Basic Theology 7

I woke up earlier than expected, just before midnight on less than three hours sleep. I wasn't able to get back to sleep because my neighbour upstairs was stomping across my ceiling and there were sirens sounding outside. You see, usually, I wear earplugs when I go to bed and don't rely on the alarm clock. But when I have to be out of here at 5 am to catch an international flight, then I am going to have to listen for the clock alarm, and I can't hear it that well with earplugs, so this is not the best way to start a trip, but still inevitable because people usually do have trouble sleeping the night before an early flight. Fortunately I have earplugs with me, and when I am on the plane I can nod off to sleep for a few hours, even though seated upright and crowded with strangers, but the earplugs should help. I am still thinking of basic theology and the whole concept of hell. I used to take it as gospel that only those who were saved made it to heaven, that the blood of Jesus and our faith in him gave us an automatic get out of jail free card. I have of course modified this position somewhat. I still believe that there are those who never make it into the divine presence upon death, but this has everything to do with people not wanting God, and nothing to do with God being a cruel tyrant who casts the unwanted and lost into a lake of fire. I still believe that as attracted as we all are to the love, beauty and goodness of God, we are also terrified and repelled by his truth and our experience of our unworthiness, and this is always going to be a struggle. But I also believe that God is merciful and loving and will spare no effort to secure us all to himself, and it could be that even the most recalcitrant and reprobate among us will one day rejoice in the presence of his eternal love and light. Does this make me a universalist? I can't rightly say, because I really don't know. I do believe most of the accounts I have heard and read about near-death experiences. There is a consistency and credibility to these accounts that resonate. You see, Gentle Reader, God is love, and even the most unloving and unlovely of us must one day respond to his call of love. I don't know what awaits me after death. But I do want to be in God's presence, and I want that process to begin here and now. I have finally packed everything for my journey to Costa Rica. I have only to add my laptop to my baggage and I will be ready to go. Stay tuned for my travel journal. Bye for now.

Basic Theology 6

I have come to believe that God is present in the whole universe, the whole world, and in all people. This doesn't mean that he is always evident, especially in people. I also believe that he is present in all religions. This may not mean that he is equally accessible in all religions. As I have come to recognize Jesus, not as simply the son of God, but God made human or in human form, this has also influenced my perception of other religious faiths. I really believe, for example, that the Jehovah of the Jews, is really Jesus, and that Allah, of the Muslims, is really Jesus. They simply refuse, for the most part, to know this, because other religions seem to have a big bone up their behinds about who Jesus is, not simply a prophet or a teacher, but God. Horror or horrors! So, really, as a Christian, I am the one with the open mind, and not them, and I could say the same about a lot of other Christians, because they don't really seem to get it either. As God is made manifest throughout the entire cosmos, so he makes himself present throughout the world, throughout humanity, and throughout all our lame and feeble efforts to make him accessible through our constructed religions. This isn't to say that Muslims or Jews, or Buddhists or Hindus, are going to acknowledge that it is really Jesus who is being revealed to them in their religious practices. It is never going to be that simple. But because Jesus is God, then surely that also must make God Jesus, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, of course, so he is present throughout, though our awareness and our capacity are always going to be challenged and limited. Neither do I think that the church still plays a vital or privileged role in proclaiming the Gospel, and for one simple reason. The institution of Christianity is simply too corrupt to be trusted with the job that Jesus ordained us for. This doesn't entirely get us off the hook, by the way. Even if the institution of the church, particularly the Anglican version, is practically compromised out of existence, as individuals who claim to love and follow Jesus Christ, we are still commissioned with the sacred charge of making him real to the world. So then, why am I still in the church, one might ask, if I have such a low opinion of this ancient institution? Both my reasons are in the question. It is ancient. And it is an institution. Ancient suggests that there is a historical connection and context that grounds us in the historical reality of Jesus. Institution implies a sense of community or collective responsibility. Christianity is a uniquely communal faith. It is our connection to one another and our participation in one another's lives that makes real the love of God to the world. In the Jesus People we were all strongly connected, but we lacked roots and foundation, and so we didn't last. As disagreeable as I might find many aspects of the Anglican Church, there is also room to connect and grow with others, and we are still doing this in the name of the one who gave his life on the cross for us, no matter how egregiously some so-called progressive Anglicans might try to water down this beautiful truth. Anyway, Gentle Reader, I may or may not write something tomorrow. I have to leave at the crack of dawn for the airport and I will arrive in Costa Rica in the evening. I am bringing my laptop, so I will see what I can do to stay in touch over the next couple of days. Ciao.

Basic Theology 5

There was also in the Jesus People a general lack of reflection and a strong suspicion of higher education. I would say that the dramatic experiences of conversion, and the powerful emotions that came with that, for many, eclipsed rational thinking, especially given the sense and experience of the miraculous. I do not doubt that miracles were occurring, plus some very powerful supernatural manifestations in our midst, because God was palpably present in us and among us. It is helpful to remember that the people being attracted to the Jesus People were often coming from some very damaged, damaging and broken life situations. The immediate impact of the love and joy of God was such that there was often little time or attention given to a more thoughtful and reflective kind of faith, which, when you think of it, really is a luxury of the well-heeled and socially well-established. As understandable was the fundamentalism of the Jesus People, it also became for me problematic. Being a gifted and brighter than average teenager also tended to complicate things for me somewhat, but for the powerful sense and presence of God in my life. Unlike other cerebrally-intense kids, I could not rationalize this experience out of existence. It was simply too real, too authentic, and my life was changing dramatically, from that of a sullen, selfish, self-destructive twit, to a joyful, generous and loving kid. And it was my own family that was noticing the difference, to their consternation and horror! Because it is recorded in John's Gospel that Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father, but by me," it was generally understood, by reduction, that all other religions and ways are false, and many of us, myself included, bent over backwards to discredit Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. We believed that there was one way to God, and that Jesus was the only way, and we weren't ashamed of declaring this, no matter how many people this lack of pluralism and anti-inclusivity might have offended. We were zealous to witness for our faith and bring in converts like there was no tomorrow. Even now, I believe in the uniqueness of Jesus. This doesn't imply that I discredit other faiths. I honour and respect them. I also believe that God reaches out and touches anyone reaching out to him, regardless of the name they are giving him. But in order to establish that Jesus Christ is unique, I think there is one small theological misunderstanding that almost everyone, many Christians included, often fall into. First of all, Jesus never claimed to be a prophet or a teacher. By osmosis, and by certain statements attributed to him in the Gospels, Jesus claimed to be God, or one could say, God manifested in our humanity. And he didn't say that no one comes to God except through him. Jesus said that no one comes to the Father except through him. If you have any understanding of the Holy Trinity, then we are touching on one God manifesting as Father and Creator, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. Which is to say that we come to God through God, which is to say through our humanity shared by Jesus, or by simply accepting that God has come to us in our fallen and imperfect humanity in order to bring us to himself. This is the one sticking point that prevents too much concourse from occurring between Christianity and other religious faiths, and Christian ministers and teachers, at their eternal peril, will often try to omit Jesus, except as a great teacher and prophet, in order to mix well and be accepted by Muslims and Jews etc, especially since the latter do not accept Jesus as the Son of God. But I still think that God, in his mercy, still reaches anyone who comes to him in humility of heart and spirit, and even if they don't in this life acknowledge Jesus, in the next, they will see and love him as he is.

Basic Theology 4

I'm trying to capture some of my earliest first impressions of reading the Bible as a just converted fourteen and fifteen year old. It was really like fresh, clean and very cold spring water to my soul. I was reading things I had heard vaguely about but was now seeing them in print every single morning. It was especially the Gospels that caught my attention. All these details about the life, ministry, work and teaching of Jesus. I marveled at his confrontation with Satan in the wilderness, of how Jesus turned down every temptation towards greatness, power and mad fanaticism, and those things resonated, as did the response of Peter and his fellows when Jesus called them to drop their nets, leave their boats and come follow him to be fishers of men. These words still resonate with me, to this very day. I read and puzzled over the Beatitudes of his Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. And I wondered, how can the poor in spirit be given something so precious, but even then in my young understanding, I knew that to follow Christ was to turn inside out and upside down almost everything that my parents and the world had taught me, because they had not taught me good nor true human values. They despised humility and poverty, and here in the words of my new saviour, lord and friend, Jesus, I was being told that it was okay to be poor, to be humble, to be a small and little person of limited resources because this makes us vulnerable and open to the love, mercy and kindness of God, and thus we become vectors of his grace. All this was already coming real for me as I, and my young friends and companions, would read, study and pray together over those words. I also came to see this in my new friends, the Jesus People. They were people of diverse backgrounds but they all seemed to share in common this beautiful humility, this complete lack of pretense. When you are a young adolescent, you start to really want and crave authenticity, or at least I did, and here it was, looking me so tenderly in the face. My new friends were, largely, hippies or ex-beatniks, artists, musicians and poets, regular working folk who had run aground in life, people from difficult family and social circumstances. Many had been former drug users, addicts and alcoholics. They had also experienced real deliverance and healing by the power of God, and their joy was unfeigned and contagious. I was, through my new friends, given that precious blessing of not only reading about Jesus in the Bible, but seeing those words brought to life in the people around me. The Jesus People were also racially diverse. Many were First Nations and Metis. The lady who was the pastor of the church, Fountain Chapel in Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood, where we were worshiping, was black. Her name was Sister Ann Walker, a middle aged woman who clearly had lived through a lot of pain and difficulty, but radiated a sense of peace, joy and love that drew me to her like the proverbial magnet. This was also particularly salutary for me in my early development. My parents were racists and my father eventually, towards the end of his life which was mercifully cut short by Alzheimer's, a white supremacist. Sister Walker was part of Vancouver's black community in Hogan's Alley, that neighbourhood in Strathcona that was wiped out by the construction of the Georgia Viaduct. She was also the first black person I had ever known. All my memories of her are fond, affectionate and respectful, and I think that knowing her as my pastor was hugely effective in forever inoculating me from the hate that my parents were not successful in inculcating in me. These were the primal influences in my lifelong spiritual growth and development, and even now as I am entering the autumn of my life, I want to make again real and beautiful those innocent and lovely beginnings.

Basic Theology 3

I would not have become a Christian were it not for the direct and personal experience of contact with the Divine. This happened on the day that I first accepted Christ, age 14, at 8 or so in the evening in the garret bedroom of the House of David in Fairview Slopes in Vancouver, now a bunch of townhouses and condos. I felt a presence so strong and so beautiful, such as was shared and experienced by my hosts who had graciously invited me for dinner that night. Yes, they wanted to persuade me to know Jesus, but I needed no persuading. I knew, from the deepest core of my being, I knew that it was God and that he was calling me in all his love, sweetness, grace and power. This is so hard to convey to those who don't believe, the skeptics, the scoffers, but this is because it is like describing the colour green to someone who is colour blind, as I said just a few weeks later to my scoffing and mocking brother. Several weeks later, when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I had never experienced such a heightened sense of power, joy and love sweeping into my life. This in many ways empowered me as a Christian, but also as a complete human being, and I am to this day convinced that I received through this presence of God in my life a great deal of healing and recovering from the fallout of my abusive childhood. I badly wanted my family to know for themselves, and to experience the beauty that was happening to me. They resisted from the first day, were angry, hostile, and scornful: my just-divorced and very angry mother who wanted to be a middle aged party girl, my alcoholic father, and my brother who abused drugs and was himself full of anger and hate. They didn't know what had got into me, neither was there anything they could do to withstand the power of God in my life. Even more to their outrage, I was happy! I no longer wanted to smoke pot or drink, I was peaceful, and I was becoming kind, responsible and loving, all changes that are consistent with an authentic Christian conversion, and they couldn't stand that this was authentic and there was nothing they could do to oppose, short of increasing their own personal resistance against God in their lives. This was painful for me. I was convinced that they would be going to hell and I didn't want them to burn forever in the Lake of Fire. I'm not sure what I think of this now. I like to believe that God is merciful and welcomes everyone who comes to him. But I also acknowledge, from very hard personal experience, that God calls us to repentance, to accepting and admitting where we are wrong and where we have wronged and done wrong, to turn away from that with the motive to do what is right, just and beautiful. I also understand from many of the near-death experiences I have read and heard about that those people who meet God in the afterlife have all been confronted with the wrong they have done to others and are called to repentance and a turning around in their lives. Neither can I imagine anyone who is not wiling to do this really wanting to live in God's presence, because as beautiful and loving God is, because God is love, he is also the essence of truth and truthfulness and I can't understand that anyone who avoids the truth would be able to bear being in the presence of the Living God. I know this from my own personal experience. When I am living in a way that is false and self-centred, it is very hard for me to draw near to God. There is a barrier. Our hold, our grip on our lives, in wanting to be the ones in charge, our own personal CEO, is so strong and so unyielding, that it is going to be something very hard and very difficult and challenging for many of us to really let go and let God. But before any of us can really move forward as complete human beings, that is exactly what we have to do. We are not our own.

Basic Theology 2

I have long been taught that there is very little point to reading the Bible without the help of the Holy Spirit. Now, for those of you who know little or nothing about Christian teaching or doctrine, let me explain a little bit about the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit is really another name for God, but God in action with the universe. So we have God the Father, the Creator, the Sustainer of the Universe. And we have God the Son, Jesus Christ, who is really God in human form, God with us, God making God accessible to us mortals. And we have God the Holy Spirit, who is the empowering action of God in the form of love and creation. Or simply put: God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Empowerer. I still appreciate and abide by this warning, because the Bible can be one huge and confusing book for those who are not ready. like many curious fourteen year olds, I tried to start with Revelation, which really reads for me like a long and very bad acid trip, even now, almost fifty years later. So I tried to begin with the Gospels, focusing on Matthew. It was wonderful. And very strange, especially the passages about Jesus curing people from demonic possession. That summer, having finished grade nine, I remember spending the last days of June curled up on the grass in Minoru Park in Richmond with my Bible underneath one of a windbreak of oak trees, reading Matthew's Gospel, with intrigue, curiosity and fascination. I knew even then that I was being shown some eternal truths and I felt of all persons most privileged. Matthew's Gospel gave me my first real grounding in Christian theology. As did the letter of James, which we did a teenage Bible study on a few months earlier, just shy of my fifteenth birthday. James taught about the importance of leading a pure and unstained life before God and others, focussing on caring for and serving the most vulnerable while challenging the wealthy and speaking truth to power. Matthew and James together have helped form the template of my expression of life as a Christian. Even then, surrounded by unthinking and unreflective fundamentalist Christians, I instinctively knew that the letters of Paul must be read rather selectively. His writings about the worship and wonder of God and the importance of following Christ faithfully have always resonated with me: not so much some of his comments about women, marriage and homosexuality. But we weren't encouraged to ask those kinds of questions, and for some years I even accepted the teachings against homosexuality, but always drawing the line at sexual behaviour, while refusing to demonize or advocating for the sexual reorientation (now proven to be the most ridiculous and harmful concept that it is) people for being gay. Over the years, my position has modified considerably, especially after having had close friends in faithful same-sex relationships, and I do accept that Pauñ did not always know what he was talking about, though I still largely agree with him about sexual conduct in general: that is what monogamous marriage is for, but I would still tend to cut people a little more slack since, well, we are human beings, after all. Over the years, I have come to focus particularly upon the Gospels, as they relate directly about Jesus who is not only the way to God, but is also the Way of God. All else is commentary. More later, Gentle Reader.

Basic Theology 1

Good Morning, Gentle Reader. I think I have beaten Nuance to death, and now it's time to change gears for a bit. I think also, because I have been addressing in some of my previous posts a number of issues that pertain to Christianity, church, Christian life, and why do I even bother? None of these writings, by the way, are scholarly or ecclesiastically sourced, they are merely my own impressions, perspectives, opinions and observations. Anyone reading this material, if they want an authoritative source, had best look elsewhere. Otherwise, please enjoy the ride. I first want to address what I believe to be a lot of popular misconceptions concerning the Christian faith, and such misunderstandings are often spawned in the minds of people who are afraid, or they are not thinking clearly, or they have a general grudge against God, faith and religion, or they have so trained the rational mind as to exclude or strain out anything that touches upon the spiritual, the mystical, the numinous. In all fairness, I would prefer to keep all my referencing within the realm of my own personal experience and curiosity. I have already warned that I am not an expert in these matters. I began seriously reading the Bible when I was fourteen, just when I was converted to the Christian faith. This was given me as a prerequisite for growing in the Christian faith. I accepted the challenge and, even now, almost a half century later, I still believe this to be an important feature of my devotional life. I read the Bible not once, but twice daily, in my second language, which is Spanish. This has been particularly good for my fluency, as I am reading daily, aloud, and these are texts that have important resonance for me. I have known fellow Christians who claimed to have sworn off the Bible for a period of time, sometimes for years, because they felt a need to deprogram themselves from faulty teaching and to try to cultivate a more personal relationship with God. I cannot really comment about this because I don't want to put myself in the position of judge. In my own experience, I have always, since I first accepted Christ, and even more so after being, just over a month later, baptized in the Holy Spirit, had a personal relationship with God. This has never changed, not even when I intentionally backslid when I was nineteen and intentionally quit reading the scriptures. However, my relationship with the Holy Bible has been evolving and changing over the years. I do not feel so much a need or obligation to read it daily, but a desire. There appears to be a kind of spiritual sustenance that happens from this daily discipline, and it is a discipline, which I strongly believe in. The disciplined life is a life of freedom. There is something in our messy human nature that cries out to be ordered and properly directed. It isn't that I worship or deify the Bible. For me, it is a valuable devotional instrument, but there is also something about daily reading about the life, teachings and ministry of Jesus that helps ground me in the reality of my faith. I need that kind of discipline. If I didn't have access to a Bible, I'm sure I would be okay, spiritually, but as long as it's available I want to make use of it. God speaks in the scriptures, but they are not his only microphone, neither do I believe that the Bible is the complete and inerrant Word of God. I have covered this in other blogposts, but I would also like to further explore this theme. At first, I was given to believe that it was the literal and inerrant word of God, but even as a young teenage Jesus Freak I had some struggle with this. It is still, to me, a uniquely inspired document, however, and this remains my position and experience.