(intermission II.)

I'll be carrying my journal with me during the next week, along with all of life's other essentials, and a handful of luxuries (pipe, dark chocolate, Sierra Designs' down moccassins). My lover and I, along with two other couples, and a single guy who is comfortable enough in his own skin to make the journey with we three pairs, are flying to Vegas in the morning, and by various means making our way to Wire Pass -- a trail head in Utah that points us toward the Paria River which we'll find and follow for five days or so until it shoves us into the Colorado near Lee's Ferry in Arizona.
The wireless signals are just weak enough in the canyon that I'll not be bothering to bring a lap top with me. I'll complete my "Christian Enterprise and I" series of posts upon my return with a word or two on Jesus. But I'll be writing in my journal, real inky words, while I'm away, and eager to continue to share the words I'm finding that express my way of being in this very diverse and beautiful, often troubling, and more often surprising world of ours.
I'll be walking with some dear friends, listening for Creator's rhythms, noting the expanse of desert and sky. Not missing the keyboard or screen. It's going to be good. You should let me show it to you some day. Let me know when, I'll put together a trip for you.
Peace to you. Shalom.

V. God

is love.

IV. b.

"Sin" is missing from the list of Christian particulars that I presented in my "Christian Enterprise and I" post, but I guess I have something to say about it.

It's like this: I have a friend, he is a homosexual and he worships with a conservative evangelical Christian congregation, he is in a monogamous relationship, the father of two, and a self-identified sinner. But homosexuality is not his sin, any more than heterosexuality is mine.
Hypothetically let's say that pornography is a sin. Straight porn will get you a spiritual time out every bit as much as gay porn, won't it?

We've got ourselves all tangled up in the pre-fixes (homo-sexuality, hetero-sexuality) and we're having a hard time finding common ground. But it's there, right after the "o" in both terms, and it's something we can all relate to. Libido and lust, expression and repression, we've all tapped in, to some extent, to the realm of the sexual. We have to, we're bodies, we have sexual things built right into us. (If you're having trouble relating to this, maybe you're in the repression category, that's ok, been there; go ahead and say it, "I am sexual." Excellent now say what the things are, say them both loud and clear, "PENIS," good, the other one too...don't be shy...starts with a "v" and it's not a dirty word...v...v...V, "VAGINA," there, that's a good start.)

Our sexuality, as an essential part of our humanity, has the potential to unite us, but we've done with it what we do with pretty much everything else: we've figured out a way to make sexuality divisive. And that's a sin.

Sin is an addiction to a substance, any substance will do. It is an attitude more than an item on a list. (Our Catholic sisters and brothers, however, do have a good list of attitudes and addictions that's worth a moment or two of your contemplation, as are their corresponding opposites.) The addiction that I see as the linchpin in most of what ails us (most scenarios of violence, hatred, and fear) is our addiction to the comfort we find from the cliques that bolster our identities. You see what I'm saying? This can be racial or religious (resulting in lots of violence and hatred, affecting our history and global relations), or it can originate from something else, like our idea of what's fashionable or our areas of giftedness (resulting in lots of meanness and locker-stuffing, affecting our middle schools, high schools and global relations).

I'm not dogging diversity, not in the least. As far as I'm concerned our various identities are as essential to our humanity as our sexuality is. (Say it, "I'm a Christian." "I'm a Jew." "I'm Hindu." "I'm Hispanic." "I'm gay." "I'm an athlete." "I'm a businesswoman." "I am Canadian.") I am for diversity. I am against the tendency we have to cushion our reality; to build a wall that isolates us and allows us to ignore our neighbor. The way to break down the wall is not by relinquishing our identity, but by exploring it to it's very source. If we all do that we'll probably find a thing or two in common -- humans, residents of the earth. If we begin there we might learn something valuable from another person's very different experience as a resident of the earth.

So sin is anything that allows us to utterly disregard the ubiquitous other.

P.S. The idea that homosexuality in all of its manifestations is a sin, that needs to be dropped. It needs to deteriorate and become a part of the soil of our past, a history out of which we can grow and flower and become more beautiful and fragrant.
I'm aware of the cases within various articulations of Christianity that have been made against homosexuality, and I find them unconvincing. I'm also aware of the biblical passages that reference homosexuality and I consider it obvious that these passages are not referencing a lifestyle of homosexuality that is based on commitment and love. The homosexuality that was known by the biblical authors and their contemporaries primarily existed in the realm of prostitution, ritual sex, and sexual abuse -- this is what they would have felt compelled to address. They would have had little or no reason to concern themselves with addressing committed and loving homosexual relationships. And if you bring up Leviticus you automatically loose. If you want to use Leviticus you have lots of explaining to do.
To be sure our religious predecessors (the scribes of this holy book that we scribble all over) would not have been free of prejudice. We've sanctified the book, not the authors. Let's read the book through the lense of infallible love, thus accessing its sacred direction for our lives and interactions, and avoiding the prejudices of its fallible authors. If our ancestors (religious, national, and familial) are anywhere, regarding us from where they are, I don't imagine they'd be too upset if we do away with their bad ideas and replace them with handshakes, hugs, and high fives. That's the best way to do combat with sin.

(intermission)

I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to do what I've been doing here recently (share my ideas about Christianity) without creating distance between myself and you the reader. I know for many readers what I'm sharing and thinking about functions to bring us closer together, you find solidarity in what I'm writing. And some readers (one time readers) are entirely unaffected, unscathed, uninspired -- they move right along, never to shed a click on my blog again. Yet there are those who are affected by what I'm sharing in a way that causes: 1. them to question me (you are confused by what I'm saying, that I'd be saying it, perhaps concerned), or 2. them to question themselves (you feel threatened by my ideas, you feel insulted or judged or shoved in a corner).
To those readers,
Please pardon me if my tone has affected you in the manner of option 2. It is not my intent to inspire self-doubt or to berate the dignity of any individual by casting judgement.
Nor is it my intent to inspire Aram-doubt. Please understand (regarding option 1.) that here, in this blog and particularly this series of posts, are my ideas, some statements, expressions, articulations. My heart (my self, my me) is involved in this expression, but not contained by it.
To all my readers,
I'm going to keep writing because I feel compelled to, I feel strongly about the issues I bring up and I think I present valuable things for your consideration. But not for your conversion. So keep reading and let's keep talking, I value your comments.

IV.a. the other

We are afraid of our differences. I'm tempted to write that we, humans, are inherently afraid of our differences, but I don't think it's true that we have to be that way. Fear is certainly an inherent sensation, but I think we're more or less socialized to fasten it to diversity. Consider children, the sort of humans that still have a good portion of the innocence they were born with. Children are inherently intrigued with our differences. All the little fingers on my contrasting white skin at an orphanage in Jamaica taught me this when I was 12. The children in the life skills class at the elementary school I worked at with their little fingers tangled in my beard. Differences in appearance and aptitude drew the attention (and incidentally the touch) of these uncontaminated examples of humanity.

What do differences (in appearance, in expression, in belief, in orientation) do to the rest of us? Often they tense us up, bother us, frighten us. And that's ok, there's no shame in the sensation of fear. It's actually quite healthy to acknowledge our fears, so we can encounter them straight on and confront them. There is hope in that. But fear denied, fear masked, fear avoided will be (has so often been) our downfall.

Let's say that we are indeed afraid of our differences, put simply: diversity threatens us. And say we're brave enough to acknowledge, encounter, and confront our fear. There are a couple of ways we can advance in that face to face confrontation.

One option is to advance with violence. By superimposing our fear on those whom we are afraid of (which we do quite naturally) we can attack our fear in its personified form. With physical or verbal force we can drive our fear into submission. If we make our fear tangible we can hold it down, and if we convince ourselves that it is low enough then we'll no longer feel the sensation of our fear, we'll have sufficiently numbed ourselves to it. But really what we'll have done is numbed ourselves to those whom we were afraid of, and done nothing to the fear itself. The fear will still be there, its sensation replaced by a silent infestation. Bad things happen when that happens. Violence toward our differences will continue to result in factions and feuds, more bloodshed and more borders.

If, on the other hand, we advance with love (or curiosity, if love is too abstract an approach) there will be a more beautiful outcome. Our fear (naturally) will take the shape of the others we are afraid of and we'll bravely approach them with love, housed in genuine curiosity: "What's it like being you?".

It's really that simple. We've been experimenting with this for ages. Asking that question and listening to each others responses and devising ways to live which take it all into account. We've been dreaming of success for quite some time now, our dream finding a variety of forms of expression: the Republic, democracy, socialism, free love, anarchy, the Kingdom of God. Our ideas tend to fall short as realities, but that doesn't mean that we should stop dreaming, or quit devoting our lives to the realization of our dream.

Jesus was one of the dream's primary dreamers.
"What is the greatest command [i.e. life's greatest instruction or the world's greatest need] ?" he's asked. "Love the Lord your God with everything you are; your emotions, your body, your intellect, your very breath. And the second greatest is like it: love your neighbor like you love yourself."

Who is your "the Lord your God"? Jesus was talking to Jews, theirs was Yahweh -- the I Am, the Isness, the One, the God that ignores and transcends tribal and national identities, the God that brings together tribes and nations, the creator and unifier, the Ground of all Being, the Real. Maybe when you hear Jesus' words about loving God you attach it to something similar to all of this, it's hard to say, God's a touchy intangible subject, yet worth some looking into.

The second answer illuminates the first for us considerably. It is like it. Love your neighbor, that's like loving God. And who is your "neighbor"? Not much room for fancy talk or hermeneutical gymnastics here. Your neighbor is each and every person who is other than you. The "thou" in the I/thou relationship. "Next door neighbor" means the other who lives next door to you. A neighborhood is a collection of others, others who all live in the same hood. Earth is a big hood, it's a global neighborhood, it always has been, but we're more aware of it now than we ever have been (thanks to the internet, air travel, photos from outer space, etc.). And since a certain sense of awareness to the other is necessary (at least helpful) before love can happen (I loved Lauren as soon as I met her) then perhaps the instruction to love our neighbor reaches farther now than it ever has.

Maybe now that our world is global in scope, now that everyone is officially our neighbor, we can have another go at our dream. And maybe now that our hood is so huge we can actually simplify our approach to the other; we don't need a political or religious or social idea to unite under, for these are no longer big enough to contain the world that we're aware of. Our humanity is, and perhaps even more binding than that is our common home. A home that we are free to explore as our hearts feel fit, asking each and every other we encounter, "What's it like being you?". If we do this, and if we listen to each other's reply, good things will happen.

III. salvation

Substitutionary atonement: Salvation means the atonement of ones sins, by way of the sacrifice of ones pure and blameless savior, for the sake of the well being of ones soul.
I don't find that description inaccurate or ineffective, however, neither do I consider it exhaustive of the potential of what salvation might fully mean. I think there's another route the word "salvation" can travel.
The saviour most frequently referenced in accordance with the atonement theory above is Jesus. And the sin (or bondage or anti-salvation habit or thing that we need to be saved from) that I see most harshly rebuked by Jesus in the Bible stories is divisiveness between neighbors, the establishing of factions, the excluding of oneself from the other.
Salvation then, modeled expertly by Jesus' lifestyle and final moments of breath, isn't so much in the mechanics of a sacrifice but in the coming together of those who suffer.
Salvation is the Hebrew shalom, the Sanskrit shanti, that precedes and transcends all of our factions and prejudice. Salvation is the possibility (the hope) of unity -- a united array of all our diversities -- on all levels. Unity globally, unity in communities and neighborhoods, unity in our families, unity in our relationships, unity in ourselves.
Salvation is peace so far as peace is whole and complete, meaning not simply the absence of war between nations, nor even the absence of conflict in general, but the willingness of men and women to love and listen to one another.
Salvation, from this perspective, isn't purchased with the blood of violence or sacrifice, but is hoped toward and realized in accordance with the way of love. Salvation comes to an individual when love attains lordship in his or her heart, comes to a relationship when love carries it, comes to families and communities when they are united in love, comes to the world in the message of love.

For God so loved the world that God gave God's only son, Jesus, so that whoever believes in Jesus won't cease to exist but will have the fullest and most extensive existence imaginable, eternal life!
God's love is universal. And to believe in Jesus isn't to believe certain things about Jesus (though we're all welcome to do that) but to believe in the essence of Jesus, what Jesus was/is about: the coming together of people, love of neighbors and enemies alike, a thoughtful unity with the divine by way of a careful caring for the fragile and marginalized.
Salvation, on some accounts, has come. On many accounts, is coming. And on all accounts, is yet to come. There is hope/work for us all.

II. Hell, and Heaven too

I ceased grappling (or even dabbling) with the concept of hell quite some time ago. I got to a point where the term seemed so laden with the glorification of our tendency to cast judgement on others and our insatiable propensity for personal guilt, that I simply let go of it. I think that was a necessary and positive thing for me to do. And I think it is a healthy thing for anyone to do to at least try and work off the beer belly that adorns the doctrine of hell. There is some excess to it that we'd be better off without.
Ideas often (always?) spring board off of other ideas on their way to becoming their own thing. There's no shame in that, and no harm in dissecting an idea, acknowledging it's sources, as a means of better understanding its meaning. Today's most prevalent Christian concept of hell is a hodge-podge concept that has borrowed from the images of various traditions and sources. Hades is where the dead go in Greek mythology upon passage of the river Styx. Gehenna (the Valley of Hinnom) was the location of a trash dump in the middle east with powerful metaphorical potential. Sheol is the Hebrew image of "the grave", the leveling place, the state of death that comes to us all. These words aren't synonymous with hell. They are each complex images in themselves that have lent portions to the development of Christianity's idea of hell. Hell is an idea that has evolved and developed, with purpose that is not strictly harmful. Hell is not a place, but an idea of a place, a powerful one. And bloated by our fears and prejudice the idea of hell has grown, in some articulations, into a means of ridding our eternal experience of those with whom we disagree, a sort of final crusade, genocide to the farthest extreme possible.

I don't believe in the eternal torment of sinners (or, for that matter, of the innocent). It seems plain to me that sin is nothing short of torment in and of itself, whether doing it yourself or having it done to you. If hell is in any way essential to the Christian enterprise then, as I understand it, it is like this: all of the happenings contained in the Christian message and metaphors happened in order to be rid of hell; not in order to provide a means of avoiding hell and bidding for a lot outside of it. Most heroes of the Christian faith saw hell for what it is, and the most inspiring of them waded waist deep into it and did what they could to extinguish it.
Hell, if anything at all, is what many people experience everyday and what all people experience at least some days. Humans experience hell when they are disregarded by others around them. We create hell by our failure to evenly distribute food and water, shelter and dignity to one another. Making heaven the realization of ones dignity, the satiation of hunger and thirst, the remedy of malnutrition and illness (whether that malnutrition has to do with a scarcity of meals or not). Indeed, and remember this, for some heaven does not find them until death does.
I'm a believer in the quiet rest and the holistic realization of contentment that comes, in one way or another, one day to us all. My left-column friends would perhaps call me a universalist. Maybe "hopeful" according to the right-columnists.

I. the Bible

For me it seems dull (rather stuffy and cooped up) to think of God dictating divine words to human receptors, thus making the Bible an inherently divine product wherein one can find answers to the hard questions. In other words I don't consider the Bible a divine response to human dilemmas.
Rather, I consider the Bible as genuine human response and reaction to the experience of God in life; sometimes by individuals, sometimes by a community. I think the Bible is more or less an acknowledgment of the the hard questions, wherein solidarity and guidance can be found.

Consider the history of the Bible itself. The process of its compilation: generations and generations of people reporting and eventually recording their experiences of life and worship and conflict and celebration and identity. So many authentic and uncensored statements and questions about the matters that mattered to them. The process of its canonization: how gradually a series of councils, by judging its utility and wisdom, bestowed authority to the collection of books that we hold in our hands when we hold the Bible. It is powerful to think of the rich history of the Bible. I think the Bible's rich history marks it with significance in a way that our personal statements about it (i.e. inspired, inerrant, infallible) can not.

I don't think of the Bible as the Word of God, but as an assembly of words (stories, accounts, songs, letters, forecasts, social commentary, history, and poetry) that are of God as often as an individual or community uses them in a God-worthy (loving!) way. The Bible is read, interpreted, and used. And that can be done to the benefit or detriment of "the other" (our neighbor, whom we're meant to love as ourselves). I believe the Bible is meant to be used to benefit, to encourage, admonish, and guide. Not used to back up our prejudice, fears, and judgments, as it so often is.

In school I was encouraged to acknowledge that the (Christian) scriptures were insufficient when separated from us, specifically from our ability to reason or interpret, our culture and traditions, and our experience of life. And I believe that these four things (scripture, interpretation, culture, and experience) do indeed need to be in constant dialogue (quadralogue?). More than need -- they are unavoidably interlaced and interdependent for the religious person. And even for the non-religious person, this dynamic foursome has played such an extravagant role in our history and has a still lasting effect in our politics and social interactions, it would be wise to understand "that" if not "how" this is.

I don't believe that the Bible does much, nor is it sacred, on its own; even though I do consider it sacred. Which is not to suggest that we bestow upon it it's sanctity (authority, yes, but sanctity is something different). In the hands and heart of a community or individual that does consider the Bible as authoritative, that does embrace its history, teachings, and stories, it has a weathered and reputable power and wisdom. There is in it a sacred theme that, partnered with human understanding, imagination, and action, has the potential to affect today's world in extraordinarily beneficial ways.
I think that makes the Bible a sacred book, able to guide a person or community in the way of love.

The Christian Enterprise and I

A couple of posts back I mentioned a sensation that I couldn’t shake, the sense that I needed to express myself regarding what I believe, me and faith.
Additionally, and more specifically, I feel a steady need in my inner life to address how I relate to and perceive of Christianity. Having been born and bred into the whole enterprise it is a matter of personal importance, there’s no denying that. But I also have relationships with many people who are active in the Christian faith, who are, in fact, self-proclaimed Christians, and these relationships contribute to the need I feel to make this address. I cherish both my heritage and these friends. And seeing as it is no secret that I have changed considerably, since my days as a pious youth and a collegiate bible student, in the way I think about religious matters – my convictions have been adjusted, my paradigm tweaked – I intend, with a series of posts, to give an account of my current relationship with Christianity. I’m going to do this by writng some monologues that pertain to a handful of Christian particulars.
By sharing these posts my intention is not to establish distance between myself and others who hold to a more conventional Christian articulation, anymore than it is my intention to distance myself from those who find no value whatsoever in the Christian experience or Christian metaphors. What I want to do is make myself known, I want to be understood and appreciated just like most of the rest of you.
But, should we end up one or two doctrines shy of mutual understanding, or should my idea of lucid expression turn out to be your idea of ambiguity (and a source of frustration) then I would be glad to either continue the exploration on a more personal-conversational level (to the extent that it might be possible) or simply agree that there is a heap of potential for good relationship to be had in the shared art of lovingly disagreeing. Maybe in the end what we’re disagreeing about isn’t religion at all, maybe we’re just wired differently (remember the columns?), and maybe you’re just as important in the swirl of life (and dialogue) on earth as I am.
What you can expect from me in the next week or so (so long as I consistently find a source of internet) is something about:

I. the Bible
II. Hell, and Heaven too
III. salvation
IV. the other (aka: our neighbor, whom we’re meant to love as ourself)
V. God
VI. and Jesus

Keep reading, share your comments, be nice, and enjoy these efforts of mine at being e-vulnerable and e-honest.