AslansTraveller

Sorry I've come to this discussion so late, but the line that hits home for me is: "Scripture is narrative that moves (hopefully) one to a relationship with the Divine;" That's the key. Our spiritual life is a pilgrimage, a story, a journey. The Scriptures is the telling of the story of a particular people to whom Christians belong by their choice. The Bible is not a book of propositions and rules (I've always thought the development of numbering the lines of the Bible was unfortunate. What other type of book has such numbering? Law Books.) It is not just rational mind, but heart and feeling and will and body and companionship and all aspects of our humanity. God speaks to us through all these aspects. All is grist for the mill. In His love, He works hard to reach us no matter where we are. He works to find a way to us and that way may be different for each of us as we are all different people.

Excellent! And for me that is a key point. It isn't just referring to Jesus for a set of proposed ethics to which to give intellectual assent, but to be involved, related and relating to a living Person, Someone who guides, loves and comforts here and now. Turning to Jesus just for a set of suggestions about how to behave is, in my experience, pointless. The world is full of great ethics, great and wise sages and their ideas and guidance. Big deal. But as a Christian, I believe that Christ will work with us, directly and lovingly through the Holy Spirit to give us what we need to follow Him. It isn't just a matter of "being a nice guy". There of plenty of nice guys, Christian and not Christian. Christ offers a reality and relationship which is far more than that.

Prayer is an excellent subject, all too often neglected or oversimplified ("Prayer is where I give God his marching orders, isn't it?"). A couple of very good resources I've found: 1) Prayer by Richard Foster. Excellent overview of the many types and purposes of prayer. Written by a man who knows his stuff. 2) Prayer of the Heart by George Maloney. Personally, I've found great peace and blessings with the basic "Jesus Prayer" as used by the Eastern Christians and a bunch of other folks for about 1500 years. Lord Jesus Christ (on the inhale) Son of God (on the exhale) Have mercy on me (on the inhale) A sinner (on the exhale). The real value isn' t just what's being said, but when used as a meditative prayer (simply keep repeating it, anywhere at any time). It sort of "clears a spot" in the mind so that you can quiet some of the ever present mental noise and quite possibly hear God when S/He's talking to you with that "still small voice"

I can understand and sympathize with this idea, but I wonder about four things: 1) How does this fit in with the idea of being "yeast"? Would we want a denomination where all the progressives gather, emptying their influence from the other denominations? Isn't better that we be scattered about, keeping other denominations from being dominated with theocrats to whom we've given a clear field? 2) One of the problems with some denominations (UU and UCC come to mind) is that their voices can all too easily be dismissed "oh, yeah, those liberal nut cases!". 3) A "progressive denomination" could all too easily fall into it's own symbols, language and jargon and become 'seperate' from other Christians and thus unable to influence them. This is already a problem in the type of jargon used by many progressives, and an unwillingness to use 'traditional' Christian language, thus alienating non-progressives. We want non-progressives to hear us and get our message, don't we? If we become to seperate, we wind up only preaching to the choir and what's the point in that? 4) If this should be done, how about gathering in one alredy established denomination? The UCC or MCC or UU? Why go to all the work to build a structure, administration, etc. when such structures already exist?

Very well put. I especially like the phrase you use "transformation centered Christianity". That is what real Christianity is about: NOT having a set of intellectual propositions to which you give intellectual assent, but a relationship of trust (another word for 'faith') and loyalty which moves you to a life of change and development. This is, fortunately, being reborn with works like Dallas Willard, Richard Foster and the reborn interest in the disciplines of the Christian life, the work of the Desert Fathers, the Orthodox monastics, even more esoteric folks like Gurdjieff, Mouravieff, Ourspensky, the Sufis and the like. It's the idea that being a Christian involves being changed. Not just in some hard-to-detect metaphysical way (being "born again") but in the day-to-day operations of life and heart and mind. It's a change of consciousness. This, of course, wouldn't be popular with more conservative folks, since the key to this sort of thing is "no more business as usual". What comes under examination is not just surface or exoteric matters (abortion, sexual morality, etc.) but the deepest assumptions of how we live (the profit motive, the place of political power, the place of ego, etc.). This is where St. Paul's phrase "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" is made real: not just saying the sinners' prayer and going back to business as usual, but the hard work of cooperating with God in the reshaping of who we are at the deepest level. When you're doing that sort of work everything is up for grabs. Very hard, very dangerous, very challenging, but very worthwhile.

I've stumbled across Mr. Cutsinger in several books of Schuon's he's edited and an excellent book Paths of the Heart based on a conference between Eastern Christians and Sufi's (with a strong Traditionalist element) which took place not long after 9/11. I've found his work very readable and clear. I find the work of men such as Cutsinger and Smith especially good because they give an approach to religious pluralism/tolerance which doesn't involve any sort of "tossing the baby out with the bathwater" i.e. sacrificing elements that are valuable in any religion for the sake of some sort of ecumenical goal.

I have come to the conclusion that I will never find a single church which will meet all my needs. Maybe that's unreasonable. Every denomination has something I don't like and every one has things I do like. So I think it's going to become a case of going where I need to go based on what I need at the time while maintaining my own personal spiritual practice on my own. In other words, I have to hunt for and gather what I need and not expect anyone to "give" it to me.

"imperfect words"? No, I think you are speaking great wisdom. I have kept after this question"are all religions true?" and found much wisdom I hadn't realized before. What you have to say speaks volumes. In a way it was a conflict of head vs. heart. In my heart I couldn't really believe that others were all heading down the wrong road. Especially since I have found great wisom in other religions (the Sufi's especially). Meanwhile, my head (or actually, a fairly rigid and literal intepretation of the Bible) was saying "There is only one Truth! How can conflicting ideas all be true?" I did some diggiing and came across the work of Huston Smith and Frithjof Schuon, both of which have an approach I can handle: all religions are right in claiming exclusive truth (on the exoteric level, the worldly level of form) and all religions are united as expressions of the Absolute (on the esoteric, mystical, metaphysical level). Now this sounded contradictory at first: all are true, yet all can claim that only they are true. But in studying, it made sense. I was especially comfortable with it because it wasn't the sort of "ecumenism" I've run into before (often in the liberal context) which buys peace at the price of denigrating other religions (i.e. all religions are equally true because they're all wrong. or "I can believe in the truth of other religions by assuming mine is mistaken") In other words, my problem wasn't with the idea of all religions being true, but with the simplistic and shallow explanations of that idea. Thank you for your ideas. They are keepers.

Or we could just call it, "Great minds think alike"

YES!! That's exactly where I was. I had wonderfully consistent, logical and well defined categories and ideas that I treated as God, but had lost contact with the living God. You know what helped put me back in perspective? The movies of Kevin Smith Yep, the guy who made Dogma, Clerks and the like. I was reading a review of his new movie "Clerks II" and the reviewer had a line, something like: "The characters spend their time discussing sex and life in such obscene tems both as a way to fight boredom and to deal with the messy and surprising reality of being human." "The messy reality of being human". That phrase hit me right between the eyes and I found my self faced with the contradiction of my life: what I believed and how I lived, the reality of the life around me and the life I was looking at through a filter. From there I began to examine and let go of a lot of my categories and certainties, urgent to push aside all the filters and come face-to-face with that living God, the one Jesus revealed (you remember Jesus, the guy hanging out with the hookers, drunks and criminals!). Smiths' movies keep speaking to me (whether he intended that or not) by celebrating life in all it's woundedness, fallenness and messiness. "Here's life" , they say. And I realize, this is the life, the people, the reality God loves and Jesus died for. Not the clean, well scrubbed (and all too fictional) life of so much conservative theology, but the real one that hits me in the face every day. As Andrew Greeley liked to say: "God writes straight with crooked lines."

Yep, Russ, I think we agree on what's really important. Good words.

Can it all be true? That's a question I'm wrestling with now, growing out of a fairly conservative Christian theology. Best people dealing with this question so far: Huston Smith and Frithjof Schuon. Interestingly they both base it on the exoteric/esoteric distinction. From the exoteric point of view it is right and proper for each religion to claim exclusive truth, because for it's followers, it is and any other mind set would undercut the power and benefit of the religious practice. From the esoteric point of view, all religions grow out of the one Absolute, thus all are true, in a sense. Strange: exclusivity and inclusivity at the same time. Something of a paradox, but it seems to make sense to me (to the extent I've been able to understand it so far) Which is why you can have a meeting of religions where the theologians and ministers are in the main room yelling at each other and the mystics are down at the local bar enjoying each others company.

Thank you Rivanna. I was tempted to continue arguing the point, but realized, it doesn't matter. I think Russ and I are on the same page where it's important: Jesus calling us to live out the Kingdom day-to-day. I don't want to turn into one of those people I dislike: the one's who lose sight of what's important simply to make some debating points (one of my biggest temptations, let me tell you.) How is it Churchill defined a fanatic: "Someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Whatever disagreements Russ and I would have, I think we'll be standing side-by-side when it comes to the question of "What do we do?" I especially like what you've said about the hope for a wide spectrum of beliefs in Progressive Christianity. I don't like conservative groups with a rigid and narrow definition of who's acceptable. I'd like a liberal group with a narrow definition even less!

Yep, a very messy and human process. God seems to like to work through these. (Of course, he's working with us, what choice does he have?). My only disagreement is the conclusion that when a decision was reached, it was a "winners" imposing their opinion on the "losers". You could make the same argument about scientific progress, as the creationists often do: the Darwinians are the "winners" who have imposed their ideology on teh "losers". I would maintain that what is today called "orthodoxy" triumphed because it solved the most problems and questions. The others didn't. Not all the ideas about Christ and God were equal. Just as not all ideas in science are equal. Some solve the problems, others don't. It was a messy process, but that doesn't make it's conclusions inherently false or illicit, any more than the fact that the scientific community accepts evolution as a whole make that conclusion false or illicit (which is a fallacy the creationists refuse to give up )

Got to disagree Russ. The divine status of Jesus was held and taught very early (check Paul's letters, the earliest of which was written within 20 years of the crucifixion then check the early Church Fathers). The same with the Trinity. They aren't human ideas, but human discoveries about God and Jesus that solved problems of understanding that the early church faced. The Councils you mention officially confirm what was already the shared belief of the Christian church community. The leadership wasn't imposing a theology on the people, but stating concisely the theology the people already held. It is often held that somehow the idea of Jesus' humanity/divinity gets in the way of people actually living out the Kingdom values that He taught. I just can't see that. I for one find it easier to follow the Kingdom ethic because it is being taught and represented by someone with divine authority. Otherwise what's left is an ethic which seems counter-intuitive, counter-commonsense and counter-survival. Taught by a guy whose teachings just got Him killed. Not much of a recommendation as far as I'm concerned. The teachings of Jesus have a certain "sentimental" attraction to our society, but aren't followed very closely, you are right about that. And I agree, the following of these teachings, the living of the Kingdom, not just nice words about Jesus and God, is what is paramount. What has allowed the church to make societal changes throughout history has been the fact that the rabbi we follow doesn't just speak with the words of a good and reasonable man, but with the authority of God. That means He isn't just another guy with an agenda, not different than you or me, but someone, Who when He says "love your neighbor", "pray for your enemies", "turn the other cheek", etc. has the authority to testify that these commands are the best way to live. But without the authority which the Man/God Jesus holds and the supernatural help offered by the Holy Spirit, following those teachings are not only difficult, but nonsensical. Without the Resurrection, you have a prophet Who taught very unusual stuff, got killed for it and Who (if He wasn't divine) was seriously misunderstood for the next 2000 years. I couldn't agree more. If I had to make a choice (although I don't think I do) I would prefer to see someone who doesn't believe in Jesus' divinity following the way of the Kingdom over someone who does believe and doesn't follow. But I don't think it has to be one or the other. And I will certainly be more willing to stand and work with the first person than the second.