What God?

2007-05-10T15:00:00.068-04:00

I. What God?

What God?
Theocratic Nightmares

Being Found
The Arts
Love and Fear
Healer
Missing the Point About Jesus
Christians & the Poor
Some Good Questions
God’s Will
Markers of Christian Identity
Choices

II. Invitations

Invitations
To Move On or Stay
Christian Community
Hope
Faith & Love
Gratitude
Humility
Forgiveness
Prayer
The Cross
Illness
Beyond Believing
Guides, Past & Present
Dark Night
My Flesh & My Heart May Fail
Jesus, the Only Way?
God, Spirit & Jesus
Names & Pronouns for God?
Who Is My Brother?
Citizenship

III. Further Reflections

Evolving Understandings & Experience of God
Love is No Game

Theocratic Nightmares 2
Isaiah, Paul, John, a Psalm & Hafiz
God With Us
Some Aspects of Spiritual Contemplation
On My Heart Today, These Poems
On the Arm of God, In the Arms of Love
Merton & Hafiz: Into Darkness to Light, Love

IV. Other Topics

On Christian Divorce
Humility & Respect on the Spiritual Continuum
The Bible is Dead; Long Live the Bible--And Other Provocations

© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
Naples, FL and East Greenwich, RI

What God?

2007-05-10T14:55:00.008-04:00

What God?

Reason’s taunt calls out in refrain, “But what if there is no God?” And more, “What if your beliefs or perceptions are all just some genetic predisposition, some biochemical, neurological or psychological phenomenon, some emotional or sociological need?” Intending to provoke, I usually respond that I would choose my life of faith and faith community anyway, that without knowing more, psychological and sociological health alone not only justify it, but often demand it. It makes me whole. Then reason’s self-righteousness challenges in response, “But how does a man of integrity risk basing his life on a lie?” Fair questions.

First, allow me to respond with a question of my own: does a genetic predisposition or the involvement of biochemical, neurological or psychological processes—including necessarily, evolutionary processes—dictate that there is no greater purpose, no Author or Director Spirit, no spiritual Mystery, no God in control? How does that follow? How else might we have been ushered to this place and time, ready to ask the great questions, ready to search out the purposes for it all, ready to encounter the One who calls us?

You look askance at me, and I understand. But after all is said and seen, the work of science provides no more evidence for the absence of God than for His presence. Neuroscience, for example, struggles with the relationship between neurological processes and consciousness, whether that of everyday phenomena or spiritual experience. They even struggle with a useful, researchable definition of consciousness. And to the extent they approach questions of God at all, they are reduced to proxy questions of spiritual consciousness or experience, which in turn are approached only through proxy measures of attendant neurological activity. However important this basic research—and it is important—it appears to provide only another groping, attenuated and unavailing approach to scientifically answering questions about the existence of God, and adds but little to understanding the experience of God.

What is spiritual consciousness or experience, anyway? Many think it relates more to the occasional visions or messages perceived by some, the expressive, Spirit-filled worship experiences of others, or the ecstatic prayer experiences also reported. But most often, the presence and work of God has less to do with these sensory spiritual experiences, and everything to do with transcendent faith, hope and love shared through Him—and His quiet, imperceptible process of changing you. Spiritual experience is an awareness of God’s presence and love, how He has changed your understandings, behavior and your life, of your increasing identity in Him, and the greater peace and trust you know. If that can be neurologically or biochemically measured and studied, can it in that way also be meaningfully understood? And, again, what does it prove or disprove about the existence of God?

However you may prefer to approach or answer the questions of science, faith and God, it does not preclude the reality of an author, director God working through biochemical, neurological and evolutionary processes, or in concert with them. Although personal views and the reasons for them may provide a self-satisfying level of soft support for differing conclusions, whatever they may be, there is no proof to be had. And all the studies of human biology and neuroscience, of cognition and consciousness, are unlikely to provide more than better explanations of the neurological and biochemical processes that facilitate the genetic prescriptions for anatomy and bodily function, for health, sensory perception and existential behavior.

So it is with this ongoing tension that passes for dialogue about science, the faith phenomenon, and the transcendent experience of God.

And so I am left with my epiphanies, still asking, what could be more miraculous and awe-inspiring, more beautiful, more humbling, than the complexities and unfathomable realities of evolutionary mechanisms and the progress of life? How else than through these evolving genetic, biochemical, social and psychological processes might all of creation have moved continually upward toward sentience and cognition, curiosity and questioning, the pursuit of truth and identity? For what other purpose might we be brought face to face with the history of the development of creation, and those transcendent apprehensions that lead us, than to seek the sensed Author and understandings of who we are and why we are now here?

And about integrity: Is it living a lie to reach for the highest ideals, the highest reality and, in the process, the highest potential and conduct of man in community? And is there a sounder, more enduring basis for defining that potential or prescribing that conduct, something loftier or more sublime, more resonant with right and authority? Where could trust more reliably be placed?

Consider the uneven, often disappointing nature of human authority and its standard bearers. The authority of man is based more or less on his strength, intelligence, character and wisdom, his ideas and conceptual constructs, his created institutions. But man’s qualities and ideas have too often tarnished and disappointed—lights that glow, then dim or fail. And as the institutions that men have fashioned—both secular and religious—to pursue our potential, to encourage our best conduct, have also stumbled or failed, what testament is that to man’s nature and potential? Like Icarus, we would fly closer to the sun, but consumed by our virtuosity and vanity, we forget we have but waxen wings to carry us there. Alas, flawed men fashion flawed ideas and institutions, and even if the best of them, by acclamation, are “better than whatever is in second place,” they are not nearly good enough.

Secular leaders routinely, often disingenuously, invoke the name of God. That they would seek associative or derivative authority through Him is understandable, if too often cynical. After all, their individual or institutional authority is, at best, supported only by those flawed, temporal foundations—assuming, if we may, that it is based on anything higher-minded than brute political or military power and forced submission, still so often the case in our enlightened world. Where are the higher, more enduring authorities and ideals, the more credible exemplars?

But any appeal I may make here or elsewhere to your intellect cannot convince or comfort you about the legitimacy of a life of faith and seeking God--not unless you are in some sense ready or disposed, unless in some way you sense His active presence, His invitation to you, His Spirit of Love. To be sure, it depends in part on your understandings about the notion of God, your definitions and expectations of God. And yes, the intellect often plays a central role in what we know and believe, but only regarding the things it is equipped to know. In the end, it is about acknowledging that spiritual sense of God’s presence and His acts of creative relationship in your life--and giving expression to that disposition to being loved by God and loving Him.

As I continue my faith journey, I have available to me the breadth of today's considerable knowledge and understandings set side-by-side with the shared knowledge and understandings of the ages. To that I add my own existential and spiritual experiences, and it all contributes to what I know and understand. And as my mind, heart and soul are so informed--as it all continually changes me--it also informs what I believe. And it sets the occasion for my evolving relationship with God, and my understanding of Him. It all might seem to you epistemologically circular, but for me it forms the most important of my understandings.

So, I cannot work with the supposition that God does not exist. My experience and understandings will not allow it. I could no more deny or abandon the reality of my Spirit-of-God experience than my spirit-of-man experience—kin and connected as they inextricably seem to be, transcending our individual identities as they so often do. To do so would also render life too vain, and hope and the reasons to reach higher unacceptably less than my soul requires. Even though others seem able to deny or abandon the reality of one or both—and do—I cannot. We each must make our own choices, however informed they may be, and however they may be informed.

First written: January - June 2005

Theocratic Nightmares

But don’t misunderstand me. In my ardor to make a greater point, I don’t mean to critique uncharitably the best of secular ideas and institutions. I only wish to make clear that the way they are structured and operate—although sometimes with great wisdom—produce an unlikely basis for the most sublime statement or vision of the potential of man.

But let me also be clear about this: absent the constraints of secular government philosophies and institutions—and particularly the pluralism of representative democracy—man has shown a propensity across time and cultures to evolve his religious movements and institutions into brittle, often brutal, theocratic nightmares. Surely, the wisdom, the constitutional necessity, of the separation of government institutions and religious institutions—the protection of people of differing faiths and those of none at all—is also quite clear. It’s the only way to protect us all from the extremes of organized religion, and protect organized religion from itself.

First written: Fall 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Being Found

2007-05-10T14:50:00.001-04:00

Most people haven’t really been watching or listening, have they? And why should they? The people they’ve been trafficking with probably haven’t prepared them for it. They’ve had no expectation that the One who calls us may be trying to get their attention: waving His arms at them in the press of daily relationships and responsibilities, flashing His light in the soft, smiling eyes that pause and pass by, speaking in the voices of those who love and care, whispering to the heart that sighs, stirring in their very soul. They have not heard Him calling from all creation, the cycles of birth and death, change and renewal, nudging them to the questions of what is passing, what transcends, and what endures.

If He wants us to see, we’ll see; if He wants us to hear, we’ll hear, or so it is written and often said. For He implores, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” and yet for many concedes, “...while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” Is that why, even when some people feel the stirring, hear that faint voice, see the light or feel the love, they turn with a heavy heart and move quietly away?

But maybe they just don’t want to see or hear. They can, but would rather tune it out or push past it. They haven’t the time or the will to entertain such a call to consuming relationship and pervasive change. Too much to give up; the cost too high. Besides, it’s a fool’s pastime in the eyes of the world. And, while some may not mind the idea of being counted a fool for God in the last reckoning of who we are, with whom we stand, and the direction we are going, they really don’t want to be seen as a fool in the world’s eyes. Not today. They choose to live accountably under worldly eyes and judgments today, and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Isn't that about it?

Or maybe they just can’t believe they deserve it. They’d like to, after all, but why should God call to them? They’re not that special or worthy, or even that good much of the time. Perhaps in some private way they are a disappointment to themselves—and therefore feel they must be to God as well. But maybe they just don’t understand what He does and why. Maybe they’ve failed to grasp that it’s all been about preparing us, making us ready to move on, that God loves us in a way they can’t understand, and wants us to grow closer to Him. And so they deny themselves His invitation. Is that a possibility?

If many have responded at all—and maybe they have—it has been to religiously avoid authentic identity with any faith at all, or perhaps move to the other extreme and identify with one narrow religious perspective only. Is that because they suppose that if God relates authentically to people at all, it’s either outside the strikingly flawed workings of organized religion altogether, or solely through one singularly self-anointed, exclusive and unbending element of one or another faith perspective—whether identified with Christianity, Judaism or Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or any other Ism? Do they suppose that God operates solely from any of our restrictive, self-absorbed, man-made religious or nonreligious boxes?

They should know He doesn’t, don’t you think? Even under a brittle cultural or religious veneer, they should know that He may call to them from any of those places or from a different place altogether, that they may find Him anywhere. And they can answer His call and draw closer to Him in any of those places as well. But many may find that some faith structures or values, faith environments or communities, some faith leaders or teachers, are more compatible with their place or circumstances, their identity or culture—or just more compatible with what God is saying to them or doing with them right now. They should move toward them, go with them, if they will.

As for me, I am a Christian, one kind of Christian: a pilgrim with Christ and Mystery, a seeker after God. I have studied various faiths and spiritualities, sojourned in Eastern and Western faith communities, and they led me back to Jesus. I try to accept and nurture an abiding relationship with Him, one that points me toward more intimacy with God and experience of His Love, that informs me more of His nature and who He wants me to become. But not in a Christian box, I pray, but through Him free of those boxes, too. And there I often find assurance, direction, even peace, but always I find the challenges of renewed identity in God and His creation, changed as I am by His Spirit and His Love (and God is Spirit and Love).

But regardless of your faith perspective, here’s a question for you: If you would go with God, would you become that new person He calls you to be in Him? Can you imagine sitting as comfortably and caringly with those so often shunned by the community, even your faith community, as Jesus did (and as those closest to God have always done)? And here’s another question: can you imagine finding comfortable, shared community with any person who seeks respectful understanding of faith or relationship with God, whatever his religion or faith orientation might be, if any? How do you feel about that? Here’s what I think: we cannot learn more about what God is saying to each of us, we cannot grow in our experience of God, if we do not share community—ideas, experience, relationship—with all the people that God calls, talks to, and talks through. And be assured, God is all and in all.

You can encounter and learn about God in the Scriptures of my faith. But you can also encounter Him in many other God-inspired writings. They must be God-inspired because I encounter God there, too: in the reverenced writings of other faiths; in the prose of writers about faith; in the poetry of the intimates of God, whatever their tradition. And God speaks to me through the poetry of some who would claim no articulated faith for themselves at all, just an inspired art, an inspiring muse. So do not be misled. This is the world that God has made—all of it—and He speaks through it all as He speaks to it all.

But you may not encounter God in all the Christian camps and communities. Nor will you encounter Him in all the camps and communities of other religions. For some have reduced God and relationship with Him to their own idea or ideal, an intellectual and cultural exercise of shaping and rationalizing an uncontainable, creating and revealing God into something defined, contained and managed—as is their faith, faith life, and faith community. It is shaped by them and for them. It’s what happens when more trust is placed in the vision of man and the ways of the world than in the leadership of His Love, the way and power of His Spirit.

For some, those embraced ideas are so broad and open that each person is invited to create his own accommodating concept of God—bereft as they so often are of any reliable body of knowledge, any teaching or direction, to find authentic relationship and prayerful intimacy with Him. Others have so narrowly defined God and the dictates of community that they have wrenched all of the love, forgiveness and compassion out of Him—and out of the life of the community. What is left is brittle, exclusionary condescension and self-righteousness. What is left is judgment. And the spiritual Companion, the Spirit of God, is just not there.

But if you do come closer to God, you may also come to understand that He does not call us to unwelcome, off-putting proselytizing. Neither does He call us to sharp-edged political advocacy. He calls us first to relationship with Him, then to a humble, prayerful, serving life increasingly filled by God’s Spirit and Love, that He may be seen and heard through it, however flawed the vessel. Yes, we are to be ready to give the reasons why, share our story and His, but beyond that to leave God’s work to God.

Be found by God. Watch for Him; listen for Him. And wherever, whenever He finds you, go with Him. Just take yourself along. His Peace He promises and His Peace He gives, but it is not easy to receive. Find, be with the people who know God and can accompany and direct you. Be ready to change and grow, continually. Be ready for challenge as well as joy. Be ready to see the world, its people and problems, your life and friends, with new, more understanding eyes. Be ready for a faith that transcends, but a life that is renewed, involved and serving. With Him, we are always growing and seeing things new—especially who He is, and our loving relationship with Him and each other. As much as you can, hold onto those caring and generous sentiments, those grateful and forgiving feelings. Hold onto Love, and let it show.

First written: January - June 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

The Arts

2007-05-10T14:45:00.001-04:00

You can encounter God through the arts as well. Whether it is the literary arts (poetry or prose), the visual arts (painting, sculpture, or photography), or the performing arts (theatre, music or dance), they can produce a singular, often transcendent experience or understanding in themselves. There is often no other way to communicate with quite the same effect. They speak to the poet’s soul in all of us. It is therefore understandable that classical literature, within the order of its deities, ascribes to the muses—and they transported on Pegasus' wings—the gifting and inspiration of artistic expression.

So much of all deistic worship and communication stands on the gifting of the arts for expression and transcendent understanding. To the extent that music, drama, poetry and prose, paintings, icons or sculptures are media used to make more meaningful our apprehension or worship of God, to the extent they mediate our understanding of His identity, His message or His work, they are truly the highest expression of the arts.

That is to say, there is an incarnational or sacramental aspect to the arts. Don’t we sense or feel some of what we know about God through them? Don’t you? They do seem to mediate in unique, effective ways the expression and our understanding of God's invitation to us and relationship with us. Much of the Bible is art in that sense, and certainly the psalms are. As the last few psalms relate to expressing our praise and worship with the joyful playing of cymbals, lyre and other instruments, and as others speak clearly of singing songs, dancing or dramatically crying out in our angst or our joy, so we should not be surprised that God uses those same expressions in those same ways today for some of our communication from Him and to Him.

I especially have that experience with poetry—and not just Christian poetry. Certainly, I love the psalms (as I’ve implied), and pray and meditate on them often. Of all the biblical genres, they speak most powerfully to me in that way. And the poetry and writings of an array of Christian intimates of God provide insight, epiphany, and assurance to me as well, and sometimes attend my personal prayer and contemplative time. But I also find the experience of God revealed in the Sufi poetry of Hafiz and Rumi, in the Diamond Sutra, as well as the poetry of those who claim no faith other than an undefined spirituality informed in large part by their inspiration and work. I have felt this in much of the work of Mary Oliver. (And in time, much later, she came to recognize and experience Him, too.)

If the totality of our experience in the world itself has an incarnational backdrop—and I believe it does—then our experiences with the arts often provide discrete insights or epiphanies that stop us in timeless reflection, that augment or complement the understandings revealed in Scripture, prayer, worship and community. In those times, in those places, your ears may also hear, your eyes may also see. You may hear the whisper, see the light, and feel the stirring.

First written: January - June 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Love and Fear

2007-05-10T14:35:00.005-04:00

So, you want to be loved. And you want to love others, too. You want something deeper, more meaningful, something more compassionate and selfless. And you want to know about God’s Love, how to receive it, and how to love Him, too. But as great is your joy about what could be gained, so is your fear about what it could cost. I do understand. Welcome to the walk with the One who calls us. But if we are to go on from here, we need definitions, something to work with. How about this:

Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...

The first-century Christian apostle Paul wrote that. If you are a Christian of biblical faith, God inspired it. It’s what is meant by agape love, God’s perfect love, a love He calls us to aspire to, a love so comprehensively perfect that we might be forgiven for the feeling that—for most of us at least—love is impossible. But a biblical distinction is made between romantic or sexual love, filial or brotherly love—notions of love we can relate to—and the pure love of God that He calls us to accept and reflect, the gift that He alone can give.

So intrinsic is the purity of this love to God that we are assured that it is the very nature and substance of His identity. Clearly, but sparingly, we are informed that God is spirit and God is light; but as if to trumpet it from the mountain tops, God’s inspired scribes also announce with clarion conviction and authority that, “God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” And more than that, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear…”

It appears clear, then, that we are to understand that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. What fills the void that is the absence of a love relationship with God is fear. What makes our lives less than what God wants them to be is fear. Reflecting that same understanding, the 14th-century Sufi poet, Hafiz, wrote,

Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I’d like to see you living in better conditions…
God wants to see more love and playfulness in your eyes,
For that is your greatest witness to Him.

Jesus made clear that all of God’s teachings could be reduced to His desire that we should first love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; and then to let that same love overflow to our relationships with others—all others, including even our enemies. We can love God and others in this way, we are assured, because He first loved us. And because in faith we can accept and abide in that love, we can let it overflow back to God and others.

But how do we really know? How can we be sure? How can we trust enough to give ourselves over to God in this way? William of St. Thierry, like other medieval Christian writers and contemplatives, had great respect for the intellect and knowledge. “He respected the fact that the intellect knows,” we are told, “however, he believed that love knows, too, and that finally the person knows God through loving him.” Love knows.

But walking this path of love leads inextricably to God’s love replacing more and more of what passes for ours, to our will, even our identity, being replaced more by His. For most, this renewal or transcendence of identity, this leaving much of who you were behind, can, in its own way, be a fearful path to walk. It is difficult enough (and often for good reason) to entrust our romantic or brotherly love to others who may not extend to it the care, respect and reciprocity that it deserves. But how much more difficult to comprehend and accept is His promised sense of freedom in surrendering more completely our love, our will and control to His, to trust more completely in the leadership of His Love and His way for our lives. Comprehending this truth, Meher Baba, a 20th-century Indian spiritual master, wrote:

True love is no game for the faint-hearted and weak,
It is born of strength and understanding.
[And quoting Hafiz,]
Only a person with his life up his sleeve
Dares kiss the threshold of love.

Love knows. But it is not an easy lesson to learn; it is not an easy path to walk.

First written: May 2006
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Healer

2007-05-10T14:30:00.004-04:00

Psychologists also tell us what we already know: we need love. We need to be loved and we need to love others. For that, we need relationships—close, caring relationships. And we need to feel forgiven for the traits or acts, the things we do that are unkind, unjust or hurtful to others, the things that disappoint us about who we are. We need to forgive others, too. We need these things for psychological and community health. We all need them.

But most of us are sadly and regrettably selfish and self-serving, even calculating and controlling, in how we share or withhold, receive or refuse these health-giving and health-sustaining aspects of identity, relationship and community. Too many cannot openly and selflessly give; too many cannot openly and gratefully receive. It’s not Heaven yet. And the frequency and depth of our unsatisfying relationships too often make that abundantly clear.

That is why a faith life and spiritual identity are so important to becoming who we have the potential to be, who we were meant to be, to finding the relationships that can take us there. And if kept in focus and balance, they will lead us to those healing, strengthening and sustaining relationships. And more so, if we find a spiritual guide or master who models and teaches these essential aspects of life and relationship. More so, if that person reflects singular and credible identity with the nature and life of God--a human example, but also a relationship and unassailable ideal still present with us through God’s Spirit. More so, if he calls us to that relationship and identity through Him.

Jesus, Annointed One, Healer. The One who divinely loves and wants to be loved, yesterday, today and forever. The compassionate, gentle One who always forgives and comforts. The One who opens our ears to hear, our eyes to see, and our hearts to love. The One who will lead us in our life with God. Jesus, the most important and healing relationship of all.

First written: November 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Missing the Point About Jesus

2007-05-10T14:27:00.001-04:00

People claim Jesus for many reasons. You know that, of course, and that their faith in Him can mean so many different things. And He may or may not change the way they consider and live their lives. But if they claim Him, or a faith related to Him, shouldn't it change them?

There are many who attend church—regularly, perhaps, on particular religious holidays, or just unpredictably. Regardless, they know the language and rituals of their Christian church community; they know the culture and the teaching. And yet I have not seen much change in so many of them—in what they do or say, in who they are. At the very least, shouldn’t they reflect some of His love and forgiveness, some of His humility and compassion toward others, both within and without their faith community?

Rather, too often, their faith and church appear a convenient front, and their Jesus claimed more a cloaking justification, an excuse, for culturally-biased, sometimes bigoted views and actions. Too often they claim this ersatz, reinterpreted Jesus—their distorted biblical teaching and Christian history, too—to support their public judgements and intolerance, their lack of public compassion and concern for the poor, their aggressive political agendas to legislate their cultural values on others. I recognize none of this in the Jesus I find in the Bible, the Jesus that abides also in my heart.

So, the first question that has to be asked is this: does God need or want us to aggressively pursue or support these “faith-based” political and legislative agendas?

Shall we start in the Gospels? Isn’t it clear that Jesus is engaged in an “in-house” discussion and corrective within the religious community of the Jews of the time, Roman-occupied Israel? He was addressing “the lost sheep of Israel.” But He would have nothing to do with the Zealots and other activists and intriguers. He was not the expected Davidic, warrior Messiah, the restorer of Israel's sovereignty and culture. He was a different, misunderstood Messiah, a purely spiritual Messiah, a restorer of His people’s relationship with God.

He taught, admonished and challenged the faith community, but his righteous anger and condemnation were reserved for the dead, dry faith, the vain self-interest and self-serving practices of the Jewish religious leaders—but not the occupying Romans. He had nothing to say nor in any way judged the Romans or other secular authorities—with two exceptions:

o First, he said we are to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s--the required taxes, legal compliance, and respect of secular government—and unto God the things that are God’s.

o Then, in the Sermon on the Mount, He also made clear that we should respond to any authorities or others who would oppress us only by giving them more than they demanded: turning the other cheek, carrying an unwelcome load farther, or giving them the shirt or coat off our backs. We are to respond not with anger or opposition, but with love, forgiveness and humility. We are to love and help even our enemies. This is the teaching and example of Jesus—a radical, spiritual Messiah—and this is the challenging and humble way He would have us share with others an understanding of God’s heart.

Other than to claim the rights and legal process afforded a citizen of Rome when persecuted, the Apostle Paul conducted himself in much the same way toward secular authorities, whether in the many towns he visited or before the authorities of Rome. In all cases, his example was to present himself as loving, compassionate and humble, reflecting the nature of God’s leading Spirit and Jesus’ example. Then, yes, he would always be prepared to tell his story and the story of his Lord, and give the reasons why. But as important as his story was, it was equally important that the example of Jesus’ spirit of love and humility be reflected in him. That is, the Great Commandment of loving God and all others, as God loves you, must be well and authentically in place before you can expect to credibly, humbly, share your story or His.

We can only follow His example and trust in the work of His Spirit and love. And in His work, there is no place or basis for cultural, political or legislative coercion. If Christians or their churches need political activism and legislation to force themselves or others to live the life God calls them to, then they do not understand the call of Jesus at all. Where in the biblical accounts of Jesus or the Apostles are there any such examples? God’s faithful people have always humbly served Him by trusting that the presence and work of His Spirit is all the authority and power needed to transform hearts and move opinions. It's not about imposing interpretations of faith or faith culture on others; it's about living a transparent life as a medium for God's love.

And throughout Christian history, whenever the organized church gained sufficient power to impose legally—or by physical force—a profession of faith and compliance with their legalistic requirements for thought, speech and behavior, what has happened? Political, theocratic nightmares: brittle, brutally enforced religious compliance, reflecting nothing of the character of Jesus and nothing of the Spirit of God. And then there were the wars—“holy” wars, "just" wars, of course.

It is worth noting that the Apostle Paul made clear in His first letter to the Corinthians that he had no place or interest in judging those outside the faith community. And Jesus admonished us against judging all others. He made clear that only after challenging and being affirmed in our own maturity, humility, and Spirit-led behavior, should we consider counseling or guiding others even within the faith community. If this is something well understood—and likely it is—why isn’t it more often reflected in Christian attitudes and behavior toward others?

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting for a moment that Christians should decline to exercise their franchise or refuse to support political candidates that best represent their views. But only that they should not presume to represent Jesus or Christianity while doing it. Nor am I suggesting that as faithful Christians they should fail to live their lives by the tenets, disciplines, and values of their faith as they best understand them. But only that they should not presume to force them on others outside their faith community in the name of Jesus.

The second question that must be asked is this: when Christian political advocacy rails against groups of people outside their community of faith—often those most shunned by many in the religious community and, possibly, the secular community, as well—do those people, or anyone seeing and hearing, recognize in this "Christian mission" the example of Jesus, or sense God’s Spirit of love, forgiveness, compassion and humility? And as a result, are they drawn to be closer to Christians and know more about our faith and who we are? Can God in any way use these "Christian soldiers" to help those lost or hurting when they purport to represent Him like that? How can we be surprised that many of those people think we hate them, and so fear or hate us, too?

What answers do you think increasingly led Billy Graham’s ministry as he was welcomed as pastor by presidents and politicians of all parties, as he was looked upon as pastor and healer by the lost and broken of a nation for two generations? And now, looking back, he believes he was still too political, that the walk of faith—and anything resembling thoughtful, obedient evangelism—is about God’s love, mercy and compassion for all. If we consider at all the examples of Jesus, I think we’d know what Billy Graham clearly knows: those people we've alienated are the very ones who Jesus would be sitting at the table with today. They would be first in His healer’s heart and first offered the promises of new life through Him.

And I have a third question, one that revisits ground we’ve already walked, but bears revisiting. Why, among many who claim Jesus, His teachings and example, does the selfishness of their politics—like their fear of cultural change—still trump their faith and relationship with Him?

They oppose social programs that certainly help those people about whom God cares most, and they oppose the taxes necessary to fund them. If it’s all about distrust of government accountability, then by all means they should advocate and vote for more efficiency and accountability. But why would they have difficulty with Jesus’ clear admonition to render unto Caesar, especially when it is serving the Lord’s people and purposes? Isn’t that also part of their giving? If they would study the history of the different Old Testament tithes and their purposes, they would see clearly the commonalities with today’s system of taxes and uses for the public good, and especially the support of the poor. And if they believe that the best answers are all about private philanthropy and church missions, they must also recognize that, as important as these generous efforts are, they alone barely begin to provide the required support of people in need or solve their problems.

So, where do we go from here? If we would follow after Him, should we be surprised that Jesus calls us first to seek and experience the consuming love of God, and to learn to love Him in the same consuming way? Should we be surprised that in that process, Jesus calls us to move beyond our more limited sense of worldly identity, it’s addictive attachments and selfish strivings, and invite more of His Spirit and nature to abide in us. And, second, He calls us to allow that love to overflow in an expression of love and caring for all others.

Jesus, by His teaching and example, then makes clear his first priorities for our life of love and service. In the context and with the gravity of final judgment, He calls us to feed and clothe the poor; to visit and care for the ill, infirm and unable; to invite in the stranger, and visit the prisoner. He wants you and me to attend them, care for them, feed them. That is where we go from here. Those are the things that should fill and direct my life of faith and yours.

If you hear or sense anything of truth or right in what I say, then why not explore it all a little further? Why not test what I’ve said against the accounts of Jesus and Paul? Why not let His Spirit speak to your heart? Why not seek a more intimate, prayerful relationship with God through Jesus? Then, why not let it spill over to heart-felt concern and support for all God’s people, especially those at risk?

First written: June 2006
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Christians & the Poor

2007-05-10T14:25:00.002-04:00

Why is it that so many of us—Christians, that is—don't understand our relationship and obligations to the poor? And then there are those old friends on the Christian Right who indulge the notion that being against government social programs and against paying taxes—especially, taxes for programs to help the poor—is somehow consistent with the teaching of Jesus or living the Christian life. I do understand, in part, for there was a time when I lived half in and half out of that faith-life contradiction. But I now believe there is no reconciling those views with the example, teaching and life of Jesus.

So, now that I have your attention, allow me to expand on and substantiate these purposeful provocations. Jesus, in the Gospels, like Moses in the Pentateuch, makes clear that the Christian's most important relationship and obligation is to love God with all their being and then to let that love overflow to all mankind—even their enemies. And, arguably, the Christian's second most important is to provide for and serve the poor. This is not works theology, but rather recognizable fruit and a measure of our selfless faith and love of God. Do you doubt this? Then, let's look deeper at some Scriptural guidance.

A central teaching is in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew at verse 31, a section my NAS Bible informally titles, "The Judgment." And it is in the context of final judgment that Jesus offers the teaching on the separating of the sheep from the goats—and that the "sheep" are to "inherit the kingdom prepared for [them] from the foundation of the world." Why? Because the "sheep" are those who serve Him by serving the poor: giving them food and drink and clothing, visiting and helping the sick, and visiting the prisoner. The "goats" are those who do not serve the poor, and therefore do not serve Jesus. They will be judged "accursed" and sent "into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels." However a faithful and thoughtful Christian may relate to the hellfire and brimstone imagery or metaphor, there can be little doubt of how high a personal and community priority Jesus' teaching places on providing for the poor. If we do not follow this teaching, we do not follow him.

And the Gospels and Epistles offer many other everyday examples and events that make clear the special relationship of the poor with Jesus and God, and highlight the attention and healing directed by Jesus and the Apostles to them. It is hard to miss the point, yet somehow so many of us do.

But there are also those who would cavalierly invoke Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 10, saying, "…if [I] confess with [my] mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in [my] heart that God raised him from the dead, [I] shall be saved." "So, I'm covered," they would say. For those folks, I would only note that Jesus is not Lord if they do not endeavor to follow his example and teaching, especially a teaching with such important implications as this one. They appear as those who would say, "Lord, Lord," but follow Him only when it is convenient.

Yet, it is still so easy for some to take out of context and embrace Jesus' statement in Chapter 26 of Matthew's Gospel, that "... the poor will always be with us." It is easy to allow that phrase to serve as a rationale for diverting the bounty provided us to first acquire our finer things in life—and to pursue that consumption with a shrug of the shoulder that suggests there is no helping the poor anyway because, after all, they will always be with us. But it is clear, isn't it, that this phrase uttered by Jesus, and His broader teaching, is not a dismissal of the poor at all, but rather addresses a more important point about that exception that proves and affirms the rule?

In that unique circumstance, Jesus reminds the disciples that they are there and then dealing with that most important obligation and relationship: the love, reverence and adoration of Jesus and God. Implicitly, in other circumstances, providing for the poor would take priority. And this is affirmed by the instinctive response of Jesus' disciples that a thing of value—especially costly perfume or oil like that being applied to Jesus' hair—should be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. And that was so even when they were living largely on the charity of others. Surely the old adage, "We are called [by God] to serve, not to succeed," would find appropriate context and application for us today to the extent we wring our hands over whether or not we can make a difference in the lives of the poor.

And what of the inclination of some to be distrustful of government or disinclined to give or increase their taxes owing, however understandable that may sometimes seem? Aren't we admonished in Paul's Epistle to the Romans,

...to be subject to the governing authorities...For there is no authority except from God...[And] because of this [and for "conscience sake"] you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due [government], custom to whom custom...

And when confronted about paying the Roman poll tax, didn’t Jesus simply, tersely, admonish the duplicitous Pharisees and the secular Herodians to "…render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's”? When these two teachings of Paul and Jesus are taken together, isn’t it hard not to conclude that we are to honor government and play a supportive role because it is God’s means of assuring civil order, public protection and supportive community? And when the taxes “rendered unto Caesar" so clearly serve the purposes of God, including providing for the poor, shouldn't there at least be a comfortable, affirmed sense of acceptance in the giving?

Further, isn't it clear that, however innovative and important their contribution, all the faith-based ministries and private charities together cannot come close to meeting the needs of the poor? Isn't it clear that only the scope, resources and authority of our government can meet that need? Don't we then have to view our taxes—in part, at least—as a tithe-like contribution to serving the poor and those in need and, in the process, serving our Lord?

Now, if only I could live this teaching as well as I understand it, and as passionately as I share it with you.

First written: June 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2008

Some Good Questions

2007-05-10T14:20:00.001-04:00

If you would walk that more difficult path of Love, then consider following His leadership of Love, His way of renewal for your life. Continually reach for new heights and plumb new depths following God into the unknown, gaining new understandings of old questions and answers. But when Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me,” where is He leading us? And then, when He adds, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it,” what would He have us do?

Yet I can offer the possibility of better answers only in more questions: How can personal loss, permanent change or illness so often point to the gateway? How can the darkness enshroud cleansing light until you’re ready for light? How can despair cover consuming Love until you’re ready for Love? And what place and role the cross in all of this?

Consider also whether there are answers or better understandings of these questions in some of the Pauline reflections. The Apostle Paul poignantly shared his experience that through the failed promise of religious legalism, the misleading promises and unsatisfying attachments of the world, he died to it all that he might live to God. Then he could say, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in Me.”

Does that help clarify our understanding of these challenges? And is our understanding furthered by Paul’s corollary admonition that, “If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is…For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God”? What does that mean? Certainly, for most, He didn’t mean that we should disengage from the world, judge it, or see it as anything but God’s creation. What do you think, can we find a more transcendent recognition of God in all things and people, and in the process grow closer in character and identity to Him?

These questions and understandings, in context, provide meaning, direction, challenge and change to my walk with the One who calls me. They enrich and make more intimate my prayer and contemplative time with Him. They inform and animate my life, my thoughts, and my writing. They are now part of the stuff of a relationship that grows ever closer with Him. Perhaps you could use some good questions, too? Then you might more often look for God in all the places He takes you. And more often you might encounter Him there.

First written: May 2006
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

God's Will

2007-05-10T14:12:00.008-04:00

How can we presume to understand the will of God, when we can scarcely understand our own? It could seem an impossible quest. And the closer we come to God, the wider the chasm between His will and ours may surely seem. But there are some things that can be known about God’s will or inferred about it from the Scriptures, especially when seasoned and brought to fuller light in meditation and the quiet solitude, the intimacy, of contemplative prayer. And at the very least, we can know with confidence what is not God’s will:

My will is not God’s will; neither is yours;

It is not God’s will that His people war against each other, kill and torture each other, or hate each other; and

It is also not God’s will that His people should be unloving, unforgiving, self-righteous, judgmental, selfish, unkind, or lacking in compassion, generosity and gratitude.

And importantly, be assured that when you exhibit those behaviors or characteristics, God’s Spirit is not in you or leading you; you are not abiding in our Lord and He is not abiding in you. And from that place, you cannot even see or recognize the path that leads to deeper love and identity in God, which is God’s will. It is important to know these things, to be clear about what is not God’s will before walking into the deeper, sometimes darker waters seeking love and identity in Him, giving up more of our will that we might reflect more of His.

First written: December 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2008

Markers of Christian Identity

2007-05-10T14:11:00.002-04:00

What is the first and greatest commandment?

Love God with all that your are, and lose your identity in Him. Abide in Him and let His words abide in you. Then let that love flow over to your neighbor; love him as God loves you. (Matt. 22: 36-40; Matt. 16: 24-27; John 15; Gal.2: 19-20)

Who is my neighbor?

All the people of God's creation. Yes, even the foreigner and stranger, especially the foreigner or visitor in distress in a strange and threatening land. Yes, even your enemy. (Luke 10: 25-37; Matt. 5: 43-47; Col. 3: 10-17)

What does the New Testament make troublingly clear to us about how in the end God will judge us?

Have you served Christ by serving those in need: clothing the poor, feeding the hungry and and giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming with hospitality the stranger/foreigner, attending to and visiting the sick and the prisoner? If yes, you are the ones that Christ will claim for eternity. If no, then Christ will say to you, "Depart from me..." (Matt. 25: 31-46)

How should we judge others?

We shouldn't. Jesus was particularly intolerant of legalistic people, the self-righteous, and the judgmental. We are called to see others through His eyes and love them with His heart--and leave the judgment to God. The lost people that God would have us serve are not drawn to us or Him by self-righteous, legalistic judgement toward them. (Matt. 7: 1-5; Matt. 9: 10-13; Matt. 23; 1 Cor 5:9-13; Col. 3)

What are the characteristics we should bring to our relationships with all people if we would be disciples and ambassadors of Christ?

Unqualified love of all God's people and creation (1 Cor. 13; 1 John 4: 16-21; 1 John 2: 15-17; John 15; John 13: 34-35); unqualified, unlimited forgiveness (Matt. 6: 12, 14-15; Matt. 18: 21-35; Luke 7: 36-50); compassion (Matt. 5:7, 12-13; Matt. 9: 12-13; Matt.12: 7; John 8: 1-12); humility and gentleness (Matt. 5: 5; Matt. 11: 28-30; Matt. 21: 5; Eph. 4: 1-3; Col. 3: 12-15)

First written: April 2009

Choices

2007-05-10T14:10:00.003-04:00

But if being found by God just doesn’t work for you right now, if it’s just not something you are open to, then you may find what remains to you less appealing still. Your freedom and choices, it appears, may be more limited than you think. What remains to you is the constant drumbeat of scholarly research that informs us we are each bound in our own Procrustean bed, genetically-defined, fixed more-or-less, and further limited by the environments we were reared in and live in.

That unwelcome, deterministic reality is an earnest finger poked in our chest, demanding to be heard, attesting repeatedly to the inherited and conditioned qualities that characterize what we do, what we think, who we are. A more euphemistic sentiment might allude to the limits and conditions on the freedom of man. A more direct and fatalistic disposition might charge that what the genes don’t dictate, the environment will. And if the genetic brand of determinism is incomprehensible or unacceptable to you, don’t expect to find more comfort in the world of conditioned behavior and beliefs. Or do you believe that the realities of family and cultural conditioning are any less powerful than your genetic endowment?

So do not deceive yourself or be deceived. The power of our genetic endowment and the behavioral conditioning of our environment are great indeed. With compelling research in hand, science would reasonably advise you that your very personality and many of your personal traits and predilections are influenced significantly by your genes. So is your predisposition to pursue certain types of vocations or interests, or fall prey to certain illnesses or diseases. And the ubiquitous power of the environment, the impact of family and culture as explained by the learning and conditioning sciences, has been well understood much longer.

Of course, many are simply in denial. They would wish it all away, dismiss it as exaggerated in impact and import. But that’s a fool’s errand, whether born of intellectual ignorance, emotional defensiveness, or worse, a stiff-necked, misguided mission to carry water for various ideological, religious or social agendas. They greatly underestimate the near uncontrollable, deterministic power of genetic inheritance and cultural conditioning. But operating under a self-constructed illusion of freedom—denying, distorting or reshaping the truth—has never been the right answer, or even a workable answer. Then you are working with a lie, and have no chance at all.

You might well conclude, then, that the natural condition of man is an utter lack of freedom, the absence of real, voluntary personal choices—or, put another way, that any sense of freedom exists only in ignorance.

Moving Toward Freedom

If all this is just too emotionally confining and personally limiting, too threatening to your notion of freedom and identity, potential and possibilities—it should be. Oh, it’s not that this is all bad science, a cruel, controlling hoax, a lie. No, in large part it is too true. And the only real uncertainty is how large a part each factor plays in influencing the understanding of our alternatives and the making of our choices. But it isn’t as bleak as it sounds.

In a real sense, you can enjoy and exercise more real freedom. Your freedom is first in knowing what has made you who you are, the way you are—and how. It is also in knowing what has made others who they are, the way they are. You can learn more about real alternatives, and the potential effect on you of different places and people, different thinking and ways of doing things. Your freedom is in that knowledge. You can also read what different people are reading, listen for what they are saying, watch for what they are doing. You can learn what you need to know, and better understand.

You can, then, see yourself and others in a different, more interdependent way, a more understanding and sympathetic way. And to the extent you know the ways you and others are a product of your circumstances—family, culture, your time and place, the box you are in—you have a blueprint for personal change.

You do have real alternatives and choices to make. And you can have better-informed reasons to believe in and make your choices. If there is anything more to your notion of freedom than a hollow log, you can know that there are choices you can make, actions you can take, to access better opportunities to grow—or not.

And the scope of the alternatives you entertain and the particular choices you make also define your freedom, don’t they? A choice to refrain from expanding your experience, knowledge or ability is, in effect, a choice to limit your future choices—and therefore the future scope of your freedom. So it is also with choices to indulge foolish, anti-social or base desires and emotions. They can threaten life or health, result in imprisonment or legal limitations, or compromise your honor, trustworthiness, or self-esteem in ways that limit your future relationships and opportunities. These acts, too, limit your future choices and freedom.

So, even if you are not open to the freedom of the One who calls you, you may be ready to plan the first steps out of your box. You may be ready to believe you can choose better alternatives and expand your possibilities, that they are real and waiting for you—even calling you.

Move, literally. Change the physical place you are in and the people around you. Seek people and situations that will expect more of what you want to expect of yourself. They can notably change your actions, what you do, change your thinking, and to some extent, who you are. And the more you know about yourself—about those influencing factors—the more readily, competently you will make choices for effective change in your life. And yes, that honest knowledge will also have to acknowledge your limitations as well as your potential. That’s important, too. But, most often, there will be some better alternatives, some better choices.

Please make some choices that work for other people, too—people you probably don’t know or don’t know well. To one extent or another, you share with them some of the same space, even if not the same experiential boxes. Make some choices for tolerance or, better still, acceptance and civility. Or, go crazy: think about respect and caring and serving.

Make some choices for community and your best contribution to it. Consider more charitably the poor, the immigrant, the stranger, the prisoner. Consider again issues of access to education and health care, and stewardship of our environment. Be part of solutions, not problems; building up, not tearing down; caring, not neglecting or, worse still, hating. You can do this. But you need to embrace a new sense of responsibility, some knowledge of the alternatives and possibilities—your possibilities. And you have to make some choices.

First written: January - June 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Invitations

2007-05-10T14:00:00.002-04:00

Where has it all taken you, this perplexing jumble of promises, contradictions and disappointments that life so often presents us? And where are you now being called? Do you still more often feel boxed in by the limitations of your place and circumstances and how they have defined you—and caused you to define yourself? When you look in the mirror, do you still see too much a stale, static existence staring back at you, your term to be served and your condition to be endured?

What you see is who you’ve become. It may be a reflection of where you feel fate has placed you, where you’re supposed to be and, regardless, where you feel resigned to remain. It’s just that I’ve had different experiences, been led to different places. I thought you should know. And even though it is not my invitation to give, I’ve felt compelled to tell my story, to share my understandings. And perhaps you’ve nonetheless heard an invitation in them.

You could see another picture of yourself, an identity changing and moving forward. You could recognize the constraining forces discussed in Choices, but also understand that you still have alternatives, you still have choices. And more, you could hear the quiet voice that encourages you to accept the invitations given and turn new corners. If so, Godspeed and safe travel. Reach. Extend. Push on. You’ll likely step onto a better path. And that is so even if you aren’t ready to acknowledge the One who calls you—even if you won’t. But if you are ready, if you do, better still.

As for me, I could not explore opportunities to realize who I might become or what I might contribute, and neglect to explore the most compelling opportunity of them all: the intriguing possibility of an intimate relationship with God, even an evolving, transcendent identity in Him. What I’ve found is that you can view these and other life questions through either the limited, often distorting window that existential life fashions for us, or the dimly-lit window into the spiritual life, the life with God—or, ideally, as your view is widened, through both. Changes in these two windows are mutually dependent and necessary for our personal growth and insight. As the view and understanding that comes through either becomes clearer, so does your need to better understand and view more clearly the other.

That is, your view of the world and its possibilities are at first distorted by the limits of your temporal identity and circumstances—and so is your ability to sense or see more clearly the invitation to a more spiritual life. The more you work through your choices for personal change and growth in everyday life, and the wiser you become about them, the more open you may also become to hearing the invitations, seeing the opportunities and choices for spiritual growth. And the more you work through your choices for change and growth on your spiritual path, the more you realize those choices are tied inextricably to the existential experiences and relationships in your everyday life. Then one day, there is granted an understanding that there is really only one merged life and reality: your spiritual life working its way to clarity of purpose and identity through everyday life in the world.

And the invitations continue.

First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

To Move On or Stay

2007-05-10T13:58:00.000-04:00

To move on or to stay—that is the essential question for you and for all of us from time to time. By now, it is doubtless clear to you the path I’ve walked and my prayer to continue forward with the One Who calls me. What may be less clear is your readiness to move forward—in life, but especially in your spiritual life. Are you ready to seek and say, yes, to the One who calls you, to opportunities for personal change, for personal growth? Or must you remain longer in your place and identity? If so, is that because there is still more growth for you there? Or do you find moving on, accepting His invitation, too challenging, too disquieting, even too threatening?

You could be understandably concerned that saying, yes, will only lead to a succession of changes and more difficult challenges. And, out of context, to be invited to deny yourself, to take up your cross and follow Jesus may seem a daunting, unwelcome invitation, indeed. Or, also out of context, you might find a little unnerving the notion that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Without knowing more, experiencing more, you might reasonably question whether you could ever accept those invitations and teachings in joy, in love, and without fear—the biblical assurances of Jesus and Paul notwithstanding.

But don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t let me or others distress you unnecessarily with matters taken out of the context of the appropriate time, spiritual foundation and understanding—pushing you out ahead of your Invitations. And please don’t distress yourself about such things. Remember what was said earlier: do not be concerned about places not yet traveled or invitations not yet received. God extends invitations only if that is your path to walk, and only when you are ready. At that time, you will feel invited, to be sure, but also assured that you are properly prepared—and that you can trust God and His faith community to walk with you and guide you. You can also trust God to complete the work He begins in you. Hold onto His love, hold onto your faith, hold onto hope and trust.

First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Christian Community

2007-05-10T13:57:00.004-04:00

There are two aspects to walking a Christian path following after God, both important. One is your personal relationship with Jesus, with God—and that is always your focus and first priority. The second is your relationship with people both within and without faith community. But there is a special and necessary relationship with the people within faith community.

So let’s speak more of Christian community, the Body of Christ—the church, if you will. I’ve certainly had my bills of particulars against some faith communities, some churches. In Being Found and elsewhere, I’ve spoken of their failings and the difficulty of finding authentic faith life and people through whom you can grow with God. But we have not spoken more substantively of what that faith or church community might look or act like. In other words, when is a faith community or church the Body of Christ? What essential role has church to play in who we are becoming in God? I think you should expect to find the following:

The Great Commandment is lived. Through Jesus, they are open to and receive God's unqualified love for them, and they return that same love to Him with all their hearts, minds, souls and strength, all that they are, and they allow that love to flow over to all people, everywhere—even those they dislike or who dislike them, even their enemies.

Through prayer, study and meditation on Jesus' life and teaching, they embrace God's invitation to be more like Jesus, to model their lives after His. They seek a deepening knowledge of Jesus and a singular relationship with Him as Lord and spiritual master, as a human revelation of the divine nature and teachings of God, and as a human example of how to live according to those teachings.

Through Jesus, and within His context of final judgment, they take into their hearts His teaching that we do not serve Him if we do not serve the poor, the sick, the stranger in our land, and the prisoner. The church community places its highest service priority on serving God by serving the least of our brethren: providing clothing, food and drink to the poor and unable; providing shelter and help to strangers in our land; attending, ministering to, and treating the sick; and visiting the prisoners.

The Spirit of God is acknowledged present and mediating all prayer, worship, teaching and study—and also in all work, planning and decision making. Christ’s spiritual presence and example are invoked to lead and mediate the nature of community interaction, outreach, and service within and without the faith community.

People are led to understand their spiritual gifts and abilities, and every person God brings into community is encouraged to take his or her place in the worship, prayer, ministry and work of the church, that God’s plan for each might be honored. To fail to do so is to deny the purposes and plans of God one person at a time.

Through Jesus, and with His compassion, humility and gentleness, they allow their lives and their walk with Him to be their statement of Christ and Christianity in the world, their weaknesses and failures notwithstanding. But, allowing humbly and generously for those human failings, the church community nonetheless earnestly desires and most often reflects the characteristics of Jesus.

Yet, they recognize as important that part of Jesus' ministry that was intolerant of self-righteousness, loveless legalism, and judgment lacking compassion and mercy. For all those reasons, Jesus assailed the Pharisees, priests and scribes as self-important religious leaders who had lost their way with God. The Christ-centered church community is vigilant to avoid identity with or indulgence of today's Christian Pharisees and legalists, but also the divisive political operatives and other Christians for whom greater identity in God through Christ is not their apparent motivation or the apparent basis for their leadership orientation.

There is a clear sense of real and full Christian community. Families and individuals share their lives together, affirming, caring for, supporting and helping one another.

It is in places like that where God can speak to you more broadly and clearly through the example and teaching of others, through the exercise of spiritual gifts, through shared faith-life together. It is there and through these people that you can grow in knowledge, in prayer life, and faith—and there that you will learn to keep faith life in balance. It is there that you are affirmed, supported or redirected, held, healed and restored. It is there that you become part of a living Body of Christ, and grow closer in identity with God.

Of course, these are ideals. And as with most biblical ideals, we—even those most faithful and prayerful among us—are not equipped to always live up to them. And as collections of such people, neither are our churches. We all fall short sometimes, in some ways. But some fall very short much of the time; it is their very identity. They are the ersatz faith communities, the cultural shelters for the self-righteous and those too often given to judging others, for the narrow-minded who cannot suffer different people or brook differing views. They subordinate the Great Commandment to their own definition of a great commission. They break God’s heart. They should be avoided, or left as soon as it is clear who they are.

Look for the better places, for God’s more humble, grateful and loving people. For you can still encounter God among and through His people in many authentic faith communities. And they remain the best place, the most reliable place, to encounter something of God’s love, forgiveness and compassion, even if shared imperfectly and inconsistently.

In fact, our faith communities are usually the only way to find and grow with God in an affirmed, accountable and serving way. But yes, there are times when we are called to the desert, the dark night experiences, or to a more solitary experience with God, sometimes for extended periods, even years. But for most of us, most of the time, our faith walk should include the company of others in faith community, in church life.

First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Hope

2007-05-10T13:55:00.002-04:00

There should always be hope. And there can be. Hope can rest on you comfortably with promise and peace. It can be as natural, as reflexive, as the breath you take. It can attend your rising up and accompany you through the day, every day. And in the darker times, the times of loss, it can hold you up and sustain you. It is essential for your emotional health, the confident exercise of your talents and gifts, the excited reaching out for new horizons, for happiness and peace with who you are, where you are, and who you are becoming.

But I’m not speaking of the hope of everyday discourse, the stuff of good fortune, good luck or, at best, encouraging probabilities. The hope I speak of is a virtue, a spiritual virtue. And in a sublime and transcendent sense, it accepts, forgives, moves on, and places yesterday’s experiences and memories in their rightful place in the past. There they are not a barrier to the future, but wise counsel that informs and guides us. The spiritual virtue of hope overcomes the misleading and dispiriting experiences and memories; it transcends the burdens, disappointments, and limiting identities the world assigns us. Hope, in that sense, is part of a greater Purpose and process. It is, in the view of the faithful, a gift from God.

But let’s first explore more common notions of hope in the choices we make in everyday life. If your personal choices, and especially the human responsibilities and accountabilities you face, are some of the stuff of your hopes, then you must consider carefully where or with whom you can wisely, reliably entrust those hopes. For to place undue trust, blind or naïve trust, in yourself or others—including government and faith-based organizations or leaders—reduces your hope to a fickle companion. That is the stuff of misplaced everyday hope, waxing and waning hope at best, and sometimes of hope lost.

Of course, you will be helpless to avoid misplaced hopes in many everyday situations. It is part of our nature, but also part of our experience and journey. But experience and wisdom gained dictate that such hopes as these be entertained only in sober consideration of your abilities and the attendant circumstances, the things within and without your control. But the results are so often out of our control, and so much a matter of probability or pure chance that failure, loss and disappointment remain unavoidable aspects of life.

And it is also important to understand the circumstances and forces arrayed against you—not the least of which is that selfish, excluding, and calculating side of man himself, his foibles and also his darker side, the matter of evil. So remember that we are called to be loving, compassionate and innocent in serving God and humanity, but also worldly-wise so that we do not naively misplace, waste or dishonor God’s gifts, invitations and work offered through us.

Yet, in all these things, the spiritual virtue of hope can be your constant and comforting companion. But trust must be placed in a balanced, transcending faith in God, and acted upon consistent with that faith and the leadership of His Love. The hope of the spiritual seeker then becomes a well-placed hope and trust in the purposes and leadership of the Giver of hope, in His plan and guidance for the unfolding of your life.

It should be understandable, then, that you should make your choices and pursue your matters of conscience without unreasonable burdens or responsibilities for success or failure. In that spirit, there is an old adage among some faithful that says, “I am not called to succeed, but to serve.” I’m sure you appreciate the wisdom in this. It does not suggest in any way a lack of passion, determination, or gifted effort. It is merely a reminder that there are reasonable and differing limits to how much each of us can do, how much we can and should bear within the context of God’s plan and direction for each of us. And God often does not prescribe temporal success and fulfillment. It isn’t heaven yet. Therefore, a balanced understanding of your place in the world is important, but so is an understanding of your greater purpose and priorities, what is ultimately most important. All burdens beyond that are for God’s shoulders to bear.

I know you understand how the emotional need for everyday hope emerges from the harsher realities of the world: its passing, often failed nature, and the cries for help, healing, compassion and love, often including our own. And for many it is all the more frantically sought as they flee the disquieting image of a promised hole in the ground. But also understand that the spiritual virtue of hope finds reliable footing only on transcending faith-based foundations that inform and shape our identity and our lives. And the more we understand these lessons of hope, the more we also must come to understand humility: what it is, what it does, and why strengthening of that characteristic, too, necessarily attends our spiritual growth and fulfillment, our transcendent walk and peace with the world and the One who calls us.

Hope, then, joins faith and love as the three great spiritual virtues. These three virtues inform, lead and animate our spiritual journey, as well as our choices of conscience and service to others. And the humility that attends them allows us to keep our role, our path, and our hope in balance with the nature and ways of God as we navigate the nature and ways of the world. And that is the existential and spiritual point, isn’t it?

First written: September 2006
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Faith & Love

2007-05-10T13:50:00.001-04:00

Innocence lost is where it begins. And innocence attends and holds open the door to childhood trust, which is likely lost soon after. But innocence does not take flight of its own volition. Neither does trust. These are changes brought about by early interactions with the world and its realities, and often associated with the first assaults on ideas or ideals thought immutable, or the loss of persons thought immortal. Then, too often shattered is the trust in some foundational, defining beliefs and values that the world so often refuses to honor or affirm. And too often among them is faith, hope or love. But my interest, my story, is about innocence and trust found again. And it is the rediscovery of hope, faith and love that carries you there.

Having already talked much of hope, let’s talk more of faith and love. But if the spiritual virtue of hope is our spiritual gift for dealing with the often deceiving, misdirecting and disappointing nature of the world, and the memories of our own failings in it, then how do the spiritual virtues of faith and love serve us?

Faith gives perspective and spiritual balance to our thinking and reasoning. It culls out specious, deceiving arguments about whom or what we are, arguments that rationalize worldly overindulgence in service of vain, temporal wants. Faith makes personal and sharpens the clarity of our encounters and experiences with the voice and path of God. It also neutralizes the power and effect of evil, and its ability to use our intellect, our reasoning, to subvert pursuit of our best interests in a life lived right and well. And with a balance of faith and reason comes something closer to wisdom in our walk with God in the world.

And then there is Love—charitable, unselfish love of God and mankind—the highest, most sublime virtue of all. It harnesses, reins in, and redirects rightly and honorably the selfish desires of our eyes and passions of our covetous hearts. Our will and willfulness are tamed and bent to a more unselfish attitude and service of what is right, good and helpful to others, as it is conformed more to the will and Love of God. And with love comes other good things: a heart that desires greater identity with God through Jesus, and also obedience to love, which includes forgiveness, compassion, unselfishness and, as a result, wholeness and peace. For, in some real and palpable sense, God is Love; it is His very substance and nature.

If you can find—or, find again—faith, hope and love, you will also find notably subdued and muted the worldly siren songs of power, money and sexual gratification. Subdued with them will be those personal expressions of spiritual failings that mark our distance from deeper relationship with God (and many people, too). Among them would be hubris, selfishness, greed, fear, jealousy, anger and resentment, the things which usually attend a life too centered on power, money and sexual life. But in a balanced, earnestly pursued life of faith, all three can represent necessary and responsible expressions of a life lived well and wisely, a life that honors God.

It is the addictive preoccupation with these three realities of life, making them ends and measures in themselves, which causes us to express ourselves in ways inconsistent with a life seeking and honoring God. And even in a balanced and measured life of faith, unwelcome temptations and responses to some extent remain. They become spiritual thorns in our side, nettlesome but humbling factors that persistently remind us of what we are and are not, of the limits of our abilities to transcend the less attractive, less worthy qualities of our humanity, of our need for a reference point in Jesus, in God.

But if the three great spiritual virtues are necessary to finding the more balanced, fulfilled life of peace with God, then how do we find them, or find them again?

The answer lies first in allowing yourself to be found by God, and prayerfully seeking an authentic relationship and identity in Him. And through that relationship, in that changing identity, you will encounter His invitations and His gifts of faith, hope and love. And under the protection and guidance of these virtues, you can again find and reflect innocence and trust, but now an informed innocence and mature trust born of associative identity with Him, and tempered by experiential and spiritual wisdom.

First written: October 2006
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Gratitude

2007-05-10T13:45:00.002-04:00

Maybe there’s a gene for gratitude. Or maybe we just learn that, too. What do you think? My faith teaches that we should at all times be grateful for all things. But as with so many other characteristics, there just seem to be those people who find a reason to be grateful in most situations in life, and those who don’t. Of course, all the latest research on the human genome, all the analysis and commentary about it, make clear that it is unlikely there is a particular gene for gratitude just as it is unlikely there is a particular gene for any other personality trait or characteristic. Rather, there are likely many genes that play a contributing role in shaping various characteristics of our personality profile. They each contribute a piece to who we are, the nature of our prescriptions and predispositions. But, yes, there is more.

As you say, there is also that acculturating role played out by our families, community and culture. That is, to some undetermined extent, we also learn to be the way we are. But if neither your genes nor acculturation have pointed you in that direction—and especially if life has been unkind to you—then the call to have a grateful heart can seem taunting, unfair at the least, don’t you think?

But also consider this: many would attest that when you accept God’s Spirit of Love into your life, when He takes up residence in your soul, you increasingly experience that Love and express those characteristics consistent with it, including gratitude. It may be that He transforms you, that you become more like Him, or that you are more filled with Him and it is now He who is more often expressed through you. What I experience could be explained either way, I suppose, but the latter feels more right to me, personally and biblically. Regardless, there isn’t as much room for the old you to express your old failings or shortcomings, those aspects of you now more crowded out and increasingly fading. And then you feel so awed, loved and at peace, so much closer to God, that it seems that what remains of your old self now feels more grateful, too.

I have so much to be grateful for: family, friends, an inquisitive spirit, education, reason, success, travel, service, and relative security—but even more for the trust and peace that is increasingly mine in saying, yes, to the One who calls me, for a changing, consuming life following Him. Regardless of how you understand it, gratitude is a wonderful thing. Whether a genetic predisposition, a family or cultural legacy, or an expression of a consuming experience of God, it is to me nonetheless a gift of God. And I am grateful for it.

First written: January - June 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Humility

2007-05-10T13:40:00.002-04:00

Let’s get real about humility. We’ve spoken of its importance. And some of the same things that we said about gratitude could also be said about humility (and forgiveness and other characteristics of Christ, for that matter). But there are things that need to be said specifically about humility and how we might usefully find a greater experience of it. We also need to be clear about how far we can progress as a matter of our own will and discipline, and about the limits within the process of our spiritual formation or transformation, as well. Because, as my pastor is wont to remind us, it’s not heaven yet.

Many years ago, I read some writings of an Eastern spiritual master who said something like this: trying to eliminate your ego is like trying to physically devour yourself. He could just as well have spoken in terms of trying to be humble or selfless as eliminating your ego. Same idea. Such is the nature of who we are in the world. It’s just the way we’ve evolved, the way we’re genetically hard-wired. It’s a necessary part of our journey to this place.

A positive and constructive sense of identity and self-regard are necessary for our growth, including our spiritual growth. And as challenging as the transitions can sometimes become in moving from more identity in the world to more identity in life with God, care must be exercised to manage and maintain a wise and healthy balance. To approach humility as a goal or purpose unto itself—and with only your will and personal discipline to take you there—is likely a fool’s errand. And any progress you may perceive in yourself is likely more personal delusion than personal change—or affectation sustained by spiritual pride.

But if your purpose is following the invitations of the One who calls you, seeking the intimacy that ushers you into greater identity with Him, then one day you may awake and find that a new sense of humility is a growing part of your character, your nature. It begins with and depends on the authenticity and ardor of your desire to abide more in the Spirit of Christ, and results in more a sense of Christ’s Spirit abiding in you. This will move you toward a greater sense of transcendence of self. This is the development and function of spiritual humility. And it is God’s Spirit and Love that guide you, which open the doors and move you through. The disappointments and losses of life, the passings of this world, can then add more personal and spiritual depth to that humility as you more easily find spiritual perspective rather than despair and resentment.

Humility, then, is not something to be sought as an end in itself. It is the necessary and unavoidable result of life lived seeking transcendent relationship in the intimacy of faith, hope and love in Jesus and, through Him, in God. It takes you to the unnerving edge of a changing identity that reflects less of you and more of Jesus, and to the reality that, in a new sense, you dwell more with Christ in God.

In the wonder of it all, borrowed words flow out desperately trying, but impotent, to convey understanding or feeling of this new experience and understanding. It is as though Christ becomes more a shared experience and identity. His life and teachings revealed in the Gospels become less something you know about, reflect on or imagine, and somehow more a part of your experience, expressed character and feelings.

Sometimes, it's as though you see more with His eyes, hear more with His ears, feel and react more with His heart. Christ becomes less often Someone sensed as a separate presence, and more often that indwelling Spirit you live through. Others times, the identities may seem more separate again, but your sense of Christ’s or God’s Spirit present remains. And even in those times when the stuff of the world again and rudely yanks you away, temporarily strips you of your broader sense of spiritual identity, there most often remains a greater sense of humility.

Now you may sometimes prefer to think that your own obedience and discipline, your will, has played a role, too. And there is no question that as Christ’s or God’s Spirit abides in you more, you will want to imitate or to express more the humility modeled and taught by Jesus. And there is a role played by this ardor for obedience and discipline. But please understand that even this is the work of God’s Spirit.

And expect to see the world from more an incarnational perspective, to see more of God’s expression and communication in His creation, particularly in the details of life. Expect to find your mind, heart and spirit more open to learning more and different things about people, the world, and life with God. Expect a more Spirit-informed faith and trust in God that acknowledges that those of other faith traditions may also know God, and be called by Him—and that we are able to learn something of God and community from and with each other. Expect an intellectual humility regarding new knowledge and research which adds richness and awe to our understanding of God’s wondrous creation.

Expect also a more forgiving heart and spirit. With greater spiritual humility and the present Spirit of God comes more capacity and inclination toward forgiving. And that humility and forgiveness extinguish anger and resentment. They cannot share the same spiritual space.

Expect to find in humility the place where God is better understood and His Love experienced more fully.

First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Forgiveness

2007-05-10T13:30:00.002-04:00

We all want to be forgiven our failings, but have difficulty forgiving others. Yet forgiveness is central to the identity and ministry of Jesus. From His dramatic teaching on our continuous call to forgive and the personal forgiveness He extended to individual supplicants in His path, to His atoning sacrifice on the cross, the Gospels attest clearly and often to the importance of this ministry. As such, it also represents a most important human expression of God’s identity: agape Love. Therefore, it is also central to the Christian identity and Christian life. But, as in the case of love, the way of forgiveness can be a difficult, challenging path to walk, even in the company of the Spirit of our Lord. And yet it only grows more essential as we move from individual relationships in community to deeper identity and relationship with God.

Jesus’ teaching on the subject of forgiveness is simple, direct and clear: if you don’t forgive others, God will not forgive you. I know that sounds too unqualified and harsh for most of us. It doesn’t seem to reflect the unqualified love of our Lord and our God. Ironically, the sound of it does not seem to resonate with the notion of forgiveness at all, does it? But there are many tough-love teachings of Jesus in the Gospels—and this appears to be one of them. But let’s consider a broader theological context of the teaching.

The first and most stunning teaching is prominently placed within and directly after Jesus’ teaching on how to pray in Matthew 6:12. Within the Lord’s Prayer we are instructed to pray: “...and forgive us our debts [or trespasses, or sins] as we also forgive our debtors [or, those who trespass or sin against us].” And if you have glossed over it too quickly or cavalierly in rote recitation, or have doubts about its interpretation, then all you have to do is read the unambiguous statements that follow the prayer in verses 14-15:

For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Later in Matthew in chapter 18: 23-35, as if to drive home the point, Jesus teaches again the same lesson using the story of the “wicked slave.” Since he showed no forgiveness or mercy to his fellow slave and debtor, his master wouldn’t forgive his debt and handed him over to the torturers. Jesus draws the lesson from the story saying,

So shall My heavenly father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart.

And if some of us should think that there must still be implied, reasonable limits to the exercise of our patience and our forgiveness, that at some point every debtor, trespasser or agent of harm has no claim on our forgiveness or mercy, perhaps we should think again. At Matthew 18: 21-22, the disciple Peter presents to Jesus the question that set the occasion for the last teaching: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” And Jesus famously responds,

I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

Whatever we may think of the seeming unqualified rigidity of this teaching, however we may construct practical ways or rationalizations to deal with it, there can be little question of the high priority Jesus places on a forgiving spirit.

But before we despair too much about the impossibility of our situation, we must recognize the similarity in the style and standards of this teaching and Jesus’ earlier teaching in the Sermon on the Mount—for example, the teaching on loving even our enemies, of having no lust in our hearts, or being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. In the same way, He reaches past the standard of the humanly challenging and difficult to the impossible standard of God’s righteousness—not to condemn us, but to remind us of our human limitations, and reveal God’s path of love, humility and redemption through Jesus. And so, we must continually remind ourselves that while we surely fail against that standard of perfection, we are yet covered by His protection and leadership—forgiven, made clean, and renewed—through our faith, hope and love in our Lord Jesus. As Paul assures us,

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The closer we hold to Jesus, the more ardently we seek God, the more we will find identity in God through Him. And, as a result, the more often, the more completely, our inclinations and responses will conform to God’s and move us toward a spirit of forgiveneness. But only as we accept His invitations, can the love of our Lord and His abiding-in Spirit take us there. For only when we can forgive others, the world, ourselves, even God—and from our hearts—can we be unburdened enough, prepared enough, to allow God’s Spirit to work in the deeper places of our soul to conform us more to identity in Him.

First written: July 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2008

Prayer

2007-05-10T13:25:00.002-04:00

Things can change for you. Each day can have a different, more meaningful look. You can become more aware of God’s incarnational winks and nods, smiles and touches, of his directing and cautioning hand upon you. Life can become more about His reaching out through the wonders and mysteries of the world to expand what you may see and hear, sense and know, about Him and you. And prayer will become more often your orientation and disposition, your accommodating medium of relationship with Him and His creation.

You may feel called to compassionate, petitioning prayer, grateful, praising and worshiping prayer, but also prayerful meditation on God’s teaching and truth for you. You may even spend time with the Ignatian Exercises. In time, perhaps, comes walking-around prayer, listening-and-watching prayer, loving-and-being-loved prayer. Prayer then becomes more selfless attention to God and others. And the inept, insecure attempts at denial of self may be replaced with a more natural sense of identity with God’s Spirit, His creation, His invitations, and His love. You may also come into a more intimate place with God where you are more captive to His indwelling presence, and more often His peace, as He quietly continues to change who you are in Him.

And you can find your way there with Jesus. To that end, if you spend time prayerfully meditating on what he said and did, if you allow Him to draw close to you, His Spirit to reside in you and speak to you, His nature to rest on you, then it is more natural, more instinctive, it seems, to love God and love and forgive others, to show patience, compassion and humility, to see all people as brothers and neighbors.

First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

The Cross

2007-05-10T13:20:00.003-04:00

There is also this matter of the cross. What role does it play and what does it mean in this whole process? Certainly there is the Mystery of the atonement—the substitutional atonement and exemplary atonement of Jesus’ death on the cross. It is said that in the Mystery of God’s Love and forgiveness, Jesus’ sacrificial death has closed our corrupting distance from God and opened wide the door to His presence and grace, now and forever. That’s a lot to get your mind and heart around. And if you are having some trouble with it on one level or another, you have lots of company. But don’t let it deter you or put you off. It is something that is often better understood with time, life experience, and deepening prayer relationship with Him.

But we are also invited to our own cross experiences. And please understand that if you accept His invitations, these cross experiences unavoidably attend them. Certainly there is the heightened sense of personal anguish and pain for the suffering and loss of other people in the world, and the heightened sensitivity to your own shortcomings and failings. That’s all part of taking up your cross and following Him. But there can also be more solitary, dark or desert experiences that attend the fading centrality of temporal identity and attachments, replaced in time by more joy and peace in closer identity with Jesus and God. This is a very personal cross experience, a more profound and intimate cross experience which, inexplicably, mysteriously, follows and relates to a shared cross and resurrection experience with Jesus.

First written: November 2006 – January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Illness

2007-05-10T13:15:00.000-04:00

Perhaps, you have also had experience in the company of protracted illness. However disheartening, could that too be part of your spiritual journey? Can you possibly serve God as obediently, as effectively, when you are chronically ill as when you are well?

I would be remiss if I didn’t speak of the experience of chronic, debilitating illness. Early in the experience, it may be viewed optimistically as a passing inconvenience that temporarily denies you the things you used to do, and being in an outward sense who you are or used to be. But then, as time passes, you change and find yourself moving through life with a slower, more measured pace, both physically and spiritually. And it may even occur to you that it could be a condition, a situation that God allowed to beset you—but regardless, an experience or challenge that God could use to advance your spiritual perspective.

But if so, you might also hope or even expect to be restored—right?—ready to return to health, spiritually strengthened to pray for and strengthen your brothers and sisters. After all, even Job was restored after God inexplicably allowed his catastrophic experience and loss at the hands of Satan (as he suffered also his myopic, accusing friends). The Apostle Peter was also restored after Jesus gave permission for his “threshing” by Satan, likely his anxious, fearful retreat as he denied relationship with his suffering Lord. But these stories may not relate to your story—or at least not to your context, time frame, or experiential path. For some, restoration may be of another kind; it may mark a different, more personal and intimate spiritual course.

For many, illness or disability remains for a very long time, if not for life. After six years, mine remains a constant companion. There is sometimes no near-term or long-term physical restoration of body, capability, lost friends or assets. You could easily become despairing or depressed about it all—and at some point, to some extent, you unavoidably will.

But God sometimes may have another reason, another purpose for these inconvenient, often painful or debilitating changes of circumstances. More than a change in what you can do, and as much as a change in identity, it may also provide limitations that protect you from wandering back onto paths earlier walked, paths that now offer nothing more for you in your spiritual journey, and more, may form obstructions to greater intimacy with God. It may also attend a barren stretch or dark night period to be endured--necessary, perhaps, to keep you humbly moving forward in your journey with God. And although time must pass and understandings must be reached, illness can be and sometimes should be embraced as a valued gift from God.

First written: November 2006 – January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Beyond Believing

2007-05-10T13:05:00.003-04:00

Is "believing" in Jesus enough, or should we be changed by Him, too? And if so, how?

Emerging from my contemplative time some mornings has been this overwhelming sense that to stress what we believe over a focus on allowing Jesus to change our lives, misses the point badly, and serves neither God nor our loving relationship with Him. And when we stress so much what we believe and distinguish it so sharply from what other Christians, others of faith, and nonbelievers believe, we spend too much of our time in disagreement and disapproval rather than being the new person in Christ we are called to be, rather than living the new life of love we are called to live in the world.

So, rather than one or another statement of faith or creed to be signed or sworn to, Christians might instead embrace a statement of identity to be sought after through Jesus. For example:

Through prayer, study and meditation on Jesus' life and teaching, I will accept God's invitation to seek to be more like Jesus, to model my life after His example and teaching.

Through Jesus, I will be open to and accept God's unqualified love for me, and will return that same love Him with all my heart, mind, soul and strength--all that I am--and will allow that love to flow over to all mankind--even those I dislike or who dislike me, even my enemies.

Through Jesus, and within His context of final judgment, I will take into my heart His teaching that I do not serve Him if I do not serve the poor, those without clothing, food or drink, the sick, the stranger in our land, and the prisoner.

Through Jesus, and with His compassion, humility and gentleness, I will allow my life and my walk with Him to be my statement of Christ and Christianity in the world, my weaknesses and failures notwithstanding.

And another important part of Jesus' ministry was His intolerance of leaders characterized by self-righteousness, rigid and loveless legalism, and judgment lacking compassion and mercy. Jesus assailed them as vipers and their faith life as akin to dried old bones in white-washed tombs. Through Jesus, I will always be vigilant and clear about the identity of today's legalists and Pharisees, and those for whom greater identity in God through Christ is neither their apparent motivation nor the apparent basis for their religious behavior.

Amen

Paul's statement on the importance of faith is essential, of course. And so is James' statement that a faith without works is a dead faith. But most important, it seems to me, is Jesus teaching and example, and His call to a new life in Him--most important not only to the Body of Christ and the work of God's people in the world, but first and foremost to our loving, ever-changing, relationship and identity in Him. And without that, nothing real or good about faith or works endures.

First written: February 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2008

Guides, Past & Present

2007-05-10T13:00:00.003-04:00

It may also help to expand your reading. You may find it helpful in your journey to read various accounts of those who have heard, answered, and followed after the One who calls us—many to intimate relationship and identity in Him. Many of these Christian sojourners describe their experiences in much the same terms as those who went before them, the language of the Christian faith, contemplative experience, poetry and love. But you can also acquaint yourself with the accounts of persons from different faiths or traditions, and recognize in them similar experiences with God, but described in their language, terms and poetry.

But don’t assume or be satisfied that any one of these personal accounts sees it all clearly, has navigated and charted the path correctly—not for others, not for you. Often you will find individual experiences, epiphanies, and understandings in common; but often, perhaps more often, you will read of differing experiences and understandings. Do not be concerned or troubled about places you’ve not been invited to, and may never be. Just walk the road that has been marked for you. And stay prayerfully close and open to Jesus, to God, His teachings and clear leadings.

And these accounts should not be viewed as a source of new spiritual goals or experiences to seek after or emulate. Rather, identify the common experiences, the ones you can relate to, and seek better understanding of them and their value to you, that you may continue forward with God. That’s all He wants, expects, or allows of you. And because each spiritual invitation and experience is just for you and where you are in your journey, each may have its own unique qualities or characteristics. But yes, these accounts may also provide a rough idea, a helpful description of some of what you may yet encounter on your path following after Him. But you can only go where God has invited you, and that’s the only place you should want to be.

Further, if at all possible, it would be both helpful and wise to have the counsel of a spiritual guide or director, a prayer mentor, a seasoned and wise sojourner. They can help focus your prayer life and relationship with God, but also help you through the crossroads, the confusing, misleading and lost periods, the dark night experiences—and keep you on the ancient path, the right and good way. But finding such a person and placing your trust in him is often difficult to do. As is the case at every crossroad and every turn, you must prayerfully, thoughtfully assess the spirits and fruits of the people and experiences that you would have guide your faith journey.

First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Dark Night

2007-05-10T12:55:00.032-04:00

Perhaps you’ve heard of the “dark night of the soul.” And if you have, perhaps it's all just too unusual, too conceptually or emotionally distant to relate to, or just too "mystical" for your sensibilities. But, it has been recognized, experienced, and commented on for centuries by those of contemplative or monastic Christian traditions, among various others. Perhaps best known for his treatment of the subject is the 16th-century Spanish Christian contemplative and spiritual director San Juan de la Cruz, or St. John of the Cross.

Yes, his poetry and extensive commentary on the subject are arcane and recondite to the casual reader, but to the sojourner in the dark night experience, they are affirming and consoling; they provide context and understanding. And yes, surely the very notion of the dark night experience suggests spiritualization of misfortune, illness, and the changes of seasons, but so often that’s just how God works, and that is just what he is working with. If it serves you better, more contemporary interpretations of the dark night can be found in Thomas Merton’s inspired Contemplative Prayer and New Seeds of Contemplation, and in Richard Foster’s instructive Celebration of Discipline.

In Richard Foster’s wonderful book, he briefly but helpfully addresses the spiritual experience of the “dark night” in his chapter on solitude. Excerpts from his commentary may be useful to us here.

The ‘dark night’… is not something bad or destructive. On the contrary, it is an experience to be welcomed…The purpose of the darkness is not to punish, but to set us free.

What does the dark night of the soul involve? We may have a sense of dryness, aloneness, even lostness. Any overdependence on the emotional life is stripped away…The dark night is one of the ways God brings us into a hush, a stillness so that He may work an inner transformation upon the soul.

[Foster quotes St. John of the Cross, saying] '…the darkness of the soul mentioned here…puts the sensory and spiritual appetites to sleep…It binds the imagination and impedes it from doing any good discursive work. It makes the memory cease, the intellect become dark…and hence it causes the will also to become arid and constrained, and all the faculties empty…And over all this hangs a dense and burdensome cloud which afflicts the soul and keeps it withdrawn from God.

'During such a time, Bible reading, sermons, intellectual debate—all fail to move or excite us…there is often a temptation to seek release from it and to blame everyone and everything for our inner dullness…You may begin to look around for another church or new experience…This is a serious mistake. Recognize the darknight for what it is. Be grateful that God is lovingly drawing you away from every distraction so that you can see Him clearly. Rather than chafing and fighting, become still and wait.

But because it is such an unexpected and challenging experience for which most are wholly unprepared, and because it can continue for many years, it is important, or at least very helpful, to find a gifted spiritual director to guide you through this process. And it can also be very helpful to consult the recorded experience and guidance of St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, or other experienced dark-night sojourners. For I’m not sure if these turbulent waters can be navigated at all well without this affirmation, consolation and direction. If you sense the need and the leading, seek out spiritual direction from the people God places there for you. We have discussed this in Guides, Past & Present.

There are particular Scriptures, poetry and commentaries that seem to speak to this experience in guiding and helpful ways. Among the more relevant, contextual Scriptures might be Isaiah 43: 1-3; Jeremiah 6: 16 and 29: 11-14; Ecclesiastes 3; Job; Matthew 16: 24-26; John 15 and 17: 13-26; 1 John 2: 15-17 and 4: 7-21; Romans 12: 1-2; 2 Corinthians 12: 1-10; Galatians 2:19-20; Colossians 3:1-17; and John 14: 25-27. But let me share with you some other poetry and commentary that apparently, arguably, address more directly the experience of the dark night.

St. John of the Cross offers Jeremiah’s Lamentations at chapter 3: 1-26:

…In dark places He has made me dwell,
Like those who have long been dead.
He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;
He has made my chain heavy.
Even when I cry out and call for help,
He shuts out my prayer.
He has blocked my ways with hewn stone,
He has made my paths crooked…

He has turned aside my ways and torn me to pieces;
He has made me desolate.
He bent His bow
And set me as a target for the arrow.
He made the arrows of His quiver
To enter into my inward parts...

He has filled me with bitterness,
He has made me drunk with wormwood.
He has broken my teeth with gravel;
He has made me cower in the dust.

My soul has been rejected from peace;
I have forgotten happiness.
So, I say, 'My strength has perished,
And so has my hope from the LORD.'
[But then hope, mercy and relief]

Remember my affliction and my wandering,
The wormwood and bitterness.
Surely my soul remembers
And is bowed down within me.

This I recall to my mind,
Therefore, I have hope.
The Lords lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul,
'Therefore, I have hope in Him.'

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.
It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the LORD.

He also makes reference to the experience captured in Psalm 18: 9-28 where the psalmist searches for and senses God behind the darkness:

He bowed the heavens also and came down
With thick darkness under His feet.
And He rode upon a cherub and flew;
And He sped upon the wings of the wind.

He made darkness His hiding place,
His canopy around Him,
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
From the brightness before Him passed
His thick clouds, hailstones and coals of fire.

…[But] He rescued me because he delighted in me…
[He] dost light my lamp;
The Lord my God illumines my darkness.

Speaking to me in the same way is the psalmist in Psalm 73: 21-28:

When my heart was embittered,
And I was pierced within,
Then I was senseless and ignorant;
I was like a beast before Thee.

Nevertheless, I am continually with Thee;
Thou hast taken hold of my right hand.
With thy counsel thou wilt guide me,
And afterward receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but Thee?
And beside Thee, I desire nothing on earth.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

.…But as for me,
the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge…

And I sense the same movement and assurance of God in the 23rd Psalm, especially in an alternative but competent translation:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.

He restores my soul;
He guides me in the tracks of righteousness
For His name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of deep darkness,
I fear no harm, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup overflows.

Only goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will return to the house of the Lord forever.

The 14th-century Sufi master and poet, Hafiz, spoke in his own terms of similar spiritual experiences.

All the images of winter I see against your sky.

I understand the wounds
That have not healed in you.

They exist
Because God and Love
Have yet to become real enough
To allow you to forgive
The dream…

[And more]

Keep ringing the bell,
Playing the tamboura,
Calling for Him.

For you
Have touched something holy inside
With your spirit body
And now your eyes look broken
Without His sacred presence near.

The heart is like that:
Blessed and ruined
Once it has known Divine beauty.
Then it becomes a restless sky hunter.

The lover keeps circling in his being
His sweetest moments with God,
Needing to kiss His face again.

[And lastly]

You have done well
In the contest of madness.

You were brave in that holy war.

You have all the honorable wounds
Of one who has tried to find love
Where the Beautiful Bird
Does not drink…

Wayfarer,
Why not rest your tired Body?
Lean back and close your eyes.

Come morning
I will kneel by your side and feed you.
I will so gently
Spread open your mouth
And let you taste something of the
Sacred mind and life.

Surely
There is something wrong
With your ideas of God,
If you think
Our Beloved would not be so
Tender.

The poetry of St. John of the Cross prominently addresses this invitation to follow God into these dark and unknown places—and into deeper intimacy with Him. These are places that cannot be traversed without Faith, Hope and trust in God. And, in the darker, more despairing times, we must also walk with forgiveness—forgiveness of others, the world, ourselves, and God.

From The Spiritual Canticle:

Where have you hidden,
Beloved, and left me moaning?
You fled like the stag
After wounding me;
I went out calling you,
But you were gone….

O woods and thickets
Planted by the hand of my Beloved!
O green meadow,
Coated, bright, with flowers,
Tell me, has He passed by you?...

Ah, who has the power to heal me?
Now wholly surrender yourself!
Do not send me any more messengers;
They cannot tell me what I must hear….

Why, since you wounded this heart,
Don’t You heal it?
And why, since You stole it from me,
Do You leave it so,
And fail to carry off what you have stolen?...

[But,] In the inner wine cellar
I drank of my Beloved,
And, when I went abroad through all this valley,
I no longer knew anything,
And lost the herd that I was following.

And from The Dark Night:

One dark night,
Fired with love’s urgent longings
—ah, the sheer grace!—
I went out unseen,
My house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,
By the ladder, disguised,
—ah, the sheer grace!—
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now all stilled.

On that glad night
In secret, for no one saw me,
Nor did I look for anything
With no other light or guide
Than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me
More surely than the light of noon
To where He was awaiting me
—Him I knew so well—
There in a place where no one appeared.

O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
The Lover with His beloved...

And from his Commentary:

O, then, spiritual soul, when you see your appetites darkened, your inclinations dry and constrained, your faculties incapacitated for any interior exercise, do not be afflicted; think of this as grace, since God is freeing you from yourself and taking from you your own activity.

And lastly, some practical advice from Richard Foster on relating your situation to others during the Dark Night experience:

What should we do in such a time of inward darkness? First, disregard the advice of well-meaning friends to snap out of it. They do not understand what is occurring. Our age is so ignorant of such things that I recommend that you not even talk about these matters. Above all, do not try to explain or justify why you may be “out of sorts.” God is your justifier; rest your case with Him.

First written: July 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2008

My Flesh & My Heart May Fail

2007-05-10T12:50:00.017-04:00

For me, it has come down to what the psalmist said in concluding the 73rd Psalm—and it can for you, too. We can make his words our own as he calls out to God saying,

…I am continually with You; You’ve taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You guide me, and afterward receive me...My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is my strength and my portion forever…As for me, the nearness of God is my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of His works.

Amen

First written: October 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Jesus, the Only Way?

2007-05-10T12:40:00.024-04:00

Jesus is Christ and Mystery for me, and holds that place of primacy over others who have been called incarnations of God, prophets of God, or intimates of God, in one sense or another. But it is also clear to me that many people find their way to relationship with God under the authority or with the guidance of a revered founding faith figure, a prophet, saint, or spiritual guide other than Jesus. And if I feel informed in a spiritual sense of Jesus’ singular and eternal unity with God, I also recognize that across the ages some other spiritual leaders, saintly or prophetically gifted individuals, have also enjoyed various and unique experiences of identity abiding in God, and have also been called uniquely to serve Him.

Be open to this reality—and also to the context, likely intent, and limits of Jesus’ well-known statement in the Gospel of John, interpreted by many as broadly excluding just such a reality. On the evening of His Last Supper, Jesus stated to His disciples that they could only come to the Father through Him. We read it or hear of it and, not knowing more, interpret it out of its context as applying to all people everywhere, throughout time. But don’t we have to ask the logical questions and observe the unassailable facts, then and now: Only through Jesus? As opposed to how else? Everywhere, through all time?

It must first be observed that Jesus' ministry was focused on God's people Israel, not those outside that place and the Judaic faith. Matthew 10 recounts Jesus first sending out his disciples saying,

Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Jesus' ministry was an "in-house" corrective mission among Israel's Jewish people. And one of the prominent elements of this ministry was to challenge the evident spiritual waywardness of the Jewish religious leaders of the time: the Pharisees, priests and scribes. They were the self-serving defenders of their privileged place in theocratic Israel, a place, a role, too much embracing self-righteousness, their rigid, loveless view of the law, and judgment lacking compassion and mercy. Jesus assailed them as vipers and their faith life as akin to dried old bones in white-washed tombs.

It would seem at least reasonable that Jesus’ statements in John’s Gospel, as elsewhere in Scripture, might be interpreted in that context. And that context would suggest that the only way to God might be through Jesus, but only in the sense that the only way to God is through humble faith and agape love--as opposed to through the religious hierarchy and narrow teaching of the time, the spirtiually loveless administration of the law by the religious leaders. It would be expressed first through a consuming love for God, then a love for all mankind lived out through forgiveness, compassion and gentleness, the characteristics of Jesus and of God.

And isn’t it also important to consider the particular circumstances of Jesus’ statement? On that same night that he would be betrayed by Judas, and after issuing a new commandment that they should love one another, He informed His disciples that,

Where I go you cannot follow now; but you shall follow later…for I go to prepare a place for you…that where I am, you may be also.” Thomas asked, “Lord we do not know where you are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus then famously replied, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.”

Isn’t it at least quite likely that Jesus is primarily assuring and comforting His disciples in those unnerving circumstances? And importantly, as part of that process, isn’t He also admonishing them that they should not backslide into the rigid, loveless faith life of the Pharisees and the Temple religious? They could not follow after Jesus in that way. Rather, they should hold firm to His example and His teaching of the New Covenant of Love—and in so doing find eternal relationship with Him and God. Isn’t that more likely what is happening here?

It is difficult for me to read into this general context and these limiting circumstances recounted only in John’s Gospel—most, a Gospel of love—the intent of God to limit His prerogatives in speaking through or to any of His people at any time, then or now. Reason, a spiritual sense for the nature and work of God, the past and present experiences of mankind, all suggest that such a conclusion is error—an error that has caused us to create distance and avoid community with so many others who also love God.

This in no way diminishes the singular and timeless shared identity of Jesus with God—nor the singular importance and implication of His coming, His ministry, His death on the cross and His resurrection, then or now. But it acknowledges that in other times, in other places in the world, God has spoken through special relationships with other people, as well. Certainly the history of God’s callings to His people Israel through special human relationships is clear throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament’s Epistle to the Hebrews. So many found their way to faith relationship with Him in that way. And there are similar relationships and experiences with God recounted in the origins and history of other faith traditions, as well.

In John’s Gospel, he also chronicles Jesus’ promise and explanation of the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus revealed that He had many more things to say to His disciples, but they could not bear them at that time—they were not ready to receive the further teaching. Jesus assures them, however, that when God’s Spirit comes, they will be guided further into the truth Jesus did not fully reveal.

And certainly more was revealed to the Apostles after Pentecost, as presented in the Acts of the Apostles and the various Epistles of Paul, John and Peter. But there is nothing in the Scriptures suggesting that the Spirit of God does not continue to reveal more of God’s truth to His people—for individual and collective understanding and edification—after the apostolic age. And as Paul in his epistle to the Colossians assures us that we put on a “new self” and are

'renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created [us],' he makes clear it is a renewal led by God’s Spirit 'in which there is no distinction between Greek, and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or freeman—Christ [God] is all and in all.'

And He speaks to all. Early in his letter to the Romans, a letter most about faith, Paul states unequivocally that what is known about God He “made evident” to all men.

'For since the creation of the world,' Paul elaborates, 'His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen , being understood through what has been made, so that they [all] are without excuse.'

If God so clearly reveals himself to all in this most natural and universal way—and if all therefore "have no excuse"—then surely, just as naturally, just as universally, His Spirit indwells, leads and teaches those who in this way accept His invitations to faith and relationship.

Surely also, then, reason and the broader spiritual experience of mankind compel us to acknowldege that God's Spirit has called to personal relationship with Him people in many faith cultures and traditions throughout time. A spiritual sense of God's nature and purposes helps us to understand that. And it's just as true today as it's always been.

As much as various religions try to deny it, try to define or limit the conditions and processes by which God calls and leads people—and in the process, try to define or limit people's access to Him—God will do what God has always done. He will love them all, call them to relationship with Him, each in his own way, show them compassion and forgiveness—all of them—whether the rest of us acknowledge or honor it, or not.

Why should we fail to acknowledge the broader work of God by denying His intention and willingness to continue to call to others of His people in different times and places through the different people and ways they best understand, before and after the incarnation in Jesus? It's quite simply what He has always done. Surely we shouldn't be surprised that people in other faith traditions have for millennia borne witness to this fact.

(But I do understand. We have our reasons—reasons based largely in defending our sense of identity in the too-human, too legalistic, organizational and theological constructs of our various religious cultures. And, of course, so many of us must continue the self-aggrandizing illusion of each of our traditions’ exclusive relationship with God. Humility, indeed.)

As a young man, I sojourned with an Eastern faith community. It was through them that God drew me back to Him. It was through them that I found a personal faith and first experienced God’s love. It would then be over a decade before God would lead me back to Jesus and the misunderstood faith of my childhood. If your faith orientation denies this reality, look into the eyes or read the writings of some of the many confessing lovers of God from other faith traditions. Listen to their earnest testimony of ardent love for Him and intimacy with Him. Understand that God is encountered there, too. And find joy in how many new brothers and sisters you have found.

This is difficult to communicate to the more orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ. They do not believe it, and don’t want to. They don't want to understand how or why it is true. But it is true. And the deeper my prayer life takes me, the more transcendent my spiritual life becomes, the clearer this is made to me.

But for those of us who God has invited to experience identity in Him through Jesus as spiritual Lord and guide, we should faithfully continue with Him, gratefully and humbly. His nature is Love and forgiveness, compassion and humility; His teaching and example are true in the greater, spiritual sense of truth; and His identity is of the same nature and reality as God’s. And through Jesus, we can move toward sharing something of the nature and reality of that identity, too.

First written: November 2006 – January 2007, updated November 2007 - March 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

God, Spirit & Jesus

2007-05-10T12:38:00.005-04:00

And don’t allow yourself to become intellectually tangled or spiritually confused by the mystery of the three Persons of the Trinity. If you do, it may misdirect or overly complicate your faith and prayer life—and, therefore, your search for deeper relationship with God. The Trinity is impossible for most of us to intellectually understand; so don’t make the understanding of God a prerequisite to moving forward with Him. You can always trust Him to reveal what you need to understand for deeper relationship with Him.

It is sufficient to acknowledge and embrace the working understanding that somehow, as the New Testament makes clear, God is Spirit and God is Love. And when Biblical accounts speak about the separate "persons", roles and works of God as Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is unnecessary and often confusing to try to separate whether it is God a Spirit or God as Holy Spirit or God as the Spirit of Christ that calls or speaks to us, abides in us, leads us or teaches us. It is sufficient to know that God is not severable in this way in these functions; it is all the same Spirit and Love of the one God.

Here it is more useful to place in abeyance the paradox of the Trinity, and encounter and experience God as that Spirit and Love, as the One who calls us. But it is also important that we have a clear knowledge of Jesus and a singular, abiding-in relationship with Him as Lord and Spiritual Master, as the human revelation of the divine nature and teachings of God, and as the human example of how to live according to those teachings.

First written: November 2006 – January 2007, updated November 2007 - March 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Names & Pronouns for God?

2007-05-10T12:37:00.003-04:00

You also need to know how misled it is to see or create distance between yourself and other people of faith based on how they variously communicate the notion or name of God in their different faith traditions and languages. When you hear the voice of the One who calls you, recognize that there is no difference in identity among the One with no name, YHWH, God, Allah, Lord, or other verbal identifiers in other languages or faith traditions for the One whom English speakers call God. Those are merely different names, different verbal utterances, to identify the same Spirit God and Lord of all.

And while I persist in referring to the One who calls us as He or Him, I do so only out of historical grammatical form and use of language. He/She is just such clumsy and unsightly usage anytime, and “It” will never do when referring to the One who calls us, the Lord of Life. God is somehow in substance and identity living Love and Spirit, and in fact admits of no divisive or differentiating qualities such as gender. God is not and cannot be limited or contained in any of these ways.

First written: November 2006 – January 2007, updated November 2007 - March 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Who Is My Brother?

2007-05-10T12:35:00.004-04:00

Who is my brother or sister on my spiritual journey? How do I recognize such people? Is it their profession of faith, their claim of identity or outward appearance? Is it everyone who says, Lord, Lord? More and more, as my prayer relationship with God has deepened, there has emerged another understanding for me. The New Testament’s first letter of John challenges us saying,

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love….God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

This teaching finds authority and inspiration in the many similar and challenging teachings on love by Jesus, especially those in the Gospel of John.

Another challenging teaching of Jesus is on the disowning final judgment of those who do not help or serve “the least of our brethren”—those who therefore do not serve Him. These two teachings would cause me to be much more humble and generous in my recognition of who may know and walk with God--in the many Christian communities, yes, but also in the communities of other faith traditions as well. At the very least, I should be ready to share God’s love toward all of them, and be open to receiving God’s love from any of them.

And for those who would hasten to point out that another person has not accepted Jesus as Lord, I would only suggest that we carry enough humility to inform us that we may not know all things about God, or Jesus, or the Spirit of God, or how He works with the people He loves—which includes all people, everywhere. An evident love of God and all humanity, and unselfish service or help to those most in need, brings one so close to Christ’s identity and teaching, so close to the heart of God, that I would feel uncontrollably moved to call him brother—and leave the working out of our differences and their importance to God.

But beware of those who profess faith in God and identity with His people, who maintain the outward appearance and language of faith community, but reflect no love for the larger family of humanity, or do not serve the needs of the poor and unable. Avoid the angry, cultural and political warriors, and the fundamentalists of all faiths who appear unable to receive or convey God’s unqualified love. They too often serve only themselves and their cultural, political or cultish interests, and are too often in the process of condemning or discriminating against one group or another that God would have them love. They also appear unable to receive God’s Spirit, His forgiveness, compassion and humility. For if they could, they would more often reflect it and share it with others in the lives they live within and without their communities.

First written: November 2006 – January 2007, updated November 2007 - March 2008
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Citizenship

2007-05-10T12:30:00.003-04:00

It isn’t heaven yet. By now you know that, of course. It is in this world and with other people that you must work through your relationship with God with awe, reverence, caution and wisdom. And you are called to be God’s people, reflecting Jesus’ heart and Spirit to others, but especially to those most hurting and in need. By now, you know that, too.

I know that you are anxious to remind me that we are called also to be in this world but not of it, to recognize that our citizenship is in heaven. Authorities of no less stature than Jesus and the Apostle Paul made recurring reference to this eternal, spiritual truth. And these same beliefs are held in other religions and spiritual traditions, as well. But, you do understand the spiritual context and existential limitations of this teaching, I’m sure.

And you understand that this teaching should be approached only in that balanced, spiritual context. It should not be understood to provide a basis for withdrawing in any sense from the world and its challenges, or failing to engage your roles and duties, your opportunities for growth and contribution in day-to-day life. And it certainly should not provide a rationalization for separating yourself from other people, either physically or emotionally—and certainly not based on misguided understandings, assurances or self-assessments of your relative spiritual self worth or standing.

In a most real sense you are in this world. And if your temporal existence is here, you also have citizenship and responsibilities here. For us to stress too much—and out of context—that we are not of the world is to be unnecessarily oblique and misleading about the importance of our life and our relationships here in God’s creation.

To fail to take seriously your place or role in broader society is to fail to live your life fully and grow fully to both your existential and spiritual potential. And in most cases, that means you fail to achieve God’s plan for you, and possibly for others.

It is also clear that part of your worship and expression of gratitude is the continuous development and full expression of your abilities and spiritual gifts. This is accomplished in large part through everyday life and relationships in the world. In the end, it is spiritually important to experience them all, the loving, forgiving, compassionate and serving relationships, yes, and the striving, disagreeable, hurtful, and disappointing relationships, as well. I remind you of what Jesus reminded us: God is all and in all. And He works through all.

And in this citizenship, this role, you must first and always be oriented toward reflecting what you can of the heart and Spirit of Jesus, the nature of God. Be oriented toward the broader sense of human community and the broader sense of the Body of Christ. As Christ’s Spirit leads, encounter and respect all others as creations and expressions of God—whether or not they share your faith or any faith at all. It is important that you try to meet them all with the eyes and heart of the One who created them, allowing them to sense in you His love for them. So, greet them with humility, respect, joy and compassion, the characteristics most essential to genuinely see and encounter other people as fellow loved creatures of God.

First written: November 2006 – January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Evolving Understandings and Experience of God

2007-05-10T11:55:00.043-04:00

[From the Washington Post, a review (8.02.09):]

Thank God for agnostics. Over the past decade, our public conversation about religion has all too often degenerated into a food fight between the religious right and the secular left. Now comes journalist Robert Wright with a gentler approach: a materialist account of religion that manages (sort of) to make room for God (of a sort).

"The Evolution of God" is a big book that addresses a simple question: Is religion poison? ...The assumption underlying many answers to these questions--an assumption shared by fundamentalists and "new atheists" alike--is that religions are what their founders and scriptures say they are, rather than what contemporary practitioners make them out to be.

Wright rejects this assumption...Scriptures are malleable. Founders are betrayed. At least for historians, there is little provocation here. The provocation comes when Wright claims that religious history seems to be going somewhere, as if guided by an invisible hand. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all appear to have a "moral direction," and that direction is toward the good...

The key argument is that, ever since hunters and gatherers have been hunting and gathering, the invisible hand guiding human history has been working (largely through advances in technology and communication) to create non-zero-sum situations that force historical actors, often against their own inclinations, into ever-widening circles of moral concern. Jews, Christians and Muslims are led (gradually and in fits and starts) toward moral universalism not because religions are inherently good but because believers are inherently flexible--flexible enough to see when they and their enemies are in the same boat.

All this happens, it should be emphasized, on entirely naturalistic grounds. Wright, a self-described "materialist," believes that history is driven not by fiat from on high but by natural selection via "facts on the ground." In his account, Judaism gives rise to Christianity and Islam without even a whiff of the supernatural...

Yet all Wright's talk of "business models" and "algorithms" and "positive network externalities" somehow opens up the conversation about God rather than closing it down. In this oddly old-fashioned book, which recalls Hegel more than anyone else, Wright speaks repeatedly of "design" and "goals" and "purposes" in human history.

In the end, Wright allows himself to wonder whether the evolution of "God," the concept, might provide evidence for the existence of God, the reality. "If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer," he writes, "then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe -- conceivably--the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity."

--"Preaching the Gospel of Maybe," a review by Stephen Prothero of The Evolution of God by Robert Wright, The Washington Post (8.02.09). Stephen Prothero is a religious studies professor at Boston University and the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- and Doesn't.

This is a good and interesting review of a more interesting book. What I find most notable about it is that Wright embraces a deterministic observation--an inference, really--more openly expressed these days by voices in evolutionary science and observers of humanity and history. That inference is that there appears a "direction," perhaps a "purpose," to the evolution of mankind, his experience in community and with religion--perhaps even a "higher purpose."

Wright posits that the evolution of religions has recurrently set the occasion for extending the “moral imagination”—shared moral empathy, even identity—among ever-expanding groups of people from different religious traditions. Focusing on the Abrahamic faiths, he explains how this has been happening over the millennia as the growth and advancement of peoples in the world pushes them closer into expanding definitions of community and the need for mutually-beneficial cooperation, what he calls “non-zero-sumness.” And yes, Mr. Wright opens the door for consideration of “direction” and “higher purpose” in it all, which for him are “moral truth” and the “source of the moral order.” But if some people of faith feel implicitly invited, even compelled, to extend his inferences further, Mr. Wright, by reasoned conviction, stops short of the scientifically unprovable: Deity.

Many people of Abrahamic religious identities will surely object to some of Wright's observations about the history and evolution of their Scriptures and narratives, their faith practices and community, and faith itself--the "evolution of God." Many will dismiss the book as misleading or unimportant--perhaps even insulting--to people of faith, because its thesis is such a modest concession in the direction of a deterministic quality to the world, and leaves them well short of the sought after validation of deistic faith--and their particular version of it. Its intellectual inferences and speculations clearly fail to embrace an omniscient, omnipotent, ubiquitous and intervening personal God--whether imagined as anthropomorphic (which is hard to reconcile with ubiquitous), a spirit being of some type, or something different or more abstract. Interestingly, Wright nevertheless provides an Afterword in which he speculates on what God is. (The Gospel of John's more abstract characterizations as Spirit, Logos, Love, Truth and Light resonate most with me.) And, of course, on the other end of the continuum, many atheists and anti-theists will also reject Wrights inferences outright, fearful that they go too far and imply too much.

But the closer a person of faith and prayer is necessarily drawn to spiritual or deistic abstractions, the closer Robert Wright's more abstract reflections and possibilities approach an affirming determinism not at all antagonistic to the intuition and experience of faith, Abrahamic or others. Wright clearly suggests that, among various abstractions of "higher purpose", his "the source of the moral order" is not so distant from Christian theologian-philosopher Paul Tillich's "the ground of being," or, for that matter, the estimable psychologist-philosopher William James' "belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting to it." Of course, many conservative and fundamentalist believers would sniff dismissively at the reflections of Tillich and James, too. But my point is simply that they nevertheless find a legitimate, meaningful place on the field of religious or spiritual discourse.

I would also suggest that, among the various organized religions, conceptual abstractions of "higher purpose" would likely first find resonance with notions of spiritual truth, divinity, or Deity among the most prayerfully devout, the more contemplative groups or adherents of those faiths. For, with regard to their spiritual apprehensions, epiphanies, and understandings that most defy description or explanation, conceptual abstractions alone are useful in expressing them and relating to them.

But to the the conservative and fundamentalist, Wright's inferences will most often be viewed as misguided speculations and meaningless abstractions--an intellectual construction of an ambiguous, godless determinism irreconcilable with the Scriptures, constraints and requirements of their Abrahamic religions.

Evolutionary Convergences: Direction? Purpose?

As insightful and interesting as this book by Wright is, it is not the most important to infer an inherent or overarching "direction" or "purpose" from empirical observations of the evolutionary progress of life, mankind, and human community. Notable is his earlier, highly-acclaimed book, Nonzero, which first set the foundation for Evolution of God. But for me, the more important work belongs to Simon Conway Morris (as shared in my essay/post, Conway Morris: Evolutionary "Convergences"--with a Purpose? (Hyde Park's Corner 6.24.08).

Dr. Conway Morris is chaired Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge, UK. His pioneering work on the Cambrian fauna, the "Cambrian explosion" (of life and species, that is) based on the Burgess Shale fossils was the subject of his 1998 book, The Crucible of Creation. It earned him world-wide professional recognition and respect. He is a member of the Royal Society and has been the recipient of many professional awards and medals.

But for our purposes, his more interesting and provocative work advanced the proposition that evolutionary "convergences" of form and function play a more central, universal role in the evolution of life forms on Earth--and that evolutionary "direction" or "purpose" might be inferred from it. And, yes, Conway Morris offers his conclusion on that "direction" and "purpose": the evolution of sentient, reasoning beings--and all the additional metaphysical questions of "Why?" and "What purpose?" that follow from it.

By evolutionary "convergences" is meant the tendency of evolving forms to find the same or very similar evolutionary solutions in species advancement regardless of when or on what branch of the evolutionary tree the life form evolves. Overworked examples would include camera eyes and various types of limbs for mobility and manipulation, among many others. But, most intriguing is his proposition that sentience and cognition are also convergent evolutionary solutions, and that something like intelligent humans would evolve regardless of how many times you rerun the evolutionary process of life. (This proposition was the subject of a years-long disagreement and debate between he and Steven J. Gould.)

Professor Conway Morris's case is most comprehensively presented and defended in his 2003 book, confidently titled, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. That was followed in 2008 by The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal?, which he organized and edited. This volume is a compendium of articles by authors representing interests as varied as micro-biology, botany, human evolution, metaphysics and faith. They offer a range of views on these questions of "direction" and "purpose," and whether there results a "deeper structure," a purposeful lawfulness in the evolutionary mechanisms and constraints in the world of biology.

Of course, Conway Morris's work and conclusions have their detractors, most prominent among them--in addition to Gould--being committed anti-theists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. For they see the implications of this work leading to more serious consideration of questions of Higher Purpose, spiritual Truth, even Deity, where my brethren in faith most often do not, or are indifferent to it. The anti-theists are concerned about credible stepping stone being laid down a slippery slope. The fact that Conway Morris is a Roman Catholic Christian likely makes them all the more uncomfortable.

Regardless, skeptics, atheists, and anti-theists will still take a measure of comfort in the fact that however provocative this research and reasoning, however appealing its more deterministic mechanisms to some people of faith, it still takes us no closer to proving or disproving the existence of God, however defined. Yet, it nonetheless reflects better how some of we faithful might envision how a creative Higher Order, Author Spirit or abstract Deistic notion--God, however imagined--might order and direct the purposes for creation. I conclude on this point as I did in my 2005 essay, What God?:

And so I am left with my epiphanies, still asking, what could be more miraculous and awe-inspiring, more beautiful, more humbling, than the complexities and unfathomable realities of evolutionary mechanisms and the progress of life? How else than through these evolving genetic, biochemical, social and psychological processes might all of creation have moved continually upward toward sentience and cognition, curiosity and questioning, the pursuit of truth and identity? For what other purpose might we be brought face to face with the history of the development of creation, and those transcendent apprehensions that lead us, than to seek the sensed Author and understandings of who we are and why we are now here?

Prayer & Spiritual Experience of God: Inferences, Abstractions

Whether confronted with the science and evolutionary interpretations of Simon Conway Morris, or the insights of Robert Wright, many are nevertheless so committed to their identities and understandings that they will not or cannot be moved from them. Some cannot get past the rigidities of their faith or anti-theism, others their indifferent complacency. But there are others who will listen and consider the importance of new research findings and inferences, new understandings and insights.

Among them are those who open-mindedly seek an informed, functioning balance of existential and spiritual identity. Some don't even mind being a "fool for Christ," as the Apostle Paul used that phrase, but will not be a simple fool--the kind of fool who is closed-mindedly blinkered to information and ideas that may conflict with or challenge their beliefs and identity, particularly their religious or ideological identity. For if it is the truth they seek, they must be open to what the truth might be.

These are often people of deistic faith and prayerful dispositions, sometimes contemplative dispositions. Perhaps they are genetically predisposed (as research evidence suggests some may be). And perhaps their temperament (which is also likely genetically influenced) renders them more open to following a spiritual intuition or inclination. Of course, many are also influenced by family and religious acculturation. Regardless, many people appear to have a constructive, emotional need for faith and prayer. They feel drawn, even called to it. Many of us relate to it in just that way, and it makes us more whole.

For some, that wholeness is advanced by transcendent, sometimes transforming spiritual experience, experience that often defies fair and useful description. Often attending it is a received sense of gratitude, humility, even peace. These are most often people whose spiritual journey has delivered them to a more devout, exploratory prayer life and experience of God, experiences not bound by the limitations of rigid fundamentalism, constrained scriptural understandings, or brittle theological barriers. And they share no space with religious legalism of any stripe or degree. But they can share a Spirit of love, forgiveness and compassion, even an experience of "relationship"--and as often, a quiet, patient but engaged openness that offers more freedom and clarity of view, more insight and understanding. And it all can change you.

This more open, contemplative experience can allow us to see in the realities of the material world, and the evolution of humanity in community, the creation and work of God. Every new scientific revelation about it all, every new understanding informed by reason, can be openly considered, and allowed to find its place in the larger reality of a merging existential and spiritual life. You may also feel moved toward Wright's "non-zero-sumness," an expanding sense of commonality, even inclusiveness and community, toward all other people. For, whether you view all this as some variant of the theological, exegetical notion of "progressive revelation," or merely the evolution of our understandings of God, we by nature (or purpose) seek to reach higher, to understand more, to become more.

And on this spiritual walk to higher ground, a growing sense of humility appears essential. The more humility we can bring to this process, the more open and contemplative our prayerful time can become, it seems, and the more clear and unburdened, even transcendent, our understanding of the world and our sense of identity. And the more open we are to expanding our experience of what people of faith call the Spirit of God.

Some of us embrace a Christianity of that type: an open-minded pilgrimage with Christ and the Spirit of God, with Mystery. But we must be intellectually and spiritually honest. For the more one enters into that type of faith and prayer life, the more personal the experience and relationship becomes. And the more important it becomes to recognize how powerfully the language and traditions of faith culture and society shape how we understand those experiences. That is, they inform the inferences and abstractions we become reliant on to find meaning, direction and purpose in those experiences. If we are to be intellectually and spiritually accountable, then, we must also look beyond our personal inferences and abstractions, and those shared or recorded by others of our faith tradition. We must explore those of other faith, contemplative, and philosophical traditions--and the work of research science, too--that also inform our experience, that affirm, augment or advance our understandings.

So thank you, Robert Wright. I think you're onto something--and to Simon Conway Morris, too. But more, I'm grateful for the insights of the Psalms, Sufi and Chan/Zen poetry, and the understandings given up by my faith Scriptures and reverenced texts across faith traditions. For if we would seek some semblance of physical, emotional and spiritual balance, we must pursue well informed personal understandings of the existential and spiritual directions implied by life and humanity in community—and yes, of Higher Purpose, too. And in that process, we must also honor and wrestle respectfully with the complexities of identity, and pursue intelligently the possibility and purpose of doing something useful and honorable with it.

So yes, we should entertain that continuing invitation to be more adventurous in those inquiries and pursuits. And as essential and illuminating as research science is, we should recognize that quite often only the process of reasoned inferences and conceptual abstractions will serve. I'm certainly grateful for how they invite me to think more broadly and comprehensively, more critically, more profoundly about my experiences and understandings of humanity, spirituality, God and faith.

First written: August 2009
© Gregory E. Hudson 2009

Love Is No Game

2007-05-10T11:50:00.002-04:00

I first read this on a poster on a friend's wall in Okinawa 41 years ago. It was written by the 20th-century Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, quoting, in part, the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz:

True love is no game for the faint-hearted and weak,
It is born of strength and understanding.
[And quoting Hafiz,]
Only a person with his life up his sleeve
Dares kiss the threshold of love.

I was so taken by it--mesmerized, really--that I spent quite some time trying to learn more of both men and their writings. And I have carried those verses with me all these years, unfailingly conscious of them. And as my faith journey carried me home, as I was given over to Christ anew, these words carried no less truth or meaning for me. For whether we are wrestling with the challenges--the joys, frustrations or pain--of love in interpersonal relationships, or the identity-challenging or changing deeper waters of spiritual love--agape love, unitive Love--this wisdom serves us well. And somehow, it seems to offer more as we experience more, as we understand more, as we grow more intimate with Him.

[Posted also to Hyde Park's Corner and, in part, to facebook]

Theocratic Nightmares 2

2007-05-10T11:45:00.004-04:00

I am a person of faith, a Christian of a type: a Christian of a more contemplative intuition, a more universalist and nonjudgmental intuition about people of other faith traditions, or of none at all. The deeper my prayer and contemplative experience has taken me, this is the direction it has taken me in. I can live by my faith and allow others to live by theirs, or not. I can live a faithful life--devout, in its own flawed way--without the felt need to legislate or force-feed my faith ideals on those who neither profess nor have interest in them. I can be confident in how God reveals himself to me in the writings He inspires, in prayer, in community, in the Mystery of His intimacy with me—and still respect the faith orientations of others, and hear and see God in them. You can, too. I have said this before.

But it bears repeating--again and again--for far too many Christians and people of other faith traditions fail to adopt this posture toward all the other people God also loves, as is so clearly called for by Jesus, by Christian and other reverenced Scriptures and writings, by the example of those more fully given over to His way and His will. So I feel relieved and fortunate to live in this time and place, within a political philosophy and context of freedom and protection from such people and their need to impose themselves and their will on me and others.

But allow me to be clear about this: absent the constraints of secular government philosophies and institutions—and particularly the pluralism of representative democracy—man has shown a propensity across time and cultures to evolve his religious movements and institutions into brittle, often brutal, theocratic nightmares. Surely, the wisdom, the constitutional necessity, of the separation of government institutions and religious institutions—the protection of people of differing faiths and those of none at all—is also quite clear. It's the only way to protect us all from the extremes of organized religion, and protect organized religion from itself.

Yes, I have said this before, too, and I cannot say it often enough, to enough people in enough places. Yet, it still does not fully protect us from those who would impose their will and views on us. All have a right to their views and their advocacy, of course. So, we must still exercise our own self-protective disciplines and wisdom gained, the lessons of life and human history.

Jesus, in his time, sent out his disciples saying,

"I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore, be shrewd as serpents, and innocent as doves--but beware of men..."

He was well aware of the loveless temple religious and legalists they would encounter. He often admonished the scribes and Pharisees and taught of his disdain for their pride, self-interest and spiritual waywardness. And since it was to the lost sheep of a theocratic Israel--the wayward religious--that Jesus sent out his disciples, we know it was the judgmental temple legalists, and particularly the temple leaders, that the disciples were being forewarned of. And, just as that was the state and balance of Judaic religious life in that time and place, so it is today among many Christians. More, I sense the situation the disciples might be sent into today is worse still--to the point that Jesus might appropriately deliver a revised charge:

Venture among religious organizations or people at your peril, for with many you will surely be as sheep among wolves; therefore, be open, loving and kindly, yet wary and discerning--but beware of the brittle and exclusive, the judgmental and self-righteous religious leaders and people, more still the political religious...

For some kinds of people, things just don't change--not even in 2000 years. And even if they claim Jesus, they won't let Him change them.

© Gregory E. Hudson 2010
First written: August 2010

[Posted also to Hyde Park's Corner]

Isaiah, Paul, John, a Psalm & Hafiz

2007-05-10T11:40:00.009-04:00

From Isaiah 43: 1-3:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are Mine!

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.

When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
Nor will the flame burn you.
For I am the Lord your God...

From Paul's letter to the Colossians 3:

Set your mind on the things above, not the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God...

[P]ut on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created [you]--a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcized and uncircumsized, barbarian, Scythian, slave or freeman,
but Christ is all and in all...

And so, put on a heart of compassion, kindness and humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving each other...
And beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts...

From John's first letter 4:

God is love,
and the one who abides in love abides in God,
and God abides in him...

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear...

If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother,
he is a liar;
for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen,
cannot love God whom he has not seen...
The one who loves God should love his brother also.

From Psalm 46:10:

Be Still
and know that I am God...

From the Sufi poetry of Hafiz, as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky:

Not With Wings

Here soar
Not with wings,

But with your moving hands and feet
And sweating brows--

Standing by your Beloved's side
Reaching out to comfort the world

With your cup of solace
Drawn from your vast reservoir of Truth.

Here soar
Not with your eyes and senses

That turn their backs
On the earth's sweet stumbling dance
Which needs you.

Here love, O here love...

And with your heart on duty
To the souls of rivers, children, forest animals,
All the shy feathered ones,

O here, Pilgrim
Love
On the holy battleground of life

Where there are bleeding men
Who are calling for a sacred drink,
A gentle word or touch from man
Or God...

A Tethered Falcon

My heart sits on the arm of God
Like a tethered falcon
Suddenly unhooded.

I am now blessedly crazed
Because my Master's Astounding Effulgence
Is in constant view...

I am a tethered falcon
With great wings and sharp talons poised,
Every sinew taut, like a Sacred Bow,
Quivering at the edge of myself
And Eternal Freedom,

Though still held in check
By a miraculous
Divine Golden Chord.

Beloved,
I am waiting for You to free me...

Who can understand
Your sublime Nearness and Separation?

Keeping Watch

In the morning
When I began to wake,
It happened again--

That feeling
That You, Beloved,
Had stood over me all night
Keeping watch,

That feeling
That as soon as I began to stir

You put Your lips on my forehead
And lit a Holy Lamp
Inside my heart.

A Hole in His Flute

I am a hole in His flute
That the Christ's breath moves through--
Listen to this Music.

First written: July 2010

God With Us

2007-05-10T11:35:00.001-04:00

Here, some poems from different sources, times and perspectives, but with common or related experiential understandings. But they are limited to the reference points and lexicon of their place and time for words to express them.

W.H Auden

(from Anthem)

Let us praise our Maker, with true passion extol Him.

Let the whole creation give out another sweetness,

Nicer in the nostrils, a novel fragrance

From cleansed occasions in accord together

As one feeling fabric, all flushed and intact,

Phenomena and numbers announcing in one

Multitudinous ecumenical song

Their grand giveness of gratitude and joy,

Peaceable and plural, their positive truth

An authoritative This, an unthreatened Now

When, in love and in laughter, each lives itself,

For, united by His Word, cognition and power,

System and Order, are a single glory,

And the pattern is complex, their places safe.

Walt Whitman

(from To See God)

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty four,
and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God
and in my own face in the glass,

I see letters from God dropped in the street,
and every one is signed by God's name.

Emily Bronte
(from Last Lines)

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:

I see heaven's glories shine,

And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

Oh God within my breast,

Almighty, ever-present Deity!

Life--that in me has rest,

As I--undying Life--have power in thee!

...

With wide-embracing love

Thy Spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

And Thou were left alone,

Every existence would exist in thee.

There is not room for Death,

Nor atom that his might could render void:

Thou--THOU are Being and Breath,

And what THOU art may never be destroy'd.

David
(from Psalm 139)

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thoughts from afar.

You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately aquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O Lord, you know it all.

You enclosed me behind and before,
And laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it...

For you did form my inward parts;
You did weave me in my mothers womb.
I will give thanks to You,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well...

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book they were all written,
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.

San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the Cross)
(from The Spiritual Canticle)

Where have you hidden,

Beloved, and left me moaning?

You fled like the stag after wounding me;

I went out calling for you, but you were gone...

Seeking my Love

I will head for the mountains and for the watersides,

I will not gather flowers, nor fear wild beasts;

I will go beyond strong men and frontiers...

Why since you wounded this heart,

don't you heal it?

And why, since you stole it from me, do you leave it so,

and fail to carry off what you have stolen?

...

In the inner wine cellar

I drank of my Beloved, and when I went abroad

through all this valley,

I no longer knew anything,

and lost the flock that I was following.

There He gave me His breast;

there He taught me a sweet and living knowledge;

and I gave myself to Him, keeping nothing back;

and their I promised to be His bride.

My whole soul has now surrendered

With all its gifts to his dominion.

I have no flock to tend

Nor any other preoccupation,

For His love alone is now my occupation.

Rumi
(from The Religion of Love)

The sect of lovers is distinct from all others;

Lovers have a religion and faith of their own.

Though the ruby has no stamp, what matters it?

Love is fearless in the midst of the sea of fear.

Hafiz
(from Carrying God)

No one can keep us from carrying God

Wherever we go.

No one can rob His Name

From our hearts as we try to relinquish our fears

And at last stand, victorious.

We do not have to leave Him in the mosque

Or church alone at night;

We do not have to be jealous of tales of saints

Or those glorious, intoxicated souls

Who can make outrageous love with the Friend.

We do not have to be envious of our spirit's ability

Which can sometimes touch God in a dream.

Our yearning eyes, our warmth-needing bodies,

Can all be drenched in contentment

And Light.

No one anywhere can keep us

From carrying the Beloved wherever we go.

No one can rob His precious Name

From the rhythm of my heart, my steps and my breath.

Jesus
(from The Gospel of John)

Abide in me, and I in you...

Just as the Father has loved Me,

I have love you;

Abide in that love...

If you keep My commandments,

you will abide in My love;

just as I have kept the Father's commandments,

and abide in His Love.

This is My commandment:

that you love one another,

just as I have loved you.

The Apostle Paul
(from Galatians 2 & Collosians 3)

...I died to the law

that I might live to God.

I have been crucified with Christ;

and it is no longer I who live,

but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live,

I live by faith in [Christ]...

If then, you have been raised up with Christ,

keep seeking the things above, where Christ is...

For you have died,

and your life is hidden with Christ

in God.

First edited September 2010

Some Aspects of Spiritual "Contemplation"

2007-05-10T11:34:00.000-04:00

I have a few things I'd like to share today, especially for those who may understand the context, and perhaps even for some who do not. But first, if there is to be any hope of understanding that context, I must first introduce and explain a few things about the Christian spiritual notion of "contemplation." And I choose to let Thomas Merton, a 20th-century Cistercian (Trappist) monk, introduce it for me.

Thomas Merton:

[...] And so contemplation seems to supersede and to discard every other form of intuition and experience--whether in art, in philosophy, in theology, in liturgy or in ordinary levels of love and belief. This rejection is of course only apparent. Contemplation is and must be compatible with all these things, for it is their highest fulfillment. But in the actual experience of contemplation all other experiences are momentarily lost. They "die" to be born again on a higher level of life.

--New Seeds of Contemplation, Ch. 1, by Thomas Merton (1961)

As you may have gathered, if you didn't already know, the term "contemplation" as used in the lexicon of Christian monastics and contemplatives does not share the same meanings that attach to it in common English usage. It is something of an arcane term of art, a term refashioned and used to suit the need because there is no other word that comes close to capturing the intended meaning--the range and depth of that meaning--implied by the referenced spiritual path and experience. Merton continues in Ch. 1:

In other words, then, a contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch Him. Or rather it knows Him as if it had been invisibly touched by Him....Touched by Him Who has no hands, but Who is pure Reality and the source of all that is real. A vivid awareness of our contingent reality as received, as a present from God, as a free gift of love. This is the existential contact of which we speak when we use the metaphor of being "touched by God."

This contemplation is something some people feel a spiritual intuition about and inclination toward; it is spiritually, possibly even genetically, visited upon them. And it is not for everyone; it just does not resonate with most. To read books on it to try to learn how to do it, how to achieve it, as though it were the next ambitious step on some step-ladder of spiritual advancement, is to misunderstand it completely. Again from Ch.1, Thomas Merton:

Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our being: for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way contain Him and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo....It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.

[...] Hence contemplation is more than a consideration of abstract truths about God, more even than affective meditation on the things we believe. It is awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life. Hence contemplation does not simply "find" a clear idea of God and confine Him there as a prisoner to Whom it can always return. On the contrary, contemplation is carried away by Him into His own realm, His own mystery and His own freedom. It is a pure and virginal knowledge, poor in concepts, poorer still in reasoning, but able, by its very poverty and purity, to follow the Word "wherever He may go."

But if you would know more, if you would try to understand this contemplative experience, there are books you could consult. Reading the accounts of the contemplative writers across the millennia can be of great benefit to those called to it and experiencing it. And there are trained and experienced spiritual directors who can also help you better make sense of it all.

For me, there have been several such mentors from earlier times, but most important and helpful have been the 16th-century Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (ICS Publications, 1991), and the more recent 20th-century writings of Thomas Merton, a Cistercian monk and author of many books, including New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions Books, 1961, 2007) and Contemplative Prayer (Bantam Doubleday, 1996). But to those without a felt inspiration or inclination, the reading can be dull, recondite and confusing. You have to need to read it. (Further reflections on this can be found in my 2007 post "Guides, Past & Present" on my What God? site.)

Now having come all that way (but really having barely scratched the surface of the topic), we may attempt to move on to two aspects of the contemplative journey and understandings that have been recurrent themes, resonating again and again with me. The first has to do with having one's spirituality and faith compromised and misguided by the co-optation of demagogues of cultural brittleness, narrowness, biases, and bigotry, whether based on nationalism, race, or distorted religious or sectarian motivations. After reciting a long list of things and experiences that contemplation is not, Merton also offers this:

There are many other escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation. For instance, the experience of being seized and taken out of oneself by collective enthusiasm in a totalitarian parade: the self-righteous upsurge of party loyalty that blots out conscience and absolves every criminal tendency in the name of Class, Nation, Party, Race or Sect. The danger and the attraction of these false mystiques of Nation and of Class is precisely that they seduce and pretend to satisfy those who are no longer aware of any deep or genuine spiritual need. The false mysticism of the Mass Society captivates men who are so alienated from themselves and from God that they are no longer capable of genuine spiritual experience.

--New Seeds of Contemplation, Ch. 2, by Thomas Merton (1961)

The second has to do with the mistaken notion that in spiritual contemplation there is some form of escape from conflict, ambiguity, despairing times, and challenges to identity and understandings, both existential and spiritual. Not true. More from Ch. 2, Thomas Merton:

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." [This important but discomfiting experience can last for years and is addressed more comprehensively, more helpfully perhaps, in the expositive writings on the Dark Night by St. John of the Cross.]

Hence it is clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe--for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, clichés, slogans, rationalizations!

The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply "is."

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is. He may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because "God is not a what," not a "thing." That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no "what" that can be called God. There is "no such thing" as God because God is neither a "what" nor a "thing" but a pure "Who." He is the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs into awareness. He is the I am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo "I am."

That was Thomas Merton's experience and understanding, a more-or-less consistent one among many contemplatives. But yours or mine may not be entirely the same. And it is allowed, of course. We are each called to our unique path to walk, our own dealt cards to understand and play. Thomas Merton followed the direction of his contemplation beyond the history and life of his Christian monastic and contemplative experience to find what common ground and experience there was with the contemplative traditions of other faiths, spiritualities and philosophies.

In that process, he found both understanding and respect for them. In addition to Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian contemplatives or mystics, he studied, and where possible, spent extensive time with and wrote about the Chan/Zen Buddhist masters, the Taoist masters (Chuang Ze), and at the end of his life, the Sufi masters. He came to understand that God can be found anywhere in creation and among all people, but especially among those who in so many different but related ways seek Him and, yes, in one way or another, find and experience Him.

On My Heart Today, These Poems

2007-05-10T11:33:00.000-04:00

These particular poems of the 14th-century Sufi poet, Hafiz, are on my heart and mind today. At one time or another, for one reason or another, I have claimed them on this space before. Today I claim them anew, just because it's today and today has its reasons, because they are still there and a gift to me.

The Heart is Right*

The heart is right

To cry

Even when the smallest drop of light,

Of love,

Is taken away.

Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream

In dignified

Silence.

But you are so right

To do so in any fashion

Until God returns

To you.

My Sweet, Crushed Angel**

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God's Heart at all.
Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy
To hear.

So what if the music has stopped for awhile.

So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight.

So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.

The mind and the body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,
But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits.

Have patience,

For He will not be able to resist your longing
For long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
O my sweet, crushed angel.

Brave in That Holy War*

You have done well

In the contest of madness.

You were brave in that holy war.

You have all the honorable wounds

of one who has tried to find love

Where the beautiful bird does not drink...

Wayfarer,

Why not rest your tired body?

Lean back and close your eyes.

Come morning

I will kneel by your side and feed you.

I will so gently

Spread open your mouth

And let you taste something of the

Sacred mind and life.

Surely

there is something wrong

With your ideas of

God

If you think

If you think our beloved would not be so

Tender.

Just You and Me*

The closer

I get to You, Beloved,

The more I can see

It is just You and me alone

In this

World.

I hear

A knock at my door,

Who else could it be,

So I rush without brushing

My hair.

For too many nights

I have begged for Your

Return.

And what

Is the use of vanity

At this late hour, at this divine season,

That has now come to my folded

Knees.

If your love letters are true dear God,

I will surrender myself to

Who you keep saying

I am.

*from The Gift (1999), poetry ascribed to Hafiz, as freely interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky.

**from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (1996, 2006), poetry ascribed to Hafiz, as freely interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky.

On the Arm of God, in the Arms of Love

2007-05-10T11:32:00.012-04:00

Today, somehow, my heart returns to this poem offered us by the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz. When in a certain place with the ways of love and your relationship with God, it speaks to us as few other collections of human words can. It captures so poignantly the experience and longing for love and for God, love that cannot be found "where the Beautiful Bird does not drink," but only in a deeper, more trusting relationship with God.

From a deeper place than most of us are willing to travel, this longing, this excited elevation of one's spirit and hope is shared by Hafiz with such authenticity and authority that it blows the doors off our tepid cautions and protected places, and invites us to throw ourselves into the waiting and trusted arms of love and God.

A Tethered Falcon*

My heart sits on the Arm of God
Like a tethered falcon
Suddenly unhooded.

I am now blessedly crazed
Because my Master's Astounding Effulgence
Is in constant view.

My piercing eyes,
Which have searched every world
For Tenderness and Love,
Now lock on the Royal Target--
The Wild Holy One
Whose Beauty Illuminates Existence.

My soul endures a magnificent longing.

I am a tethered falcon
With great wings and sharp talons poised,
Every sinew taught, like a sacred bow,
Quivering at the edge of my self
And Eternal Freedom,

Though still held in check
By a miraculous
Divine Golden Cord.

Beloved,
I am waiting for you to free me
Into Your Mind
And Infinite Being.
I am pleading in absolute helplessness
To hear, finally, your Words of Grace:
Fly! Fly into Me!

Who can understand
Your sublime Nearness and Separation?

*Renderings in English of Hafiz' poetry by Daniel Ladinsky, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (1996, 2006).

Merton & Hafiz: Into Darkness to Light, to Love

2007-05-10T11:31:00.005-04:00

Sometimes it's hard to separate one's love of God from love of life, love of creation, love of people, and love of truth, whether spiritual, scientific or historical. Sometimes it all seems to merge into one gestalt, one encompassing perception that defies description. Sometimes we may even start to lose some of our sense of identity in that broader, deeper sense of creation, existence and reality. Further, we may have to acknowledge a different sense of purpose, a growing sense of shared relationship and identity--and it seems to transcend that which changes and passes, and finds more identity with that which endures, perhaps even a timeless shared identity in the infinite and eternal.

But, at some point in that process necessarily comes many challenges to orthodox thinking and understandings in faith practice and life. The doors get blown off some protected safe havens and refuges from personal change and growth, places too often created by cultural and faith organizations, and even the faithful themselves, because they cannot fully risk following God and truth into the unknown, the unsettling places that cause us to question who we are, what we believe, and what that means for our lives and our speculations about the real and eternal. This is an unnerving, identity-questioning and changing place that most would rather avoid, or escape if they find themselves led there.

I've often talked of the 20th-century Cistercian (Trappist) monk, Thomas Merton, and shared from his writings. I will share more here, along with some poetry by the 14th-century Sufi master, Hafiz. These quotes are excerpted from Merton's book on contemplative prayer. Thomas Merton:

It is natural for one in [certain circumstances] to dread the loss of his faith, indeed of his own integrity and religious identity, and to cling desperately to whatever will seem to preserve the last shreds of belief. So he struggles, sometimes frantically, to recover a sense of comfort and conviction in formulated truths or familiar religious practices. His meditation becomes the scene of his agonia, this wrestling with nothingness and doubt. But the more he struggles the less comfort and assurance he has, and the more powerless he sees himself to be. Finally he loses even the power to struggle. He feels himself ready to sink and drown in doubt and despair.

This is not the moment for arrogance or proud thrusts of will. The arrogant man will break in the agony of darkness. His meditation will be intolerable, and he will either revolt or despair. We must also recognize that one of the causes of mental or emotional breakdown of novices or young monks is...a lack of identity and spiritual maturity.

The man of today is more and more vulnerable in this respect. His efforts to seek peace and light are carried on not in a realm of relative security, in a geography of certitude, but over the face of a thinly-veiled abyss of disorienting nothingness, into which he quickly falls when he finds himself without the total support of reassuring and familiar ideas of himself and of his world. Nevertheless, it is precisely this support that we must learn to sacrifice.

This is the genuine climate of serious meditation, in which, without light and apparently without strength, even seemingly without hope...we drop our arrogance, we submit to the incomprehensible reality of our situation and we are content with it because, senseless though it may seem, it makes more sense than anything else... Here then, we make not the confident and conspicuously generous resolutions of our moment of light, but we abandon ourselves in submission, colorlessness, hiddenness, humility and distress to the will of God. We see there is no hope but in Him, and we leave everything, finally, in His hands. "Take heed, said Jakob Biehme, "of putting on the Christ's purple mantle without a resigned will."

Dread is an expression of our insecurity in this earthly life, a realization that we are never and can never be completely "sure" in the sense of possessing a definitive and established spiritual status. It means that we cannot any longer hope in ourselves, in our wisdom, our virtues, our fidelity. We see too clearly that all that is "ours" is nothing, and can completely fail us. In other words, we no longer rely on what we "have," what has been given by our past, what has been required. We are open to God and to His mercy in the inscrutable future and our trust is entirely in His grace, which will support our liberty in the emptiness where we confront unforeseen decisions. Only when we have descended in dread to the center of of our own nothingness...can we be led by Him, in His own time, to find Him in losing ourselves.

[...] The whole mystery of simple contemplative prayer is a mystery of divine love...

[...] But true [contemplation] is that which transcends all things, and yet is immanent in all...The character of [this Christian contemplation] is pure love, pure freedom. Love that is free of everything, not determined my anything, or held down by any special relationship. It is love for love's sake. It is a sharing, through the Holy Spirit, in the infinite charity [and love] of God. And so when Jesus told his disciples to love, he told them to love as universally as the Father who sends his rain alike on the just and unjust.

---From Contemplative Prayer, Chs. 15 & 16, by Thomas Merton (1996, 1966)

That so-called "dark-night" experience is a daunting abyss to stand at the edge of and look into, never mind casting yourself faithfully, trustingly, headlong into it. But, in their faith and contemplative walk, that is just what many are called to do, if they would find shared identity in the light and love of God. We are advised that some do it with greater faith and trust than others, and some cannot do it at all. Some keep taking two steps forward and one step back; and some go just so far and stop, living as their situation provides for them in the new light and understandings of their spiritual way station.

The Sufi poet Hafiz offers this poem that affirms shared experiences and understandings of the contemplatives of different faith traditions. Hafiz:

Love is the Funeral Pyre*

Love is
The funeral pyre
Where I have laid my living body.

All the false notions of myself
That once caused fear, pain,
Have turned to ash
As I neared God.

What has risen
From the tangled web of thought and sinew

Now shines with jubilation
Through the eyes of angels

And screams from the guts of
Infinite existence itself.

Love is the funeral pyre
Where the heart must lay
It's body.

So then, to what place or what end this most challenging and difficult of divine dances, this spiritual totentanz. Hafiz offers us perspective, if not understanding, in more of his poetry, perspectives and understandings embraced by Merton and spiritual contemplatives of other stripes as well. Again, Hafiz:

In Need of The Breath*

My heart
Is an unset jewel
Upon the tender night
Yearning for it's dear old friend
The Moon.

When the Nameless One debuts again
Ten thousand facets of my being unfurl wings
And reveal such a radiance inside
I enter a realm divine--
I too begin to so sweetly cast light,
Like a lamp,
Through the streets of this
World.

My heart is an unset jewel
Upon existence
Waiting for the Friend's touch.

Tonight
My heart is an unset ruby
Offered bowed and weeping to the Sky.

I am dying in these cold hours
For the resplendent glance of God.

I am dying
Because of a divine remembrance
Of who I really am.

Hafiz, tonight,
Your soul
is a brilliant reed instrument

In need of the breath of the
Christ.
*From The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master (1999), as rendered in English by Daniel Ladinsky.

On Christian Divorce: Believers, Unbelievers & Uncommitted Believers

2007-05-10T11:26:00.000-04:00

Questions of Christian marriage—and divorce—are not matters wisely approached through narrow, legalistic dictates or simplistic bromides. Jesus denounced legalism as inconsistent with the Heart and Love of God. Rather, we must approach questions and answers of marriage and divorce filtered through the heart of Jesus, his love and teaching on compassion and kindness. And we must understand the time, context and circumstances of his teaching on divorce, as well as that of Moses and the Apostle Paul. In particular, it is important to understand what assumptions prevailed about theocratic context, shared faith community, and mutual submission to God or to Christ. And what difference does it make when the parties are set in a secular context, or if there is not a mutual submission to a present Spirit of Christ?

Jesus made clear that all faith life and community—however changing or evolving—was to be lived out in the context of the New Covenant of love (John 13:33-35; 15:7-12). This is our starting point and our ending point. Love, compassion, kindness and forgiveness were to mark Christian relationships with all people, and certainly others in faith community. And in that context, the marriage relationship was especially singled out by Jesus and Paul for special attention and understandings (Matt.19; Eph.5; 1 Corinthians 7). Let's take some time to review the relevant teachings and background.

Rules for a Theocratic Israel

Jesus' comments on divorce are often quoted from the Gospels of Matthew or Mark and portrayed simply, legalistically, without qualification, context or history. But it is important to understand more about such things. Genesis 2: 24 sets the first stone of our understanding in its statement that, "For this cause a man shall cleave [that is, "cling"] to his wife; and they shall become one flesh." And I think most all would agree that this call and expectation goes beyond the physical relationships to the loving, serving relationship later articulated by Paul in Ephesians.

But Deuteronomy 24:1 makes it clear Moses understood full well the failings of people, and that some marriage relationships were not ordained or blessed by God. A remedy (albeit a one-sided remedy) was provided: "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce..." While the cultural one-sidedness of the remedy must be noted, it must also be inferred that "some indecency" was intended to describe a material matter or offense in light of God's admonition to "cleave" and "become one flesh" in a relationship subordinated to God and faith community.

Jesus’ Corrective Teaching

But the actual practice of divorce among God's people Israel became more relaxed and perfunctory to the point that by Jesus' time a man was allowed to hand a certificate of divorce to his wife for almost any displeasure or dislike at all. And that is what Jesus was addressing in Matthew 19. In this circumstance of Pharisees baiting Jesus about the necessity for "any cause at all" for divorce, Jesus makes His case as strongly as He can in defense of marriage and limiting the defensible occasions for divorce. Jesus quotes Genesis 2, reiterating that, "they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate." When asked why Moses allowed a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away, Jesus answered, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way." Actually, as we noted above, it was not that way even in Moses time, for he allowed it only where a husband "has found some indecency in [his wife]." But to drive home his point, Jesus adds, "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery."

As is understandable in such circumstances--given the extent and gravity of the problem--Jesus errs on the side of the strongest possible statement and the most limited of possible exceptions. The concern and principle addressed here is the importance of a loving, compassionate, committed marriage relationship in reverence and honor to God and community. It is not about the troubling circumstances under which a faithful wife must be protected from physical or emotional mistreatment by a dishonorable spouse. Rather, here, Jesus' love, compassion and admonishments are poured out over the failure of selfish, self-centered Jewish men and the lax, legalistic administration of the Pharisees to honor God and His marriage principles. Here he seeks to protect the many faithful, but defenseless women from the more common, more threatening spousal mistreatment of the time: abandonment by a husband without good or any cause. But does anyone doubt that Jesus would also have stood up to protect otherwise oppressed or abused wives, if that were a significant concern?

And let us remember that this history of faith practice from the time of Moses to the time of Jesus assumed the context of a theocratic culture where faith life and government were under the same authority, where all people and relationships were assumed to be submitted to God and faith community. This was the orientation of God's people Israel, notwithstanding the circumstances of the captivity and the Roman occupation. And this was the context and assumption within which Jesus' acted and spoke. For most all of His ministry, Jesus directed His attention and teaching only to the people and theocratic culture of Jewish Israel (Matt. 10:5-6).

Paul’s Expanded Principles
for Christians in Marriage

It is the Apostle Paul who addresses more fully the issues of Christian marriage and divorce for new Christian communities growing within cities or areas of diverse faiths and philosophies outside Israel. In these communities, the assumptions of shared Jewish culture and faith—or shared Christian culture and faith—are not valid, and the circumstances and relationships in marriage are often far more complex. In these circumstances, only the shared faith and love in Christ and the guidance of an indwelling Spirit would suffice. Legalistic rules would not.

In Ephesians 5, Paul generally admonishes us to be "imitators of God" and advises us of the things to avoid in that endeavor. Then, beginning in the 18th verse, He shares how we are to conduct ourselves with each other: "...be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear [awe, reverence] of Christ."

What have verses 18-21 to do with Paul's teaching on marriage? A lot. It immediately precedes and sets the teaching foundations and assumptions for the further teaching on the marriage relationship. That is, it is God's ideal and charge to us that, even in the everyday relationships between and among all Christians, there is expected a Spirit-filled, joyful, celebratory thankfulness and submission to God's love and will--and in those relationships we are also to be subject to one another.

That would apply generally to spouses just as much as anyone else. That is to say, husbands are expected to be subject to their wives and wives to their husbands. But then, in verse 22 of Ephesians, Paul focuses on the special expectations of husbands and wives. Wives are admonished to more especially be subject to their husbands "as to the Lord," and to respect them. This makes clear that the relationship of the wife with Christ is at the center of her relationship with her husband. And while all Christians are called to love each other, and especially Christian spouses, Paul admonishes husbands to more especially love their wives "...just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for Her." It is made clear that the relationship of the husband with Christ is also at the center of his relationship with his wife. The husband is called to a love of his wife modeled after Christ’s love, a love so committed that it is sacrificial unto death. Then, making the point in a way easier for some men to relate to, perhaps, Paul says that each husband should love his wife "...even as himself."

In summary, Paul’s guidance in Ephesians 5 stresses the central and mediating role of the marriage couple’s mutually-submitted faith relationship in Christ, and that the marriage relationship is lived in and through their shared love of Him.

Paul sets the bar impossibly high; I think most of us might agree on that. There are no marriages with which I am familiar that reach that Christ-like perfection. But failure to meet God's standard for marriage does not constitute a standard for divorce. It is after all, the standard of God's righteousness, the ideal to which we are called in and through Jesus--and we and God know we all fall short of that. We are unavoidably working with and through our human failings. But just because we cannot live fully to that standard doesn't mean we are not called to strive toward it, to consistently set it before God in a deepening prayer relationship through Jesus. Phillip Yancy, in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, made the same powerful point about the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 25:21-48). Jesus, in one case after another, takes us beyond a challenging human standard to God's standard of righteousness: don't even be angry; don't even lust in your heart; love even your enemies; don't divorce except for unchastity; and in closing , "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Now that could be—and often is—deeply discouraging to most of us mere mortals. But Yancy also directs us to the Scriptural reminder that, "There is none righteous, not even one," and further on, "...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift of His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." (Romans 3:9, 23-24.) That's the point, isn't it? We are called to a life that strives toward God's righteousness, and despite our human failings and failures, finds promised hope, redemption, and restoration in the teaching, example and saving grace of Christ Jesus. We are His Easter people, living in the well-founded hope of faith and relationship with Him. We understand that we live each day to be drawn a little closer to him, to reflect more of Him.

So, what has that to do with a Christian standard for divorce? Well, before we can talk further about an appropriate standard for divorce, we have to understand the standard for Christian marriage and how to successfully continue in that marriage. And that real-life, everyday standard for marriage—and I hope this is clear—is not perfection in either party to the marriage relationship. The only perfect one in the shared relationship is Jesus. Perfection, God's righteousness, is not in the cards dealt us. Rather, we come to the marriage relationship as we come to the faith community and life generally—flawed creatures, at best well-intentioned and wrestling earnestly with our faith as we daily fall short to one extent or another.

It is the shared love in and through Jesus that anoints and redeems the marriage relationship. It is in the trust, respect and forgiveness that is ours through Jesus that the Christian marriage strengthens and grows. It calls us more each day to humility and selflessness toward each other. It calls us to acknowledgment of shortcomings and an apologetic spirit that allows couples to respectfully, constructively and continually adjust their course and move on together. It is in prayer that we start each day of marriage relationship anew, restored in that relationship with Him and each other. It is the commitment to each other through the Lord that is our foundation—and it is that foundation that carries us through our differences and most challenging times to the greatest joys of the marriage relationship.

But what about the case when one spouse is not a Christian? Or, more difficult to navigate, what about that case where the authentic love of Christ is shared by only one spouse, and where the other lives a life in marriage relationship that does not honor God, and does not honor the spouse--even dishonors, oppresses or abuses the spouse while continuing to invoke, "Lord, Lord"? Is the only standard for divorce narrowly that of "unchastity," as some Christians insist?

Paul’s New Divorce Principle:
The Unbelieving Spouse

Paul gets us started in addressing these questions in 1 Corinthians 7 where he discusses the situation of the "unbelieving spouse." The implied context of this broader teaching by Paul suggests an unsettled time, perhaps a time of change, challenge or threat to the Christian community. But even if marked by a cautionary tone, the teaching is nonetheless timeless and universal in application, and consistent with the earlier teachings and principles we've discussed. But the older teachings do not address the new, more complicated situations. It is here that the issue of an "unbelieving spouses" must be addressed for the first time. Outside of the insular world of theocratic Israel, the failure of assumptions of common faith culture and commitment are now a new reality. Hellenic, non-Jewish married couples are now drawn into the ambit of Pauline Christian evangelism and teaching. Sometimes one spouse would accept Christ and a faith relationship in Christian community, but the other spouse would not. What to do.

Reflecting God's wisdom, Paul proclaims, "And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, let her not send her husband away." But more, "if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or sister is not under bondage [obligation] in such cases, but God has called us to peace. For how do you know O wife [or husband] whether you will save your husband [or wife]?"

Paul, by the example in the this teaching, again makes clear how essential an authentic faith relationship with Christ is on the part of both spouses—essential, that is, to assure that faith principles and teachings on Christian marriage are honored. For without a mutually-shared relationship with Christ mediating the marriage relationship, the narrower assumptions and teachings on divorce cannot apply. The believing spouse, if still bound by the older, narrower assumptions and teachings, would be at the mercy of the unbelieving spouse, and any non-Christian values and behavior he or she independently embraces and brings to the marriage. And if the result is the dishonoring, oppression or abuse of the believing spouse, a legalistic approach would provide no protection or escape to the abused believer. But Paul emphasizes that the believer must be able to rest assured and protected in God’s call to peace in faith in Christian marriage.

Appropriately then, Paul allows that if the unbelieving spouse consents to remain in the marriage relationship, then the believing spouse should not send the unbeliever away. But impliedly, certainly, the unbelieving spouse--by his or her consent to stay--is also consenting to a relationship that honors Christian principles of marriage. This is an essential understanding to assure the protection and "peace" in faith of the believing spouse. And if the unbeliever does consent, but then proceeds to dishonor, oppress or abuse the believing spouse, the believing spouse, impliedly, could still send away—divorce—the offending, unbelieving spouse. For then the marriage relationship cannot honor God, the believer is at risk of physical or emotional harm, and the faith life of the believer is certainly not at peace. And the only way that a believing spouse is likely to be a bridge to faith for the unbeliever is if there is a basic, mutual honoring of the Christian principles of marriage relationship. If that consent and commitment is not given and lived out, the believing spouse is unacceptably at risk and right to leave.

Yet, I do not mean to leave the impression that marriage of a Christian believer to a nonbeliever is more likely to prove unworkable or result in divorce. In fact, it is my understanding that the rate of divorce among married Christians is about as high as between non-Christians who marry. Which is to say two things: first, there are also a lot of non-Christians who marry who love and honor each other, who work hard at their differences and their ability to be a better spouse, who embrace marriage values similar to those of Christians and live them. Second, there are a lot of married Christians who divorce. Far too many. But why?

One answer might be that the Christian faith earnestly embraced and lived prepares spouses for successful marriage no better than any other faith or philosophy, or none at all. A troubling answer, and untrue. The other is that too many Christian spouses who say "Lord, Lord" have not authentically embraced God's love, submitted themselves to Christ and to each other in shared relationship, and meaningfully committed to live their married life consistent with Christian principles and teachings. This, regrettably, is the likely case in far too many Christian marriages ending in divorce. How do we know them? We know them by their lack of a submitted marital relationship, the absence of expressed love, respect, patience and kindness toward a spouse. We know them by their hurtful marital behavior, the lack of fruit in their marriage and, too often, the harm done.

"Lord, Lord":
The Common Case of the Uncommitted Believer

How, then, is the uncommitted believer who does not honor or live his faith in the marriage relationship—but invokes "Lord, Lord"—any different in place or standing than the unbeliever that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 7? And more, what of the uncommitted believer who is also unrepentant or unchanging in dishonoring, oppressing or abusing a believing spouse who honors God? The answer is clear, is it not? There is no difference. They necessarily stand in the same place in questions of divorce and protecting an innocent believing spouse. For Jesus made clear that, “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but [only]he who does the will of my Father in heaven….And I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.’" A "believer" who invokes "Lord, Lord," but fails to honor Scriptural teaching on marriage stands before Jesus as disowned and an unbeliever.

Then, if such an uncommitted believer leaves—divorces—a God-honoring spouse, the divorced spouse cannot be under "bondage," as Paul puts it, and bears no fault or sin in the divorce. And a fortiori, the God-honoring spouse should not be under "bondage" and should bear no fault or sin for leaving—divorcing—the dishonoring, oppressive or abusive spouse, whether or not that dishonoring spouse invokes "Lord, Lord.” The dishonoring spouse must be treated as an “unbeliever” for purposes of divorce considerations.

It is also important to remember that we are called to submit ourselves only to the faith community and those who earnestly strive to reflect that faith, those values, and that behavior. We are admonished not to submit ourselves to the wrong ways, base values and hurtful behavior of the world. And when those ways of the world are reflected by uncommitted believers, we are not to submit to them as Christians, and we are not to submit to them as Christian spouses. To do so denies God's promises to God-honoring, oppressed or abused spouses; it denies them the fullness of love and joy in Christian life and identity, and the fulfillment of spiritual calling and gifted service. In those cases, the offending spouse has acted the part of a nonbeliever based on unchanging nonconformity to Christian teaching and marriage principles. And the marriage dissolution should be recognized by the church, for in those cases no Christian marriage exists in fact.

This result follows from a fair and reasonable understanding and extension of the teachings of Paul in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians. And the same result easily follows from the application of broader Christian principles and assessments of spousal fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) as they speak to us through the Spirit, teaching and example of Christ Jesus. For, as we observed at the outset, we must in the end approach questions and answers of marriage and divorce filtered through the heart of Christ, His love and teaching on compassion and kindness.

In closing, I would also remind church leaders that it is the responsibility of the church to shepherd, teach, and protect the flock of Christ. That includes the shepherding and teaching of immature and uncommitted Christians. But it also includes the shepherding and protection of those God-honoring believers "more sinned against than sinning" in oppressive or abusive marriages that disrespect and dishonor the believer and God.

© Gregory E. Hudson 2009

First written: October 2009

Humility & Respect on the Spiritual Continuum

2007-05-10T11:25:00.001-04:00

The truth is that many folks--very good folks, in fact--never share in the spiritual or faith experiences I sometimes describe, whether they are open to it or not: they sense no God; they are disinclined toward faith; they reflect no spiritual intuition. To borrow context from my reflection, Being Found, they do not and never have sensed that

"...the One who calls us may be trying to get their attention." They have in no way perceived Him "waving His arms at them in the press of daily relationships and responsibilities, flashing His light in the soft, smiling eyes that pause and pass by, speaking in the voices of those who love and care, whispering to the heart that sighs, stirring in their very soul. They have not heard Him calling from all creation, the cycles of birth and death, change and renewal, nudging them to the questions of what is passing, what transcends, and what endures."

Perhaps they are too lost, too isolated or without, too much in pain or emotional suffering to lift their eyes or hearts in faith or even hope. People are wont to say that, even to believe it. Perhaps they are too much involved with self-indulgence or self-aggrandizement to consider a more disciplined, behavior-changing alternative. We hear that as well. Or perhaps they are just insensitive or unresponsive to spiritual invitations or cues for reasons unclear to us: perhaps it is an expression of their personality or temperament, perhaps it is just the way they are genetically wired--for there is, apparently, a correlation between a group of genes and faith or spirituality.

And the inescapable corollary must be a call for humility and respect from each of us to all of us. We must be aware that those of us who do reflect a spiritual intuition, who do sense God, hear the invitations, and have a personal experience of connectedness with something we call God, may also be reflecting our personalities and temperaments, our genetic predispositions or prescriptions. That does not mean there is no God--although some would consider it evidence--or, for we Christians, that Jesus is not still the same Jesus.* But it continues to challenge us about the reasons some people are drawn to spiritual understandings and experience, and some are not.

For the faithful, it also continues to challenge us about what God is doing in our lives, wherever we fall on the spiritual or faith continuum. Orthodox Christianity has few satisfactory answers for these questions, at least not for me--other than the notions of predestination and election, and the call to trust in God's perfect love and justice, notions that do not share comfortably the same intellectual or emotional space. Mystery or misunderstanding? Destiny or delusion? How about humility about the unknown and unknowable? Yes, humility, that at least. And respect, that too--for all people wherever they are, or are not, on that spiritual or faith continuum.

[*For those interested in my understandings of my faith and connectedness with God and Christ, see my essays "What God?", "Being Found" and others in this What God? series.]

First written and posted March 15, 2011
Copyright Gregory E. Hudson 2011

The Bible Is Dead; Long Live the Bible--And Other Provocations

2007-05-10T11:20:00.002-04:00

First, from Timothy Beal in The Chronicle Review:

For many potential Bible readers, the expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. If the Bible is God's perfect, infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own [failings]. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature.

The Bible is anything but univocal about anything. It is a cacophony of voices and perspectives, often in conflict with one another. In many ways, those dedicated to removing all potential biblical contradictions, to making the Bible entirely consistent with itself, are no different from irreligious debunkers of the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general. Many from both camps seem to believe that simply demonstrating that the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions is enough to discredit any religious tradition that embraces it as Scripture.

Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what's at stake, namely the Bible's credibility as God's infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably.

But you can't fail at something you're not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That's a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. On the contrary, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere. Ultimately it resists conclusion and explodes any desire we might have for univocality.

We don't know, and will never know, many details about the history of the development of biblical literature. No doubt there have been countless hands, scribal and editorial, involved in writing, editing, copying, and circulating the various versions of various texts that eventually were brought together into a canonical collection. Nor do we know very much for certain about the ancient life situations—ritual practices, oral traditions, legal systems—in which these texts had their beginnings. Nor do we know everything about the complex process by which the canons of Jewish and Christian Scriptures took form. What we do know for certain is that the literature now in our Bibles was thousands of years in the making.

Given how many hands have been involved in so many contexts over such a long time in the history of this literature, can we honestly imagine that no one noticed such glaring discrepancies? Can we believe, for example, that the seam between the first and second creation stories in Genesis, as well as the many other seams found throughout the Torah, were not obvious? That if agreement and univocality were the goal, such discrepancies would not have been fixed and such rough seams mended long ago? That creation stories would have been made to conform or be removed? That Job would've been allowed to stand against Moses? That Gospel mix-ups concerning who saw what after Jesus's resurrection would have been left to stand? That Judas would have died twice, once by suicide and once by divine disgorge? And so on. Could all those many, many people involved in the development of biblical literature and the canon of Scriptures have been so blind, so stupid? It's modern arrogance to imagine so.

The Bible canonizes contradiction. It holds together a tense diversity of perspectives and voices, difference and argument—even, and especially, when it comes to the profoundest questions of faith, questions that inevitably outlive all their answers. The Bible interprets itself, argues with itself, and perpetually frustrates any desire to reduce it to univocality.

---"The Bible is Dead; Long Live the Bible," by Timothy Beal , professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University, The Chronicle Review (4.17.11)

I sent a link to the article excerpted above to several friends and acquaintences, including a few friends who have neither read the Bible nor have any desire to do so. One, a very able, good and selfless civic contributor, a person I like, allowed that she would read the article on my recommendation. This would not likely have been something she gravitated to unprodded.

It's just that so many good folks won't read the Bible because of the types of expectations and limitations impliedly placed on the experience by very "religious" people on the one hand, and very "athiestic" anti-Diests on the other. But there is a more intelligent middle ground for reading and understanding the history of the Bible and what it has to say, both for spiritual seekers and the merely interested or curious. It can be a fertile ground for open-minded exploration in faith, but also a wonderful experience in fascinating literature and cultural history. For some of us--a fair number of us, actually--it is both.

The article shares a refreshing understanding of the unencumbered, open-minded and challenging venture into the rich, but often ambiguous experience it can offer. Like all good educational processes, it raises as many questions as it answers, and the answers as often as not reveal different understandings when seen through different perspectives, contexts and times. Like the life experience it addresses, it is often complex and confounding, and defies simple answers or understandings. It is anything but what many people want it to be.

I sent the article to some who have no interest in reading the Bible, not to entice them to read it--although I think they could be enriched by the experience. (And it is a notoriously difficult book to make sense of by just picking it up and randomly reading.) Rather, it was my hope just to share this third perspective on reading and understanding the Bible, an open-minded, open-hearted exploration of either spirituality, faith, literature or cultural history. And as much, to make clear that some of us who claim some variation of a faith journey read it with the same accountability and intellectual honesty with which we pursue other experiences and aspects of our lives that challenge understanding.

But at the risk of wandering off the reservation, I also must share that I have always been a student of human behavior. And a walk in spiritual exploration or faith--an accountable walk--must also be taken with eyes and mind wide open for what existential life and scientific research tell us about who we are, what we do, and why. My studies in psychology, genetics, brain, neural and endocrine systems as an undergraduate (and through a graduate fellowship) have remained active areas of interest for me throughout my life-- and for some years, evolutionary science, as well. And I believe there is ample evidence to suggest that our personalities and temperaments have a lot to do with our orientation to spirituality and faith. We can see those personality types reflected in the range of both political and faith expressions.

And the likely level of determinism involved can be unsettling--more so to some than others, but to some extent to all. For our genetic prescriptions and predispositions appear to govern far more of who we are and what we do than we are comfortable acknowledging. And the deterministic power of our family, educational and cultural conditioning is also greatly at odds with our preferred understandings and sense of freedom, choice, and self-determination. Very uncomfortable, ambiguous stuff for most people--just as uncomfortable as Mr.Beal's shared understandings and approaches to experiencing the Bible are to most believers.

Such ambiguity and challenges to identity are so much of what life offers. I too think it a shame if the discomfort of wrestling with them keeps us from exploring and better understanding the determinants and possibilities of our identity. And to ignore the invitations and challenges may also be to fall short of our potential.

Copyright Gregory E. Hudson 2011
First written: May 20, 2011

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Bible-Is-Dead-Long-Live/127099/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Prefatory Comments

2007-05-10T11:00:00.003-04:00

A return to graduate school at Harvard at age 54, and an extraordinary corner turned in my prayer and spiritual life, challenged and changed my sense of identity, purpose and direction. In December 2004, I started writing about it and couldn’t seem to stop. An edgy personal anthem, a statement of complaint and declaration of changed identity demanded expression. I titled it Out of the Box for reasons evident in the reading of it. Other essays soon followed clarifying or expanding on aspects of the first. Those were my Identity's Complaint essays.

Then still more essays were called forward to address issues of faith posed by the earlier pieces. What emerged was this next series of essays titled, What God? Identity and Life with the One Who Calls Us, and another series, Beyond Life's Boxes. And while these lack the same rhetorical edge, they too are intended to be provocative in the sense of challenging our spiritual sense of identity, our understandings, directions and actions.

These essays are more a personal reflection on finding oneself, being found by God, and finding evolving relationship and identity in Him. They are about me and my evolving identity, yes, but they could also be about you. So, it would be altogether satisfying to me if in some way they help others better relate to their existential and spiritual questions, either by providing some answers or better questions.

Greg Hudson

September 2007

What God?

Contents

What God?

Being Found

The Arts

Love and Fear

Healer

Missing the Point About Jesus

Christians & the Poor

Some Good Questions

God's Will

Markers of Christian Identity

Choices

Invitations

To Move On or Stay

Christian Community

Hope

Faith & Love

Gratitude

Humility

Forgiveness

Prayer

The Cross

Illness

Beyond Believing

Guides, Past & Present

Dark Night

My Flesh & My Heart May Fail

Jesus, the Only Way?

God, Spirit & Jesus

Names & Pronouns for God?

Who Is My Brother?

Citizenship

Evolving Understandings and Experience of God

Love Is No Game

Theocratic Nightmares 2

Isaiah, Paul, John, a Psalm & Hafiz

God With Us

Some Aspects of Spiritual "Contemplation"

On My Heart Today, These Poems

On the Arm of God, in the Arms of Love

Merton & Hafiz: Into Darkness to Light, to Love

On Christian Divorce: Believers, Unbelievers & Uncommitted Believers

Humility & Respect on the Spiritual Continuum

The Bible Is Dead; Long Live the Bible--And Other Provocations

Prefatory Comments