Go Figure
John 9:1-17
“This man
is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
“The phrase
“in Christ” cannot be understood correctly without recognizing that Christ was
already the source of our being as the one “in whom all things were created.” -Morgan Guyton
So, I want to share the outcome of a really convoluted and
intuitive mental process; a process which I decline to describe in any sort of
detail. It’s just something that my mind does, and it’s been doing it more and more
reliably in the last few years.
The starting point of this process was my increasing
frustration with my own attempts to describe the fallacies underlying modern
evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity. I suspected that there was a real
heresy imbedded in the idea that God punishes for sin, but I couldn’t put my
finger on it. I still can’t.
The end result was the discovery of a blog by a guy named
Morgan Guyton, a Methodist pastor and the director of a body called the NOLA
Wesley Foundation at Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans. He also
writes books and articles for all sorts of publications.
My mind keeps jumping back to a scene from the movie “Risen”
in which the resurrected Jesus tells the Centurion, “You’re paying attention to
the wrong things.” (it’s probably not an exact quote.)
That’s the thing though. I mean, it’s really the thing! I might have just figured it out, this minute.
If I’m paying attention to the same thing that the fundamentalists are,
even for the purpose of trying to refute it, then by golly, I’m paying
attention to the wrong things too!
There was something else that Guyton said, in a blog post entitled
“A Response to Bill Maher’s Comments About God”— “The reason I believe Jesus is the Son of God is not because I think
Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, and all the other Christian apologists have made a
slam-dunk case for Jesus that only idiots wouldn’t agree with. (omitted
text here) The reason I believe Jesus is everything the
Bible claims about him is simply because I have encountered the living
resurrected Christ in my personal life.”
That’s when the penny dropped for me, at least part of the way.
I’ve said that exact same thing to explain why I am a Christian even though my
personal philosophy is much more aligned with Buddhism. My eschatology is
permeated with notions such as Ursula LeGuin’s “The Other Wind” and Lao Tzu’s “The
Great Tao”, and I don’t really believe in ‘pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by”.
I constantly struggle with how to respond to hostility,
hatred, contempt, mockery, and scorn whenever I encounter it in person. The
funny thing is that when I was a police officer it didn’t bother me as much. I
think that was for two reasons. One, it wasn’t aimed at me personally, it was
aimed at my uniform. Two, I had a job to do, and the job was the thing that
kept me balanced. I couldn’t waste energy on the abuse when there was something
that needed to be done, and it was my responsibility to do it. I think that maybe
that is my essential problem these days. I don’t have a “job” to do. Maybe it
would help if I could figure out what my “job” is.
You’re probably thinking that I’ll never get around to talking
about the resonant phrase I chose from the readings for today, but bear with
me. It’s all about that convoluted, intuitive process which doesn’t lend itself
to being explained. It’s about the thought process that made those Pharisees make
up rules about who was “from God” and who wasn’t. I can sort of understand
their problem. They needed workable criteria; they needed somebody with authority
to endorse Jesus. They had no clue how to go about making up their own minds
about anything.
An encounter with the Living God was the impetus for my conversion,
just as it was for Guyton. No matter how many books I’ve read, or how much my
theology evolves, that simple fact remains. It just sits there, not wobbling,[1]
quietly breathing the Spirit into my life.
I’ve felt the impulse to retell the basic story of Jesus in
bare, plain, literal language for a long time now. The reason that I’m feeling
more and more driven to actually do it arises from my daily observations of how
people’s filters work. People’s filters are what generates inept behavior, like
driving off a cliff following GPS navigation on their phones; people’s filters are what produces the odd
phenomena of being unable to read the simple meaning in the words of a
sentence.
The main thing that’s been holding me back is my long
experience with the reality that it doesn’t matter what anyone says. Logic and reason just can’t
compete with emotion-driven convictions. So why even try?
That brings me back around to the experience that led to my
conversion. Logic had nothing to do with it. Reason had nothing to do with it.
It was wordless and indefinable. The only way that has any hope of coming close
to describing it is through the use of metaphor and poetry.
So it can’t be about re-phrasing the story of Jesus so that
it’s more logical and reasonable. That would definitely fit the case of ‘paying
attention to the wrong things’.
Lao Tzu talked about “straw dogs”—
“in one translation
Chapter 5 of the Tao Te Ching
begins with the lines "Heaven and Earth are heartless / treating creatures
like straw dogs".
Su Zhe's commentary on
this verse explains: "Heaven and Earth are not partial. They do not kill
living things out of cruelty or give them birth out of kindness. We do the same
when we make straw dogs to use in sacrifices. We dress them up and put them on
the altar, but not because we love them. And when the ceremony is over, we
throw them into the street, but not because we hate them." [2]
So, it’s not about
“The Gospel Story.” It’s not about “Being Saved From Sin.” It’s not about power.
It’s not about trade-offs. It’s not about following the rules. It’s not about
anything you can get out of it. It’s not about belonging to the Christian Club.
It’s not about doing what God says because he’s an abusive parent who will chain
you in the basement if he doesn’t like the look on your face, or the tone of
your voice. Nope. Those are the
filters. Those are the straw dogs. If
you pay attention to them you are
missing the boat. If I pay attention to them, then I’m missing the boat.
Instead, I think I’ll catch
the boat!
St. Brendan’s boat—
The little tiny one made out of twigs and mud.
The one with no paddles and no compass.
I’ll drag some straw dogs aboard to use for ballast.
I’ll hang on to the gunnels in the storm-surge
and remember never to spit into the wind.
Out in the middle of the empty ocean,
I’ll pull some straw out of one of those dogs
and line the bottom of the boat
to keep my butt out of the bilge water.
Morning and evening, I’ll look out
across the limitless water and say,
“What have I got myself into?”
and old Brendan will say, “________”.
Then I’ll roll my eyes and say,
“Go figure.”
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