Godzilla Attack Redbud!

Oh no!
They say he's got to go
Go, Go!
Godzilla!

The Scandalous Nature of "Spiritual Authority" and "Spiritual Truth"

If there's ever been a thorn in my side, it's been my defiance toward "spiritual authority". The reason I put the phrase inside quotations is, it's an oxymoron to me.

If something is spiritual, it's unknowable. It's something words can't describe. It can't be touched, only felt. It can't be experienced with the senses, but rather leaves itself to be defined by words like "peaceful," "serene," and "awesome." It's the sense of knowing there's wind blowing, but not knowing where it's coming from.

On the other hand, the word authority implies ownership of a concrete realm of time and space. A master mechanic has authority on the intricate details of assembling an engine.

So, when someone claims to have spiritual authority, they are trying to box in something that is outside of space and time. They're trying to take something that was originally meant to create a sense of awe and wonder and manipulate it into something that fits into our worldview.

And, when a group of people attribute spiritual authority to one or two people, they are essentially giving that person power to take what wasn't supposed to be defined in the first place and to put our own, broken sense of what spirituality should look like onto it.

And, once this happens, another phrase results: "spiritual truth."

Once something spiritual is defined in human terms that make sense to sensible beings, truth claims can start being made.

The problem with this is, everyone who claims to have this insider's knowledge of what's spiritually true comes up with different measuring sticks to gauge it with.

And so, when we take the Gospels for instance, we have four differing accounts of Jesus' life.
      What's true for Matthew, isn't true for Mark, isn't true for Luke, and so on. It's the nature of journalism and eyewitness accounts. Everybody witnesses things differently.

And, when we take U.S. history, we have differing accounts of what happened when the Pilgrims first made it to the New Land.
And, with the dinosaurs.
And, with every news report.
And, with every government scandal.

So, as a Christian who grew up with this idea that certain people had insider's knowledge to "spiritual truth," while the rest of us had to crawl around looking for the gurus, it's hard to listen to any lecture outside of a Ted Talk without experiencing the sensation of feeling manipulated.

I can only suspend reality for so long before I have to put my feet back on the floor.

I don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but it's my experience right now.

In order to even have a phrase like "spiritually true" exist in the first place, you have to be able to marry the elements of sixth-sensedness and sound, intution and touch, emotionalism and smell.

Or, "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

Basically, I feel like I've fallen for a God-shaped pyramid scheme.

Someone decided to write down what they thought God was like, and left to the devices of the fucked-up-edness of human beings, it became true. It became boxed in. It became law. 

And the law determines who's in and who's out. Who gets into the God club and who doesn't. 

I wonder what Jesus meant when he said "the truth will set you free."

Did he possibly mean something much simpler than the concept we've somehow turned into law - which is (flippantly and disgustingly unintelligible) "just believe in Jesus and you'll be set free!"

What if the "freedom-setting" truth he was talking about was the horrible idea (to the truth-dependent) of not trying to be so anal about what the truth really is?

What if this being set free that Jesus spoke of so frequently was not about grasping God with our hands and turning spiritual concepts into binding laws that put fences around the unknowable, but letting

            truth be what we can grasp and spirituality be what can't be grasped (aka God). 

 

Some Thoughts About What Jesus Might Do if He Were to Walk Into a Christian Worship Service Any Given Sunday

A story just popped into my head:

What if Jesus were to show up randomly one day to any of our "synagogues" (assuming he'd even want to walk into a synagogue considering how many open-air amphiteatres and parks are around)? Lets just say he walked into any of our church services and as soon as he found a seat in the back somewhere, he looked up onto the powerpoint and saw words about him, solely about him. The words said things like "his blood set us free, he forgave our sins once and for all, he came back from calvary, etc."

You would think (because you were singing the songs about him) that if you looked at his face as he was sitting there, he'd be smiling, kind of pridefully.

      He'd probably feel elevated right?
                 
            Or maybe he'd feel blessed?

                   Or maybe he'd feel really loved?

                            Or maybe he'd feel like he was worthy of worship?

            Or maybe, this is just what we'd think if we were to actually see Jesus sitting in a service that was all about him . . .

But . . . 

What if Jesus did show up? What if he did hear songs being sung about him? What if he did hear the pastor say that Jesus was the only way to God?

And to our amazement, we expected to see an elevated . . . blessed . . . loved . . . worthy . . . Jesus . . .

       But what we got instead was completely not what we expected. 

                This Jesus stood up right in the middle of it all . . . and flipped over the offering tables . . . and the hymnal stands . . . and started ripping down the statues . . . the projectors . . . the cameras . . .

And walked up to the front of the auditorium, grabbed the mike from the pastor [who's passing out] and said authoritatively,

"Why do you call me good? No one is good, only God." 

And then he walks off the stage, obviously fighting back the vague memories of a people from the past who wandered around like lost sheep looking for a shepherd.

What would you do?
What would you think?
What would you feel?

Would you feel like every bit of your faith was ripped from your hands?

Would you feel crushed?

Would you feel like you'd been doing the best you could, but were suddenly told by the one person you wanted to please all this time that you were worshiping something other than God?

Or would you feel relieved that after all this time you thought that if you didn't worship Jesus you were gonna somehow be cut off from God or punished or sent to hell?

What if Jesus's greatest mission was to point people to the one true God, and not become the one true God himself?

That'd be pretty scandalous, wouldn't it be?

Tour De Braz

Larry and I began training for this ride back in December after Fred (another neighbor) fixed my back wheel.

We took the 100 mile loop.  Larry made it over the bridges.  I drafted off Larry.  Got to ride in a bike train in the beginning.

With stops, it took us 7 hours.  Lots of head and cross winds.

After quitting my cycling days, I got back in the saddle. I'm proud of us for training and sticking with the plan.  It feels like a real accomplishment.  We did it.

Is Christian Truth Universal Truth? Some Thoughts

I'm constantly intrigued by the way people connect with God outside of Christianity. 

Why?

Because, for so long I thought it was impossible to connect with God outside of Christianity. 
Even as I write this, there will be a couple of you who cringe at the thought that someone outside of the fold could be praying right now to the same God you are - yet, they don't ascribe to the values of the Christian faith. 

I want to keep this post as simple as possible, but unfortunately for most of us, the layers and layers of learning will probably prevent us from receiving such simplicity.

But, here it is. Maybe it'll stick.

Believing that Jesus is who the scriptures say he is, is, a Christian ideal. Actually, it's a Judeo-Christian ideal adopted by the early Christian church, and shaped and molded since.

It's not a Muslim ideal. It's not a Buddhist ideal. And, it's not a Hindi ideal. 

Which means . . . 

There are other ideals besides the ones we call Christian.

I'm a Christian, which means that I believe that when I look at the Jesus of scripture, I see what God is like and I see what a life full of God is like. As a result, I want to be like the Jesus I read about, and I have an "inner knowing" that my sins are forgiven and that God loves me.

And,

the Muslim woman believes that when she looks at Muhammad she sees what God is like and what a life full of God is like, and so on.

For the longest time, I thought Christianity was the only game in town. Maybe it's because I live in the deep south of the Bible Belt. Maybe it's because I never knew anyone who claimed anything other than Christianity. 

What I forget about the most when I'm reading the scriptures is: Jesus was Jewish. He thought Jewishly. He acted Jewishly. He talked Jewishly. Everything he did and said fell in line with what a good Jew would do and say at that time in that culture. 

When we read the gospels, we're reading about a Jewish author's take on what God was up to. So, Jesus was the one they were waiting for. The one through whom the One God would rescue the exiled (the Jews), forgive (those who believed), and redeem (those who were chosen). 

Honestly, I think the authors' put alot of words in Jesus' mouth that the Jesus I believe in never would have said. I don't think Jesus was so arrogant to think that he was the only way to God. Of course, we can rebut that simply by saying he was God, therefore he wouldn't get all puffed like we would if we were to say the same thing. Could you imagine your friend announcing at church that he was the only avenue in which you could connect with God? Would you think he was just a little arrogant?

So, when we say things like, "You can only have peace through Jesus," and, "Jesus is the only way to God," and, "If you believe in Jesus your sins will be forgiven (which, by the way, would completely contradict the point of the cross as the scriptures stand)," we are declaring specifically Christian ideals. 

We are laying out the truth of Christianity,

which is not a universal truth. It's an inherently Judeo-Christian truth.

I've been really blind for a really long time to the fact that there are people outside of Christianity who connect to the same God that I do. 

I used to feel threatened by "those crazies" who merely thought they were worshiping God. My Christianized intellect told me they were pagans, full of idolotrous urges, nowhere near the path that I was on. 

The truth is, they were very gracious. They let me judge them without consequence. They let me hiss my condescension. They let me rattle their minds with my "one way" theology. Yet, they listened patiently, probably praying to "their God" to open my mind to the beauty of spiritual diversity.

To think that everyone else must adhere to Christianity in order to find/explore/connect/worship God is like saying everyone must drive a Cadillac in order to really understand driving. 

This kind of thinking shuts me off from the ability to have any helpful kind of conversation with those who don't follow the same faith as I. Instead of trying to find out how I can connect to God with them, I'm trying to figure out how to connect them to the right conception of God.

So, thanks to all of you who've put up with my small-mindedness for so long. You've taught me how to start smashing the borders of my God box.

Double Cheeseburger

Winning is like a double cheeseburger, something you never eat, but once, maybe twice, you don't worry about the calories or anything... so in tune with no worries... and it lasts and there's no hangover... just more, where it's really good all over and you know for at least a couple days that all is good and you can be free to take any turn you like.

Kaley At Theater Under The Stars

It was an incredible night.  Kaley on stage at Theater Under The Stars.  She was with her theater group.  Clear Springs swept the Houston Area with nine awards including best musical.