Being an Honest Believer

The following is an excerpt from Bishop John Shelby Spong’s book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die. I believe it speaks to the feelings of many who read this blog……

Many of us can continue to be believers only if we are able to be honest believers. We want to be people of faith, not people drugged on the narcotic of religion. We are not able to endure the mental lobotomy that one suspects is the fate of those who project themselves as the unquestioning religious citizens of our age. We do not want to be among those who fear that if we think about what we say about God, either our minds will close down or our faith will explode. We are not drawn to those increasingly defensive religious answers of our generation. Nor are we willing to pretend that these ancient words still have power and meaning for us if they do not. We wonder if it is still possible to be a believer and a citizen of our century at the same time.

….I am convinced that the future of the Christian faith rests not on reasserting those words of antiquity, but on our ability to refashion the symbols by which Christianity is to be understood in our time.

Bishop Spong


Shalom,
barry e

It was said of him....

It was said of him, that he was born of a virgin…It was said that he was the Son of God… that he performed miracles,…. that he died to save us from our sins…These things were said and written about Quirinius of Rome in the year 500 BC…

These same things were also written about, Hesus of the Celtic Druids 830 BC… likewise, Indra of Tibet 720 BC, and Attis of Phrygia 1200 BC, Alexander the Great about 400 BC, and Caesar Augustus …. And of course Jesus of Nazareth in the book we call Matthew, written about 80 AD.

I’m not telling you any deep dark secret… this information is taught in Christian and secular colleges and Christian seminaries around the world.

Such things were written about hundreds and hundreds of Kings and Rulers and religious icons throughout ancient history… These are well documented historical writings, found on tablets and scrolls preserved today in museums everywhere.

Were these events written of because they were actual historical events? Hundreds of virgin births?… Hundreds of saviors? …

Scholars and Historians, both Christian and secular, tell us they were written to say, “This was an extraordinary person,”…They were written to say, “remember this person”, “In this person we have seen something special, we have seen the Holy, in this person we have experienced the divine.” …

Does it matter that these things did not literally happen in the life of Quirinius of Rome or Indra of Tibet …or any of the hundreds of others?…Millions of Christians, might claim that it DOES matter, to them, in the case of Jesus of Nazareth…

For me what matters is that these post-Easter exaltations of Jesus have done what they were intended to do. They have caused us to remember…. For me what is important is that you and I do remember and practice and strive to live the pre-Easter teachings of Jesus… To love one another, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us… to seek justice and inclusiveness for all human beings.

...barry e

Please visit my book site - Christian beliefs - GIVING VOICE TO THE SILENT PULPIT

Bishop Spong Q&A

Shirley Krogstad from Hendersonville, North Carolina, writes:If you had to name one "belief" of yours that has evolved or grown the most over the last ten years, what would it be?

Dear Shirley,

Since my whole belief system is deeply interrelated that is not an easy question to answer. I like the story told about an elderly bishop who remarked, "The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the less beliefs I have." That is exactly what I feel.

To answer your question more specifically, however, I believe it would be the way I think about God. God is no longer a person, a being or an entity to me. God is rather a presence in whom, to use words attributed to St. Paul, "I live and move and have my being." The "old man in the sky" was the first image to go, then the heavenly judge who kept record books and finally the father figure who desired praise and whose mercy I implored. The invasive, external heavenly deity faded and new images began to intrude themselves into my consciousness.

The interesting thing to me was that while these old images were fading, the God intensity within me remained steady and steadfast. Today I am a God-intoxicated person, but my definition of God is anything but crisp and well defined. I struggle to find words big enough to use when I try to talk about God. God to me is now more of an experience of transcendence, or perhaps the source of life, the source of love and the ground of all being. An experience to me is vastly different from a being who might be described externally. People hear these concepts sometimes as simply words. I hear them, however as a call to transcend all human limits and all human boundaries. God to me is a call to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that I can be.
A redefined Jesus still stands at the center of my God experience. He is not the one sent to be my savior, redeemer or rescuer. Jesus is not to God what Clark Kent is to Superman, a deity masquerading as a human being. He is rather a God presence through whom I am empowered to be open to the life, love and being that flows through me.

I now call myself a mystic because in my understanding of God I have gone beyond words into a kind of wordless wonder, awe and mystery. This is not where I was a decade ago. I doubt if it will be where I am a decade from now, but it is where I am today and it represents the evolving, growing frontier of where I was ten years ago.

Thanks for asking.
– John Shelby Spong

Shalom,
barry e

Imagine for a moment...

Imagine for a moment that there were no religious writings. That such things as the Bible, the Torah, the Koran and other religious writings did not exist. Imagine that mans knowledge of the ancient world came exclusively from history books.

Then imagine that we, the people of the 21st century, were to decide that it was time to sit down and write an epic of our world and of the human race.

Ponder that thought, an epic of the human race, as seen exclusively through the eyes and the worldview of the people of the 21st century…. An epic that would try to explain, as best we could, the origin of the earth, the universe and life on this planet.

Knowing what we do about the cosmos and the formation of galaxies, planets and stars, do you think for one moment we would postulate the idea that a supernatural being of some sort, standing out on the edge of space, creating all that exists?

Knowing what we do about biology and the functions of the human body, do you think for one moment we would suggest that a supernatural being (of some sort) impregnated a young virgin and she gave birth to the son of this supernatural being?

Do you think we would suggest that this supernatural being, by virtue of its omnipotent power, controls the weather? That it speaks to people from the clouds, causes disease to punish, cures disease to reward?

If we were to write the history of the universe, the earth and life on earth from the point of view of an intelligent adult of the 21st century, do you think for even a nano-second we would hypothesize such nonsense?

And yet millions of otherwise honest, well-meaning, intelligent people believe these things to be literally true.

What does this say about the maturity of the human mind? What does it say about the power of the Church to control human thought patterns?

The Church can and should be an agent for change and truth in the world and it should start by becoming intellectually honest about it doctrines and dogma.

barry e

Please visit my book site - Christian beliefs - GIVING VOICE TO THE SILENT PULPIT

Hungering for Truth

The following article recently appeared in the St. Petersburg (FL) Time. I find it disturbing that the writer – Norma W. – and thousands of others like her, must live outside their religion and cannot communicate intellectually with their families, because the Church continues to withhold the truth of the church doctrine from the people-in-the-pews.
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I lost my religion in Religion Class. We were a religious family – at least in name. Nobody I knew would have dared admit out loud that they didn’t believe in God. So after misplacing my faith, I kept quiet.
I could hardly believe the loss myself. I kept returning to the place faith had been, prodding it like a sore tooth. How could this happen? I’d gone to Sunday school and church my entire life. I even went to church camp. I knelt every night as a child and asked God to bless a long list of relatives while glancing nervously at the prayer over my bed: “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” I wasn’t afraid for my soul. It was the dying part that scared me. Who knew you could be snatched away while you slept?
In college, before taking the required Religion Class, I’d been devout enough to debate my aunt (who was also my English professor) about angels. We were reading Milton and she said when we die, we become angels. I said angels were another thing altogether, and the reason Milton put man above them was that we had the choice of being good or not. If we chose good, we were placed higher than the angels, who were heavenly beings and – except for the fallen ones – by nature good.
After she called our minister to check on this, she phoned my mother to say I was right. But, not wanting to show favoritism, she gave me a B in the class, which did not affect my belief in God, but definitely soured my belief in her.
To graduate from my Methodist college, you had to take a year of religion: one semester of Old Testament and one of New.
It was not the college’s intention to undermine our faith, but religion was taught as history. Who were those tribes? How did they come to worship one God, and how did the books we call the Bible get written and put together? This is where it happened – in the first semester among the begats.
I discovered that the Bible had come together over hundreds of years, written by different men in different times. Our textbook Bible contained the Apocrypha, the books that were once part of the Bible, but through one dispute or another had been cast out. To me, they sounded just as plausible as the official parts.
Doubt crept in like a poison, or maybe it was faith leaking out.
All I know is, during those months, as I read my chapters, took notes and wrote papers, belief gave way to logic. God – at least the God I was kneeling to in church – was a construct, put together over centuries, codified, fought over, killed for, and what did we really know? Nothing, except we needed this story, needed to believe our soul went somewhere and that we didn’t blink out like light bulbs at the end.
I knew better than admit doubt. I continued to kneel in church and bow my head for grace during family meals. Was everybody pretending? At dinner, I opened my eyes a crack and peeked around. My sisters certainly looked pious enough. I never ask them what they believed for fear they’d ask me in return. If I told them the truth, they would shake their heads and say they’d miss me when they were in heaven with the angels and I was burning below.
I graduated, left home without admitting my faithlessness, and quit going to church. Now and then I can feel doubt pinching at my atheism, but I repress it. When you’ve tasted the forbidden fruit, there’s no going back to innocence, and no point being wistful about what you’ve lost.---------------------------------------
Such a tragic story, one that is being played out thousands of times a day, all around the world. And who is at fault?- The Church.. By refusing to be honest with their constituents and would-be-constituents, they are driving away the very people they are trying to attract.

A minister friend of mine recently confided in me that at the annual conference of his church denomination he had had conversations with several of his colleagues regarding this problem. All admitted the problem exists but none are willing to ‘rock the boat’ or do anything about it.

So while the Universities, Colleges and Seminaries teach a modern, intellectually honest religion, the Church continues to preach an ancient folklore and superstition that is irrelevant to the 21st century worldview.

If nothing is done, and the trend continues, Christianity will soon find itself on the fringes of society, among the ignorant and uninformed.

Such a pity. The church… dying from its own lack of integrity.

barry e - 2009

An Ocean of God: The Interconnectedness of All Being

Excerpt from;
An Ocean of God: The Interconnectedness of All Being
By Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

It was almost ten years ago that one of my sons brought home what was then a new and sophisticated computer game. “It’s called ‘virtual reality,’ Dad,” He explained. “You play it by entering it. You must imagine that you are actually inside it You ask yourself, “What would I do if I really lived in this world?”

The game was called Myst. (They’ve since come out with a sequel called Riven.) You pop in the CD, look at the screen, and find yourself on an island. There’s a dock, a forest, buildings. Stairway. The graphics and sound effects are impressive and convincing. There is no manual, no instructions, no rules. You “go” places by aiming a little pointing finger and clicking. You can look up and down, turn around, climb stairs, wander all around the place. Where ever your curiosity leads you, there are things to discover and remember. There are machines you can operate, a library full of books you can actually open and read. Devotees say the game is properly played over weeks and months. (It’s been almost a decade and I still haven’t finished.)

And the purpose of it all? Why, of course: to figure out what you’re doing there. But to do that, you must first figure out how the place works.

What fascinates me here is not yet another sophisticated and clever way to waste time in front of the computer screen. (I can do that with Solitaire and FreeCell.) It is the concept of a game whose purpose is for the player to discover the purpose. Virtual reality, schmirtual reality, this ain’t no game. What’s going on here? Why am I here? What are the rules?

Upon hearing about this. A friend who is a professor of English suggested that it seemed a lot like childhood. I’d go further. It may be a lot like adulthood, too. We all find ourselves in “this world” and “object” seems to be to figure out what we’re doing here. Unfortunately, the way most things are connected to one another is not immediately apparent.

After all, meaning is a matter of connections. If something is connected to absolutely nothing – symbolically, linguistically, physically, psychologically – it is literally meaningless. And, if something is connected to everyone and everything, it would be supremely meaningful. I suppose it would be God: The One through whom everything is connected to everything else, the Source of all meaning. Religious traditions are the collected “rules of the game.” They presume to tell us how the world works. And if you “play by them,” you are rewarded (hopefully before it is time to leave) with an understanding of why you are here – with what is otherwise known as the meaning of life.

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Bishop Spong Q&A 6/18/09

Jody Jones from Cedar Park, Texas, asks:

I recently attended your three lectures in Austin, Texas. You are an important person in my growth. I was raised as a fundamentalist, and you allowed me to begin and continue my journey. You mentioned prayer, and defined the prayers of most as "adult letters to Santa Claus." I must admit that it is an excellent definition. My question is this: What does prayer look like you to today? Thank you for continuing to educate.

Dear Jody,

I don't like to use the word prayer, because it is culturally translated as one person approaching the theistic God above the sky with a request. The word itself has become bankrupt and not capable of redemption.

Instead, I think of prayer as communing with the holy, that which is transcendental, the power of life, the consciousness of the divine, the Ground of Being or perhaps the source of love. I do not commune with God in order to seek divine favor or to engage in religious flattery that people call praise. I commune to discover God within me and to be more open to that presence. I do not separate prayer from life. I do not think prayer is something I do, so much as it is something I am.

Public worship has elements of liturgical prayer in it and I engage in public worship every Sunday. I believe the purpose of liturgy is to open us to the presence of the holy in the gathered community. I resent having medieval patterns of liturgy imposed on me, as if somehow plainsong music and priestly chanting creates holiness. To me it only creates irrelevant liturgy. I have written on prayer many times. I experience more in prayer than I can describe in words. That is as far as I can go.

I hope this helps.

– John Shelby Spong

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Bishop Spong Q&A - Petitionary Prayer

Elmo Hoffman, via the Internet, writes:

I have read much of your work and met you once at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, at a pastor's conference. It was the same venue where I also met Marcus Borg. I am a retired civil trial lawyer and a late-life seminary graduate, now an ordained Disciples of Christ minister, although before seminary I was a lifelong Presbyterian (USA) from the same time frame and section of North Carolina as you. My question, which gives me a great deal of trouble, is: What is your basic understanding of petitionary prayer? I believe you have said, "A God who would save the life of one prayed-for cancer-stricken child and not another would be a monster." This makes sense but gives me a great deal of trouble in considering petitionary prayer. (I have read your book Honest Prayer — I find no answer to this problem there.)
Dear Elmo,

Thank you for your comments and for your question. Your question on petitionary prayer is almost always the first question that comes up wherever I go to lecture. People can talk about their understanding of God until the cows come home, but nothing really changes until they translate their understanding of God into their prayers. More than anything else, our prayers define our understanding of God. So to talk about prayer, we have to define who the God is to whom we pray. To say it differently, "Who do we think is listening?"

Most people, quite unconsciously, approach the subject of prayer with a very traditional concept of God quite operative in their minds. This God is a personal being, endowed with supernatural power, who lives somewhere outside this world, usually conceptualized as "above the sky." While that definition has had a long history among human beings, it is a definition of God that has been rendered meaningless by the advance of human knowledge. This means that for most of us the activity of prayer does not take seriously the fact that we live in a vast universe, and that we have not yet come to grips with the fact that there is no supernatural, parental deity above the sky, keeping the divine record books on human behavior up to date and ready at any moment to intervene in human history to answer prayers. When we do embrace this fact then prayer, as normally understood, becomes an increasingly impossible idea and inevitably a declining practice. To get people to embrace this point clearly, I have suggested that the popular prayers of most people is little more than adult letters written to a Santa Claus God.

There are then two choices. One says that the God in whom I always believed is no more, so I will become an atheist. People make this decision daily. It is an easy way out.

The other says that the way I have always thought of God has become inoperative, so there must be something wrong with my definition. This stance serves to plunge us deeply into a new way of thinking about God, and that is when prayer itself begins to be redefined. Can God, for example, be conceived of not as supernatural person, but as a force present in me and flowing through me? Then perhaps prayer can be transformed into meditation and petitionary prayer becomes a call to action. The spiritual life is then transformed from the activity of a child seeking the approval of a supernatural being to being a simultaneous journey into self-discovery and into the mystery of God. It also feeds my sense of growing into oneness with the source of all life and love and with what my mentor, Paul Tillich, called the Ground of All Being. It would take a book to fill in the blank places in this quick analysis, but these are the things that today feed my ever deepening discovery of the meaning of prayer.

– John Shelby Spong

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A note from Cliff

Barry,
I have been stimulated by your blog and our Sunday morning discussions to write the following. As I was writing it, I found that one thing led to another, and therefore, it has become wordy and probably too pedantic. Nevertheless, I offer it to you.
Cliff
According to the 2nd story of creation (Genesis 2), God created man (adham) out of the ground (adamah) and breathed into his nostrils "the breath of life" ("Ruach," also known as "Spirit"). Of course, this was this author's way of trying not only to make sense of how life came upon the earth, but how human life is special and different from other forms of life. These stories are not meant to be understood literally, but taken as stories to help explain the mystery of life. Since that writing, however, we have continued to use the word "Spirit" as a power that is outside the natural order. Yet, breath is a part of the natural order. Ruach, however is something more than air; it is the breath that makes us human. This was to say that human life was more than the life of a goat or the life of a tree. Human life for this author was special, so the problem for him/her/them is to tell the story so that the special nature of humans is emphasized. The problem is that it says nothing to identify the “name” of the “one” who gives life to humans. We might infer that since humans possess Ruach, humans contain the nature of the divine. This is the same specialness that is conveyed by the author/s of the first creation story where it says that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." Here again it is not the author's intention to identify the Creator, but simply to state that men and women are created beings. Humans are a part of nature, but are special, i.e., created in the image of one who is supreme. It is an attempt to teach others something of the mystery of life. This leads me to understand God as being as close to us as our breath.

God is unknowable. Yet, when the authors looked around them and saw that humans were somehow more than plants and animals, they attempted to understand this mystery and help others to do the same. Humans have the capability of thought, of reason, of developing language, of creating tools. The thinking of the day said, humans must somehow be associated/connected with a "being" which is outside of creation. Since there was a school of thought that said, there are many gods that live outside of creation, the "being" which created humans must be a god, but not simply a god, but THE GOD, which is over and above all gods and creation. This may have been an attempt to refute the notion that there are multiple gods that rule the creation, hence, the beginning of the notion that there is one and only one God.

The point that I am trying to make here is that the characters in the Bible stories strain to understand the breath of life, Ruach. They were not satisfied with old thinking. All through the Bible we discover people who are on the cutting edge of thought and action. This straining to learn and to become more than we already are, has led to the quest for scientists to continually learn more about the universe.

Moses, for instance, wants to name the entity that breathed life into humans. The author/s of the story of Moses want to emphasize that the one whom they have named "God" or “LORD” is THE SUPREME BEING, (not a scientific theory, but a statement of faith and hope) so the authors created a story whereby Moses, a great leader of the Hebrew people, encounters a "being” i.e., one unlike any other being, who communicates with him" in a burning bush which is not consumed. Of course this is fantastic. It is meant to be awesome. (It also elevates Moses to a position of authority.) When Moses asks the "being" in the burning bush his/her/its name, the only answer Moses receives is, "Say to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" (Exodus 3:13 ff.). "I AM" can be translated, "BEING," which also might be interpreted as "the breath of life" or "Ruach," or Spirit. In my words, “The Ultimate Spirit of life has sent me to you.”

It is also interesting that Paul Tillich attempts to find a name for God. He calls God, "The Ground of Being" or in Hebrew, the Adamah (ground) of Ruach (the breath of life.)

The Biblical writers wanted a "name" for "The Breath of Life." Thousands of years later we still want to find a "name" for the "breath of life!" The writers of the biblical books called the "breath of life" by many names: Yahweh, Spirit, LORD, Elohim, El-Shaddai, Adonai, G-d, Creator, and several others, I am sure. The name “God” became so sacred that the Hebrews were prohibited from uttering or writing it. The early church leaders called The Breath of Life by the names of Father, King, Holy Spirit, and Shepherd. The Gospel of John calls God the “Word” or Logos,” which is the force that precedes the known world. Many of the names by which we know the Breath of Life are descriptive rather than an attempt to name God. We say that God is light; God is love. Even the Trinitarian formula, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is meant to be descriptive rather than an attempt to name God. Unfortunately, those who have been called to be leaders and spokes-persons for believers, have had other axes to grind, therefore, they have proclaimed that anyone who believes in these things will inherit eternal life; all others are lost until such time as they come to believe, a notion which must be actively rejected, for this is legalism of the highest order.

What does all of this have to say to us? This is my answer or as a preacher, my sermon: The Bible is not an authoritative set of rules, which says, "Obey" or go to hell. The Bible for me contains stories that help to teach us to grow in our understanding of all that there is to comprehend. The intellectual quest to know our creator/God/Breath of Life/Yahweh/ Elohim/Shepherd/Father is a quest that has its roots in our beginnings as modern human beings, and it is not wrong to try to discover a name that is descriptive for Ultimate Being. Most of our names will be description, rather than identification, because the one we seek to discover is unknowable by intellect alone. For me, this says, "Continue trying to find a suitable descriptive name for "The Breath of Life." It says, "Continue searching for a name that is meaningful for us, just as those who came before us searched for a name that was meaningful for them.” The implication of this is that humans must not be passive spectators but active explorers, who seek to discover all that there is in creation. The ability to do that makes us unlike anything else in all of creation. What a gift!

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Spirit of the Living God

This past Sunday our discussion group was studying Chapter Ten of Lloyd Geering’s book, ‘Christianity without God’. Chapter Ten is titled ‘Why Christianity must become non-theistic’.

Geering states, near the beginning of the Chapter, “If we think of God as ‘a superhuman person regarded as having power over nature and human fortunes’, we are using a descriptive definition. But if we take ‘God’ to refer to the highest values which motivate us, then we are using a functional definition.”

Someone mentioned the confusion this causes when we use the word ‘God’ to refer to two different things (definitions). It often becomes difficult to discern which ‘God’ the speaker or writer is referring to. Several people agreed, adding that even if one knows that the speaker is referring to the functional definition, confusion is created because of the ‘baggage’ surrounding the word ‘God’; caused by several thousand years of using the descriptive definition.

We discussed the desire to refer to the functional definition with a new or different term but this would, admittedly, cause great consternation and anxiety among those Christians who are not ready, willing or able to move away from the descriptive definition. The word ‘Ruach’ (the Hebrew word for spirit or breath of life) was mentioned. Ruach might be used to refer to “the highest values which motivate us”, i.e. love, compassion, tolerance, inclusiveness, justice. Expressed is this way, ‘the Ruach of life’, might give rise to an utterance of our new meaning for the word ‘God’.

Still, for those not disposed to advancing the intellectual integrity of the Church, this would seem unnecessary, even blasphemes.

Later, during the morning worship service, the congregation sang the familiar old hymn, ‘Spirit of the Living God’….

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me,
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.
As I sang the words of this song, my thoughts went back to our group discussion, and I began to ask myself.... “ When we refer to the functional definition of ‘God’ as love, compassion, tolerance, inclusiveness, and justice… are we not referring to how we as humans ought interact with each other in living out our lives? Is it not a manifestation of the Ultimate expression of life itself?” And in this context are we not speaking of the ‘Spirit of a Living God’?

This thinking does not solve the confusion factor mentioned earlier, but perhaps it could serve to help those who are concerned about the baggage surrounding the word ‘God’ when used in the functional context.

I’ll let you decide…..

barry e

Dedication to Reality

Excerpt from 'The Road Less Traveled' - M. Scott Peck

….The third tool of discipline or technique of dealing with the pain of problem solving, which must be continually be employed if our lives are to be healthy and our spirits are to grow, is dedication to the truth. Superficially, this should be obvious, For truth is reality. That which is false is unreal. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. The less clearly we see the reality of the world – the more our minds are befuddled by falsehood, misperceptions and illusions – the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions. Our view of reality is like a map with which to navigate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

While this is obvious, it is something that most people to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy, their views of the world narrow and misleading. By the end of middle age most people have given up the effort. They feel certain that their maps are complete and their Weltanschauung (worldview) is correct (indeed even sacrosanct), and they are no longer interested in new information. It is as if they are tired. Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.

But the biggest problem of map-making is not that we have to start from scratch, but that if our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them. The world itself is constantly changing. Glaciers come, glaciers go. Cultures come, cultures go. There is too little technology, there is too much technology. Even more dramatically, the vantage point from which we view the world is constantly and quite rapidly changing. When we are children we are dependent, powerless. As adults we may be powerful. Yet in illness or an infirm old age we may become powerless and dependent again. When we have children to care for, the world looks different from when we have none; when we are raising infants, the world seems different from when we are raising adolescents. When we are poor, the world looks different from when we are rich. We are daily bombarded with new information as to the nature of reality. If we are to incorporate this information, we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful, sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind.

What happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, a seemingly useful, workable map, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that that view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn? The painful effort required seems frightening, almost overwhelming. What we do more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information. Often this act of ignoring is much more than passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than try to change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. Sadly, such a person may expend much more energy ultimately in defending an outmoded view of the world, than would have been required to revise and correct it in the first place.

- M. Scott Peck

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Bishop Spong Q&A

Stephen Argent of Sussex, United Kingdom, writes:

Thank you for the stimulation of your published works and weekly newsletter. My question concerns the pastoral care of those Christians who do not have the intellectual capacity or strength of character to tolerate the ambiguity of your message. Rightly or wrongly their "simple" faith sustains them and many would be fatally undermined should they be confronted by doubts concerning such issues as the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection. Is it right to leave their views unchallenged, or should gentle sensitivity necessitate a less direct approach? I am aware that I will appear patronizing in posing this question, but from your own pastoral experience how have you dealt with this matter?

Dear Stephen,

Your question is a frequent one, but in my opinion it reveals things under the surface that I believe need to be faced.

First, is your concern really for those whose "simple" faith is being disturbed by developing knowledge? Frequently I find this question asked by one who is himself disturbed, but projects it on to others.

Second, are you really suggesting that truth should be compromised for the sake of those who might not be able to understand? Does that not make religion a bit of an opiate for the people?

Third, if truth is to be compromised in the realm of the church for the sake of those who might not understand or for those you call simple believers, has not the church become totalitarian? Is that not an example of control by giving people security when they cannot deal with truth? Is such a formula followed in any other discipline of human knowledge? Is religion somehow virtuous when it does what would be deplored in any other human arena?

Fourth, the pursuit of truth in religion is never imposed on people by force. That is not the nature of liberal education. The only people who seem to me to impose specific religious answers on anyone are those evangelical Protestants or conservative Catholics who believe that they possess the unchanging truth of God.

Fifth, the task of the Christian is to love "the least of these" our brothers and sisters. Seeking to protect them from uncomfortable truth is not just patronizing as your letter suggests, it is both demeaning and dehumanizing.

Finally, one of my professors once said, "Any God who can be killed ought to be killed." To which I would add, any faith that can be undermined should be undermined. A God or a faith that needs you or me to prop it up has already died long ago. You do not need to defend a living God. Only dead gods seem to require that.

– John Shelby Spong

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Legitimate reporting or Religious bias?

This letter was written to the Arizona Daily Sun, Flagstaff, January 17, 1990, in response to a story that run on New Year’s Eve about a tragic multi-vehicle accident in the fog. Many lives were Lost. It was written by Mr. Dan Barker, former Baptist minister and evangelist.
I read with dismay your front page December 31 stories about the tragic pile-up on I-40. Who would not be saddened by such a horror?

I was surprised, however, by what appears to be an unnecessary intrusion of religious bias into the related story, “Family thankful to survive horror.” It is not inappropriate for a reporter to quote the religious beliefs of interviewees, or to mention religion if it is relevant to the story, as long as it is objective and balanced. Sweitzer’s piece, however, seems to cross the line from reporting to Christian cheerleading.

The Singletons prayed before leaving on their trip, and it is their belief that this prayer kept them alive. They are entitled to this belief, but Sweitzer says they “know who saved them.” He gives the complete irrelevant report that “Singleton’s wife talked earnestly to one trucker and he became a born again Christian on the spot.” Assuming that this is a good thing, Assuming that your readers would know what is a born again Christian, and doing nothing to move the story. If the trucker had converted to Islam during the tragety, would that have been deemed relevant?

The praise and thanksgiving should go to the school districts that helped with buses, to the Flagstaff police and fire departments who saved lives, to the expert medical care of the Flagstaff Medical Center, and to the humanitarian efforts of the Red Cross. These are human, secular groups that put compassion into action. It is understandable that individuals will turn to their faith for comfort in times of distress, but using an occasion to thank and recognize a deity is ludicrous.

Why would a deity allow such an accident? Were those who were killed and injured undeserving of protection? Did the victims not pray hard enough that day? When the accident first started too occur, when the first vehicle went out of control, did did the watchful deity say, “Okay, here we go! Let’s see. Car #6 swerve this way because you haven’t prayed all week. Truck #4 can totally flip out of control because the driver missed church last week. Oh look! Van #3 has occupants who prayed this morning; OK smash the van but not too hard, they can probably scramble out and up the hill to observe how I punish the atheist in the station wagon, and let’s see. Yes! I’ll crush the mother, father, and sister, but let the one little girl live for a few hours.” And so on.

Who would love such a monster?

Did it occur to the Singletons. Or the reporter. That if they had not spent time praying that morning before leaving on their trip. Their car might have been a mile or two farther up the road (depending on how long they prayed), avoiding the accident altogether?

Let’s ask the injured (we can’t talk to the fatalities) if any of them prayed that morning. It was the Sabbath, after all. How many of them are (were) deeply religious people? What kind of message does this insensitive story send to those less fortunate?

One of the survivors of the crash of flight 232 in Iowa is an atheist and secular humanist, Peter Wernick. He credits his survival with the heroic human efforts of the pilots and with luck. Many Christians died in that crash. Let’s hear the Singleton’s story. But let’s be careful to avoid ‘Bible-belt journalism” in the reporting.

Dan Barker

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The Gapless God

Jim Burklo is the Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California. He serves on the board of The Center for Progressive Christianity.



Recently, at the University of Southern California, I've found myself engaged in conversations about the nature, or super-nature, of God. A few weeks ago, I attended a talk for the evangelical Christian club at our medical school. (The title of the talk was "Why I Am Not an Atheist" - which, sure enough, raised the hackles of our atheist medical students, one of whom showed up to complain. "How would our Muslim students feel," the student asked, "if the title of this talk was 'Why I Am Not a Muslim'?" A really good question....) The speaker proceeded to give the usual arguments, unscientific and illogical, but invoking science and logic, for the existence of a supernatural God. You can look up all these arguments on the internet. The argument from time, Pascal's wager, the argument from morality. If any of them were convincing, then we'd all be convinced... but they aren't, and we're not.

At the question and answer period, I said, "As a progressive Christian, I have found a way to experience God without having to go through this exercise of trying to prove the existence of God. I don't need to believe in a supernatural God to be Christian, so this effort to account for such a God through science and logic isn't necessary. Your arguments fail because they are tautological: effectively they depend on the initial assumption that there is a supernatural God outside the universe who created it and tinkers with it from outside, so it is no wonder that they circle back to that conclusion."

I have yet to meet anyone who became a Christian or came to believe in a supernatural God as a result of any of these propositions. I've met many hundreds of people who became evangelical or fundamentalist Christians because they came into contact with Christians whom they admired and with whom they wanted to belong. They accepted the supernaturalist doctrines of these Christian groups because that was the price of admission. Seeing later that there were serious logical and scientific challenges to supernaturalism, some of them sought out arguments based on science or logic to give support for their beliefs. But not once have I met a person who started down the Christian path on the strength of these explanations.

A few nights ago our Office of Religious Life hosted a stage performance of "Dangerous Descent", written by Colin Cox, at USC. It's a dramatization of the debates between evolutionary biologists and proponents of the "intelligent design" version of Christian creationism. It pits 'scientism', a stridently atheistic expression of the evolutionary biology position, against the supernaturalistic Christian account of the emergence of life on earth. The play made no reference to the progressive Christian movement, which does not posit a conflict between Darwin and faith. But despite and perhaps because of its polemical nature, the play was a good conversation-starter for the audience after the performance. The actors, the playwright, an evolutionary biologist at USC, and myself were the panel initiating the after-show discussion. Of the hundred-odd students and staff who attended, it appeared that a handful were proponents of the 'intelligent design' perspective.

One of them spoke up and said that there was no way that the complexity of certain features of life could be accounted for by a process of random mutation, so an intelligent Creator must have formed those features. I answered: "You are completely entitled to your religious belief. But in order for your idea to be scientific, you have to explain how God did what you say he did." 'Intelligent design' does not and cannot offer such explanations. 'Intelligent design' rests on the idea that God is supernatural. But to explain the processes by which God creates would suggest that God's acts are part of the realm of nature. This would deny the supernaturalism, and thus the existence, of God.

Michael Dowd, author of "Thank God for Evolution!", is the nation's foremost "evangelist" for celebrating the compatibility of sound science and good religion. In a recent blog, Michael points out the consequences of the biblically literalistic defense of supernaturalism. "Is it any wonder that young people are leaving religion by the millions, if this is the 'good news' they are offered? Is it any wonder that the new atheists continue to ride bestseller lists if religion is equated with such 'supernaturalism'?"



All the arguments for 'intelligent design' are appeals to belief in the "God of the gaps", a supernatural deity whose existence is supposed to account for the existence of things that science can't yet explain. In the "Dangerous Descent" play, the actor advocating for 'intelligent design' constantly complains whenever the actor advocating for evolutionary biology says 'not yet'. But science is all about seeking out explanations for that which has 'not yet' been understood. All that has so far been discovered was once 'not yet' explained. Science thrives on the quest to close the very 'gaps' that supernaturalist Christians invoke as evidence of the existence of their God. The "God of the gaps" has been in retreat for centuries now, as each gap is filled by new discoveries.



But there is a gapless God: the One who is one with the process of evolution and ongoing creation. The One who is one with nature. The One who is a verb that moves from within, rather than a noun that stands outside the universe and gives directions. The One who is existence itself, and thus whose existence is pointless to prove. The One whose presence we feel in prayer and worship, the One who is the essence of the awe we feel when we consider the natural marvels that surround us. The God we know in the glow of wonderment, as we consider both our knowledge and our ignorance of how the universe works.

Jim Burklo

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Excerpt from The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan

I am sometimes accused of sounding arrogant and perhaps dismissive when I debate religious topics with some of my ‘believing’ friends. These few paragraphs by Carl Sagan seem to be written just for me….perhaps they will have meaning for you as well.... barry e
In a life short and uncertain, it seems heartless to do anything that might deprive people of the consolation of faith when science cannot remedy their anguish. Those who cannot bear the burden of science are free to ignore its precepts. But we cannot have science in bits and pieces, applying it where we feel safe and ignoring it where we feel threatened – again, because we are not wise enough to do so. Except by sealing the brain off into separate airtight compartments, how is it possible to fly in airplanes, listen to the radio or take antibiotics while holding that the Earth is around 10,000 years old or that all Sagittarians are gregarious and affable?

Have I ever heard a skeptic wax superior and contemptuous? Certainly. I’ve even heard, to my retrospective dismay, that unpleasant tome in my own voice. There are human imperfections on both sides of this issue. Even when it’s applied sensitively, scientific skepticism may come across as arrogant, dogmatic, heartless, and dismissive of the feelings and deeply held beliefs of others. And it must be said, some scientists and dedicated skeptics apply this tool as a blunt instrument, with little finesse. Sometimes it looks as if the skeptical conclusion came first, that contentions were dismissed before , not after, the evidence was examined. All of us cherish our beliefs. They are to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based – or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven’t thought of, or demonstrates that we’ve swept key underlying assumptions under the rug – it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

The scientist who first proposed to consecrate doubt as a prime virtue of the inquiring mind made it clear that it was a tool and not an end in itself. Rene Descartes wrote, …
I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting’s sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath.
In the way that skepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who like the skeptics are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

Clearly there are limits to the uses of skepticism. There is some cost-benefit analysis which must be applied, and if the comfort, consolation and hope delivered by mysticism and superstition is high, and the dangers of belief comparatively low, should we not keep our misgivings to ourselves? But the issue is tricky. Imagine that you enter a big-city taxicab and the moment you get settled in, the driver begins a harangue about the supposed iniquities and inferiorities of another ethnic group. Is your best course to keep quiet, bearing in mind that silence conveys assent?

Or is it your moral responsibility to argue with him, to express outrage, even to leave the cab – because you know that every silent assent will encourage him next time, and every vigorous dissent will cause him next time to think twice? Likewise if we offer to much silent assent about mysticism and superstition – even when it seems to be doing a little good – we encourage a general climate in which skepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. Figuring out a prudent balance takes wisdom.

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Bishop Spong Q&A 2/19/2009

Rick, via the Internet, writes:

You mentioned that there are two sets of the Ten Commandments, and that one of them includes the injunction against boiling a kid in its mother's milk. I believe you said this version was in Deuteronomy. But I looked up the Deuteronomy version, chapter 5, verses 6-21, and I find no reference to boiling. In fact this recitation of the Ten Commandments appears to be in complete agreement with the recitation in Exodus, chapter 20, verses 3-17. Would you please explain where I would find the Ten Commandments recitation that includes the boiling the kid reference you described? Thanks.

Dear Rick,

You must have misheard. I said there are three versions of the Ten Commandments. The oldest one is Exodus 34, the second is Exodus 20 and the last is Deuteronomy 5. It is in Exodus 34 that you will find the injunction about "boiling a kid in its mother's milk." This version is almost totally cultic.

If you look again at Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, you will discover that there is not "complete agreement" as you suggest. The primary difference is in the commandment about the Sabbath. Deuteronomy suggests that the Sabbath was to be observed because they had once been slaves in Egypt and even slaves must have a day of rest. In Exodus 20, the original Sabbath Day commandment has been edited to claim that God, resting from the work of creation on the Sabbath, was the reason for its continued observance. That addition to the original fourth commandment was from the quill of the priestly writers in the Babylonian exile (roughly from 596 to 450 BCE, depending on which return from exile was the last one), who also wrote the seven day creation story at the same time.

That creation story did not exist when Deuteronomy was written. So the versions of the Ten Commandments are really four: the primitive Exodus 34 version from the "J" writer in the 10th century BCE; the familiar one from Exodus 20, which is originally from the "E" writer in the 9th century BCE but was substantially edited by the "P" writer in the 6th century BCE; and the Deuteronomy 5 version, which is from the 7th century BCE and from the hand of the Deuteronomic writer. The biblical writers accounted for these several versions by suggesting that because Moses broke the tablets, God had to redo them and God did not redo them in the same way.

The fact is that these rules, like all covenant rules, emerged through the life of the nation of Israel and probably always had several versions. That is not a problem unless you are a fundamentalist.

– John Shelby Spong

A response to last weeks article

My younger brother (he’s 70, I’m 72) wrote a reply to last week’s entry about freethinking Muslims. I thought you might be interested in reading it. For the past several years he has traveled the mid-East, consulting with universities in Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Oman. He has worked with individual universities and with groups of universities on a variety of projects.

That's an encouraging article, and I applaud the openness and visibility of their statement. The good news is that there are many muslims who think that way. In fact, there are many more who believe that way than dare to make such a public declaration. the fact that some do helps the others. In the long run, I believe this position will win out and Islam will join the modern world. However, I do think it will be a long time coming.

Right now we have a few Arab countries that are trying to move this way - Jordan, UAE, Qatar, and to a lesser extent Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain. And you have mixtures of things going on that highlight some of the issues, such as Saudi Arabia under the fundamentalist theocratic control of the Mahabis and simultaneously building strong universities and bringing in top scholars. Oil money provides a great buffering for rulers in times of transition and it slows the pace of change in a case like Saudi Arabia while it allows change to move more swiftly in a case like Kuwait.

With the enormous strengthening of higher education in the middle east coupled with the impossibility of totally controlling information in this internet age, things will be changing at different paces in different countries. However, the transition will not be easy or without conflict. Good examples of countries with conflict are Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. As any threatened group does, the Islamists (followers of Islam who want to establish theocratic governments) become more fanatically fundamental when their traditions, and especially their power, weaken. We can only hope for more examples of enlightened muslims speaking out as in the statement you sent. And we need more examples of the benefits of secular democracy. The current economic situation hurts perceptions ("See the greed of secularism and what it brings."). The election of Obama was a very strong positive signal ("See that democracy is real and works."). In time more of the Arab leaders such as in Jordan and Qatar will push for democracy, and in other countries the people will demand more freedom from autocrats whether their rulers or their clerics.

In the meantime I suggest we applaud, support, and befriend muslims who take such clear stands for secular societies. They often come under intense pressure from within their muslim community.

M-----

Encouraging news from the Islamic World?

Our study group has often questioned whether there were ‘freethinkers’ in other religions, as there are within Christianity. This past Sunday we read a statement from the Internet that leads us to believe there are! Below is a proclamation form a Muslim group that gives an example.


Institution for the Secularization of Islamic Society

Mission: We believe that Islamic society has been held back by an unwillingness to subject its beliefs, laws and practices to critical examination, by a lack of respect for the rights of the individual, and by an unwillingness to tolerate alternative viewpoints or to engage in constructive dialogue.The Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society (ISIS) has been formed to promote the ideas of rationalism, secularism, democracy and human rights within Islamic society.ISIS promotes freedom of expression, freedom of thought and belief, freedom of intellectual and scientific inquiry, freedom of conscience and religion – including the freedom to change one’s religion or belief - and freedom from religion: the freedom not to believe in any deity.

Statement of Principles

1. We share the ideals of a democratic society, and a secular state that does not endorse any religion, religious institution, or any religious dogma. The basis for its authority is in man-made law, not in religious doctrine or in divine revelation. In a theocracy of the type that Islamic fundamentalists wish to establish, sovereignty belongs to god, but in a democracy sovereignty belongs to the people. We therefore favor the firm separation of religion and state: without such a separation there can be no freedom from tyranny, and such a separation is the sine qua non for a secular state.

2. We believe in the primacy of the rule of law: a common civil code under which all men and women have equal protection of their rights and freedoms.

3. We endorse the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants on Human Rights without qualification. We are particularly concerned to promote and protect the rights of women and those with minority beliefs: all should be equal before the law.

4. We are dedicated to combating fanaticism, intolerance, violent fundamentalism, and terrorism by showing the intellectual inadequacy of the fanatics’ programmes, the historical inaccuracy of their claims, the philosophical poverty of their arguments, and the totalitarian nature of their thought.We defend the right of free inquiry, and the free expression of ideas. We therefore reserve the right to examine the historical foundations of Islam, and to explain the rise and fall of Islam by the normal mechanisms of human history.

Additional info: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/isis

A Violinist in the Metro

Here is a thought provoking article I found in a church newsletter this week. Hope you enjoy it... barry e

A man sat at a metro station in Washington, DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late to work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother dragging him along, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing the silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua sold out a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written… how many other things are we missing?

-- author unknown

Defining morals and morality

From the book "The Final Superstition" - by Joseph L. Daleiden

To define a principle as a “God given right” is an attempt to universalize the principle to be applicable to all times and circumstances. It also, in effect, removes the principle from examination and validation in terms of its impact on human welfare. The danger here is that when an authoritative religion is vested with the infallible authority to determine what constitutes a moral right or moral obligation, it will structure the rules of morality to serve the interests of the religious institution itself before the interests of humankind. When morality becomes controlled and defined by an elite, whether an authoritarian state or religion, it is structured primarily to serve those in power.

Humankind probably devised some rudimentary moral laws long before it created organized religions. William James recognized that moral behavior could be explained by purely natural means: “instinct and utility between them can safely be trusted to carry on the social business of punishment and praise.” James may have been overly simplistic and optimistic in this view, but he was on the right track.\

According to Paul Beattie, the origins of morality can be traced primarily to the role model of the family. Parenthood, which originally was largely instinctive, by virtue of the nurturing of infants and care of young children, provided a role model, not in terms of what was taught, but in the relationships involved. Seeing the benefits of mutual dependence and harmony existing in successful families generated the idea that society could benefit if this selfless relationship could be extended to the “family of man.”

Social custom was the device used to transmit moral codes which stood the test of time. Customs prevent each individual from acting in a socially destructive way and facilitate the transmission of values from one generation to the next. While customs are not fluid, they are sufficiently plastic to permit remolding if the needs of the day demand it. Religion, on the other hand, rigidly formalizes moral structures, thus inhibiting further evolution.

Nevertheless, sociobiologists such as E. O. Wilson caution that it would be wrong to reject all moral values and rules of religion out of hand, since the real origin of those values is not a mystical God or religious institution per se, but rather the genetically transmitted disposition to altruism (or at least reciprocity). Therefore religions can be of some benefit if they effectively reinforce certain moral values even if the theological basis for accepting those values is erroneous. Still, each moral value and rule must be periodically reviewed for appropriateness and relevance, and this is where religions usually fail.

Bishop Spong's Q&A

Joan from Highlands, North Carolina, writes:

Do you believe in heaven and hell, the blissful heaven and the burning hell? And do you believe in Jesus Christ as your personal savior?

Dear Joan,

Answering your two questions is impossible until some terms are defined and some explanations are given. When you define heaven as "the blissful heaven" and hell as "the burning hell," you reveal an evangelical mindset that asserts a particular understanding that you are requesting that I either affirm or deny. It is to bind the discussion to your frame of reference. That immediately suggests that you do not want real answers, you want affirmation. I cannot give you that nor would I be interested in doing so.

With that background, however, let me proceed to respond. I think it would be fair to say that I do not believe in a blissful heaven or a burning hell as evangelicals define those terms. 0You define heaven and hell as places of reward and punishment where God evens out life here on Earth. I regard that as primitive, childlike thinking that transforms God into a parent figure who delights in rewarding goodness and punishing sinfulness. This portrays God as a supernatural, judging figure and it violates everything I believe about both God and human life.

If anyone pursues goodness in the hope of gaining rewards or avoiding punishment, that person has not escaped the basic self-centeredness of human life and it becomes obvious that such a person is motivated primarily by self-interest. The Christian life is ultimately revealed in the power to live for others, to give ourselves away. It is not motivated by bliss or torment. Both of those images are little more than human wish fulfillment.

The fiery pits of hell are not an essential part of the Christian story. If one would take Matthew's gospel and especially the book of Revelation out of the Bible, most of the references to hell as a fiery place of torment would disappear. That is a quite foreign theme to Paul, Mark, Luke and John. Evangelicals never study the Bible deeply enough to make this distinction. They basically talk about a book they do not understand.

When you ask about "believing in Jesus Christ as your personal savior" you are using stylized evangelical language. That language has no appeal at all for me. To assert the role of savior for Jesus implies a definition of human life as sinful, fallen and helpless. It assumes the ancient myth that proclaimed that we were created perfect only to fall into sin from which we need to be rescued. It was a popular definition before people understood about our evolutionary background. We have been evolving toward humanity for billions of years.

Our problem is not that we have fallen from some pristine perfection into a sinful state from which we need to be saved, it is that we need to be empowered to become something that we have never been, namely fully human beings. So the idea that I need a savior to save me from a fall that never happened and to restore me to a status that I never possessed is in our time all but nonsensical. It is because we do not understand the nature of human life that we do not understand the Jesus role. I see in Jesus the power of love that empowers us to be more deeply and fully human and so I do not know how to translate your questions.

Sorry, but the old evangelical language that you use is badly dated and I believe quite distorting to my understanding of what Christianity is all about.

– John Shelby Spong

The Karl Marx Quote

Karl Marx is perhaps the most eloquent and thought provoking nonbeliever of all time, and perhaps his “religion is the opium of the masses” is still the best one-liner in the business.

But as famous as that zinger is, it’s too bad that most people have never read the sentences that come before and after it. Marx was a whole lot more sympathetic to religious faith than most people give him credit for. He saw religion as a source of solace that should only be abolished until the sources of people’s pain—an unfair economic system—had been eradicated.

“Religious suffering, ” he wrote in 1844, “is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

Marx wasn’t just another hater of religion as a childish fantasy or a retreat from rationality. He saw faith as a symptom and not the disease, and he was interested in faith not in terms of right and wrong but because of what it told him about the human condition.