Good question.
So I thought about it for a week or so.
Religion cannot supply any such thing...unless we realize that the question should be cast as "Can we supply that?"
We are the fishers and we are the men; first we help ourselves, then we help others.
Life is the wide Ocean, the deep, blue sea, within whose vastness are mysteries available to us to support us all our days. There is enough to support all mankind, if we are strong and bold enough to set forth upon its waters to fish.
We are already on its waters, we are already tossed by storms and winds, we have already thrown out the sea anchor to try and steady ourselves. But we have to go deep into the waters that remain calm while the surface storms, and we have to bring up those treasures new: new thoughts, new intentions, new ways of doing things, that will transform us.If we are no longer recognizable as 21st century Americans, so be it. If we are no longer Europeans, nor Africans; if we no longer are Sunni versus Shi'a, so be it. Ancient ways are fine fishing boats day in and day out, until the storm breaks; then we find the hulls leak and the bilge pump can't keep up.
I spoke recently to a lady Christian. I said somethings critical of Mega-churches. This had something to do with Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. She replied that it was all right to prattle on about the lilies of the field, but even Jesus needed money to keep the ministry going, and how did I think it was done? Did He just shake the money tree?
My wrath was tempered considerably by the picture of Jesus sitting shaking a money tree. How nice that she could create such an improper icon for us to view.
So I prattled on about how much I admired her ability to take the more profound teachings of the gospels and render them inane. I went on about the story of the loaves and the fishes, another gospel thing ready to be illustrated by our modern day knowledge: I asked whether we are to envisage Jesus shaking his loaves and fishes tree? And so on. It was evil Montag day...thank heavens, at last!
Of course, lots of noise and chatter about ministries and the injunction to spread the word, and so on. I said that when the remark was made to spread the word, I did not read the words "by any means necessary" appended to it. Did it ever occur to you people that spreading the gospel by force - which the West did well up to World War I, at least - was not what was intended? Nor was the Mega-Ministry?When Jesus said teach all the nations, He may have meant...and I am sticking my neck out here...He may have meant that we do it the way He did it: go forth, trusting in God to provide the food, the shelter, the safety. Where there is community fine; where there is none, you are pretty much on your own: you don't have the option to make an appeal to the tapped-out faithful to make up your $900,000 short-fall.
There is St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare on the one hand, and there is Pastor Rick Warren and Pat Robertson and the others on the other hand: choose!
Choose whether it's you and God on that deep blue sea, or whether it's you and God in the Big Blue Meeting room on Missionary Sunday, after the meeting of the Ushers' Guild and the Political Action Committee. Choose!(full disclosure: at this point, the lady said that Jesus had miracles to get peoples' interest, and the modern church doesn't. It was sort of as if spectacle took the place of miracle. Now I understand the miraculous a lot better: it's the way God shills to get peoples' attention, pehaps He shakes His money tree as He does it.)
Posts
12 comments:
I was in full time ministry. Had to raise support. First five years I think we had an income of as little as $400 a month. It went up and down. Later we got to full support, when we went overseas. You know where, I’d rather not say here. Reasons.
My dad, the minister, hated asking for money. He was fortunate that my mom inherited some, so he gave back his paycheck to the church every two weeks. It was hard for him when we raised support. I always had an inner conflict about it, knowing how he felt, but knowing the mission groups we were with had this model.
Tent making was a nice alternative. Work and earn what you need, like Paul who made tents to pay his way. I liked this better. In fact we ended up leaving where we were because I couldn’t handle being paid by churches to do what we did rather secretly.
I may be wrong here, but many if not most of the mega-churches are charismatic/Pentecostal. This branch of the church – again my limited understanding, not being of that genre – believes that prosperity is God’s blessing. If you get sick, God is unhappy with you. If you aren’t successful, you are missing something. If you aren’t baptized with the Holy Spirit, you’d better keep trying. Is Rick Warren charismatic? I dunno. I say this from direct personal information from friends who were Pentecostal. When my friend got a cold, she was miserable spiritually.
I’ve never understood this since it doesn’t align with Jesus’ teaching, as far as I am concerned. We had other non-charismatic friends who also felt we were shirking our duty when we were undersupported. Well, they had ONE church’s support, 100% of what they needed. That wasn’t too hard.
Anywho, miracles, and having needs met. Even though I left the church, I still believe in them and that what we need will be supplied. But you know what? There are a whole lot of hungry Christians in the world. Are they out of sync with God?
A good deal to think about.
The whole business of the lilies of the field, that do not spin nor toil, is a profoundly mysterious thing; yet we know of godly people who are just so supplied.
What are we to make of it? Dismiss it or belittle it or degrade it? I'd rather attempt to understand it.
I think this whole age of the world is out of sync.
I know only one thing: when I was without hope and falling, He came around the corner and said He'd been looking for me.
...He'd been looking for me, and where had I been hiding?
So I said that I'd been right here all the time.
And He said, "You think so, eh?"
I found that mysterious, too. Had I been in hiding?
How can the broad wide open world be in hiding from God?
Where one person sees a mystery, another sees the run-of-the-mill:
I see a mystery in the lilies of the field, someone else sees merely a colorful parable which ought to be ignored;
someone catches cold, and I see a virus infection, and they see a mystery of the withdrawal of God's blessing.
Perhaps where we find our mysteries defines us. Perhaps where and what we find filled with God's presence defines us.
Certainly we are differently defined from terrorists who find God's word connected to religious and political violence.
(this reminds me of Persephone, the goddess named "destruction-slaughter"...from your post recently.)
You were hiding and God found you.
I had him all the time ad nauseum (church) and went out riding on the crest of the wave (missionary). Came home, now what? What do you do when you've been doing the thing God loves the best (so say they)?
Reexamine everything. The questions you had as a 7-year-old standing in the pews. How can what we think be the only way? How can Jesus invite some and reject others? How can people die forever if they haven't heard about Jesus? What kind of God lives that way? What is God under all this religion?
So, come home, lose all the questions and wishes for answers. Sit in the desert wilderness. Say to God: I'm not gone, I'm here. If you're there, find me. I know you don't need me.
How differently we were found, Montag. How different God was/is for both of us. As you say.
He did, He did find me. It was quite different from before. Now I think maybe Jesus did all those things but it was understood badly. He showed us how to do it - revealing God within. Being divine. You shall be like him. God is here inside. I think he's within all of us. In some He is just hidden, eclipsed.
Jesus died so all could live. Period. I'm with George McDonald that there isn't a hell. Well, unless it's here on earth. Yeah, there's hell here. It's our job to make heaven.
Yes. I agree.
However, here's where the tough part is: once found, what are we to do?
I have a sneaking suspicion He did not ferret us out just to let us take it cool and easy. The job of making earth heaven will be very difficult, and the mad men who now are killing each other will find they have one item of agreement: to exterminate those who would turn swords into ploughshares.
If I look at Jesus as a model, I think he would be, be who he is, in a day like this, just as he "be-ed" who he was in his day. Was it any different then? The madness is a monster eating more madness to survive. It is my duty to not feed it any madness, including fear and anxiety. To be wise as serpents and innocent as doves as a little person like you and me maybe means we don't let the madness make us mad. There is not much we can do - besides being divinely sane - to annihilate the madness. Lots of little people being divinely sane might just do the trick though. I think it's growing, I really do.
Very interesting discussion here. This is the type of ideas that we all swirl around, we who have grown up with an experience of spirituality, regards of how inchoate, and reasons to take it seriously. Jesus is touchstone. What it all means, nobody knows, but I'm not willing to subscribe to the materialistic point of view, and it doesn't matter that I don't know what it all means. Seems to me that is the whole point of our relationship with God.
On the whole question of whence sustenance, I often quote Chesterton: Christianity has not failed, it has just never been tried. IOW, if we didn't persist in demanding and taking, by violence as often as not, more than what is reasonably necessary for our and our family's well-being, the sustenance question would be moot.
Well said, Ruth. Being wise as serpents and innocent as doves comes from experience - yet also the realization that experience itself may be worthless ... just a bigger Ponzi scheme.
In our society, with age and experience we tend to think we become as wise as serpents...BUT we also believe that our innocence necessarily disappears as we do so.
The School of Hard Knocks, or whatever way we imagine it, makes us wise, canny, and cunning, and we leave the days of innocence behind.
Yet, here is another one of those paradoxes: how does one actually become wise - and all that may imply - while remaining innocent?
Don't know yet.
Chesterton was right - as usual.
And we - all of us - would nod our heads and think: how correct that observation is, and how smart old Gilbert Keith was.
Of course, we have no idea how difficult it is to actually do so. If following the teachings of Christ were at all easy, there would be more evidence of it being so after 2,000 years. Ditto for each and every other religion.
It's interesting you mention Jesus as touchstone.
Ruth mentioned Jesus as Model.
But where is the unchanging standard, free of imperfect understanding or translation, that is this model or this touchstone?
Nowhere but in your our own hearts. So we come back to ourselves.
The remark about sustenance is the exact point of the matter: no one in their "right" minds would follow Christianity.
There is no such unchanging standard as you describe, our inner reality is the only place we can go. You're precisely right.
I always wonder if I'm clear enough. That's why your feed-back is so important.
Thank you.
Post a Comment