Author: JOHN
To: Steve, Bob listening
Even though I think in many ways we
are miles apart “philosophically,” I
thoroughly enjoyed reading your last comments. Why? Because you are just so
darn ENTHUSIASTIC. It is not
surprising that you feel the way you do; you are the glass-half-full man and I
am the glass-half-empty man, looking at the same (approximately) thing. I really think you come at this from a whole
different place. You come at it from
the heart and I come at it from the head.
Interestingly, in a recent (over beers) discussion with our mutual friend Jay, he said something
that I think sums up the whole difference between us, and demonstrates that you
and he are pretty much in the same corner. He said: “John, it’s not an
intellectual thing. You don’t get there
through analysis,” or words to that effect. And the two of you may well be exactly right.
But here is the way I see it. We both want to get to the same place. Call it Kansas City. But you are starting out from Chicago, and I
am starting out from …uh…Blacksburg (circa 1969). The trip to Kansas City has got to be different for each of us,
because of our starting points.
One of my starting points is that I
was educated to be a supremely critical reader. Hey, that’s what it means to go to school for about 7 years
studying literature. Whatever I pick up
and start reading, I can’t help but apply many years of the principles of
analysis and critique to. (You did not
see a preposition at the end of that sentence!). And when I read the Bible I
very plainly see (from my point of view) all kinds of things that to me are
obviously not literally true. I see
narrator after narrator with his own horse to ride. I have to take much with a grain of salt. And yet, I can still read it and take
valuable things from it, which I try to do.
I think that you and I are actually
very much in agreement as to the concept of God, but with regard to Jesus we
differ. For one thing, I don’t even
believe that it is necessary to know Jesus in order to enter God’s
kingdom. I think that Jesus is one
door, and a very important one, but I am not particularly drawn to it. I think that He is there to help many millions
of people like yourself to find their way in, and to find it from where they
are starting from. As for me, I am more
drawn to some other (perhaps lesser, smaller) doors. They have names like Walt Whitman, Ram Dass, Gautama Buddha,
Martin Luther King, Garrison Keillor, Jane Roberts, Alan Watts, Krishnamurti,
and maybe even LSD! God put all these
doors in the world for us, and many more, because He wants to give us every
opportunity to enter His kingdom.
The problem I have with many
Christians (and I don’t mean you — if they were all like you I wouldn’t be
talking about having a problem!) is that they believe (I want to say “have been
taught to believe”) that there is only one way to go, and futhermore that
anyone who doesn’t agree is (though they may say “sadly”) bound for hell. It just ain’t so, Steve! My God is way bigger than that! I honestly don’t even believe that Jesus
meant for us to worship Him. I don’t
think he meant for a whole church to be founded on worshipping Him. I believe that everything he said and did
was meant to point to the Father. And
for that Jesus is certainly to be admired, and praised, and seen as a role
model, and respected, and shared with other people, and his message
disseminated. But that’s just it: his
message. His message was to love God
and to seek God. To worship Jesus
himself to me is as if someone started
a church to worship Martin Luther King. Now Martin Luther King is probably number one on my all-time respect
list for anyone who has ever walked this earth! But should I worship him? Would he have wanted me to?
Maybe you and I are like the two sons
in the prodigal son parable. You are
the son who stayed home, and I am the one who went out and tasted the world’s
pleasures. And maybe I have to pay the
price (maybe I already have paid some of it). All I know is that if anybody gave me this brain, it was God
Himself. I have to agree with Bishop
John Spong that I don’t want a church where I have to check it at the
door. No, if something is true, then it
will stand the test of the best brains, and the closest scrutiny, and there will
still be wheat when the chaff has been thrown to the wind.
I continue to study the Jesus story because I think there are still things I can learn from it. I think you are interested in my (and Bob's) point of view for the same reason. It hink God looks on and says, "This is good."
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