The God I Believe In: Part Trinity

As I’ve said elsewhere, God for me is many things personal, transcendent, etc. As I have matured, I’ve struggled with the images taught to me in Catholic school. They seemed to conflict and the simplistic explanations given did nothing to make them more believable to me. It wasn’t until I had read more deeply into the theology of the Trinity and of the thinking of the three Eastern bishops who were instrumental in shaping it, i.e. The Cappadocians, that I gained a fuller understanding which allowed me to believe again.

(Version 2.0)

I want to know how God created this world. I’m not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.

 It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously.

Albert Einstein

The agonizing moments through which I have passed during the last few years have also drawn me closer to God. More than ever before I am convinced of the reality of a personal God…To say that this God is personal is not to make him a finite object besides other objects or attribute to him the limits of human personality; it is to take what is finest and noblest in our consciousness and affirm its perfect existence in him. It is certainly true that human personality is limited, but personality as such involves no necessary limitations. It means simply self-consciousness and self-direction. So in the truest sense of the word, God is a living God. In him there is feeling and will, responsive to the deepest yearnings of the human heart: this God both evokes and answers prayer.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

As I’ve said elsewhere, God for me is many things personal, transcendent, etc. As I have matured, I’ve struggled with the images taught to me in Catholic school. They seemed to conflict with one another. The simplistic explanations given to harmonize and justify them did nothing to make them more believable to me. The just made for more questions.

For example, I always believed that God is inscrutable. As a child I would imagine God as a wispy cloud stretching into an infinite darkness. So how could the priests and nuns be so certain that such an inscrutable God was exactly as the Trinitarian formula states? How could they say others such as Jews were wrong?  The old saw of “It’s a mystery,” seemed to reek of indoctrination dodging the question so I simply ignored it.

As I grew into adulthood and got more educated on the subject, I full on rejected the Trinity. As a dogma that resulted from a bitterly violent and protracted conflict among Christians over the divinity of Christ vis-a-vis God, it had little spiritual value or power for me. To make matters worse, the conflict calcified positions to the point where The Trinity became identical with God. Historically, this has led people make God very describable, neat and clean. Today you’ll hear the Trinity explained with images of a three leaf clover or water in three phases or a pie cut into three pieces. These metaphors, while containing a bare kernel of truth, are so simplistic and ham-fisted that I would’t be surprised to hear them called blasphemous in some theological quarters. We have gone from indescribable mystery to metaphors for a metaphor for God which makes them rather untrustworthy symbols of “Him” or even our understanding of Him.

It wasn’t until I had read more deeply into the theology of the Trinity and the authors of the dogma that I gained a fuller understanding that allowed me to believe again. Continue reading “The God I Believe In: Part Trinity”

I Have Experienced It to Be True

Nadia Bolz-Weber:

Years ago on a bright Tuesday in March I was driving to seminary and I found myself stuck in traffic on I-25.  Sitting in a dead stop on the interstate I stared up into the clear blue Colorado sky and thought “What in the world  am I doing?  I don’t believe a word of this Jesus stuff. I mean, It’s a fairy tale”.  But then in the very next moment I thought “except…throughout my life…I have experienced it to be true.”  I experience the gospel to be true even when I can’t believe it. And honestly sometimes I believe the gospel even when I don’t experience it.  [emphasis mine] And I suggest to you today that this is why we have and even why we need Word and Sacrament. Because see, we are a forgetful people.

via Sermon for the ordination of Matthew Nickoloff.

Believing the Bible History

I get tons and tons and tons of trash talk from atheists who insist that the only way the Bible is “true” is if it is literally, historically and scientifically accurate. This is understandable given our indoctrination into truth grounded in the availability of things like camcorders. The ancients had no such luxury and they knew it.

In my experience, I’ve heard tons and tons and tons of trash talk from atheists who insist that the only way the Bible is “true” is if it is literally, historically and scientifically accurate. This is understandable given our indoctrination into truth grounded in the availability of things like camcorders. The ancients had no such luxury and they knew it.  They did not write scientifically or historically in our sense but poetically, mythically to convey truth by story and symbol. Even biographies were not called “histories” but “lives.”  The ancients knew this as well.

Yet dogmatic (largely atheist) critics continue, even when they are told the historical facts, to read it as 21st century moderns. All too often they then sophomorically demean the ancients and the books they wrote. The loud and proud ignorance from people who practically worship evidence is as one put it, “jaw-dropping.” Continue reading “Believing the Bible History”

Why I’m Not Necessarily a Materialist

What materialists take on faith is too reductive.

What materialists take on faith is too reductive.  The abuse of Occam’s Razor is problematic on a philosophical and practical level.  And if it doesn’t work out in the mundane why should I assume it does in matters of “ultimate concern?”

Andy Newberg lays out the scientific philosophical issues:

Occam’s Razor tells us not to assume more than what is needed to explain something. But this of course is an assumption and one that places substantial importance upon the word, “necessity.” After all, there is a grand assumption as to what actually constitutes necessity in the context of trying to explain something. This is particularly the case when considering the existence of God. For example, many religious individuals cannot conceive of a universe without God. For them, God is absolutely necessary. A scientist might argue that physical laws explain the phenomena that make up the universe, and, therefore, God is not necessary. For one person, what constitutes necessity is completely different than for another person.

There are even broader problems with the notion of necessity when one considers the “why questions” that may be outside the purview of science. Take the law of gravity mentioned above. Science can explain how gravity works between two objects, but why should it be based on the exact equations we find rather than others? In fact, why should gravity exist at all? Answering the “why” questions sometimes stretches necessity to its limits. For example, many cosmologists are now entertaining the hypothesis that the universe is actually a multiverse with an infinite number of possible universes, some of which have gravity while others do not. These cosmologists have argued that there is an absolute necessity to have an infinite number of possible universes in order to explain why our universe is the way that it is. They argue that if there is an infinite number of universes, then one of them, by pure chance, would have gravity and all of the other laws of nature exactly as they are. But if we apply Occam’s Razor, is it more likely that there is an infinite multitude of universes that we can never measure, or is it more likely that there is a God that we can never measure? Which answer satisfies necessity?

Andrew B. Newberg. Principles of Neurotheology (Ashgate Science and Religion Series) (Kindle Locations 1195-1205). Kindle Edition.

What the Gospels Are

I read the Gospels to get to know Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. For a long time I would basically gloss over or outright reject the miracles in the story as legendary accounts, particularly the birth narratives. I wanted insight into he who “made our hearts burn” and sparked a faith that has lasted millenia. It seemed to me that miracles and such obscured who Jesus was: more ignorance from my post-Enlightenment indoctrination. I won’t make that mistake again.

I read the Gospels to get to know Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. For a long time I would basically gloss over or outright reject the miracles in the story as legendary accounts, particularly the birth narratives. I was deeply interested in Jesus of Nazareth the man first, because that is how he become known. I wanted insight into he who “made our hearts burn” and sparked a faith that has lasted millenia. It seemed to me that miracles and such obscured who he was: more ignorance from my post-Enlightenment indoctrination. I won’t make that mistake again.

As Bart Ehrman writes:

The Christian Gospels

  1. The Gospels are best seen as ancient biographies of Jesus
  2. Ancient biographies had several distinctive characteristics:
    1. They were usually based on oral and written sources (sometimes biographers showed a preference for the oral).
    2. They were less concerned with relating historical events than with showing the character of the main figure through his or her words, deeds, and interactions.
    3. They did not utilize “character development,” since most ancient people believed that a person’s character was relatively constant throughout his or her life.
    4. They often portrayed the main figure’s character at the very outset of the narrative.

The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings p.65, Box 4.2

Continue reading “What the Gospels Are”

Why I Don’t Read Ideological Media

Coates’ great post, Dishonesty Is The Seventh Killer App:

You should read James Fallows’ takedown of Niall Ferguson deceptive case against a second Obama term. You should also read Andrew’s, and you should read Joe Weisenthal’s.

 
But one thing to keep in mind is there is no real penalty for respectable lying in our world of intellectual discourse. Ferguson will almost certainly continue to have a field for his thoughts, regardless of how little effort he puts into stringing them together. The Krugman rebuttal in which Ferguson claims he was only talking about the insurance end (it’s detailed in Weisenthal’s piece) is not a debatable opinion, but the sort of thing that would raise a red-flag for any fact-checker worth their weight.
 
When I first started wading my way into the world of ideas, I thought having a big university on your C.V. along a PhD held said something about your trustworthiness. I would have seen that Ferguson was a historian at Harvard and thought, “No way he’d fudge facts. He’s a Harvard big-shot who publishes in big magazines.” I would have been, of course, dead wrong. 
 
Dishonesty of this sort is insidious. It can’t be dismissed with the ease of plagiarism or manufactured evidence. As long you’re not egregious, you can actually make a career as respectable public intellectual, and occasionally lie. No one will stop you. Almost no one cares.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic)

I do.

On Rooting for the Gays Chick-Fil-A Edition

Any so-called Christian movement that inspires or coddles hatred is a debasement of the values Christ stood for and ultimately died for.

Recently there has been some controversy over Dan Cathy’s anti-gay statements and his support for organizations that target our LBGT brothers and sisters. I have very little to add to the controversy other than to support my LBGT brothers and sisters who have been targeted by organizations, e.g. the Family Research Council, that Cathy supports via donations from Chick-Fil-A; and to make some biblical observations.

Because of debates with my fellow Christians who oppose the LBGT communities equality agenda, I would question whether my view of how the Bible treats gays for fear I was being self-serving and imposing myself on the Word. And then I see the following and I wonder how I could have ever questioned God whispering to my conscience.  Any so-called Christian movement that inspires the following nuggets, pun intended, is a debasement of the values Christ stood for and ultimately died for.

  • Gabriel Aguiniga, a gay employee at a Chick-fil-A in Colorado, also said the hardest part hasn’t been hearing Cathy’s comments. Instead, “[it’s] constantly having people come up to you and say, ‘I support your company, because your company hates the gays,’” Aguiniga, 18, wrote in an email. “It really takes a toll on me.”
  • On the one hand, there is the customer who came in and said he supported Dan Cathy and then “continues to say something truly homophobic, e.g. ‘I’m so glad you don’t support the queers, I can eat in peace,’” the employee, who is 23 and has worked for Chick-fil-A since he was 16, wrote in an email.
  • Last week, when [Andrew Mullen] went out to the parking lot to help a trucker (not directly employed by Chick-fil-A) unload a shipment of goods, the trucker turned to Andrew confidentially and said, “If I see one more faggot at a Chick-fil-A protesting, I’m going to be sick.”

Obviously these are some pretty nasty comments and you might be inclined to say they don’t reflect the general sentiment of the folks who came out in droves to appreciate Chick-Fil-A. And you would be right to a degree. But what is inescapable is that the people who made these comments felt at peace and at home in this so-called movement. More directly, their hatred found joy and comfort. That for me is the truest indictment of this movement. Christ does not inspire or welcome hatred.

A Tree Known by Its Fruit.

Luke 6:43 “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. 44 For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles. 45 A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

The God I Believe In

(Version 1.3)

The God I believe in is hard to describe, at once inscrutable but very close to us on a personal and intimate level. The Jesuits “define” God thus:

God–Various titles or names are given to the Mystery underlying all that exists–e.g., the Divine, Supreme Being, the Absolute, the Transcendent, the All Holy-but all of these are only “pointers” to a Reality beyond human naming and beyond our limited human comprehension. Still, some conceptions are taken to be less inadequate than others within a given tradition grounded in revelation.

Jesuit spirituality encourages us to be aware of the images of God we have in our heads and to jettison childish, destructive, hurtful images, e.g. an accountant of good and evil waiting to damn or redeem based on your account balance, while cultivating adult images that help us to love God more deeply (and consequently humanity). So these are the images that inform how I apprehend God. Let me be clear, these images are not God. 

No image fully captures who God is. We naturally try to put our experience of God into words, but all words will be inadequate because we are dealing with God, who is Ultimate Mystery. We must be careful not to turn our images of God into idols. Instead, we let God reveal Godself to us, gently and naturally.

Father Kevin O’Brien SJ. The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in Daily Life (Kindle Locations 500-503). Kindle Edition.

With that caveat here goes:

I never believed in the Old Man in the Sky with the fuzzy white beard.
  • Ground of Being – God doesn’t exist within a set of dimensions. Existence and essence have their root, so to speak, in God. (Thanks to Tillich for this.)
  • Love – God is not loving. God IS love.
  • Mind – The God of physicists, e.g. Einstein, and mathematicians who see the way our universe works under the precise laws of physics, who cannot help but see how they point to a Mind that constructed them.
  • Person – Being brought up in a western tradition, I relate to God personally. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best on how God relates to us personally in our deepest (and sometimes darkest) moments.
  • Trinity – I must admit I was very hostile to this doctrine back in the day. Learning the sordid history behind the Arian Controversy, I judged it (unfairly) by the at times ugly process that led to its authorship. But as I learned more about mysticism and theologies that teach that paradox can be powerful for disciplining against our idol making tendencies, I saw the beauty it holds. Three Persons in One God  is indeed non-rational, even nonsensical (especially to those who worship rationality) but apt since we Christians experience God as all three.
  • Good/Hope – Eschatologically speaking, God is my hope that on the cosmic scale, the Good prevails, despite the horror of the present.
  • Truth – God for me is True in every sense including the objective.
  • Jesus – The Master and example of what a human being looks like who is in intimate communion with God. So much so that we Christians make the audacious claim that he is God.
  • Justice/Blackness – As a black man, God is intimately connected with both justice and my racial identity. Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the God of Abraham. Well, God for me is also the God of the Negro spiritual, of singing instructions to runaway enslaved people for the Underground Railroad under the nose of the Overseer, the God of enslaved people who read Exodus under pain of death while “Pharaoh” preached St. Paul’s slave theology, a God who “makes a way out of no-way,” a God who is “good all the time and all the time God is good,” who “may not come when you want Him but is always right on time,” the God who inspired King to exclaim on the night before he was murdered, “I’ve been to the mountain top!” and “I just want to do God’s will!” This by far is the most powerful image because it has been and continues to be lived by necessity. The relentless onslaught this world has made on us for centuries make it so.

So there is my list. That’s the God I believe in so to speak.

Why I am a Christian

Because I love Jesus.

That is the only real answer. The End…and The Beginning as well. Alpha and Omega.

Because I love Jesus.

That is the only real answer. The End…and The Beginning as well. Alpha and Omega.

Continue reading “Why I am a Christian”

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