Category Archives: A Jesus kind of Love. The Sacred Laughter of the Sufis. The Spiritual Journey rather than a Religious Country Club. the Called, not the Chosen.
Overcoming an Exclusionary Faith
Sikh activist and author Valarie Kaur recalls an experience of a childhood friendship ending because of a difference in faith:
I was in eighth grade, sitting in the library with my very best friend in the whole world. Her name was Lisa. We were working …, but we were really giggling and passing notes to each other and messing around, when Lisa gets really quiet for a moment. She has this far-away look in her eyes and she says, “Valarie, I just can’t wait until judgment day.”…
I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Well, then it’ll just be us. It’ll just be us. I can’t wait until it’s just us who are left.” I said, “Well, where will everyone else go?” Then she looked at me, very uncomfortable. She said, “Well, you know, down there.” It was that moment that I had to break to my very best friend the fact that I was not Christian…. I could see the blood drain from her face…. How could her very best friend not be saved? Not be good? Not be Christian?…
She had inherited a theology that divided the world into good and bad, right and wrong, saved and unsaved. Her theology severed her from her own deep knowing that her best friend was good and beloved. It’s like her theology stole me from home. She was trying to make it all make sense, try to hold both, but she couldn’t hold both. She had to let me go. [1]
In the wake of that loss, Kaur visits a church where she can confront a Christian about the belief in a God who discriminates against people of other faiths. There, she meets a church organist and recalls saying,
“I just can’t believe that there could be a God who would send me to hell,” I said. There was a pause as she looked at me. I was ready to fight.
“I can’t either,” she said. She saw my shock and explained. “I think that there are many paths. It just doesn’t make sense otherwise….” Her name was Faye and she was the first Christian I had ever met who did not believe I was going to hell. I would go on to meet many more people like her and learn that there are many ways to be Christian, just as there are many ways to be Sikh. Our traditions are like treasure chests filled with scriptures, songs, and stories—some empower us to cast judgment and others shimmer with the call to love above all….
Fifteen years after I thought our friendship was over, Lisa would reach out with an apology. She would still be Christian and I would still be Sikh, but she would have long abandoned the particular theology that had tried to sever us from one another. She had gone on her own journey … and had eventually come back to our friendship. In the end, we learned that love was the way, the truth, and the life. [2]
The “Guts” of my Faith
Trying to kind of sum up my faith and understanding of the spiritual in life.
Is there something/someone worth calling God? Yes! Why do I believe this? Because I’ve experienced unexplainable timing miracles over and over in my life and because when I separated Jesus from any religion, it became clear that Jesus fleshed out these things: 1. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE; 2. that we ALL are loved: and we are ALL created and called to love one another(even our enemy) just as WE are loved. 3. God’s essence (Spirit) is in everything and everyone if we are open to it. We are an essential part of the whole, but we individually are not equal to the whole. 4. Life, both as individuals and as humanity, is a school for the spiritual journey of evolution in loving, and we are learning to love still on the day we die. 5. We are not all dealt the same hand, so it is impossible to judge how well anyone is playing their hand. Only God knows that. 6. No person or group has all the truth and nothing but the truth. 7. We are part of God and God is part of us, but we are not the whole. 8.The Scriptures are letters from God written by people in earlier and more primitive cultures, but we hear God through the Scriptures with the understanding of the culture we are living in. with its differences AND its limits. 9.Truth and fact are not the same. Some Scriptures teach truth through metaphorical stories. The details are not facts, but the truth they are illustrating is real. 10. Jesus FLESHED out not only the Love of God for all humanity, but also the stages of growing into Loving as God Loves. His WAY is our WAY. He is the witness that we unfinished human beings can grow from the selfishness of an infant’s needs to the freedom to Love others more than ourselves, even those who seem to be our enemies, but who play a crucial part in our growing free to Love. 11. We not only can love our enemy, but choose to trust God when we feel abandoned just as Jesus ultimately did on his cross. 12.This life is not all there is. 13. Jesus as a person in History is not the only way to learning to love as God loves. But Jesus has definitely been my personal way, so I that is what I have to share.
At 87 I am still on my personal journey so may understand more tomorrow, but will not know it all in this life, just my God given personal potential through the grace of being loved. I pray for people, even those connected to cars broken down on the highway this way: “God, be with that person and their loved ones. Give them the grace they need physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to become the person you created them to be. I ask this in Jesus’ name, who fleshed our Your love for us. Amen.”
The Dance of Gender Differences
Christianity was created by men, the bible was written by men, religion has been controlled completely until very recently by men. Women and men most often are born with different traits (not always.) God created us different so we would bond across those differences, which working together could make each other and the world a better place. The Working Together in a dance is the goal…..different strengths are needed for different challenges and times. To have balance there needs to be freedom to take turns leading in the dance. The spiritual journey changes us throughout our life. At 87 I’ve recognized how I have changed my view of everything, including God and Jesus and other religions, over my journey. Jesus fleshes out the spiritual journey in a way I personally can learn from, so he’s my “go to” guy. But I figure I will probably still be seeing new aspects of our life journeys on my death bed! No person or religion has all the truth, nothing but the truth, even with the help of God (which would make us equal to God!) Once we recognize that we are all one and that God is Love by any name, we can trust the spirit within. Then we can roll with the changes in this life. It is a school for learning to Love…our own unfinished, so flawed , selves and thus even the enemy who is unfinished like us but in different aspects. We actually NEED each other to help us become whole.
Justice Means Fairness to All, not Payback for Sin
As parents we get frustrated when our young children do irritating or harmful things. We don’t punish them because we are angry even if we are. We punish them so they will learn not to do that. And we get scared when they do something dangerous. So, we try to come up with a punishment to keep them from harm. Punishment is not about payback. It’s about teaching and learning. Unfortunately, many times it takes consequences to teach us enough to change our pattern of behavior. As we age, if we have learned enough times from consequences, then it may just take a verbal warning.
A lot of us, perhaps even most of us, must learn some things through consequences.
When we talk about hell as consequences for sin, sometimes that experience of hell happens in this life until we get the message.
The point is the word justice is about fairness. It’s not payback. As an imperfect human being in the heat of hurt or anger, I may want payback. I don’t think God needs justice in the sense of payback or evening up a score. Humanity projects our own human anger and desire for payback onto God.
If you believe in evolution and God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit you see humanity as unfinished and ourself as unfinished. We are in a personal spiritual journey of evolving that falls way short of perfect, but hopefully inches us forward enough to be at least perceptible to God and doesn’t set humanity back.
I recognize that some people can see the light, but most of us need to feel the heat. So, the idea of a Hell may have a use, since many, if not most people, experience a taste of it here. But the idea of a vindictive God wanting the satisfaction of seeing us getting a payback of suffering doesn’t mesh with a Jesus who fleshed out the Love of God and died forgiving not only his own people who got him tortured and killed, but even forgiving God for letting him feel abandoned on the cross.
A Seriously Dysfunctional Family Are We!
Did you ever cringe over the scripture where Mary and the family of Jesus are outside where he is and worried about him and when people tell Jesus that his family wants to see him, his response is that his family were all those that ‘”get” him enough to follow him. As a mom that bothered me. But today I “get” it. Family is the basic unit of humanity. Now, as is obvious in the Scriptures, being human they often do not get along well. But the ideal of family remains. And Jesus says that those that “get” what he is saying enough to actually follow in his footsteps are his family. But there are many who have come to know and live what Jesus taught without knowing Jesus, but by hearing the Spirit of God within. And many who technically follow Jesus, but do not follow the Spirit within. “You will know them by their Love.” And that’s a love like Jesus loved when he died on the cross.
What does it mean to follow Jesus? To be a disciple? What did Jesus mean when he said that He is the WAY. Does it mean a momentary commitment asking Him to be not only our Savior, but our Lord? Is that like a magic incantation? Or is it just the beginning of our journey like it was to those confused disciples who thought it meant freedom from the hostile rule of Rome, freedom from suffering, freedom to be special and important, to be empowered and protected, and having the keys to the kingdom of God (or at least to the Sky room at the airport!).
What does it mean to pick up our cross to follow him?
Not ANY of the above.
What does the cross symbolize? Dying to self. It’s that simple and that scary and that inescapable.
Does being the family of Jesus mean we immediately have the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth? NO!
Peter who was the closest friend of Jesus argued with Paul about circumcision and Jewish rules. God had to intervene and show Peter both in a dream and by sending him to witness Cornelius and all his Gentile family experiencing all the gifts of the Spirit not only without being circumcised, but without being baptized! If that doesn’t make you question a couple of thousand years of theologians’ rules, you are clinging like the “good” Jews to thinking we can limit/control God and coast if we just play the game by the rules.
A relationship with God starts within. The Spirit of God is within us if we open to it whether we have met the technical game rules or not. It’s a relationship between the kind of human that we see in Jesus and the God that created everything and is still creating disciples like Jesus even through other teachers. Jesus is the Son of God. That’s a relationship. Jesus is our brother. That’s a relationship. The same Spirit of God within Jesus also connects us all as brothers and sisters. We ARE family. Like it or not! And the WAY of Jesus is the Spiritual Journey that he took where he started out thinking he was sent for his religious family, the Jews. And step by step the Spirit freed him from limiting the Spirit to just men, just the clean, just the righteous, just the Jews, just the conquered, just those that did NOT torture and crucify him. “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”
Watch whom he heals and recognize how each step of the way he broadened his understanding of the “People of God.” And look around you and see whom you consider your enemy and be afraid, very afraid, that you are missing the point.
SPIRITUALITY OR RELIGION? A JOURNEY OR LAWS? THE CALLED OR THE CHOSEN?
Spirituality grows out of personal experience, not someone else’s theological interpretation. It’s a lifelong journey. Being Called is not the same as being the only Chosen. Spirituality is not a Religious Country Club or a Get Out Hell Free Card. No person or group has all the truth and nothing but the truth. We are imperfect and unfinished and we need each other, particularly those different from ourselves. We are all pieces of the puzzle we call God.
Okay. Here’s where I probably alienate some or most of my few readers. I listened to a “chat” with Jamal Rahman on a site called Charter of Compassion.org. He wrote a book called Sacred Laughter of the Sufis. And to be honest, it described my spiritual journey and what is real for me in many ways. My journey started, continues, and will end with Jesus Christ as the Love of God fleshed out for all of us. But I figured out quite a long time ago that God is not limited by any group or to any person. We humans have done the limiting, not God or Jesus. And each branch of Christianity or any other religion goes from the Love of God that the original person tried to share through their experience to a religious country club with people interpreting someone else’s experience of God and turning it into theology and laws because we want so very much to control God and life and death. The journey begins with a person who tries to share their experience. But almost immediately the next generation tries to lock everything into law and theology and set it in stone, literally. The reason I’m sharing this “chat” is that it describes Grace and a spirituality of Love that isn’t limited to any person or group or nationality or ethnicity or religion. Please think about how many billions of people have lived on this planet that God created…both the planet and all the people. Would only a relative handful be chosen to survive it? What kind of love is that? It’s a human kind of love that wants to feel good about itself by feeling better than others, to be the “Chosen.” That ain’t it, guys. Would you do that with your children? Life is mostly mystery and we do not understand it enough to think we have a monopoly or control of it or God. HUBRIS! By listening to others we sometimes get a glimpse of the truth that is the essence of all our different attempts to make sense of life and to become more loving. This doesn’t threaten belief in God or his expressions of his Love like Jesus. Just don’t make a God of anybody’s Scriptures or any group’s limited understanding. The Christian Scriptures have come alive for me and when faced with either decisions or suffering or challenges they help me. But, listening to God includes listening to everything around us with a heightened awareness and then looking for confirmation, because we are really good at hearing only what we want! Cheer up if this is scary. You are surrounded by the love of God. God is FOR you. God wants you to know inside out that you are loved, so you can feel safe enough to grow free to love even your enemies. To realize they aren’t playing with a full deck either and they are doing the best they can with the hand they were dealt, but they need your compassion to open their hearts to trusting what you know from the hand you were dealt. They need the gifts they have to be valued and used in balance with the gifts you have when and where EACH is needed. Unless we feel valued/loved for who we are, we cannot value those who are not only different, particularly if they think they are better than us. I so hope this make sense. Praying it will do no harm, but will open all our eyes to God’s love for his whole motley crew. We need each other because our own gifts are good, but limited.
Since Julian died, I have been beating myself up in retrospect for how hard my particular personality was for someone like my husband to love those sixty years. As he used to say in our talks on Marriage Preparation Weekends, “I don’t understand her. Haven’t got a clue! But I accept her as she is.” Sadly, I wanted to be valued for the things about me that I valued. I realize now that he allowed me to change some basic prejudices he had from his acceptance of how things were in the world in his growing up. But, in the hindsight of old age, I cringe over how he had to live with so many everyday things that had to be totally irritating to him. His trouble expressing verbal appreciation for me was hard on me, but the many normal things as a wife and mother that I didn’t give a shit about had to drive him crazy! I did realize today in listening to this blog post chat, that God actually used all our differences for Grace. Often Grace for the change needed for the journey comes in the hard stuff. Watch for it! Remember the beautiful Monarch butterflies I saw on the ripe pile of cow dung getting what they needed to grow. I sometimes have shared another experience where God physically showed me that Jesus was with me sharing my moment of feeling crippled, abandoned, and rejected. He has been there, done that, and has the scars to prove it, so we can know we are not alone in those awful moments. Love you guys. Sorry for my limits in sharing the beauty, tenderness, and presence of God even in life’s manure!
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 