This is what is on my mind today; ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
To begin with, I just finished the most recent book by Bishop John Shelby Spong, the retired Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Newark and probably the most controversial theologian, author and lecturer I know of. I have read several of his book. His most recent and the one I just finised is titled: Jesus for the Non-religious. If you are not familial with Bishop Spong I can briefly tell you that he is a biblical scholar and theologian and what makes him so controversial is that he declares that though Jesus was a real person of history who was killed by the Romans, and through who God was present is a most intense manner, all of the proclamations about him in the new testament, virgin birth, the miracles, even the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension are not historical events, rather they are pre-modern, pre-scientific stories rooted in the Jewish liturgical trqdition told to try to explain the un-explainable, to express the un-expressable and communicate that which is beyond the frame of human thought, which is the experience of the unique presence of God in the humanity of Jesus. He is passionate in his devotion to and proclamation of the reality of God, not as a personified character who intervenes in our lives. but who is our very lives themselves. He is in the line of thinking of Paul Tillich who declared God not to be "a being" but rather to be "the ground of all being".
One may or may not agree with Bishop Spong on many of his ideas, but it is a great experience to hear him out and wrestle with his perspectives. As I read the book I was moved by his description of how to live passionately in the mystery of God. He expresses it this way:
Live fully, Love wastefully and Be all you can be.
The book concludes with a poem written by a lady named, Lucy Negus, after she had heard one of his sermons and I find the poem worthy of pondering:
Christpower
Look at him!
Look not at his divinity,
but look, rather, at his freedom.
Look not at the exaggerated tales of his power,
but, look, rather, at his infinite capacity to give himself away.
Look not at the first-century mythology that surrounds him,
but look rather at his courage to be,
his ability to live and
the contageous quality of his love.
Stop your frantic serach!
Be still and know that this is God:
this love
this freedom,
this being;
And,
when are accepted, accept yourself;
when you are forgiven, forgive yourself;
when you are loved, love yourself.
Grasp that Christpower
and dare to be
yourself!
Ya' know, after all, our life is in Christ, not the stories about Him. I came to know him first, not through the stories about him, but through the love of certain people who entered my life. I discovered a divine presence in them that they imparted to me. Having encounterd that divine presence on some people, I found that it was present in all people, and not just in people, but in everything that surrounded me. I discovered I live on God as a fish lives in the sea. God is all that I am, all that I came from, all that fills me and surrounds me, and at death into him I shall desolve and become one. The stories in the Bible are a guide as to how to intensify my awaremenss of him within myself and how to enhance my expression of that presence in what I do and say.
In this regard I agree completely with Bishop Spong, God cannot be captured in any story or doctrine or theology. All expressions of and about God are flawed and finite. God is perfect and infinite beyond infinite. My awareness of God is always present, it is beyond faith or believing, it is the way I experience life, and all the other stuff about God is subject to change.
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