The Tao of Scripture

It is a well-established practice in Christianity to discern different layers of meaning in Scripture. The number of these layers have varied over the centuries, but most often four layers are identified. Likewise the labels for these layers have varied. I identify them as: literal, theological, moral, and spiritual.

Many Christians focus on the literal meaning of scripture. They insist that everything that the Bible says must be taken literally, including matters of history and science. This is the approach of fundamentalist and evangelical forms of Christianity. Their stand for “biblical inerrancy” has them down the dead end of rejecting the findings of natural and historical sciences. These Christians fight lost causes, such as a literal six-day creation and a worldwide flood.

Others see the Bible as a textbook of theological truth, which can be condensed into creeds and confessions of faith.  For these folks religion is chiefly about doctrine – believing the right things. Using a list of essential doctrines (“the fundamentals”) as their standard, they draw sharp lines between true believers and unbelievers, orthodoxy and heresy, the saved and the lost. It is a dualistic approach.

A third layer of interpretation focuses on the ethical application of scripture. Scripture is understood to be a sourcebook for morality. Christianity is about doing the right things. The religious life is understood to be primarily an ethical life. These believers see the spiritual life in terms of divine commands, laws, and moral principles. This moralistic approach leads them to see a world divided between good and evil, right and wrong, saints and sinners.

These first three layers of meaning are not mutually exclusive paths. Often the literal, theological and ethical approaches are combined into unique religious systems that define themselves in terms of carefully prescribed orthodoxy and orthopraxy. This has given birth to a myriad of religions, sects and denominations, each believing they alone have a “biblical worldview” and do God’s will.

There is a fourth way. Throughout history there have been mystics in all faith traditions who have seen a Way that transcends worldviews, beliefs, and ethics. They see a deeper meaning in Scripture. For them Scripture points beyond itself to its Source. Words are windows to the Word. The Bible is more about the Author than the autographs. Scripture bears the scent of Heaven and opens a door beyond human understanding.

This Way sees worldviews as cultural constructs. It sees doctrines as creations of the human mind. Morality is seen as more than obeying laws and applying principles. It goes beyond a relationship with God to know the intimacy of union with the Divine. It embraces dualities as parts of a greater unity. It is not about drawing lines, but abiding in the center of an ever-expanding circle with no circumference.

This mystical Way is direct awareness of the One for which all religions and spiritualties strive. It is intuitive rather than emotional or intellectual. It is experiential, yet it is not itself an experience. It is apprehension of God beyond theism, philosophy or religion.

The Tao Te Ching calls it the Tao, normally translated “the Way.” That phrase is also what that early followers of Christ called the Christian movement, according to the Acts of the Apostles.  Confucius called it the Way of Heaven. The author of the Gospel of John called it the Logos. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, or simply “the Father.”

This Spiritual Reality was Jesus’ sole message. According to the Gospels most of Christ’s followers did not understand what he was saying. Consequently after Jesus’ death the Church quickly exchanged the message of Jesus for a message about Jesus. Thus began Christianity’s rapid downward spiral into secondhand religion.

This Eternal Way is at the heart of all Scriptures. Not just the holy texts of my own faith tradition but all religious traditions. Huxley called it the Perennial Philosophy, but it is not a philosophy. It is not a religion, but all spiritual practices seek it. It is not a theological system, but all doctrines point to it – some better than others. This Way is at the heart of the Scriptures. It is why I love the Bible.

White Jesus

My wife and I just finished watching the second season of the FX television series Reservation Dogs. It follows four Native American teenagers trying to find their way on a reservation in present-day Oklahoma. It has a (nearly) all indigenous cast and is a fascinating – and at times hilarious - glimpse into today’s Native American culture.

As a pastor I found the references to spiritual beliefs and practices particularly interesting. I especially liked that the show did not take indigenous or Christian spirituality too seriously, poking fun at both along the way.

Most interesting to me were the references to Jesus.  A traditional church portrait of a fair-skinned Jesus hangs on the wall of one of the family homes. The teens repeatedly refer to Jesus and even pray to Jesus, always referring to him as “White Jesus.”

That phrase “White Jesus” called my attention to the distorted way that Jesus has been presented in America. The historical Jesus was not white, yet he has usually been pictured as Caucasian in American Christian art. Most white folks do not think this is a problem. We see nothing wrong with having a portrait of a White Jesus hanging in our churches. We like the image. It feels comfortable to us.

But imagine for a moment if every church you entered had a picture of a black African Jesus on the wall. How comfortable would you feel then?  That is how people of color feel when they are expected to worship a White Jesus.

Can you imagine Southern Baptist churches depicting a black Jesus in their stained glass windows and Sunday School material? They can’t even remove the names of slaveholders from the buildings at my alma mater - The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary! That is how tone deaf white Christians are.

White Jesus is not the real Jesus. In my sermons I have often pointed out that the historical Jesus was not a fair-skinned man with an aquiline nose, thin lips, and light brown hair, even though that is consistently how he is depicted in traditional portraits. Even recent film depictions do not go far enough in correcting this misperception. Jesus was a Sephardic Jew with dark skin. He looked more like today’s Palestinian Bedouins than Ashkenazi Jews.

In the television show Reservation Dogs the spirits of indigenous ancestors regularly show up to give advice and guide the characters. One is a warrior who died at Little Big Horn. Another is a medicine woman who walked the Trail of Tears.  There is one scene where a group of ancestors gather around one of the girls. She felt their presence and it brought her to tears. It reminded me of the “church triumphant” and the biblical “great cloud of witnesses.”

In the concluding episode of the season White Jesus finally makes an appearance, played by Incubus front man Brandon Boyd. The teens have traveled to Los Angeles to honor the wish of a deceased friend by visiting the ocean. Their car is stolen while they are in a restaurant, and they do not know where to turn for help. At that point White Jesus appears and guides them the final five miles to the beach. He gives them verbal directions and walks with them.

Jesus is a homeless man who offers to share his humble shelter in a homeless encampment for the night. The police raid the area at dawn and everyone scatters. The teens lose track of White Jesus, but they follow his directions until they reach the ocean. 

On the beach one of the teens offers a prayer, and they proceed to wade into the ocean, where they have an emotional visionary reunion with their deceased friend. The camera cuts to White Jesus on the Beach. Reminds me of the Easter story.

I loved that Jesus appeared as a homeless man, although his use of Elizabethan language is cringeworthy. I loved that these teenage sinners, whose language is consistently “salty” and whose behavior is often illegal, feel so comfortable following Jesus. At the same time they realize that White Jesus is part of the White man’s religion and culture, which is suspect because of its history with Native Americans. Yet they are open to Jesus.

The name of the show brought to my mind the gospel story of Jesus meeting an indigenous woman. She is identified as a Canaanite, who were the indigenous people of the land of Canaan. She calls out to Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus replies with what appears to be a racial epithet. His remark sounds disturbing to our modern ears, which are so sensitive to verbal insults.

Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” Her reply: “Yes it is, Lord. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Jesus then praises this woman’s “great faith” and heals the girl. I think Jesus recognized and overcame his own ethnic bigotry at that moment. Jesus learned from this encounter.

The idea that Jesus may have learned something from this indigenous woman may be controversial to Christians who think of Jesus in terms of unchanging perfection, but the Bible tells us that Jesus “grew in wisdom” and “learned obedience.” In his willingness to learn and change Jesus is our example in the spiritual life.

I don’t know if the writers of the show had this biblical scene in mind when they named the show. But I see parallels between the “reservation dogs” (which is the name the teens gave their gang) and the Canaanite woman. I see “great faith” in both. I see indigenous faith in both. I see a type of faith that White Christians with our White Jesus need to learn from – in order to overcome our racism and ethnocentrism as Jesus did. May we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The Gospel of Ruth

I am presently part of an online Bible Study at our church. I am not the leader, just a participant. So I get to throw in my “two cents” along with all the other two-centers. It is the first time since I retired six years ago that I am participating in a study at this church. God bless the present pastor for welcoming me!

We are studying the Old Testament book of Ruth. Ruth is a favorite of many Christians. It ordinarily presented as a love story about a righteous man who meets a virtuous woman and live happily ever after. While focusing on the romance, the radical nature of the book is often overlooked.

It is one of only two books in the Old Testament that has a woman as the main character. The other book is Esther, which was likely written at about the same time. The Book of Ruth is written from a woman’s perspective. The husbands of Naomi, Ruth and Orpah, are killed off in the opening verses before we get to know anything about them. The other men – except for Boaz – are minor characters in the story.

Because it is written from a woman’s perspective, it is thought by some biblical scholars that the Book of Ruth may have been written by a woman. That would make it unique in the Bible. Of course we don’t know the book’s authorship for sure. The book is anonymous, which is what we would expect if it had been authored by a woman. If it was known to be written by a woman, it never would have made it into the canon.

Not only is the central character a woman, she is a Moabite. Moabites were the historic enemies of the Hebrews. This Moabite marries Boaz, who is the son of Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute from Jericho, a “sinner” in the eyes of religious society.  Yet the genealogy at the end of the book informs us that Ruth and Boaz were the great-grandparents of David, the greatest Jewish king.

That genealogy in the final sentence of the book is the reason Ruth was written. It reveals that foreigners were an integral part of the history of Israel. In doing so, it challenged the teaching of the Torah, which said that no descendant of a Moabite could enter the temple. Yet David had such ancestors, and his son Solomon built the temple.

The book of Ruth is “protest literature.” It was written at a time when anti-women and anti-foreigner moralists had taken over the government in Jerusalem. It is probable that the Book of Ruth was written in the fifth century BC, when Ezra was purging Israel of all foreigners – Moabites in particular.  Ezra required all Jewish men who had married foreign women to divorce them publicly and send them and their children away.

Nehemiah followed up on Ezra’s reforms with a building program to construct a wall to keep foreigners out of Jerusalem. It does not take much thinking to see parallels to policies popular in American society today. The Book of Ruth was written to challenge the narrative that religious fundamentalists were preaching. It was pointing out that if one looks into the history of Israel one can see that diversity did not threaten Israel but rather strengthened it.

I call the Book of Ruth radical. The etymology of the word “radical” means “root.” We get the English word “radish” from it. The root of true Biblical spirituality is not about building walls to keep people out but drawing the circle wider. It is not about priding ourselves on being God’s chosen people and excluding others. It is about seeing that God’s people have always included all types of people.

That is the root of the gospel of Jesus, who reached out to foreigners and sinners. Jesus declared that a Roman soldier had more faith than anyone in Israel. He said that “sinners” were entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the Sadducees and Pharisees, who were the heirs of Ezra. This is the Gospel of Ruth. It is as controversial today as it was when the Book of Ruth was written.

Living in the Moor

This summer my wife celebrated her seventieth birthday, thereby joining me in exploring the eighth decade of our lives together. I have another seventy-something birthday coming up in a few days. The other day we were chatting with a friend about this milestone of life. This friend said her mother used to call this stage of life “living in the more.”

She explained that Psalm 90 describes the human lifespan as “threescore years and ten” (seventy years) and if “by reason of strength” we are granted more, it is an added blessing. She called that additional time “living in the more.”

When she said “living in the more” I thought I heard “living in the moor.” I immediately imagined the moorland of Britain. Sherlock Holmes’ case of The Hound of the Baskervilles came to mind. In that tale a demonic hound was said to inhabit the moors. 

Dr. Watson describes the moor as “gloomy,” “sinister,” “so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious,” “like some fantastic landscape in a dream.” It is an “enormous wilderness of peat and granite,” where squalls drift across the russet face of “the melancholy downs” and “heavy, slate-coloured clouds” trail “in grey wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills.”

Brrrr! I feel like pulling up my collar and turning down my deerstalker cap just reading about it! In a personal letter to his mother, Arthur Conan Doyle called the moor “a great place, very sad & wild.” In Wuthering Heights the moor is described as “unleashed, mad and dangerous.” Hmm! Perhaps I better go back to the Shire.

When I looked to the dictionary, it defined a moor as “a tract of open uncultivated upland; a heath.” That sounds a bit better. My experience of my seventies is very much like that. It is an uncultivated land filled with possibilities and pitfalls. There are not many roadmaps for this territory. Everyone seems to blaze their own trail. My type of place.

When they age, some people seek to relive their earlier decades, warding off old age by trying to recover their youth. It is the senior equivalent of a midlife crisis, except in our seventies we are not midway to anywhere. No one lives to be 140. 

Others retreat into the past, reliving old memories. Still others spend their later years entertaining themselves with television and small talk until the undertaker arrives. A few reinvent themselves with a “second act” or perhaps a “third act.” Good for them!

The seventies are not without their physical limitations as the body ages. Instead of going to the doctor for cures, more often we go to manage symptoms. Either that or opt for new bionic joints, which are not without their problems. 

So far I have found my seventies to be a time of spiritual adventure and discovery. In retirement the restraints of theological norms and ecclesiastical pressures are gone. I am free to be “unleashed, mad and dangerous.”

Classical India understood the latter part of life to be a time to put aside the concerns of earlier stages of life and dedicate oneself to spiritual concerns. Having spent my whole adult life in religious concerns, I find this stage to be doubly spiritual. Old dogmas fall away in the light of direct spiritual awareness. Prejudices and divisions are seen as petty exercises in egotism. There is no longer any time to waste in fear and anger. The psalmist sang:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away…. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

It is important to number our days. Whether our years be threescore years and ten or “by reason of strength” fourscore years or more, one day they will be cut off, and we will fly away. As the gospel hymn reminds us: “One glad morning, when this life is over, I'll fly away.”  In the meantime I am “living in the moor,” and I have found it to be the Kingdom of God.

The Preacher as Gadfly

Here in New Hampshire we have a healthy population of biting flies. In fact we have a season named after one variety: black fly season. It comes after mud season and before tourist season. In May and June one cannot walk down the street of our village without being swarmed.

But black flies are nothing compared to deer flies and horseflies, which can really take a chunk out of you all summer long. Biting flies hurt! They are a nuisance. For that reason I think they are a good metaphor for a preacher. Good preaching should have a bite! Preachers should function like horseflies in a congregation and community.

There is a well-known adage that the pastor’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I agree, but there is a lot of comforting going on in churches these days and very little afflicting. In this time of declining church attendance, pastors are afraid that if they engaged in prophetic preaching, pew warmers might take their checkbooks and leave. So pastors pamper the remaining church members instead of challenging them.  That is why so many adult church members have not advanced beyond Sunday School faith.

It is time for some prophetic preaching from Christian pulpits. Better yet, some Socratic preaching. Socrates famously said that his role as a philosopher was to be a gadfly, which is a generic term for all varieties of biting flies. He saw his mission as causing discomfort to his fellow Athenians. He was so successful that he was put on trial for “impiety.” He "failed to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges." The Greek word for impiety is asebeia, defined as "desecration and mockery of divine objects" and "irreverence towards the state gods." 

He was also charged with “corruption of the youth of the city-state.” The Greek word is polis, from which we get the word political. It does not take much thinking to see current applications. This reminds me of the charges brought against Jesus by Jerusalem’s religious and political leaders. Both Socrates and Jesus were found guilty of blasphemy and treason and were executed. Both could have escaped execution but chose not to.

Socrates carried out his teaching mission by the now-famous “Socratic Method.” Socrates did not provide answers. He asked questions. Lots of questions. No statement went unchallenged. He questioned every belief of his students and insisted that every assertion be backed up with evidence. This technique exposed a person’s unexamined presuppositions and assumptions. It revealed that most people live by borrowed ideas.  

Practicing this discipline of critical thinking makes us very aware of how many of our cherished beliefs have been unconsciously adopted from our families and communities, rather than tested and proven by reason.  The process of Socratic thinking is much needed in our time when conspiracy theories are rampant in America, especially in Christian churches. 

I find myself using the Socratic Method more and more in my preaching and teaching. By posing rhetorical questions while preaching and asking pointed questions when conversing, I encourage people to question everything in their spiritual and political worldview. In other words, I commit asebeia (impiety) and “corrupt the youth [and elderly] of the state” and church. I "fail to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges."

I question the false gods of all religions, especially my own Christian religion. As I said in a recent podcast episode entitled “Smashing idols,” I demolish false gods, of which there are many in American Christianity. To use the apostle Paul’s term, I “demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God….”

Not the least of Christian idolatries is bibliolatry, which is the deification of Scripture. There is also the divinization of doctrine and church tradition. Finally there is the idolizing of Jesus himself. The God worshipped in many churches is a false god fashioned in our cultural image and likeness. As the gadfly Voltaire famously said, “In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.”

The Socratic Method goes against the current trend of American culture. We live in a post-modern and post-truth society. There is no search for truth, just opposing self-interests. There is little self-reflection or self-examination these days. Every discussion degenerates into a debate, rather than being a shared search for deeper truth. Preaching has become polemic, and dialogue is replaced with diatribe.

Amid this decaying American culture I seek to play the role of the gadfly. Be careful! I bite! I preached a sermon recently in our community church entitled “Hiding from God,” showing how churches develop elaborate systems for hiding from Divine Truth. It is the preacher’s task to expose such self-deceptions. 

It is gadfly season in the church. It is time for some preaching with a bite. We preachers are to afflict people so they have nowhere to turn but to the Balm of Gilead, the Living God. 

Footprints in the Soul

The summer drought has uncovered some interesting finds throughout the world. As waters recede, relics long hidden have been revealed. In Europe the lowered Danube River has exposed German WWII ships, complete with 10,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance. The foundation of a 2000 year-old bridge was exposed in the Tiber River near Rome. West of Madrid a 5000 year-old megalith comparable to Stonehenge came to the surface. Of more recent vintage, a receding Lake Mead has produced several human remains, perhaps reminders of Las Vegas’ mobster era.

The most interesting find comes from Texas. The drought uncovered evidence of a lost species: a Texas liberal Democrat! Only joking! Although what they found was almost as rare. The footprints of a 113 million year-old dinosaur were discovered at Dinosaur Valley State Park. The prints of the three-toed Acrocanthosaurus were found in the dry river bed of the Paluxy River, southwest of Fort Worth. They were preserved by sediments of the river.

In his novella (and movie) “A River Runs Through It,” Norman Maclean remembers the people of Big Blackfoot River in Montana. He concludes the book, “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.”

A mountain stream caused MacLean to ponder the “timeless raindrops” etched into stone and write his novel. As I ponder the ancient footprints of dinosaurs, I think of what can be found in ancient depths of the human soul. Some say each soul is unique, formed at birth, which means mine is a mere seven decades old. Others thinks that the human soul is at least as ancient as our species, and probably as ancient as life on earth.

In my experience the spiritual essence found in the depths of my being is older than that. It is eternal. Ecclesiastes wrote: “God has placed eternity in the heart of men, yet they cannot fathom the work that God has done from beginning to end.”

Before there was the idea of God, there was the Nameless. This is what was revealed to Moses in the burning bush. “I am that I am” explained Yahweh, when Moses’ asked God’s name. “Before Abraham was, I am,” said Jesus, thereby exposing himself to charges of blasphemy, which resulted in this execution.

The human soul bears witness to this Divine Reality. For most of our lives this Timeless Truth is hidden beneath the rushing waters of daily life. When a spiritual drought descends upon our lives in the form of the Dark Night of the Soul, the waters dry up and the soul is revealed. At those times we can see the footprints of God etched across its surface.

Our human soul bears evidence of its ancient and divine origin. The soul (if you want to use that term) is older than we are, existing long before our birth. It is older than the human race, older than mammals, older than the dinosaurs that roamed Texas, older than the first one-celled organism that was born from earth’s primeval ocean. Older than the Earth, our solar system and our galaxy. Older than the Big Bang that formed the universe.

Its human form is just the most recent expression of this ancient Reality. Some want to give this Ultimate Reality a name and build a religion around it. Some people want to claim this ancient Truth as their sole possession, with them as the sole spokesmen and apostles. I harbor no such fantasy. This is bigger than my religion or my human race.

I am nothing in comparison, no more than a rain drop in the mud. No more than an eddy in an earthly river. Yet my roots go deep into this ancient bedrock. From it I draw upon the waters of life. This is my life. This alone is real. All else is as transient as footprints in the mud, even if those footprints are hardened into rock that lasts 113 million years.

Dinosaur fossils will melt away in time. Our human species will disappear, as longer-lived species have died out before us. Our names, nations, cultures and religions will be forgotten, but the Nameless One is eternal. To find ourselves in this Nameless One is to find our true selves. That is what the Bible means by being found “in Christ.”

Droughts are difficult times, but they can reveal priceless treasure, if we keep our eyes open. This is what Jesus called the “pearl of great price,” and “treasure hidden in the field.” It is worth all we possess, even our lives, if we are willing to pay that price. Why not? As Jim Eliot famously said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Beyond Relationship with God

Many Christians talk about having a relationship with God. Evangelicals in particular speak of the importance of having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They usually say this begins when one “receives Jesus into your heart” or “accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior.”

Evangelicals frequently distinguish themselves from mainline Protestants and Catholics by saying that these other groups have religion, but “born again” believers have a relationship with God, and that makes all the difference. The slogan goes something like this: “It is not a religion. It is a relationship” or “It is not about religion; it is about a relationship with God.”

I go one step further. I say, “It is not about religion or relationship. It is about realization.” By “realization” I am referring to waking up to the Spiritual Reality that Jesus called the Kingdom of God. Jesus referred to this as being “born of the Spirit” and “born again,” by which he meant something very different from the evangelical conversion experience. Jesus also called it eternal life, which is likewise very different from popular Christianity’s fantasy of a heavenly theme park.

Mainline and Evangelical Christianity may be fine as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. There is nothing wrong with religion when it is psychologically and socially healthy religion. Likewise there is nothing wrong with having a relationship with God when it is a healthy relationship. But there is more to the spiritual life than a relationship. 

You have heard the saying, “The good is the enemy of the best.” A relationship with God can be the enemy of the best. Jesus invited this followers to go beyond religion and relationship to realization.

According to the Gospel of John, on the night before his death Jesus offered a lengthy prayer, which is often referred to as his High Priestly Prayer. First he prayed for himself, and then he prayed for his apostles. Finally Jesus prays “not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” He is talking about his followers in future generations. This is what he prays for us:

“that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

Jesus says we are meant to know the same oneness with God as he knew. Jesus is talking about more than having a closer walk with God. He is speaking of transcending relationship. He is speaking about union with God, which is something Christian mystics – East and West - have always said is possible. Eastern Orthodoxy has long taught this truth, calling it theosis.

Jesus wanted us to have more than a relationship with God or himself. He wanted us to know union with God like he knew it. He promised that we would “participate in the divine nature,” as the Epistle of Second Peter describes it. 

Union with God does not negate a relationship with God; it transcends and fulfills it. It is analogous to Jesus saying he came not to destroy the Law but to fulfill it. Realization of oneness with God fulfills both religion and relationship.

There is more to the spiritual life than most  churches teach. Christian spirituality is more than religion or relationship. It is realization of oneness with God. Jesus prayed that we might know this oneness. The First Letter of John says that if we pray anything according to the will of God, it will be done. Jesus prayed according to the will of God, and his prayer has been answered. Now it is just a matter of realizing this union with God in our lives.