I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians.

Can any article about some Christian doing something stupid be complete without this quote from Ghandi? "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. They are not like your Christ."

Today this quote is making its appearance on every online article covering the story of the Lutheran pastor who apologized for taking part in an interfaith service for the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting.

I’ve read four or five different articles on this topic, and each time someone comments “I like your Christ, but I do not like you Christians.”

Look, I share the sentiment here. I love the teachings of Jesus, I hate the way they have been misconstrued by masses of “pew potatoes” the world over. But we can’t criticize all of Christianity based on the actions of a few lunatics who get attention.


Just because one very conservative division of Lutheranism believes that participating in an interfaith event is the same thing as affirming that all religions equally lead to God (and heaven) doesn’t mean they all do.

Many Christians do believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to know God and get to heaven. Other Christians believe that Jesus showed us one way to know God, but other ways will also get you there in the end. Some Christians even believe that Jesus is another isha-devata (a favorite deity to worship).

The Westboro Baptist Church is no more representative of Christianity than the Unitarian Universalists are. Despite what some really outspoken fundamentalist would have us believe, there is not, nor has there ever been one universally agreed upon bedrock called “Christianity.” The various, sects and denominations are as varied as humanity itself.

There. I’ve done my good deed in defending this thing called Christianity.

I was outraged by this story, but I know it is not the view of every Christian. I hope that even those who believe Jesus is the only way to know God or get to heaven would see the value of interfaith dialogue and ceremonies like this where we can all come together as a human race joined in our sufferings, and not worry about the stupid divisions we’ve created.

But to Christians that believe Jesus is “the way, the truth and life” and that no one “comes to the father” but through Jesus I have this to say:

This quote comes from the Gospel of John, which is unlike the other three gospels in nearly every way. It is a very gnostic book. It is highly unlikely that anything recorded in John are records of actual events.

Despite what we have been led to believe, the disciples did not follow Jesus around worshiping him as God. They followed him around as a teacher, as a leader, as someone to strive to be like. They had no idea he was God. Go re-read the gospels with fresh eyes. I’ll wait.

Did you see that? Even when Jesus hints at things like the fact that he’ll be raised in three days, the disciples had no idea what the heck that meant. If everyone who knew Jesus knew he was the incarnation of God it wouldn’t have taken some 100 years to develop the theology that taught that Jesus was both God and man. Philosophers hammered at that idea for ages, it’s not spelled out as clearly as you now think.

You can feel certain about the truth of your faith because you live in an echo chamber where people who think just like you pat you on the back for thinking just like them, and then when you pray you get warm, tingly feelings. That’s not a firm foundation for rejecting the possibility that every non-Christian on the planet will roast in eternal hell fire, or even to assume that they’d be so much happier if they could just worship your God. They live in their own echo chambers and get their own warm tingly feelings.

When Jesus told his disciples to evangelize to the whole word, I don’t think he meant to do so by insulting them. The best way to convince non-Christians that Christianity is a good thing is by embodying the principles the faith espouses. Love, kindness, charity, patience. Love your neighbor, be kind to strangers, help foreigners. The best way to convince non-Christians that Ghandi was right and that Christians are nothing like Jesus is to scold each other for participating in interfaith events, by smugly declaring that you have the whole truth and nothing but the truth with no room for any misunderstanding.

Why? Just why?

Westboro Baptist Church Says It Will Picket Vigil For Connecticut School Shooting Victims

From the Huffington Post

How do these people sleep at night? 

Your God is Too Small

There's a lot of finger pointing and handwringing right now about who to blame for the tragic shooting yesterday. Everyone agrees it was a shocking, horrible thing and many of us wept for those lost, and those left behind.

It's only natural to ask how any loving god could let this happen. I find it appalling that atheists have rushed forward to scream "where's your God now?" and I find it equally appalling that theists have rushed forward to say "not allowed in schools, that's where!" If anything should unite believers and unbelievers it is the tragic loss of so much young, innocent life.

Shame on you, atheists who have used such a painful tragedy to make anyone question their faith, the very means they draw comfort and hope from. Shame on you, Christians for your poor response. This is not the answer:

How dare you marginalize God this way? God is the supreme being, creator of heaven and earth, omnipresent and omnipotent. How dare you suggest that God is bound by politics. Do you think God was allowed into Egypt when he freed the Jews from slavery? Do you think the Roman's wanted God to violate the laws of nature when he raised his son from the dead? God is not bound by laws or politics. There is nowhere God cannot go. There are no laws, no walls, no boundaries mere mortals could construct to keep him out.

"Where could I go to escape your spirit? Where could I flee from your presence? If I climb the heavens, you are there, there too if I lie in Sheol. If I flew to the point of sunrise, or westward across the sea your hand would still be guiding me, your right hand holding me." Psalms 139:7-10

'"Am I only a God nearby,' declares the Lord, 'and not a God far away? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?' declares the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord." Jeremiah 23:23-23

"Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Matthew 28:20

We live in one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world. You don't have to agree with anyone else's religion, but you have to respect their right to have it. Government employees are not Sunday school teachers. If you want your children to know God, teach them. If anyone seeks God and has a relationship with him, that does not stop at the doors of any building.

To suggest otherwise makes your god a very small god indeed.

Nice quote

He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. 
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I'm a panentheist

Paul Tillich said that we should retire the word “God,” because it had become virtually meaningless. Meaningless because there is no consensus about what the word means. Wars have been fought, people have been slaughtered of the "right" and "wrong" definition of God. (It always makes me laugh when people say God is so transcendent that we can't know his mind, but then they DO know his mind about what he wants, what he expects, where he will send me when I die ...)

Tillich used expressions such as “Ultimate Concern,” “Ground of Being,” which pointed toward a concept of God as not a supernatural person somewhere “out there,” but as the ultimately unknowable direction in which all things point.

As Marcus Borg has articulated better than I could hope to, the God I reject is the god of supernatural theism, a “supernatural being somewhere out there.” The God that has become a selfish transaction for the unknowable afterlife. Christianity is not simply believing the right things so you can avoid eternal Hell Fire, it's about knowing and loving God, loving your fellow man, and as Jesus said in John's gospel that we "might have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).  Borg's book, "Speaking Christian" has challenged me to rethink my opinion of God and of Christianity.

Unlike pantheism, which says the universe is God, God is the universe and that is all, I realized I'm a panentheist. Panentheist means all in God and God transcends everything. God is "the ground in which I live and move and have my being" (Acts 17:28). An imperfect analogy is of fish in a river. Fish (that would be us) live in a river, rely on the river for breathing, moving ... and yet the river is more than just the fish and flora and fauna, it flows into the Ocean, it nourishes life.

Life itself is a sacrament - simply by living our lives as genuine and authentic human beings we can meet God, not just know God, but meet him and know him completely.

This is also becoming the foundation of Progressive Christianity and the Emergent Church. I would be happily involved with these denominations because they allow for the intellectual honesty of searching, discovery, questioning and rejecting. And yet they acknowledge the traditions of Christianity and the beauty of the Bible - as a human creation. They acknowledge the beauty in and borrow ideas from other religions. They follow the truth, and still have an encounter with God.

I won't claim the title of Christian. The traditional, cultural understanding of that word means someone who believes things which for the sole purpose of going to heaven, of avoiding hell. I'm not that person, I don't just believe anything.

Watch this video from my favorite church (unfortunately it's in Springfield, IL or I would go every week) for a fuller understanding of my faith journey, which will continue until the day I die.

Pascal's Wager

Several people have said to me "I'd rather believe and be wrong then not believe and be wrong, because if you're wrong you're going to hell." What you may not realize is that this is actually called Pascal's Wager, created by the seventeenth-century philosopher, Blaise Pascal. In a nutshell, Pascal's Wager says that since we can never really know if God exists, there is so much more to gain by simply believing God does exist. Essentially if you wager that God exists you gain everything (eternal life) and if you lose (and God doesn't exist) you've lost nothing.

It seems like a compelling proposition, right? Just believe the right things and you'll go to heaven! But what are the right things to believe? Why should anyone wager the Christian God is the right God to gamble your eternal soul on? He is not the only option. Maybe the Hindu God is the right one. Maybe Zeus is the right one.

Secondly, I've given up my previously held beliefs because of reason and thinking. I simply can't force myself to un-know all the things I've learned during the last five years. Surely God would know I was faking it. Believe me, there are plenty of times I think to myself "why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?" but I can't take the blue pill and forget everything.

And finally, is faith really just a matter of mentally assenting to a checklist of established beliefs? That seems so hollow, so pointless. I think any God (who every religion says is utterly transcendent and ineffable) wouldn't endow us with an intellect and ability to reason and then require we throw those abilities out the window and just blindly believe what we're told. I genuinely believe any God would much prefer those who honestly seek the truth, wherever that may lead.

So please stop lobbing this argument at me. Like everything else, I've given it a good deal of thought before rejecting it, but I find it lacking and frankly disrespectful of God.

This I love and believe with my whole heart.

I've mentioned before my fondness for authors like Bishop John Shelby Spong and Karen Armstrong. I did not realize until recently that there is a church that also loves these authors. THIS is a church I would love to attend. THIS is a faith I whole heartedly embrace. Here is a church that loves the Bible as I do, the wants to follow the teachings of Jesus, as I do, and is not afraid to call a spade a spade; to recognize myths, metaphors and the historical setting. Here is a church that believes Jesus taught us how to LIVE our lives, not just a list of things we need to mentally ascent to!

This is a spiritual approach I wholeheartedly embrace. It focuses on how to live our lives, how we can make the lives of others better without concern for some magical after life we can't possibly know anything about.