High Tech and High Touch

Last Friday, Lorna and I “attended” the graduation ceremony for our oldest grandchild, Thomas.  Of course, in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic we did not attend the ceremony in person.  It was held by the all-pervasive ZOOM on the internet.  It was wonderful to be able to be part of this event as we were about 2000 km away at the time at the cottage in PEI and would not have been able to attend otherwise.

This experience brought to mind a phrase that was popular back in the long-ago time when the internet was just beginning to come into common use.  This was probably in the early 80’s – that’s the 80’s of the last century and not the 1800’s although it might as well have been it seems so long ago.  That phrase was “high-tech and high touch.”  As I recall the idea behind the concept of high-tech/high-touch was that technology would bring new opportunities for all the world to be in touch in new and wonderful ways.  It would bring a world of possibilities for people to connect with others regardless of where they were.

I haven’t heard the phrase in many years but there have been many developments in social media such as blogs - I have one for some time now http://anotherfoolforchrist.blogspot.com/ but blogs are old news and have almost gone the way of rotary dial telephone.  There is also Facebook which is not as old but is now the realm of old fogies.  There are things such as ticktock or is that Tiktok which I know nothing about and the all-pervasive twitter which Donald Trump made famous for misusing until he was banned from it.  I am able to say I have never tweeted and in my darker moments have thought that those who tweet are twits.  But some might say in response don’t knock it until you try it.

The high-tech part of the prognostication seems to have been fulfilled with a vengeance.  However, I am not so sure about the high-touch part.  Having worshipped at the temple of the great god Zoom, I am aware of the limitations of the touch when we meet in this or similar media.  It does allow us to touch others regardless of where they are in this wide world.  However, the touch is not what I would call high.  There are limitations to meeting this way and on social media in general – at least in my somewhat limited experience.  However, I have attended conferences, workshops, worship services and meetings.  I have even co-led a few workshops via Zoom.  I have even entertained a group of people on Zoom.  I can conclude that the touch is not that high – certainly not as high as in person.  At the moment we are in quarantine at the cottage and there is very little touch allowed outside my bubble so I am grateful for all the touch available via the internet.  I will continue my exploration of the touch of high-tech next week.

May you be blessed and keep in touch on your journey. 

All-embracing Perfection

 Spare me perfection. Give me instead the wholeness that comes from embracing the full reality of who I am, just as I am.

—David Benner, Human Being and Becoming

 

You can be either broken or you can be broken open.

—Paul Tillich, Theologian  

 One of the mistaken challenges of the Christian Church is the effort to make Christians strive for perfection.  Now this is perhaps understandable as Jesus tells us to be perfect, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt 5:48).   The problem with this is that to my way of thinking, this is a surprizing thing for Jesus to say.  Being fully human, he must have known that there is little or no chance of people achieving perfections this side of the Heavenly Kingdom being established on earth.  However, there is an answer to this apparent quandary.   One commentary noted that a better translation of this passage from the Aramaic would be ‘all-embracing’ rather than perfect.

Being far less than perfect myself, this is a hope that I cling to with all my strength.  I can strive to be all-embracing – although that is a challenge every day.  Conversely, there is no hope that I will be perfect during my time on this earth.  Indeed, I believe that the expectation that Christians should be perfect has done more harm than good.  It encourages people to believe that when they fail to be perfect in thoughts, words and deeds and this in turn, may lead them to believe themselves to be beyond hope.  On the other hand, they may desperately try to hide their imperfections from others and from themselves.  They may deny the parts of themselves that they consider are imperfect.  Carl Jung identified that aspect of ourselves as the Shadow.  The Shadow is the part of our psyche which is the container for all those aspects of ourselves which are unacceptable.  We deny those aspect of ourselves either consciously or unconsciously.  There can also be aspects or traits which are commendable or positive which we have denied in ourselves such as abilities which have been neglected.  However, for the most part they are the negative, unacceptable aspects which we do want to acknowledge in ourselves. 

We can see this play out in our culture where in many situations, failure is a black mark against you at best or unacceptable at worst.  Despite the assurance by some that failures are necessary on the road to success; failures are for the most part somethings to be avoided.  The concept of failure as a positive thing has not truly penetrated our collective psyches.  It is something which is held against us and can be a source of shame.  However, failure can be something to be embraced as addressed in the quote for Paul Tillich above.  It is the breaking of our ego-driven armor which we build up around ourselves in an often desperate and mistaken attempt at self-preservation, that leads us closer to others and to God.  We are broken open to allow God and others into our lives.  No one expressed this better than Leonard Cohen, “there is a crack in everything.  That’s where the light comes in.”  That light, the light of Christ, allows our light to shine in the world. 

May you be blessed by the light on your journey.

The Power to Choose

 Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

—Viktor Frankl

 

Last week, I took in a very interesting interview of Stephen Fry by Jordan Peterson.  It can be found on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFFSKedy9f4.   Now I have not generally been a great fan of Jordan Peterson given his rather confrontational style to people younger than himself  and their perhaps at times over the top reactions to challenges in their life.  I have been a great fan of Fry as a Renaissance man of great intelligence, creativity, and erudition.  In the interview, in which my assessment of Peterson rose a few notches, they discussed a very interesting image of how people might react if they were on a rather unstable boat which began to tip to one side and was threatening to overturn.  One of them, perhaps Peterson, postulated that everyone would run to the other side of the boat causing it to over turn the other way.  He put this in terms of consciousness saying that because the people were conscious of the original instability, they would react in a way that caused the very thing they were trying to avoid.   In my view, I believe that it would be due to insufficient consciousness.  The people involved would have reacted instinctively without having the ability to choose their response.  Now I must caution that I may have some of the details of this wrong as my memory can be less than perfect and I may have skewed the details to fit my premise.  However, I believe the premise is accurate. 

Originally, when I came across the quote from Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and best know for his classic book, Man’s Search for Meaning, I planned to reflect on the quote regarding the difficulty of people actually being able to choose in a conscious manner not unlike those people on the unstable boat.  However, the revelation last week of the discovery of the buried remains of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops Residential School motivated me to shift my focus this morning.

The question facing Canadians this morning is, in the space between the stimulus i.e., the terrible revelation of the effect of the terrible chapter in Canadian history and our responses, is how do we choose to respond to that information?  As a middle class, now more than middle-aged, white Canadian man, my reaction may be to run to the other side of that rather unstable boat of the Canadian treatment of indigenous peoples in our history which continues to the present day in many respects.   I can say that this revelation is evidence of a terrible chapter in our history but it is one that has affected me in only peripheral ways in my life.  I can also perhaps choose to acknowledge and be at least somewhat conscious that I have been a beneficiary of a system of Government which was built, in part, on the Governments’ treatment of indigenous people which broke or ignored treaties and treated indigenous people as at least second-class citizens at best and less than human at worse.  This is not a comfortable place to be – on the other side in reaction to the boat tipping further off kilter. 

I have had a few excursions into the unstable waters of indigenous history in Canada.  I participated in a Blanket Ceremony while studying theology and have been in gatherings where I have been purified by sweet grass.  These entered my consciousness for a while but did not stay in my conscious awareness to a great extent. 

The knowledge of the discovery of the remains was shocking to me and I am left in the uncomfortable position of not knowing how I can choose to respond to that stimulus.  I will have to sit with that uncomfortable tension and see what is born out of it.  I hope that it will be, in the words of Friedrich Von Hugel, ‘divinely intended tension’.

Blessings on your journey through these troubled waters.

Of the Queen and the Spirit

 There is a double occasion for celebration this holiday weekend.  It is a holiday weekend because we are celebrating Victoria Day today.  For those who are not Canadian, and perhaps some who are, the Victoria Day holiday weekend celebrated the birthday of Queen Victoria whose birthday is May 24^th.  The holiday Monday was designated as Victoria Day even though it doesn’t necessarily fall on that date.  The 2-4 weekend - as it is called colloquially – is the opening of summer in much of Canada and many a case of 24 beers are purchased and consumed on the weekend.  The weekend is celebrated on the Monday before May 25th and was declared a holiday after Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 to honour the “Queen of Confederation.”

The other occasion is about a different kind of spirit than the spirit in the case of 24 beers – yesterday we celebrated the Day of Pentecost in which the Holy spirit alighted on the Christians gathered in Jerusalem and a fire descended on them and was lit under them and gave birth to the Christian church.  Pentecost is the day in which the church celebrates the third Person in the Holy Trinity and gives it its due.  Unfortunately, from my perspective, the organized church – or the part I am experienced with - does not actually give the Holy Spirit the due it deserves.  My little joke about this is that the Holy Spirit is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Holy Trinity – it doesn’t get any respect - or more accurately, it “don’t get no respect.”  I hope most of you are old enough to get the reference. 

I believe hat the problem with the Holy Spirit – from the perspective of the organized church – is that it has a mind of its own that the power of the Holy Spirit cannot be control.  As it says in the Gospel of John, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  If people have direct access to the Holy Spirit – or more accurately, the Holy Spirit has access to them, who knows what the Spirit might encourage them to do and be.  

One area where I know the spirit is at work in people today is through their dreams.  I know that God does speak to us in and through our dreams and can give us guidance about how we can live our lives more fully as God intends us to live.  However, to give the church leaders some credit, there can be a problem if people misunderstand what the Spirit is telling them.  There may also be other spirit that try and influence people and lead them astray.  In another forum I have been reviewing some rules that can help us understand if what we are being told is actually from God.  There are nine questions which can help us in discerning if it is God’s will or another source.

When a course of action seems to present itself through dreams, prayer, or synchronicity, how do we know if it is indeed Divine Will? The following questions applied separately may not give us a definitive answer, but applied collectively they can help determine who or what is truly calling us to action. They may help us discern God’s will:

1.       Is it harmful? God’s will is man and woman’s well-being. Do I feel free or compelled? The Spirit is not compulsive; we have a choice. A sense of urgency may signal neurotic compulsion, rather than freedom of choice in God.

2.       Does the course of action take into account the obvious facts of my situation? Does it acknowledge my other responsibilities? Do circumstances seem to be shifting of their own accord to accommodate this course of action?

3.       Does the course of action feel natural − do I feel “at home” with it? Can I look back at my life to date and see this new development as a positive, natural extension of my life’s journey? Does it seem to “fit?”

4.       In retrospect, what have been the fruits of my choice? If we experience consistent failure or disappointment in a course of action, perhaps our true gifts lie elsewhere.

5.       Even though individuation sometimes means going against mainstream culture, is this a decision I can put before the broader community, at least for discussion? If no one in my Christian community can support my course of action, I may need to re-think it.

6.       Is the message persistent? Am I hearing it from a number of sources?

7.       Is the action required of me, or of other persons? God’s will for our lives usually requires us to do our own footwork.

8.       Do I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time and thought “building a case” for this course of action? Could I be rationalizing some compulsive behavior?

9.       Am I willing to take “no” for an answer? Do I feel like everything depends on this particular course of action being carried out? Or that this is the only “right” way?

I hope that you are blessed to be able to listen to the Holy Spirit and discern God’s truth on your journey.

The Truth About Miracles

 

As I wrote last week, I am currently engaged in a biblical study course on the Old Testament.  Last weeks lecture raised the question about the human involvement in divine action – specifically, what does it mean for scripture to be inspired by God?  The following chart offered by the leader, Murray Watson, gives a continuum of possibilities in how to understand the inspired nature of the relationship between Devine and Human beings.

A spectrum of possibilities in terms of the human-divine relationship

 It struck me that this is a good illustration of the challenge that miracles bring to people in our culture today.  The belief in the part which God plays in the world relates directly to how miracles are understood and accepted or not accepted by people.  On the one end of the continuum, the stories of miracles in the Old and New Testaments in the bible are actual, literal accounts of the events.  On the other end they are made up stories which have no validity as factual accounts of actual events.

To illustrate, how do you understand the account of the flood in Genesis in which God told Noah to build an ark to hold a pair of every kind of animal to enable them to survive the flood which God sent upon the face of the earth?  Whether you believe that this actually happened as recorded in the Book of Genesis or was just a “myth” i.e., it didn’t happen, can create an inseparable barrier to people exploring with each other how God is working in their lives today. 

In my view, there is little to be gained by arguing over the details of this account or other accounts of miracles in the bible.  If we can put aside the issue of this historical nature of the event and whether the details are historical facts, we are much more likely to have a meaningful discussion of how God in working in our lives today.  Rather than argue over the truth of the facts of the case, we can explore the capital ‘T’ Truth of how God was operating in the lives of the people who wrote down the account and explore that Truth in our lives today.

For me, the story of the flood shows that God’s creation is redeemable regardless of how fallen the world seems to be.  God can and does work through individuals who can work to redeem the world against impossible odds.  That is certainly applicable to the world today as we see the challenges that are facing the world from pandemics to a new outbreak of conflict between the Israeli and Palestine - not to mention the chasm that exists between political parties in our neighbour to the south.  To me, it doesn’t matter whether or not a person named Noah existed and whether or not he built an ark that held all those animals.  The Truth is that God has and does work through people to bring about the salvation of the world.  We can have hope in that and not give into despair when we read today’s news.

Blessings on your journey and may you know the Truth of God in your life.

Reconsidering the God of the Old Testament

I am currently auditing an Old Testament course at Huron University College in London Ontario.  I signed up for it after getting a taste of what was on offer at the first lecture which is, of course, offered by Zoom.  Lorna had signed up for the course so it is through her encouragement that I was introduced to what should be a very engaging overview of a subject that is well worth exploring further.  The course is being led by Murray Watson who did a great job in the first lecture and left me wanting more.   

I have not taken a formal course in the Old Testament since studying theology at Huron almost twenty years ago, so I thought this would be a good way to dip my big toe into those very deep waters again.  I must confess that I have always been fascinated by the Old Testament ever since I was captivated by all the stories of heroes such as David the shepherd boy slaying the giant Goliath or the blind Samson pulling down the building and killing all those evil Philistines.  The stories of Jesus in the New Testament just didn’t do it for the young me until much later when I could more fully appreciate that love can be more powerful than heroic acts even when the underdog defeats the forces of evil.   

The Old Testament of the Christian bible is deep water with many currents and eddies and even rip tides that can be hard to navigate for Christians who follow Jesus who proclaimed and lived out his life as the son of a God of love.  The first lecture had an interesting exploration of these challenging waters with a short discussion of the heresy of Marcion.  Marcion who was a second century Christian theologian who taught that the malevolent God of the Old Testament was a different God than the benevolent one of the New Testament who sent his son Jesus Christ to redeem the world. 

Now Marcion was heretical and indeed wrong in his belief that the God who made a covenant with Abraham and wrestled with Jacob was not the God whom Jesus Christ prayed to as his Heavenly Father.  However, even a cursory reading of the Old Testament will reveal what might have been the basis of his heresy.  The OT God who – as an aside had many different names such as Elohim, El-Shaddai, Yahweh, Jehovah and Adonai – did not seem to often believe in justice for people who were not his chosen ones despite what the prophets proclaimed and was not slow to anger as the psalmist sang – at least not always.  Yahweh would have wiped out the Israelites after they demanded the Golden Calf to worship if it wasn’t for the intercession by Moses.  It is this God who sent the flood and drowned the world and everything in it except for Noah and the favoured few people and animals in the Arc.  Yahweh also commanded the Israelites slaughter of the inhabitants of the Promised Land, “You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded.” (Deuteronomy 20:17)

So, how do we reconcile the difference between the God the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament without following Marcion down the dead end of his heresy?  How can we reconcile the apparent differences in the actions and behavior of God?  I believe that it was not God that was different but rather, it was the people who saw and heard God through the lens of their culture and times.  The people of the OT were not ready to appreciate a God that did not have at least some of the characteristics that we see as negative today.  Similarly, people today are not ready to embrace the message of what it means to pick up our crosses and truly follow Jesus - I am in no way claiming I do this a lot of the time.  For me the key is in John 16:12-13 - "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." 

Murray Watson addressed this in a more learned manner in a response to me:

I prefer to think more in terms of "evolution" and "transformation" over time (as you suggest in your message). We often speak of "progressive revelation" over hundreds of years, and you're right ... those who received some of that revelation in the earlier centuries lived in a world of warriors, constant violence and battles ... and their understanding of God definitely fit into that familiar framework. I often go back to what I learned in my university courses in Thomistic philosophy; St. Thomas Aquinas said (in Latin): "Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur" (Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the recipient) ... as human beings, we are conditioned by our time

Carl Jung affirmed the same point when speaking of people not being conscious enough to appreciate the truth of the world in which we live, “There does seem to be unlimited knowledge present in nature, it is true, but it can be comprehended by consciousness only when the time is ripe for it.”  I do wonder how the people of the future will regard the follies and foibles and atrocities of our world.

Perhaps we are blessed if we can do our utmost to avoid heretical paths on our journey.

Natural Law Is Not Spiritual Law

Recently I was given the gift of an epiphany in something written by Rev. Sherry De Jonge.  It was the concept of spiritual law https://www.exultantministries.org/post/god-of-the-impossible:

An old woman and a virgin will each bear a son. Impossible in the natural, but we forget that we also live in a creation that is spiritual – it has spiritual laws and it has spiritual consequences,

It is somewhat surprizing to me that I had never thought of spiritual things in terms of spiritual laws that operate in the universe just as there are natural laws.   Natural laws have been developed to describe how the universe operates in material ways which can be weighed and measured even if it is on a quantum level.  I know and have known for much of my life that natural laws do not apply to how God operates in the spiritual lives of people and indeed the world.  This is described in the Gospel of John 3:8 “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

However, it came as something of a surprize when I realized I had not thought of spiritual things in terms of spiritual laws.  As a Spiritual Director you would think that this is obvious.   I do know that God is working in my life and in the lives of everyone in many different ways whether we are aware of it or not.  However, I just never thought of it in terms of laws that govern how the spirit works which can be codified and set down – and on reflection that is probably not the way to understand spiritual laws.   After all it does seem hard to pin down even identify when the spirit is actually present and how it is working in us.  As the Gospel says, “you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”   Sometimes we can be blind to what is right before our eyes.  I take comfort in the obtuseness of the disciples who often didn’t see what was right before their eyes. 

There is much in the Christian Bible and other wisdom writings that point to what can be called spiritual laws.  I am thinking particularly about the beatitudes - the sermon of Jesus which tells us that we are blessed if we live our lives in a spiritual way:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

So, here we have eight rules that can be considered spiritual laws telling us how we can be blessed in our lives.  However, I don’t believe that it would be a good idea to try and set down a comprehensive list of rules and regulations which would define what the spiritual laws are.  That would be applying the rules of natural law to the operation of spiritual law.  I don’t believe that the action of spiritual laws can be weighed and measured and cannot be seen under an electron microscope. 

One of the great mistakes that we make in this modern age is to do just that – try and apply natural laws to spiritual things.  We treat the bible as an historical and a scientific document.  I recently watched for the first time the silent movie classic Metropolis which is available on You Tube.  The theme of the movie addresses just this challenge, “The mediator of the head and the hands must be the heart.”  The heart is not rational and neither is Spiritual Law.  To love your enemy is not rational. 

Another recent blog by Ryan Dueck sums the challenge of not codifying spiritual things as natural law up very well:

It’s not that I all of a sudden have no use for logic or arguments or philosophy or theology or anything like that. No one who reads what I write or listens to what I say would ever come to that conclusion. But like Smith, I think I have come to a point in my life where I am deeply aware of the limits of these endeavours. God is not a logic proof. The life of faith is not an argument or a solution to a rational problem. The gospel is not the “system” that we so often and eagerly reduce it to, but a story and a song. And you and I are not data machines in need of the right inputs. We are lovers who need to be loved into remembering. We are dreamers who need more expansive imaginations. We are a ragged choir in need of a better song. https://ryandueck.com/2021/03/02/wonder-shining-in-my-eyes/

Blessings on your spiritual journey