Tag: love

“I AM” IS GREATER THAN “AI”

The small ego – the things we identify with –

our education/work/marital status/wealth –

our possessions can possess us

and hand the reins to EGO (Edging God Out):

our attachment to our self-image instead of to God.

The small ego is a necessary part, but not the whole

of who we are, and breaking free of it into the whole

liberates us from just being a part.

 

Even the small ‘I,’ the ego, cannot love

because it is always in one of four small ‘c’ modes:

calculation/control/competition/comparison.

Comparison with others = judging = anti-love.

 

To end the violence all around us

we first need to end the violence within us –

technology will not save us but “I AM” can

and meditation – listening to silence – the language of God

within us and around us – can help.

 

Quantum theology believes:

  1. the ‘shadow’ is a real and powerful dimension of all life
  2. the shadow cannot be eradicated
  3. the more we try to eradicate it, the more power we give it
  4. the shadow is a powerful force for creativity if we integrate it.

 

Because our shadow and God wrestle within us

most people relate to the sacred

with a sense of ambivalence – a mixture of

trust/antitrust/approach/avoidance.

 

But there is no need to be afraid –

the Godhead is a Goodhead.

In fact, it’s all good – Teilhard de Chardin saw that

even technology can provide a ground for religious development –

something that, rather than destroying us

with AI like CHATGPT

technology could take us to a higher level

of consciousness and union in love –

telescopes let us see into the past

and just how great/good/glorious God is

and always has been

and always will be.

GOD LOVES YOUR SHADOW

Trying to find absolute rights and wrongs is a trick

we play on ourselves to feel secure and comfortable

but it is far more daring to keep your heart open

and not make anyone the ‘enemy’

not even your shadow.

 

Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle says the soul

is a mansion of many rooms, but there is a room

in which we should always dwell – self-knowledge –

coming to consciousness of the dark side

of one’s personality is, according to Fr. Thomas Keating

the ‘sine qua non’ – the ‘essential condition’ for

psychological/spiritual growth/humility/wholeness/holiness.

 

Our shadow only becomes hostile

when ignored or misunderstood –

like any human being you have to get along with –

often you have to give in/resist/show love.

 

Holy men and women have unconsciously written whole books

claiming it was all dictated to them by Jesus/Mary/the Holy Spirit

but John of the Cross would be sceptical about this

and Fatima/Medjugorje/end-of-the-world predictions.

 

Kick at the darkness/the shadow not out of illusion

not out of triumphalism, but out of grace –

kick at the darkness because it is ubiquitous

but it is not sovereign – it will not have the final word.

 

God’s way of being just is to show mercy/unconditional love

to those who were loved conditionally

and therefore repressed the ‘unacceptable’ parts of themselves

and so developed a shadow.

God loves all of us, even our shadows

and this formed the basis for Karl Barth’s belief

that we can at least hope for

the salvation of all souls.

 

God is patient with us

not wanting anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9).

 

 

 

LOVE’S PROPER DISTRIBUTION

 

The Resurrection is about the Cosmic Christ

but the historical Jesus is both

a historical door to God and an Ultimate Door.

Jesus shows us how to open the door to God’s Providence

working in every moment – whether we receive honor or contempt –

to the devout both are useful for edification.

 

Matthew is the only gospel that uses Final Judgement

as a way of dramatizing the teachings of Jesus –

no other gospel has the teaching of the sheep –

eternally blessed for reaching out to the poor –

and the goats – damned forever for shutting the poor out.

Still, justice-seeking is constitutive of every gospel –

justice is never an add-on/afterthought.

 

Discipleship involves both putting on

the Mind of Christ and working to spread

the Beloved Community/Church/Kindom of God

in the world – to be people of prayer

and to humanize our impersonal society.

 

“Lovers in a Dangerous Time”

by Canadian folk legend Bruce Cockburn (Co-burn)

is a prophetic song in naming our times

as dark and death-dealing

and naming love as the only way

to “kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”

 

Justice needs to be fueled by love and prayer

for our enemies, otherwise, as Gandhi said

“you replace one pack of wolves with your own pack.”

Justice needs its Source

in the inexhaustible energy of God

or it will burn out in anger/frustration/exhaustion –

you need a strong spiritual life to confront the powers that be

and to be a well-balanced/effective justice-warrior.

 

So, Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God”

can be used to draw yourself

and your comrades/compatriots/conspirators

into a contemplative state of mind

and fight with renewed energy for the justice of God

which is “the proper distribution of love

throughout society” – Reinhold Niebuhr

THE EROTIC UNIVERSE

In early Christianity, theology and prayer

were never divorced. Evagrius of Pontus (345-399 CE):

“The theologian is the one who prays

and the one who prays is a theologian.”

 

Later on, Thomas à Kempis wrote in The Imitation of Christ

“If you look at Creation, the Creator

withdraws his gaze from you.”

So, Christians have had an anti-Creation/

anti-body/anti-sexuality spirituality

which is ironically contrary to the Creation-centered

spirituality of the Bible.

 

But the theory of evolution changed all that –

evolution does not degrade humans

it shows us we are an integral part

of a vast web of earthly relationships.

But science only tells us ‘how’ we got here –

we need religion to tell us ‘why’ we are here – our purpose.

 

The idea of Christian cosmology

is in the Greek Fathers of the Church

particularly Irenaeus, who wrote that, in Christ,

the universe finds its meaning and goal.

 

The Uni-Verse, the One Verse, the One Poem

is thoroughly relational/communal/erotic –

wanting union even at the molecular level –

‘gravity’ is ‘mutual attraction between bodies’ – ‘eroticism’ –

its all part of the love that makes the Universe go round –

to ‘be’ is to ‘be with’ – the ‘we’ always precedes the ‘I’

just as the sexual union of a man and woman precedes children –

no one can say “I did it all on my own”

or “I did it my way – alone.”

 

Mantras are not words that mediate rational meaning –

they are vehicles that carry the spirit to one’s depths

and give us solitude to make us ‘uselessly present’ to God

which connects us to love in our depths

which connects us to others –

solitude is thus the erotic foundation

upon which community is built –

the purpose of life is the same as the purpose

of the Universe – to make love.

UNITY SURPASSING MODERNITY

The Perennial Philosophy highlighted

the “Great Nest of Being”

which was the universal worldview of humanity

until modernity reared its methuselah head.

 

Going beyond modernity

since the turn of the millennium has been

a growing awareness of commonality

between religions, and unity of all sciences –

a general visioning of all things as interrelated.

 

However major dualisms still persist:

heaven vs Earth/spirit vs body/human vs animal/

sacred vs secular – all these dualisms

which falsify life/nature/God

since God works thru both/and polarities

not either/or dualisms – God is in and beyond

the Earth/body/nature/culture/life.

 

Photosynthesis, one of the key factors in life

happened when chlorophyll molecules served everything

by capturing solar energy and converting it into

food and energy for others

3,000,000,000 years ago.

 

Nature serves us and Law serves us

and so our will delights in Law

but we cannot fulfill all laws

so the Cosmic Christ emerged from within the universe

as Jesus the Christ who lived under the Law

and experienced all our temptations/compulsions

in order to redeem/liberate us from the Law

with the Divine Love that goes beyond Law.

 

Following Jesus, Christian social action

finds God in politics/work/social programs –

anything that betters human life –

because Christ became human

and every human is another Christ

and we cannot let Christ live

in physical/spiritual squalor –

“As you do to the least, you do to Me”

– Jesus the Unitive Thinker in Matthew 25:40.

A PROPER VIEW OF GOD PROMOTES MENTAL AND SOCIAL PEACE

  The mistaken interpretation of the wrath of God in the Bible, the foundational book of western culture for most of its history, has caused many to live their lives in fear and guilt, moral rigidity, narrowmindedness, and a feverish need to proselytize (force their beliefs on others). In fact, some have used it as a justification for violence – if God is violent, violence against others must be acceptable in God’s sight.

    Is it possible to undo all this harm without simply throwing the baby (the scriptures) out with the bath water (the wrath of God)? An intelligent approach to biblical wrath of God would be a major way to promote mental health and social peace.

    Although many believe the Bible is inspired by God, it is important to understand it did not drop out of heaven. It came to us through human beings who were influenced by their culture, and so there were often two steps forward and one back in understanding what God is like, until we arrive at Jesus, who many believe gives us the best means of understanding God and the Bible.

    Humans have often lived in ego-based, divisive, reward and punishment cultures. There is a movement in the Bible from a vengeful God, which is what the ego wants, to the merciful God of Jesus, which is what the soul hopes for, a God who is gracious, overlooks human foibles, and responds to wrongs not by punishment but by love.

    Much of the wrath of God in the Bible was due to human authors failing to separate God and nature. Floods or poisonous snakes killing people must be from God, the authors believed, since they had no other explanation except that everything that happens must be from God. This mentality is still with us today when insurance companies refer to floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes as “acts of God.”

    However, God and nature are not the same. These so-called acts of God are not God’s will, but rather nature obeying natural laws about water, wind, and tectonic plates. The biblical writers knew nothing about science and the laws of nature.

    Despite occasional verses about the wrath of God, there are many biblical examples of God’s desire for restoration not punishment. In Ezekiel 33:11 God says, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.” And the prophet Micah declares “Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity? You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18). Isaiah 53:5-6 prophesied that God would restore us to love, peace, and justice through a Messiah.

    What then do we do with the “hard sayings” of Jesus that seemingly speak of God’s wrath? He says, for example, that it is better to cut off your hand if it causes you to sin, than to end up in hell (Matthew 5: 29-30) and the sheep (who took care of the poor) go to heaven and the goats (who didn’t care for the poor) go to hell (Matthew 25: 31-46).

    Context is important here. Jesus was speaking to Jews, Romans, and Greeks who were masters of rhetoric – the art of dramatic speech to make a point. Jesus knew it was not the hand but the heart that caused sin. He didn’t expect people to actually cut off their hand, as if that would solve anything. He is speaking dramatically here to make the point that sin and not taking care of the poor are extremely serious. They destroy human community and create hell on Earth. He knew people do not change easily, so he had to speak dramatically to make his point.

    Jesus also said other hard, countercultural things such as love your enemies, which is the essence of restorative justice: God conquers his enemies by loving them and making them his friends, not destroying them. This is the essence of wisdom not wrath.

    In conclusion, the proper interpretation of scripture leads us to a God of pure love, not a false god who is a mixture of love, punishment, and wrath. Approaching the Bible this way will eliminate a major source of fear, guilt, and violence and so be a great boon for mental health and social peace.

 

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and religious educator of adults. brucetallman.com btallman@rogers.com

HOW TO INTELLIGENTLY APPROACH GOD’S WRATH IN THE BIBLE

The Bible, although inspired by God, came to us through human beings, and so there were often two steps forward and one step back in understanding God, until we arrive at Jesus, who is the best “hermeneutic” or “means of understanding” the Bible.

    In approaching God’s wrath in the Bible, we ideally would move from a vengeful God, which is what the ego wants, to the merciful God of Jesus, which is what the soul wants. However, humans have always lived in ego-based, divisive, reward and punishment cultures in which wrongs should be punished. On the other hand, God is soul and grace-based and responds to wrongs not by punishment but by love.

    Much of the wrath of God, in the Old Testament at least, was due to human authors failing to separate God and nature: floods killing people, poisonous snakes biting Israelites in the desert, bears mauling children, must be from God, since everything that happens is from God. This mentality is still with us today when insurance companies refer to floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes as “acts of God.”

    However, God and nature are not the same. God is in all nature, but these so-called acts of God are not God’s will, they are due to nature obeying natural laws about heat, gravity, and tectonic plates. The Old Testament writers knew nothing of these laws.

    Despite this, there are many instances in the Old Testament of God’s loving restoration. It was prophesied that God would restore us through a Messiah (Isaiah 53:5-6). In Ezekiel 33:11 God says, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.” And the prophet Micah declares “Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity? You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18).

    We also find God’s restorative justice in the New Testament. Zacchaeus was hated because he collected taxes from his fellow Jews for the occupying Romans, but Jesus tells Zacchaeus he wants to have dinner with him. Zacchaeus is stunned by the grace of Jesus and says, “Behold Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor,” and Jesus responds, “Today salvation has come to this house, because Zacchaeus too is a son of Abraham.” Jesus thus restored him to the Jewish community (Luke 19:8).

    What then do we do with the “hard sayings” of Jesus? In Matthew 5:29-30, he says it is better to cut off your hand or pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin, than to end up in hell; the sheep (who took care of the poor) go to heaven and the goats (who didn’t take care of the poor) go to eternal torture in hell (Matthew 25: 31-46).

    Context is important here. Jesus was speaking to Jews, Romans, and Greeks who were masters of rhetoric – the art of dramatic speech to make a point. Jesus knew it was not the hand or the eye but the heart that caused sin. He didn’t expect people to actually cut off their hand or pluck out their eye, as if that would solve anything. He is speaking dramatically here to make the point that sin and not taking care of the poor are extremely serious. They destroy human community and create hell on Earth. He knew people do not change easily, so he had to speak dramatically to make his point.

    Jesus also said other hard, countercultural things such as love your enemies, which is the essence of restorative justice: God does not punish his enemies, God destroys them by loving them more and making them his friends. This is the essence of wisdom.

    This spirit of restorative justice carried on in the early church. “If anyone has caused sorrow, you should forgive him and reaffirm your love for him” (2 Cor. 2: 5-8) and “If anyone is caught in any trespass, restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1).

    This idea of God as a God of love not punishment has continued in the modern church. The largest Christian denomination, Catholicism, has never said that anyone, even Hitler or Stalin, are definitely in hell. On the other hand, it has said that many people are definitely in heaven: the saints and martyrs.

    Jesus was all about restorative not retributive justice. His great commandments, to love God with all your heart and to love others as you love yourself, were meant to restore the original unity between God and humans found in the Garden of Eden. And as I concluded in an earlier article, the healthiest image of God is that God is a God of pure love, not a mixture of love, wrath, and punishment.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and religious educator of adults. btallman@rogers.com

HOW CAN GOD ALLOW SUCH PAIN?

  In the past twenty years wildfires, famines, hurricanes, tsunamis and floods have killed hundreds of thousands of people and left many more without homes and means of livelihood. Given all this, how can anyone say God is a God of love?

      Whenever we are overwhelmed by the evil and suffering in the world, we should always remember that evil is only a corruption of something that was originally intended to be good. For example, illness is a corruption of original health. War is a corruption of original peace.

       So goodness is original and foundational, evil is only secondary. According to the Jewish scriptures, God made life and everything “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

       God provides for us most of the time. The oceans God made are good to human beings 99% of the time: the source not of tsunamis and hurricanes, but of fish and of rain that makes the plants thrive that animals and humans eat. God constantly provides air, food, water, and shelter for us, but this is so commonplace we normally don’t think about it.

       God does not want or cause suffering. The laws of nature, and misuse of human freedom, are the twin sources directly responsible for suffering.

       Normally, natural laws serve us well, create order in the world, and allow us to predict what will happen. However, nature just obeys its own laws. It doesn’t matter to nature if people are in the way of an avalanche – it is going to obey the law of gravity anyway.

       If God kept interfering with natural laws to prevent our suffering, life would be totally chaotic and unpredictable.

       God allows suffering for higher purposes. Through suffering, we learn compassion for the suffering of others, and wisdom: how we and others can avoid even worse suffering. Also, service to others, self-sacrifice, courage, and heroism emerge. If God eliminated all suffering, life would lose its’ profundity.

       Suffering, to some degree at least, is an inescapable part of life because suffering is a continuum, all the way from stubbing your toe to the massive tragedies of famines and war.

      We have to ask: should God eliminate all suffering from life? And if not, what degree of suffering should God allow?

       As Helen Keller once noted, “Life is full of suffering, and it is also full of the overcoming of suffering.”

       God allows suffering, but God also motivates us to overcome suffering. Thus, all the helping professions and agencies arise: medicine, psychology, social work, churches, mosques, synagogues, the United Nations, Red Cross, etc.

       God always brings greater good out of any tragedy or evil. Through God working in them, people all over the world respond generously to disaster relief.

       The pandemic has caused people all over the world to examine their own lives and priorities: are material things that important? Any of us could be gone in the blink of an eye, so maybe God, taking care of each other, and what happens to us in the afterlife are the important things.

       Perhaps the biggest answer to suffering is this: if God had not created human freedom (and therefore the capacity to do harm), and natural laws, there would be no suffering. Therefore, while God is not directly responsible for suffering, God is indirectly responsible for it. Given that God indirectly causes suffering, one could say it is necessary that God suffer with us, that God not be in heavenly bliss while people on earth suffer.

       If God is ultimately responsible for suffering, the cross is a necessity, if we are going to maintain any idea of a compassionate God. The cross is the great symbol that God suffers with us, that God is, indeed, a compassionate God.

       Where is God in the face of natural catastrophes? God is right there suffering with the people who are suffering. God is always right in the center of human pain, trying to alleviate it. God is a God who cares and is close to the brokenhearted. The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures say this over and over.

       The cross in turn demands resurrection and heaven. It wouldn’t make any sense that an all-powerful God could be ultimately defeated. It is another necessity of faith that God ultimately must triumph over all suffering and death, and there is a place where all suffering is wiped away forever. Resurrection and heaven are necessities.

       Suffering is ultimately a mystery beyond explanation. We could talk to the victims about all the points above, but it would still not take away the pain of those who have lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods.

       Sometimes all you can do is hold, cry, support, and try to be present (either physically or in your prayers) with those who are suffering.

       Besides giving whatever aid you can, sometimes all you can do is feel people’s pain with them. This is what a loving God does.

 Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and author. btallman@rogers.com

 

GOD’S JUSTICE IS ETERNAL LOVE NOT ETERNAL PUNISHMENT

 You may find the idea that God is only pure love, not a mixture of love and wrath, revolutionary if you grew up as I did with an idea of God as an angry old man in the sky constantly watching us so he could punish us for our sins.

    Although I have grown beyond that image intellectually, the vestiges of it are still deeply planted in my brain and make it difficult for me to totally trust God. Even as an adult I used to think that, on the one hand God was purely loving, and yet on the other hand we had to maintain God’s “holiness,” by which we meant “hatred of sin,” and since sin has to be punished, God’s justice was always punitive and wrathful.

    But what if God’s justice is only restorative not punitive, and God is forever only pure love? What if, as the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr always says, “Jesus came not to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God.”

    The best human being would do everything they could to fully understand and help others, not punish them. However, we live in a dualistic, tit-for-tat culture that divides people up into good and bad. The bad are your enemies and the culture tells us enemies are to be punished and destroyed.

    This punitive cultural attitude even infects our churches and warps our theology. Jesus taught that we should love our enemies, but many Christians do not believe that God does this, God condemns sinners to be tortured forever in hell.

    Jesus taught that we should forgive seventy times seven, that is, forever. But many Christians do not believe God does this, God sends people to eternal torment in hell.

    Why would someone as great as God, who has infinite power, knowledge, patience, kindness, love, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy choose to eternally destroy infinitely small, vulnerable creatures because of the stupid things they do, usually out of their own ignorance and brokenness? Doesn’t that make God infinitely petty, unloving judgmental and angry – qualities we don’t admire in any human being?

    Even in civil courtrooms, the length of the sentence must fit the crime – we don’t send people to lifelong imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread for their family because they are food insecure. Eternal punishment therefore does not make sense. What could we possibly do that would warrant, not just imprisonment but torture, and not just for a lifetime but forever? Forever is an awfully long time, particularly if you are being tortured! This idea makes God a monster who is eternally vengeful, something we admire in no one. This idea makes atheists not believers. Surely, God is far greater, not far lower, than the best human being?

    Maybe God’s holiness is God’s infinite and eternal love, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy? Maybe God’s holiness is like the story Jesus told about the father of the prodigal son who runs out to meet and embrace his son and celebrates his return, rather than punishing him for squandering his father’s fortune? Maybe God’s holiness is like Jesus who, when a woman is caught in adultery, rather than stoning her for her sin, as the elders wanted him to, says, “I don’t condemn you, go and sin no more.”

     I think the idea of hell as a place of eternal torture is a projection of our worst fears onto God and religious leaders used this to control people. It is easy to control people who are afraid. I also believe though that there is a hell, not as a place but a state of mind. We create our own hell or heaven on Earth by the choices we make. I suppose it would be possible to make eternally bad choices and so condemn yourself to eternal hell, but I don’t think God condemns us. Rather, God would eternally pursue us until we gave in to God’s eternal love.

    Of course, this brings up all the verses in the Bible about the wrath of God. There are good theological responses that give alternative ways of interpreting these verses, but I reserve my answers for another article. Suffice it to say for now, that the Bible is full of examples of God’s restorative not punitive justice. For now, let us merely consider and savor the idea that God’s holiness and justice are found in God’s eternal love not eternal wrath, that God is only loving not both loving and wrathful.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and author of God’s Ecstatic Love (Apocryphile Press, 2021). See www.brucetallman.com/books

 

 

 

   

   

WHAT THE POSTMODERN WORLD NEEDS NOW

The most important role for religion in the postmodern world

is to act as a sacred conveyor belt

moving people from myth to reason to trans-reason

that is, to see the limits of reason and transcend it.

 

Today we need to transcend both reason and science.

Buddhism tells you from day one

to find out for yourself what is true –

it encourages constant seeking –

even the teachings of the Buddha

should be questioned and tested.

 

For fundamentalist Muslims there is no need to ask questions

for the Koran has all the answers already –

their Sacred Book in its 114 suras (chapters)

is considered by them to be the final revelation

of the final prophet Mohammed

of the final purpose and will of God for humanity.

 

But mystics/contemplatives/sages of all traditions see

that their viewpoint is just a view from a point –

they have the ability to observe

their own inner dramas and dilemmas

in an egoless way

which is the primary form of “dying to the self”

that Jesus and Buddha lived and taught experientially.

 

Today however, the self reigns supreme

individualism leads to anti-institutionalism

people think institutions like family and marriage

are too restrictive – no one should have a say in how I live

and so people rail against government taxation

meant for the common good

and church is seen as impeding my spiritual growth –

individuals want to create their own self-religion

and free autonomous individuals get infected

by the pandemic of loneliness

which scourges the postmodern world.

 

What the postmodern world needs now

is community/togetherness/love/

sweet love.