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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Category: RE-post

It is what it is? 2022

George 2 Comments

Recently I perused some older posts and found several that seemed as relevant now as when I originally wrote them. This one from 2008 is a good example.

I am always trying to find ways to explain how I think and see the world differently than I did years ago.

As I sat waiting for an orientation class to begin, the television was tuned to an educational channel and the program was a GED preparation math class. The teacher was trying to explain math concepts. He explained that a number, for example the number 5, is more than just a 5. You could say that 5 is 5 and that what it is.
But in reality 5 is infinitely more than just 5. Five is not only 5 it is 2.5×2 = 15/5 = 37-32 = 6-1 = 7.4389 – 2.4389 = ad infinitum .
Yes, they are all 5 but 5 is more than just 5. I can’t explain all the math concepts in the illustration but for me it was a great way to illustrate how my thinking and ultimately my view of the world have changed.
My former way of thinking was when I saw 5, it was 5 and that was what it was.
Somewhere along the line I realized that not only is 5 … 5, it is 2.5×2 and 15/5 and much more. Things I viewed so narrowly, I now realize the endless possibilities that exist in in how they are seen and understood.
Creation reflects the infinite nature of the Creator.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

A Glimpse in the Mirror

George 1 Comment

The COVID-19 pandemic has afforded me opportunity to peruse old files. I came across a letter I wrote to our Bible Study group in Louisville before we moved to Wilmore. Its message is a timely reminder.

As you probably know, I listen to a lot of sermons and lectures. I’m concerned that I may be a “cognitive behaviorist”. I ran across that term in a book that I just finished. I posted a comment on my blog about it. Here is what I posted:

Occasionally, I look at the mirror and get a glimpse of what I really look like and it isn’t always a pleasant experience. I would prefer to see myself in my mind’s eye. This morning as I was reading Scot McKnight’s “A Community Called Atonement”. As he addressed impediments to the atoning role scripture plays in the life of the church, I had a “glimpse in the mirror” experience. The subject was “cognitive behaviorist”.

“… cognitive behaviorists teach that if we get things right in our mind we will behave accordingly. With respect to spiritual formation … the theory goes like this: the more Bible we learn, the better Christian we should be; the more theology we grasp, the better we will live. … But we need to make this clear: knowing more Bible doesn’t necessarily make me a better Christian. I have hung around enough nasty Bible scholars and enough mean-spirited pastors to know that knowing the Bible does not inevitably create a better Christian. And I’ve known plenty of loving Christians who don’t know the difference Matthew and John, let alone the differences between Kings and Chronicles”

The cognitive behaviorist approach denies a biblical theory of the Eikon [that humans are created in the image of God]  We are made as Eikons, we cracked the Eikon (through our will), and the resolution of the problem of cracked Eikons is not simply through the mind. It is through the will, the heart, the mind and the soul – and the body, too. No matter how much Bible we know, we will not be changed until we give ourselves over to what Augustine called “faith seeking understanding”. The way of Jesus is personal, and it is relational, and it is through the door of loving God and loving others. The mind is a dimension of our love of God (heart, soul, mind, and strength), but it is not the only or even the first door to open.

I share that with you because I may have communicated in some way that knowing the Bible is all we need to be Christ followers. Knowing the Bible is important, but as stated above, it is not he only thing. Personally, I am trying to develop other dimensions of my relationship with Christ, my will, heart, soul, and body. Spiritual formation is not just about knowing the Bible. I would like to discuss this further when we get together.

Spirituality of the River (2008)

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Dr. Erland Waltner at age eighty quoted in Dissent Discipleship:

During the last decade of my life … I have sensed I am in transition on my experience of God …For many years my time with God was something like a quick stop while driving on a long and sometimes rough road … a pit stop in the Indianapolis 500 when drivers stop to refuel, to check tires, to watch for possible trouble ahead before hurrying back to fast lane as quickly as possible. I called mine a “spirituality of the road.”

Now I am beginning to see my relationship with God as being like a river which helps me get from here to there, to carry me along from day to day, from task to task, from one experience to the next. I am experiencing God as One who is not only daily present with me, but One who is in motion, bearing me up, sustaining, renewing, enabling me.

Spirituality of the river asks for a higher kind of trusting of in God, a deeper kind of love, a profound hope to be carried on by this river.

My Catholic Roots – Re-post 2008

George 0 Comments

The Church written by Hans Kung has been an important influence in my understanding of the nature and character of the church. There is a great deal of irony in that. Kung is a radical Catholic theologian. I was introduced to the book as an assigned reading by Dr. Ferguson in his “Church of Christ” class at Abilene Christian College (1972). Kung’s criticism of the Catholic Church revealed surprising parallels and similarities between the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ. Reading Kung was eye-opening for me, not only in his views of the church but in the very fact that he was Catholic.

Could it be possible that a Catholic had truthful understandings, not only about the nature and character of the church but also God? A radical and challenging idea for a person who was raised to believe that Catholics and the Catholic church were about as far from truth as you could be and not be classified as non-Christian. It began to occur to me that perhaps I should begin to read outside of writings by “the brotherhood”.

The continuing relevancy of Kung’s writing for me is evidence in the following quote from an early chapter:

It seems to be far from straightforward or without dangers for the church to reflect seriously on the Gospel of Christ. Has it the right to appeal to the words of Jesus? Is it really founded on his Gospel? Or is it merely a substitute phenomenon, making do in place of something much greater which, despite Jesus’ proclamation, has yet to come into being? It would do nothing but harm to the Church if questions like these, which are admittedly awkward ones and have never been adequately aired, were to be dismissed as stemming from the ill-will of critical exegetes and historians, who challenge an uncritical and unhistorical ecclesiological dogmatism which naively defends the staus quo. Surely these questions indicate a fundamental longing for the origins of Christianity, for the discovery of what Jesus really intended? What did Jesus really intend? Did he simply intend the Church we have today? Is the Church we have really backed up – in its essentials, not in the inessentials – by the message of Christ? Or is it not proudly basing the justification for its existence on the words of someone who would have opposed it from the start, just as he opposed the Jewish temple clergy and the theology of the scribes? Many people today must have the impression that the Church is a prisoner, so to speak, of its own history and traditions, of its own ideas and laws. All too often it seems to be defending itself against the words of Jesus and the un-compromising challenge of his message. To many people the Church’s frequent talk of “tradition” merely suggests it is afraid to investigate boldly and radically its own origins and the original message which brought it into existence; it seems to be unwilling to take serious steps to clear out of the way all the barriers which separate it from the source of its own existence. Does the Church too ask the same question which the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoievski’s terrifying story puts to the returning Christ and to Christ’s message: “Why do you come to disturb us?” There is no doubt that the message of Jesus has had, if not a destructive, at least a disturbing effect on the Church in any age, challenging it, rousing it, goading it into new life; in short, it has always been a “stumbling-block”.

Unbalanced love (Re-post 2008)

George 0 Comments

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these.”  Mark 12:28-31

I have been thinking about this passage for some time. I have concluded that I have mostly failed to keep the most important command. Of course, everyone is imperfect and fails to keep the command flawlessly. That is not what I am talking about. There is another dimension of failure that has characterized my efforts to love God; it is a failure to love God completely. Completely meaning not perfection but wholly … heart, soul, mind and strength. It has been my consistent desire to love God. For many reasons, my efforts to satisfy that desire have concentrated on loving God with “all my mind”. I’m not sure what the “correct” understanding of “all my mind” is, but, for me it has meant diligently applying study, reason, logic, knowledge, correct understanding, et al to show God how much I really love Him. My love for God has not devoid of my heart, soul and strength, but has my default mode has been my mind. The impact of such an unbalanced love on my relationship with God is serious.

A simple analogy of an “all my mind” love for Ann illustrates the problem. I’m pretty sure that Ann would not feel very loved if my time and efforts to my love her were confined to study, analysis, interpretation of, and correct response to every communication and situation in our relationship. For example, she would find little consolation in the ritual of kissing her and telling her “I love you” each morning if she knew that I did it only because it is “a correct way to express my love”. She would soon reject my kiss and ignore my words if that were the case. Undertanding Ann’s expectations of my love for her, how could I be so foolish to not understand God’s expectations, especially when he speaks so clearly?

A continuing goal of my journey is to understand the full experience of loving God with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength, not just with all my mind. Of course, I need not to forget there is the second greatest command, “love your neighbor as yourself”.