Hi Rishi,

I am in essential agreement with most of your key points.  I would add one also, or perhaps put an exclamation point one what you've already introduced; the radical and life-changing nature of the action behind the atonement.  Jesus and his tiny band wound their way through the hills and valleys and tiny villages and eventually into the great city of Jerusalem, bringing a radical new message to a people hungry for God's personal touch and disillusioned with the distance from God created by the religious system of their day.  Carry a soldier's pack not only one mile, but two?  Give someone your shirt and your coat?   He who is without sin cast the first stone?  One of those bloody awful Samaritans is my neigbour?  Turn the other cheek, for heaven's sake?  Radical, alarming, even dangerous concepts for the system that had created such a chasm between God and the ordinary gal or guy in the street; yet concordant with the true nature of a loving God.  It is that concordance that still makes our Christian faith resonate today. Yet I would contend this radical and life-changing message would have faded quickly into the mists of time if not for a radical and life-changing climax...a climax that was shockingly brutal while at the same time shockingly poignant...a climax with such power that it began rather than ended a movement.

Of course Jesus had a choice.  But in a way he did not.  For he knew as well as anyone - better than anyone - of the prediliction of humankind to stray from what God had written upon the hearts of each and every one of us (Jeremiah).  The best sermon or craftiest parable or sagest proverb in the world  was not going to stall that prediliction.  Only radical action would save the radical message. The death of Jesus on the cross was that radical action and the very cornerstone of the atoning power of not just the crucifixion but the message that underlay it. 

"How much do you love me?" I asked Jesus.

"This much", Jesus answered.  And he held out his arms - and died.

I think the viewpoint of God is all-inclusive, unitive or kosmocentric, whereas the viewpoint of us humans is ego-, ethno-, and anthropocentric. When we experience our unity with God and the world, then this experience results in an upwelling of unitive love. Acting on that would be fulfilling God's will.

However, we humans are mammals, and our strongest mammalian instinct— which has evolved by necessity!—is focused on the survival of us as individuals, families, and groups. Ego-, ethno-, and anthropocentricity are necessary survival instincts that have naturally evolved and are also God's will.

So we are faced with a delicate balancing act between ego-, ethno- and antropocenricity on the one hand and kosmocentricity on the other. Each side is necessary and good. The evil comes in when the two are out of balance. Being onsidedly kosmocentric can go against our ego-, ethno- or antropocentric interests; being onesidedly focused on those can go against our kosmocentric interests.

The delicate balancing act consists of acting on behalf of the whole as well as the individual and group. Actually, when we act for the benefit of the whole, then the individual, family, and group are necessarily included.

The insight that we, as individuals and groups, are unique manifestations of the same God; that the Creator God poured ITself into creation in the act of creating; that God quantified, mutliplied, diversified and uniquefied ITself through the act of creating so that every one of us is a unique form of the same God; that the same God experiences ITself uniquely in and through every one of us; and every one of us experiences the same God uniquely, can help us walk our life in holy balance.

Great question, Alex. I hope others respond to it with their views as well.

I think first of all it's important to say that the term "atonement theology" is like the term "Christian theology"; it's an umbrella category with many different varieties underneath.  So I'm guessing that your theology prof was suggesting that certain kinds of atonement theology were a mistake for the church to adopt.  (For example, Lonergan's understanding of religious conversion is based on a type of atonement theology rooted in Aquinas that suggests faith, hope, and love are transcendental realities which radically alter the course of human development for the better.  So that might be an example of atonement theology that your prof would incline toward.)

Maybe a good way to think about your question is to imagine a continuum of views. On the South end of the continuum is the view of Jesus as a great man, much like Ghandi and Martin Luther King were great men.  On the North end of the continuum is the view of Jesus as the one and only, wholly human, wholly divine, son of the Living God.  The atonement theologies that are often stongly opposed by progressive theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, tend to be the ones that fall on the extreme North end of the continuum. There, for example, the blood of Jesus is not a symbol of a subtle spiritual reality, but a literal world-saving substance that purifies the sinful bodies and souls of fallen humanity.  Having said that, though, the  atonement theologies at the far South end of the continuum are just as problematic.  There, for example, the blood of Jesus might become a metaphor for something like class consciousness, which empowers the underclass to realize their domination by the elite and to rebel against it for their fair share of society's resources.  So the blood of Che Guevarra, for example, has the same metaphorical power as the blood of Jesus.  At this end, you end up with a completely flat, modernist understanding of life. No Trancendence.

So, an easy solution to these extremes is to say that a balanced theology is somewhere in the hypothetical middle.  I  think this is probably the typical UCC stance, although I've heard both extremes  in the UCC as well.

From my perspective (which I'm trying to sort out in this blog with others help) there is a problem with that whole North/South continuum and how it understands human nature.  I think the process of atonement, like human beings themselves, is inter-subjective.  It happens in the space between persons, rather than through a kind of spiritual injection of each individual with the saving blood of Christ, on the one hand, or through protest and policy development, on the other. It's much more subtle than either of those extremes.  A good example of this is seen in how infants and parents shape one another's experience for better and for worse.  Human nature is not enclosed within the skin of each individual human being, like that North/South continuum imagines it to be. There is an in-between space which, though invisible, is very real. That is where, in my experience, we encounter God. It is the realm that Jesus was so attuned to. It is where the Kingdom of God is located, because it is where  at-one-ment happens .

Another thought -- since we both affirm a place of dignity for GLBT persons in the church -- consider the differences between arriving at that affirming position out of an ideological commitment and out of an intersubjective experience of at-one-ment in relation to marginalized persons. I would argue that Jesus' way was not the former but the latter, and that these two ways lead to qualitatively different places.

The Buddhist Equation

Nirvana = atonement

The Computer Gamer Equation

Not using cheat codes = atonement

The Scientologist Equation

Not using certain drugs = atonement

The Challenger Equation

Obeying safety regulations = atonement

The Child's Christmas in Wales Equation

Listening to your Elders = atonement

The Physical Scientist Equation

Not jumping off of cliffs in an attempt to fly against the laws of reality = atonement

The Author's Equation

Reading Douglas Adams = atonement

The Canadian Equation

Ordering a double-double at Timmy's = atonement

Just a Self-writing poem,

Inannawhimsey

What about the nonperspectivalist's equasion?

God is not an Alpha Dog. God is the Alpha Dog. He is the Alpha and Omega Dog, Most High, Lord of Hosts, Name Above All Names ... so who could possibly be greater than He? Who could possibly come before Him?

Good answer, Squire!

Hi Rishi,

I am confused -- in your description, atonement sounded like an action done by the individual to find harmony with God, an action made possible by God.  Then it sounds like something done by Jesus.  Now I don't know for sure what you mean by "atonement" --the action and the initiator.

Thanks for your clarification.

Jim

The Nonperspectivalist Equation

Watching the three stooges = atonement

The Perspectivalist Equation

Grokking the difference between spending time with a beautiful man and spending time sitting on a hot stove = atonement

Squire, why His Mother, of course :3
 

Just a Self-writing poem,
Inannawhimsey

Thanks, Jim.  This is part of the problem.  We're too 'clear' on who the sender and the receiver are. Who's sending the stuff-that-atones, and who's receiving it?  Who's the subject and who's the object of that subject's atoning act?  We think it's all crystal clear in scripture, but it's actually not the closer we look.  And it's just as mercurial in the Hebrew scriptures as the Christian. They start with everything apparently clear and very dualistic, but as we engage them, in prayer, in ritual, they take us to a place that is beyond subject and object.

The process between the sacrificed animal and the worshipper, the process between Jesus and his followers, the process between you and I right now... is where atonement happens. God is that process. And the sacred symbols (the blood, the cross, the passion), when they're not mistreated, are the portals into that dynamic process. In my experience, this is the transforming power in orthodox liturgy.

To simplify it, Jesus focuses on the empirical fruit of the process.  When you experience limitless love or compassion or patience happening in some context, you know atonement is happening there.  If you experience violence toward others or masochistic self-denigration, you know atonement isn't happening there.  But focussing on the fruit isn't enough in the long run, because we need to know how it's happening, how we can get involved in that fruit-forming process.  And that kind of know-how is what good theology of atonement is all about. It tries to explain the process of how spiritual formation works, how we actually become more like Jesus, by symbolically 'taking up our cross' for example.  That symbolic directive alone is a complete manual on spiritual development.

From our context and from your explanation, can I infer the following statements?

1.  Jesus, either by example as a "great man" or by some kind of rupturing of spiritual barriers by his death as the son of God, created a space where we can act to harmonize our relationship with God and guidelines for those actions.

2.  Our tasks include recognizing signs in our attitudes and behaviours for lack of harmony with God, wanting to regain harmony, and acting to regain harmony.

3.  Jesus/God accepts and blesses our efforts, helping us regain harmony.

4.  All of this together is called 'atonement'.

Good for you!!!!!!! 

Hi Pilgrim,

I think your view is shared by many progressives.  And even before the 'progressive' movement, people who just saw themselves as 'liberal' began re-focusing on these natural experiences of oneness. They knew there was something terribly wrong with a theology of atonement that left them more fragmented, rather than more whole.  And they were right.

The challenge with this, though, is that if it's not elaborated more, it leaves us with an implicit theology that tells us we have to go 'sunset hunting' or 'hug hunting' or hunting for whatever...  whenever we discern disharmony in our lives.  And this can be just another variation on that very same (faulty) atonement theology which tells us that what we really need to make us whole, to satisfy the deepest longings of our souls, is 'out there' somewhere,  hanging on the proverbial panacea tree, just waiting to be plucked. It turns out though that, in the long run, rather than expanding consciousness, this maneuver actually constricts it by locking us into a vicious cycle of craving objects which cannot possibly satisfy the longings of our hearts.  Not coincidentally, this is the same kind of theology that keeps consumer capitalism going.

The hallmark of good atonement theology, I think, is that it addresses this root problem of "hunting" (or "seeking", "leaving home," "exiting the reality of the present moment", etc.) to find the Divine. And good atonement theology does that by transforming the illusory perception of ourselves as an empty subject searching for a fulfilling object. That illusory self-perception is the root cause of our experience of disharmony (not to mention the root cause of greed, hatred, and their many offspring...)  So, it's actually quite necessary that a good atonement theology be connected, both logically and experientially, with a good theology of 'sin.'

This gets to the heart of why I consider myself orthodox theologically, which I'm going to use this opportunity to ramble on about a bit.

In the progressive movement, I see a tendency to reactively jettison huge segments of the tradition (e.g. the theologies of sin and atonement) because of the ways they have been misunderstood and abused.

In my view, this tendency to jettison leads to an incomplete symbolic lexicon. What are becoming taboo words to progressives (like "sin," "atonement," "sanctification," "hell," "heaven," "sacrifice," etc.) have a function. They point out symbolic dimensions of the spiritual life, which we need to guide the very subtle process of practice.  Spiritual "practice", after all, is not just a set of techniques, like how to change a lightbulb. Spiritual practice is rooted in symbols that convey particular understandings of self, other, cosmos, and the many processes involved in their harmonious interrelatedness.  Much more complex than rocket science. (( Why on earth do we imagine that spiritual practice is somehow less challenging than, say, intensive psychotherapy, or marriage?))

Right practice (orthopraxy) depends on right understanding (orthodoxy). Right practice leads to the type of unitive experience that enables us to love our enemies, whether that enemy is ourselves or apparently unrelated to ourselves.  When practice doesn't yield that subjective and objective fruit, something is often amiss with our practice.  This discovery  is not the end of the world by any means; it is a normal, everyday challenge in the spiritual life. And it calls for a response.

When our practice is not bearing fruit, it often suggests that something may be amiss with our understanding of what practice is, i.e. something may be amiss with our "orthodoxy," with the views of self, other, God, world, action, etc, that are feeding into our practice. We're perhaps somehow misapprehending the sacred symbols of the tradition.  Or, on the other hand, perhaps our blood sugar is low, or the air quality in our workplace is unhealthy, or a toxic social situation is influencing our perceptions in ways we hadn't realized, or....etc., etc. etc.  Our practice community (in this case 'church') is charged with helping us in this crucial process of discernment. Because, after all, it is a hermeneutic community, a community that has committed itself to understanding and living out a particular tradition's view of the spiritual life and to help others do the same.  In this way they build up a beautiful network of symbolic meanings in our minds that and support life and growth and point us toward the Transcendent.

This organic process gets interrupted, however, if, when we discover that a particular symbol, or doctrinal domain, has become contaminated by homophobia, or a colonial domination scheme, or misogyny, or consumer capitalism, or whatever....  we sever  that whole, living domain and dispose of it. By all means, let's deconstruct the daylights out of it. Prune it! Fertilize it! Reshape its growth pattern! But let's not be so naive or arrogant as to imagine that we can just pluck entire dimensions of meaning out of an ancient wisdom tradition without affecting that tradition's ability to help us live wisely.  If progressive has anything to do with actually moving forward in the spiritual life, that is not progressive. On the contrary, it truncates the inner, communal network of meanings that support our spiritual life.  And  in the end that ends up truncating our subjectivity. (This is a theme developed by Bernard Lonergan, the Jesuit theologian Alex brought up, in a wonderful little book called 'The Subject').

This is why I struggle with the progressive / emerging terminology. It's waaayyyyy too big an umbrella to be meaningful.  Borg, for example, does not do what I described above as a naive or arrogant approach to the development of a tradition. On the contrary, his approach is very much in keeping with what I'm describing as genuine orthodoxy. As I see it, the people who are the busiest heaving entire fields of doctrine out the window are the ones with the least understanding of what those doctrines actually mean.
 

I like to think of atonement as  deep human flourishing. It helps the term  shed the toxic interpretations that have sometimes been attached to it.

The good thing about this is it's all-inclusive in terms of people on that North/South continuum.  The challenge with it might be that, on the far south, "great man" end, it's very easy to end up in a flat, modernist, Cartesian view of oneself, others, and the world, in which anything that has a scent of the transcendent (like the invisible, intersubjective space between us) becomes bunk, and the objective attitudes, beliefs, behaviors of Jesus become the ideals which I will use to judge the greatness of my attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. In other words, the whole process can come to take place in thought, because implicitly that it is all that is really real (I think, therefore I am).  This leads to an extremely managable form of Christianity, but one that tends to lack immediacy, since spiritual development is reduced to a kind of thought experiment, where I carve my life until it matches a certain ideal that I have in mind.  On the other, far north, end, it's very easy to end up back in an early medieval view of oneself, others, and the world, in which supernatural powers are at work in virtually everything. So self-awareness is not as important as awareness of where the angels and demons are, because they're the ones that can either help or hurt you. At this end, there's virtually no subject -- not because of some wholesome process in which the ego is being transcended and the heart expanded, but because the focus of attention is all 'out there'.

Sounds good to me.  Of course, how these points are actually understood depend on #1.  The problem with the "great man" vs. "one-and-only supernatural God-Man" way of understanding Jesus is that its much more than that. It's a way of understanding self, other, world, and the nature of reality.

For example, if, in my congregation we are big on the "great man" view of Jesus.  And we notice that things are getting a little dry, maybe a bit moralistic in our ethos, and people are slacking off in their attendance and their contributions. We have to do something, because we want to keep the doors open. So we start adding supplemental programming, maybe a little Hindu yoga, some Sufi dancing, Buddhist meditation, etc... to moisten things up a bit. 

That kind of approach can work out in a number of ways. 

If we're very fortunate, we will learn, both intellectually and experientially, from our association with our Hindu/Sufi/Buddhist neighbors, what some of the obstacles to spiritual life are within our own theology. Then we are in a position to make some adjustments, perhaps even to rediscover Jesus again for the first time, without all of our stultifying, modernist overlays on top of him.

If we're unfortunate, we won't learn anything. We'll start thinking something more or less along the lines of "Christianity is dumb and boring, but these other religions are smart and fun."  So maybe we'll keep the copies of Voices United and the pews upstairs for the old folks, but all the real action will be going on in the newly renovated church basement "spiritual community center" located in what used to be the church basement. Then, we just have to wait for the old folks to die off and we can take over the whole building.  Maybe open up a health food store or a capuchino bar  inside for extra funding. 

The tragedy in the latter scenario is that we never came to understand the Way of Jesus before we disposed of it. And we very likely take the same consumerist, theologically juvenile mentality into our new spiritual community center as well.

What can help us prevent that tragedy, I think, is spiritual leadership that understands the nature of what's going on here. And by "leadership" I don't necessarily mean just the ordained folks, but people like you and I.

I saw this first over in the thread and was going to reply - then had to take the dog for a walk, long story won't digress - and poof it was gone.  Thanks for the redirect Rishi.

I do agree with the above paragraph.  A lot of what I see in deconstructive movements is a great deal of energy expended on re-inventing the wheel.  Instead of wasting precious energy on dismantling everything and rebuilding, would it not be better to shore up the genius of those who came before and add our own unique experiences?

Just a thought,

LB

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.    

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For sure.  This is especially challenging for us in the UCC, I think, because of how young we are.  We don't have any parallel to, for example, the Anglican's Book of Common Prayer. It seems to me like we were really still trying to invent our first wheel when deconstructionism became popular and then we started to wonder if maybe it would be better to not have a wheel at all. As a denomination, we don't really have a well thought out theology and philosophy that has been practiced and refined over the centuries. And that makes attempts at theological reform or spiritual renewal pretty paradoxical at best.  I'll never forget a comment made to me by a person in my presbytery, that "The UCC isn't based so much on any particular theology as it is an ethos."  If that's the case, it certainly would make us more flexible than other churches, but what is it, then, that informs and guides and shapes our ethos (and our members) other than the surrounding culture? 

Whimsey, the Uncaused Cause has no mother. Are we in agreement on the self-created and self-existant nature of GOD? 

Also, I do not see why watching The Three Stooges would qualify as atonement.

Hi rishi,

Re my statement #1 -- I am trying to figure out how you understand Jesus' role in atonement;  for me, Jesus has a special relationship with God that I feel incapable of defining and unwilling to define, suspecting the relationship is bigger than any box I might design.  To me, his words and actions point to a way of being that is "out there" and "within us" at the same time.  His continuing presence in the world provides comfort and encouragement to us in facing the risks involved in choosing to attempt to follow his war.  This presence is tangible to our spiritual selves.

[quote=rishi]

" The challenge with this, though, is that if it's not elaborated more, it leaves us with an implicit theology that tells us we have to go 'sunset hunting' or 'hug hunting' or hunting for whatever...  whenever we discern disharmony in our lives.  And this can be just another variation on that very same (faulty) atonement theology which tells us that what we really need to make us whole, to satisfy the deepest longings of our souls, is 'out there' somewhere,  hanging on the proverbial panacea tree, just waiting to be plucked. " 

 Hi Rishi,

You've given me so much to think about!  I'm only capable of taking things one step at a time.

I'll start be commenting on the above. I think I need to clarify what I meant by this -as this answer of yours above, distorts my original meaning.

When I refer to sunsets etc. I'm not looking "out there" for this experience of unity (oneness). I could look at a million sunsets and not feel this oneness or sense of connection. When "it" happens I believe it is by the grace of God. It is essentially a shift in consciousness - I'm looking at the same world but seeing it differently.

I can only describe it's features. I'm egoless, unaware of "me" and feel this surge of warmth, love and, above all, a feeling of unity and connection. I become a part of a whole. It feels very much  "within me", not "out there".

My experience is that I can't will this to happen, it it by God's grace. One thing I've retained from the "old" religion is that God is love. It seems impossible for this shift in consciousness - this feeling of unity -  to occur unless there's love in my heart at the time.

I think nature is a perfect metaphor for atonement.

In nature, every being gives itself to the whole and thereby enriches the whole. Only we humans break this sacred law by attempting to take more from the whole than we give, thereby diminishing the whole, and, ultimately, ourselves.

The spirit of atonement, as P.P. said, is the spirit of universal unity and at-one-ment: the spirit of giving oneself to the whole.

When it is felt rather than conceptualized, universal at-one-ment manifests itself as a feeling of unitive love. Not just a love for our fellow humans, but universal love for everyone and everything.

ALL MY RELATIONS,

Arminius

Arminius,

I'm so pleased that you understood what I was trying to say. I was describing what atonement FEELS like.

As you put it, "it is felt rather than conceptualized."

I promise I won't refer to you as the Master of Bafflegab ever again. 

I like Borg's way of talking about the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus, and I think it's very helpful. In terms of Jesus' capacity to be in that place of atonement with and for others, I think it was growing throughout his life, as it does in our lives (under the right conditions). Personally, my only experience of Jesus is the post-passion, post-mortem, post-Easter one. The Jesus I hear speaking in the gospels already knows that his passion and death are a portal, not the end. Maybe because it was all written post-Easter. Once he was glowing in the authors'/editors' experience, it's pretty hard to imagine him otherwise.  But in any case, his words and actions are, in my experience, atoning from the beginning.

But I imagine that it probably wasn't actually like that throughout Jesus' life. I imagine that the atoning power (the ability to perceive and be within that divine, intersubjective space, which is healing, saving, sanctifying) was growing in Jesus. It wasn't always in such full bloom, although I don't doubt that it was always very strong (and I suspect that had a lot to do with his relationship with Mary).

Although he had to develop spiritually like everyone else, I imagine that he was nearly in full bloom, almost fully dwelling within that holy, intersubjective space that we now call the Trinity, by the time he made the decisions that led into his passion and death.   So at least by that point he would have been very far from run-of-the-mill, very pure of heart, very radiant with a love that has no limits, no need to sin anymore, and only barely able to experience temptation any more.

Then, through the passion and death he died, he came to full bloom, became limitlessly available, which is the post-Easter Jesus.

Why I imagine those things is rooted in my experience of getting to know the person of Jesus. So, what is his role in my quest for atonement?  In my experience, his role is as much as I can take in, as much as I can allow him to be, as much as I trust him. And, it seems, so far in my spiritual life, that I will only trust him to the extent that I am convinced of the reality of his undying, never withdrawing love for me.  So it is an intersubjective dance between he and I.  And it gets more complicated, and adventuresome, because I start to experience him not just in formal times of "prayer," but at all times, including in the intersubjective space that I share with others. And in some very mysterious way, his presence is his way. And the closer he and I become, the more my presence is my way, and not different from his way. In a nutshell, he is continually drawing me into a place of atonement, because it's where he lives, it's who he is, what he's all about.

This is spiritual theology, though. It's an "insider's" view, and not just ideas.  And I share it in a forum like this with some caution. But for me it's the best way to tell you how I understand Jesus' role in atonement. Part of my caution is that some Christian people I've met have a kind of emotional disconnect when it comes to Jesus; they relate more to the one Jesus calls 'Father,' and have wondered if something is wrong with them when I share experience like the above. I don't think anything is wrong with them, but I do think the way Jesus has often been represented to people in Sunday School is quite lame and disconnecting.  My early religious education was in the beginning of Vatican II in the RC church, and it left me with a very mystical sense of Jesus, too mystical some might say.

Ahhh yes.....  That is very different indeed. Thanks for those additional atoning nuances...  Interesting how I filled in the blanks from my own experience (I've seen the snapshots of several anxious 'sunset hunters'...)

Another thought on the difference between what you described in relation to the sunset and how I misinterpreted it...   The difference is very much like what the Jewish theologian, Martin Buber describes as the difference between an "I-Thou" relation (where the ego is lost through being fully present to the other) and an "I-It" relation (where the ego uses the other for its own agendas).  I know Buber was very taken by the spirituality of Jesus, within the context of Judaism. I don't know if he ever spoke of the "I-Thou" relation as a dynamic in atonement. It certainly fits, though.

Another example of contrasting modes of relationship.... James Joyce somewhere talks about genuine art appreciation often not being possible because we are inwardly relating to the work of art as something we want to possess, so that its beauty can only be experienced as an object of desire, not appreciated in itself.  (If I remember correctly,  he calls this dynamic the difference between the aethestic impulse and 'prostitution') Very similar to Buber's distinction.

And one more example -- although the Buddha didn't use this language, the real 'art' of meditation is in relating to the objects of perception, whatever they may be, with attention that is full, kind, and does not seek to influence the object in any way.  As soon as we attempt to engage in this process, we discover how our more 'default' mode is often one of clinging to those objects of perception we find pleasant, and pushing away those we find unpleasant. So, from a Buddhist perspective, you might describe how you find yourself relating to a sunset as an example of the mind entering into meditative awareness.

This is another reason why I'm here at WC. To read such tasty ideas :3
 

From people like Joseph Campbell I've developed the riff that we are Story Machines. Everything we experience can be said, in a very real sense, to be a story. A tale. A collection of symbols that are the meat and fuel for our...soul? Spirit?
 

So then G_desses and G_ds can be said to be particularly-powerful symbols, living in the realm of the...soul? Spirit?
 

And they live off of what we give them.
 

And vice versa.
 

(your phrase "leaving home" reminded me of a time when my wife met this author on the bus and they began chatting aboot the Great American Novel...he wrote it up in two sentences, I think: the boy, after having lived his whole life on the farm, left the farm to have great adventures. In his old age, he came back, to discover that he had never really left home)

(and since we and reality exists according to certain Laws/Habits, with which it is easier for us to exist in accord with them rather than trying to fight them...then these certain symbols that have been found, "atonement", "sin", "hell", could be thought of as indicators of the 'Laws of the soul'? psychological Laws? Social Laws? how I relate to others and how universe relates to me)
 

Woo-hoo!
 

To grok the word grok, go to your local library and look for Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Tis where the word comes from. I found it to be a delightful book, brimming with humanity. I am hoping the word will come back into use again.

Why can't "the self-created and self-existant nature of GOD" have a mother?
 

Ferinstance, for Justice to exist, it needs us to believe in it. Justice does not exist...but it also exists.
 

So, in that sense, which is the Prime Mover?
 

Or the colour green? It does not exist independently of my perceiving it. In fact, the colour itself is 'created' by my neurology and then, because of my neurology and how I was taught, I think it is 'out there', a quality that inheres in the grass.

Or these two sentences: "The following sentence is false. The previous sentence is true." 

The paradox doesn't exist in and of itself; it comes into being when both sentences are read.

Just to be clear, I am not dealing with the existence or non-existence of G_d here at all :3 I am more dealing with 'cause and effect'.

And as for your second one...that was my silly attempt at a double entendre:

o "Nonperspectivalism" is the belief that cause and effect do actually exist outside ourselves, which made me think of slapstick (which only works if the audience is aware of cause and effect in that sense), which made me think of the Platonic Ideal of slapstick, The Three Stooges;
 

o that, mixed with a sense of punishment/healing from punishment (from living in the Nonperspectivalism world) by watching some Three Stooges, which would then be acting in accordance with the Laws of Reality (you MUST watch), which it really isn't :3
 

Just a Self-writing poem,
Inannawhimsey

Another way in to this might be asking "What is Jesus' role in 'prayer' ?"

I would say that engaging  what you call this "continuing presence" of the New Testament Jesus is where atonement happens. It's where disharmony becomes harmony. And that engaging is "prayer", whether it's happening in silent meditation, in a live conversation with someone, in a dream while you are asleep, in resisting the desire to smack a person you find annoying, or in any number of other ways. This is no different from the orthodox understanding of prayer as our response to God's loving gift of Him-/Her-/Itself to us in Jesus. (But notice that it doesn't have anything to do with 'propitiation' or making a bad. loathsome self into one that is pleasing to an angry God by covering it with sacrificial blood.)

When we reflect on this, it becomes clear that prayer is all about atonement.  Prayer is the process of atonement.  Not automatically, though.  If in Sunday school we learned that Jesus was kind of like a Jewish Ghandi, who still inspires us today, what role could he possibly play in prayer (?) ...unless prayer just means something like "thinking inspiring thoughts."

Another question that comes out of this: What is Jesus' role in the "liturgy" that happens between 10:30 and 11:30 on Sunday mornings? In theory, the entire Christian liturgy is an intensive form of corporate prayer that celebrates and strengthens the liturgy, the prayer, of our daily lives. It's the deeply buried treasure in the UCC's typical "Order of Service," and it's all about at-one-ment. This is important to think through, because it informs our expectations about what it is that we're engaging in when we get together on Sunday mornings.

I agree, though, that it's also good to leave all of that theory behind, and just ask the question empirically:  What is it that we're engaging in when we get together on Sunday mornings?   Enquiring minds in the Emerging Church want to know. And that is good. But, to be candid, I don't think we're very motivated, as a collective, to listen to what the voice of this ancient tradition has to say in response to that question (maybe because we think we've already been there/done that, and it didn't work). I think, the UCC anyway,  is probably heading as a collective in a more Unitarian direction, which is not a bad thing, just not where I personally want to go at this point in my life.  Maybe this is our ethos as a denomination. We have more power to choose where it is that we want to go than we have responsibility to the tradition.

Hi Rishi:

What are we engaging in when we get together on Sunday mornings?

Re-affirming and re-enforcing our link with God, I would say.

But what exactly is "God?"

Not some distant and abstract deity but the living God that is in us and all around us. God as the greater whole of which we are an inseparable part. God as Kosmos and Gaia.

Love of God, then, is love of the planetary and cosmic whole. When we love God, then we love the unitive whole, with unitive love. And when God loves us back, IT loves the unitive whole, with unitive love. God does not just love us, Homo sapiens sapiens, as has been mistakenly assumed for far too long. God's love is unitive, whole, and holy. 

Godly love is whole and holy; holy love is love of the whole, by the whole.

If spirituality is not wholistic, then it isn't worth pursuing and supporting, at least not for me.

Another important dimension of this is how it connects to the bigger picture of who's "in" and who's "out" in society at any given point in time. This atonement process that Jesus enables/is stands out precisely because it's able to walk through the marginalizing walls of society. For example, the story in Matthew 9:20-22 of the ritually impure woman who sneaks up and touches the hem of Jesus' robe.  If his atonement theology had been the same as that of the institutionalized religion of his day, this act would have resulted in Jesus becoming unclean. But, instead, it results in the woman becoming clean/whole.  The key is in both this woman and Jesus having eyes to see the real significance of the atonement rites -- that the real healing power lies in this intersubjective space between us, where we actually encounter the transforming presence of God.

In the same way, the destructive power of institutionalized religion has always been tied to its failure to recognize the true nature of atonement. Consider the crusades, colonialism, what the Canadian churches did to the Aboriginal population, etc...  often passionately justified in terms of finding "atonement" for the "unclean" victims. But, below the surface, something quite vicious was going on in relation to these scape-goats.  So it seems that how we actually relate (face to face, not just in principle) to the least powerful people in society is an indicator of our implicit atonement theology.

Rishi,

I've been re-reading your blog, and concerning myself with one thought at a time.

Alex raises a point about Jesus's divinity - in relation to other great men such as Ghandi.

I'm still grappling with whether Jesus WAS divine. At the moment I'm thinking that he was fully human, a Jewish mystic who understood the  true purpose of faith - namely to bring about God's kingdom here on Earth. He certainly didn't want to start a "new" religion. He had a religious experience which enabled him to experience at-one-ment, and wanted to share with others what he had learnt about God. What started Christianity was that his disciples, who had a hard time understanding him when he was alive, had religious experiences after he was crucified. (it is not uncommon for people to have experiences of someone close to them that has died.)

With God's grace, countless people have  had religious experiences and experienced at-one-ment. This unitive experience, is the basis of faith. I don't believe that faith based on belief alone would have lasted through time.

This is why I prefer to see myself as a Follower of the Way than as a Christian.

(This is still a work in progress - I might well come to believe that Jesus was divine as well as human. If you don't agree with me, perhaps you can persuade me of Jesus's divinity?)

Hi P.P.:

I think Jesus was fully human and fully divine, just as we are, only that he was more aware of his divinity than we, and brought us the message of our divinity.

Unfortunately, we mistunderstood his message, divinized only him, and left ourselves mundane. Grace, or atonement, is heeding Jesus' message and awakening to our innate divinty.

And so much depends on what is meant by "divine".   What I mean by divine these days is, in Christian terms, to be "without sin,"  free from ego-based illusions that foster greed, hatred and their offspring. And I see that divinity as a process, so that, under the right conditions, we all become  more and more divine.  So everyone is relatively divine, some more so, some less so. I understand absolute divinity as that Mystery we call "God". So, regarding Jesus, for me the big question to grapple with has been whether Jesus was relatively divine or absolutely divine. And it's really not the kind of question that can be answered just by thinking about it.

I agree with all of that. 

Here is where things get more complicated.  Personally, I think that what the disciples experienced after the crucifixion was something other than the kind of experiences we can all have when someone close to us has died.

Whether or not their experience of the risen Jesus was a literal bodily person or a spiritual presence, I can't say. But either way, I think they encountered a transcendental, living, egoless reality that was formerly the historical Jesus. This to me suggests the absolute divinity of Jesus.  So by that point, at least, he had become an absolute manifestation of the divine mystery we call 'God'. 

I feel quite certain that, in one form or another, he "came back" after the crucifixion, and that he is, in a very real sense, here now. But this certainty is not connected with how I view scripture or the creeds, but rather with my own practical experience of Christian spirituality. At the same time, it's my experience that this Jesus who has somehow "come back" and whom I experience in my everyday life as an absolute manifestation of the divine, is, in some way the same as the New Testament Jesus.  I feel this way because of the  resonance between what I experience devotionally and what I read about Jesus in scripture (of course, the two mutually influence one another.)

But I don't really have an ability to, or even an interest in, persuading anyone of the divinity of Jesus. I can't imagine how I would do that.  One thing I can say, though, is that I'm quite sure that my experience of Buddhist teachings and practices is what opened the door for me to be able to entertain the possibility of Jesus being absolutely divine. In part because Buddhism gave me a much broader, more intelligible, and helpful philosophy of religion than the Christianity of my youth did.  Some Christian people I'm sure find this very disturbing,  because it means that my mind and heart are not only open to the possibility of Jesus being an absolute manifestation of the divine, but also to the possibility of such absolute manifestations in other religions. 

This way that I understand and experience Jesus poses some challenges for me at times. For example, I have difficulty connecting at an emotional level with types of Christian practice that involve no experience of Jesus as a transcendental reality in the here and now, since my own spirituality is so predicated on that.  Without that, I don't "get" how Christianity works for people.... because it seems kind of dry and moralistic to me.  This is challenging at times because I encounter a lot of people in the UCC for whom Jesus is basically just a "great man," a "role model," etc., etc.  So, my way of explaining my faith to them is not to go as far as I have here, which would probably be quite overwhelming, but rather to focus on my view that Jesus was a Jewish mystic (even though I see that as just his starting point.)

This makes sense to me.  Where my experience differs is that I see the actual trancendental presence of Jesus in the here and now as his "Way."