Hopefully this doesn’t come across too negatively since I haven’t had someone to filter thoughts through for the last week or so.  Needless to say, this has become somewhat of a giant urn in which I am able to boil down and sift through things in a writing-things-out sort of way.

The question of the hour is this.  At what point along the journey (of following Christ) did we 1. center everything we do, think and say around arriving at a certain place (heaven) and 2. secure all of those reasons so tightly in a vault of complacency that to even suggest we are closed minded initiates a sort of “preemptive war” mentality that launches us into a state of, honestly, lunacy?

Now, there are countless times that, in the nearly 30 years I’ve been alive, I’ve been wrong.  And I’m not one to deny having thought and acted wrongly.  And I can’t help but wonder, what’s wrong with being wrong?  It’s difficult to admit, but I’ve been raised in a sub-culture that is never wrong, especially when it comes to issues of doctrine, justification for certain behaviors and yes, quite often, with scripture.  It is my assessment that churches are the only places in society that we tolerate and even accept a culture of mis-education and even lack of education, save (most) ministers, priests and clergy.  It’s only here that we are allowed to hold ungrounded and unsupported arguments claiming, that’s what the Bible says or doesn’t say.  End of conversation.  Now, I realize that is a broad sweeping stroke and it’s not my intention to start any debates, but ruffling feathers and peeling away the layers of ignorant comfort is something I’m interested in doing.

Now, some of us may be thinking, “Phew!  It’s a good thing I’m not closed minded.”  Here’s a clue that we may in fact have our beliefs locked so tightly away that we’ve almost completely forgotten upon what ground we were originally standing.  If we can look in the mirror and honestly tell ourselves that we do not need any other influence for Christian living, apart from scripture, we may be closed minded.  It’s awfully arrogant to think we can come to scripture able to flawlessly and correctly interpret scripture.  If you can look someone and tell them with complete conviction, if there’s no heaven, this whole Christian thing isn’t worth my time, we may be just a bit closed minded.  Are we really only in this if there something in it for me at the end?  If we can’t enter into the secular arena, have conversation (NOT debate) and allow our beliefs to be scrutinized, picked apart, mocked or simply discussed, it’s entirely possible that we are refusing to allow the very Spirit of God to penetrate to the deepest recesses of our being, and in turn, bring forth something new, fresh and most likely greater than that which we so desperately and childishly cling to.

I know this is erring on the negative side.  I also know that there are plenty of opportunities to poke holes in my logic.  And it isn’t my intention to ignite new flames of dissent and disagreement.  What I am working toward, as with the way in which I live my life, is to bring about a new life NOW.  There are so few places in scripture that even reference the notion of heaven being our ultimate purpose, or grasping with white knuckles the ignorance and denial that affords us the illusion of comfort and security.

What kind of people could we be if we opened the steel doors of our hearts?  What kind of people could we be if we allowed and even embraced the opportunities for new understandings?  What kind of people could we be if we came to know Jesus as ancient Israel understood the concept to know: as in sexual intercourse… (Borg.  Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time)  Does that change anything?

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?

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…

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.

One of the websites my wife and I keep up with is called the Jesus Manifesto.  Overall, most of the discussions we’ve read have been pretty good.  There was however, a letter posted yesterday, I believe that hits close to home for us.  The title of the note was called “A Letter to a Common Sense Atheist.”  Though this was a thought provoking letter, I don’t want to get tangled in superfluous details nor initiate another “argument.”  That being said, there is something I’d like to address.

My wife and I are actually fairly close friends with an atheist family.  We have shared many wonderful discussions together and our conversations have shed light on many of my assumptions, not just about the Christian faith tradition, but on life as a whole.

However, I must say that there is still something that disturbs me about this whole Atheist vs. Christian discussion.  And I feel like I can speak fairly honestly about the subject because I’ve been apart of conversations in both camps.  Here’s the deal.  No matter which way we flip the coin, each faction has their artillery of “proof” intended to blank-out the arguments of the other side, proving them wrong.

Here’s my real issue.  I’m sure that there are many facts that are true on both sides.  But, I think we’ve still missed the point.  I’ll argue from the Christian perspective because that’s what I know and it would be pretty arrogant of me to assume I know the mind of someone else.  I think it is a horrible waste of time for Christian people to try to prove people to heaven.  First of all, that’s not really a biblical concept.  And it’s awfully silly for us to use the Bible as a scientific text since at the time it was written, the concept of science was a mere 1,000 years in the future.  Anyone else see the disconnect there?

So, what then, does that mean?  I believe it to be our responsibility as followers of Christ to translate his LIFE into the language of the world we live in today.  It’s really kind of a waste of time to “prove” someone into believing in God, and I am not really concerned about all the “facts” that we claim to have.  Our job is to BE a different kind of people.  The world doesn’t see anything different in Christians because we can argue with the best of them.

I had the opportunity to preach this past Sunday and I spend some time in the 5th chapter of Matthew, in what we have traditionally labeled, the Beattitudes.  One of the glaring disconnects hidden within that passage is the fact that none of charges Jesus issues has anything to do with “believing” the right things.  I argue that it’s overwhelmingly a description of Kingdom life. LIFE.  It’s not a list of lofty ideals that are good to hope to attain, rather they are a description of the life of someone who is participating in the realm of God here on this earth.  To dive ever deeper into what Jesus is talking about, I even argue that if we are not showing mercy, making peace and being persecuted for doing those things, we are really just warming a seat on the sidelines of life.

So, I then argue that arguing is a waste of time… HA.  Isn’t it sad how quickly we can get wrapped up in our own words?  Interesting thought.  That alone could be flushed out into a few more posts.  Yet I end with the model of Christ.  What kind of life are we going to live?  Will we be participants in the realm of God, or are we going to be content to argue with everyone we come in contact with?  And I will break my own rule for this reason: I believe the essence of Christ is fully realized when we lose churchy language, step outside of the building, file away all our “proof points,” hold our tongues, love people wastefully and bring the Kingdom life here.

So, let’s please stop trying to “convert” people and just recklessly love them, and allow the Christ life to be realized in the decisions I make each day.