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Is America Willing To Be Freed From Its Demons?
Religion Dispatches
Racial antagonism structures our imaginations as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.READ ON ...
Racial antagonism structures our imaginations as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.READ ON ...
Is America Willing To Be Freed From Its Demons? by Religion Dispatches There is a poignant story in the gospel of Mark where Jesus encounters a young man tormented by a demon.
The boy’s father, who desperately wants Jesus’ disciples to help him, has reached the point of exhaustion. The disciples cannot free the man’s son from the demon. The simple question we face at this moment in the United States is can we be freed from our demons?
The murders of Alton B. Sterling, Philando Castile, the five Dallas police officers, and the other black men killed last week who did not make the news show us our oppression. The problem with invoking the demonic is that such invocation has been used as a rhetorical band-aid to cover a wound far too serious to imagine recovery. Yet we must invoke the demonic now not to cover over what Wendell Berry called the racial wound but in order to understand the kind of resistance we face to our liberation.
Racial antagonism structures our imaginations as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.
I don’t know if we Americans, especially Christians in America, want to be freed from our demons. The late New Testament scholar Walter Wink defined the demonic as an array of human and supra-human forces aligned to destroy life. The demonic was both individual and structural, personal and collective, sentient and mechanical. Wink’s expansive way of writing about the demonic sought to capture the dynamic interplay of our being oppressed by evil and our making ourselves tools for evil’s use. Some yield to evil, and others receive the suffering inflicted by such yielding.
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IS AMERICA WILLING TO BE FREED FROM ITS DEMONS?
Minnesota activists brought the police tape from the scene of where Philando Castile was killed to Governor Mark Dayton's residence.There is a poignant story in the gospel of Mark where Jesus encounters a young man tormented by a demon.
The boy’s father, who desperately wants Jesus’ disciples to help him, has reached the point of exhaustion. The disciples cannot free the man’s son from the demon. The simple question we face at this moment in the United States is can we be freed from our demons?
The murders of Alton B. Sterling, Philando Castile, the five Dallas police officers, and the other black men killed last week who did not make the news show us our oppression. The problem with invoking the demonic is that such invocation has been used as a rhetorical band-aid to cover a wound far too serious to imagine recovery. Yet we must invoke the demonic now not to cover over what Wendell Berry called the racial wound but in order to understand the kind of resistance we face to our liberation.
“Racial antagonism structures our imaginations as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.”
I don’t know if we Americans, especially Christians in America, want to be freed from our demons. The late New Testament scholar Walter Wink defined the demonic as an array of human and supra-human forces aligned to destroy life. The demonic was both individual and structural, personal and collective, sentient and mechanical. Wink’s expansive way of writing about the demonic sought to capture the dynamic interplay of our being oppressed by evil and our making ourselves tools for evil’s use. Some yield to evil, and others receive the suffering inflicted by such yielding.
The demonic moves in and through human interactions, social processes, and ways of thinking and acting so deeply inculcated in us that we could rightly call them ways of being possessed. The demons hide right out in the open. The words of the famous song,Demons by the band Imagine Dragons, remind us that we don’t have to look too hard to find the demons:
I wanna hide the truth
I wanna shelter you
But with the beast inside
There’s nowhere we can hide
No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
This is my kingdom come
When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
Walter Wink said that in order to overcome demons you must name, unmask and engage them. So let me name three demons that must be faced. There is the demon that hides in our diversity as a society and fosters racial antagonism. There is the demon that hides in our love of weapons and our myth of independence and makes us worshippers of guns. Finally, there is the demon that hides in our concern for safety and addicts us to fear and forms our obsession with barriers. We all understand these demons, but what we fail to admit to ourselves is that our demons are useful—and no one really wants to get rid of a useful demon.
These demons make us money.
Politicians, pundits, news outlets and advertisers all play with the tensions, conflicts and frustrations between black and white people. They use racial antagonism to boost ratings, to draw attention to their products and to keep viewers. We are constantly afflicted by the media with yet another “conversation” between opposing racial viewpoints that yields no light and generates no new ideas. Its only purpose is to increase our consumptive desire for more such interactions. We need interaction and conversation, but these endless media events offer us nothing to build on. They only set us up for the commercials that dance between the comments.
“We have learned to structure our fear geographically and unleash it through police violence set up to protect our spaces. Land developers, civil engineers, city planners, real estate agencies, builders, insurance companies and a whole host of others all profit from our barrier-building and fear-mongering.”
Racial antagonism structures our imaginations, as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.
One of my neighbors was in a Target store recently and encountered a man wearing a holstered gun. When asked by my neighbor why he carried this gun in Target of all places, the man—neither a police officer nor a security guard—said that he needed to take care of himself. Yet guns have never created independence, only entrapment. Too many people in this country believe the myth that a gun frees me from those who I fear and who I hate. This old myth fuels the worship of the gun and its unprecedented record sales in this country.
We imagine the gun creating a barrier around my land and my body, my home and my people, protecting me from any form of invasion. While safety is a legitimate concern, a gun carried by a scared police officer or a scared customer in Target does not insure it. We create barriers by the way we construct neighborhoods, carve up communities, and channel resources, goods and services along racial lines. Such barriers feed our fears and teach us to live comfortably in the racial lies that have guided the thinking of so many Americans for centuries. We have learned to structure our fear geographically and unleash it through police violence set up to protect our spaces. Land developers, civil engineers, city planners, real estate agencies, builders, insurance companies and a whole host of others all profit from our barrier-building and fear-mongering.
“We have been in a racial cold war for centuries, and now a real war beckons us.”
Our way forward? Exhaustion. The only way to free ourselves of these demons is to reach utter exhaustion, and come to the point where the money we make through race and violence is less compelling than the desire for life together, life truly joined in common hope of flourishing. Sadly, I don’t believe we have reached the point of exhaustion yet.
But make no mistake, we are headed for exhaustion. We have been in a racial cold war for centuries, and now a real war beckons us. We are headed toward the moment when we all fully embrace the condition of perpetual war where the only thing that we share is a quest for money and unbelief in the possibility that people will change.
Of course, some of us are already exhausted, and we would all do well to remember the words of Jesus to his disciples when they asked why they could not cast the demon out of the young man. His response was “this kind comes out only by prayer.” Later, monastic scribes added the words “and fasting” to this verse, which I take to be a helpful amendment. Prayer and fasting in relation to our current moment in this country translates into refusing to listen to voices that drive our racial antagonism and instead listening for those voices that speak our hopes. It also means finally entering the kind of fasting that we Americans have refused.
We need a gun fasting. It is time to give up guns. We need not only prohibitions against war weapons in our streets, but also gun-buy-back programs, and gun-destruction community parties. Yet more than these, we need new police practices that make the use of guns the absolute last resort. More than all of this, we need to declare a time of an actual gun fast. No more hunting, shooting competitions, gun sports, range shooting practice, gun buying, gun shows, etc., until we see a 50 percent reduction in gun violence in this country. I would prefer to see Christians give up their guns, but for so many such a request feels like giving up a family member, their culture, their identity. So let’s take a smaller step: fast.
A holy fast clarifies one thing: that one’s love of God and neighbor is more important than the things we need for life and health. It is time for us to show such love by denying ourselves something we need neither for life or health—our weapons. Every Christian in this country ought to make a solemn vow today to either get rid of their weapons or to put them away.
I have been in turmoil not only because of the shooting of these two black men, but because of the killing of these police officers by a young black man. Yet the temptation to hate and to kill is real. Like so many black men, I have never had a positive experience with an on-duty police officer, even though I have always been a law-abiding citizen. Only my love for God and my love for my neighbor—including police officers—keeps me from hate. But that temptation to hate and kill is profoundly present to us all at this moment.
The demons tempt us to violence, but there has always been a way to resist that temptation. We must follow the way of a God who will not release us either to our demons or to our despair.
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Homo Sapiens, God, and the Evolving UniverseDr. Carl Krieg
This is the second in a series of articles fromTheological Memoirs that examines nine “scientific facts” that require a new theological response.
READ ON ...
Theological Memoirs
Reflection Number 2: Homo Sapiens, God, and the Evolving Universe by Dr. Carl Krieg
This is the second in a series of articles that examine nine “scientific facts” that require a new theological response. Click Here to Read the first article.
I am not a scientist, but the general outline of evolution seems pretty clear. Due to a variety of causes, genes in any given species will mutate. Mutations that help a species to survive and multiply are by definition beneficial to that species, helping it to adapt to changing environmental factors. Mutations detrimental to survival will factor into the demise of that species. There is no plan. Changes are due simply to random mutation and adaptation. And that change is a two way street. Any given species can become more complex in its struggle to survive and reproduce, or it can become simpler. Some bacteria have become simpler simply because simple made it easier to survive and reproduce. It all depends on what it takes for survival. Everything is contingent, which is to say that it need not have come into being, and it need not continue in its being.
As of now, no one knows how life began, but clearly it did. How we define life is a subject of controversy, but any definition would have to include the ability to reproduce. After life began, the environment continued to change, so life had to adapt to those new realities. And as life forms found themselves in different environments, they began to evolve in different directions, ultimately becoming plants and animals, fish, feathers and fur, conscious and not-so-conscious, the current panoply of life that surrounds us today even as it continues to change.
Understanding human evolution involves an admixture of fact and theory. The facts include well documented climate changes in Africa where many of the fossils were found, as well as genomes that have been sequenced only within the last decade. We have today the genome not only of homo sapiens, but of Neanderthals and Denisovans as well.
DNA analysis shows us that the humans of today share 99 per cent of their DNA with chimpanzees (or, some figures say 94%), and 50% of their DNA with bananas. How can this be?! From what I can understand as a simple layman, most DNA is instruction on details of life that all life has in common, such as the process by which a cell reproduces. But then there is that 1% difference, and it is in that 1% where the changes are given their unique marching orders. All humans share 99.9% DNA, but we don’t all look alike. Enter that .1% that makes us different from one another. And some of that .1% comes from Neanderthals.
At some point in the past, a few million years ago at least, some of those great apes experienced a mutation(s) that proved explosive: they developed bipedalism. They could now walk on two legs instead of four. Quite possibly at the same time, the environment was becoming less forest canopy and more open savannah. Some evolutionary theorists suggest that standing upright was a strategic advantage in grassland, enabling our ancestors to see game further away. Be that as it may, the bipedal adaptation continued to create change for millions of years.
The bipedal Homo Heidelbergensis lived in Africa, Europe and Asia as recently as 600,000 years ago. For whatever the reason, most likely climatic, the groups in Europe and Africa developed in isolation from one another. The African group became Homo Sapiens and the northern group became Neanderthal. It was only about 50,000-80,000 years ago that some of the African group started to migrate north, moving along the eastern end of the Mediterranean and up into what we call Europe. And along the way, they met Neanderthal, big and strong, requiring a large daily intake of calories due to the cold weather, and having a brain bigger in size than ours today.
The total picture is a bit fuzzy as to where and when the mixing occurred, and whether there were other hominins around, but there is no doubt that Neanderthals and homo sapiens co-existed on this planet as recently as 30,000 years ago.
And mated. Every human today of non-African descent has some DNA inherited from Neanderthals. Those Homo Sapiens who remained in Africa never met Neanderthal, never mated with them, and therefore have no Neanderthal genetic inheritance. But for those who left, the high probability points to inter-breeding. While that was going on, other ancestors, such as the Denisovan, were evolving in Siberia, China, and Indonesia, and their DNA shows up in southeastern Asians.
The story will most likely always be a bit fuzzy, and new evidence is continually being found. But there is no doubt we have evolved from earlier homo species, that we are genetically bound to them and to one another, and that the process will not stop with us.
The impact of evolution on traditional religion is explosive, and falls into two categories. The first is the claim of evolution that everything is contingent, the second is that species mutate. I’d like to analyze them one at a time, but before we do that, let’s listen to the full impact of what evolution has to say. It’s a broadside bombardment.
The Impact of the Contingency Factor
No Divine Plan
Contingency means that there is no reason why anything has to be. It could as well be as not. There is no upward direction to the change; it just moves on. According to evolution, everything is contingent, and there is no cosmic plan, no teleological dimension. What then is god’s role in all this? If the cosmos has no purpose, it’s pretty hard to say that god has a purpose. That old time talk about god’s plan for salvation is like talking in the wind. How can divine providence control a process that has no direction and no goal?
No Divine Direction
Forced to give up the concept of a divine plan, some believe that god, even if she does not have a plan, has a hope that matters will end a certain way. God wills a direction for earth history, perhaps toward a Kingdom of God, a kingdom of peace and justice. Prominent in the biblical perspective is the promise of the day when the lion will lie down with the lamb, when men will beat their swords into plowshares, when all the earth will be filled with plenty. The question for theologians has always been whether the promise is fulfilled in history, or beyond. But however one answers that question, it is a meaningless issue from the evolutionary perspective: God may have a hope, but the universe has no goal.
No Kingdom of God
There was a time in American history when the predominant theological outlook, called the Social Gospel, was very optimistic about the future. Things were getting inevitably better. Before you know it, the Kingdom of God on earth would be here, at least in preliminary form. But then began the great depression and the rumblings leading to the second world war, and the social gospel optimism was replaced by Christian Realism, under the inspiration of Reinhold Niebuhr. God’s historical kingdom was replaced by an eschatological kingdom that would not arrive until the end of time, whenever that might be. People today continue to look for the end of time and the coming of god’s kingdom, and continue to predict when that day will arrive. Todays historical reality is so depressing for some that the only hope they have is that it will all end.
What has evolutionary cosmology to say to all this? God’s promise of a Kingdom, whether in history or beyond, is null and void. If god does not intervene in the process, how can we affirm that the dream of god will be implemented? This is a radical repudiation of a basic tenet of biblical theology.
No Moral Law
Instead of talking about a divine plan, or a divine hope or direction into the future, others speak of some moral law that has been part and parcel of the universe since the beginning of time. The starry sky above, and the moral law within, and all that. That belief enabled Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, to fight racism with the presumed conscience of the “enemy” as his only tool. But again the questions of evolution: where did this moral law begin? with homo sapiens? with Neanderthal? with the Big Bang? If it does exist, will it last, or will it die out?
Mutation
No Singular Incarnation
Let’s move on from the scientific assertion that there is no teleological end toward which the cosmic process moves, to the assertion that species evolve. The broadside continues. Given that homo sapiens arose out of the species that went before, mated with Neanderthals, and continues to evolve, what does it mean to say that God was incarnate in Jesus? that Jesus was true man? Was there a Neanderthal Jesus?
No Singular Atonement
It is commonplace in Christianity, even outside fundamentalist circles, to assert that “Jesus died for our sins”. Whether that is an accurate description of what Jesus did is a topic for another day, but for those who want to say that, what does it mean from an evolutionary perspective? Did the Neanderthals need someone to die for them? Or Homo Heidelbergensis? And where is the dividing line? And if we do not say that Jesus died for our sin, but only that we needed him to do something for us, why is it that we need a savior? from what?
No Trinity
Even if one wanted to believe in god, it is highly selective, from an evolutionary perspective, to focus on one person from one planet and place that person into the cosmic godhead. Can we really believe that a man from Galilee is part of a cosmic-and-beyond triune god?
Humans not Special
Inasmuch as all life can be traced back to a common ancestor, what does it mean to be a human being? We homo sapiens like to think that we are the apex of nature, the epitome of self consciousness, and created in the image of god, whatever that might mean. We have a soul, and that makes us special. Really? Is not the belief in human superiority nothing more than a grand Illusion? Everyone knows that golden retrievers are more godlike than we are. And every day a new study shows that other members of the animal kingdom share elements of self awareness that we previously thought unique to humans. The latest news is about ravens.
Looking backwards, where can we mark the dividing line between ape and homo, between Neanderthal and homo? Some say we have something special, perhaps a soul, but did that something special just suddenly become part of a species, say June 3, 762,000 BCE? Did Neanderthals not have this?? How about Heidelbergensis? Was their self consciousness at a lower level than ours today? Who are we, anyway?
Earth not unique
And then there’s ET. Modern astrophysics paints a picture (almost literally) of a universe immense beyond comprehension. A universe that is evolving, by the way. Would not god love other creatures in the universe as “he” loves us? Where does Jesus fit into that situation? Did Mars or Venus or planet X have a savior once upon a time? Do they now? Do they need a savior? For what? And how can we elevate Jesus, true homo sapiens from that little planet earth, into the second person of a trinity?
Eternal Souls?
There are some answers to these questions that seem to incorporate evolution. One answer is that there are souls that migrate along the path of evolution. They may initially inhabit an amoeba, then a cat, then dog (I’m a dog person), then homo sapiens. They somehow remain the same, supposedly, but the incarnation differs. There is a certain logical consistency to the idea, and it definitely deals with the issues of evolution, but questions can be asked. Where did the souls come from? Are they older than the Big Bang, or are they a product of that event? Do they pre-date the origin of our universe such that they are part of some eternal cycle?
Eternal Wisdom?
There is another answer that focuses particularly on Jesus. The idea here is that Jesus is just another teacher in the long history of gifted teachers, that he is but one member of a long tradition of those who pass along wisdom that has been around a long time. There are those who believe that this wisdom was not available in the Middle East and that Jesus actually had to travel to India to get it. Others think that it was available in the Hebrew tradition, under the guise of wisdom literature. It’s not exactly clear, however, where this wisdom began. It’s one thing to have an eternal soul that seemingly transcends evolution, but quite another to place your bets on historical figures. Where did the wisdom begin? in our Neanderthal ancestors?
Commentary
First of all, a disclaimer. As I said in my introduction, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. Most especially, I am not trying to convince my secular humanist family of friends about anything to do with god or Jesus because, as far as I can see, it doesn’t make any difference what you do or don’t believe. What does seem to matter is whether a person is loving and compassionate or not, both for their own happiness and fulfillment as well as that of others.
Evolution does not create any problems for secular humanism because there is no god to fit into the picture. It’s a different state of affairs for Christian theology.
In the previous chapter on cosmology, on the issue of whether or not love is the ultimate reality, i.e. whether process is teleologically defined and heading somewhere or not, we concluded that Christian theology and evolution are contradictory. Either the future will be shaped by god- in history or beyond- or it will not. Theology founded on faith says yes, science says no. I don’t see any compromise. If you take the teleology of god out of the equation (pun intended), and the nature of the universe is not love but neutrality or worse, then the faith of the disciples is misguided and bogus, and you can take down the Christian shingle and close up shop. I’m not ready to do that.
On the other hand, mutation is happening right in front of our eyes. There is no escape. The fact that Jesus was homo sapiens, coupled with the inevitable mutation of homo sapiens, forces us to accept the fact that he, like the dinosaurs, will become a fossil of the past. How does theology deal with that?
In the preceding section I spoke of what we learn from the Jesus/disciple encounter. I also described as theologically speculative any affirmations that go beyond what we learn in that encounter. However, knowing that some statement is speculative does not necessitate its being wrong. So let’s explore a bit and imagine a scenario, a scenario that recognizes that 1) species mutate, including homo sapiens, and so agrees with evolution on that score, 2) but also assumes a teleological end and so on that score rejects the total contingency of evolution. The cosmos changes, but god has an end in view.
An Incarnation?
The New Testament gospel of John, written perhaps 75 years after Jesus was executed, starts with the following statement of faith: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That’s pretty highfalutin stuff. Historically, the first century Christians elevated a man they knew, a man called Jesus, into God Himself. Jesus became identified as an incarnation of God, the second person of a trinity, his continued presence in the world seen as the third person, the Holy Spirit.
Now, first century Christians knew nothing about evolution, so we have to cut them a break. But we do, and we need to accept this in-your-face fact as we try to intelligently make sense of Jesus. Or at least I do, since I’m calling myself a Christian. So, God decided we were in trouble, and the Word became flesh and tried to straighten us out. That has a certain logic to it. But what about Neanderthal? and ET? and non-Jews? We can assume, I think, that it’s certainly possible Neanderthal did not live up to his potential as a loving being. Perhaps the Word, then, became Neanderthal flesh and dwelt among them. And the same could hold true for ET. And the same for homo sapiens other than those in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In other words, it certainly seems possible that the Word, as an incarnation of god, could appear in a variety of different times and places, according to the needs and shortcomings of evolving species.
Can we go further? Is that Word, manifest to the disciples as Jesus, still alive? Can I talk to him? Is he my friend? (Remember that old hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus”?) Certainly the disciples believed that he was alive again after the crucifixion. In fact, that’s the heart of their faith and their gospel. Rudolf Bultmann, a 20th century New Testament scholar, created quite an uproar in the Christian church when he essentially said that the rise of the disciples’ faith was itself the resurrection, and that Jesus himself was crucified, dead, gone. In other words, the resurrection was a purely subjective affair. Again, I can see the logic here, but I disagree. From what I can tell, the disciples felt and believed that the spirit of Jesus was alive and well, a spirit that was more than their faith, a spirit that transcended them. Not to say resuscitation of a corpse, that wasn’t it. But, yes, something that was outside of them, a spirit alive. You can see how I keep coming back to those disciples and what they experienced.
Can I talk with my friend Jesus, this homo sapiens incarnation of the Word? I guess it’s okay. I do it. Why not? and Neanderthal? Could she talk with the Word incarnate in her flesh after that incarnation had ended? I suppose so. Why not? The Spirit/Word of God did assume and continues to assume many forms. Jesus is one of them, and I assume there are many.
Divine Providence?
There’s Jesus. Now, how about providence? Going beyond the bare minimum that we learn from the Jesus/disciple encounter, where might speculation lead? I believe that theology works with a teleological view of the cosmos as formed by love and that science does not, and that this difference is basic. I also said that anything more would be speculative, but, hey, speculation can be fun.
When I was at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, we always talked about how god was doing things in history. Read the Hebrew bible- god is commissioning Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and the rest of the prophets, this army and that, all to accomplish his will on the planet. People believe today that god is doing things for them, answering prayer (sometimes) and performing what they call miracles. We want to believe that God is a god of history, active in the world in a manner that is side by side with the natural process of evolution. Traditionally, that activity is called providence. God is doing things. Indeed, God has a plan, a hope, a direction for history that is working out. By and large, this is how so many Christians see god, be it in a small Baptist church in the Bible Belt, or in many of the halls of theological academia.
All of that stands in sharp relief to the science of evolution. But in addition to the attack of evolutionary science on such a view of god, that old problem of evil also rears its ugly head. We’ll talk about evil later, but for now we can say that if god is active in history, she seems to be doing a lousy job. Providence stinks. The plan isn’t working. People are suffering unjustly.
We need to think about god in a new way.
I begin with the idea that the presence of god is twofold. On the one hand, it is everywhere in the universe. This is the panentheistic perspective described in chapter one. Unfortunately, we creatures are not aware of this presence as we ought and can be, so god becomes incarnate- whenever and wherever need be, today, long ago, far away- so that our (somebody’s) eyes can be opened to see the nearness of god everywhere. This means that we have a general presence of god throughout the universe, and a special presence that is found only in incarnations (plural).
As far as the special presence is concerned, let’s look at planet earth in recent history. Homo sapiens appears on the scene. She was not quite what she could be, not living up to being a loving and aware animal, so god becomes incarnate in human flesh in order to show what life can be and to challenge us to fulfill our potential. For Christians, that incarnation is Jesus. And this is, indeed, an intervention in history. I have no idea how that happens.
To help understand the general presence, I have two images that I like to use. Imagine yourself in the dark countryside. There is no moonlight, only the Milky Way, that band of light washing across the sky, a ribbon comprised of a hundred billion stars. And you feel both very insignificant and very important all at the same time. You sense something beyond that you are part of. A moment extraordinaire.
For the second image, imagine yourself in a NYC subway, rushing around a corner of the tunnel to meet your train connection. And there, on the concrete floor with a hand outstretched, eyes focused on you, is a wretched woman begging for a coin, a helping hand, a person who cares, and your little private world has been invaded. You continue along just like everyone else, but you know that something has just happened that transcends the normal. We have moments like the starry sky above and the subway beggar all the time. It’s that old panentheistic god knocking on our door.
What’s the relationship between special and general divine presence? between the word incarnate in Jesus and god’s presence everywhere? The disciples help us out on this one. The god they found in Jesus was the same god they experienced in their starry sky/beggar moments. Jesus helped them to understand that those moments did indeed involve the god beyond.
They, and we, learn that god, who is present in the stuff of the world, reaches out to us and challenges us to act. God does not act in history as an independent agent, (except when god decides it’s time to become incarnate; don’t ask.) There is no daily intervention. Asking god to do something doesn’t work. Instead, god opens our eyes and asks that we do the divine work, that we see what the possibilities are and act accordingly. God was in Jesus showing and enabling us to become loving and aware, calling us to act in history, to become the real us, loving and caring. Providence, as I see it, is not god acting in history in a manner interfering in the natural processes. It is god encountering us and enabling us to see what needs to be done. We should not be asking god to do things. We should be opening our own eyes to see what needs to be done and doing it. The Dalai Lama said the same thing while speaking of Syrian refugees. Forget “thoughts and prayers”. Do something.
Having said all this, I want to repeat what I said in the section about cosmology, and that is that if we begin our reflection with the Jesus/disciple encounter, the line of demarcation between faith and science is that faith sees the cosmos as informed by love, and science does not. That’s basic. But seeing the world as informed by love can be true not only of people of faith, but of people of all convictions, faith and non-faith, round the world. Just recently there was a report about a study that shows how compassion not only benefits the receiver but the giver as well. Seems as though there is something in our genes that rejoices in helping others. As I said earlier, that was the fundamental message of Jesus’ disciples, that the meaning of the resurrection is not a resuscitated body, but the omnipotence of love and compassion. Available to all.
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Xavier Rudd: Life Lessons from the Didgeridoo
The boy’s father, who desperately wants Jesus’ disciples to help him, has reached the point of exhaustion. The disciples cannot free the man’s son from the demon. The simple question we face at this moment in the United States is can we be freed from our demons?
The murders of Alton B. Sterling, Philando Castile, the five Dallas police officers, and the other black men killed last week who did not make the news show us our oppression. The problem with invoking the demonic is that such invocation has been used as a rhetorical band-aid to cover a wound far too serious to imagine recovery. Yet we must invoke the demonic now not to cover over what Wendell Berry called the racial wound but in order to understand the kind of resistance we face to our liberation.
“Racial antagonism structures our imaginations as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.”
I don’t know if we Americans, especially Christians in America, want to be freed from our demons. The late New Testament scholar Walter Wink defined the demonic as an array of human and supra-human forces aligned to destroy life. The demonic was both individual and structural, personal and collective, sentient and mechanical. Wink’s expansive way of writing about the demonic sought to capture the dynamic interplay of our being oppressed by evil and our making ourselves tools for evil’s use. Some yield to evil, and others receive the suffering inflicted by such yielding.
The demonic moves in and through human interactions, social processes, and ways of thinking and acting so deeply inculcated in us that we could rightly call them ways of being possessed. The demons hide right out in the open. The words of the famous song,Demons by the band Imagine Dragons, remind us that we don’t have to look too hard to find the demons:
I wanna hide the truth
I wanna shelter you
But with the beast inside
There’s nowhere we can hide
No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
This is my kingdom come
When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
Walter Wink said that in order to overcome demons you must name, unmask and engage them. So let me name three demons that must be faced. There is the demon that hides in our diversity as a society and fosters racial antagonism. There is the demon that hides in our love of weapons and our myth of independence and makes us worshippers of guns. Finally, there is the demon that hides in our concern for safety and addicts us to fear and forms our obsession with barriers. We all understand these demons, but what we fail to admit to ourselves is that our demons are useful—and no one really wants to get rid of a useful demon.
These demons make us money.
Politicians, pundits, news outlets and advertisers all play with the tensions, conflicts and frustrations between black and white people. They use racial antagonism to boost ratings, to draw attention to their products and to keep viewers. We are constantly afflicted by the media with yet another “conversation” between opposing racial viewpoints that yields no light and generates no new ideas. Its only purpose is to increase our consumptive desire for more such interactions. We need interaction and conversation, but these endless media events offer us nothing to build on. They only set us up for the commercials that dance between the comments.
“We have learned to structure our fear geographically and unleash it through police violence set up to protect our spaces. Land developers, civil engineers, city planners, real estate agencies, builders, insurance companies and a whole host of others all profit from our barrier-building and fear-mongering.”
Racial antagonism structures our imaginations, as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.
One of my neighbors was in a Target store recently and encountered a man wearing a holstered gun. When asked by my neighbor why he carried this gun in Target of all places, the man—neither a police officer nor a security guard—said that he needed to take care of himself. Yet guns have never created independence, only entrapment. Too many people in this country believe the myth that a gun frees me from those who I fear and who I hate. This old myth fuels the worship of the gun and its unprecedented record sales in this country.
We imagine the gun creating a barrier around my land and my body, my home and my people, protecting me from any form of invasion. While safety is a legitimate concern, a gun carried by a scared police officer or a scared customer in Target does not insure it. We create barriers by the way we construct neighborhoods, carve up communities, and channel resources, goods and services along racial lines. Such barriers feed our fears and teach us to live comfortably in the racial lies that have guided the thinking of so many Americans for centuries. We have learned to structure our fear geographically and unleash it through police violence set up to protect our spaces. Land developers, civil engineers, city planners, real estate agencies, builders, insurance companies and a whole host of others all profit from our barrier-building and fear-mongering.
“We have been in a racial cold war for centuries, and now a real war beckons us.”
Our way forward? Exhaustion. The only way to free ourselves of these demons is to reach utter exhaustion, and come to the point where the money we make through race and violence is less compelling than the desire for life together, life truly joined in common hope of flourishing. Sadly, I don’t believe we have reached the point of exhaustion yet.
But make no mistake, we are headed for exhaustion. We have been in a racial cold war for centuries, and now a real war beckons us. We are headed toward the moment when we all fully embrace the condition of perpetual war where the only thing that we share is a quest for money and unbelief in the possibility that people will change.
Of course, some of us are already exhausted, and we would all do well to remember the words of Jesus to his disciples when they asked why they could not cast the demon out of the young man. His response was “this kind comes out only by prayer.” Later, monastic scribes added the words “and fasting” to this verse, which I take to be a helpful amendment. Prayer and fasting in relation to our current moment in this country translates into refusing to listen to voices that drive our racial antagonism and instead listening for those voices that speak our hopes. It also means finally entering the kind of fasting that we Americans have refused.
We need a gun fasting. It is time to give up guns. We need not only prohibitions against war weapons in our streets, but also gun-buy-back programs, and gun-destruction community parties. Yet more than these, we need new police practices that make the use of guns the absolute last resort. More than all of this, we need to declare a time of an actual gun fast. No more hunting, shooting competitions, gun sports, range shooting practice, gun buying, gun shows, etc., until we see a 50 percent reduction in gun violence in this country. I would prefer to see Christians give up their guns, but for so many such a request feels like giving up a family member, their culture, their identity. So let’s take a smaller step: fast.
A holy fast clarifies one thing: that one’s love of God and neighbor is more important than the things we need for life and health. It is time for us to show such love by denying ourselves something we need neither for life or health—our weapons. Every Christian in this country ought to make a solemn vow today to either get rid of their weapons or to put them away.
I have been in turmoil not only because of the shooting of these two black men, but because of the killing of these police officers by a young black man. Yet the temptation to hate and to kill is real. Like so many black men, I have never had a positive experience with an on-duty police officer, even though I have always been a law-abiding citizen. Only my love for God and my love for my neighbor—including police officers—keeps me from hate. But that temptation to hate and kill is profoundly present to us all at this moment.
The demons tempt us to violence, but there has always been a way to resist that temptation. We must follow the way of a God who will not release us either to our demons or to our despair.
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Homo Sapiens, God, and the Evolving UniverseDr. Carl Krieg
This is the second in a series of articles fromTheological Memoirs that examines nine “scientific facts” that require a new theological response.
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Theological Memoirs
Reflection Number 2: Homo Sapiens, God, and the Evolving Universe by Dr. Carl Krieg
This is the second in a series of articles that examine nine “scientific facts” that require a new theological response. Click Here to Read the first article.
I am not a scientist, but the general outline of evolution seems pretty clear. Due to a variety of causes, genes in any given species will mutate. Mutations that help a species to survive and multiply are by definition beneficial to that species, helping it to adapt to changing environmental factors. Mutations detrimental to survival will factor into the demise of that species. There is no plan. Changes are due simply to random mutation and adaptation. And that change is a two way street. Any given species can become more complex in its struggle to survive and reproduce, or it can become simpler. Some bacteria have become simpler simply because simple made it easier to survive and reproduce. It all depends on what it takes for survival. Everything is contingent, which is to say that it need not have come into being, and it need not continue in its being.
As of now, no one knows how life began, but clearly it did. How we define life is a subject of controversy, but any definition would have to include the ability to reproduce. After life began, the environment continued to change, so life had to adapt to those new realities. And as life forms found themselves in different environments, they began to evolve in different directions, ultimately becoming plants and animals, fish, feathers and fur, conscious and not-so-conscious, the current panoply of life that surrounds us today even as it continues to change.
Understanding human evolution involves an admixture of fact and theory. The facts include well documented climate changes in Africa where many of the fossils were found, as well as genomes that have been sequenced only within the last decade. We have today the genome not only of homo sapiens, but of Neanderthals and Denisovans as well.
DNA analysis shows us that the humans of today share 99 per cent of their DNA with chimpanzees (or, some figures say 94%), and 50% of their DNA with bananas. How can this be?! From what I can understand as a simple layman, most DNA is instruction on details of life that all life has in common, such as the process by which a cell reproduces. But then there is that 1% difference, and it is in that 1% where the changes are given their unique marching orders. All humans share 99.9% DNA, but we don’t all look alike. Enter that .1% that makes us different from one another. And some of that .1% comes from Neanderthals.
At some point in the past, a few million years ago at least, some of those great apes experienced a mutation(s) that proved explosive: they developed bipedalism. They could now walk on two legs instead of four. Quite possibly at the same time, the environment was becoming less forest canopy and more open savannah. Some evolutionary theorists suggest that standing upright was a strategic advantage in grassland, enabling our ancestors to see game further away. Be that as it may, the bipedal adaptation continued to create change for millions of years.
The bipedal Homo Heidelbergensis lived in Africa, Europe and Asia as recently as 600,000 years ago. For whatever the reason, most likely climatic, the groups in Europe and Africa developed in isolation from one another. The African group became Homo Sapiens and the northern group became Neanderthal. It was only about 50,000-80,000 years ago that some of the African group started to migrate north, moving along the eastern end of the Mediterranean and up into what we call Europe. And along the way, they met Neanderthal, big and strong, requiring a large daily intake of calories due to the cold weather, and having a brain bigger in size than ours today.
The total picture is a bit fuzzy as to where and when the mixing occurred, and whether there were other hominins around, but there is no doubt that Neanderthals and homo sapiens co-existed on this planet as recently as 30,000 years ago.
And mated. Every human today of non-African descent has some DNA inherited from Neanderthals. Those Homo Sapiens who remained in Africa never met Neanderthal, never mated with them, and therefore have no Neanderthal genetic inheritance. But for those who left, the high probability points to inter-breeding. While that was going on, other ancestors, such as the Denisovan, were evolving in Siberia, China, and Indonesia, and their DNA shows up in southeastern Asians.
The story will most likely always be a bit fuzzy, and new evidence is continually being found. But there is no doubt we have evolved from earlier homo species, that we are genetically bound to them and to one another, and that the process will not stop with us.
The impact of evolution on traditional religion is explosive, and falls into two categories. The first is the claim of evolution that everything is contingent, the second is that species mutate. I’d like to analyze them one at a time, but before we do that, let’s listen to the full impact of what evolution has to say. It’s a broadside bombardment.
The Impact of the Contingency Factor
No Divine Plan
Contingency means that there is no reason why anything has to be. It could as well be as not. There is no upward direction to the change; it just moves on. According to evolution, everything is contingent, and there is no cosmic plan, no teleological dimension. What then is god’s role in all this? If the cosmos has no purpose, it’s pretty hard to say that god has a purpose. That old time talk about god’s plan for salvation is like talking in the wind. How can divine providence control a process that has no direction and no goal?
No Divine Direction
Forced to give up the concept of a divine plan, some believe that god, even if she does not have a plan, has a hope that matters will end a certain way. God wills a direction for earth history, perhaps toward a Kingdom of God, a kingdom of peace and justice. Prominent in the biblical perspective is the promise of the day when the lion will lie down with the lamb, when men will beat their swords into plowshares, when all the earth will be filled with plenty. The question for theologians has always been whether the promise is fulfilled in history, or beyond. But however one answers that question, it is a meaningless issue from the evolutionary perspective: God may have a hope, but the universe has no goal.
No Kingdom of God
There was a time in American history when the predominant theological outlook, called the Social Gospel, was very optimistic about the future. Things were getting inevitably better. Before you know it, the Kingdom of God on earth would be here, at least in preliminary form. But then began the great depression and the rumblings leading to the second world war, and the social gospel optimism was replaced by Christian Realism, under the inspiration of Reinhold Niebuhr. God’s historical kingdom was replaced by an eschatological kingdom that would not arrive until the end of time, whenever that might be. People today continue to look for the end of time and the coming of god’s kingdom, and continue to predict when that day will arrive. Todays historical reality is so depressing for some that the only hope they have is that it will all end.
What has evolutionary cosmology to say to all this? God’s promise of a Kingdom, whether in history or beyond, is null and void. If god does not intervene in the process, how can we affirm that the dream of god will be implemented? This is a radical repudiation of a basic tenet of biblical theology.
No Moral Law
Instead of talking about a divine plan, or a divine hope or direction into the future, others speak of some moral law that has been part and parcel of the universe since the beginning of time. The starry sky above, and the moral law within, and all that. That belief enabled Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, to fight racism with the presumed conscience of the “enemy” as his only tool. But again the questions of evolution: where did this moral law begin? with homo sapiens? with Neanderthal? with the Big Bang? If it does exist, will it last, or will it die out?
Mutation
No Singular Incarnation
Let’s move on from the scientific assertion that there is no teleological end toward which the cosmic process moves, to the assertion that species evolve. The broadside continues. Given that homo sapiens arose out of the species that went before, mated with Neanderthals, and continues to evolve, what does it mean to say that God was incarnate in Jesus? that Jesus was true man? Was there a Neanderthal Jesus?
No Singular Atonement
It is commonplace in Christianity, even outside fundamentalist circles, to assert that “Jesus died for our sins”. Whether that is an accurate description of what Jesus did is a topic for another day, but for those who want to say that, what does it mean from an evolutionary perspective? Did the Neanderthals need someone to die for them? Or Homo Heidelbergensis? And where is the dividing line? And if we do not say that Jesus died for our sin, but only that we needed him to do something for us, why is it that we need a savior? from what?
No Trinity
Even if one wanted to believe in god, it is highly selective, from an evolutionary perspective, to focus on one person from one planet and place that person into the cosmic godhead. Can we really believe that a man from Galilee is part of a cosmic-and-beyond triune god?
Humans not Special
Inasmuch as all life can be traced back to a common ancestor, what does it mean to be a human being? We homo sapiens like to think that we are the apex of nature, the epitome of self consciousness, and created in the image of god, whatever that might mean. We have a soul, and that makes us special. Really? Is not the belief in human superiority nothing more than a grand Illusion? Everyone knows that golden retrievers are more godlike than we are. And every day a new study shows that other members of the animal kingdom share elements of self awareness that we previously thought unique to humans. The latest news is about ravens.
Looking backwards, where can we mark the dividing line between ape and homo, between Neanderthal and homo? Some say we have something special, perhaps a soul, but did that something special just suddenly become part of a species, say June 3, 762,000 BCE? Did Neanderthals not have this?? How about Heidelbergensis? Was their self consciousness at a lower level than ours today? Who are we, anyway?
Earth not unique
And then there’s ET. Modern astrophysics paints a picture (almost literally) of a universe immense beyond comprehension. A universe that is evolving, by the way. Would not god love other creatures in the universe as “he” loves us? Where does Jesus fit into that situation? Did Mars or Venus or planet X have a savior once upon a time? Do they now? Do they need a savior? For what? And how can we elevate Jesus, true homo sapiens from that little planet earth, into the second person of a trinity?
Eternal Souls?
There are some answers to these questions that seem to incorporate evolution. One answer is that there are souls that migrate along the path of evolution. They may initially inhabit an amoeba, then a cat, then dog (I’m a dog person), then homo sapiens. They somehow remain the same, supposedly, but the incarnation differs. There is a certain logical consistency to the idea, and it definitely deals with the issues of evolution, but questions can be asked. Where did the souls come from? Are they older than the Big Bang, or are they a product of that event? Do they pre-date the origin of our universe such that they are part of some eternal cycle?
Eternal Wisdom?
There is another answer that focuses particularly on Jesus. The idea here is that Jesus is just another teacher in the long history of gifted teachers, that he is but one member of a long tradition of those who pass along wisdom that has been around a long time. There are those who believe that this wisdom was not available in the Middle East and that Jesus actually had to travel to India to get it. Others think that it was available in the Hebrew tradition, under the guise of wisdom literature. It’s not exactly clear, however, where this wisdom began. It’s one thing to have an eternal soul that seemingly transcends evolution, but quite another to place your bets on historical figures. Where did the wisdom begin? in our Neanderthal ancestors?
Commentary
First of all, a disclaimer. As I said in my introduction, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. Most especially, I am not trying to convince my secular humanist family of friends about anything to do with god or Jesus because, as far as I can see, it doesn’t make any difference what you do or don’t believe. What does seem to matter is whether a person is loving and compassionate or not, both for their own happiness and fulfillment as well as that of others.
Evolution does not create any problems for secular humanism because there is no god to fit into the picture. It’s a different state of affairs for Christian theology.
In the previous chapter on cosmology, on the issue of whether or not love is the ultimate reality, i.e. whether process is teleologically defined and heading somewhere or not, we concluded that Christian theology and evolution are contradictory. Either the future will be shaped by god- in history or beyond- or it will not. Theology founded on faith says yes, science says no. I don’t see any compromise. If you take the teleology of god out of the equation (pun intended), and the nature of the universe is not love but neutrality or worse, then the faith of the disciples is misguided and bogus, and you can take down the Christian shingle and close up shop. I’m not ready to do that.
On the other hand, mutation is happening right in front of our eyes. There is no escape. The fact that Jesus was homo sapiens, coupled with the inevitable mutation of homo sapiens, forces us to accept the fact that he, like the dinosaurs, will become a fossil of the past. How does theology deal with that?
In the preceding section I spoke of what we learn from the Jesus/disciple encounter. I also described as theologically speculative any affirmations that go beyond what we learn in that encounter. However, knowing that some statement is speculative does not necessitate its being wrong. So let’s explore a bit and imagine a scenario, a scenario that recognizes that 1) species mutate, including homo sapiens, and so agrees with evolution on that score, 2) but also assumes a teleological end and so on that score rejects the total contingency of evolution. The cosmos changes, but god has an end in view.
An Incarnation?
The New Testament gospel of John, written perhaps 75 years after Jesus was executed, starts with the following statement of faith: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That’s pretty highfalutin stuff. Historically, the first century Christians elevated a man they knew, a man called Jesus, into God Himself. Jesus became identified as an incarnation of God, the second person of a trinity, his continued presence in the world seen as the third person, the Holy Spirit.
Now, first century Christians knew nothing about evolution, so we have to cut them a break. But we do, and we need to accept this in-your-face fact as we try to intelligently make sense of Jesus. Or at least I do, since I’m calling myself a Christian. So, God decided we were in trouble, and the Word became flesh and tried to straighten us out. That has a certain logic to it. But what about Neanderthal? and ET? and non-Jews? We can assume, I think, that it’s certainly possible Neanderthal did not live up to his potential as a loving being. Perhaps the Word, then, became Neanderthal flesh and dwelt among them. And the same could hold true for ET. And the same for homo sapiens other than those in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In other words, it certainly seems possible that the Word, as an incarnation of god, could appear in a variety of different times and places, according to the needs and shortcomings of evolving species.
Can we go further? Is that Word, manifest to the disciples as Jesus, still alive? Can I talk to him? Is he my friend? (Remember that old hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus”?) Certainly the disciples believed that he was alive again after the crucifixion. In fact, that’s the heart of their faith and their gospel. Rudolf Bultmann, a 20th century New Testament scholar, created quite an uproar in the Christian church when he essentially said that the rise of the disciples’ faith was itself the resurrection, and that Jesus himself was crucified, dead, gone. In other words, the resurrection was a purely subjective affair. Again, I can see the logic here, but I disagree. From what I can tell, the disciples felt and believed that the spirit of Jesus was alive and well, a spirit that was more than their faith, a spirit that transcended them. Not to say resuscitation of a corpse, that wasn’t it. But, yes, something that was outside of them, a spirit alive. You can see how I keep coming back to those disciples and what they experienced.
Can I talk with my friend Jesus, this homo sapiens incarnation of the Word? I guess it’s okay. I do it. Why not? and Neanderthal? Could she talk with the Word incarnate in her flesh after that incarnation had ended? I suppose so. Why not? The Spirit/Word of God did assume and continues to assume many forms. Jesus is one of them, and I assume there are many.
Divine Providence?
There’s Jesus. Now, how about providence? Going beyond the bare minimum that we learn from the Jesus/disciple encounter, where might speculation lead? I believe that theology works with a teleological view of the cosmos as formed by love and that science does not, and that this difference is basic. I also said that anything more would be speculative, but, hey, speculation can be fun.
When I was at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, we always talked about how god was doing things in history. Read the Hebrew bible- god is commissioning Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and the rest of the prophets, this army and that, all to accomplish his will on the planet. People believe today that god is doing things for them, answering prayer (sometimes) and performing what they call miracles. We want to believe that God is a god of history, active in the world in a manner that is side by side with the natural process of evolution. Traditionally, that activity is called providence. God is doing things. Indeed, God has a plan, a hope, a direction for history that is working out. By and large, this is how so many Christians see god, be it in a small Baptist church in the Bible Belt, or in many of the halls of theological academia.
All of that stands in sharp relief to the science of evolution. But in addition to the attack of evolutionary science on such a view of god, that old problem of evil also rears its ugly head. We’ll talk about evil later, but for now we can say that if god is active in history, she seems to be doing a lousy job. Providence stinks. The plan isn’t working. People are suffering unjustly.
We need to think about god in a new way.
I begin with the idea that the presence of god is twofold. On the one hand, it is everywhere in the universe. This is the panentheistic perspective described in chapter one. Unfortunately, we creatures are not aware of this presence as we ought and can be, so god becomes incarnate- whenever and wherever need be, today, long ago, far away- so that our (somebody’s) eyes can be opened to see the nearness of god everywhere. This means that we have a general presence of god throughout the universe, and a special presence that is found only in incarnations (plural).
As far as the special presence is concerned, let’s look at planet earth in recent history. Homo sapiens appears on the scene. She was not quite what she could be, not living up to being a loving and aware animal, so god becomes incarnate in human flesh in order to show what life can be and to challenge us to fulfill our potential. For Christians, that incarnation is Jesus. And this is, indeed, an intervention in history. I have no idea how that happens.
To help understand the general presence, I have two images that I like to use. Imagine yourself in the dark countryside. There is no moonlight, only the Milky Way, that band of light washing across the sky, a ribbon comprised of a hundred billion stars. And you feel both very insignificant and very important all at the same time. You sense something beyond that you are part of. A moment extraordinaire.
For the second image, imagine yourself in a NYC subway, rushing around a corner of the tunnel to meet your train connection. And there, on the concrete floor with a hand outstretched, eyes focused on you, is a wretched woman begging for a coin, a helping hand, a person who cares, and your little private world has been invaded. You continue along just like everyone else, but you know that something has just happened that transcends the normal. We have moments like the starry sky above and the subway beggar all the time. It’s that old panentheistic god knocking on our door.
What’s the relationship between special and general divine presence? between the word incarnate in Jesus and god’s presence everywhere? The disciples help us out on this one. The god they found in Jesus was the same god they experienced in their starry sky/beggar moments. Jesus helped them to understand that those moments did indeed involve the god beyond.
They, and we, learn that god, who is present in the stuff of the world, reaches out to us and challenges us to act. God does not act in history as an independent agent, (except when god decides it’s time to become incarnate; don’t ask.) There is no daily intervention. Asking god to do something doesn’t work. Instead, god opens our eyes and asks that we do the divine work, that we see what the possibilities are and act accordingly. God was in Jesus showing and enabling us to become loving and aware, calling us to act in history, to become the real us, loving and caring. Providence, as I see it, is not god acting in history in a manner interfering in the natural processes. It is god encountering us and enabling us to see what needs to be done. We should not be asking god to do things. We should be opening our own eyes to see what needs to be done and doing it. The Dalai Lama said the same thing while speaking of Syrian refugees. Forget “thoughts and prayers”. Do something.
Having said all this, I want to repeat what I said in the section about cosmology, and that is that if we begin our reflection with the Jesus/disciple encounter, the line of demarcation between faith and science is that faith sees the cosmos as informed by love, and science does not. That’s basic. But seeing the world as informed by love can be true not only of people of faith, but of people of all convictions, faith and non-faith, round the world. Just recently there was a report about a study that shows how compassion not only benefits the receiver but the giver as well. Seems as though there is something in our genes that rejoices in helping others. As I said earlier, that was the fundamental message of Jesus’ disciples, that the meaning of the resurrection is not a resuscitated body, but the omnipotence of love and compassion. Available to all.
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Xavier Rudd: Life Lessons from the Didgeridoo
Musician Xavier Rudd
Xavier Rudd felt compelled to play the didgeridoo (yidaki) as a child. It took him decades to truly understand the meaning of the 60,000-year-old instrument in his art and his life.
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Xavier Rudd: Life Lessons from the DidgeridooMusician Xavier Rudd felt compelled to play the didgeridoo (yidaki) as a child. It took him decades to truly understand the meaning of the 60,000-year-old instrument in his art and his life. We talked music and magic with Rudd at Ironworks Studio in Vancouver’s Railtown district on October 23, 2015. Read his story, “Life Lessons From the Didgeridoo” here:Lululemon
Liturgy Selection
The Daily Prayer
A contemporary rendering of the Lord's Prayer by Curran Jeffery
O Divine Power of Creation
Hallowed be thy name
The mystery of thy grace be with us
Give us this day our nourishment
For both body and the soul
And forgive us our shortcomings
As we forgive the shortcomings of those around us
Strengthen us in the ways of wisdom
And strengthen our spirit when confronted with evil
For thine is the glory and the power
Of all that is seen and unseen
For ever and ever Amen© 2001 Jeffrey Curran
Comments from the author:
The Lord’s Prayer from The King James Bible has been with me since childhood. During much of my life, I have used it every day. It has truly been a daily prayer and, believe me, the forgiving part hasn’t been easy and the temptation part has been a real big issue. As I have moved through adolescent doubt and adult questioning, there have been times when the royal metaphors and the patriarchal attitude, which were the norms in the England of 1607, just didn’t seem like they were working for me. Then on 9-11, as I watched the towers of The World Trade Center collapse, The Elizabethan Lord’s Prayer completely failed me. The moment is frozen in my mind as I stood in front of the TV and got to the line, “Deliver us from Evil.” It just didn’t work. There was no theistic God that was going to stop what was happening. That night, in tears and meditation, I composed the above contemporary rendering of The Lord’s Prayer. This does not pretend to be a translation. It is an interpretation. I have taken the prayer and rendered into words that reflect my faith and experience. I do not believe in a “Big Daddy God” who will keep evil things from happening. I believe in the divine creative power of the universe that calls all human beings to overcome the pitfalls and dangers of this world and discover the redeeming power of grace and love. Thus “Strengthen our spirit when confronted with evil.”
Xavier Rudd felt compelled to play the didgeridoo (yidaki) as a child. It took him decades to truly understand the meaning of the 60,000-year-old instrument in his art and his life.
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Xavier Rudd: Life Lessons from the DidgeridooMusician Xavier Rudd felt compelled to play the didgeridoo (yidaki) as a child. It took him decades to truly understand the meaning of the 60,000-year-old instrument in his art and his life. We talked music and magic with Rudd at Ironworks Studio in Vancouver’s Railtown district on October 23, 2015. Read his story, “Life Lessons From the Didgeridoo” here:Lululemon
Liturgy Selection
The Lord's Prayer (continued from last week)In finding the version of the Lord’s Prayer that works for you or your church, there are many possibilities. You can decide to adopt a version in modern language, like the ones here.
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The Lord’s Prayer, Continued
Week of July 31, 2016
In finding the version of the Lord’s Prayer that works for you or your church, there are many possibilities. You can decide to adopt a version in modern language, like the ones here. Or you can modify the language in the traditional version to make it more in keeping with progressive practices; for example, substituting the traditional “Our Father” with “Our Father/Mother” or “Our Creator”. At my church we’ve started to say “Hallowed be thy names.” What a difference an “s” makes! The understanding that God has many names and that all of them are sacred and all of them have something to teach us, is a hallmark of progressive Christianity.
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A 21st Century Lord's Prayer
Great divine spirit of love that is at the core of everything and from which all life flows,
We acknowledge your healing and transforming power.
read moreWe acknowledge your healing and transforming power.
A New Lord's Prayer
Breath, love, hope, inspiration
— truth that sings forth from within
even as I am enveloped with its challenge,
read more— truth that sings forth from within
even as I am enveloped with its challenge,
The Daily Prayer
O Divine Power of Creation
Hallowed be thy name
The mystery of thy grace be with us
read moreHallowed be thy name
The mystery of thy grace be with us
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A 21st Century Lord’s Prayer by Roger Courtney
Great divine spirit of love that is at the core of everything
and from which all life flows,
We acknowledge your healing and transforming power.
May the spirit of unconditional love and forgiveness flow through each of us and enable the realm of love to spread throughout the world.
Like the flowers in the fields, ensure that we have the basics we need to live
and give us the love and commitment to ensure that others have what they need too.
Give us the courage to acknowledge when we have done wrong,
to seek forgiveness from those we have hurt
and to forgive those who have hurt us,
so that we may be reconciled.
We acknowledge the power of self-giving love to transform individual hearts and the world.
We recommit ourselves to the unconditional love of others and the work of justice and peace. Amen
A 21st Century Lord’s Prayer by Roger Courtney
Great divine spirit of love that is at the core of everything
and from which all life flows,
We acknowledge your healing and transforming power.
May the spirit of unconditional love and forgiveness flow through each of us and enable the realm of love to spread throughout the world.
Like the flowers in the fields, ensure that we have the basics we need to live
and give us the love and commitment to ensure that others have what they need too.
Give us the courage to acknowledge when we have done wrong,
to seek forgiveness from those we have hurt
and to forgive those who have hurt us,
so that we may be reconciled.
We acknowledge the power of self-giving love to transform individual hearts and the world.
We recommit ourselves to the unconditional love of others and the work of justice and peace. Amen
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A New Lord’s Prayer by Gretta Vosper
Breath, love, hope, inspiration
— truth that sings forth from within
even as I am enveloped with its challenge,
borne to my heart from the uncharted boundaries
of that which transcends me,
May these harmonies speak to us
of the beauty for which we long,
the unremembered perfection
whence we were born
and call us to offer ourselves as vessels
for their hallowed music,
pouring truth into the crevasses of despair in our world.
May we walk with courage
in places of hurt, anger, fear, and isolation,
with love, the standard we bear,
holding us to our own truths
and sparing us the tragedy of the petty remark,
the regrettable action,
the choices we know we’ll regret.
And when we cannot hold
to the challenges our love sets for us,
may we find our way back to one another
and in each other’s eyes,
find welcome, healing, and forgiveness.
Through the interweaving of our dreams,
strengthened as they are
with threads of beauty, goodness, and truth,
the glory we may become
is woven into reality.
May we ever offer our hearts
to this essential devotion.
As light into light we pray, Amen
Gretta Vosper, West Hill United Church, Toronto, Canada© 2010 gretta vosper
A New Lord’s Prayer by Gretta Vosper
Breath, love, hope, inspiration
— truth that sings forth from within
even as I am enveloped with its challenge,
borne to my heart from the uncharted boundaries
of that which transcends me,
May these harmonies speak to us
of the beauty for which we long,
the unremembered perfection
whence we were born
and call us to offer ourselves as vessels
for their hallowed music,
pouring truth into the crevasses of despair in our world.
May we walk with courage
in places of hurt, anger, fear, and isolation,
with love, the standard we bear,
holding us to our own truths
and sparing us the tragedy of the petty remark,
the regrettable action,
the choices we know we’ll regret.
And when we cannot hold
to the challenges our love sets for us,
may we find our way back to one another
and in each other’s eyes,
find welcome, healing, and forgiveness.
Through the interweaving of our dreams,
strengthened as they are
with threads of beauty, goodness, and truth,
the glory we may become
is woven into reality.
May we ever offer our hearts
to this essential devotion.
As light into light we pray, Amen
Gretta Vosper, West Hill United Church, Toronto, Canada© 2010 gretta vosper
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The Daily Prayer
A contemporary rendering of the Lord's Prayer by Curran Jeffery
O Divine Power of Creation
Hallowed be thy name
The mystery of thy grace be with us
Give us this day our nourishment
For both body and the soul
And forgive us our shortcomings
As we forgive the shortcomings of those around us
Strengthen us in the ways of wisdom
And strengthen our spirit when confronted with evil
For thine is the glory and the power
Of all that is seen and unseen
For ever and ever Amen© 2001 Jeffrey Curran
Comments from the author:
The Lord’s Prayer from The King James Bible has been with me since childhood. During much of my life, I have used it every day. It has truly been a daily prayer and, believe me, the forgiving part hasn’t been easy and the temptation part has been a real big issue. As I have moved through adolescent doubt and adult questioning, there have been times when the royal metaphors and the patriarchal attitude, which were the norms in the England of 1607, just didn’t seem like they were working for me. Then on 9-11, as I watched the towers of The World Trade Center collapse, The Elizabethan Lord’s Prayer completely failed me. The moment is frozen in my mind as I stood in front of the TV and got to the line, “Deliver us from Evil.” It just didn’t work. There was no theistic God that was going to stop what was happening. That night, in tears and meditation, I composed the above contemporary rendering of The Lord’s Prayer. This does not pretend to be a translation. It is an interpretation. I have taken the prayer and rendered into words that reflect my faith and experience. I do not believe in a “Big Daddy God” who will keep evil things from happening. I believe in the divine creative power of the universe that calls all human beings to overcome the pitfalls and dangers of this world and discover the redeeming power of grace and love. Thus “Strengthen our spirit when confronted with evil.”
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Events and Updates
As It Is: Spiritual Journaling
Online Course August 8th - September 2nd
Whatever spiritual path you are on, this e-course will equip you to explore interior, interpersonal, social, and sacred realities.
READ ON ...
As It Is: Spiritual Journaling
Click on Amazon Smile and choose ProgressiveChristianity.org as your charity - when you shop Amazon donates .05%.
Events and Updates
As It Is: Spiritual Journaling
Online Course August 8th - September 2nd
Whatever spiritual path you are on, this e-course will equip you to explore interior, interpersonal, social, and sacred realities.
READ ON ...
As It Is: Spiritual Journaling
“As it is.” These three little words embedded in the lines of a prayer taught by Jesus remind us to seek the workings of the divine “on earth as it is in heaven” — that is, to approach our many challenges in union with Sacred Presence. But how? One profound and reassuringly helpful tool to foster this sense of unity is spiritual journaling. Through contemplative writing, we get practice in recognizing and responding to our relationship with God, self, others, nature, work, and society just “as it is.”
Spiritual journaling opens space to relate to deep questions:
Spiritual journaling opens space to relate to deep questions:
What does this event or this emotion have to say to me?
What can this disappointment teach me about healing?
What does this discovery reveal to me about the presence and leading of the Holy Spirit?
How can my anguish over the suffering of this person or that group stir my love into action?
How can my felt sense of yearning guide me in taking the next best step in this situation?
Whatever spiritual path you are on, this e-course will equip you to explore interior, interpersonal, social, and sacred realities. Holy questions gleaned from scripture, poetry, and literature will offer a variety of perspectives on faith and doubt, action and reflection. In each email sent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for four weeks, you will receive:
Whatever spiritual path you are on, this e-course will equip you to explore interior, interpersonal, social, and sacred realities. Holy questions gleaned from scripture, poetry, and literature will offer a variety of perspectives on faith and doubt, action and reflection. In each email sent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for four weeks, you will receive:
An introductory reflection on the day’s topic
A tip for getting started with your writing
A special query to spark your thoughts and journal writing
A suggested action and resources for going deeper if you wish
A link to the Practice Circle, a community forum open 24/7 to share with others in this e-course and to receive guidance from Judith.
Judith began journaling when she was ten, in a small blue diary with a gold lock and miniature key. She chose a ballpoint pen, because she knew that writing in pencil would let her fudge the truth. In 1974, she began a lifelong love affair with keeping a journal, studying journaling as an art form and not only writing but also inserting soul collages, tree photos, and icons in her journals.
In 1981 she enrolled at Pacific School of Religion and then went on to be pastor of United Church of Christ congregations in San Francisco until the ministries of spiritual formation and writing laid claim to her soul. She now lives with her husband Pete at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California. Her heart is enriched by her work in spiritual accompaniment, teaching, and contemplative writing.
Judith invites you to freely express your full range of written reactions in this e-course — confused or certain thoughts, positive or negative emotions — because each aspect of the truth of yourself will reveal valuable insights. You may want to follow her journaling prompts exactly; you may also view them as a trampoline and record the bouncing associations that follow. This e-course gives you lots of freedom, most of all the freedom to follow your heart and the arc of your own life’s story.
(4 CEHs for chaplains available.)
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Start:
August 8, 2016
End:
September 2, 2016
Location:
Online eCourse
Registration:
$59.95
Contact:
Mary Ann Brussat
Organization:
Spirituality & Practice
Website:
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/ecourses/course/view/10176/as-it-is-spiritual-journaling/key/tcpc/
Email:
brussat@spritualityandpractice.com
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Judith began journaling when she was ten, in a small blue diary with a gold lock and miniature key. She chose a ballpoint pen, because she knew that writing in pencil would let her fudge the truth. In 1974, she began a lifelong love affair with keeping a journal, studying journaling as an art form and not only writing but also inserting soul collages, tree photos, and icons in her journals.
In 1981 she enrolled at Pacific School of Religion and then went on to be pastor of United Church of Christ congregations in San Francisco until the ministries of spiritual formation and writing laid claim to her soul. She now lives with her husband Pete at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California. Her heart is enriched by her work in spiritual accompaniment, teaching, and contemplative writing.
Judith invites you to freely express your full range of written reactions in this e-course — confused or certain thoughts, positive or negative emotions — because each aspect of the truth of yourself will reveal valuable insights. You may want to follow her journaling prompts exactly; you may also view them as a trampoline and record the bouncing associations that follow. This e-course gives you lots of freedom, most of all the freedom to follow your heart and the arc of your own life’s story.
(4 CEHs for chaplains available.)
Images
Start:
August 8, 2016
End:
September 2, 2016
Location:
Online eCourse
Registration:
$59.95
Contact:
Mary Ann Brussat
Organization:
Spirituality & Practice
Website:
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/ecourses/course/view/10176/as-it-is-spiritual-journaling/key/tcpc/
Email:
brussat@spritualityandpractice.com
-------
View all upcoming events here!
News
Job Listings
FacebookTwitterWebsiteEmailYouTubeOur mailing address is:
ProgressiveChristianity.org
4810 Point Fosdick Drive North West#80
Gig Harbor, Washington 98335, United States
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