Spiritual Domesticity

[poliphilo]

I love routine in every day life- eating the same breakfast off the same plate every day-  but not at all in the spiritual life. In the spiritual life- the life of the mind- I'm hungry for the unfamiliar. There's a universe out there and I want to cruise it all.  I rarely re-read a book- or watch a movie twice- and I've been finding it a terrible bore having to soldier through the same unvarying liturgy week after week.

This isn't the only reason I'm leaving the church (again) but it counts. If I enjoyed saying and singing the words I might be able to cope with not believing in them- but I don't .  This isn't about aesthetics.  We could be singing the finest words to the finest music and I'd still be chafing.  After a time- and with me its a very short time- even Cranmer palls.

I thought, since I was getting old, that I was ready to nest inside a religious tradition. I was wrong. I don't want that kind of spiritual domesticity.  I'm tired, but I'm not that tired. "Old men should be explorers". Tell me something new. 

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I suggest Spong. He is so interesting. He thinks for himself:

Was Jesus also God? Or was he just a wonderful, inspired man more in touch with spiritual things than most other men? Lynda

Dear Lynda,

Unfortunately, the way you ask this question does not lend itself to a simple answer. I need to know what you mean by the word "God" and what you mean by an "inspired man." This confusion has been created by the Church itself out of a dualistic mindset that believed that God and human life, heaven and earth, souls and bodies, spirit and flesh were radically separate categories. That reflected an ancient mindset that is not part of our world view.

The Christian experience best articulated by St. Paul affirmed that "God was in Christ," that is, in the person of Jesus we met, engaged and interacted with the presence of God. Later when Christians tried to define how God, whom they thought lived above the sky, got into Jesus living on this earth, they had a problem. That is where you begin to get the explanations you find in the gospels.

Mark, the earliest gospel (ca. 70) said that at Jesus' baptism the heavens opened and the spirit of God entered him. The word you used, inspired, really means filled with the spirit.

When Matthew wrote (82-85) he introduced the Virgin Birth story that said God entered Jesus at conception. At that moment, Jesus' full humanity was compromised. Luke, writing a bit later (88-93), confirmed Matthew's Virgin Birth account, but with greatly varying details. John, writing at the end of the century (95-100), asserted that Jesus was "The Word of God" present as part of God at the dawn of creation, and that this "Word" was enfleshed in the fully human Jesus. It is of note that John totally omits the miraculous birth story.

I think most of this debate is irrelevant. I believe that God can dwell in all of us and that the experience of the early Christians was that God indwelt Jesus in a particularly full and complete way.

To say that "Jesus is God" in a simplistic way is absolute nonsense. Jesus prayed to God. Was he talking to himself? Jesus died. Can one say God dies?

I meet God in Jesus. I also meet God in people like you. The difference, I am convinced, is one of degree not one of kind.