theeffect

Long Time Coming

2007-05-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

Can't believe how long it's been since I've posted here. In my defense, since last May I've been feverishly writing a book, which I'm just now finishing. I figured my blogging was being done in those pages. Meanwhile, we've been working to bring theeffect out of its completely guerilla status by starting new ministry operations and weekly Sunday Gatherings, which began last Sunday, May 20th.

So as theeffect picks up steam, I thought I should at least put a placeholder here. As soon as the book is to bed, I plan on posting here more regularly, especially as a means to stay in touch and stimulate discussion with effect members.

So it's been a long time coming for both the book and theeffect. The book, called the 5th Way, should be (self) published in another month or so; I'll let you know when its available. Keep checking our site for updates on theffect and changes on the ground here. And I'll see you back here soon...

Taba, Bisha, Lakhma, Dama

2006-07-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Try to imagine yourself in the Galilee in the first century...

The smell of apple, almond, and sycamore trees in blossom. The sight of riotiously colorful wildflowers in bloom on a hillside above the Sea of Galilee. the sound of thousands of variegated waterbirds--egrets, herons, and cranes--following their intricate and beautiful migratory patterns up the Jordan River rift valley, just at the right time. The black basalt hills above the Sea of Galilee, providing rich, dark, but very thin soil upon which to sow. The strong winds blowing in from the Mediterranean at particular times of the day.

In such a setting, timing was essential for success in planting. In Yeshua's day, the whole area of Galilee was much wetter than it is now--virtually a jungle in many areas. Water buffalo and lion roamed about. To travel safely through this wild landscape depended on knowing when certain areas were flooded, when animals that might be dangerous to humans were present, and when and where one could find edible food.

Yeshua experienced all of these sensations of the natural world around him as it followed the rhythm of Sacred Unity. To describe this ryhthm of rightness and ripeness, the Aramaic language uses the word taba, usually translated "good." (from The Hidden Gospel, Neil Douglas-Klotz)

The people of 1st century Galilee, just like people today living in agrarian and subsistence cultures, were intimately connected with the rhythms of nature, of the turning of the globe, night and day, the circuit of the moon through its phases, the slow progression of the seasons. They lived close to the earth, they could hear its heartbeat and depended on its pulse for their very lives. To be in harmony with the land's rhythm was certainly"good;" it was critical to maintaining their lives: when to sow, when to reap, when to go out, when to come in. But we as modern, industrial people don't understand this anymore. We can spend years of our lives completely isolated from the rhythms of nature, in hermetically sealed, air-conditioned cars and houses, never seeing a sunrise or sunset, our bare feet never really touching the earth--even electrically isolated from the ground by rubber-soled shoes. To us, "good" means something else entirely.

When Yeshua said taba, good, he meant ripe, ready, mature, at the right place and the right time. In harmony with and capable of flowing seamlessly with everyone and everything. This is "good." And so then, the opposite of all this, is bisha, usually translated 'bad" or "evil." But not evil as we think of evil, bisha simply means not ripe, not ready, immature, out of harmony and rhythm.

Let the significance of these words wash over you for a moment and really sink in.

When we think of being a good person, we think of someone who does "good" things, right things. But a good person is not someone who simply does the right thing, but someone who has learned, is ready and capable of seeing the goodness of true relationship, the goodness of really being as one with someone else, in unity with God and each other. And as a result, will do everything and anything in his or her power to foster and protect that unity and those relationships. If this seems a subtle difference, look deeper; it makes all the difference in the world. Being "good" is not about behavior, about following codes or rules, but about being in love with unity, loving being one with someone else, and living accordingly.

Being "bad" then, being evil, is also not about doing bad things, but about being incapable, unready to see the possibility of unity anywhere, of being too unformed to see the goodness, the necessity of true relationship in life. The actions of such a person are random with respect to relationship building--harmful, hurtful, even catastrophic, because they aren't ready to see what is really good. Everyone wants the best for themselves, but the ripe person understands that the best, the taba, is centered in unity, and the unripe person searches everywhere else, leaving a swath of destruction in their wake.

Yeshua said, "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." This saying either fills us with dread, because no one is perfect, and how can we ever hope to be...or we just let it pass over and through us as one of those incomprehensible sayings that doesn't have a lot of meaning in the real world. But Yeshua is saying something critically meaningful and doable here. The word for perfect doesn't mean perfectionistic or without mistakes, but complete and whole, mature, ready...ripe. It's the same concept. We can be as whole and complete as our Father in heaven is, in the sense that we can also see the goodness in being at the right place at the right time for each relationship and moment in our lives.

This is how God continues to love us even when we are following unlovely ways. Committing unlovely acts. God sees beyond the actions themselves to the seed of ripeness that lies within each of us, the possibility of bearing ripe fruit that we all carry with us, no matter how immature we may be at the moment. No matter how how much we don't understand that our unripe actions are directly defeating the purpose of having the completion that each of us desires in our lives. And when we act unlovingly, Yeshua says, "Forgive them, Father. They don't know what they are doing." And this is literally true.

This is why Communion is so important as a symbol of the Christian faith. For two thousand years, it's been the primary focal point of the faithful. Firstly, it's a time of gathering and community, where we sit around a common table and eat as one with a common minds and hearts. But something more. Yeshua uses bread and wine to get his point across. Bread, lakhma, in Aramaic doesn't just mean bread, but as it shares the same roots with hokhmah, the word for wisdom, it means the source of all sustenance, physical, emotional, spiritual--the very wisdom of God, everything we need or will ever need. Yeshua is saying that that wisdom, that provision, is his body. He and the Father are one. Everything that the Father is, Yeshua is--it has become part of himself. So he invites us to eat, to take it in, and become one with him just as he is one with the Father. To become "perfect" as he and the Father are perfect. Take this and eat, make it who you are as well.

And at the end of the supper, he took the cup. The cup of his dama. His blood. But dama doesn't just mean blood, but also juice, sap, essence, in some contexts, even wine. To the ancient Jews, the blood was the life force; it was what carried life, and so was sacred. It was literally the essence of all that a person was. Yeshua says to drink. Take this life force, this animation of who he is and make it who you are as well. The wine, the Jewish symbol of joy and celebration mixed with the essence of Yeshua's life is the powerful symbol Yeshua is using to bring us to taba. And when we eat and drink, we remember Yeshua, as he asked us to, in the fullest sense of that word. We remember not just by thoughts in our minds, but by every action, choice, and the living out of each relationship in our lives. Every moment of our lives.

Taba and bisha--ripeness and unripeness. Lakhma and dama--wisdom and essence. These are the words and symbols Yeshua used to help us become complete. But words lose their meaning with time and translation. And symbols lose their ability to point to truth as they devolve into ritual. It's up to each of us to keep the meanings written on our hearts. Not to simply follow cold rules and forms, but to see the goodnes in each face and life we encounter. And because we have eaten the lakhma and have drunk the dama, to take our place as a taba people, a complete people--full of ripe fuit--ready, willing, able, at the right place, at the right time to celebrate the unity we experience with God and each person who shares this moment with us.

Person to Person

2006-03-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

In a comment to the post Nothing is a Feeling Too, below, Deb wrote:

that was so needed something drew me to this web site tonight ive listened to your station forever. my life and family have been going throug so much the past few years and ive been finding myself wondering why? i stopped praying for awhile because it only depressed me more when praying was only a reminderof how awful things have become. then i felt detached not only from my life, but from God. that is when i realized just how much God has been there step by step keeping me from going insane. I have 6 kids and 2 stepdaughters yes total of 8. My husband turns out to not be as much of a Christian as he made out to be 6 years ago. so there is sucha struggle. To makea long story short thank you for letting me feel like its okay to feel whatever and He wont leave me

I'm posting this open response because Deb wrote anonymously, so I can't respond to her directly. But maybe she'll come back and see this. And if she does, I want her to know how grateful I am that she wrote and shared a bit of her life with us. As I read her note, my heart was breaking for her, and at the same time I was so grateful that she found a bit of relief and solace in the words she found here. How often do we all need just a bit of peace in difficult situations? A moment when the wolves are held at bay so we can catch our breath and find strength to move out once more.

Deb, yes, it is perfectly okay to feel whatever you're feeling right now--with all the pressures and responsibilities in your life, with all the faces in your home that look to you for so much--there is so little time for anything but the daily necessities. And though just about every line in your message could generate an entire book in response, I do want to emphasize just one thing right now: that you're not alone, even when it feels that way. That God really is there in the silence or the loneliness or the craziness of our households. And you're also not alone because there are so many of us out here going through the same thing, feeling the same disconnect at times, and then finding new ways to understand our relationships with God and each other that weren't necessarily taught in Sunday school.

Here's a prayer from Thomas Merton that has helped me immensely over the years:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

You're in a very difficult situation right now, Deb, but your desire to please God, your desire to be a good mother for all your children, to be a good wife, a good person is, in itself, so incredibly pleasing to God that you can't even imagine his pleasure in you and how he loves you. No matter how you may be feeling about the job you're doing or the results you see, God sees your desire and is one proud papa.

Start there, Deb. Plant a stake in the ground at the place of God's love for you, and let everything else in you life revolve around that point. Don't let that stake move. Let it convince you all over again of God's love and pleasure in you. As Merton says, we can't always see it, or how it will work itself out, but God's love will never leave us, and everything really will be alright. And here's the kicker, we don't have to wait for heaven for this to happen, because once we really begin to understand and see how we are loved, heaven comes to us. Right here and now. Even if our circumstances don't change right away, we can begin to see them in a different way, with less fear, that allows a way through with the awareness of God's presence in every moment.

I don't know if this helps any further or if you're even reading this, Deb, but just know I'm praying for you to begin seeing yourself the way God sees you--because that's what it really means to be born again.

Pastor Dave

A Post-Christian Conversation

2005-11-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

Recently had a fascinating email string/conversation with an old friend of mine. We go back some 25 years--used play in bands together from the early 80s. With that kind of history, it's hard to hide much from each other. So here's a post-Christian talking to a post-theologian in a post-modern world. My friend Chris gave me permission to post (pun unintended) portions of our string here, but it's long enough that I published it to theeffect site instead. You can get it here.

Post-Theology

2005-11-03T11:10:00.000-08:00

Friend of mine, an Englishman born in Sri Lanka and now a Talmidic Jew (a Jew who follows the Way of Jesus) wrote what he called a "personal theology" of God's ultimate plan for us as humans and the reason we're here on this planet. His theology to me was of less importance that what it did for him in his life. He has Asperger Syndrome, which is a form of autism that makes normal human relationships and social discourse extrememly difficult. His personal theology allowed him to see the beauty, even the necessity of his circumstances in order to fulfill his purpose in God's plan. And he really is a beautiful person--one of the most beautiful I know. If his theology allows him to live Jesus' Way to such an extent, how can I argue? It's his, after all.

The senior pastor of one of the mega-churches here in Orange County who just stepped down for at least 6 months to re-evaluate his life, told a friend of mine that he was "post-theology" at this point in his life. It was an interesting way to put something I've been experiencing myself increasingly for the last couple of years as I've tried to pastor and teach both within and outside a formal church setting. I've taken certain beatings for my beliefs/models through this period, and I've been thinking about this whole concept and process of theology to which I've dedicated a great part of my life. I'm now convinced that theology is simply our best expression of the inexpressible, our attempt to make sense of things we just can't know herenow. Or better, a way of describing the experienced action of God in our lives. And so, by definition, it's all only partially accurate at best, and complete nonsense probably more than we'd ever want to imagine. And yet we fight wars both large and small, kill, excommunicate, and generally hurt each other's feeligs over these models we construct--not realizing that no one has it all right anyway. Do we really think that any one of us has it all right? That we really have God all figured out? As Thomas Aquinas said, "A comprehended God is no God at all." And to paraphrase Brennan Manning, I wouldn't want a God I could understand.

But having said all that, theology is still necessary and useful if we put it in its proper place in life. Our own personal theology can be beautiful in that it can drive us forward in love and help us see over the disabilities life has handed us or we have handed ourselves. Like my friend, we can use the lever of theology to see God more clearly moment by moment. Or not. Theology is a two-edged sword that can cut the other way and debilitate us further, if misconceived or misused. And so I'm at the point of just wanting to know the tree by the fruit as Jesus instructed. Anyone who is caring for children and treating others with respect and love is someone I want to know, someone I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with anytime, anywhere. The rest just doesn't matter. If our intellectual understanding of ultimate reality is what ultimately saves, then truly, God help us all. No, our understanding doesn't matter in such things except as the means by which we get to the point in our lives that caring for children and showing respect and love for each other becomes vitally important. Getting to that point. That matters.

And how do we get there? How do we develop a personal theology? It's in our own prayer life that we become convinced, that we see clearly something that we know to be true. A Catholic priest once told me this when I was trying to argue a theological point from the Bible about 15 years ago. He help up his hand and said, "All I can tell you is what I've become convinced of. Go become convinced of what you're convinced of." I thought it was a cop-out at the time. Now I know it's the only way to live this life. Our personal theology will come out of our personal experience of God in our lives. There is no other way to learn such a thing, because such a thing is not transferrable between humans. What we become convinced of is ours alone. Our ruby slippers. We may find ourselves lined up with someone else's conception, but we all must arrive under our own steam. Teaching theology, as I still do, really is a contradiction in terms, but at the same time, I realize that in order to help anyone to get to the point that they are willing to let go of everything they think they know in order to become convinced of what God is really showing them, we need the classic tools of theology to deconstruct old forms rather than to construct new ones. Take us down to ground zero, to the moment where God really lives.

The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu once said, "The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. Once the fish is caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch a rabbit. Once the rabbit is caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. Once the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to."

The purpose of theology is to catch God, to get us to the point of trusting God enough to fall back into his embrace and experience who he really is and not who we might imagine him to be. And once the personal experience of God is grasped, then the theology can be forgotten. In this way, theology is properly formed and useful. If not, then not. Theology is not and never should have been a litmus test for our acceptability to God. Or to each other. That's abomination. We can properly use theology to build belief, and belief to promote faith, and faith to produce experience and trust in God. Then wrapped in his embrace, as Paul Harvey says, we get the rest of the story. And we become convinced, and our lives begin to shine--full and heavy with sweet fruit. Beyond words. Beyond ideas even. Spirit to spirit. Heart to heart. Life to life.

Where can I find a person who has forgotten theology?

Nothing is a Feeling Too

2005-11-04T07:03:00.000-08:00

Someone sent this to me in email the other day--one of those syndicated sort of messages:

�??The relational dynamic with God is mysterious, personal, intimate, lively, and vibrant. Some days it�??s effervescent; other days it�??s serious. There are times in our relationship with God when we want to worship Him radically, to explode with adoration for Him. Other times we�??re drawn to lie on our faces and be still in His presence. Some days He wants us to get out of the prayer room and go do something. Other days He wants us to stop being busybodies and sit down and chill out. Don�??t ask me why He wants what He wants. The Christian life involves a mysterious, relational dynamic with a loving God, and lots of people have trouble navigating its ambiguities. But we are like Him, and He is like us�??more than we might think.�??

I was thinking how pervasive is the explicit and implied message today in the church and religious/spiritual circles that we need to be feeling God's presence and action in our lives. That feeling him is the actual indicator of his presence. The truth is, some days you feel...nothing at all.
Is that acceptable? Is the non-feeling of God the indication that something is wrong with our relationship with him?

Yes, it's acceptable. And no, it's no indication that anything is wrong. In fact, the non-feeling is really the essential part of the process. This is important for us to understand because it can be the source of so much grief, personal recrimination, and distraction. The spiritual journey is actually an unfelt process. We don't "feel" things of the spirit, because they reside below human emotions and thoughts. But often the spiritual breaks through and out into the emotions and cognition, and there we are, feeling something. And it can be wonderful. But the spiritual process is cooking along whether we feel it or not, if that is our desire, and we are pursuing God earnestly in our lives. As Thomas Keating says in his book, Invitation to Love, "We don't have to feel it, but we do have to practice it."

The ancient church always understood this. They considered emotional responses, and charisms/gifts of the spirit to be "consolations," felt responses that the new believer needed to begin the journey--a honeymoon of sorts. As the person matured spiritually, those consolations faded, the training wheels removed so faith could function as it should--without a safety net. So there is the spiritual process, and there are emotional responses, and there are gifts of the spirit. The confusing part is that they can and often do occur together, but they are not one and the same thing. And emotions and gifts of the spirit are certainly no indication of spiritual growth or maturity. Think for a moment. We see very young people expressing emotion in religious settings and performing spiritual gifts, with little or no spiritual maturity. Sometimes the gifts occur spontaneously in someone completely unprepared spiritually. Conversely, we see older people who've dedicated their lives to God for decades, with little or no felt responses or manifested gifts.

Emotions and gifts and spiritual connection seems to have gotten connected as romantic notions of love became more culturally pervasive after the Renaissance, but it's essential to de-link these parts of our lives. Why? Because often we make emotional ecstasy and spiritual gifts the proof of our or others' spiritual status. We put pressure on ourselves and burdens on others. Or we end up chasing the emotional highs or spectacular gifts for their own sake--becoming emotional junkies--rather than seeking the true spiritual identity of our Father. In fact, the ancient church traditionally looked at spiritual gift with suspicion, as a realization that the more spectacular the gift, the harder for the person to remain humble, which the church understood was much more important.

Seek first the Kingdom and all else will be added. What may be added are beautiful emotions and gifts. Cause for celebration. But let's remember that the Kingdom to Jesus is simply the awareness of God's presence in this moment through our identification with his Spirit. That's what we seek. And it's very quiet and still. And it needs no visible means of support. And provides none. As it should be.

Shameless Ad

2005-10-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

Just wanted you to know that theooze.com picked up my article Men, Women, Chimps, and Scientists, and you can read it below on this blog or here at theooze.

Also, keep checking the articles at theeffect. Go here and then to articles/thisweek for the new stuff and articles/random for the latest there.

Inspired People, Inspired Writing

2005-10-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Been thinking on revelation lately. Teaching a class on the origin of scripture has made it inevitable. There's the kind of revelation you can get from observing nature--general revelation--and then there's the kind you can only get downloaded directly from God--special revelation. This direct communication with God comes in the form of dreams, visions, prophetic utterances, words of knowledge, prayer, etc. Some folks don't believe in special revelation anymore. They say it ended with the prophet Malachi, and from then on, we have only the Scriptures to guide us. All we need is there in the book. Sola scriptura, scripture alone, as the Reformers cried 500 years ago.

I don't think most of us Christians would agree with that today. Don't we believe that direct communication with God is possible? If not, what's all this worship time and prayer time and gifts of the spirit all about? Of course, some folks don't believe in the gifts anymore either. Those stopped with the Apostles. But the church all the way up through the Enlightenment had a rich mystical tradition. Now, there's that word again. Mystical. Mystic. Mysticism. It's gotten a bad rap, being now intertwined with New Age elements, but a mystic is simply someone who believes in and practices direct experience and communication with God here and now. Seems to be pretty descriptive of any of us sitting this side of Deism.

But at the same time, we place so much emphasis on the Scriptures alone, that the other forms of special revelation are atrophying in our own lives. Before there were Scriptures, there was special revelation alone: direct communication with God, mystical experiences such as dreams, visions, prophecies, and miracles--it was from these experiences that God-inspired, God-breathed people wrote...scripture. And they saw that scripture as living and active--containing the ability to create more special revelation, direct communication, mystical dreams and visions and words of knowledge in the people who read them and took them to heart.

Everything we can't know about God from simple observation of nature can only come from God himself in the direct communication that is possible between us. Once communicated, once breathed into us, we now have something to talk about, to write about ourselves. And once we are God-breathed, then we are inspired and our writings and talkings will be inspired. Just as inspired as Scripture? I believe so. Without the authority, certainly. And subject to the checks and balances that Scripture provides. Absolutely. But inspired? Yes.

We need to vigorously pursue a full life of special revelation. To look in all the directions from which God speaks. The Bible, the reading of Scripture, is only a third person experience until we make it second and eventually first person in the exercise of our own mystical prayer life. That's the goal: to hear God's voice daily. The scriptures are one tool God uses. There are many more.

The Suburbs of Hell

2005-09-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry it�??s taken so long to get this out. I've been spending some time in the suburbs of hell. These two thoughts may seem related�??a compelling, if oblique, excuse for not having written lately, but they're really not. Plain old, garden variety non-sequitur. I haven't written here lately 'cause life has run away with my time, and I've been dealing with issues that revolve around the doctrine of hell the way objects circle the bowl before disappearing over the event horizon.

I teach twice a week: a Thursday night study currently on the words of Jesus in the Gospels, and a class on the origins and transmission of Scripture at a local bible college. It seems that no matter what the subject may be or from what premise we start, if allowed to go on long enough, any thread of discussion among Christians will ultimately end up centered on hell. Who's in, who's out. Who's up, who's down. What false doctrine disqualifies us from God's ultimate acceptance, and what ultimately saves. I've seen it time and time again over the years, and I've been experiencing it in these two weekly venues lately. Any idea or concept we discuss is always being judged in the red light of hell.

So I ask rhetorically, why do Christians need to spend so much time circling the suburbs, the drain of hell? I suppose it's not really a rhetorical question, but like a good lawyer, I think I know the answer before I ask. Why are we so defensive as people of faith about our ultimate acceptance by the God we characterize as all-loving? Why are we so willing to start handing out tickets to hell to everyone around us who thinks differently than we do? Why do we always end up here in these suburbs? I'm sure my rant is betraying my frustration, but at the same time, I do understand. And I do have compassion here.

Then I read about Brian McLaren's new book, the third in his New Kind of Christian series entitled The Last Word and the Word After That. It's in this book that he tackles the doctrine of hell--the third rail of contemporary Christianity if there ever was one. Kind of a no-win situation for him to discuss this openly, and that's the way it's working out. The reviews on Amazon.com by orthodox Christians are scathing, so much so, that apparently Brian had to beg his supporters on his own website to please post their own positive reviews on Amazon to give a little balance. Brian has apparently (I've not read the book) taken the Father's love to such an extent that he no longer believes in an everlasting hell. Say it ain't so, Brian. Now I can�??t say I know where Brian really stands on this issue or whether I stand with him intellectually, but as Shakespeare wrote, I do believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy�??and theology. And so I stand with him spiritually. And that's really the point. Not the views themselves, but how we react to each other because of them. What makes us so angry? Why do we think it's all right to tear into each other because of our differing views of God and his interaction with us? And again, why are we so fixated on hell?

It all comes down to fear. We're either living in love or we're living in fear. Love is characterized by connectedness and unity and fear is characterized by separation�??the ancient definition of sin itself. But fear is realized, manifested in anger, stress, depression, anxiety, envy, jealousy, covetousness, greed... Every human psychosis, every single one, can trace its lineage back to fear. Fear is ground zero for everything that wrecks our lives and relationships. Fear is the opposite of love and perfect love casts out fear. To the extent we have those negative symptoms in our lives, we have fear--and we have displaced love. That's how you know where you stand, after all. Want to get to the crux of every problem in your life? You can ask the same question every time: what am I afraid of? It will lead you to the source of your frustration like a laser-guided missile.

Fear and love are mutually exclusive�??this is a point the church seems to have missed. Love is unity and fear is separation, but you can�??t get to love through fear. You can�??t work for unity without first being unified. The fear of hell�??s punishment cultivated by the church over the years that was meant to drive us to God�??s love is a self-defeating, contradiction in terms. Fear and separation only breed more fear and separation, never unity and love. Unity requires a clean break with fear, a quantum leap into the unknown of the Good News. A falling backward into the arms of�?�what? Whom?

We fixate on hell, because we fear it. We fear that God really won't ultimately accept us. We want to believe we know others are going to hell, because at least we can imagine we're better than they are, which means we still have a chance. We tear into others and their differing views because they're chipping away at the carefully constructed walls of our fortress--the worldview and theology that we hope will save us from the inferno.

And because we live in fear, never really trusting that such good news as perfect love really exists, we can never get any further away from hell than its suburbs. We live continually in its shadow, in its smog, with its skyline always on the horizon. It's a terrible thing to live in fear. Especially when the fear is of our own choosing. Jesus gave us an alternative. We say we've taken it, but our obsessions, our lack of civility, and our mailing address give us away. Perfect love casts out fear. Get that and get it all.

Whatever hell really is will be revealed in time. It's not for us to know such things right now. But we know enough. And we should know enough to let hell be. It wasn't made for us, and we don't have to go there, and thinking about it only keeps us in its suburbs every moment of our lives.

Time to move to the country, get some fresh air.

Elijah and the Ants

2005-10-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

Here's one I wrote a while back, but seems pertinent from time to time...

Journal Entry
September 21, 6:45 AM

Down by the pool near the waterfall in semi-darkness listening to the water. Are you in the water, Lord? When the leaves move high overhead, are you in the trees? Where are You? Where do I go to listen? What do I listen for? How do I listen? Do I strain? Do I relax? Is it obvious? Subtle?

Elijah in the cave hiding from Jezebel knew how to listen�??what to listen for. Even in his despair and selfpity, his desire to die, to give up. He knew the sound of your voice. When the wind tore into the mountain, he knew you were not there. The earthquake, the fire�??the same. But when the still voice, the whisper barely displaced the air at the back of his cave, he wrapped his mantle around his face and went out to meet You. I love that image. Silent compliance. Obedience. Submission.

I look down and I see ants on the ground swarming over something. Carrying off pieces of it in the long snaking column back to their queen. Such great activity, effort. So completely silent. I look�??no sound. Yet I imagine if I was suddenly ant-size, standing near, the sound would be of a fierce battle or frenzied construction site. Tearing, scraping, scuffling, buzzing. I'd put my hands over my ears and run. But hearing nothing, I sit and watch. Soundproof. My ears are too big for such things. The mass of my eardrums cannot be moved, vibrated by such small variations in air pressure. If I could somehow thin them out, refine them, a new world of sound would open up until I could hear the ants.

I think that's where you are, Lord. Right in front of me like these ants. Shouting, talking, waving at me right before my face. But I hear only what I'm capable of hearing. See what I'm willing to see. Relate as my spiritual, emotional maturity dictates. I think your revelation is all around me and I walk right past�??through�??in despair because I can't find it.

Does it frustrate you, Lord? That I am so deaf and blind? That my ears and spirit are too thick and heavy to be moved by You? Do You get tired of waving your arms and shouting from behind the glass I put up between us?

Elijah knew how to listen. Yet still despaired. I can't hear, and despair too. Whose despair is blacker? The despair of knowledge or ignorance?

Elijah came out of his cave at Your call.

I only pray that I hear when You call me out of mine.

Men, Women, Chimps, and Scientists

2005-09-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

I've had this in the randomstuff section of theeffect site for awhile, but thought I'd put it here too. I'd managed to forget this lesson again recently, and needed a stiff reminder that it's better to be a chimp than a scientist...

Journal Entry
January 21, 3:50 PM

Women and their men. I see them all the time. Airport terminals are a good place to watch. The roles, the emotions, the language is universal.

I see a young couple from the moving sidewalk coming toward me hand in hand. One of them has just arrived. I can't tell which; the small case he carries is non-descript. They talk. She is smiling. Looks up at his eyes, back forward again. Up. Back. So much is said with her eyes. I can only imagine. I watch him. He is talking, but looks forward; she alternately at him and back ahead. What I see in her eyes he hasn't seen as long as I watch.

They pass, and I watch their backs. I see her profile tilted up to his face, but only the back of his head�??minding the tiller. I've seen this before. Why is it so much easier for women to know where to look? Where to keep their eyes? Moving through their lives with their eyes fastened to the sides, on the eyes of those who travel with them�??their men more intent on destination, the negotiation of the journey. And how do women keep that look in their eyes as they search up into the profiles of their men?

Last Wednesday night we got a video of scientists trying to teach human language to apes and dolphins. You thought it would be great to watch the dolphins you saw in the pictures on the box but were bored, as I knew you'd be when I tried to talk you out of it. Even so, a segment stays in my mind. One man, a very famous scientist, spent three years raising an infant chimp and trying to teach him sign language. He named the chimp Nim. Nim did very well. Learned several hundred signs. But funding ran out, the project was disbanded, and Nim went to a zoo or something like it. After reviewing hundreds of video tapes of his sessions with Nim, the scientist concluded that Nim was only imitating his teachers and hadn't really learned anything. Put a big dent in the chimp-teaching business for awhile.

Several years later the scientist went to see Nim. Hadn't seen him since funding ran out on the project. In clinical voice over, he wondered if Nim would remember him. The video camera caught Nim walking with a trainer just as he caught sight of the scientist. Immediately chimp screeches filled the TV speaker at the rate of about three per second as Nim threw up his arms and sprinted, as well as chimps can in their loping way, for the scientist who got down on his haunches and braced for impact.

Nim leapt into the scientist's lap and threw his arms around his neck. Chimp arms being what they are, they almost went around twice. All this time and for as long as the camera held on Nim and the scientist, chimp screeches never stopped or even slowed down, chimp teeth big and bright as the scene cut.

And I kept hearing those screeches, and I laughed and smiled and my eyes stung a little all at the same time because the scientist thought that Nim learned nothing, and Nim thought that the scientist was his father, or brother at least. Because the scientist was looking ahead at where he was going. Nim was looking at him.

I'd rather be a chimp than a scientist.

I'd rather be a young woman watching her man's profile than a young man watching the road.

Dave Brisbin

More Subversive Thoughts

2005-09-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Coming out of the previous post, I guess this is my week for subversive, contrary, and generally surly thoughts about our faith practices. I suppose I could say that they're a penetrating and incisive look at how we practice our Christianity in the early part of the 21st century, but I'll let you decide how to characterize.

I've noticed that many times when the subjects/doctrines of salvation and hell come up, one name often comes up as well. It usually comes up embedded in a question worded something like, "Well, do you think he's saved?" or, "How about him? He was a good man, but..." Mohandas Gandhi (or Mahatma, for "great soul") is usually the top pick for a really good person who was also a non-Christian and therefore...what? That's the question, isn't it?

Well, I just ran across this site and this quote from Gandhi, "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." I guess the Mahatma was as unsure of us as we are of him. If we could just stop continually thinking about hell and who's going there, and more about this moment and who's in it with us, I do believe we'd kill many birds with one stone. And wherever Mohandas is, if the Christians he ran into had been thinking this way, he'd have one less memorable quote to his credit.

By the way, the site is called Antithesis. Seems to be only one page to it--not sure what it's all about, though it does seem to be making a point.

The Secret of Life

2005-08-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

James Taylor wrote a song with the above title, and in it he said, "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time." There's some real truth there. But just as when we have our bible studies or hear teaching or preaching about spiritual issues, the inevitable question comes up: "That all sounds really nice, but how do you do it?" I think that's what we really all want to know. How do we do it? Paul learned to be content in all his circumstances (prison at the time), how did he do it? James tells us to "Consider it all joy" when we're faced with trouble and suffering--how do we do it?

Well, in James' book, I think we get a clue. The first thing James tells us in telling us to see trials and hardships as friends that come to mature and perfect us, is that we need to see life differently. The first line of Scott Peck's book The Road Less Traveled is, "Life is difficult." I think the first thing we need to do, is see life for what it is. Life is conflict. Every movie, play, novel, or any dramatic/comedic presentation you see is based in conflict. Without conflict, there is no story. In life, if there is no conflict, there is no life. Life is conflict--endless series of conflicts that need to be resolved. And in the resolution of one cycle of conflict comes the growth that takes you more confidently to the next. If we can see this, make friends with life as it really is, and not as we wish it to be, we can take our first step toward enjoying the passage of time.

Most of us think life should basically be easy. That conflict and pain are the aberrations, the exceptions. That peace and joy and contentment are the absence of conflict in our lives. These are all lies we tell ourselves. Conflict and pain is a basic, necessary part of life, and peace and joy can occur in the midst of great conflict. This is important: you can be content and unhappy at the same time. Happiness is the emotional response to our circumstances. Contentment is the decision to be so regardless of the circumstances. Contentment requires a shift in attitude and perspective to be achieved.

Dennis Prager, a syndicated talk radio host has a "happiness hour" every Friday on his show (9 AM to noon, M-F on 870 AM in southern CA). He talks about issues that make or break our sense of happiness. This week he said that until we understand that success in life is the exception and failure is the norm, and not the other way around, we'll never be able to be happy. More accurately I'd say we'd never be content, but you get the point. He said that "successful" high school students often become the most unhappy adults because they learned to equate happiness with success early in life, and life is not like that. Life is lived in the trenches with brief moments of "success" as punctuation. Learning that, getting your arms around it, will change everything.

This may sound defeatist or maybe even depressing, but think about this. How do you make friends with life on its own terms? Let's say you commute 50 miles to work each day. 25 miles each way through bumper to bumper, heavy freeway traffic day in and day out. It's three hours each day of driving, and it's driving you nuts. You can see it as waste of your life, you can get in the car every trip ready for battle. You can honk the horn and weave from lane to lane trying to get another car length ahead. You can curse the other drivers under your breath or even to their faces, but it still takes 3 hours a day to make the trip. That's the reality. It will take three hours no matter how you drive unless you get another job closer to home. Knowing that, accepting that reality, that fact, you can then stop at Starbucks for an iced latte, turn up the air conditioning, and put a great book on tape you've been meaning to read in the stereo, or your favorite music, or learn a foreign language on tape, or pray, or whatever it takes to make those three hours meaningful and useful to your life, your contentment, and ultimately your happiness.

Life is hard. Life is conflict. That's the first step: accepting that fact. James gives us the second step as well. When we begin to see life's cycles as friends, and we begin to learn from those friends, the wisdom of God becomes ours, and then the process really speeds up.

Evangelism vs Discipleship

2005-08-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

Just got an email message from a Jewish friend in England. It so perfectly illustrates something I've been trying to get across for some time now that I want to share. I believe that what we typically call evangelism (prosletyzing or converting to another belief system) should really be considered discipleship. The Hebrew word for a disciple is talmid. There really is no analog for this word in our language. A talmid, which is translated as follower or disciple in our Bibles, is someone willing to live their lives with someone else, the master, day and night--to see who they really are, in all the intimate details so that they want to and eventualy do become like the master--become identified with him.

In this story, Alex and the Muslim imam had that relationship for a time, but most importantly, Alex was living his life of faith to such an extent that he could even attract the imam into a converstation in the first place. If we'd all do this, simply live our faith with integrity, we could leave our tracts and flyers at home and just go live. The people would come to us. Jews don't prosletyze as Christians do, but then Christians should be prosletyzing more like Alex, who doesn't even consider himself a Jew. Remember, in the "great commission," (Mt 28:19) Jesus tells us to go make disciples (talmidim) of all the nations. And that means much more than "street witnessing," it means to live our lives in such a way that others want to follow, to immerse themselves in a different way of life that will change who they are and who they identify with. If we are identified with God, and our talimidi identify with us, well if A equals B and B equals C, then C equals A, no? We need to be talmidis first, we need to identify with God and simply live that life before anything else happens down the road. Here's Alex...

"I would like to tell you briefly about someone I recently met from Zambia. His name is Alex, and his was a remarkable story. His love for the Jewish people drove him to walk many miles through the bush to find a computer, so that he could make contact with a Jewish community over the internet.

He had a strong belief in the verse from Torah, that says those who bless Israel would in turn themselves be blessed, and those who curse Israel will in their turn have that same curse return to them. Apparently in the 1930's, there was a strong Jewish presence in Zambia that ran businesses connected to the copper-mining industry. During that time, Zambia was relatively prosperous. However, with the creation of the State of Israel, Zambia was influenced by the Muslim section of its population, and all the Jews left. Alex felt that this was the beginning of Zambia's economic problems. Alex follows Torah, and keeps kosher. He considers himself a God-fearer, rather than Jewish. He runs an orphanage, and a shelter for the poor from which he distributes food to the poor.

In Zambia, the Muslim population has grown as a result of the activities of fundamentalist groups providing food for the poor. They give it on the condition that you are a Muslim, or intend to become a Muslim. Alex upset them by giving poor Muslims food. What upset them even more, was that Alex did not place any preconditions on the food he gave. He was even visited by an imam, who engaged in lengthy discussions with him. The imam asked, "Why do you follow the God of Israel?"Alex answered, "Because the God of Israel is a living God."The imam asked, "How is it that your God is a living God?"Alex replied, "Because when my God says something, He does it. What He promises, He fulfils. What He predicts, comes to pass." And with examples from the Torah and the Prophets, Alex showed the imam where this has happened.

Over a course of many months, the imam returned many times. And eventually, one day, he said, "I want to follow your God. I want to follow the God of Israel. I also want you come and speak to my congregation." The first part of the imam's words lifted Alex's heart; the second part filled him with dread. But he nevertheless accepted the invitation. You can imagine--it was like Daniel entering the lions' den. There was this softly spoken man, standing before a large crowd of nearly a thousand Muslims, trained and converted by hardline fanatics. So he prayed, "O Lord my God, I have no idea what to say; please direct my tongue to speak."And so he spoke to them. And at the end of the day, as it was getting dark, about a hundred Muslims came forward and said that they wanted to follow the God of Israel. They even wanted to convert there and then. Alex tried to explain to them that he was not qualified to convert them--he was not even Jewish. But they insisted, so he thought a bit, and said that perhaps he could do something to symbolise their break with the past.

So that evening, they went down to the nearby river, and with several men on guard to warn away crocodiles, all the men immersed themselves. They are now applying for a proper conversion. When I heard all this, I picked my jaw up off the floor and told him that this was further proof that our God is a living God, because out of nowhere God has called him, and sowed a seed in a place no one would have expected. I feel privileged to know Alex."

And so do I. I pray I can be more like Alex every day.

Prayer of Mother Teresa

2005-08-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

My wife ran across this wonderful little prayer from Mother Teresa.
Wanted to share...

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received,
and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into our bones,
and allow your soul the freedom to
sing, dance, praise, and love.

My Friend's Day

2005-08-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine died today. Had a massive heart attack and died. I've known him for around 15 years, and though I didn't know him really well, wasn't completely close, there always was a connection between us. He was a kind of institution in my life that I guess in some irrational way I thought would always be there. Last April we agreed to try to get closer. To spend some time, have a lunch and talk. For the last few months, I'd been trying to get together with him, but one thing or the other, usually the other thing, always got in the way. And now there is just one big thing. No more chances.

Today was his day. I'm sure he didn't know it was his day when he woke up and saw the lines of his familiar room in the familiar light. It just became his day one moment this morning with the pain in his chest. Even then, I'm sure he didn't know it was his day. When did he finally know? What did he think about? What did he feel? What did he try to say?

When I heard over the phone a few hours ago, I literally couldn't speak. Couldn't think of a thing to say. I'm trying now to say that I still can't really believe that I won't see him again. I'm trying now to say that I wish we'd had at least one of the lunches we planned so I'd have that solid memory to fall back on and maybe feel better about. Should I have tried harder to see him? Should I have not given up as I did the last few weeks telling myself that maybe later when things were less crazy, I'd try again.

And I'm trying now to say that on his day, I can't help wondering what my day will be like. How I'll find out that it's my day and what I'll be thinking and trying to say. How this life I so casually live will suddenly end. What will end it? What will precede it? Will I have any clues? I'm sure I won't know it's my day when it comes any more than he did. For that matter, day ain't over yet...

And all these things I wonder about, my friend is learning now. Whatever is out of my reach now, my friend is now experiencing. I will miss my friend. Not so much the time I spent with him, because there wasn't so much of that, but just the knowing that he's out there, like the ocean I rarely visit just a few miles away. The possibility of lunch.

Thinking on James

2005-08-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted; life has intruded for the last week. Just finished a short paper on the book of James and wanted to call your attention to it. Trying to see James from an intensely Jewish perspective and how his vision of the Gospel squares so well with Jesus', but not necessarily our own--as modern, Western thinkers. Here's an excerpt:

"Western World, Western Church
We as Western thinkers have been seduced into the notion that everything can be reduced to mathematical equations or verbal expressions that fully describe a process or object; to digitize, to reduce something to numbers that will allow the full manipulation of that object and to make it then �??work�?? for us. To analyze, compartmentalize, categorize, to catalogue, to thrust a pin through and place it under glass to visit from time to time as an accomplished act or fact�??something completely understood and tamed as we move on to new frontiers of knowledge. This process has served the Western world well in the last 500 years in terms of science and industry, but it�??s been a disaster in terms of our spiritual and personal worldview. Our scientific accomplishments have come at the expense of our spiritual progress, our very ability to find the X that marks the spiritual treasure spot. And the Western church has gone right along for the Western ride.

From the deep mystical and spiritual grounding of ancient and medieval Christians, who prized direct experience with God and the other-centered lifestyles that flowed from that experience, we have come to ubiquitous �??How To�?? books that break down our spirituality in neat categories, templates, and numbered lists. We hear speakers and pastors from more and more audio-visual venues telling us how to �??do it.�?? We see the footprints of Western marketing, economics, science, technology, and imperialism all over our churches�??from the way they are organized to the messages we impart. Western thinking is, after all, our worldview, so we�??re really not even aware of it as we use it. It�??s the ground we walk on and the air we breathe. Even as I try to avoid the pitfalls of this thinking, I�??m using it to describe my very efforts to avoid it. It�??s like thinking in a native language while trying to translate mentally into a second. Until we can actually think in the second language, we are always losing something in the translation. And here, that something lost is vital to our ability to understand the process of relating to God and each other, in other words, living in the Kingdom of God.

The Jesus-James Alternative
...the Book of James seems to act as a kind of antidote to all this. First off, James is an intensely Jewish book. The Jews, from the most ancient times to today, have a genius for practicality, for what I�??m starting to call herenowness. Jewish spiritual thinking is almost entirely focused on herenow, rather than on some future time or afterlife. ...Our relationship with God...is only as good as our worst relationship with one another. We love God by loving each other. We see God in the faces around us, and we demonstrate what we believe in how we live these relationships. Or better, what we truly believe flows naturally from who we�??ve become because of what we truly believe."

For the full article, go here, if any of this has piqued your interest.

Turtles All The Way Down

2005-08-10T09:58:00.000-07:00

This title comes from the ancient cosmological model of the earth resting on the back of a huge turtle. But when asked what the turtle is resting on, the answer is that it's "turtles all the way down." The futility of logically trying to prove the unprovable is summed up in the last paragraph of the article by the same name by Paul Campos:

"...supporters of intelligent design theory are guilty of impiety when they imagine that something like the nature of God could be subject to scientific verification. (On this point they should consult the ultimate peer-reviewed journal: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.") The argument between those who treat science as a religion and those who want to make religious belief amenable to the methods of science can produce no winner, or even a coherent disagreement." (For the entire article, go here.)

Whenever we try to explain the infinite in finite terms, that is, try to "prove" spiritual principles or even the existence of spirituality or God by logical means, it's turtles all the way down. There's always a point where logic runs out, a line we can't cross, an abyss into which we finally must simply jump. The infinite is by definition, infinite, and so can't be defined in finite terms. The two are mutually exclusive. When we try, we necessarily run into inevitable paradoxes such as predestination vs. free will, faith vs. works, perseverence of the saints (whether you can lose your salvation or not), and so on. In fact, once you find yourself at one of these impasses, you can be sure you've made the error some way back of trying to "prove" something that stands outside of logic itself. Logical principals can only describe logical processes, and infinite processes aren't logical--they're, well, infinite.

If the spiritual could be proven, what's the use of faith? Why is faith so highly prized in Scripture? Because there is no other way to approach the infinite, God, or our spiritual selves in this life of logic any other way. We can move logically to within just a few nanoseconds of the moment of creation, but then when temperatures and velocities approach infinity, we must take a leap of faith. It's interesting that those who claim atheism, those who say categorically that there is no God are taking just as illogical a leap of faith as those of us who believe there is one. God's existence can't be either proven or disproven logically. The only logical response to God is agnosticism--the big "I just don't know." So why do we spend so much time trying to "prove" the existence of God or Noah's ark or the ark of the covenant, the validity of creation science or end times prophecies, or (fill in the blank here)? There seems to be this need in us to have a turtle to stand on, something solid under our faith. But if it's provable, it's not faith after all.

Let's be honest and stop all this. We can prove our faith to ourselves through our direct experience and connection to our God, but not to anyone else. We can know that we know that we know, but we can't transfer that assurance to anyone else. That's their job, not ours. Best we can do is show them theeffect of our faith on the quality of our lives and let them interpret that as they will.

Very Interesting

2005-08-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to bring your attention to a couple of fascinating articles that I just posted to theeffect site. Go here for an article about the changing values of Americans and return to a culture of virtue that is being reflected in a statistical drop of all sorts of problems from teen pregnancy, domestic violence, drunken driving, children in poverty, and even divorce. Encouraging news. Then go here for an article by Leonard Sweet on titheing. If you thought you understood the scriptural practice and mandate of the tithe, you may be surprized.

You can check the engage/articles/new this week link for new articles every week pertaining to topics relating to our spiritual journey and how that plays out in our politics, culture, religion, society, and our lives.

Moments of Kingdom

2005-08-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking about that last post--the difference between Western and Eastern thinking. And I suppose I was thinking in a typically Western way: I (subject) was thinking about the post (object) the way a scientist thinks about an experiment. There is a necessary separation involved in this way of thinking. In Jesus' depiction of Kingdom, there is no separation. In fact, Kingdom is a moment by moment experience of connectedness--of us to each other, of us to God through each other. The moments of Kingdom are those moments where everything falls away, all sense of the boundaries of self, all sense of an I/subject or you/object cease to exist in the total immersion in the moment. That's how we know we're having a Kingdom moment, by this loss of self, which is what "dying to self" means after all. Francis of Assisi once said to preach the Gospel continuously and to use words where necessary. I hear about how we have to go and minister and spread the Gospel and do this and that to fulfill our mission and commission in life. We're always thinking about methods and ministries and strategies for growing this and that church or organization. Reaching more people. But here's the catch: if we're thinking about what we're doing as we're doing it, we're not immersed in the moment of doing. We're not fully present to the person we're doing it with/to. We're still separated off in our minds thinking about the objects around us rather than being fully connected to them. And if we feel pressure or obligation to do or do more, then we're not letting our doing flow out of just who we are becoming. We need to shut off that voice in our heads and just be with the people God has placed in our paths and with the God who has placed every breath in our bodies. And then see what happens next.

Here for a thought about men and women, chimps and scientists, and that subject/object thing, and here for more on Kingdom (click Kingdom link).

To Be or Not to Be...

2005-08-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

For anyone not familiar with the title of this post, it's where Shakespeare's Hamlet debates his own suicide as a cure for his depression. Here's an intensely charged article that we discussed at our weekly study a couple of weeks ago. In it, Jack, a 59-year-old retiree is trying to decide whether to use Oregon's assisted suicide law to end his own life, of which he only has about 6 months left due to bone cancer. To avoid all the pain and loss of dignity and control to himself and his family, he thinking over the options he has, but is at least thankful that Oregon law provides such options to him in the first place. At present, the White House has instructed the Justice Department to prosecute any doctor who prescribes drugs for assisted suicide under federal law, regardless of state statutes. That decision has been stayed pending a court decision.

Hard to know where to start in this situation, there are so many issues. Does the federal government have the right to supersede state laws in this way? Do we the people have the right to pass laws that allow us to kill ourselves legally? Does Jack have the moral right to kill himself, even in this situation? What are the obligations of the people closest to Jack? To talk him out of it, to warn him of his moral duty, to let him be and make his own decision? Is suicide always wrong? What does Scripture have to say about suicide and its implications on salvation? Is there any circumstances when suicide is acceptable?

Did I get them all? There are so many issues surrounding our rights and obligations as Christians and people of faith with regard to our political and legal process, that I think I want to leave them for another post (to follow shortly) that is even more on point. But what of the issue of suicide itself from a moral and Biblical point of view? If you grew up Catholic, as I did, then you know that suicide is tantamount to a free trip to hell. It is the ultimate expression of despair and selfishness--an unrecoverable "I don't care" to the feelings and concerns of loved ones. It is the ultimate desecration of life--murder of self. It is the ultimate thumbing of the nose at God and any hope of something better. And when it is all these things, it's pretty bad, but is it instant hell?

I had someone come to me recently concerned about the state of a friend who'd committed suicide, afraid she was now in hell. The pain on her face was heartbreaking as she turned this possibility over in her mind. In fact, the Bible is silent on suicide. There are two recorded suicides in the Bible (Saul and Judas), but there is no commentary on the acts themselves, and no teaching on suicide specifically. There is the injunction against murder, so there's that if you consider suicide a form of murder. But even then, there's only one unforgivable sin, and neither of them are it. Further, the issues that drive a person to suicide are often much different than those that drive a person to murder. How responsible for their actions are people in the throes of despair and pain so deep as to end their own lives? The scriptures don't tell us specifically, so Catholic theology notwithstanding, it's pretty risky to assume. But now let's take a step further.

When is suicide not despairing, selfish, a desecration of life, or a rejection of God and hope? Let's look at Jack again. He doesn't want to die--usually considered an essential ingredient of suicide. He wants to live, but there is no medical hope of that. He wants to spare himself the incredible pain of bone cancer and the indignities of losing all control of bodily functions and having his family have to clean up after him. He wants to spare his loved ones the pain of watching him slowly die. Apart from a miracle, he's going to die within 6 months one way or another. Now before you answer, think about this. Is lying always wrong? Is stealing always wrong? Says not to do it in the Bible, but when we lie to Nazis to save Jewish lives or we steal to keep our family alive, we seem to understand that there is a larger imperative here.

Jesus broke the Sabbath laws deliberately in order to make the point that sometimes in order to fulfill the intent of the Law, you have to break the letter of the Law. The intent of not working on the Sabbath was to provide refreshment and renewal and to keep holy the Lord's name. Jesus deliberately made mud in his hand as salve for a blind man's eyes to cure him, knowing full well that the act of mixing the mud was "kneading," a violation of Rabbinical Sabbath laws. But then what was more refreshing, renewing, and glorifying to God than to heal this man that day? Jesus is saying that it's not merely keeping the letter of the Law that has any component of love, but the intent behind the actions. If lying and stealing can be fulfillments of the law of love when the intent is to preserve life, then what of suicide when the intent is not to die but to spare the living unnecessary pain and suffering. From a spiritual point of view, it is not the actions themselves that matter, but the intent behind them. Even our good actions mean nothing if love isn't motivating them--Paul calls them clanging cymbals in 1Corinthinians.

And there's another point. I hear pastor/teachers sometimes say that sin leads to separation. This is a typically Western view. Western in the sense that it's based in duality (pairs of opposites, discrete and separate) and separation between subjects (us) and objects (them). These concepts are really the basis of Western science and society. Eastern thinking (and like it or not, Jesus was an Eastern man, speaking an Eastern language to Eastern people with an Eastern worldview and culture) is much different. It's based in unity and the connectedness of all things. Even dualities like good and evil, light and dark are seen as continuums connected to each other. Saying sin leads to separation doesn't go far enough. To the ancients, sin is separation. The separation itself is the sin. Anything that disconnects a person from another, that separates a person from the normal working of the community in any way, is unclean, impure--sinful. That's why we see such things in the OT Law as a woman's period, or touching a dead body making a person unclean/sinful and in need of purification through the temple system. Seems crazy to us that normal bodily functions would be "unclean," but they were seen as interruptions in the normal flow or function of community relations. So, anything that leads to separation/sin is seen as sinful, and anything that leads to unity/connectedness is seen as righteous. When an act like suicide leads to the heartbreak and breaking down of relationships among those left behind, it is surely sinful (but not necessarily unforgiveable), but when, in situations like Jack's, it may knit the family closer together and cause them to celebrate the end of Jack's life with him, we may need another measuring rod.

So before we run off to conclusions about suicide, we need to stop and carefully consider the circumstances surrounding every decision. When we enter the voting booths to decide laws that govern these issues, we need to think about what rights and options people should have in their lives. And when we counsel and try to comfort those like the woman who came to me about her friend's suicide, we need to leave open every possibility of God's ultimate acceptance of all of us--even those who for whatever reason cut short their time here... I continue to have this nagging feeling that God is much more reluctant than we in handing out tickets to hell.

New Articles on theeffect Site

2005-08-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

I guess I can use this to bring you commercials about new stuff on theeffect website. Just posted a bunch of new articles on random issues such as Jesus on the issue of divorce, the roles of husbands and wives, headcoverings for women, inspiration and inerrancy of scripture, finding the garden of Eden, 1st or 7th day Sabbath observance, and more. It's all random, but should be interesting. Go here and then click the random link to get to the list.

Does God hate or not?

2005-08-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, this first real post is inspired by Grendal and Lindsay who had a hot and heavy over this issue. About the hardest thing we can do as we walk around in our earth suits is try to get our arms around God's perfect, unconditional love when our whole lives are spent experiencing love that is somewhat less than that. And it doesn't help when our Scriptures seem to give us opposing views. We read in 1John that God is love and perfect love casts out fear; in James we read how our faith is only relevant and alive if we love our neighbor as God loves us; Jesus was all about this unconditional love and acceptance. But then there are passages like Romans 9:13 where Malachi 1:2-3 is paraphrased saying that God loved Jacob but hated Esau. If you do a search on the word "hate" in Scripture, you'll find other examples of God hating something or someone. I'll leave the concept of God hating things like unrighteousness to the theologians, but let's look at the possibility of God hating someone.

First, we need to know that in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, the word hate could mean what we mean by hate: an active detestation of someone/thing. But hate had another meaning as well. It could simply mean to love less than something/one else or to prefer less. The Torah speaks of a man with two wives, one he loves and one he "hates." The Law says the man must treat them equally in terms of their firstborn sons, but here, hate doesn't mean detestation, it simply means not the favorite, not the one most loved. This is the sense in which God loved Jacob and "hated" Esau. But then, in a way, isn't that the same thing? God isn't supposed to play favorites is he?

The big question here, then, is why did God prefer Jacob over Esau and how was that preference played out. If you remember the story (Gen 25:27-34), Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of soup when he was hungry after hunting. He despised his birthright, counted it as nothing, and this is exactly how he lost his preference. Since his birthright meant nothing, it was taken away and given to Jacob. In ancient Hebrew thought, their relationship with God was concentrated on the here and now--Jews didn't have a clear conception of the afterlife and left that to God to sort out. They focused on this day, this moment. All God's blessings and curses were here and now to them: rain on their crops, increase to their livestock, etc. To see good things happening in their lives was to them proof of God's love and approval. To have bad things happen was to see proof that God "hated" them, or loved them less/disapproved. It was a simple cause and effect. Because Esau lost his birthright, God hated/loved him less than Jacob who got it. But the key here is that Esau was the actor who decided whether the birthright was his or not, and ultimately whether God "hated" him or not.

After David had his fling with Bathsheba, the "sword never left his house," and his life was a shambles from that time on. But there was never a time when he wasn't described as God's beloved. And even though David accepted his difficult circumstances (proof of God's "hatred"), he understood his part in creating them, knew that he was still God's beloved, and never left His side. In this sense, even God's "curses" are blessings, since as James says, those difficult circumstances are the very times that grow us up. God doesn't "curse" us to punish us, but allows the effects of our actions to play out and help us to make better choices.

Bottom line: we need to understand the language and thought forms of the time when the Scriptures were written in order to understand a concept like this--what we call a Hebraism. God loves us all unconditionally--take it to the bank. If that's not true, then we can all go home right now. Put a stake in the ground at the point of God's perfect love and interpret all else in your life (including the Bible) from that point of view. God's love and acceptance are absolute, but we, through our decisions, can and do create circumstances in our lives that God doesn't alter. And so from a human point of view, it may look and feel as though God has preferences, but just look up from whatever depths you might find yourself in, and you'll find Him right there with you. Definitely not hating you.

First time for everything...

2005-08-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

Alright, so now I've dipped my toe into the blogsea. So far, it's been pretty cold. Not nearly as easy as I thought it would be, but I've gotten this far, so if anyone's listening, please drop a comment just to let me know that comments work. And I'll write something actually relevant at first opportunity. Though with the amount of time I've spent here, I'm going to have to get some work done...