| Theology That which is evil unto you, do not do to any other man. That is the whole Law. All the rest is commentary. Rabbi Hillel, first century contemporary of Jesus The story is told that a young student heard that Rabbi Hillel could recite the entire Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) while standing on one leg. Rabbi Hillel was an elderly man, but when asked by the student if he could do such a thing, the old man stood up on one leg, said the quotation above and put his foot back down. One wonders if the "young student" might have been Jesus. “Believe!? I do not believe in God—I know.” Carl Jung, in the last year of his life The Self is both the conscious and unconscious, and as such it may be called the “God within us,” since all of our highest and ultimate purposes seem to be striving toward it. Robert Johnson When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow The Kingdom of Heaven The kingdom of heaven is a condition of the heart – not something that comes “above the earth” or “after death.” The whole concept of natural death is lacking in the Gospel: death is not a bridge, not a transition; it is lacking because it belongs to an entirely different, a merely apparent, world, useful only insofar as it furnishes symbols. The “hour of death” is not a Christian concept – an “hour,” time, physical life and it's crises simply don’t exist for the teacher of the “good news.” The “kingdom of God” isn’t something that one waits for; it has no yesterday and no tomorrow, it doesn’t come in “a thousand years” – it is an experience that takes place inside the heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.” Frederick Neitzche 90% of the work toward enlightenment is spent preparing your body and mind to withstand an encounter with God. East Indian yoga teaching
“Don’t be anxious for the future, for the future will take care of
itself.
Rabbi Jesus of NazarethSufficient to the day are its troubles.” If in doubt about the proper action, choose the kindest way. And it is always good to be in doubt about any action, as long as you go ahead, trust God, and take it! WWenn At the end of the day, the Great Adversary is not some horned devil, some demon from below. The Great Adversary is “I”. WWenn The Religion of Youth Tommy, at the age of five, entered a church with his mother and noticed the cross upon the altar. “What’s that?” he inquired. “A cross,” whispered his mother. “A Red Cross?” he asked. “No, just a cross.” “Oh, I know,” said the boy, “T for Tommy.” It will be many years before Tommy will be capable of understanding the reverse interpretation of the symbol – that it represents “the 'I', crossed out.” From The Individual and His Religion by Gordon W. Allport, p.33
“This is my beloved son.
St. Luke, quoting God's Voice at the TransfigurationListen to him.” "Jesus said …" in The Gospel of Thomas… Jesus said, “If your teachers say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds will get there before you. But the kingdom is inside you, and it is outside you. If you know yourselves, then you will be known; and you will know that you are the sons of the living Father.” Jesus said, “Recognize what is in your sight, and what is hidden will become clear to you.” Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.” The disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?” Jesus said, “It will not come if you look for it. Nor can you say, ‘It is here’ or ‘It is there.’ For the kingdom of the Father is already spread out over the earth, but people don’t see it.” The disciples said to him, “When will the repose of the dead happen, and when will the new world come?” Jesus said, “What you are waiting for has already come, but you don’t recognize it.” Jesus saw some infants nursing. He said to his disciples, “These infants are like those who enter the kingdom of heaven.” They said to him, “How then can we enter?” Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside.” Explanations from Marcus Borg: (Borg is now a best selling author and theologian, but many years ago, he was my philosophy teacher at Concordia College. I appreciate his opinions a great deal, since we share many similar experiences of wrestling with religious concepts in our lives.) GRACE Grace means that salvation comes from God. Grace means that salvation comes through divine initiative. So it is in the Bible: God led the Israelites, …God is the source of light and sight,… God loved (and loves) us long before we knew that,…etc. The more one understands grace, the less self-righteous and self-made one can feel. Grace undermines all Christian pretensions to self-righteousness. It also undermines a common corollary of contemporary American individualism, the notion that I am what I am because of how hard I have worked. Even in secular terms, the notion that we are “self-made” is patently false. How much of our own “achievement” is because of our genetic inheritance, the family and economic circumstances into which we were born, and a myriad of events in our lives over which we have had very little control? And is it really true that those who have not done as well have only or mostly themselves to blame? Grace calls into question some of our most cherished religious and political beliefs. But properly understood, grace is a profoundly egalitarian notion. The more one understands grace, the more hubris (and its corollary of judgment of others) will be replaced by gratitude. Gratitude and grace go together. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew, p. 168 FAITH First, there is faith as fidelity, or faithfulness. … to have faith is to be faithful to the relationship with God. Faith as fidelity is the meaning of “the first commandment of all”: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” …. Its opposite is not doubt but infidelity, or (as the prophets frequently spoke of it) adultery and idolatry.” A second meaning is faith as trust. …to have faith in God is to trust God. We see the meaning of faith as trust most clearly by considering its opposite: anxiety. … To the extent that we are anxious, we lack faith in God; growth in faith means becoming more trustful of the one in whom we live and move and have our being. BELIEF A third meaning is faith as belief. Faith does involve belief but only in a very general sense: namely, the belief that there’s something to all of this. Faith as belief does not mean believing a particular set of doctrines or biblical statements to be true, regardless of their intelligibility or persuasiveness. But faith does involve believing enough to respond. The Hebrews in Egypt had to respond to the liberating act of God or they would have remained slaves; they had to believe enough to think that it was worthwhile to leave Egypt. But obviously what they believed was not a set of doctrinal claims or propositions; rather, they believed God. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew, pp. 169-170 God as “You” The problem isn’t really whether to use “he,” “she,” or “it”; rather, the problem is using third-person language for God. When do we use third-person language to talk about somebody? When she or he isn’t there. Third-person language implies absence. But if God is second-person language—God as “You.” God is “the you” in our midst, who knows us already and who yearns to be known by us. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew, p. 50 The Exclamation of God In the Jewish tradition, the prohibition against graven images of God makes …the point. It is not simply that one should not make a statue or physical image of God. Rather it means that God is beyond all images, physical and mental. Martin Buber’s understanding of the origin of the divine name Yahweh is suggestive. Buber argues that it originated in an exclamation drawn forth by ecstatic religious experience and means roughly, “O the One!” The most sacred name of God is an exclamation uttered in a moment of religious ecstasy: God cannot be named; only exclaimed. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew, p. 48 Panentheism Panentheism says God is both transcendent and immanent. It means “everything is in God.” God is more than everything (and thus transcendent), yet everything is in God (hence God is immanent). For panentheism, God is “right here,” even as God is also more than “right here.” God is all around us and within us, and we are within God. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew, pp. 32-34 Hatching the heart To use a favorite metaphor, spirituality is “for the hatching of the heart.” To extend the metaphor, the heart is like an egg with a shell around it. If what is within is to live, the egg must hatch, the shell must break, the heart must open. If it does not, the life within dies and becomes foul smelling and sulfuric. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew, p. 114 The role of religion The role of religion in the history of humankind is pervasively ambiguous. Although the spiritual function of religion is to aid the process of opening the heart and reorienting the self, religion can be used (and often has been used) as the ultimate legitimator of self-interest, whether by the group as a whole or by individuals. Groups have often justified their claims by grounding them in divine revelation, and individuals often legitimate their own positions by appeal to religious beliefs. When this happens, religion can build an even thicker shell around the heart. But religion can also be the means of liberation from the self-interest of the encrusted heart into a wider community of being. Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew, p. 114
“Preach the gospel everywhere you go,
St. Francis of Assisiand, if necessary, use words.” About praying: Rocco A. Errico Setting A Trap For God: The Aramaic Prayer of Jesus Counsel & Guidance “God fills the entire universe, for God is Spirit, and spirit means ‘that which is everywhere present.’ Therefore, the counsel and guidance we may need is ever present for us to tap. But, it often happens that we do not stay in tune to receive the guidance we need. Through negative mental attitudes, we tune into other channels, such as fear, worry, jealousy, and resentment. And sometimes we turn our receivers off completely!” Prayer as listening “Prayer is not ‘telling God’ what to do. God knows how to run the universe! We do not need to remind God of our needs nor of the needs of our relatives and friends. ‘And when you are praying, be not babbling like the pagans, for they are expecting that through the abundance of words they will be heard. Thus, do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him’ (Mt. 6: 7-8) So, prayer is not ‘telling God,’ but it is listening to what God would tell us.” In the name of Jesus To truly pray ‘in his name’ means ‘to pray with the same kind of understanding about God and the human family that Jesus had.’ The Aramaic term beshemi, ‘in my name,’ implies ‘according to my way, method, approach, technique,’ or ‘with my kind of understanding.’ Jesus encouraged his disciples to pray to the Father in his name, but he meant for them to pray in the manner he taught them. The answer to praying in Jesus’ name, then, lies in knowing and experiencing the same awareness that Jesus had and felt: That God is a loving parent; That God is the source of all good; That God is for us and never against us; That we are His children; That as His children we can receive all good things a loving parent has for us. Come Holy Spirit . . . Three ways to recognize the Holy Spirit: 1) World widening, not world shrinking 2) Inclusive, not exclusive 3) Compassionate, not judgmental “Religion is a defense against the experience of God.” Carl Jung Be not righteous overmuch, and do not make yourself overwise; why should you destroy yourself? Be not wicked overmuch, neither be a fool; why should you die before your time. Ecclesiastes 7: 16-17 If you oppress poor people, you insult the God who made them; but kindness shown to the poor is an act of worship. Proverbs 14:31 You may think everything you do is right, but the Lord judges your motives. Proverbs 16:2 If you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2: 3 The Meek . . . “The meek are those who see themselves as God made them. The meek are not those of no account, who offer themselves as the doormats of the world. The meek are the humble—persons who have no presumptions, no false notions, no erroneous ideas of their importance. The meek look in the mirror and see only themselves. Moses was meek. Jesus was meek. The meek are creatures of God, persons shaped in God’s image, persons through whom the power and presence of God are with us. You know them well. Persons without guile, whose work is their ministry. Some are in high places, others in low. The meek I have known include one of the corporate leaders of America and a hospital orderly whose life healed more people than all the other professionals with whom he worked day by day. These are they who shall inherit the earth. They shine forth in the midst of God’s world, where they were placed and where they belong.” from Forward Day by Day, April 1996 My opinion of reality: we appear to have a spirit, which is to some degree shared with all peoples. Jung called it the collective unconscious; Native Americans called it the Great Spirit; Jesus called it Heavenly Father; Mohammed called it Allah. We seem to be in charge of some piece of this collective spirit for a lifetime, shaping it perhaps, creating it. Upon our death, the piece we have, the piece we are, returns to the collection of all the spirits, although how and why we don’t know. There is a lot we don’t know, although we learn more all the time, bringing ever more back to the Great Collective Spirit with the passing of each lifetime. W. Wenn Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And the more you become aware of the unknown self -- if you become aware of it -- the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to wake up and say, "Why, that's me!" And in knowing that, you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes and goes, that appears -- now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown -- and so it goes, forever and ever and ever. Alan Watts The Most Frequent Command in the Bible: “Be not afraid!” “Do you know what the most frequent command in the Bible turns out to be? What instruction, what order, is given, again and again, by God, by angels, by Jesus, by prophets and apostles? What do you think – ‘Be good?’ ‘Be holy, for I am holy? Or, negatively, ‘Don’t sin’? ‘Don’t be immoral’? No. The most frequent command in the Bible is: ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Don’t be afraid. Fear not. Don’t be afraid.” The irony of this surprising command is that, though it’s what we all really want to hear, we have as much difficulty, if not more, in obeying this command as any other. We all cherish fear so closely that we find we can’t shed it even when we’re told to do so.’ . . . Can you imagine living a normal, wise, responsible life without the nagging sense that everything is about to go horribly wrong, that you may have made it through the last day, or week, but that this was simply a happy accident, since the universe is basically unfriendly and Murphy’s Law will take revenge later or, more likely, sooner? That is how most people live.” “To that condition the gospel of Jesus comes with bad news and good news. The good news: there is just one command this time, not even ten. The bad news: this one command tells you not to be afraid, and we haven’t a clue how to obey it. We don’t like fear, but it’s the air we breathe. We don’t know any other way to live. This, actually, is why people imagine God as a God who is always giving orders and getting cross with people. We project our fears, yes, and our hatred, upon to the creator of the universe; we call this object, this idol, ‘God’; and we are afraid of, and resent, the God we have thus made in our own mirror-image.” N.T. Wright Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached completion in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. 1 John, chapter 4 Frightened of the Life of God “God gives his life to men in symbols and sacraments, but if that life is to be truly lively, it will not stay confined in those forms or in any others. It will use forms; it will express itself in forms; but it will not be held in forms. “Herein is the great difficulty in passing from the symbol and the idea to God himself. It is that God is pure life, and we are terrified of such life because we cannot hold it or possess it, and we do not know what it will do to us. ‘It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ Therefore we are always trying to possess God. It may be in some state of exalted feeling, or perhaps in some neat little theological formula, or even in a ritual act which we can perform – or leave alone. In just the same way we are always hanging on grimly to our own lives, protecting ourselves with all kinds of conventions, securities, habit-mechanisms, prejudices and hopes. The more sedulously we avoid death, the more certainly we avoid life. We are scared stiff to awaken to the truth that we are being swept along by the life of God as in a mighty torrent; that it sweeps us away from our possessions and our very selves to carry us out to the ocean of God himself. There we cling desperately to floating logs or swim with all our might against the stream, not seeing that this effects nothing but our own discomfort and exhaustion.” Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit, c. 1947 We are punished by our sins, not for them. “All shall be well,
The Lord, speaking to Dame Julian of Norwichand all manner of things shall be well.” “It
behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall
be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-c.1429) Christian failure; Christian nation “Either Christianity is a failure, or those who have undertaken to expound it have failed in doing so. Until our warriors are disarmed and our armies disbanded, we have not the right to call ourselves a Christian nation.” Leo Tolstoy Hypocrisy “Not without good reason was Christ’s only harsh and threatening reproof directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy. It is not theft nor robbery nor murder nor fornication, but falsehood, the special falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes them and makes them vindictive, destroys all distinction between right and wrong in their conscience, deprives them of what is the true meaning of all real human life, and debars them from all progress toward perfection. Those who do evil through ignorance of the truth provoke sympathy with their victims and repugnance for their actions, they do harm only to those they attack; but those who know the truth and do evil masked by hypocrisy, injure themselves and their victims, and thousands of other men as well who are led astray by the falsehood with which the wrongdoing is disguised.” Leo Tolstoy The Fundamental Truth “We know and cannot escape knowing the fundamental truth of the Christian doctrine, that we are all sons of one Father, wherever we may live and whatever language we may speak; we are all brothers and are subject to the same law of love implanted by our common Father in our hearts. Whatever the opinions and degree of education of a man of today, whatever his shade of liberalism, whatever his school of philosophy, or of science, or of economics, however ignorant or superstitious he may be, every man of the present day knows that all men have an equal right to life and the goods things of life, and that one set of people are no better nor worse than another, that all are equal. Everyone knows this, beyond doubt; everyone feels it in his whole being. Yet at the same time everyone sees all round him the division of men into two castes – the one, laboring, oppressed, poor and suffering, the other idle, oppressing, luxurious, and profligate. And everyone not only sees this, but voluntarily or involuntarily, in one way or another, he takes part in maintaining this distinction which his conscience condemns. And he cannot help suffering from the consciousness of this contradiction.” Leo Tolstoy God speaks: you are beautiful “I know you. I created you. I have loved you from your mother’s womb. You have fled—as you know—from my love, but I love you nevertheless and not-the-less however far you flee. It is I who sustains your very power of fleeing, and I will never finally let you go. I accept you as you are. You are forgiven. I know all your sufferings. I have always known them. Far beyond your understanding, when you suffer, I suffer. "I also know all the little tricks by which you try to hide the ugliness you have made of your life from yourself and others. But you are beautiful. You are beautiful more deeply within than you can see. You are beautiful because you yourself, in the unique person that only you are, reflect already something of the beauty of my holiness in a way that shall never end. You are beautiful also because I, and I alone, see the beauty you shall become. Through the transforming power of my love, which is made perfect in weakness, you shall become perfectly beautiful. You shall become perfectly beautiful in a uniquely irreplaceable way, which neither you nor I will work out alone, for we shall work it out together.” Rev. Dr. Charles K. Robinson (1973, Duke Divinity School Review, Winter 1979, p. 44.) as quoted in Scott Peck’s People of The Lie, 1983 The Religious Life “The position of the man who has entered on the religious life is that evil, error, imperfection, do not really belong to him: they are excrescences which have no organic relation to his true nature: they are already virtually, as they will be actually, suppressed and annulled, and in the very process of being annulled they become the means of spiritual progress. Though he is not exempt from temptation and conflict, [yet] in that inner sphere in which his true life lies, the struggle is over, the victory already achieved. It is not a finite but an infinite life which the spirit lives. Every pulse-beat of its [existence] is the expression and realization of the life of God.” John Caird, quoted by William James God be in my head, and in my understanding; God be in mine eyes, and in my looking; God be in my mouth, and in my speaking; God be in my heart, and in my thinking; God be at mine end, and at my departing. Episcopal (Anglican) hymnal Wisdom from above Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. Book of James, chapter 3 Disturb us, Lord … Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well-pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; when having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build the new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim. Stir us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas, where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes, and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope and love. ---- Robert L. Darwell You never enjoy the world aright … You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars, and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world; and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God as misers do in gold, and kings in scepters, you cannot enjoy the world. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your own walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you cannot enjoy the world. Thomas Trahern What is God like? Years ago the Anglican missionary scholar, Stephen Neill, was asked to write a book on the doctrine of God to explain the Christian faith to Hindu scholars and to do it in language simple enough for Indian peasants to understand. Not an easy assignment when you consider that most of our theology is written in the abstract philosophical language of Western culture, for people who already know and accept the story of the Bible. What can you honestly say to Hindus -- or anyone else-- about what God is like? Bishop Neill found the answer in the first Epistle of John and his book, The Christian’s God, is basically an exposition of John’s description of God as light. John reduced his personal experience of God in Christ -- everything he had heard, seen and touched -- to one sentence: “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” And he summarized all religion in one word, “fellowship”-- fellowship between God and humanity and among all human beings. Because God burns with the pure light of love, there is nothing to fear in him, and those who are brought into his fellowship burn, as St. John did, to share it with others. Charity & Love & the truly God-fearing man Love of humanity is more than charity. The value of charity lies only in love, which lives in it. Love surpasses charity in three respects: Charity touches only a man’s money; love touches the man himself. Charity is only for the poor; love is for both poor and rich. Charity is only for the living; love is for both living and dead. Love without reproof of error is no love. He who judges his neighbor leniently will himself be judged leniently by God. Let man always be intelligent and affable in his God-fearing. Let him answer softly, curb his wrath and let him live in peace with his brethren and his kin and with every man, yes, even with the pagan on the street, in order that he be beloved in heaven and on earth, and be acceptable to all men. The kindly man is the truly God-fearing man.” The Talmud God in need of man “To be is to stand for, and what human beings stand for is the great mystery of being God’s partner. God is in need of human beings.” Rabbi Abraham Heschel The Divine Will “Mass infections are greater than man. [In times of such infections], turn the eye of consciousness within to see what is there … see what you can do in small ways … What lies beyond is newspaper mythology … What is important and meaningful to my life is that I shall live as fully as possible to fulfill the divine will within me. This task gives me so much to do that I have no time for any other. “Let me point out that if we were all to live in this way we would need no armies, no police, no diplomacy, no politics, no banks. We would have a meaningful life and not what we have now – madness.” Carl Jung
“Wytt it wele, loue was His menyng.”
(“Know it well, love was His meaning.”)
Julian of Norwich, 1342 – 1416 The message of Jesus “Jesus may have been an illiterate peasant (Crossan, Horsley, et al.) or a relatively learned member of the middle class (Koester, Brown, et al.); we do not know. He may have been an apocalyptist or a magician (M. Smith), a ‘wisdom sage’ or a self-styled prophet. Scholars disagree on what to emphasize. But the essential message of Jesus – despite all questions of sources, sayings, oral and written traditions, and situations of Gospel composition – comes through every aspect of the communal memory with ringing eloquence. That message is love.” James Carroll, Constantin’s Sword "By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we learn truth.” and now some critical thoughts:
Jesus tried to point the way to God,
WWbut somehow we ended up worshiping his finger. The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it. Religious ideas are like words – of little use, and often misleading, unless you know the concrete realities to which they refer. The word “water” is a useful means to communication amongst those who know water. The same is true of the word and the idea called “God.” Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, p. 23 Forgotten Symbols “Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.” Joyce Carol Oates The Boss’s Son . . . “…the Gospel has been obscured and muffled almost from the beginning. For Jesus was presumably trying to say that our consciousness is the divine spirit, “the light which enlightens every one who comes into the world,” and which George Fox, founder of the Quakers, called the Inward Light. But the Church, still bound to the image of God as the King of kings, couldn’t accept this Gospel. It adopted a religion about Jesus instead of the religion of Jesus. It kicked him upstairs and put him in the privileged and unique position of being the Boss’s son, so that, having this unique advantage, his life and example became useless to everyone else. The individual Christian must not know that his own “I am” is the one that existed before Abraham. In this way, the Church institutionalized and made a virtue of feeling chronic guilt for not being as good as Jesus. It only widened the alienation, the colossal difference, which monotheism put between man and God.” Alan Watts Jesus vs. the Bible “Thus, we reach the seeming paradox that you cannot at once idolize the Bible and embody the spirit of Jesus. He twitted the Pharisees as today he would twit the fundamentalists: “You search the Scriptures daily, for in them you think you have life.” “The religion of Jesus was to trust life, both as he felt it in himself and as he saw it around him.” Alan Watts Faith vs. Belief The more deceptive idols are not images of wood and stone but are constructed of words and ideas – mental images of God. Faith is openness and a trusting attitude to truth and reality, whatever it may turn out to be. This is a risky and adventurous state of mind. Belief, in the religious sense, is the opposite of faith – because it is a fervent wishing or hope, a compulsive clinging to the idea that the universe is arranged and governed in such and such a way. Belief is holding to a rock; faith is learning how to swim—and this whole universe swims in boundless space. Alan Watts Other images of God There have been other images of God than the Father-Monarch: the cosmic Mother; the inmost Self (disguised as all living beings), as in Hinduism; the indefinable Tao, the flowing energy of the universe, as among the Chinese; or no image at all, as with the Buddhists, who are not strictly atheists but who feel that the ultimate reality cannot be pictured in any way – and, what is more, that not picturing it is a positive way of feeling it directly, beyond symbols and images. Alan Watts Atheism in the name of God Atheism in the name of God is an abandonment of all religious beliefs, including atheism, which in practice is the stubbornly held idea that the world is a mindless mechanism. Atheism in the name of God is giving up the attempt to make sense of the world in terms of any fixed idea or intellectual system. It is becoming again as a child and laying oneself open to reality as it is actually and directly felt, experiencing it without trying to categorize, identify or name it. Alan Watts The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes...The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession -- and take the credit for the correction. During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.....There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain. Mark Twain "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice, Europe and Elsewhere” NOT-SO-PLAIN BOOK “Call it intellectual snobbery if you will, but although the books of the Bible might have been ‘plain words for plain people’ in the days of Isaiah and Jesus, an uneducated and uninformed person who reads them today, and takes them as the literal Word of God, will become a blind and confused bigot.” Alan Watts |