BillM

Hi Jeanied. Welcome to the forum! My suggestion is going to be HIGHLY biased, so please keep that in mind. I've had four children, and if I had it to do over again, I would read to them the gospels in the Good News for Modern Man translation (which is currently called the Good News Bible). Why would I do this? Because I would want their oldest memories of the Bible to be about Jesus. what he did and what he taught. And there is plenty of material there for good conversations and object lessons. I would not start off their Bible education with cutesy stories of Noah and the flood (99.9% of the world is destroyed) or Joshua and Jericho (where Israel's enemies are killed) or the 10 Commandments (as we Gentiles were never under that covenant) or King David who had too much blood on his hands to build the Temple. See, I told you I was biased. I would want them grounded in who Jesus was and what he taught us. Reading the gospels in the Good News Bible is a good way to do this (about 5th or 6th grade reading level) or Christian moderates have recently publish the Common English Bible that is like an "English-as-a-second-language" version that makes the scriptures easier to understand for younger people. http://www.commonenglishbible.com/ You can, of course, find many "children's Bibles" in the NIV, etc. But if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't expose my kids to the more horrific stories in the Bible until they could handle them (and I still struggle with some of them at age 52). Again, welcome to the forum. If you get the opportunity, we'd love to hear more about you and your journey in the Personal Stories section. Regards, Bill

Letter from Jesus about Christmas -- It has come to my attention that many of you are upset that folks are taking my name out of the season. How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood by those of you who have been blessed with children of your own. I don't care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate my birth, just get along and love one another. Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree. My Father made all trees. So celebrate his good creation whenever you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine if you wish: I actually spoke of that one in a teaching, explaining who I am in relation to you and what each of our tasks were. If you have forgotten that one, look up John 15: 1 - 8. If you want to give me a present in remembrance of my birth, here is my wish list. Choose something from it: Instead of writing protest letters objecting to the way my birthday is being celebrated, write letters of love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell me all the time. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't have to know them personally. They just need to know that someone cares about them. Instead of writing the President complaining about the wording on the cards his staff sent out this year, why don't you write and tell him that you'll be praying for him and his family this year. Then do it. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you can't afford and they don't need, spend time with them. Tell them the story of my birth, and why I came to live with you down here. Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and forgive him or her. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt to take their own life this season because they feel so alone and hopeless? Since you don't know who that person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile; it could make the difference. Instead of nit-picking about what the retailer in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to wish you a "Merry Christmas" that doesn't keep you from wishing them one. Then stop shopping there on Sunday. If the store didn't make so much money on that day they'd close and let their employees spend the day at home with their families. There are individuals and whole families in your town who not only will have no "Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any presents to give or receive. If you don't know them, buy some food and a few gifts and give them to the Salvation Army or some other charity which believes in Me and they will make the delivery for you. Finally, if you want to make a statement about your belief in and loyalty to me, then let people know by your actions that you are one of mine. Don't forget: my Father and I can take care of ourselves. Just love me and do what I've asked you to do. I'll help you, but the ball is now in your court. And do have a most blessed Christmas with all those whom you love and remember. I love you, Jesus (Channeler unknown)

Hi Yvonne. Always nice to hear from you. I think you're assessment of that community culture is quite widespread worldwide. Perhaps it is no wonder that Jesus often described the kingdom as something hidden, something to be sought after, something small but growing, something few would find? It is odd, but perhaps prophetic, that we live in an age where more information is available to more people in more accessible ways at a more reasonable cost than ever before, but that information can never satisfy our innate need and desire for meaningful relationships. I get absolutely nothing out of church services where I am basically expected to say little more than "Good morning, how are you?" to people that I don't really know and listen to a man who claims to speak for God drone on for 30 minutes whom I don't really know and who doesn't know me. One of the meanings of Christmas to me, metaphorically, is that when God really wanted us to understand him and our relationship to him and to others, he didn't send a bulletin, or a financial report, or a list of doctrines and rules, or a ton of information. He sent a person. And he still does. In you. In me. In any who go beyond offering people information to what they really want -- relationship.

>>Thanks for the recap of the science fiction show. You’re welcome, Karen. >>Didn’t know that about Mary Shelley’s life—tragic. Yes, and she died from a brain tumor at the age of 53. But her work has served as a warning for 200 years now. >>Your quote reminds me of a line from “The Undiscovered Country” when the Federation president says at the Camp Khitomer conference, “Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that we must do that thing.” Ah, yes, that was a good one. The Federation was in a position to completely wipeout the Klingon empire…and they chose not to (at least most of them). >>A few associations that come to mind --Harry Mudd in TOS created hundreds of androids to serve him— a clear cut example of technology used for wrong purposes. Indeed. This also made me think of the Roger Corby/Andrea episode where androids essentially enable humans to have eternal life. The danger, of course, was that they were created by fallible human beings and, therefore, had human flaws programmed into them. >>In TNG “The Offspring,” Data creates an android daughter, Lal. The story ends sadly when she dies due to a malfunction. Sort of a mixed message there. Definitely. That episode brought tears to my eyes. I could cry for Data’s loss though he could not. It was so sad to see her shut down. What kind of scifi makes saps like me cry? >>A big part of what made TOS work so well was the trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, as you suggest, each portraying one aspect of the ideal human. I think so too. Next Gen had a different formula, but the theme was still the same in that we need each other and different viewpoints in order to grow and be all that we can be. While Roddenberry was alive and at the helm of Next Gen, he expressly forbade the writers to have conflicts between the bridge crew. His ideal was that we had truly embraced IDIC by the time of Next Gen. They could have minor misunderstandings that required clarification, but not even the sort of banter that McCoy and Spock had (“Listen, you green-blooded, pointy-eared walking computer…”). Not on Next Gen. The enemy on Next Gen was always “out there”, and, usually, to be understood. Still, the goal of Star Trek (or one of the goals) was to turn enemies into friends or allies. The TOS Klingons came to serve on the Next Gen bridge with Worf. The Borg came to serve on the Voyager bridge with Seven-of-Nine. Like what Jesus taught, enemies were to be understood and loved if possible, not utterly exterminated. I’m not sure about Q, though. BTW, the scuttlebutt on the next ST movie is that Khan will be back. Abrams is interviewing actors to reprise the role. Of course, since Abrams rebooted everything, the Botany Bay is still floating in space with Khan and crew in cryogenic stasis. We’ll see what happens. But I’m partial to Ricardo Montelban and don’t think anyone can pull off Khan like he did. Man, am I getting old.

Yvonne, I don't think you're weird at all! But, then, because I'm a Trekkie, I don't know how unbiased my scale of weirdness is. I like what Jung said about aliens. I've never read anything by him, but maybe I should. One of the things that I think scifi aliens do rather well is to allow us to "see ourselves" from the outside. Other than the ones who are out to destroy us or to eat us, they usually offer us questions and critique that cause us to reflect on who we really are and why we do what we do. Both Spock and Data where excellent at this. Spock was, of course, half-human, but buried his human half because he felt that rationality and logic was usually the best tool for making decisions of import. Data was, admittedly, superior to humans in many ways, but always had as his goal the desire to be more "human" and that required the frustrating process of trying to understand us. So both of these "alien" characters allowed us "windows into the soul" to understand ourselves better. I found it interesting that through ST original series, Spock never "grew" much. Of course, the premise of the TV show was that episodes had to stand alone and characters, therefore, couldn't be changed a whole lot. But when it came to the movies, Spock becomes "more human" in Star Trek: The Motion Picture" after his mind-meld with V'Ger. As he holds Kirk's hand, he says something to the effect of, "This, Jim, emotion, is beyond V'Gers comprehension. For all of V'Ger's knowledge, it is empty, without meaning or purpose." (My paraphrase from memory or lack thereof) And Spock smiles. He says that he has found what he was looking for, something that Kholinar could not give him. And he revels in his ability to be "human" until the end of STII, where he dies. It's my opinion that Roddenberry knew that Spock's character could not really function as Spock if he were allowed to be as human as anyone else. This is one of the things that I don't like about Abram's "Star Trek". A Spock that is just as subject to "flawed human emotions" as the rest of us is not, well, Spock. So Roddenberry kills off that "more human" Spock and when we meet "Spock" again at the end of STIII, he is the emotionless Spock that we have always known. Granted, Spock became more and more his "old self" through the rest of the movies, but he was drawn more and more to embrace and appreciate his Vulcan side, ultimately leaving Star Fleet in order to become a Vulcan Ambassador like his father. Spock, as we know him in the finals, is more like his father than he is the "hand-holding" Spock of STTMP. He functions better as a "window into the soul" that way, asking us why we do what we do and what we hope to accomplish. For what it's worth, I hope the "new" Spock of Abram's reboot gets his heart severely broken by Uhura and decides to embrace being Vulcan (especially given how many are left) in the reboot. I just can't see him jumping Uhura's bones in the turbolift ever time he gets a free moment away from his science station. That is not the Spock I know and love. And I don't think it is the Spock that Star Trek needs. Roddenberry had Spock right the first time, showing us the logical side of ourselves that needs to be balanced with our emotions (McCoy) and our will (Kirk) to make us the best humans we can be.

Karen, On Ridley Scott’s “Prophets of Science Fiction” series, I watched Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein last night. This was the most meaningful episode to me so far (I’ll talk about the others later if you’re interested). As you probably know, Mary wrote “Frankenstein” when she was only 18 (around 1816 or so) and is considered by many to be the first true “science fiction author”, quite an accomplishment considering her age and that fact that she was, in that time, “a woman.” She didn’t even sign her name to it at first because she didn’t think people would read such a book if they knew that a woman wrote it. But she incorporated the three guidelines of science fiction: 1) write a story that pertains to the use of cutting edge science of your time 2) address how that science might be used for the betterment of humanity and 3) also address how responsibility comes with the use of that science. Shelley’s novel was definitely classic in that sense. I assume you know the basic story, so I won’t go into all of the details. Frankenstein, using the cutting edge surgery and electrical knowledge of his time, creates a human being. He brings life out of lifelessness. From the science side, we already can somewhat do that with our paddle machines. We can, up to a point, bring the dead back to life. And from the genetic side, we can already determine what sex, hair, and eye color our babies should be. Scientist tells us that in the very near future, we will be able to predetermine our child’s height, weight, intelligence level, musical abilities, and physical abilities just by manipulating chromosomes. Awesome possibilities. But also awesome responsibilities. In Shelley’s novel, the monster is not the creature, but the creator. Frankenstein, for reasons of his own, rejects his creation. He was brilliant in creating the creature, but didn’t know what to do with it after he brought it to life. After he began to comprehend just what he had done, he became sanctimonious and didn’t want anything more to do with his creation. Frankenstein’s science was great, but his sense of responsibility and morality for the life he had given birth to was severely lacking. This, to me, is Shelley’s morality play. Just because we *can* do a thing, does that mean we *should* do a thing? But whether or not Shelley (or Scott) intended it this way, I can’t help but see religious issues in play here also. According to the Judeo-Christian religion, God created mankind. But the way the story is told today, our choice of sin resulted in our visage being marred and God is repelled by the “ugliness” of our sin. He cannot bear to look upon us and has rejected us. There is, supposedly, a great gulf that separates us from our creation and he no longer is responsible for his creation. He has abandoned us as worthless. The only remedy, according to the apostle Paul, was for God to make a “new creation”, a “new Adam” in Jesus and to associate us with him in order to accept us. Many Christians find comfort in this, there is no doubt. But I don’t, for it still says that God cannot accept us just as *we* are. I don’t want to be accepted “for Christ’s sake” or on the basis of someone else’s merits. If God cannot love me and accept me just as I am, then, like Shelley’s Frankenstein, it is our Creator that is the monster. Good fathers love and accept their children, warts and all. Shelley lost her mother in childbirth. She lost all five of her children to early death. Her husband died of drowning. Maybe she thought that these things were punishment from God, I don’t know. Maybe deep down she felt like God had rejected and abandoned her. Or maybe her story is simply one of science run amuck. Whatever the case, despite the fact that her book is 200 years old now, I still think it has a message appropriate to our time. Our science, technology, and sense of morality have real world consequences. If we dare to create, then we should be prepared to take responsibility for our creations. This doesn’t mean that we control our creations, but that we stay in relationship with them and guide them to be the best that they can be, something that Frankenstein utterly failed to do. What a monster.

...And another popular, interesting rendition of Handel...

Beatitudes for Our Time 1. Blessed are you who have nothing, but still help one another; for your bodies may be racked, but your humble spirits have already been healed. 2. Blessed are you who notice when one of your friends is weeping, and who sits with him; for comfort comes to those who do not pretend that life is a Happy Meal, a new set of wheels, or a winning lottery ticket. Pain is nobody’s friend, but it does cut through a lot of silliness. 3. Blessed are the simple, gentle people of the earth who live in the shadows of fame and fortune, but who are neither bitter, nor jealous. For the earth and all its abundance already belongs to them. 4. Blessed are those whose late-night cravings are for human connection, for peace of mind, for the cup of kindness, for another round of laughter. They will push away from the table of contentment, put their hands over their heart and say, “I’m stuffed!” 5. Blessed are those who look at the beggar on the street corner who, yes, may be a scammer, and remember that it’s not what someone does with the dollar that you give away that matters, it’s what you will do with the one you keep that doesn’t. 6. Blessed are those who part easily with what came easily to them. 7. Blessed are those whose heart is like a filter, purifying what the world serves up, tainted by selfishness and deception, and runs it through again and again and again until it comes out redeemed and luminous. 8. Blessed are those who put down their guns, who decide not to wear any uniform, who study peace instead of war, who pray for their enemies instead of killing them, and who may pay the price but who will not pay the piper. 9. Blessed are those who give peace a chance, for they shall be called naïve, but not by God. 10. Blessed are those who run into trouble by trying to get other people out of trouble, not because they enjoy the attention, but because they can’t sleep well when so much lying is causing so much misery and so little truth even bothers to show up. 11. Blessed are you when someone calls you a prophet and you have no idea what they are talking about, because all you did was tell people the secrets of their own heart, and that made them cranky. Your reward will not be in the number of friends you have on Facebook, but in the number of people who trust you to speak for those without a voice and to challenge those without a conscience. Lying is easy and often quite lucrative. Telling the truth, that is terrifying, and disorienting, and dangerous, and so it has always been. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. – Robin Meyers

Just got back to Texas from a trip to New York to see my parents. My father has bone cancer and is declining fast physically. I don't know whether I'll get to see him again before he departs this world or not. It was hard to tell him good-bye, knowing that it might have a double meaning. My mother probably has the first stages of Alzheimer's, so I have to be on eggshells around her, careful of what I say and do. I love them both and it hurts to see them suffer. I feel so helpless in that I can't fix things for either one of them. Sometimes saying "I love you" just doesn't sound like enough. But sometimes it's all we have. I'm grateful for my parents. Like me, they were far from perfect. But they loved me and did what they could. It's hard to see them slipping away, but I know to Whom they go and have to trust him. The older I get, the more I learn from both my parents and my children that life is about letting go.

Yvonne, Jenell, NORM, and Javelin, thanks for the nice comments. Jenell, you wrote: “Those of us that may even say, and truly feel, I ALWAYS knew Him, I ALWAYS loved him, it seems, even before I knew the Earthly details of who He was...That KNEW His voice the first time we heard it....and resisted all efforts to teach us a "different Jesus", one that was judgemental and demanding perfection and willing to send us to hell....this has made me feel so "different" at times in my life I've wondered if I really weren't born to my supposed parents at all, but found in a cabbage patch somewhere, where I'd been dropped by a passing alien space-craft!” I could really relate to that. It’s almost more like a “remembering” than a new knowledge, isn’t it? I love the story Marcus Borg tells of the couple who brought home their new baby boy, put him in the crib in the nursery, and introduced him to his older sister. The couple proceeded downstairs but listened closely to the nursery monitor for any signs that might be disconcerting. After a few minutes, they heard the little girl whisper to her new brother, “Please, tell me about God, I’ve almost forgotten.” There was, I believe, a timeless germ of truth planted in my heart at that young age that God does love the world and that Jesus came to help us remember what God is really like and what true love can and will do. But religion, because it is often based in the fear of God instead of in his love, made the truth so complicated and segregated that it left my head and heart spinning and often opposed. For me, Jesus is my brother who helps me remember.

I don't necessarily find this to be the case, NORM. I think there is a both/and approach to this. If the Bible were written in the last hundred years within Western culture, that I would agree that most of us could simply pick it up and "experience the book on its own" for the author(s) would share our culture and language. But the Bible is an ancient book written by numerous authors in three different languages with cultures that are very much different from our own. Languages are cultural manifestations and if we don't know something of that culture, we are liable to misunderstand what was original meant, sometimes with disastrous results. This is where, imo, good commentaries can be helpful in giving us insight into the original languages, cultures, customs, and idioms of the Bible, as near as we can get from 21st centruy reconstruction. At the same time, I do agree with you that the Bible (and other sacred scriptures) does seem to be transcendant in devotional use. We don't have to have Mdivs for our sacred text to speak to us. The words seem to come alive and grab us, not only pulling us in, but because part of us. We find ourselves becoming part of the story. So I think we need both approaches. I find it helpful to know what the scriptures probably meant to their original audiences. Commentaries can help us with that. But I don't deny the devotional use of the scriptures in asking God to speak to me now through these ancient writings.

No need to mince words, Jenell, tell us what you REALLY think! :lol:

Jenell, perhaps these at Yale? New Testament: http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/introduction-to-new-testament/content/downloads Old Testament: http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/introduction-to-the-old-testament-hebrew-bible/content/downloads I've enjoyed them both.

PS - If anyone here doesn't have the "Access Bible" NRSV, PM me and I will mail you for free (media rate) a hardback copy that I no longer use as I stumble across a genuine cow version. First come, first served.

Welcome, Mr! For a good "middle of the road" Bible, you might want to check out either the "Access Bible" or the "Discipleship Study Bible". The Access Bible's focus is on helping you understand the context of the scriptures in their time, place, and culture. The study notes are of a moderate bent. Good notes, but not much on overall focus (which can be beneficial). The Discipleship Study Bible's focus is on helping you understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus today. While it does have notes that illuminate the time, place, and culture of the scriptures (and they, too, are moderate), there is the thematic notion that the scriptures are to help us follow Jesus. I enjoy both of mine for their different aspects. One is more educational from a historical/critical viewpoint, while the other is more devotional or like a "Life Application" Bible for moderates. Welcome to the forum!

Like Yvonne, I'm just making an observation. The owner of the forum is a hyperdispensationalist who believes that nothing Jesus said applies to us today. Jesus, in her opinion, was only for the Jews. She follows the apostle Paul only. She recently told me how "unsaved" I am (ha ha!) and while I wanted to remind her that Jesus said not to judge, I then remembered that she doesn't listen to Jesus. Her "Christ" is not the Jesus of the gospels, but the ascended Lord who sits at God's right hand and who speaks only through the apostle Paul. Paul is the mediator between mankind and Christ. It is an interesting point-of-view. Being unsaved, I don't hold to it.

Part 3 - In 2004, I admitted that I had lost my faith in Christianity as an institutional religion. I felt that I could no longer live with the ugly side of Christianity - the empty promises of prayer, the judgmental attitudes, the constant guilt of sin, the desire to escape the world instead of trying to compassionately help it, the constant threats of hell, and the adherence to ancient superstitious worldviews as reality. All of this cognitive dissonance was too much for me to ignore. I found many things attributed to God in the Bible to be immoral or unethical. Things like God killing women and children in the flood. Things like God commanding the Israelites to kill their enemies, including women and children, and keeping virgins as war booty. Things like God testing people (remember Job and Jesus?) when he is supposedly omniscient. Things like God wanting his people to show their devotion to him by mutilating their sexual organs. Things like the notion that blood can somehow remove sin. Things like God sending evil spirits. Things like God hardening Pharaoh’s heart and then destroying him for having a hard heart. Things like God commanding genocide. Again, is this the God that created the world? I don’t think so. And reading the apostle Paul’s writings just made things worse. Paul wanted women to be quiet in church, to never have any authority over men, to never teach men anything. Paul supports slavery in his writings. He thinks that government officials rule by “divine right”. And Paul puts forth this offensive doctrine that everyone is born into this world as an evil human being, deserving, not God’s love, but God’s wrath and destruction in hell. According to Paul's understanding, even babies go to hell because they have not believed in Paul’s gospel. This is “good news” to the world? This is the plan of the God who so loves the world? Again, I don’t think so. Some might think that I had a crisis of faith because I didn’t know enough of or believe enough of the Bible. In reality, my crisis in faith didn’t come about because I wasn’t reading my Bible and praying, but because I was. The more I read my Bible, the more I saw how contradictory and nonsensical a lot of it was, not only about God and humanity, but about the nature of reality. To me, the Bible is a record of what ancient peoples thought about God, the world, and their place and purpose within it, not God’s revelation of what he thinks. The Bible is not God’s record of himself; it is a record of human accounts of their experiences and concepts of what they called God. They were doing the best they could with the light available to them, but we have so much more light today. I needed a faith that wasn’t so much calling me to the recapture the past, but inviting me to live today and to walk bravely into the future. The religion of my youth could no longer do that. I had to leave that kind of Christianity or no longer consider myself to be a Christian. Nevertheless, I think that traditional Christians are, for the most part, good, caring, and loving people, especially towards those in their own “flock.” Christians have helped me when I needed help, been there for me when my own family wasn’t and, in many ways, showed me a great deal about grace and forgiveness. It is the doctrines and control of Christianity as an institutional religion that I am against. IMO, many of these doctrines have no direct bearing upon how people act, upon forming good character; so I don’t find them to be very pragmatic. I am letting go of a lot of religion, but I don’t want to let go of the relationships. So where am I today? Well, I still believe in God, the Creator behind the universe, the One who was the first cause and whose laws continue to sustain things. And I’m still drawn to Jesus, my first love. I appreciate and try to live out the best of Jesus’ teachings because I think he was 100% right that we should love God and love each other. This, to me, is what my religion comes down to – living in right relationship with God and with others. My faith is not about perfection, but about finding meaning and experiencing life. Therefore, I can acknowledge that the Bible is not a perfect book, that it does not give us a perfect view of God, and that Jesus was not a perfect man. He was just as human as all the rest of us, a product of his time, his religion, and his worldview. Yet, I find that there is something in his life and teachings that is transcendent, that is still relevant to us today. It is still a good idea to care for the earth, to be compassionate toward others, to feed the hungry, heal the sick, shelter the homeless, care for the poor, even to forgive our enemies rather than destroying them. These things are still worth consideration and practice to me, especially when I have the freedom to reinterpret them or understand them from another point-of-view. I admit that I am no longer a traditional, orthodox Christian. I’m just trying to separate the chaff from the wheat in my life and my faith. Both my head and my heart are involved in this sifting, so it is not an easy undertaking and it takes time. This isn’t only about my beliefs, but about pragmatic changes in my life, hopefully for the better. With all of this being said, am I still a Christian? Probably only insofar as I try to follow the best teachings of Jesus. After all, he never talked about Christians or Christianity. He only spoke about following him or being a disciple, someone who is learning his “way” of living and loving. My kind of Christianity is more linked to what I do than to what I believe. I want to spend my remaining years enjoying the life that I know I now have, and trying to make life and our world better for my family and friends in whatever ways I can. To me, following Jesus is a wise and compassionate way to do that. He showed us that God is our source of life, love, and being. And he told us and lived out the truth that it is loving one another that really matters. That is the Way that I seek.

Part 2 - After that year of Bible college, I married a Christian girl I had met in high school. Though we both came from rocky home backgrounds, we felt like we could make it because we were, after all, Christians in love with each other with God on our side. In order to support my family, I decided to go in the Army to get electronics training. But our marriage proved to be a struggle. We both came from broken homes where problems had been dealt with, not by the hard work of communication and compromise, but with holding grudges and getting divorces. So neither of us was really equipped to work out our problems and all the going to church and praying we did just didn’t seem to help. After five years of marriage, things between us fell apart. Because we had no tools available to us to help us work anything out, we divorced. Due to the fact that I was still in the service, she got custody of our two children. I was decimated. In a short period of time, I had lost my wife and my children, or it felt that way. And I wondered: despite many things in my past and in my life that may have been stacked against me, didn’t God have “a wonderful plan” for me? Didn’t Jesus come to give me an abundant life? I was disillusioned – with myself, with my life, and with my religion. So I stopped going to church as I tried to recover from the shambles my life was in. The truth of the matter is that life is simply messy, Christian or not. We and our world are complicated and there are no magic bullets. Upon exiting from the service, I went to work for an electronics company. I was bitter about my divorce and some of the things I had gone through. I felt God was done with me. This is one of the things that can drive someone in Christianity nuts: though Christians say that God is in control, it is never really God’s fault if something goes wrong. If things go right, God is thanked and given full credit, but failure is always attributed to personal sin or to original sin or to the devil or to a sinful world. God always seems to be blameless where human suffering is concerned. Of course, I didn’t dare think this way back then; I just felt the failure was mainly on my part because I was, after all, a sinful human being. Church reinforced that notion to me every Sunday. An older technician at the company where I was working helped me readjust to civilian life. I soon found out he was a Christian and found I could talk to him about most anything. Eventually, we talked about my divorce and my felt estrangement from God. He assured me that God could and would forgive my sin and restore me if I sincerely repented. And that is what I did. In Christianity, this is the “formula” for staying in fellowship with God: almost constant confession and repentance of our sins. But I found some healing and restoration through my co-worker’s counseling. His belief in God’s ability to restore was tested when I began to show an interest in his daughter. I knew she was special from the moment I met her and she was very accepting of me and my two children. We began dating and married almost a year later. My wife and I became very involved in our local churches. We made quite a few friends there and felt loved. But I continued to grow agitated with the kind of Christianity that I was involved with. Maybe because of my past, coming from a poor, broken family, going through brokenness myself, I felt like Christians ought to be doing more to help the poor and broken instead of just sitting in pews singing, “I’ll Fly Away.” I began to wonder, “Why is Christianity so focused on leaving this world instead of on changing it for the better?” I wondered why Christians weren’t doing more to follow Jesus’ teachings about helping the poor, setting captives free, healing the sick and broken, and living out the Sermon on the Mount. After all, didn’t the Lord’s Prayer mention God’s will being done on earth? I found that most of the songs and sermons I heard were not about what God could do through us here for the sake of others, but only about what Jesus has done for us personally in order to take us to heaven later. I began to see that despite claims to the contrary, Christianity can be a very self-centered religion, all about what God or Jesus does for us with very little about what we could do for others. The “straw the broke the camel’s back” came for me one day during a church service. My wife and I were called out of the service to come tend our 4-year-old son who was in Children’s Church. When we got there, he was in the hall, crying hysterically. Between sobs, he repeated, “Daddy, why would Jesus burn me? Why?” I assured him Jesus loved him and would never burn him but he was simply too scared to really listen to what I was saying. My wife took him out to the car and I went into the Children’s Church room to see what had happened. The teacher had shown the kids an artist’s rendition of a man engulfed in flames, his arms raised to heaven, his face contorted with agony, crying out to heaven with a plea for mercy that would never be heard. She told the kids that this is what would happen to them if they did not accept Jesus as their personal savior. I reminded her that Jesus never once threatened children with hell, but she insisted that she did not want God holding the blood of these children on her hands. I was struggling myself at this time with the question of hell, but I knew for sure it was inappropriate to foist this doctrine upon young children. We left that church shortly after that. The Christianity of my young adult life was putting more pebbles in my shoe: 1. The ruse of the evangelical call that God will fix our lives for us if we just get saved. 2. The claim that God is in control but somehow unwilling or unable to do anything about suffering. 3. The notion that Christianity is not about making this world better, but about escapism - leaving it in order to go somewhere else. 4. The threat of hell used against almost everyone, supposedly coming from a God who is love. With all of these pebbles in my shoe, I was finding it impossible to walk.

This is my story - how I came to faith, the kind of faith I had as a young adult, why my faith changed, and where I am now. As my journey is a long one, I’ll post it in three parts. Part 1 - I fell in love with Jesus when I was 12 years old. On the back wall of the baptistery of the Chemung Baptist Church in upstate New York, there was a mural of a meadow stream flowing into the tank, the centerpiece of the mural being a life-size picture of Jesus as a shepherd. He had a crook in one hand, was cradling a soft, little lamb in the other, and around him were other sheep, grazing on the grass or drinking from the stream, safely guarded by the Great Shepherd. As I looked at the face of Jesus, I felt that his eyes were gazing right into my soul — kind eyes, eyes of love. Though I’m now in my fifties, I can recall that picture of Jesus like it was yesterday. When I turned 12, my father decided that I needed religion. Whether this was due to my behavior or just some rite of passage, I don’t know. But he said, “It’s time that you start going to church.” I suppose this was his way of providing for my religious training because, to be honest, my family never talked about religion much. So my sister and I were sent off to Vacation Bible School in the summer of ’72. I was enraptured by the story of how he came to earth as a baby born of a virgin, did miracles to prove he was God, died for my sins so I could be forgiven, and rose again to make a way so I could go to live with him in heaven forevermore. The VBS teacher said all I needed to do in order to go to heaven someday was to tell Jesus I was a sinner, was sorry for my sins, and ask him to come into my heart to live. Of course, being in a Baptist church I was also warned about the consequences if I refused to believe in Jesus, namely, going to hell. But it was the love of Jesus that drew me and I responded to that love by becoming a Christian. A few weeks later, I was baptized in that baptistery and began my life of faith. Things at home were rather rocky. As far back as I can remember, my parents were always fighting with one another over something, and I can remember thinking that they were the ones who really needed to go to church. They never did go with me that I can recall. Maybe they thought that religion was something for children, something that would keep them from messing up their lives later. Growing up in the farming countryside, I spent plenty of time exploring the woods and nature around me. I was fascinated by all the variety found in the great outdoors and felt close to God there. There were many occasions when I took my Bible with me up into my tree-house and just spent time reading, learning everything I could about God and Jesus and God’s plan for my life. As I read about God being a deliverer, a protector, a rock, and about Jesus being a savior, I prayed that God would heal my parent’s marriage and stop the abuse at home. But despite my prayers, things continued to get worse. In ’75, my parents divorced. About a year later, my Mom “found Jesus” and she and I started attending a Pentecostal church together. We were both “on fire” for Jesus. I took my Bible to school with me throughout my high school years and witnessed to anyone I felt God was leading me to. I hung out with a group of Christians at school, but noticed they tended to argue a lot with each other over doctrinal issues. Sometimes they even thought other members of our Christian group were either not really saved and were going to hell. This began to bother me because I felt deep down Christians should be known by their love for each other, not by their arguments over doctrinal differences. My last year of high school, I decided to go to Bible College as I felt God was calling me the ministry. The year in Bible College was both a joy and a trial for me. It was a joy because I felt really close to God there, like I was doing what he wanted me to do, and I found I had an aptitude for theology. I also really enjoyed going out with the ministry teams to different churches, trying to raise money for the Bible College. But two things happened during that year that made me realize, once again, Christianity was no Pollyanna world. The first thing was that even though I was a Pentecostal, I had never spoken in tongues and was therefore considered to be a second-class Christian. Therefore, the school decided to pull me off the ministry teams. They wanted representatives that were “Spirit-filled.” I thought this was judgmental and hypocritical because I knew a few kids on the ministry teams who, in spite of speaking in tongues, had wandering eyes and could tell the most offensive jokes. The second thing that happened was that a senior there whom I had a good friendship with, someone who had been a homosexual before getting saved, was denied a license to preach by the college because of his “past life.” I felt like if people were really considered to be “new creations in Christ” after becoming Christians, who should judge them according to the past? And with my inability to speak in tongues, the school dean asked me to consider whether that school was really the right one for me anyway. I became disenchanted with the Bible College and decided not to return. I again noted that people who claim to be Christians, who claim to follow Christ, can be very judgmental and exclusionary. Christianity, for me, was beginning to tarnish. I had responded to Christ’s love for me in my youth - perhaps a naive love, but a love nonetheless. But three things from this period in my life became pebbles in my shoe: 1. The first pebble is the efficacy of prayer. Despite all the promises that God answers prayer, my prayers, especially for good things like the healing of my family, were not answered. And it didn’t seem to matter whether other Christians agreed with me in prayer or asked in Jesus’ name. “Prayer changes things” just didn’t work in a practical way in my life. 2. The second pebble is the judgmental attitudes of Christians. I read the gospels, I knew that Jesus said not to judge or that, if we judge, we should judge ourselves first. But the Christianity I grew up in seemed to be obsessed with judging everything and everyone, and I simply couldn’t see how that fit in with Jesus’ teachings. 3. The third pebble, probably the most harmful thing that I experienced from this period of my life, is the constant guilt of sin and the threats of going to hell. I was told that I was guilty because of what Adam and Eve did; guilty for sins I committed; guilty for the sins of not doing what I should have done; and guilty for killing Jesus. Add to this the notion that I was never sure if I believed all the right doctrines to keep me from going to hell. My life was dominated by guilt and fear, and I doubt anyone can be psychologically healthy living under that kind of religion. With these pebbles in my shoe, I began to hobble in my walk of faith.

Personally, I like Karen Armstrong’s approach to this with “The Charter for Compassion.” She believes that at the center (relativists probably wouldn’t agree with this term) of all the world’s great religions is what we call the Golden Rule – doing unto others as we would have done unto ourselves. Though a monotheist, she believes that religion essentially comes down to how we treat one another. So she suggests that the leaders of the world’s great religions put forth the effort to examine (or reexamine) their religious scriptures and traditions in the light of the Golden Rule and work together to show how each religion supports and lives out this central truth. This would also entail modifying those religions if necessary. Obviously, no small endeavor. Going back to my cosmological analogy, I think Karen would put the Golden Rule as the sun in the center of the solar system. All the other world religions would circle around this sun, keeping their distinctions, but finding their source and light in the Golden Rule. In this way, Karen hopes, the world religions can learn to be part of the same solar family, yet not give up the distinctive things that make each religion unique and meaningful to its adherents. Therefore, if I’m a Christian, I don’t have to give up my Christianity AS LONG AS I view it and interpret it through how I treat others, going back to Jesus’ two commands. But if I think Christianity is all about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell in the afterlife, then, yes, I need to reconsider that doctrine in the light of the Golden Rule. I would suspect that other world religions would face similar challenges. To me, this would be a good form of pluralism. Relativism, on the other hand (and in my view) would mean that it really doesn’t matter which world religion (or none) that one chooses. As long as you are sincere about it or it makes you feel good, go for it. This, to me, is dangerous because while I feel that people are capable of great good, we are also capable of great evil, and relativism swings the door wide open for people to do anything they want to one another as long as they are sincere or it makes them feel good. So I would support Karen’s view of pluralism, if that is what she is presupposing, especially in putting compassion at the core of what it means to be religious or part of a faith tradition. If we don’t have that, then, as one apostle said, all we have is a bunch of noise. I, for one, would be all for putting compassion at the center of pluralism.

NORM, "Pluralism is simply the realization that the world doesn't end at my driveway, and relativism is the reason." That may well be the case. I think that Western religion has typically held to a "destination-type" view, that our beliefs and practices lead either to heaven or to a better world or to a better us. So we have the notions with pluralism that "all roads lead to Rome" or that "all paths lead to God" i.e. there is a goal in mind, something to "get to." But if pluralism and relativism are basically the same thing, then it seems to me that our driveways simply lead to everywhere (if we go far enough). There is no destination, no goal, we simply drive around, taking in the scenery. The point is to enjoy the drive, not to go anywhere. This is probably an Eastern notion and has some validity. I'm just not sure how it fits with Jesus' teachings about the kingdom of God and the over-riding notion that God is redeeming the world.

You guys make me think, a good thing at my advance age and limited 256k of RAM (very volatile memory that dumps every night). I would use an cosmological analogy. Relativity is like our universe - there is no "center" or "middle point". Things are flying away from each other, but distances and relationships are only relative to each particular object without any central anchor. Pluralism is like our solar system - there is a center, the sun, around which everything revolves. Nevertheless, no two planets are exactly alike. Similarities? Yes. But lots of differences also. It is not that one planet is wrong and that another planet is right, it is just that they all circle a central reality that keeps them together and sharing some commonality without losing their individual distinctivinesses (is that a word?). Therefore, distances, speeds, mass, etc. is usually made in reference to the central point, the sun. In religion and philosophy, relativism would then be the notion that there is no center or anchor. Nothing is really tied together by anything else and, therefore, the only meaning to be discovered is within that religion or philosophy itself for its adherants and it really has no impact on anything or anyone else. Pluralism would then be the notion that there is some kind of center or anchor. There is something Bigger or Larger or Transcendant that ties things together without making them uniform. Though they have internal meaning, they are also part of a larger Picture which can be discussed an appreciated from different points-of-view. Now, as to what, in pluralism, this center or anchor or Bigger might be, I'll leave that to you professional theologians and philosophers to figure out. It's getting late and I have to go take a brain dump so that I can have enough memory available to both walk and breath tomorrow. As always, my opinons are relatively pluralistic.

“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.” - Peter Rollins, How (not) to Speak of God

That's been my experience also, Yvonne. Metaphorically, when I was in conservative Christianity, I was expected to chant in unison (not to have a difference of opinion or interpretation); then when I went to the other extreme into liberalism, my voice was so small as to be insignificant. Or, to put it another way, conservativism claimed to have all the truth and liberalism claimed that there wasn't any such thing. Although I sometimes talk about the subject of truth here on the TCPC forum, I make very few (if any) actual truth claims about my faith. Rather than talking about my faith being true or right, I would rather talk about it being meaningful. In other words, I find enough meaning in it that I feel it is worthy of building my life around. But then, obviously, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. feel the same way about their faith or path. As long as people in these other religions share with me what is meaningful to them, I enjoy the conversation. But when/if they start with truth claims, I will shut down from my end of the conversation. My view of truth is that it can only be apprehended, not fully comprehended. A real world example of this is that I was asked to author a blog for Christian deism a couple of months back. I was happy and eager to do so. But then the "organization" that was going to sponser it (financially) insisted that I believe that Jesus was a deist, that I hold this to be a truth claim. I couldn't agree to that truth claim any more than I could/would agree that Jesus was a Republican or a Democrat or even a Christian. Jesus was a faithful Jew (as far as I can tell) and Judaism and deism are, obviously, somewhat different. Deism is, to me, a reasonable and sensible religious philosophy, but I just couldn't squeeze Jesus into that package. Jesus is simply too open to interpretation for any one group to claim to own him (including Christians). I suspect that, in relation to what you said, even Jesus had to find his own voice. He didn't take the voice of the Essenes that said that what God wanted was for his people to withdraw from (as they saw it) the compromised Judaism of the first century. He didn't take the voice of the Zealots that said that God's messiah would take up a sword and a war horse to slay God's enemies. He didn't take the voice of the Pharisees that said that what God wanted from his people was slavish obedience to the Law and the Prophets. And he didn't take the voice of the Sadducees that said to compromise with the rulers in order to just get along. He found his own voice which spoke of God's love for everyone, even for enemies, and that it was only love, not violence or hate, that could overcome evil. Amazingly (or maybe not so), the early Christians claimed that Jesus' voice was the voice of the Father, of God himself. They found enough meaning in that voice that they built their lives around his words, even if it cost them their lives. And I think that voice continues to speak today. But I also believe that voice calls for a response. It calls for an echo. It calls for us to find our own voice wherever we are in life. It might even sometimes call for, in a very humble way, for us to "speak for God" where there is so much noise that people just aren't listening. But we have to be aware of the cost of doing so. It may get us crucified. And that voice often calls for action. Otherwise, all we are doing is repeated empty phrases. Although I find metaphysical interpretations of the doctrine of the Trinity to be nonsensical to me, I can certainly agree that God's voice seeks incarnation. We, like Jesus, become God's wisdom "in the flesh" to our hurting and hopeless world - to our families, to our friends, to our workplaces, to our societies. And we continue to find God speaking to us today through the voice of others. It brings meaning and hope to our lives. And that is when I think Christianity is at its best.

I hope all of you have a wonderful day of celebration with friends and family for all of the blessings and gifts that we have in life. Regards, Bill