Everyone believes something. And we all have belief systems in things that are vast and beyond us. Even those who claim not to believe in God have some kind of belief-system in something that functions for them as god. Everyone gives the authority of a god to something or someone. In that sense, there really are no a-theists, that is, those who are without a god.
Whatever our ideas about God (or gods), and how the world is ordered, and what life is really all about, these things we believe tend to get firmly fixed within us. Especially the really big matters in life tend to get settled in our minds. After all, we couldn't stand to live day-to-day with a whole lot of life shifting like sand.
You can often notice what these fixed points are by paying attention to what a person resists. Even more, if you'll notice what makes a person angry, you can get even closer to what someone holds close in their belief.
[It's pretty interesting that most of us can see this in others much more clearly than we can see it in ourselves. We can notice the resistance of a friend or family member to a certain idea, but never see that same resistance within ourselves. Or we can notice their anger when a certain topic is mentioned, but never connect the dots in our own lives. I'm just sayin' . . .]
Very often our anger flares up when something or someone challenges these fixed points within us. It must be one of our human methods for defending our inner territory, the sacred ground of our fixed points.
In Luke 4:24 - 30, when Jesus reminded the people of the synagogue of two accounts in the Hebrew Scriptures in which God extended mercy, generosity and healing to foreigners (non-Israelites), the crowd flew up in a rage. They became so furious at how closely his words touched them, that they wanted to kill him.
Luke 4:24 - 30
“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “prophets are not accepted in their hometowns. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
One of their fixed points (a national value, it seems) was that, "God loves us and takes care of us, but isn't on the side of the foreigner (Gentile)." By using the examples of the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, Jesus challenged their fixed beliefs. In anger, they sought to kill him.
I am concerned that too much of contemporary religious expression is about having more and more fixed points. That is, we tend to think of spiritual maturity as having more and more of life -- and God -- nailed down to where a person knows the answers and eliminates any mystery or ambiguity from life. We settle all the issues. We don't allow for any questions to be unanswered. We want to be sure to speak about certainties. And we imagine that this is "spiritual growth."
Actually, it's a very juvenile spirituality.
A growing spirituality does not settle more and more of the issues -- a "settler" is someone who stops moving, stops exploring, stops walking the path in favor of "settling down" in one place, fixating who he or she is in that single space -- but rather is able to live with open hands. A growing spirituality does not need to have all the questions and issues resolved. The person who is growing in faith can live with mystery and not-knowing. After all, if it is "knowing with certainty" we're about, then we have very little faith. Faith is not "what we know;" rather, it is what we trust, even as we live in a cloud or in the darkness of not-knowing.
And besides, the consistent testimony of the Bible is that God's ways and God's mind are far beyond ours.
This sort of open-handed spiritual presence recognizes that my ideas about life and God and Reality are simply that . . . my ideas. They may be my final answer, but they are not THE FINAL ANSWER. As I experience God at ever-deeper levels of my being, then I can shift how I perceive God, how I enter more fully into life. I don't need to cling to some fixed point and get angry when someone challenges it. I can be open to new revelations of God, new understandings of God that stretch me and grow me. Clinging to my fixed points in anger simply keeps me in the small space where I currently live.
I think of it this way: God may not be evolving . . . but my understanding, comprehension, and experience of God is always evolving.
For me, the corollary involves the institutional Church, or organized religious expression. The job of the Institution is not to tell you what is true and then be sure you adhere to it. The role of the Church is not to provide you with a list of fixed points to believe conceptually -- though that's what the Church has most often done all throughout her history.
The role of the body of Christ is to provide a safe setting in which you can explore and grow and come into your God-designed wholeness, so that your life can be about the wholeness of the world. You have to explore for yourself and discover for yourself Who God is . . . and What is at the Heart of the world. You should not simply believe me, or anyone else. You have to make this your own journey, your own exploration.
Sadly, in her history the Church has rarely provided this kind of setting. More often, she has given us a list of fixed points, then said to us, "Here you go. Now, go and believe these." That may be the single largest reason the Church has had so little healing impact on the world.
Thankfully -- and gladly -- some dissenting, mystical voices have arisen through the centuries, to give us another message, encouraging us on in our exploration, admonishing us to not "settle" too soon, giving us another vision of life and God that may yet transform the world.
Showing posts with label church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label church. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Saturday, August 7, 2010
The Real in Reality
I'm usually not too interested in "reality" television. Most days my life has enough reality without having to live someone else's reality vicariously. Most folks probably feel that way, too. For most of us, daily life itself is a hand-full.
We have all the reality we can handle, so a part of the human impulse is to find ways to escape that reality, or at least to soften the bluntness of it. We do that through addictions and attachments, hobbies and leisure, overwork and medication.
And very often we find some sort of religious expression to be our escape from the reality of the world. Religious expression very often promises persons an escape from reality, an open door to a better life, or at least to a different life. And if we can't have the better or different life now, at least we know it is promised in some eternal By-and-By. It is part of the appeal that many of us find in spiritual endeavors, a form of escapism which says that it's possible to get around real life now. If not now, it will surely happen when I die.
I am interested in and given to Christian spirituality. I say to folks all the time that a part of this spirituality -- which I believe is reflected in the Christian Gospel -- is awakening to an alternative framework or structure for life by which we live differently in the world, out of a Gospel-paradigm for being and seeing and doing in the world. This alternative paradigm unmasks the illusions of the prevailing "reality" of culture/tribe and liberates us to live soulfully from an inner core where we are intimately connected to God.
Having said that, though, the goal of Christian spirituality is not escape from the world. Rather, the world itself is the context for our spirituality, for our being and seeing and doing.
In other words, the life-giving, soul-connection with God which is at our center is lived out in the real stuff of our everyday lives. Spirituality does not separate us from the real stuff, but immerses us into it in a different, life-giving, healing way. We are not escaping challenges, weaknesses, and shadows, but rather living into them differently.
Frankly, I witness that a lot of people are attracted to spirituality because they see it as the missing link, perhaps the one piece of gnosis that has eluded them for years. To many people, it seems at first blush that a more inward spiritual journey has as its main benefit the escape from responsibility and challenge and shadow. It sounds like a fresh message, an appealing way around the things that life throws at us.
Through the years, for instance, I've run across folks who felt they could serve God very well -- or that life would be really wonderful -- if they could just stay on retreat 24/7. Some of them wanted to run off and join a monastery -- heck, I wanted to do that in one extreme season of my life! -- as if that were the solution to the difficulties of their lives. Others just wanted to go on perpetual retreat, or attend every conference, workshop, or class possible to find answers for the realities of their lives. In all, the goal for many people is to escape life as it is, not be more immersed in it.
The Church and most religious systems of belief tend to perpetuate this idea of escape from reality. Our preaching and teaching envisions the world as evil and problematic. We sing, "The world is not my home." We're convinced that if we could get to a state of "holiness" and "pure spirit" we could get around reality.
Our desire for prayer can too often be rooted in our desire for a better life, our desire to get around the reality of our life-circumstances.
Our concern for heaven can be an antidote for our fears about the reality of death.
Our longing for healing as the eradication of sickness causes us to sidestep the teacher and companion that often is experienced as disease.
When we escape reality, though, we may also be escaping God. A few years ago I heard Paula d'Arcy say, "Most often, God shows up as life."
Thomas Merton wrote, "Reality itself is God's epiphany."
And these words, first heard thirty years ago from one of my mentors, have rooted me since: "Whatever you believe, if it won't play in a cancer ward or in a shoddy nursing home, it's not the Gospel."
Spirituality is not an escape hatch. It roots us in the Real, Who is revealed in reality. It is a connection to and attentiveness to what is, not to what might be or what we hope one day to be.
We have all the reality we can handle, so a part of the human impulse is to find ways to escape that reality, or at least to soften the bluntness of it. We do that through addictions and attachments, hobbies and leisure, overwork and medication.
And very often we find some sort of religious expression to be our escape from the reality of the world. Religious expression very often promises persons an escape from reality, an open door to a better life, or at least to a different life. And if we can't have the better or different life now, at least we know it is promised in some eternal By-and-By. It is part of the appeal that many of us find in spiritual endeavors, a form of escapism which says that it's possible to get around real life now. If not now, it will surely happen when I die.
I am interested in and given to Christian spirituality. I say to folks all the time that a part of this spirituality -- which I believe is reflected in the Christian Gospel -- is awakening to an alternative framework or structure for life by which we live differently in the world, out of a Gospel-paradigm for being and seeing and doing in the world. This alternative paradigm unmasks the illusions of the prevailing "reality" of culture/tribe and liberates us to live soulfully from an inner core where we are intimately connected to God.
Having said that, though, the goal of Christian spirituality is not escape from the world. Rather, the world itself is the context for our spirituality, for our being and seeing and doing.
In other words, the life-giving, soul-connection with God which is at our center is lived out in the real stuff of our everyday lives. Spirituality does not separate us from the real stuff, but immerses us into it in a different, life-giving, healing way. We are not escaping challenges, weaknesses, and shadows, but rather living into them differently.
Frankly, I witness that a lot of people are attracted to spirituality because they see it as the missing link, perhaps the one piece of gnosis that has eluded them for years. To many people, it seems at first blush that a more inward spiritual journey has as its main benefit the escape from responsibility and challenge and shadow. It sounds like a fresh message, an appealing way around the things that life throws at us.
Through the years, for instance, I've run across folks who felt they could serve God very well -- or that life would be really wonderful -- if they could just stay on retreat 24/7. Some of them wanted to run off and join a monastery -- heck, I wanted to do that in one extreme season of my life! -- as if that were the solution to the difficulties of their lives. Others just wanted to go on perpetual retreat, or attend every conference, workshop, or class possible to find answers for the realities of their lives. In all, the goal for many people is to escape life as it is, not be more immersed in it.
The Church and most religious systems of belief tend to perpetuate this idea of escape from reality. Our preaching and teaching envisions the world as evil and problematic. We sing, "The world is not my home." We're convinced that if we could get to a state of "holiness" and "pure spirit" we could get around reality.
Our desire for prayer can too often be rooted in our desire for a better life, our desire to get around the reality of our life-circumstances.
Our concern for heaven can be an antidote for our fears about the reality of death.
Our longing for healing as the eradication of sickness causes us to sidestep the teacher and companion that often is experienced as disease.
When we escape reality, though, we may also be escaping God. A few years ago I heard Paula d'Arcy say, "Most often, God shows up as life."
Thomas Merton wrote, "Reality itself is God's epiphany."
And these words, first heard thirty years ago from one of my mentors, have rooted me since: "Whatever you believe, if it won't play in a cancer ward or in a shoddy nursing home, it's not the Gospel."
Spirituality is not an escape hatch. It roots us in the Real, Who is revealed in reality. It is a connection to and attentiveness to what is, not to what might be or what we hope one day to be.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Guerilla Marketing for the Church
The email hit my inbox last week from some group selling church products. Its subject line described "high-powered guerilla marketing tips" designed to help local congregations attract people. The article gave tips for using “guerilla marketing” to spread the love of Jesus Christ to communities and save budget money at the same time. “Guerilla marketing” was defined as tactics that involve PR stunts, community functions, and other creative ways to draw persons to public events.
The words "guerilla," "stunts," and "tactics" were prominent in the article. (If you check out the dictionary meaning of "guerilla," you'll find phrases like, "irregular warfare," "harrassment," and "sabotage." Is that what the Church has come to stand for?)
Frankly, I found the guerilla talk funnier than offensive, and more than a bit pathetic. I suspect there is a market for the "stunts" and "guerilla tactics" the email suggested. Maybe it's just sad.
I wondered if those who wrote the article proposing guerilla marketing as a “tactic” for growing the Church really believed what they were writing. Did they believe that because the Church is concerned with matters of Spirit and eternity any tactic is legitimate? What “PR stunts” might draw people into a deeper connection with God? I haven't discovered those stunts yet.
I've spent quite a lot of time recently in Genesis and Exodus, exploring spiritual formation themes in the first two books of Moses. The article stood in contrast to the Exodus narrative, where God is revealed as I AM WHO I AM, where persons move toward liberation amidst darkness and cloud, and then wander from place to place in a stark wilderness as God shapes them inwardly and outwardly for the Promised Land.
What would guerilla tactics for Church growth and spiritual nourishment look like up against a forty year journey in the desert? Would guerilla marketing suggest a “stunt” or “tactic” that might trump the long, slow work of spiritual formation? Those questions arose within me. They seem like relevant questions, given our current Church and cultural milieu.
The words "guerilla," "stunts," and "tactics" were prominent in the article. (If you check out the dictionary meaning of "guerilla," you'll find phrases like, "irregular warfare," "harrassment," and "sabotage." Is that what the Church has come to stand for?)
Frankly, I found the guerilla talk funnier than offensive, and more than a bit pathetic. I suspect there is a market for the "stunts" and "guerilla tactics" the email suggested. Maybe it's just sad.
I wondered if those who wrote the article proposing guerilla marketing as a “tactic” for growing the Church really believed what they were writing. Did they believe that because the Church is concerned with matters of Spirit and eternity any tactic is legitimate? What “PR stunts” might draw people into a deeper connection with God? I haven't discovered those stunts yet.
I've spent quite a lot of time recently in Genesis and Exodus, exploring spiritual formation themes in the first two books of Moses. The article stood in contrast to the Exodus narrative, where God is revealed as I AM WHO I AM, where persons move toward liberation amidst darkness and cloud, and then wander from place to place in a stark wilderness as God shapes them inwardly and outwardly for the Promised Land.
What would guerilla tactics for Church growth and spiritual nourishment look like up against a forty year journey in the desert? Would guerilla marketing suggest a “stunt” or “tactic” that might trump the long, slow work of spiritual formation? Those questions arose within me. They seem like relevant questions, given our current Church and cultural milieu.
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