God – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

Stages of spiritual development: a comprehensive guide

Most of us are familiar with intelligence quotient (IQ) tests. In 1995 Daniel Goleman published Emotional Intelligence a groundbreaking book based on the idea that how well you did in life depended not on IQ but on EQ, your emotional quotient, that is, how well you got along with others. Perhaps there is also a SQ, a spiritual quotient. Your SQ would be how far along you are on the spiritual journey as mapped out over the centuries by various spiritual thinkers.

In the sixteenth century, Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross outlined the stages of the spiritual life, from complete union with evil to complete union with God.

In the first stage, that of pagan life, one gives into temptation and doubt about God and lives in desolation. Eventually, through the grace of God, one may be converted to belief in God. This can occur rapidly (the “born again” experience) or gradually over time.

During the conversion stage, doubt about God disappears but temptation remains strong, so to survive spiritually one must move to the next stage, which is purgation, or “the dark night of the senses.” One must separate from evil by purifying one’s senses and learning virtue, and the best way to do this is through active contemplation, particularly prayer and scripture study.

Eventually, one gets to the stage of illumination, or spiritual betrothal, where the spiritual life is going well and there is lots of sweet consolation. It’s like being engaged to be married to God.

The next stage is shocking because it seems as if God has abandoned you. In this stage, temptation is gone, but so is consolation. The thinking here is that God has not actually deserted you; instead, God is trying to move you from a faith based on feelings to a faith based on conscious decision, a much more unshakable faith. In this spiritual desert, which people like Mother Teresa went through, doubt is strong. The only solution is to keep choosing to believe.

The final stage is divinization, not that you become God, but you are in total union with God. All temptation and doubt are gone. You are fully your beloved’s, in spiritual marriage.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) had a more generalized map. In the aesthetic stage, the sole focus is on self-centered pleasure. Eventually, you realize this is causing yourself and others great pain, and so at this point, you can choose to enter the ethical stage. In this stage, becoming “holier than thou” is easy until you realize you also fall short of your ideals and need God’s help to be truly holy. When you surrender to God’s grace, you enter the religious stage.

Empirical research on stages of faith has been conducted in the past twenty years. By conducting thousands of interviews, James Fowler of Emory University mapped out six stages.

Briefly, in magical faith, one thinks of God as a cosmic Santa Claus. In mythical faith, one takes every scriptural story as historical, scientific fact. In group faith, one believes whatever one’s group believes. In personal faith, one starts asking questions like “what do I really believe?” Here, people often feel they are losing their faith, but they are actually going deeper. In paradoxical faith, one accepts paradox, for example: Jesus is the only way to God, and yet there are other ways. In sacrificial faith, one becomes willing to lay down one’s life for principles like justice or freedom for all people, not just those of one’s own religious tradition.

SQ, like all spiritual things, cannot be exactly quantified. You cannot say your SQ is 100 or 160. However, if over the years, you have a deeper, more contemplative, loving, ethical, grace-filled and service-oriented spirituality, if you can embrace paradox and all people, and think freely for yourself, you can be assured, given the spiritual maps above, that your spiritual IQ is growing.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

The Power of Detachment in Relationships

What most people are looking for in a relationship, whether inside or outside of marriage, is someone who is totally attached to them: completely committed and passionately in love.

While we tend to think of detachment negatively, as disinterest, aloofness, or lack of feeling, exactly what we would not want in a relationship, if we look at it in a different way, it is an important virtue in any relationship, whether with God or another human being.

Detachment in most world religions means “inner freedom.” Jesus never used the word but it was implicit in his spirituality: the ability to let go and let God. Detachment is about “not my will, but Thy will be done,” surrendering to the divine, putting your life in God’s hands.

Detachment is a key Buddhist virtue, and Meister Eckhart, the great Christian mystic, believed that in relationship to God, detachment was more foundational than love. We cannot love God fully and unconditionally as long as we are clinging to our ego. Like the rich young man who chose not to give up his wealth and follow Jesus, our ego-attachments can block our love of God.

Detachment is likewise crucial with human relationships. You cannot really love someone if you are attached to your agenda, how they should look or how the relationship or marriage should be. Your list of characteristics of the ideal mate: good-looking, healthy, wealthy, sexy, professional, romantic, etc may prevent you from appreciating someone right in front of you.

The key to any relationship is acceptance, to accept your partner as they are, with all their faults, and to celebrate their differences from you, the things not on your list. Hopefully, they will also be detached from their agenda and accept you as you are with your faults and differences.

The most important thing is to be attached only to God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments is that we should put God first in all things, nothing should come before God. It is crucial to put God before everything, including human relationships. Then you can exist in the single life, in a relationship, or in marriage in inner freedom.

So many people are stressed-out about their relationships. If they are not in a relationship they are obsessed about when they are going to meet the right person. If they are in a relationship they are obsessed about where it is going or if it is going to end in marriage or not. If they are married they often wish their marriage was better, or wish they were not married at all.

It is very easy to let your attachment to a relationship or marriage get in the way of your relationship with God. I have known people who stopped attending their place of worship or gave up their spiritual practices or compromised their morals and self-esteem and basically sold their soul, all in an attempt to maintain a relationship. At that point the relationship has become an idol, that is, they have put it above their relationship with God.

It is important to do your part to make a relationship or marriage work, but it is far more important to put God first, keep your integrity, not make the other person into an idol, and detach from the outcome. If you let go and let God, the outcome will always be better than if you cling to a relationship out of fear of being alone or some ego-need.

The relationship is going to end at some point anyway. Even if you get married it may end through separation, divorce, or death of your spouse. Besides that, God has called some people to be single, it is not God’s will that they be with someone. God has something greater in mind, some charitable work, social justice project, or mystical marriage, that is, marriage to God.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and marriage coach. www.brucetallman.com

Exploring Divine Love Amidst Human Pain

Why does God, who is supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, allow disasters? Why does God not prevent all accidents, illness, famine, and war? Why does God allow suffering in general?

In 2005, some Christians maintained that, because New Orleans had a reputation for being “sin city,” God sent Hurricane Katrina to punish them. Pat Robertson, a US televangelist, claimed that God had punished Haiti with hurricanes and earthquakes for “making a pact with the devil.” A few centuries ago, John Wesley believed that the great Lisbon earthquake in the 1700s was God’s wrath against sin.

Such explanations must be categorically rejected. In the biblical story of the woman caught in adultery, when asked if she should be stoned to death as the Law of Moses demanded, Jesus replied, “Let the one who has never sinned cast the first stone.” All her accusers walked away because they knew they had sinned too. If God struck New Orleans, Haiti, or Lisbon for their sins, God would have to do the same to all of us.

God did not want or cause an earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest countries on our planet. A more widespread explanation for Haiti’s poverty and woes is that foreign countries rejected Haiti when its slaves revolted and gained independence, it has had a string of brutal and corrupt governments, and Haiti is geographically located in a hurricane zone and on a fault line.

God does not want or cause suffering in general either. We know that God allows human freedom, which is the cause of most human suffering. God also allows a certain freedom in the natural world. Most of the time, nature serves us well, but natural laws will proceed even if humans are in the way. God did not cause the earthquake in Haiti, the shifting of tectonic plates did.

Getting back to our question of why God allows suffering, we also have to ask: to what extent should God eliminate suffering? Should God eliminate all pain? Pain, which is part of nature, serves us well in most cases. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove, the pain tells you to withdraw it. If God eliminated our ability to feel pain, we would quickly destroy ourselves. Pain is also a great motivator. Most medical and social breakthroughs have come from seeking to alleviate or prevent pain.

Most of us have experienced a broken heart from being spurned by someone we loved. To eliminate all pain, God would have to make us into robots who could not do unloving things like rejecting people. However, we would also be unable to love since love requires free choice.

Pain also serves us well spiritually. The ecstasy of gaining love and the pain of losing it make us more humble, wise, and compassionate. Suffering should not be glorified; no one should purposefully seek it. However, we can use it as a great teacher.

Just as we suffer if our children suffer, God must suffer with us. In fact, that is what the cross, the central icon of Christianity, is all about. It declares that God knows what it is like to suffer as a human being. God suffers with us. The cross is the universal symbol that God is not in bliss, off somewhere else, while we suffer on earth. God is right in the middle of our pain. God is always on the side of the crucified, no matter what their nationality, race, or religion.

Sometimes, though, the suffering is so senseless that there is no adequate explanation. As Rabbi Harold Kushner said long ago, sometimes all you can do is drop your theological explanations and be with people, hold them in your arms, and cry with them in their grief. That’s what God does. God does not leave us alone in our sorrow.

The international response to Haiti was due to God moving people’s hearts and consciences to reach out and help take this crucified nation off its cross. The response has been like the beginnings of a resurrection: God overcoming horrific pain and death. Perhaps, Haiti will eventually be fully resurrected as a much safer and stronger nation than before. Let us all pray that this is what happens.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and religious educator of adults. www.brucetallman.com

Boost Your Spiritual Growth with These Easy Practices

If you adopt any of the following suggestions, it will have a big impact on your spiritual growth.

Get to know a homeless person and try to find out how they became homeless.

Read the scriptures of another religion.

Start the day with prayer, meditation, scripture reading, or any spiritual reading. It will set the tone for the day.

At the end of the day, keep a spiritual diary and record where you met God that day or what God taught you. Record your prayers and review them later to see if they were answered.

Use natural breaks in the day, like meals, coffee breaks, or when you shower, drive, exercise or wait in line to think of others in prayer.

Extend your present daily spiritual practice from 15 to 30 minutes or 30 minutes to an hour.

Adopt a child or family in a developing nation through World Vision or a local charity like Save-A-Family-Plan and develop a relationship by writing back when they write you.

Volunteer to visit people in jail, read to the blind, be a friend to the mentally ill, or help prepare meals and clean up at a local church soup kitchen.

Hire the person on the traffic island with the sign that says they will work for food or money.

Attend the place of worship of your own faith regularly if you do not do so.

Prepare yourself before going to your place of worship by praying or reviewing the readings beforehand.

Visit the place of worship of another denomination. For example, if you are Presbyterian attend a Mennonite service.

Visit the place of worship of another religion. Christians could attend a local mosque. Muslims could attend a synagogue.

Get to know someone of a different religion and find out what they believe.

Check out www.beliefnet.com, a vast website where you can learn about any spiritual or religious tradition and dialogue with those in it.

Join an online prayer community like that at www.sacredspace.ie. You can put your prayer requests out there and pray for the requests of others.

Get to know the writings of a major spiritual thinker like Thich Nhat Hahn or Henri Nouwen.

Do a “retreat at home.” Take a whole morning, afternoon, or evening once a week or once a month to pray or meditate more deeply.

Attend a local retreat center like the Michaelite Fathers just outside London, or Five Oaks in Paris, Ontario.

Get to know the Enneagram, a powerful tool for spiritual growth and awareness at http://www.enneagraminstitute.com.

Learn new ways of praying, like Centering Prayer, Ignatian Prayer, Taize Prayer, or learn new ways of reading scripture, such as Lectio Divina.

All these things will help you on your spiritual journey.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion.

http://www.brucetallman.com

Exploring Atheism in the Context of Progressive Christianity

Gretta Vosper, director of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity, a United Church of Canada minister, and author of the bestselling With Or Without God: Why the Way We Live Is More Important Than What We Believe, declared she was an atheist in 2001. A minister who is an atheist?

She said in most mainline churches there is a vast gap between what the clergy know and what the laity believe. What she believes most clergy know is that there is no supernatural being called God and even if there was, God does not intervene in human affairs or respond to prayer. God is merely our own human efforts in the world for justice and peace. She also believes the Bible was just written by humans, there is no heaven, and the Christian creeds are irrelevant. I’m sure most clergy were surprised the United Church let her continue in spite of her atheism.

Like most atheists, she has no authentically satisfactory explanation of where everything came from. You have to stop the infinite regress of asking “Where did that come from?” at some point. Asking, as atheists do, “Where did God come from?” makes no sense because the concept of God implies eternality. God has always existed. Atheists could say the same about the universe, but at some point, you are forced to give something God-like qualities like eternal existence. You have to make something into God, either God or the universe.

Vosper sees religion as an attempt to deal with chaos in the world. However, how does she explain order in the world? The late Bernard Lonergan, a Jesuit theologian, explained through his concept of “emergent probability” how there can be both order and chaos in the universe because God works through “secondary causes,” such as nature, without violating those causes. God is mystery, and just because we don’t understand exactly how God works does not mean God does not exist.

I like the approach of biblical scholars who say humans wrote the Bible and therefore it has scientific and historical errors in it, because God works through secondary causes like flawed and limited human beings, but underlying it all, the Bible is inspired by God.

Also, in my experience, prayer does work, and I regularly hear from my clients how prayer works in their lives. Some things have to be believed to be seen. If you don’t believe in God’s intervention, you won’t see it, but if you do believe in it, you see it everywhere. Coincidences happen that are too coincidental to be mere coincidences. They are “God-incidences.”

Progressive Christianity can be helpful, but Vosper’s attempt to leave God out does not address our existential angst. Who do you turn to when human effort fails, you fail yourself, people betray you, or you suddenly find you have cancer and are going to die?

To be fair to Vosper, I think she has a point: we need to look for the positive common values found in all religions, and this is more important than our various creeds. She is right that our beliefs are meaningless if we do not live our faith. Believing the faith is easy, living it is hard. As G. K. Chesterton said, “Christianity has not failed, it has just never been tried.”

In fact, it has been tried by individuals who Christians call “saints,” who always put more emphasis on living the faith than on doctrine. As one of the most famous, Francis of Assisi, said, “Preach the gospel wherever you go, using words if necessary.”

So yes, let’s be progressive and update our faith in the light of contemporary scholarship, but let’s not throw out God with the childhood religion, as atheists do. Let’s have an adult faith. In God, not Gretta Vosper.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. www.brucetallman.com

Why Marriage is Hard: Exploring Challenges and Solutions

Songs and movies create fantasies about romantic love, and the wedding industry creates even greater fantasies about marriage. However, romantic love is fickle, and marriage is hard. St. Paul wrote in scripture that those who marry will experience trouble (I Cor. 7:28).

Humans are basically good but also basically broken, and therefore, while God meant marriage to be a holy and blessed state, if two broken people live day after day in the most intimate relationship in the world, that is, marriage, there are going to be problems.

Besides spiritual direction, I do marriage counselling. All marriage experts agree there are four distinct stages of marriage: romance, disillusionment, misery, and seasoned love.

Marriage normally begins with romance. When dating, everyone is on their best behavior and looks their best. You haven’t lived together, so it is easy to buy into the illusion that this person only has good points and will take care of all your needs forever.

After you move in together or get married, and the other person is in your face day after day, you normally start to notice things about them that bother you, and you may feel that only some of your needs are getting met. In this disillusionment or “reality check” stage, you lose the illusions of romance.

If you stay together long enough, you will normally go through misery at some point, where your partner’s good points seem to be totally eclipsed by their bad points, and you feel none of your needs are getting met. This misery stage is why, according to Statistics Canada, there is now about a 40% divorce rate for first marriages.

At this point, faith can be very helpful. In most religious weddings, the couple takes serious, sacred vows before God and other people that they are going to love their spouse “for better or worse.” When in misery, it is particularly important to remember this unconditional love commitment before God. Prayer and church-based organizations like Retrouvaille, which hosts healing weekends for couples in misery, can also help a lot.

Misery can be as difficult as overcoming an addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous has been successful because its first tenet is to admit that your life is out of control, and you need the help of a Higher Power to overcome your problem.

In a second marriage, faith can be even more crucial. People in second marriages are even more prone to fall into misery because there are usually also ex-spouses, lawyers, children from two marriages, and wounds from the first marriage to contend with. It is not surprising the divorce rate for second marriages is significantly higher than for first marriages. People in second marriages need to pray even harder and exercise even more the virtues that all churches teach: forgiveness, trust, patience, commitment, etc.

However, there can be legitimate reasons for separation and divorce. If there was prolonged emotional or physical abuse or neglect, it probably was not God’s will that the two of you be together in the first place, and you should split up. On the other hand, often couples split up without giving their best effort to preserving the marriage.

Mutual spiritual growth is the purpose of any marriage, whether first, second or third. Difficulties can be seen as an opportunity to rely more upon God, to surrender your ego more, to pray more, to love more deeply.

If you can do all these things, you will eventually come through to the fourth stage called seasoned love. If you learn to accept your partner with all their flaws, remember your wedding vows and recommit yourself to the marriage, you will normally start to see your partner’s good points again, the bad points don’t matter because you are committed to the marriage anyway, and by then you have learned to rely upon God more than your spouse for getting your needs met.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com.

Effective Prayer: Seven Key Habits for Spiritual Growth

Most people who believe in God, whether Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Bahais, or Jews, pray at least occasionally. For many, prayer is central to their spiritual journey. However, like anything else we do, prayer can be effective or ineffective.

The key to prayer is desire for God. St. Augustine’s classic Christian definition of prayer is “lifting up our hearts and minds to God.” In this sense, whatever we do, whether working, playing, or even just walking the dog, can be prayer if we use it to connect to God.

Another key to effective prayer is silence, both internal and external. It helps to pray in a quiet environment and to take a moment to still the constant cacophony of thought before beginning. However, God can be found in the midst of noise and chaos as well.

Having a special designated place and time can be helpful, but where, when, how often and how long you pray depends entirely on your schedule and whatever proves fruitful for you.

In preparing to pray it helps to get into a comfortable posture, whether sitting or kneeling, and then follow the A.C.T.S. formula: Adoration (instead of starting with requests bring to mind God’s glory: e.g. “Almighty God, source of all being, truth and life…”), Confession (examine your conscience, repent of and surrender to God all negatives such as unforgiveness and deceit), Thanksgiving ( remember all God’s blessings), Supplication (pray for the needs of others).

It is also okay to pray for your own needs, as long as this does not become the major focus of your prayer. As well, the Jewish scriptures say that if you pray for someone else’s need and you have a similar need, God will supply your need as well. You don’t even have to ask for it.

There are seven habits of people who are highly effective at prayer:

First, their prayer is based on their own experience of God, so they are praying from their heart as well as their head, not just mumbling prayers composed by someone else.

Secondly, their prayer is simple and direct. Good prayer is possible for anyone, not just the religious professionals. You don’t have to have a doctorate in theology to pray well.

Next, their prayer is bold, strong, and durable. They boldly approach God because they know God as a God of compassion. They do not timidly address God as if God’s grace did not outweigh their failings. Also, their prayer gets stronger, not weaker, during the hard times.

Fourth, their prayer is deep and loving. It involves a radical commitment to God and others, particularly their enemies. For them, prayer is broad and hospitable. It welcomes all human beings, all creatures, and the whole planet into their hearts. It is never just about their own little group.

Fifth, they listen to God as much as they talk, and they take this listening attitude into their daily life. Throughout their day they are sensitive to the subtle promptings of the Spirit. In this sense, they “pray always” as St. Paul exhorted Christians to do.

Sixth, their prayer is socially conscious. They are particularly aware of the marginalized, the people the rest of us often forget about because they drop through society’s cracks. Their prayer takes in the social issues of the day. It is never just about “God and me.”

Lastly, their prayer is integrating. It integrates their faith with their life, their contemplation with their action. After they pray, they do something that addresses what they prayed about. As someone said, the person who is effective at prayer “prays as if it all depended on God and then acts as if it all depended on them.” They know that what the world needs now is effective prayer harnessed to effective social action.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

Exploring Dimensions: Angels, Spirits, and Our Quantum Universe

There is more to the universe than meets the eye: scientists know that 23% of the universe is composed of dark (invisible) matter, and 73% is dark energy. That means only 4% of the universe is visible. Some astrophysicists also believe that our quantum universe is made up of 11 dimensions, not just the three we are used to, or four if you include space-time.

Perhaps angels, spirits, ancestors, and ghosts inhabit these other dimensions and have the ability to interact with our dimension. These beings are real, not just the figment of someone’s imagination, and have a real impact. John Geiger in his new book The Third Man Factor, writes about how people in desperate straits are often helped by a mysterious someone who shows them the mountain pass they must go through or steers their boat in a storm when they are too sick to move.

Many people believe in guardian angels, and the scriptures of the major religions are full of them. The Jewish and Christian scriptures describe angels guiding people in dreams, protecting them when they are thrown into a furnace or lion’s den, or liberating them from jail.

It is not always clear what the difference is between angels, spirits, ghosts, and ancestors.

Directees (people in spiritual direction) often tell me about spirits appearing at the end of their bed when they wake in the middle of the night. Perhaps our unconscious mind is still open to the seven or eight other dimensions when we are in that hazy state between sleep and waking.

Some of my Christian directees can see spirits or ghosts when they are fully awake, an ability they usually wish they didn’t have. One woman reported walking into the back kitchen in her old farmhouse and seeing four spirits sitting around a table. Another said she was at a funeral when she saw the spirit of the dead man being led through the chapel by another spirit who apparently wanted the deceased to know the grief he caused his family by committing suicide.

Others have told me about an invisible someone preventing them from stepping in front of a car or hugging them when they were crying over a deceased spouse.

Some friends who immersed themselves in native spirituality were building a sweat lodge when they looked up and found themselves surrounded by spirits. Aboriginals throughout the world believe we are constantly accompanied by our ancestors. This is similar to the “cloud of witnesses” Paul wrote about in the New Testament, which later became the doctrine of “the communion of saints.”

One of my directees read about a doctor who was driving in the middle of nowhere when a young boy appeared, who then led him to an overturned bus. The doctor was able to save several lives, but one of the deceased was the boy he picked up. When he got back in his car the boy’s baseball cap was still on the passenger’s seat.

A long time ago I was lost on the prairies when my car broke down. It was January, and I was slowly freezing to death. Even though I was an atheist then, I shouted at the sky “God, please help me!” Out of the blue a car appeared, and a man poured antifreeze into my gas tank. When I asked who he was he said “I’m an angel of the highway.” I followed right behind him until we finally came to a town. He turned to the right and when I looked down the street there wasn’t a car in sight. I don’t know if he was indeed an angel, but in our strange universe I don’t discount any possibility.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

Transformative Loss: Finding Strength in Lent

Lent is a time of loss. The 40 days before Easter are meant to commemorate the 40 years the ancient Israelites were lost in the desert before coming to the Promised Land. Lent is also a time when Christians lose things, give them up, as a way of commemorating Christ’s great loss, the sacrifice of his life on a cross.

Lent is a time of repentance, of turning around, of turning away from things that may be addictive habits the rest of the year. Some give up chocolate, dessert, or that lovely glass of wine after work. Many go deeper and see Lent as a time to lose unholy attitudes: jealousy, self-pity, unforgiveness, adulterous thoughts, the internal sins that no one knows about except us.

Some choose loss during Lent, and some have loss thrust upon them. Due to the financial meltdown, people are losing their jobs, homes, businesses, retirement plans, and peace of mind.

Those who work in palliative care, hospice, and hospital emergency departments receive training in how a person’s “assumptive world,” all the assumptions they have about the way life will be, can implode in an instant: their son or daughter is killed in a car accident, their spouse learns they have cancer, has a stroke, or dies. The normal response is to feel like the ground under your feet has suddenly disappeared, you are falling, and your whole life is falling apart.

The scriptures contain one of the most spectacular stories of loss ever recorded, a story that makes most of our losses seem small by comparison. Job was a man of God who had it all: great wealth, a wonderful family, and an outstanding reputation. Then he had a total meltdown: he lost all his money, his family, and even his health. His friends accused him of bringing all this on himself through some hidden sin, although he couldn’t think of anything he had done to deserve this. Even his wife urged him to “curse God and die.” However, despite all the absurdity, he continued to trust God.

A time of loss can be a time of personal transformation. When people lose precious things, they start to realize that, despite their former assumptions, life is very vulnerable, dreams are fleeting at best, and one’s fortunes can suddenly reverse. The natural response is to ask, “What is really important in life?”

In the face of all this loss, people search for a solid foundation for their life, something eternal and unchanging. People start to realize that the only lasting thing is God. Quite simply, it’s God or nothing.

It’s not surprising that church attendance goes up during individual or social meltdowns. Next to God, the church is one of the few constants in our civilization. It has been there through the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the advent of modern science, communism, two planetary wars, and the Great Depression. The church has witnessed many severe storms come and go.

People who build their lives on the solid foundation of God know that, with God’s help, they can withstand any storm, crisis, or meltdown, just as the church has. They also know that God can bring a greater good out of any loss.

Throughout the scriptures, God brings new life out of evil, no matter how great. Job trusted God and was vindicated in the end: everything and more was restored to him. As our human exemplar, Jesus trusted God and was resurrected so that all of us could reach the Promised Land.

No matter how bad it gets, as long as we trust God, all is well, and as Julian of Norwich said, “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

The Absurdity of Atheism in Maher’s ‘Religulous’

“Religulous,” a mockumentary, is a two-hour assault on religion. The not-very-subtle message is that to be “religious “is “ridiculous.” The title combines the words.

Bill Maher, the host, delights in skewering the seeming absurdities in religion: babbling in tongues, silly hats, the manipulation by televangelists. I think Jesus himself would likely laugh or weep over our folly. Religions need people like Maher. He is like the court jester employed by wise medieval kings to point out when people were getting too pompous.

Maher also attacks the dangerous side of religion: the holy wars, suicide bombings, anti-science, and potentially self-fulfilling prophecies of nuclear end-times. Maher does religion a service by courageously showing us when it is absurd, mindless, and destructive. He mainly attacks Christianity and Judaism, but also dares to criticize Islam.

However, he does religion a disservice by presenting the extremes as the norm. There is a danger the uninformed might think this is all religion is.

He conveniently leaves out when religious people live according to their true values, have a deep spirituality, found service agencies and hospitals, educate and feed the poor, protest war and injustice, promote the sacredness of life and marriage, and constantly remind us life is more than the unbridled pursuit of money and self-centered pleasure.

He conveniently leaves out the many profound and very rational Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers: Abraham Heschel, Martin Buber, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, and Averroes, to name a few.

He conveniently leaves out the constant progression in religious thinking and that atheists are stuck in a time warp in their criticism. Sure, there were absurd things written in the scriptures 2500 years ago, and God was often portrayed as an angry despot. Sure, there were crusades, and the church condemned Galileo hundreds of years ago. However, most believers today have repented of those ways of thinking and left them far behind.

This is where Maher totally misses the mark. The inconvenient truth for him and other atheists is that most people in the mainline synagogues, churches, and mosques are not extremists but moderates who believe in a loving God, are in favour of rationality and science, and are themselves critical when their traditions become absurd and dangerous.

Maher also conveniently leaves out that atheism itself may be dangerous and absurd. Without religion, people make up false gods, for example, absolute ideologies like capitalism and communism. Maher conveniently leaves out that atheists like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed 80 million people in the twentieth century, more than all the religious wars in all of history.

He conveniently leaves out that it might be more rational to believe there is a Supreme Intelligence behind all the order of the universe than to believe it all just happened by chance. He conveniently leaves out that without God, life might seem ultimately absurd when you are suddenly downsized, become sick, or lose a loved one. He conveniently leaves out that God and religious faith may, in fact, be the only real answers to life’s absurdities and dangers.

Thank you, atheists, for keeping religion honest and accountable, but please don’t try to convince people that religion is all absurdity and destruction, and please be as self-critical as you ask religious people to be.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com