What do you Believe?

Science versus religion

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:16:00 -0400

Which is more truthful: science or art?
On its face, this question presents a false choice. Science and art belong to two separate realms. Both express deep truths about existence, but in very different ways. Science uses the symbolic form of mathematical equations to describe the mechanics of reality. Art uses paint, the written word, film and sculpture to depict the human condition and our relationship to the world around us. The scientific method is a rigorous "left-brain" activity. Art taps into our deepest emotions; its creation comes from a "right-brain" intuitive perception.
At the same time, these realms can overlap. The sciences of color theory and perspective have influenced artists for centuries. New technologies, like photography and computer graphics, have spawned new artistic mediums. On the other hand, many of our greatest scientific discoveries were conceived through sparks of creative insight. Astronomers and physicists often use terms like awe and beauty to describe the universe.
If we change the question to science versus religion, however, people flock to either pole of the debate. Some religious fundamentalists close their eyes to the scientific laws that make our 21st century lives possible in the name of preserving the literal words of scripture written down millennia ago by men who had a different understanding of how the universe worked. On the other extreme, scientific atheists look down their noses at those who hold religious beliefs as simpletons belonging to a different age.
The core problem in this debate stems from both sides overstretching their perspectives. A religious worldview that denies scientific knowledge will ultimately be doomed to irrelevancy. A scientific worldview without a larger philosophical, metaphysical or religious system in which to anchor itself strands one like a shipwreck survivor adrift in an ocean of meaninglessness. Neither science nor religion, on their own, can hold all of the answers to existence, but maybe together they can complement and strengthen each other.
Without the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, we wouldn't have cell phones, the Internet, cars, fresh food in our stores 24 hours a day, air conditioning or medicine. Would you fly in an airplane if the laws of aerodynamics didn't work every time? Our life expectancy has doubled in the last two centuries because of the advancement in our scientific knowledge.
Science excels at explaining the mechanics of how our universe works. In centuries past, humans filled in the gaps in their scientific knowledge with supernatural explanations: The sun moved across the sky because the earth was the center of the universe and Apollo pulled it in his chariot. Storms were vengeance from the gods who lived above. Humanity came into existence because a god formed us out of clay. Mental illness was seen as demonic possession. Scientific knowledge has now supplanted all of these supernatural explanations.
But as good as science is at explaining the how and the what of existence, it falls short with the why and the should. Science better describes mechanics than it does meaning.
Not withstanding The Big Bang, quantum theories of spontaneous creation of matter and energy, String Theory and concepts of a Multi-Verse, our vast scientific database still struggles to answer the most fundamental of all questions first posed by the Greek philosopher Parmenides in the fifth century B.C.E. and repeated by others through the ages: "Why is there not nothing?" On a personal level, this desire to understand the meaning of being may come out as "Who am I, and why am I here?"
Critics of religion enjoy pointing out how many wars and how much suffering has been caused in the name of religion. But only science has given us the tools to kill each other in ways never before imagined. Biologists have produced viral and bacterial weapons; chemists have developed gunpowder and ever more destructive explosives; physicists have given us the power to destroy our very existence with nuclear weapons. Scientific advances in mechanical and chemical engineering have made our businesses more productive than at any time in history, bringing us comfort and prosperity. These same advances have also polluted our environment to the point of endangering our planet.
We must also be careful not to overstate the infallibility of the scientific method. Scientific knowledge has inherent limitations. Science is not truth; it's an approximation of truth. Math has a beauty, an elegance, to it. But at its heart, math is nothing more than a symbolic representation of an underlying reality, just as language is a symbolic representation of ideas and concepts. Sometimes, we have a tendency to confuse the symbol with the underlying truth it represents. An ancient Chinese saying cautions that "the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon." Math, language and scientific theories are merely fingers pointing us toward greater truths.
The philosophical limits of math are no surprise to mathematicians. In 1931, Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems showed that an arithmetical proof cannot be both complete and internally consistent within itself. In other words, the axioms of the system cannot be proven within the system. For any mathematical system to work, it must begin with certain assumptions.
Another limitation with the scientific method is that all scientific theories rely on human conception, interpretation and evaluation. The history of science shows that the process of one scientific theory supplanting another is a bumpy one. Twentieth century philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn used the term paradigm shift to describe the upheaval that often accompanies a change in scientific perspective.
The Catholic Church's reaction to Galileo is often held up as an example of the conflict between science and religion. Not only was Galileo required to recant his writings that argued for Copernicus's heliocentric solar system rather than an earth-centered one, but the Church didn't officially admit it was mistaken until 1992! However, Kuhn explained that much of the early resistance to a Copernican view of the universe came not from religious sources, but from other scientists. Bias, preconceived ideas, academic politics, ego and resistance to change are ever-present in scientific and academic communities and often result in institutional opposition to new theories, especially ground-breaking ones. Many scientists initially resisted Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo because they presented a new paradigm of the universe.

Centuries later, when Einstein proposed another fundamental shift in understanding space and time, his theories were also at first doubted by the physics community. In a twist of irony, Einstein himself later rejected the weirdness of the other great scientific breakthrough of his day, Quantum Mechanics. Declaring that "God does not play dice with the universe," he never accepted the inherent randomness and unknowability of what has now become the most tested and verified scientific theory in history. These scientific disagreements continue today. Go to any research university and ask the theoretical physicists about the ultimate theory of existence, and you will hear heated debates.
As crucial as scientific knowledge is to our lives, it is not itself enough. We need a system of meaning that science alone does not provide. We need meaning not just to supply us a moral code to live by in our communities. We need meaning because humans crave meaning and purpose as worthy goals themselves. Religion doesn't have to be the system that supplies meaning to our scientific understanding of the world; philosophy can also serve the same purpose. The point is that we need something more than science.
That science cannot provide all of the answers we seek should not, however, open the door to a religious fundamentalism that denies scientific theories like evolution. Nor should we assume that just because we do not understand an occurrence that it was miraculously caused. For someone who believes in a God-created universe, wouldn't resisting scientific models of the universe be tantamount to resisting God's creation? Why can't our religious theories evolve with our understanding of the world, just as our scientific theories do? Must our religious doctrine be frozen in time from a different age thousands of years ago? What is truly infinite and ineffable will never be fully understood or articulated in its entirety. If we think of God not as static in history but immanent throughout, revelation will be an ongoing process -- one we can and should participate in ourselves.
Many religious systems do not inherently contradict science. Buddhism, for example, does not depend on a deity for its path to salvation. Its meditation techniques are being studied in universities for the neurological changes they produce along with the corresponding health benefits. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, where much of the science versus religion debate takes place, we have modern theologies fully compatible with a scientific worldview. Twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich described God not as a supernatural being but as "the ground of being." Tillich's God is like the infinite ocean out of which each of us is but a wave, arising briefly and then falling back. Process theologians, beginning with Alfred North Whitehead, write of God as that creative power within the universe, a power that is both the source of existence and its boundary as well. They ask us to imagine that we are like cells in the divine body, each having influence over the other.
Atheist critiques of religion, like those from Oxford Biologist Richard Dawkins and Cambridge Physicist Stephen Hawking, are only valid in that they disprove a certain antiquated image of God -- the grandfather in the sky who created the universe like a potter or a watchmaker might and who governs it like a cosmic chess master. If we allow our religions to evolve, we might find that science and religion can complement each other: each may open a different window into reality, just as art and science do.

Interview with Jeffrey Small

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 09:39:36 -0400

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: JEFFREY SMALL ANSWERS OUR QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS DEBUT NOVEL THE BREATH OF GOD
BY RT BOOK REVIEWS, MARCH, 11 2011 | PERMALINK

Jeffrey Small’s March suspense, The Breath of God, received an RT Top Pick! This debut book is plotted around a real historical document from 1887 that continues to be controversial. So we knew we would have to go straight to the author to answers about this intriguing new tale!
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Writing about missing texts following Jesus' life opens you up to criticism from Biblical and religious readers. Were you at all intimidated by this?
I suspected that two of the novel's themes would be controversial: exploring the mystery behind what Jesus was doing in the twenty years of his life that the Bible doesn't address that made him into the man he became and the importance of inter-religious dialogue so that we can understand the influences among and the common themes between the world's religions. Throughout history, religion has been one of the major causes of war, persecution, and exclusion. We see these problems ongoing today with Islamic terrorism and with what I call "Country Club Christianity"—the attitude that "I'm saved, but you're not" that leads to persecution of gays, discrimination against those of other religions, and the relegation of women to subservient roles. By having more dialogue among religions, we cannot only lessen these tensions by exploring the commonalities rather than the differences among the great faiths of the world, but we can also enlighten our own faiths by opening our minds to ideas we may not have considered. Rather than being intimidated by a reaction to these themes, I felt a calling to bring them out into the open.
There are a lot of very heavy hitters writing blockbuster novels based on Biblical mysteries (especially the big one, Dan Brown). Why did you choose this as the subject for your debut novel?
As I began working on The Breath of God in January 2005 and then saw the popularity of Dan Brown explode, I knew that I would be compared to him, but what I have tried to do with my novel is very different than the superficial similarity that we both explore a controversial Biblical mystery. Whereas Brown does a masterful job of weaving his controversy into a plot device that drives his story, The Breath of God delves deeply into the mystical and spiritual mysteries that are common to both the Eastern and Western religions. When I first learned about the mystery of the so-called Missing Years in the life of Jesus, I was drawn to the idea that he may have been influenced by other religions, which is why we can find so many parallels between his teachings and the Buddha's, for example. I was also fascinated by how different and colorful the culture and history of India was, and I thought that alternating the novel's scenes between the American South, India, and the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan would create an interesting journey of contrasts for the reader. The "historical" part of my plot also serves as a mechanism to take my characters on their own personal spiritual journeys, which I hope are relevant and meaningful to any reader regardless of their own religious beliefs.
What can you tell readers about the 1887 document that The Breath of God is based on?
The idea behind the story of the The Breath of God is based around an actual historical event: the controversial discovery by a Russian journalist named Nicholas Notovitch in 1887 in a Himalayan monastery. Notovitch claimed that the monks in the monastery had proof of the activities of Jesus of Nazareth during the twenty years of his life between a temple appearance at age twelve until he began his ministry at thirty, a period about which the Bible is silent, that shaped him into the man he became. After Notovitch published his findings, he was denounced by the academic authorities of his day without any serious investigation of his claim. A few others over the next two decades also saw the proof he did, but then everything vanished from the remote monastery.
What other research was required for your novel?
I spent a month traveling through India and Bhutan researching the novel's settings while I also took classes in yoga, Hindu philosophy, and meditation. I've tried to capture the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells (especially the smells!) of these exotic locations accurately in my writing. In the beginning stages of my research, I read over fifty books and journal articles on world religions, theology, and philosophy. I became so intrigued by my study of the common mystical traditions within the world's religions that I moved my family to England in 2008-9 while I pursued a Master's degree in the subject at Oxford University.
Have you started working on your next novel? Will this one have a controversial topic as well?
I have just finished the first draft of my second novel. I'm sure that some will find it controversial as well! The purpose of my writing, however, is not to create controversy for its own sake, but to raise questions that make people think. To me, religious ideas should be debated and explored. We should embrace uncertainty and doubt as part of the process of learning and understanding. Also, in the thriller/suspense genre, my second novel explores the scientific and psychological basis behind mystical experiences of the divine.
What are your favorite books based on Biblical mysteries?
I did enjoy the DVC, although at times it left me wanting to know more about the questions it raised. I wish that Brown had explored his themes a little deeper rather than only using the mystery as a plot device. That being said, I think it's hard to argue with his success! Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy a number of the books that followed in his footsteps (ones that I'll inevitably be compared to!) but I think that the Bible is so full of mystery that could be mined in the future. However, much of the writing in this area falls under the category of Christian fiction, which doesn't really interest me—I'd rather read mainstream fiction that makes me think rather than tries to preach to me.
When I think about some of the Biblical mysteries that are ripe for further exploration, I've always been fascinated by the apocalyptic literature of the Books of Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New Testament. The imagery of these books is so powerful and has inspired speculation for centuries about whether the world as we know it will end and what that might look like. But only in the past sixty years have we developed the technology to actually bring about the type of apocalypse described in these writings. Also, I find the resurrection stories of Jesus to be an interesting mystery because the accounts of this event are not nearly as clear-cut as many churches teach. In some of the Gospel's Jesus' appearances take on spirit-like qualities because he suddenly appears inside a locked room in the middle of a group of people. In others, his close disciples do not recognize him, even after spending the day walking with him and eating a meal. Other accounts, however, are purely physical such as John's description of Thomas checking out Jesus' wounds. Paul, on the other hand, never met Jesus during his lifetime, and yet he describes the resurrection as more of a visionary experience. So what really happened that inspired these first followers?
As The Breath of God demonstrates, I also find the writings of the East to be a treasure trove of material to be mined for themes as well. Religion has inspired humanity since our history began, and it will continue to do so in the future.
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Interested in learning more about Small's take on the Notovich documents of 1887? You can pick up your own copy of The Breath of God in stores now.

Begin a Christian–Muslim Dialogue

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:30:58 -0400

The current uproar over Rep. Peter King's (NY) hearings on Islamic fundamentalism is yet another example of the tribal mentality that too often goes along with religion. Rep. King makes the underlying assumption that American society is a Christian one. In other words, because certain terrorist attacks were carried out by Muslim fundamentalists, it is okay to hold hearings investigating Muslims in our country to determine how widespread this fundamentalism may run. The flaw in this argument is that it fails to realize that there are millions of (non-terrorist) Muslim Americans who are part of our society. A further flaw in the argument is the assumption that the few terrorists speak for this larger group. Today, there are more Muslims in America than either Episcopalians or Presbyterians.
When I think back to the much smaller, but still terrible, terrorist bombing in Atlanta's Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympic Games, I do not recall congressional investigations into Christianity. This bombing achieved world-wide publicity and cast a shadow over the games and my hometown. The terrorist was Eric Rudolph, a fundamentalist Christian known for bombing abortion clinics. While there was some outcry over right wing militia groups (especially after another fundamentalist Tim McVeigh bombed the Federal building in Oklahoma), our government did not put Christianity itself on trial. Why are we singling out Muslims as a group today?
I have heard some argue that the Quran contains violent passages that incite its followers to violence on the promise of eternal life in heaven. My response to that is usually "Have you read the Old Testament?" Examples abound of military battles in which the followers of Yahweh are instructed to kill, not just an opposing army, but the women, children, and even livestock of the people being conquered.
The problem here is not Islam; it is fundamentalism. And we see fundamentalism and its corresponding results of intolerance, exclusion, discrimination, and violence throughout history in every major religion. Certainly we see plenty of it within Christianity with what I refer to as Country Club Christianity: the idea that "I'm saved, but you're not, because you do not belong to my club." The root causes of fundamentalism are many, but certainly economic disenfranchisement, lack of education, fear of a changing world and one's place in it are major contributors.
Instead of hearings that are already inciting protests and creating an us-versus-them atmosphere, why can't we instead open up more avenues for productive inter-religious dialogue? And by dialogue, I don't mean accusatory congressional hearings. An open-minded dialogue among participants of different faiths starts to reveal some interesting things: parallels among the religions, influences between them, and lessons that we can learn from them. I have tried to engage in such a dialogue in my new suspense novel, The Breath Of God, in a fictional format.
Through dialogue, Christians might learn that the word "Islam" means "peace through surrender." Islam is a deeply monotheistic religion in which God is the ultimate reality and by surrendering oneself to this reality one may find peace in this life and the next.
When we look at the spiritual practices of Mohammad, who found refuge in a cave on Mt. Hira to meditate and pray, to the Buddha, who sat underneath the Bodhi tree deep in meditation, and to Jesus, who spent forty days and nights in the desert fasting and praying in deep contemplation, we see that around the same age before beginning their ministries, each of these founders of great religions engaged in similar spiritual practices, practices that later followers in the contemplative traditions of these religions would emulate to find a connection to their divine centers as well.
I fear that Rep. King and similar accusatory proceedings serve only to compound the problem of religious conflict, not solve it. How can we use religious dialogue to find commonalities among our different faiths rather than focus only on where we differ? How can we learn from each other, taking what we might find helpful from another's tradition and applying it to our own?

Pondering Jesus this Christmas

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 23:34:05 -0500

The house is dark and quiet. My wife and daughter have gone to bed. I just turned out the lights on the Christmas tree after stepping over scraps of wrapping paper, empty boxes, and stacks of gifts from today’s Christmas festivities. I love Christmas: decorating the tree, the time with family, the food, the presents, the excitement in my daughter’s eyes, the general merriment—pretty much everything that has to do with the secular side of the holiday! Now with a little quiet time on my hands as Christmas Day is ending, I’m sitting here thinking about the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, the truth is we have no idea when Jesus was really born. I’ve seen scholarly speculation that argues for both fall and spring births, but the New Testament doesn’t give us a date, or even a month. So how did we end up with December 25th? The tradition of celebrating the birth of Jesus on this date originated sometime in the 4th century, around the time that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire. The Church, however, didn’t officially adopt this day for another two hundred years. Because early Christians didn’t have a specific date in the scriptures to go from, it may have made sense to them to pick a day that had some other significance. December 25 was the date of the winter solstice on the Roman calendar—the shortest day of the year. Sunlight grows stronger and longer each day following the solstice. Picking a day which represents this transition from dark to light seems to me an appropriate symbolic date to celebrate the birth of a man who represents to many the link from our everyday human lives to the divine. There is much imagery in the Bible of both Jesus and God being represented as light, a metaphor we see for the divine in many other world religions as well.

The choice of December 25th also worked for the early Romans because it corresponded with two other celebrations centered around the winter solstice. Saturnalia, an ancient Roman celebration which originated two centuries before Christ, began on December 17th and ended on the 23rd. Saturnalia was a celebration of the god Saturn and was marked by feasts, merriment, the hanging of evergreen cuttings, the lighting of candles, and gift giving (an interesting article here). Many Romans in the 4th century also celebrated the birth of the sun god, Sol Invictus, on December 25th, marking the occasion with a festival (see article here). As Christianity began to spread throughout the Roman empire, it was only natural that the Christian tradition of Christmas would absorb elements of these other popular pagan celebrations.

Today, churches across the world included recitations or reenactment of the birth story of Jesus in their services. This celebrated story, one of such powerful and familiar imagery, is also used by those seeking to poke holes in the tenets of Christianity. Most Christians have probably heard something along the lines of, “Come on now, you don’t really believe that Jesus was born from a virgin, do you?”

What I find fascinating (and, I must admit, comforting to my scientific mind) is how often we’ve seen variations of this same skepticism in a miraculous birth from academic Christian scholars over the past century. Scholars from Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann to today’s Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out that the oldest writings in the New Testament, Paul’s letters and Mark’s gospel, never mention the Virgin Birth. The story only appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written some eighty years after this miraculous birth supposedly took place, when the authors, who never themselves met Jesus, were trying to establish a community of followers. The details of the birth story itself vary significantly in both gospels, and then we have nothing more about Jesus’ life (other than a brief temple appearance at age twelve as described in Luke) until his baptism by John and the beginning of his ministry sometime around the age of thirty (this mystery of the early years of Jesus’ life is explored in my upcoming novel The Breath of God).

During the time Matthew and Luke were writing the birth stories, Caesar was regularly referred to as a Son of God and as a divine ruler. (I should also note that the term “Son of God actually occurs very infrequently in the Gospels, especially compared to oft-used “Son of Man”). Roman mythology, derived from the Greeks, also had many stories of gods impregnating women. For example, Heracles or Hercules, was born from a mortal woman but fathered by the god Zeus. During the age of the Biblical writers, the science of reproduction wasn’t understood. People assumed that the man provided the seed and the female was just a vessel in which to grow the child.

We also can find similar stories of miraculous births in other religious traditions, for example the story of the Buddha’s birth, which took place five hundred years before Jesus. According to the legend, one night when the Buddha’s mother was sleeping, a white elephant spirit appeared to her in a dream and told her that she would give birth to a unique son. The spirit then entered her womb. A crowd gathered at the baby’s birth, after which a wise old man told the people that the baby would grow into their spiritual leader.

These problems with the birth story of Jesus used to bother me, a lot. Today, I can freely embrace the narrative as part of my religious and cultural heritage and the powerful message it sends because I am no longer handcuffed by a need to require historical accuracy from scripture, nor must I close my eyes to the reality of how the world operates in order to embrace my faith. When I read the account of Christ’s birth, I see the metaphorical importance of the creative power of God in the life of Jesus, just as God is also the creative power behind the universe itself (see my post on the Mythology of Genesis).

What is more important to me than the mechanics of Jesus’ birth is that he was a real man who lived in history who came to be seen as “the Christ,” the Messiah. I philosophize a lot, especially about God and the nature of God (see my post, Rethinking God). But as with science, I believe that theologians also need experimental results, observations, to match our theories. I look at the totality of the life of Jesus and see a man, who by the force of who he was, caused those around him to feel the presence of God, a presence that stayed with them after his death. Jesus was a man who walked the walk that he preached; he lived a life characterized by compassion, acceptance, healing, and prayer. That Jesus was a real man who lived in history and in whom the divine and the mortal were united is critical. To me, this doesn’t mean that all of the stories about him written decades after his death by later followers of the fledgling movement must be historically accurate, especially since I know they were written by people from a different age without the understanding of biology and physics that we have today. What is important to me is how those around Jesus were affected by him. They looked at this man and were better able to understand God.

Creation, incarnation, revelation, and salvation are all parts of the same process. In Jesus we see a man in whom the creative divine light shined so brightly that he was seen as divine himself by his followers. He became a beacon, lighting a path not to himself as an end goal, but to God. It is critical to our own paths to salvation that the Jesus event happened in human history (not just in a mythological or philosophical sense) because it shows the reality of the possibility of salvation for all of us. We each can find God; we can connect with our divine centers, with the breath, the nephesh, of God that is reason for our existences, because Jesus has preceded us and has shown us the path. Through Jesus we can glimpse ultimate reality as filtered through the everyday reality of a man born 2000 years ago.

A Rock Band, A Priest, and a Psychologist

Wed, 6 Oct 2010 12:15:44 -0400

A rock band, a priest, and a psychologist.

No, the title to this post isn’t the beginning to a joke that has these characters walking into a bar. Rather, each of these has an interesting statement about the importance of celebrating our uniqueness and the corresponding dangers of conformity.

Last week I attended a concert of my favorite band from high school, who I last saw sometime in the mid-1980s: the progressive rock group Rush. As I was singing along (with a bunch of other middle-age white guys) to the song Subdivisions, the idea for this post came to me. Here is a sample of the lyrics: “Nowhere is the dreamer or misfit so alone. Subdivisions—in the high school halls, in the shopping malls. Conform or be cast out. Subdivisions—in the basement bars, in the backs of cars. Be cool or be cast out.” The song is about the pressures we experience in our society to conform, from the peer pressure we face in school to the suburbs we live in as adults.

Listening to this song, I was immediately reminded of a talk I had attended the previous week by Bishop John Shelby Spong. Bishop Spong described how anthropologists explain religious intolerance as resulting from our human tendency to live in tribes. From an evolutionary standpoint, by sticking close together with those who are most like us genetically (especially our family members, but this extends to our tribe as well), we can better protect our genes from outsiders—i.e. those not like us, those from other tribes. When I studied religion at Oxford, I read Emile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, who examined the religious practices of aborigines in Australia. He noted that each tribe had their own deity (often represented by an animal in totemic form), and that these tribal deities came to represent the tribes themselves. He extrapolated this research to the larger world religions and equated God with society. In other words, our religious identities are tied to our societal (or tribal) identities and vice versa.

In religion, we use the word orthodoxy to describe what is the traditional view or doctrine of a religion. It’s interesting to look closer at this word: orthos is the Greek word for “right, straight, or true,” while doxa means “opinion.” In other words, orthodoxy means the right or true opinion. For centuries the church has defined what this right opinion is, but depending on what church you go to will determine the specifics of what is orthodox. I often use the expression “Country Club Christianity” to describe the “us versus them” mentality we often see in our religion. We can clearly hear this mentality when people start to talk about who is “saved” and who isn’t. In other words, to be in the club you must conform to a particular doctrine.

Throughout history, those who had the audacity to propose ideas that conflicted with the church’s teachings (like Galileo who was condemned by the Catholic Church for his scientific theories) were referred to as heretics. I find it ironic that the word heretic is derived from the Greek hairetikos, which means “one who is able to choose.” Thus, choosing to think for oneself in many religious contexts is a dangerous path that can lead to censorship, derision, expulsion, or tragically even death.

We often think of the US as the country that embraces individualism more than others. Our cultural icon of the “self-made person” who embraces “the American dream” is part of the mythos of our society. Yet the pressure in our individualistic society to conform is still immense. Just ask any teenager about the politics of middle or high school, and you’re sure to get an earful about the pressures to act, dress, and talk like the others. Former Yale psychologist Irving Janis used the term groupthink to describe the phenomenon of the conformity of group decision making. Groups of people naturally stress cohesiveness rather than individuality in their discussions. Groupthink, Janis said, often results in poor decision making because the most creative and unique (and thus non-conforming) people and ideas are excluded or silenced from the group. Much of this silencing comes from self-censorship. Most of us censor ourselves when we sense that the group we are part of is moving in another direction.

Who are your heroes? MLK? Gandhi? Mother Theresa? A former teacher or coach? A grandparent? My guess is that, whoever these people are, they were not conformists. Greatness does not arise from towing the popular line. I’m not calling for open rebellion here, but rather for us to embrace differences both within ourselves and those around us. I hesitate to even bring up the word diversity because it is not only overused, but it also conjures up images of political correctness that can be just as silencing as the conformity of the majority. Instead, why can’t we encourage those aspects of ourselves and others that are unique? Can we find fascination and beauty in these differences? What can we learn from them? In the global and multicultural world we live in today, can we truly live by the words of Jesus (an extreme non-conformist!) to love our neighbors, especially when they do not look or think like us? What lessons can we take from the rock band, the priest, and the psychologist?

Find Your Creative Self

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:20:21 -0400

Close your eyes and conjure up the image of a creative person. Who comes to mind?

Do you see a woman wearing coveralls splattered in plaint, standing in front of a canvas, a paintbrush dangling from her fingertips? Maybe you picture a sinewy man whose long dark hair has fallen around his face as he gazes down at the guitar slung from his shoulders, while the smoke from his cigarette curls upward from his lips. Or you might envision a different man, sitting in the corner of a coffee shop: one with unkempt hair, a wrinkled oxford shirt and corduroys. He might have a drink in one hand and a pen in the other as he scribbles the plot outline for his next novel in his moleskin notebook.

When we think of creative people, we often think of the stereotypes of the artist, the musician, the writer. But creativity is not limited to the artistic world. Picture instead an inventor like Thomas Edison or a scientist like Marie Curie. From the business world, we might think of a Steven Jobs or Richard Branson. The creative visions of these people have changed the way we live.

Now look into your own life. Who were those people you’ve encountered who did things in a novel way: maybe a teacher who generated a passion in the classroom for the subject, not by lecturing, but by having the kids participate in the learning process themselves; maybe a colleague at work who came up with a more efficient way of accomplishing a task. What about you? When have you been at your most creative? How did that feel? Do you have your most creative thoughts in the shower, right before falling asleep, on a run after a long day at work, or on a walk through nature? What do you do with these ideas?

Daniel Pink writes that the American business world today requires “A Whole New Mind” in the way we approach our work. Technology has resulted in many of our routine jobs being outsourced to countries like India and China. To stay competitive, we must embrace our creative selves. Pink implores us to move from our traditional logical and systematic “left brain” culture to one that seeks out innovation, a more “right brain” approach. In this new competitive landscape, those who can think outside the box will be more valued than those who are merely focused on getting the job done. Embracing our creative talents will allow us to compete with cheaper and more plentiful labor from overseas and with automation in our own country that never tires, doesn’t need vacations or healthcare, and works overtime for the same cost. Pink writes, “It’s no longer sufficient to create a product, a service, an experience, or a lifestyle that is merely functional. Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.”

I find it interesting that we often have a love/hate relationship with the creative. Today we laud as genius the insights of Einstein’s special relativity or Picasso’s first experiments with cubism, yet it took years before their contemporaries recognized the value of their work. Thinking back to our earlier stereotypes of creative people, how often do we tack on the negative, while at the same time we celebrate the accomplishments of these types? We often judge creative people as different, moody, flighty, disorganized, troubled or, worse, tortured. In organizations, creative ideas are often rejected as too risky, and creative thinking is discouraged in favor of a known status quo. Even (the highly creative) Henry Ford once said that a customer can have any color car “as long as its black.”

What does all of this have to do with religion and spirituality? In an earlier post (here), I wrote that we can read Genesis as a mythological interpretation of God as the creative source of existence. In this interpretation, God did not just create the universe in one motion (and in violation of the scientific principles we hold today) and then leave it to run on its own. Instead, my view is that God is the creative source that continuously sustains existence. In other words, we can see God as the ultimate center of creativity.

Creativity is one of the characteristics of the universe. The evolution of the cosmos from the big bang to today is characterized by a movement toward life, toward diversity, and toward consciousness. In quantum mechanics, subatomic particles can appear in a vacuum. An apple tree creates when a seed from one of its fruits falls to the soil and grows into a new tree. As humans, we are able to take creativity to a new level. In other words, nature itself (dare I use the word creation?) is characterized by creativity.

For children creativity comes naturally. Children understand instinctively how to play. Creativity is really nothing more than playing with ideas. In his enlightening TED talk (here), Sir Ken Robinson notes how children are creative because they do not fear being wrong. Yet our schools and our businesses educate creativity out of people. We learn early that being wrong loses you points. When you ask a classroom of kindergarteners how many of them are good artists, nearly all will raise their hands. Ask the same question to middle school students and only a fraction will raise their hands. Edison experimented for years before he found the right filament that would work in a light bulb. He famously said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” I wonder how many people today would be willing to find that many ways that don’t work.

From my own experience, I only have to look to my writing to find the close relationship between creativity and failure. On March 1 of next year, my first novel, The Breath of God, is finally hitting bookstores. I began the book six years ago with energy, ideas, and a secret desire to sit across the sofa from Oprah. As someone used to success, the process of opening the many envelopes from literary agents and publishers that began with “We’re sorry…” was disheartening. After I got over the depression each rejection brought, I returned to the book, rewriting and improving it. Then I sent it out again, and received more rejections. Gradually, through this process the book became better. Many times I could have given up. I’ve thrown over 300 pages of writing into the trash. I’ve completely rewritten three of my main characters including my protagonist. All of this has been painful, but at some point along the long road of rejection, I recognized that failure was part of the process of creativity. Now in a few months, the book will finally be out. (Then it will be time for a new set of insecurities. Will anyone buy it? Will they like it? But that is the subject of a future post!)

I find it interesting to think of the interaction between failure and creative growth in terms of the natural world as well. When we look at the process of evolution, we can see how it has allowed for life and consciousness to develop from inert matter. At the same time, evolution has its own mistakes, dead ends, and Edison-like failures. Evolution results in widespread extinctions of other life forms; it allows for birth defects, cancer, and disease. Yet this process of failure leads to life itself.

We each have creative centers that are intrinsic to who we are. How can you today embrace your own inner creative self? Can you allow yourself to fail so that you can reach new heights of growth? How can you develop your divine creative talents and put them to use with your work, your family, or your hobbies?

Who am I?

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:23:52 -0400

In the musical Les Miserables, the main character Jean Valjean sings a gut-wrenching song (one of many!) called “Who am I?” as he struggles with his self-identity. I pose that same question to you now: Who are you?

For many people (especially those in high-profile, successful careers) they are their jobs: lawyer, doctor, executive, artist. Others may think of themselves in terms of their family responsibilities: parent, spouse, caregiver. In other words, how often do we identify who we are by what we do?

But what happens when our circumstances change and we are no longer who we thought we were? The economic times of the past few years have caused many people to examine this question. The danger of tying our self-identities to something external to ourselves is how fragile that can be.

The other day I had a great discussion with a friend who lost his job in the recent recession. He is a talented, intelligent, hard-working, and resourceful guy who will end up doing something great in the future, but he is struggling now with his self-identity. If he is no longer the powerful business executive he was a year ago, who is he as a man?

I faced similar feelings five years ago when (under admittedly different circumstances) I sold my company and left my position as President and CEO. Until that point, I had no idea how much I had imbued my own self-identity (and hence my self-worth) into my role as a Chief Executive. When I was no longer in that role, although I was successful, I felt an emptiness and a lack of purpose.

But who are we really? If we think about it, self-identifying with a job in today’s world in which people hold multiple jobs by the time they’re thirty makes no sense. What happens when we retire, we lose our jobs, or we change careers? Do we become a different person then? Identifying with our familial roles isn’t much better because they change as well: children grow up, parents pass away, relationships with spouses evolve.

Instead, maybe we should look deeper into ourselves in order to find the source of our being. But does doing so reveal something deeper that we can call an “I”? The Buddhist tradition would say “no.” Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh poses this thought experiment: close your eyes and imagine yourself as a child. What did you look like? What were your thoughts, desires, worries? What did you do every day? Open your eyes and examine yourself now. You look different than you did decades ago. From a scientific standpoint, the entire cellular structure of your body has changed: old cells have died and been replaced by new ones. Your mind is different too: you think about different things; you’ve had experiences that have molded you. The neurological structure of your brain is different as new memories have been added and old ones faded. Because they both change, neither our bodies nor our minds can be considered “I.”

In a branch of Hinduism known as Vedanta, the world and we, as inhabitants of the world, are considered temporary illusions. Like the Buddhists, they see humans as finite creatures constantly changing and dependent on the world around them – a mortal and impermanent condition. But where the Buddhist looks inward and sees only emptiness, the Hindu sees the Atman: that which lies behind consciousness, the “unseen seer,” the “unheard hearer.” Furthermore, this Atman is nothing less than a spark of the divine infinite cosmic soul known as Brahman. For the Jew, Christian, or Muslim, looking deeply might reveal the human soul – a concept developed by Plato (and later incorporated into these traditions as early followers studied Platonic philosophy). The soul is associated with the body but unlike the changing and impermanent body, it is eternal.

I find it interesting that in none of these traditions is what we do who we really are. This is not to say that what we do is unimportant, but only that our self-identity cannot be that. By moving beyond the material, the superficial, the most common ideas of who we are, maybe we can begin to discover deeper truths about ourselves – even about the universe around us. Maybe by letting go of our perceptions of who are, we can move past the suffering caused when the inevitable changes happen in our lives because we will no longer derive our self-worth from something which is finite in the first place – something that is going to change.

Faith is not a synonym for belief

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:10:00 -0400

Are you a believer?

Have you ever been asked this question before? Did the question and your search for an answer make you uncomfortable? Did you wonder to yourself what does this question really mean? For me, the answer to all these questions is “yes.”

When I was growing up, I often heard the popular refrain in Christianity that to be “saved” all one needed was to have “faith.” When asked what “having faith” meant, the reply was typically “believing that Jesus is the son of God.” In other words, all we are required to do in order to have eternal life is to believe a certain set of facts about events that occurred over 2000 years ago, and whatever else we do in our lives (cheating, stealing, murder, etc.) is irrelevant.

I struggled with this issue because logically it didn’t make sense to me. Why would an all-powerful God, who created all of existence, care about a single belief we held? Anthropologists would say that for the vast majority of us, our beliefs are culturally conditioned. Is the Hindu raised in India with little exposure to Christianity who lives an exemplary life going to hell because she does not believe what an American who grows up in the Bible-belt is taught from a young age? What happens when an article of faith (for example, that God created the world in 6 days 6000 years ago) contradicts what we know from other disciplines like science, history, and archaeology?

The more I thought about this issue, the more it seemed that the formula of “believe in the doctrine of XYZ” and “you will be saved” was little more than a carrot and stick approach to encourage people to conform to the doctrine of whatever authority was making the proclamation. The history of politics has shown that this exact strategy has been employed countless times (often to terrible results) by authoritarian regimes to compel conformity and thus solidify the power of the institution.

The modern view of believing in Jesus in order to be saved has its roots in Martin Luther’s Reformation which responded to the Catholic practice of selling indulgences (paying the church for salvation) by substituting the doctrine of Justification by Faith as outlined by St. Paul. According to this doctrine, we cannot be saved by our good works because at heart we are all imperfect sinners – our works will never be good enough for God. We are only saved through our faith in Jesus.

However, as Luther’s doctrine has evolved over the centuries, it has been distorted so that “faith” has become synonymous with “belief.” What has happened is that a new requirement has been substituted for good works. Making belief a requirement for salvation is just replacing another kind of work – the mental work of belief in something – as a condition to salvation. It is trying to bring in through the back door the type of human action and interference in God’s salvation that Luther objected to with the Catholic church selling indulgences.

So what is the meaning of Luther’s justification by faith? This means simply that we are already saved. We don’t have to do anything for our salvation, and this includes believing in a specific doctrine. When we combine this theory with the conception of God (which I have outlined in earlier posts) as the creative power behind all of existence (instead of a supernatural being who judges our actions like Zeus from the top of Olympus), we can begin to understand how we are already part of the infinite and eternal power of being. The “Kingdom of God” is already present and real because it is the basis that underlies all reality. However, we do not realize that we are already saved—we do not experience this salvation in our day-to-day lives. We live lives in which our egos dominate us and in which we live apart from the ground of reality that is God. Using an analogy from science, we experience only one side of reality—our bodies and the spaces around us—but if we were to look at reality at the molecular level, reality looks very different—what appears solid is actually made up mostly of space and the empty space around us is filled with particles.

The path to salvation thus becomes more like an awakening, an understanding, and an experience of what is already here but we cannot see. The spiritual path (prayer, meditation, fasting, worship, etc.) becomes a mechanism to peal back the onion layers of who we are and what we think the world around us is, so that we can examine the power of God within ourselves, within others, and within existence itself. Salvation is an opening of our eyes and hearts, a new way of seeing the universe.

Faith then is not belief in a certain doctrine about Jesus, but a trust in using him as an example of what it looks like to live a God-centered life. Through the stories in the Gospels (whether or not the details are historical are irrelevant), we can understand the nature of God’s presence within the world and what a God-centered life looks like: a life of humility, compassion, love without boundaries, a life which experiences suffering and doubt, but a life that ultimately participates in the eternal power of God that transcends death.

We’ve all heard the expression “Try it on faith.” This doesn’t mean, “Believe me” but rather “Trust me, and experience it for yourself.” Faith is about testing, questioning, and doubting. In science these qualities lead to greater truths, why shouldn’t the same apply to religion? For me, religion is about embracing the unknown and the difficult – a journey of exploration that never really gets there because ultimately I am finite. Faith is about being comfortable with my doubts because doubt is part of my search for truth. Faith is not a closing of my eyes and mind to the real world, to science, to modern knowledge, or to experience, but it is the opposite: an opening up and a new way of seeing.

Understanding evolves and changes with information; it is open and dynamic. The history of science shows us that whatever our beliefs and theories are today, they will probably be proved wrong over time, and we will then adapt our theories to the new information. Yet in religion we often hold onto cherished beliefs in the face of contrary facts. I think we should borrow from the model of science and allow our religious beliefs to evolve with time as well. But we should be cognizant of the difference between scientific knowledge and understanding through faith and religious experience. I view faith as another form of knowledge that is based more on insight and wisdom. It is using intuition as a way of understanding versus pure reason. But it should not be in conflict with reason, science, and experience. Therefore when I pose the question at the top of my blog “What do you believe?”, I do so as an invitation to explore your beliefs, to question them, and to engage in a deeper search for meaning that may mean confronting uncomfortable facts and evolving your views.

The Bible and Homosexuality

Wed, 19 May 2010 17:32:27 -0400

Why are so many Christians offended by homosexuality? Of all of the “causes” that a religious group could choose to focus their attention (and wrath) upon, what is it about gays that bothers people? Why does this issue carry more weight for some people than the environment, terrorism, poverty, domestic violence, the national debt, or the myriad of other real issues facing our society?
For a religion based on the teachings and values of Jesus—love, compassion, acceptance, social justice, and forgiveness—we don’t see much of these qualities in the vitriol that comes from some Christians on the issues of gay marriage and rights or the ordination of gay ministers and priests. Today we better understand the complicated interplay of genetics, environment, biochemistry, and psychology that shapes all aspects of who we are, so why is someone’s sexual orientation a moral issue at all?
I ask these questions not just rhetorically but because I truly have a difficult time understanding why some people care so much about what other consenting adults are doing in their bedrooms. The answer I have often heard is that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is an abomination.
I view morality as the principles that govern how we live in harmony with others in our society. If we look to Jesus’ teaching about the most important commandments (love God and love neighbor), we can find universal moral principles that are as applicable today as they were two thousand years ago. However, the context in which we live today is very different (we don’t stone unruly children to death, we do not own slaves, women are not subservient). Therefore, we should expect the application of these moral principles to be different today than they were then. Are two people in a loving gay relationship causing moral harm to our society while those who angrily condemn them are helping?
A few years ago, radio pop-psychologist Dr. Laura Schlesinger, who is Jewish, spoke out against homosexuality, justifying her stance with teachings from the Bible. Although she has since recanted her comments, I think that the following letter, which can be found online in various forms, written to her then is still applicable (and quite funny) to the debate we continue to hear today:

Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to best follow them.
1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev.1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. What do I do about this?
2. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
3. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as allowed in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
4. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev.15: 19-24). The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there “degrees” of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16). Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your adoring fan

As the letter above so humorously demonstrates, the Bible contains many moral teachings that we no longer heed because the society in which we live today is very different from the one in which the authors of these books lived. Is it not time to add the teachings against homosexuality to the list of outdated commandments?

The Meaning of the Resurrection

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:58:24 -0400

A recent poll found that “fewer than half of Americans mentioned Jesus' death and resurrection when asked about the significance of Easter.” (poll) Yet the key event that defines Christianity is neither the life nor teachings of Jesus, but rather it is this strange event that happened after his death: the resurrection. What exactly does resurrection mean? Are we supposed to believe that a dead man came back to life 2000 years ago?

Many sermons in churches declare clearly that Jesus physically rose from the dead, in the sense that his same body was reanimated. The Bible, however, is much less clear on the details of the resurrection. Mark, the oldest Gospel, ends with the mystery of an empty tomb with no appearances by Jesus. In the other Gospels, we have various confusing and conflicting details about the resurrection appearances: in some Jesus is not recognized, even after former disciples have followed him on a road and eaten with him; in other appearances he takes on ghost/spirit-like qualities by suddenly appearing in and then disappearing from locked rooms. Paul’s visionary experience of Jesus is the earliest recorded one we have, as well as the only first-hand account (his letters were written 20 years after the death of Jesus, versus Mark which was 40 years after the crucifixion). Paul never met Jesus during Jesus’ life. His experience of the resurrection was in a vision on the road to Damascus, yet Paul classifies this vision as the same in character and importance as Jesus’ other appearances.

Without this strange experience of the resurrection, whatever it actually was, we would not have Christianity as a religion. Some scholars argue that the resurrection was either a mass hallucination or that the story was simply made up by Jesus’ followers after the death of the man who was supposed to be their Messiah. But would these men have given up their lives in martyrdom if that were the case? Would a pure fiction have the power to sustain a movement that would become the Christian religion?

Is it possible, however, that something deeply spiritual happened, but that something was not a supernatural reanimation of the corpse that was Jesus, which would violate our laws of science and which is hard to reconcile with the details of the stories mentioned above? Furthermore, maybe this spiritual event held (and most important, still holds) a powerful metaphorical message about our relationship to the divine.

What if the experience of Jesus was one in which his followers truly saw the power of God within a man to an extent that they had never encountered before? If we see God as the ground of our being (instead of a supernatural being as discussed in my earlier post Rethinking God), then Jesus can be viewed as a unique (but human) man in whom this ground was not a distant source of existence buried under layers of ego, but was the very center of his being. Jesus’ life, his teachings, his compassion, his ministry of healing all radiated this power of the divine.

Jesus opened up his disciples’ eyes to this power of God. After the human Jesus died, what if his followers still experienced the power of God that they had seen within Jesus, even though their teacher was no longer with them? In an age in which supernatural visions and prophesies were commonplace, this experience of the power of the divine that their teacher had opened them to could have been interpreted as if the spirit of their teacher had never died because the power of God never does die.

In my previous post (Who Goes to Heaven?) I discuss how the concept of resurrection is not original to Christianity but is taken from the Old Testament Book of Daniel, one of the latest Hebrew scriptures. The Israelites themselves borrowed and then adapted the concept of resurrection from the Persians under whose rule they lived for two hundred years.

Jesus’ martyrdom (his crucifixion) occurred during an age in which many Jews (as Jesus and his followers all were) believed in a soon-to-come End Times during which the faithful would be resurrected. Physical reanimation is what was expected with resurrection in Jewish context, but the actual experience of those who saw the resurrected Jesus was different: it had spiritual and ethereal qualities. In other words, maybe the resurrection was a powerful mystical (but not supernatural) experience of the living power of God in the world. But as this experience is told and interpreted over decades in a time that expected a bodily resurrection, the stories developed in which the resurrection is conveyed in bodily imagery.

When we examine the story of Jesus’ death and the mystical experience of resurrection in metaphorical terms, we can see in the story of the crucifixion (probably a historically accurate event, though certainly dramatized by the gospel writers) the very human nature of Jesus: we see suffering, pain, doubt, and death itself—inevitable conditions of being human. Yet in the story of the resurrection, we learn that this human condition is not the conclusion – hope exists for all of us. Behind the suffering of existence lies a power: the power of existence itself that is eternal and infinite. This power thus “conquers death” because it is the source of existence.

The powerful message of Christianity thus becomes one of light and hope: just as Jesus was able to tap into this power such that his life was centered on it and radiated it, we can do the same. We can also experience the divine ground within ourselves and within all of creation.

Who Goes to Heaven?

Sun, 4 Apr 2010 12:31:32 -0400

On this Easter Sunday, I thought it appropriate to explore the history and meaning behind the ideas of resurrection and heaven. In modern Christianity, a widespread belief is that the reward for a good life on earth (which can be defined depending on one’s perspective as living morally, having faith in God, or believing in Jesus) is an eternal life in heaven after death.

Does it surprise you that our concepts of heaven and hell as places of reward or punishment where we spend eternity after death are not present in the Bible?

As Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright explains in an interview with Time (click here for the article), these concepts developed over a period of centuries and did not fully take shape until Dante (1265-1321) who vividly described Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell in his Divine Comedy. In the Bible, heaven is the abode of God and certain select prophets (Enoch, Elijah, Jesus) but not us. So how did our ideas come to be?

In ancient Judaism, the concept of an afterlife did not exist. Humans did not have an immortal soul that survived the body (this concept was later incorporated into the religion from Plato). Instead, like the ancient Sumerians and Canaanites (much older civilizations than the Israelites) who influenced them, the Hebrew people believed that the dead went to a dark, shadowy underworld like the Greek Hades. They called this place “Sheol,” a term used 66 times in the Old Testament.

Because there is no possibility of a beatific afterlife, the Old Testament teaches that the rewards for living a good life are its own rewards. In Ecclesiastes 3:16-22 we read, “For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They have the same breath...All go to one place; all are from dust, and all turn to dust again...So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot.”

In the last writings of the Old Testament, however, we begin to see an evolution from the dust-to-dust view of death to the new concept of resurrection. This concept appears in the Book of Daniel, written 168-165 BCE. How and why does this concept appear?

The ancient Hebrews lived for two centuries under Persian rule (539-333 BCE) after the Persian armies freed them from Babylonian exile. The Persian religion known as Zoroastrianism taught that history would eventually come to an end when the righteous would be judged by the supreme God Lord Mazda who would send his Holy Spirit to the world. At the End Times a resurrection of the dead would occur: “The dead will rise in their lifeless bodies.” (Yasna 54)

It is only after living under Persian Rule for two centuries that this same idea of a resurrection at the end of history appears in Jewish writings. During the second century (BCE) Maccabean war, many Jews were martyred for their beliefs and religious practices. During this period of turmoil, the Book of Daniel was composed. The problem with martyrdom was that the traditional benefits of living according to Jewish law (old age, children, a good life) no longer applied. So why should one give up their life for the religion?

This problem is overcome for the first time in Daniel which prophesies an End Times during which the martyrs will be resurrected in their bodies and return to life on Earth. It appears that the Hebrews in this time of persecution adapted the Persian idea of resurrection to fit their own situation. Not everyone is resurrected – only the martyrs (and some evil people who will be resurrected and then punished). Resurrection becomes a means by which divine justice is served. The loyal and faithful who give up their lives will be rewarded even though they have died prematurely.

Jesus and his first-century followers (all Jews) lived in this context. John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul each taught that the End Times were near – in fact, it would occur while some of those who heard them preach were still alive. When Jesus was martyred, reports of his resurrection would have been taken as an important sign that the apocalyptic age was at hand. (My next post will address Jesus’ resurrection in detail).

Also during this time, the Jewish revolt against the Romans was brutally repressed, the Temple was destroyed, and many early Christians were being martyred for their beliefs. Just as was the case with the Book of Daniel, the authors of the early Christian texts were dealing with a strong sense of injustice.

In the Christian view of the End Times (the Book of Revelation), Jesus will return to Earth, the dead will be resurrected (the concept borrowed from the Persians by the Jews and then adapted again by the early Christians), and a new Kingdom of Heaven (a New Jerusalem to replace the one that has just been destroyed by the Romans) will be established on Earth. There is nothing in this vision about going to heaven when we die.

However, the End Times did not come as expected. Centuries passed; all of those who had witnessed Jesus as well as many generations following them died, and yet the world did not end. As the Platonic idea of the soul begins to be incorporated into Christianity as it does in Judaism, the idea of eternal life of the immortal soul begins to develop (using imagery from the Bible) and fully takes shape in the Middle Ages in the writings of Dante.

Just as the promise of resurrection in an immanent End Times would be a powerful motivation to martyrs during the age of Daniel and Revelation, the promise of eternal life in an Eden-like Heaven as opposed to a fiery damnation in Hell would have served well the Church’s purposes of growing and controlling its congregations.

Next time: Jesus and the meaning of the Resurrection.

The Snowflake and God

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:49:26 -0400

WARNING: this post contains rampant philosophical speculation!

What could a snowflake have to do with our understanding of God?

In an earlier post (Symbols of God), I suggested that in order to move away from our anthropomorphic views of God as a supernatural being who sits outside our universe creating us as a potter or watchmaker might and occasionally intervening in history as a chess master might move pieces across a chessboard that we instead turn to nature for new symbols of God. One symbol I proposed was to see our relationship with God as similar to the snowflake’s relationship to the water that lies behind the flake. The water is the “ground” of the snowflake. Each snowflake is a unique creation but shares with others the dynamic element that is the water out of which they are created. Similarly, God can be seen as the “ground” of all of existence – the creative essence out of which we and the universe come from.

I would like to explore this analogy a little deeper. The description above helps to illuminate one important aspect of the snowflake: although each has a unique crystallized structure, its ground is a different form altogether. The tiny solid crystal originates in liquid water that at one point was part of a vast ocean, but which evaporated to a vapor in the clouds. The snowflake will fall to the ground where it will later melt. Although the unique crystal will no longer exist, its essence, its water, returns to its source as the water molecules that made up the flake flow into a stream that eventually joins the ocean.

However, the water as the ground of the snowflake is not all that is required to make a snowflake. The snowflake comes into existence (it “becomes”) through a process. This process is governed by scientific laws of chemistry and physics that dictate how the water evaporates from the ocean and how the cloud vapor condenses, freezes, and crystallizes. This process is also influenced by external conditions: namely the temperature and the humidity of the surroundings. In other words, the creation that results in a unique individual snowflake is the result of the interactions of the ground (the water) with the crystallization process itself, which is governed by laws and external conditions.

Besides the concepts of “ground” and “process,” a third concept is necessary to have a snowflake: the concept of the snowflake itself. Begin with the same water vapor and the same physical laws but alter the environment and you might end up with a rain drop or sleet instead of snow. Even when all conditions are perfect for snow, we do not just get one kind of snowflake. The physical structure of each flake is unique, each is an individual, yet we can easily recognize that it is a snowflake and not a rain drop or sleet because the concept of a snowflake exists. The combination of ground and process creates an individual flake out of the potential for a flake. Thus, to the creative process, we add “potentiality” or “possibility.” A snowflake can only exist because there is a possibility of a snowflake to exist in the first place. The concept of potentiality is important because it not only allows for a snowflake to exist, but it is also a limiting factor. As stated earlier, change the conditions or alter the process and we no longer have a snowflake but a raindrop.

Now imagine again the relationship between God and the universe as the snowflake with the three aspects that allows it to exist: ground, process, and potentiality. In theology, we traditionally speak of the qualities of God in terms of words like omniscience (“all knowing”), omnipotence (“all-powerful), transcendent (“above” or “beyond”), and immanent (“within” or “present”).

I suggest here that we might better conceive of God as part of the creative essence and process that calls us into existence and then sustains that existence. Thus, we can think of God as the ground of existence (the water to the snowflake). We can think of God also as being the creative process or the power that calls existence into being (the process and the laws that govern the creation of the snowflake). The third part of our new Trinitarian view of God is that within the infinite nature that is God lies the infinite possibilities of existence (the concept of the snowflake itself).

God is thus the creative ground and force behind existence, but within existence there is freedom, just as there is freedom in the creation of each snowflake that becomes a unique crystal. However, our freedom is not unlimited. We are products of our environments. The process of our creation connects us to what came before and what surrounds us. Because of my genetic heritage, for example, I will never be a 6’7” basketball player, nor could I have been a Chinese national. I am uniquely me, and I have a great latitude over what I might do with my life, but reality dictates that this latitude is ultimately finite.

Our new view of God, therefore, contains an element of 1. Ground, 2. Process, and 3. Potential. These elements can also be spoken of in terms of having the qualities of 1. Essence or Being, 2. Dynamism or Becoming, and 3. Ideal or Form. Of course, these ideas are not new at all. From the 20th century theologian Paul Tillich we find in #1 his “ground of being.” From his contemporary Alfred North Whitehead, we get #2 in “process theology” (as expanded by Charles Hartshorne), and going back two and a half millennium we find in #3 the idea of Plato’s “Eternal Forms.”

Like the traditional Christian view of the Trinity, this new Trinitarian concept is not meant to be three distinct, finite qualities of God. The infinite nature of God means that each of these qualities is part of the larger whole; in fact, each can be seen as the same divine quality manifested in a different way.

Finally, we should caution ourselves not to take the metaphor of the snowflake too literally (as often happens with the monarchical imagery of God as a king sitting on a throne in heaven). The water that is the ground of the snowflake, the process that creates the snowflake, and the concept of the snowflake itself are meant only to be symbolic representations of the relationship of God to the physical universe. God is not foreign or separate to our universe or ourselves but is intimately connected in these ways.

Sexual Abuse and Satan

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:56:30 -0400

The Catholic Church has a new response to the ongoing scandal of priest sexual abuse of children. Now that the scandal has spread from the US to Europe, with recent revelations of abuse in Germany from the parish over which the current Pope was responsible before becoming Pope, the Church continues its bumbling efforts at a solution to this terrible problem. As tolerant as I like to think that I am of different religious traditions and cultural beliefs, I cannot accept what appears to be an obvious and ongoing criminal cover-up by the Church. Dioceses in the US have paid out billions of dollars to victims in recent years, and yet the Vatican remains as insular and tight lipped as ever, prioritizing the protection of its priests rather than the victims of the abuse.

The Church’s latest response? As reported in Salon (click here for article), The Vatican has sent out their head exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth to address the problem.

Yes, that’s right, an exorcist!

And what is Amorth’s response to the scandal? He claims that the child abuse is being caused by Satan. Amorth says, “All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including pedophilia.” He goes on to say that Satan is at work in our society as a whole as evidenced by the low attendance at church and the number of women in the workforce who should be staying at home with their families. If I’m reading between the lines correctly here, the Vatican’s exorcist is implying that if you women would just quit your jobs and sit your butts in the church pew for a change, then maybe the priests would stop abusing your children!

I’m being somewhat facetious here, but these are his words. To me, the fundamental problem with Amorth is his invoking Satan as a cause of the Church’s problems. By proposing that a supernatural being is causing evil, he is taking responsibility away from those priests who are committing these heinous crimes and from the church for its responsibility in preventing the abuse and then covering it up.

Do I believe that there is a supernatural being called Satan that causes us to do bad things? No. I see these images as part of the mythological tradition that developed over many centuries to explain the existence of evil in the world. (See Elaine Pages, The Origins of Satan). As I discuss in an earlier post (The Problem of Evil), evil is not a supernatural force acting on us to make us do things that we wouldn’t normally do. Instead evil (as well as pain, death, disease) is the natural result of being free creatures. With freedom comes responsibility for our actions. The moment we insert Satan into the picture, our responsibility takes a step backward. “Well, I didn’t want to do that, but Satan made me.”

Why is the Vatican not listening to the advice it gives to its own parishioners when they commit sins: 1. Recognize that there is a problem. 2. Confess. Take responsibility. 3. Change the culture that is causing the problem.

Maybe instead of stonewalling and covering up, the Church can direct that energy into having a real discussion on the underlying problems caused by a doctrine that demonizes all sex other than in marriage and requires priests to be celibate. In other words, act like a church: admit, repent, transform.

Does God Answer our Prayers?

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:57:40 -0500

In a previous post, The Problem of Evil, I address one of the most troubling concepts in theology: how could a loving and all-powerful God allow evil and suffering to exist? In that post, I suggest that if we conceive of God as the creative power underlying existence rather than a supernatural being sitting outside of existence, then this issue takes on a different light. God would then encompass the physical laws that govern the universe and that allow life to exist—laws that include chance, randomness, and freedom. In other words, the process through which creation happens (as supported by God) also results in sickness, natural disasters, anxiety, and the freedom to do of evil.

The question of prayer then becomes the following: will God answer our prayers if we no longer view God as the chess master or the watchmaker? The first step in answering this question is to examine the question itself. What do we mean by “God answering our prayers”? A popular interpretation of this question is that if we want something badly, have faith in God, pray diligently, and if the cause we are praying for is a good one (like the health of another person, for example), then God will intervene in a supernatural way and take action so that what we are asking for comes true.

Some difficulties with this conception of prayer come to mind. First, it brings us right back to the centuries-old problem of theodicy: why would God intervene in some cases but not in others? If God intervenes in the world in a supernatural way when we ask through prayer, why wouldn’t God go ahead and prevent whatever the bad occurrence is from happening in the first place? This philosophical problem becomes most pronounced when the victim is an innocent, such as a child. Also, for every example we might hear of a prayer being answered, we could find others where the prayers were not answered in equally deserving cases.

Second, does this view of prayer not violate the scientific principles that govern the universe? Is it not a leftover conception of God from an age in which people believed that the weather and illnesses were all controlled by God?

A third problem arises when we consider the psychological aspects of this view of prayer. Modern physics and biology teaches us that the world is an unpredictable place. As humans who have a powerful ability to control our environments, we have also evolved a psychological need to exercise this control. How do we know that we are not just using prayer as a psychological tool to exert control over forces in the world that we do not and never will have control over?

Does all of this mean that prayer is a pointless exercise? Definitely not.

Maybe we need to rethink prayer. But first before doing so, I want to make clear that in the previous paragraphs I am not trying to disprove the possibility of God acting within the universe. Certain theologians have suggested, for example, that the randomness associated with Quantum Mechanics allows room for God to take action at the subatomic level in a way that events can be influenced but the general laws of science are not violated. However, even if we can solve the scientific objections, we still have the philosophical ones of why God doesn’t do this every time we pray or to help people even when we do not. Because of the philosophical objections, I find it more productive to set aside the issue of whether or not God intervenes and to focus instead on how we can use prayer in a way that becomes a meaningful exercise without sacrificing our modern views of the world.

Instead of seeing prayer as a method of asking God for something we want (even if that something is good), maybe we can use prayer as a way of opening up ourselves to God. Prayer can become a means of connecting ourselves with the divine ground that is the essence of existence. Prayer can also connect us with our fellow humans and with the natural world around us. (Barbara Brown Taylor presents some beautiful and practical reflections on finding God in everyday life in her new book, An Altar in the World.)

How can we do this? I will address the specifics in future blog posts, but here is a quick overview:

1. We can use prayer as a way of giving thanks. We can recognize that we are not independent, but dependent creatures, and be thankful for the blessings we have. Through thanksgiving we can begin to realize that we have enough, and that our societal pressure to always want more (money, power, sex, material things, etc.) will never bring true happiness.
2. We can use prayer as a method of forgiveness for both the things we have done in our lives and for the wrongs we feel have been committed against us. Many psychologists would say that healing cannot happen without forgiveness.
3. We can use prayer as a way of opening our hearts to God. By quieting our minds, we can open ourselves to experience the divine directly. This experience may even lead us to new conceptions of our place in the universe and give us a way of transcending our own personal suffering.
4. We can use prayer to connect with others. We may pray for someone in trouble and wish them well, without the expectation that there will be a supernatural intervention to make this so. Instead, the prayer for others may be about connecting with what that person is going through, with becoming empathetic with their experiences, and with expressing compassion. This connection with others may be strengthened as we realize that God that is the ground of our being is also the ground of theirs – that we are intimately connected in ways that might not be as apparent without prayer.

Many of you may read the above and think that reconceiving prayer in this way is not new at all. You are right! The themes contained above—thanksgiving, forgiveness, compassion, openness—are traditional Christian themes. I may just be putting a different emphasis on how we think about these in a modern world in a way that is consistent with my earlier posts on how we conceive of God.

The Bible as Mythology, Part 2: Genesis

Tue, 2 Feb 2010 23:21:27 -0500

What can the stories of the Bible teach us about our own experiences of the divine? In my last post, The Bible as Mythology, I discussed my problems with a literal interpretation of the Bible. Reading the Bible as mythology, however, does not mean that all of the stories are historically untrue. Many are, in fact, based on real historical events and people. Others are purely fictional, and yet others are a blend of history and imagination. In this post, I will demonstrate how unlocking the handcuffs of historical truth from the Bible can free us to experience the universal themes present in the stories.

Let’s start at the beginning: Genesis. A source of ongoing debate, this story is often read by creationists as a literal description of how God created the world in 6 days 6000 years ago, forming man from the dust as a potter might create a pot. Atheists like Oxford Biology Professor Richard Dawkins see the story as not much more than a primitive people’s attempt to explain the workings of the universe without the benefit of modern science. On the other hand, I (along with many others, including the early second century church father Origen) read it as a metaphorical commentary on the relationship between God, humankind, and existence itself.

Whether the original authors of these stories believed in the accounts literally or not is irrelevant to how we read them (Chapters 1 and 2 actually present two different accounts of creation, written not by Moses but by at least two authors during the 6th century BCE—one of the later texts of the Torah—who borrowed imagery and themes from the much older Mesopotamian creation story, the Enuma Elish). If we read the Bible as the encounter of a pre-modern people with the divine, we would expect their interpretations to be written in a way that conformed to their cultures and their understanding of the workings of the world, which is a very different understanding than we have today. But the underlying thematic message of the stories can still contain universal truths that hold just as much meaning for us. Just as our scientific laws change over time as we gain knowledge of the universe, why shouldn’t our theological interpretations of scripture likewise evolve?

From the opening lines of Genesis, we can thus see God as creator. But today we might choose to interpret God not as a supernatural being sitting outside the universe commanding it into existence, but rather understand God as the source of existence itself—an existence that flows forth from God. We can understand God as the creative power that supports existence. This creative power was not a one-time event, but it occurs continuously—underlying the space-time framework of the universe, the matter and energy that make up its content, and the physical laws which govern its actions. This creative power is also that which animates life itself as we see with the image of God breathing the breath of life into Adam. The Hebrew word for “breath,” nephesh, also means “soul.” God is thus the center of our being. (For more on this view of God, see two of my earlier posts: Rethinking God and Symbols.)

Similarly, we can read the Garden of Eden as representing an ideal: the essential underlying connection between God, nature, and humanity. However, we do not live our lives in this ideal essence. Instead, our actual existence is characterized by a distance between us and the divine ground that is the power behind creation. This separation (the “Fall”) and our own further distancing from our divine centers in which we elevate our egos over God (“sin”) is what results in our suffering. (See my earlier post on The Problem of Evil that explores this issue further.)

We also see in this story that although God is the creative source of existence, we have freedom—just as the theories of quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and evolution all posit the importance of randomness, probability, and freedom in the laws that govern existence. God creates, but a key mechanism in the process of creation is freedom of the created.

The metaphor of the Fall and the separation of humanity from our divine ground can also be seen in the metaphorical language of sexual awakening. Just as a child transitions through puberty to adulthood (symbolized by the recognition of Adam and Eve of their nudity and their sexual union) and this transition also coincides with both a loss of innocence and a corresponding increase in wisdom (symbolized by the eating of the fruit from the knowledge of good and evil), humanity has transitioned from our pure essence to our actual existence. The question then becomes how can we reconnect with the divine ground, with God?

Rereading Genesis in this way allows us to see both the creative role of God and the human existential situation within a framework that is consistent with modern science. In a later post, I will similarly address the mythological meaning behind the resurrection.

The Bible as Mythology, Part I

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 11:31:08 -0500

When you hear the word “myth” associated with the Bible, what is the first thought that comes to your mind? Do you define the word “myth” to mean that the stories described are not factually true?

My reading of the Bible has undergone an evolution over the years. As a child, I was taught the various stories as if they were actual historical events. As my understanding of science and the world began to broaden, I saw that a literal reading of many of these stories was impossible. I came to view the Bible as myth, by which I meant non-historical stories that contained a moral message. Today, my understanding of the Bible as myth has taken another step. Although I still do not believe that many of the stories are historically or factually accurate (although they may be anchored in historical events), I view “myth” in a broader and more meaningful sense. Mythology is a form of literature that expresses fundamental truths in a way that ordinary discourse is inadequate to describe. Mythology adds a richness of detail and a concreteness to metaphorical language. Now when I refer to the stories in the Bible as mythology, I do not intend to do so pejoratively. Reading these stories as myths gives me the freedom to understand their underlying meaning in a way I never could before.

Why specifically did I abandon the historical view of many of the writings in the Bible I was taught as a child?

1. From a scientific standpoint, many of the “facts” in the Bible were simply wrong. One of many examples: according to Genesis, the universe is just over 6000 years old. According to physics, the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.

2. Also from a scientific perspective, many of the stories were impossible. Within this category, I put most of the miracles. The story of Joshua stopping the sun moving across the sky is an example. First, the story assumes (as was the thinking then) that the earth was flat and was at the center of the universe. We simply know this to be false. Second, for the sun to stop would mean that the earth would have to cease rotating on its axis—an event which would destroy the planet.

3. For many of the miracle stories, natural explanations exist, especially considering they were written in a time when the authors believed that solar eclipses were divine omens, disease was divine punishment, and mental illness was caused by demon possession. In the case of Jesus, I do believe that he was a faith healer and that healing was an important part of his ministry. However, today we can find faith healers in Haiti who practice voodoo and in tribal Africa who practice witchcraft. Many of these modern-day faith healers have patients who are actually healed by these practices. Doctors call this the placebo effect, an effect so powerful that drugs must undergo double blind experiments.

4. Some of the mythological stories in the Bible are not original, but were borrowed from other traditions. The Epic of Gilgamesh—a Sumerian poem detailing the creation of the universe that predates the writings of Genesis by many centuries—contains a flood story whose plot points are almost identical to the story of Noah.

5. The other world religions also contain rich histories of mythology and fantastical sounding (to us) stories. On what basis can we Christians claim that our miracle stories are legitimate, yet theirs are flights of fancy? The mythology surrounding the Buddha, who lived 500 years before Jesus, includes tales of how he healed the sick, walked on water, and flew through the air. His birth was foretold by a spirit (a white elephant rather than the angel Gabriel) who then entered his mother’s womb! At his birth, wise men predicted that he would become a great religious leader.

6. The Bible itself is full of inconsistencies. How can it be an accurate historical record, when the various books contradict each other? Here is UNC Religion Professor Bart Ehrman: “Just take the death of Jesus. What day did Jesus die on and what time of day? Did he die on the day before the Passover meal was eaten, as John explicitly says, or did he die after it was eaten, as Mark explicitly says? Did he die at noon, as in John, or at 9 a.m., as in Mark? Did Jesus carry his cross the entire way himself or did Simon of Cyrene carry his cross? It depends which Gospel you read. Did both robbers mock Jesus on the cross or did only one of them mock him and the other come to his defense? It depends which Gospel you read. Did the curtain in the temple rip in half before Jesus died or after he died? It depends which Gospel you read…Or take the accounts of the resurrection. Who went to the tomb on the third day? Was it Mary alone or was it Mary with other women? If it was Mary with other women, how many other women were there, which ones were they, and what were their names? Was the stone rolled away before they got there or not? What did they see in the tomb? Did they see a man, did they see two men, or did they see an angel? It depends which account you read.” (http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p96.htm)

Despite the above points, millions of people still read the Bible literally. Other than the inherent problems associated with closing our minds to science and the reality of the world, I see other problems in literal interpretations of the Bible. I believe that such a reading limits the Bible. Rather, than expressing universal truths, a literal interpretation limits the actions of God to certain events in history. Yes, there are many rules articulated and lessons expressed, but God’s actions on the world become finite, confined to certain historical events: like the chess master making individual moves on a chessboard frozen in time two thousand years ago. Reading these same stories mythologically, however, can bring forth their universal qualities.

Second, encouraging a literal reading of the Bible alienates much of our society. In an age of science and technology, too much of the Bible is simply unbelievable to today’s mind and can turn people away from the underlying messages. I fear that an insistence on a literal or historical view will ultimately lead to the irrelevance of Christianity. Furthermore, because the stories were written in a different age with very different views on social justice—an age in which slavery was legitimate, an age when discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation was the norm—the Bible can also be used to justify intolerance today.

Reading the Bible as mythology is not a new concept. Two of the early Church Fathers, Origen (185-254) and Augustine (354-430), both interpreted Genesis metaphorically, rejecting literal interpretations. Early in the 20th century, German theologian Rudolf Bultmann called for a “demythologizing” of the New Testament for many of the reasons I have given above. Rather, the movement in many fundamentalist circles today to read the Bible as inerrant (an extreme form of literalism, in which every word of Bible is viewed as true) is a late development from the 19th century as a response to the chipping away at the historicity of the stories since the Enlightenment.

By throwing off the shackles of having to believe in the historicity of the Bible, we are free to interpret the stories as a testament to the religious experiences of people from a different age—a testament that communicates a meaning about their experiences of Ultimate Reality, of God. I understand that their experiences of the divine ground were interpreted through the lens of a pre-modern view of the world, and my own religious experiences will take on a different form today. In my next post, I will examine how I interpret a few of the key Biblical stories in a metaphorical way that helps me to understand the meaning of God.

Learning from Other Religions

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 15:47:13 -0500

Religious scholars point out that a dialogue among the various world religions can help to lessen the tension that religious exclusivism naturally causes, promote understanding and mutual respect, and even highlight the many teachings that the different religions have in common. I take these benefits one step further and argue that inter-religious dialogue can serve to enlighten our own traditions. Some fundamentalists resist such a dialogue because of a fear that the concepts from other religions might pollute our minds or confuse us – just as Satan tempted Eve. I disagree. In fact, it was my study of Eastern religions that brought me back to Christianity and allowed me to reconnect with my faith in a fresh way that was reinvigorating.

As I struggled with the problems of believing in a God that was a supernatural being that looked a lot like us (see my earlier post here), and before I discovered Paul Tillich’s theology describing God as the ground of our being, I read the Bhagavad Gita and was blown away by a description of God that I found poetic, moving, and yet rational. Too often Christianity emphasizes the transcendence of God rather than the immanence, but the Gita shows the closeness of God to us as the source of our existence. A crucial text in the Vedantic tradition of Hinduism written centuries before Christ, here are a selection of passages describing the nature of God:

“I permeate all the universe in my unmanifest form. All beings exist within me, yet I am so inconceivably vast, so beyond existence, that though they are brought forth and sustained by my limitless power, I am not confined within them. Under my guidance, Nature brings forth all beings, all things animate or inanimate, and sets the whole universe in motion… I am the source of all things, and all things emerge from me; knowing this, wise men worship by entering my state of being… Infinite are the forms in which I appear. I am the self, seated in the heart of all beings; I am the beginning and the life span of beings, and their end as well… I am…the mind among the six sense; the consciousness of all beings… I am time… I am…the source of all things to come… These are just a small number of my infinite manifestations… Whatever in this world is excellent and glows with intelligence and beauty—be sure that it has its source in a fragment of my divine splendor. Just know that I am, and that I support the whole universe with a single fragment of myself.”

Translation by Stephen Mitchell

The Problem of Evil

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:50:14 -0500

Why is there evil, suffering, pain, illness, and death in the world?

A classic question in theology asks how can a loving, yet omnipotent God permit evil and suffering in the world? The argument goes as follows: a God that allows suffering to continue is either a) not all-powerful (not omnipotent) and is thus unable to prevent the suffering; b) not loving because this God has the power to prevent suffering but is unwilling to do so; and/or c) not omniscient (not all-knowing) because God only is aware of the suffering after it has already occurred and it’s too late to prevent it. This problem of evil and God’s inability or unwillingness to do anything about it is known in theology as “theodicy.” Two of the most common (and I think unsatisfactory) answers to this question are that God’s ways are “mysterious” or that God has an overarching plan that we can not know.

I find it fascinating that you never hear the question of why suffering exists from a physicist or a biologist. Why? To the evolutionary biologist or the cosmologist (that is the study of the origins of the universe, not the science of makeup - cosmetology!), pain, suffering, and even evil are absolute requirements for life as we know it to exist. Evolution only works because of a freedom implied in the natural world: a freedom of genetic mutation, a freedom of natural selection, and a freedom even of randomness. This freedom led to the existence of conscious humans, but by necessity the same freedom also causes cancer, disease, and natural catastrophes.

Too often in history the human predicament (which includes our anxiety over our mortality, the suffering we experience in life, and the problem of evil) has been seen as a result of our disobeying certain rules or laws or it follows from a disbelief in a particular doctrine. But I believe the problem of evil is only a problem when we view God as a supernatural Zeus-like being. If we instead understand God as the power of being itself (or Paul Tillich's "ground of being"), then this problem disappears. We can begin to see God as creative and living in that everything that is is grounded in God.

The question then is not how can God permit evil? God is not permitting anything other than the creative state of being, which by its nature includes freedom. Freedom is what leads to sin and consequently evil.

God as the ground of being, rather than a supernatural being who intervenes occasionally in the universe, allows for a God that supports all existence as its creative ground but does not make a choice as to which unfortunate events to intervene to change. The nature of existence (as grounded in God) is such that humankind is free. To be free, we must have the ability to do evil, to turn away from God (the true ground of who we are). Thus, the possibility (and reality) of sin is built into the very fabric of life.

To argue whether God could not have found a better mechanism for life and existence fails because it falls into the fallacy of seeing God as a supernatural being designing the universe as a watchmaker might (opening God up to the criticism of being an incompetent watchmaker) or playing with the universe in an ongoing chess game according to some divine plan (opening God up to the criticism of being a cruel chess master) rather than understanding God as the creative structure of existence itself. Thus, the problem of evil is ultimately one of perspective: from a micro view we may see the sufferings that happen in the world, but from a macro view we can understand that this suffering is part of the very fabric of the nature of existence itself.

The Tao of The Gospel of John

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 12:06:47 -0500

I will keep this post uncharacteristically short for me, because I think these words speak for themselves.

"In the beginning was the Tao. All things issue from it; all things return to it… Every being in the universe is an expression of the Tao… The Tao gives birth to all beings, nourishes them, maintains them.”

The Tao Te Ching, 6th Century BC

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

The Gospel According to John, 1st Century AD

And one more for good measure:
 “Krishna said: ‘Never was there a time when I did not exist, or you, or these kings; nor will there come a time when we cease to be. The presence that pervades the universe is imperishable, unchanging, beyond both is and is not. These bodies come to an end but that vast embodied Self is ageless, fathomless, eternal.’”

Bhagavad Gita, 6th Century BCE

(The quotes from the Tao and the Gita are from translations by Stephen Mitchell.)

Throw Away the Symbols

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 22:24:31 -0500

When you pray, or hear someone who does, what are the most common words used to address God?

My guess is “Lord” and “Father.” As I discussed in an earlier post (The Problem with God), using such symbols reinforces our mental image of God as a supernatural being rather than as the power underling being itself (as I propose in Rethinking God). Both terms bring to mind the image of a powerful male figure who exerts control over us. The use of the pronoun “He” only adds to this image. For this reason, I will now avoid using personal pronouns when referring to God. Similarly, I am careful when attributing human emotions and thoughts to God: I try to avoid talking about God’s anger, jealousy, will, or wants. Do these emotions belong to God or to me?

What symbols should we use then when thinking of God, especially a God that we do not conceive of as a supernatural person?

It is certainly possible to interpret the traditional symbols of God in ways that are not anthropomorphic. For example, we can understand God as “personal,” not in the sense that God is a person, but in that we experience God in a personal way, as the center of our being. Similarly, God as a “creator” does not have to mean that he formed the universe as a Creationist might think, but as the ground of being, God is always present as the creative, dynamic force in existence itself.

However, because of our tendency to anthropomorphize God, I propose that we avoid the use of symbols that encourage this mindset and find other fresh ones (whether from nature or science) that resonate better with the modern mind.

I’m curious to hear from anyone who reads this what symbols you might suggest. I propose that we focus on symbols that characterize God as that which animates, sustains, and nourishes life – not symbols that stand apart from who we are and how we exist at our essence. The problem, however, with conceiving of God as the creative power of existence is that this description is vague and difficult to put our arms around. God as a supernatural being is much easier to understand because it is concrete and finite. We need symbols to understand God, but we must recognize that ultimately even our new symbols are woefully inadequate. If God is infinite, then any finite symbol will in some way limit God. We must also avoid the trap (as an ancient Chinese proverb says) of believing that the finger pointing to the moon is the moon itself.

Here, I will focus on three symbols: breath, light, and water. First, the idea of using breath as a metaphor for the divine is as ancient as the writings of the Bible. Breath cannot be seen, it has a dynamic quality to it, and breath gives us life. In the Old Testament the word used for the human soul is nephesh, the Hebrew word for breath. In Genesis, God “breathes” into Adam giving him (and thus humanity as a whole) life. This mythological tale can be interpreted to mean, not that God literally breathed into a figure made from clay as a Greek god may have done, but rather God is that unseen and untouchable mysterious force that lies behind life itself as does the breath. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is described similarly as a wind that enters us. Interestingly, the Greek word for soul is psyche, a word that today we use to mean “mind” but which originally also meant breath. In Hinduism, the Sanskrit word for soul is atman, which also originally meant breath, and which is considered to be part of the divine cosmic soul Brahman that lies behind all that is. In Buddhism, the core of meditation practice focuses on following the breath. It is not a coincidence that the title of my first novel is The Breath of God.

Similarly, light cannot be touched or grasped, but without the light from the sun, we all would perish. Light warms us, comforts us, and provides the process of photosynthesis crucial to existence of life on this planet. Taking the analogy further, consider the relationship of a spark to a fire. A spark originates from the fire; it dances; it burns brightly; but it’s existence is short unlike the fire which both births and is the essence of the spark. Within each of us is the tiny spark of the larger fire that is God. In the New Testament there are numerous references to Jesus as the light which illuminates the path to God. Similarly in Buddhism, the Buddha was a man who lived in history who became enlightened and who lights the path for future beings to awaken to the reality of the world. The word “Buddha” is not a name but a title, meaning “the enlightened one.”

My final new symbol for God was inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s water and wave example discussed in my earlier post (Rethinking God) but is one I think might be more relevant for the Western mindset so focused on individualism. Think of each of us as a snowflake. Each snowflake is a unique individual with its own distinct crystallized structure. God is not a being who exists somewhere up in the sky producing snowflakes because he thinks they look pretty or they amuse him as they flutter to the ground. Instead, God is like the water that underlies the snowflake. Each snowflake has a relatively short lifespan – it is formed by the water vapor of the cloud, it descends (or “falls”) to earth, and then after spending sometime on the ground, it melts. The unique existence of the snowflake is born, lives, and then dies. But the water that makes up the snowflake still exists. After the snow melts, the water from that flake, along with all of the other unique but now melted flakes, forms a river that runs to the ocean. Then one day, this water that is the infinite ocean evaporates to the sky to form clouds and new snowflakes.

The water can be seen as the eternal, dynamic, creative essence of the snowflake. It is not only responsible for the existence of the snowflake, but it links each individual snowflake with every other snowflake – each is unique, yet each shares its essence in an eternal connection with the others. However, from the perspective of the snowflake that is made up of hard, linear lines forming a unique crystal, the idea that at its essence, it originates and then returns to a vast ocean of liquid that is fluid and undifferentiated and impossibly large cannot be comprehended.