From my blog post: "Do you want to join the ultimate dance?"
For me, these questions remain: "Did I love unconditionally? Do I love disregarding the desire to find a reason, a 'because' before I love? Am I committed to stay the course until the unconditional and unreasonable love of God in me shows up to bring me into his/her purposes?"
This is really challenging but has to be done if we want to make an authentic statement to people who are asking genuine questions. When we are confronted by honest questions, the place to start is to know that we don't know and to be honest enough to confess it. We are learning to honour people who think differently from us, and to learn from them. But to do that we have to accept and love questions, learn to live with them and allow them to become our teachers. Can you imagine a Christian church where that happens?
Many fundamentalist Christians shoot their wounded and they believe that they are justified for in their minds their god does that. They believe he banishes the wounded (those who have not "accepted" Jesus as their "personal saviour") to hell forever. In that light it becomes easy to dismiss a person when her questions become uncomfortable. Just send them to hell. I am so glad that Jesus and Paul did not have that attitude. "Father forgive them ..."
Those of us who have come to know the "other God", have begun a revolution that will include and care for every person we see as wounded and imperfect (including ourselves and those who do not agree with us). We are joining the Dance of the Trinity and reaching out to touch one another and be together.
There are more and more people from all traditions who are joining the revolution and when a tipping point is reached, we will live in a world where the Unseen is manifested, where Love is real and the Dance is the main attraction.
All I have to do right now is not break relationship ... Love will do the rest.
Joe de Swart commented brilliantly:
We are at this moment right in the middle of a reformation. A reformation that is going to shake off hundreds of years of theological and interpretational dogma adherence. If our very root spiritual exchange (dance) is with the living, then any version of stagnancy cannot be truth.
Hold on to the version of software and hardware dating back to Luther, and irrelevance, first inward to ourselves, then outward into our relationships becomes the ossified into crystallised state. And we go nowhere. We cannot live in the 21st century with the theology and faith of the 16th century. It is dishonest.
All around us, we see people giving up. But, what are they giving up? Giving up on something directing, informing and guiding people from another century. In today's world, it may as well be people from another planet.
All reformation adopters first grow tired of the construct (how of doing - current and prevailing method and structure).
Once the construct is gone, we find that it is actually not the meetings and structure that was the only burden, but the whole thought package.
Brave people, then dig deeper, and find that all's not well in the spring behind all the thought dogmas. That spring itself is good (intentionally) but insufficient (compared to the vastness possible).
Then the struggle ensues against the narrow portal, the closed spigot, the frozen tap. As we try to open and broaden it (the real One is limitless), we go through anxiety, rejection (first of ourselves, then by others), uncertainty, doubt, fear...
But, it is impossible not to press on. So we do.
And all this is built on the revolutionary nature of Jesus himself, who tossed over the tables of tradition. We learn to re-evaluate who our neighbour is (all those "other than us" ones), how God relates to us (in more ways that we ever imagine), how broad love is (much broader than we feel comfortable) and how much grace there is (for more than we decree worthy).
All of our post modern angst, the culture wars, the political wars, the so called woke wars, are all part of the reformation. It asks us to use the teachings of Jesus to re-evaluate who are our neighbours? Who do we need to learn to love and accept (Jesus and tax-collectors, adulterous wife, the prostitute and the blue collar workers), to us it challenging to see the marginalised and the rejected, offensive ones and see if we should not throw our arms open to such? We are moving from bible reading, preaching, karaoke singing, arm flapping and tithing, into something new (drawing from the margins of the past) but it really is not some modern day St John of the Cross stuff (that ship has sailed), we are just seeing the our previously dear history, had some margins, and those margins are very interesting. We are not resuscitating Theresa, Fenelon, Guyon or Lawrence. We are looking upwards, inwards and outwards for the fresh 'now' stream as it unveils in human imaginations. God peeling of another layer.
There are two community archetypes: Let's call the one the Amish, the second we call BB King.
The Amish community works because it solidified so much of the daily questions already in the past. Shall we use a motorised car? No, we need to live closer to living things, at a slower pace. Do we want to wear Prada or Nike? No, check shirts and modest frocks are our uniform and makes us all similar. Etc. Democracy works in a community with a very long tail of tradition. Don't like the tradition? Go somewhere else. Daily discussions are off a very limited agenda sheet. Decisions are micro-evolutionary with few dramatic changes. Stability and certainty assured. But it starts to be very alien as time goes by. Don't get me wrong, it is good! We can learn much from looking at this living museum, but museums do not solve my issues of now and will not cover this earth now. People rooted and faithful to the long tail of history and culture.
Secondly, BB King. BB looked to surround himself with people with a great gift and mastery in music. He could not care a fig about the tradition, the culture or the origins. It was the expression, the demonstrated ability, the flow. Meeting up, delighting and playing with as many 'others' helped him to do his thing ever better. Overtime everyone wanted to play with him. He was attractive, inventive and humble. Working with him made other people shine in ways the never could otherwise. But, this community of BB, was a short-tail community. It did not care about your origins and history, it valued your musicianship. Not that history did not matter, its just that these people acknowledged that history for you may edge your jazz skills, for another classic skills and a third it formed the blues. All is good. But music itself transcends all genres. If you want music, then make the history tail short. It looked forward, chasing that new sound, and fresh innovation. BB worked with people that were drug addled, broken and even desperate. His friendship and invitation for collaboration micro-rescued many, maybe for only a few days, maybe for ever. BB judge not.
We oscillate in ourselves between these two poorly illustrated bookends (make your own parable if mine offends), the long-tailed and the tailless relationship options. I think that we are moving from Amish to BB, and the Amish don't like it. Even the non-Amish on the outside, still want us to be rather Amish, they bought the postcards.
I love the way you put this: " ... the thought that comes to me is that in reality, God is the ultimate other. Probably, we cannot find one more 'other' than us. The beguiling thing of other is the deception of 'same'. We associate to with God. We think we know such transcendency. Our hubris assumes familiarity. We may be shocked to see the difference."
In the context of evolutionary incarnation, I want to shed some light on the way we got ourselves in this dilemma you describe so eloquently. The antropomorphism of God is a common mistake we make to bring "Him" to our level so that we can describe "Him" and in that way feel more in control. We actually think we can control God with prayer so that we can improve our circumstances and for most of us "He" is more a giant cosmic servant than anything else. If we can keep "Him" there, then we feel in control and we can handle life better.
I think we want to strengthen our illusion of control by understanding things. And to do that, we create words to describe those things. It is exactly what toddlers do to enable them to create a persona that will not be swamped by this world we live in. And we continue to do that as adults whenever we encounter new situations that may be threatening. We do that with the indescribable reality we call God.
The problem is that the naming and classification of things and objects are very much influenced by our environment and specifically by our parents, family and extended family, social and other media that influence us subconsciously in our decisions on what is beneficial and what is dangerous (for me).
For everyone who are trying to help the toddler were born into this paradigm and have to function from it to be able to survive the challenges of this life. And there is nothing wrong with it initially, for you have to learn how to define good or bad to survive. But, as we grow older, we learn that there is another paradigm available that makes life much easier to live.
As we ask the questions that open the way to peace and love, mostly in the second half of life, we learn to distrust the fight or flight paradigm and start to trust the inclusive thinking that characterised the latter half of the life of Jesus.
The first chapters of Genesis called the development of the first paradigm, “eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and when the first humans did that, their eyes were opened to see that the world they inhabited could be divided in benefit and threat, positive and negative, agony and ecstasy.
Before that moment, they lived in a world where all things belonged, were perfect and necessary. They had no need to recognise the agony of life as a threat, because they knew its purpose and they could exist in bliss in the midst of threat and even loss.
They understood that life was an expression, an evolutionary incarnation of the Love that was the Ground of All Being, the Source, the Creator. They knew that this Love expressed itself in both ecstasy and agony and therefore they accepted the existence of the agony of life as a given and not something that had to be avoided at all cost. Life was not about humans but about the manifestation of the Unseen and that simply precluded the exclusion of anything - even the pain.
Motivated by self-fulfillment, they became self-sufficient and lost their one-ness with everything. The agony of life became a threat and fighting to live in the ecstasy of life became the goal. They chose to distinguish between good and bad and from that moment all things became either tools to establish ecstasy or threats to the existing ecstasy. The classification caused exclusion of some animals, plants and moments and the inclusion of others according to their own definition of good and bad.
THe first humans learnt to define everything, including God, so they expected God-self to become a threat when they disobeyed. They hid from her when she walked in the garden and they felt ashamed. They expected wrath and exclusion for they were now able to experience the fear of loss that motivates self-preservation. They projected their own new experience on God and expected to be excluded.
In this way a paradigm was established that would influence thought and actions for all generations. Our word for that paradigm is “sin”. My new definition of sin is, “the exclusion of things, people and moments based on my own definition of right and wrong”.
That obviously includes myself and God. The moment I define myself as “sinful”, or toxic, I have already excluded myself from the whole and that opens the way to a multitude of aberrant behaviour patterns, like depression, fear, anger, self-pity, unforgiveness, addiction - and murder. All in the name of protecting the ego against the perceived threat of loss.
This paradigm influenced the story-tellers who established the history of humankind. Generations of people were thinking along lines of exclusion, fight and flight. Survival instinct classified all things, God included, as either good or bad and the story they passed on to the generations became the one recorded in Genesis - one of a God who excluded the first humans from a blissful and safe environment as punishment for their sin and cursed their existence with hard labour and painful procreation.
The doctrines of penal justice, eternal damnation, substitutionary atonement and Christian supremacy followed easily from there.
The systemic problem is binary thinking that gave birth to dualism. And it is a human condition. When Jesus cried on the cross, “Father forgive them for they do not understand”, he was speaking as one who was born in the same dilemma but through suffering learnt to reclaim the unity of all people, things and moments in God.
It became clear later in his life that he had started to think differently and that he had learnt in the end to include not only the one he called Father but also the Pharisees who crucified him, the agony of the cross, the betrayal of his closest friends as integral parts of the large painting of the unfolding love of the Unseen and Indescribable.
Our words for that may be, the evolutionary incarnation of God.
I understand that this is a different take on a sacred story but that is what forums are all about, so let's talk ...
I love the point you make:
"Those of us who have come to know the "other God", have begun a revolution that will include and care for every person we see as wounded and imperfect (including ourselves and those who do not agree with us)."
Taking your comment a bit out of context, the thought that comes to me is that in reality, God is the ultimate other. Probably, we cannot find one more 'other' than us. The beguiling thing of other is the deception of 'same'. We associate to with God. We think we know such transcendency. Our hubris assumes familiarity. We may be shocked to see the difference.
If the progress map starts say with something like: awareness --> considering --> broadly accepting --> being somewhat attentive --> contemplating --> participation --> intimacy in relating --> loving --> knowing (assuming that we first love before we actually know. I loved m wife, but still learn more and more towards the goal to know her).
Then our level of utter obliviousness towards the actuality and real God must remain a bit shocking. Surely, God is any human's ultimate stranger. Because of kindness, goodness and love, we do not feel this 'strangeness'. God is so gracious, reassuring, loving and accepting that it cover all our multiples. This state of acceptance should not be confused with knowing.
How can we harp on about the 'otherness' of others, while confessing satisfaction with God? This is incongruent and a fallacy to be sure?
Therefore, we have to simply now perfect love. Love of me, love of neighbour before we can remotely suggest any actual love of God.