8. The Crucifixion

We are in the season of Lent.  Yes, for those who keep track of such things I am horribly late in starting to comment on Lent.  But, this is the season when we reflect on the coming sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

I have heard the story.  God was so angry at humans, that in order to bring them closer to him he came to earth as Christ, and then he put Christ on the Cross to die the death that we deserved, a slow horrible, demeaning death. While on the cross, God gave vent to the wrath that he had been saving up for millennia, and Jesus took it.

Sorry I just do not believe that. 

John 3:16 Does not read.  “For God so hated mankind that he could not look at them without wanting to puke so he sent his only begotten son to take the punishment that they deserved.”

Instead I offer you:

Psalm 51: 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;  you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

Or

Hebrews 10:8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

It is my belief that it is we who demanded sacrifice.  We pinned it on God, but it us who demanded that animals and at times human be put to death.  I agree with the scholars that assert that it was our insistence that sacrifice be made.  Blood sacrifice is in the history of every nation, save the First Nations people of North America.

I remember attending a Christian conference and one the speakers, one of the most popular, spoke of animal and human sacrifices.  He talked of people being set on fire, he talked of animals being slaughtered, and just as I was thinking that he would talk about our misguided efforts to eradicate Witchcraft with the Inquisition, he mentioned pagans.  We have no moral footing to point out the sins of other faiths.

I believe that if you and I were there we would crucify Jesus.  If there would have been a more horrendous means of execution we would have used that instead.  I would have held one of his arms to the cross beam as you drove in the nails, then for the other arm we would have swapped places. 

We could not stand Christ.  I think the message that God loves us, despite the shitty things we do, is detestable for us.  It is us, who are caught with the demand for punishment.  It is us, that calls for the “pound of flesh.”  God simply wants to be in communion with us.

Those who insist that it was God who led the execution of Christ, draw upon the books of the law that prescribed sacrifice.  You stole your neighbour's Macaroni and Cheese, then take two hamsters to the temple and offer them to God.  These books are used as a means of explaining how God wanted sacrifice.  I believe that the sacrifices called for in scripture call for us to limit our demand for punishment to the murder of animals.

The crucifixion is one the mysteries of the Christian faith.  I think there will come a time when we understand fully all that happened on the Cross and in the resurrection of Jesus.  Only then will we have complete knowledge.  But for now I choose to believe that it was us, not God, who killed Jesus.

I would ask that you read the following, he says this much more eloquently than I do:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-guyton/four-cringeworthy-claims-_b_1631944.html

7. A Call to be Involved with Others

John 13:12 – 18

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

I think we Christians spend far too much time dictating moral codes to other people.  We are content to stand at a distance, removed from the lives of others, and tell them that what they are doing is wrong.  The entire story of Christ is the story of God’s involvement in the lives of his creation.

What did Christ do as he walked the earth?  Yell at people that we are sinful, evil and wicked and that the very sight of us makes God want to puke?  No.  He healed people, fed them, loved them, wept with them, and in the end told them that God loved them and wanted them – just the way they are.  He did have some rather pointed things to say to the religious leaders of the time, those who seemed inclined to tell other people how to behave in order to come close to God.  Nowhere do I see this example of Jesus as clearly than in the washing the feet of his disciples. 

I am told, and have no reason to disagree, that as Jesus stripped down to his undershirt that he was now dressed as a slave.  The removal over his outer clothes was an acceptance of his stature of servitude, not the pragmatic taking his good clothes off so they did not get wet and dirty.  Jesus, prior to the last supper, knelt as a servant and washed the feet of those that would carry his message.

In this message by example, I believe, that Jesus is not diminishing who he is, but rather is showing how we are to involve ourselves in each other’s lives.  We are to be involved with each other without pretense, without moral superiority, not glorifying how much closer to God we are than the other.  We are to get on our knees, and involved in the lives of those around us.

It is easy for me to stand at a distance.  It is safe.  I will not get splattered by the ill effects of the other person’s life.  It is easy for me to stand at a distance and point out that the other person’s sin is much more vile than my own.  It is easy for me to stand at distance and create a service board or a committee to look into helping the other person. 

But that is not what I am called to do.  “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” I am called to kneel at the other person’s feet and be of service to them. 

I also find it interesting that in this example that Jesus did not leave the upper room and go out into the streets of Jerusalem to the red light district, or to Skid Row, or to the derelict section.  No, he knelt at the feet of those who were with him. 

I am called to have this kind of service not to those in some other community.  I want to comment that there is a time and place for that as well.  But I am called to have that kind of interaction in those who are in my life, my family, my neighbours, those I work with, those who I shoot with paint balls, and those I worship with on Sunday.

6. Called to be Grateful

6. Called to be Grateful

Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."

If you are desiring an orderly progression of posts starting at a fundamental basis and progressing to a profound, semi-profound, okay, mild amusing conclusion you are expecting something of me that my mind cannot produce.  I also think, theology is not linear, we can only progress a bit here, and then a bit there, and another piece here.  It is the fact that the bible is obscure and contradictory in places that lends it credence to me.  To think that we could write of God and our relationship with him in a single stream of thought is indeed arrogant.

Today I want to write of my gratitude.  I believe we are called to be grateful.  To provide some clarity I do see gratitude as being different than being joyful.  Being joyful for me is simply the response to God being with my life.  Gratitude is seeing my life, with all its victories and defeats, warts and bruises, successes and triumphs and realizing that all not only serve the greater glory of God, but also that he has used them to make me a better person.

I am immensely grateful that I am an addict and alcoholic.  Even more so that I am clean and sober.  Thus, I owe an immense debt of thanks to Narcotics Anonymous.  My experience within that twelve step program has shaped my understanding of God and my relationship to him.  Most profoundly was my understanding that God is not a solitary experience, God can only be experienced with others.

There are moments of profound realization and insight that occur when I am alone.  But God really is experienced when you and I come together without pretense, without agendas, but simply come together in his name.  Nowhere have I experienced this as profoundly as in the fifth step “Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

This was my woman at the well moment. 

I wish it had been more dramatic.  The stories of the fifth step rival the conversion stories told in churches.  People report experiencing emotional breakthroughs, cathartic episodes, people report that their lives are changed forever, that it is like spring cleaning when mom would open the windows and scrub down the entire house.  Thus is the reputation of the fifth step. 

Like my coming to Jesus my fifth step was pragmatic, and almost anticlimactic.  It was step that I knew that if I wanted long term abstinence that I needed to do.  I also had a clear agenda.  As I had been Christian for most of the time that I had used drugs and alcohol, I was sure that I had pissed God off and I was going to hell at the end of this life. 

So I wrote out all the things I had done that I thought merited damnation.  Then with my list I went to see the pastor of the church that I had attended sporadically through my addiction.  I sat there and after we had prayed I shared my list, and we chatted.  It was an excruciating experience.  Even today I can feel the shame of a life wasted by addiction, of behaviours fueled by the abuse I witnessed at home, and in my drug use.  I laid out what I had done without benefit of excuse or explanation. 

When we finished the pastor looked at me, and said.  “I wish more people in our church would do this.” We then prayed.

After this I walked out to my bike. It was raining; it would be a wet ride home.  After I got home I prayed again, and then went out to a meeting.

There was not the huge relief I had been looking for; I don’t think there was any to be found.  Today I see that God in his kindness allowed none, I was looking for a different drug.  But I found myself happier, less embarrassed as to who I was, less likely to become angry to scare you.

Today, and so many days later, I am truly grateful for that experience.  It was one of the experiences that has allowed me not seek the relief of intoxication.  It has allowed me to share myself with others at a more profound level.  Everything on that list, and it was a list of my deepest and darkest secrets, I have shared with other people.  And for each item on that list I am grateful for, as that has formed the unique person that I am.

So kind of a convoluted path to gratitude.  But the path really is realizing that there is nothing that we have done that is so awful, evil, perverted, or sinful that God cannot use that in victory with you and with other people.

5. An Interruption

5. An Interruption

My last post was a week late.  It would be easy to become critical of myself for not meeting my expectation of posting once per week.  As with much else in my life I find that when I find myself resisting it is because somewhere there is something that is amiss.  The first number of posts were trite, the concepts of being called to love and to joy are classic Christianity, and they are safe.  Only a complete fool would disagree with them. 

What I really wanted to say, to stand up and declare, is that I think modern day Christianity, the formalized religion is wrong.  I believe that we have created the same law burdened approach to appeasing God that Jesus spoke out against two thousand years ago.  Our approach to God is as legalistic as ever.  Thus begins my personal theology.

My personal theology is not complete, nor is it perfect.  For as Saint Paul stated, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”  I do not have sufficient theological training to claim anything like authority in scripture.  But I do have my faith, and I believe the leading of the Holy Spirit.  If you take exception to what I write, please take the time to publish your own theology.

Having one’s own theology, apart from whatever denomination, or congregation one is a part of is important.  For it is in those moments when we are confronting our faith that we need to have an understanding of scripture that resonates within us.  I encourage you to develop yours, a deeper understanding than – someone has told me and I will obey.

Original Sin – A Self Imposed Exile

I find that I have tended to place responsibility for my situation outside of myself.  Either God has not seen fit to relieve the plight or it is Satan's dark design that I suffer.  My quest for sobriety was full of this paradox, either God was not giving me enough strength or was not lifting the desire to get drunk and stoned or the Devil was not letting me go.  All of that has an element of truth to it.  But! Let me repeat that - BUT it was not until I accepted that drugs and alcohol held no more relief for me was I able to move on.   My exile from God at times utterly comical and full of drama was really self-imposed.

I see our fall - THE FALL FROM GRACE - as being a self imposed exile.  I am limited by my desire to be brief and thus may rush through points without a full explanation.  When I have done that it is because I have not seen that point as being central to this post.  Suffice it to say that Genesis is not an accurate rendering of events - the world was not created in 72 hours split up over six days, and the truth of the story lays within a deeper understanding.  Truths such as I was created to be in relationship with God, that all of what we see is a divine expression.

But the story is that God created everything and it was perfect.  And then he said. "Do what ever you want - snowboard in the morning - sail in the afternoon and dance the night away - just do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil."

When I first wanted to challenge this scripture I wondered what kind of god would not want us to know good from evil? What kind of god would want us ignorant? It smacked of "Leave it to Beaver." A family blissfully ignorant living out a divine plan that they did not know and without question.  I stopped talking to God.  He waited.  With the help of a friend I came to realize that the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was nothing other than judgement.

The story of Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve, there were others if you wondered, were naked and knew no shame.  There they were dangly bits for all the world to see and not an iota that anything was wrong.  And then, they ate the fruit - yeah that one.  Suddenly - Adam hid cause he was naked - and he knew it was wrong.  God did not say. "Dude, gross, what are you doing letting the little guy flap in the breeze?"

In one action, judging, and I believe it was each other, we were condemned.  Once we were started judging we could not stop.  Once we started comparing ourselves to each other we had to keep going.  In one moment, we closed the door on paradise.  

I believe that the original sin is not willfulness.  And I have doubted for a long while that simply because I was ushered into this world through my mother's womb I was condemned.  For me, and that is all I can speak for, I believe that the original sin is judgement.  I was condemned at birth not because I was born, but because as soon as I was able to hear I was immersed into a world of judgment.  That was bad, this is icky, so and so is a bad person, it is shameful how that neighbour acts, it is wrong to do that.  A constant babble of condemnation, criticism and judgement; a baptism of putridness.  Until I became damned with the judgement.

Romans 2:1 NIV

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.