Is Your God “You” Enough? …And What That Means for Evaluating the Fourth Gospel --- Deification of Humans

I started reading a book entitled Is Your God Big Enough, Close Enough, You Enough? Jesus and the Three Faces of God (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2017) some time ago as spiritual reading-research. Author (Theologian-Pastor) Paul Smith’s approach is novel and intriguing, especially the “You Enough” part. He invites us to think of and relate with God keeping firmly in mind what he terms the “three faces of God”: God as "big" (transcendence), "close" (immanence), and even as "me myself" (radical immanence).

One major assertion of Smith is that these are the very same ways in which Jesus himself related with God. There are actually abundant references to this in the gospels. Jesus (the historical person) related with God as transcendent Father, as the One over all beings and things (e.g., Matthew 11:26 / Luke 10:21 “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth …); Jesus also related with God as a close intimate Being (e.g., John 17:21 “May they be one as you are in me and I am in you”). But then, Jesus also spoke “as God!” (e.g., John 10:30, “The Father and I are one!”). Christians have always taken that last statement to be a reference to a special ontological divine status that Jesus had. Smith, on the other hand, seems to suggest that relating to God as “one with you,” that is, “as you” is something each and every Christian should also do, just like Jesus!

I was particularly intrigued, as mentioned, by the assertion that the God we believe in and relate with should also be “you [or ‘me’] enough.” I never heard that we have to think and relate with God as being “myself” because, in traditional Christian doctrine, that is tantamount to idolatry! However, on careful consideration, I can say that this way of thinking of and relating with God has actually many things to commend it. It leads to other significant insightful epiphanies. Among these are: it can be linked with the principle of "nonduality," the goal, we can argue, of every and all genuine spiritual paths, that is, of the whole enterprise of spirituality! It could also be taken as an effective way (the most radical and thorough one actually!) to explain the Christian Trinitarian (or any religion’s concept of) God’s immanence. A third insight I picked up is that it can positively account for the phenomenon in the Gospel of John of Jesus being clearly "divinized."

That third insight requires more comment. At some point in my life-journey, after I clearly realized that the portrait of Jesus in John is by and large non-historical and more a reflection of John and his community’s kind of (high Christological) faith in Jesus, I have to admit that John became somewhat of a disappointment for me, given my zeal to seek for the historical Jesus. There are many voices regarding the pluses and minuses of “divinizing” Jesus. We can no longer change Christian history; it is what it is. However, my interest in the historical study of Jesus has made me realize that John does present a challenge for people to see Jesus as a truly historical, flesh-and-blood first century carpenter-turned-rabbi!

So this suggestion that <the God we worship actually desires to be and should be appropriated by us as radically immanent> was a breath of fresh air. From this vantage point, John’s Gospel is more clearly revealed to be mystical and John, a mystic - someone who saw that Jesus and God are linked in a nondual way, hence, Jesus could also be called "One with the Father" (Jn 10:30).

However, why was John so unloving to his enemies in certain parts of his gospel? Here we can use the principle from Integral Theory that one can have a "mystical experience," a "waking up" experience in any stage of growth. The waking up experience is not a panacea. The person will interpret his/her mystical experience in terms of the stage of growth in which s/he finds herself. John, it can be said, was apparently still in an ethnocentric stage, even though he had a deep and significant "waking up" experience about the non-duality between YHWH and Jesus!

The logic then is: If relating with God as “Me Enough” was true for Jesus, that is also true for each one of us. We, like Jesus, can be "one with the Father (Abba-God, in his terminology). In other words, God should also be “me enough!”

“Theosis”

In order to show us that his assertion that we should relate with God as “me enough” is a bona-fide Christian practice, Smith provides us with a veritably amazing, eye-opening substantial compendium of references in Scripture and from tradition to the explicit declaration that “we are gods” or that “our goal is to be divinized.” I'm just amazed at the constant thread in the Christian tradition, particularly in the Christian East (but also some data from the West), which makes reference to the fact that one of the most important matters in Christian existence and Christian anthropology is the notion that humans are called to “become gods” - that is, deification, theosis! (Cf. pp. 183-96 of the book).

 It is impressive that there are a great many scriptural passages that explicitly mention the teaching of deification, theosis (transformation into divinity), apotheosis (deification = apo [change] + theosis = changing into divinity), and the like. This teaching has indeed been unfortunately by and large neglected in the Western Christian tradition! Now, thanks to Smith’s insights, I am convinced that theosis is a major teaching of Christianity because of overwhelming evidence in the tradition! Thanks also to the Eastern Christian tradition that has treasured this principle in a particular way!  (Cf. pp. 196-203)

Some Characteristics of the Religiosity and Spirituality of Millennials

I thought that this TED talk was particularly enlightening and good in identifying some dominant characteristics of the religiosity or spirituality of millennials.

(Some salient points from an online TED talk of Prof. Paul Robertson of New Hampshire University)

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmLbD3m6Z3w&t=0s&list=WL&index=15

No less religious-spiritual than other generations! With regard to 'beliefs and practices', millennials are no less religious-spiritual than other generations. The factor that sets them apart is that their beliefs and practices are removed from institutionalized-organized religion and are more individual, private and independent.

Functionalism - religion's value is the function that it performs in society. Society is an organism. Religion enables society as an organism to function properly. It’s like football in New England (the speaker’s local context). When Sunday comes, you know how to dress, what to do, where to go, who to root for or against, etc. 'Football', functionally speaking, plays a huge role in New England. Religion does a similar thing when considered from the point of view of functionalism.

Structuralism - our institutions, beliefs and practices form a structure so that when we are “in this structure” we know where we are located, what role we have to play in this incredibly complex universe. Religions create such a structure. You don't have to inquire about everything anymore. A structure "puts you in your place" and you know it. However, nowadays, when people (especially the youth) are not religious anymore (in a structural way), the meaning of life is not so clear anymore. People don't know their "place" in the universe anymore. The traditional religious view is that we are "imago dei." Is it any wonder that the instances of depression are more numerous today today than in ages past?

SBNR - among millennials, 72% say they're "spiritual but not religious".  In short, many still believe that there's something bigger than themselves. Millennials, although not religious, still believe that there's a "bigger meaning" to life. IN SHORT, WE ARE AS RELIGIOUS AS EVER!

Is There Really a Need to Supernaturalize Spirituality?

Yesterday, it just occurred to me that the quest for spirituality among many people nowadays is found primarily in very ordinary, quotidian experiences, in the so-called "simple joys of life," such as love, family bonding, compassion, enjoying a beautiful sunny day out in the park (as our extended family did yesterday), etc. In order to make these very ordinary experiences a means to deepen one's spirituality, one just has to—as the Buddhist tradition teaches— be mindfully aware of them, savor and cherish them, and then, seek to deepen and transcend oneself (my definition of 'spirituality'),  particularly through compassion. 

If that is the case, my burning question is: Why do we even have to "supernaturalize" or "box in" the very human quest for depth and transcendence into the category of "religion" with its supernatural categories? Is that even useful? Isn't doing that a cause for the great divorce between spirituality and everyday life? This group of questions certainly needs further reflection on my part.

I have this nagging feeling that, at least for some (many? most?), spirituality nowadays could very well remain at this very basic human level. And then, if there is indeed a God,  S/he would lead people very "organically" to whatever goal or end that S/he has in mind, without forcing an unnatural, dichotomized type of religion (between natural and supernatural).

I was thinking of these things while we were having a beautiful moment of family bonding at a park yesterday on a gorgeously beautiful spring day.

I am also reminded of what contemporary spirituality teacher Diana Butler Bass wrote in her book Grounded about the spiritual revolution that, she claims, is currently afoot. The only thing is, this spiritual revolution seems to be  grounded in very human, mundane, earthy things. Butler Bass writes,

It is surprisingly easy to join in [the spiritual revolution]: get off the elevator, feel your feet on the ground, take a walk or hike, plant a garden, clean up a watershed, act on behalf of the earth, find your roots, honor your family and home, love your neighbor as yourself, and live the Golden Rule as you engage the commons. Pay attention. Play. Sing new songs, recite poetry, write new prayers and liturgies, learn sacred texts, make friends with those of other faiths, celebrate the cycles of the seasons, and embrace ancient wisdom. Weep with those who mourn. Listen for the whisper of God everywhere. Work for justice. Know that your life is in communion with all life.

The spiritual revolution, finding God in the world, is an invitation to new birth, most especially for religion. There is no better place to start than in your synagogue, mosque, temple, or church.

Grounded, 284

(originally written 2018-05-07)

Young Catholics ... Going, Going ... Gone ...

I came upon this article at NCR on a study on disaffiliation of young Catholics in the US entitled  'Young Catholics, going, going, gone..."
Link: https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/study-asks-why-are-young-catholics-going-going-gone

Link to publisher's (St. Mary Press) original Study: https://www.smp.org/dynamicmedia/files/d005d252a8caebcc1193f6cb755fd234/5926_Sampler.pdf


In the article, (a personal acquaintance) Elizabeth Drescher's remarks are striking:

Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct associate professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University, spoke at one of the sessions the day after the report was presented. She has studied and written about "unaffiliation" and says those trying to understand it typically approach in one of two ways, which she saw during the evening discussion.

It usually comes down to, she told NCR, asking either what's wrong with the unaffiliated — "Are they superficial? Are they narcissistic? Did they have bad parenting?" — or asking, "Why don't they like us?"

The truth, she said, is neither. It's much more complicated. At a time when we live longer lives, and religious identity is not sealed upon us at birth and violently enforced by the authorities, and global culture has been reshaped forever by a digital revolution, traditional Western religious structures no longer fit the bill.

"We still have the fantasy that people will orient their spiritual identity around an institutional framework that worships in a particular place and time," said Drescher. "But that's not going to really solve the problem. I don't know that it's a problem to be solved to fix disaffiliation, but to what extent can churches and other organizations engage and adapt to the cultural currents of the present age?"

My take:
Traditional religious structures and institutions might still have a role as filling (bluntly speaking, nothing but) a "niche" in the task of shaping people's spiritualities and religiosities nowadays but the vast majority of people in western societies have moved on from traditional religion and do not find an exclusive and regular attendance of traditional institutions necessary anymore. Religious institutions will just have to accept that. PERIOD.

In order to stay relevant, people and institutions that have been in the Religion-Spirituality business up to now must reconfigure themselves to become truly open, non-exclusive entities that welcome any sort of seeker (even if s/he comes only  irregularly) and that offer a plan and proposal for deepening one's spirituality. They should not be overly attached to preserving traditional forms of worship.

That is usually too high a cost to pay for traditional institutions who will still try: to preserve the status quo, to keep up their self-conviction of having a direct line to God, to not change "sacred tradition," to "impose" and authoritatively "demand" how believers are to worship and live. Hence, they will increasingly be shunned and consigned to powerless irrelevancy, except for a few people still willing to be "controlled" in a traditional way.


/jkk

Religions are Like Languages

To me, religions are like languages: no language is true or false; all languages are of human origin; each language reflects and shapes the civilization that speaks it; there are things you can say in one language that you cannot say or say as well in another; and the more languages you learn, the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes. Judaism is my mother tongue, yet in matters of the spirit I strive to be multi-lingual. In the end, however, the deepest language of the soul is silence.Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Source: http://www.rabbirami.com/Accessed: 2017-01-30

What particularly struck me here is "the more languages you learn, the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes." That really hits the nail on the head! For years now I've been working on hybridity and its relation to religion and spirituality ... and to life itself. Here, Shapiro says it very eloquently: Learn as many languages you can. For me, that means in practice: try to get to know as many different worlds / religious worlds as you can ... even to the point when you can claim to a certain extent that you know these worlds somehow as an insider. You are going to be tremendously enriched by that! That has been my personal experience in my life journey so far.

Is 'Why' an Important (Ultimate) Question?

I'm reading Rami Shapiro's Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent now. In the part in which he deals with the question "Why," he provocatively asks: Is 'Why' even a relevant question?
He answers by saying that, in a profound sense, 'why' is not relevant, nay, it could even be a dangerous distraction. He uses the story of Job in the Hebrew Scriptures to comment on that. When Job demands to know the 'why' of his suffering, God seems to indicate that this question is irrelevant because life is chaotic and wild while, at the same time, also oftentimes beautiful and grand. One can just stand in front of the great mystery and live it to the full with radical acceptance. ...

The God Beyond Naming

For some time now, I've been deeply interested in the theme of idolatry and how it has reared its head in the Bible and in Christian/religious history. Here is a quote from Rabbi Rami Shapiro that speaks to this theme.

"What I am saying is that all theologies and ideologies are of human origin. The gods produced in these systems are gods that can be named and not the Eternal God beyond naming. This doesn't mean there is no God, only that whatever this God may be, it cannot be named, owned, or monopolized by any group to sanction its own ends and excuse whatever means it uses to achieve those ends."
Rami Shapiro
Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent, 2013, p. 182

 

Bethlehem, Palestinian Christians and all that ...

An very informative and thought-provoking article from The Washington Post at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/23/evangelicals-side-with-israel-thats-hurting-palestinian-christians/?postshare=1071482743329708&tid=ss_tw-bottom&utm_term=.f67076664c1f

Some interesting quotes and points

• "Bethlehem is the most heavily Christian city in Palestine. Its Arab Christian mayor, Vera Baboun, describes her hometown the “capital of Christmas” and says that between Bethlehem proper and the surrounding Bethlehem governate, there are upward of 38,000 Christian residents. "
• "One of the greatest challenges that IDC is working to tackle is the perception that the Middle East is void of religious minorities,” said Philippe Nassif, executive director of In Defense of Christians a U.S.-based organization dedicated to raising awareness of the challenges facing Middle East Christians. Nassif, who is of partial Arab Christian descent, told me that while some mainline Protestant congregations have begun to recognize and advocate for Palestinians in recent years, American evangelicals display little such awareness."
  "According to a 2013 Pew Research survey, more than 80 percent of evangelical Christians in America believe that God gave the land of Israel for Jewish people; just 40 percent of American Jews believe the same."
• "Fundamentally, however, American Christians have misunderstood one of the core complexities of the Israel-Palestine conflict: that it isn’t simply a confrontation between Muslims and Jews. Christians, too, are caught up in the strife, but typically overlooked."

/jkk

What Causes Suffering?

(from Ken Wilber's writings)

I thought this was a very thoughtful piece. It shows Buddhist influence.

"What causes suffering is the grasping and desiring of the separate self, and what ends it is the meditative path that transcends self and desire. The point is that suffering is inherent in the knot or contraction known as self, and the only way to end suffering is to end the self. It's not that after enlightenment, or after spiritual practice in general, you no longer feel pain or anguish or fear or hurt. You do. It's simply that they no longer threaten your existence, and so they cease to be problematic. You are no longer identified with them, dramatizing them, energizing them, threatened by them. On the one hand there is no longer any fragmented self to threaten, and on the other, the big Self can't be threatened since, being the All, there is nothing outside of it that could harm it. A profound relaxing and uncoiling occurs in the heart."
-Ken Wilber

The Pocket Ken Wilber, p. 157.
Original Source: CW 5: Grace and Grit, 103-104.

/jkk. Originally from 2017-12-07

About Incarnation and Sacramentality

(Post-Israel Trip Ruminations, cont'd)

I've finished reading Daniel Boyarin's The Jewish Gospels recently and I can say that Boyarin has convinced me that the concept of a high Christology <(by which he means), the concept of a "Son of Man" who is given authority and power by YHWH, sits on a throne with/next to YHWH and is "divinized" in some way> is not a uniquely Christian concept but was present already in Jewish currents of thought even before Jesus' time. Boyarin actually argues it was present way before Jesus' time. This is the concept that is operative in texts such as Daniel 7 and 1 Enoch 14 (see Boyarin's book). 

However, Boyarin concludes that what is uniquely Christian is the idea that that divinized "Son of Man" is not only going to appear on the clouds of heaven in the eschaton (as in Daniel and other 2nd Temple Jewish writings) but is actually here, walking on the earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (pp. 100-101). In short, the "incarnation" in a concrete person of the originally Jewish idea of a divinized "Son of Man" is the Christian innovation. 

I felt this concept keenly at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth where, at the site of Mary's house the sign reads, "Hic, Verbum caro factum est..." (HERE, the Word was made flesh).

 

The philosopher Don Cupitt argues at various points (see, for example, his "The Meaning of the West" book) that the Christian notion of the incarnation is actually the one responsible for secularization because when the distance between the divine and this material world is

collapsed by means of the notion of incarnation, the gulf between the "sacred" and the "profane" is somehow lost and the focus of human religiosity shifts from God "out there" to God (or "Ultimate Meaning") being focused here in the here and now, in the secular, "in carne" (in the flesh) literally!

Also ... While in Israel, I thought a lot about the notion of "Sacramentality."

SACRAMENTALITY - the Christian notion that grace (even God) can be mediated-experienced in a special way through very concrete/material things (such as ... Water). This is what drives the pilgrimage experience! For example, at the various places around the lake of Galilee, my unique sacramental moments involved touching the water of "Jesus' lake" - the sea of Galilee

These are two other thoughts (among many others) that particularly stood out for me as I was on the Israel-Palestine trip last June. 

/jkk (originally written on July 27, 2015)