Are you a None, a Done or a Discouraged?
The Nones are those identified as having little or no experience with the church or the Bible.
The Dones are those who report having had involvement, membership or leadership in the church. However, now they indicate in effect: “Been there, done that, doesn’t work for me anymore.”
The Discouraged are those who have remained involved in the church but miss those who have left or are rarely seen. Many feel worship and beliefs are of a former time, but they want to remain faithful to God.
Increasingly people searching for hope, trust and contentment believe religion is not for them, irrelevant in the scientific age. I hope what I offer can produce a new understanding how Christianity became so out of date and how we can more faithfully interpret the Bible and faithfully live in the Way of Jesus—living in hope, trust and contentment.
INVITATION
MY OWN STORY – I was raised in a conservative household. Both of my parents graduated from a conservative, evangelical seminary. As I grew older, my feelings about conservative Christianity began to make less and less sense. The Christianity I had known reflected belief locked into dogmatic concrete by the Church about 1900 years ago. Ever since there have been mostly minor modifications of doctrine and dogma, even by protestant theologians.
Clearly the Church could and did use the sword, if necessary, to prevent new thinking that endangered its hold on ecclesiastical power by declaring heresy and condemning heretics. Actually, that power included political power for centuries.[1]
How the Church and Christianity came to be as it is—way out of tune
Many people do not know why Christianity arrived in the 21st century with rapidly diminishing significance in our daily lives. From my perspective, with plenty of documentation, only some of which is herein, I offer this line of thought on the church’s decline. It begins with the creation of the hierarchical/patriarchal Church in the fourth century.
Roman Emperor Constantine began to adopt Christianity in 312 ce. By the time of his death, the impact of his totalitarian form of Christianity on the later Roman world was a continuation of a form of the political Pax Romana (the peace of Rome). Romans regarded peace, not as an absence of war, but the rare situation which existed when all opponents had been beaten down and lost the ability to resist.[2] In the daily lives of those living in the Empire, this meant if you dare step out of line, you will be punished. The same approach was used in formation of official dogma of the Roman Church.
Constantine changed the course of European history in ways that continue to have repercussions in the present day. Adopting those aspects of the religion that suited his purposes, he turned Rome on a course from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilization of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority—political as well as Church and the Bible’s dogma and doctrine.
Only a thousand years later, with the advent of the Renaissance and the emergence of modern science, did Europe begin to free itself from the effects of Constantine’s decision, yet the effects of his establishment of Christianity as a state religion remain with us, in many respects, today.
(4) We need to shift from self-protective bureaucratic hierarchies to communities of faith and courageous outreach networks.
Christianity inherited and blessed some very bad elements of the power structures of the fourth century Constantinian Roman Empire. Thanks to Constantine, Christianity was both officially established and fatally compromised. The Constantinian church began to exercise power over people. Church leadership forgot that Jesus did not exercise power over people; but that he empowered people to take responsibility in living, learning, and caring for one another. Jesus did not control people through authoritarian decrees, laws, and sanctions.
All the theologians, mostly bishops, who ministered under Roman rule did their best to be honest and faithful to Holy Scripture. They must have felt imperial pressure and fear to produce a product satisfactory to the emperor. It must have been their trust in the Lord that sustained them through the ordeal. I believe it was the authorities of the Roman Empire who initiated horrible reactions against those bishops who had different views than what the new creeds declared. These dissident bishops became treated as heretics and their writings destroyed. Many were excommunicated from the Church and some were exiled from the empire. What a loss it was to lose their writings that may have positively influenced later theologians.
To be faithful to God and the Bible, many of us believe we should bring our best thinking and understanding of the world that includes science. In this paper, to the best of my ability, I propose a faithful understanding of the Bible stories and lessons with a 21st century worldview and ways we can walk in the Way of Jesus with hope, trust and contentment.
Part 1
A Different Understanding of God’s Presence
God Within
Yes, there is a better way. I believe it is faithful to the Bible to see it another way. Scripture is more than adequately clear where God is—where God resides. I begin with a common English word.
The New Testament testifies over and over again the concept of “God within”. The English word “enthusiasm” is translated from the Greek, God within enthousiasmos “divine inspiration”; as well as enthousiazein “be inspired or possessed by a god.
Here are four texts, of many, to make my point:
1. Ephesians 3:20 – 20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine….
2. Luke 24:32 – 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us (other ancient authorities lack within us) while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
3. John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
4. 1 Corinthians 6:19 – “19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple (or sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”
With “God within,” one way we are created in God’s image is to be born with a conscience. A conscience that is not developed renders a person unable to distinguish right from wrong—moral decision making. Among others, a narcissistic psychopath has a conscience that may be no more developed and sensitive than it was at the person’s birth. Rather than thinking of the traditional image of the “heart,” God residing in our conscience is a concept that can help us understand what it means to be human, created in God’s image.
Conscience vs. Heart: The primary “spiritual member” of the body
· Conscience (Wikipedia)
Conscience is a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual’s moral philosophy or value system. Conscience stands in contrast to elicited emotion or thought due to associations based on immediate sensory perceptions and reflexive responses, as in sympathetic central nervous system responses. In common terms, conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a person commits an act that conflicts with their moral values.
Religious views of conscience usually see it as linked to a morality inherent in all humans, to a beneficent universe and/or to divinity [God within].… Common secular or scientific views regard the capacity for conscience as probably genetically determined, with its subject probably learned or imprinted as part of a culture.
Commonly used metaphors for conscience include the “voice within”, the “inner light”, or even Socrates’ reliance on what the Greeks called his “daimōnic sign”, an averting (ἀποτρεπτικός apotreptikos) inner voice heard only when he was about to make a mistake. ….
The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) describes: “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, tells him inwardly at the right movement: do this, shun that. …
His conscience is the human’s most secret core and sanctuary [in which God resides]. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.” Thus, conscience is not like the will, nor a habit like prudence, but “the interior space in which we can listen to and hear the truth, the good, the voice of God. It is the inner place of our relationship with God, who speaks to our heart and helps us to discern, to understand the path we ought to take, and once the decision is made, to move forward, to remain faithful.”
In his On the Circulation of the Blood (1628), the English physician William Harvey…did not challenge the metaphysical interpretation of the heart. The heart, as Master Nicolaus had aptly observed in the late twelfth century, was the primary “spiritual member” of the body. As such, it was the seat of all emotions. “If indeed from the heart alone rise anger or passion, fear, terror, and sadness; if from it alone spring shame, delight, and joy, why should I say more?” wrote Andreas de Laguna in 1535. Harvey metaphorically described the heart as the “king” or “sun” of the body to underscore its cosmological significance….
As a 21st century viewpoint, I suggest the conscience better qualifies as “…‘the primary ‘spiritual member’ of the body”.
Having more respect for and identification with your conscience will help you better understand what it means to be are created in God’s image.
If God resides within us, how can we better understand how this relates to prayer and worship?
For the record, I have sympathy for pantheism and panentheism (defined on the internet); but each is only the opening concept from which the thought can advance to a modern, scientifically and biblically consistent idea of a God within who relates with us in prayer.
Praying in Self-Talk
Wouldn’t praying to God within us be like talking to ourselves?
There is that, for sure. I suggest a new understanding of God within may help bring talking to yourself to a divine level of human life at its fullest.
This is not what I mean:
No, talking to one’s self is NOT always nutty. Kristin Wong offers a clue:
In a New York Times column, Kristin Wong wrote:[4] “The fairly common habit of talking aloud to yourself is what psychologists call external self-talk. And although self-talk is sometimes looked at as just an eccentric quirk, research has found that self-talk can influence behavior and cognition.
“Language provides us with this tool to gain distance from our own experiences when we’re reflecting on our lives. And that’s really why it’s useful,” said Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.
“When we talk to ourselves, we’re trying to see things more objectively, Mr. Kross said, so it matters how you talk to yourself. The two types of self-talk you’re likely most familiar with are instructional self-talk, like talking yourself through a task, and motivational self-talk, like telling yourself, ‘I can do this.’”
I suggest what can be included is our prayerful self-talk with God residing in our conscience, an inner feeling or voice from God, viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s thinking and behavior. Through prayer we discipline our intuition (the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning) to be more responsive to God’s will.
In I Thessalonians 5:17, the Apostle Paul instructs us to “pray without ceasing.” For me, to pray without ceasing is to have an attitude of God-consciousness and God-surrender that we carry with us all the time. Every waking moment is to be lived in an awareness that God is within us and that the Lord God is actively involved and engaged in us, our prayerful self-talk, in our thoughts and actions. This attitude resides in the conscience.
I suggest prayerful self-talk is the key to more fully understanding the claim that we humans are created in God’s image. In contemporary terms, we humans have within us that reality—a holy nature, where God resides.
Conceptually speaking,
we pray to God within and not God in heaven.
Prayerful self-talk is a valuable and efficacious act.
Good for spiritual discipline:
Christ Prays in Us and through Us[5]
Here is a paragraph in a column by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Roman Catholic priest, as well as an American author and spiritual writer. PBS (Public Broadcasting System) has called him “one of the most popular spirituality authors and speakers in the world.”
Although most Sunday church services don’t foster it, the essential religious experience is that we are being “known through” more than knowing anything by ourselves. An authentic encounter with God will feel like true knowing, not just in our heads but in our hearts [DG: conscience] and bodies as well. I call this way of knowing contemplation, nondualistic thinking, or even “third-eye” seeing. It is quite unlike the intellectual “knowing” most of us have been taught to rely on. This kind of prayer and “seeing,” takes away our anxiety about figuring it all out fully for ourselves or needing to be right about our formulations. At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with us, and we are not afraid of making mistakes. – Feb 7, 2021
Prayerful self-talk blesses the community: Mutual encouragement found in sharing the expression of love and compassion.
Prayerful self-talk blesses those for whom a prayer is given: When one knows the community is praying for them, science indicates one is physiologically in better condition physiologically, including psychologically, for the body to be healed.
Prayerful self-talk lives naturally in our conscience. Our conscience feeds our intuition. It can be nurtured and disciplined to empower us to live with agape love, compassion, empathy, righteousness, godliness, faithfulness, endurance and gentleness — those elements that reflect God’s image in the wholeness of Christ Jesus.[6]
Prayerful self-talk aids our cognition of the 24/7 presence of the divine (God). It is our holy nature to have a personal relationship with and the ability to objectively recognize the divine and the sacred, which lead us to pursue wholeness, as well as peace with justice—Amos 5:24: “but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
As Richard Rohr’s CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault explores how developing this kind of “Christ-consciousness” is the key to understanding Jesus’s teaching on the “Kingdom of Heaven.”[7]
How do we put on the mind of Christ? How do we see through his eyes? How do we feel through his heart? How do we learn to respond to the world with that same wholeness and healing love? That’s what Christian orthodoxy really is all about. It’s not about right belief; it’s about right practice. . . .
Jesus uses one particular phrase repeatedly: “the Kingdom of Heaven.” You can easily confirm this yourself by a quick browse through the gospels; the words jump out at you from everywhere. . . .
So what do we take it to be? . . . [Jesus] says, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” (that is, here) and “at hand” (that is, now). It’s not later, but lighter—some more subtle quality or dimension of experience accessible to you right in the moment. You don’t die into it; you awaken [DGarshaw: are transformed] into it. . . .
The Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness; it is not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place. . . The hallmark of this awareness is that it sees no separation—not between God and humans, not between humans and other humans. And these are indeed Jesus’s two core teachings, underlying everything he says and does. . . .
When Jesus talks about this Oneness . . . . what he has more in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. His most beautiful symbol for this is in the teaching in John 15 where he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you” [see John 15:4–5]. A few verses later he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love” [John 15:9]. . . . There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual interabiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love. . . .
THE PHOENIX AFFIRMATIONS Version 3.8 – www.darkwoodbrew.org/beliefs/
Worship and Liturgy
In God’s love and our love of God and neighbor,
we can trust “all will be well.”
“What? How about when terrible things happen, like a loved one being killed in an auto accident?”
There is much to be explained here, but this is an introduction to a life of hope, trust and contentment. Looking in the healthy direction, I suggest three things—the first is a reminder:
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me, even when I know I may walk around the next bend and be murdered by a stalking robber….
Part 2
The Journey Is the Destination!
GOOD NEWS!!
“Our English word ‘Scripture’ implies a written text, but most Scriptures began as texts that were composed and transmitted orally. Indeed, in some traditions, the sound of the inspired words would always be more important than their semantic meaning. Scripture was usually sung, chanted or declaimed in a way that separated it from mundane speech, so that words — a product of the brain’s left hemisphere — were fused with the more indefinable emotions of the right.”[9]
In other words, if we literalize “indefinable emotions”, we easily misconstrue the meaning, in addition to not recognizing most Bible language is in the form of metaphor and myth.
From “The Saving Power of the Cross” by Richard Rohr, April 2, 2021
What is revealed is our human inclination to kill others, in any multitude of ways, instead of dying to ourselves—to our own illusions, pretenses, narcissism, and self-defeating behaviors. Jesus dies “for” us not in the sense of “a substitute for us” but “in solidarity with” the suffering of all humanity since the beginning of time! The first is merely a heavenly transaction of sorts; the second is a transformation of our very soul and the trajectory of history.
Jesus did not die for our sins nor was he the vehicle of human redemption. Since God doesn’t “make no junk,” humans were made in God’s image, which God called good, and need no redemption.
NOTE: Is the Trinity totally outmoded? Not according to Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. He affirms the Christ invites humans to share his divinity, to be part of the Trinity ourselves, not a different substance from which humans are made, i.e., Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.”[13] Jesus introduced the Kingdom of God, not one of the several Messianic Expectations that hoped for a Messiah who would be a king and who would restore the Davidic dynasty.
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of the victim beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel of injustice itself.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was hanged by the Nazis in 1945
Transformation is one’s salvation
As Father Richard Rohr writes in his closing of “Living in Heaven Now,”[16]
We don’t go to heaven; we learn how to live in heaven now. And no one lives in heaven alone. Either we learn how to live in communion with other people and with all that God has created, or, quite simply, we’re not ready for heaven. If we want to live an isolated life, trying to prove that we’re better than everybody else or believing we’re worse than everybody else, we are already in hell. We have been invited—even now, even today, even this moment—to live consciously in the communion of saints, in the Presence, in the Body, in the Life of the eternal and eternally Risen Christ. This must be an almost perfect way to describe salvation itself.
The same message comes from Amos: “Seek the Living Presence and you shall live. . . . Seek [God] who made the Pleiades and Orion and turns the deep darkness into morning and makes the day darken into night. . . . Seek good and not evil, that you may live. . . . Hate the evil and love the good and establish justice in the gate (Amos 5:6, 8, 14, 15).
Jesus is the source of transformation and contentment, not redemption and salvation.
Again Fr Richard Rohr lifts the message: Jesus died not a substitute for us, but in solidarity with us,
April 2, 2021
Today the primary human problem is both revealed and resolved. It is indeed a “good” Friday. What is revealed is our human inclination to kill others, in any multitude of ways, instead of dying to ourselves—to our own illusions, pretenses, narcissism, and self-defeating behaviors. Jesus dies “for” us not in the sense of “a substitute for us” but “in solidarity with” the suffering of all humanity since the beginning of time! The first is merely a heavenly transaction of sorts; the second is a transformation of our very soul and the trajectory of history. My dear friend James Alison is a brilliant theologian and a primary teacher of the work of René Girard.[17] Here he writes about the true power of the cross:
[Jesus] went to death as a victim. . . . And the reason that this is important is that it catches us at our worst, as it were. The space of the victim is the kind of place none of us at all ever wants to occupy, and if we find ourselves occupying it, it is kicking and screaming. More to the point, we spend a great deal of time pointing fingers and making sure that other people get to occupy that space, not us.
Now by Jesus going into, and occupying that space [of the victim], deliberately, without any attraction to it, he is not only proving that we needn’t be afraid of death, but we needn’t be afraid of shame, disgrace, or of the fact that we have treated others to shame and disgrace.
Progressive Websites:
www.Patheos.com | Hosting the Conversation on Faith
www.ProgressiveChristianity.org
cac.org Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation
www.foranothervoice.com J.A. Dick
www.Progressive Christian Alliance | A Mustard Seed Revolution of Grace, Love, and Inclusion
www.holycrossluthern@rogers.com Pastor Dawn Hutchings
www.ProgressiveChristiansUniting.org
www.progressivechristiansuniting.org/blank For college students
If you find another one and want it added here, let me know: dgarshaw@sbcglobal.net
[1] The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman, VintageBooks, February 8, 2005.
[2] Momigliano, Arnaldo (1942). “The Peace of the Ara Pacis” (PDF). Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 5: 228–231. doi:10.2307/750454. JSTOR 750454.
[3] John A. Dick is a historical theologian. He is retired from the Catholic University of Leuven and currently is a visiting professor of religion and values in American society at the University of Ghent. He holds licentiates in historical theology from the University of Nijmegen and the KU Leuven and doctorates in religious studies (PhD) and historical theology (STD) from the KU Leuven.
[4] How Often Do You Talk to Yourself? – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[5] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (Crossroad Publishing: 2009), 23–24
[6] I refer to Christ Jesus in the literal sense of his being “THE ANOINTED ONE” – not our savior. Being transformed into a new creature of Jesus’ love in action is our salvation.
[7] Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, “The Kingdom as Consciousness,” Wednesday, November 18, 2020 – “Let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ” (Phil. 2:5)
[8] It must be added, speaking prophetically to government extends to those of wealth and power, including corporations, who control tax and other laws and regulations. God’s call is for peace with justice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “We must aid the victim of injustice, but also throw a spike into the wheel of injustice.”
[9] Nov. 11, 2019, What Is the Meaning of Sacred Texts? – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[10] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, Blackwell Pub., 1994, p. 84.
[11] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Original Sin (newadvent.org)
[12] Original Sin :: Catholic News Agency
[13] For details, see his book, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe, by Richard Rohr, 2019.
[14] Thanks to Robin Meyers for this expression from his 2012 book, The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus, SPCK, p. 20.
[15] One of the reasons King James wanted a new Bible translation in 1611, the KJV, was to remove from the then popular Geneva Bible the commentary note that he thought threatened him, i.e., it would be God’s will to depose “tyrants.”
[16] Daily Meditation, March 12, 2021 – cac.org
[17] Rohr highly recommends James Alison’s exploration of René Girard’s work, particularly Alison’s four-part study series Jesus the Forgiving Victim: Listening for the Unheard Voice (DOERS Publishing: 2013).
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