LIVING A FAITH THAT LIVES

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  The Sabbath is over, or Shabbat as our Jewish family members call it.  Shabbat has ended since sun down. 

As you read this, please do not think that I disdain the church.  I love everyone, and all congregations are worthy of my admiration and respect.

I do, however, disdain stupid ideas and dead doctrines.  Much of what is called orthodoxy is based on a faulty view of the world.  It is based on an ancient view that Yahweh lives in the sky with his heavenly host.  This cosmology preaches that the earth is flat.  The sun and planets go around the earth.  Women are the reason why there is sin in the world.  God wants us to murder infidels.  The world will end with a sword fight on a small battlefield outside of Jerusalem.  

Since Yahweh is not so far away, he (and Yahweh is definitely a male deity) had no problem sending his son down to earth.  Jesus came to earth to symbolize the Jewish ritual of sacrifice. 

The earth, after all, was not too far away, so Yahweh did not have to travel very far to impregnate Mary.  In fact, heaven was so close that the residents who lived there got a little twitchy when humans tried to build a tower so they could live among them.

It could not be helped.  The writers of the Bible, after all, were Jewish people who lived in a flat cosmos.  They conceived of Jesus as being a lamb that had to be sacrificed so God could redeem the world.  It would have been more extraordinary if they had proposed a heliocentric solar system, millions of galaxies, and an infinite universe.  

According to the ancient view, Jesus came down to establish Old Testament piety as God’s will. 

But those of us who read the Bible know that Jesus preached something more beautiful, liberating, and loving than piety.  Jesus lived something more profound than human sacrifice.

He preached a new way of being kosher.  His way of being kosher was to live God’s love in our lives.  Being clean would be revealed in the loving and kind way we treat other people. Being defiled would be revealed in the way we hurt other people.

Mysticism is great.  Doctrine is interesting.  However, the love of our God of love is the ground of mysticism and it transcends doctrine. 

Men and women can believe the world is flat if they want, but they are not Christians unless they love.  Men and women can believe in the Trinity if they want, but they are not Christians unless they love.

We know now that our world orbits a star just as we know that faith orbits love.   The great truth that God is love can thrive for centuries past the time when people stop believing the Virgin Birth as an actual historical event and start appreciating it as a symbol of God's love in a human life.  

Only a world view that conceives of a universe powered by hate would be anti-Christ to God’s love.  This love is God and Jesus.  If a Muslim loves, then he or she is Christian without acknowledging it.  If an atheist loves, then he or she is a sacrament without knowing it.  It is time for Christians to return to the God who loves and hold onto that God as steadfastly as we have held on to strife and hate.  

Jesus lived love beneath an atmosphere that is full of elements, not angels.  He lived without knowing that such an atmosphere existed.  

Jesus preached love to sentient organisms who had taken millions of years to evolve.  He preached without knowing that evolution worked in the world. 

Jesus showed love to these same organisms so that they might transcend their animal natures.  He showed this without knowing that all men and women are human primates.  

God's love is the gospel.  Everything else is conversation.

Blessings…