Living in the And

Lent has traditionally been understood as a preparatory time before Easter to participate in the sacrifices of Christ by making some difficult sacrifices of your own--usually involving some kind of fasting (no meat, no fats/oils, no sweets, hence the over the top revels of Fat Tuesday to mark the end of Mardi Gras--literally Fat Tuesday--with the sweet and fatty foods) as well as something unique to the penitent that is given up. By entering into the sacrificial postures, it is supposed to make you more aware of how much more Christ gave up to descend to humanity and be killed on your behalf.

I am not a substitutionary atonement adherent and don't observe Lent with those purposes. I see the death and resurrection of Christ as just another variation of the many springtime renewal stories. Every tradition has something that honors the Life Cycle springing forth at this time of year. Whether it is a Pagan celebration of Earth Day, Chinese New Year, Passover/Easter, everyone has some ritual of honoring that which died in order to generate the new life that sustains us through the coming year.

For me, personally, I am looking at the death of who I was (more accurately, who I thought I was) and the rebirth of myself into who I am becoming. It is a time every year when I consciously try to let go of habits of thought and pre-conceived ideas about who I am, of what I think the world is, of How Things Are. The Lenten period marks a space between the worlds, a gestation as it were between What Was and What Is. Yogis talk often about the Space Between the Breaths. a little death in the middle of the breathing that sustains us. Enlightenment, they say, is to be found in the Space Between, in the And of in-and-out. 

For me, Lent is a conscious Space Between last year and next year. It is living in the And. Recognizing a space between Ending what came before and Beginning the rest of my life.Therefore I take up practices for the Lenten season that will provoke my thinking into that death-and-resurrection, rest-and-renewal, sort of focus. Usually some form of meditation, some form of giving-up, some form of service, or all three.This year I'm attempting all three: a fairly rigorous dietary restriction for the purpose of clearing my mind and entering the hidden depths of repressed memories and emotions, a meditation on my old journals and (unexpectedly) the New Testament book of James, and a creative service by participating in the Religion-Free Bible Project and (hopefully) getting my Heretic blogging back up and running.

It is a hefty undertaking. More than I have attempted before. Given my health ups-and-downs (mostly downs) I don't know how much of my To-Do list will get done. But the honor is in the attempt, in the being willing to place myself in the space, to submit to the process, rather than the perfect execution of the tasks.

From Minister to Atheist

From Minister to Atheist: A Story of Losing Faith

I saw this link from at least three different sources today.  Including someone who I thought shouldn’t have been shocked at the story. Here is my response:

You can't believe that a church would treat the clergy this badly? You, who have yourself been the recipient of similar if not so public abuse? You, whose own son was thrown out of more than one religious job for absurd reasons and with likely illegal process?  Every member of your family through several generations has been boxed in, closed down, and shut out of Christian ministry positions, and this story surprises you? 

In my almost three years since coming back to Christianity, I have heard dozens of similar stories: ministers living a lie to keep their job or telling their truth and losing their credibility and their livelihood. I have at least three friends on Facebook (that I can think of off the top of my head, probably more if I were to go look at my not-extensive friends list) who were thrown out of their positions of ministry with public acrimony. This woman's story is tragic but mostly for its ubiquity. No one shoots the wounded like Christians. 

I long to create a sanctuary for precisely these kind of hurting souls. I have wanted to minister to the ministers (while I was in the Christian world or to other secular ministers when I wasn’t) for as long as I have thought about "what I want to be when I grow up" but I was told explicitly and implicitly that there was no call for such a mission and if there were I was unqualified to fill it. 

But the stories are coming out now. The need is desperately real.  I ache with knowing that I could have helped so many people just like this woman over the last few decades but I myself was dismissed, boxed in, and shut out of organized religion. 

And people wonder why I cringe at calling myself a Christian, why I don't go to church, why I blister tirades at religious incivility and bigotry, and wince when they tell me I need to forgive and listen to God more. 

Yeah, I was listening to God, and my God-given reason, when the church marginalized me right out the door. But now there is the Internet ... and I have a blog!

I'm not as angry with you, dear friend, as it might seem. I am angry at intolerance and prejudice, rudeness and contempt from people who claim to follow a prince of peace who said famously, "your fidelity has saved you; go in peace.”

What is a Samaritan?

And behold a certain lawyer stood up, tempting him, and saying, Master, what must I do to possess eternal life?  But he said to him: What is written in the law? how readest thou?

He answering, said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy neighbour as thyself.  And he said to him: Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering, said:

So there’s this gay bar on the way into a big town.  It’s a popular spot for wild-eyed crazies to lounge in the shadows and prey on the hated sinners as they come out of the bar.  One night, there is a man lying beaten and unconscious on the curb in front of the bar. 

Jerry Falwell is being driven into town for a conference, sees the scene, and demands that the driver turn around. “Find another way into town; what will people think if they find out I was in this part of town where the gay bars are?” 

Rick Warren drives his own fancy rental car past the bar but doesn’t even see the man in the street because his mind is occupied with his upcoming launch of the new reality series “After the Sermon with the Purpose-Driven Preacher.”

Along comes a wealthy Pakistani Muslim with strongly rumored but unconfirmed ties to Al Qaida.  He tells his cab driver to stop.  He gathers up the unconscious man and directs the cabbie to the nearby Sisters of Mercy Hospital, where the hospital determines that the man has no identification and thus no insurance.  The Muslim slaps his Visa card down on the counter, “Insurance is no problem.  I will pay his charges.  Make sure he has a private room and the best of care.”

Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbour to him that fell among the robbers?  But he said: He that shewed mercy to him. And Jesus said to him: Go, and do thou in like manner. (Luke 10:25-37)

Universalism

“What are your thoughts on universalism?”

Universalism: a doctrine whereby all people "go to Heaven when they die”.  It is a doctrine that presupposes a definition of both salvation and an afterlife.  In my personal theology, to “be saved”, to “enter the Kingdom of Heaven/God”, or any of those Christian buzz-phrases is closer in meaning “enlightenment” than anything to do with an afterlife.

I believe in the eternal soul but not necessarily in the individual ego that is attached to the soul during a physical lifetime.  Rationally, I’m more inclined to subscribe to a reincarnation of soul through multiple lifetimes with different individual egos than the usual Christian story of individual egos/souls in unchanging eternal torment or adulation of the deity.  So, “to go to Heaven when I die” has a whole different meaning for me now than it did when I was an Evangelical.  

Regardless of what happens to my individual ego after my physical death, I believe that salvation is something that happens in this lifetime.  I use salvation in its more literary connotation of a transformation from one state of perpetual darkness, closed-mindedness, psychological suffering, or selfishness, to a state of compassion, broad vision, service, and enlightenment. Will everyone be saved? That is, will everyone move from a state of selfishness and suffering to a state of compassion and service?  Clearly, one needs only to look around at how many people live and die in a state of selfishness to see that to be untrue. 

Can everyone be saved? Is there anyone for whom enlightenment and transformation is not possible? In this sense, I believe in a doctrine of universalism.  I believe everyone has an equal opportunity to be enlightened, to experience grace, to raise his consciousness.  No one who is willing to commit to the process of transformation will be denied.  Will everyone notice the many opportunities to experience grace in their day?  Of course not.  But everyone, everywhere, everyday has a thousand moments of grace, opportunities to choose compassion over selfishness, and to see manifestations of love and life in the midst of evil and destruction.

At this point, a doctrine of reincarnation becomes desirable and logical.  If one’s theology begins with a loving God creating humanity for companionship, then it is only reasonable to believe that such a God would provide endless opportunities for his eternal companions to reach a place where they can have both a knowledge of Good and Evil and the capacity not to be limited by that duality—in other words, to be able to think/feel/be like God.  A friend recently supported her Christian belief in reincarnation this way:  "if souls are forever, existing in eternity past and eternity future, why would anyone want to limit them to a single lifetime in which to understand spiritual mysteries?  That’s like having a child and then if they haven’t got life figured out by age five, you kick them to the street."

Most theories of reincarnation presuppose a continued connection between the soul and the individual ego (to a greater or lesser degree) and hinge on this very concept of many chances to “get it right” as well as the presupposition of a loving (and only loving) God.  While I have experienced in my visions the immense and total love of God, my reason still convinces me that God is more nuanced than to be only on the Love end of any polarity.  I am absolutely convinced that every conceivable duality is only a mental construct. Each pole of every duality contains and produces its opposite and that the whole meme is a sum greater than its parts.  Therefore, logically, rationally, I have to accept a God that somehow transcends moral definition of loving or fearful, even transcends a morality and somehow includes loving and fearful.  The mystery of God, in my personal theology, includes both Love and Fear yet transcends them so completely as to make such distinction all but irrelevant.  How that can be, of course, is what makes it a mystery.

But any good theologian won’t just leave it all there as mystery. It’s a cop-out. Mystery is all well and good and thoroughly Truth, but damn hard to live well.  How does one live the question of universalism?  How to live in our single known finite physical lifetime with an awareness of all humanity living in a state of potential? For that is what grace is—the moment when potential become transformative action.  How do we treat our fellow man, all our brothers and sisters in humanity, as equally owning this opportunity for enlightenment, transformation, salvation? Doctrine without praxis is useless. Faith without works is dead.

I think it requires our own “conversion experience”, a moment (or lifetime of moments) in which we become aware of grace in our own souls.  Without a sense of our own psychological or spiritual suffering and a transcendence of that suffering into compassion, we cannot see the Divine in all people. Some people refer to this shift in awareness as being able to “see with God’s eyes”.  Until we have met God within ourselves, we can never truly see God within others nor treat them accordingly with the justice and kindness they deserve.

Must this conversion experience or salvation occur within the Christian paradigm? I.e., must everyone “call upon the name of Jesus to be saved”?  Certainly there are those who preach that dogma, denying even the possibility of universalism. I think that is an unnecessarily limited reading of Christian Scripture and seems to limit ridiculously the companionship for God.  Rationally, it seems absurd:  similarly to the argument for reincarnation but on a one-lifetime-only scale, why would God create humanity for companionship but limit its possibility to a tiny fraction of the world’s population?

Again, theologians claim “the mystery of God”.  (On a side note: my experience with fundamentalist thinkers is that they will claim “mystery” whenever they come up against an irreconcilable tangent of their own doctrine rather than struggle through it.) I’m content with mystery as long as it is mystery that leads one into greater communion with the Divine and greater service of humanity.  For me, a doctrine of universalism, either through reincarnation or otherwise, makes me much more aware of grace, gives me a deeper appreciation of my God, and a wider capacity to love my fellow man.  As I see it, a doctrine of “born-again Christianity” as the only means of “salvation” lead to a sense of elitism, prejudice, and hypocrisy, and a condescension and patronization of those I considered “unsaved”. 

In my final analysis, the measure of Truth for any person is how well it encourages that person to Love God and Love Neighbor.  Regardless of how the Truth is articulated, whether in language of universalism or exclusion, if it draws the follower into a place of more Love, then it is Truth.  If, no matter how it is articulated, a doctrine causes hate and discontent among followers, then it is evil.

 _____________________________________

I wrote this post entirely from my own meditations and contemplation of the relevant ideas.  It wasn't until I went searching for images to attach to the post that I found this article:

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/18208-is-jesus-the-only-way

I totally disagree with the conclusion but it raises many of the necessary questions one must consider when one contemplates universalism.  This topic is very difficult to address because it is hardly the simple question that it seems: one constantly trips over one's presuppositions and assumptions based on our increasingly limited interpretations of the Bible.  I think this article notes many of these presuppositions without even being aware of how they limit the possible conclusions.

Love in Fundamentalism V: Changing Terms Changes the Terms

[author] Words that come to mind are "love" or "honor", perhaps “service”, I'm sure there are more. 

[commenter] The problem is that it seems you can't really get away from the concept just by using different words.  It seems to me that both “love” and “honor” have just as much opportunity for exploitation and abuse as "submit" does.  It all depends on how you live them out.  The Christian definitions of "love", "honor", "service", and "submission" have been around for centuries, and the concepts are by no means new, though some of the ways they have been used may be.  I have to wonder, though, if back in the day what we've been talking about was the original meaning or definition of these words, and if it isn't the "common understanding" or dictionary definitions that have diverged somewhat.

The difference in the connotations would be that it is possible to mutually honor, respect, or serve one another, no matter which of the many common definitions you use.  It is, however, impossible to mutually submit to one another in any of the standard usages of the word.

I am not trying to get away from the concept of working for the benefit of others in preference to oneself.  I'm trying to get away from the apparent need (based on the number of books, sermons, lectures on the subject) to hammer home to women that they must submit to husbands with the corollary being men taking control of their households (rather than men submit, or men and women honor, or men and women act in service to).

My original point was that if church teachers (those who turn theology into practical application for the rest of us) focused their attention on the real truth of mutuality, using terminology that easily supported the concept, then there would be 1. less confusion about submission being a degradation of one party and promotion of the other and 2. less institutionally sanctioned exploitation of the concept.

What I want is a return to what I am presuming was meant "back in the day" and I think the language is creating a major obstacle to today's people being able to get to that meaning.  If the godly concept is "mutually working for the highest good of the other", then let's say that and not dogmatically hold on to outdated vocabulary simply because of tradition, especially when the use of the outdated words leads to so much abuse that could potentially be avoided simply by using words that speak to modern people.

Love in Fundamentalism IV: Defining Terms of Submission

[commenter] Maybe it's just a matter of semantics - I feel like we're kind of saying the same thing (for the most part) but we're defining "submission" differently. To me, "submission" means putting the other person first or making them more important than you.  By which I do NOT BY ANY MEANS mean "choosing the other person's desires over your own".  A fine distinction but an important one.  I DO mean “making what is best for the other person your priority”.  Ideally, in a mutually submissive relationship, the other person is working for your best just as much as you are working for theirs.  

You ask, "And where does it leave the one who is doing all the submitting?" and say, "Seems to me that God is more about setting up paradigms that are more likely to succeed than fail."  It seems to me he has and it's called MUTUAL submission, that first word being the key.  In God's economy it's not about one person, or many people, giving in to all the desires and proclamations of one or a few people.  When you are truly seeking what is best for others, and they are seeking your best, then there is no room for the kind of despotism and abuse we've been talking about.  The problem is not with the "paradigm" as you call it, but with the way sinful and imperfect people live it out - or don't as the case may be.

I think you've made the very point I was trying to describe about semantics and vocabulary.  If you can't even tell whether we're talking about the same thing or not when we say "submission" when we've been defining it for several emails, then how can the average congregant possibly have a clear understanding of the word?

In the common parlance of the everyday world "submission" means "to seek approval, i.e. to submit a proposal or submit an essay or submit a doctoral thesis" or "to deny one's own desires in favor of another's".  The idea of "mutually submitting" is a logical impossibility in our regular usage of the word.

sub·mit  (sb-mt)

v. sub·mit·ted, sub·mit·ting, sub·mits

v.tr.

1. To yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of another.

2. To subject to a condition or process.

3. To commit (something) to the consideration or judgment of another. See Synonyms at propose.

4. To offer as a proposition or contention: I submit that the terms are entirely unreasonable.

v.intr.

1. To give in to the authority, power, or desires of another. See Synonyms at yield.

2. To allow oneself to be subjected to something.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/submit

In church, "submission" is, if I understand you correctly, supposed to mean "taking action for the benefit of the other".  On the whole page of the above link, including three dictionaries of English, two thesauri and the etymology of the word "submit", there is absolutely nothing that would even hint at your definition of "submit" and a whole lot about things like "knuckling under", "obedience" and "to render up will or authority".

If you want to describe the process of being in a godly relationship as each person "taking action for the benefit of the other", a description I heartily agree with, then we should use a term that everyday English speakers will readily understand to mean that.  Words that come to mind are "love" or "honor", perhaps “service”, I'm sure there are more.

There are way too many sermons preached and Christian marriage books written, though, whose premise and practical advice sound way more like my definition of submission than yours.  That's why I said I don't think even the generally recognized experts in theology are at all clear on this word.  There's lots of advice out there promoting that women submit to husbands, REGARDLESS of the husband's actions.  In the face of outright life-threatening violence, and certainly lesser disrespect, the women are told to "submit" and "keep silent" and “God will honor her in heaven”.  Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but I think if something is True, it will remain True even when taken to its logical extreme.

That's where I say that if we talked more in church about "love" and "honor" and "service", all of which more readily denote "actions benefiting others", and less about "submit", there wouldn't be these kinds of human errors in practical theology.  And there would be less opportunity for the power-mongering among us to exploit those who are trying to apply "submit" to the best of their (dubious) understanding.

I think you and I mean exactly the same thing about God's economy being about the many, with each acting for the good of the others over oneself.  But that is completely not the economy that develops in communities concerned with "submitting" rather than "honoring" or some better-fitting term.  I say that the church has got so hung up over pounding the square pegs of its jargon into the round holes of our common understanding, that it has long ago lost sight of the underlying great Truth.

Love in Fundamentalism I: Love Equals Submission

 [author] I was identifying with [walkaways from extreme fundamentalism]—that their quest for spiritual communion with God would lead them to participate in these stifling, degrading, anti-gracious communities and then breaking free of the legalism.  The more I read about Christian fundamentalism, the more appalled I became.  The extreme practices Christians have taken up seemed so absurd yet so oddly familiar. 

I realized that most of these ideas [of extreme fundamentalism]…had floated through most of the churches we attended and probably were much stronger an influence than I noticed as a child. 

[commenter] Wow, that's a powerful statement. I never thought of equating the churches we grew up in with the kind of super-fundy stuff you read about from cults, but I can see some of the parallels you are drawing. It makes me so sad that people who claim to have received the love of Jesus show so much disdain for others who are supposed to be their brothers and sisters in Christ (not to mention the rest of the world for whom Christ died.) Power and control seem to always trump grace. 

[commenter] People have one heck of a time loving others, and I think it is because they see this love as a duty rather than as an opportunity to allow the indwelling Christ to live out through them. 

This may actually be the crux of the whole matter.  So much of fundamentalism (in any religious or social setting) is about following rules to win approval from the powerful. Whoever can demonstrate having followed the most rules, the most closely, scores the most points... except the powerful who determine the rules can change them whenever it seems someone else might actually be winning.

In Christianity (at least the evangelical and fundamentalist versions I grew up with), the biggest and most important rule is that Love is best demonstrated by Submitting.  Usually in some kind of service or obedience to those in authority over you, or alternately by demanding that those beneath you on the hierarchy are taught to submit appropriately.  So if Love=submission and the ones on the bottom of the heap are the ones who HAVE to submit the most… Well, who the hell would really want to love anybody else?

I stayed up late recently listening to podcasts about the ballyhoo in the Southern Baptist Convention about this new theology of the Trinity that's come out (been around for at least 30 yrs and underlies the dominionist movement but has recently been shown to be articulated by some Big Whigs of SBC and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) wherein God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have three separate wills and are covenanted to work together to manifest God's will.  God is the Top Dog, Jesus submits to God (and actually has no power to answer prayer, can only take them to God) and reigns over the Holy Spirit.  Therefore Father/Husband has all authority in domestic and civil venues, Woman/Wife/Daughter must follow the Father in everything and cannot have her own calling/work/agenda except as it supports the Father and Wife/Mother/Older Daughter rules over the (younger) children to make them obedient to the Father.

I got to thinking that the whole thing is just so silly.  If churches and Christian literature spent half as much time preaching biblical leadership—being a true public servant working for the betterment of the whole group—as they do demanding that everyone submit, submit, submit, we might actually never have to care about who's submitting to whom and how well.

Why is Christianity about judgment and only ever so rarely about actual grace (not the "oh I'm such a worm and God is gracious that he hasn't just stomped on me" kind)?  Why did I spend twenty-one years among the self-proclaimed God's People and never have a clue about grace until I read a non-Christian source?

Why did I at age 12 have to ask the pastor how to "love God and love your neighbor as yourself" if I didn't love myself?  Basically the answer I got was that not loving myself was a demonstration of proper humility and an appropriate understanding of my essential worthlessness so I actually should love my neighbor better than myself.  What kind of bullshit answer is that to give a kid?  Hmm, the Bible doesn't support the way we've taught this child to believe so instead of changing our teaching when she calls us on it, let's just REWRITE scripture.

And now huge movements within the SBC, the largest denomination in the US, are doing this exact thing.  Really, this shouldn't surprise me, I'm sure it has been going on for millenia.  The powerful always get to rewrite the history (and all our scripture is historical right? More hmmm…).

So I don't think I've really missed anything by staying out of the church scene for nearly two decades.  Same song, second verse, a little bit louder, a little bit worse.

A Season of Renewal and Resurrection

Ash Wednesday.  The beginning of Lent.  The end of excess and the start of focused restraint and renewal.  A time culminating with the rebirth of a soul. A very loose interpretation of the meaning and purpose of Lent but the interpretation that gives it meaning to me. 

I laughingly posted to Facebook about my stack of books I wanted to read, wondering if I perhaps had a problem with an excess of research.  Am I addicted to Google? To books? To finding answers to every varied question that passes through my head?  Or do I simply have an inquiring mind in search of a venue for my accumulated knowledge?

My kids suggested that I should give up Google and email for Lent but I asked who would be served by such sacrifice:  my kids, who are old enough to have little need of me beyond driving and dinner?  I, who greatly delight in every new idea to debate, discuss, and develop new questions? My husband, who admits to finding himself applying to all the people he meets in his travels the knowledge I so freely share? Would God be pleased with such pointless sacrifice, made simply for the tradition of Lent?

Or would God find more appropriate an act of service?  I certainly would be better pleased to continue reading and expect that I’ll find greater healing and spiritual growth by writing.  The excess of research may continue but I hope to reap more benefit by distilling some of the morass of ideas into a few new thoughts.  Or at least new questions.  For the next forty days, I hope to write here frequently—daily is my plan, although I doubt I’ll actually post that often.  Forty days of turning the glut of information in my brain into some kind of synthesis. 

By the end of the season, I intend to have regained the confidence in my own voice, the facility of word I used to take for granted.  I pray to be reborn as a person whose authority I respect without needing to footnote my own opinions.