Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Science Testimony Cont.

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

I took my first biology class when I was a freshman at the university. I never will forget, my professor announced on the first day that we would be studying evolution, but in the interest of fairness, he wanted to show us the evidence for creationism. 

He spent the entire class writing the Genesis account of creation onto the chalk board. After he was finished, he turned and said, “That is all the evidence there is for creationism. Now, we turn to evolution.” 

Dr. Van Horn was his name.  For the first two weeks of the course, he lectured about evolution and natural selection.  During the rest, evolution imbued every natural process we examined.  

I began to feel my culture had duped me, and for a long time I resented that.

Thanks for coming. Next time, I will write more specifically about Intelligent Design.

Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: My Science Testimony

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Thanks for returning. Please read and respond.

I owe my marriage to The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Let me explain how.

The first time I met my wife was in P&S, a paper and supply store for teachers. For me it was love at first sight beside the dry erase markers because her green eyes bedimmed all the other hues in the store.

I looked quickly at her finger to see if she wore a ring.  I saw none so, emboldened by that, I asked her if she had seen anyone in the store who could help us.  She said she was looking for someone too.

I asked her where she taught. She told me the name of her middle school. I asked her what she taught. She said, “Science.” 

I know my eyes widened. I blurted out what could have been misconstrued as a risky pickup line.

I said, “I love science too. I bet I am the only man you ever met in this town who’s read The Origin of Species and liked it.” Her big eyes swelled to the size of limes.  

Seeing that she was impressed, I boldly asked her to tell me her name.  Eventually, we had a first date, a second date, and so on until we married and are living happily ever after.  

Love, it seems, naturally selected us to make a family.

The funny thing is I read The Origin of Species because I like to read great books, but I had a limited background in biology, I found myself looking up a lot of words and researching a lot that I did not understand.

When I had attended high school I never took a single science course. My public school system, in their wisdom, deemed it unnecessary for all students to study science or math in the 1970s.

I was given the choice to opt out of science and math. I was a kid. I did what any kid would do. I opted out. I have always regretted that for I would have loved biology.

Please feel free to respond.  Next time, I will share how my first biology professor taught creationism beside evolution.

I hope to see you here.  Blessings...

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Scopes and Kitzmiller

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Thanks for returning.  I hope my post finds you well.

Below, I want to write about one of those times when Christians publicly make our faith look silly.

Recently, I viewed the Nova special entitled “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.” I was appalled, but not surprised, by the uncompromising world view of those who defended intelligent design.

Everything depends on a theory. Many of us do not know a good theory even after it imbues and surrounds us.

Take the badly named Discovery Institute. Their people appeared willing to implement their so-called Wedge Plan. They sought to fracture the educational system of our nation by using the law to drive their doctrine into it.

They used political maneuvering so intelligent design would be required scientific instruction in the public schools. This resulted in a court case, Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District.

As I watched in fascination, I recalled the early 20th Century when John Scopes was tried in a criminal case for teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee.

There was one crucial difference between Scopes and Kitzmiller. In the Scopes trial, Judge John T. Raulston disallowed scientific testimony. So Clarence Darrow, the defending attorney, had no choice but to prove his case by demonstrating the silliness of a literal interpretation of the Bible.

He called the defending attorney, William Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist, to the stand. He maneuvered Bryan into admitting the age of the earth could be interpreted figuratively in the Bible.

In the Kitzmiller trial Judge John E. Jones III allowed scientific testimony. One expert after another from many scientific fields was called to the stand.

The Discovery Institute called their scientific expert, the Great Right Hope, Michael Behe, to the stand. He turned out to be a punching bag.

Science humiliated the defendants that day and proved that intelligent design was religious.

It is no small wonder that fundamentalists either do not know about this case or they are embarrassed to mention it in the hope that it will be forgotten.

The fundamentalists were bad sports after their loss. As bad sports on the losing side often do, they accused the referee, that is, the judge of being a judicial activist. The irony here is that Judge Jones was a George W. Bush appointed conservative.

Indeed, Judge Jones blasted the defendants from the bench for being dishonest and ridiculous. Later, he wrote an article about the case in The Humanist magazine (January/February 2009): “Inexorably Toward Trial: Reflections on the Dover Case and the ‘Least Dangerous Branch.’”

It saddens me to see a spectacle of this nature. It makes my brothers and sisters look like fools and my faith look silly.

It is nearly impossible to be taken seriously when an attempt to make an intelligent case for faith is presented to other intelligent people who are living in this century, not the 19th Century.

If we cannot present the case for Christianity seriously and viably, then our faith is doomed.

I live and breathe a faith that declares the life of Jesus of Nazareth is relevant for all of us today even as creationism remains a superstitious idol. The world needs his message and life. Jesus is the only true correction for all that is mean and meaningless in religious doctrine.

Thanks for being here with me. Please feel free to comment. I welcome the input. Tomorrow I will write about the good side of intelligent design.  Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Stupidities and Absurdities

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

If you are here reading this, I am so happy for your visit and hopeful that you might be uplifted in some way.

It's depressing to read or watch the news these days. Radicals continue to stake out conservatism with the same energy they stake out patriotism. They speak absurdities into microphones eagerly thrust before them. The politicians, fearful of losing their power, pander shamelessly to them

The press seems to savor the brashest higgledy-piggledy-natural-law-and-common-sense defying proclamation just for the sake of entertainment. Microphones and cameras eagerly await the next outrageous stupidity that pops into the heads of those whom we elect allegedly to solve national, state, and local problems.

A statement that is just plain nuts, then appears on talk shows like Meet the Press or The Daily Show. The statement itself becomes news, and we laugh and talk about it and after it is said repeatedly it begins to sound viable. That is a dangerous precedent for a nation conceived in reason.

Depending on our point of view we scratch out heads and wonder how a human being can sound so much like a horse’s ass without anyone in the press corps calling him or her on it.

If we are sympathetic to the speaker we reason out by default how he or she makes sense.

The more incredible the stupidity uttered, the more gullibility must be whipped up to prolong the entertainment value.

For example, it was not so long ago that Time Magazine reported that 51% of Republicans believed our president was not born in the USA. That was fine and good for comedians if it were uttered by an individual, but it stinks when it takes on the validity of a cult.

Recall the campaigns Mr. Obama had run against Senator Hillary Clinton, and then against Senator John McCain. Surely, if there had been an inkling of credibility to the claim that Mr. Obama was Kenyan, either of those candidates would have screamed it to the rooftops and through our televisions. Neither said anything about it except Mr. McCain who famously told one of his supporters that Mr. Obama was a good American.

When the “birther” issue emerged again during the second election, Governor Romney was criticized for not denouncing it except among those partisan press members who wanted others to believe there was an issue even when they privately knew there was not.

Believing stupid things corrodes integrity. It makes normal, thinking people assume a default assumption that every statement must be scrutinized if it comes out of the offending person’s mouth or the political party’s press. Hatred, not logic or reason, seemingly drives such loony discourse as we are seeing these days.

The elevation of absurdity has certainly hurt Christianity through the centuries: from Docetism to Darbyism and current end times theology. I will not write of theology right now, though it has certainly set the standard for generating stupidities as truth.

Many self aggrandized Christians have been preaching that it's okay to spend billions of dollars and shed gallons of human blood to take out one tyrant, but not a dime should be given for health care. They proclaim that all people should arm themselves, yet forget that most of the citizens gunned down in our country cannot afford the CPR or ITC to revive them.

I am being a little rhetorical here. Then again… maybe not. When our House of Representatives votes to cancel the food stamp program, it makes me think that many among them would quite literally withhold every single dime spent for health care, and allocate it to those who are like camels traveling through needles.

It seems too enormous amounts of money is spent to persuade the rest of us that helping poor people is a dangerous plot that is destroying our nation.

The irony is we claim to be this great Christian nation. We have programs to help poor people that would make the prophet Amos shout for joy. Our government contributes to the sustenance of millions, and that would make us the envy of early Christians who lived during that dreadful time when they had to hide from their government in Rome.

Alas, we are such self obsessed Christians today with no good news for anyone except those we work so tirelessly to plunge further into their Mammon.

Are we praying for more war? I listen to some of our politicians who beat those war drums into Afghanistan and Iraq, and would now beat them into Syria. These same politicians descry food stamps as if they were citizen possessing devils and praise war as the will of god. These are the politics of those who profit from wars. This is what the Bible means when it talks about thinking like the world.

Let’s be honest here. We can be Christians who clamor for war and against the poor, but we are not following our leader. We love Caesar today as Caesar was loved before, and love not the peasant from Nazareth. All those same lies told to glorify Caesar are being told today to glorify the green, wallet sized American god and the politicians who defend him.

I hope you return for my next post. Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Occam's Razor

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I trust you are well.  I am writing about Occam’s Razor.

I remember watching Jupiter once during a high school football game.  It shone brightly in the sky before kickoff.  By the 4^th quarter, it appeared to be moving backwards. 

When I was a kid, I used to race my younger brother.  We’d draw up a finish line.  I’d give him a head start.  I would pass him a few yards before the end.  While I was passing him, he appeared to be going backwards. 

To ancients who believed the earth was the fixed, immovable center of the universe, the appearance of a planet moving backwards must have contributed to the belief that planets were heavenly beings watching them.

Jupiter appears to be moving backwards because our planet rotates, but Jupiter also recedes from the sky.  It can vanish for weeks.  

An ancient Greek named Ptolemy attempted to explain such celestial oddities with epi-cycles.  He proposed that planets moved in circles as they moved across the sky.

This earth centered theory, what we call the geocentric theory, was the prevailing theory of ancient people for millennia.  It underlies all Biblical thinking about the cosmos.

It was a complicated system of planetary motion that would eventually be replaced with a sun centered theory, the heliocentric theory we know to be true today.  This theory has only been around for a few hundred years, not nearly as long as Ptolemy’s theory. 

The heliocentric theory, first proposed by Nicholas Copernicus, in the 16h Century, changed everything:  philosophy, politics, religion, and it put Poland on the intellectual map.

Too bad the earth centered theory was the explanation of the universe when the Bible was written.  Copernicus was no dummy.  He knew he would be burned at the stake for suggesting the earth moved when the Bible clearly said it did now. 

Copernicus arranged for his book Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs to be published after he died.  His theory set the sun in the middle of the universe and proposed that all planets, including Earth, orbited the sun. 

His theory satisfied the requirement of Occam’s Razor.  It did not need a bunch of epicycles to explain planetary motion in the universe.  Once the sun was in the center of a solar system, the motions of all the planets became the simplest explanation.  Just because it was the simplest did not mean it was believed. 

Look up Galileo’s trial if you want to see how humanity, upon pain of death, resisted the idea of an earth centered universe.

By the way, when I say universe, I mean the whole shebang.  Ancient people thought the skies and earth were all there was and there weren’t no more.  They could not conceive of a solar system let alone billions of suns, billions of galaxies, and a universe that appears to be infinite. 

Heck the microbial world, including the germ theory, would take even longer to conceive and then believe.

But I would argue that science in general, and Occam’s Razor in particular, are true friends of religion.

Indeed, when it comes to religion, I apply Occam’s Razor.  It wards off superstition and idolatry.  The Bible thereby inspires faith that is strong and sensible rather than insipid and silly. 

If what we know to be true conflicts with our faith, then we need to take a long hard look at what we believe about how to believe.  In the case of the Bible, the problem is not God or the Bible.  The problem is how we are interpreting the Bible.

I have on my car a Jesus fish and a Darwin fish.  Mine was the first and second car to stick them together.  I put them on my Corolla in 1995. 

I reckon I hoped to start a trend.  A decade passed, and my indomitable Corolla died underneath an overpass on Interstate 75.  A few days later I bought a new Fusion. 

I stuck a new Darwin fish and a new Jesus fish on that car too, and thus became the second person in Chattanooga to post them on his car.  I suppose it takes two to begin a trend.

One day, I was walking out of Best Buy in Chattanooga, when I saw three teenagers standing behind my car.  One of them pointed to my car and asked me to explain my fish.

I said, “They belong together don’t you think?”

One boy replied, “I don’t see how.”

I asked, “Have you ever read Origin of Species?”

“Nope.”

“How about the Bible?”

“Some of it. ”

“Well—I,”

Alas, these young men were teens.  They sensed a long explanation coming…and they were probably right…so they dashed off before I could get started. 

I relished the opportunity to explain to them how I read The Origin of Species.  I sensed how it, like Copernicus’ book, changed everything.  Yet, I was never leaving God.

Thanks for visiting.  I hope to see you here again tomorrow.  Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Occam's Razor

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I hope you are well today.

It’s just plain American to disdain indoctrination in others, but ignore it in ourselves. I have little time and energy for being indoctrinated when I know it's happening to me.

I acknowledge that I too am indoctrinated. I believe capitalism is the best economic system in the world, even when it blows up every fifty years or so. I believe I live in the greatest country ever even though we love war and the Dollar Almighty.

But my indoctrination will only go so far. I prefer not to cross that line where a doctrine becomes a superstition or an idol. So, I have some rule to live by.

“If it doesn’t happen, it probably never happened.”

A variant of that is: “If it cannot happen, then it probably never happened.”

For instance, it happens that people who get cancer live. In many cases, apparently if you listen to people talk, the doctors say, “There’s no natural explanation for why so and so was cured,” even after chemo and radio and whatever-o therapy was applied. Then, someone says, “It was a miracle.”

Okay. This happens a lot. What does not happen is someone gets cancer, a witch doctor or another modern shaman, called a spiritual healer, utters an incantation and the cancer floats out of the body, to the wonderment of all those present and taking cell phone pictures that are not faked, and then turns into a Hershey bar.

The former scenario is possible among a very low percentage of blessed survivors…I suppose. The latter does not happen except in a Mel Brooks movie.

My favorite rule of thumb is Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is the best.

William of Occam: 1287-1347 CE

By simplest, William of Occam did not mean the explanation that is the easiest to believe. If that were true all religions and politics would be more scientific than a microscope. No, he simply meant the explanation that does not require a lot of other explanations to make it true is probably the best explanation.

For example, ancient people watched the same sky we watch today. They believed the sun and planets moved over a flat and fixed earth. They did not know that earth was a planet. Without instruments, how could they think otherwise?

Next time, I will write about the planet Jupiter and faith.

Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Forrest Gump

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back. I hope your Sunday has been restful and fulfilling. 

I have been writing about how texts are transformed by interpretation. 

The primary text I wrote about last time was Forrest Gump by Winston Groom.  In my first daily post today, I mentioned how the movie transformed the book.  In fact, I could argue that it created a different Gump tradition.

In the book, which I recommend to one and all if you love to read comedy that will make you laugh, Forrest does not run home to see his mother after he is discharged from the army.

Now, it’s been a long time since I read the book.  I am going from memory here, specifically what struck me as so “other” from the movie.

So, back to Mrs. Gump.  In the book, Forrest gets a telegram or a phone call or something that tells him she had passed away.

In the book, Forrest is in a production of, I think, Hamlet at a theater.  He is holding a torch while on stage.  He accidently sets the theater on fire. 

This gets him in trouble with the law.  The judge gives him a choice.  He can go to prison or join an experimental NASA program that will launch him into outer space with a gorilla and Major Sue. 

He opts to launch into space.  While in outer space, the gorilla keeps trying to grab Major Sue who apparently arouses him.  Somehow this causes the module to crash onto an island inhabited by cannibals.  Among the cannibals is a Harvard educated man who loves to play chess.  I believe he was the chief.

In the book, Gump may or may not be good at ping pong.  I don’t remember exactly.  But he is great at chess. He realizes that the chief will eat him, the gorilla, and Major Sue if he lets him win.

Incidentally, Gump is also terrific at playing the harmonica.  He and Jenny are in a band at the beginning of the book.  She leaves him when she finds him in an alley with adoring female fans sitting on his lap.

I hope I can demonstrate two things here.  I tried to recount a story that I read long ago.  I tried to recount some of the main events in my memory that show how the text has been transformed by the movie.

If I never read the book again, and I never saw the movie again, I might easily blend both traditions in some way in my head decades from now. 

Some scholars believe the writer of John’s gospel may have read Mark and composed his gospel based on his memory of that reading.  Imagine someone reading the gospel of Mark one time or hearing about it one time.  That could very well be likely since there were no printing presses in the first century. 

Someone, say a writer who composed John’s Jesus tradition, called the Johannine School in modern biblical scholarship, might have remembered enough of Mark to follow his passion story, but then recalled little else.  John’s is a unique Jesus tradition in a way similar to how Forrest Gump the movie is a different Gump tradition than the one in the text.

What I have not mentioned is how stories circulated about Jesus orally before they were written down.  This is not unusual.  Stories about Troy and Hector circulated orally before Homer wrote them down.  Stories about Adam, Abraham, and Moses were told before someone fixed them into a text.

In fact, in the Jewish Bible, the Torah is something like a quilt sewn together with four different cloths.  The genius of the redactor, that is the one who combined the sources, is his unique preservation of ancient diversity.  He fixed it into singular a text for scribes to copy.

Now, I know all this.  It means the Bible is a very human book.  Yet, it does not make me believe I can’t be a God person because there are one or one billion errors in the Bible.  It would be silly to hold any book anywhere to a false standard of inerrancy.  That is idolatrous.

No, I have the relationship with God before I come to the Bible.  I read the Bible to understand that relationship.  I am never leaving God because the written language that expresses faith is so human. 

In truth, I am thrilled by that.  It makes me humble.  I am not as likely to be a pious Bible thumper when I know that the Bible is fallible.  I am fallible as an interpreter. 

But Jesus is the light of truth I find in the Bible.

Thanks for visiting. I hope to see you here next time. Blessings…

Christianity and the Next 1000 Years: Recalling Forrest Gump

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Happy Lord’s Day to all you fellow God-people who might be reading this today. To those of you who do not number yourself among Christians, I say, “Happy Sunday.”

I remember reading Forrest Gump by Winston Groom. Truly, it was the funniest book I ever read in my life. I stopped carrying it with me to restaurants because it made me laugh out loud, and that can be embarrassing, as well as dangerous, especially if you start choking on an olive.

I've read the book once. I've seen the movie scores of times. I love that movie. I've shown the movie to students in English and History classes. I would love to teach the book in an American lit course.


The movie is funny, but the book is funnier. The movie is an interpretation of the book. It is another writer’s, or group of writers’, interpretation of a single text. It is a different medium too. As such, it has been transformed into a nearly different story from the one in the book. Certainly, Forrest has been transformed into a different person.

Tom Hanks just wins your heart with his Academy Award winning performance. He gives a human face to what many would have us believe is the "true" Southern man: simple, with a simple trust in life. I'm hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Kind of Man" lyrics in my head right about now. I tend to substitute "simpleton" for "simple" since often that is how the virtue of simplicity has been incarnated these days.

Sally Field as Mrs. Gump, who sure does want his son to get his education, is more complex than Forrest. Robin Penn Wright is Jenny. She is more complex still. She becomes lost, but is found again once she reconnects with her best friend whom she loves and by whom she can finally give herself permission to be loved. We see her complexity transform so she eventually finds happiness in the simplicity of her life with Forrest.

Gary Sinese plays another lost soul who must deal with a transformation in his life. He goes from the simplicity of following orders and giving commands in the military to living his life without legs. This makes him furious at God, but he makes his peace with God and becomes a simple, happy man.

Those four characters tug, pluck, tug, strum, and yank on my heart strings every time I watch that movie, but they barely resemble the characters in the book.

I love that opening scene on the Savannah park bench. It reveals the first intimation that Forrest is the kind of man who accepts everybody. Throughout the movie he did not notice if someone was black or white or in a wheel chair or holding guns at a Black Panther rally. If he had to pee, he’d just as soon tell a president as a friend. On the sea of humanity, he bobbed however that ocean moved him. Indeed, in the movie, people were just people to him.

He had a very simple faith in God. A hating God never seemed to have occurred to him. The complexity Gump experienced in life was the binary question of freedom or fate. Do we make our destiny or does fate make us who we are? In the end, he decided it was both.

When I’m feeling that lackluster sense that life can impose upon my mood, I simply have to watch Forrest break the shackles of his metal braces on his magic legs. The symbolism is most obvious.

I cried when I watched Forrest Gump the first time. I usually cry in the same place whenever I watch it again and again. It's hard as a Big Orange fan from the University of Tennessee to watch him return those kickoffs back for touchdowns for the Crimson Tide. Each time I weep like a baby being fed Gerber jar lids.

Seriously, the scene where his best friend, Bubba Blue, played by Mykelti Williamson, dies on a share in Vietnam is very  emotional. Another emotional scence occurs when Lieutenant Dan “makes his peace with God." Two other tear jerking scences occur with the passing of Forrest's mother and his wife’s death after she succumbs to AIDS.

The gentle way he relates to Little Forrest was also deeply moving.

Last year I met Winston Groom at a book signing. I heard him lecture and discovered, much to my surprise, that he loves to write history. I bought his book Kearney’s March and stood in line so he could sign it.

Winston Groom is really tall. He looked nearly as tall sitting at the signing table. I asked him if it bothered him that the movie was so much different from his book.

He replied tersely, “I have no control over what they do to my book.” 

Mr. Groom did not strike me as being enthusiastic about the movie.

Next time, I will write about the book and explain what this has to do with never leaving God.

I hope to see you here. Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Taking a Sabbath

I'm resting today.  I hope to you tomorrow.  Blessings...

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: 95 Theses

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

It’s good to have you visit with me here today.  Below is the final installment of the 95 Theses I wrote.  I hope you are inspired to write your own.

85.  Much of the imagery about Jesus is Jewish.  Theology and Christology are grounded in ancient Jewish, Greek, and Roman philosophical categories such time, space, causality, and substance.  Because of science we understand those categories with more clarity than the ancients understood them.  There are more profound ways of understanding God and Jesus that accord with the universe that we know to be true, a way that ancients could never have dreamed.

86.  Any believer, whose conscience compels them to interpret the Bible literally or in any other way, must be received and loved as family.  The only commandments we are to obey have to do with loving God and loving all people.  We are not commanded by Jesus to argue about doctrine, but we are commanded to love each other.

87.   Whether we interpret the Bible literally or poetically, we still have to meet God there, to discover God’s inspiration embedded there, and explain what scripture means to us today. 

88.   The church needs a method to make sense of God in the world.  Whatever the method, love should should be the litmus.    

89.  Love is expressed in the saying, “Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13).  We are commanded to love God and everyone else, including our enemies, with such a love.  That should be our starting point when it comes to understanding our faith and our purpose in the world.

90.  The gospel of John has no love for Jewish people; thus, it speaks of love for friends, but as someone else has said, if we love those who love us, what credit is that to us?

91.  Christians are not of this world.  That means we do not think like other people think.  It does not mean that we do not cuss, drink, have sex, go to movies, etc.  There are plenty of pious ones in the world.  Being pious serves the pious only.  It is easier to be pious, and despise those who are not, than it is to be one who loves. 

92.  Many are willing to uphold philosophies and political systems that promote economic injustice, civil strife, corruption, and war.  Do not be deceived into believing that is God’s way.  The second killing begins, love leaves. Christians should abhor war.

93.  In society, love is all about everyone getting a fair deal.  Among humans are the most brilliant minds in the world.  It is the 21^st Century.  We should be able to figure out an economic system that works fairly for all peoples, and not just a few.  Surely we can make a more practical, less wasteful system that is beyond socialist and capitalist doctrines. 

94.  If we Christians work for governments, then we should not try to engineer society so that our religion is promulgated in some way.  Doctrines are personal and once they become coerced they are idolatrous.  Instead, we should seek a society that is just and peaceful.  If we ever achieve that, we will come to realize that God has been working in us the whole time it unfolded.

95.  Do you seek signs of his coming?  See homeless and broken people who are cast off in our society decrease.  God commands us to invite anyone who will come to God’s feast.  That banquet is another metaphor, by the way.  It persuades us to look past life’s circumstances in order to love souls even if they are inconveniently poor. 

96.  The greatest prayer is love in action.

Oops!  I cheated.  That’s 95 Theses plus 1 for me.  I could have written a whole lot more for the word pouring out my heart is boundless. 

                        Thanks for coming.  I hope to see you here and receive your input.  Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: 95 Theses

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

           Welcome.  I pray you are well as you read my words today. 

           I wrote these 95 Theses as quickly as I could and for fun.  They emerge from a lifetime of living as a God person.  They express who I am today.  

          I could write 95 more, for God has blessed me with a mind that finds God in every particle of being.  I see an onion, a sea shell, a power cord, a ladder, dice, a planet, a crater, a kiss, test tubes, a church, novels, a synagogue, a cathedral, fried chicken, a mosque, a pebble, a  railroad track, a polynomial, a thought, a grand slam (Braves fan), a fine defensive stop (Go Falcons), a brownie with nuts topped with chocolate almond ice cream, poems, wine, a father or mother returning from war, a man or woman standing near an interstate entrance holding a sign that says, “I am hungry,” a child, children, my children, my wife, my family, and there I find God.

73.   In the ancient world BC (Before Copernicus) the gods impregnated human women.  Dead people lived again.  Chariots could ride across the sky.  But these things only happened to immortals and men who became immortal.

74.  To ancient people, the problem with Jesus had nothing to do with the supernatural.  The problem was that this man Jesus was supernatural.  He was not Caesar.  He was a nobody Jew, a condemned criminal, an obscure country preacher from Jerkwater, Israel who went to the big city and got squashed. 

75.  Today, the supernatural is a problem for me.  Maybe magic can happen, but it really never happens. I look at the present and the past with scientific eyes and historical eyes grounded in scientific methods.  I cannot help but do this.  It is very likely Jesus was arrested after disturbing the peace during Passover and immediately taken away to be crucified because Roman guards would not have bothered with a lowlife Jew disturbing the peace in the Temple during a volatile religious holiday.

76.  His disciples fled.  They did not want to be arrested.  They did not see where Jesus was crucified.  The Romans could have crucified him anywhere.  If that is true then his body was left to rot. The early Christians in whom Jesus lived told other stories about Jesus' death.

77.  To those who loved him and those who love him today, he is alive still.  The early Christians expressed his ongoing life with stories, not facts, and we do so today.

78.  With no eye witnesses upon which to base a narrative, the gospel writer whom tradition calls Mark went to the Jewish Bible in search of passages about a man of God who suffered.  He did not have to look very hard.  As one Bible scholar has said, “It was a job description.”  The writer called Mark took words from those passages and crafted his narrative.  His narrative became the primary source for other narratives about Jesus, his life, and his death.

79.  Before Mark wrote his gospel, there were sayings attributed to Jesus and stories about him that were told among the earliest believers.  His disciples kept him alive.  His disciples today keep him alive.

80.  Matthew and Luke are expanded editions of Mark; plus they share another common source of Jesus sayings that is not found in Mark.  The latter source was discovered by German scholars in the 19^th century.  They called it Quelle or the Q source.  When the Gospel of Thomas was discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, it lent credence to the idea that early Christians collected Jesus sayings and preserved them in texts.

81.  The gospel that tradition ascribes to John was written much later than the synoptic gospels.  In it, Jesus is more supernatural and more mystical.  John is scripture that is a different Jesus tradition than the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

82.  The gospels are not eyewitness accounts.  They are redactions, that is, parts of other texts put together in order to tell the good news about Jesus.  All the gospels are anonymous.  No one really knows who wrote them. 

83.  To Christians, Jesus is God’s Word.  Scripture is a written word of God. The gospels are inspired, but they are not the same Word that Jesus is in the sense that they are the final revelation of God.  Scripture points to Jesus.  Scripture is not Jesus.

84.  Jesus told stories about God.  Early Christians told stories about Jesus.  He has been vindicated by his resurrection.  He lives in his church.  Even today, we continue to tell stories about Jesus.

Thanks for visiting today.  I hope to see you here again tonight.  I appreciate any input you might offer.  Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: 95 Theses

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back…glad you came.  I pray my blog finds you growing in faith.  Below are some more theses.

53.    The Parousia is a poetic motif that courses through the Christian Bible.  From the time Jesus announced to a crowd of people that some of them would see the Son of Man coming in his glory to Darbyism, to Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye, the Parousia has been badly misunderstood.

54.  If we keep insisting people are going to fly out of their cars, off of their commodes, or away from their beds to meet Jesus in the sky with his posse of avenging saints, then our faith will seem sillier with each coming generation.

55.  Early Christian writers dealt with the delay of the Parousia in diverse ways.  Our generation needs to realize that Jesus comes again and again with each generation of Christians that love one another and the rest of humanity.

56.  A lot of believers remain baby Christians all of their lives.  Imagine grownups raised to believe in Santa Claus.  Imagine only good girls and boys who are past 21 get presents only if they believe Santa Claus is real and his story is history.  Anyone who does not believe sleighs and reindeer can fly are not allowed to celebrate Christmas. 

57.  If Christians continue to rely on superstition to promulgate the gospel, the faith will diminish to a cult.  It is already happening. 

58.  We should be thankful that Christians today do not insist that to be a Christian one must believe the earth does not move because the Bible says it is fixed upon a foundation. 

59.  God does not live in the sky.  God does not sit on a throne with Jesus sitting next to God.  God does not have a body part that enables sitting.  Such language is poetry.

60.  To speak of God, people must use figurative language.  Precise scientific language is impossible and undesirable.  God is the ground of all being. 

61.  God is beyond all gods.  Any language about One so lofty must itself be lofty.  Any logic about One so lofty must itself by sublime.

62.  God is that which is perceived to be personal that resists nonbeing. 

63.  When we see God we see ourselves, but God is infinite and we are finite.  We must gaze beyond our finitude to begin to grasp God’s infinity.

64.    We cannot imagine God without those structures in our minds that allow us to perceive transcendence. 

65.  When we read the Bible, we see God evolve from a tribal deity to a universal deity mainly because human consciousness transformed over time.

66.  Not every doctrine in the Bible is worthy of God.  For instance, the Deuteronomic Theory of history states that God blesses his people with prosperity as long as they obey God’s law and God punishes his people with suffering if they disobey.  Jews returning from the Babylonian Exile questioned that theory.   Books like Job, Ecclesiastes, and other post-exilic writings questioned that theory of history.  Many no doubt felt that they had followed the temple religion faithfully, yet Yahweh still punished them.  They began to realize that bad things happen to everybody. 

67.  The truth is that we all get our comeuppance.  The rain falls on the wicked and the faithful.

68.  Jesus preached the kingdom of God here in the love of his disciples.  It is a great commission that has yet to be attempted in earnest.

69.  Jesus did not come to establish a new piety.  The world through the centuries had been drowning in pious, rapacious men.  Jesus offered a new way of being kosher.  It is a cleanliness based on the way we treat one another.  It is a way of being kosher by renewing ourselves with love.

70.  Being worldly has nothing to do with having fun.  What is opposed to Christ is not about pleasure, but about manmade domination systems that grind people down.  Caesar rode a horse and led armies that murdered innocent people in order to force Roman ways onto other cultures. 

71.  The image of Jesus as a conquering, bloody Caesar arriving from the sky is an idol.  Jesus rode a donkey and led followers who save the world from oppressive power, greed, and violence. 

72.  Jesus was a Jewish man living under brutal Roman rule.  Stories are told about his wondrous deeds for the purpose of preaching.  They were not told to convince people that the supernatural happens. 

Thanks for letting me share with you today.  I’ll finish my 95 Theses tomorrow.  Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 100 Years: 95 Theses

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

            Welcome back.  I hope you got a kick out of my first twenty-six thesis.  Below are twenty-six more.  I really believe we should all write our own 95 Thesis.  Why stop at 95 and why not write it more than once in our lives just to see how we are changing.

     27.   Christian growth today is measured by how devoutly Christians believe absurdities.  The more assuredly I believe a snake and a donkey talked in the Bible, the stronger is my faith.  That kind of faith is an absurdity.

     28.  Fables are stories set among talking animals.  Most cultures, ancient and modern, have fables.  So did the Hebrews.

     29.  All cultures use symbolic language to talk about their gods.  The Bible also uses symbolic language.  We should appreciate its literary quality and themes for therein lies a word from God.

     30.  All scripture is inspired not dictated by God.

     31.  For a Christian the life of Jesus is the light by which scripture and God glow.

     32.  The Bible says in many places that the earth does not move because God has fixed the earth in its foundations.  That is lovely poetry expressing the Biblical world view.

     33.  Ancient Hebrews did distinguish between planets and stars.  They were all lights in the sky.

     34.  Hebrews did not know about Japan, Cuba, or Canada.  They did not know about germ theory, the circulatory system, placental birthing, cervixs, clitorises, the tail bone, homologous anatomic structures among species, natural selection, and soap. 

     35.  That’s right.  There was no such thing as soap from Abraham to Jesus and on to the 12^th century.  Being kosher had little to do with being sanitary clean.

     36.  The biblical world view does not know that stars are suns. 

  

     37.  Underlying all biblical thought is a cosmology that posits a sky, earth, and heaven.  God and God’s heavenly host live in the sky.  People, plants, and animals inhabit earth. 

     38.  It is not too far to travel if a heaven dweller wants to visit Jerusalem in order to deliver a message.

     39.  All biblical doctrine is best understood when the biblical world view serves as the context of every word.

     40.  It is absurd to believe the poetry that expresses creation is science.  There is not only the problem of explaining how our vastly vast universe that we know today was created in a week, but how life emerged again after being destroyed by a flood that covered the entire planet.

     41.  God may be the same yesterday, today, and forever in some way, but God as God is revealed to be evolving in the Bible.  God begins as a corporeal sky Man who lives just beyond the clouds with his heavenly host.  He becomes a presence in a tabernacle and then a presence in a temple, and then a presence in hearts.  In the later books, God is revealed to be Lord of all nations.  Finally, Jesus comes along to reveal God who loves.

     42.  One reason why theology often seems absurd is because it is based on ancient categories of what being is. 

     43.  Theology must always be contemporary and gospel. 

     44.  Any theology that ignores or denies the ongoing discoveries and explanations that come from scientists has already become a superstition and is thus idolatrous.

45.  All theology is useful to study and can contribute to spiritual growth.

     46.  Reading or writing theology is a form of prayer.

     47.  We have only poetry and theology to express what the word “God” means.  Theology is poetry abounding in logic.

     48.  We do not know what Jesus would have thought about the modern world.  We know that his philosophy of love and justice can illuminate any generation. 

     49.  If we do not change our faith into the love movement it was meant to be, Christianity will die as a superstition.  The more scientific each generation is, the more impossible an expectation of the literal interpretation of Biblical texts will be to them.

     50.  At the turn of the last century, there was a huge expectation among many Christians that Jesus would arrive from the sky with a posse of bullet proof saints.  It did not happen.  It will never happen.

     51.  The Bible says Jesus will hold seven stars in his hands.  That is either poetry or the largest human hand ever seen.  Where would one stand to take in such a sight were it literally true?

     52.  Again, ancient people thought the stars were little lights in the sky.  Those were not helium and hydrogen burning suns in Jesus’ hand.

     Thanks for visiting my blog today.  I'll post some more theses tonight.  Until then, blessings...

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: 95 Thesis

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

            Welcome back.  I hope you got a kick out of my first twenty-six thesis.  Below are twenty-six more.  I really believe we should all write our own 95 Thesis.  Why stop at 95 and why not write it more than once in our lives just to see how we are changing?

27.   Christian growth today is measured by how devoutly Christians believe absurdities.  The more assuredly I believe a snake and a donkey talked in the Bible, the stronger is my faith.  That kind of faith is an absurdity.

28.  Fables are stories set among talking animals.  Most cultures, ancient and modern, have fables.  So did the Hebrews.

29.  All cultures use symbolic language to talk about their gods.  The Bible also uses symbolic language.  We should appreciate its literary quality and themes for therein lies a word from God.

30.  All scripture is inspired not dictated by God.

31.  For a Christian the life of Jesus is the light by which scripture and God glow.

32.  The Bible says in many places that the earth does not move because God has fixed the earth in its foundations.  That is lovely poetry expressing the Biblical world view.

33.  Ancient Hebrews did distinguish between planets and stars.  They were all lights in the sky.

34.  Hebrews did not know about Japan, Cuba, or Canada.  They did not know about germ theory, the circulatory system, placental birthing, cervixs, clitorises, the tail bone, homologous anatomic structures among species, natural selection, and soap. 

35.  That’s right.  There was no such thing as soap from Abraham to Jesus and on to the 12^th century.  Being kosher had little to do with being sanitary clean.

36.  The biblical world view does not know that stars are suns. 

37.  Underlying all biblical thought is a cosmology that posits a sky, earth, and heaven.  God and God’s heavenly host live in the sky.  People, plants, and animals inhabit earth. 

38.  It is not too far to travel if a heaven dweller wants to visit Jerusalem in order to deliver a message.

39.  All biblical doctrine is best understood when the biblical world view serves as the context of every word.

40.  It is absurd to believe the poetry that expresses creation is science.  There is not only the problem of explaining how our vastly vast universe that we know today was created in a week, but how life emerged again after being destroyed by a flood that covered the entire planet.

41.  God may be the same yesterday, today, and forever in some way, but God as God is revealed to be evolving in the Bible.  God begins as a corporeal sky Man who lives just beyond the clouds with his heavenly host.  He becomes a presence in a tabernacle and then a presence in a temple, and then a presence in hearts.  In the later books, God is revealed to be Lord of all nations.  Finally, Jesus comes along to reveal God who loves.

42.  One reason why theology often seems absurd is because it is based on ancient categories of what being is. 

43.  Theology must always be contemporary and gospel. 

44.  Any theology that ignores or denies the ongoing discoveries and explanations that come from scientists has already become a superstition and is thus idolatrous.

45.  All theology is useful to study and can contribute to spiritual growth.

46.  Reading or writing theology is a form of prayer.

47.  We have only poetry and theology to express what the word “God” means.  Theology is poetry abounding in logic.

48.  We do not know what Jesus would have thought about the modern world.  We know that his philosophy of love and justice can illuminate any generation. 

49.  If we do not change our faith into the love movement it was meant to be, Christianity will die as a superstition.  The more scientific each generation is, the more impossible an expectation of the literal interpretation of Biblical texts will be to them.

50.  At the turn of the last century, there was a huge expectation among many Christians that Jesus would arrive from the sky with a posse of bullet proof saints.  It did not happen.  It will never happen.

51.  The Bible says Jesus will hold seven stars in his hands.  That is either poetry or the largest human hand ever seen.  Where would one stand to take in such a sight were it literally true?

52.  Again, ancient people thought the stars were little lights in the sky.  Those were not helium and hydrogen burning suns in Jesus’ hand.

Thanks for your visit.  Tune in next time when I will answer the question, "Can this guy really come up with the rest?"  Blessings...