: oppression, violence, hatred, persecution, hunger, poverty, and everything that comes with them.

You may not be a fan of Ernie and Bert, you may agree with me that much of public broadcasting fare's best function is bringing on sleep, you may like me prefer to listen to NPR via podcasts rather than drive around listening to sedate announcers for hours on end, or you may not be a public broadcasting consumer at all; but we all need public broadcasting, and we all need to call journalists to stop being political hacks and return to being journalists.

It's about a whole lot more than public broadcasting.

Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone

Which Jesus do you Celebrate?

2010-12-24T12:14:00.001-08:00

I have watched with interest the many postings on the various social networking sites over the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours regarding what Christians call the Feast of the Nativity, more commonly (and more secularly) known as Christmas.

As you might imagine, the most common posts are those wishing others a Merry Christmas. Many add wishes for a Happy New Year. Some attempt the dubious tasks of either defining for us just how we ought to understand Christmas in an orthodox manner or taking to task those who have expressed what, in the eyes of the writer, are unacceptable understandings of Christmas - usually because the writer feels they themselves have a far superior understanding of the Nativity than the person they are attacking. Others, in an attempt to avoid the doctrine police, load their messages with disclaimers - with varying degrees of success.

The interesting things to me in all of this are two. The first is that claims of orthodoxy always have been, and always will be, attempts to control the thoughts and beliefs of others. As such, I find them to be of little interest and believe that claims of orthodoxy have been behind far more evil than good in the history of the world.

The second point of interest for me is that the first two or three hundred years of Christianity was a time of great diversity - and not a whole lot of concern about the exact details of Jesus' birth or its celebration. Those concerns arose after the institutionalization of the Church in the fourth Century. In our day we see an increasing number of people stepping away from institutional religion in search of a way of spiritual expression that is true to their personal beliefs, developed from within as opposed to imposed from without. The resulting variety of understandings of Christmas is to be expected and, in an odd way, is a return to the diversity of early Church practice.

I believe the diversity of opinion and practice around the celebration of Jesus' birthday exists because how you celebrate Jesus' birth is largely dependent upon how you understand Jesus himself - and so how can we reasonably expect uniformity? Even if were achievable, it would not be desirable because - like all orthodoxy - it would be imposed from outside, not an organic understanding of Jesus that takes into account individual differences and diverse life experiences of humankind. Our diverse understandings and practices around Christmas are good things because they demonstrate that we have spent some time considering Jesus and what he means to us - and that's always a good thing!

Of course, there will always be people more than willing to tell others what to believe. The best thing to say to them?

Merry Christmas!
Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone

Annual Christmas Message

2010-12-20T13:51:00.000-08:00

It's that time again: Time to write my annual Christmas Message for friends, family, members and clergy of The Universal Anglican Church, Members of Christ Enlight & The Ecumenical Franciscans of the Renewal (EFR), those affiliated with Bishop Craig Ministies and CraigBergland.com, my facebook friends, and anyone else who stumbles across this message.

I began writing "pastoral" Christmas messages eleven years ago to a very small audience. It was easy then because I knew most of the people who would see my message and so knew what their concerns were. Since then, then number of folks who see my Christmas message has grown exponentially. I don't know in a personal way most of the people who will read this message. You aren't a monolithic group with the same beliefs and needs, and so each year the task of writing a message that will be meaningful has become more and more difficult. Some would say to take the easy, generic way out and write of a baby born in a manger two thousand years ago - but those of you who know me can attest that I rarely take the easy way out, even when it would be advisable.

Over the last three years I have struggled with a back injury that stems back to four days before my 25th birthday. It was a Monday, I was a Yuppie, and a hospital custodian presented me with a very bad idea regarding a piece of ultrasound equipment for which I was responsible. I sent him off to lunch and did what I thought I had to do. By Friday (my 25th birthday) I couldn't feel my right leg and so drive myself (using my left leg) to an emergency room. Over the years that back sprain has had plenty of wear and tear on it. During our 2007 trip to visit my family in Minneapolis something went wrong and I found I couldn't walk more than 30 feet without having to stop and squat for several minutes. While I have had intervals where I have improved, the last nine months have been a struggle for me. Fortunately an answer seems to be at hand, and sometime early next year I will have surgery that should improve my situation. I don't tell this story for your pity, although I would certainly welcome your prayers.

I tell this story because there are many of us who live with chronic pain and physical limitations, and many whose circumstance is far worse than mine. The vast majority of us probably have someone we know who has difficulty getting around, or who is undergoing some kind of medical treatment this Christmas, or is arthritic, or has chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome, or fibromyalgia, or any of a host of other issues that make either getting to or participating in (or both) holiday celebrations problematic. What I would like to suggest to you as a spiritual practice for this holiday season is that you identify one of these people in your life and then ask them how you can make their holiday more enjoyable. I can attest that on days when I am not doing very well it doesn't matter whether the day is a holiday or not, the idea of going some place is not attractive - but I can always sit in a chair at home that is fairly comfortable. Every one of us who fights pain, illness, and mobility issues is different, however, which I why I suggest asking the person what would be best for them.

I know what some of you are thinking because I used to think the same thing before I became one of those troublesome people who require accommodation. You are thinking that the holidays are really very busy, and finding time to accommodate those of us who don't always get around very well isn't easy. There are, however, 12 days of Christmas, and the truth is that for many people the best present is presence. Since for many of us one day isn't much different from another we would probably be just fine with a visit somewhere between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Most of us are very aware - and appreciative - of the effort required to include us.

Two thousand years ago a baby was born. Once a year we get very energized about the story of his birth, and I suppose there is no harm in that. What tends to fall to the wayside in all the excitement of Nativity Scene and Santa Claus' arrival is the life of this Divine Child. Ironically, we spend more time on his birth and death than we do his life, and perhaps that fact alone reveals everything that is wrong with contemporary Christianity. There is nothing unusual about people being born and people dying, they do it every day. It is the life lived between the birthing and dying that makes a person special, and the one thing that characterized the life of this Jesus of Nazareth was that he loved people radically.

Mind you, Jesus didn't love people in the way that contemporary Christians are encouraged to love people. Rather he loved everyone, and tended to love in a most outspoken and dramatic way those who the religious and political authorities of his day found unacceptable. Who were these allegedly unacceptable people? They were the sick, the outcast, divorced women, orphans, those living together without being married, the party people, those who were biracial and/or who lived in the wrong neighborhoods or worshipped at the wrong church. Can you see how little progress we have made in the not quite two thousand years since Jesus death?

One would think that if you wanted to pay tribute to someone on their birthday that you would do what was important to the birthday boy:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' "The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'"

Merry Christmas

+Craig Bergland

Advent

2010-12-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

Liturgical Christians are currently celebrating the season of Advent, which has historically been seen as having a two part focus. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that we are preparing to celebrate the Birth of Jesus. Contemporary culture is very good at this first focus, largely because we celebrate birthdays all the time. It may be more accurate to say, we are very good at superficial celebrations of birthdays that focus on the exchange of presents and shared meals. We may not be as good at celebrating birthdays in an intimate way that brings us closer to the birthday boy or girl, but in the case of Jesus that works out just fine because the birthday boy isn't sitting right in front of us. Even better is the fact that the gifts we exchange don't go to the birthday boy, they most often go to anyone but the birthday boy and we receive gifts as well! Who wouldn't love this kind of birthday?

The second focus of advent is on the return of Christ, often called his second coming. After Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, his followers expected him to come again in their own lifetimes. Jesus' return was to usher in the end of the age and signal the advent of the kingdom of God on Earth. The fancy theological word for that event is the eschaton, and Advent certainly has an eschatological focus. It's now almost two thousand years since Jesus' death, and that fact that he has not yet returned in the expected way has not stopped people from predicting his immanent return. This second focus of Advent is one of which a great number, if not the great majority, of people are oblivious.

How are we to understand Advent in the light of the current Re-formation of Christianity? Perhaps more importantly, how does Advent fit into our spiritual practice? Perhaps not surprisingly, the answer has two parts. As we prepare for the celebration of the birthday of Jesus, I would suggest that we give a gift to Jesus in the form of a contribution to a program or ministry that benefits those about whom Jesus was concerned: the poor, the widowed, the orphaned. It will help to shift the focus from pleasing everybody but the birthday boy to doing something concrete for the birthday boy.

We also need to view the notion of the return of Christ from a different perspective. The Bible recounts that Jesus ascended into the clouds and would return from whence he came. That is figurative language, but we have tended to literalize not only this account but much of the Bible that was never meant to be understood literally. Did Jesus disappear into the clouds on some sort of invisible magic carpet ride and will he really return the same way, surfing to the ground on an invisible magic carpet?

We need to recall that Jewish thought at the time of Jesus anticipated a Messiah who would be a military conquerer and serve to restore the glory days of Israel under King David. Many early Jewish Christians, and many Gentile converts, had a very difficult time changing their understanding of the Messiah to a peaceable Messiah, whose goal and purpose was not to drive out the occupying Roman forces but rather to show God's love for all people and to teach us that we are all inseperably interconnected with God and with one another. As political tensions grew between 30CE and 70CE, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple for good, it was only natural to see the battles that took place as indicating the end of time, the eschaton, and to look for Jesus to swoop down from the heavens and usher in a new reality. From our vantage point nearly two thousand years later, it's a perfectly understandable mistake, but we are still faced with the issue of Jesus' return.

A central point in my spiritual teaching is that we all are God bearers, which is to say that both God and Jesus dwell within us, work through us, and act as us. With this perpective, Jesus comes again every time a child is born, every time love is kindled or nurtured, every time we act compassionately - in short, every time we reach out to another. That means Jesus comes again every minute of every day, and our celebration of the second focus of Advent is intimately tied to our celebration of the birth of Jesus. If you want to see Jesus return, it's not necessary to cover your vehicle in doom and gloom bumper stickers about hell and equip it with a PA system so that you can share your distorted views with force. In fact, that is entirely counter productive.

To celebrate both Jesus' birthday and his minute by minute return, reach out to someone else. Food banks, clothing drives, Salvation Army kettles, ministries that serve others, and helping the people you meet in your daily life are all ways to celebrate Advent and Christmas in a spiritual way. Do it quietly, don't draw attention to yourself, and you will find it an especially powerful practice. The added benefit is that you will contribute to changing people's lives for the better. What could be a better spiritual practice than that?

What is an Institutional Church?

2010-11-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

I often use the terms "Institutional Church" or "Institutional Christianity" in my writing and speaking. Since there seems to be some confusion about what those terms mean, it seems good to me to write a clarification. The following, in no particular order, are characteristics of Institutional Religion.

1. The institution exists primarily to ensure its ongoing existence and the ongoing power and authority of its leadership. Power, once acquired, is very seductive, and those in religion who rise to positions of power are loathe to surrender it. Whatever threatens the status quo is declared invalid and/or evil.

2. The primary leadership style contains a high degree of autocratic style. Questioning of leadership is either not allowed or highly discouraged. It is assumed that leadership is in a better position to know what is best for the membership than the members themselves are.

3. Member organizations/churches are obliged to pay a fixed percentage of their budget to the denominational or non-denominational organization to finance its operation. The denomination or non-denomination cannnot be questioned regarding how it spends this money. When the local bishop (or other leader) visits a congregation the offering for that day "belongs" to the bishop, who is not required to account for how it is used.

4. Membership in the local ministry is not seen as a voluntary affiliation on the part of the member. Rather, membership can be granted and revoked by local church or the denomination, or non-denomination, only. There is no guarantee that if a member asks to be removed from parish rolls that the parish will comply. The denomination, or non-denomination,, on the other hand, can remove people from or rrefuse people access to membership for reasons determined solely by the denomination.

5. The denomination, or non-denomination, sets itself up as the sole, or most authoritative, interpreter of the tradition. Membership is prohibited or discouraged from questioning official interpretations.

6. The denomination, or non-denomination, assumes the right to the private information of the membership and access to the details of their personal lives, including financial information, and may send "statments" (as opposed to year end tax statements) of member contributions. In some cases, the member is required to show their previous year's tax return so that the appropriate "tithe" can be determined by the organization.

7. The denomination, or non-denomination, "owns" the property in which the local church meets, including buildings and/or additions paid for solely by the membership and may "take back" such property at any time.

8. Denominations, or non-denominations, have the right to restrict or define who the local ministry calls as their pastor. They often have the right to refuse to allow a qualified individual to be called by the local church without giving a reason.

There are, of course, other characteristics of institutional religion, but these eight provide an overview of what happens within institutions - the organization has the deck stacked in its favor, and the members have little if any power to change things for the better. The structure exists to perpetuate the existence of the institution and to make it very difficult if not impossible for any real changes to come from the grass roots of the organization. This is why it is futile to believe that such organizations can be changed from within, for to initiate change one has to hold some power. In an institution, nearly all of the power is held by the institution by the very design of the organization.

We live in a time in which people have become less and less willing to be controlled by institutions. They are realizing that if an institution is unresponsive to the needs of its membership then members have the right to leave the institution and establish organizations that are responsive to their needs and ideas. Such a movement is the beginning of restoring sanity to spirituality in the developed world.

What Really Matters

2010-11-28T13:14:00.001-08:00

The recent election of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as the President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is very revealing in that it represents the growing affinity betweem fundamentalist Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church. I say that because Dolan's election represents a choice to continue to fight the "culture war" rather than follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

The culture war can be defined as seeing the role of the Church to be fighting against Abortion and Homosexuality to the exclusion of any other issue - biblical or not. It represents the complete abandonment of Christian morality and ethics; a complete abandonment of the over three thousand Bible verses concerning caring for the poor, the widowed, and the orphan; an abandonment of the teachings of the Prophets; an abandonment of God's preferential option for the poor: In short, an abandonment of a Christian worldview in favor of a populist pile of nonsense about which Jesus was absolutely silent. It represents the Roman Catholic Church standing lock step with fundamentalist Protestants, which constitutes the de facto abandonment of everything catholic by the Roman Catholic Church.

Why is this significant? It is extremely significant because it represents a desperate act by desperate men. Having abdicated its moral authority through the fruit of a perverse system of clerical celibacy that finally caused the Church to accumulate a critical mass of pedophile priests who not only acted out on their illness but were assisted in doing so by an equally twisted group of bishops and archbishops who engineered the largest world wide cover up in history. The masterminds of it all were Pope John Paul II and the man who currently occupies the See of Peter, Benedict XVI.

Almost any response would have been better than the one represented by the election of Dolan. The best response would have been to open the doors of the Vatican to allow the light of truth to shine through. While heads would have rolled, the Church would have reestablisher herself as a moral body. Instead they chose the worst possible response in that the cover up is on going. The Church, having decades ago lost the ability to speak with relevance to the developed world, has beaten a hasty retreat to the Southern Hemisphere - a place where what males say is truth is still truth, regardless of the facts involved. Birds of a feather do, in fact, flock together.

In throwing in their lot with a culture war that has been fought for years with no good result by Protestant fundamentalism, in many ways the Roman Catholic Church has withdraw from the battle for relevance in the developed world. While there may be temporary sanctuary in the Global South, the long term picture is that the Global South will continue to develop over the coming years and the Church - both in her Roman Catholic and Protestant fundamentalist forms - will find itself perched on the precipe of irrelevance once again in a few decades. The difference at that time will be that they will have nowhere else to turn.

All of this points out the truth that there is no point in trying to change these institutions from within. Not unlike trying to bail out a sinking ship with a thimble, no matter how much energy one expends the result is the same. Those who cousel such actions are members of the institution acting in a self serving manner in that they chose to perpetuate a lie in hope of gaining favor in the eyes of their superiors.

The alternative, of course, is to leave the institution in search of a new kind of organization. Unfortunately, many of the alternative "churches" are led by small minded autocrats who lack the ability construct any blueprint other than the failed one of institutional religion. In my role as Presiding Bishop of The Universal Anglican Church I run across stories of these little Napoleans all the time. They feature organizations that have not developed a theology of their own but instead reuse the theology of an existing church (usually the Roman Catholic Church) with one or two changes (ususally married, female, and/or gay clergy); do not adequately educate, prepare, or supervise clergy; clergy, including bishops, who do not keep their promises because they imagine they have some sort of special "privilege" by virtue of their ordination (nothing could be farther from the truth); and, most damning of all, entire "denominations" that do absolutely no ministry, save perhaps conducting worship services for their cats and the ashes of their dead mother in a corner of their basement. Such groups obviously do not constitute a viable alternative to the death rattle of the Institutional Church.

Are there any viable alternatives? Certainly, there are - the trick is finding them. Spiritual teachers and spiritual organizations, whether they define themselves as a denomination or other kind of network or fellowship, can be evaluated from the outside by looking at a few details. Some of them are obvious, such as clergy or teacher training, supervision, and availability, If you send an email, do you get a response? Does the organization's website identify who their clergy or teachers are and where they are located? If not, how can you be sure they really exist?

It's been said that you can evaluate a person by the friends they keep. You can do the same with an organization. Who are their friends, who are their partners in ministry, with what organizations do they work? Having friends isn't enough, those friends have to actually be doing active ministry and/or teaching as well. What's more, their friends should reflect a certain amount of diversity. It's easy to establish relationships with organizations that are mirror images of your own, but a healthy organization looks to devleop diverse relationships. Above all, the organizations you are investigating should be transparent. That is to say they should willingly answer your questions and be able to substantiate their claims. They should offer you the opportunity to speak with members as well as clergy or teachers. The final point should be obvious: everyone you speak or correspond with should be friendly. Arrogance is never a spiritual quality and should always raise a red flag.

I believe we live in the early days of the next Reformation of Christianity. Organizations that are looking to the future will be featuring new ideas, new methods, new structures, and will be absolutely consumer oriented. Gone are the days when a spiritual organization can hang a sign out in front of their building and expect people to show up "just because." Thankfully, we have come to a place where we realize that, while there are great benefits to leading a spiritual life, the details of our spiritual practice are up to us. Speaking just for myself, it's an exciting time to be a spiritual teacher!

Evidence of Everything Wrong with the Church

2010-11-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

If I had to provide just one example of everything that is wrong with the institutional Church, it would be just one word. The word is arrogance.

It seems like everywhere I go, no matter who I speak with, they have a story of leadership in the Church acting almost completely out of arrogance and not at all out of a sense of responsibility or commitment. If we give someone just the tiniest bit of authority or power, it seems they are almost compelled to lord it over others, despite Jesus' expressed instruction to avoid doing so. Leadership, both lay and ordained leadership, soon become just a little too important to follow through on their commitments, and seem to feel such practices are perfectly fine. From bishops who cancel engagements because their driver doesn't feel well (don't even get me started on bishops needing drivers) to the church board member who "forgets" to open the front doors on Sunday morning, the church is filled with people sending overt and covert messages that say, "I don't care about you." What could possibly be more destructive? I honestly believe that people are willing to forgive many mistakes and errors in judgment, but when their new baby is scheduled to be baptized and clergy don't show up because they "didn't feel very well yesterday" and so couldn't get their shoes polished, those very fogiving people very understandably walk out the door and never return.

We all could stand a refresher course in humility. The course begins with folk making a commitment to mean whay they say and say what they mean. "Not feeling like it" is something that each of us encounter at one time or another, but most of us still do what we have obligated ourselves to do: Go to work, pick up the kids from school, be where we say we're going to be, and follow through on our commitments. There is nothing about reaching a certain level within any hierarchy that exempts us from our promises - even, and perhaps most especially, when our driver is sick.

Insights from the Road

2010-11-23T14:26:00.001-08:00

I have been travelling a bit recently through the midwest, in Texas, in Connecticut, and in New York. Perhaps more than during any of my other travels, this time I have notice the tremendous diversity that exists in the Country. Except on the most basic of levels - food, clothing, and shelter - Americans seem to lack obvious common concerns, and values from one part of this Country to another are very diverse. If you doubt that, all you need to do is watch how people who pass one another on the street interact in different parts of our Country. If that doesn't convince you, airport behavior will. Some of you will be surprised to learn that in some airports it isn't necessary to ask passengers waiting to board the plane to not block the gate so that other passengers can board. Others of you would call those who don't create human road blocks sissies.

I can't help but wonder, in light of just these two small indications of our diversity, how we could ever develop a spirituality that would be one size fits all. On the surface, compassion would seem to be a much harder sell in the northeast and New England that it is in the Midwest - but such a judgment would be an over simplification of an underlying problem.

The essential problem, in my estimation, is our pace of life. The developed nations have all bought into the notion that frenetic activity is a sign of a productive member of society. I would like to dispute that conclusion, and in fact say that just the opposite is true. Human beings are social animals, and the fact that those parts of our world where the pace of life is faster are the very places in which people don't seem to have time for one another. Even in those places where people seem to have time enough to acknowledge one another on the street, people are way too busy.

A solution will be possible only when we each come to a determination of how much money is enough. If our culture contines to buy into the death dealing notion that there can never be enough then we will remain bound to a lifestyle that not only dehumanizes the other, but in fact dehumanizes every human being. It will only be when we finally are honest with ourselves and each other about the truth that consumer capitalism cannot bring happiness, that there will never be enough material goods to make us happy because happiness cannot be found in things. Happiness is found in living fully and compassionately in the present moment - and learning to do that takes effort and commitment, more effort than elbowing other people out of line at the airport. It's also supremely satisfying.

I do hope we learn to choose happiness before we experience abject misery.

The Faceless Children

2010-11-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

I am in Austin, IX visiting Bishop Elect Susan Gaines, EFR, and the faith community she leads, Karori Contemplatives. Yesterday, Saturday, some of us went to a special event for the homeless here in Austin. People were able to get a haircut and other services, to get a flu shot, to register to vote, and to share a meal together prepared by the good people from Mobile Loves and Fishes. The event was held in the Pan American Center in Austin, which has a park adjacent to it with a playground and an ampitheater. The children enjoyed playing on the swings and other playground equipment, and the weather blessed us with a nice, sunny day. Part of Karori Contemplatives mission and ministry is giving prayer beads to anyone who wants them. They teach those who want prayer beads a way to use them that is centered on the truth that God loves them. It is a powerful ministry, and it was a blessing to watch the smiles on the faces of people with their new prayer beads - and also a blessing to pray over, for, and with these fine people, to listen to them share their stories and their concerns.

It was the children that were the biggest blessing to me. I can't help but wonder why it is when we see reports about homelessness we don't see images and stories of the many families with children who are homeless. I am pleased that in my hometown of Milwaukee it has become possible for homeless children to attend school, but that is only a beginning. As I watched the children play and laugh, I thought about the many families in our current recession who have become homeless. I also thought about the many small minded, selfish people in our society who lack compassion - but have greed in abundant supply - who would deny any human being adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.

It takes a almost sub-human ignorance and selfishness to take the position, as a woman I spoke with last week in Milwaukee did, that she got what she has through hard work (actually, this woman got what she had by marrying her husband and has never worked a day in her life) and that those who don't have abundantly mustn't have the desire or the work ethic to get ahead. She didn't even want to finance Medicare, because "those old people should have prepared for their retirement like we are doing." Becasue I didn't want to offend her and didn't see any point in being mean (but truthful) I would have asked her what she felt about prostitution, since she "earned" what she has in the same way that that postitutes do.

If I could, I would grab everyone opposed to the notion of adequate food, clothing, shelter, and health care for every human being by the ear and drag them to an event like the one held yesterday in Austin. Can there possibly be anyone so uncaring, so lacking compassion, so filled with greed, so devoid of any trace of humanity, that they would be unmoved by the face of a homeless child? If there is a time when we will stand face to face with God, would anyone be proud to say that they had deprived children so that they could buy the latest Lexus?

I can't imagine anyone would be proud of that statement, but there would doubtless be some who would have to speak those words. Our greed comes from a false belief that things guarantee us security - and we feel this way despite the fact that homeless people at one time had things, and there was nothing about their things that kept them from becoming homeless. All people everywhere need to understand that everything we have will one day be gone. It will break, wear out, become obsolete, or get stolen. Whatever the case, it will one day be gone - and so to buy in to the consumer capitalist lie that things will make us happy is to surrender our freedom, our finances, our future, our compassion, and our happiness to that valuless system of belief. Things have become our god, and in that process we have lost our souls.

If you doubt the truth of my last statement, ask yourself what you would be unwilling to give up to save the life of a child. The answer just might disgust you.

In Praise of Uncertainty

2010-11-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

I happened to be in the local Christian bookstore shopping for a CD this morning when I stumbled onto a conversation. An adult woman, I would guess in her late forties or early fifties, was having a conversation with one of the employees at the store and I heard her say something like, "Yes, I used to think like that too, but now I see things much more clearly since I...well, it's just much nicer being where I am now, seeing how wrong I was and now knowing that I am right." My sense was that the turing point that she couldn't quite describe was some sort of a conversion experience, and judging by the books she was carrying and her overall smug presentation it was pretty safe to guess that she had made a shift to the right in her spirituality. Let me say that there's nothing wrong with being a conservative Christian or even a fundamentalist. Plenty of good people have been fundamentalists, and they have contributed admirably to society while living good and holy lives. Of course, in my opinion you could substitute an infinite number of other spiritual perspectives for "fundamentalists" in the above sentence and still have a true statement. I want to take care in not appearing to be bashing conservatives in general and fundamentalists in particular, for while I don't share all of their perspectives I am connected to all people of good will. Where I part company with such folk is when they knock at my door and ask me where I'll go if I die tonight. I have, on occasion, been tempted to suggest to such intruders that if they don't leave me alone I will help them find the answer to that question for themselves!

I believe this woman in the bookstore reflected a basic, very human reason that many people are attracted to conservative expressions of Christianity. The reason is that they crave certainty. Certainty can bring a fair amount of stability to a rather volatile world, and in times of stress like our current economic crisis it's only natural to look for some certainty to grab hold of with all our might. It's all very human, it's all very natural, but when it comes to God, it's the wrong place to look. I believe that God dwells in all places at all times, but that the place where God is most easily discerned is, perhaps counter intuitively, in uncertainty.

The problem with certainty is that it limits our field of experience. If we know that God is present in ABC, it becomes pretty easy to decide God is not present in XYZ or in the people that dwell there - except, of course, that an infinite God has to be everywhere, including in XYZ and the people who dwell there. Perhaps more importantly, if I decide that God dwells in ABC and become accustomed to looking for God only there, what happens when circumstances change and I can't get to ABC anymore, or they build a new freeway right through the middle of ABC? What happens is that I am cast adrift and can't find God at the very time I need God most. In our current context, ABC could be prosperity, my church, my job, my suburban existence, my home with my 2.5 children and a dog, or the gated community in which I lived until they forclosed on my zero down mortgage.

It would be better for all of us, regardless of our particular religious perspective, to begin looking for God in the least likely places. We should strive to find God in all places, and in all people, and in all circumstances. That will assure that we never find ourselves unable to locate God. The challenge will doubtless be that we will learn that God dwells as much, if not more, in the people and circumstances that we struggle to tolerate. It is in those places and at those times that true spiritual growth begins.

It may not be very sexy to admit that there are times when you aren't sure where to find God, but it sure is a lot more honest. Honesty - with ourselves, with others, and yes, with God - is a pretty good place to start a journey of spiritual discovery.

Passionate Fruit

2010-11-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I hear people say things that really cause me to wonder if I am all alone among the sane on our planet.

Last weekend my wife Erin and I were away together (and alone) for the first time in six years. It made me realize how important it is that we not let six years go by before we do it again. As often happens when I travel, I hear people say things that strike me as very odd. It happened a few times over the weekend, but the most memorable one was the woman who was apparently enraged by strawberries. Erin and I were sitting in the hotel breakfast area when I heard a woman say something like, "remember those strawberries that made me so damn mad?"

When I was younger I used to carry quite a bit of anger with me. The anger rapidly dissapated when I developed a meditation and mantra practice, but in all of my angry moments - and there were plenty of them - I can honestly say I don't recall a piece of fruit every doing anything to enrage me. Even the dreaded strawberry did not draw my wrath, mostly because fruit pretty much sits there and doesn't do or say anything. I do remember a man wearing a hairpiece that looked like a piece of lettuce really ticking me off, but he only looked like a piece of lettuce, he wasn't actually a lettuce.

The real question is, how much anger do you have to be carrying around to believe that a strawberry makes you enraged? As a people we carry a tremendous amount of anger with us, a great majority of it due to offenses real or imagined that we refuse to let go. This anger is even worse among younger people, from whom I continually hear statements like, "she disrespected me." My biggest issues is that just about anything that irritates the speaker becomes a sign of disrespect - including statements and actions that have nothing to do with the person who has decided they have been disrespected. Collectively, we have a huge chip on our shoulder.

One of the most useful pieces of advice I ever read regarding disagreements is Thich Nhat Hanh's counsel to look at the person you are in a disagreement with and ask yourself who will care about this argument three hundred years from now. Heck, ask yourself who is going to care in fifty years. The truth is that most of the disagreements we find ourselves embroiled in, most of the conflict we are a part of, we won't remember five years from now. Stated another way, the biggest issue in our lives at this very moment, unless it involves the death of a loved one or the ending of a significant relationship, is going to be long forgotten in six months unless we choose to hold onto it in the form of anger or a grudge.

Most of our stress, most of our tension, even most of our depression is the direct result of our choice to hold on to what are most often imagined offenses. This means that we can, in a very real way, choose to become happier, more well adjusted people by forgiving those we imagine have offended us. We can avoid accumulating the stress in the first place by asking ourselves if this issue will matter to anybody ten years from now. If the answer is no, why not just walk away from the argument before it even begins?

Before I go, a word about respect: Respect is earned, it's not a given. If you are looking for someone's repect, the best way to earn it is to do something nice for them every chance you get. The odds are, they will return the favor, and a relationship of mutual respect will be built. If, on the other hand, you choose to walk around demanding respect then you will find yourself in the situation most entitled people do - friendless and lonely.

Why We Worship

2010-10-29T08:40:00.001-07:00

I have often blogged on this topic as a question. Last night I found my answer in something Max Lucado said at a Worldvision concert that Erin and I attended. Actually, I found the answer in disagreeing with what Max said. Sorry, Max.

Max said that we worship because "we are little and God is big." There is, of course, some truth to that statement. The Infinite is larger than the finite. The problem is that, behind what Max was saying lies the notion of the total depravity of humankind - an unfortunate distortion of St. Augustine's mistaken notion of Original Sin.

Why do we worship? I believe that we should worship because we recognize the very presence of God in us, through us, as us! As bearers of the very DNA of God, as the offspring of God inseparable from God we have a lot to celebrate! Never alone, never bereft, eternally divine, what a joy we have to proclaim to all people - because all of us, every last one of us, are divine! What we need to do now is write liturgies that reflect that truth. I'm on it!
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The Future of "Church"

2010-10-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

I once saw a motivational poster that said "CONSULTING" in all caps underneath a picture of two men shaking hands. The sub-caption was something like, "If you can't solve a problem, at least you can make money perpetuating it." In many ways, most church consultants aren't doing anybody any favors. Even those considered on the cutting edge tend to talk more about turning church buildings into multi-use centers not much different from community centers, and turning the focus of the church members from an inward focus based on concerns about paying the mortgage (a concern that nobody in scripture ever raised, interestingly enough) to serving our fellow human beings and luring them into the building in the hopes that they might decide to join our church. It's almost as if they are hoping that the people will say, "What the hell? As long as I am there as many hours a week as I am, I may as well join the church." They talk about removing pews and replacing them with chairs, or selling the chairs and going back to pews, and a host of other issues that are little more than distractions from the central issue: The message and the worship that accompanies it have become so perverted that people aren't buying it any more.

It goes something like this, with variations on the theme: "God is really pissed off, and you had better do everything you can to assuage God's anger or else God will send you to his eternal torture chamber where you and most of the people he allegedly created will burn for eternity. The best way to stay out of the torture chamber would be to show up every week, give the church at least ten percent of your gross income and respond to extra collections as requested, you vile, totally depraved piece of scum. Have a nice day!"

The only thing about this approach that I can't understand is why any of us ever bought it! It's not what the Bible says, unless you read the Bible very selectively and completely out of context. It is, however, deeply embedded in the languaging of our traditional hymns, which explains the popularity of contemporary Christian music - music that has taken popular love songs and made God the object of our love instead of some woman or man. While I confess that I like some contemporary Christian music, I can't say that it's particularly deep in terms of meaning or spiritual impact.

What we really need is to take some time off of and away from the performance based, religious approval system and ask ourselves what makes sense in light of the fact that we have come to a relatively new, yet very old, way of understanding God as a God of love and grace. After all, if God loves us and we are inseperably connected to God, not only do traditional hymns fail to resonate with anyone, traditional worship language seems insulting to God! We may even ask ourselves how God feels about humankind continuing to beg forgiveness and a fire retardant suit even after we have realized God doesn't work that way! It's probably at least as annoying as a girlfriend I used to have years ago who asked me about every thirty seconds if I loved her! After answering affirmatively for tens of thousands of times, I started answering by say, "yes, but I'm beginning to regret it!"

It seems to me that the task for followers of Jesus is that we might take our time to discover what works, what feels appropriate when we gather in groups as church. There will be trial and error, we won't always get things right on the first try, or the seventy-first try, but that's perfectly fine. We are feeling our way along toward re-discovering authenticity as church, and that isn't accomplished over night.

If you'd like help doing that, get in touch with me - I'd be happy to help!

Free Stuff Inside!

2010-10-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is moving her business. After having a yard sale at the business location to get rid of some of her personal property as well as items from the business that won't be needed at her new location, she put what was left outside with a "Free Stuff" sign on it. I agreed to help her watch the store while her employees packed things up for the move. After doing this for a few days, I have come to the conclusion that if I ever decide to become a mass murderer the best way to find victims will be to put some stuff on the curb with a "Free" sign on it.

I can't tell you how many people have stopped to pick stuff up that I can't imagine they could possibly have any use for. People routinely wander inside the buiding, even after being told that all of the free items are on the curb. To tell the truth, they're rather bold as well. Even after being told nothing inside the building is being given away they will open boxes that have been packed for the move and start picking through them. If I told them there was more free stuff in the basement, I am sure they would run right down the steps and I could lock the door behind them and hold them hostage.

There is an alure to the idea of getting something for nothing. That allure causes people to fall prey to Internet email scams, despite the fact that by now you would think that everyone not living in a cave would know that when you get an email asking for access to your bank account that it's a scam. Subtler version of "something for nothing" cause us to agree to do all sorts of absurd things in the hope for a return that is greater than what should be reasonably expected. The same something for nothing attraction lines the wallets of preachers of the so-called prosperity gospel, who promise a ten to one return on money sent to them if only the sender will believe. When the ten to one return doesn't happen, the victim is told that they didn't get the return because they didn't have enough faith.

I used to feel sorry for people who fall prey to get rich quick scams. I still do feel sorry for the good people who fall for a scam in which they believe they are helping someone pay for funeral expenses or get an inheritance and aren't primarily motivated by profit - although there usually is a profit involved in those scams as well. I am beginning to change my mind, though, about people who get cleaned out because someone promised they would get rich quick and they believed it. Why? Mostly because these people allowed their own greed to make decisions for them and in that regard they aren't very different from the con artists who take them for a ride.

As a society, we need to wake up to the truth that wealth isn't going to make us any happier than we are right now. There are things that will make us happier - among them generosity, relationships, living in a way that is consistent with our beliefs, altruism, compassion, and a host of other similar qualities. Instant wealth isn't the ticket to happiness. If you don't believe me, consider that most people who win significant amounts of money in the lottery are broke within three years.

Joel Osteen stands in front of an obscene number of people every week and tells them that God wants them to be successful in their careers, and if you will just fill Joel's pockets with cash then your career goals are ensured.

Can anyone tell me how that is any different that an email announcing that you have won the lottery?

Can We Talk?

2010-10-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

Can we talk? Or is that a bad idea?

I love a good debate as much as anyone I know. As I have observed in the past, however, the truth is that much of debate in North America today - epecially on the political and religious fronts - would never pass muster in a high school debate class. Personal attacks, manufactured facts and evidence, and just about every other fallacy known to humankind abound. In the United States we are in an off year election season, and in Wisconsin where I live the incumbent Governor has decided not to run for re-election. I can't remember a more negative political advertising season, and I am disgusted with the entire process. In the religion arena, I have become equally disgusted with the sexual orientation debate, especially in light of the suicide of three young men over the past few months who were the victims of homophobic bullying - a practice that is the direct result of the political wrangling of the religious right and its homophobic rhetoric. I have had more than enough.

What is the point, I ask both you and me, of continuing to debate people who are so selective in their application of the scriptures that they distort them beyond all recognition - abandoning all of the Levitical holiness code (which they should, since it has been superceded by Jesus) but holding on to Levitical notions of human sexuality? What is the point in debating people who are more than content to benefit from the work of scientists when it comes to healthcare, or technology when it comes to cell phones and such, but are unwilling to hear what science has to say about sexual orientation? What is the point in debating a Church that on the one hand decries abortion and on the other hand prohibits birth control?

In short, what's the benefit of debating unreasonable people? After much searching of my heart, mind, and soul, I can't find a single benefit.

The problem with closed minded people is that their minds are made up and the facts just don't matter. That means that they aren't seriously going to enter into a debate or an exchange of ideas. Instead, they are going to try to convert you to their point of view at any costs, and feel free to call you names if you don't become a "true believer." This is the problem with the vast majority of institutional religion of every stripe - it isn't really about seeking the truth, it's about a select few (professional clergy) controling the feelings, thoughts, and behavior of the many. Power and control are never well served by the truth - most especially truths like all people are loved by God, that there are such things as basic human rights that not even religion can take away, and that as members of society we have a moral (not religious) obligation to take care of one another.

Rather than waste our energy in pointless debate, I believe the time has long come for those of us who don't belong to The Flat Earth Society to speak our truth loud and clear. If moderate to progressive people have one glaring fault, it's that we have bought into the mistaken notion that we must, at all costs, be "nice." That means don't disagree with anyone, don't contradict anyone, don't rock the boat, don't upset the apple cart - no matter how corrupt and evil the apple cart has become. I ask you this: Do you think that a young, gay man who is breathing his last breath as his feet twitch in the throws of death, hovering a few feet off the floor, gives a damn about your apple cart? What apple cart is worth a life?

Here is what I would like every person reading this to do: Please go to http://www.ChristEnlight.ning.com and become a member. It's free, and nobody will bother you. We are going to be having a series of discussions on that site about how to make each of our opinions heard. We don't have to all have the same opinion, because what binds us together should be a profound respect for life - not the cheap, easy, spectacular pseudo-respect that those who claim to be pro-life most often have, but rather a respect for all of life.

We are talking about a recognition that every human being has the right to live a life of their own, free from harassment or bullying for any reason. We're talking about the truth that as the wealthiest continent in the world, all of North America has the responsibility to ensure than no child goes to bed hungry and no human being who is sick goes without healthcare because they can't afford it. We are talking about taking true responsibility for the mentally ill by doing what is necessary to provide adequate treatment including inpatient and residential treatment when appropriate, and not allowing private insurers to make mental health treatment a second class of illness paid for at lower rates than any other healh problem. Along with that goes serious treatment for addictions, and working toward disspelling the myth that addictions are "choices" and not illnesses.

There's more, of course, but every world religion in their non-institutional forms would agree that this is a decent starting place. While we are at it, let's come together in the same place to discuss and share our spiritual (not religious) journeys - not with a mind to convert or preach, but instead that we might journey together mutually enriched by our shared experience.

It's a little bit pie in the sky, I know. If we don't gather together, than the small minded bigots posing as people of faith will win the day. I'm not going to let that happen. I am going to present another voice. won't you join me?

The Separation of Church and State

2010-10-19T19:38:00.000-07:00

Delaware Senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell is taking a lot of heat these days for apparently not realizing that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, a freedom often paraphrased as separation of Church and State - although those precise words don't appear in the Constitution or any of its Amendments. While I have to admit that O'Donnell make a pretty embarassing mistake, rather than look at what it means for a politician to fail to understand the Bill of Rights, I'd like to take a look at how it is that so many religious people and religious organizations - particularly conservatives - are in favor of legislating not just morality but also free thought. It would seem that if conservative religious folk can't win the day by the merit of their arguments they are perfectly content to pass laws that would make their view the only legal view to hold. That's as true in the case of attempts like Ms. O'Donnell's to pass legislation that would outlaw the teaching of evolution as it is in the case of conservative Mormons pouring millions of dollars into California in the Proposition 8 vote.

Unlike Ms. O'Donnell, Churches enjoy a tax exemption. In order to maintain their tax exemption, Churches are required to refrain from interfering in the political process. The IRS, however, has been extremely selective in how they prosecute allegations of interference in the political process. Back when George II was King, the IRS chose to try to remove the tax exempt status of an Episcopal Church in California after the pastor preached an anti-war sermon. The IRS failed, largely because the war wasn't running for office that year. The same IRS chose not to investigate the Mormon's involvement in the Prop 8 vote, and it has repeatedly failed to challenge the Roman Catholic Church's tax exempt status despite the fact that the Roman bishops have routinely ordered that politicians who are pro-choice be excluded from receiving the Sacraments. Then their is James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" alleged ministry, which functions like a political action committee and yet enjoys tax exempt status as a Church. All of those examples are so clearly violations of the tax exempt status of the involved Churches that somebody has to be paying somebody off - literally or in kind.

The thing that I find especially curious when Christians attempt to manipulate the political process and claim Jesus as their justification is that Jesus was no friend of the status quo. In fact, he was quite the opposite and was executed after being found guilty of the only crime that earned the death penalty in his day - sedition. Despite that, it seems like one of the favorite occupations of conservative Christians in attempting to climb into bed (not literally, of course - as far as you know) with politicians!

I don't want to place all of the blame on conservatives. Progressives tend to do the same thing, except that progressives are for the most part opposed to a theocracy and have a pretty firm hold on the separation of Church and State. As Prelate of The Universal Anglican Church, I have noticed a trend among aspiring clergy candidates to become way too involved in making political statements on facebook and other social networking sites. I don't get involved in what this pundit said or what that pundit did. I understand my spirituality as calling me to work toward creating what has been called the Kingdom (or, better, Kin-dom, as in "family") of God. That Kingdom was described by Jesus as just and peaceable - the last two qualities that any government I am aware of will ever be able to create.

So much for theocracy!

Is God a "Person"?

2010-10-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

It seems like we keep on hearing the same trite phrases we've heard for the last two decades or more about having a "personal relationship" with God and/or Jesus, about knowing the "person" of God, and how in doing so we come to know God in a way that isn't otherwise possible. Today I was listening to a podcast I listen to regularly and heard someone on the show relate that he had been in Israel and had a discussion with a Rabbi about getting to know the "person" of God. Not surprisingly, the Rabbi had never heard of such a concept, and so this individual concluded that the Rabbi didn't have nearly as rich a relationship with God and that Rabbi could if only he came to know the "person" of God in a "personal relationship" with God. Such a statement reflects a profound ignorance of many things.

The first is that the notion of God as person is not scriptural. In fact, in John 4 Jesus quite explicitly states that God is Spirit. It would help if we would clarify what a "person" is. Dictonary.com offers the following:

1. a human being, whether man, woman, or child: The table seats four persons.
2. a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.
3. Sociology . an individual human being, esp. with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture.
4. Philosophy . a self-conscious or rational being.
5. the actual self or individual personality of a human being: You ought not to generalize, but to consider the person you are dealing with.
6. the body of a living human being, sometimes including the clothes being worn: He had no money on his person.
7. the body in its external aspect: an attractive person to look at.
8. a character, part, or role, as in a play or story.
9. an individual of distinction or importance.
10. a person not entitled to social recognition or respect.
11. Law . a human being (natural person) or a group of human beings, a corporation, a partnership, an estate, or other legal entity (artificial person or juristic person) recognized by law as having rights and duties.
12. Grammar . a category found in many languages that is used to distinguish between the speaker of an utterance and those to or about whom he or she is speaking. In English there are three persons in the pronouns, the first represented by I and we, the second by you, and the third by he, she, it, and they. Most verbs have distinct third person singular forms in the present tense, as writes; the verb be has, in addition, a first person singular form am.
13. Theology . any of the three hypostases or modes of being in the trinity, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
—Idioms
14. be one's own person, to be free from restrictions, control, or dictatorial influence: Now that she's working, she feels that she's her own person.
15. in person, in one's own bodily presence; personally: Applicants are requested to apply in person.

It seems to me that all the confusion started with the notion of there being three "persons" of the trinity, but we can see from number 13 above that when used in theology the word person refers to a mode of being, not a person in the sense that you and I are people. From this misunderstanding has come the popular notion that God is a person, most often a superhuman person but a person nonetheless, with whom I might have breakfast. The reason the Rabbi couldn't relate to God as person was most likely that he was theologically a lot more astute than the person asking about a personal relationship with God.

We can have personal relationships with our friends. We can go out to dinner, share breakfast, check out a movie, go for a walk, and do an almost limitless number of things together. We can ask our friends to "pass the cheerios," but no matter how many times we ask God to do the same we will remain without cheerios if we don't get them ourselves. Frankly, the whole notion of a "personal relationship" with Divinity has always seemed to me a dumbing down of God in cutesy attempt to make God accessible. I wouldn't have a problem with that if it didn't lead to people being dismissive of others whose understanding of God transcends a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of a theological and philosophical term!

Where is God found? God is found anywhere and everywhere, but traditionally if one desires to commune with God - to be relational with God, if you will - one does that in prayer, not over breakfast. The kind of prayer that leads one to commune with God is meditative prayer, contemplative prayer, mystical prayer - in the case of the Rabbi most likely Kabbalah - not the "gimme, gimme, gimme" prayer that sees God as Cosmic Santa Claus! To identify God as person as if God were some super-human is to misunderstand God completely. It is that kind of misunderstanding that has made it so very easy for humankind to project all of its own bad behavior onto God - after all, if God is just one of us writ large then God must also be subject to temper tantrums, too.

Here's an idea! Instead of assuming that people are dumb and need God dumbed down for them to understand or relate to (as opposed to with) God, let's give people credit. Let's teach them the truth that when they watch a sunset, God is there. When they sit with their partner, gazing into each other's eyes, God is there. God is also there in the beauty of Fall colors, in the love of parent for child, in the compassion that reaches out to those in pain, in the transcendence of orgasm, and in the charity that gives without expecting repayment. Finally, and perhaps most of all, God is in the still, small voice within that can only be heard when we turn off all of the noise and business of our lives and sit quietly, allowing ourselves to listen. In those times we will encounter a God that is so much more meaningful that the fiction we create by turning God into our little buddy that it would be comical if it wasn't so tragic.

Now that is a God I can relate with!

Beer. It's Not Just for Satan Any More.

2010-10-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

Last week as my colleague Jeffrey+ and I were passing the time in the Atlanta airport after being voluntarily bumped from our scheduled flight home we decided to have a beer and watch the Monday Night Football game in the airport bar. This particular bar was more or less a bar without walls. Instead of a wall there was a waist high metal rail that ran around the circumference of the bar area, and that design allowed people passing by to see the television. As is my custom, I was traveling in clerical clothing. As an aside, most clergy prefer not to be identified as clergy when they travel. I feel that it is my responsibility to be radically available, and so I travel in clerics the vast majority of the time.

This particular trip I had the opportunity to enjoy several conversations with people who noticed my clerical garb. Perhaps the most telling conversation was with a Baptist seminarian, who told me that he was amazed at the freedom that Jeffrey+ and I enjoyed in that we were able to sit in a bar and drink a beer. He told us that in his Baptist tradition there would be no greater "crime" that he could commit than drinking a beer. What's more, he said that he was so concerned about not being allowed to be authentically himself that he has all but decided that he can't be a pastor and instead will most likely remain in the academy rather than be subjected to the scrutiny of the morality police known as the Baptist tradition.

No greater crime than drink a beer? I believe the man, and at the same time I am incredulous. I can't imagine a more distorted perspective that one that would suggest the worst thing a pastor can do is drink alcohol. Jesus, after all, drank alcohol. We know this for a few reasons. The first is that the Gospels record several episode of Jesus being accused of being a drunkard and a party person. Another is the reference to not putting new wine into old wineskins. The reason why you don't put new wine into old wineskins is that the fermentation process causes gas to be released and that pressure would cause an old wineskin to burst. Yet another reason is that anyone who carries around grape juice in the heat of the desert doesn't have grape juice for long. In fact, my alcoholic father began his professional drinking career in high school by purchasing Welch's grape juice and placing it in the basement windows of his parent's home so that it would ferment.

Even if you don't find that argument convincing, are you prepared to say that you would rather your pastor beat his wife than have a beer during a football game? I believe that is precisely what this system is saying, because this system is entirely preoccupied with holiness codes - and holiness codes are always life denying. More than life denying, they deny the very Jesus that Baptists claim to worship as God. After all, Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Jesus was the one who came to earth to say that it was the Spirit behind the Law that was important, not the letter of the Law - and yet holiness codes are about nothing but the letter of the Law. In fact, if I could choose only one example to prove why institutional religion is life denying and harmful to its adherents, I would choose holiness codes.

Holiness codes and lists of rules to follow are asking us to deny our very humanity. They also suggest that human beings can somehow be seperated from God, and that false notion is used by institutional religion to instill fear and institute a program of thought and behavior control that is extremely destructive. In fact, it wouldn't be overstating the case very much, given that this process denies the message and reality of Jesus, to say that it is the anti-Christ.

I can't help be reminded of the movie "Terms of Endearment." In it, Jack Nicholson suggests to Shirley MacLaine that she have not one drink but two, in the hopes that they might kill the bug that's up her a$$. Hear that? I'll buy!

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize - and I'm Not It!

2010-09-30T17:48:00.000-07:00

There is a strange practice in much of Christianity that I have never understood. Actually, there are many strange practices in Christianity I have never understood, but the one I refer to is the notion that exists in conservative corners of Christianity that believers are supposed to police the thoughts, behavior, and beliefs of one another for doctrinal purity. I have run head on into that practice myself recently, and it just mystifies me.

One of the many podcasts I listen to is done by a former Assemblies of God pastor who has stepped a bit out of the fold in that he now recognizes that much of the Church engages is manipulative control tactics. He has come to understand "the grace message" that most of Christianity has ignored for the last two thousand odd years. I became a "fan" of his program on facebook and so am listed on the facebook page for the show. Imagine my surprise as I listened to a podcast of his today wherein he commented that he had received emails that "some" of the people who are fans of his show's facebook page are universalists (that would be me) and the authors of the emails recommended that he get rid of we dirty, rotten, heretics (my words, not his).

To his credit, this man refuses to purge his followers of the doctrinally impure because we listen to his show and have bought his book just like those who pass the litmus tests of orthodoxy administered by the self appointed doctine police. I think that's a good policy, although it would not have been the end of my world if he had given me the boot. As the saying goes, I have been kicked out of better places than this. That being said, it's not too hard to see how the Nazi party in Germany got the cooperation of Christians, who by and large turned in their neighbors with the best of them. In fact, they must have been already well trained to fill Gestapo posts with the practice they had identifying heretics through the years.

I can't help but wonder what these people imagine they are accomplishing. Do they believe in a God who is just a little dumb, just a little inefficient, just a little soft on crime, and just a little addled and so they feel they have to help God out in identifying the unacceptible? Don't they realize that when they spend all their time looking at other people for heresy they aren't left with much time to pay attention to God? In a strange way, they spend all their time on heresy. If you want to see what you really value, look at what you spend your time on. For these people, their god has become heresy.

More basic to the whole issue is the massive amount of entitlement this behavior exposes. They have proclaimed themselves God, and equipped with their literal understanding of a document never intended to be understood literally and the support of their pastors (who are among the least well trained clergy in all of Christendom) they set about "turning" people in to the powers that be so that they might be purged. The laity are not the only targets of their cannibalism, however. They eat their pastors, too. If the doctrinal purity issue doesn't work, they just claim to be "offended," which seemingly has the effect of calling the doctrinal purity of the "offender" into question, and the feeding frenzy starts again.

To those of you who are easily offended I say, "man up!" Is it any wonder that institutional Christianity is imploding? Who in the world would want to associate with these small minded, poorly behaved Hitler Jugen who, for all their hours pouring over the Scriptures, have no idea of who the God they purport to worship really is? I'm going to do us both a favor and take myself off that page. I wouldn't want anyone to assume I am one of them.

And so yet again I say, please don't call me Christian. I am a follower of Jesus. If you aren't, that's OK because God loves us both equally. She even loves those cannibals, although I am sure she shakes her head at them and sighs.

We Eat Our Young - and Not So Young

2010-09-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

By now most of North America has heard about the accusations against Bishop Eddie Long. The media are starting their usual feeding frenzy, circling the story looking to destroy the Bishop. He has denied the accusations, in what looks very much like an attemt to cast himself as the victim. It won't work, of course, and it's a bad strategy - but in a certain sense, he is a victim. He is a victim not of his accusers, but of a system that puts unrealistic expectations on its pastors in the form of a holiness code. He's also a victim of the historic black church and its denial of the fullness of human sexuality and the resultant homophobia that permeates that Church.

Did Bishop Long engage in inappropriate relationships with his accusers? That remains to be determined, but at the very least he engaged in very poor judgment. I have never sent pictures of myself in a muscle shirt to anyone - and not only because nobody would want them from me! For a pastor to send such pictures to a member or members of his church is to exercise very poor judgment at best and a misuse of power at worst. None of the individuals who have come forward to date have alleged they were involved sexually with Bishop Long when they were under the age of consent, but they do allege that he began grooming them when they were under the age of consent. The issue here, but only one of the issues, is that a pastor is in a position of power and authority over his or her members, and so to enter into a sexual relationship with them at any age is inappropriate. The media will no doubt focus on this to the exclusion of the larger issue.

The larger issue is that a pastor in many corners of the Church cannot be honest about his or her sexual orientation if they aren't heterosexual. Many churches won't hire unmarried pastors for fear that they may be gay. There are other bizarre expectations as well - in many parts of the Church a pastor cannot be divorced, or have piercings, or have tattoos, or wear their hair in an unconventional style, or drink alcohol, or use tobacco products - the list goes on and on. In short, they can't be human. The problem is that humans are the only species from which churches call pastors.

The unrealistic expectations of many, if not all, churches force their pastors to take parts of their lives underground if they hope to continue to serve as pastors. If I am a gay or bisexual pastor in a church that doesn't accept my sexual orientation then I will feel that I have to take part of my life underground. Since not too many people are content to be someone's "under cover lover," I may turn to prostitutes or other inappropriate relationships to satisfy my very normal and natural needs. While it certainly is a lapse in judgment, it is an understandable lapse in judgment. Every Christian Church will say that celibacy is a gift given to but a few, and then many of them turn around and seek to require it of gay and lesbian people. It's not hard to see the inconsistency in that position.

Destroying Eddie Long won't solve the problem. In fact, destroying Eddie Long may only make the problem worse in that it will reinforce the status quo - and the status quo is nothing short of evil. Instead, we need to develop a healthy sexual ethic in all corners of the Church and free ourselves from holiness codes based on the Old Testament Law, If we claim to be Christians, then we need to start living in the freedom that Christ brings. Until we do, we'll continue to sacrific pastors on the altar of bigotry.

Getting "In Trouble"

2010-09-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

If you have ever spent any time in conversation with folks who have been or are currently conservative Christians, you've probably heard them use the expression "I'll probably get in trouble for this, but...". What they mean by this is that others will disagree with what they are about to do or say and will criticize them. For these people this is a very normal, common occurance, so much so that they are always surprised when I ask them what they mean, or who they are going to be "in trouble" with. They answer, "With other believers, of course!" Even those of us who are unfamiliar with conservative Christianity may have heard stories of preachers who have said something that has caused them to get "in trouble" with the Church Board or Vestry. I have been "in trouble" in a small community that I used to serve, so I understand what it is like from a pastor's perspective to be "in trouble." What I want to say about the notion of being "in trouble" is that it's a load of nonsense.

What gets us "in trouble" with other alleged Christians or people of any faith? Most often it's speaking our honest truth, either about our beliefs or our experiences. The "in trouble" process is nothing more or less than an attempt to silence an individual and stop all dialogue. In other words, it's about manipulation and control. I'll never forget a church member at a parish I served part time and at which I was critically under compensated saying to me (in her best menacing voice, which wasn't very menacing at all), "We pay your salary!" after she learned the scope of my ministry not only transcended her congregation but was active in the same town in which her church was located. There wasn't any competition involved because the two churches served radically difference constituencies. When I asked her if that was supposed to be some kind of a threat - which it clearly was - she lied and said, "no." I then told her that if she thought I was going to sell my soul for what they paid me she was sadly mistaken.

That's the thing about people presuming they can get you "in trouble" - It only works if you are willing to play along. Certainly, the attempt to silence or control anyone is a mark of an unhealthy community and it is especially inappropriate in the context of a faith community. When we find ourselves tempted to attempt to silence someone or cause them to suffer because of something they have said or done what is really happening is that we are feeling threatened or afraid and feel we need to strike back. Ironically, the woman who threatened me in the congregation I served was afraid that the broader scope of my ministry would cause me to abandon her congregation, and so I became to her every man who had ever abandoned her. The ironic thing is that, had she and her cronies not been so threatened and treated me so poorly, I would never have left that congregation. They were afraid that if I left they would have to disband, and so they forced me out and disbanded!

The people we attempt to silence may well be the best prophetic voice in our midst. As Jesus said, prophets are never respected in their hometown. If you feel so challenged by what someone says or does that your instinct is to silence them, the better option is to ask them to sit down and have an honest, adult conversation about your reaction to what has happened. That response always allows for growth on all sides, and it really is the only healthy, loving response to a challenging situation. I believe that this issue is one of the biggest reasons for the collapse of institutional Christianity. As the reformation currently under way starts to form communities of its own, we must learn from this lesson or be doomed to repeat it.

Paperanity

2010-09-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

I am amazed at how silently the religion of Paperanity has grown. It began about 150 years ago in certain, small corners of Christianity. The circuit rider preachers had their part in it, but there were others, too. You might say Paperanity had its roots in uneducated, manipulative clergy who sought to grow their flock and their wallets by tricking people into a kind of bondage to which they would willingly submit. These preachers and evangelists convinced people that they must submit to a Paper Pope - and they did it! They convinced people that healthy religion is not found in relationship - despite the fact that all of the teaching the former head of their religion, Jesus, did was in the context of relationship.

Now they had a book to worship. Now relationship with paper supplanted relationship with other people. Like the ultimate abusive husband, these preachers isolated their flock from their family and friends who weren't a member of the cult. It was very dangerous to even speak with people who weren't members of Paperanity Churches. They called the outsiders "the world" and convinced the other insiders that the world was a dangerous place. It became best not to associate with the world for fear of losing you eternal soul. Just pay attention to Paper and Pastor and everything will be just fine.

To make people obey the Paper, they had to make it seem extremely important. No longer was it written by people, now it was written by God. No longer could it possibly contain error or contradiction, it was infallible and inerrant. Never mind that the Paper God never claimed such status for itself, Pastor said it was true and Pastor could never be wrong or have an ulterior motive. Just do as Pastor says and you'll be fine.

Today I listened to a podcast in which a relatively progressive former Assemblies of God pastor was explaining that God is Love, but loving isn't "wishy washy or weak" and so when the Old Testament reports God destroying entire towns and all the people in them it was, indeed, a loving God who did that - not people trying to place the blame for their barbarism on God - because God is loving and strong.

This kind of thing is why I feel dirty when I identify as Christian.

What is Christ Enlight?

2010-08-31T13:25:00.000-07:00

On many occasions, I am asked to explain what Christ Enlight is. In that Christ Enlight is a living movement, I don't believe it is possible to explain Christ Enlight definitively. The emergent church movement has said of statements of belief that they are outdated the moment they are finished, for belief is a living and evolving thing. I agree. Despite that truth, as the leader of a movement that is resonating with people much more than I ever dreamed it would, I believe there is value to be found in explaining at least our perspective on spirituality so that we might develop a context in which our journey might be understood to live, move, and have its being.

World wide spirituality and religion, in all its forms, might be imagined as a single story building with an open roof. Each system or understanding occupies a different room in the building, which has a limitless number of rooms. A particular denomination of Christianity, for example, might occupy several rooms as it has several different expressions within a single denomination. Precisely how many rooms there are is not important. In fact, the rooms should be understood as rather fluid. The people in a particular room look out through the open ceiling at the focal point of their religion, no matter the name they assign to the focal point, The focal point may be a God or gods, it may be a state of mind such as enlightenment, it may be contact with something transcendent but nameless, or an almost limitless number of possibilities. For the purposes of our discussion here, the name of the focal point is less important than the fact that every system has a focal point, including atheism, and that the focal point is the same thing known by many different names.

Since the earliest days of religion, religion has engaged in an attempt to convert those from a different religious tradition, or from no religiouos tradition, to our better, or superior, or "one true" religion. There is no small irony in the truth that every religion believes itself to be the one true religion, which is impossible. How much effort has been expended, how much money spent, and how many lives lost in service of this false premise? Our tribal view of religion, which served well in more primitive times when our survival depended on tribalism, has become the a threat to survival rather than the means to ensure our survival.

Within each religion or spiritual system there are a number of practices in which adherents engage, among them worship, education, and - common to every religious tradition - some form of prayer, meditation, contemplation, or similar way of communing with the focal point of the religion. For the sake of simplicity, I will use the term meditation as inclusive of all terms for communing with the focal point. Meditation becomes the ladder which allows us to see over the walls into the other rooms and appreciate the beauty of the practives found there. From the perspective above the walls, we come to see that so much of what separates us, and so many of the arguments we get into, arise because of things of our own construction that have nothing to do with the view above the walls - and it is above the walls that we encounter God. Institutional religion is about reinforcing the walls, but God isn't found within the walls!

For example, did you know that the first two to three hundred years of Christianity was a time of great spiritual diversity within Christianity, including a large number of folks who believed that everyone goes to heaven? Did you know that our scriptures do not record Jesus ever using the word "hell" but rather that contemporary Bible translators have placed that word on Jesus' mouth? The real word on Jesus' lips was Gehenna, which referred to the garbage dump outside the city walls of Jerusalem and which today is a verdant field - not exactly the image of hell in Christian art, is it? Did you know that the creed most often recited in Christian worship, the Nicene Creed, wasn't formulated until the fourth century? Were you aware that those who didn't agree with the doctrinal decisions of the Church throughout history and refused to recant have been routinely executed? Did you know that the earliest image of the crucified Christ that can be found in Churches didn't appear until the late tenth century in what is now northern Germany - where the Emperor Charlemagne had been converting people to Christianity by placing his sword at their neck? The predominant image in Christian Churches for the first ten centuries was of paradise as a reality on earth. The risen Christ was pictured, but his dead body hanging on a cross was not. In other words, they found Jesus' resurrection to be much more compelling than grisly depictions of his dead body hanging on a cross. In fact, for the first five hundred years of Christianity it was considered offensive to wear the instrument of Jesus' death. Early Christians either wore a fish symbol or an ankh. How in the world have we moved from a view of all people residing in a paradise on earth to a view that depicts God as routinely casting people into an eternal hell about which Jesus apparently knew nothing?

The Christ Enlight movement began as a discussion about truth. We want to reclaim our spiritual heritage. The founders of Christ Enlight have peered over the walls using the ladder of contemplative prayer and seen the beauty that exists in all spiritualities and the sincerity of all practitioners. We have also seen the distortion of our story and the damage that has been inflicted by human beings who hate in the name of Love - and pure, undefiled Love is precisely what God is. The Christ Enlight movement is here to encourage each and every person to look above the walls and see the truth to be found. We proclaim unashamedly that we find God to be Love, that everyone is "saved", and the question for us is not, "how to get to heaven," but rather how to share the love. Every person, place, and thing is of God - bears the very DNA of God - and so there are no outcasts. If you want to see God, look at your brother or sister. Reach out to them in love. This is authentic religion, and nothing less will do!

Where is God?

2010-08-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a victory at Half Price Books. I consider it a victory whenever I find something that I didn't go to Half Price Books to buy - it's even better if I didn't know it even existed - and yesterday I hit the trifecta. I found a five CD series on meditation by Pema Chodron, one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, and not one but two, four hour DVDs by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Even better, the whole transaction was less that thirty two dollars! I scrambled home in anticipation, and sat down after dinner to watch the first teaching from one of HHDL's DVDs. I wasn't disappointed, but I confess a point of divergence with the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama was asked about whether it would be possible to develop one world religion. He offered that, given the great diversity of humankind, he really didn't think that such a goal would be possible or even desirable. He continued to say that since we all have different personalities and life experiences our religious needs are different. Up to this point, I agree completely with the Dalai Lama (I'm sure he would be gratified to know that I agree with him).

Then he continued to say that, since Christianity believes in a Creator God and Buddhism does not, that the two religions are not compatible. He added, however, that when Christian and Buddhist monks meditate together they have shared experience. It is here that I disagree with HHDL. I will say that I am certain that the Dalai Lama has had discussions with a variety of Christians, some of whom have a vision of Christianity that wouldn't be compatible with my vision of Christianity, about what it means to be Christian - including the rather misleading notions of a "personal God" and a "personal relationship with Jesus" that I find most misleading.

In truth, as a part of something called the Buddhist Christian Dialogue, Buddhist and Christian monks have shared their experiences in meditation (the Buddhists) and contemplative prayer (the Christians) and found a great commonality of experience. (In truth, what the east calls meditation and what the west calls contemplative prayer are very much the same thing.) As Fr. Thomas Keating has said, when one becomes an accomplished meditator, he or she rises above the walls that divide religious perspectives and see the great commonality that lies there. I am certainly that the Dalai Lama has had this experience.

Christian contemplatives believe that they encounter God in their meditation. This has certainly been my experience. Buddhists might talk about meditation being a method of getting in touch with ultimate reality or exploring the mind. I believe we are all talking about the same thing. What is God but ultimate reality? Where do we encounter the indwelling God/Christ but in our mind? We are corporeal beings, but God is not. In this life, we can't leave our bodies on a sustained basis, so our primary point of contact with God is in and through our very mind and body! As we encounter God through our meditation, we come to understand that the mythological vision of an embodied God creating all that is through the use of Godly hands and feet is a primitive, inaccurate vision of the God who is the Ground and Sustainer of All that is. We come to see God as transcending physicality and dwelling instead in energy and Spirit. After all, Jesus himself told the Samaritan woman and the well that God is Spirit, and the time is coming and now is when people would worship God in Spirit and Truth. This was more than the primitive understanding of God extant at that time could comprehend, but today we not only can understand it but we can experience it through spending time in the presence of God in meditation.

In truth, Buddhists and Christians are experiencing the same thing in meditation but we have assigned different language to describe it. As Fr. Keating explained, the experience is the same. I would add that doctrine distorts the experience, and it is to the doctrine that the Dalai Lama responds when he suggests incompatability between any or the mystical traditions. In point of fact, all the great mystics have experienced the same thing, be they Buddhist, Christian, Sufi, Moslem, Indigenous, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Jain, or a member of any other "system of explanation."

If you have ever been in love you know that, no matter how hard you try, words and thoughts are never adequate to convey the experience of the beloved. Over the centuries people have tried to explain love in song, poetry, prose, art, and any number of other modalities - and never succeeded. The reason is that mystical experience cannot be captured, it must be experienced. This is as true when God is the beloved as it is when your partner is the beloved, and what is God if not absolute reality?

When division exists between religions or spiritualities, it exists because we love our thoughts and words about the Truth more than we love the Truth itself - no matter what name we assign to the Truth. Because when we finally realize that we will stop killing each other in the name of religion, there is no more important message to be teaching.

Grace - The Great Obstacle

2010-08-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Isn't it ironic that the message of Grace, which is the heart of the Gospel and really Good News, is the part of the Christian message that most Christians reject? It seems so very counter-intuitive to me, but the great majority of people who claim to believe in God as experienced through Jesus Christ seem constitutionally unwilling and/or unable to believe that God could possibly be loving and accepting and prefer instead to worship the angry, judgmental, vengeful God found in the Old Testament. That is a fictional view of God. It seems the more that your tradition insists on a literal view of scripture, the more likely you are to be stuck with the viewpoint of the Old Testament Pharisees.

In fact in a strange sort of way it may be that Grace, which is decidedly good news, is also the biggest obstacle for people to overcome in their journey to the Good News. What that means for those of us who are trying to share the Good News of God's love for all people is that we must be supremely patient with people and tirelessly spread the Grace message. Even those who seem to understand the Grace message regarding themselves very often have a blind spot regarding some other group that they wish to keep in bondage.

This hit home for me in a new way today as I watched a Jay Bakker video on Youtube in which he preached a message at "Grace Church" about gay marriage. The crowd was largely African American, and I noticed D. E. Paulk sitting in the front row. The crowd was with Jay until he spoke supportively about gay marriage. You can watch the clip below:

The clip is absolutely heartbreaking, and shows just how much work we need to do. Jay expresses my sentiments through his tears when he states how painful it is to see people who have been oppressed turn around and oppress others, blind to the fact that it is wrong for anyone to be marginalized or oppressed.

We must not tire of spreading the message of God's love for all people. It is the heart of the Christ Enlight message, and I have now seen that just because someone accepts it for themselves doesn't guarantee that they get the "big picture." It is understanding that God's love applies to all people that moves us to a place to really understand the Gospel. As long as we are willing to believe that anybody is unacceptable to God, we remain in the bondage of judgmentalism and oppression.

It's long past time for all God's children to be free.

Sabbath

2010-08-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

I am off today, well, sort of. In the interest of fairness I should report that there are those who consider me a bit off every day, but that isn't the sort of off to which I refer. A day off, almost completely. I don't get those very often during the Summer, which is filled with weddings and meetings about weddings as well as my usual rather full schedule. I was last on vacation on my honeymoon in May of 2004. The vacation before that way a trip to Jerusalem in January of 2008. I have, of course, gone to visit the in laws and other family members in between, but those aren't really vacations because they involve chasing around like a fool in order to visit everyone you came to visit. We usually make a four or five day trip to Minnesota to visit the in-laws for Christmas that would be restful if we actually took a week, but my wife's work schedule won't allow that.

We are a culture of frenetic activity, not all of it productive. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of it isn't productive. The corporate world is full of meetings, and in my experience ninety percent of all meetings are make work rituals that accomplish nothing. In the Church that number rises to ninety-nine percent.

We work to make a living, we work extra to make extra money, and in an economy like this one we work extra for free in an ill advised attempt to keep our jobs. If we work at a union job we may work slower for fear the work will run out, and so believe that by being less efficient we are ensuring our future employment. At then end of our working lives, which hopefully won't coincide with the end of our living lives, we can't be sure that the promises made to us by our employers about our retirement will be honnored - witness the ELCA's treatment of non-ordained retired employees. In the end, there is a good chance that we will work an insane amount throughout our lives for the retirement reward that will not exist, which means we have worked for nothing.

We need to return to Sabbath. The creation account in the Hebrew Scriptures indicates that God rested from the work of creation on the seventh day. Of course, theologically speaking it would be problematic if God actually was tired or needed to rest. I believe the story is written that way to set an example for us, and as a culture we have missed the point entirely. Even back in the day when the creation account began circulating as an oral myth people recognized the need for rest. We have lost sight of that truth largely because most of us are members of the religion of the 20th century, Consumer Capitalism. In this religion there are no sabbaths, and workers die at their post only to be swept away into the trash heap and replaced with two, younger, less experienced, less expensive employees.

I'm going to take my time back before there is nothing left to take back.

An Epiphany, of Sorts

2010-08-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

As you may know if you are listeners to the Christ Enlight podcast - and if you're not, you are missing some fantastic programming - I have been listening to Darin Hufford's excelent podcast, "Into the Wild." Darin comes out of the Assemblies of God tradition, which is the white folks' Pentacostal Church. Before you get in a uproar over that characterization, you should know that the original Pentacostal movement was racially integrated, but eventually the while folk left and formed the Assembly of God - but, I digress. The megachurch phenomenon has both Pentacostal and Evangelical manifestations, and they are not the same - although they share many things in common. One of the things they share in common is the practice of members policing one another, for lack of a better word, in matters of faith and belief. This is something that those of us who come out of mainline traditions really haven't experienced, and the more I learn about it the more shocked I am that anyone would tolerate it!

All the while claiming to be in search of biblically accurate belief, these self appointed belief police (known informally as "Christians" by virtue of their having prayed the non-biblical "sinners prayer") monitor the beliefs and practices of other "Christians" for doctrinal and biblical purity. The belief police seem to have developed the kind of clout that hasn't been seen since the Salem witch trials. With all the fairness of a lawyer asking a witness, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" these pin heads can smear anyone they choose with no more evidence than announcing that something someone wrote has "offended" them.

What I can't begin to understand is why anyone would tolerate this behavior. These people are no different than the people in John 8 who dragged the woman they set up and caught in adultery before Jesus for judgment. If you recall the story, the men who "caught" this woman in adultery (which would have required them either peeping through the window or sending a man to seduce her, or both) presented her to Jesus and asked him to pass judgment on her. He refused. There is no reason to believe he would respond any differently to contemporary belief police, yet they seem to wield tremendous power in conservative circles. Ironically, these same believers would be very critical of the Sacrament of Confession on the basis that it involves human beings (clergy) speaking on behalf of God!

Once again, we have an example of the very human, but very unhealthy, need to define in groups and out groups manifesting itself in the Church. Once again, we see people being hurt by those who are so insecure that they need to marginalize others to reassure themselves that they are acceptable in the eyes of God.

How tragic, and how completely avoidable because the truth is that none of us can ever be separated from the Love of God. All of the wasted energy and all of the destruction that results from this behavior has nothing to do with God and everything to do with human insecurity.

Yet another piece of evidence that shows how very urgently our message is needed!

Cafeteria Style Spirituality

2010-08-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

I was really quite surprised a few weeks ago when I received a comment to a twitter post from a UCC (United Church of Christ) pastor I met at an event a few years ago. My tweet essentially said that no authentic spirituality would ever try to stop its adherents from exploring other spiritual paths. This garnered a response from the aforementioned pastor that this sort of thinking had let to the dire state of "cafeteria style spirituality" that exists in America today.

Precisely my hope!

Most often we hear the term "cafeteria spirituality" said with a sneer, as if there is something wrong with people havung choices in the spiritual practices they will engage in. Such freedom of choice allows us to avoid practices we don't find especially meaningful and engage instead in those in which we do find meaning. Underneath all this is a belief that God is big enough to encompass all legitimate spiritual practice - and that the only illegitimate spiritual practices are those that harm humans or animals. I guess that means I'll have to call of my annual Labor Day sacrifice of stray cats on my authentic, round, stone, pagan, altar in my backyard. I'm kind of disappointed about that. Still, a rule is a rule!

Institutional religion doesn't like us having freedom of choice because if we have the freedom to explore practices that work for us we may very well stumble on something that we resonate with much more than the lifeless dribble the institution has been recycling for the last 1700 years. We may find that paying our tithe, for example, isn't a New Testament biblical concept at all. This may cause us to look a little deeper and notice that 85% of every dime we give to the institutional church is eaten up in administrative costs at the parish level. Does institutional religion really mean to suggest that we are honoring God by giving money to pay clergy salaries, staff salaries, building maintenance and purchase costs, utilities, worship materials, and toilet paper (the last two very often bearing a striking resemblance to one another)? Yes, they do mean to tell us that because as long as we believe it they continue to receive salaries and housing allowances.

I'm certainly not opposed to clergy being paid. What I am opposed to is the instution that sucks most of the financial resources out of every Christian community in the world and wastes it on administrative costs, all the while encouraging people to give at least 10% of their income on the basis of an Old Testament doctrine that doesn't apply in a New Testament context!

Funny thing about cafeterias - they usually have a lot less overhead and so are less expensive places at which to eat. No wonder the institution doesn't like them.

Limitations

2010-07-28T15:05:00.000-07:00

I fell down the steps in my home this morning - not all of them, just four or five of them, but it was enough. I put my foot on a step and slipped on something - I still don't know what - and my foot went forward off the step and I landed flat on my ass and proceeded to bounce down four or five steps. (If you are offended because I said ass, please grow up.) In the greater scheme of things, I landed on one of the safer places to land. Tumbling down steps tends to lead to much worse injury that bouncing. If it weren't for the fact that I have several bad discs the experience wouldn't even have been worth mentioning. Since I do, the pain was excruciating. My daughter Tori and my granddaughter Tali were home, and Tori rushed to check on me, but there's not much you can do for a fat ass with a bad back laying on steps except try not to laugh. She did offer to help me up, but I'm not sure that would have been possible without a block and tackle. Once the pain subsided a bit I was able to get myself up, take some pain meds, and put my tens unit on while waiting for the drugs to take effect.

The larger issue this raises is one that I have had to confront over the last four or five years with more intention - the issues of physical limitations and chronic pain. Over the years religious types have tried to explain both pain and injury away with a number of theories ranging from the absurd to the masochistic. Within the dualistic mindset that was medieval Christianity suffering was seen as a way to tame the flesh so that the Spirit could be set free. This led to a wide variety of masochistic practices that resulted in self abuse being seen as a spiritual practice that helped one get to God. The question that these practices overlooked was that, given the great care with which God created our bodies in the Genesis account, how one could justify destroying God's handiwork.

At various types suffering has been seen as redemptive, resulting the people actually seeking out suffering! Of course, one has to ask if a loving and compassionate God would require suffering. The answer is a resounding, "NO!" That being said, and with the caveat that nobody should ever actively seek suffering or limitation, I do believe that in my experience suffering has been helpful in my spiritual journey. There have also been times when my body, sick and tired of my tendency to ignore its messages, has choosen to take matters into its own hands and shut me down. Other times illness or injury has stopped or severly limited my activity. Each of these times has been times of great spiritual insight and growth, but I'm not entirely sure that I wouldn't trade the growth for avoiding the pain!

Our culture values activity. Even people like me, who stress the value of the contemplative life, tend to also have an active component to their life - after all, we have to earn a living. As we age, however, we all will have to confront limitations. Living with limitations is, in large part, a spiritual task. In my opinion, it's never too soon to begin preparing for the days when limitations will come. One of the most important ways we can do that is to start to recognize that we are human beings, not human doings. Despite the fact that we can do wonderful things, our value comes from being inseperably connected to and loved by God. Our value to one another comes from that same place.

If you have ever visited someone who was in the hospital you know that your value to them was not about doing something for them - what they needed from you most of all was to be with them. It was your presence that was healing. When we are in the hospital we have most of our needs met by healthcare professionals. What they can't do for us is substitute for the company of those who love us and care about us, and we long for that company.

When we truly love someone and are in relationship with them we are completely comfortable with extended periods of silence. We might be travelling a distance by car and have an hour or more pass without conversation taking place. We are comfortable with this because we value each other's presence and so don't need mindless chatter to pass the time.

I encourage you to look intentionally at those times when just being is enough. See them for the special, spritual events they are, and look for more of them. In doing so not only do we celebrate our unique status as the beloved of God, but we also practice the skill we will need as we encounter limitations in our own lives - the spirituality of being. It is the greatest gift we have to give - to others and to ourselves!

What is our Motivation?

2010-07-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest challenges facing contemporary progressive spiritual communities is that a major paradigm shift has to take place around our reasons for and methods of gathering. When we move beyond the notion that we have to worship in order to appease and angry God who is just waiting to zap us with a lightening bolt from on high it doesn't take very long before we begin to question why we are worshipping. The answer that religion has proposed is that we need to worship for ourselves, that human beings have a need to worship. If church attendance is any measure of the truth of that proposal it seems to indicate that it is false - but perhaps failure to identify with worship isn't the only problem. It may not even be the biggest problem.

Do we need Church in the way it exists today in most places? Do we need the building with the parking lot, the committees, the collection plates, the building fund, the building maintenance fund, the payments to the regional office, the board meetings that mimic the worst of office politics, and the family dysfunction that almost always plays out in congregational life? Do we need the power and control game that is so contrary to the life, teachings, and example of Jesus but always manifests in religious gatherings? Are these things even a part of the practice of ones religion, or are they human games that we pile on top of religion?

In my visits to faith communities of various types and in various settings, I have come to realize that the much of the less than desireable behavior that those of us raised in the Christian tradition have seen also occurs as groups of Western Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, Jews, and Native Spiritualites gather. The negativity is a function of the systems we have established and our expectations within them, not of the spiritualities themselves. In other words, we Westerners have taken our toxic behavior within Christian Churches and carried them to other religions as we have left Christianity for supposedly greener pastures. That means that, to a certain extent, we can do all of the great work we want to do in reshaping Christianity but that it will fail if we don't redefine business as usual in spiritual community. In fact, the very word "business" may be the heart of the problem.

A healthy spiritual community engages in stewardship, but stewardship is not the primary reason a spiritual community exists. A healthy spiritual community has to transact some business such as paying the rent and utilities, but transacting business is not the primary reason a spiritual community exists. A healthy spiritual community may well worship, but worship is not the primary reason a spiritual community exists. The primary reason a spiritual community exists is to facilitate the spiritual growth of its members. In fact, I would say that if you aren't doing a good job of nuturing the spirituality of your members you either need to find a way to do so or else disband your community.

The reason that people behave so poorly in the church is that the church has allowed its focus to shift from spiritual growth to a business model. Under such a model people will naturally bring behaviors which may be considered appropriate in business and start using them in the church, where they aren't. When we succeed in making spirituality the center of community life then our practices will change as well.

It is one of the primary tasks of an effective spiritual leader to continue to call the peoples' attention back to the the truth that all people with who we interact are beloved of God and deserve to be treated as such. The sad truth of most spiritual communities is that they have allowed models and motivations other than spirituality to drive their behavior. When people protest that treating people ethically and with due love and consideration isn't efficient or effective they are reflecting the lack of spiritual focus in the community. To those who continue to complain that such a vision isn't practical, we need to redirect them to Jesus and remind them that Jesus didn't care about efficiency or practicality, he cared about loving God and loving our neighbor - something there is precious little of in most churches today. Perhaps that's why they are so empty.

You Are Smarter Than You Think You Are!

2010-07-13T13:53:00.001-07:00

Did you ever notice how often religion tries to convince us that we are stupid? They don't come right out and say it overtly. Rather, they tell us that we can't understand spiritual truths without their help. We can read the Bible, but we need the assistance of religious authorities lest we misinterpret biblical truths. We can pray, but we need help interpreting what the spirit has to say to us.

Am I the only one who finds this a little strange? If we have the reading level needed to read the current best seller, why would we misunderstand the Bible? Is God a bad writer? If I understand the language well enough to engage in a conversation with a person I meet on the street, why can't I understand the Spirit? Does God have a speech disorder? Does God lack a vocabulary large enough to communicate effectively? Or is there another reason for all of this help that religion seems to think we need?

It's certainly true that a rudimentary understanding of spirituality is needed to understand the context of scripture, but a couple of visits to almost any church on Christmas and Easter will do just fine in providing that context. Occasionally conversing with others investigating scripture will serve to ensure our interpretation isn't too far out in deep right field. So, what's really behind religion's insistence that they serve as interpreter of spiritual experience?

We all need to be needed, even on the institutional level. What's more, if religion allows us to communicate with God directly, we might decide we don't need a middle man after all. That would change the game profoundly, wouldn't it? Instead of dispensing truth, clergy would become fellow travellers who engage in actual discussion.

More importantly, we would quickly come to understand that not only does God care enough about each of us well enough to communicate clearly and effectively with each of us, but also that we are bright enough to understand what is communicated to us! Gone are the days when we believed we were dependent on or inferior to anyone on the spiritual journey. Isn't that good news?
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Shopping with Grandma

2010-07-10T09:08:00.001-07:00

I write this sitting on the man sofa outside the women's dressing room while Erin tries on clothes. A woman has just gone into the dressing room with her 6 or 7 year old granddaughter. On the way in she announced to her granddaughter, "Your mommy is lucky she works as a nurse."

I fully expected the reason to be that she didn't have to decide what clothes to wear because she had to wear scrubs, or something along those lines. That would have been a reasonable sentiment - I feel fortunate to not have to choose neckties, after all. Grandma's answer?

"Because you'd be broke because Mommy can't control her spending!"

Really? Are you serious? Sadly, this happens all too often. Grandparents have an issue with a child or child-in-law and so say toxic things to a grandchild. The worst part of it is that the grandchild takes the statement on face value and becomes afraid that her parents can't adequately provide for her and protect her. Because children need their parents to be ok for their world to be a safe place, they assume it must be their fault, and they may as well schedule their first appointment with a therapist right now.

We all need to be careful of what we say to children. Even more importantly, we need to develop healthy, adult patterns of relationship wherein we speak directly to the person we have a problem with rather than passive aggressively gossip with others about our issue.

The ironic thing is the most often the things we choose to get energized about are none of our business. If Grandma doesn't like how her daughter or daughter in law is spending she needs to mind her own business. If she is bankrolling irresponsible spending, then she is enabling the behavior and needs to look in a mirror to find the source of the problem.

I'm reminded of Jesus teaching that before we seek to remove the speck in another's eye we should remove the plank from our own. They may well be the most ignored words he ever spoke.
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Band Camp as Spiritual Community

2010-06-26T10:36:00.001-07:00

I wasn't in Band during High School. I was in a band, but not THE band. I was going to be a rock star, and it's pretty obvious how that plan worked out for me. For the last ten years my wife has taken time off to serve as a nurse at the same band camp she participated in when she was in High School. I have been fortunate enough to spend the last weekend of camp with her four or five times now, and so have been fortunate enough to experience for myself the truly spiritual community that band camps are.

It's not just the music, although music is intensely spiritual. It's not just the drum circles, although drum circles are an essential part of Shamanic formation. It's not just camaraderie, although that is part of the experience as well. What it comes down to is loving kindness.

It doesn't matter who you are or where you are from, it doesn't matter how awkward you may be socially, it doesn't matter what is different about you, because all that matters is what bind you together: Music. As one of the volunteers said to Erin and me the other day, the drive home after camp is the worst part because you "are going back to the real world where everyone isn't positive and nice to one another."

In a very real way, band camp is the Kingdom of God living and active. Imagine a Church where everyone is positive and nice to each other and everyone is accepted for who they are. You HAVE to imagine it, because it doesn't exist, but band camp says it's possible if only we would make loving kindness our religion.
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Correction

2010-06-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

The first sentence of the last paragraph should have read, "The time has come..." not 'gone'

Thanks!
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Homesickness as a Measure of Family Dysfunction

2010-06-26T07:33:00.000-07:00

I am spending the weekend at a band camp where my wife Erin is the head nurse. There are always wonderful spiritual and pastoral insights for me in being here. This year was, true to form, full of experiences and insights.

There is always a measure of homesickness at band camp. Some of it is truly homesickness, especially when it is someone's first time away from home, but I can't help but wonder how much of apparent homesickness is really evidence of co-dependence. In other words, how many of these kids feel like they need to be home because their parents fight, or abuse one another, or drink to excess, or engage in any other dysfunctional behavior.

Family systems theory holds that one member's illness or acting out impacts every other member of the family. Band Camp is evidence of the truth of that, and a cry for all of us to realize how massively interconnected we are. None of us is an island unto ourselves, and our toxicity is not just ours. We share it most with those we most love. If we all were aware of that truth, we might be motivated to heal ourselves.
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Defending the Faith

2010-06-25T10:07:00.001-07:00

I am on the email list of Biblica Direct. I confess I don't know how I got on that list, but they are kind of interesting to watch. Their primary business is supplying large quantities of Bibles in various translations and formats at reduced prices. Even with my progressive, Interspiritual perspective I have a deep love for the scriptures.

This morning I received an emailing from them with a request to donate Bibles to a group in Africa, which is a good and valuable thing - except that when they got to why they needed the Bibles. It seems that only three members of this group have a Bible, and "One pastor grieved, 'In my congregation only three of us have Bibles, yet we live in a Muslim-dominated area…we have no Scriptures to defend the Faith'"

Defending the faith is a concept we hear a lot about, but it is a concept whose time has passed. In fact, if we stopped "defending the faith" has led to misunderstanding, violence, and war since the beginning of time.

The real question is, what are we defending? Surely not God, who I am completely certain is more than capable of self defense. Beyond that, particularly in the case of Islam there is a shared religious heritage and understanding of God. Beyond the Abrahamic faiths, the truth is that there is One God, known by many names and understood in many different ways - but One God nevertheless.

So again, what are we defending? Who is "attacking"? The devil or some other mythological character? Even if I did believe in a devil, and despite the practices of some believers, positing a devil who could defeat God is theologically problematic in that it essentially posits two Gods. Again, who are we defending?

Defending the faith amounts to defending my ego's need to have my view seen as superior and to encourage, coerce, compel, threaten, or beat you into agreeing with my view. It isn't about the faith, it's about power and control. It isn't life giving, it's life denying. Stated more clearly, "defending the faith" is spiritual abuse - nothing more.

The day has gone when the standard needs to be religious and spiritual pluralism, which can be simply defined as allowing each person the freedom to make their own choices and be responsible for them. Under this model evangelism is inappropriate because attempting to convert others is contrary to the value of personal responsibility and freedom of religious/spiritual practice.

In short, we can stop defending and defensiveness and relax. That's a much healthier, less stressful way to live - and practice our spirituality. It allows for growth and, of primary importance to followers of Jesus, reflect the example of Jesus himself. As I recall, that's the goal of the Christian journey!
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In Praise of Amtrak

2010-06-24T05:24:00.001-07:00

I love the train, just absolutely love it. I supposed it's because my father took me to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago on the train when I was in sixth grade. That was really the last thing he ever did with me prior to him virtually absenting himself from my life. We did go fishing during family vacations during my teen years, but that was definitely for him, not me.

Since becoming presiding bishop of the UAC I have had the opportunity to take train trips to New York City; Hartford, CT; Austin, TX; Osceola, MO; Chicago repeatedly; and Normal, IL. I find the train to be far superior to air travel, largely because it takes me back to a time when life was much simpler and when only birds flew in the air. I would not be surprised if in a previous life I worked on a train. I have been fascinated by them since before I can remember. When you add to all that the fact that I don't have to take off my shoes, extract my electronic devices and medical equipment from their bags, repack my liquids into 3oz bottles, or pay to check my bags, I'm in heaven.

Of course, depending on how far you travel the train takes a bit longer, but I see that as a good thing. We all need to be reminded that no matter how urgent our business seems it will still be there when we arrive - an excellent remedy for self importance!

Try it, you'll like it!
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Jim Taylor's Soft and Sharp Edges Columns

2010-06-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

I want to commend to you all two email columns written by Jim Taylor of Canada. If you have never checked him out, I strongly recommend him. If you've checked him out in the past, check again! Here is this week's Soft Edges Column, which I find reflects my own feelings 100%:

Wednesday June 16, 2010

THE BURDEN OF RELIGIOUS BAGGAGE

By Jim Taylor

As I grow older, I grow increasingly suspicious of labels. We tend to assume that once we have labelled a person -- left or right politically; extrovert or introvert socially; conservative, orthodox, liberal, or evangelical religiously -- that we know all we need to know about him. Or her.
We drop them into pre-defined slots. And if they don’t fit neatly, we jam them in anyway.
Labels and definitions require everything to fit our preconceptions.
This rant comes to mind because a friend sends me quotations from an Indian guru called Sathya Sai Baba. I appreciate his words of wisdom. I rarely find much to disagree with.
But my resistance flares whenever Sai Baba defines terms: “This is the true meaning of thapas...” Or of seva, dharma, or whatever.
Suddenly I feel I have to learn a new vocabulary before I can belong.
Or, to use a different metaphor, I feel that I have to pick up a weighty burden of religious baggage before I can walk the path he recommends.

SUCKED INTO SYSTEMS
I had the same reaction a few years ago when Joan and I vacationed in Thailand. Most American hotel rooms have a Gideon Bible in the bedside table; our Thai hotel had a book of the Buddha’s teachings. I found little there that conflicted with, say, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or Paul’s pastoral advice to the Christians in Rome.
Until the Buddha’s teachings turned into Buddhist doctrines.
I’ve felt the same after listening to the Dalai Lama, or reading the words of Krishna in the Hindu Mahabharata. I expect I would respond similarly to the Sikh insights of Guru Nanak Dev, or of Baha’i’s Baha’u’llah.
Their advice for living makes good sense. Until it gets sucked into a doctrinal system.
If the Christian gospels have any historical validity, Jesus never mentioned the Holy Trinity during his lifetime. He never proclaimed his mother’s sinlessness. He never propounded a theory of double predestination, never used words like transubstantiation.
On the other hand, he talked a lot about relationships. With ourselves, with others, and with God. He also talked a lot about money, and how it can impede those relationships.

QUALITIES OF LIVING
Skip Paul’s abstract theologizing, and look at his instructions for living -- usually at the end of his letters. The marks of true faith, he said, were “joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Has any culture, any religion, anywhere, advocated the opposite? Has it promoted murder, treachery, deceit, lying, cheating...? Against outsiders or enemies, perhaps. But never within one’s own loyalty group.
The great world religions, it seems to me, gradually learn from their own teachings to rise above narrow restrictions of tribe or clan or race. The moral teachings apply to everyone, transcending artificial distinctions like skin color, gender, status...
“For now,” wrote Paul prophetically, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free...”
It took 18 centuries for Christianity to heed his rejection of slavery. We’re still struggling to overcome race and gender distinctions.
But a good start might be to avoid labels.
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Copyright © 2010 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
Please tell your friends about these columns.
To send comments on this column, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, send an e-mail with Soft Edges in the subject line to jimt@quixotic.ca
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Healthy Spiritualities are Positive

2010-06-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

Healthy spiritualities are positive, in the sense that at their heart are teachings that convey what to do - practices, beliefs, works, and so on - rather than what not to do - sins, improper beliefs, and so on. In other words, a healthy spirituality should have a list of "dos" at its core rather than "don'ts." That isn't to say that a healthy spirituality won't have within it things that an adherent should avoid doing, but it is saying that those things won't form the core of the spirituality. If you look around today, particularly in the Christian arena, many people have corrupted Christianity to the point that you would think that all God cares about is who you sleep with and whether you carry your pregnancy to term.

The problems with prohibitions is that they can't teach the Spirit behind the Law. If I tell you not to sleep with your neighbor's wife but don't tell you why I am saying that, not only are you in fact more likely to seek her out but you won't be able to generalize the principle behind the rule. If, on the other hand, I tell you to treat your neighbor the way you would like to be treated, not only are you less likely to sleep with your neighbor's wife but you also will understand the values of compassion and empathy and apply them to other situations as well. Perhaps even more important, teaching positive principles tends to make us think of ourselves in a positive light, as opposed to giving you lists of things to avoid and having you view yourself as a problem to be avoided.

Decades from now, when we look back at the many reasons for the death of Institutional Christianity, I believe that chief among them will be the impression that the more conservative segments of the Church has conveyed that Jesus offered no positive path for living, only a list of prohibitions. The irony in that, of course, is that it was that very tendency within the Judaism of his time that Jesus sought to correct! It has only been the focus of some of the Protestant reformers at the time of the Reformation on total depravity that has muddied the waters and led to the mess we currently find ourselves in.

As Marianne Williamson, whom I happen to like very much and respect, has said very often, "God doesn't make junk." Would that we would take that in and appreciate all of its implications for our spiritual teaching and living!

For Now, Just Call Me Post-Christian

2010-06-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

I am always rather perplexed when asked to identify myself religiously. It came to me this evening that the most accurate definition of my belief is Post-Christian. I believe that the world would be best served if we just took institutional religion and threw it in the ash can so that we could start from scratch. I say that because 95% of it is so profoundly unhealthy.

Take for example an email I received the other day. It had a YouTube clip of some nun, who supposedly is a real nun, and apparently she goes around using comedy to teach the "truths" [sic] of the Roman Catholic Faith to laughing audiences. I was actually nauseated by her attempts at humor. She told a Methodist woman who asked if she would go to hell that the Church used to think that only Catholics went to heaven, but at Vatican II they decided that if she followed all the rules of Methodism and followed the Golden Rule then she would go to heaven, but she would get a room by the elevator and the ice machine. Everybody squealed and giggled - except for me, of course, because the view of God and spirituality she presented was so destructive and dysfunctional that it denied Jesus' message completely.

After that apparent bone thrown at Protestants, she then went on to list every religion that she felt didn't constitute a valid religion. The list included Mormonism, Pentacostalism, Christian Science (which she said didn't belong together - an attempt for a laugh but a statement with a sad truth behind it), and the New Age, which she said worships rocks and crystals (a profound untruth). So apparently it's funny for a nun to bash other traditions?

The final straw for me was when she said that if you violated Commandments six through nine you were in mortal sin because they were sins against your body, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and you don't see a Temple wearing a thong. Everybody roared, except me. In case you don't have them memorized, six through nine are:

6.You shall not murder.
7.You shall not commit adultery.
8.You shall not steal.
9.You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Leaving aside for a moment that I don't see how the last two are sins against your body, her statement about wearing a thong (while intended to get a laugh) not only perpetuates the false teaching about our bodies and our sexuality being inherently sinful and unacceptable, it is the classic case of a female representative of the Church (after all, she is a real nun) disparaging other women. If there ever was a day when this was acceptable, that day is long past. The fact that the woman in question was going for a laugh almost makes it worse, in my estimation.

We have unprecedented numbers of young women in this country with eating disorders, with poor and/or distorted body image, who are self mutilators, and who are survivors of sexual abuse. That's just a partial list of the challenges before young women today, and to be sure some young women fall into more than one of the categories I listed. Institutional religion has buried its head in the sand and refused to address these issues in a rational, adult manner. I suppose they have been too busy molesting altar boys to worry about young women. The last thing we need is a nun who, in a misguided attempt to make the Catholic Church look cool and trendy, contributes to the enormous self image problem our young women already bear.

I think if we threw the whole package into the ocean and started over we would be far better off. Call me Post-Christian, I no longer want to be associated with the shameful conduct of the Christian Church.

Memorial Day Message - The Future of The UAC

2010-05-31T16:45:00.000-07:00

In my role as Presiding Bishop of The UAC (www.TheUAC.net) I sent a message to the clergy of the church today. What follows are the parts of that message that are appropriate for general distribution:

My Dear Friends,

On this Memorial Day, as you all know, we traditionally honor those who have served our Country and paid the ultimate price. I find present within myself this day a profound call to work for the end of war, to convince our world from the local level, to the national, to the international, that violence is never the answer and that war can never lead to peace. War only leads to resentment and revenge – and more war.

On this Memorial Day I want as well to acknowledge an institution that has died. Contrary to what some would have us believe, this institution did not die in combat. It died at its own hand. Unlike individuals who die at their own hand, this institution was not tormented psychologically. It was tormented by its own arrogance. The Church as we have known it is dead. Some choose to forge on, ignoring the rotting corpse on which they tread. There are health dangers in moving among the dead without a mask and protective equipment.

Also moving among the dead are the Pope. It is apparent that he was the mastermind behind the coverup in the Roman Catholic Church, and that he did so with at least the assent if not at the direction of Pope John Paul II. By his refusal to acknowledge the truth, he is kicking and spitting on the remains of the dead. Also desecrating the graves of the dead is the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is preparing to sanction those bodies within the Anglican Communion that are acting in accord with Jesus' call for the full inclusion of all people in the life of the Church and Society. He has identified those working to heal as agitators, working to upset his precious Communion. In doing so, he joins the Pope as a force and a voice for evil. Make no mistake, the Church is dead. With the possible exception of the UCC and MCC, and a few isolated Independent Churches, what continues is but a poor imitation of the original, a forgery if you will, that attracts in North America at best twenty percent of those who profess a belief in God. In Europe the number is much smaller.

The UAC stands at a crossroads. We can face reality, or we can journey with the pretenders. The Rev. Jeffrey Montoya and I have had a number of discussions about the future. We both see the future of Christianity as lying outside the Institutional Church. We both have noticed the significant percentage of people who have left the Institution and found other ways to express their faith. Most often these people still believe in Jesus, still believe in God, but have rejected the angry, punishing, manipulative God that the Institution has created. They have dabbled in the New Thought Movement. They have listened to the likes of Marianne Williamson and her teachings based on A Course in Miracles. They have been to the local Metaphysical shops and purchased gemstones, or crystals, or books about alternative healing modalities or near death experiences. They are Reiki practitioners or are clients of one. They have read books by Buddhist and Hindu teachers, or heard them speak, or both. They have listened to Podcasts or Blog Talk Radio programs about spiritual topics. In short, North America is organically forming its own spirituality.

“Spiritual but not religious” is not a bad thing to be, despite what defenders of the corpse that was Christianity would claim. Spiritual but religious is the truth in North America today, and if the The UAC chooses to remain a part of the spiritual landscape we must not only adjust to that truth but in fact revel in it! Jeff+ and I believe that the future of The UAC may be that of a bridge church (how very Anglican!) for those journeying into whatever the Spiritual landscape will hold in the future. We know well how to communicate with the church people, and many of us well know how to communicate with the spiritual but not religious people as well – but we need to learn to do it intentionally and well. This will be the focus of our coming General Assembly, October 7-10, 2010.

Between now and General Assembly, I encourage each of you to be in a period of prayerful reflection about how your ministry might more intentionally reach out to the “spiritual but not religious,” that we might dialogue about your ideas at GA!

God's Peace,

+Craig

I Reject the Church

2010-05-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Within the last 48 hours we have seen just how irrelevant and out of touch the Church has become through a stark contrast. President Obama has declared June LGBT Month in America. In what is a bold move, for the first time "Pride month" is being recognized by the President of the United States. In his declaration, the President praised the many and diverse contributions of LGBT Americans in all areas of endeavor, and pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act passed under George "Pinhead" W. Bush's administration and to eliminate "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military to allow for full, honest participation by our LGBT brothers and sisters in this nation's military.

In stark contrast, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ro-ro Williams has issued the first sanctions for Anglican Churches that "have inflamed tensions over homosexuality in the Church." The Churches that have "inflamed tensions" are, of course, the Episcopal Church and others that have granted LGBT clergy and members full access to the life of the Church. How in the world does anyone of intelligence or compassion declare that equality is error and side with small minded, uneducated, pinhead, so-called bishops who are homophobic and tribal in the worst sense of that word - some of whom have endorsed killing people whose only crime is bearing the sexual orientation that God has gifted them with?

My pastoral associate, The Rev. Jeffrey Montoya, suggested to me in a phone conversation yesterday that we have been looking at what is happening in the Institutional Church in a less than accurate way. He said, and I agree wholeheartedly, that those of us who have stepped outside the Institution to establish a more loving path have not been rejected by the Church - rather we have rejected the Church. I would add that we have seen it for the sinful, evil body that it has become: From the Roman Catholic abuse of children and nuns and the subsequent cover up; to the persecution of LGBT individuals by most every segment of the Church; to the control, manipulation, and fear mongering by evangelicals and their cronies, the Institutional Church seldom represents the will of God or teachings of Jesus and has become instead the domain of small minded, impotent fools. Those persecuted peoples who insist on remaining inside denominations which marginalize them and discriminate against them in the absurd hope of changing the monster from within are fooling themselves at the expense of denying the people God created them to be. Like an abused wife who won't leave her alcoholic husband, these people need our support to step outside the Institution into fullness of life. Those of us who have had the strength to reject the Church need to reach out to those who need help to step out from under their abuser.

Let me say it just as plainly as I can. If you are a member of a denomination that has not explicitly stated their full inclusion of all people in the life of the Church and acted in accord with that statement you are a part of the problem, not working for a solution. Moreover, if you have isolated yourself in an Independent Church that doesn't actually do ministry with people who are not relatives or pets of the clergy, you are a part of the problem too.

The Church is dying, and I for one am glad to see it go. Let's not wait for the corpse to rot, let's get on with the real work of ministry that needs to be done. There are a lot of hurting people out there, and we need to reach out to them rather than be distracted by the evil heads of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and their counterparts to distract us through their evil actions from the good work we are here to do!

Unlucky, or Something Worse?

2010-05-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

We have all known those people who just seem to have everything bad that could possibly happen in a person's life happen to them. If a bridge is going to collapse, odds are they will be driving over it. If an in ground sprinkler system is going to turn on for no reason, they will be standing in front of it wear a dry clean only suit. They ordered their wedding dress or tuxedo from a shop that went out of business the day before they were supposed to pick it up and all the assets were seized by creditors. They have lost more jobs that you have had, all seemingly for reasons beyond their control. Every boyfriend or girlfriend they ever had cheated on them, except for the three that proved to be impotent.

How can these people have such bad luck? They don't.

The reason that these people have such apparent bad luck is that they put themselves into situations where they can be taken advantage of, usually because they are used to being a victim. They don't listen to their gut and they fail to believe that if something seems to good to be true, it is. They are infinitely concerned, almost obsessed, about pleasing people and so if they are asked to do something they know to be wrong they will do it anyway and then are incredulous when consequences arise. They continually ask, "why do these things always happen to me?" What they need to ask themselves is, "why do I put myself in situations where these things are likely to happen to me?"

There will always be people in the world who will be looking to take advantage of the unsuspecting, and they seem to have radar that detects people with a victim mentality. If you do things the right way, if you properly investigate offers made to you by people you don't know, and if you trust your instincts you will be part of the way toward changing your world. You will be all the way there when you realize that perpetual victimization only happens to those who choose it.

Anyone of us can become the victim of an unscrupulous character at one time or another in our lives. If it keeps happening over and over again, the reason is that we are asking for it. Ask yourself what you gain by being a victim. Do you crave the attention or the pity? Are you trying to get someone to take care of you? Or, more likely, are you so used to being a victim that you don't know who you would become if you were self protective?

In order to be free from anything, all of us need to know who we are and what motivates us. We really can change anything we choose. We do so by changing ourselves.