Posts Tagged ‘faith’

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Lost faith. Found faith.

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

There are many joyous moments as a Pastor.  One is seeing faith just starting to break into the open.  Usually that takes the form of rather qualified statements ….

  1. If I went to a church, it would be one like yours. (My thought: See you in 6 months)
  2. I don’t have much space for God but I like that. (My thought: You might not have space for God but He has it for you.)
  3. If only I had not lost my faith…. (My thought: Buckle your seat belt for a great ride!)
I think those statements actually are ways of returning to faith. But that faith is far different than what we hold faith as.  We will find Faith, but it will NOT be how we supposed it to be.
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You live in an unobserved culture.  We all do.  That makes it nearly impossible to see the ways that the hidden forces of culture impact how we hold the world.  Maybe it makes it impossible to see how corrupted the concept of faith is by our cultural predispositions. For me, I often mistakenly hold faith as a “thing” that lies “out there” that I am to “achieve.” or “attain.”  Therefore as I turn faith into a commodity, it becomes both imminently losable and findable.
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But what if faith was far different than an objective thing, a commodity, detached from the deepest nature of humanity?
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See I wonder, and I might be wrong, if even the debate over faith, taking as it does that commodity approach, is a red herring of sorts, sending us scurrying down paths of our own mental and cultural constructions.  Christ spent no time in deep existential debate about faith and its attending proofs. The questions He did offer of salvation were stark.  Want to know what the state of faith is in your life, answer these He would say.  What do we do when we see hunger? What do we do when we see poverty?  What did we do when we see the single parent?
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Maybe in life we tend to start the journey by asking the questions, making the statements alluded to at the beginning of the blog and then get, blessedly, those were never actually the questions.   Faith, as the New Church holds it, is the eye of love.  Live with courage and humility and faith there!

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“Faith is truth acknowledged in the heart.”

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Emanuel Swedenborg wrote these words to get to a critical piece of Christian theology.  Faith is not, as we often treat it, a matter of intellectual consent or agreement.  It is a matter of the heart.  Truth, in the New Church, we believe should come to be known by the life within it.  (Secrets of Heaven, 1496)  That makes the marker of truth not the tight intellectual proposition the Western mind favors, but a matter of alignment with the greatest God given loves humanity can exercise.

As a matter of the heart, that turns faith away from certainty.  Likewise, it turns it towards an active stance of loving action.  As James 2 phrases it, “Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, dead…. Show your faith by what you do.”  Faith and possibility then go hand-in-hand.

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Belief or Belonging?

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

Many people talk of a basic tension growing within Christianity in 2012. That tension may come to down to this idea – “I want to be part of a Church that stands FOR something but does not stand AGAINST other people.”  Tricky!  A ticklish issue, one Christ wrestled with.  One growing as the traditional forms of faith shift.  Much of it connects to the question – does the life of faith start with “belief” or “belonging”?

The “belief” argument goes like this.  It must all start with belief.  That is the key differentiator.  Proper belief gives rise to well lived life.  Without belief squared away churches are no more than social clubs, unanchored institutions buffeted by the waves of culture.  Christ was clear on principle.  So should we be.

The “belonging” argument follows a different track.  Christianity is about belonging to ever widening circles of community.  As those circles widen, of course they will encircle those for whom traditional belief is a challenge but who are looking for a sense of belonging in the world as well as a life of higher purpose.  Christ was comfortable with outliers. So should we.

What of the New Church?  As I understand it, it would be this.  You can have no true “belief” without first creating a senses of “belonging.”  Here is how Emanuel Swedenborg phrased it: “The knowledge of spiritual realities becomes nothing more than objects of memory when the people who are adept at them have no love for others.” (Secrets of Heaven, 1197)  Belief then is just a “dead object,” lacking any connection to great purposes of love, conscience and LIFE. Restated, hold onto belief as the sole criteria, belief becomes merely superficial ornamentation, “Belonging” can be so much more!  And have no worry for those want a challenge – the “belonging” game is many times more difficult to play than the “belief” game.  That is because you have to BE the truth, not just think it, not just speak it.

 

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Speak

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

A blessing it has been to listen to conversation around women’s roles and their connection to ministry.  Such conversation is one part of a larger picture – a picture of creating churches/ synagogues/ mosques/ worlds inclusive of all voices.

Much of that sounds admittedly soft headed.  But it is not.  Conversation takes courage for all involved.

A popular online podcast, defending “THE true Christian faith” lists its mission statement as, “… an online radio station that is free from the scurvy plagues of pop-psychology, goofy fads, self-help, pietism, purpose-drivenism, the prosperity heresy, contemplative mysticism, seeker-sensitivism, liberalism, relevantism, Emergent nonsense, and the sissy girly Oprah-fied religiosity that is being passed off as “Biblical Christianity.”” That brand of fundamentalism deifies a certain rigidity that is at best hard to move forward in the face of.  At its worse, it is downright scary.   All religious institutions I am aware of evidence in a given number of their adherents a tight draw to that very form of calcified faith, a faith that loudly proclaims (a) there is one and only one true way, (b) it is best exampled by those who follow that way to the letter and (c) it is under attack by those with whom the edges are more soft. The list of those who are “in” then becomes very short.  The list of those who are “out” grows ever longer.

In face of such opposition, it is easy to beat a hasty retreat, leaving to such people the Christian high ground.  Hence the need for courage.  I don’t believe we need ever beat a hasty retreat.  Christ’s model was dramatically clear.  It was a holding firm but not holding firm in the form of reflexive defensiveness of “THE Christian Faith” but a holding firm in love – a moving into the Christian life.

Look none of that is easy and if one thinks it is, you probably are not pushing your faith far enough – really allowing God in.    The interaction of faith and life should be challenging and transformative.  None of that occurs in arenas of smug rightness – “rightness” from liberals or conservatives.  It only occurs when we dare to allow ourselves to sink into the arms of a loving God … and MOVE.    Then we stop building bomb shelters and start speaking to new worlds.

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In Memory of Vaclev Havel

Monday, December 19th, 2011

I remember the 10th grade World Cultures student speaking to me at the window on the second floor of my Pocono Mountain Senior classroom.  His question, earnestly asked, was “Do you think the Berlin Wall will ever fall?”  Having come of age in the Cold War, such a Wall-less world seemed fanciful.  My retort – “Maybe in your life time but not in mine.”   Within 2 weeks, the wall fell.

In the coming years, I came to know more of Vaclev Havel, the eventual President of the Czech Repulic who rose to power 8 days after the Berlin Wall fell.  What so fascinated me about the man – a poet by profession – was the overt way he used faith to guide and undergird the burgeoning democracies in Eastern Europe.  He spoke to a democracy with a “soul”, a concept far removed from my American perspective, one in which yes democracy was painted with light patina of spirituality, but certainly not given a “soul.”  As such, as one commentator noted, his “moral authority was bale to stretch a weak presidency beyond what was written in the constitution.”

I remember the resonance of his words that we are  as “beings that have fallen out of Being.”  To return to Being, his call from straightforward; “The only possible place to begin is with myself . . .it is I who must begin . . . For the hope opened up in my heart by this turning toward Being has opened my eyes as well. . . . Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether I am lost.”

So I will miss that presence, and that language, a language so clear on the deeper calls embedded within.

 

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How Do I Keep It Simple?

Friday, July 8th, 2011

From the book “True Christianity” Volume 2, pg. 23:

Friends, abstain from what is evil, and do what is good, and believe in the Lord with your whole heart and your whole soul; and He will give you love for what you do and faith in what you believe.

That is simple.  Often for me life chugs along and then I just hit patches where I feel unteathered, disconnected from God and other people. And at those time, a simple reminder of a simple truth brings me back to center.

What is powerful about this line from True Christianity is that it speaks of our need to follow the God of our understanding and how in doing that, God helps us to have faith (think “confidence”) in what we know and to have love at the core of what we do.  In other words, it is settling into our true selves.  Yes, there is a need there for an external form of revelation as it were – a rock “higher than I” as the New Testament would put it – to pull us out of our petty selves.  And, at the same time it focuses us back on our true selves in a healthy way – our informed perspective on the world, our enlightened view of God, our love.  Put your heart and soul into it and you get your heart and soul.


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Winter Solstice: Faith in the Present Moment

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

God calls us to places where faith becomes possible – an important topic to speak on this winter’s solstice, the darkest day of the year.  For some, that place, that call comes at times when all else is stripped away.  For others it comes at times when the world breaks open in a limitless horizon of boundless opportunity.  I imagine for most reading this that a combination of the two probably rings true.

This morning reading of the “13th Disciple” I was struck again by the Jesus’ call to the young man and his clear rejection of it.  That rejection does not of course mean a “loss.”  The text is clear – Jesus “loved him.”  Jesus’ patient compassion is ever knocking on the door.  And the call is to leave behind so much – “sell all you have.”  So opening that door is a rather scary proposition!  Who wants to hear that as a sales call.

Remember the context though.  It is the context not of selling all of our material possessions and living in abject poverty.  It is the context of “selling” the comfort of our lives to heed a call that will lead us to a place where true faith is possible.  That will not be comfortable terrain.  But it will be terrain where we can find the true faith, faith as in living life deeply in the present moment, a faith no longer uncoupled from love.

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An Interesting Perspective: Sans Baggage

Friday, November 12th, 2010

I was privileged to hear someone’s story several days ago.  This individual shared their journey into faith.  What was interesting was just one small line they said, one that really caused me to pause.  Having never previously possessed any faith of consequence, they shared how they were arriving at faith, in their middle years, without baggage.

Think about it.  Imagine arriving at faith, belief, God – whatever word you choose – without baggage.  I see so many folks who end up in the New Church because of baggage around their former faith.  Likewise I see many who have left the New Church for the same reason.

The image that comes to mind is God painting on a clean canvas.  Of course, none of our lives is without baggage, without, knicks, cuts, smudges.  But wow, to be witness to God’s starting to paint without all the pre-existing garbage – what a blessing that must be.

What was actionable for me in hearing this story was the thought that maybe that is part of our faith journey – traveling to the point where we can arrive “naked” in the sense that we are without the baggage of “religion” in its formal garb.  I know there is a great need for caution with these words because religion arguably gives us the container in which to grow and without which we might miss the necessary structures that give someone some thing to come to.   I know absolutely, in my life, I would have been/ will be completely lost without the formal structures of the Pittsburgh New Church, the Academy of the New Church, and NewChurch LIVE.

And it remains equally true, when thinking about arriving without baggage, maybe God’s painting “takes” faster to the well-prepped, clean surface.  Maybe there is room to push part of the outreach efforts of NewChurch LIVE that direction – in the direction of helping people see religious faith sans baggage.   Maybe that informs Swedenborg’s stress that church best grows among gentiles – good folks, open folks, who are not involved in a formal religion who when they find it, can jump in both feet.

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Faith vs. Belief

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

I heard a recent podcast that commented on the difference between Faith and Belief.

The author – a minister – commented on getting a call from a desperate woman, readying herself to commit suicide.  He got on his motorcycle to travel to her house.  The point – faith got him on that bike, not belief.

What a valuable perspective.  Yes, I have definitive “beliefs.”  I look to God’s Word and New Church theology to figure that out.  And, belief continues to mean less and less in a sense.  This is not to say that “belief” is relegated to nothingness.  It is to say that faith, faith as defined as a sense of God-given purpose, direction, and vision, is more important than the intellectual constructs around formal doctrinal pronouncements.

My “belief” is fun to share, to teach, to ponder but it has yet to “get me on the bike.”  What gets me “on the bike” is a stirring deep within, a voice, a “dictate” that says serve – my “faith.”  As one author noted, Jesus is the model of being fully Divine and fully Human – or as we would say in this faith tradition – the Divine Human.  We are not God. And we do mirror in our own way that dichotomy.

We possess an element of the Divine in the form of God-given gifts attached to our core – our “inmost.”  We also are completely human.  We need to endeavor then to loose track of neither.  We cannot be totally human without a view of the divine.  We cannot access the divine, without being human.  Critical that we take that divinity and live it into our humanity.   Stand in divinity alone and we live a detached life.  Attach – but in the right way, in the healthy way – to the world – to the “weary and scattered” as God calls us.

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Dig one deep well. Not many shallow ones. (Gandhi)

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Faith is often an intensely person experience.  It also atrophies when undertaken as a purely solo flight.

One can absolutely count on a formal church letting one down.  Imperfect human beings – including you and me – populate all religious institutions.

This makes it hard to stick with a formal religious organization.  The disappointments will come making it hard to take root in one place long enough to “dig one well deep.”

So why “stick”?  Because we need that deep well.  Because part of the digging is moving through the inevitable disappointments that all man-made institutions give rise to.  Because one deep well might not seem that important in times of plenty but is critical in times of drought.

This is part of why faith is so deeply counter-cultural.  We play by a “winner’s script” in which we often give the rather trite advice, when faced with disappointments, to do “what you feel like doing.”  I am a big advocate for feelings, for emotions.  I also cringe when I hear that advice being glibly dispensed.  I work with people all the time who suffer from wounds because they or someone they know did what they “felt like doing.”

Maybe that is again the power of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  Jesus was asking His 12 disciples – dig one deep well.  Don’t be afraid.  Stick with your feelings and move through them.  There is a spring – eternal water – for those who can remain in one place long enough to dig.

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