Beyond Political Posturing

Constructive dialogue doesn’t just happen. We don’t have the patience for it. There needs to be a structured process.

Most of the members of the United Methodist California-Pacific Annual Conference participated in such a process a few years ago. It was called “discernment.”

A bit of background. In deciding policy and direction, the United Methodist Church operates as a pure democracy. Matters are decided by Roberts-Rules debates followed by votes in legislative session at both the regional and national levels.

This system is by design adversarial. On each motion, those on both sides are heard from, and then a vote is taken. The majority vote prevails. Those who are not in the majority have to live with it.

We had attempted through legislation for many years to come to terms about the role of gays and lesbians in church leadership. But our conference remained bitterly divided and stuck.

The aim of the discernment process was not legislative but rather attempting to sense the direction of the church in the midst of people opening their hearts to each other. It may sound a little strange, but it was quite powerful.

The central method used was simple. Groups of eight to ten people would agree to basic ground rules and then each person would answer some specific questions about their experience. This method was repeated in many venues over almost two years.

Listening to the experiences of people in the structured setting of discernment was extraordinarily enlightening to me. I had thought I knew everything that needed to be known about this issue.

Hearing from people actually dealing with it every day showed me how little I knew.

Carrying Easter Forward

The fragrance of the lilies begins to fade, the uplift of triumphal music begins to fade.... What are the manifest results of Easter? Especially in a world in which political discussion seems dominated by diatribe and warring hysterical headlines?

For most of us, political dialogue doesn’t exist. We read or hear statements by political leaders which are usually encapsulated criticism of the opponent’s action or point of view.

We read opinion in magazines, newspapers and online. The goal of these pieces is not dialogue but persuasion.

We listen to radio or TV talk shows where the aim is to entertain by pointing out the impugned idiocy of the other side, thus creating conflict. Short, clever, self-righteous diatribes are the staple, from both hosts and callers.

We talk with our friends and discover they have become as stirred up as we are by the lunacy of those we disagree with. The ensuing conversation is not dialog but rather an assemblage of cherry-picked facts that support our pent-up point of view.

In real dialogue, listening comes first, and the goal is not persuasion but understanding. An excellent example is described by David Briggs of Religion News Service.

In a story published last year, he talks about a dialogue between John Kerry supporters and those of George Bush in the “battleground” of Ohio in 2004. It wasn’t easy.

It happened at the Forest Hills Church, Presbyterian in Cleveland Heights. Rev. John Lentz had sensed a bitter partisan division in the church and wanted to find out why there was such tension.

Participants were uneasy and uncertain at the beginning. But what happened over time is revealing. This is how Briggs puts it:

“The focus shifted from trying to convince people who held different beliefs that they were wrong to listening to other members talk about how their views were shaped by having a family member in the military or escorting women into abortion clinics.

“Respecting one another also meant being open to change.”

One participant decided to stop listening to constant criticism of liberals by radio and TV entertainers. He says the idea that those who oppose the Iraq war are unpatriotic is “nonsense--that’s just nuts.”

A conclusion reached by the participants:
“When we seek and share the same values, our differences can lead to creative dialogue instead of confrontational disagreement.”

Why 40 Days of Lent?

Seven is considered a lucky number. How did that happen?

There probably are many people who think seven became lucky in Las Vegas. You could say we are “illnumerate,” though I think that term is used to describe widespread math inability.

The specialness of seven goes waaay back to ancient numerology, in which a particular meaning was attached to certain numbers.

Specifically, the number 4 was used to signify the earth (everything that was on the ground or came from the ground). The number 3 was used to signify the heavens (everything that was up that was visible).

This meant that any equal combination of 3 and 4 signified completeness or perfection. Thus seven (3+4) was understood as the perfect number. So was 12 (3x4).

Likewise, 6 (7-1) was considered a permanently imperfect number. So was 13 (12+1).

This was the understanding as the stories in the bible were written down, edited and assembled. That’s why there are seven days of creation, 12 tribes of Israel and 12 apostles. And the instruction to forgive “seventy times seven” originates from this. There are multiples of seven and 12 in stories throughout the bible. And, of course, the ever-present-in-Revelation-and-horror-movies 666.

The number 40, 4 times ten, is an earth-bound number. Thus it is used to describe the number of years the Israelites were in the wilderness with Moses, the number of days of rain that caused the flood and the number of days of Jesus’ temptation (which we commemorate during Lent).

In the early days of Christianity there came to be 3 faces of god, the trinity. Meanwhile, there were the four corners of the earth and the four elements of ancient alchemy--earth, air, fire and water.

Later, as our system of time evolved, there were 7 days in a week, 24 hours in a day and 12 months in a year.

And then, there came craps.

It all came from way back.

Who Is Jesus?

“I have walked through picket lines in San Diego, California to deliver a lecture. I have endured a bomb threat at Catholic University in Brisbane, Queensland. I have been the recipient of sixteen death threats, all of which came from bible-quoting ‘true believers.’

“I am grateful for each of my critics. What they unwittingly did was identify me as a resource for the religious seekers of our world who yearn to believe in God but who are also repelled by the premodern literalizations that so frequently masquerade as Christianity.”

This passage comes from Bishop John Shelby Spong’s book "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Published in 1998, it has become much more relevant in the ten years since.

Spong, who is a retired Episcopal bishop, is very concerned that the mainline church is shrinking. His thesis is that some of the central doctrines of the church are based on woefully outdated information and are thus incomprehensible to modern spiritual seekers.

Most “experts” on church growth talk about a myriad of tactics to market, invite and welcome people to church. Instead of this “outside-in” approach, Spong advocates that the church move inside-out. And so he examines and critically questions the roots of doctrine.

Then he goes back further in an effort to discern what the life of Jesus and the earliest Jewish and Christian tradition has to say about the relationship between humans and the divine.

An example of Spong's approach is his examination of the common belief in Jesus as “rescuer.” This has become an embedded part of Christianity, and is proclaimed by conservative Christians as ultimate truth.

But Spong reminds us that this is but one of several interpretations and understandings of the life of Jesus, and is not the earliest. Just like any doctrine, it is based on reading the bible in a particular way, using some specific assumptions.

Some people react to Spong's questioning as if the Christian faith itself is being attacked. That's why he continues to be vilified and even threatened.

His goal, however, is not to tear down Christianity but rather to challenge everyone who cares about the church to get serious about growing it.

By the way, the earliest understanding of Jesus comes from the beginning of the first-written of Paul's letters (and thus the first-written part of the new testament), 1 Thessalonians, which refers to Jesus as spirit.

The Real Original Sin

Last time I mentioned the two creation stories. I want to touch on the second one again, because one doctrine that originates there has been intensely controversial for quite some time. You guessed it. We’re talking original sin.

The traditional Christian teaching is that human sin (that is, disconnection from the sacred) began with Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. The doctrine developed that this “sin” was part of each human being at birth.

One of the most vocal opponents of this teaching was Rev. Matthew Fox, who in the 1990s developed an alternate view he called “original blessing.” He based this on the first creation story (in which God calls all of creation including humans “very good”). Because this story precedes the Adam and Eve story, he considered it primary, and the most-basic view of essential human nature.

I have always found the source of the original sin idea a bit opaque. Saying that Adam was disobedient to God may or may not be true, but to me it is singularly unhelpful. What exactly does “disobedience to God” mean? How exactly does a person know if he is disobedient to God? There is a great deal of interpretation needed from various authority figures, some of whom may have their own disobedient-to-God agenda.

I prefer to think in terms of the original, and subsequently universal, human failing. It may be the root of all human suffering. It does not begin with an act of disobedience, but with what happens afterward.

The Adam and Eve story illustrates this perfectly. When God asks Adam if he ate the apple, Adam says yes he did, because Eve told him to do it. When God turns to Eve and asks her the same question she says yes, she did tell Adam to eat the apple, because the snake told her to.

This is called passing the buck. We all carry the impulse to do this. This failure to take responsibility causes pain, sadness, dysfunction and even violence. From this impulse all kinds of evil springs.

If there is original sin, this is it--alive and all around us.