Letting God Out of the Box

Is your God - or I could say, your idea of God – safely inside a nice comfortable box?  This is probably a rhetorical question because I think if is inevitable that we either consciously or unconsciously put God into a box to contain our idea of God.

Now, at this point you might be asking, what about atheists?  They don’t believe there is a God.  Now I could interject and quote psalm 14, “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’”  However, that would be unfair and what would be the point is quoting scripture to an antsiest.  To stay on point, saying there is no God is actually a way of putting God on a box which is labelled no God.  As I recall from my grade 10 or 11 math a null set is a is a subset of every set (or something like that as grade 10 was a long time ago).   Another way of responding to an atheist is, tell me about the God you do not believe in. 

Some boxes that a person can put God into can be very well defined.  It might be that God is in a box that is defined by the Old testament - a God of judgement that can strike down enemies of the builder of the box.  Another box might have walls that are defined by love.  Another might be a God that set things in motion and then sat back and watched creation unfold according to the laws God established at creation without getting involved any further.  Other boxes may have very expandable and rather nebulous walls such as the God of Teilhard de Chardin who saw God as the omega point or the God of process theologians who saw God evolving along with God’s creation.  This is a box that seems to allow for a God who is both immanent and transcendent – which is another pair of boxes we can put God into.

So, given that we can have boxes in which put our version of God, does that really matter?   Does the God we believe in affect the way we live or is it the other way around?  Is who we are – the type of person we are (I could say how God created us to be but that would be a bit circular), determine the type of box we construct to put God into?   I can’t say that I have reached any conclusions on that.  However, perhaps what I am suggesting today is that it is useful to consider the box that you have put God into and to consider what happens if we discover something which may be from God that don’t fit that picture we have about God.

Perhaps exploring this could produce something worthwhile – bear some good fruit. 

Blessings on your journey.

Religion and Science Dialogue

One of the joys of being retired or at least semi-retired is that I have more time to do some of the thing I would not have had time to do previously (or at least would not have made time for).  One of the joys this summer has been to catch up on past episodes of Tapestry, the wonderful CBC radio program on things spiritual and religious hosted by Mary Hines.  Mary does a beautiful job of delving into the different subjects and people being interviewed to get at the heart of the subject.  The show is often interspersed with humor which I think is wonderful as she delves into the “laughter at the heart of things” (a phrase I must credit to Helen Luke).  I would encourage you to listen in to the program which is on CBC Radio 1 on Sunday afternoons or explore past episodes on-line at your leisure. 

Another program I have discovered which touches more directly on what I want to discuss today is Faith and Witness, a podcast which explores ecumenism in the church today.  It is an undertaking of the Canadian Council of Churches.  Faith and Witness explores a number of big theological issues such as salvation from the perspective of different denominations in Canada.  The goal is understand where different denominations are on major issues and to explore the common ground among those denominations. 

The programs are interesting and ecumenism is a worthwhile undertaking.  However, when I was listening to a couple of the episodes I couldn’t help thinking that the discussion would be completely foreign and completely uninteresting to 99.9% of Canadians.  I believe what is truly needed most today is a discussion of a common basis/understanding between people of religious faith and the religious none’s as they are classified on the census.  A large part of that is, I believe, a lack of common language which will help define what we are talking about.  This hopefully might be used to discuss things religious and spiritual from a common starting point.  We can also begin to address the assumptions (often wrong) that we have about the different perspectives that people bring to the discussion.  This is what the ecumenical movement tries to do with different denominations within Christianity.  

This was brought into focus for me by an article in the Globe and Mail this past week.  The August 5^th edition had an article entitled “Magic in the machine” which explored the phenomenon of consciousness from the current understanding in psychology and neuroscience.  Consciousness is a topic which is of great interest to me particularly in the area of dreams and Jungian psychology.  There seems to be a great divide between those studying the brain from a scientific basis and those who approach it from the spiritual/metaphysical perspective.  There is, I believe a consensus that human being are conscious but consciousness cannot be put under the microscope and examined as a physical entity therefore as quoted in the article, “  The scientific and philosophical consensus is that there is no non-physical soul or ego, or at least no evidence for that.”  The implication is that unless scientists can find hard evidence for it, it is not worth discussing.

He article did a good job of exploring the subject given the limits of a short newspaper piece.  However, one statement stood out for me and independently for Lorna as well.  The article stated, “We no longer believe in a numinous life force, an élan vital.  So what’s the big deal about consciousness?”  My question is, who is we and what is the statement based on?  If there is no numinous life force then this life on earth is all we get.  There is no continuation of the life force or soul or spirit beyond the material life we now live.  Here we have assumptions and perspectives that are not universal and need to be explored.  This is where Tapestry excels in exploring how different aspect of the experience of the Divine play out in our lives. 

Richard Rohr does a wonderful job of exploring the False Self or Ego and the True Self which is the person God intends you to be.  The ego, despite the lack of evidence for its existence, is a force which often keeps us from God—the ultimate being.  It is exactly this ultimate question, which science will never find what it considers satisfactory evidence for the existence of, is one of these issues that keep us in (at least) two solitudes.  I will close today with a quote from Richard Rohr which explores the True Self.  I may explore this use further if the spirit inspires me to:   

Your True Self is that part of you that sees truthfully and will live forever. It is divine breath passing through you. Your false self is that part of you that is constantly changing and will eventually die anyway. It is in the world of passing forms and yet it sees itself as a central reference point—which is never really true. The false self is passing, tentative, or as the Hindus and Buddhists might say, “empty.” Richard Rohr Daily Meditation August 8, 2016

I don’t not have a sermon to share with you today as I had Sunday off from official duties only providing the music for St. Alban’s in Souris.  Blessings on your journey.  

Gretta and me

Recently I have re-encountered Gretta Vosper—not directly but on the radio and in the news.  Gretta Vosper is something of a well-known personality.  For those of you who are not familiar with her, she is a United Church of Canada ordained minister who has declared herself to be an atheist.  She has written a number of popular books including: With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. 

I became aware of the Rev. Vosper a few years ago when I heard her interviewed on that wonderful CBC radio program Tapestry with Mary Hynes.  I was somewhat troubled by what I heard at the time but I guess not enough to follow up on what I heard.  I re-encountered the Rev. Vosper last week when I heard a rebroadcast of the program while driving in my car.  That was followed by a Canadian Press news item on Huffington Post that stated Vosper was undergoing a process in the United Church that could lead to her being defrocked.  The article notes, “An ordained United Church of Canada minister who believes in neither God nor Bible said Wednesday she is prepared to fight an unprecedented attempt to boot her from the pulpit for her beliefs”. 

My reaction to hearing the broadcast and the news item was quite visceral—indeed I was surprized by how charged it was.  It caused me to investigate and examine her beliefs in more detail to help me understand my reaction more fully.  My initial reaction (which probably many people have) to hearing about Vosper was, “if she is an atheist and no longer believes in God (the definition of an atheist), why is she still an active United Church minister leading a congregation in The United Church?”  I felt I needed to understand more fully where she was coming from and where she was going in the church.

Vosper “came out” and revealed her atheism in a sermon in 2001.  The lay leaders of the congregation agreed to walk with her in the new path she was exploring which was, I presume, the bringing about a non-religious church in a non-religious time.  However, there were apparently, and not surprisingly, many of the members of the congregation who could not make that journey with her and left her flock.  As she describes in the interview, worship looks very much like a typical United Church worship service with hymns and prayers and a sermon. However, there is a distinct difference.  They no longer use scripture passages; they have rewritten hymns to take out any reference to God; indeed they no-longer is the G** word in any in most context.  If there is a reference to God they always state, “By God I mean…”  

Vosper noted in the interview that she came to the point of “coming out” when she had to deal with the devastation of her daughter who was mourning the loss of a beloved teacher to cancer. The daughter had, unknown to Vosper, prayer for God to heal her teacher.  Vosper could not reconcile the devastation of her daughter  and her non-belief in an interventionist personal God who answered prayer for which she had no satisfactory answer to comfort her daughter.    She decided to stay in her position as a minister due to the pastoral relationship she had with her flock. 

My next question is, why Vosper doesn’t join the Unitarian Church (as one on-line commenter noted) where she would fit in with no problem doctrinal?  Vosper holds the United Church to be the most progressing denomination in the world and is comfortable staying in the church.  As she states on her web site:

My congregation belongs to The United Church of Canada, probably the most progressive Christian denomination in the world. It ordained women over seventy years ago and has been ordaining openly LGBTQ leaders for decades. But theologically it remains in the closet about the human construction of religion and all its trapping. I couldn’t stay in that closet.

I have concluded that Vosper doesn’t want to leave the United Church to join the Unitarians or perhaps lead an independent secular humanist “church” because she would not be able to make an impact on the church.  She believe that the church needs to be converted to an organization that does not believe in a supernatural being in the sky who intervenes in human affairs for better or worse—a belief that, in her mind, has caused so many problems in the world. 

As noted above, Vosper does not usually use “God” in her worship—but when she does she qualifies if with, “by God I mean…”  This seemed to imply that she does believe in some form of higher power.  I had hoped to discover what Vosper does actually believe in which could be considered a higher power.  Unfortunately in the interview she did not specify what she might mean by God.  My investigation to date has not born much fruit.  I have not read any of her books.  However, the blurb for her book, With or Without God on her web site states:

Envisioning a future in which the Christian church plays a viable and transformative role in shaping society, Gretta Vosper argues that if the church is to survive at all, the heart of faith must undergo a radical change. Vosper, founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and a minister in Toronto, believes that what will save the church is an emphasis on just and compassionate living—a new and wholly humanistic (my emphasis) approach to religion.

What then are the conclusions I have reached at this point in my investigation?  First, I must say that I admire Vosper for having the courage to say and stand by what she believes—even if I believe that she is wrong—and I certainly do.  I do not believe that she is wrong about wanting the church to move beyond the belief in God as a supernatural person in the sky who is arbitrary and can be bribed (she didn’t say that last part directly, as far as I know, but I extrapolated  from what she has said).  That has been called succinctly “God the Butler” who is called up to serve us on demand.   I believe that the church must change.  However, if all that the church is going to become is another place to gather together to be a supportive community and do good works—which are undoubtedly a vital part of being church—how is that different from any secular group such as Rotary already in existence?  If we Christians do not believe in God—a higher power who calls us to be more than we are and shows us how we can be that—then that is not Christian. 

May the God, who Gretta Vosper apparently does not believe in, bless her and keep her.  I wish Gretta Vosper well in her future endeavours however, I hope and pray (to that same God) she will pursues those endeavours in place where atheists have a home: that in my view is not the Christian church.