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Further reflections on my “You keep using that word…” post

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Wow. Welcome to my page. I didn’t really expect this much attention when I posted one of my older posts (“You keep using that word…”) on the Facebook page of “Christians Tired of Being Misrepresented”. I’m grateful for the positive comments and support. I’m glad that people seem to understand where I’m coming from.

Some don’t, and I wanted to address that. I want to make very sure that the point of my post is understood.

There is a term that comes to mind. It is “jingoism”. It can be summed up with the phrase “My country, right or wrong.” It is a blind allegiance to an idea, even if that idea is going totally in the wrong direction. The same can be said of the church, and Christianity. Some people have said I’m attacking the church, and Christians, that I’m being judgmental. I’m not doing either. I’m pointing out that this idea of “my Church, or my Faith, right or wrong” is dangerous. Religious jingoism has gotten us in a lot of trouble.

Are we hanging on to our idea of church because we love church? Or are we ready to honestly examine how we think of church because we love church? I’m in the latter half. I’m not alone.

I want the church to be what Jesus meant for it to be. It often isn’t. It is because I love Jesus that I want the church to be alive, and flourish.

If the church can’t handle a little honest criticism, then it needs it all the more.

Church needs to be about action. We are Jesus’ body in this world. The healing of the world will come through our hands. We are the ones who will teach and nurture and encourage. We are the ones who will bring forth the Kingdom of Heaven.

I’m frustrated when church has become a place to hang out. I’m frustrated when church has become a social club. I’m frustrated when church isn’t about taking care of others more than it is about taking care of its own.

I would hate to think Jesus died for us to get together and sing a few songs on Sunday and then go on our way. I’d rather church be about doing something real with our time together.

When people think of Christians, they need to think of people who want to help. They need to think of people who love unconditionally. They need to think of people who give of their time and talents and treasure to bring forth the kingdom of heaven. Sadly, “church” and “Christian” is all to equated with judgment and exclusiveness. We only have ourselves to blame for that.

I wrote “You keep using that word…” as a wake-up call to Christians. It is to let us know that we have strayed from the path.

I also wrote it for non-Christians, to let them know that anyone who says they are Christian but they don’t act in a loving way, isn’t. That perhaps they should give us a second chance. I almost walked away from Jesus before I even got to know Him, and it was because of Christians.

Pointing out where we have made mistakes isn’t judgmental, in spite of what a few commenters said. It is pointing out hypocrisy. It is saying that our actions don’t match our creed. We just aren’t doing it right.

I want us to do it right. I want us to do it right so much that I write about it, for free, in my spare time. I’m passionate about this.

Keeping going the way we’ve always done it because we’ve always done it that way will be our death.

The church as we know it is dying. Many people have written far better and far more than I have on this. I’m not the first to point this out.

But this doesn’t mean the end of the church. It is just the end of the church as we know it.

And that is a wonderful thing.

We can start again.

We can have church that welcomes everyone, male, female, gay, straight, and from every race and culture and class. We can have church that encourages every person to be a minister, and to use their skills.

Or, this can go like the way of Martin Luther and John Wesley. They tried to reform the church, to make it line up closer to what Jesus meant, and they were ridiculed and ignored. Some listened, and separated off. This isn’t ideal.

I want us all to wake up.

Church isn’t about a building or a minister, or vestments or candles or stained glass windows.

Church is about us, the people of God, honestly serving God by serving His people. His people are everyone. Everyone. Not “the chosen”, not those people in church already, but everyone. Every single person.

I like the Gandhi quote about how he loves our Christ but not our Christians. Gandhi also said “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” I’m not attacking church, or Christians. I’m pointing out how we are falling short as a body. I’m pointing out that we aren’t living up to what we believe. I want the church to indeed be the Body of Christ, rather than a building where we hang out for an hour once a week. I want the Church to do what Jesus did. Some congregations do, and that is awesome. Some people do, within congregations that don’t. I also want people who aren’t Christian to understand that the people who are the loudest about their Christianity are often what I have seen called “Christianist”. They like the idea of Christ more than Christ. I want better for us. I want the Church to be a force for good. I want to call to attention the Christians who would say Gandhi is burning in hell because he isn’t Christian.

Jesus in disguise.

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Mother Theresa suggests that we try to see Jesus in every person. She said that it was her privilege to wash Jesus’ festering wounds and to feed him as a tiny abandoned child with AIDS. Essentially, we should serve each person as if they are Jesus in disguise.

I’ve tried this for the past few years at work and it is pretty amazing, and yet very difficult. Every now and then I want to say, hey, Jesus, can you stop being so weird?

It isn’t all weird. Mostly, there is a lot of good in this practice. Because I have changed how I approach people, they have changed towards me. I used to have a lot of people yell at me. They would come in already loaded up with problems, and they were ready to share. Anything and nothing would set them off. It always seemed random when a person would yell, and I began to get very hesitant around everyone. I expected to get randomly yelled at, and they would read my fear and oblige me.

So I tried Mother Theresa’s approach, with a little bit of “The Dog Whisperer” thrown in. Work with me here. People are animals. We are civilized animals, mostly, but we are still animals. We forget this. We respond to the same cues that animals respond to. So showing calm, positive energy is going to result in better results than showing fear.

Being interested in and calm around every single person I help is honestly overwhelming to do for hours at a time. I am a huge introvert. I like people and am constantly fascinated by them, and I like serving them. But I need a lot of quiet and calm to recharge after a day at work.

The difference in patron’s reactions to me is amazing, though, so it is worth it. It is as if I’m playing a “hide and seek” game. I’m looking really hard for the good, the light. I’m trying to see their soul, the spark of God that is within them. They respond to my curiosity by opening up. Their light may be buried under years of abuse or self-hatred or illness, but it is always there. Where there is life, there is light. Just searching for it can bring it out and make it brighter.

Jesus in disguise can be really overwhelming, however. Gender and age are illusions. She can be lonely and I’m the only person she’s got to talk to. He can be a new widower and on the brink of tears while he is signing up for his library card. He can be really smelly because he walked to the library on a Tennessee summer day because his car broke down and he doesn’t have air conditioning at home. She can be a young mother with more children than she has patience for.

Jesus can be a real pain when he is like this. I want to say, hey, Jesus, can’t you show me your nice side sometimes? Why do you have to be cranky and smelly and mean? Can’t you just be normal for a change?

And then I pray again. I ask him to show himself to me again. I ask him to work through me. I ask that my words be what this cranky, smelly, mean person needs to hear. I ask that I’m able to offer them a bit of healing in the time we are together. I try to be mindful and fully present.

It is hard. But it is everything. It is what each of us is made for, this reality, this presence, this moment when we stop being machines and we start being human. It is beautiful and real and aching and sad and overwhelming and everything we need to make this place we call Earth a home. Because ultimately it is all about a connection between people. It is about incarnate love, this love made real and tender and fragile and beautiful.

But it sure would be nice if Jesus would take a bath and use a breath mint every now and then.

On ministers, and spoon-fed faith.

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I’m wrestling with the idea of ministers. I’m wrestling with it from several directions. I have an issue with ordained ministers. I have an issue with people who aren’t ordained and call themselves ministers. Then I have an issue with the entire idea of ministers at all. So I’m going to try to work out where I’m coming from and where I’m going by writing about it.

I believe that each person has within them a unique perspective. I think that each person’s insight into what is Truth is valuable. I liken it to the story of the five blind men and the elephant. Each person in the story was touching a different part of the elephant and each person thought they had the whole thing. They thought that their particular understanding of what they were experiencing was truth. But each person was wrong because they only had a small part of it. It was only when they started comparing what they were experiencing did they start to understand that the elephant was far bigger than they had apprehended. This story is usually used to illustrate how each faith tradition should interact with each other and that no one faith has a lock on who God (YHWH, Allah, The Divine, the Creator…) is. But I expand this story. I use it to point out that each person’s understanding of God is valuable. Everybody needs to share.

With a top-down lead church, with a minister in charge, nobody gets to share. It is a passive experience. The people sit and listen to one person say what God is. Perhaps some people need that for a while. Perhaps they need a God with training wheels. But I’d rather them learn that they are strong enough to ride on their own.

I have a big problem with the entire idea of people being passive about their faith. I think it is dangerous. I think our souls are too important to be handed over to another person. I think we all need to be accountable to each other, and we need to be in community. I’m not about mavericks. But I think everybody needs to participate in the conversation as to who God is. When we entrust our spiritual health and our spiritual path to one person it is giving away our own power.

I believe that knowing Truth is like looking into the heart of a diamond. I believe that each person sees the heart of the diamond in a different way. What you see is valid for you, and what I see is valid for me. Together, when we compare notes, we gain a better understanding of what is there.

Then these pop-up strip-mall churches concern me. There is no training. Would you go to a doctor who gets his authority just because he says he is a doctor? He hasn’t been to medical school. As far as you know he hasn’t even read a medical book. He believed that he has a gift for healing so he says he is a doctor and starts accepting patients. He also has no oversight. There is no established authority over him that monitors what he does. There is no recourse when he does something wrong. So why not have the same training and oversight for a self-proclaimed minister? If you are going to say you are in charge of the spiritual health of others, then it is important that you aren’t going to mislead them.

There is a guy in California who styles himself Archbishop Carl Bean. He founded the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Los Angeles. Archbishop? Really? Is that all it takes? Get people to listen to your take on the Bible and then apparantly you can call yourself anything you want. Most of the links on his church’s website are asking for donations for his retirement fund. I find this highly suspicious. I had a coworker whose grandfather started the church that he goes to. The grandfather’s title is Bishop. Again, we have the same issue. Start a church, get a title. Something seems very wrong about this. I also know of a lady in Nashville who calls herself “Minister Lois Grady”. She uses this title on her book and her Facebook page. I know people who are ordained priests who don’t use their title on their Facebook page. They’ve had three years of graduate school and gone through enough paperwork to kill several trees and more committees than the President meets with to get that title. In every mainline church there are rules about who gets to be called Bishop or any other title. You can’t just declare yourself Bishop. You can’t just declare yourself a minister, either, which is the first step.

But then what does Jesus say about ministers? Let’s look at Matthew 23: 8-12. Jesus says “8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (NRSV)

So it sounds like Jesus is against the idea of anybody calling themselves “Father” or “Rabbi” or “Teacher” – or any other title indicating authority.

None of the apostles were ordained. Neither was Saint Francis, who founded the order of the Franciscans. Neither was Mother Theresa.

Then there is the idea that every person who is a baptized Christian is a minister. We are all called to preach the Gospel, the good news that God loves us and has forgiven us of all our mistakes and faults. We are all commanded to love and show love. In the same way that Jesus loved, we are to love.

There are faiths where there are no ordained ministers. Quaker and Sikh are two that come to mind. But then there are establishing faiths that have a very strict system in place to ordain ministers, and that is still not a guarantee that they are any good. They can in fact be criminals in cassocks. Just because you have passed a criminal background check does not mean that you won’t ever break a law in the future. And when they do break laws, their crimes are covered up so they can continue to damage their congregants. So being ordained and part of a faith tradition that says there is oversight is no guarantee of safety or true teaching.

I’m not alone in seeing problems with the church. There are Facebook groups called “Christians for a Change”, “Christians tired of being misrepresented,” “Kissing fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity,” and “The Christian Left.” There are hundreds of books talking about how it is time to strip away a lot of the “stuff”

I believe each person needs to take an active role in their faith. I believe that every person needs to wrestle with their faith in a similar manner as Jacob. I believe that each person needs to read every holy scripture from every faith tradition. I believe that people need to stop having their faith spoon-fed to them.

The power of group prayer.

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Originally posted on FB 11-8-12

There is something to be said for the power of group prayer.

A few days ago I felt like I was going into battle at work. A lot of nonsense is going on with management and I felt very conflicted. The rules keep changing on what we are allowed to do, and we feel that we are being pitted against each other in each department. Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies. That is very hard, as you well know. I wanted strength to get through the day with my faith intact, knowing that God is always with me and serving as a good witness to His love.

I remembered all the prayers that lifted me up at Cursillo. Those prayers, from friends and strangers, helped me to get where I needed to be. Those prayers helped me and others overcome physical limitations so that we could be fully present that weekend. I wondered if there was a way I could tap into that power again, and while wondering it came to me that there are monks and nuns, both Christian and Buddhist, who are praying for everyone all across the world, right now. They are praying for peace and harmony and joy. They are praying for one-ness with each other and with our Creator .

I claimed those prayers. I claimed them as mine and tied into that web of support. I felt buoyed up, strengthened by a cloud of witnesses who do not even know me.

Last night I remembered that, and decided to pay it forward. It is good to pray for others by name, but it is also good to pray for those people you don’t even know. We can pray that they are helped, raised up, loved. That they are served by others as Christ would serve them. That those who are lost are found. That those who are found turn that light outwards towards others and expand the family of awakened humans.

I’m thankful that I am in this communion of saints, and thankful that I am learning how to give and receive this kind of support.

There is a hymn that has the refrain “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord”. It is time to make that real. We say in America “E pluribus unum” – out of many, one.

What would happen if this Body of awakened people all started to move as one?

Love in action is the very definition of God through Christ. The Bodhisattva vow also speaks to this. It is the vow of an enlightened person to not go on to Nirvana but to stay behind and help others achieve enlightenment. I am sure there are other examples like this throughout the world in other religions.

Our goal is to seek and serve God by serving our fellow humans, and all creation, treating everyone and everything with respect and love.

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Everyday Miracles

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Originally posted on FB 11-6-12

We expect miracles. We want healing right now. We want things to happen right away.

We forget that God uses us. God created us as co-creators, according to Madeline L’Engle in her book “Walking on Water”. We are his agents in this world. Saint Theresa of Avila said that Christ has no hands or feet on this Earth but ours.

We forget that God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt. God didn’t do it Himself – He wanted a human to work with Him to bring forth freedom and healing and peace. We forget that Samuel was given the message of doom for Eli. And most of all we forget that Mary brought forth Christ. There are countless stories throughout the Bible of God calling people to do His will here, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

God calls all of us. That is why He made us. Yes, you, right there, right where you are. God wants you. Consider this to be like those old US Army posters – your Uncle Sam needs you! But really, it is your Heavenly Father who needs you.

In all of those stories, God asked the person if they would help, and sometimes there was a bit of arguing. “Me? Really? I’m not any good at that. Can’t you send somebody else?” is a fairly common recap. Rarely do they just say straightaway “Here I am, Lord” or “Let it be to me according to Your will.”

God works through us every day. He sends a friend to listen. He sends us to a stranger to do the same. He sends a kind nurse to notice that we have a health problem we should tend. He sends us to cheer on a friend who is trying to quit smoking.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy – ask not what your God can do for you – ask what you can do for your God.

You don’t have to wait for the call – you have already been called. Be kind. Show love. Don’t gossip. Encourage others. Teach. Offer a shoulder to cry on. Feed the hungry. Work at a food kitchen. Volunteer with Second Harvest. Work for peace – at home, at work, in the neighborhood, in the world. Every little bit counts, and it all adds up. Do not do nothing for fear of not being able to do everything.

The miracle is that God is with us all the time, and He will never forsake us. God constantly helps us. God strengthens us and raises us up from the chaos of the world. God performs His miracles through us. That is the real miracle – that God needs us, and wants us, and loves us. He never said this life would be easy, but He always says that He will be with us, to the ends of the earth.

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