Particularly in our American “can-do/goal-oriented” world, we move from monthly quotas to quarterly reports, and ultimately to annual reviews. Goals, goals, goals. It’s all about DOING SOMETHING. The problem is that once we’ve done that, we have to do something else and we completely miss the BEING in between, the milestones we’re to reach. It’s the journey… not the destination!
Monthly Archive for February, 2008
People come out of Sunday sermon where they have just heard the “Seven Keys To Heavens” or some such simplistic and easy to follow formula and they are excited. They’ve taken copious notes and life is a matter of just following the Seven Steps (originally made famous by Mormon Stephen Covey). Then they go home and read their Bible and it all gets very confusing. God isn’t a capitalist and there is a reason that Rene Girard said, “The Bible is a text in travail”. Continue reading ‘Text In Travail’
Religion is being rescued by science. Someone sure needed to do it. It’s not just quantum physicists either- though they probably got it started. Paleoclimatologists, glaciologists, social biologists, and astrophysicists are coming to the same conclusions. We are a part of something bigger! We are not here by accident. And, there’s more to life than our little private world that our ego loves to construct. Continue reading ‘One With The Universe!’
People are afraid of God and for good reasons. For most of human history, which includes a great deal of the Judaeo-Christian literature, God was described and written of as a monster of sorts. Maybe God wasn’t all that bad; however, He sure wasn’t likable, definitely not lovable, and all too often coming on the scene to beat the hell out of someone for something. And you wonder why people are afraid of God? Read the Old Testament. Talk about someone needing anger management lessons, the Old Testament God should enroll immediately. Continue reading ‘Don’t Be Afraid!’
I have spent more than five decades studying the sacred Christian text known as the Bible. I say sacred, not infallible or inerrant text as the fundamentalists claim. For me the main purpose of the Bible is not to give us scientific or historical information (while it does), but to bring about transformation in our lives and society. Continue reading ‘Information vs. Transformation’
Biblical literalism assumes purity of process but in so doing greatly misses the mark (sin?) and leads people to untenable places of emotional and intellectual distress. One doesn’t need a frontal lobotomy to be a Christian or Buddhist. One must know and embrace the many literary forms in which the Bible was written of there will be no practical doctrine, let alone experiental living out of one’s belief structures. Continue reading ‘Bias Of Biblical Literalism’
I Corinthians 13 speaks of the fact that we see simly now. Unfortunately some see hardly at all. Some are apparently blind. Most importantly we are blind to what we’re doing that’s wrong and yet have 20-20 vision to see what others are doing that’s wrong. That’s why we have 30,000 “Christian” denominations world wide. And each one KNOWS that the others are wrong. Continue reading ‘Missing The Mark’
We come into this world made in the image of God, but that’s from the INSIDE-OUT. Until we look within and align our hearts with our Maker, we’ll continue to live a dualistic life—one of needless separation.
The church was never intended to be a vehicle to accomplish order, control, or conformity. That of course was how Constantine saw it- and wanted it, so that’s how it became. Never has God, nor His Son Jesus looked upon priests, pastors, or ministers to be enforcers of the LAW. Once again, that’s something that culture and the church have built: a house of cards on sandy soil. Give me your HEART (right relationships- orthopraxy) not your HEAD (right doctrine- orthodoxy)! Continue reading ‘Orthopraxy Trumps Orthodoxy’
The Being Of Doing
Our post modern American world is so predictable. Whatever one did last year is history, water under the corporate bridge. This is a new month, a new quarter, and a new year. Whatever you did last year must be done again this year plus 10-15% more. And in way too many cases good salesmen and women have existing territories taken away within which to do the more. That’s just the way it is! DO more this year with less, and if you do, we’ll ask even more out of you next year! Continue reading ‘The Being Of Doing’