By
susan on April 2nd, 2010
Posted in church, random rants, religion | 1 Comment »
One of the fastest ways to get people angry with each other is to bring up politics or religion. It seems like my parents’ generation was very careful to not discuss those things in the company of friends, unless they were sure that they shared similar ideals. That way they could play bridge or golf with people of different religions or political parties. They were very careful not to offend each other.
In these days of social networking and the internet, hardly a thought is kept private and we are much more likely to know exactly where people stand in politics and religion. And we are much more likely to engage each other on these issues.
Have any of you ever been involved in an internet discussion on a political issues? You know how hard it is to keep a cool head and engage others with respect. Do you ever get that little surge of adrenaline that comes with knowing that you’re going to battle? You brush up on your facts and prepare to make a case for your point of view. You really have no interest in understanding the point of view of “the enemy.” Your aim is to destroy them. Pretty soon the insults are flying from both sides and feelings are hurt, and you’re wasting hours a day generating more heat than light.
Why do we act like that? Because we all want to be right. We all want our side to prevail. We want things to work out for our own best interests. We can’t figure out why people don’t think like us. We start thinking that people with the opposite point of view can’t even be human, and then we start treating them that way. We are afraid for our own egos, for our own selfish interests and we seek to destroy what threatens us.
I don’t need to tell you how crazy people will act in order to protect their own interests. If people feel threatened in any way – their income, power, housing, food supply, health care, or whatever – people can act quite insane. And they don’t need the threat to be real; they just need to be convinced that it is. Look at the state of political debate in our country. People go out and yell angry, racial epithets at congresspeople from the opposing party. Senators and representatives refuse to cooperate on important legislation because their status as an elected official might be in danger if they seem the slightest bit cooperative with the other side.
Politics have become so polarized that people involved have abandoned reason in favor of trying to scare people into agreeing with them. Some leaders keep repeating the same lies over and over again in the hopes that people will be start believing the lies. Look at how idea of “death panels” has influenced the health care debate. There is no such thing in the legislation and look at how many people believe it anyway because they’ve heard about it over and over. Many people have become convinced that they should be scared of this legislation, without even checking the facts for themselves. Fear is a powerful motivator.
On Good Friday, one question to ask is why was Jesus killed? The short answer is that he threatened some very powerful people. They were afraid of him and what he stood for. There were rumors about Jesus, that he was going to make himself the king of the Jews. In Mark 11:18 we read “The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.” And in John 11:47-48, “Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
The Jews didn’t like being ruled by Rome, but they had a working relationship with them. Jesus’ huge following and the rumors of him being “King of the Jews” threatened the status quo, even though the status quo wasn’t all that great. So Caiaphas, the high priest, began to plot Jesus’ death, reasoning that it was better to eliminate one man who could cause a huge mess.
The leaders incited such fear among the people that Jesus was turned over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman ruler of the region, and demanded that he put Jesus to death. Pilate knew that he couldn’t quickly get reinforcements from Rome to put down a revolution, so he kept the peace by reluctantly giving in to the demands of the Jewish religious leaders that Jesus be put to death.
Can any good come from the politics of fear and hate? Do innocent victims keep having to pay the price of that fear? And why do religious groups have to play into those politics? The death of Jesus is a powerful lesson on what fear can make people do. When we become fearful for ourselves and our interests, and hate those who are different from us, we crucify Jesus over and over again.
Fortunately the lesson doesn’t end there. The resurrection of Jesus is a promise that peace, joy, hope, and love will, in the end, prevail over fear and hatred. And there are encouraging signs in our world today that we can, indeed, learn to understand one another and respect others of opposing views.
In response to the scare tactics used by groups such as “the Tea Party” a new group has sprung up calling itself “The Coffee Party.” Here, members much commit to civility in public discourse. All viewpoints are to be respected and there will be no insults or name calling. People of differing political views are beginning to meet in coffee shops all over the country to discuss the issues in fair and balanced ways. It is a very hopeful movement based on respect for differences and overcoming the pettiness that characterizes modern politics.
And there are other signs of hope in the world. I saw a video today of a school’s response to picketers from the Westboro Baptist Church, which is a registered hate group that organizes demonstrations at funerals of soldiers, various schools, and communities that promote tolerance between people. The students decided that they were not going to let the hate group have the last word, and gathered a huge crowd to sing to the WBC protesters. You can watch the video here: Gunn High School sings away hate group.
The central story in Christianity, about the death and resurrection of Jesus, is a story of good overcoming evil. We do not have to give in to fear and hatred. We can act based on hope and love. On this Good Friday, let’s put to death hatred in the name of God of those who are different.
By
susan on March 25th, 2010
Posted in enneagram, modern life, random rants, spirituality | No Comments »
In my email in-box this morning was a new Costco ad, featuring all kinds of new electronic gadgets promising to improve my life. People who know me know that I am a total gadget goddess, a junkie for all things new and different and technological. Every now and then one of these gadgets actually does simplify my life, like my Kindle, which allows me to carry around an absurd number of books; books which don’t add to the real estate crisis on my bookshelves. But mostly the gadgets fill my house with shining LED lights and wires that inexplicably tangle themselves together into an orgy of knots.
A recent Costco acquisition was a GPS unit with “lane assist.” I have traveled to LA twice in the last six months or so, and driving on the freeways without the lane assist feature is, well, an exercise in terror. When there are 8 lanes going in each direction, exits on the right and left, and the car is moving at 60 miles and hour, it is just not helpful when your GPS tells you to “take the next exit” fifty feet before the exit. So on this last trip to LA, I was prepared. And for the most part, the device delivered – Until it broke on the next to last day of the trip. Fortunately on the last trip, I had learned the way, more or less, from Long Beach to the airport. We had rented a GPS unit with the car, but it didn’t work properly and didn’t actually speak the directions, so we basically used it as a map.
I often wonder if all of these electronic gadgets, and the whole proliferation of devices designed to deliver information, actually enrich our lives or just make us less resourceful and able to think for ourselves. Advances in medical knowledge tell us that to stave off degenerative brain disease, like Alzheimer’s, we should solve puzzles and do things that make us think. Might using a map and figuring out our own routes from here to there be actually better for our brains than being fed turn by turn directions? Is using a GPS to get somewhere and then doing puzzles to work out our brains kind of like driving to a health club to exercise our bodies?
It’s just one of those things that make me say “hmmm.” Of course, I do both – I drive to the health club to swim and I use the GPS when I’m traveling or going somewhere unfamiliar. And I also walk my dogs for exercise and use maps when finding a new place. But I do wonder if all these new gadgets that deliver instant information are actually all that helpful in the grand scheme or our lives. Is being bombarded by information from dawn to dusk and afterward a good thing?
I think not. I hear a lot of people complain that when they go to bed, they can’t turn off their minds. But how could we turn off our minds when we are soaking up information every waking moment. Our brains are overloaded and spinning out of control. This is not a sign that we know how to think well. If we knew how to think, to use our brains instead of allowing our brains to use us, we would be able to turn them off and stop the endless ruminations.
There are ways to do this, but they are not easy or quick to learn. The first step is to just turn off the information flow for a time every day. Turn off the computer, put down the book or magazine, turn off the TV or radio, and shut down the gaming software. Then just notice what happens with your mind and body. Do you feel anxious? Are you immediately bored? Do you start to fidget? What do you think about – are there patterns of thought that pop up? Try to sit with any discomfort you feel and figure out what needs to be done.
I love the work of Andrea Isaacs. She works with the Enneagram and Emotional Intelligence. She has people physically act out their emotional or mental discomfort, and then has them listen to their bodies, and let their bodies tell them what to do as an antidote. I suggest trying this as a start; you may be surprised at how much your body knows. Instead of seeking yet more information to understand your discomfort, just sit with the feelings and thoughts and let your body respond.
By
susan on March 20th, 2010
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My kids and I were in the neighborhood of the Crystal Cathedral last Sunday, so we went to a service there. It was quite a show – the music was good and there were some big name choirs and musicians, the surroundings were beautiful, the speaker was entertaining, and there was a brunch afterward for visitors in the building with the large gift shop. We each were given a copy of Robert Schuller’s book, “If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It.”
The book, as well as the core of the belief system of this church, is that if we stay positive, we can succeed at what we want to do. God wants us to be happy, healthy, and successful in this life. In the book, Schuller tells us to use four affirmations to keep away despair and to attract success. In the service, people were encouraged to come forward for prayer after the service to be healed of physical ills or to become more financially secure in these troubled economic times.
It’s not the worst theology in the world. At least they’re not using the Bible as a weapon to scare people or justify excluding them from church life. There’s way too much of that going on in religion. But these teachings are not exactly true to all of what Jesus called people to be and do. Jesus didn’t say to “take up your dreams and follow your hearts.” He said to take up your cross and follow him. And when the rich young ruler asked what it would take to gain eternal life, Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor.
How did Jesus dying on a cross as a criminal, at a young age, turn into a belief that God wants us to live our dreams and be successful?
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.
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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.
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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.