May, 2010

faith / general — Comments Off
17
May 10

bigger than my body

Someday I’ll fly
Someday I’ll soar
Someday I’ll be so damn much more
Cause I’m bigger than my body gives me credit for

After listening to the thoughts of Desmond Tutu from my last post, I imagine God to still be inspiring writers to write profound thoughts that someday will be canonized into The Bible II.  The prophet John Mayer has spoken.

Desmond Tutu said this during a portion of a recent interview that dealt with his good friend, the Dalai Lama:

“Do you really think that God would say, ‘Dalai Lama, you really are a great guy, man.  What a shame you’re not a Christian.’  I somehow don’t think so.  I think God is just thrilled because no faith, not even the Christian faith, can ever encompass God or be able to communicate who God is.  Only God can do that.”

This flies directly in the face of what traditional theology teaches.  How many times have you heard, “No one may come to the Father, except through me,” which implies you have to come experience the Jesus that this brand of church is promoting before you can graduate to some distant heaven far away in the clouds.  In church we are taught about love and grace and mercy which flows from God in heaven – God IS love, after all – and yet when we see these traits in people who aren’t traditional God-heads, we puzzle as to how non-Christians can experience and show these traits.

Perhaps God is bigger than we, “his body”, give him credit for.

It’s human to want to compartmentalize – and put concepts in neatly and clearly defined mental boxes.  God is bigger than our mental boxes.  It’s tempting to think of God in terms of metaphor to put his character in terms of something that we can understand, but the problem here is that every metaphor quickly breaks down.

God is big.

But how to we reconcile the words of a book that says “no man comes to the father except though me” with a spirit and an understanding of Jesus that is so loving that he wouldn’t see anyone not be part of the family.

We’ve got one mechanism – it’s our choice.  Our go-to default position on this has been – “it’s a gift that is freely offered” and you’re stupid, dead, ignorant, irrational NOT to take it.  This functions, but doesn’t remove some of the callousness – God throwing his hands up and saying “The ball is in YOUR court – I’ve done all I can do.”

We sometimes tack on that not “accepting God’s gift” makes baby Jesus cry to handle this.

But, maybe, we’re starting in the wrong place – maybe we’re reading too much into the english translation of greek words that were written thousands of years ago. Perhaps instead of reading that Jesus is the only door that leads to the father so if you don’t accept his love prepare for eternal damnation we should read Jesus is the way through eternity and He has revealed himself to so many people in so many ways that everyone can have access.

It’s a much different interpretation that resolves the “only through me issue.”

You can’t own God.  But the Christian church (and to be fair, all of our faiths) have staked their claim.  My God does this.  You (lower-case g) god doesn’t.  We’re trying to contain the uncontainable.

Sure, this is heretical – I understand.  But how much more like Christ would it be to drop the us-and-them mentality, the “homosexuality is an abomination” approach to life, the drive for pious perfections and simply replace bad circumstances with good circumstances, and to replace good circumstances with better circumstances?

It is utterly irrelevant to me if when I die I was right or wrong.  I don’t care what heaven is like.  I’m OK with Zen-like questions surrounding my Christian faith.  I don’t need answers.  What I need is to express faith in practical ways by being friendly, sharing food, washing cars, giving money, hugging, and relating to people in completely unconditional terms.  I am motivated by a belief that we’re all created in the image of God and that your soul and mind and strength are equally as valid as my soul, and mind, and strength.

He’s bigger than His body gives him credit for.

general — 1 Comment
17
May 10

think really big

Desmond Tutu was recently interviewed on “Speaking of Faith.” (Download the MP3 of the interview here).  I’ve always felt a super natural connection to this man which until recently I had decided was due to what often happens when people find out that I am named Desmond.  There is a certain brand of dry wit that possesses some to point out that he and I share monikers by referring to me as one of the following names:

  • Desmond Too
  • Desmond Tutu
  • Desmond Tutu Too

After hearing him speak, I cannot help but imagine that my connection with him runs much deeper – asking some of the same spiritual questions and thinking some of the same spiritual thoughts.  This is not to place myself in, around, or near the same league as Desmond Tutu but, rather, to say that where his heart and soul and mind have already travelled I dream of going.

Tutus experiences with life during Apartheid in South Africa have certainly contributed to his perspective on the planet.  I have to admit that, prior to this interview, I had no real understanding about Apartheid other than to know it was a bad thing.  It is certainly on my radar now.  If you are like me in this regard, in short Apartheid was Church-sanctioned, politically-enforced white-supremacy – it literally translates as “apartness”.

From the interview:

When the Dutch Colonial Afrikaner Nationalist Party came to power in South African in 1948, it decreed white supremacy in perpetuity, codifying the policy of apartheid, which literally translates as “apartness.” Comprehensive separation and brutalization of the 80 percent majority population of non-whites became the law of the land.

Desmond Tutu grew up, like other black children, in a ghetto township marked by deprivation unlike the towns in which white children lived. He stresses that his childhood was not devoid of joy. Children adapt; he played with his friends. But there were many moments which he traces as early stirrings of his sense of injustice, experiences that reminded him and others, as he says, of their second-, third-, fourth-class citizenship, though they did not even have citizenship.

Tutu says that we are created for goodness – a concept I deeply believe in.  In the face of these injustices, his soul stirred with a general sense of awe, wonder, and hope that is completely encompassed in what has become a motto of his, that “God is in control.”  Perhaps it’s a coping mechanism?  Obviously, in the face of brutality and inequality it is comforting to think that “this, too, shall pass” and we’ll be reunited with our creator.  This is escapism, is it not? Tutu’s claim of almighty control, though, is more deeply rooted in a belief that the God of the hear and now has our best interests in mind.

He speaks of the first time he as able to vote and compares that experience with the general apathy of the west.  For westerners, voting is sometimes a chore, a duty, a responsibility that is sometimes done begrudgingly.  When Tippett asked Tutu to relay his feelings about the first vote that he had ever cast, he response was in the form of a quesiton:

“How do you describe falling in love?”

Tippett also asked him about his feelings about homosexuality – Desmond Tutu is well known in his church for holding very liberal, relatively speaking when it comes to such topics.  His response, at the time didn’t fully hit me – because I relate so closely to the views that Tutu holds, perhaps I simply assumed we were on the same page.  What I have since realized is that he’s is so much further through the book than I am, it’s incredible!

From the transcript:

Well, you know, there are, yes, many in Africa in the Anglican Church who hold views that I wouldn’t hold my self over this. And I’ve of ten said what a shame. I mean, really, what a disgrace that the church of God in the face of so much suffer ing in the world, in the face of conflict, of corruption, of all of the awful things, what is our obsession? Our obsession is not minister ing to a world that is aching. Our obsession is about sexual orientation. I’m sure, I mean, the Lord of this church look ing down at us must weep and say, “Just what did I do wrong now?”

Just what did I do wrong now?  What an incredible question to imagine God asking – not that the world is somehow unholy or not a part of the church – but that “God’s people” seemingly couldn’t care less about the suffering and aching and pain all around us and are more interesting in debating the relatively sin-liness of various social issues.

How can we who say that we’re children of God be so off base?  How could we have so clearly missed the point?

There’s something else that Desmond Tutu said . . . God is bigger than Christianity . . . that’s coming next.