Baptismal Synchronicity

In December my wife and I attended a Christmas party for Baptist clergy and spouses at Camp Sentinel in Tuftonboro. We were sitting around the roughhewn wooden tables munching on Christmas fare and getting to know each other better.

A pastor from Wolfeboro asked where I was from. I said I was originally from Danvers, Massachusetts. Because this was a Baptist gathering, I added that I was baptized as an adult at the First Baptist Church in Danversport.

Another minister at the table replied, “Me, too!” It was John Babson, a minister serving as a chaplain in the Lakes Region. I had gotten to know him recently, and I had even invited to preach in Sandwich on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

We began to compare the details of our baptisms. We were not only baptized at the same church, we were also baptized by the same pastor, in the same location, in the same year! It turns out that we were baptized at the same time! Two people were immersed in the Danvers River on that July day in 1973 – he and I.

He recalled more details of the occasion than I could. He remembered me as a large, bearded young man with long hair. (It was the seventies, after all.) He said when I came up from the water I “looked just like Jesus.” My memories of him were vaguer, but I recall another man about my age being baptized that day.

Here we were forty years later, both Baptist ministers serving in the same area. Someone at the table commented on the chances that two young men baptized in a small church at the same time would become ministers.

Even more unlikely is the fact that we are still in active ministry after all these years. Most ministers don’t last that long. Statistics show that 60% to 80% of those who enter the ministry will not still be in it 10 years later, and only a fraction will stay in it as a lifetime career.

This providential encounter at a Christmas party has made me think back on my baptism. I was meditating on it during a worship service recently while we were on vacation in the Florida Keys. The gospel lesson for the day was on the baptism of Jesus.

As the preacher preached, my mind drifted. (I am sure that does not happen to anyone listening to my sermons!) In my imagination I returned to my own baptism. It was the turning point of my life. John Babson said I reminded him of Jesus emerging from the baptismal waters. I don’t know about that, but I know Christ was present at that beach.  

With summer sunbathers watching, two young men professed their faith in Jesus Christ and were immersed at a public beach. Spectators likely thought it was a curious sight, but they have long forgotten it. We have not forgotten. We are still disciples of Jesus and ministers of Christ after all those years.

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Art is Jesus Baptism 3 by Chris Cook. Here is his site. 

Rethinking Repentance

The gospels tell us that Jesus’ message is summed up in the words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” When I hear those words, cartoons of doomsday preachers come to mind - pictures of bearded, hair-coated prophets holding signs predicting the end of the world and urging people to get their act together before it is too late.  

It is not a pretty sight. When seen in this way, Jesus’ words feel like a divinely inspired guilt trip causing me to feel bad about myself, my behavior and my thoughts. When I hear “Repent,” my immediate reaction is to feel bad, which is supposed to produce an inner resolve to be good.

That is not what repentance really means. Repentance is not an apocalyptic attitude prompting a moral conversion because of the imminent threat of death or hellfire. We have known that for at least a hundred years, but it seems not to have found its way into the pulpit or the pews.

At the end of the nineteenth century a scholar named Treadwell Walden wrote a two hundred page book on the meaning of the biblical Greek word for repentance entitled “The Great Meaning of the Word Metanoia.” It became a classic and was followed by other Greek scholars.  Walden says that the translation of metanoia as repentance is “an extraordinary mistranslation.”

In his book “Topical Analysis of the Bible” biblical scholar J. Glentworth Butler agreed that the Greek word carries none of the sorrow or regret contained in the words repentance and repent. The great Greek scholar A. T. Robertson agreed. He says that translating metanoia as repentance is “a linguistic and theological tragedy.” A surprisingly good survey of the misunderstanding of this important spiritual concept can be found in Wikipedia.

Then what does it mean to repent? Robertson says that a better translation is “change of mind, a change in the trend and action of the whole inner nature, intellectual, affectional and moral,” “a transmutation of consciousness.”

Jesus is not talking about feeling sorry, regretful and guilty. He is talking about a spiritual transformation that happens through the grace of God working in our lives. The English word “repent” means “to rethink, to think again.” The Greek word means the same thing – a change of mind.

The Greek word metanoia is formed from two smaller words – the prefix “meta” and the word “nous.” The prefix meta can mean “with, after, or behind.” It can also carry the sense of “beyond” as in the word metaphysics. Nous is the mind or understanding. Metanoia means a change of mind that involves going “behind the mind” or “beyond the mind.”  

What does this lesson in etymology mean for us? It probably means that I have bored my readers to death. But if your eyes are still open, I hope you will see that Jesus is pointing us to a shift in thinking, a transformation of mind that catapults us into the Kingdom of God, which is always at our fingertips – for those with minds open to see.

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Cartoon by Rex F. May, 2010, www.baloocartoons.com 

Cousin to a Porcupine

One of the consequences of being a grandfather is that I get to watch children’s television again. It has changed since my kids were little. Furthermore my grandkids are only allowed to watch TV in small doses, so we choose our shows very carefully.

Recently I sat down with our three year old to watch Little Bear. It is a very cute show. This particular episode was about a lonely little porcupine who wanted friends. Actually he wanted cousins. He asked the little bear and duck to be his cousins. Then he asked them for a hug, but bear and duck thought he was a bit too prickly to embrace.

At that point I drifted off into my own mental world. I thought, “Well, bear and duck are porcupine’s cousins aren’t they? Come to think of it, I am a cousin to porcupine as well.” I decided to do a little research as to how close of cousins we are.

Human beings share 99% of our DNA with other humans. We truly are all brothers and sisters. On a National Geographic website, I learned that we share 90% of our genes with chimpanzees (I thought it was closer to 97 or 98%),  88% with a mouse, 65% with a chicken, 47% with a fruit fly, 24% with a wine grape, and 18% with baker’s yeast. We are cousins to all living things on this planet.

It led me to contemplate the interconnectedness of life on this planet. I have always been environmentally-minded. It is one of the few issues that influence my voting. I tend not to be political,  but I am environmental. This brings it to a whole different level.

Not only are we connected biologically, we are connected chemically. Our bodies are made of the rocks of this planet, processed by erosion and biological digestion. We have literally emerged from the earth. The earth has emerged from the stars. Every element on earth was forged in distant stars. As has often been said, we are literally made of stardust. When we look into the heavens on a starry night, we are viewing our heavenly cousins.

Then there is the connectedness of consciousness. This recently became real to me during our recent trip to the Florida Keys. One of the attractions we visited was the Theater of the Sea, which is a smaller and more intimate version of Sea World. When I looked into the eyes of the dolphins, I recognized a cousin to the consciousness of my own mind. The same was true with the sea lions and even the parrots. I have not stopped thinking about this experience.

We are connected at every level. I am cousin to all life and even so-called “inanimate” objects in the universe. Our ultimate connection is to the Lord of Creation, who brought all into being out of nothing and formed all living things from the dust of the earth. This adds a new meaning to the Great Commandments. To love God’s creation is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. 

Vortex Vexation

Oh, great! Something new I am expected to be afraid of. The fear-mongers of the media have introduced a new character to the evening weather report: the Polar Vortex. Why have I not heard of this before? I watch the weather report. I am not a religious devotee of it like my wife, but I watch the local forecast with her.

Now on top of the jet stream, El Niño, and garden variety high and low pressure systems, there is the dreaded Polar Vortex. It comes from the north like an army invading from Canada. It reminds me of the Cold War scenarios depicting Soviet missiles coming over the North Pole toward the U.S. But this threat brings sub-zero temperatures, not nuclear fire.

I guess the Northeast needed something to excite the viewing audience. The West has its wildfires, the Midwest has its tornadoes, and the Gulf has it hurricanes. All we had were Nor’easters. But now we have the newest meteorological supervillain – the ice monster known as The Polar Vortex.

Yes, this winter has been colder than normal, and it is icier. The roads in town are ice rinks. I came back from a recent vacation in sunny Florida to find that my driveway had turned into a sledding hill. This week has my thermometer hovering around zero. But it is winter in New Hampshire, after all!

As so often happens, my mind finds a spiritual application for almost anything. Is there a spiritual polar vortex? I read an article yesterday by atheist Michael Shermer. He is gleefully tracking the demise of religious belief in America. According to his figures, every new generation is becoming less religious. The younger you are, the less religious you likely will be. Based on this trend, he predicts the extinction of religion by the year 2220. He is already writing the Lord’s obituary.

Does this mean there a spiritual deep freeze sweeping the nation? Are we on the verge of a religious ice age? It is certainly not true of my life or my church. Furthermore I am always wary of statistics. Surveys are yesterday’s news. I never take predictions seriously. I have seen too many dates for the return of Jesus come and go unfulfilled. Predictions tend to say more about the predictor than the future.

My experience is that what goes around, comes around. Religion, like everything else, moves in cycles. Spiritual renewals come with the regularity of spring appearing after winter. I predict that spring will come again this year, regardless of how cold it is today. In fact I will venture to predict it will arrive on March 20. (I got that one from Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.)

The same is true spiritually, although I would not venture to predict a date. Do not fear. Be patient, wait upon God. Watch and pray. By the grace of God, the spring will come. I see signs of it already. 

Unthinking God

While on vacation recently, I read a book entitled Caught in The Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola. It is a study of unbelieving clergy and their intellectual and emotional journey of deconversion.

In other words it is about ministers who “lost their faith.” The book is based on interviews with these ordained men and women. Many of them are still in ministry living double lives, preaching from the pulpit what they no longer believe.

As a fellow clergyman, it was heart-wrenching to read about the pain my colleagues endure as they found their belief in God slipping away. But I was particularly struck by how everyone in the book was caught up in the realm of ideas.

This is true of the authors as much as the clergy. Religion is understood exclusively as a belief system to be intellectually accepted “on faith.” When evidence contrary to belief is encountered, faith crumples.

My faith is not a set of beliefs. I have ideas about God, but they are not the substance of my faith. Faith is not believing things without evidence. When ideas are the foundation of religion, the religion is threatened when contradictory evidence is uncovered. That is what happened to the ministers in this book.

My spirituality is not primarily a set of ideas or beliefs. For me faith transcends ideas. Ideas are imaginary things. They exist only in our heads. They are not real. We in the West are under the illusion that ideas are real.

We can thank Plato for this; for him the realm of Ideas was more real than the physical world. Platonic thought shaped Christianity via Aristotle and Aquinas, which is why Christians can be so dogmatic. It is why a Western philosopher like Daniel Dennett does not even think to question this presupposition in the book.

As a preacher I utilize ideas. Ideas are useful in preaching and teaching, but I do not mistake them for Truth. Augustine said, “If you can think it, it is not God.”  Ideas are mental descriptions of what we perceive to be reality. They are not reality in themselves. When ideas are translated into words, it adds another degree of separation from reality. When words petrify into dogma, they become a substitute for Truth

Faith is not believing in unverifiable ideas. Faith is not acceptance of inherited doctrines. It is not even “belief in the existence of a supernatural being.” Such a god is an idea, a figment of our imagination. Faith is trust in the One who is not an idea. Faith is trust in the One who transcends beliefs. Faith is direct self-authenticating apprehension of God.

The book, Caught in The Pulpit, opened my eyes to the fact that many clergy (as well as non-clergy) do not share my understanding of faith. In my opinion - to use the oft-quoted saying - they mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself. They believe in religious ideas rather than what the ideas point to. They are shocked to discover that their ideas about God are not true, and then they conclude there is no God!

God is beyond the realm of ideas. To see beyond, all we have to do is look a little higher.

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Art by Hugo Espinoza, color illustration of man with a long, "Pinocchio" nose and crossed fingers behind his back. Chicago Tribune 2008.

Forgotten Memories

I received a packet in the mail yesterday. It was from the executor of my uncle’s estate. My uncle Tom died in Fort Myers, Florida, a few weeks ago at the age of 90. He was the last of my parents’ generation. His wife, my aunt Eleanor (my father’s sister), died the previous year. I now own the distinction of being the oldest living member of my family.

In the large envelope were dozens of old photographs. Some are professional sepia images dating back more than a hundred years. I spent the next hour slowly reviewing each one. Fortunately many of them were identified on the back with names and dates. The oldest were portraits of my uncle’s grandmother, born January 6, 1862 and his great-grandmother, born in Ireland a generation earlier.

The photos of my uncle as a little boy made me smile. There he is on a tricycle in the 1920’s. There he is in a school photo circa 1930 with a mischievous smile on his face. It is in a cardboard folder, and on the back are the words: “To Mary From Tommy With Love.” That was probably his sister Mary Lou. There is even a place to paste a two cent stamp to send the photo through the mail.

There is a high school graduation photo of one of my uncle’s friends. There are photos of my uncle Tom and his sister, Mary Lou, who died in 1968, and his mother Helen, who died in 1986. There is Tom as a young sailor and at his college graduation. There is my aunt and uncle’s 8x10 wedding photo.

I only knew my uncle as a gruff old man who seldom spoke. Even when I was a child he seemed like a solemn man. But here he is smiling with his mother and sister, whom I never knew. Here was a man who lived his life. Here is a whole family of people who lived their lives.

Among the pictures was the death certificate of my aunt Eleanor. I had forgotten that her middle name was Vera, which is now my one year-old granddaughter’s name. There was even a photo of me sitting with them at Ames Farm in Gilford, where they spent summers for decades. There is another photo of my great-grandfather Davis’ camp on Bow Lake, purchased in the 1890’s.

There was even a photo of our Baptist Meetinghouse here in Sandwich, taken in 1993 with my name on the sign. They were proud that I was a minister, although they hadn’t stepped inside a church since their wedding.

As I peruse this collection of old photographs, I realize that they are memories. Not my memories. They are his memories. Happy times. Full lives. No one now living remembers most of these people and events. But they are recorded in these photos. 

We all have memories. We are someone else’s memories. I know I am in countless wedding and baptism photos in family albums. If the photos survive our disposable culture, they will become old photographs. Someone’s nearest living relative will look at those photos and smile at the forgotten memories.  

Being a Spiritual Friend

A pastor – at best - is a spiritual friend. He (or she) has many more roles, of course. A pastor is a general practitioner of all things ecclesiastical, the religious equivalent of a primary care physician. (Although sometimes it feels more like an emergency room physician.) The pastor’s most important role is to accompany people along their spiritual journey and give guidance when needed. 

Some call it spiritual direction or being a spiritual advisor. To that end in the 1990’s I received training as a spiritual director by the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington, DC. But every pastor does this job, for better or worse. A pastor is supposed to help people connect with God.

As I see it, the first step in helping people walk with God is to get people to stop running away from God. This idea is opposed to the conventional wisdom of American spirituality, which says that people are spiritual seekers. The “seeker-friendly” megachurch movement is based on the premise that people are on a spiritual quest.

The assumption is that people are spiritually searching. They are inwardly driven to look for purpose, truth, and meaning. They search inwardly and outwardly, in religion and spirituality, in Eastern Religion, Western Religion and no religion. They search in material things and in relationships for the wholeness that comes only from God.

That is not my experience. I think that people are running from God. As Francis Thompson’s described his own life in The Hound of Heaven:

 I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;              

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;           

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 

    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears        

I hid from Him….

People run from God, and they run from themselves. They are afraid to see who they really are and who God really is. That is why we construct religions and philosophies – to protect us from God and ourselves.

People intuitively know that if they discovered their own true nature, they would come face to face with the image of God. It is a short step from there to God. So like Adam and Eve in Eden, we hide from God, from one another, and from ourselves. So I encourage people to stop playing hide-and-seek.

Have the courage to be present with the omnipresent God. Forsake all pretenses, take off all masks, and let down all psychological defenses. Take off the disguise. We aren’t really fooling anyone anyway, least of all ourselves. Certainly not God.

Stop and be silent. Let us ignore the inner chatter which tries to distract us from our goal, and simply wait upon God. That is all it takes. All it takes is a sincere heart and an open mind. If one is honest enough, open enough, and persistent enough, the self-delusions fall away, and God appears … as Friend.