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PaulS

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  1. Phil continues.... On August 17, 2021, the Taliban in Afghanistan, hoping to project an image of moderation, pledged to honor the rights of women, vowing to form an “inclusive Islamic government.” On May 8, 2022, a scant eight months later, the Taliban passed a law requiring women to be covered from head to toe when outside the home. On that same day, the NPR program, Weekend Edition Sunday, quoted a young Afghan woman saying that “enforcing the veil basically disappears women.” Roman Catholic Supreme Court justices Amy Coney Barret and Brent Kavanaugh vowed to honor settled law during their Senate confirmation hearings, then at the first opportunity began dismantling Roe vs. Wade, joined by their fellow Roman Catholics Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. It appears Neil Gorsuch, born and educated as a Catholic, will join their efforts. Each of those five justices were confirmed by senators representing a minority of American voters. In Russia, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, has called Vladimir Putin’s leadership a “great miracle of God,” and in a recent speech said the people in Ukraine were “evil forces”, stating “we must not allow dark and hostile external forces to laugh at us.” The danger of state-affiliated religion was expressed by Robert Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic, who said of America’s founders, “They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship, that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for mankind and for mankind alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.” When I began this sermon series, contrasting the differences between religion and spirituality, I intended to limit the series to ten messages. I would have happily stopped there if religion had behaved itself, but these recent examples remind us of the unholy alliance of government and religion. So I continue the series with this observation: Religions too often serve one segment of a nation, while spirituality serves humanity. Sometimes that favored segment is a political party, other times an economic class, still others a specific race, gender, or tribe. But far too often religions allow themselves to be used by the ruthless few to rule the compliant many. Spirituality, on the other hand, is for the whole world and not just one corner of it. Spiritually is committed to the expansion of love, not the narrowing of it. In our nation, we are witnessing the co-opting of the Christian faith to support a social agenda that is anything but Christian. The language and structures of Christianity are being employed to further a political movement comfortable with fascism, white supremacy, male authority, and economic disparity. It offers no help to the poor and beleaguered, not one comforting word to the grieving, not the smallest measure of freedom to the immigrant, few options to women except obedience and compliance, no refuge to the victims of gun violence, and no word of hope to the gay and transgendered. Its intention is to increase its own power, while diminishing the power of those not like them. It endeavors to control every facet of our lives—our marriages, our right to bear children or not, our education, our right to learn what we need to learn, our right to vote without encumbrance, and to have our votes count. Many Christians in America have lent their enthusiastic support to this effort, caring primarily for their privilege and power. But make no mistake, it is a false Christianity, as far removed from the spirit of Jesus as east is to west. Spirituality opposes cruelty, especially cruelty done in the name of God. It offers its whole and hearty Amen to the Jesus who said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are oppressed.” This past week I was on a Zoom call about one of my books with a church in Oklahoma. During the Q&A, one of the women said she didn’t think the Church should talk about politics. I knew exactly what she meant. She was weary of the turmoil our nation is experiencing. I understand that because I’m weary too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we didn’t view one another as enemies to be fought, but as friends to be helped? Unfortunately, that’s not the case today, is it? But let’s be honest, that has never been the case. Our nation was born in a climate of division and oppression. It is in the air we breathe. It is exhausting, and I understand why that woman wanted the Church to stay out of politics, so I didn’t say anything. But the discussion leader didn’t let me off the hook, so asked my thoughts about Christianity and politics. I said I sympathized with the woman’s frustrations, that I am frustrated and tired too, but that we can’t clock out early. We can’t leave before our work is done. Politics, I told the group, isn’t about whether we are Republican or Democrat. Politics is our collective effort to live together in such a way that makes possible the equal opportunity for happiness. This collective effort we call governance or politics was so important to our spiritual ancestors that the first five books of the Bible dealt primarily with this subject. How will we live together? How will we treat one another? What will we value? Those are political questions. The only people who can avoid those questions and issues are the people for whom the prevailing order is working just fine, which is to say, us, well-off white people. Politics is so much more than which political party we affiliate with. It is our shared effort to fulfill our founder’s hope for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, we don’t always agree on the best ways to accomplish that, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. And just because we grow weary, that doesn’t mean we get to clock out early and leave before the work is done. I acknowledged to the group that it sometimes feels bruising to talk about such things, especially when we came to church hoping for or needing to hear a word of consolation and not a word of challenge. But Friends, we don’t have that luxury right now. Our sense of Quaker spirituality demands our engagement, requires our commitment to love the whole world and not just one corner of it, requires the expansion of love, not the narrowing of it. As has happened before in human history, religious people have formed an unholy partnership with powers and principalities. It is incumbent upon us to address and resist this corruption, to stand always for decency, to rededicate ourselves to that most golden of rules, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. And to, by God, do the right thing when others won’t.
  2. I'd say that BOTH decisions were correct based on the laws of the land, in that the law provides for SCOTUS to 'interpret' matters. That they did - it's just that there were different people in the seats today than there was 50 years ago. Undoubtedly, personal bias through religion and 'moral' viewpoints impact how one thinks. SCOTUS aren't above that. I think the fact that Roe v Wade hadn't been overturned for 50 years until SCOTUS got to a position of a conservatively stacked panel, speaks volumes as to the 'rightness' of any decision it makes.
  3. Technically in Australia it is at arm's length, but still the people who make the decisions about who to appoint as a Judge are appointed by political parties, so the system has the ability to 'favor' political choices, but favoritism as a political end result just doesn't seem to be an occurrence here. I guess like the US, it's not a perfect system, it's just the best we've come up with up until this point. Maybe the US process started out with the best of intentions too, but later the process became a political football. I think clearly biases show through, as demonstrated with this latest decision. I mean 50 years ago the vote was 7-2 in favor of the Constitution recognizing abortion (basically), but today the vote is 5-3 in it not. Nothing at law has changed in those 50 years, just who sits on the bench and who is prepared to find for or against, has. Pretty much the rest of the world just looks on and thinks what is this madness (abortion, Trump, guns) that the US exists in, and are we seeing the beginning of the end of an empire.
  4. Well the decision/choice was with the individual until the court interfered with this 50 year old decision. Unfortunately a lot of Christians are biased about abortion and from what I see are happy to hide behind "state's right's" to support the removal of this Federal support. I wonder what the same people would have to say if SCOTUS said freedom of religion should not be supported by Federal laws and should only be a state matter.
  5. Following the United States Supreme Court overturning a decision of the Court that has stood for 6 months short of 50 years (Roe vs Wade) there's been a fair bit of commentary on social media, as well as all media services. I'm sure we all have a view on abortion - this is where I stand for what it's worth. Abortion is a difficult decision, but it should be exactly that, a decision. SCOTUS, or any court or government, should not be able to take that decision from people. A Facebook post attributed to one Amie Lynne Jordan of South Carolina: I'm not pro-murdering babies. I'm pro-Becky who found out at her 20-week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs. I'm pro-Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later. I'm pro-Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child. I'm pro-little Cathy who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she should have been able to trust and her 11-year-old body isn't mature enough to bear the consequence of that betrayal. I'm pro-Melissa who's working two jobs just to make ends meet and has to choose between bringing another child into poverty or feeding the children she already has because her spouse walked out on her. I'm pro-Brittany who realizes that she is in no way financially, emotionally, or physically able to raise a child. I'm pro-Emily who went through IVF, ending up with SIX viable implanted eggs requiring selective reduction to ensure the safety of her and a SAFE number of fetuses. I'm pro-Jessica who is FINALLY getting the strength to get away from her physically abusive spouse only to find out that she is carrying the monster's child. I'm pro-Vanessa who went into her confirmation appointment after YEARS of trying to conceive only to hear silence where there should be a heartbeat. I'm pro-Lindsay who lost her virginity in her sophomore year with a broken condom and now has to choose whether to be a teenage mom or just a teenager. I'm pro-Courtney who just found out she's already 13 weeks along, but the egg never made it out of her fallopian tube so either she terminates the pregnancy or risks dying from internal bleeding. You can argue and say that I'm pro-choice all you want, but the truth is: I'm pro-life. Their lives. Women's lives. You don't get to pick and choose which scenarios should be accepted. It's not about which stories you don't agree with. It's about fighting for the women in the stories that you do agree with and the CHOICE that was made. Women's rights are meant to protect ALL women, regardless of their situation! Overturning Roe does not stop abortions, it stops SAFE abortions! Abortion is healthcare.
  6. A personal sacrifice for the greater good, which seems so hard , almost impossible, for so many.
  7. But how would so many Christians be 'proved right' otherwise! What I mean is, there seems to be a lot of Christians that want there to be a Hell to justify/legitimize their beliefs. So sad really.
  8. Perhaps create a thread posting the bulk of your questions all at once? I'm not really sure there is any fount of knowledge when it comes to answering all question, but many members here have deconstructed and reconstructed their faith over time and have drawn on lots of knowledge available from scholars, authors, and personal sources. I would suggest though that whatever the answers are, when it comes to reconstructing faith, I think take all opinions with a pinch of salt. Biblical scholarship is one thing, but interpretation and application of 'spiritual' concepts is completely another. I wish you well in your search, Skyler.
  9. I have to agree - I think his sermons might've been better titled "What Spirituality Is Not". He seemed to be able to easily point to the problems that Religion causes, but didn't nail it at all concerning what spirituality actually is (even in his mind as to what it is). Indeed, it reads a bit like that to myself also. Phil grew out of his old fundamentalist beliefs, but can't quite let go of the familiarity of God and community that I would say was probably a positive of his religious experience to some degree, but is now not much more than living a 'good' life like anybody else. I am still none the wiser how 'spirituality' serves that.
  10. Absolutely, but I wonder if the inspiration for poetry is a product of spirituality?
  11. Oops, my bad. Seems like Phil wasn't finished when Easter interrupted his series on Spirituality. So for completeness, I have now added Sermons 9 & 10, which I think now are the last. What does it mean to be spiritual? (9) I was talking with a man not long ago who learned during our conversation that I was a Quaker minister. He said, “I used to be a pastor.” I asked him how long he had served as a pastor and he said, “Well, it was a long time ago, and I only lasted three months.” I knew there had to be a good story there. Three months? How do you only last three months? It turns out he forgot Mother’s Day. He said, “Actually, I think they would have forgiven that, but the next week I preached on women and the church and quoted from Genesis about men ruling over women and 1st Corinthians about women being silent in church and that turned out to be my last Sunday.” I didn’t know him well, so didn’t feel free to call him a birdbrain, but I thought it. I asked him if he still believed those things, and he said no, that he’d gotten married and his wife had straightened him out, and I say good for her. So Happy Mother’s Day, women, and greetings from a church that doesn’t believe you should be ruled by anyone but yourself and if you want to speak, feel free. If you’re not a mother, we still celebrate you. Today, we honor all those women who create, nurture, and love. Some women give birth to children, others to ideas, and still others to transformative social change. We honor you and applaud the many and various ways you have nurtured life. We begin with an apology. Religion, perhaps more than any other institution, has conspired to keep women down. The American suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, once said, “The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.” We can talk until we are blue in the face how the Church reveres women, how the Church elevates women, but when Christianity’s largest denomination, Roman Catholicism, does not permit women to serve as priests, when a religious majority in the Supreme Court conspires to deny women their medical and reproductive freedom, when 48,000 Southern Baptist churches do not permit women to lead, when 17 million Mormons worldwide will not permit women to serve in the priesthood, the Church’s words ring hollow. We’ve been talking about what it means to be spiritual, contrasting religion and spirituality. I want to continue our exploration by observing that religions, not all religions, but certainly a plurality of religions in history, have endeavored to keep women down and powerless, and have done so by claiming the subjugation of women is God’s will. We contrast this with spirituality, whose purpose is always to connect and affirm, believes women were not intended to be managed, but emancipated. Spirituality speaks not of conquest and control, but of connection and liberation. When our Christian ancestors encountered strong and independent women, they called them witches and put them to death, a warning to women everywhere to know their place and stay there. Philip Smith, writing in the academic journal Historical Social Research, estimated that from 1400-1700 AD up to one million women were accused of witchcraft and half of them were put to death, with full approval of the Church. Then we became “civilized,” so rather than killing powerful and free-thinking women, we forbid them from owning property, made them stay with abusive husbands, denied them a voice in political matters, and still forbid them from terminating an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy. When we peer behind this grim curtain, we see the hand of oppressive religion pulling the strings. When women expressed great spiritual truths, they were corralled, told what they could and couldn’t say, what they could and couldn’t feel, what they could and couldn’t do. But spirituality never corrals, it never controls. It seeks only to enlighten and illuminate. When I hear a woman say, “I am spiritual, but not religious,” I am hearing a women realize she has been ill-served and abused by religion, though has not lost her passion for truth, meaning, and beauty. It means religion has tried to silence her, but she has nevertheless persisted. For too many years our image of the perfect woman was related to her willingness and ability to serve men. She was not valued for her intelligence, for her insight, for her creativity, for her strength, but valued only for her compliance and submission. Wives, obey your husbands, religion told her. Cover your head. Keep silent. Bear children. Don’t argue. Know your place. But know this, compliance and submission are the dreaded enemies of true spirituality, which serves always to emancipate and empower, especially those who’ve been held down and held back. Today is Mother’s Day, so I think naturally of my mother and her life. My mother had 78 organs, of which the womb was only one. When that was removed, her value was in no way diminished. I remember my mother telling me of the day she told religion to stop concerning itself with her womb. She’d had five children in six years and one Sunday morning sat through a homily given by a man telling her birth control was a sin. Afterwards, she asked him, “Are you going to help me raise all the children you want me to have?” He said, “That is not my business.” She said, “Exactly.” I loved my mother. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think of her, that I don’t miss her, that I don’t cherish her memory. I am grateful she gave me life. But I am even more grateful for her strength, her intelligence, and her refusal to be reduced to a womb. In the last decades of her life, my mother was not a religious woman. She was however, deeply spiritual, and walked freely and joyfully among the fragrant and gorgeous mysteries of life. I pray all of us may do the same. What does it mean to be spiritual? (10) When I was a kid, I loved going to the movies at the Royal Theater in Danville, especially matinees, sitting in the dark on a Saturday afternoon, then staggering outside disoriented by the sunlight, like a second morning to the day. Mr. Ahart owned the theater, and sometimes on Saturdays showed classic movies. I remember when I was 7 or so, going to see The Swiss Family Robinson, and being irritated by the Robinsons, who were so annoyingly perfect that when the pirates attacked their island, I found myself rooting for the pirates. For several days after the movie, I imagined I was a pirate and dug holes in our yard looking for treasure until my dad made me stop. My brother, Glenn, never one to miss an opportunity to deceive me, even drew up a fake map, rubbed dirt on it to make it look old, then put it where I would find it, leading me to believe there was a hoard of gold coins buried underneath our rose bushes, though when I dug them up, I found nothing but worms. I have never lost my fascination with treasure hunts, with discovering some secret treasure that has eluded others. It might be one of the reasons I became a pastor. Initially, I became a pastor for the leg room. The benches in our Quaker meeting were so crowded it was like flying coach, and there would be Pastor Taylor sitting up front in his very own chair, with all that leg room, like flying first class, and I thought, “I need to upgrade,” so I became a pastor. But I eventually realized I became a pastor because I’ve always been fascinated with the hidden aspects of life, namely God, whose presence, like treasure, has often eluded me. I spoke at a funeral last week of a woman I’d grown up with in Danville. Her family invited those present to share stories about her and one of the men spoke, telling us if we wanted to ever see our friend again, it would behoove us to accept Jesus as our Savior so we’d go to heaven when we died. It was as if God were holding the woman hostage. If you ever want to see her again…He quoted several verses of Scripture and told us the first thing we had to do was believe in God. I thought, “Wow, that is one heck of a first step.” Believe in God, just like that. We’ve been talking about what it means to be spiritual, contrasting the qualities of spirituality with the qualities of religion. Today, I want to suggest another difference. Religion begins by asking us to believe in God. That’s the first step, and it’s a big one. Religion expects us to believe in someone or something no one has ever seen. And religion says, begin there. It’s like asking a toddler to run a marathon. Many of us are simply incapable of such feats. Let’s contrast this with spirituality, which doesn’t, as Lewis Carroll wrote, require us to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Instead, spirituality invites us to a quest, a journey, whose goal is a discovery. The attainment of this treasure is often arduous, there is mystery involved, and time. But one doesn’t start with the treasure, one starts with the desire to seek it. There might be a map, but that map is sometimes baffling and vague, subject to one’s perspective and interpretation. But unlike religion, we don’t begin with the treasure. We begin with the longing to discover that most beautiful and elusive of treasures—Ultimate Reality, what the theologian Paul Tillich called The Ground of All-Being, the Spirit that permeates all of creation, the foundation of everything and everyone. That is the treasure. It is a paradoxical treasure, because it is elusive, and yet permeates us. Just beyond us, and yet in us. Here is the most exasperating thing of all. If you were to draw a map revealing the exact location of this divine treasure and how you found it, that map would work for no one else, for we all start in different places, with varying points of reference. These maps are like fingerprints, there are no two alike. Beware of those religionists who demand one method, one way, one path. Evangelicals speak of a four-point plan of salvation, Catholics describe a Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Buddhists have their Five Principles, Judaism their covenant with God, and Islam has its Five Pillars. So we have all these maps, all these paths, and each of them can be useful, so long as we realize there is no one path and one path only. There is only seeking and exploring and hopefully, if one persists, discovery. Some people find the treasure of God in a blinding moment, in an instant of Aha! Others discover this treasure incrementally, gradually, piece by piece. Not in one blinding moment, but in a slow unfolding. That is how it has been for me. I caught a quick glimpse of the NuFlexne Presence just this week. With Covid taking a break, parents and grandparents can once again eat lunch with the children at our granddaughter’s school, so this past Monday I went to Madeline’s school at lunchtime. I arrived a few minutes early, while the kindergarteners were eating, so waited in the cafeteria for Madeline’s class to arrive. It came time for the kindergarteners to leave the cafeteria to make room for the first graders. One of the little kindergarten boys fell backwards out of his seat, dumped his food all over himself and the floor, and began to cry. Another little boy went to him, put his arms around him, told him it was all right, then helped him clean up the mess he’d made, walked with him to the window to return his tray, then took him by the hand and led him from the cafeteria. I thought to myself, “So that’s what God looks like.” All these years, I’ve wondered what God looks like, and now I know. He’s about three feet tall with light brown hair, wearing a Colts t-shirt and blue jeans. At least that’s what God was wearing on Monday. God might be wearing something different today. God might be 90 years old, wearing a dress, and living in Africa. Who knows? But this past Monday at noon, God was in Danville and wearing a Colts t-shirt. I saw him with my own eyes. Religion says, “First, believe in God.” Spirituality says, “Let’s start with desire.” Even though I’m a pastor, belief has never been easy for me. What would you expect from a man who became a pastor for the leg room? But I’ve always been curious, and I’ve tried always to be open, which is how I’ve learned that seeking the Treasure can be every bit as meaningful as finding it.
  12. Yes, a debate that probably goes back millenia - since humans have been trying to understand their existence. The thing for me is that we know that on a subatomic level all things are connected. So perhaps spirituality is just as much a part of who we are as our physical attributes are - we just don't understand it fully yet.
  13. Bart Ehrman is currently posting a series of his 'most commented on' blog posts which can be read here: https://ehrmanblog.org/member-landing-page/. The entire blog is a great value read from one of our current generation's most distinguished New Testament scholars and is available both free (a few restricted blog posts) or for the low annual membership fee of $25 (all proceeds go to charity). The below is one of his free articles recently shared, which I in turn am sharing here (but you can read it direct at https://ehrmanblog.org/a-revelatory-moment-about-god-most-commented-blog-post-3/). From Bart: January 12, 2020 I had a “revelatory moment” last week that I think may have changed my view about “God” for a very long time – or at least about the existence of superior beings far beyond what we can imagine. As most of you know, I have long been an agnostic-atheist, and as some of you may recall, I define “atheist” differently from most people, at least in relationship to “agnostic.” The word “agnostic” means “don’t know.” Is there a God? I don’t’ know. How could I possibly know? How could you? I know a lot of you do “know” – or think you know. But my view is that if you’re in that boat you “think” there is a God – really, really think it, deep in your heart, and maybe even deeply “believe” in God – but really, at the end of the day, there’s no way to *know*, at least in the same way you “know” that you have two knees, live in Pennsylvania, or like lasagna. Anyway, I’m not asking you to agree with me. I’m just saying it’s my view. We simply can’t “know” that there is a God in the same way we know other things, and I myself, long ago, came to the point where I had to admit I *really* don’t know. It’s not that I deeply believe there is a God but admit that technically I can’t know. I mean I really don’t know. Over the past fifteen years or so (more? Less?) I’ve also been calling myself an atheist, but I have always meant something different by that from what other people say. Usually people think of an atheist as a more extreme agnostic, someone who doesn’t say “I do not know if there’s a God” but who says “I know there is not a God.” I’ve never meant that. How could I know that *either*? I’ve taken “agnosticism” to refer to what you KNOW and “atheism” to refer to what you BELIEVE. Do I believe in God? No, I do not. So I’m an agnostic and an atheist at the same time. My revelatory moment has softened my view. I guess I’m still an agnostic and an atheist, but I think it makes much, much better sense to stress the “I SIMPLY DON”T KNOW” part, and stop implying that I firmly believe one thing or another. Here’s why. I have a meditation practice and in it over the past year or so I’ve spent a lot of time meditating on consciousness, especially the marvel that I am a self-conscious being (you are too, but I’m usually not thinking about you when I’m meditating. Sorry….). Consciousness is one of the most mysterious and imponderable aspects of the multiverse, period. Philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, theologians, and all sorts of very, very smart people have written extremely erudite books about it, most of them disagreeing with one another. How does something made out of “matter” have the ability not only to think, reason, decide, achieve its own will, and so on – but be aware of doing so? If you know the answer, you should write a book and you will receive many international prizes and be the greatest explainer of human existence who has ever lived. Many have tried. So I ain’t goin’ there, to give my sophomoric, neurologically- / philosophically- / psychologically pathetically unnuanced views about it. But something did occur to me the other day during meditation that came as a revelation. In my experience, one person’s light-bulb moment, when something really clicks, is completely *obvious* to everyone else. And so I’m always hesitant to share mine. Some of you will say, THAT’S what you finally realized? Uh, yeah, duh…. So, when you do think that, well, hey, I knew you would. But here is the thought that occurred to my head, for whatever it’s worth. In our way of thinking (this isn’t shared by all cultures), there are different orders of existence/being. An infinity of things that could exist do not exist – either they never did exist (an infinity themselves) or they once existed and do not any longer. Most of the things that do exist we would call “inanimate” – minerals and stars and black matter and so on and on. There may be even an infinity of that category too, depending on your view of astrophysics etc. Most of the things that do exist and are “animate” we would classify as … what? Non-animal? Most obviously to our senses (I’m simplifying), for example, plants: grass and oak trees and such. Some few things that exist are animals – however you define that (I’m not interested in refined generic definitions here or exceptions here). They can move themselves, they differ at the cellular level, etc. Some of these animals have brains and have instincts and some ability to assert a will, and so on. Humans, in our way of thinking, are on the top of the chain. It’s not that warblers, and copperheads, and orangutans are all the same – there are enormous differences, of course. But usually we conceptualize the human with, well, the ability to conceptualize and reflect on the past and future in systematic ways and so on. And yes, I’ve read Frans de Waal – fantastic! But still, on some level, I’m not doin’ the same thing with my brain as my cat is….. Still, it doesn’t much matter: arguing one way or the other on it isn’t going to change my revelatory insight. So here is my “duh” moment. A rock has no way of recognizing that an animate object such as a dandelion exists. A dandelion has no way of recognizing that a panther exists. Now it gets a bit tricky. A panther has no way of recognizing that a superior intelligence exists. Yes, a panther does recognize in some instinctual sense that there are things out there to look out for. But it has no way of realizing that there are people who can engineer sky scrapers, or split atoms, or reconstruct the history of Rome. It simply is not in its purview. Humans can and do recognize, analyze, study, think about, reflect on these other forms of life. You don’t need to say they are “lower” life forms or that we are “superior” to recognize this. We can understand all these things because in some sense (not all), our cognitive abilities are superior. But here’s my point. Suppose you WERE to think (whether imperialistically or arrogantly or not) that we are talking about levels of existence, from lower to higher: rocks, trees, non-human animals, and humans. The fact is that the lower ones can never know about the higher ones, what they really are, what they are capable of, how they exist, what they do, and so on. They can’t even conceptualize their existence. Then what in the blazes should should make me think that I could possibly know if there was a higher order above me, superior to me in ways that I simply can’t imagine? Not just one order above me, but lots of orders? If there are such orders, there is no way I could ever know. Literally. Duh. And so really, agnosticism is the ONLY option. Not in the sense of a shoulder shrug, “Hey, how would *I* know?” but in the sense of a deep thoughtful response – I have precisely no way to adjudicate the view, one way or the other. The PROBLEM is that we humans always imagine we are the pinnacle of existence. We’ve always thought that. That’s why we have no trouble killing other things to satisfy our needs. I’m not opposed to that in every instance: every time I eat a meal or scratch my arm (killing who knows how many microbes) I do that. But it has always led to some rather enormous problems, from massive destruction of others in war to, now, our rather determined efforts to destroy our planet. This idea that humans are the pinnacle of “material” existence has always (so far as we know) been promoted in religion, especially those that dominate the West. In Genesis, humans are the ultimate goal of creation, the reason all other living things came into being. This idea that we ourselves are all-important has ironically crept out of our religion into our secular epistemology. If we are the top of all existence, then there must be nothing above us. And so we can use our brains to figure out everything else that exists. In principle, our brains can figure out *everything*. My revelatory moment showed me with graphic clarity that that just isn’t true, on epistemological grounds. Who says we’re the pinnacle? If quartz stone and maple trees and slugs could think, they would think *they* were the pinnacle – they wouldn’t have the capacity to imagine a Stephen Hawkins or a Steve Jobs or a Frank Lloyd Wright. But they can’t imagine something higher than them. So what make us think we would have the capacity to imagine whatever it is that is above *us* in the pecking order? Frankly, it’s just human arrogance. Pure hubris. And I must say, looking at the world today, I’m not a huge fan of human arrogance and hubris. It’s not doing too well for us. I am obviously not urging a return to traditional religion. This insight decidedly does NOT justify anyone in saying, “See, I was right – my view of God is plausible.” Your view of God might be completely *implausible* and based simply on what you heard from people living 2000 or 3000 years ago who were generally far more ignorant of the world than we are and were simply doing their best to figure it out. So my insight does NOT argue that there must be a (single, Jewish or Muslim, or Christian) God, or archangels, or demons, or whatever. For me those are just mythological constructs that are trying to make sense of it all. So I’m not at all advocating we return to the religious constructions of previous centuries and millennia. I’m just saying that the possibility that there really *might* be orders of existence higher than I can imagine strikes me just now as completely plausible. Why not? Who says *I* can figure it all out. If superior forms of intelligence and will do exist, I would literally have no way of knowing. And how many different forms/levels could there be? God knows. So to speak.
  14. But aren't you saying things about God when you decide that "it's not that God is being a meanie...", or "the Bible is not about God at all". You seem to be just as prone about saying what God "isn't" and what's not about God, as to what others say God is. So I can't help but think you are deciding on what God is (by declaring what God isn't). If you truly believe you can say 'nothing' about God, then how does saying things about God (what God isn't) meet your own criteria?
  15. He seems to be very aligned with spirituality simply being living your best life, loving all others, and living well in community. Seems to me that spirituality viewed like this is reality.
  16. Phil's final sermon in this series on spirituality: (Edit - there was actually a part 9 & 10 after this. Sorry. They have now been added to the Forum): Well, Easter Sunday has arrived in its entire splendor. Early Friends didn’t celebrate Easter, and still don’t with the same enthusiasm of other Christians. We believe no one day is more sacred than another, that each day is a fitting day to celebrate the principle of resurrection. I tried my “every day is special” theory out on Joan several years ago, when our anniversary came and went without my acknowledgment. At the end of the day, when it was clear our anniversary had slipped by unmentioned, Joan asked me why I hadn’t said anything, and I told her that I didn’t believe in setting aside just one day to celebrate our marriage, that we should celebrate it every day. It sounded good when I said it, but it turned out to be the wrong answer. Special days are important, because when every day is special, then eventually no day is. So I am glad to celebrate my anniversary every June 3, and I am eager to celebrate resurrection on the Sunday following the Paschal full moon. We’ve been reflecting on what it means to be spiritual, by contrasting spirituality with religion. Of course, we realize the two often overlap, that religion, at its best, provides a platform for spirituality by helping like-minded people navigate and explore the world of spirituality. So religion has genuine benefits, when exercised in a positive, life-giving way. But we also know that religion isn’t always positive and life-giving, don’t we? Because religions are a human enterprise, a human construct, so sometimes behave poorly just when we need them to be virtuous and brave. Cases in point, the Russian Orthodox’s broad support for the genocide in Ukraine. If ever we needed a brave and prophetic Russian Orthodox church, it is now. But they have failed. Or consider the growing American Evangelical support for fascism and racism in our own nation. If ever we needed a courageous and visionary church in America, it is now. I single those two out by way of example, but every era has its examples of religions behaving badly, including Quakers, who despite our generally good reputation, have from time to time caused God heartburn. I don’t want to imply that religions behaving poorly is a conservative tendency. Many historians believe the progressive’s social gospel of the early 1900s led in part to the First World War. Though viewed by many religious progressives as a holy war that would open the way for a more just and enlightened world, we now know what it led to was World War II, the effects of which still haunt us. Those of us who participate in religious communities must ask ourselves, “When is religion most likely to be toxic?” This is a question the Apostle Paul answered in his second letter to the church at Corinth. I’m no great fan of Paul. I think he tended toward fanaticism, which to me is not a desirable trait, but let’s give credit where credit is due, and say he might have been onto something when he told the church at Corinth that, “the letter killeth, but the spirit gives life.” It is this fixation on the letter, this unbending preoccupation with the letter of the law, that causes religions to lose their way, because it asserts that ultimate reality is not found in spirit, but on paper. When John the gospel writer said the word became flesh and dwelt among us, he wasn’t talking about the Bible. He used the Greek word Logos, which means thought, principle or expression. It meant Jesus was the expression of God. But too many Christians say, “Oh, no, the Bible is the expression of God.” They then presume to interpret that Bible for us, and woe to us if we disagree. The letter killeth. Every single time. But the spirit gives life. At its best, religion provides a platform, a meeting place, for the Spirit. At its worst, it imposes rules that must be followed, leaders who must be obeyed, creeds which can not be questioned. The letter killeth, but the spirit gives life. The letter killeth. It treats us as children. It sees you and me as inferior beings incapable of thought, devoid of morality, and worthless without God. But the spirit gives life. It rejects the notion that we are moral infants, and urges us to conduct ourselves as responsible, mature adults. The language around this is telling. When religion is about the letter of the law, it sees us as children of God. It requires us to address our leaders as Father. When I was pastoring over in Irvington, there was a man in our meeting who’d grown up in the Catholic tradition and kept calling me Father Phil. I let it go at first because it felt kind of neat, but it finally wore on my last nerve, so I said to him, “Friend, I’m not your father. I’m Spencer’s father and Sam’s father. I’m not your father. I’m your friend. Call me Phil.” When religion is about the letter, when it is about control and submission, when it is about someone being on top so someone else must be on the bottom, then the select few are always the parents who wield authority while the remaining many are children with an obligation to obey. My friend Jim Mulholland told me once, “I’m fed up with the children of God. I want to see more adults of God.” It’s not just religions that do this. We find these patterns of toxic power in marriages, in workplaces, in political parties, in seats of government. Some two thousand years ago, we saw this toxic power in a place called Golgotha. Friends, reject as strongly and determinedly as you are able, any circumstance that keeps you, or anyone else, pinned to the ground with a knee to the neck. If anyone tells you that is God’s preference, or the way things must be, then find people who will take your worth and dignity as seriously as their own. Find people who will treat you as an adult of God, not as a child of God. Because the letter killeth. First, it kills our autonomy, then it kills our self-respect, and then our spirit, and finally our lives. But the spirit gives life. Knowing what we now know about tyranny, I wish Jesus had not gone humbly and quietly to the cross. I wish he had not meekly surrendered to evil. I wish the church would not later say such tyranny was God’s plan from the beginning. Instead, I wish Jesus and the disciples and the admiring crowds from the week before had said to the abusers, “No more.” I wish, then and there, a tradition of creative resistance had begun, and was with us still, so that whenever or wherever a tyrant rose to kill and destroy, men and women of good conscience, adults of God, would stand together and say, “No more.” I wish that had been done in August of 1619, when the English ship, the White Lion, carried enslaved people from Africa to America. I wish the adults of God who lived in England and America had stood then and there and said, “No more.” I wish that had been done on the night of November 14, 1917, when 33 women suffragists were arrested for protesting peacefully outside the White House and were taken to jail and tortured. I wish the adults of God who lived in America had stood then and there and said, “No more.” I wish that had been done in the waning hours of November 9th, 1938, on the Night of Broken Glass, when Hitler and his thugs began their murderous massacre of the Jewish people. I wish the adults of God all over the world had stood then and there and said, “No more.” I wish that had been done when Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s border on February 24th, I wish the adults of God who lived in Russia had stood then and there and said, “No more.” When that happens, when the adults of God everywhere unite against tyranny and hatred anywhere, when together they push away the stone of oppression, Justice and Peace will rise to their feet and walk free.
  17. Phil's 2nd-last sermon on spirituality in this series: When I was a kid, my dad worked for Johnson Wax, selling Raid bug spray, Pledge furniture wax, and Glade air freshener, driving from one small town to another, all over the state of Indiana. It was the perfect job for an extrovert, seeing old friends and making new ones, trading Johnson Wax products for assorted items, including, one glorious winter’s day, a six foot wooden toboggan sled and a female mannequin, which we dressed in my sister’s swimsuit and leaned against the telephone pole in front of our house, until Charlie Williams, the chief of police, came and hauled her to the hoosegow for public indecency. But the best thing about my father’s job was the company car, always a station wagon, which my father received brand-new every two years. Every other fall, Dad would turn in his old station wagon at a car dealership up in the city and drive home a new car, honking the horn as he pulled in the driveway, which was the signal for us to run outside, get in the car, and drive to Gray’s Cafeteria in high style. The next morning, we would help him load up the new station with bug spray, furniture wax, and air fresher and off he would go to Rushville or Brazil or Jasper to make his fortune. I remember one station wagon especially well, a 1971 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser with a rear-facing back seat, which I had to sit in with my little brother David even though it made us nauseous and pukey. It was clear the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser had never been road-tested on small children prone to motion sickness. There was something about looking back for hours at a time that did me in, which is ironic, given my fondness for nostalgia. I love looking back. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the word “nostalgia” literally means to reminisce about home to such a degree you become physically ill. The pain of looking back was first documented among Swiss mercenaries and English sailors who longed for home. Given what we know about their exploits, one can’t help but think everyone would have been better off if they had just stayed home. But imagine that, looking back so much it makes you sick. We’ve been thinking about what it means to be spiritual, contrasting spirituality with religion. We know, of course, that sometimes religion and spirituality overlap, that religion includes dimensions of spirituality that are helpful and instructive, which is why religions last. At their best, they provide a platform for spirituality. But we also know religion and spirituality are sometimes at odds with one another, sometimes conflict with one another. This morning I want to suggest a significant difference between religion and spirituality by noting that religion often concerns itself with looking back, or reminiscence; while spirituality often orients toward the present and future, or reality. Religion, because it is rooted in past people, events, and beliefs, asserts that our ancestors had a greater understanding of truth than modern people. The ancestors they venerate believed the earth was flat, thought illness was caused by demons, believed multiple gods were vying for supremacy, thought kings held their power and position by virtue of God’s authority and approval, believed God required human sacrifices, and thought a man’s status in his community was predicated on the sexual purity of his wives and daughters. These are the saints of old who religions urge us to revere, the exemplars of faith we are encouraged to emulate. Not long ago, I heard a radio preacher say he wanted to have the faith of Abraham. You remember Abraham, don’t you, who willingly placed his son Isaac on a stone altar to slice him open? I am not saying those in the past have nothing to teach us. Of course, they do. But the absolute and mindless veneration of the past, the dogged insistence that something is true only if it is ancient, cripples our ability to learn and grow. Religion sees truth only in the dim past, never in the sunlit future. That poses a danger. Because religions are rooted in the past, they often carry forward the ignorance and prejudice of the past, which is why those most resistant to equality and justice are often deeply religious. Poll after poll conducted on the topic of religion and discrimination confirms that piety and prejudice too often walk hand in hand. The more devout the community, the greater the racism, the greater the sexism, the greater the homophobia. By way of example, I want to tell you something I’ve been struggling with that bears on this tension between the comfort of old answers and the necessity of new ones. I’ve been struggling with the issue of gender identity, how some people, rather than identifying with the gender they assumed at birth, now identify with the other gender, or perhaps even both genders, or no gender at all. A few weeks ago, my friend Jim Mulholland and I went on a trip to the farm, something we do from time to time, and this subject came up. I told him I had misgivings about it, that I didn’t quite understand it, and that, quite frankly, it seemed like a fad, that some people were identifying with another gender just because it was the thing to do. Jim said, “So what if it is a fad? Isn’t it our most basic right to decide who we want to be?” And Boom!, the instant he said that, I thought, “Yes, no government or person should have the power to tell someone who they must be. That is a personal and private decision.” Now, do I still understand the nuances of gender identity? No, not at all. I have a lot to learn, but I’m reading about it and talking with people about it, and I’m determined to understand it, because I have a large family and lots of friends so this issue will touch people I know and love and I need to educate myself. Yes, I could do what some have done, and simply declare that God made everyone either male or female, like it says in the Bible, “male and female he created them,” I could get all religious on everyone. Or I could study and learn that scientists have identified at least six markers for gender identity: one’s genetic sex, one’s hormonal sex, one’s internal genitalia, one’s external genitalia, one’s secondary sexual characteristics that appear in puberty, and one’s social gender that reflects the norms of their culture. And guess what, those markers don’t always line up. So sexual identity isn’t always either/or. Sometimes it is, but it can also be both/and or reside on a spectrum. Isn’t science fascinating? The older I get, the more I appreciate those enduring words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard it said by the people of old…., but I say to you… What is that but the recognition that past truths have their limits, that new insights are not only possible, but preferable. Friends, we are not mannequins, forever cast in one mold or another. We are complex living beings, seeking to understand and be understood. Religion too often says, “The matter is settled. The subject is closed.” Spirituality says, “There is much here to learn. Let’s get started.”
  18. I definitely agree it doesn't have to be perfect, but that's my point about me thinking there is a difference in violence to bring an end to violence (e.g. war to end a holocaust) versus violence used because one is offended by a cartoon. It's not perfect, but by and large, it seems a reasonable understanding to most people. No, I'm saying 'morality' exists, but not in the sense that there is a singular, final morality, but rather that it is a subjective morality based on communal understandings. What one community finds moral doesn't necessarily means another community will agree. So this is the subjectiveness of morality, but not its non-existence.
  19. This is precisely what I mean though by claiming the 10 commandments are existential truths. I mean who says 1 x day a week is adequate rest? Why not 2 days a week for somebody that perhaps works an extremely physical workload versus somebody working a mundane office job? I for instance work 28 x 13hr days straight before then have several weeks of R&R. I see this roster pattern as working very well and provides me the balance I like in my life. So why isn't rostering an existential truth? Perhaps it's just me, but I have no idea what you are trying to say is 'the Good News'.
  20. I am uncertain how to display that I have hidden (i.e. not allowed) two further posts by Akay following my post above. Akay's posts continue to breach copyright as Akay refuses to acknowledge the source of the cut and paste articles or identify if they themselves own the articles they are copying from other various Islamic sites. This is not in line with Forum Guidelines and are not genuine engagements of discussion here on this topic. Future posts by Akay will be subject to Admin approval until further notice.
  21. And I love that fable, which I think is a very good one to keep in mind, but totally impractical to apply as a rule set I think. There definitely is a distinction, so it can't be entirely false, but I take your point and think it is a 'shade of grey' type issue - i.e. there is some crossover of physical to mental when we are talking about physical harm. Does it exist how? I don't believe there is one singular morality, but morality in the sense that we practice it concerning how we think our communities should exist. Obviously what is right for one community may be wrong for another (just using duality to make the point), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Clearly our understanding of morality is informed by our societal/cultural/ religious beliefs and life experiences, so morality can be both right and wrong at the same time I expect.
  22. I thought I would share this freely available article from Time (https://time.com/5822598/jesus-really-said-heaven-hell/), contributed by Bart Ehrman. I think it's a good article that explains in layman's terms how the idea of a Hell of eternal pain and suffering does not have any historical support from Judaism or Jesus himself. BY BART D. EHRMAN MAY 8, 2020 Ehrman is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity, and the author or editor of more than thirty books, including the just published Heaven and Hell. He is a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. None of us likes thinking about death, but there are times when we have little choice. The virus spreads, hospitals fill, and systems become overwhelmed. Our greatest concerns, personal and national, are for survival. But for many people – even the otherwise healthy — the crisis has unexpectedly raised the specter of death itself, our constant companion even if, most of the time, we do our best to ignore it. Or, in more normal times, try to laugh it off. The most recent and memorable effort was NBC’s smash hit comedy series The Good Place; but the humor even there was rooted precisely in terror, as Eleanor Shellstrop and her companions desperately worked to avoid the afterlife they deserved in the Bad Place and its eternal torments. The fear is as ancient as civilization’s oldest surviving records. The hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh writhes in agony at the prospect of spending eternity groveling in dust being eaten by worms. Few people today may share Gilgamesh’s terror of consciously living forever in the dirt. Plenty, however, tremble before the possibility of eternal misery. Possibly this is a good time to help people realize that it simply will not be that way. There are over two billion Christians in the world, the vast majority of whom believe in heaven and hell. You die and your soul goes either to everlasting bliss or torment (or purgatory en route). This is true even in the land of increasing “nones”: Americans continue to anticipate a version of the alternatives portrayed in The Good Place: regardless of religious persuasion, 72% believe in a literal heaven, 58% in a literal hell. The vast majority of these people naturally assume this is what Jesus himself taught. But that is not true. Neither Jesus, nor the Hebrew Bible he interpreted, endorsed the view that departed souls go to paradise or everlasting pain. Unlike most Greeks, ancient Jews traditionally did not believe the soul could exist at all apart from the body. On the contrary, for them, the soul was more like the “breath.” The first human God created, Adam, began as a lump of clay; then God “breathed” life into him (Genesis 2: 7). Adam remained alive until he stopped breathing. Then it was dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Ancient Jews thought that was true of us all. When we stop breathing, our breath doesn’t go anywhere. It just stops. So too the “soul” doesn’t continue on outside the body, subject to postmortem pleasure or pain. It doesn’t exist any longer. The Hebrew Bible itself assumes that the dead are simply dead—that their body lies in the grave, and there is no consciousness, ever again. It is true that some poetic authors, for example in the Psalms, use the mysterious term “Sheol” to describe a person’s new location. But in most instances Sheol is simply a synonym for “tomb” or “grave.” It’s not a place where someone actually goes. And so, traditional Israelites did not believe in life after death, only death after death. That is what made death so mournful: nothing could make an afterlife existence sweet, since there was no life at all, and thus no family, friends, conversations, food, drink – no communion even with God. God would forget the person and the person could not even worship. The most one could hope for was a good and particularly long life here and now. But Jews began to change their view over time, although it too never involved imagining a heaven or hell. About two hundred years before Jesus, Jewish thinkers began to believe that there had to be something beyond death—a kind of justice to come. Jews had long believed that God was lord of the entire world and all people, both the living and the dead. But the problems with that thinking were palpable: God’s own people Israel continually, painfully, and frustratingly suffered, from natural disaster, political crises, and, most notably, military defeat. If God loves his people and is sovereign over all the world why do his people experience so much tragedy? Some thinkers came up with a solution that explained how God would bring about justice, but again one that didn’t involve perpetual bliss in a heaven above or perpetual torment in a hell below. This new idea maintained that there are evil forces in the world aligned against God and determined to afflict his people. Even though God is the ultimate ruler over all, he has temporarily relinquished control of this world for some mysterious reason. But the forces of evil have little time left. God is soon to intervene in earthly affairs to destroy everything and everyone that opposes him and to bring in a new realm for his true followers, a Kingdom of God, a paradise on earth. Most important, this new earthly kingdom will come not only to those alive at the time, but also to those who have died. Indeed, God will breathe life back into the dead, restoring them to an earthly existence. And God will bring all the dead back to life, not just the righteous. The multitude who had been opposed to God will also be raised, but for a different reason: to see the errors of their ways and be judged. Once they are shocked and filled with regret – but too late — they will permanently be wiped out of existence. This view of the coming resurrection dominated the view of Jewish thought in the days of Jesus. It was also the view he himself embraced and proclaimed. The end of time is coming soon. The earthly Kingdom of God is “at hand” (Mark 1:15). God will soon destroy everything and everyone opposed to him and establish a new order on earth. Those who enter this kingdom will enjoy a utopian existence for all time. All others will be annihilated. But Jesus put his own twist on the idea. Contrary to what other Jewish leaders taught, Jesus preached that no one will inherit the glorious future kingdom by stringently observing all the Jewish laws in their most intimate details; or by meticulously following the rules of worship involving sacrifice, prayer, and observance of holy days; or by pursuing one’s own purity through escaping the vile world and the tainting influence of sinful others. Instead, for Jesus, the earthly utopia will come to those who are fully dedicated to the most pervasive and dominant teachings of God’s law. Put most simply, that involves loving God above all things despite personal hardship, and working diligently for the welfare of others, even when it is exceedingly difficult. People who have not been living lives of complete unselfish love need to repent and return to the two “greatest commandments” of Jewish Scripture: deep love of God (Deuteronomy 6:4-6) and committed love of neighbor (Leviticus 19:18). This may be simple, but it is not easy. Since your neighbor is anyone you know, see, or hear about, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, true love means helping everyone in need, not just those in your preferred social circles. Jesus was concerned principally for the poor, the outcasts, the foreigners, the marginalized, and even the most hated enemies. Few people are. Especially those with good lives and abundant resources. No wonder it’s easier to push a camel through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom. Most people today would be surprised to learn that Jesus believed in a bodily eternal life here on earth, instead of eternal bliss for souls, but even more that he did not believe in hell as a place of eternal torment. In traditional English versions, he does occasionally seem to speak of “Hell” – for example, in his warnings in the Sermon on the Mount: anyone who calls another a fool, or who allows their right eye or hand to sin, will be cast into “hell” (Matthew 5:22, 29-30). But these passages are not actually referring to “hell.” The word Jesus uses is “Gehenna.” The term does not refer to a place of eternal torment but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, believed by many Jews at the time to be the most unholy, god-forsaken place on earth. It was where, according to the Old Testament, ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to foreign gods. The God of Israel had condemned and forsaken the place. In the ancient world (whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish), the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a decent burial. Jesus developed this view into a repugnant scenario: corpses of those excluded from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet. Jesus did not say souls would be tortured there. They simply would no longer exist. Jesus’ stress on the absolute annihilation of sinners appears throughout his teachings. At one point he says there are two gates that people pass through (Matthew 7:13-14). One is narrow and requires a difficult path, but leads to “life.” Few go that way. The other is broad and easy, and therefore commonly taken. But it leads to “destruction.” It is an important word. The wrong path does not lead to torture. So too Jesus says the future kingdom is like a fisherman who hauls in a large net (Matthew 13:47-50). After sorting through the fish, he keeps the good ones and throws the others out. He doesn’t torture them. They just die. Or the kingdom is like a person who gathers up the plants that have grown in his field (Matthew 13:36-43). He keeps the good grain, but tosses the weeds into a fiery furnace. These don’t burn forever. They are consumed by fire and then are no more. Still other passages may seem to suggest that Jesus believe in hell. Most notably Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). Some are said to be sheep, and the others goats. The (good) sheep are those who have helped those in need – the hungry, the sick, the poor, the foreigner. These are welcomed into the “kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” The (wicked) goats, however, have refused to help those in need, and so are sent to “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” At first blush, that certainly sounds like the hell of popular imagination. But when Jesus summarizes his point, he explains that the contrasting fates are “eternal life” and “eternal punishment.” They are not “eternal pleasure” and “eternal pain.” The opposite of life is death, not torture. So the punishment is annihilation. But why does it involve “eternal fire”? Because the fire never goes out. The flames, not the torments, go on forever. And why is the punishment called “eternal”? Because it will never end. These people will be annihilated forever. That is not pleasant to think about, but it will not hurt once it’s finished. And so, Jesus stood in a very long line of serious thinkers who have refused to believe that a good God would torture his creatures for eternity. The idea of eternal hell was very much a late comer on the Christian scene, developed decades after Jesus’ death and honed to a fine pitch in the preaching of fire and brimstone that later followers sometimes attributed to Jesus himself. But the torments of hell were not preached by either Jesus or his original Jewish followers; they emerged among later gentile converts who did not hold to the Jewish notion of a future resurrection of the dead. These later Christians came out of Greek culture and its belief that souls were immortal and would survive death. From at least the time of Socrates, many Greek thinkers had subscribed to the idea of the immortality of the soul. Even though the human body dies, the human soul both will not and cannot. Later Christians who came out of gentile circles adopted this view for themselves, and reasoned that if souls are built to last forever, their ultimate fates will do so as well. It will be either eternal bliss or eternal torment. This innovation represents an unhappy amalgamation of Jesus’ Jewish views and those found in parts of the Greek philosophical tradition. It was a strange hybrid, a view held neither by the original Christians nor by ancient Greek intelligentsia before them. Still, in one interesting and comforting way, Jesus’ own views of either eternal reward or complete annihilation do resemble Greek notions propagated over four centuries earlier. Socrates himself expressed the idea most memorably when on trial before an Athenian jury on capital charges. His “Apology” (that is, “Legal Defense”) can still be read today, recorded by his most famous pupil, Plato. Socrates openly declares that he sees no reason to fear the death sentence. On the contrary, he is rather energized by the idea of passing on from this life. For Socrates, death will be one of two things. On one hand, it may entail the longest, most untroubled, deep sleep that could be imagined. And who doesn’t enjoy a good sleep? On the other hand, it may involve a conscious existence. That too would be good, even better. It would mean carrying on with life and all its pleasures but none of its pain. For Socrates, the classical world’s most famous pursuer of truth, it would mean endless conversations about deep subjects with well-known thinkers of his past. And so the afterlife presents no bad choices, only good ones. Death was not a source of terror or even dread. Twenty-four centuries later, with all our advances in understanding our world and human life within it, surely we can think that that both Jesus and Socrates had a lot of things right. Jesus taught that in this short life we have, we should devote ourselves to the welfare of others, the poor, the needy, the sick, the oppressed, the outcast, the alien. We should listen to him. But Socrates was almost certainly right as well. None of us, of course, knows what will happen when we pass from this world of transience. But his two options are still the most viable. On one hand, we may lose our consciousness with no longer a worry in this world. Jesus saw this as permanent annihilation; Socrates as a pleasant deep sleep. In either scenario, there will be no more pain. On the other hand, there may be more yet to come, a happier place, a good place. And so, in this, the greatest teacher of the Greeks and the founder of Christianity agreed to this extent: when, in the end, we pass from this earthly realm, we may indeed have something to hope for, but we have absolutely nothing to fear. Ehrman’s new book, from which this essay is adapted, is Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife.
  23. Yes, we could debate all day on any definition of 'justified' violence. But I think there is a difference in violence to bring an end to violence (e.g war to end a holocaust) versus violence used because one is offended by a cartoon. I agree with you concerning the complexity of reality. I was being specific about recognizing that words or pictures cannot physically harm us, not that there is no harm whatsoever when using words or pictures. Of course mental harm can be caused. Morality is clearly subjective. And we are wise to live and let live wherever we can. But at some point the community does need to defend itself or risk non-existence. I'm not saying one is good and one is evil, but reality is that we all choose and usually that choice is ultimately linked back to survival.
  24. No need to get testy, Akay! It doesn't matter if you have many articles on IslamWeb (or Islamhelpline, as per your last cut and paste). What matters on this Forum is that you are breaching copyright when you cut and paste from other sites without recognition. Please reference these other sites when you are posting material here that is already presented there. I am sure you can understand that this Forum has no way of identifying or confirming that you own these words on other sites. Please adhere to the Guidelines you agreed to abide by, when you signed up here. Akay, in your fervour you seem to have overlooked that all I am arguing for in the matter of the doctrine of the Trinity, is that there are many verses Christians have used to 'deduce' the doctrine, rightly or wrongly. You initially denied these verses existed, then you claimed they were later additions, and now you argue for their minimization for other reasons. I don't disagree with you that the Trinity may not be an accurate teaching, but to argue that there is no biblical support for the doctrine is incorrect. The arguments made by later Christians clearly demonstrates they used biblical texts to deduce the doctrine. Whether they were accurate in doing so, is another matter entirely. This is a 1+1=3 argument. This is like saying people today can't accurately document what happened in WW2 - when we know they can. I don't disagree that there is much to speculate about and debate, concerning the accuracy of every word claiming to be a message from God, or Jesus, or Allah or Mohamed for that matter, but your logic is faulty if you think it can be established that the Bible in no way represents Jesus. No shock here - this is well understood by anybody who has done just a little bit of reading outside of the Bible. Paul was a major influencer of what eventually became Christianity. But whether the Bible is representative of Jesus' teachings or not is subject to much debate. Most professional scholars acknowledge shortcomings for any outright agreement on all matters. Does this mean everything written by Paul misses the mark - of course not. Thanks for clarifying that the bulk of the Dead Sea Scrolls (some 100,000+ articles) are in fact genuine and not forgeries (i.e. 5 x fragments). Seems a bit of a waste of time pointing out such an insignificant amount of forgery, but for whatever reason you felt it important to. THE Jews? What, like every single one of them? So you think ALL Jewish books are distorted? Isn't that kinda like saying THE Muslims are suicidal lunatics, or THE Muslims believe they will get 72 virgins in Heaven? Some Muslims do think like this and obviously many are even prepared to die as suicide bombers, but of course many aren't either. I expect the same goes for THE Jews - some did some things, many didn't. Unfortunately, throughout history many bigots have racists have used Jesus' death against Jewish people as though somehow they are/were all individually responsible. Maybe understanding what Progressive Christianity actually is may help you to think about what you post here. I think you will find that many Progressive Christians (and others) will actually agree with a lot of the scholarship around the Bible and NT. Have a look at this thread perhaps:
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