Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Christian Spirituality

I Once Thought I Was a Progressive Christian, But…

by James Brown in Christian Spirituality

I once thought that perhaps I was a progressive Christian, but I’ve come to realize that that label includes me with a lot of people with whom I clearly disagree.

On the other hand, I can’t associate myself with “social Christians” who drive their $50K SUVs to church on Sunday but do precious little else to express their “faith” other than stick a plastic fish on their bumper or a cowboy kneeling before a cross on their back window.

I certainly can’t associate with the fundamentalist “small p” Pharisees who place themselves above others, using politics and their majority social positions to try and impose their version of only outward morality on the rest of the “sinful” world.

The same with the mega-church evangelical “big show” devotees who apparently only experience God if it’s to a remake of a John Mayer song with Jesus words. (Though I do like some of the music … and some not.)

Or the radio and TV evangelists who really only do it for the money until they’re caught snorting meth in a whorehouse and are shown to be massive hypocrites.

Neither can I embrace the various “charismatic” denominations, who seem to be addicted to “odd” outward shows of devotion, and who gave themselves away to me in Guam when, as a young man, I was told to “fake it.” I did, and I’ve been ashamed of that moment ever since—I have this thing about authenticity.

Neither am I able to fully embrace being a Catholic, though I gave it my heart trying.

There are few places left for me to… [Read more…] about I Once Thought I Was a Progressive Christian, But…

Finding Faith Again

by Sandy Brunsting in Christian Spirituality

My faith journey has changed dramatically.

I grew up in a fairly traditional mainline church and never actually gave my faith and worldview much thought. It wasn’t until I got married and had my own family that I really bought into it.

And then we ran into this situation at church. It was distressing and messy and we parted ways with our former congregation about ten years ago. For a long time I felt like an exile. It caused a crisis of faith, which, in retrospect, was very healthy.

Since then, my perspective has changed (and grown, I hope). I have come to realize how little we can actually know God. The more I learn about God, the more I see how unknowable he actually is. You can’t put God in a box; as soon as you do, he’s not God anymore but an image of your own making.

I have also come to see Jesus as absolutely central to faith. Without him, it doesn’t make sense. He is love and compassion and truth, he is resurrection in all the dead places in life, he is inclusive and kind to outcasts and to the outcast places of my heart. And I am sure he is way bigger and much more inclusive than we can imagine.

I have read numerous books and listened to many talks from teachers and authors of all kinds. I have noticed that some of the best teaching, and some of the worst, have been from Christian sources. Influential guides on my journey have been writers, spiritual leaders, mystics, and scientists, who have in common a passion for truth, wisdom, love for humans and… [Read more…] about Finding Faith Again

Is It Time We Stopped Describing God as Good?

by Bill King in Christian Spirituality

First, just to be clear: no, I’m not arguing that God is evil, amoral, or anything less than the God of love, mercy, and justice portrayed in the Bible, and made known to us through the person of Jesus Christ. This is an issue not about God’s character, but about vocabulary.

The way we talk about things matters. The words we use affect how we view the world and how others view us. The trouble is that human language is limited and trying to use a finite language to describe the infinite is never going to be easy.

We simply do not have the words to describe God. That’s not a new or ground-breaking thought, but it is relevant when it comes to talking about goodness, because, as Jesus himself says (Mark 10:18), if you describe God as good, then you have nowhere to go when talking about mere humans. By comparison, if God and God alone is good, then humans–all humans–must, by definition, be evil, right? And that’s a real problem.

It’s a problem because it defines us by our failures. It creates the view, which I’ve heard many times from more conservative Christians, of humanity as disgusting, corrupt, and miserable creatures reveling in sin and debauchery. It leads to the sort of unhealthy obsession over sin that becomes not a recognition of shortcomings and a desire to repent and do better, but a cause for despair. Sin becomes the defining characteristic of human life. And when you see humanity in those terms it becomes difficult to understand God’s unconditional and… [Read more…] about Is It Time We Stopped Describing God as Good?

A Blessing for Holy Week Journeys

by Jonathan Gaska in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jonathan Gaska and Jill Crainshaw.

So Holy Week begins.

As I celebrated Palm Sunday with my congregation this year, I wondered: what way do they make, these palms that dance and wave to the sounds of our laughter, joy, and singing? What dust do they stir up? Or sweep away?

Dust. And ashes.

We began this journey all those weeks ago in dust and ashes. On a Wednesday. In the middle of the week. In the middle of chaotic lives. And we have traveled far since Ash Wednesday. Perhaps our eyes have been captivated by the promise of new light that awaits us, and we have journeyed in hope. Or maybe we’ve stumbled along the Lenten way, uncertain of what lies ahead or fearful of what we are already carrying in our hearts. Or perhaps, like Jesus, we’ve traveled through frightening wildernesses not of our own making. Lenten geographies—life geographies—are unpredictable at best. And too many geographies in our world are littered with blood, bombs, and the bones of those vulnerable ones caught in the crossfire of competing powers. These geographies—our geographies—groan for the touch of healing feet.

Then, as it does each Lent, Palm Sunday arrives. Bright green fronds sweep out in front us in congregations across the globe to make a new way. We turn our feet toward sounds of rejoicing: “Hosanna! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!” But even as our feet dance along the Palm Sunday parade route, we know: the rejoicing songs hold… [Read more…] about A Blessing for Holy Week Journeys

Jesus, the Cathedral and Me

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Spirituality

Reflections on John 4:5-42

Sometimes when I think about Jesus he seems so far away–someone in a distant time and place, more spiritual than physical, more transcendent than incarnate. I get tired and I wonder if Jesus is really calling me or if I am just hearing my own desire echoing back across the hills. And then, three Sundays into the Lenten journey, he showed up “at about noon” in the Gospel and I was right there with him, thirsty and needing a drink of water to refresh my spirit.

Sunday afternoon I went to the Cathedral in the Light, an outdoor worship service. I went because our church had accepted a request to help with making the meal for the worshipers. Right after our 10 a.m. worship, a group of us gathered around the table downstairs and we made sandwiches to go. Ham and cheese. Peanut butter and jelly. It was fun slapping those sandwiches together. We laughed and we said a prayer that everyone would be blessed by this activity. I said that I would bring the food to the Cathedral. I wanted to be there and I also wanted to be home. It was a long day.

I got to the common with my box of sandwiches. It was about 2 p.m. Cold and windy. A storm was on the horizon but it held off. People volunteered to take different parts in the worship service. The musician played “Sanctuary” on his guitar and we got ready to be a living sanctuary. We sang and prayed. There was a very drunk person reaching out to everyone he saw and asking “Is this church?” Yes, this is… [Read more…] about Jesus, the Cathedral and Me

Dust

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

I am dust; to dust I shall always return.
But don’t assume as you disturb my rest

with your omnipotent kitchen broom that
I am mere debris to be swept up and away.

Remember. We are interfused, you
and I, suspended in each other,

vestigial particles of endless galaxies,
diminishing and becoming, deposited

but for a moment amid yesterday’s dinner
crumbs and dog hair. Tomorrow?

I am cyclonic, demanding skeletal trees
to dance with me through dry valleys;

or I am breathed out by destructive
detonating demons only to settle, leaden,

on a sandal-sheathed foot severed
from the child who sat at grandma’s

table while she cooked the evening meal.
But I am also the cadence of the soil, eternity

dug up in a spade and sown with ordinary
mystery. Still, don’t assume I am magic either,

or that you are, except when in a distant
sun-soaked garden we tango with the departing

light and time’s muted colors bend onto our
backs and we carry life across ancient seas

to fertilize the future. Remember. You are
dust; to dust you shall forever return.

 

Dust was in the news this week. Popular Science reported that dust from Asia might be fertilizing sequoias in California. In stark contrast, another headline from this week reads: “Inside Mosul, a huge blast, then screams, dust and horror.” Bombs flattened houses on a street in Mosul, and citizens were buried beneath the rubble.

Across the globe in Las Vegas, a dust storm… [Read more…] about Dust

The Greatest of These

by Rachel Hooker in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Rachel Hooker.

I am not a very good Christian any more.

I used to think that under it all, I was doing the things right and that counted for something. That it counted for a lot.

I wanted God’s blessing and God’s protection, and to get those one must do all the things just so, or try to. God forgives those who are trying to do the things just so, but fail, so he still protects and blesses the trying.

Now I don’t do all the things just so. Now I don’t try. I got exhausted somewhere in my soul, doing right and finding no harvest. No protection. No blessing. All this doing the things right got me exactly nowhere and I feel betrayed.

Doing the things just so made me feel better than those who didn’t. I tried not to let it, but it did.

Doing the things just so made me feel ashamed when I failed, which was all the time.

I can’t do the things that make God love me; can’t show my love by obeying. Someone tells me he does anyway, that he always did.

These theologians. Spiritual pundits. These writers and speakers and church-leading-noise-makers teach me how best to manage the shame of failing to be like them–that is to say, like they say they are. I do the things they tell me God hates, and I wonder if he loves anyway. They predict doom for me. They do. I do. It’s easy to believe in doom. All the things they say are so intertwined with lies and shame that I am too weak to separate and pull out.

The shame makers taught me that faith is a thing… [Read more…] about The Greatest of These

Remember: A Lenten Call to Embodied Justice-Making

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

Ash Wednesday liturgies mark the beginning of Christianity’s yearly Lenten journey by emphasizing penitence, introspection, and human mortality. Last week, many people in Christian communities observed Ash Wednesday by receiving ashes on their foreheads. I participated in three Ash Wednesday liturgies this year. By the end of the day, I found myself focusing on how important it is that the ashy sign of the cross we carry out into the world on our faces after an Ash Wednesday liturgy serves as more than a symbolic and too-soon forgotten reminder of our personal mortality or of our individual spiritual disciplines or relationships to God. Even as we are called in the Ash Wednesday liturgy to remember that we are dust, we are also called to remember that the ashes of human mortality and fasting are imposed on too many people by systemic forces that overwhelm and oppress.

Three remembrances were stirred up for me this week and will trouble my feet as I travel this year’s Lenten road. Trayvon Martin died five years ago, on February 26, 2012. How can I receive a cross-shaped symbol of mortality as a liturgical action without repenting in dust and ashes for my part in constructing a world where too many people still do not count all black lives as beloved? And what about the ashes from those ceremonial flames that have burned at the Standing Rock encampment? How am I, as one who lays my head down to sleep in Winston-Salem, North… [Read more…] about Remember: A Lenten Call to Embodied Justice-Making

Why Doesn't God Answer Life's Big Questions?

by Tony Cutty in Christian Spirituality

So often, especially when we are distressed, we cry out to God, “Why is this happening?” So often we ask the big questions: why does suffering happen; why is there pain if God is so good; why did my wife die so young?

And the silence is deafening. You listen for the Voice to explain things, like He does so often, and yet on these questions, when it seems so really important, He doesn’t say anything. You can almost feel Him looking at you with His huge compassion…

I think the reason for this silence is that the answer is so deep, so embedded in God’s purposes, so unable to be put into words, that there’s no way He’d do it justice with a short answer. Such an answer wouldn’t, in fact, answer the question, because the answer is too immense. In some ways it’s almost as if the answer is “Wait and see!” (although there’s a little more to it than that, as we shall see).

Because, only now, after my entire adult lifetime of following Him and learning to hear His voice; learning to hear His heartbeat; learning to feel the gentle breeze of His Spirit’s guidance; living through the very worst thing that could happen to me (Job 3:25); do I begin to get the slightest inkling of understanding, what it’s all about; the answer to “Why?”; the reason for the silence that denies me the quick, easy answer.

And I still can’t tell you “why.”

But I am beginning to discern the slightest shadow of an inkling of an answer–though I can’t put it into words. This kind of answer is only discerned,… [Read more…] about Why Doesn't God Answer Life's Big Questions?

Showing Love

by Jim Gordon in Christian Spirituality

Christians talk a lot about standing up for our beliefs and doctrines. It seems we often feel this is the best way to show our devotion to God and to be a witness for Him.

But I am not so sure we are going about this in the correct way. As Christians, we are getting to be known more for what we are against and for what we condemn instead of for how we show the love of God to others.

Many of us go to a church building on Sunday and sing and smile and listen to a sermon and think we have fulfilled our duties for the week. All day we feel good and close to God and we think everything is good.

Then Monday hits and we go grudgingly off to work with a frown on our face and feeling down. We might even be in a bad mood and snap at our fellow employees and try to make them feel as bad as we do.

We too easily forget that Christianity is not a religion or a one day a week life. As followers of Christ, we are to let Christ live through us in the strength of the Holy Spirit. We are to let his love flow out of us to touch those we come in contact with throughout the day.

Instead of trying to win people over to our way of thinking by pointing out their mistakes and shortcomings, instead of condemning them and making them feel like outsiders, we should be allowing the love of Christ to touch them. We should accept and treat all people like we want to be treated.

While Jesus lived in bodily form on earth, he constantly spent time with those the religious crowd would not even… [Read more…] about Showing Love