Glorifying God

When I was newly ordained, I was required to teach confirmation classes using a standard “catechism”. At that time it was important for the confirmands to know the correct answers to these questions. I remember reading in the Westminster Catechism, one used by several reformed theology protestant churches, that the “chief end of [man] was the glorification of God.” Of course, in addition to that “end”, faithful humans also were in line to receive the reward of salvation in the process. But the purpose of life and, by extension, the purpose of the church was ultimately to glorify God. I must confess to you that I’ve been struggling for a long time even to figure out what glorification of God is supposed to look like. To many religious people it seems to have something to do with giving credit to the only One who deserves credit for anything. Somehow, human obedience, refusal to succumb to temptation, piety, and gratitude also helped to add up to the glorification of God. While the word is still used, even in liberal protestant liturgy and worship, I wonder how many people are left who still see the glorification of God as their primary purpose, or how many are left who still go to church (if they go at all) to get support in this holy task.

Bear with me; there’s a question embedded in all this. Is the glorification of God the only way to understand the purpose of creation, and not just human creation, either? And furthermore, what role might the liberal Christian church play in helping people work toward some alternative end?

If, for the sake of argument, glorification of God is not really about how we behave or how we believe, then could it have something to do with who we are or who we are becoming? If we assume that we are created in the image of God (or even that all creation embodies the image of God in some way), then who we are or who we are becoming takes on primary significance.

For me, this question is best addressed by edging out onto the bridge that hangs between the theological notion of creation and the scientific notion of evolution. In many Christian circles these have been cast as opposites for so long that it is difficult to connect them. I have believed for a long time that evolution could be seen as the “how” of creation, but the question about the purpose of creation invites us to take another step and embrace evolution as a sacred process.

Recently, I have been rereading a book by Loren Eisley called “The Immense Journey”. It was written 40 or 50 years ago and I haven’t looked at it for a long time. I remember, however, from my initial introduction to this beautiful book how moved I was at Eisley’s profound, almost sacred, respect and amazement at the wonders of the evolutionary process. I’m sure I’m not the first one to come to this conclusion, but, aided by Eisley’s images, I find myself believing that the sacred purpose of life is to evolve. What makes this a fascinating idea is that human beings have attained a level of conscious awareness that makes it possible for us to observe, think about, and intentionally participate in the evolutionary process.

No doubt, there is plenty of room for growth and development in the human race. For one thing, we humans tend to operate at a relatively immature level of ethical development. The lion’s share of ethical thinking seems to revolve around either not getting caught, or around the potential rewards or punishments that we deserve as a result of our behavior. Even the catechistic “glorification of God” is too often construed in reward/punishment terms, or in terms of the need to survive at the expense of others. Such thinking supports all sorts of violent attempts to address the problems of the world.

So, how might life and society be different if we based human behavior less on selfish pursuits and more on improving our abilities to relate and cooperate at more profound levels? For humans to embrace a higher ethic, it will probably be necessary for us to allow our image of God to mature, too. It won’t work for us to continue to see God as a demanding (though probably loving) parent, who throws divine temper tantrums when we don’t behave.

A radical Christian idea is that we embody the divine and that the divine is in an evolutionary process of coming into being in and through us. If we see it that way, then our ethical task is to become as fully our unique selves as we can. We honor God, not by obedience or by giving credit. We honor God by maturing and taking responsibility for our lives, our relationships, our social systems, and even our destiny.

We must be honest, though. Maturity is scary. We may find it necessary to make sacrifices. We may even need to get out of the way as a human race so the evolutionary process can go on. As Jesus died so we might live, maybe in time, we will die so life can go on. This, of course, is only speculation. Evolution is a very slow process.

Still, I have come to believe that Healthy Liberal Christianity will help people and cultures mature, even beyond their need for the church – and even beyond their need to cling selfishly to life. We liberal Christians have a lot of work to do if we are to mature in our understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice, but it’s difficult work, and not for the faint of heart.

If you’re interested in a somewhat dated but poetic treatment of the evolutionary process, read “The Immense Journey” by Loren Eisley. And if you are interested in exploring some startling speculations on the purpose of life and it’s possible sacrifices, take a look at “Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics” by Diarmuid O’Murchu.

I’ll be away next week, so the next post will be during the first week in July. Thanks for reading and for the comments you have made. They mean a lot to me.

Wayne Gustafson

"Our Faith is 2000 years old, our thinking is not." United Church of Christ

Gay Pride

This Saturday, June 14, is the annual Gay Pride Event in Elmira. For some (perhaps even most) religious groups, the demonstration of pride by those of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual orientation, is seen as an affront to God. For other religious groups (The Park Church among them) a Gay Pride event is a way that a radically disenfranchised group can affirm their human dignity, and is therefore worth our support and our advocacy on their behalf.

As we consider these positions, perhaps we need to take a look at this word “pride”. An incorrect understanding of the word simply adds fuel to the fire of the controversy. In English, we use the term in two very different ways. One has to do with pride over an accomplishment, and the other has to do with pride in being who we are. Complicating matters even more, each of these meanings can be used in healthy or unhealthy ways. For example, we teach our children to be proud of their accomplishments, seeing that as a way to encourage their development. On the other hand, we don’t want people to use pride in their accomplishments to elevate themselves over others (or even God, for that matter) in an arrogant way. In the same way, we teach one another to have pride (perhaps more like dignity) about who we are as human beings, but at the same time we don’t want people to use their self-pride to set themselves over others because of certain human qualities like is done in racism. As dignity and affirmation, pride is good. As arrogance or as evidence of superiority, it qualifies as one of the seven deadly sins.

From everything I’ve ever known about gay pride events, the purpose is to give appropriate space for human dignity, so that people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc. don’t have to hide their identity away in shame. They can stand in the light and be who they are, and it has nothing to do with arrogance or superiority. That’s what we support and encourage, and that is why this church co-sponsors these gay pride events.

Some may think that The Park Church is trying to change what we perceive to be the narrow minds of others. But that is not our purpose. We, simply, support this event on behalf of a segment of the human population that has received way too much judgment. While we don’t expect to change any one else’s opinion, we can at least say how we have come to believe as we do about the issue of homosexuality and the church’s response to it.

I will speak for myself and not presume that others, even from Park Church, would describe their beliefs in precisely the same way. So, here are a few random thoughts of mine about why this congregation has chosen to be identified publicly as “Open and Affirming” when it comes to sexual orientation:

First of all, at judgment day (whatever that might be), I believe God would be more interested in why I was not more compassionate rather than why I was not more judgmental.

This church’s Open and Affirming stance is based on our compassionate response, not on believing that we are right and other positions are wrong.

All theological positions find their biblical support in the particular passages they select (while others are ignored). Here are some that I choose to use.

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” I John 4: 16b

“Love does not insist on its own way.” I Corinthians 13: 5b

Therefore, regardless of my interpretation of right and wrong, who am I to proclaim that God wants God’s own way, and that I must enforce it.

Jesus says nothing about homosexuality.

But, he says a lot about being judgmental: “Don’t!”

Paul also addresses the dangers of judgment in Romans 2:

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. ²You say, ‘We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.’ ³Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? ⁴Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? ⁵But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

And finally, from Luke 6: 36, Jesus says, “Be ye compassionate (sometimes translated “merciful”) as your God is compassionate.”

Many people (gay and straight) have told me that their orientation was clear to them at a very young age. That fits with my experience of being aware of my attraction to girls when I was only 4 or 5 years old.

According to my reading and according to thousands of conversations, I can’t come up with any reports of people being talked into adopting one particular sexual orientation or another. It is true that someone might be encouraged to experiment, but I have been told by gays who try the straight life that they soon find out that it is not natural for them. Straights who experiment with the gay life, also learn that it is not natural for them.

Without going into too much detail, there also appears to be a serious problem with Biblical translation. It is not appropriate to apply a 21^st Century interpretation onto words that belong to another age, language, and culture. The best scholarship I have been able to find indicates that

• the sin of Sodom was lack of hospitality,
• that the words used in the New Testament refer either to ritual prostitution or “man-boy” relationships where there is a serious power differential. (And those are problematic for other reasons that have nothing to do with sexual orientation.)
• Those words do not refer to adult loving relationships. That said, strong arguments are made that we really cannot know precisely what Paul meant.
  

Leviticus is the one exception. Homosexuality is punishable by death. But then, so is eating lobster or wearing clothing made of a polyester blend! We must, therefore, put those proscriptions in their proper context.

Clearly we do not believe that homosexuality (broadly understood) is unnatural, and while we do not understand why people are born with different sexual orientations, we believe that they must determine what is authentic for them. Our job is to love them and to help them have a place in the world where they can be who they are. That the existence of diverse orientations might cause discomfort or confusion does not provide adequate reasons for us to judge them.

So, we will continue to affirm the dignity of human beings, we will continue to identify ourselves publicly as an “Open and Affirming” congregation, and we will continue to support gay pride events.

Images of God

There are so many things to write about that I hardly know where to begin. Political, economic, social, and religious controversies abound. But for today, instead of getting caught up in one controversy or another, I want to write about a fundamental perspective that may affect how we view all of the above issues. I am thinking about how we imagine God to be.

Of course, because God is beyond all direct knowing by humans (my assumption, anyway), human experience and imagination generates a myriad of images. In Healthy Liberal Christianity, we consistently remind ourselves not to confuse our images with the realities they attempt to describe. Still, our images are moving and profound, and they do affect how we see things.

For example, some divine images are associated more with “theism” or “deism”. Oh, you don’t know the difference? Well, theism sees God as having something like a human personality (although necessarily bigger and better) and that personal God shows caring by being involved in human affairs. This God heals, chastises, teaches, and intervenes, often in response to human requests (prayers). Deism posits a God who created the universe, who set it into motion, and then who went on vacation. The deist God is sometimes referred to as “the divine clockmaker” who builds the clock, winds it up, and then stands back to let it run.

There are other divine images that are less person-based and might include “life itself”, or “love”, or “energy”, etc.

Thinking about the theist images for a moment, I have noticed that images can mature and change over time. Let me give you a few examples. Many people believe in “The Santa Claus God.” You know, the one who is “making a list, checking it twice, going to find out who’s naughty and nice.” This is the God who is most interested in whether or not we are behaving ourselves and who will reward “niceness” and punish “naughtiness.”

Others believe in the image of God that I call “the genie in the lamp.” This is the God who intervenes in human affairs on request (or perhaps on demand). We “rub the lamp” by our religious rituals and prayers, the divine genie pops out, does the requested tasks, and then returns to the lamp until needed again.

In my counseling practice, I have anguished with the confusion that many of my abused clients have carried for years about why God didn’t intervene to rescue them from their abusive experiences. They sometimes wonder if the Santa Claus God was punishing them for their naughtiness, or why the Genie refused to come out of the lamp to work in their behalf. With only those images to draw from, then the ongoing abuse must mean either that the victim is being punished or that God is somehow unable or unwilling to help. These are terrible prospects.

So, it becomes necessary to identify yet another image of God. I call this one “The God of Presence.” The God of Presence neither punishes nor rescues. This image of God shows caring by being intimately present throughout human experience – including the best and the worst. God’s presence is more than companionship. It’s more like God experiences every bit of human experience along with us and brings divine meaning to it. No matter what we go through, we are never left alone.

Is it really possible for God to be God without having to intervene in order to show caring? This is a much debated point between conservative and liberal positions, but I don’t think there is any way to declare a clear winner in either direction. We must, instead, remember that all images of God are inadequate, whether creator, clockmaker, parent, judge, or any other image. Still the imagination continues to generate divine images. For example, one possible image of God is creation itself, including its embedded evolutionary process. From this perspective, creation is not completed, nor has God ceased speaking to creation (“God is still speaking”). Perhaps, then, our task of co-creation is to mature into divine fullness – beyond our prejudices, beyond our fear-based reactivity, and beyond our attempts to measure human acceptability by means of obedience. Perhaps we have the capacity to develop a richer and deeper ethical foundation for our communities and our relationships. Perhaps, as Jesus intimated, we have the capacity (and the responsibility?) to become more godlike in our Evolutionary Process. Perhaps we will discover that the divine maturation process in creation is actually indistinguishable from evolution.

For now, it simply feels right to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep healing – in short to keep evolving.

Blessings on our divine journey.

Wayne