What If Women Had a Voice at Nicea?

What if women had been given a voice at Nicea? What if the Apostle Junia had written an epistle that survived, even if only in references by ancient critics? What if the cult of Jesus had not won the economic and political turf war against the mystic gnostics? What if the Acts of Paul and Thecla had made the canon? What if we still believed Jesus really was a totally flesh-and-blood, sweaty, sexy man?

Would women have not become second-class citizens of the Kingdom? Would we have quit making excuses for ignoring "male and female, created He them" and "in Christ there is no slave nor free, male or female"? Would women be respected in the Christian community as whole, complex people instead of wombs with legs?

What if we had taken Jesus seriously when he honored the whore, the women disciples, the adulteress, the mother, the rich patroness, rather than only following his example as the destroyer of the temple?

Who would we think God is? Who would we think we are?

He Is Risen

Jesus Christ is risen indeed
Alleluia!


Today, as my Facebook page is rife with joyous exclamations of resurrection and hope, it seems appropriate to contemplate the meaning of Christ Resurrected.  I have no issues with Jesus crucified. I’ve studied enough to be satisfied that, as best we can know, a man named Jesus existed in first century Palestine and quite likely was crucified by the Romans (though no actual first-, or even second-, hand evidence exists). But to accept a literal resurrection with as much confidence as I’ve accepted a literal crucifixion requires a whole different order of questions and criticism.  I’m not one of those scientism-thinkers who relegates any story of the miraculous to the fairy tale pile.  Just because miracles aren’t likely and aren’t explicable when they do, doesn’t mean they are impossible—that’s kinda the definition of miracle, after all. So I leave open the possibility that this guy Jesus did not only literally die but also bodily resurrect.  I think, however, that it is highly improbable and take the line of least resistance—I will only accept a literal miracle when more likely explanations don’t exist.

Many people take the CS Lewis approach to Jesus and say he must be exactly who we’ve decided he said he was (a substitutionally atoning deity, sacrificed on our behalf) because otherwise he was either a liar or insane—as if those are the only options.  Since we can’t believe that Jesus would either lie or be insane (just think what that would do to our doctrines!), we must therefore accept that he is the dead and resurrected God-Man.  Um, yeah, the dead and resurrected God-Man.  Just like the dead and resurrected God-Man of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Celts, the Hindu, the…. Yeah, dead and resurrected god-men were quite popular in the thousand years before and after Jesus.  Even non-deities like Roman emperors and Greek heroes were talked about as resurrected and coming back in glory. So, thinking of Jesus’s death and resurrection as somehow different, more literal, than all those is pretty crazy to me.

Which all leaves me with the question—who was this Jesus, then?  What was his purpose?  My working hypothesis has been that he was a singularly human teacher who preached a wholly loving God that didn’t need sacrifice or legalism for atonement.  A teacher whose primary and perhaps only message was an overwhelming and transformative experience of this God found through and resulting in the love and service to one’s fellowman.

What a comedown from a resurrected deity!  So commonplace!  Why, Jesus would be no different than Buddha or Lao-tse or even Mohammed.   And not significantly different than the later Jewish prophets of his own tradition. The shock of the idea pointedly illustrates the elitism and entitlement tendencies of Christianity as surely as the fervor with which Christians insist that Jesus is a dead and resurrected God-Man wholly different than all the others.

And all of the clamor of “my god is better than yours” distracts completely from the radical, transformative, salvific Truth taught by every single one of those prophets and resurrected god-men:  recognizing one’s divine worth as wholly loved cannot help but lead one to love others with that same radical grace.  When you know you are loved, you cannot do anything else but love.  In our denominational tribalism, we fight tooth and nail for the doctrinal correctness of our particular formulation of that Truth to the extent that we ignore the Truth itself. 

We are loved.  We are wholly, completely, totally, unequivocally, inalterably LOVED by the Very Being who creates the universe.  We need do, in fact, cannot do anything to be lovable, to be loving, to be loved.  We are loved, we are lovable, and to the extent that we understand our loved-ness, we are loving.  And that really is amazing, radical, transformative, and capable of bringing peace to all mankind.  No matter who teaches a message of Love, under what name, the result is the same.  Recognizing the love brings more love to the world. 

When the love of God enters the world, Christ is risen indeed.  Alleluia.

Embracing Heresy

her·e·tic [ hérrətik ] (plural her·e·tics) Definition: 1. somebody who holds unorthodox religious belief: a holder or adherent of an opinion or belief that contradicts established religious teaching

2. somebody with unconventional beliefs: somebody whose opinions, beliefs, or theories in any field are considered by others in that field to be extremely unconventional or unorthodox

[14th century. Via French< Greek hairetikos "able to choose" < haireisthai "choose"]

[comment]  I guess that I'm confused about the heretic label you've bestowed upon yourself, for after reading most every post here, I don't think that I see anything heretical -- a very heavy word. … You seem to be professing that you don't really know what to profess -- so long as it’s genuine.

Ah, the short answer is that I am heretical because I choose not to accept any of the doctrinal dogma of Christianity as it is generally understood in our culture.

The longer answer goes like this: My understanding of the nature of spiritual reality is in direct opposition to the teachings about God and humanity and the relationship between the two that I learned growing up.  When I left Evangelicalism (the only version of True Christianity that I knew), I threw absolutely every belief I’d ever been taught into the recycle bin: there was not a single thing that I considered sacrosanct.  I even tried very hard to be an atheist but found that my mystical and psychic experiences made that philosophical position pretty laughable. 

After some twenty years as a non-Christian seeker of Wisdom, I realized a few very basic Truths that have now become my personal Fundamentals.  These are the mantras I’ve been chanting to my daughters since they were old enough to hear:

Treat people the way they want to be treated.

Share the Resources.

It's not funny if someone isn't laughing.

Charity begins at home.

Follow the money.

What goes around, comes around.

People are stupid everywhere; everyone is stupid sometimes; don't be any more stupid than you have to be.

Don't do anything that can get you pregnant until you are ready to welcome a baby, you're not ready for a baby until you pick out a good daddy. (Okay, this one may not be strictly philosophical but darn good advice!)

Here are a few more favorites that pepper the spontaneous sermonizing I do while about my daily business:

God is the creative force.

Hell is other people.

We are Imago Dei (humanity is the face of the divine)

If it is Truth, it is True across Time and Culture.

There are no Either/Or’s—they are always Both/And.

The opposite of a truth is a lie; the opposite of a profound Truth is another profound Truth.

The personal is always political.

Good leaders serve of their people.

Seek and ye shall find (and the flip side: you always find what you go looking for)

God gave us brains; he must expect us to use them.

The measure of holiness, regardless of religious culture, is characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control.

And the most profound truth of all:  Honor the divine, however you find it.  Nothing else matters.

As far as I can tell from my studies, none of my personal Fundamentals is contradicted by either Christian Scripture or the preponderance of nearly three millennia of theologians from any of the world’s Wisdom traditions.

As for the established Christian Fundamentals, I find very little evidence of truth to satisfy my rational mind. Mostly I found only parochial interpretations of tradition and scripture to support the dogma. So, I refuse to confess the creeds or to give intellectual assent to most, if any, of the central doctrines. When I first came back to Christianity, I even doubted the historical existence of Jesus himself.  Now I am willing to concede the likelihood of a historical Jesus of Nazareth, a radical iterant teacher who ran afoul of the Establishment and managed to get executed, but I still think a historical Jesus is irrelevant to the spiritual truth of Christianity.

I have not found convincing argument indicating the validity of anything like Biblical Inerrancy or even that the Gospel Truth is in any way historical truth.  Theological constructs such as the Virgin Birth, God in Three Persons or any other version of the Trinity, Deity of Christ (or in fact the deity of God), Original Sin, or even the historicity of the Resurrection or its physical necessity for spiritual redemption are, in my opinion, best understood from an allegorical point of view—as meditative tools or mythology that illustrates ineffable realities—rather than literal fact.

Being a true scientist, I am not arrogant enough to think that none of these doctrines could be absolute truth.  I am only saying that there is not, nor can there be, any way to prove one way or another what the literal truth of these doctrines might be.  And I choose to define the terms of spiritual reality differently, based on alternate interpretations of Scripture, current scientific thought in nearly every field of study, and my own experiences—all subject to change as I and all other scientists continue to ask questions, seek answers, and find more questions.

I have read extensively this last year on Christian theology, doctrine, church history, and my ever-favorite mystics.  I figured I was pretty well versed in the Evangelical dogma so I concentrated on specifically non-Evangelical sources—my favorites are listed in the Bibliography, Etc. page but that is only the tip of the reading iceberg.  I was more than a little dismayed to find how few writers I agreed with who were still identifying themselves as Christians and that none of those who did escaped rabid accusations of heresy. Then I realized that I was in the best company of all: Jesus himself was the first heretic in Christian history.  He was a Jewish heretic, to be sure, but heretical nonetheless.  If my claim to being Christian is that I follow the life and teaching of Jesus, heresy is a pretty good place to start!

Interestingly, while I was a heathen and espousing these ideas, no one much cared.  Non-Christians I knew took most of my conclusions for granted and Christians apparently considered me so far beyond the pale that I wasn’t worth arguing with.  But now that I have started to call myself a Christian again and I still hold to the same ideas, suddenly I get Hebrews (here and here) preached at me.  It didn’t seem to matter to anyone but me that I risked my immortal soul by not accepting the deity of Christ when I was a heathen but a heretic who questions the same is apparently destined to special damnation. As a heathen, I was generally well-respected; as a heretic, I am threatened with hellfire scare tactics by Christians and regarded akin to a first-grader who refuses to learn her ABC’s by non-Christians.

With all due respect to the commenter who wondered why I identify myself as a heretic, I call myself a heretic because I am heretical.  I put it right in the title so that no one reading my posts can be too surprised when I out some of my more outré ideas—truth in advertising, so to speak.  I don’t want anyone to have reason to feel betrayed when they discover that I don’t toe the party line.

The over-arching theme in this blog is that all of Christianity can be, and was by Jesus himself, reduced to a very simple premise: love God, love your neighbor, love your enemy. Nothing else matters.  Everything else is an add-on and a potential distraction from the Truth.  I don’t want my own heresy to be a similar point of distraction from that Truth.  In my own journey, owning my heresy has been crucial to understanding the radical simplicity of Jesus’ teaching, perhaps someone following my blog will find it equally liberating. 

Inhale Exhale - By Grace

http://youtu.be/HB59EdpX3iE

My eyes roll back into my head.

I'm trying to keep my head on straight to understand.

Remember what he said, "Yes, I do believe".

A smile reached the surface.

Free me. You have freed me,

I will not suffer anymore,

Suffer anymore. I'm alive.

I'm scared stiff, I'm shakin' in my boots.

When you come face to face with the reason you exist.

I'm holdin' on to truth, and livin' like a king.

Free me. You have freed me,

I will not suffer anymore,

Suffer anymore. I'm alive.

I'm tired now; somehow I will survive.

I can't remember how it feels to be alright.

I'm tired now; somehow I will survive.

I can't remember how it feels to be alright.

By grace, you have freed me.

I will not suffer anymore.

I will not suffer anymore.

Suffer anymore.

I'm alive.

By Grace Inhale Exhale

When I first tripped over this song on the internet, I was repulsed—no, not because of the screamo metal sound (although I am more of a jazz aficionado than a fan of thrashed out vocals)—because I was sure that the lyrics were yet another pie-in-the-sky, fairy-tale take on Christianity.  “Just find Jesus and all your pain will go away.”  The Disney-esque Jesus who makes dreams come true. I was irritated at one more example of the ridiculous promises to which Christians cling in the all-too-human experience of suffering.  In my very literal childhood (all children are very literal and, as fundy Christians, we were taught to remain very literal long past the time to grow up), I heard version after version of the Cinderella-style “come to Jesus” fairy tale.  And I was disgusted that such a very modern band was singing such a old and worn-out story.

But I couldn’t get myself to write the contemptuous, dismissive post on this song that I wanted to write.  Believe me, I tried.  I wanted to pour all the bitter cynicism bred in Sunday School lesson after sermon after Christian storybook into one long diatribe against the absurdity of this young current group promoting the same tired lies.  Jesus doesn’t save you from suffering.  In actual fact of Scripture, he promises his followers the same and more! No one in the Bible EVER promises that we can escape the pain of living a human life.

Despite many attempts, the post never went very far and each time I found myself reading the lyrics over and over (admittedly, more than I listened to the song itself, but I did that too).  The more I cast out Fear, the more I wrote about Grace, the more I listened to the heart behind the music, the more I realized I was wrong about this song and, perhaps, this group.

It finally occurred to me that this song wasn’t a false promise of Easy Street but a triumph of having found jubilant meaning in human existence through which a transcendence of suffering is possible.  Not that life won’t hurt after finding Jesus but that living with the awareness of grace means the soul is no longer trapped in the pain and fear of pain.  Noticing grace means that suffering is not what defines life; compassion defines the gracious life.

The experience of suffering is universal.  Understanding, not denying, deeply experiencing our own suffering is the key to loving our neighbors, our enemies: we all have deep hurts in our lives.  In our pain, we can act with compassion—literally to “feel the pain with” others as the same as our own pain.  Suffering is what makes us each and every one equally human.  Grace is what allows us to see past our finite painful humanity into the eyes of the Divine, or, perhaps, with the eyes of the Divine.

Shaking Like a Wet Dog

Someone recommended Dallas Willard’s books to me with “[I] keep thinking of you as he's dealing with a lot of the same concepts/issues.  He agrees that a lot, if not most, of the ways modern "fundagelical" Christians read/interpret/understand the bible and put it into practice have nothing to do with what the bible is actually saying.  He has some interesting ideas about what he thinks it is actually saying, that seem pertinent to your search.”  So I browsed Google Books version of The Divine Conspiracy and checked The Great Omission out of the library.  I thought the first book wasn’t too bad several months ago when I browsed it but didn’t find it inspiring enough to search it out at the library.  The second I’ve had here at the house long enough to read three other (big, fat) books between reading attempts.  Today I forced myself to read more than a couple paragraphs and got as far as page 15 before I slammed it shut in frustration. 

Now you have to understand that I read faster than anyone I know and generally will read every book I pick up cover to cover—from intro, preface, and acknowledgements, to endnotes, and bibliography.  I even read books I thoroughly disagree with just for the pleasure of mentally arguing with the author on every point.  For me to have such difficulty with this book is hugely unusual.  And frustrating because I think (from what I was able to read) that I would actually agree with him that Christianity is a commitment to a life lived on Jesus’ model and not just some fire-proof ticket through the Pearly Gates. 

I just can’t get past his language.  The intro and first chapter that I struggled through are peppered with words like obedience, need, must, and command; trigger words for me.  Worse, the presentation of why we “must” follow Jesus' “commands” in “obedience” made me feel like there were a lot of shoulds, oughts, and if you’re a true Christian you will.  To be sure I didn’t slight poor Willard, I just skimmed the pages again and he actually doesn’t say “should”, “ought” or delimit Christian-hood, quite.  Perhaps I’m too sensitive—having been beat over the head with the Christian stick too often—but I just don’t think I’m going to be reading any more Willard books any time soon. Maybe there’s a Cliff Notes version I can skim?

Okay, breathing deeply, shaking it off…