I sometimes hear critics say I am against the creeds. This is not exactly true. I am against using the creeds to replace love as the essence of the Christian faith. I am against using the dogmas of sectarian Christianity to replace the call to universal love. And, I am against using belief to replace functioning minds.If truth is important to us, then it is necessary to be radically honest. A part of honesty is not claiming as personal knowledge reports that have been told to us second or third hand. To gather weekly to entrance ourselves by repeating the same words in a creed is not a reliable path to honesty, much less love. In the American Revolution both sides had a majority of self proclaimed Christians. A majority of people on both sides affirmed the essential tenets of the Christian faith and yet neither side found in their faith a reason not to kill the other. That fact alone should warn us that creeds do not lead to peace even between people of the same faith.People sometimes claim that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is the heart of the Christian faith, but Christianity based on the resurrection is faith in power, not in love. If Hitler had died and resurrected it would not prove the validity of hate. According to scripture there were many witnesses to the resurrection, but those witnesses were recorded by the same authors who wrote of the resurrection in the first place. To use the people in the resurrection stories as witnesses to the resurrection is like using Achilles’ men to prove the existence of the Trojan horse, or the characters in nursery rhymes to prove the existence of Mother Goose. Stories of magical power may satisfy incurious minds, but they do not reliably lead to honest minds nor loving hearts. There is nothing wrong with creeds as a kind of spiritual poetry, but if we tell stories of miracles we must never forget one thing:It is love that validates power, not power that validates love.
Religion is either a bridge, or it is a prison. Religion either opens us to the larger life we hold in common with all, or it imprisions us within itself. Religion is either the pursuit of the original song of our hearts or it is a parrot song for us to whimper within our gilded cages. If religion does not free us from its own dogma, it fills our minds with words of the dead. Such faith permits us to believe but not to think.If religion does not free us from its own moralisms we become mimes living in formulaic gestures instead of ethical relationships. Religion either calls us beyond its own walls into life and nature or it shrink wraps our horizons down to those of its own sect and culture. Such religion praises the seed but forbids the blossom.
The Greek word for church, “ekklesia,” once meant “called out.” The Greek word for a religious gathering became the modern word for synagogue. That word meant “to bring together.” Jesus participated in his synagogue, so he wasn’t rejecting his Jewish community, but why would the early church use a word that means “called out” to their self-identity?As I understand it, the word “ekklesia” originally referred to the democratic body in ancient Athens that made important decisions. Athenian citizens had an obligation to the common life. Our modern word “idiot” originally came from a Greek term for someone who lived by and for themselves. Being an “idiot” didn’t mean that the people were stupid, it just meant they didn’t participate in the civic process. They saw the people of their city as total strangers. They may have been personally smart and ethical, but they added little or nothing to the common life.As I said so far as we know, Jesus never left Judaism and he participated in his synagogue. So, perhaps the word “ekklesia” was added, not to describe a new sect, but to emphasize the kind of religion that produces good neighbors and shares a commitment to the common good.Perhaps being “called out” means finding a love that is wider than our narrow allegiances to our own siblings, political party or religious sect. Perhaps “ekklesia” described a community that not only gathered in worship, but also heard a call to serve the common life. When Jesus began his teachings he didn’t give his followers sectarian theological tracts. He took them out to a shoreline and told them to contemplate the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. It seems to me Jesus wasn’t calling his followers into a new religious sect so much as calling them out to a love that would grow into compassion and justice for all.
LEAVE YOUR COMFORT ZONE – Even if it’s true that all roads lead to the top of the mountain, we should still choose paths that save time and do not injure others. If we really want to shorten our learning curve, we should stop repeating the cliches that make us feel comfortable and explore those awkward questions that most disturb our habitual thoughts and feelings. DO NOT LIVE
IN YOUR THOUGHTS ALONE – A tree becomes unstable if its branches grow larger than its roots. For every inch our branches stretch toward the rational brilliance and clarity of the sun, so far must our roots burrow into the dark moist soil of our irrational animal tissue. Wisdom is the balance between our light and our darkness.
MAKE LIFE YOUR TEACHER – Learn from everyone, but follow no one. Learning from your own mistakes is a better foundation for growth than surrendering responsibility to untestable authority figures. No one can be wise for another. If there are beings more evolved than we, their advice might be as useless as the tips you or I would give to a spider monkey. If you want to awaken, make life itself your teacher.
EMBRACE THE AMBIGUITY OF LIFE – Choose the tortuous ambiguity of real life over the comfortable clarity of religious certainty. All our answers are temporary resting places. As soon as we discover new information we must redraw our maps. Answers come and go, it is the great questions of life that accompany and guide us all through life’s twists and turns.
TAKE OFF YOUR MASKS – What you are truly thinking and feeling right now is your only true starting place for growing into wisdom. What you SHOULD think or feel is not a firm foundation for true spiritual growth. Polishing your image so that you appear brave and kind will only give you the mask of wisdom. Masks are very small prisons because we must hide behind them to keep up appearances. Even if someone falls in love with your mask you will still be utterly alone. Do not be ashamed of your own true heart.
SEE THROUGH YOUR OWN EYES – Avoid teachers who constantly appeal to absent authority figures. A seeker would not really know if their teacher was “enlightened” unless they were “enlightened” as well. And if a teacher is “enlightened” they would not need the crutch of authority to make their case. They illumine our lives with insights. Find teachers who speak from their own hearts and humorously use their own imperfections as teaching stories. There is nothing less enlightened than parroting the enlightened. We cannot feel through another’s skin nor see through borrowed eyes. Sleeping in the tent of a wise person is not wisdom. Wisdom is the truth that sets us free.
DO NOT GRASP AT THE WHOLE – Do not attempt to grasp the one. Instead dissolve into it. The “one” is no one’s property. It is the common life of which each of us is a minuscule part. No one grasps the whole but we each move closer toward it when we love any other piece of life’s mosaic.
“No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.” -Herman Melville
Have you ever had the strange experience of feeling misunderstood by everyone you knew, and then had a dog jump on your lap to give you the love you were seeking? Human intelligence is a double edged sword. Reason can sometimes pierce the mysteries of nature, but it can also leave us so lost in abstractions that we are uprooted from our own biological truth. I have always found it wondrous that dogs seem to understand when we are sad even when our friends do not. Unlike us, dogs do not seem to get lost in their plans or regrets. They are four-legged Buddhas mostly living in the here and now. They recognize the pain of a kindred mammal through their own animal tissue. The answer to many of our world problems lies sleeping in our benumbed human tissue. Empathy is a powerful litmus test to tell if our own hearts have fallen into numbness. Almost by definition, we cannot feel it when our own hearts go numb. Dog-like empathy toward ourselves and others is a way of making sure that intellectual abstractions have not eclipsed our own very tender mammalian hearts.
Is it possible that Einstein’s revelation E=MC2 and Moses’ revelation about a divine name burning in a bush were the scientific and poetic versions of the same deep insight? Could one revelation be thinking about our foundation and the other feeling it?Could the believer’s submission to God and the Atheist’s submission to fact be the heart’s and head’s witness to the same reverence? Is it possible that every sincere religion, and every sincere rejection of religion, springs from an even deeper fountainhead which is capable of embracing them both? Could saying “God is one” mean the myriad conflicting world views are all differing tongues of one flame, instead of the doubtful claim that only one vantage point is correct? Perhaps our primary mistake lies in thinking any one approach can capture the one sacred flame burning within and beyond us all, or that any person or group can serve as its only custodian.
Think about it- if Christian nationalism is correct and religion is about being patriotic, armed, anti-abortion and heterosexual then why didn’t Jesus teach any of that? If Christian Nationalism is correct then Jesus would have to be the worst teacher of all time.The answer many Christian Nationalists give to the question “why didn’t Jesus teach against abortion and homosexuality is that Jesus didn’t talk about a lot of important things but that doesn’t make them right. That answer is technically true, but it also completely dodges the question. Christian Nationalists need to explain how they can claim to be following Jesus when the movement is based almost entirely on things Jesus didn’t say. How did Christians Nationalism degenerate from “turn the other cheek” to “stand your ground’? How did Jesus’ call to share the world get replaced by a heartless commitment to free markets? How did Jesus’ call to care for our one human family get replaced with calls to turn the needy sojourner away from our borders?Christian Nationalists need to realize that Jesus never saw the finished Christian scripture. Jesus never approved a hierarchy of clergy. Jesus never said that in order to be married you need to get a wedding license from the state. Jesus never signed off on any of the creeds that would be developed centuries later. If anything, Jesus rejected the religion of dogma and hierarchy in favor of a life of simplicity, humility, forgiveness and sharing. When a rich young ruler asked Jesus what he could do to inherit eternal life Jesus didn’t mention baptism, confession of sins, or any of the atonement theories of Paul. He told the young man to share his possessions with the poor. Think about that for a moment.Jesus answered another person asking about eternal life with a story of nonsectarian compassion. The parable of the good Samaritan is a teaching story of religious people getting it wrong and a merciful outsider getting it right. Jesus then told his followers to “go and do likewise.” Doesn’t the story of the good Samaritan imply one doesn’t need to be a sectarian Christian to live the kind of life Jesus described? If we look at the teachings of Jesus it seems that a loving Atheist is actually much closer to the life Jesus described than a perfectly orthodox believer who is indifferent to the world’s suffering. The question is whether some Christians will give Jesus a say in the matter of what it means to be Christian. If Christian Nationalism is correct and the essence of Christianity consists in things Jesus never mentioned then Jesus would have to be the worst teacher of all time. If we assume that Jesus wasn’t a bad teacher, then we must also assume he did not come to teach people to be American nationalists OR sectarian Christians but to be kind and universal human beings. Maybe Christian Nationalists should “go and do likewise.”
When we take the poetry of scripture and read it like it were a logical treatise by Aristotle, we cannot help but miss the point.The symbol “God” is not meant to be understood logically but to be felt viscerally. The word is a poetic attempt to speak of that which is deeper and larger than we can possibly grasp intellectually. The symbol “God” is a poetic attempt to share in the mystery undergirding us.The symbol “God” is an attempt to share those moments when we are struck by an awe we cannot describe. The symbol can refer to a sense of being at home in the cosmos, and even of a visceral feeling of being addressed by the universe. But such symbols are the poetry of subjective feelings not literal dogma about objective facts. An Atheist who refuses to use the symbol “God” may actually understand the nature of the symbol better than someone who loses its sense of poetic mystery by using the word in the same concrete sense as a stone. We “take the name in vain” when we try to argue logically about what “God” thinks or wants. Preachers blaspheme when they assume to speak for “God.” There is more piety in not saying the word “God” at all than in using it as some kind of metaphysical furniture.To say “God is love” means we cannot capture the mystery of being philosophically; but, when we love each other, we can sometimes feel a profound sense of a deeper tie binding us to each other, to the web of life, and to the stars.
Last night a cricket got into my apartment and gave an uninvited concert intermittently through the night. I had lived the day in my clock and calendar, and so the intrusion of nature reminded me of my deeper home in the cosmos. For a moment, I laid aside my problems and projects and just listened.Some say that being religious means believing in an invisible being who made everything. To me, religion has always been about a sense of over powering reverence before the interconnectedness of life. John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” To me, religion is remembering I am an expression of something deeper and bigger that is more my home than anything that happens to me biographically. When a cricket chirps, it is singing to other crickets but, according to the Farmer’s Almanac, you can count the number of cricket chirps you hear in 14 seconds, add the number 40 and you’ll have the temperature. I doubt the cricket is aware of the meteorological aspects of its song, but its chirping reminds me that I, too, am a thread in an ecological garment. It isn’t true that a cricket plays its leg like a violin, but it does make music with its wing. I have always been struck by the fact that Einstein sometimes played a violin to break up his mathematical work. I suspect he sometimes used the violin to animate the intuitive side of his brain so that his intuition and reason might play together as he explored new possibilities. For me, religion has never been about dogma or magical rituals but a kind of playful exploration of the cosmos. Religion has always been about those moments I “dissolve” into a deeper sense of life than my own little story. I believe it is a mistake to think we have to choose between being good scientists and the singing cosmic song. Science tells us where to place the notes on the sheet music. It is what happens between the notes that we hear as music. I went to sleep last night lost in my clock and calendar. It took the unwanted hymn of a cricket to remind me to listen for a deeper and larger song, to tune my heart to that music, and then to play my own life like an instrument so others might hear my little fiddle and remember their part in the cosmic symphony.
Few biblical texts have been misused as maliciously, and as dishonestly, as has the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hebrew prophets talked about the “sin” of Sodom, but none of them mentioned homosexuality. The prophet Ezekiel spoke clearly on the matter:”“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”So what is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah about? Just like Jesus, the ancient rabbis often taught in parables. To take a parable literally usually means to miss the point entirely. The “sin” in the story of Sodom referred to a culture of domination and abuse toward of those outside one’s own culture. Sojourners were incredibly vulnerable in the ancient world. To not offer them hospitality could mean their death. To shoehorn the modern concept of homosexuality into the story of Sodom and Gomorrah says more about the sexual obsessions of the translators than anything that is in the actual text. Neither biblical Greek nor Hebrew had an equivalent term for the modern word “homosexuality.” In fact, the words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” were both coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1868. It is dishonest to pretend the ancient prophets were hating on the same people as the Christian Nationalists of today. We who live in the age of MAGA can learn a few things from this teaching story. As the demographics of our nation change and white Christian men are no longer the central stars of our nation’s narrative, many who benefit from white Christian male heterosexual privilege are tempted to mistreat those of the new demographic- as if their very presence were an assault on the the moral fiber of our nation.Forming lynch mobs to protect the old ways from newcomers is exactly what the bullies of Sodom were doing. Such mindless allegiance to the ways of yesteryear may feel strong at first but it actually binds us to an old world that is dying. The metaphor of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back is a warning about being unwilling to let go of our former glories and enter a new world being born. We cannot make America great by bullying those who do not fit our stereotypes about who is and isn’t a real American. The DEI movement (inclusivity equity and inclusion) so dreaded by Christian Nationalists is just another version of the ethical sinew of this nation “E Pluribus Unum.” If we do not develop a culture that affirms the dignity and human rights of us all, our wealth and military might will not make America great again. Without diversity, equity and inclusion this nation will unravel for lack of a unifying ethical principle. Ironically, blaming our problems on vulnerable populations like the LGBTQ community or undocumented immigrants makes us the very “Sodomites” the story warns about.