By
susan on March 9th, 2010
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Why must religions, and the traditions and denominations within them, be so competitive? Sometimes when I read about trends in religion, I feel like I’m watching some kind of competitive event like the Olympics. I can imagine an announcer proclaiming: “Muslims are gaining on the Christians, while Jews lag a bit in numbers. Buddhism has become amazingly popular, with a gain of ten percent over the other religions… Hinduism is holding steady as the Sikh population shrinks a bit. Who will win the contest of the world’s most populous faith tradition?!!” (I completely made all that up, so don’t quote me.)
Or within the Christian tradition the announcing runs like this: “Liberal Christians watch in alarm at the rising numbers of fundamentalists, while New Age groups claim their share of the market. Roman Catholics have lost membership because of scandal, but still hold a large lead over most other groups of Christians. The Orthodox haven’t had much chance of winning this race ever since their split from the Roman Church…” (Again, fiction)
There are a variety of marketing strategies employed by religious organizations, including word of mouth, catchy slogans, and print and television marketing. I love the ads put out by my own denomination, the UCC, emphasizing that “Wherever you are in life’s journey, you are welcome here.” The Episcopal Church used to run print ads with catchy sayings like “Jesus died to take away your sins, not your mind.” Even the signs out in front of churches can be used to market to a particular group of people.
Once people join a tradition, steps are taken to keep them within it. Some groups require people to renounce their previous beliefs. Some have membership rituals which become a kind of lifetime membership. (”Join now and get an eternity of benefits!”)
Then we are encouraged to believe that we have made the right choice, and that now God loves us more, our beliefs are more sound, we have more truth, or at the very least, we have the most interesting or friendly people or the best programs in town. Sometimes this is carried even farther through doctrine that teaches if you leave this tradition, you will certainly be going to hell.
My Enneagram Type 7 gluttony and aversion to limiting options is going to show here but I must ask: If we are all seeking the truth, why must one exclude the other? Why not both/and instead of either/or? Or why not “all of the above.” Surely each tradition can hold no more than a planet’s worth of truth in the universe that is God. Why can’t we get together and learn from one another and see what we can learn about
Most of us are not secure enough in ourselves or driven enough to engage in a full examination of our own beliefs. It requires open and honest, hard spiritual work to come to a place where we are not afraid of our beliefs being challenged. But we can start by questioning why we believe what we do. If we have held onto doctrine is it because it meshes with our own experiences of God? Or is it because we are afraid to think differently? Are we content to go along with what we are taught? Or can we become engaged in the search for truth, both inside our own tradition and in the traditions of others. Can we talk openly with others about their beliefs and actually hear what they have to say?
Can we quit trying to knock other truth-seekers off the winner’s podium and realize that we are seeking the same thing?
By
susan on March 8th, 2010
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Today is International Women’s Day and my thoughts are swirling around the ways that our cultures have informed our beliefs about what women and men are like. I grew up in a traditional household and my parents held very traditional beliefs about the roles of men and women. I rebelled against those ideas at an early age. I remember once my mom told that I needed to learn to iron so that I could take care of my man when I grew up. My response to her was very dramatic. I threw what I was holding onto the floor, and exclaimed, “Damn it, Mom. I’m not going to grow up to a be slave to all the men in the world!”
That was about 40 years ago and times have changed. Here in the “west” women have endless opportunities to follow their dreams and career ambitions. Even though we’re still being paid less, we are more free to choose “nontraditional” careers, without being ridiculed, than most men. But stereotypes persist, for example how many of you have heard these: Women are nurturing and are programmed to take care of others before themselves. Men are logical and unemotional and better at leadership. Women are weak; men are strong. Women are good at cooking, men are good at hunting. Some of the stereotypes are based in physiology and brain science and are generally true, but others are completely arbitrary and only serve to keep men in positions of power over women. And sadly those stereotypes are often kept in place by institutions like the church which, in my opinion, should be about promoting equality between all people.
It seems like personality traits are better understood through a typing system like the enneagram, rather than basing one’s ideas of personality on someone’s gender. And then we might look at how gender affects one’s type.
In terms of enneagram traits, women are often expected to embody the “Helper” type, Type 2. But as a 7, I wanted to explore all my options and get out there in the world and do my own thing. It just felt wrong, on so many levels, to try to fit myself into the roles that were expected of me. I felt trapped by those expectations, and as you know, a trapped 7 is not a happy 7!
I welcome comments on how your gender and expectations associated with gender have affected your personality, as understood through the enneagram.
By
susan on March 5th, 2010
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My doctor has me trying a new medication for my narcolepsy and these last few days my mind has been a bit foggy. Having a chronic neurological disorder sucks in a big way and can really put the damper on one’s life dreams.
I got in trouble with someone on a support forum the other day for posting this: “I doubt there’s anyone with narcolepsy who is completely thrilled with how their life has turned out. Mine has really been a struggle. But I’ve learned so much about myself and gained so much compassion for others through all the problems. I guess if you believe that this life is all there is and that making money and having an impressive career are what counts, then I understand how you could feel bad.
“But if you live and learn and keep putting your feet one in front of the other – there’s a lot to be proud of. No shame in having an illness! If your friends don’t understand, are they really your friends?”
Oops. Apparently there are those who really do think like that! How bad would life seem if you feel horrible 90 percent of the time, and believe that this life is all there is? My point was that I, personally, couldn’t make it without faith in something more. What would be the point in even trying to get out of bed, or even hoping that the next round of medications might work? I know that everyone is into “living in the moment” and “the power of now” and such, and I agree to a point. But when the “now” is the worst thing ever I need hope and trust that there is a bigger picture, and that things will work out OK in the eternal scheme of things.
By
susan on March 2nd, 2010
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There is a place in all of us where we can be aware of the divine. Not all people make an effort to develop their spirituality, but most of us have an inkling of a spiritual reality of some sort. And once in a while most of us will have a “spiritual experience.” In those moments we may feel a strong sense of peace or joy or feel a sense of purpose. Life suddenly makes sense and we can trust that things will work out somehow. When we are in those moments, it doesn’t matter what our beliefs are; there is a universal quality to these experiences. People of all faith traditions have spiritual experiences and sharing these experiences can lead to greater understanding of each other.
When Jesus was transfigured on the mountaintop his disciples had a spiritual experience. Those who were present were awestruck. It was like nothing they had ever seen or felt. They wanted to build a monument to the experience. Jesus told them “no.”
It’s human to want to save those profound experiences. It’s human to want to be able to repeat them, and it’s human to want to let others know about those experiences. So we build entire doctrines to make sure that people know how to get to those mountaintops. Our experiences become stories that we tell over and over again. Our stories become codified into doctrine, and our doctrines become creeds. Pretty soon we have taken a kind of experience that is universal among humans and made it into a thing that is exclusive to “our” faith.
Stories and doctrine are not inherently bad things. They are maps that can lead us to experience God. But they are not God. God will always be bigger than the monuments we want to build.
By
susan on March 1st, 2010
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Being a liberal Christian, I don’t talk about Jesus much. In fact, when I hear people talking about “the Lord,” outside of a church environment, I almost break into hives. Weird, since I’m an ordained Christian minister! Some of the problem is that I or my children have been treated badly in the name of Jesus. (You can read a bit about that in my entries on “Walking the Walk” versus “Talking the Talk.”) But some of it is that I was raised in the Lutheran tradition, in which we just didn’t talk much about Jesus or matters of faith. My Catholic friends didn’t talk about those things either, and talk about faith was pretty much reserved for sending people from the other tradition to hell.
And then there’s the fact that some people get really emotional when talking about Jesus. I’m also a native-born, white Minnesotan, raised by people who were from good, strong, stoic, northern European stock and when people start getting emotional about anything we tend to stiffen up a bit. There’s a fine line between being emotional in public and doing something like masturbating in public!
My church home is now The United Church of Christ, a liberal Christian denomination. We mostly talk about Jesus in terms of how Jesus would expect us to act in the world. We’re focused on issues of justice and inclusiveness. And if you scratch a UCCer and try to get an answer to what he or she believes in, you’re likely to get some very vague answers.
You may wonder, with all our supposed focus on activism and saving the world, why I didn’t talk about the UCC as embodying the Christian “walk” in the world and instead talked about World Vision. World Vision will tell you that underlying their action is their Christian beliefs that Jesus wants people to love and take care of each other; that we are to spread his love for us through our actions. We liberal protestants are shy about proclaiming our beliefs because we don’t want to appear to be trying to make converts. So we just do the good deeds and try to appear to be a secular organization. Not always, but often.
I understand the desire to not be about making converts. It comes less from a love of Christianity than it does for a respect of people from other traditions and religions. We want to respect all people and honor the idea that God can work in more ways than one. We would never want anyone to believe that we think we are better than them because of our religious beliefs. We don’t want to be like “those people” who talk about Jesus and their relationship with Jesus to point of making other people uncomfortable. We don’t want to evangelize. And yet, by our reticence to talk about our beliefs, we almost take ourselves entirely out of the Christian conversation.
Proclaiming beliefs certainly puts us in the way of criticism. But it also opens up the discussion and gives people something to work with. Those of us in liberal Christian traditions need to claim Jesus as our own and enter the discussion.
By
susan on February 28th, 2010
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It is easy to be intolerant of those who are different from ourselves. Looking at whats “wrong” with others is a cheap and easy way to feel better about ourselves. If we can band together with other like-minded people and then judge those who are different, we can feel superior. We can blame the problems of the whole world on “those people.”
People have used scapegoats all throughout history. The ancient Jews originally used an actual goat. On the day of atonement, the sins of the children of Israel were proclaimed over the head of a goat, which was then sent into the wilderness. The scapegoat takes the blame for the wrongs of others. In Christianity, we worship a scapegoat who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus takes the blame of all people.
As waves of immigrants came to the US over the past hundreds of years, the newer immigrants became scapegoats. Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Irish, Italian, Poles, other ethnic groups all took their turns at being the newcomers and scapegoats. Because these cultures have melded well into our modern society, it seems odd to think that these groups were ever scapegoated. Country of origin, race, and religious beliefs all are criteria to lump people into the goat category. As various groups of people fought for rights in our country, those groups were the goats. Women, black people, American Indians have all taken turns being held in lesser regard and having fewer rights. Nowadays the big group of scapegoats is the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community.
Its a long process to learn to loving and inclusive of others who are different. As soon as one group is accepted, people will find another to be the outcasts. It’s in our nature. And yet Jesus calls us to move beyond our human nature and take on god nature. Jesus has taken the sins of the world away and we no longer need a scapegoat. We are to learn to love all people, regardless of any category we can find to separate them from ourselves.
When we can’t blame an “other,” then we are forced to look at ourselves. We have to admit that we are a part of the problems happening around us, and that we are also part of the solution. Whereas finding another to blame for everything is cheap, fast and easy, looking within ourselves for answers is emotionally expensive, difficult and painful, and can take a lifetime.
By
susan on February 26th, 2010
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Another reason I choose to remain in the Christian tradition is that I love the music and I love to sing. I’m not saying I sing that well but I love doing it. Someone in choir commented that I sight read well and asked me how long I had been singing in choirs. My response was that I have been singing in church choirs since I was a small child. I was raised in a Lutheran church that had many choirs and, from the time I was old enough to stand in a white choir robe with a red bow, I have participated in them. We had the Cherub Choir with the white robes, a grade school choir with ugly gold robes, a youth choir for the teens, and a senior choir.
It was customary for church attendees to belt out the hymns as loudly as possible, and it was a bit distressing to find out that not all churches share that enthusiasm. I grew up believing that people went to church to sing. Music in general was just a big deal. LOUD music. Maybe too loud. My dad complained incessantly about “that damn pipe organ” which they played too loudly and with too much dissonance.
Call me weird but I love singing hymns. Old hymns, new hymns, gospel hymns, Easter hymns, even hymns for “Ordinary Time” (also known as the Sundays before and after various church holidays). My kids will tell you that I have many of them memorized and can come up with a hymn for any theme, on a moment’s notice. OK, I’ll admit that there are some really bad hymns out there, and some of the new ones are completely un-singable, but for the most part I love singing hymns.
The only thing that could make the hymns better is if more people would dance to them, or at least sway back and forth and clap. I love to get babies dancing to the music; I wonder how that gets lost as people “grow up.”
And it’s not just hymns. There is so much music that has been written for the Christian tradition. And in my years in the church some of that music has become a part of my bones. While I got a bit burned out in my younger years on dissonant, loud, pipe organ music, there is a lot to be said for quietly listening to piano or cello or flute, or even drums. Music can touch us in so many ways. It can remind us of people who have gone on before us, bring peace to a troubled soul, even inspire us to be better people.
Every tradition has its music, but Christian music is a part of me.
By
susan on February 25th, 2010
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Sometimes I wish people would just shut up about their religious beliefs and let their actions speak for them. You remember that old song we used to sing at church camp that went “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love…” Some people embarrass the whole religion by claiming to be Christian and then hating and judging others in the name of Christ. My children experienced this first hand when involved in some “Christian” homeschool organizations when they were younger. Because we were the wrong kind of Christian (not fundamentalist Biblical literalists) in they eyes of some people we were more or less excluded from any friendships. No wonder my kids refuse to be a part of the Christian tradition!
Sadly it seems that most religions, to some extent, thrive on judging and excluding others. But Christianity claims to be based on loving God and loving others. How much better would it be if people didn’t say that they were Christian, but instead acted it out by showing concern for other people?
Several years ago we decided to sponsor a family through World Vision. Sponsoring a child is an amazing thing – what costs so little to us can change so much about the life of a child or family. Not that it would have changed anything, but we signed up for this long before anyone from my own Christian denomination told me that they didn’t approve of the organization because “they proselytize.” (Maybe some of the people do but their official policy is that they do not.) According to their mission statement, “World Vision serves all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender.” It continues:
“Why we serve:
Motivated by our faith in Jesus Christ, we serve alongside the poor and oppressed as a demonstration of God’s unconditional love for all people.”
Who needs “words” when you do that?! When you really walk the walk, you don’t need to talk the talk. I have to say that the more I’m involved with this organization, the more impressed I am. They’re big, they’re powerful, they’re everywhere, and they get things done. When the Haiti earthquake struck, they had some of the first people on the ground helping out. After the Super Bowl this year, when ads were on TV to by a “Saints Super Bowl Championship” t-shirt I wondered what happens to all the pre-printed “Colts Championship” t-shirts. World Vision got them and sent them to Haiti. You never heard a World Vision person saying that Haitians deserved the disaster because of past sins. They saw people in need and they responded. They used “their words” to ask for help on humanitarian grounds.
I could write pages and pages about all the important work they do, and the issues they take on. They currently have a traveling and online exhibits called “The AIDS Experience” where people can learn, in heartbreaking detail how AIDS has affected Africa and what it’s like to be a child who is affected by AIDS. You can see it here: http://www.worldvisionexperience.org. I really like it, too, that they target their educational efforts at more conservative churches who have traditionally been more about talking about faith than getting their hands dirty working with the unwashed of the world. Their president, Rich Stearns, has written a book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” taking to task Christians on being so uninvolved in working to eliminate poverty.
So now I’ve used 570 words (to this point) to tell you about one organization whose mission is to actually walk the Christian walk instead of just talking the talk. Some people may have issues with them because some of their people talk too much about being Christian, but it seems that at least they’re trying to do some good in the world.
By
susan on February 24th, 2010
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How can the ideals of Christianity be so far from the reality? Must there be so much “talking the talk” and so little “walking the walk?”
When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment, he said simply: Love God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself. People didn’t really want to hear that stuff about loving one’s neighbor, so they asked him what he meant by “neighbor.” He made it very clear that he meant everyone, including people considered undesirable by the social norms of the time.
Jesus’ words were utterly revolutionary. To follow Jesus means to love and respect all people. No exceptions, no exclusions.
But humans want to compare and judge and exclude people they don’t particular like. So the excuses creep in and there are exceptions made. We may sing songs about how “they will know we are Christians by our love” but that’s not always happening in groups of believers. Somehow the words of Jesus get twisted around completely backward and are used to exclude from the Christian club various groups of “inferior” people. Once we’ve driven the others out of the church, then we’ll be feeling the love.
Think of Pat Robertson’s response to the earthquake in Haiti. He said that God was punishing them for years of devil worship. Seriously Pat? Did you not read your Bible, especially the parts about loving one’s neighbor or not judging others lest you be judged yourself? Perhaps someone needs to tell a the story of “the good Haitian.”
Jesus’ teachings and practices were revolutionary. He picked mostly incompetent people to in his band of disciples, and often made room for all kinds of outcasts in his group. He even valued women as leaders in the church. He pushed the ideal of loving one’s neighbor far beyond the social norms of his time. He pushed enough that it got him killed.
By
susan on February 22nd, 2010
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One of the reasons I remain in the Christian tradition is because I just don’t want to give up the idea of Jesus as being a manifestation of God. As much as I believe that God is everywhere and we don’t need intermediaries to talk to God, sometimes it’s good to just be able to relate to God as another human being. Jesus is one of the gang, one of the family, someone who gets it.
Now please don’t get all excited here and write me off as someone who believes that God can ONLY be experienced through Jesus Christ, and that, really, anytime anyone experiences the divine, he or she is experiencing Christ whether he is named or unnamed. I don’t believe that; that is a huge part of Lutheran theology that I couldn’t swallow when I was in seminary. But I do believe that God can be experienced through Jesus and that experience can be quite profound.
I’m a big believer that God can be experienced in nature and have had profound spiritual experiences while sitting on a rock by a river or lake, gazing at the starts at night, or just breathing the fresh, pine-scented air of northern Minnesota. I’ve experienced the presence of God through music and the arts. I would guess that there are as many ways of experiencing God as there are people. But sometimes I want to move beyond that general sense of the divine presence to something more concrete. I can go hug a tree and feel at one with universe, but a tree can’t share my human experience. Jesus can.
Even Oprah, with all of her weird beliefs about how God wants us to be successful in life and all that law of attraction stuff (to me that seems like another form of “blame the victim”) said that sometimes “you just want Jesus.”
My daughter told me one day that if God created “existence,” then God cannot “exist.” It’s a difficult concept to wrap one’s brain around but serves to highlight a problem with belief in a creator God. Certainly there are scientists who would argue that God does not exist based on physical evidence. Jesus gets around this whole problem by being born as a human, and “existing” within creation.
In my praying the Daily Examen these last few days, I’ve tried to included a conversation with Jesus. The other night it went something like this:
S: “Hey, Jesus”
J: “Hello Susan. How’s it going?”
S: “I’m really having a hard time tonight getting my brain to shut up.”
J: “It took me 40 days of being alone in the wilderness to get my brain to quit. Of course in my day we didn’t have the internet or Facebook to fuel the fire! Just work on turning it all off. It takes time.”
Yeah. Jesus rocks.