A Thin Place

God and Weather

2011-09-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

In another blog, I suggested (tongue-in-cheek) that the current drought in Texas might be God punishing Texans for being anti-gay.

This was in response to (among other things) Congressional Representative (and Presidential candidate) Michelle Bachmann's statement last month that:

I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?'

Last Sunday, on Meet the Press, Bob Schieffer asked, "[D]o you believe that God uses the weather to send people messages?"

Bachmann replied:

I believe in God. I'm not ashamed to say that I believe in God. I'm a woman of faith, and a woman of prayer. But the comments that I made right then was a metaphor, that was very simply what I was doing.

But does Michelle Bachmann believe in Jesus, and what would Jesus say?

In explaining why we should love our enemies, Jesus said:

He [God] causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

(Matt. 5:45)

If you believe in the words of the Bible and the words of Jesus, then no, God does not use the weather to send people messages.

The Parent Metaphor

2010-10-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

In my own thinking about God (or the Divine, or whatever word we want to use), the metaphor that I have found to be most useful is the metaphor of the loving parent, because it carries with it the idea of unconditional love.

A truly loving (and wise) parent will not try to control a child's life, and will not try to control what they do or who they love. They will not plan paths for their children, but instead allow their children to go their own ways.

This is very much the imagery that Jesus was drawing upon when he called God "the Father." For example, in the "Parable of the Prodigal Son" found in Luke 15:11-32, what was the plan of the father for his son, and how did he try to control or guide his son's life? The answers are none, and he didn't. When the prodigal son asked for the share of the property that would be his someday, the father gave it to him, and there's no mention of any arguments or questions. And then the son left. Once again, no mention of what the father might have said. And then, when the son had wasted all of the money and had returned home, the father greeted him without questions or recriminations. Unconditional love.

But we also have to raise that bar a notch or two because when we're talking about the difference between God and Mankind, we're not talking about the (metaphorical) difference between a parent and an adult child, but the difference between an adult and an infant. (For a sense of the gulf between God and Mankind, read the diatribe that God addresses to Job in chapter 38-41.)

So when we ask about God's "will" or expectations for us, the best metaphor is that of a parent whose small child has gone to the backyard with other children to play. Does the parent care if the children play hide-and-seek, or cops-and-robbers, or cowboys-and-indians? And does the parent really care whether the child plays the role of the seeker or the sought, the cop or the robber, or the cowboy or the indian?

That's my response to people who ask if God could really love Hitler. If we really are as children to God, then Nazism was just another childish game, and God loves his children regardless of what games they have decided to play.

The Nine Billion Names of God

2010-08-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

"The Nine Billion Names of God" is the title of a science fiction story I read years ago, the details of which are not relevant to this message, except that it described a religion in Tibet which believed that God had a specific number of names (about nine billion names), and that the purpose of mankind was to write out all of those names.

I thought about that story after driving with a friend, because I pointed out a red-tailed hawk that was sitting on a fence-post at the edge of the road and I was surprised that my friend didn't really seem interested. I can understand someone not wanting to spend time learning about birds, or spend time looking for them, but it puzzled me that someone wouldn't want to admire and learn about a magnificent, beautiful bird that was sitting in plain sight by the side of the road.

In thinking about my own attitudes, I realized that I felt a certain obligation to learn about the animals and plants around me. I can't know God directly, and I can't understand all of creation, but the least I can do is learn the names of the living pieces of God that are around me.

It started with birds, and I've always been pretty good with trees. Lately I've started trying to identify wildflowers, so I'm now learning about Spreading Dogbane, Cow Vetch, Yellow Spearwort, and Pickerel Weed, among others.

I'm thinking that next I'll try to identify different kinds of mosses, lichens, and fungus.

And I'm hoping that the total will be fewer that nine billion.

The Theology of Health Care Reform

2010-02-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

I experience a certain amount of cognitive dissonance every time I hear a politician or pundit express opposition to universal health care when the same politician or pundit has previously advocated "Christian values." For example, the "C Street" members of Congress are all very public in their Christianity, very Republican, and very opposed to health care reform.

I describe my reaction as "cognitive dissonance" because it is difficult for me to understand how anyone who thinks of themselves as "Christian" could possibly oppose health care reform or government support of health care.

Consider one of the most well-known of all parables, the parable of the "good Samaritan" in Luke 10:25-37. The context of the parable was an exchange about what Jesus elsewhere described as "the two great commandments," that you should love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. Jesus was then asked "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied with a story of a man who had been beaten and robbed by thieves and left as dead by the side of the road. Priests and Levites passed him on the road, but a Samaritan (not a Jew) saw him and, moved by pity, bound his wounds and took care of him. Jesus asked which of the three was a neighbor to the man who was robbed and was told, "The one who showed him mercy," to which Jesus replied, "Go and do likewise."

Is there any doubt but that we are required to show mercy to those who are sick or wounded?

In another often-quoted passage, sometimes referred to as the "parable of the sheep and the goats" but more often as the "Judgment of the Nations," Matt. 25:31-45, the context is more complicated, because Jesus is describing future events, and quotes the "Son of Man" when he "comes in his glory" with "all the nations [...] gathered before him." Jesus says that the king will say to those at his right that they are blessed and will inherit the kingdom, because "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

When asked by "the righteous" when it was that he was hungry, thirsty, naked, or sick, the king will reply that "just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did to to me."

Once again, is there any question but that the righteous will take care of those who are sick, even the least of us?

And yet the self-righteous "Christians" among us are blocking efforts to apply our collective resources to the care of the sick.

I have not seen any public discussion of why someone who calls himself or herself a Christian would oppose universal health care, but the only possible rationale I have been able to imagine is a concern that non-believers would be required to pay tax money for health care for others, and Christians do not want to force their beliefs on non-Christians.

Of course, that same kind of concern doesn't stop those same Christians from being ready and willing to force on others their views on abortion, same-sex marriage, and military spending.

And why don't we let the non-believers speak for themselves? Why don't we who believe in Christian values speak out in support of the principle of health care for all, and be willing (even glad) for our tax dollars to help pay for the health care of the sick and needy? Why is there support for universal health care among atheists and agnostics and so little support among fundamentalist Christians?

Can anyone say "lame rationalization"?

I'm afraid that self-proclaimed Christians oppose health care reform because they are trying to serve two masters, God and wealth, and are failing (as Jesus predicted in Matt. 6:24). If you are so concerned about your own money, and with your own tax liabilities, that you can't support the idea that we should all help each other with the costs of being sick, than you can't really love God and you can't really love your neighbor.

Guns and Jesus

2009-06-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

According to the New York Times, the pastor of a church in Louisville, Kentucky, has asked his congregation to bring their guns to church as an "open carry celebration" of "our rights as Americans!”

The pastor, Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church, is quoted as saying that "I don’t see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist."

Whether followers of the teachings of Jesus must be pacifists is a good question, but is not the question I want to address today. The question that concerns me today is whether a true Christian should allow his love of his guns to interfere or compete with his love for God, or his love for his fellow man.

The second of the 10 Commandments is that "You shall not makes for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (Exodus 20:4-5)

The principle that we should not be attached to physical objects or other worldly things also appears frequently in the teachings of Jesus. Consider these few examples from the "Sermon on the Mount" as reported in the gospel of Matthew: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth" (6:19), "You cannot serve God and wealth" (6:24), and "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear" (6:25). And also consider Jesus's advice to the young man in Matt. 19:16-22, which was that he should "sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." The young man "went away grieving, for he had many possessions."

I believe that God wants us to enjoy our lives, and enjoy the physical world, including our possessions. But our possessions must be tools to an end, and not an end in themselves. We use a tool as long as it serves us, and lay it aside when it does not. Our possessions should be tools we use to enjoy our lives, but should not control our lives.

So someone who enjoys wordworking can take some pleasure in owning good woodworking tools, and someone who enjoys target shooting can take some pleasure in owning a good gun. But only some pleasure. If we take too much pleasure from our tools and cannot put them aside, or if we worry about our tools, then we are addicted to the tools or are worshipping the tools.

Even if we are not commanded to shun tools of violence, we are nevertheless commanded to be indifferent to them, and to treat them as any other tool. We should not celebrate a "bring your gun to church day" any more than we should celebrate a "bring your chisel to church day" or even a "bring your iPod to church day."

But Pastor Pagano is not indifferent to guns, but (according to the Times) "passionate." He responds to critics of guns in churches with passion, describing the issue as "a crusade."

And so my concern about Pastor Pagano is not that he owns guns or enjoys shooting guns, but that he loves his guns, and that his love for his guns is distracting him from more important matters of faith. My concern is not about pacifism, but idolatry.

A Prayer for Friends Hospice

2009-06-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

This prayer will need some explaining.

I serve on the board of trustees of Friends Hospice, which is a nonprofit Quaker organization that works to ensure that all peoples in Philadelphia have access to high quality, compassionate care at the end of life, regardless of ability to pay. We offer spiritually grounded, state of the art medical care and counseling to all in the Philadelphia area who are facing serious illnesses, including undocumented residents, people with disabilities, the homeless, and people with little or no family support.

I also believe in the power of intercessory prayer, because I believe that the universe will give you what you want if you clearly state and make known what you want. As Jesus said, "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks the door will be opened." (NRSV Matt. 7:7-8)

Since the hospice began operations in December 2007, we have provided the quality of care we want to provide, but we have had difficulty attracting the right number of hospice participants (patients), and so our staff and our resources are currently under-utilized.

At a recent meeting of the board of trustees, we agreed on what we wanted in new hospice participants, and this is a somewhat modified version of that request:

Spirit, please send to Friends Hospice Project two disenfranchised, reimbursable people at end of life who live in north or west Philadelphia, and who are emotionally available for hospice care. Please let these people be timely new referrals who can accept home-based hospice care, and who have a community of friends and family who are teachable, will be grateful for our care, and are willing to talk to others about us. Please let some of the participants come to us through an appropriate large referral source such as Project Home or Jefferson Hospital, and let us have a balance of challenge and grace in our work as a result of these admissions. Thank you.

By reading this prayer, you will have helped Friends Hospice in its mission. Thank you.

The Christmas Stories

2008-12-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, "stories" plural.

When thinking about Christmas as the traditional celebration of the birth of Jesus (and not a marketing ploy), Christians should remember that two of the four gospels make no mention whatsoever of the birth of Jesus, and the other two gospels tell stories that are not just different, but actually conflicting.

A traditional Christmas celebration will include readings from both Luke and Matthew, and mix them together, but let's take a look at what the Bible actually says.

In the book of Luke, Mary and Joseph start in the town of Nazareth, but then must go to the town of Bethlehem in order to comply with a census supposedly ordered by Caesar Augustus (for which there is no historical evidence whatsoever). There is no room at the inn so Mary gives birth to Jesus in the stable. Shepherds are told of the birth of Jesus by angels and they come to the stable to see the baby Jesus. Mary and Joseph travel to Jerusalem with Jesus, and then eventually return to Nazareth. No mention of any wise men from the east, no star over Bethlehem, no slaughter of male babies, and no trip to Egypt.

In the book of Matthew, the story is quite different. Mary and Joseph seem to be living in Bethelem already (i.e., no census by Caesar Augustus) and Jesus is born in their home. No mention of any stable, manger, or shepherds. Instead, wise men come from the east, follow a rising star to Bethlehem, and offer gifts to Jesus. Then Mary, Joseph, and Jesus flee to Egypt when Herod orders the death of all children in or around Bethlehem that are two years of age or younger, another seemingly noteworthy event for which there is no other historical evidence. After Herod dies, Mary and Joseph return to Israel, but are still afraid to return to Bethlehem in Judea, and instead settle in Nazareth in Galilea, where they have apparently never lived before.

It is also remarkable that the gospels of Luke and Matthew tell these stories once and then never mention them again. Jesus himself never refers to his own birth, and he is never asked about it, which seems strange given the unusual (to say the least) circumstances of his birth. And there is no mention of the birth of Jesus in the book of Acts, any of the letters of Paul, or any other part of the New Testament.

Finally, we have to confront the fact that the authors of both Luke and Matthew wanted Jesus to be born in Bethlehem in order to fulfill a prophecy, but that he should be "from" Nazareth in order to fulfill another prophesy. So it appears that each of the authors constructed a story to explain why Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and they constructed different stories. The authors also had very different goals for their stories, because Matthew describes Jesus as royalty, descended from King David, sought after by wise men from the east, and seen as a threat by King Herod, while Luke describes a lowly birth in a stable noticed only by angels and shepherds.

What are we to make of all this? Two conclusions seem unavoidable.

The first conclusion is that the stories of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke cannot be considered factual. They contradict each other, so they can't both be accurate, and there are too many problems with them to believe that either is historically accurate.

The second conclusion is that the stories of the birth of Jesus are not very important to Christianity as a faith, and so whether you want to believe or disbelieve the stories is also not very important. You can be a "good Christian" (whatever that might mean) whether you choose to believe the story in Luke, or the story in Matthew, both of them, or neither of them.

The corollary to these conclusions is that, once we have stripped the stories of any historical or theological significance, we can have fun with them. We can transform the wise men of the Bible into three kings, and we can make up names for them, such as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. We can construct scenes in which the three kings from Matthew are mixed in with the shepherds and manger from Luke. We can write songs about lame shepherds (Amahl) and little drummer boys.

All good fun. And isn't that what Christmas is all about?

The Meaning of Life

2008-09-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know the meaning of life.

It came to me one night as I was thinking about the pain of relationships, and why we have to suffer from self-doubt and embarrassment, and what is the point of having to struggle for happiness.

And then it occurred to me that the struggle was the whole point. Not because we are supposed to struggle and prevail, or because we are supposed to struggle and lose, but we are supposed to experience the struggle.

In Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch expresses his own view of the purpose of creation. In his version of Genesis, there was nothing but God in the beginning, and God created a physical reality and people within that reality so that there would be something that is not God. God could not see or appreciate His/Her/Its own divinity until there was something that was not divine against which to compare God. There is a difference between merely knowing something and actually experiencing it, and God wanted the fullness of experiencing Itself. Walsch reports this explanation from God:

[T]he All of Everything chose to know Itself experientially. ... It reasoned, quite correctly, that any portion of Itself would necessarily have to be less than the whole, and that if It thus simply divided itself into portions, each portion, being less than the whole, could look back on the rest of Itself and see magnificence.

Hinduism has a similar view of creation, beginning with a One which is alone and finds no joy in being alone and so fragments Itself into millions of little pieces which then proceed to play a game of hide-and-seek with each other. The fragmentation and diversity of creation is a kind of game that God plays with Itself.

A Course in Miracles says that we each share a part of the mind of God. Quakers talk about "the Light within" each person.

All of these expressions point to the same conclusion, which is that we straddle the line between what is God and what is not God. We experience both the love and joy and communion that is God and the fear and sorrow and loneliness that is not God. It is the experience of both that makes us human.

And we can't choose between them or embrace one and exclude the other. There is no such thing as joy if there is no sorrow, and there is no such thing as love if there is no fear or anger. There is no peace if there is no pain. We must be able to experience what is not God in order to know and appreciate what is God. The purpose of our lives is to experience both so that, through us, God may know just how wonderful God is.

Life is, as is often said, all about the journey, and not about the destination. Once we trust in God and accept the assurances of Jesus that our destinations will all be the same regardless of what path we take, we can stop worrying and take the time to appreciate just how marvelous it all is.

Which is our function, after all.

The "Peace Tax"

2008-05-30T04:55:00.000-07:00

I have already explained why I do not agree with the idea of war tax resistance. Many people who support the idea of war tax resistance also support an idea that has been called the "peace tax," and now I am led to explain why I don't agree with the "peace tax" either.

The form of the "peace tax" that is currently before Congress is H.R. 1921, the "Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act." Skipping over findings and definitions, we find the guts of the act in section 4, which states in subsection a that:

The Secretary of the Treasury shall establish an account in the Treasury of the United States to be known as the 'Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund', for the deposit of income, gift, and estate taxes paid by or on behalf of taxpayers who are designated conscientious objectors.

And in subsection b that:

Monies deposited in the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund shall be allocated annually to any appropriation not for a military purpose.

How could anyone object to that? Conscientious objectors get to pay their taxes into a special fund that is used only for non-military purposes, and so get to pay their taxes without contributing to wars. It's a win-win, right?

Actually, it's more like a nothing-nothing. It's nothing but a bookkeeping gimmick that divides tax receipts into two piles, and then allocates expenses between the two piles, but (and here's the important part) the expenses haven't changed. It is clear from the statutory language quoted above that the "Religious Peace Tax Fund" will only be spent on appropriations already approved by Congress and will not increase any non-military spending. The money that passes through the peace tax fund for non-military spending will simply be offset by an increase in the amounts for military spending from other tax funds. So military spending remains the same, and non-military spending remains the same. The path that the monies might take might change, and things might look different on paper, but the end of the path is the same and nothing has changed in reality.

The only way the proposed statute might have any real-world impact is if so many taxpayers directed money to the peace tax fund that there wasn't enough tax money to pay for military appropriations, but there are at least two reasons to believe that will never happen:

First, the number of taxpayers who are likely to direct their tax dollars to the peace tax fund, and the number of dollars directed to that fund, is never going to be large enough to impact the federal budget. According to the figures supplied by the IRS in the instructions to Form 1040 for 2007, in fiscal year 2006 military spending was 23% of the federal budget, while the personal income tax was 39% of the federal budget. The gift tax and estate tax (which are the other two taxes affected by HR 1921) are usually reported to be no more than 2% of the federal budget, so let's assume that 41% of the federal budget could be directed to the peace tax fund. Even if a majority of taxpayers directed that a majority of the income, gift, and estate taxes should go to the peace tax fund, there would still be enough of those taxes (half of 41%, or 20% of the budget), together with the corporate income tax (13% of the budget) to pay for military spending (23% of the budget). But if a majority of the taxpayers were that strongly opposed to military spending, that majority could simply elect a new Congress and actually reduce military spending instead of going through the charade of the "peace tax."

Second, even if enough taxpayers directed money into the peace tax fund to cause some kind of a spending problem for the military, there is nothing in the act that would prevent the Treasury from "borrowing" from the peace tax fund to pay for military spending, just as money is now "borrowed" from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay expenses unrelated to Social Security.

So the peace tax fund will never have any effect whatsoever on military spending, and does no good. And I believe that it will do us moral and spiritual harm.

It harms us because it dulls the pain of war. It would allow us to think that war is no longer our responsibility because we didn't vote for the politicians who sent us to war and because it's no longer "our" tax dollars paying for the war. But it is our responsibility. It is our government, and our responsibility, and we can't wash our hands (as Pontius Pilate did) and absolve ourselves through a bookkeeping gimmick.

If the Peace Testimony means anything, it means that we change our behavior, and not just our accounting methods.

Metaphors Redux

2008-03-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

Years ago, in a message entitled "The Finger or the Moon," I wrote about how the words we use for God and our spiritual experiences are only metaphors for the experiences themselves. I was reminded of that recently, while reading The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D.

According to Dr. Douglas-Klotz, the Aramaic word that Jesus would have used for "God" was Allaha, which is very similar to the Arabic (and Islamic) Allah, both of which can be translated as "Sacred Unity."

And here's where I see a problem: Our word for God is not Aramaic or Arabic, but Germanic, based on the German word Gott. Like the Greek word theos, Gott was originally used to describe an anthropomorphic deity. Odin (a Germanic god) and Zeus (a Greek god) were both depicted in human terms, with human appearances and human emotions, even though possessing supernatural powers. That is the image of "God" that I had in childhood, and it is the idea of "God" that I now reject.

Somehow, we have received the Judaic and Aramaic concepts of the divine spirit that unifies the world through the "lens" (or "filter") of Greek and Germanic language and thought. By contrast, Islam seems to have preserved its purity, maintaining a concept of Allah that cannot be reduced (or limited) to any image or other worldly metaphor, much as Taoism continues to speak of "the Tao" as something that is ultimately indescribable. (The very first line of the Tao te Ching declares that "The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.")

Quakers talk about "the Inner Light" and "the Divine" as things that unite us, and that is the way I like to think now. There is a logic or force or principle in the world that is ultimately unknowable, and yet intimately connected to us all, and comforting. That is what I mean what I say "God."

Quaker Jargon

2008-01-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

Soon after I began attending Quaker meetings, I became aware that Quakers have their own meanings for some words and phrases that are different from the meanings used by non-Quakers. That kind of jargon frequently appears in cultural or vocational groups, and can serve an number of different purposes.

One possible purpose of jargon is to act as a shibboleth, or a way of distinguishing the "insiders" from the "outsiders." Although early English Quakers consciously adopted manners of "plain dress" and "plain speech" that distinguished them from other segments of English society, those manners arose out of spiritual concerns (the Testimony of Simplicity) and not out of a desire for separation. And I have found that Quakers are always willing to explain unusual words and phrases, and want people to understand the language they use, so the separation seems to be more of an undesirable side-effect than a goal.

Another possible purpose of jargon is to reduce the number of words needed to communicate complicated ideas by assigning a special or more specific meaning to those words. For example, a lawyer practicing in my area of law (trusts and estates) might refer to a "QTIP trust," which I would understand to be a trust for the benefit of a surviving spouse that qualifies for the federal estate tax marital deduction through a provision in the Internal Revenue Code for "qualified terminable interest property" ("QTIP"). That's a lot of meaning to pack into one abbreviation. And the primary purpose of most Quaker jargon is to pack more meaning into fewer words.

The following are some common Quaker expressions (in no particular order) that I think provide some insight into Quaker ways of thinking and the refinements of meaning that seem to be important to Quakers. This is not intended to be definitive or comprehensive, but just a point of view from this (fairly) recently convinced Quaker.

Meeting. This word is used in at least four different ways. It can be used in its usual sense, meaning any gathering of people (as in "there was a meeting of the committee last night"). It can also mean a Quaker worship service (i.e., a meeting for worship). It can also be used to refer to those Quakers who are gathered in worship (i.e., what other faiths might call the congregation), or to a group of Quakers as an organizational entity (i.e., what other faiths might call a church).

Leading. Short for "leading of the Spirit," it can be used to describe any spirit-led desire for any action or resolution. A leading might (or might not) result in a ministry or a witness.

Discernment. A spiritual decision. Specifically, the spiritual process by which leadings are determined. (What might look like a "decision" to other people becomes a "discernment" to Quakers.)

Concern. Something that is troubling to the spirit. It might be as big as world hunger, or as small as the size of the meeting's electric bill. Through discernment, a concern might (or might not) become a leading.

Ministry. This word can be used to describe almost any kind of faith-based service, but is usually reserved for regular or recognized service to the spiritual needs of others. So, for example, a commitment to regularly visit other Quakers in nursing-homes might be recognized as a ministry.

Vocal Ministry. The ministry that occurs when Quakers spontaneously rise to deliver messages during meeting for worship.

Witness. Can be used as both a noun and a verb to describe any action that is an expression of faith. So, for example, a refusal to be drafted into the armed forces, or a refusal to pay taxes to support the military, might be described as a "witness" or as "witnessing." See also, testimony.

Testimonies. Quaker "testimonies" are not words, but actions. So, for example, the Peace Testimony is not a form of words, but the act of living without violence.

Notion. A somewhat derisive term applied to an idea or belief that has no importance to the speaker, such as a theological concept with no apparent worldly consequences. A question about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is definitely a "notion," and questions about the divinity of Jesus might also be considered "notions" to some Quakers.

Inner Light. The "that of God" that Quakers believe is in everyone.

The Purpose of Forgiveness

2008-01-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

In a previous post, on "doing the right thing," I proposed that the reason we should follow the teachings of Jesus, and God's laws generally, is not for any reward in an after-life, or any material reward here on earth, but in order to achieve an immediate spiritual reward or spiritual peace. Today, I want to talk more specifically about the purpose of one of Jesus's more challenging commandments, that we forgive one another.

The doctrine of forgiveness shows up in a lot of different places, and in a lot of different ways. It is explicit in the Lord's Prayer, but it is also inherent in the commandments that we love our neighbors as ourselves, that we love our enemies, and that we not judge others, because you can't love someone without also forgiving them, and you can't forgive someone while also judging them. Forgiveness is also central to the Quaker "Peace Testimony," which is not just about rejecting violence but also about rejecting hate, anger, resentment, greed, and other emotions that lead to violence.

But why are we to forgive one another? What is the purpose, and what is achieved?

When I hear others speak about forgiveness, it almost always sounds like something we are supposed to do for the benefit of the person forgiven. In other words, it is just a variation on the "be nice to others" theme. But why are we to be nice to others?

Forgiveness is also sometimes advocated (and criticized) because the "world will be a better place" if everyone did it. This is something I often hear from skeptics about the Quaker "Peace Testimony," which is that I am under the delusion that, if I stop fighting then my enemy will stop fighting, and if I disarm then my enemy will also disarm. But that is not what I believe at all.

Along the same lines, forgiveness is also sometimes presented as a matter of self-interest, based on the belief that, if we forgive, we will also be forgiven. This seems like a natural conclusion for statements such as "Judge not, that ye not be judged," and the "Golden Rule," which allows at least the implication that if we treat others as we would like to be treated, they might do the same.

All of these things might be ancillary results of forgiveness, but are not the central purpose of forgiveness, which I believe is our own spiritual peace, which I call "salvation."

Anger, resentment, and judgments are spiritual burdens, and angry, resentful, and judgmental people are unhappy people. It is only by letting go of our anger, resentment, or judgments towards others that we can be at peace with ourselves, and perhaps also at peace with them. And that means forgiving them.

In my own life, I have learned that peace and contentment come only when I have given up my point of view. I was reminded of this just this morning, because I had been turning over a dispute over and over again in my mind for several days, and was very troubled about how to prevail in the dispute, and this morning I realized that what was most troubling about the arguments that kept going through my head was that I felt mean and petty as I voiced them in my head. To be at peace, I need to let go of my emotions towards my opponents and forgive them.

So forgiveness is not something we do for others, but something we do for ourselves. Its purpose is our spiritual peace, and our salvation.

Faith and Taxes

2007-12-26T06:29:00.000-08:00

A recent article in the New York Times described the views of a tax professor in Alabama who also has a degree in religious studies and has published articles making the argument that tax
policies that are not progressive violate Judeo-Christian values. Johnston, David Kay, "Professor Cites Bible in Faulting Tax Policies" (New York Times 12/25/2007).

For those who might be interested in reading her most comprehensive article, see Hamill, Susan Pace, "An Evaluation of Federal Tax Policy Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics," 25 Va. Tax Rev. 671 (Winter 2006). (More information about Prof. Hamill and her writings can be found at http://www.law.ua.edu/susanhamill/.)

The law review article is written in a dryly academic style, but I found it to be very comforting
and exciting to read, for a number of reasons.

First, it shows that there are still people who take faith seriously. Not "seriously" in the gay-bashing, defend-against-an-alleged-war-on-Christmas, or put-the-10-Commandments-in-the-courthouse kind of way, but in a "what does it mean to love your neighbor" and "what should we be doing to improve the lives of others" kind of way.

The article also made a number of statements which were consistent with my beliefs, and so provided me with some assurance that perhaps I wasn't as much on the fringe as I often feel.

In that way, the article was also comforting because it provided evidence that a liberal Quaker like myself can find common ground with conservative evangelical (which is how Professor Hamill is described). (That a desire for social justice should unite liberal and conservative Christians was also one of the themes of Marcus Borg's book, The Heart of Christianity, which is highly recommended.)

Finally, the article was comforting because it gave me hope that, if we can all think and talk more about our values, and think less about our own pocketbooks, maybe we can achieve some real progressive tax reforms and social welfare reforms (such as universal health care)

Light, Darkness, and Consciousness

2007-09-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

In The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D. (Theosophical Publishing House, 1999), Dr. Douglas-Klotz writes that the words in Aramaic (and Hebrew) for "light" and "darkness" signify not just different levels of light but also different qualities of thought. Light is orderly and linear, while darkness is chaotic and swirling. He states that, "Psychologically, they are like the start-to-finish, cause-and-effect nature of rational thinking compared to the zig-zag nature of intuitive thinking."

I have previously written that the story of Adam and Eve might be a mythic explanation, or metaphor, for the emergence of consciousness out of breakdown of the "bicameral mind." Our brains have separate hemisphere, one of which is more intuitive and the other of which is more logical, and what we call consciousness may have arisen when the two halves of our brains began to interact more closely.

Dr. Douglas-Klotz believes that the creation story in Genesis expresses a need for balance between light and darkness, which is undoubtedly true, because God did not abolish darkness, but only separated the light from the darkness, calling one "day" and the other "night." (Gen. 1:4-5) But it is also important that the darkness preceded the light, because before God said "Let there be light," a "darkness covered the face of the deep." (Gen. 1:2)

In other words, not just the story of Adam and Eve but also the creation story itself may be a metaphor for the rise of rational thought out of the "swirling" of a brain dominated by its intuitive hemisphere, and the rise of consciousness out of the balance between them.

Seeing God

2007-08-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

I have been reading The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz, Ph.D. (Theosophical Publishing House, 1999), which is about understanding the teachings of Jesus as they might have been understood by someone who heard them in Aramaic, which was the language spoken by Jesus. I will be writing more about this book later, but a few explanations are needed now.

The author does not claim to know exactly what words Jesus used in Aramaic, because the oldest manuscripts of the Gospels are in Greek. There is a very old version of the Gospels in Aramaic, but most Western scholars believe that it is a translation into Aramaic from Greek, rather than a version of the Gospels that pre-dates the Greek versions. The author therefore uses the Aramaic Gospels to explore possible different understandings of what Jesus taught, and makes no claims about what Jesus "really" said or meant.

I had only reached the second chapter of the book when a translation at the beginning of the chapter stopped me in my tracks. The Beatitude that is translated in the King James Version of the Bible as "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," (Matt. 5:8) was translated from Aramaic into English as "Ripe are the consistent in heart; they shall see Sacred Unity everywhere."

The KJV version is mystical and to me, largely incomprehensible, even though it is familiar. The Aramaic version somehow had instant meaning for me, even though it was unfamiliar.

I had already read that the Aramaic word for "ripe" also meant "good" and "ready." The phrases "consistent in heart" and "see Sacred Unity everywhere" reminded me of an experience from several years ago that profoundly affected my view of the world. As I explained in a much earlier entry, on "Holiness," I once did an exercise in silently blessing those I encountered during the day, and as a result I began to see those I blessed (and myself) differently. Remembering that experience as I read the phrase "consistent in heart," I realized how important it was for me to bless everyone, without any judgment about them In that consistent view of those around me, I saw what I would now (as a Quaker) call "the light within." By consistently viewing all of those around me as blessed children of God, I had "ripened" and come closer to seeing God (the "Sacred Unity") itself.

It may seem like a self-fulfiling exercise, but my experience has been that, if you consistently look for that of God in everyone, you will see God in everyone, and will see that which unites us rather than what divide us.

Doing the Right Thing

2007-07-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

In talking about religion and political or social issues, many people want to discuss what is the “right thing” to do. But before trying to decide what is right, you might want consider why you would want to do the “right thing.”

Assuming that the “right thing” is something that is (or has been) determined by God in some way and is knowable by us in some way, I can think of only four different reasons one might want to do the “right thing”:

Obedience for the sake of obedience: You should follow God’s laws simply because they are God’s laws, without regard to consequences.
Reward in the afterlife: There is a life after death and God will punish you in the hereafter if you don’t do what you’re told, or will reward you if you do what you’re told.
Reward here on earth: God will punish you here on earth by bringing misfortunes on you if you don’t do what you’re told, or will reward you with worldly riches if you do what you’re told. Or, if you prefer a more mechanistic and less anthropomorphic theology, you could say that God’s laws represent fundamental physical and social laws, so “doing the right thing” should produce desirable consequences here on earth.
Spiritual reward: God will not actively punish or reward you, but has put in you a desire to be at peace with God and your fellow human beings, and you can achieve spiritual peace and contentment by doing the "right thing."

Let’s explore through each of these possible reasons and look to see if they make any sense.

Obedience for the sake of obedience

There are several problems with the idea that we should obey God’s law (or “do the right thing”) just because God says so, without regard to the consequences.

One problem is that it is inconsistent with the idea that human beings can think and exercise free will. Why would God both give human beings the ability to think and expect us to do what we are told without thinking?

Another problem is that the lack of consequences to our actions seems to make the rightness of our actions meaningless. What is the point of spending time figuring out what God wants us to do, and then doing what God wants, if it has no consequences whatsoever. It’s sort of like asking a question and then ignoring the answer. God asks us to do certain things, we do them, and then he pays no attention whatsoever to what we do. It's all a complete waste of time.

Although I said I was going to assume that God's will is knowable, a complete lack of consequences would also seem to make God's will unknowable. If there are no consequences to what we do, how can we ever be sure we’ve got it right? Without any standards to just how well we’ve done in the past, our future actions become increasingly uncertain.

Which makes the concept of “right for right’s sake,” and the people who believe in it, very frightening. If a person can't decide what is or is not the “right thing” by looking at the consequences, then the decision about what is “right” is completely arbitrary, depending in many cases on what the person was taught as a child, or what the person has been led to by a charismatic leader. Without any way of testing their beliefs, people can make all sorts of toxic judgments about what is the “right thing,” which can be relatively mild (such as shunning homosexuals) or more extreme (such as deciding to kill heretics).

Reward in the afterlife

Obeying God’s law in order to achieve eternal life, heavenly paradise, or some other reward after death is a little better than simple obedience for the sack of obedience, because at least we know why we’re doing what we’re doing. But it's contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

Take the parable of the prodigal son. The son who goes off and commits just about every sin imaginable is welcomed back by his loving father without ever having to repent, express regret, or pretend to change his ways. And this is consistent with many other parables and teachings of Jesus, who describes a God of seemingly infinite and unconditional love. I am, for that reason, a "universalist." I simply cannot believe in a God who would ever punish anyone for anything.

Needless to say, if everyone gets into Heaven, then it's no longer a reward for "doing good" on earth and a different motivation is needed for "doing good."

The idea of a reward in an afterlife also suffers from a lack of empiricism. If all the rewards (or punishments) come after we’re dead, and no one comes back from the dead to tell us what works or doesn’t work, how can we ever know if we’re making the right choices?

Reward here on earth

Now we're getting closer to something empirical and verifiable. If there are material consequences for our actions, then we can test whether or not we're doing the right thing by seeing how God reacts. Prosperity means we've been doing good things, and drought, plagues, disease, and calamities mean we're doing the wrong things.

It's a good belief system and is still used in many parts of the world, including parts of the world that call themselves "Christian." Of course, what Jesus said is exactly the opposite.

"[Your Father in heaven] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:43.)

Just about everyone who has ever thought about it has puzzled over why God would cause bad things to happen to good people (and vice versa).

So scratch the idea that God provide material rewards for good behavior.

Spiritual reward

My fourth choice, that obeying the word of God gives us spiritual peace and contentment here on earth, is more than just a winner by default, but represents the best explanation of the teachings of Jesus and other great religious teachers of history (e.g., Buddha, Lao-Tzu, et al.)

Jesus said that "The kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21) And, as I have argued (and will argue) elsewhere in this blog, the ultimate purpose of the teachings of Jesus is the achievement of what Buddhists call "nirvana" or "enlightenment," what the apostle Paul called "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Phil. 4:7), and what I call "salvation."

Using spiritual reward as a test for God's will also creates an empirical faith, or what Quakers call "experiential." You can use your own life as a laboratory and see what kinds of thoughts and actions lead to peace and what kinds lead to anxiety or strife.

Try it.

Where the Decisions Come From

2007-05-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a workshop on clerking at Pendle Hill, which is a Quaker center for spiritual growth, study, and service in Wallingford Pennsylvania. During one of the workshop sessions, the leader asked us why we are concerned about unity in our meetings for business and why strive for a "sense of the meeting."

I have some thoughts about an answer to that question, but some explanation of Quaker process may be needed first in order to make the question understandable to non-Quakers.

The members of Quaker meetings (by which I mean the churches or congregations of Quakers) conduct their business (such as the adoption of budgets, elections of officers, and other matters relevant to the meeting) through a "meeting for business," also known as a "meeting for worship with a view towards business." It might also be described as a "meeting for business in a spirit of worship." In a meeting for business, the members of the meeting strive to achieve unity in every decision, and much of the workshop I attended was devoted to understanding how the clerk of the meeting (who presides at meetings for business) can help the meeting achieve that unity. But why do we Quakers care about unity? Why can't we simply take a vote and let the majority rule, or why can't we simply negotiate a consensus? Why do we struggle with the leadings of the Spirit and strive for unity?

In thinking about those questions, I remembered a story that John Woolman (1720-1772) related in his Journal. Woolman described a meeting for worship that he attended along with several native Americans. After hearing a long prayer from Woolman, one of them put his hand on his own chest and said "I love to feel where the words come from." That is very good description of the joy of Quaker worship. When we are lead by the Spirit and speak out of silence, and we hear the words of others who have been lead to speak, we can feel a connection to God and it is that connection that brings us both peace and joy.

Quakers also love to feel where the decisions come from. When we are able to reach a sense of the meeting in unity, there is a great sense of both peace and joy. If there is that of God in all of us, and we are able to share that part of God in our decisions, then the decision-making process (and the decision itself) becomes part of our connection to God and to each other.

The Quaker decision-making process is therefore an outward manifestation of our inner faith. It is one of the ways in which we try to put our belief in the goodness and sacredness of each person into practice. And when we are successful in achieving unity, it is indeed a form of worship, a sacred "thin place" in which we can become closer to the Divine.

War Tax Resistance

2007-04-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

Quakers have a long history of refusing to pay taxes that pay for wars. In modern times, we have not had taxes specifically identified as taxes for wars, so those who decide that they cannot, in good conscience, pay war taxes are lead to withhold a percentage of the federal income tax based (usually) on the percentage of the federal budget war that is military spending.

Refusing to pay taxes (or parts of taxes) used to fund wars seems like a logical extension of the Peace Testimony, but war tax resistance does not seem to be well supported by the teachings of Jesus, and might actually be inconsistent with those teachings.

When Jesus was asked about the payment of Roman taxes, he asked for the coin used to pay the tax (a Roman coin) and then asked whose image was on the coin. When told it was Caesar's, Jesus replied that we should "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's; and to God the things that are God's." Matt. 22:15-22 (NRSV). (See also, Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26.) That story might or might not be a commandment that we should always pay our taxes, but it certainly doesn't support the idea that we should be refusing to pay taxes. The Roman Empire was an empire built by military conquest, and the taxes paid to Rome supported that military. If Jesus had qualms about paying taxes to support military conquest, he certainly didn't show it there.

Other teachings of Jesus are similarly inconsistent with tax resistance, even in those passages often quoted to support the ideal of pacifism. In the version of the "Sermon on the Mount" in Matthew, Jesus said "Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile." Matt. 5:39-41 (NRSV). My understanding is that the "forces you to go one mile" was a reference to a Roman law or custom that required Jews to carry for at least one mile the baggage of any Roman soldier or official who might command it. Needless to say, this was greatly resented, and yet Jesus said that if your hated Roman oppressor forces you to do something, do even more than you are required to do. If our own government is evil, should we resist? According to Jesus, it is acceptable, even preferable, for us to help officials of a government that is violent.

Jesus also said that "you shall not murder" is not enough. "But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment...." Matt. 5:22 (NRSV).

What sense are we to make of these passages? Why would God want us to help our enemies, and why would God not want us to be angry?

The common thread in most of the teachings of Jesus, and the theme that allows his teachings to make sense, is spiritual peace. We are to give up anger, and be willing to love and help our enemies, because that is what will give us the greatest spiritual peace, happiness, and contentment. Eliminating war and violence may be noble goals, but that is not what the teachings of Jesus are about. The purpose of Jesus's teachings is to help us find inner peace, and not necessarily outer peace. (Jesus said "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." Matt. 10:34 (NRSV).)

A person who opposes war and other forms of institutional violence could find it spiritually disturbing that his or her tax dollars are used to help pay for war and weapons, and so war tax resistance might be more peaceful to that person than paying the taxes. But war tax resistance can have consequences, such as tax penalties, interest on both the taxes and the penalties, and even jail. (Willful failure to pay a federal tax is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine not exceeding $25,000.) And if the war tax resister has property, the government will eventually collect the taxes, interest, and penalties, regardless of the religious beliefs of the taxpayer.

So which are we to choose, the economic and emotional costs of war tax resistance or the emotional and spiritual costs of war tax compliance?

Like many other problems in life, the question seems to be addressed by the "Serenity Prayer" of Reinhold Niebuhr:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

War is something that needs to be changed, but tax resistance does not seem like an effective way to change it, even assuming that it can be changed. By the standard of the Serenity Prayer then, war tax resistance seems like an unwise choice.

Humility

2007-03-18T04:40:00.000-07:00

The word "humble" and all its variations (humility; humbly) and synonyms (e.g., the "blessed are the meek") appear frequently in both the old and new testaments of the Bible, but what is humility?

The Bible says that "the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth." Num. 12:3 (NRSV). The man who spoke to God, confronted and defied the pharaoh of Egypt, and led an entire people into the wilderness towards an unseen promised land was "very humble"? What kind of humility is that?

When I think of humility, I often think of submissiveness, which suggests weakness, but humility in the Bible suggests a kind of quiet strength.

This is explicit in one of the commentaries to "the Lost Gospel Q" (Marcus Borg, Consulting Ed.), which translates the beatitude "blessed are the meek" as "fortunate are the gentle." A footnote explains that the original Greek word was "proates" which is more accurately translated as "gentle but strong" and "connotes strength that is gentle and tinged with of caring."

All those thoughts were jumbled up in my head when I read this passage by William O. Brown (1978): "Humility is a form of inner strength, a kind of dignity that makes it less necessary for a person to pretend." (Daily Readings from Quaker Writings Ancient & Modern, Linda Hill Renfer, Ed., Serenity Press)

Mr. Brown pretty much nailed it there. Humility is an expression of confidence, because a person who is truly confident does not need to brag or boast. And when you combine that kind of confidence with compassion for others, you get the "gentle strength" that Jesus was talking about.

And I have thought of at least two ways in which humility can bring power:

Humility gives us the power to see more clearly. All too often, our perceptions of the world and ourselves are clouded by our own egos. When we see ourselves as "right" and others as "wrong," it prevents us from seeing the truth in others and prevents us from learning new truths. And seeing more clearly gives us the power to act more clearly.

Humility also gives us power because people are more likely to listen to a voice of humility than a voice of pride or arrogance. The Tao Te Ching says that "All waters are drawn to the sea; it is its lowness that gives it power." People are actually more likely to trust the judgment of a person who expresses occasional uncertainty than the "know it all" who always claims to have all the answers.

Finally, and most importantly of all, humility reflects our right relationship with God. Our faith in God give us confidence and strength. But that confidence and strength is tempered by our understanding of our human weaknesses, by our inability to understand God's plans, and by our knowledge that our salvation comes from God's grace and not because we can earn it or deserve it.

Which helps my understand a little better my favorite passage from the old testament:

"And what does the Lord required of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

The Invisible Hand

2007-03-16T18:52:00.000-07:00

In The Wealth of Nations (1776) the economist Adam Smith wrote that, when individuals pursue their own economic self-interest, the general wealth of the country increases and that general increase in prosperity benefits everyone. He described this as an "invisible hand" that guided individuals to benefit everyone even while they thought that they worked only for their own profit.

I have come to believe that there is a similar "invisible hand" in spiritual matters. When an individual acts to increase his or her own spiritual peace, the general peace of the community is increased, and so there is a benefit to all.

It's the flip side of John Donne's "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee." (Meditation XVII.) Changing the negative to positive, every man's joy enriches me, and I never send to know for whom the bell peals, because it peals for me.

And so I rejoice when I learn that someone has made a life-changing or career-changing decision, even if I think that the decision might work against me. For example, if a co-worker quits, it might mean more work for me, or it might mean that I will need to help find and train a replacement. But it also might be good for me in the long run. The replacement might be someone that I can like or learn from. Upon losing an employee, our supervisors might realize that they either need to change their ways or lose more good employees. Or I might finally decide that I need to quit in order to find a better job. But how the change benefits me is unpredictable and not important. The important thing is that someone has acted to benefit his or her own life, and that action can only serve as an inspiration or model for others and only increase the prosperity of peace in the world.

And so I embrace those who have the courage to act to change their lives. I don't know how their decisions will help me, but I am sure they they will, if for no other reason that there will be happier people in the world.

Reaping What We Sow

2007-03-10T05:29:00.000-08:00

In one of my previous posts about violence as public policy (i.e., "Guantanamo"), I quoted the Biblical admonition that "you reap whatever you sow." (See also, "The Wide Gate of Torture.") Well, it looks like at least part of the harvest is starting to come in.

The New York Times has reported that, after more than a decade of declining crime rates, many areas of the country have been experiencing double-digit increases in violent crime over the last two years. ("Violent Crime in Cities Shows Sharp Surge," 3/9/2007.) Theft and other crimes against property continue to go down, and the biggest increase in violent crime is in aggravated assaults with guns (i.e. shootings).

The article talks about a lot of different possible causes, including economics, a rise in the abuse of methamphetimine, and declining federal aid to local law enforcement, but most of the law enforcement officials who were interviewed talked about it as a social problem. There are simply more people willing to use guns to settle disputes or avenge perceived wrongs.

The leadership of a country influences the thinking of the country, so let's look at where the Bush administration has been leading us.

One of the most important policy formulations of the Bush administration is the "Bush Doctrine" that was first announced by President George W. Bush in a commencement address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on June 1, 2002, and is laid out in more detail in the "National Security Strategy of the United States" issued by the National Security Council on September 20, 2002. The essence of the Bush Doctrine is that the United States intends to maintain overwhelming military strength and will use that military strength unilaterally and preemptively against any people or country who might pose a threat to us. This policy has been described as "muscular," but it could also be described as "macho," "violent," and "paranoid."

So then we invaded Iraq without the approval of the United Nations in order to protect ourselves from weapons of mass destruction that might exist but don't, as it turns out. And, in addressing a question about the dangers of attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, President Bush responds with "bring 'em on." (7/2/2003)

The administration also has policies of seizing people it thinks might be a threat (e.g., "extraordinary rendition") and holding them indefinitely (e.g., Guantanamo) while subjecting them to "tough questioning" (i.e., physical and mental stress, threats, and abuse) without the authority of any law and without any judicial review.

And Republican leaders regularly mock those who want to cut back on our use of violence as wanting to "cut and run," implying cowardice.

So, within a few years, people on the streets begin to think (and act) as though the same rules (or lack of rules) apply to them, using deadly preemptive violence to respond to perceived threats, and never backing down from a fight.

We're reaping what the President has sown, and it is still just the beginning.

The Wide Gate of Torture

2007-02-18T06:56:00.000-08:00

In Matthew's version of the "Sermon on the Mount," Jesus presents the following admonition:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that lead to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matt. 7:13-14 (NRSV).

This is pretty much the same thing that H.L. Mencken said 1,900 years later, which is that "There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."

A recent article in the New Yorker talks about the growing acceptance of the use of torture in both the government and popular culture. The Bush administration is on record as claiming that the standards of human decency contained in the "common Article III" of the Geneva conventions do not apply to terrorism suspects in U.S. custody and, although the administration rejects the word "torture," they admit to "harsh measures" such as "waterboarding," which is universally recognized as a form of torture.

In popular culture, the use of torture as a plot device on television has exploded in the last few years, particularly on the Fox network show "24," where hardly a week goes by without the use of physical coercion or threats of physical coercion.

And the appeal of torture is obvious: It's simple and it's easy. Never mind the morality, or legality, or even the effectiveness of it; it's a simple solution to what is otherwise a complex problem. When we are threatened, all we need to do is threaten back. When they hurt us, we hurt them back. If we think someone knows something that we want to know, we hurt them until they tell us what we want to hear.

Of course, every suspect we abuse learns to hate us and becomes a terrorist for life. And the stories of torture and abuse become recruiting tools for the bands of terrorists who want to kill us. And our allies are becoming increasing disgusted by our behavior and have started to indict our agents (in Italy this week, for example, and perhaps soon also in Germany).

Yes, torture is simple. The gate is wide and the road is easy, and it leads to our destruction, not our life.

Religion v. Science

2007-02-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

(Today is "Evolution Sunday," and the 198th birthday of Charles Darwin, and so I wanted to republish my commentary on creationism, evolution, religion, and science, which I originally posted on 10/2/2005 on my "Thoughts" web page.)

I made up my mind years ago about the "conflict" between evolution and what is sometimes called "creationism," and in the process I developed a new way of looking at religion and science and the differences between them. I always expected that someday I would hear or read of someone who had reached the same conclusion, but I never have so I guess it’s time to explain my view and the reasons for it.

What appears to be a conflict between religion and science can be resolved quite easily once you understand that there is no conflict. There is no conflict between religion and science because they answer two completely different kinds of questions. As long as they can’t both answer the same question, they can’t be in conflict.

Science can really only address the question of "how." How were stars formed? How can we predict the movement of the planets? How are diseases transmitted? How do birds fly? And so forth. Science investigates and explains the chemical, mechanical, electromagnetic, atomic, and other processes by which things happen.

Religion can really only address the question of "why," which is a very different question because it goes to the meaning or purpose of the way things are and the things that happen.

Unfortunately, scientists sometimes think that by explaining how something happens, they have explained why it happens, which is where a lot of the confusion and conflict comes from.

To illustrate, consider the "debate" between "creationism" (or another other religious view of the origins of mankind) and evolution. A Darwinist might think that he (or she) has explained "why" man evolved by explaining that a process of genetic mutations and natural selection resulted in the evolution of modern man. But why did the process of natural selection lead to mankind and not some other kind of creature? The Darwinist might reply that natural selection occurs because some animals are better suited to their environment than others. But why was there an environment that lead to the evolution of man and not some other kind of creature? The Darwinist might reply that the climate on earth a million years ago was favorable to the evolution of man. But why was there a climate a million years ago that was favorable to the evolution of man?

I hope you can see where this is going. Every "answer" can be countered with another "why" and, just as a parent eventually tires of answering the repeated "why" of a three-year-old, eventually the Darwinist will have to say either "That’s just the way it was" or "Because I say so." And neither of those is really an answer.

Many scientists will dismiss what I’ve just said with the explanation that they simply don’t have all the answers yet. But that simply means that they don’t yet understand the problem, because it is becoming increasingly clear that science will never know "all the answers." Every new discovery brings more questions and so, the more scientists learn, the more they find how little they’ve learned.

Even more importantly, it’s becoming increasingly clear that there are some things that are simply unknowable. For example, one of the fundamental principles of quantum physics is that you can’t know the energy (or speed) of a subatomic particle at the same time that you know it’s location. The more precisely you know a particle’s location, the less you know about it’s energy, and vice versa. This is known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and it’s not something you can solve with better equipment of more sophisticated experiments. It’s a fundamental limitation on what is knowable.

Because there is this unavoidable level of uncertainty, the interaction of atomic particles is often completely unpredictable, and this was a shock to scientists. The classical, Newtownian view of the universe was that it was predictable, almost like a giant machine. If you knew where something was, where it was going, and how fast, you could predict where it would be in the future. If you knew where everything was and where everything was going, you could (in theory) figure out the future of everything. In quantum physics, that predictability fell apart and suddenly the future was very random.

Even the brilliant Albert Einstein tried to reject this aspect of quantum theory, stating that "God does not roll dice." What he (and others) overlook is that our inability to predict the future does not mean that God is "rolling dice." The fact that it looks random to us does not mean that it looks random to God (or even that it is random).

Another example of unknowability is chaos theory. One of the initial discoveries of chaos theory was that sufficiently large and complicated systems (such as, say, the weather, or life on earth) are inherently unpredictable because very small events can have very large consequences over time. The classic example is that it is theoretically possible for the flutter of the wings of a single butterfly to change the atmosphere in such a way that a month or more later a tornado that was going to form, doesn’t (or vice versa).

If small events affect large events in ways that are unpredictable, and the smallest (i.e., molecular) events are inherently unpredictable, what does that tell us about how well scientists can predict the future? Over the short term, and for most of the things we can see, scientists can tell us the rules and can predict what will happen fairly accurately. But over longer periods of time (say thousands of years) and for smaller objects (say the genetic material in cells) things start to get very unpredictable, and there is often no good scientific explanation for why one thing happens and not another.

Now let’s look at the religious point of view. Ignoring the Bible (I’ll get back to that later), a belief that God created man in His image does not require any particular method of creation. If God had a choice of two or three different ways of creating man, who are we to criticize His choice?

So let’s assume that God had a choice between snapping His fingers and having mankind appear instanteously, out of thin air, or having mankind appear slowly, first in the form of protoplasm, then single-celled organisms, then multi-celled organisms, then fish, then reptiles, then mammals, then hominids, and finally homo sapiens (mankind). Do we really care which method God chose?

As far as the Bible is concerned, it contains some very interesting and profound thoughts of some very wise people, but those same people also didn’t understand the chemistry of fire and so the chances of them guessing right on questions of genetics can summed up as "small."

Another problem with the Bible is that there are actually two different creation stories in the book of Genesis. The more familiar story is the one that starts at Chapter 1, verse 1, and describes the creation of the universe in seven days, with God creating "humankind in his image, .. male and female he created them" on the sixth day. Gen. 1:26-27. The other creation story appears in Gen. 2:4-25. In this second version, the earth and the heavens are made in one day, and God created a man out of the dust of the ground, and then created a woman from one of his ribs.

Can anyone really claim that the Bible is "right" when it can’t even tell the same story twice without changing it?

Where does that leave us? Science is interesting, and it’s valuable. It provides better ways of living and interesting toys. So I want scientists to continue to tinker. But scientists are not much more than plumbers or electricians installing new appliances and fixing the shorts and leaks in the universe that God built. As useful as they can be, they can’t tell us why we’re here. They can tell us how we got here, but not why we’re here. When we want to ask questions like "why," we need to talk to God and listen for that still, small voice.

Why I'm Quaker

2007-02-10T10:30:00.000-08:00

Gregg Koskela has written his "Top Ten Reasons I'm a Quaker" and his reasons are similar to mine, but not identical, so I thought I'd write down the reasons I became Quaker, and why I enjoy being Quaker.

As you'll see, I came up with six reasons, not ten, which seemed like a good enough number to me. And you'll also see some connections between the reasons. That's okay with me also.

In no particular order:

Universalism - I have always been disturbed by the notion that some people will be "saved" by God (whatever that might mean) and others damned, and that the key to salvation/damnation is the right religion, or the right baptism, or the right lifestyle. It was therefore a relief to join a group that is very spiritual, with strong feelings of their own, who nevertheless believe that there is "something of God" in everyone, and do not claim any exclusivity to divine inspiration or salvation.

Continuing Revelation - I have also been very puzzled for most of my life by the notion that God spoke to ancient Hebrews, and spoke to Jesus and the apostles, but suddenly decided to draw a line across the page at the end of John's Revelation and has been mum for the almost 2,000 years since then. So it was, once again, a relief to find a group that believed that continuing direct revelation from God was not only possible, but should be considered normal and not necessarily symptomatic of a serial killer.

I also like the idea that there is a body of religious thought to which I can contribute. A by-product of the belief in continuing revelation is the accumulation of a Quaker literature which is not the product of professional theologians but of "ordinary" Quakers who have been inspired to write down their thoughts about God, Jesus, scripture, and Quaker faith and practices. Because the most important qualification is inspiration from God, and in the Quaker view of the world all are equally qualified, the Quaker "theology" that exists is extremely egalitarian and accepts contributions from all.

Walking the Walk - One of the truly wonderful things to me about Quakers is that they not only "talk the talk" about their relationship to God, but that they also "walk the walk" in trying to put their beliefs about God, and the teachings of Jesus, into their day-to-day lives. The clearest example of this are the Quaker "Testimonies," which are not "testimonies" in words but testimonies in how we live our lives. (I.e., "Let your life speak.") Another example is the strong social and political activism of Quakers, who have a political impact that is very much disproportionate to their actual numbers.

The testimonies have become a comfort to me, because I find that they give me an excuse to do (or not do) the things I wanted to do (or not do) anyway. So, when I want to avoid a party or other frivolous event, when I want to get rid of some stuff I no longer have any use for, or when I want to buy clothes that are practical and comfortable (and even inexpensive) but not necessarily stylish, I can cite the Quaker testimony of simplicity as my justification. When I want to express myself in a non-tactful way, I fall back on the testimony of integrity. When I look in the bushes for cans and bottles, it's not because I'm obsessive-compulsive but because of the testimony of stewardship for the earth and its resources. The testimonies therefore provide me with a (relatively) guilt-free lifestyle I can enjoy.

Decision-Making - I still enjoy Quaker decision-making, as time-consuming and frustrating as it can be, because I have found that the need for unity, and the resulting need to listen to and take into account the thoughts of all of the members, produces better and more positive decisions than can be produced by a mere majority.

Listening - Because of both the decision-making process and the belief that there is something of God in each of us, Quakers seem to spend more time truly listening to each other than any group I have ever experienced. And when I say "listening" I don't mean being quiet while the other person talks but truly concentrating on what the other person is saying in order to understand the other person's point of view. To me, it is a very loving act to listen to another person's point of view, and so I see the ability of Quakers to listen to each other as a continuing expression of love for each other.

Silence - And I enjoy the silence. Even the brief silences that begin and end most gatherings of Quakers outside of meeting for worship (e.g., committee meetings) are a welcome pause in the day to gather my thoughts and give thanks for where I am, what I'm doing, and how I'm feeling. In a world where multi-tasking is becoming the norm, some periods of no-tasking are very welcome.

The Parable of the Dutiful Son

2007-02-02T06:05:00.000-08:00

(In a previous message, I referred to my thoughts about the parable of the prodigal son. This is my commentary on that parable, which I originally posted on 10/19/2003 on my "Thoughts" web page.)

What I call the "Parable of the Dutiful Son" is what most other people call the "Parable of the Prodigal Son" found in Luke 15:11-32.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son can be summed up as follows: A man has two sons. The younger son takes his inheritance and leaves home, proceeds to waste his money in an immoral and irresponsible life, and ends up coming home penniless and humble, hoping to work as a servant for his father, but his father greets him with joy and prepares a great feast in his honor, to the displeasure of the older son who remained behind. The younger son represents the sinner, the older son represents the faithful, and the father represents God. The moral of the story is that God always loves us no matter how we have sinned, and those of us who don't sin just have to learn to live with it.

The Parable of the Dutiful Son is more complicated. The facts are the same but the focus of the parable is on the older son who stays behind and why he is resentful.

When the younger son returns and the older son discovers the celebration going on, he becomes angry and refuses to go in. The father comes to plead with him, and the son states that he has been working like a slave for his father, and has never disobeyed him, and yet the father has never given him "even a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends." (15:29.) The father begins his reply by saying, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." (15:31.)

This seems terribly unfair. And the father's response, that "we had to celebrate" because the younger son "was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found" doesn't really seem explain the unfairness of squandering a fatted calf on behalf of a wastrel and denying the hard-working son even a young goat.

But did the father ever deny his older son a young goat "to celebrate with my friends"? The older son doesn't actually claim that the father ever denied him anything. What angers the older son is that the father never gave him the goat. And the father replies by saying that "all that is mine is yours," which is a round-about way of the father saying that he couldn't actually give the older son anything, because everything already belonged to the older son (i.e., you can't give something to someone that they already have). If the older son never had a young goat to share with his friends, it was because he never asked for one (or just never took one).

And the father described in the parable does not seem like the sort of father who would work his son like a slave. So if the older son worked like a slave, it was his decision to do so, and not his father's.

Taking these observations one step further, I believe that the older son was waiting for his father to die. The older son was dutiful and served his father, but he had more or less put his own life on hold until his father died and he came into his own inheritance. Only after his father died would he begin to live and enjoy himself. Until then, he would be the dutiful son and work like a slave.

So the parable actually does address the "unfairness" of the father's actions, and shows that what seems to be unfair only seems that way because of the actions and decisions of the older son, and not the father. It was the older son who decided to work like a slave, and not the father. It was the older son who decided never to take a young goat to celebrate with his friends, and not the father. It was the older son who decided to live a boring, unhappy life, and not the father. And the father loved both his sons, and the fact that the older son had decided to make his own life unhappy was not going to stop the father from celebrating the return of the younger son.

So the parable is not just reassurance to the sinners in us that our Father still loves us, but also a wake-up call to the slaves in us that our Father also loves us and that everything our Father has is already ours. It is up to us to enjoy our lives, and to enjoy the world and the gifts that God has given to us.

God's gifts and grace are unlimited and are available to all. If we begrudge God's grace to anyone, it is probably because we have begrudged God's grace to ourselves. If we enjoy our lives and the grace and gifts our Father has given to us, we will not be angry or jealous when our Father celebrates the return of one of our brothers, but we will be able to celebrate with our Father and share our gifts with our returning brother.

Divine Forgiveness

2007-01-28T04:45:00.000-08:00

Years ago, when I was still Presbyterian, I was sitting in a Presbyterian church on a Sunday morning listing to the same kind of pastoral prayer that I had heard for most of my life and, when the minister came to the "prayer for forgiveness," it suddenly struck me as very, very silly.

The minister was talking (as Presbyterian ministers often do) about how sinful we were, and unworthy of God's love and grace, and how we were nevertheless humbly seeking forgiveness. But I had by that time come to believe that Jesus meant exactly what he said in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32.), and about how God causes the sun to rise on both the evil and the good (Matt. 5:45). God loves us, and has forgiven us, is forgiving us, and always will forgive us.

The reason that we need to pray is not so that God will forgive us, but so that we will forgive ourselves. The problem is not that God does not love us and forgive us, but that we have not yet figured out how to accept that love and forgiveness.

Guantanamo

2007-01-23T05:43:00.000-08:00

(We recently "celebrated" the fifth anniversary of the establishment of a detainee camp at the U.S. military base oat Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and I wanted to republish this commentary that I wrote and published on June 30, 2004.)

As I watched the special report on the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that was broadcast by ABC News on its "20/20" program (Friday, 6/25/2004), the terrible sadness and sickness of it was almost overpowering to me. I fear not only for our souls, but for our safety.

Nowadays, we say that "what goes around comes around." Jesus said, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get." (Matt. 7:1-2)

In the form of the "Golden Rule," this becomes, "Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31)

The idea that there is a reflectivity in the universe appears frequently in the Bible, most often as a warning:

"As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same." (Job 4:8)

"For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind:" (Hosea 8:7)

"According to their way I will deal with them; according to their own judgments I will judge them." (Ezekiel 7:27)

The most frightening version comes from the letter of Paul to the Galatians:

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for you reap whatever you sow." (Gal. 6:7)

A teacher of mine sometimes said that "the only way to stop a behavior is to stop the behavior." What does that mean in real life?

It means that we can’t teach kindness by practicing cruelty.
We can’t instill a sense of mercy by acting mercilessly.
We can’t establish a rule of law through lawlessness.
We can’t expect justice by administering injustice.
We can’t create peace through war.
And we can’t stop terrorists through terrorism.

Which brings me to my favorite passage from the Bible:

"And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)

In the policies of the Bush Administration, there is no justice, there is no kindness, and there is no humility.

And I am afraid that we will reap the whirlwind.

Repent?

2007-01-14T07:19:00.000-08:00

The word "repent" appears in the New Testament and in Christian literature and sermons. And yet it seems to be the result of a faulty translation, a translation faulty enough to distort our view of both Jesus and God.

The word "repent" is derived from the Latin paenitere, which means to regret or be sorry, from which we also derive the words "penitent" and "penitentiary." But the Greek word used in the manuscripts of the New Testament is metanoia, which means to change your mind or change your heart. (See "The Lost Gospel Q," Marcus Borg, ed., p. 34, n. 1.)

John the Baptist was not calling on people to express regret or feel guilty, but to renew their minds and hearts. Mark 1:4 (NRSV) says that John was proclaiming "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." In "The Lost Gospel Q," the same phrase is translated as "baptism and a change of heart leading to the forgiveness of sins." In "The Gospel According to Jesus," Stephen Mitchell translates the phrase as "a baptism of renewal for the forgiveness of sins."

The act of forgiveness is itself a change of heart or change of mind. When we forgive, we go from anger, resentment, or disapproval to a state of peace, love, and non-judgment. Similarly, we are "reborn" in Jesus because we can then change our hearts, putting aside our fears and sorrows and regaining the faith and innocence of a child.

It is true that, in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the son who has lead a sinful and dissolute life admits to his father that he has sinned when he returns home, but the father does not seem to pay any attention at all and immediately calls for a celebration. The son is never asked to perform any penance and his sincerity is never questioned. The son never even asks for forgiveness. He is simply accepted home and unconditionally forgiven as soon as he appears. His change of mind and decision to return home was enough.

Renewal and rebirth are central to the teachings of Jesus, and it is unfortunate that we have become burdened by the idea that we have to be penitent before we can be reborn and return to God.

A Thin Place

2007-01-13T15:33:00.000-08:00

The name of this blog is based on a phrase used by theologian Marcus Borg to describe a place (or a thing) where the distance between the divine and the secular are narrowed, and we are able to come closer to experiencing the divine.

My hope is that this blog will help me (by writing it) and others (by reading it) experience that kind of "thin place."

This is a continuation of a web page I created some years ago, http://evans-legal.com/dbe/thoughts.html, and I will be copying my previous postings from there to here for the sake of "completeness."

Pascal's Wager

2006-07-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

Pascal’s Wager (7/9/2006)

We have a choice as to whether or not to believe in God. I have chosen to believe in God, and one of the reasons I have chosen to believe in God is somewhat similar to an argument made by the mathematician Blaise Pascal.

Blaise Pascal was a gambler as well as a mathematician, and invented the mathematics of probability so that he could win more often when gambling. He was also a philosopher, and got caught up in discussions of "proofs" of the existence (or non-existence) of God. Briefly, Pascal proposed to his friends that, if an absolute proof was not possible, the mathematics of probabilities would suggest that you should wager your soul on the existence of God, rather than the non-existence of God.

Pascal presented the question of whether or not to believe in God as a kind of a choice, with pros and cons, and the choice you make depends on how you value the pros and cons. If you chose to believe in God, you must follow the dictates of the Christian church and give up the sinful pleasures of a sinful world, but your ultimate reward is a place in Heaven and eternal life after death. If you choose not to believe in God, then you get to enjoy your life without guilt, but you may suffer eternal torment in Hell.

Pascal’s reasoning was that, if there is any possibility of eternal life, no matter how small, the reward of eternal life is so overwhelmingly great that the finite pleasures of a finite life are insignificant by comparison, and you should "bet your life" by believing in God.

My disagreement with Pascal is not so much in the mathematics, but in his assumptions. His assumption was that a belief in God requires giving up pleasures and live a joyless life. I believe the opposite, and that it is the life without faith that is joyless.

My belief in the existence of God has led me to believe that I am loved by God (along with all others), and has also led me to believe that my primary function in life is to be loved and to give love in return, not only to God but to those who are loved by God, which is everyone else. (These are the "two great commandments" taught by Jesus: that we should love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves.)

When I have not believed in God, my life has been full of fear. I have been alone and unloved, and my life has seemed short and meaningless. When I have believed in God, I feel that I am part of something large and holy, I have felt loved, and my life has seemed to be both eternal and essential.

The "sinful pleasures" that many believe that God commands we must give up are not really that sinful or that pleasurable. Neither sex nor alcohol are prohibited by the Bible, which only seems to counsel against excess and an excess of almost anything leads to more pain than pleasure. Excessive alcohol produces hangovers, sexual license leads to shame and regret, uncontrolled gambling leads to bankruptcy, gluttony makes us fat, avarice (and "workaholism") makes us tired and lonely, etc. In short, it doesn't look as though God is denying us any real pleasures in life, but only discouraging obsessive or self-destructive behaviors.

So, "Pascal's wager" seems to be no wager at all. If I believe in God, I automatically "win." Why would I want to "bet" any other way?

Prayer

2005-07-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

I think of prayer, and approach prayer, somewhat differently from most people. Most of the things I hear and read about prayer are about very deliberate words and thoughts addressed to God at specific times, or for specific reasons. (I have read that, for the ancient Hebrews, a "prayer" was a public chant or proclamation to God, while Jesus was the first to suggest that prayer might be private.)

With me, prayer is more like an aside. I'll be thinking about something, really chewing on it or wrestling with it, not thinking of God at all, but then at some point a part of my brain will say, "What do You think, God?" And then I’ll get the answer.

(And, if you don’t mind my saying so, sometimes the answer is a little flip, but I've come to expect that from God because He usually doesn't waste time beating around the bush or sugar-coating it for me. ... But I digress.)

Jesus tells us that God already knows what we need, so praying for what we want is an exercise in redundancy. And Jesus also promised that God will provide what we need.

The great Christian theologian and Phillies center-fielder, Gary Matthews, once said that he believed that all prayers are answered, but that sometimes we don't like the answers.

So we need to distinguish between what we want and what we need.

I once heard a sermon about prayer that drew on the story of the death of King David's first-born son by Bathsheba. (2 Sam. 12:1-23) David had arranged for Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, to die in battle, and then David took Bathsheba as his wife. This "displeased the Lord," and God told David that Bathsheba's son by David would die. According to the Bible, David pleaded with God, fasted, and prostrated himself on the ground for six days. On the seventh day, the child died, and then David got up, washed, went to the temple to worship God, and then ate. His servants couldn't understand why David would fast and weep while the child was alive, but get up and eat once the child was dead. David explained, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said 'Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the child may live.' But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." (2 Sam. 12:22-23)

The preacher used this as an example of the failure of prayer, but it is actually an example of success. David got what he needed, even though he didn't get what he wanted. What David needed was humility and the strength to accept God's will (i.e., the death of his son), and David got those things from his prayers. So David's prayers were answered, even though David didn't like the answer.

I sometimes think of prayer as a "reset" button for our brains. When a computer gets so hopelessly confused and messed up that it doesn't operate properly any more, the solution is to "reset" the system and start all over, with a clear memory and all of the operating priorities back in order. Similarly, prayer is I how lose the crazy thoughts with which I have become obsessed and am able to reconnect with God.

Which is what I usually need.

The Meaning of Communion

2005-03-27T07:19:00.000-08:00

As a teenager in the Presbyterian church, I decided that I didn’t understand the meaning of communion. This is my body, broken for thee? Eat of it? Why should we eat the body of Christ and drink of the blood of Christ? It didn’t make any sense to me, and it seemed to be cannibalistic.

And so I stopped taking communion. I couldn’t share in something that I didn’t understand.

Later, when I was in my thirties, I started taking communion again, but not because I understood what it meant. Only because I thought I should share the communal experience.

Then, one Holy Thursday during a Tenebrae service, I decided to try to figure out what Jesus might have meant by the words of the Last Supper. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? Why did he say what he did?

I tried to imagine that I was Jesus, and that I knew what the New Testament accounts said that I knew, meaning that I knew that I would be betrayed, that my disciples would desert me, and that I would be tortured to death. Imaging that, I felt alone and scared. Imagining myself at a Passover seder, an annual celebration that is rich with symbolism (and feeling somewhat melodramatic), I realized that I might have asked my disciples, when they gathered for the same Passover celebration next year and in years to come, to think of the bread that was broken as my body, broken for them, and to think of the wine as my blood, spilt for them, and to remember me as they eat the bread and drink the wine.

In other words, I imagined a plea from Jesus that he be remembered. He was lonely and scared, and he wanted to be remembered. So he asked his disciples to remember him during Passover meals in the future.

And that’s all there was to it.

And, in thinking of Jesus in that way, I saw a great irony in the traditional celebration of the Last Supper, because it is celebrated as a holy event, a sacrament, full of divine meaning. But there was no divine meaning. Jesus was asking for a very human thing: to be remembered. What is called "holy communion" has all of the theological significance of a group of guys hoisting a beer at a corner bar and saying, "Here’s to Jesus."

Which is a relief to me. It's a relief to know that I haven't missed something or misunderstood something. And it's a relief and comforting to think of Jesus in a very human and very understandable way.

As a result, I still don’t have much use for communion. But every year, before Easter and during Lent, I like to pause, lift a glass of something, and say "Here’s to Jesus."

I like to think that he’d like that.

The Garden of Eden and "Original Sin"

2004-04-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

What is the "original sin" that caused God to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden? The common assumption is that it was sex, of which the "apple" is only a symbol. I've also heard sermons that talk about disobedience and irresponsibility, because Adam first ate the fruit that he was forbidden to eat, and then tried to shift the blame to Eve (who in turn tried to shift the blame to the serpent). The problem with all of these ideas is that the story of the Garden of Eden that is found in the book of Genesis in the Bible says nothing about sex (other than nakedness), and never uses the word "sin." So what is the story about? I believe that the story of the Garden of Eden is not really about sin at all, "original" or otherwise, but is a mythic explanation of the emergence of what we call "consciousness."

One of the important differences between human beings and other living creatures is that, as far as we can tell, humans are the only creatures that are "conscious," by which I mean that we know we are alive and we think about our own thoughts. We judge ourselves and feel embarrassment or guilt for when we judge our own actions harshly. As Mark Twain put it, "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."

If humans are conscious and other animals are not, and if the theory of evolution is correct (which is another argument for another day), then there must have been a point at which the human race made a transition between unconsciousness and consciousness. And that point of transition would not necessarily have been at the same time we got opposable thumbs, or walked upright.

According to psychologist Julian Jaynes, writing in his book 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," the rise of what we now call consciousness is a relatively recent development in human history, occurring but a few thousand years ago. He believes it is a product of our bicameral brains, which are divided into hemispheres with significantly different functions. Greatly oversimplifying, the right side of the brain is more intuitive (which Jaynes describes as "god-like"), while the left side of the brain tends to be more logical (which Jaynes describes as "man-like"). What we call consciousness is explained by Jaynes as a break-down between the two different functions of the two different sides of the brain, so that the "man" part of the brain began to experience the "god-like" judgments of the other side of the brain.

It is difficult for us now to envision an entire society dominated by unconsciousness, but that may have been the condition of at least part of some ancient cultures, and it is entirely possible that some of the people who were alive at or after the time of the transition would have noticed something happening. Which brings me back to the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

The phrase "Garden of Eden" is synonymous with paradise, but what was it really like? The Bible says that God "planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed." Gen. 2:8. But it seems that the man did not have a life of leisure, because the Bible also says that "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." That’s right, the man had to work. And we know two other things about Eden. First, that God told the man that he may eat of every tree of the garden except "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." (Gen. 2:17) Second, that the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. (Gen. 2:25)

When we read the story of the garden of Eden, what we are reading is a story of life without consciousness. The man and the woman have no knowledge of good and evil, and are never ashamed of anything, not even of their nakedness. They work and live in complete innocence, with no guilt, no shame, no fear, and nothing we could call angst.

All that changed when they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for then "the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves." In other words, they felt shame. And when God arrived, they felt fear. And when God asked them what had happened, they made excuses. In other words, they were conscious of who they were and what they had done.

So why did God "drive" Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden? What the author (really "authors") of Genesis are confirming is that consciousness is a very mixed blessing. It brings us understanding of the world around us, and knowledge of good and evil, so that we are more like God. But consciousness also brings us pain. It is why we feel guilt, shame, and remorse. It is why we are often unhappy.

The authors of the Genesis were writing with nostalgia about a time in the not-so-distant past when life was much simpler, and much happier. People lived in the moment, working, loving, and dying. They felt physical pain, cold, and hunger, and sometimes fear and anger, but those were like storms that passed through and were forgotten once the sun appeared again. They never had an "identity crises" or a "mid-life crisis" or regrets about the past or guilt about a mistake they had made. They were childlike, and happy. In retrospect, it must have seemed like living in a beautiful garden, and they must have wondered what happened and why they ever left (or were forced to leave).

Eternal Life

2004-02-21T07:19:00.000-08:00

One of the traditional Christian doctrines that I have trouble with is the idea of life after death, or "eternal life."

One problem is that a life after death couldn't really be eternal, because "eternal" means "without beginning or end; existing outside of time." But as far as I can remember, my life did have a beginning, at my birth. If I had no life before my birth, then my life can't be "eternal" even if it should continue after my death.

And I have difficulty finding the doctrine of life after death in teachings of Jesus. Jesus spent most of his ministry preaching the importance of this life and this moment, and not concerns about the next day, much less the next life. "Give us this day our daily bread" and "observe the lilies of the field," not "give us the ability to live forever." References to "eternal life" or a "life everlasting" are few and far between, and often seem incomplete or out of place, as though added to the gospels by Paul or other apostles after the death of Jesus. (Unfortunately, most of what is now called Christianity is really based on the writings of Paul--who never met Jesus--and not the teachings of Jesus himself.)

To me, it diminishes the life and teachings of Jesus to say that what he believed and what he taught has nothing to do with our lives on earth, but is only a means to an end, the ultimate end being life after death. I believe that the life and teachings of Jesus are an end unto itself, and that we love God and love our neighbor not in expectation of a future reward, but in the expectation of an immediate, present "reward," which is the Kingdom of God.

This view is also expressed in "The Gospel According to Jesus" by Stephen Mitchell. In the introduction, Mitchell writes that, "When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he was not prophesying about some easy, danger-free perfection that will someday appear. He was talking about a state of being, a way of living at ease among the joys and sorrows of our world. It is possible, he said, to be as simple and beautiful as the birds of the sky or the lilies of the field, who are always within the eternal Now." Later in the book, in his commentary on the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus is asked about "eternal life," Mitchell refers to "eternal life" as "A synonym for 'the kingdom of God': a life lived in such a way that the personality becomes transparent and the light of God shines brilliantly through; a life lived fully in the present moment, beyond time."

In "The Practice of the Presence of God," which is a collection of writings by and about Brother Lawrence (ca. 1611-1691), Abbe de Beaufort writes, "[H]e worried neither about Heaven nor Hell. All his life was utter freedom and a continual rejoicing. He had put his sins between God and himself, as if to tell Him that he was not worthy of His grace, but that did not prevent God from flooding him with it."

The Abbe also wrote, "He did the most perfect thing: he left everything for God, and did everything for love of Him. He had entirely forgotten himself. He no longer thought about Heaven or Hell, about his past sins or about those he was presently committing, after he had asked God's forgiveness for them."

A somewhat similar thought (but expressed in a more secular way) appears "The Lives of a Cell," by Lewis Thomas. In a chapter/essay entitled "On Probability and Possibility," Dr. Thomas writes, "Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise."

So I have come to believe that whether there is a "Heaven" in the traditional Christian sense, or a "life after death," is really unimportant. If I believe in the love and grace of God, and see the world as an expression of his love and grace, then I am content with this world and this moment. What happens in the next moment is in God’s hands.

I hope that, in the last seconds of my life, I will still be immersed in thoughts of the wonder of life and the love of God, and not worrying about what happens next.

The "Sacrifice" of Jesus

2003-11-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

From the time I first began to think critically of Christian theology (which would be about the time I was in high school), the idea the Jesus was a "sacrifice" for the sins of mankind made no sense to me, and I was pleased finally to read a theologian who agrees with me. In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus J. Borg discusses different ways of seeing Jesus and talks about the "priestly story" of sin, guilt, sacrifice, and redemption. He also admits that the priestly story is the principal metaphor of the Christian church, which he believes is a mistake for several reasons, one of which is that the story does has no logic to it. "The notion that God's only son came to this planet to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and that God could not forgive us without that having happened, and that we are saved by believing this story, is simply incredible…. To many people, it simply makes no sense…."

And I am one of the people for whom the story makes no sense.

The crucifixion of Jesus is often compared to the story of Abraham and Isaac, but I can't understand how or why God would sacrifice His own Son. To whom was God offering a sacrifice?

A sacrifice is a quid pro quo. In chess (or war), you sacrifice a pawn to capture a knight. In cabalistic religions, you sacrifice an animal to gain the favor of your gods. In each case, there are rules or realities that require that one thing be given up to gain something else. Why was it necessary for God to give up His Son? What rules or realities bind God? Why could God not forgive our sins without killing His own Son?

And what did God accomplish by that sacrifice? What did the life and death of Jesus accomplish that could not have been accomplished in any other way?

Or perhaps the sacrifice was not by God, but by Jesus. (See Hebrews 9:11 and following for examples of this metaphor.) Jesus would then have been sacrificing something valuable to Himself, His own life, in exchange for the salvation of the world. But a sacrifice must be pleasing to God, so we are back to the same question, which is why God would want His own Son as a sacrifice.

And in what way was the life and death of Jesus a sacrifice? If Jesus was resurrected and still lives, then there was no sacrifice at all, because nothing was lost. Or was it the fact that God was made man, and lived and died as a man, that was the sacrifice? But what is so awful about living and dying? The rest of us still live and die, and no one claims that any of us are living and dying for the sins of the world.

If you believe that Jesus was the only Son of God, and that God is all-powerful, then you must also believe that the death of Jesus was part of God's plan and what God wanted. So then you have to find a reason for God to kill His own Son, and the idea of a sacrifice is probably as good as any. Except that it makes no sense.

The False Dualism of Wisdom

2003-10-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus J. Borg begins one chapter with a generalization that surprised me. He said that all great teachers of wisdom teach that there are two paths, the path of wisdom and the path of foolishness. I think that this was an unfortunate generalization, both because I think it is wrong and because it was not necessary to his presentation.

At a very literal level, the generalization is wrong because it describes a one-to-one relationship. One path to wisdom, and one path to foolishness. I don't know that there is ever only one path to wisdom, but even if there were, there would still be millions of different paths to foolishness. (See, for example, the Book of Ecclesiastes for the point of view that everything is foolishness.)

Looking beyond literalness, the generalization still implies a dualism that may exist in traditional Christianity (e.g., good v. evil, God v. Satan, and Heaven v. Hell), but may not necessarily exist in other thought systems. For example, Taoism may divide the universe into competing forces (the yin and the yang), but it does not label one "good" and the other "bad." In fact, much of Taoism is devoted to achieving a balance of contrasting forces, and to eliminating concepts like "right" and "wrong."

Similarly, A Course in Miracles differs from traditional Christianity in rejecting the whole notion of evil. What we call "evil" is, according to the Course, nothing but an illusion of our sick or fevered minds. The Course also states that love is so all-encompassing that it can have no opposite. More to the point, the introduction to the Course also rejects the notion of different paths. It states that the Course is a required course, and that "free will" only gives us the opportunity to decide when to take the lessons, but not the curriculum itself. In the thought system of the Course, there is only one path, and our choice is not among different paths, but between taking the one path or none at all. Or, to use the metaphor in a different way, there may be different paths, but only one destination. What others might call the "path to foolishness" is what students of the Course would call a longer and more difficult path to the same destination.

The reason that there is only one destination is God's grace. God's grace only admits of one destination, and that is salvation. We can choose the path we take, but we can't alter the destination.

The Shock of Jesus

2003-10-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus J. Borg points out a decisive difference between Jesus and the prevailing Jewish culture of his day. The prevailing Jewish culture was based on attaining holiness, which Borg refers to as a "purity system." The ministry of Jesus was based on the compassion of God, which is why Jesus associated with tax collectors, prostitutes, cripples, and other "impure" persons. Borg uses this difference to illustrate the political impact of Jesus's teachings, which contradicted much of the social and economic structure of his times.

This description of Jesus, and the contrast with prevailing Judaism, is consistent with Stephen Mitchell's The Gospel According to Jesus, but Mitchell makes a slightly different theological point. Mitchell agrees that Jesus's associations with "the wicked" were shocking to the Pharisees, but not for the reason we usually assume. The popular current view (or at least what I was taught in Sunday school) is that Jesus believed in forgiveness while the Pharisees did not. So Jesus was willing to associate with sinners because he wanted to redeem them and convert them, while the Pharisees did not want to redeem sinners and opposed Jesus's efforts. Mitchell says that this is nonsense.

Even the Pharisees believed in forgiveness and believed that God would forgive sinners. However, in order to be forgiven by God, a sinner must first repent. It may also be necessary to do a form of penance, or perform cleansing rituals, in order to be purified again. (Borg suggests that some sinners were beyond redemption, chapter 3, n. 16.) In any event, a sinner might be accepted back into society, and might be forgiven, but first the sinner must repent.

What is shocking about what Jesus did is not that he went among sinners, urging them to repent, but that he went among sinners and did not urge them to repent. He accepted them as they were, no matter how unclean, and ate with them and socialized with them. In this respect, Jesus is like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, because when the son returned after living in sin and degradation and shame, the father did not consciously "forgive" the son and then welcome him home. Rather, the father immediately welcomed his son home and showed his son his love by celebrating his return, without even ever asking if the son was sorry or regretted what he had done.

And therein lies the shock (and problem) of Christianity. We are not asked to love sinners in order that they might repent and be saved. We are simply asked to love sinners. Period. And continue to love them as they sin.

Which is very shocking. (And very difficult.)

Holiness

2003-10-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

One of the turning points in my life came one day while doing the lessons from A Course in Miracles. Of course, I can no longer be certain exactly which lesson it was, but it was fairly early in the lessons and I think it was lesson 37, "My holiness blesses the world." That lesson begins with:

"This idea contains the first glimmerings of your true function in the world, or why you are here. Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness."

The instructions for the day were for four exercise periods of three to five minutes each, during which you would first repeat the idea of the lesson ("My holiness blesses the world.") and then spend a few minutes blessing anything (or anyone) you might see or think about, with your eyes open or shut. (Thinking to yourself, for example, "My holiness blesses this chair.") The lesson also suggested that "It is particularly helpful to apply it silently to anyone you meet, using his name as you do so."

It is that last suggestion that changed my life, because as I went through the day, my holiness blessed the checker at the grocery store, the person who held the door for me (or for whom I held the door) at the post office, the people driving past me on the street, and everyone else I thought about during the day. And everyone changed that day, and no one has been the same since.

It was as though a light had been turned on, or a curtain raised, and I could see people for the first time. Before, I could see their faces, hair, arms, and legs, but now I felt I was seeing the real them, that I could sense their inner thoughts and inner essence. And everything I saw was good. They were all kind, loving, gentle people, true children of God. True, one of them might seem rude or indifferent at the moment, but that was a slip, a mistake, which might happen because they were busy or distracted or preoccupied with some troubling thought. Fundamentally, they were all good people, and I loved them all.

And I'm happy to say that, when I am in my "right mind" (a phrase from the Course), I can still see only the "Inner Light" in those around me (a Quaker phrase), and not the darkness. And I still like to go through the day at peace, surrounded by loving people, and blessing them all with my holiness.

Obeying God

2003-10-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

In A Testament of Devotion, the Quaker writer Thomas R. Kelley talks about "holy obedience" to God's will. But is it possible to do anything but God's will?

Years ago, I told one of my spiritual teachers that I was "allowing" things to happen as God wished. His response was, "What makes you think you have a choice?"

In this respect, I am reminded of the story of Jonah, who was called by God to go to preach in Nineveh, and promptly got on a boat traveling in the opposite direction. There was a storm, Jonah was thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish. After three days, the fish spat up Jonah onto dry land, and then Jonah went to Nineveh.

So, God gives us a choice: We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way.

The introduction to A Course in Miracles presents a similar theme, because it describes the Course as "a required course." Only the time at which you take it is "voluntary."

"Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time."

So, you can go to Nineveh first, and then get eaten by a fish, or you can get eaten by a fish and then go to Nineveh. But you still end up in Nineveh eventually.

Our choice is not between doing God's will and not doing God's will. Our only choice is whether we are going to be happy about it. We can trust in God and enjoy our lives, or we can be dragged by God along through life, kicking and screaming. That's our choice.

The Finger or the Moon?

2003-10-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

There is a proverb or saying in Zen Buddhism to the effect that a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself.

This saying (or metaphor) comes up in several contexts, but the recurring message is that the words or teachings of Zen are not the same as Zen itself. So, it is sometimes said that, when the student finally sees the moon, there is no longer any need for the pointing finger.

I recently gained a new appreciation for this metaphor during a Quaker retreat on "spiritual formation." In a session on learning to listen, the leader of the session pointed out that all of the words we use to describe our spiritual experiences are only metaphors for the experiences, and that the words themselves are often inadequate. To listen to the spiritual experiences of another person, we must therefore learn to look past the metaphors and work to understand the thoughts and feelings of the other person. We must look to find the moon, and not be distracted by the pointing finger.

For many years, I did not use the word "God" in my own discussions of my faith, because the image of the "God" I learned in my youth was not the God I wanted to talk about now. In the Sunday School of my youth, I envisioned God as an old man sitting on a throne in the sky, passing judgments on humans and intervening in events on earth to favor the "good" and punish the "evil." I do not think of God in that way now, either in terms of his appearance or his actions.

A turning point for me was when I realized that other members of my Quaker meeting had the same misgivings about the meaning of the word "God" that I had. When I realized that the word "God" itself was just a metaphor for whatever it is that we revere, and that many people were struggling with their own understanding of "God" and were aware that not everyone else shared their ideas of God, I started using the word again. I decided it was all right to use the word as a short-hand for something that most people knew was more complicated than a single word could easily convey, and that enough people understood "God" as a bundle of ideas and not a fixed thing.

All of which illustrates the problem of communicating between different faiths and different cultures. The words we use for some of the most important ideas in our lives are based in metaphors, and not dictionary definitions. When we hear another person speak of God, or Allah, or the Tao, or Buddha, or even Jesus, we should try to see the moon, not the finger.