AllThingsHuman - Christ Enlight

Humanity

You may be surprised to see humanity appearing in a series of articles outlining a new vision of what it is to be a follower of Jesus, but you shouldn't be. After all, spirituality - and even religion when healthy - isn't about a deity or meeting a deity's needs (we might pause to ask what sort of divine being would need anything from humanity), it is ultimately about humankind, about growing into people who achieve their full potential, who themselves become divinized.

From the perspective of the Christian tradition, we should start in the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden is not a historical place, although the boundaries of it as described in Genesis do exist. In other words, you can find the location of the Garden of Eden on a map, but the Garden itself never existed. How do we know?

We know because when human beings first appeared they didn't have a language, much less a written language on which to record theur histories. The traditional view has been that God knew about the story and dictated it to Moses, who supposedly wrote Genesis - except that there doesn't seem to be any way that Moses could have recorded all this while wandering around the desert. There isn't a biblical record of the caravan of camels on which the stone tablets that were Moses' record of God's revelation were borne. More importantly, we have already dismissed the notion of God as Divine Dictation Deity in our introductory blog. How did the story of the Garden of Eden develop? As part of the oral tradition of the Hebrew. Children sitting around the campfire came to ask, "Where did people come from?", and they were told the story of creation we find in Genesis. When they asked, "Why do we die?", they were told the story of the disobedience in the Garden of Eden.

It's important to say that just because a story didn't really happen, it can still be true. Fairy tales, folk tales, biblical tales, and a host of other stories have been construction througout the years to teach truths, and the Garden of Eden story is no exception. People are disobedient, and if you tell us not to touch something we will touch it, if you tell us not to eat something we will eat it, largely because we have to experience something before we believe it to be true. Remember when your parents told you not to have sex? And you all are still waiting for your first sexual experience because of that, right? I didn't think so.

This all would have been just fine had not St. Augustine come along. Prior to being ordained against his will (a curious thing that happened in the early Church), St. Augustine had a little problem with his pants. It seems they kept falling off in the presence of women, and rather than simply pull his pants up he decided to do a mattress dance first. Then he found himself on the way to being consecrated Bishop, and he had to deal with his rather unsavory escapades. He looked to the scriptures and said, "I'm not a man-ho, I'm just a victim of Original Sin!" Everybody said, "What's Original Sin?" And slick old Augustine said, "It makes your pants fall down!"

Suddenly babies were born with "the stain of original sin," and baptism was supposed to cleanse us from that stain. The Orthodox never really bought into Original Sin. I've changed a fair number of diapers and can tell you the only stain I have ever seen on a baby is in their diapers.

In the Gospels Jesus encounters a man born blind and Jesus' disciples ask, "Who sinned that this man was born blind - him or his parents?" Jesus replied, "No one sinned." Did you catch that? No one sinned - not, Adam sinned, or it was because of Original Sin, but just plain old, "No one sinned." Why is that important?

It's important because every person - the good, the bad, the ugly, and everyone in between - is born perfect good and sinless. Yes, that means you.

Institutional religion (The Church), of course, grabbed on to the whole Original Sin/Original Guilt things and has been squeezing people by their coin purses ever since. Christ Enlight is here to say that has been a lie, the practice is a practice of extortion, and it needs to stop. Do we sin? Absolutely. When we hurt one another or act in ways that are lacking in compassion we sin. Is there an "original sin?" If there is it is probably something like trying to get ahead at the expense of others, but we learn that. You don't see babies trying to get ahead at the expense of other babies. Can we stop sinning? Absolutely. It will be a process, and it won't happen overnight, but as we move toward enlightenment and becoming a fully integrated human being, we will sin less and less. It is perfectly ok to be you, and you are perfectly ok - even with your imperfections!

Now that IS good news!

What about Science?

You may at this point be thinking that the goal of Christ Enlight is to develop a spirituality based on science. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as this letter indicates:

I would generally agree with you [about the benefits of a rational and scientific faith], but with the caution that even science is not static. Today's fact is challenged by tomorrow's theory and eventually replaced by it. That theory is then fact until successfully challenged by another theory, and the cycle continues. I truly believe that there are things that science has not yet discovered that nevertheless exist. I am becoming more and more fascinated with the notion that God is perhaps a very advanced being who creates and sustains universes merely by thought energy. If such a thing would be true, the odds are that science would have a very hard time discovering it because the energy which sustains the universe would come from outside of it. Even if this view of God is not true, it raises an interesting point - that there are things which are outside the reach of science.

Mahayana Buddhists hold that there are beings who exist in realms or on planes which we cannot perceive. Some would say that Jesus now exists as a particular kind of such a being, a Bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas are beings who achieve enlightenment but defer nirvana in order to return to help all beings achieve nirvana. That's a fascinating notion to me, and probably one that science dismisses because they cannot measure it. It intrigues me that the population in general is more than willing to entertain the notion of ghosts or hauntings than we are positive unseen beings such as bodhisattvas. For science, if they can't measure it then it doesn't exist. Despite that, love exists.

I don't believe that human spiritual development will move forward until we achieve the ability to incorporate science into our spiritualities while avoiding turning science into our religion, because science doesn't have all the answers and never will. One hundred years ago it was a fact that space travel was impossible and always would be. I am certain that we are convinced that some things are impossible today which one hundred years from now will be routine. To put all our eggs in the scientific basket is to choose a very limited perspective, indeed. It is one without compassion, love, and everything else that cannot be objectively measured. What's more, I would say that nothing can truly be objectively measured, because even scientists are invested to one degree or another in their theories. True objectivity can only be achieved through the detachment that spiritual practices such as meditation teach us, and that is truly ironic!

I agree with the Buddhists that if science reveals that something we believe is not true then we must change our beliefs. At the same time, I am not willing to participate in a religion of science because ultimately I believe that is as empty as institutional Christianity.

Creation and Science

Christ Enlight holds to the Big Bang theory of creation and believes that God is and was the energy not only behind the Big Bang but also that supports and sustains all that is, was, and will be. When the time comes that science develops a more concise theory than the Big Bang, we will hold that theory.

What of the biblical creation narrative? We hold that it is a wonderful folk tale that was created in response to the question, "Mommy and Daddy, where did we come from?" We find that story to contain many truths in the form of metaphor, but we do not believe it to be a literal, historical, or scientific account of creation. The reasons for this are many, not the least of which is that there are actually two accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis. Other significant points of interest are that the sun doesn't appear until the third "day" of creation (which begs the question as to how the first two days were measured); the patriarchy and oppression that has resulted from the biblical account of woman being taken from man, created from a rib of his, and named by man along with the animals and subsequently being responsible for the fall of humankind from the Garden of Eden; the Flood in which all living things perished except those aboard Noah's Ark and wherein the entire world was seen to be covered with water is not a scientific possibility; the three tiered view of the world including the flat earth theory; and there are many others. Biblical literalists of all stripes have gone to great effort to explain these things away, but I must ask what kind of an all-powerful God would need human beings to explain away "facts" about the creation?

Christ Enlight also rejects the so-called "Creation Science" as a complete and total fiction, and finds that the so-called scientist who support it are no longer scientist but rather apologists for the flat earth society. One of the saddest moments in my personal experience came when I read that my Alma Mater, Wisconsin Lutheran College, had established a creation science program. When I attended WLC it was a school with great integrity. Those days are obviously gone.

We hold with the Dalai Lama that if and when science proves that something we believe is not correct, we must change what we believe. We hold that scientists perform the very worthwhile job of investigating the universe of which God is the Ground of Being. In doing so, they cannot help but teach us about God. We need to listen. Of course, we need to listen with a discerning mind, for science is not perfect and is subject to error just as any field of human endeavor is prone to error. The key is to remain fluid in thought or belief, and to avoid at all costs becoming entrenched in yesterday's truth.

It seems that one day our universe will end. The resulting implosion will no doubt impact our galaxy. It is naive to assume that we are the only living beings in a constantly expanding universe, and it is equally naive to scan the skies for UFOs. When the universe comes to an end it will not do so in the way that the Book of Revelation predicts. The Book of Revelation is a highly symbolic piece of literature that belongs to the genre of Apocalyptic literature. It has never been appropriate to take that literature literally, just as no thinking, rational person would hop into an oven after reading the Book of Daniel (another example of Apocalyptic).

Medicine, as a part of science, is a vital part of any responsible spirituality. We reject as naive and irresponsible any parent who would deny their child medical treatment for any reason. We find religious beliefs which would deny medical treatment to anyone for any reason. Even as we affirm the value and effectiveness of prayer, we do not believe it to ever take the place of medical care. Prayer and medicine are two complementary but distinct fields. We need both.

In the biblical creation story we learn that we have been made custodians of the created order. since This means that environmentalism should be a part of our spirituality. Since God is the Source of All, including nature, those who claim to believe in God simply must be concerned for all of creation. We must recognize that to destroy the environment is to destroy ourselves, our children and grandchildren. As part of our stewardship of creation, we must have absolute respect for all living beings - humans, plants, and animals - as well as inanimate parts of creation such as natural resources.

As the Christ Enlight discussion continues, there will be other questions that arise regarding these issues. Rather than respond in fear to these questions, we welcome the opportunity to further the dialogue and learn more about ourselves, the created order of which we are a part, and God. We acknowledge that for any faith to be alive, it must be fluid.