Love God or Get Squished?

Reading the first book of the Confessions of Augustine yesterday I was stopped to contemplation (now that's good thing - usually) by this phrase: "Or what am I to Thee that Thou demandest my love, and, if I give it not, art wroth with me, and threatenest grievous woes?"

Now first off, I must admit that I am not a fan of Augustine. This is because he was instrumental in pushing for the eventual excommunication of Pelagius, whose story reads like a classic frame job. Aside from this I am enjoying the reading. There are some fantastic declarations of praise in Augustine's Confessions.

This quote stopped me, because I considered it from the perspective of someone who struggles with the idea that an angry god might also be a capricious and cruel god. This concept that the Christian God is demanding love, and is angry to the point of destruction and killing if He does not get it certainly makes Him appear wildly capricious at best, and a cruel murdering megalomaniac at the worst.

So, these questions comes to mind:

Is God really declaring woes on those who do not love Him simply because they are suppose to love Him, and when they don't He gets really ticked?

OR is there something intrinsically insidious, and potentially dangerous in the heart of those who do not love God?

OR is this quote altogether problematic for Christian doctrine, and instrumental in establishing a bad way of viewing God?

OR is there altogether another way of looking at this?

OR, maybe you have some thoughts?

Social Action and Pentecost: non-verbal expressions of our faith

And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

The Franciscan call says, "Preach the Gospel. When necessary use words." The heart of Christian social action is found in this dictum. God's care for the world should be expressed by His people in acts of mercy and giving. The poor should be cared for, and the oppressed relieved. These actions often speak louder than words, and carry the seed of the Gospel in them.

In comparison evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity sometimes look (and sound) shallow, and pompous next to taking serious social action. Of course Christians should be involved with caring for the impoverished and oppressed of the world, but I wonder if the above words of the Apostle Paul are the connecting dots between social action and Pentecostal faith.

His Gospel, perhaps like that of Francis of Asissi, was not simply spoken, but illustrated. Paul healed the sick and cast out demons. He demonstrated God's power through his prayers and blessings to the impoverished and the oppressed, and he did so in such a way as to emphasize his own weakness. By this he more perfectly illustrated the Gospel - He clearly modeled salvation as an act of God's power moving upon humans despite their incapacity to save themselves.

Healing and deliverance through the miraculous acts of the Spirit of God are still the greatest social action moments of the Biblical narrative. They do not by any means give Christians the right to ignore caring for the poor and oppressed in practical ways, but our knowledge of God's power should cause us to desire the spiritual gifts and move into a wholly new realm of social action.

Belief and Being: Myth Transforming Life

I was in Junior High, and I read Tolkien for the first time. First, I read the Hobbit - in one sitting, on a Saturday while camping at the beach in Carlsbad, CA. Then the Lord of the Rings quickly followed. One character who took up a mere single chapter of the trilogy expanded to mythic proportions for me. I identified with the colorfully dressed, singing, dancing, carefree character who seemed to be dropped parenthetically into the middle of the book. When the ring twirled around his finger, he did not disappear like others, but even more powerful to the story, he did not care for the ring, and did not want to keep it. In fact, he knew that he would care so little for it, that eventually he would lose it, and that would be bad for the rest of the world, which balanced on the precipice of power struggles circling around this ring of power.

I wanted to be like Tom Bombadil. I wanted to leap carefree through a world of struggle and war, and have no consideration for the petty battles of men and their enemies.

Within the next few years I read Evangeline Walton's Tetralogy of the Mabinogion, and found myself identifying with the faithful and courageous Pwyll, who although taking on the form of another King for a whole year, and being told that everything in the Kingdom was his for that time, refused to sleep with the King's beautiful wife. The steadfast integrity and faithfulness of Pwyll captured my heart, and became a part of my own heart's desires. I also read of the warrior who laughed in battle, and as a freshman in High School thought that this was an attribute I wanted to make my own - to laugh in the face of war.

To greater and lesser degrees these things were part of my own personality, which I chose to embrace early. They were engrained more deeply, or perhaps awakened by myth. Myths as these carry power to transform. Stories larger than life activate my heart to dream large, and romantically engage with the dragons and monsters which war against my soul.

I wonder how actively we find the stories, and the history of scripture capturing our hearts like these myths captured mine while I was young? I have found myself dreaming in Biblical proportions, even like I dreamt in mythic proportions as a youth. In doing so perhaps I have captured the sense of the magic of myth, and applied it to the scripture. There is a reason we use the term "Biblical Proportions." The Bible stories like myth are larger than life. Those larger than life stories call me to something greater, and somehow seem to carry me along with some magic power of life transformation.

Belief and Being: Myth Informing Life

Yep, yep here we go again. Part three to the topic of Belief and Being."

Postmodern spirituality, whatever that really is, must have a Joseph Campbell mythic touch. As Campbell might have told us myth is more important than truth. Personally I do not buy that line, but on the other hand I do not fully reject the importance of myth.

Tolkien has changed my life with myth for the better. To a lesser degree Lewis - strangely even Adams, and Herbert. Almost as powerfully as Tolkien, ancient tales whose original tellers have long been forgotten have moved me through the Mabinogion - myths on one hand thought to be Pagan, and on the other hand thought to be Christian in origin.

The power of these fables is not in true stories told, but in truths being delivered through tales of heros and villians, and of monsters and faeries. Something in the myth stirs the human heart to deeds beyond itself, and moves us to issues of greater value than the span of our life. Average people take on mythic heroism in the shadow of the stories which captivate their hearts.

Myth speaks to our existence, and calls us to be something greater. It awakens us into a fullness of life by causing us to believe that romance has not died.

This is the power of myth found in our childhood stories, and it is the power of myth in ancient Pagan spirituality. Gods and goddesses whose stories are now only partially remembered become hunters and huntresses, virgins and mothers, protectors and healers for the struggles experienced in everyday life. Their stories become a sourcebook of guidance for today's Neo-Pagan.

Comparatively, as Christians we read our Book as a book of true stories, and we often invest our energy in defending its historical veracity. I will never set aside this foundational element of my faith in God - I believe that he interacted with humanity in real events through human history, and many of those events are retold in the pages of my Bible. Yet I have to ask myself "who has the more living faith?": The person who allows a myth to direct their life as a child is enamored and captivated by the fables told at bedtime, and goes on to try and recreate them at playtime, or the intellectual historian who defends the stories of scripture like the accountant who keeps someone else's books?

Somewhere in between these things - or maybe better yet - somehow holding radically to both these positions, I can discover a Belief of Being. In defending my historic faith, and in discovering the power of its tales (like myth) to inform my daily life I find a present reality, and a living faith.

Is this where I discover the meeting place of belief and being?

Belief and Being: The Net Worth of Man, and Our Communication of the Gospel of Becoming

That's right. I am a serial blogger. I tend to get stuck on certain topics, and blog them to death. Other times I reiterate ideas periodically, and create less connected series. I've got my Christian Sexuality series, and my stories entitled "Beyond the Pall," now I am in a second part of what is minimally a trilogy about "Belief and Being." So, if you like being bored to tears by someone investigating all the wrinkles of some specific thought - read on! And thanks for hanging out with me.

In the previous post I wrote about the tendency of Evangelical Christianity to proclaim a "Gospel of Becoming" to those outside the boundaries of the Evangelical faith system. We speak of Hell and judgment, Heaven and happiness, sin and death, and forgiveness and eternal life. These eschatalogical elements of the Christian faith become our heraldic call to those who are not yet part of our tribe.

It would seem that under the assumption that "the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God," we only communicate those things which have to do with a person's eternal destiny. (Perhaps not realizing that the topic of Heaven may be one of those subjects which are the "things of Spirit of God," which even a perusal of 1 Corinthians 2:9-16 would suggest.) This potentially exaggerated assumption leaves us with nothing to discuss with those who do not carry our theological positions, except to warn them of impending doom, or offer them a hope of eternal life - and this we call the Gospel.

Heaven is indeed a topic of Good News, but it relates to our future only. Heaven and Hell speak to us of a need for becoming something other than what we are now, and of turning toward a future of promise instead of one of certain doom. This has no reference to the present reality of daily of living, or to the hopes and dreams which reside in the human heart now. It does not speak to my need for significance, or even of realized love in this life. The messages of Heaven and Hell tend to reverberate with subtle hints of intrinsic worthlessness. The message tells some people that without acceptance to Heaven they are merely refuse for the dung heap of eternity.

This at least is how a Gospel of Becoming is received by many people who have heard it. Is it any wonder that the message has been rejected? The idea that humanity is intrinsically worthless is counterintuitive to life itself, and certainly not found in scripture.

Check out just a few passages which say otherwise:

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour."

"And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it."

This passage from Matthew 7:26-27 speaks of a man's life as a house built on a poor foundation, which falls. The fall is "great." This simple reference identifies the intrinisic greatness of humanity.

"But the tongue can no man tame; [it is] an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God."

Here in James 3 we are reminded of the imago dei (the image of God), which every person is created in. Our treatment of one another should be dictated by an understanding of this point.

If the people we communicate Gospel truths to walk away with a sense of worthlessness, could it be that we have communicated a Gospel of 'becoming something other,' and have fallen short of communicating a Gospel of Being?

I am certain that we are working hard to live our faith, and therefore merge our belief with our being, but I am not certain we have learned well to communicate a Gospel of Being. The Gospel of Becoming is a critical message, and one not to be forgotten, but in order to identify with those living with Postmodern, and/or Neo-Pagan reference points, we must communicate a Gospel of present reality, and of being, in order to identify ourselves as part of a caring community working at merging belief and being.

Now what that Gospel of Being looks like is something for other posts. Do you have any thoughts on what a Gospel of Being might look like?