Heresies for Holy Week: Day 5

Rev. John Wilde is a Presbyterian minister, friend, and yes, heretic. But only his friends can call him that. He blogs at the John Wilde Blog among other places. The heresy I am posting today is not from any of his blogs, but a comment he wrote on one of my posts.

How do I know it is heresy?

Well...

Snad liked it.

Maybe you will too!

Magic Jesus believers refuse to acknowledge what is totally obvious. The people who wrote the Gospels KNEW they were writing fiction. I'm not saying that they created Jesus. But it's clearly similar to the historical novel genre of our times. If people today want to believe in a magical Jesus, that's their right although many are forced into such belief when they really want to acknowledge reality.

They don't have to force it on others who want to be a part of a Christian Church for all the right reasons: compassion, justice, parties, dancing, singing, meditating, peacemaking, eating, drinking, thinking, sharing, welcoming, making friends. reconciling, laughing, crying, liberating and more.

'Nuff said.

Heresies for Holy Week: Day 4

Today's heresy comes from Carol Howard Merritt, a Presbyterian minister in Washington, D.C. A few days ago Carol wrote this piece for the Huffington Post, Is God Vengeful? The Meaning of Holy Week for Social Justice Christians.

Because Carol questions the Satisfaction Theory of Atonement and labels it for what it is, bloodthirsty, vengeful, divine child abuse, etc., she gets the honor of being my heretic of the day! Go Carol! Preach it!

Historically, we have this notion that God the Father sent Jesus the Son to die in order to pay for our wrongs. Jesus was the last, perfect sacrifice. Ancient traditions are full of sacrificial systems and the need for a cosmic reckoning extends back for centuries.

We offend people, get angry, lose patience, become unfaithful, and make mistakes, and so we yearn for the ability to compensate for the wrongs, to wipe our record clean. In this heavenly economy, there is a timeworn idea that the lifeblood of an animal needs to flow, or crops need to be burned in order to make amends with God.

On Holy Week, Christians have said that Jesus Christ died in order to remunerate the final payment for our misdeeds. But what does that say about God? Do we serve a divine being that needs blood to forgive? And, even more disturbing, would we worship a Creator who would require the sacrifice of God's son to extend mercy?

That sort of reckoning may have made sense in ancient times, but now it puts into question the nature and character of God. Is God vengeful? Does God need payment for wrongs that have been committed? Is God bloodthirsty? Is God some sort of divine child abuser, a being who needs to see his own Son suffer so that our wrongs might be paid for?

....Jesus was tortured and killed. As we think about the misery of Jesus, then our focus widens and we begin to realize the hardships of other humans. We take the time to remember the distress of those in Haiti who still do not have homes to live in, those who are living with the stench of dead bodies rising up around them. We reflect on those who have been bombed in their cities.

We imagine what it is like to live with the threat of Malaria or AIDS. We recognize the homeless whom we would ordinarily ignore on our streets. We listen to those who have been thrown out of their houses because they have lost their jobs, cannot make their mortgage payments, and cannot sell their homes, because their house value dropped....

....Traveling with Jesus, reading this story, and remembering that brutal assassination gives Christians the ability to see suffering not as something that happens to the weak, but something that happens in unjust societies, that can occur to the innocent, and will happen to all of us. And the act of focusing our attention on suffering, of having active compassion for those who endure it, just might save our souls.

Carol uses measured language in her essay. But she echoes what feminist theologians have been saying for a long time. Remember the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference when Delores Williams said:

"I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all…I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff."

She was right then. She is right today.

Rita Nakashima Brock, author of Saving Paradise writes:

One of the great controversies to emerge from Re-Imagining was our rejection of the atonement, the idea that the torture and execution of Jesus Christ saved the world. My theological career has been spent dismantling that doctrine. I want to tell you today that I am convinced that atonement theology is the deepest betrayal of Christianity ever perpetrated. It is not just one way to understand salvation, but a betrayal of salvation, a doctrine that abandoned the life and ministry of Jesus Christ for loyalty to Caesar and his legions.

John Shelby Spong put it deliciously:

Let me state this boldly and succinctly: Jesus did not die for your sins or for my sins.

That proclamation is theological nonsense. It only breeds more violence, as we seek to justify the negativity that religious people dump on others because we can no longer carry its load. We must rid ourselves of it. One can hardly refrain from exhorting parents not to spare the rod lest they spoil the child, if the portrait of God at the heart of the Christian story is that of an angry parent who punishes the divine Son because he can take it and we cannot.

I offered my heresies on the topic here.

Once upon a time, God created Heaven and Earth. God is good, just, and perfect. He created Adam and Eve and put them in a garden. Well we know that is fiction as we know that human beings are the product of evolution that has taken billions of years. But OK.

Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying. A talking snake convinced the "bad" woman to eat some fruit from a tree from which they weren't supposed to eat. The logic of this is that because of Eve and Adam everyone on the planet therefore deserves eternal punishment in hell.

I know. It is kind of a leap for me, too.

God's honor has been damaged by Adam and Eve's sin. So God sent Jesus the God/Man to be sacrificed (like a goat) to satisfy God's honor and to pay the penalty that we deserve, in fact you deserve, even though you didn't eat the fruit. But you did all kinds of other bad things and had bad thoughts (usually having to do with sex) so it all washes.

But if you believe in that story you will go to heaven and not hell.

That story is supposedly better than what really happened?...

....There was and is nothing sacred and holy about the execution and torture of Jesus or of anyone. "Holy Week" is a misnomer as is "Good Friday." If anything, remembering the death of Jesus should summon us to honor life not death. It should give us the courage and commitment to speak out and not remain silent in the face of torture, execution, violence, injustice, and needless suffering around the world.

Heresies for Holy Week: Day 3

I decided to add one of my own heresies to the mix. A few years ago I wrote an essay for the Jesus Seminar that had to do with how the insights of biblical scholarship affected the business of the church, including preaching and worship. It was a liberating exercise for me and I will share some of what I still think is true from the paper What to Preach? The Challenge of the Jesus Seminar to Contemporary Homiletics (woot, fancy title):

I believe that many clergy are overdue for a heart to heart with their congregations about the metaphor “Word of God” especially as it applies to the Bible. I have found that this metaphor more often stops creative thought than inspires it. The question we might ask our congregations is, “If the Bible is the Word of God, what makes it so?”

Modern scholarship has eroded the foundations for this metaphor. We have come to a time in which it is incredible to assert that our canon of scripture is objectively true or authoritative for all of humanity. Appeals to the Bible’s historical or scientific accuracy are naive. The claim that our canon has been dictated or inspired by supernatural revelation amounts to little more than special pleading. There is no magic power that makes the Bible or any text within it superior, truer, or more divinely inspired that any other human writing, religious or secular. The hands of human beings through their own imaginative power made every jot and tittle of carving and of script. The Bible is a collection of the writings of humans for humans. Once we dismiss the assumption that our book or library of books is more authoritative than any other collection, we can finally take our seat around the table of humanity.

When faith communities begin demythologizing the Bible, some interesting things will happen. The Bible’s authority will shift away from the text and toward the individual interpreter or community of interpreters. No longer will the Bible be considered an authoritative source of truth that contains infallible propositions about God or the human condition. Rather, it will become a resource for wisdom. Since authority is earned by the truth it tells, the Bible will have whatever authority the individual or community gives to it. People may find through its narratives, poetry, and song, an oasis of spiritual refreshment. Or they may not. It will be up to the people (both collectively and individually) to draw out what is meaningful and good and to discard what is not meaningful and good.

The preacher’s task will be to offer permission and encouragement for the congregation to engage in this discipline of freedom. The preacher can no longer assume that within a biblical text is a Word from God that needs to be teased out through exegesis and delivered to the waiting faithful. The preacher can no longer assume that just because a text is in the Bible that it is from God or is even valuable. A preacher can, however, provide information about a text using such tools as literary and historical criticism. The preacher can also provide an opinion regarding the text’s value for the community of faith. The preacher may even use the text as an impetus to speak about a contemporary concern. But I believe it is unethical for a preacher to make the claim that what s/he is saying is true, good or of God because it is based on his or her interpretation of a biblical text. In other words, a preacher cannot use a biblical text to prove a point. Anything a preacher says must stand on its own terms. This ethic will free both the biblical text and the preacher. The text will be freed from the preacher’s misuse of it. The preacher will be freed from the constraints of needing to “preach from the Bible” or to have everything s/he says to be backed by scripture.

Preaching can do a great deal of good in a community of faith. It can inspire, comfort, challenge, and inform for the betterment of humanity. Preaching can also do a great deal of harm. The harm results not so much on the content of the message or its style of delivery as on the implied authority of the preacher because s/he supposedly preaches the Word of God. I believe that Word of God is not only a meaningless metaphor; it is also a harmful metaphor for both the Bible and the preaching act. I recommend that preachers discontinue its use and have this conversation with their congregations.

What approach, lens, angle of vision, or metaphor might we take toward the Bible that will make it a helpful resource in the Sunday morning experience? I consider the Bible to be the family history of our spiritual ancestors. It is a collection of the record of human experiences canonized by various family historians. Our family history gives us rooted-ness. We have a story. We have a past. Our ancestors do have wisdom. I believe that they caught a glimpse of the fire. If we are wise, humble, and courageous, we can see that fire as well. It is out of respect for our ancestors, our need for rooted-ness, and our need to listen to the wisdom of the ancients that we “open and read.” The advantage of this metaphor is that it allows us to appreciate that there are other families on this earth. They have family histories as well. Telling our stories to one another (without the competition about whose is more objectively authoritative) will enable us to engage more positively and peacefully with those of other faith traditions. Also, family histories are never complete. Like the genealogist who discovers great Uncle Albert, who for some reason was not mentioned in the family history, so too, scholars of Christian origins have found remnants of communities whose stories were not told, or at least told positively, in the canon of accepted lore. These “Uncle Alberts” include communities reflected in the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary and numerous others. As we discover the great diversity of our Christian past, we who are charged with adding to the family history for our descendants, will now be obligated to include these voices as well.

Careful thought must be employed regarding the use of texts from the Bible and other non-canonical literature during the Sunday Morning experience. It would help level the playing field by not elevating the canonical literature over any other reading. Also, preachers must come clean with their congregants regarding the type of literature the text they have selected represents. Simply determining if it is history or fiction is a good start. Particularly with Jesus material, the preacher needs to be honest as to whether the material is historical, legendary or if it fits some other typology.

Heresies for Holy Week: Day 2

It is Tuesday of Holy Week. Welcome to today's heresy!

First a question from the Westminster Larger Catechism.

Question 29: What are the punishments of sin in the world to come?

Answer: The punishments of sin in the world to come, are everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell fire forever.

Lovely.

And what do you make of it, Mr. Robert Ingersoll?

If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine.

It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child.

It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender, it has furrowed the cheeks of the good.

This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear?

I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.

Heresies for Holy Week: Day 1

I am thinking up some blasphemous things to post for Holy Week.

One of the ablest truth tellers and most creative blasphemers is Olive Ann Burns. In every congregation I have served I have quoted this piece during one of my Easter sermons.

Since I already presented this in my current congregation, I won't this year. But I post it here as one of my favorite heresies. This is from the novel, Cold Sassy Tree.

In this scene, young Will Tweedy is talking to his grandpa about theological matters. Grandpa speaks first:

“We held church up at the house this morning.”

“Sir?”

“I was the preacher, Miss Love was the pi-ana player, and the both of us made up the congregation. Hit was a real nice service.” He enjoyed seeing I was confused. “Wish you’d a-been there, son. We sang us some hymns, after which I talked to the Lord a while, tellin’ Him bout the week, and I then preached a sermon. Tell you the truth, I think it upset Miss Love.”

“Sir?”

“I didn’t have no words thought out, you know, so I jest commenced sayin’ thangs I been a-thinkin’ on lately—about the Virgin Birth and Resurrection and all like thet. I said don’t any a-them thangs matter. Well, Miss Love like to had a fit. Said she warn’t raised to think like thet. I said I warn’t neither, but thet didn’t keep me from thinkin’, and I ast her do Methodists interrupt and argue with the preacher or do they sit and listen to what he’s got to say.”

“Gosh, Grandpa. You mean you don’t think Jesus rose from the dead?”

“I’m a-sayin’ thet did He or didn’t He ain’t important, son. What’s important is thet when the spirit a-Jesus Christ come down on them disciples later, they quit settin’ round a-moanin’ and a-tremblin’, and got to work. They warn’t scairt no more, and the words they spoke had fire in’m. Compared to a miracle like thet, Jesus rollin’ back a dang rock and flyin’ off to Heaven ain’t nothin’.”

“What did Miss Love say to that, Grandpa?” I was real excited.

“Nothin’. I didn’t let her interrupt me agin. I said thet same miracle is still a-happenin’, right here in Cold Sassy, in July of nineteen aught-six. A crippled person or a invalid, or the meanest thief or the most despairin’ misfit, why, if’n he can ketch aholt of the spirit of Jesus Christ, he can quite bein’ scairt and be like risin’ up from the dead. Once his soul gits cured, no matter what his body’s like, why, he can start a new life. Well, next I preached about the Virgin Birth. To my thinkin’, the birth ain’t the dang miracle. Hit’s the fact thet a boy like Jesus was born to a mama who could leave Him be. Well, and then I talked to Miss Love bout Eternal Life. As you know, son, jest believin’ we go’n live forever in the next world don’t make it so—or not so.”

I felt awful. “Grandpa, you don’t think Granny’s gone to Heaven? She ain’t Up There waitin’ on us to come?”

“I like to think so, son. If’n they is a Heaven, she’s Up There, I know thet,” he said softly. Then he laughed and slapped his hand on Satan’s rump. “Ain’t but one way to find out if she is or ain’t, though. And I’m not thet curious.” He sighed, spat, and said, “Havin’ faith means it’s all right either way, son. ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ means I trust Him. Whatever happens in this life or the next, and even if they ain't a life after this’n, God planned it. So why wouldn’t it be all right?” He looked dead serious, then all of a sudden laughed again. “You know, if’n I was a real preacher, Will Tweedy, wouldn’t nobody come to my church.”

“I would, Grandpa.” pp. 187-9