The First Mutation

 “The Church is a place of great beauty and healing. It can also be a place that traumatizes, excludes, and abuses.”[1]

From the very beginning—the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian New Testament—the church has been divided. In chapter 15 Peter and Paul, the leading voices of the nascent church, locked horns over whether Gentiles should become Jews (read: be circumcised) before being accepted into the church.

The church in Corinth was divided over almost everything: which spiritual gifts were more important, whose baptism counted, which preacher they should follow… Even the Lord’s Supper was a point of contention.

Heresies abounded in that first generation of the church: Gnosticism, Docetism, Arianism, etc. The overarching question was “Who’s right?” How can we make sure we get it right, so we won’t go to hell when we die? (More about hell in the next blog!)

That issue of who’s right and who’s wrong never has been resolved within the historic church. I saw a headline today (I didn’t read the article. The headline was upsetting enough.); it read, “All Baptisms Performed by Phoenix Priest Invalid Because He Changed One Word.” Good grief!

Some of the apostles seemed to catch momentary glimpses of what was right; but they were inconsistent in their proclamation of it. Some of the early church fathers—I’m thinking specifically of Origen of Alexandria (c. 184 – c. 253)—seemed to get it right, at least part of the time. Of course, even this paragraph represents my own conviction that I’m right. (One difference is that I accept the human limitations described by the title of my blogsite: “Flawed Glass,” based on I Corinthians 13:12. I accept the possibility that I may be wrong.)

The purpose and objective of spiritual discipline—both individually and in community—is not to attain that divine love, but to experience what already is and always has been.[2]

But there’s that first mutation thing. From primordial wondering about things unseen, we humans have wanted to get it right. We have a need to be loved and accepted. We have a need to make sure we’re loved and accepted. We don’t want that faith and trust stuff, we want a solid guarantee! So we develop a binary “right/wrong” system by which we can be sure. Oral Roberts often said, “I know that I know that I know.”

So that first mutation is the move from trust to certitude. It’s not a new thing; it’s a throwback to a prehistoric human need to control the unknown. It is a rejection of faith and trust.

The truth is: nobody ever gets it right! That’s why we need grace. It’s not about being right. It never was. It’s about being loved and accepted by the source of all love. John got it right (I John 4:8): God is love!

Red, brown, yellow, black, white: you are loved! LGBTQ/Straight: you are loved! Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Socialist/Communist: you are loved!

And here’s the thing: when we are experiencing love and acceptance, we are free from all that worry and anxiety about whether we’re “right.” The reason we wanted to be “right” in the first place was just to be loved and accepted. When we experience love we are free to love, without concern for ourselves and without concern about whether the recipient of our love is worthy, or whether our love will be returned. We already are loved!

The natural response to experienced love is to love in return. We worship the God who is Love with praise, adoration and thanksgiving, and we serve the God who is Love by loving the people God loves, which excludes nobody! Thanks be to God!

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Bruce Epperly, endorsing Mark Gregory Karris, Religious Refugees (Orange, California: Quoir, Kindle Edition, 2020) p. 4.

[2] I’m grateful for this insight discovered in David Artman, Grace Saves All: The Necessity of Christian Universalism (Wipf and Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition 2020) p. 105.

A New Paradigm of Faith (which I think is a carbon copy of the original)

• "I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love." ~ Wendell Berry

• “Choose being kind over being right and you’ll be right every time.” ~ Richard Carlson

My heart aches to the point almost of tears when I dwell on “man’s inhumanity to man”. Jesus ate with sinners of every variety, touched the untouchables, healed the unclean and even reminded those in Nazareth that when there was famine in Israel, God sent Elijah to feed a woman from Sidon; when there were many lepers in Israel, God had sent Elisha to heal a Syrian named Naaman—both of whom were heathen aliens!

Jesus refused to condemn a woman caught in the act of committing adultery (a capital offense in that culture), he visited in the home of Zacchaeus, a treasonous, embezzling Publican, and he advised carrying a Roman soldier’s pack not just one mile, as the law allowed, but two miles.

 Jesus called upon his followers to forgive others 70 X 7 times (literally 490 times, which is more than any of us would ever attempt; but which in the numerology of the day was probably intended to mean an infinite number of times) and never, ever to retaliate or seek vengeance. He even forgave the ones who nailed him to the cross.

Jesus reserved his strongest reproof for those who openly boasted of their piety and moral superiority and then used their considerable religious authority to dominate all who dared any divergence from their dogmatic pronouncements.

The Pharisees boasted of their righteousness. Perhaps they even kept checklists of the laws they obeyed. They dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”; but Jesus said, “…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20 NRSV).[1]

But so many who claim to follow Jesus call others the foulest of names over disagreements about political ideologies, and seek legal authorization to discriminate against people they judge to be the vilest of sinners (but will gladly serve sinners of every other category). Then we all assemble at church and congratulate each other on our moral superiority.

We tend to read Scripture selectively. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Jesus read Scripture selectively, too; and so did Paul. The crux of the matter is not whether we read the Bible selectively, but rather, which texts we select. Jesus selected those that lead to compassion, healing, restoration, reconciliation and love. He rejected those Scripture passages that lead to vengeance, retaliation and violence or domination of any kind.

Theologian, Walter Wink, begins the 9^th chapter of his book, The Powers that Be, with these words:

“American culture is presently in the first stages of a spiritual renaissance. To the degree that this renaissance is Christian at all, it will be the human figure of Jesus that galvanizes hearts to belief and action, and not the Christ of the creeds or the Pauline doctrine of justification by grace through faith. And in the teachings of Jesus, the sayings on nonviolence and love of enemies will hold a central place. Not because they are more true than any others, but because they are crucial in the struggle to overcome domination without creating new forms of domination.”

As I said earlier, we all read the Scriptures selectively, and that’s not necessarily bad. Having surrendered all anxiety over my eternal destiny to the one who said, “My grace is sufficient,” it is my intention, and my prayer, that my reading of Scripture will always put me on the path of following Jesus, even in—especially in—the selection of Scripture texts I choose as my standard for living.

Having arrived so late in life at this paradigm of faith, I have a deeper sense of freedom and joy in Christ, and I have a smidgen of resentment for all those years wasted in the old pattern of reading the Bible to find evidence that I’m right. I’ll never be totally right, except in the act of entrusting my eternal destiny to Christ and moving on to serve him.

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] I believe the Pharisees were totally sincere in their attempts to be faithful; but, their faithfulness had become misdirected toward legalistic and unquestioning obedience to a set of laws, and their manipulation of those laws pointed them away from their intended purpose, which was to describe a relationship with God that resulted in loving treatment of persons. 

Trust is the Opposite of Certainty

We have seen that Jesus interpreted Scripture in the rabbinic spirit of faithful questioning motivated by love. We have noted that Jesus’ interpretation of Scripture was in direct contrast to that of the Pharisees and other religious leaders of his time, who read the Scriptures in a spirit of unquestioning obedience and were motivated by an obsession with correct doctrine. The Pharisees were concerned about who was “right” and who was “wrong,” and were determined to enforce their “right” understanding, even if such an effort required violence.

We have said that over the centuries the Church has tended not to follow the pattern of Jesus, but rather to follow the pattern of the Pharisees, striving to maintain orthodoxy and labeling those who disagree as heretics. The result has been a long history of various manifestations of the church enforcing their authority through violence or the threat of violence—all in God’s name.

The struggle to know what is “right” has replaced Grace as the foundation of faith. In far too many cases our trust is more in the correctness of our doctrine than in the Grace of God. Such an application of religious faith establishes an “us vs. them” mentality, which always leans toward an exclusionary witness and far too often is forcefully inflicted.

While the exclusionary witness establishes categories for judging who is acceptable and who is not, Jesus’ witness was to go out among the outcasts and the fringe people—to eat with them, to touch them and through loving inclusion to restore their lives to wholeness. Too often our approach has been to demand that those on the outside become “like us” before they can gain admission and acceptance. Our doctrine becomes "the way, the truth and the life."

We all read Scripture selectively, and justification can indeed be found for both approaches. They stand in direct contradiction within the Holy writ, and we choose one way or the other:

1.       The way the Pharisees chose: unquestioning obedience to what they had determined to be the “right” doctrine (Law), and enforcing that doctrine as the prerequisite of faithfulness—excluding (and sometimes punishing with violence or threat of violence) all who do not conform (including Jesus).

2.      The way Jesus chose: faithful questioning the violence in Scripture and bearing witness to unconditional love (Grace), including all humanity in a divine embrace of reconciliation and restoration. All humanity. And "All" means "All."

Our celebrated First Amendment rights which grant freedom of speech and religion actually came about in direct response to the church’s legacy of persecution and rampant bloodshed committed in the sincere (but sincerely wrong) effort to maintain purity of doctrine. As a result of those Constitutional rights, there are no more burnings at the stake today.

So, what is the greater wrong: not getting the formulation of the Trinity quite right, or slaughtering those who do get it wrong? What is the greater sin: questioning a doctrine or working to destroy people’s careers and livelihoods because they question it?

Equally important as what we profess is how we profess it and how we live what we profess. When we act in any way to harm others in the name of Scripture or faith or morality we demonstrate that we are neither scriptural, moral nor faithful. Jesus said the whole law and the prophetic writings were predicated upon love of God, love of neighbor and love of self (Matthew 22:36-40). And Paul wrote, “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10) When we do not act in love, nothing we do is right, and nothing is faithful, not even according to the law.

The simple formula of the New Testament witness is “Grace Trumps Law.” It’s simple; but it’s not easy. It requires that we “let go” of our efforts to justify ourselves through adherence to “right” doctrine, and that we instead “take hold” of the Grace God offers and surrender to the power of that Grace to mold us into the likeness of Jesus. That whole process of “letting go” and “taking hold” is called “Trust.” Trust is the opposite of certainty, and certainty is a first cousin of control.

And we are a culture of control addicts. Maybe we need a 12-Step program to facilitate recovery. “Hello. My name is Jim; and I’m a controlaholic.”

That’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim