No Ammo?

This is follow-up of sorts to a post I wrote a couple months ago entitled “Proof.”  I want to ask a couple questions and just see where my mind takes us.

Disclaimer.  Please keep an open mind, assume the best and engage in some honest, self reflection.  And as always, remember, this is a blog, of some of the stuff going through my head, and it’s not fact or set in stone.  I simply want to be true to myself and engage in the process of challenging myself to something higher on more than surface levels.

So, remember a couple weeks ago when I was talking about the idea of proof and how the typical behavior of a Christian is often defensive, trying to “prove their point?”  I will say, that’s true for the Christian and non-Christian.  We are all really good at proving our point, which I would argue is a waste of time.

Continuing on.  I want to speak to those of us who call ourselves Christians.  And I hope that this question penetrates to the core of the whole idea of “proving someone into belief” as well as cutting into our most common defense that, “the Bible says…”

What if we didn’t have the Bible? What if we could not longer use the argument, “because the Bible says so?”  And if we don’t have scripture as our proof text, what is it that we ground our arguments on, if in fact we were going to break my rule?  What I’m trying to say is, if we take away the Bible, if we remove it from the picture, there are way too many people who would crumble without scripture.  And my challenge here is, we’ve got to be people that have a foundation of a more sturdy stature than sola scriptura (scripture alone).

Now, please don’t hear me say I don’t think the Bible is important, that’s not what I’m arguing.  I believe as Brian McClaren that scripture is a piece of the foundation, not the foundation itself.  So, what I am arguing is that when it comes to “defending our faith,” honestly, we’ve got nothing when we enter into the secular arena and for several reasons.  One, we hold a certain truth so closely that we will not allow it to stand on it’s own in public debate.  If truth is truth, it should be able to stand without us building walls around it and guarding it with machine guns an verbal grenades (John Spong).  Also, there’s really not anyone who buys the authority of scripture apart from church folks.  And we can’t tell our unchurched friends that the Bible is true simply because it says so.  That’s like saying a circle is a circle because it’s a circle.

So we, as people of faith have to begin building a foundation of girth.  If our entire structure of faith is built on scripture, one small object, what happens when that one thing fails?  Instead, as Brian McClaren would argue, we’ve got to build a foundation that has a plethora of anchor points so that if one fails, our structures don’t crumble.

Anyone picking up what I’m putting down?  It seems to me that the ammo we thought we had, or the ammo we thought we should be using, is full of blanks.  Time to regroup.  Who’s in?

Wind

This could possibly be the shortest post I’ve penned in quite a while.  But, there was something I recently read in a book that I thought was worth at least flushing out a few thoughts.

I was reading about some of the ancient Jewish traditions, specifically some of those that addressed their understanding of God.  As I scanned through the passage, I found it very interesting that, number one, the ancients would not pronounce the name of God, because in doing so it “somehow made God an object rather than a subject, an embraceable entity rather than an ultimate mystery.”  It’s also interesting to note that one of the ancient Jewish words for God was ruach. The literal meaning of that word is wind.  ”And that wind or ruach was observed not as a being, but as a vitalizing force.”

The more I read about some of those ancient Jewish traditions and concepts of God, the more intrigued I become.  What would our world be like today if the function of God was transformed from a being to a concept that more closely resembled wind?  And interestingly enough, it was understood that wind and breathe were intimately connected.  How cool is that?  Our understanding then is shifted to embrace a concept of God that is living and moving, entering and exiting all life, all the time.  Not apart from life, rather an essential element to life itself…

Chew on that one for a while…

Truth and Anger

I’m currently reading a thoughtfully provocative book.  There is so much in the book I find so interesting that I’m finding it difficult narrowing down any coherent thoughts.  Having said that, I found this quote to be particularly interesting.

Anger has always marked the religious establishment.  This is why so many Christian leaders historically have justified such things as the stifling of debate with ex cathedra pronouncements, the persecutions of dissenters, the excommunication of nonconformists, the execution of heretics, and the engagement in religious wars.  This is also why anger is just beneath the surface of organized religion in almost every one of its Western manifestations… Anger lies underneath the glee expressed by the preachers of Christian history when they assign unbelievers to hell.  Anger is the reason why many religious people act as if they will not enjoy the bliss of heaven if they are not simultaneously allowed to view those not so fortunate writhing before their eyes in the fires of hell.  Anger is the reason why the Church throughout its history kept writing creed after creed to clarify just who is in and who is out of this religious enterprise so that religious people who know who their enemies were and could act appropriately against them.

I find this particularly interesting because we can deny and justify anger all day long, but if we are to be people who honestly look in the mirror and see an accurate reflection of ourselves, we’ve got to realize this is so very true for many of us.  And not just the issue of anger that is boiling beneath the surface, but the deeper rooted problems it brings to the surface.

One of those issues being that anger seems more often than not to be the engine for our pride in which we claim to be right, holding onto absolute truth, yet refusing to allow that truth to hold it’s own in the public arena.  Yet when questions are raised concerning those things we have barricaded in as untouchables, we get defensive and often hostile.  And as much as I really dislike Freud, I agree with him when he said, “Real truth, does not need to be surrounded by such impenetrable barriers.  Truth in its objective form can win in debate in the public arena.”

Now, I’m not going to identify any of those truths, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.  But, I will offer this clue.  The truths most in need of discussion in the public debate are probably those that we religious folks hold onto most tightly.  Hold that thought up against the previous arguments about anger, and we start to see the relationship between the two.

My concluding thought then continues as follows: why do we insist on reacting to the changes and challenges of our world via an angry, hostile defensive posture?   Why must we claim absolute knowledge in certain subjects yet refuse to allow them to be brought into public discussion.  Why has the history of organized religion been based primarily on anger, fear and hostility to “get people to think like us?”

I’m not sure if I’m okay with that.  There seems to be a rather large chasm between our lifestyle and Jesus’.  Just something to think about.