4 posts tagged “theology”

".....in most traditions, faith was not about belief but about practice. Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific, or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.   The myths of the hero, for example, are not meant to give us historical information about Prometheus or Achilles -- or for that matter, about Jesus or the Buddha. Their purpose is to compel us to act in such a way that we bring out our own heroic potential.

Karen Armstrong
**
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot—air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

—William Stafford

In the course of my studies, I have discovered that the religious quest is not about discovering "the truth" or "the meaning of life" but about living as intensely as possible here and now. The idea is not to latch on to some superhuman personality or to "get to heaven" but to discover how to be fully human--- hence the images of the perfect or enlightened man, or the deified human being. Archetypal figures such as Muhammad, the Buddah, and Jesus became icons of fulfilled humanity. God or Nirvana is not an optional extra, tacked on to our human nature. Men and women have a potential for the divine, and are not complete unless they realize it within themselves." 

 ---Karen Armstrong
*
"We see things not as they are but as we are." John Milton

“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

—Matthew 6:22–23

*
As we mentioned in the May 19, 2004, issue Samurai and Mustard Seeds: Fealty’s Link to Faith, “We tend to become like the thing upon which we focus: if we lead a lie, our whole self becomes a little bit more lie-like; if we feed paranoia, the world becomes one giant conspiracy.”

To very large degree, we create the world in our own image. This realization now leaves a very interesting question: if then, we wish to see the world as we ought to see it, as the honest and sincere quest after truth, beauty, and goodness would dictate, both as it is and as it yet can and shall be, how then can we have any hope—much less certainty—of seeing it clearly? On the forum recently, Sara posted about the Quakers, or the Society of Friends as they are also known, and their central  tenet of “the Inner Light.” According to this principle, we, as God’s creations, have within us “that of God in everyone” which on a very basic level gives us not only life but discerns between good and evil. It reveals the presence of both in human beings, and through its guidance, offers the alternative of choice. ... [T]he Inner Light [also] opens the unity of all human beings to our consciousness. Friends believe that the potential for good, as well as evil, are latent in everyone. (Why Do We Close Our Eyes...)

In sum, this “seed of Christ” in all persons is just that: a seed. And like all seeds, it must be watered if it is to grow: it must be “activated.” This tiny mustard seed is the basis by which we first stretch forth uncertain fingers toward the kingdom of heaven; it is the basis by which we answer the gentle yet persistent knocking on the door of our hearts to open up and allow the indwelling presence of God to enter in and fill us. The emphasis, as with all true spiritual pilgrims, is placed on the relational and experiential: “first-hand knowledge of God is only possible through that which is experienced or inwardly revealed to the individual human being through the working of God’s quickening Spirit.” The answer as to how we can have any hope of seeing the world as we ought to see it is found in whether or not we nourish and water the inner knowledge that we already have. If we know we are leading a lie, we cannot very well expect to have our vision undiluted: our vision, like our life, will become increasingly lie-like. Heaven does not stock spiritual fruit, as Samurai and Mustard Seeds reminds us, but rather spiritual seeds, and we are not yet who we were created to be: we are ever becoming and the spiritual life is progressive and teleological.

The reason my spiritual vision cleared on the morning I describe, is because I longed with every ounce of my being to “see clearly.” There have been times I have asked and not received, primarily because I did not ask with my whole heart and my whole being. One has to want the good gifts of God. It seems to be almost a cosmic law that we cannot receive any more than we are willing—on the deepest level—to receive. A half-hearted request lets in a little light, because a half-hearted request does at least have some beginnings of a seedling or a sprout. A half-hearted request, however, must itself be nurtured if it is to become throaty and full-hearted. A half-hearted request is a seed, and if we are of only half a heart, then let us nourish the half that is good, and, while we cannot exactly throw the other half away, we can let it bask in the blood of its better half until it is wholly won over. Further, a whole-hearted request is always painfully aware of its baser half, hence the basis of the request. Pride, by contrast, is a spiritual killer: when we think ourselves in no danger of falling and in no need of daily nourishment, we are then far, far from seeing clearly and are liable to the grossest distortions, all the while feeling inordinately pleased with ourselves, reveling in our blindness and calling the darkness light.

So then, I was lying in bed thinking I was thinking about Gandhi, but in reality thinking about Covey, and not about Covey, but about what Covey said, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” And suddenly, as if in retrospect, the words of Christ as recounted in the gospels sprang to mind: “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22–23) or, the last sentence stated in the positive in Luke 11:36: “If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp [of the body] illumines you with its rays.”

[from Mr. Renaissance]

**
Summons

What would it look like?

To spread out love like a cloak over a puddle
Love offered like a lit cigarette
A warm hand
An antidote to poison,
Like a snake-bite kit
Like a last chance to drink before entering a dry country

Love the most breakable of objects
If it could be an object --
Tiny.
Fragile.
Or it’s a mustard seed
Existing in potential.
A maybe -- A maybe-not
Tossed off as as afterthought.
Not the end-all be-all at all.

But to see it as it really is
In its own light , not light reflected -
It shines;
A diamond
with no flaws or contradictions.
Without a seasonal emphasis.
With a way instead
Of saying --
'I never want to go away from you'

Even as the sea recedes.

If we think of ourselves out of nature --
Us in a window
Us under glass --
We miss that
what we see ‘out there’
Is also most intimately ‘in here.’
The weddedness of self to body
self to breath, to cell, to pulse
to the great pituitary watchtower.

Do I have enough peace in me to absorb peace?
Containing enough of the nature of peacefulness
inside me ?
Could my own essence
not have the sentinels of immunity destroy it?

Is there enough wisdom in me to attract wisdom?
Ample love, loving, loveliness
to harvest love from this world?

(June 2006)

**

"There are, then, two ways to confront or criticize another human being : with instinctive and spontaneous certainty that one is right, or with a belief that one is probably right arrived at through scrupulous self-doubting and self-examination. The first is the way of arrogance; it is the most common way of parents, spouses, teachers, and people generally in their day-to-day affairs; it is usually unsuccessful, producing more resentment than growth, and other effects that were not intended. The second is the way of humility; it is not common, requiring as it does a genuine extension of oneself; it is more likely to be successful, and it is never, in my experience, destructive."

- M. Scott Peck, *The Road Less Traveled* (Touchstone, 1978), p.152

This is part three of our exercise on thinking through your own theology (common lesson four) . 

The first two parts are "Theological Frameworks" and "Common Lesson Four" .

{You can access them by clicking this link)

In our last meeting,  we brainstormed "Jesus Christ"
and "Human Being".

Tonight,  we brainstormed "The Holy Spirit" and "Love"

(The links are to Wikipedia links for the words)

Holy Spirit:  breath, ruach, inspiration, grace, another, sense of transcendence, magic, always available, a connection between the Self and God, invisible, transparent, something that empowers believers, a hope of permanence in our ephemeral existence, miracle, a broader part of oneself, undefinable, counselor,  all this and always more, immanence/presence, mother (feminine), ocean of meaning, individual truth, Sophia.

Love:  Freedom,  the Source of All Creation, connection,  ancestral continuity, enduring kindness,  nurturing for the giver and the receiver,  sustaining interdependence, the Purpose of Life, Unconditional,  Life-Giving,  Compassionate, Transparent,  grace, passionate,  saying 'sorry' when you need to,  true bonding, outflow, forgiving,  truly seeing another (clear vision and emotion),  promoting another's growth, force that is bigger than the action it is couched in,  acceptance of everything,  the universal solvent,  unconditional positive regard.

*****
NEXT

We culled the lists a bit down to a more concise statement of each.
*Jesus Christ seemed to be the name of "he who brings the new paradigm"  and a teacher who is an embodiment of love.
*Human Being was shortened to a God-creature.  Potential & promise.  Stories & storytellers.
*Holy Spirit  culled to 'breath and inspiration' , God within,  all this and more,  a bridge between,  and transcendental wisdom.
*Love summarized as sharing, connecting, bonding, continuity, passionate, grace, redemption, forgiveness, that which fuels Kindness.

Of course, we disagreed as to relative importances of each of these items,  in terms of writing a code or a Creed. We decided to open up the exercise to invite each member to write a Creed this week. 

I invite each to view Creed on Wikipedia , particularly the section as Creeds as a Denial of Heresies.

Also note:

Rabbi Milton Steinberg wrote that "By its nature Judaism is averse to formal creeds which of necessity limit and restrain thought" and asserted in his book Basic Judaism (1947) that "Judaism has never arrived at a creed." The 1976 Centenary Platform of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, an organization of Reform Jewish rabbis agrees that "Judaism emphasizes action rather than creed as the primary expression of a religious life."

Some of our forays into Creedal  points were:

"I believe the Love of the Holy Spirit is infinite"
"I believe that loving-kindness is the way to the Holy Spirit"
"All Human beings are filled with the Holy spirit and love"
"That God sees (and seeds) our potential and promise."
"That our potential and promise comes from our connection to God,  Love, the Holy Spirit and Wisdom."
"I believe that Love is embodied as The Teacher Within."

***
Have a Go !

COLLECT FOR THE WEEK;

GOD YOU ARE LAUGHING AT US RIGHT NOW.
AS WE LAUGH AT OURSELVES

WE PRAY THAT WE CAN KEEP OUR SENSE OF HUMOR
FIND JOY IN SILENCE
AND THAT WE NOT LIMIT 'GOD' TO 'CREED'
THAT WE MAY SENSE THE LOVE THAT SURROUNDS US
AND IN WHICH WE ARE PLANTED AND GROUNDED.

AMEN

***

I really need to get a copy of "Honest To God".... I grew up so steeped in this theology,  which was new and full of energy at that time.

Ultimate Concern.

So many theological discussions now remind me of the Russian argument when they first launched a man into space,  and the astronaut said that they had been up in space and "hadn't seen any God up there."   Who took that seriously?  They were looking for an old bearded man in the sky? What?  

And here we are in the 21st century, with silly "is there a God, an old bearded man in the sky" conversation to sell tabloid newspapers.

***
This is from a blog called "A Seeking Spirit"...

**

"When I was a young woman and beginning my journey into religious studies I came upon the Bishop of Woolrich’s writings because they were so controversial at the time and, as a result, his little, thin book Honest to God was brought to my attention.

His writing made so much sense to me and to my peers.  My professors at the time, even though they were of a conservative bent, understood well the quality of his work and encouraged serious consideration of his book and that of others who similarly forge new appreciation and clarity within our Faith. 

In God’s time a half century is but a pebble.  For me, Robinson’s words are as helpful now as they were then and I know that, while I can appreciate the anthropomorphic imaging of God by understanding its roots in its developing monotheism Judaic tradition, I continue to find that he, along with theologians such as Tillich and Bonhoeffer, speaks to my heart and subjective condition.

Now years later, theologians have reviewed his book and pointed out that many in the church in his day did not want to take a serious effort to even understand what they purported to believe, let alone deal with the discrepancy between those beliefs and religious conventions, versus the way the church’s members lead their daily lives.  But as society became more jostled by modernity, this discrepancy has become a concern, and continues as a constant focus of contemporary criticism as well as cause for self-examination by those who are faithful.  (Read, for example, The Purpose-Driven Life). 

Theologian Rowan Williams critiqued Robinson’s work for its lack of theological depth and not adequately taking into account trinitarian doctrine, thereby reducing the contemporary theological view of God to that of an “inactive, crude and vague supraworldly agent.”  My own conclusion is that as simplistic and perhaps naive as Robinson’s book may have appeared to contemporary theologians, it was prophetically foretelling the Lambeth storm that is waging now on Rowan’s doorstep."

The following from John A T Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, ‘Honest To God’ (SCM, London: 1963)

"For in place of a God who is literally or physically ‘up there’ we have accepted, as part of our mental furniture, a God who is spiritually or metaphysically ‘out there’. (p. 13)  But suppose such a super-Being ‘out there’ is really only a sophisticated version of the Old Man in the sky? Suppose belief in God does not, indeed cannot, mean being persuaded of the ‘existence’ of some entity, even a supreme entity, even a superior entity, which might or might not be there, like life on Mars? (p. 17)

God, [Paul] Tillich was saying, is not a projection ‘out there’, an Other beyond the skies, of whose existence we have to convince ourselves, but the Ground of our very Being. (p. 22)  Rudolph Bultmann …in ‘New Testament and Mythology’ … when he spoke of the ‘mythological element in the New Testament he was really referring to all the language which seeks to characterise the Gospel history as more than bare history like any other history. … the mythological language of pre-existence, incarnation, ascent and descent, miraculous intervention, cosmic catastrophe, and so on … make sense only in a now completely antiquated world view. … the entire conception of a supernatural order which invades and ‘perforates’ this one must be abandoned. But if so, what do we mean by God …. and what becomes of Christianity? (p. 24)

God is, by definition, ultimate reality. And one cannot argue whether ultimate reality really exists. One can only ask what ultimate reality is like … Thus, the fundamental theological question is not in establishing the ‘existence’ of God as a separate entity but in pressing through in ultimate concern to what Tillich calls ‘the ground of our being’…(p. 29)In Tillich’s words: The phrase deus sive natura, used by people like Scotus Eriggena and Spinoza, does not say that God is identical with nature but that he is identical with the natura naturans, the creative nature, the creative ground of all natural objects. (p. 31)

God is not ‘out there’. He is in Bonhoeffer’s words ‘ the “beyond” in the midst of our life’, a depth of reality reached ‘ not on the borders of life but at its centre’, not by any flight of the alone to the alone, but, in Kierkegaard’s fine phrase, by ‘ a deeper immersion in existence’. For the word ‘God’ denotes the ultimate depth of all our being, the creative ground and meaning of all our existence. …Tillich warns us that to make the necessary transposition, ‘you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself.’ (p. 47)

Belief in God is the trust, the well nigh incredible trust, that to give ourselves to the uttermost in love is not to be confounded but to be ‘accepted’, that Love is the ground of our being, to which we ultimately ‘come home’. … And the specifically Christian view of the world is asserting that the final definition of this reality, from which ‘nothing can separate us’, since it is the very ground of our being, is ‘the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’. (p. 49) … Bonhoeffer insists … ‘The transcendent is not infinitely remote but close at hand.’ (p.53)

The question of God is the question whether this depth of being is a reality or an illusion, not whether a Being exists beyond the bright, blue sky, or anywhere else.  Belief in God is a matter of ‘what you take seriously without any reservation’, of what for you is ultimate reality. (p. 55)  The New Testament says that Jesus was the Word of God, it says that God was in Christ, it says that Jesus is the Son of God; but it does not say that Jesus was God, simply like that. (p. 70)

Bonhoeffer .. [wrote] … To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to cultivate some particular form of asceticism (as a sinner, penitent or a saint), but to be a man. It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.’ (pp. 82-83)

…(we remember it was) asked by the crowds of Jesus when he began his public ministry: ‘What is this new teaching?’ And so it has always been … Paul was dismissed as a setter forth of strange gods, Socrates was condemned as an ‘atheist’.  Every new religious truth comes as a destroyer of some other god, as an attack upon that which men hold most sacred…For the Christian gospel is in perpetual conflict with the images of God set up in the minds of men, even Christian men, as they seek in each generation to encompass his meaning…. But as soon as (these images of God)…become a substitute for God, as soon as they become God, so that what is not embodied in the image is excluded or denied, then we have a new idolatry and once more the word of judgment has to fall.

… the beginning is to try to be honest - and to go on from there. (p. 141)"

(ref: A Seeking Spirit)