Faith
is like having sex
You
gotta feel it to do it
And
you gotta do it to feel it
Anything less is just fakin'.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Do you believe in God?
Do you believe in God? Great!
What if I told you that I
believe in God too
Just not in the way you
might
Would that be okay?
But what if my belief in
God
Is too different
From your belief in God?
Would one of us need to
give up rights to the term?
Are
you an unbeliever? Great!
What
if I told you that I don’t believe in God either
At
least not in the conventional sense
Would
that be okay?
But
what if my unbelief
Was
more nuanced
Than
your unbelief? Or yours more than mine?
Would
one of us have to concede a belief in God after all?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet what if belief or
unbelief is completely irrelevant
To the reality of God’s
existence or nonexistence?
What if faith still works
like faith
Regardless if we believe
in a God or not?
What if right is still
right, wrong is still wrong
Grey is still grey, and
“beats me!” is still “beats me!”?
What if hope is still
hope, love is still love, and trying is still trying
No matter how we use our
faith? –as long as we use it
What
if faith is as universal
As
our limits and shortcomings
And
learning to love was the only real choice we ever had in the first place?
Would
that give us an all-inclusive meaning to the struggles of life?
Would
that pretty much describe God in a nut shell?
Or
humanity?
Or
grace?
Or
all of the above?
In
the end words DO have meaning
And
‘God’ is no small word
Question
is, is there a Word
Bigger
than how we might think about ‘God’?
If there is, do any of us
really have the right to define it?
To color it? To wrap it up in a box?
Postmark it for Jews and
gentiles
But not for heathens or
heretics?
Given what “God” means
simply by us saying it
Isn’t it still the holy
grail of human language?
An utterance for every
knee and tongue
Too sublime to bow or
confess a thing
Other than what faith
would give us
In the very moment of its
sudden and glottal stop!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So
what if faith took living
Rather
than believing?
And
God took faith
Rather
than confessing?
Perhaps
that would give us all
Only
one thing left to do:
Live
by loving others
Die
in the throes of struggle
And
hope to God that that was more important
Than
what we believed.
Immovable Text
Scripture
is not authority
Its
inspiration
Otherwise
Why
keep quoting it and not just do it once and for all?
I
know the love of Jesus
Not
because the Bible tells me so
But
because I feel it in my heart
No
book can do that
It
just so happens
That
what I read resonates
With
what’s already in me
In
deed, Divine Love transcends
Not
only scripture
But
the Christian story itself
So
to be truly inspired
Holy
Word must be borne in every trough
It
must bear the deepest and darkest plot of love
Not
just for some stories, but for all
And
when this Love has done its work
We
nonetheless insist that it must die
On
ink and paper, buried inside immovable text!
And
yet the Gospel truth
Is
that between the blowing and crinkling pages of life
This
Word rises to live again and again
Each
day in our hearts.
Faith is a Two-way Street
To
be clear
We
atheists don’t reject
All
the truly amazing and wonderful things about God
We
just feel
That
all these amazing and wonderful things
Are
freely available without a God
Now
If
you want to accuse us atheists
Of
still believing in SOME kind of God
On
account of this
I
suppose then we DO have the right
To
say critical things about God after all
All
in all, faith is a two-way street
What
you praise
I
might scoff
And
I’m sorry if that rubs a sore spot
But
the rules say we all got to drive here
So
let’s at least mind the center line shall we
By
the way, what if ‘God’ is the road itself?
“G” “o” “d”
God
is a word
That
names the object of our faith
So
Believe
Or
Don’t
believe
Just
Be
good to your faith
God
will thank you for it
And
the rest of us will too.
Peace.Religious Journey
Religion
itself is a good thing
But the kind of unquestioning literalistic certainty
Is what
turns our religious ideas of God
From
a loving creator
Into
a bigoted tyrant
And
us into his unwitting accomplices.
So
make doubt part of your religion.
Doubt
everything that doesn’t sit right with you
And
especially those things that sit TOO well
And
then hold on
Your
idea of God is going to start doing cartwheels
But
don’t worry
Religious faith is made for this kind of journey.
"no one puts new wine into old wineskins" -Mark 2:22
"we should not think that the nature of the divine is like gold or silver or stone, an image which can be formed by the art and thought of humans" -Acts 17:29
Thursday, April 25, 2013
when heaven comes down to earth
In today’s world
Why should religion still be defined by superstition?
Why should spirituality still require a belief in the
supernatural?
Today
We know we have an inner world, and an outer world
Our conscious minds, and our cosmos
At long last, that’s all we have data for; thoughts and
things
And so our inner data has given us the insights of
psychology
And our outer data has shown us the laws of physics
And yet science itself has shown us
That these are not two worlds, but one
One coin, with two sides
So why should we still imagine an extra third world
To make sense of the amazing two-sided one we’re clearly limited
to?
Why should we keep imagining some extra heavenly realm
that we have no data for?
Isn’t it about time we found religion without
superstition?
Isn’t it about time we found spirituality without the
supernatural?
Isn’t it about time we found God right here, right now,
gleaming with reality?
Can’t God just be the great unity of the reality inside
us with the reality outside us?
Can’t God just be the way the majesty of the universe
relates to the wonder of our hearts?
And vice versa?
Can’t we just be still and know that God is simply the reality
of reality?
And that reality itself will always hold and reveal the
truth and goodness we seek
Even though we may lose track of it sometimes –inside or
out
Thus, in today’s world
Shouldn’t religion simply be the outer practice of the
inner good we find and cherish?
And spirituality, the collective science of how we can do
this together on one planet?
Perhaps today
Can finally be the day
When heaven comes down to earth
But then again, this has been preached for two-thousand
years
So maybe, could this, just maybe, be the return of Christ
for our age?
Last time: freedom
from the legalistic trappings of Law and sin
This time: freedom
from the literalizing of Lore and superstition!
And yet at all times the same Kingdom, always at hand.
And yet at all times the same Kingdom, always at hand.
“Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” -Matt. 28:20
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