conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

As Charlie Brown said to Lucy as she rattled off all of the different phobias and she reached this point:

"I think you have pentaphobia. Do you know what that is?"
"What is it?" he asks.
"The fear of everything!" she grins.
"THAT'S IT!" he yells.

THAT'S IT, I yell.

So...Vanier is saying that people come to church for the relationships...God comes out of that.
Here we are again.

Carly,

Yes. Christ is community. It's not community for the sake of gregariousness (though anthropologists might have something to say about our species) as much as it is the Body of Christ coming together for the healing of the world.

Jesus sent the disciples out two by two to proclaim the Kingdom and to heal. That's all.

And it's enough.

Rich,

Um...what? ;-)

Tripp, here we are at "salvation" again. Any new thoughts about what that actually is or means? I'm still pretty mystified by how you deploy the word.

The idea of a friendship with an agenda of mutual sanctification sets my teeth on edge. Sounds a lot like the Christian tradition of saying to people, and women specifically, "Shut up and let me change you."

The saving grace is "MUTUAL." Which is something I have a hard time imagining. It's worth my meditating on.

Hey.

Salvation is a sticky word...burdened by all sorts of crap. I'm trying to work my way around and within it. How is it "mystifying?"

And salvation in community is mutual. It is not me saving you nor you saving me. It's God saving all of us in community. God saves. We cannot.

"That's it" is said with the same burst of recognition and confidence that CB uses in the CB Christmas Special. Vanier articulates the main point that I have been trying to make about the place of CCW and the focus of our real mission work within the community. Perhaps he imbues it with an extraordinary meaning that requires the use of words like "sanctification," but the thrust is the same.

Liturgy is a means to this end and not an end unto itself. Liturgy has the responsiblity of focusing the care and fellowship so a church doesn't diffuse into a social club. We have the blessings of community because of God, not God exists because the community itself exists. But this perspective on community as how God really works in the world moves us beyond many of the things that trouble me about organized religion. Petitionary prayer becomes a way to bring the connections of the community to bear in love for the subject of the petition. It isn't about God above the world - it's about God in the world. If we would stop teaching that God answers prayers and instead teach that prayer has the potential to allow God to work within and through us, that would be a better manifestation of God's power.

Semantics are important - witness the power of the word "salvation" to energize you and push Megan's buttons. The mystery of God is made brutal when considered as judge and arbiter of souls in a world as grey as is ours. I keep imagining myself being processed through God's thresher when I think of the Great Harvest metaphor. Am I wheat or chaff? But when we move, as I believe many have, toward a faith that is based on God in us, it makes much more sense to be faithful, to look for God in the ordinary and to forget about the endgame.

You can argue that both can exist, and I suppose that is true. But my peabrain can't see how. I don't see salvation as a destination. It is a daily possibility, and it has little to do with what a theologian decided it was many years ago, and more to do with the small victories we have in overcoming our inclination toward selfishness. Perpetuating the vision of God as King is not motivating, but raising people up to believe that God's love and presence makes life worth living and people worth loving - that would be the apex of living in the spirit of Christ.

The oddest thing about this, is that I know you and I agree at the heart of this, but the surface never seems to align. I also don't believe in sound bites. Sorry for the long post.

It's literally mystifying. I don't actually know what you mean by it.

I know you believe that about community, but I don't know WHY you believe it. Technically an omnipotent God under the standard Judeo-Christian description doesn't need anything outside Godself to do God's work. God could do this as-yet-undefined Saving in any way God wanted, including but not limited to the use of other people.

Who purportedly have free will, so then, what's up with that?

p.s. You should feel free to answer these questions when you've had a little more sleep. They'll keep.

Rich...You said:

Liturgy has the responsiblity of focusing the care and fellowship so a church doesn't diffuse into a social club.

I agree and would expand that into the entire programmatic life of a church and not just the liturgy. But that's neither here nor their. Where I have perhaps have misunderstood you is this...

I assume you think that the focus of liturgy is the community. I think it is God. We are looking for the exact same result. I think focusing on the people in the liturgy is turning the church into a social club. To articulate what you say so well in the liturgy is to focus the liturgy upon God. It is, after all, worship. And if the focus of worship becomes the people gathered then we have a problem.

I think you and I agree. We are trying to get to the same end result. And, perhaps unlike you, I think that focusing on the people gathered and not God is mistake...a poor focus. One may worship the God that is both transcendent and immanent. God is both. I think where we trip one another up is that I say "worship God" and you appear to read only a transcendent God. Liturgy should afford moments of realization for both aspects of the divine.

Sometimes God is entirely other. Sometimes God is sitting next to me. Sometimes it is both at the same time.

Ah...you don't know "why" I believe it. Okay. I will take you up on your offer and postpone a full response. Am I understanding you?

Um...just to put this out there...I think God needs us. Jesus needed his friends. God needs God's creation.

But let me sleep on it first.

OK, food for your thought on the topic of salvation --

The word is traditionally used, as I understand it, to refer to the myth of redemption from the equally mythical original sin as described in Genesis.

This means it's given that God will send every human soul to hell, until and unless that soul is "saved."

What kind of loving God sets up that twisted situation?

You're almost understanding me.

Why you believe that "community" -- by which you mean participation in an organized church -- is absolutely required for "salvation," is one question.

What "salvation" means is another question.

Go!

Sleep well.

I believe that God is really waiting for us to mature out of the need for a transcendent God. And, yes, I do think that the community is the reason for worship, not the existence of God. But I also believe that the community has no hope of reaching any real kind of connectedness without God. Heck, even with God, it's hard. So does this make God the focus and people the object? I dunno. My perception is that faith as a means to explain the human condition and rationalize away that which we cannot explain is the most primitive of levels at which we believe. It relies on the darkness to maintain its place. But faith as a way of life that relates the timeless logic of unconditional love and selflessness seems evergreen to me.

Of course, if that grand human conceit that we are made in God's image is true, then God probably does want our worship and adulation and He probably gets upset when it isn't there. One could make an argument that God made the world such a mess so that he would be able to hear the "thank yous" from the people not yet suffering, but that would be a more cynical view than I can handle.

There is no logical answer, so why not choose the most rational instead of the most mysterious?

Rich,

I don't understand your insistence that mystery and rationality cannot go together. One may say that the only rational course is to assume such a thing as mystery. Many a smart and rational person has come to that conclusion. Mystery is not the end to rationality. So, explain to me how you get there.

I believe that God is waiting for us to mature enough to realize how immanent God is...as well as how transcendent God is. An anthropocentric faith where God only exists where we do is no less misguided than the hubris of saying we look like God.

Megan,

I will speak to the publishers and begin the first draft of the book. ;-)

More seriously, good distinctions. I'll get there. Thank you.

I can accept mystery, but I think it is weird to embrace it and celebrate it. You have heard me say before that I can't ever know whether God is acting in the world in any kind of direct sense, but I still believe in God. I resent that God feels a need to be hidden from plain sight and that we have to make decisions based on things that happened many years ago. I hope and need to believe that God understands that he gave me this mind that can't connect the dots, but which can't work with an incomplete picture. So I try to walk the walk, figuring that will get me to God, as I believe Jesus led us to this. But talking the talk is pretty bogus to me. Any rational framework of God has to recognize that God cannot be any kind of singular entity resembling a King who rules and grants wishes and holds court to decide that we are saved only if we believe in Him. These are contradictory to any kind of concept that God is better than us in a moral and spiritual sense. There is no rational point to life if the sole purpose of life is to please God.

But, life has a purpose if God is immanent and always present; if God is a part of a collective soul, both in and apart from each of us. It is in our own self-interest that we act on the Word. This concept of God has its own mysteries, like how do we establish Christ as the Son of God if God is not an independent entity. But that is an easier mystery with which to live than the eternally baffling questions about God's purpose for evil and sin. It makes much more sense to accept that evil and sin are as old as God and that only an acceptance of God as demonstrated by Christ can shelter us in any sense from the beating we receive in the world on a daily basis.

Finally, I don't agree that a faith that recognizes that the only real manifestation of God in the world that we can grasp, embrace and cherish is misguided. Again, it has the potential to drift and become selfish because people are at its core, but what incarnation of religion has not fallen prey to some form of idolatry. But if you want to understand my thinking, you need to separate this vision you have of what may be the outcome of this belief from the way that I try to articulate it. I would also agree that there is a place for a transcendent God in a fully articulated description of this belief structure, but that is secondary to what we can access with our senses.

Rich,

I guess I am trying to hold what you see as contradicting notions in juxtaposition. One does not necessarily rule out the other. I think the fullness of how you describe God's presence in community is beautiful. It is the Incarnation. We need not look to a two thousand year old event to see God. We can see God, encounter God with our senses now with and in one another. Lovely. Truly.

I resent that God feels a need to be hidden from plain sight and that we have to make decisions based on things that happened many years ago.

Thus, God is not hidden from plain sight...but we are limited. Who said God needs to be hidden? I surely did not. Jesus certainly did not. God never has. Pillars of flame, and a prophet from Galilee suggest that God is never hidden. But God is Other and is a Being. And a human response to such Otherness as God's is worship and the recognition that though perhaps "created in God's image" we are not God and worship (liturgy) is a means of coming into the transcendent God's presence.

Again, God is both transcendent and immanent. These are not contradictions. They are merely descriptions...and inadequate ones at that. So, let's try to find ways to honor all of God's beauty...

Pillars of flame, etc. -- to quote Ms. Jackson, what has God done for us LATELY? In terms of that kind of unmistakable evidence of presence that cannot be explained any other way?

The UCC widely publicizes the phrase, "God is still speaking." This harmonizes better with your idea that God's presence can be seen readily in other people and ourselves. However, this brings up the big obvious question of free will.

So, whatcha gonna do with that?

And re "I'll get there" -- honey, how many years have you been putting me off with that response now? I love you dearly, but I'm feeling like you're abusing my (admittedly terribly limited) patience.

It was a busy day yesterday, so I couldn't carry this further, and I want to avoid going in circles, but ...

The phrase "God is a Being" is not a fact. It is conjecture. A "Being" connotes an image of humanity to me again, a sentinent, independent entity. Now, I am not saying that the opposite is true either, that God is only some sort of ethereal link between souls that binds us together, but I am suggesting that this is the only way we have to see God, and that the other way is not useful imagery. Further, I think it is limiting imagery that holds both us and God back from achieving the reunification that I believe God seeks.

God as a Being is absolutely hidden from sight and the other senses as well. Humanity is self-limiting when it follows its inclination to conceive of God as Father, as King, as a shaped Being. Why continue to try to perfect this inherently flawed concept when we have an alternative view that is supported by a deeper view of the Bible and the life of Christ that moves beyond the historical simplicity of the times and takes the essence, the agape love, to drive faith beyond earthly boundaries in a way that is comprehensible?

Worship is a way of accessing God's presence. I couldn't agree more. But my problem is that the old language, the old way of capturing God with words doesn't allow me to access God, because it is the equivalent of dialing and getting a wrong number. I rarely get a sense of God as immanent. The prayers, the songs, they all point to God as external force. Without the power of shared community, congregational worship is of minimal value. This was a driver in my leaving the Catholic Church. I never had strong anti-papal sentiments. I never felt bound by the dictates of Rome. My real issue was that it was anonymous worship. Congregations were large and churches were set by where you lived, not by what you wanted. The administration of the entity overwhelmed any sense of community once I exited CYO.

Rich,

Good comments. And as I have a sermon to write, I'm going to just let them hang there for a bit. But I do have one question...What do you say of/to those who experience God as a Being? The entire Christian canon is based on such experience...even of Jesus as God.

I don't have an adequate response. At face value, it appears to be a long series of experiences that are built on each other. We all know that the power of suggestion can make imagination palpable. But I think that this is too dismissive a point of view. Paul's conversion is the most real of these experiences to me, and yet, it is easy for me to rationalize it as metaphoric and not real.

My best answer is that there has been a historical need for God to be a Being, as that was mankind's best chance to grasp God with its resources at hand. I believe that an essential part of our evolution as a people of God is the gradual abandonment of images that don't move us forward toward becoming a more perfect people. To paraphrase Paul: When I had less knowledge, I spoke with less knowledge, I understood with less knowledge, I thought based on having less knowledge, but when I knew more, I put away the old logic and adopted the new.

We are exhorted to grow and to become new again. As I mentioned, I am not ruling out that God is a being; I only say that I can't justify it as a fact. I saw a sermon on the web as I was looking for something else that states that the Bible is absolutely true because God wouldn't let it exist as a flawed document. That kind of circular logic becomes more transparent as we progress. I think it is the duty of the Church to begin the process of phasing out some of these reference points, much like we try to phase out non-inclusive language and Old Testament retribution theology. Am I right? I don't know, but I do believe it is possible and consistent with a broader interpretation of Scripture based on what we now know about how brains process that which we do not understand.