Filling the Jock Strap of Jesus

Imagine God's inner dialogue:  "How can I get people to listen to me and take me seriously in the Holy Land in early C.E.? I mean, unfortunately females are mostly an unheard lot at this point...I will send a part of myself in the form of a man to get peoples' attention. He will be my son and spread my word. If the role was reversed or men and women saw the equality of a future time, I'd have sent my daughter instead. And SHE would have picked 12 of her apostles (all women), no less - as people would LISTEN TO THEM!"

While smart on God's part, people misconstrue the hell out of Jesus being a man. And have to this very day.

God created man and woman in (his) image. God then, is both male and female. As an all-knowing powerful being, God is both Mother and Father.

In 2010, the article below provides a solid example of a weaksauce argument. Having a penis is irrelevant to "standing in the place of Jesus" (or maybe Wang should have said, "filling the jockstrap of Jesus".)

And Wang cites that this male domination held true in the first century as it does through the ages... then tell me, Wang, why do men not take several concubines, sacrifice goats and have incestuous relations with their daughters? Heck, it happened in the first century so why doesn't it hold true now? Real easy to pick and choose your bigotry when it benefits ye who sports a dick, isn't it?

The Bible (and hence Christianity) will only remain relevant if it can connect with the modern times in a POSITIVE and loving and peaceful way. The boys club of Rome widens that chasm year by year which is why their market share in the religious index continues to dwindle.

Women are every bit as blessed of soul and mind as men. Women can move the hearts of masses in the spirit of Christ just as much as men. And if I want to dredge up some low ball blows (no pun intended) women are physiologically less programmed for pedophilia and more emotionally in-tune to the sufferings of the world.

As Jesus was persecuted, so are women from around the world on a grand scale. In my eyes that makes women equally or even more qualified than men to be at the pulpit.

Think about it.

BONUS ROUND: Other Tidbits of Oppression

The Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Eve conveniently did not make it into the Canonical Bible.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law in the Catholic Church mandated that women wear a veil or head covering. Men did not have to.

Catholic marriage ceremonies (depending on the priest) still insist upon, "Wives, obey your husbands." (mis-used from the New Testament letter from Paul)

Jesus hung out with with women of all persuasions, i.e. Mary Magdalene. But she gets few props.

The church has a pre-occupation with a woman's reproduction. Men? Stick it where you want. The woman is seemingly charged with all sins linked to adultery, abortion and birth control. Men seem to be off the hook with regard to responsibility.

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Catholic Church defends male-only priesthood

August 30th, 2010 - Original Source Link
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/30/catholic-church-defends-male-only-priesthood/?hpt=T2

Barring women from being Catholic priests is not the result of sexism 2,000 years ago, it's because women cannot fulfill a basic function of the priesthood, "standing in the place of Jesus," a leading British Catholic thinker argued Monday. "This teaching is not at all a judgment on women's abilities or rights. It says something about the specific role of the priest in Catholic understanding - which is to represent Jesus, to stand in his place," argued Father Stephen Wang in a statement sent out by the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales. It's rare for the Catholic Church to defend its fundamental positions in this way. Wang was responding to the announcement that campaigners for female priests will plaster posters on London buses next month during the pope's visit to London. The ads read "Pope Benedict - Ordain Women Now!" and will be on 15 double-decker buses running in some of London's main tourist areas, including Parliament and Oxford Street, said Pat Brown, a spokeswoman for Catholic Women's Ordination (CWO). The group spent "in excess of 10,000 pounds" ($15,500) on the ads and is hoping donations will help make up at least part of that cost, Brown told CNN Friday. Wang rejected both the tone and the content of the ads, saying that while an atheist ad campaign last year was "hesitant and ended with gentle exhortations," this one ends "with a shout." And it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding, said Wang, the dean of studies at London's main seminary for Catholic priests, Allen Hall. Pope John Paul II declared in 1994 that the church has no authority to ordain women, a position confirmed a year later by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. At the time, Ratzinger was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the arbiter of Catholic Church dogma. Wang called the late pope's position "surprising," saying John Paul had meant he did not have the power to change "something that has been such a fundamental part of Christian identity from the beginning." The bottom line is that Jesus chose 12 men - and no women - to be his apostles, Wang argues. The choice was "deliberate and significant, not just for that first period of history, but for every age," Wang says. Men and women are equal in Christianity, he continues, but "this does not mean that our sexual identity as men and women is interchangeable. Gender is not just an accident." He compared the role of a priest to that of an actor playing King Arthur or British soccer star Wayne Rooney in a movie. "No one would be surprised if I said I wanted a male actor to play the lead," he said, admitting the analogy was "weak." But, he said, "it shouldn't surprise us if we expect a man to stand 'in the person of Christ' as a priest, to represent Jesus in his humanity - a humanity that is not sexually neutral." The Catholic women's group says that in addition to its bus campaign, it plans to hold a vigil September 15, the day before the pope's visit, outside Westminster Cathedral. The group also plans to demonstrate at Lambeth Palace, the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury - the head of the Church of England - during his meeting with the pope. And members plan to hold a banner along the route of the popemobile, the secure vehicle which carries the pope, in London. Pope Benedict plans to visit England and Scotland September 16-19. It will be the first state visit to the United Kingdom by a pope, according to the British Foreign Office. John Paul's trip in 1982 was officially a pastoral visit.

A Worthy Read

On Sunday, 8-15-10, a man named Samuel Blake Ellis (the grandfather of a popular blogger I follow) passed away due to complications from Parkisons and Alzheimers at the age of 88. He wrote the following thoughts on God about 10 years ago. He was a retired Methodist minister.

This is definitely worth reading whether you agree entirely with him or not.

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GOD

 

Please do not take offense at what I am going to say. In no way do I mean to belittle your beliefs. And please don't don't worry about my "salvation," whatever that may mean to you. My beliefs really serve me well.

I am grateful that over the years I have never been looked down on for asking questions.

"When I was a child I thought like a child...". Children are apt to interpret things literally. No where is this more true than in the realm of religion. All of my playmates were from Roman Catholic families, and we were all aware that there was a difference between Catholics and Protestants.

As a child I felt I knew all about God, but as the years have gone by I find that I agree less and less with the things I've been told about God. Even as a very young person I got away from that kind of thinking, for it didn't fit with some other ideas of God that meant more to me. For example, I was taught, and I still believe, that God is Love, and that God is inextricably related to the welfare of all people. Believing that, I cannot believe that God purposely allows disasters of fire, flood, and earthquake, to say nothing of individual personal pain in the form of physical impairment, bereavement, divorce, assault, automobile accident, etc.

Another idea that I have discarded is that God is all-powerful. If God is a god of love and also all-powerful, God certainly would not cause the difficulties I've just mentioned. If God were all-powerful he would not allow them to happen. So, they must happen in spite of any power that God may have. So, for me, God cannot be both all-powerful and loving.

Take the illustration of a disaster such as an airplane crash that results in some persons dying and others surviving. When I read of parents of a survivor thanking their god for saving their beloved family member I feel like asking them, "What kind of god is this who is willing to save some people, but is unable (or unwilling) to save others?

One thing I am very sure about is that God is neither male nor female, even though I've been using the masculine pronoun for want of one that is adequate. Particularly in the last ten or fifteen years or so of my ministry I became sensitized to the alienation and hurt we males have inflicted upon women and girls by the language we use. And clergy males are no less to blame than lay men.

Once, at the beginning of a meeting of clergy, we were asked to introduce ourselves by name, and then tell what were the best or the worst things that had been part of our lives in our recent past. With a gesture that included all the people in the group, a man spoke of the love and concern he had felt recently from "all my brothers in the ministry" during his recent illness. A young female minister two seats away from him who had sent him a note of encouragement, introduced herself in turn and noted that the worst thing that had happened to her was learning just now that she was a brother of the male minister. It was said gently, and with a touch of humor, but it made very clear how thoughtless we men sometimes are.

At this point I can't resist telling you the story about a rocket that had been sent into space. It fell to earth one Sunday morning just outside a church where a service was in progress. The landing made such a noise that the congregation and minister rushed out to find the rocket stuck firmly in the ground, and there, wonder of wonders, was an angel sitting on the nose cone. When the hubbub had died down, the minister, as spokesperson, posed a question directly to the angel.

Minister: Blessed Angel, we welcome you to Earth. We are honored by your presence. We pray that you would be so kind as to answer a question that you, as a citizen of Heaven, are eminently qualified to clarify.

Angel: I am happy to be with you, and I shall try to answer your question.

Minister: We would like to know, What is God like?

Angel: (after several moments in deep thought) Well, first of all, she's black...!

And that reminds me of what a parishioner said to me when he learned that I was about to retire. Said he in a derogatory manner, "I suppose the bishop will appoint a woman to be our pastor." And, trying to answer in a light manner, I responded, "Yes, and she will probably be black." What made it interesting was that the bishop did indeed appoint a woman, and she was indeed very black.

At my final service of worship before her arrival I did something to symbolize my desire that she be welcomed warmly. I hoped also that what I did would indicate clearly that I would no longer be pastor to this congregation. At the close of the service, using appropriate words, I took off my black clerical robe and placed it upon the altar as an indication that the person who was coming would take up the robe, and with it, the ministering of the congregation that had been my responsibility until then.

PHYSICS AND THE BIBLE

The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav (1979, Morrill Quill Paperbacks) is a physics book dealing with subatomic physics written for the lay person, which has opened an exciting new view of creation for me and has forced me to rethink my place as one human being in the universe as well as my old ideas about god.

 

Writings by Carl Sagan

 

One of the most important ideas that has changed my religious outlook is my discovery that pure chance appears to be what decides things in the sub-atomic physical world. Of course this runs counter to the idea that God purposely directs every single thing that happens.

For me, however, it provides a satisfactory answer to the old problem of evil. That subject has puzzled and bedeviled people for centuries, and perhaps even farther back in prehistory before there were any formal theologians. There has always been a feeling on the part of humans that if they were good, however that was defined, they would be rewarded, and that if they were bad they would be punished.

In our own lives we know that this is not the way it works. Oh, we can try to rationalize by saying that in some mysterious manner it must be for the best that the mother of three little children was killed in an automobile accident. God must have had a good reason for willing, or at least allowing, that sort of thing to happen.

I don't buy that. Rabbi Kushner, in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, does an excellent job of expressing how impossible it would be to respect that kind of god. Also, my own personal experience tells me quite convincingly that good people do not always receive a blessing, and bad people do not always get their just desserts.

I suppose that the ideas of heaven and hell came into being in order to explain that it would only be fair that each person get what he or she deserves If that doesn't happen while the person is alive it seems only right that it should happen in some other life beyond death. That would mean that the good people in this life would go to heaven and bad people would go to hell. That helps many people to feel better when humans don't get what they deserve-either eternal peace or eternal damnation-before they die.

I believe that fairness (justice) is not life's major operating principle. After all, what did I ever do to deserve being born into a loving family where I always had the necessities of life? What terrible thing did a child starving in Ethiopia do to deserve suffering and starvation? How is it that one child is born to an alcoholic mother who doesn't want it, and another child is born to parents who will love and nurture it to responsible adulthood?

Heaven and hell solve the problem for many people, but it doesn't for me. The best explanation I have is that such eventualities come about by chance. Which simply means that all babies are born without being consulted or having any choice in the matter.

The question, "Why me?", asked when cancer strikes, is not taken seriously by those who answer in a supercilious manner with the question, "Why not you?". I love that Old Testament character, Job, who was not patient at all (although crossword puzzles sometimes define him as the epitome of patience) with his friends who kept trying to convince him that he must have done something terribly sinful to have deserved the sorrow and pain that they thought God visited upon him. Job maintained before them and before his God that he was not guilty of anything that merited his suffering.

Many a human being has felt as Job did, and the argument that God, by inflicting pain and suffering, is merely meting out just punishment for unknown sin, is certainly not worthy of a good god. The god Job's friends believed in is not my god.

In the realm of nature, think of the fact that only one of millions of sperm cells succeeds in fertilizing an ovum, and all the rest fail. Why that particular one? Or, what about the fact that an average of only two out of some 700,000 eggs laid by a Pacific salmon ever reach maturity? Why those particular two and not some other two? Given the relevant facts, we can determine what the probabilities are for survival, but we can not say just which specific eggs will produce the survivors. We can predict that a certain number of lives will be lost in automobile accidents for every ten million miles driven, but we cannot be specific and tell by name who the victims will be.

Both fortuitous and hurtful happenings seem to be distributed by chance, and that would be very discouraging if it were not for some other important factors. In other words, if chance were the only operating power we might as well forget about justice, righteousness, and love. We could live any old way we wanted to, because nothing we could do would make a difference in the outcome. The fact is, however, that how we deal with good fortune and bad fortune does make a big difference.

I firmly believe that there is a manner of living which is exceedingly valuable, and I call that way of life Christianity. I hasten to say that I don't believe in everything that has been called Christianity. But, I do wholeheartedly believe in the kind of Christianity that is depicted in the gospels of the New Testament as they reveal the spirit of Jesus. And it is the spirit that is important to me. There are also Old Testament instances that give evidence of that spirit. I firmly believe that the spirit of goodness is not restricted to persons who call themselves Christians. Neither does it belong to any time period in history.

I know it's hard to talk about God as spirit, for spirit is something ethereal, out of reach of the five senses, and yet it's something that we human beings give life to. The idea of God as a superhuman being who is somewhat like us is very pervasive, but I don't believe that there is such a "being" beyond the lives of humans.

My God is goodness itself, a quality of spirit. The spirit I think of as my God, the essence of Goodness, lives where-and at those moments when-a human being gives life to the spirit of love. Love is only an idea until it is expressed in action by a human being; then it becomes a reality!

I don't believe in a literal heaven up in the sky or in a hell that is somewhere in the fiery bowels of the earth. I don't believe in a literal, physical, resurrection of Jesus or in a virgin birth. Some of the parishioners whom I served over the years would be distressed by those statements. I hope that they don't disturb you, but if they do, remember that you don't have to believe as I do. Every person has a right-and a duty-to hold fast his or her own beliefs. You have a right to yours whatever they may be. However, please remember that it's a sign of growth to be willing to give up even long-held beliefs in favor of new ones that you find to be more meaningful.

Religious beliefs are not simply to be mouthed; they should guide and direct personal day-to-day living. Saying we believe something, simply because we have been told by some authority that we ought to believe it, is not good enough. In our childhood we naturally take on beliefs that our parents hold. We hang on to them until our own experience gives us good reason to change them. But, to hold onto beliefs that were passed down to us when we were children if they no longer make sense is to be less than honest with ourselves.

I've heard a story, which may or may not be true, about a young wife who always cut a slice off a roast before she put it in the roasting pan. One day her husband asked why she did that. Her answer was that her mother always did it, and so it must be the right way to prepare a roast, but she agreed to ask her mother about it. When she did, her mother answered that she always cut a slice off the roast because she didn't have a roasting pan big enough for the whole thing.

There's nothing wrong with questioning custom, and there's nothing wrong with questioning our religious beliefs either. It's easy enough to question the beliefs of others, but I'm talking about our own beliefs. Those that can't stand up under our own questioning ought to be discarded, don't you think? I think that a reason some people don't have anything to do with organized religion is that they have questioned certain religious practices and beliefs and have found them wanting. The sad part is that these folks don't investigate anything else.

I'll never forget a visit I made to a man who, I was warned by well-meaning parishioners, was an atheist. In the course of our conversation he enumerated a number of things that he didn't believe. He was somewhat taken aback when I told him that I didn't believe those things either.

There's a lot of superstition in religion, but there is also much that can enrich the lives of human beings. As a result of learning about the attitude and teachings of Jesus through reading about them, and through seeing them work in the lives of others, and experiencing how they have worked in my own life when I have had the courage to practice them, I have come to embrace the following credo.

My understanding of the message of Jesus is that his God wants people to enjoy this life that they have been launched into without their consent. Jesus demonstrated how best to find that joy. Jesus likened his God to a father who loves his children. (He might have chosen a mother image, but in his day it was the father who was the person who was responsible for the family.) To have a father who loved his children in spite of their waywardness was a powerful picture illustrating the spirit he considered to be the greatest Good.

I don't see the God of Jesus as being especially interested in having people bow down before him, or having people do certain acts of kindness and mercy for his benefit. The emphasis of Jesus was not on duty to God, but rather on trying to help people discover how to live happy, valuable, satisfying, good (godly) lives-lives lived in a spirit of goodwill. Apparently Jesus felt that his God would be happy if people lived in such a way that they would be happy. That makes sense to me. After all, isn't it good when we and those we love are happy persons? Don't good parents want their children to be happy persons?.

I believe that I ought to respect all people and treat them with the kind of non-judgmental understanding that I would want to receive from them.

I believe that being good is its own reward. It is futile to "do good" for the purpose of getting a reward. Doing good, and dwelling on that goodness, is the kind of pride that breeds dissatisfaction and resentment when we don't get the recognition and praise from others that we think our moral superiority deserves. And, if I should get praise for being (or doing) good, I would probably begin to believe that I am superior to others. But, doing good and trying to be a good person simply because it is a satisfying way for me to live eliminates any need for the praise of others and allows me to move on to the next adventure with a light and happy heart.

I believe that the only person I can change is myself. If others make changes, good or bad, in their lives because they have known me, it is because they choose to do so. I have no power to coerce them into changing. Nor do I want such power, because that would make them my slaves and take away from them any joy they might find in directing their own lives.

Instead of trying to list all of the rest of the beliefs that have been meaningful to me and have helped me to have a wonderful, satisfying life, let me simply commend to you the teachings of Jesus.

For me, Jesus was not God, nor even a god (small g) but simply a man, a human being, who understood quite clearly the most satisfying way to live his human life. And, don't tell me that makes Jesus "just an ordinary human being." Just the opposite; it means that he was an extraordinary human being. His life was lived in a spirit that defines what goodness (Godliness, if you'd rather say it that way) really is.

I also want to say something about the Church. The Church is certainly imperfect. I find that there are many things in church dogma that I cannot abide. Superstition and belief in magic are still rampant. There are some people who are hard to get along with. There are, however, many church people who are the salt of the earth. And, the Church is the only institution I know which encourages and recommends to all that we search for and practice the highest qualities of human life that we can find. I owe a great deal to the Church. It has given me a wonderful opportunity to practice, in a safe setting, the kind of Christianity I have tried to live outside the Church where there's little safety.

So, to sum up, I don't know much about what or who your God is, but I have enjoyed life as a part of the Church, and have found a great deal of satisfaction in trying to live life in a spirit of goodwill. I like to think I'm getting a little better at it as time goes on.

Oh, but "What about the creation of the universe?", you ask. "Who did that?" I knew you'd be asking that, because I've asked it of myself many times. My answer at the present time is that I don't know, and it doesn't worry me one bit.

For all I know, there may not have been any beginning at all. Maybe the universe is eternal with no beginning and no ending. Our minds, as amazing and wonderful as they are, seem incapable of imagining anything that has no beginning and no ending, but that may say more about our limitations than about the reality of the universe.

So far, nobody has discovered any boundaries to the universe. New telescopes help scientists to discover galaxies and "black holes" at greater and greater distances from us. Of course, they may not even be in existence now, because of the length of time it has taken their light to reach us.

I know about the Big Bang theory, but for me that doesn't explain how the universe was created. There must have been something that BANGED! I have to admit that my mind can't fathom nothing, Anyway, what difference does it make in the way we live with other people and with our environment here on earth today?

Astronomy and astrophysics are fascinating subjects. I'd like to know more about them. And I think it's great that there are people who probe the mysteries of space and time. I respect them. But when I read about astrophysics and, at the other end of the spectrum, the world of subatomic particles, I find myself coming back to the idea that there might be no beginning or ending to what we call the universe.

But, you say, "The Bible says that 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,' doesn't it?" Sure it does, and if you have to have a beginning, that may be the best way of saying it. It simply means that the person who first expressed that idea of God couldn't understand how creation could have come about. The humans he knew couldn't have created it, so he (perhaps she?) decided that a superhuman, supernatural power must have done it somehow for some unknown reason. Maybe the creator was lonely so he made people; maybe he liked color and therefore made sunsets and flowers; maybe he liked to travel so he stretched out the universe so that there would be more room. Maybe! But I see that kind of reasoning as strengthening my belief that we humans create our gods according to our own definitions of goodness.

 

That leads me to say a few things about the Bible. I encourage you to read the Bible as if you had never before heard of it. Read it, and pay attention to what is written there. Try to remember you're reading it as if you had never heard anything about this book. That's hard, because you have heard about it; you have heard some people say that it must be believed as the literal Word of God, and when you read that the sun stood still you ought to believe that the sun actually stopped at some point between its rising and its setting. And when you read of an axe floating in water you should believe it because it's in the Bible. But, try to read it as if you never heard that you ought to believe such things.

Notice that there are a couple of biblical stories about the beginnings of things, and that the stories don't agree. You'll find these stories in the first two chapters of the first book in the Bible. Many times in history we humans have simply attributed to a superhuman being those things that we couldn't explain.

 

You will find that in one place the Bible record says "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks", and in another place it says precisely the opposite. There will be a lot of other things that you'll read in the Bible that don't agree with each other or with scientific knowledge discovered since the writing of the Bible by humans of a bygone age. So, what are you going to do with this book of books? I suggest that you use the same methods of criticism that you'd use with any other book.

Human beings wrote what is in the Bible, and other human beings, men in council meetings, (we assume all of them were males) chose to include certain writings instead of numerous other writings that were also available. And human beings were just as fallible in making choices then as we are today.

 

It would be laughable, were it not so sad, that there are people who try to make Bible texts fit their pre-conceived idea that everything in the Bible is historically factual. Picture all the animal life on earth going two-by two into a big boat (the ark) to be saved from a world-wide flood that destroyed everything else. Of course no boat could be big enough to hold all that life for more than forty days and forty nights along with all the food necessary to keep them alive.

Probably most of the people who say we should believe the story as literal history don't even know that in the sixth and seventh chapters of Genesis Noah is told to take two of every kind of animal at one point while at another point there are to be seven pairs of "clean" animals and birds in the ark along with only one pair of each animal that was not considered "clean".

Please understand that I am not saying that the Bible is worthless; I am simply saying that we ought to use our intelligence and understanding of the various forms of literature we find in the Bible.

 

One of the reasons that I went into the ministry was because I felt that there had to be an approach to the Bible that was different from what my minster believed. He said in a sermon in my hearing that God had given us television so that we could watch the battle of Armageddon, which he interpreted as marking the end of the world. I mentioned earlier how this same minister warned teen-agers that they should never consider the idea of evolution; if they did they would not be welcome in his church.

The better business bureau tells us that if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is; beware of it. I would say that if something you read in the Bible is too fantastic to be believed literally, it is probably not literal fact. You may read some of the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament that seem to be too good to be true, or too fantastic to be literally so or impossible to live in this life. You may want to test them. I'm talking about such teachings as the Golden Rule and the teachings in what has been called "The Sermon on the Mount." Go ahead; check them out; put them into action; test them. It will be well worth your while.

Megachurches: Megacreepy

I've been inside a megachurch for a wedding. It was impressive in size and the seats were velvet and plush. The screen was huge, sound system top of the line and they spared no expense when it came to vast floor to ceiling drapery and plants. It was a ginormous auditorium and had a connecting grade AND high school attached. There was even a coffee shop in the lobby.

I was terrified as hell and could not wait to get out of there.

It was a theater...a circus...a stage. It had no humble scrappings of a poverty-rich Jesus. It was a tanning booth and chunky gold jewelry. It felt very charlatan. Very door-to-door salesman. It felt like the kind of sales seminars people suffer through to get the free vacation. I wonder if the free vacation they are peddling is heaven. I could not recognize God in that place even when the pastor was speaking. The modern art type of cross near the mic felt cheapened in the shadow of a widescreen sales pitch. What I heard and seen was not about humility and meekness. It was about putting on a show. Keep them entertained (it doesn't matter what you say, but HOW you say it) and they will keep coming back. The coins will fall into the slots if you keep them entertained.

In the original bible, church was defined as a gathering of people - often small. I can see where one would get more out of a smaller group. Like teacher to student ratios for classrooms. This place felt like an assembly line factory. The opiate of the great big mass who knew they were having a good time.

The decadence of the Catholic Church was on par with the excess of this megachurch business.

As a follow up, I think there are some good comments regarding the meshing of evangelicals and money in the United States from a 2005 Bloomberg article called "Of Megachurches and Megabucks".

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Bloomberg Businessweek: The Popularity Issue
August 16, 2010

Church: Lakewood, Houston

Over the past two decades, megachurches in the U.S. have expanded their flocks from 200,000 to more than 8 million souls, according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey by Trinity College in Hartford. The biggest by far is Lakewood Church in Houston, a non-denominational Christian congregation. The church seats 16,000 and boasts a weekly attendance of 43,500, according to evangelical magazine Outreach's annual list of the "100 Largest and Fastest-Growing Churches." Lakewood's kinetic pastor, Joel Osteen, reaches 7 million U.S. TV viewers each week. His gospel of prosperity—"Don't simply settle for what your parents had"—is broadcast in 100 countries.

Although their most explosive growth may be behind them, megachurches are still attracting congregants. Outreach says America's 100 fastest-growing megachurches added 97,879 members last year. LifeChurch.tv grew fastest, adding more than 5,000. —Caroline Winter

Gradual Revelations

Amazing. Another article favoring rationale within faith, recognizing that fundamentalism is isolating and dangerous. In the original post, the comments following the article were vast in their criticisms.

One comment insinuated that one could not believe in science and have faith. Rubbish. Science is part of God. How do you separate out those items that are suppose to debunk God when He is their creator?

Anyway, I find articles like this encouraging. All I can say is that having been on my own journey of enlightenment, it does take years and it is a gradual revelation.

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The evolution of a Christian creationist

Source: Washington Post, August 9, 2010

Good News! Young evangelicals are shifting their allegiance.

Much has been said about the mass exodus of young adults from church, with some studies suggesting that seventy percent of Protestants age 18-30 drop out before they turn 23.

While the factors behind the trend are complex, I'm not surprised that young evangelicals like me are feeling less comfortable in the pews these days. Our pastors might not like it, but the world is changing, and we are changing with it. Unless the evangelical church in America can adapt and evolve, it might not survive in a postmodern world.

I know because I almost abandoned it myself.

A child of the culture wars, I knew what abortion was before I knew where babies came from. I grew up scribbling words like "debatable" and "unlikely" in the margins of biology textbooks, fearlessly defending a 6,000-year-old-earth against atheists I only knew in my imagination. When I was in middle school, my family moved to the buckle of the Bible Belt and became residents of Dayton, Tennessee, home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. There I attended a Christian college, listened to Christian music, and voted my Christian values. People called me "Bible girl."

This faith of mine didn't fall apart all at once, but instead eroded gradually, as I began studying science, interacting with people of other faiths, and experiencing a touch of "voter's remorse" when my pro-life president championed two wars overseas. My questions turned into skepticism, my skepticism into doubt, and I stopped going to church for a while.

My return to faith is something of a survival story that I chronicle in my memoir, "Evolving in Monkey Town" (Zondervan, 2010). The phone calls and emails I've received since its publication confirm what I've suspected all along: I'm not alone. Young evangelicals across the country are experiencing a collective crisis of faith.

Unfortunately, many leave Christianity altogether. But others, like me, simply undergo a change.

At the heart of this change is a shift in allegiance. For so long, evangelical Christianity demanded our allegiance to range of causes--from young earth creationism, to religious nationalism, to Republican politics. Somehow the radical teachings of a first century rabbi got all tangled up with modern political platforms and theological positions that were never essential to Christianity to begin with.

Young evangelicals are in the process of picking apart and deconstructing this tangled mess of ideas in order to get back to the most basic teachings of Jesus. So you shouldn't be surprised to bump into more and more and more oddities like me--a young evangelical Christian who votes for Democrats, has gay friends, and believes in evolution.

But don't be fooled into thinking this shift in allegiance means we're simply jumping from one political platform to another. At its best this change signals an allegiance first and foremost to the Kingdom of God, which knows no political party or geographic boundary, but instead grows outside of these confines through acts of love, humility, and peace. Instead of protesting outside abortion clinics, for example, we're championing adoption and supporting single moms. Instead of reducing our Christian service to a duty at the ballot box, we're looking for practical ways to address hunger, human trafficking, and homelessness.

The bad news for the Religious Right is that young evangelicals are tired of the culture wars. The good news for everyone else is that we're ready to make peace.

Rachel Held Evans is the author of "Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions." She blogs at http://rachelheldevans.com.

By Rachel Held Evans

Another Author Who "Gets It"

Amazing. the second article in a row that is positive! I'm so glad to be able to post something like this.

Sci-fi author Ray Bradbury is another artist who understands "flow" in the sense that I do. That, when looking back on the creations one makes, it can be declared: "It was not I who did that - I didn't do that." It is a gift attached to the Creator's hand more than an artist's own. 

I love that he focuses on LOVE in knowing God.

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Sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'

By John Blake, CNN - August 2, 2010

(CNN) -- Ray Bradbury lives in a rambling Los Angeles home full of stuffed dinosaurs, a tin robot pushing an ice cream cart, and a life-sized Bullwinkle the Moose doll lounging in a cushioned chair. The 89-year-old science fiction author watches Fox News Channel by day, Turner Classic Movies by night. He spends the rest of his time summoning "the monsters and angels" of his imagination for his enchanting tales. Bradbury's imagination has yielded classic books such as "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian Chronicles" and 600 short stories that predicted everything from the emergence of ATMs to live broadcasts of fugitive car chases. Bradbury, who turns 90 this month, says he will sometimes open one of his books late at night and cry out thanks to God. "I sit there and cry because I haven't done any of this," he told Sam Weller, his biographer and friend. "It's a God-given thing, and I'm so grateful, so, so grateful. The best description of my career as a writer is, 'At play in the fields of the Lord.' " Bradbury's stories are filled with references to God and faith, but he's rarely talked at length about his religious beliefs, until now. 'Joy is the grace we say to God' He describes himself as a "delicatessen religionist." He's inspired by Eastern and Western religions. The center of his faith, though, is love. Everything -- the reason he decided to write his first short story at 12; his 56-year marriage to his muse and late wife, Maggie; his friendships with everyone from Walt Disney to Alfred Hitchcock -- is based on love. Bradbury is in love with love. Once, when he saw Walt Disney, architect of the Magic Kingdom, Christmas shopping in Los Angeles, Bradbury approached him and said: "Mr. Disney, my name is Ray Bradbury and I love you." Bradbury's favorite book in the Bible is the Gospel of John, which is filled with references to love. "At the center of religion is love," Bradbury says from his home, which is painted dandelion yellow in honor of his favorite book, "Dandelion Wine." "I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. ... Everything in our life should be based on love." Bradbury's voice booms with enthusiasm over the phone. He now uses a wheelchair. His hearing has deteriorated. But he talks like an excitable kid with an old man's voice. (Each Christmas, Bradbury asked his wife to give him toys in place of any other gifts.) Weller, author of "Listen to The Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews," says Bradbury ends many conversations with "God bless." Weller's book devotes an entire chapter to Bradbury's faith. "I once asked him if he prayed, and he said, 'Joy is the grace we say to God,' '' Weller says. Bradbury was raised as a Baptist in Waukegan, Illinois, by his father, a utility lineman, and his mother, a housewife. Both were infrequent churchgoers. His family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression to look for work. When he turned 14, Bradbury began visiting Catholic churches, synagogues and charismatic churches on his own to figure out his faith. Bradbury has been called a Unitarian, but he rejects that term. He dislikes labels of any kind. "I'm a Zen Buddhist if I would describe myself," he says. "I don't think about what I do. I do it. That's Buddhism. I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down." Bradbury started writing for pulp magazines like "Weird Tales" and "Thrilling Wonder Stories" at the beginning of his career. But even then, faith was an important theme. In his 1949 story "The Man," Bradbury tells the story of a rocket crew landing on Mars, only to see their thunder taken by a Christ-like figure who had arrived only hours earlier. In subsequent stories such as "Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned," priests and other ordinary people search and find redemption. Allusions to Christianity are common in his stories, but Bradbury doesn't define himself as a Christian. He considers Jesus a wise prophet, like Buddha and Confucius. "Jesus is a remarkable person," Bradbury says. "He was on his way to becoming Christ, and he made it." Weller, also author of "The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury," says Bradbury's religious antenna is most attuned to Christianity. "The guy keeps writing about Jesus, but he doesn't consider himself a Christian," Weller says. "He says faith is necessary but that we should accept the fact that when it comes to God, none of us know anything." The Rev. Calvin Miller, author of the New Testament novels "The Singer Trilogy," sees an optimism in Bradbury's stories that's reflected in the Judeo-Christian belief that there will be a "new heaven and a new Earth" one day. Miller once wrote an essay about Bradbury's "Christian positivism," titled "Hope in a Doubtful Age," that was published in "Christianity Today," an evangelical magazine. After the essay appeared, Miller says, he was sorting through mail at home when he noticed two thank-you letters from Bradbury -- one written when the author was headed to Paris for vacation and another when he arrived. The following Christmas, Miller says, he received something else from Bradbury. "Every Christmas afterward, he sent me a card," Miller says. "I guess the religious implications of the article meant a lot to him." Will space travel destroy our belief in God? The religious implications of space travel also mean much to Bradbury. Bradbury has been a relentless supporter of space exploration. Ascending to the heavens won't destroy God; it'll reinforce belief, he says. "We're moving more toward God," he says. "We're moving toward more proofs of his creation in other worlds he's created in other parts of the universe. Space travel will increase our belief in God. As he approaches the end of his journey, Bradbury is still conjuring his monsters and angels. His next book, "Summer Morning, Summer Night," was just released last month. Many of his best friends, though, are not around to read him anymore. "My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now," Bradbury told Weller in his book of interviews. "I'm so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don't have the guts to take their names out of the book." Bradbury is also concerned about something beyond his own mortality: humanity's survival. Space travel and religion seek the same goal -- immortality, Bradbury says. If humanity remains on Earth, it is doomed because someday the sun will either explode or flame out. Everyone -- not just the characters in his story -- must eventually explore the stars, he says. "We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves."

Anne Rice Sees the Light

Well said, Anne, well said.

From her last quote (which I totally agree with), it sounds like she's not technically *quitting* the realm of belief in Christ. I 100% understand why she has made this decision and give her kudos for being vocal about it.

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Legendary author Anne Rice has announced that she’s quitting Christianity.
Source: Marquee Blog - July 30, 2010

The “Interview with a Vampire” author, who wrote a book about her spirituality titled "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" in 2008, said Wednesday that she refuses to be “anti-gay,” “anti-feminist," “anti-science” and “anti-Democrat.”

Rice wrote, “For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

Rice then added another post explaining her decision on Thursday:

“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," Rice wrote. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”

Grave Errors

The raping of children by pedophile priests is not on par WHATSOEVER with the ordination of women and should not be subject to the same scrutiny. It is illogical and a fundamentally immoral view.

No Christian bible says the absence of a penis negates the ability to inspire the grace of God. Jesus was a man. It is not indicated anywhere in scripture -meaning THE BIBLE - not Vatican law - that all Catholic priests should be men, nor is there any citation of the issuing of penalties should a woman be ordained. Someone point this out to me. Point it out so I can deconstruct it.

No Vatican boys club has a right to invoke the name of God in a sick declaration that lumps the ordination of women into the same bucket of criminality or "grave"ness as child rape.

Excerpt from article:

"One new element included lists the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse. That drew immediate criticism from women's ordination groups, who said making a moral equivalent between women priests and child rapists was offensive."

I'm not the submissive, non-questioning type so I don't see or understand how Catholic women (in 2010) can honestly reconcile this statement between their spirituality with God and Vatican doctrine. That chasm between universal truth and institutional policy appears to be widening at an alarming rate.

My blood boils. I thank Christ every day that I was able to see clearly and leave this female-subjugating institution.

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Vatican: Ordination Of Women A 'Grave Crime'

NICOLE WINFIELD -07/15/10 11:05 AM

Source - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/15/vatican-ordination-of-wom_n_647296.html

 

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican issued a revised set of in-house rules Thursday to respond to clerical sex abuse, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children and priests who use child pornography, but making few substantive changes to existing practice. The new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no canonical sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers and do not include any "one-strike and you're out" policy for pedophile priests as demanded by some victims. As a result, they failed to satisfy victims' advocates, who said the revised rules amounted to little more than "administrative housekeeping" of existing practice when what was needed were bold new rules threatening bishops who fail to report molester priests. The rules cover the canonical penalties and procedures used for the most grave crimes in the church, both sacramental and moral, and double the statute of limitations applied to them. One new element included lists the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse. That drew immediate criticism from women's ordination groups, who said making a moral equivalent between women priests and child rapists was offensive. The Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor acknowledged it was "only a document," and didn't solve the problem of clerical abuse. He defended the lack of any mention of the need to report abuse to police, saying all Christians were required to obey civil laws that would already demand sex crimes be reported. "If civil law requires you report, you must obey civil law," Monsignor Charles Scicluna told reporters. But "it's not for canonical legislation to get itself involved with civil law." Victims' groups have accused the church's internal justice system of failing to deal with abuse allegations and allowing bishops to ignore complaints in order to protect the church. "The first thing the church should be doing is reporting crimes to civil authorities," said Andrew Madden, a former Dublin altar boy who took the first public lawsuit against the church in Ireland in 1995.

BACKFIRE!!

Wow. I mean... wow.

I've been crazy with grad school so I have not had the time to post, but I had to take a few minutes to comment on the following article.

Those in the Catholic church who are trying to vie and argue against abortions are oblivious to the fact that their twisted logic is turning against them. Observe the following graphic that metaphors perfectly with this situation:

Talk about a backfiring statement.

Focusing on the verbal diarrhea by John Ehrich (I refuse to include "Reverend" as his title), I must say it is a sorry state in 2010 that the woman, the human carrier of said human fetus, is forgotten; relegated as a mere function without feeling, without history, without an opinion or reason, even in the case of life threatening instances or sexual victimization. The misogyny of the Catholic church continues in obvious frustrated desperation to form that "sputtling", "befrazzled"  sentence in red-faced attempts to vilify the woman in an abortion situation. However, the only thing that yapping lapdogs of the Church like this manage to do is embody the mind-fogged incoherent logic of a drunk-uncouth-fool-stumbling-and-falling-into-a-plate-glass-window-hitting-rock-bottom-with-bottle-still-in-hand, yelling "Oh, and other thing...!!"

(Sigh) And I keep saying it: the church places the living 2nd to the unborn. The Vatican Boys' Club in the U.S. certainly does not scream this loud or passionately when babies are blown up in the theater of unjust wars.

The compassion of Christ has gotten trampled underfoot in the aisles of the Church. The understanding of Jesus was drowned in the Baptismal font. The love of God has been burned and disintegrated in the ashes of ritual. Spirituality has become taboo as these men put on the stoles of a guilt-centered religion, which fits neatly in the coffers. The agape of the Holy Spirit has been replaced with the Catholic Church 2.0., an institution which is growing ever more unrecognizable as being "Christ-centered".

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Catholic Leader Says Woman Should Die With Her Fetus -- When Did Woman-Hating Go Mainstream?

By Carole Joffe, RH Reality Check - Posted on May 24, 2010, Printed on May 25, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146991/


"She consented in the murder of an unborn child. There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child."

With this brief quote, the speaker, the Rev. John Ehrich, medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix, deserves credit for achieving a twofer in a recently revived (if not formally declared) misogyny competition that is now sweeping the anti-choice world. He is not only stating that a gravely ill woman (the mother of four children) should have been left to die, rather than being permitted an abortion; he is also explaining why Sister Mary Margaret McBride, the nun-administrator of a Catholic hospital who authorized the abortion (thereby saving the woman’s life) deserves to be excommunicated.

This case, which has received wide coverage in RH Reality Check and other media, has predictably stunned many people, across the abortion divide. Some have pointed out that the Phoenix diocese misinterpreted Catholic health care directives, and that abortion is permissible under these rules when a woman’s life is at stake. Others have made the common sense observation that if the woman had died, not only would her four children remain motherless, but the 11-week old fetus would not have survived either. Inevitably, some commented on the disparity between the nun’s swift excommunication and the fact that none of the identified pedophile priests have received such punishment.

But while the Phoenix case may cause the most jaw-dropping, with its undisguised preference for a woman’s death over an abortion, there are other recent instances that similarly suggest an upsurge of blatant woman-hating in the antiabortion world. Take the notorious Utah law passed earlier this year in response to the deeply sad case of a pregnant teenager who paid a stranger to beat her in the hope of inducing a miscarriage. (In spite of the severe beating that occurred, the pregnancy resulted in a live birth). Outraged that the male in question received a jail sentence but that there was no legal mechanism with which to charge the teen, a Utah legislator pushed through legislation that criminalizes the seeking of an illegal abortion, and which many observers believe has the practical effect of making all miscarriages in the state theoretically suspect. Had this law been in effect at the time of the incident described above, and had the fetus not survived, the desperate young woman could have received fifteen years to life. As the untroubled sponsor of the bill told a reporter, the young woman “has to face the consequences of her barbaric actions.” No one stopped to ask under what conditions she had gotten pregnant nor why she took such drastic measures.

Then there are the mandatory ultrasound laws. These are occurring in a number of state legislatures, but nowhere to date with such viciousness as the one recently passed in Oklahoma. There the new law stipulates that one hour before her abortion, the patient must receive an ultrasound, with the monitor positioned so that she can see it, and the doctor must point to and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. There are no exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

The current Supreme Court has also shown an unprecedented and disturbing hostility to women with respect to abortion. In its most recent decision on the subject, the 2007 Gonzales v Carhart case which upheld a ban on a certain abortion technique (intact dilation and extraction, or so-called “partial birth abortion”), the Court, shockingly, for the first time upheld an abortion restriction which did not allow any exception for a woman’s health.

Do these examples of misogyny represent anything new? To be sure, in some extremist anti-choice circles, full throated woman-hating never went away. (See, for example, this video from several years ago of Flip Benham screeching at women entering a N. Carolina clinic that “Satan will drink the blood of your child!”) But in other, more mainstream quarters of the movement, the heated, and hateful rhetoric of the period immediately after Roe—where women seeking abortion were routinely called “sluts” and “baby killers” —gradually became replaced by a new frame: abortion hurts women. Given that by the early 1980s, about 40 percent of American women were estimated to have an abortion during their reproductive years (the number now is about 33 percent), arguably such hate speech was counterproductive for the opponents of abortion: too many Americans either themselves had had an abortion or knew someone who did. Thus, antiabortion rhetoric shifted to professed sympathy for women, and abortion providers—those doing the hurting—became the main objects of demonization.

The nature of laws restricting abortions has also undergone changes in the recent past, reflecting a heightened mean-spiritedness. While all such laws have as their goal the objective of making the procedure more difficult to obtain, earlier laws—for example, the waiting periods, or the TRAP laws governing minute, arguably irrelevant physical features of freestanding clinics-- these measures did not have quite the same blatant cruelty as current measures do, given the mandates to force a woman to hear a description of her ultrasound or to be told terrifying lies about supposed links between abortion and breast cancer, suicide and infertility, as is required in a number of states.

Why has this increase in undisguised misogyny occurred? Certainly part of the answer is the election of Barack Obama. Like other sectors of the rightwing, the antichoice movement has been both enraged and energized by the Obama presidency. There not only has been a change in rhetoric and in the quantity and quality of abortion legislation since the 2008 election, but also an upsurge in aggression and violence at the site of clinics themselves (though most of this violence to date has been directed at providers, rather than patients, as we saw with the tragic murder of Dr. Tiller one year ago).

Another explanation lies in the considerable success the antichoice movement has had in stigmatizing abortion, and therefore those who both receive abortions and provide them. As the overall number of abortion patients drop, and as poor women of color disproportionately comprise the population of abortion patients, it has become far easier for mainstream actors in the antichoice movement to see a split world, in which good women do the “right thing” when faced with an unwanted pregnancy and bad women don’t. This deeply stigmatized view of abortion recipients enables the “respectable” opponents of abortion—the legislators, the Church officials and so on—to go a rhetorical place where their extremist colleagues have always been.

Let's Talk Heaven

Happy (upcoming) Easter! I came across this article below that brings up some interesting questions with regards to how people think "Heaven" will be. Or if it will be at all. Or if it is simply metaphorical.

I would like to address a couple of points that this author touches upon:

1) "Cremation, once viewed as the ultimate desecration of the human body, an insult to God who makes the resurrection happen, will soon surpass burial as Americans' preferred way to dispose of a corpse."

I think that it is enivronmentally responsible of a believer to choose the cremation route. If one believes God will resurrect the body, then God (who is all powerful) can construct your body back into its original state from a scattered pile of ashes in the blink of an eye. To think that one's body needs to be preserved for it to be resurrected in "original form" needs to rethink their view of God's power.

2) They quote that great theological cop-out: "We cannot know what God has in store for us."

To admit we don't know sh*t about sh*t is not a cop-out. It is being honest. It is assuming humility as a human of limited intelligence. Who can know God's mind for sure? Find me someone who has 100% of all the theological answers. I would more readily accept this "cop-out" than an absolutist idea.

Aside from being concerned with finding the answers about Heaven, I really like the questions that it brings up and I have a great book I would like to tout that deals with this precise question.

In C.S. Lewis' wonderful book The Great Divorce, a man gets to heaven to find that he can essentially no longer do what he loved to do on earth - research and writing - because all of the answers, an angel tells the man, "are all laid out before you. You need to search no more." This perplexes the man who found the pursuit of truth to be his passion and love. Upset that he no longer can write and research for answers in Heaven, he goes down to check out Hell.

I am also reminded that being good for the reward of Heaven alone is not...all good. Being good for goodness' sake is better. It is truer. Love motivating love is pure. I think of this parable:

Saint Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Spanish mystic, saw an angel rushing towards her, carrying a torch and a bucket of water. “Where are you going with that torch and bucket?” she asked. "What will you do with them?" “With the water,” the angel answered, “I will put out the fires of hell, and with the fire I will burn down the mansions of heaven; then we will see who really loves God.”


Many philosophers have debated the intent of being good. If there is no reward, will one still be inclined to be good?


Even Aristotle had a matrix of intent in Nichomachean Ethics:


Virtuous - those that truly enjoy doing what is right and do so without moral dilemma
Continent - does the virtuous thing most of the time, but must overcome conflict
Incontinent - faces the same moral conflict, but usually chooses the vicious ("full of vice") thing
Vicious - sees little value in virtue and doesn't attempt it
 
Highest Good is...

• desirable for its own sake
• not desirable for the sake of some other good
• all other ‘goods’ desirable for its sake

This is very similar to the oft-used saying from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7


"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves."


While I would love to be able to draw and strive to better myself in the afterlife like the man in The Great Divorce, I think in the end what matters is not the reward we get in the form of Heaven, but how many lives we have touched in betterment and in Love in our time on this earth. I think that while each person will be judged on their individual actions and character, so perhaps is Heaven customized to our individual dreams of it.

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Far From Heaven

By Lisa Miller - NEWSWEEK - Published Mar 25, 2010 - From the magazine issue dated Apr 5, 2010

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/235418

It's Easter—that most pleasant of springtime holidays—when children stuff themselves with marshmallows and stain their fingers with pastel dyes. In reality, of course, Easter is about something darker and more fantastic. It's a celebration of the final act of the Passion, in which Jesus rose from his tomb in his body three days after his execution, to reside in heaven with God. The Gospels insist on the veracity of this supernatural event. The risen Lord "ate barbecued fish [Luke] and walked through doors [John]," is how a friend of mine, an Episcopalian priest, puts it. This rising—the Resurrection—remains at the center of the Christian faith, the narrative climax of every creed. Jesus died and rose again so that all his followers could, eventually, do the same. This story has strained the credulity of even the most devoted believer. For, truly, it's unbelievable.

Resurrection—the physical reality, not the metaphorical interpretation—puts everything we imagine about heaven to the test. My new book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife, argues that while 80 percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, few of us have the slightest clue about what we mean. Heaven, everyone agrees, is the good place you go after death, a reward for struggle and faithfulness on earth. In most of our popular conceptions, we have bodies in heaven: selves, consciousness, identity. We do things. People yearn for reunions in heaven with friends and relatives—and even with their pets. "I want to lay my head on Grandma Lucy's lap," the Christian memoirist Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in an essay. "I want to shell field peas with Fannie Belle and listen to Schubert with Earl." Some people imagine heaven as the place where their most material yearnings are fulfilled. The evangelist Billy Graham once spoke of driving a yellow Cadillac in heaven; the heroine of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones eats peppermint ice cream; suicide bombers in the Middle East fantasize about the sexual ministrations of 72 dark-eyed virgins. In all these visions, embodiment is the crux of the matter. If you don't have a body in heaven, then what kind of heaven are you hoping for?

Despite the insistence of the most conservative branches of all three Western religions on resurrection as an incontrovertible fact, most of us are circumspect. The number of Americans who say they believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has dropped 10 points since 2003 to 70 percent, according to the most recent Harris poll; only 26 percent of Americans think that they'll have bodies in heaven, according to a 1997 Time/CNN poll. Thanks to the growth here of Eastern religions, reincarnation—the belief that after death a soul returns to earth in another body—is gaining adherents. Nearly 30 percent of 2003 Harris poll respondents said they believed in reincarnation; of self-professed Christians, that number was 21 percent. Reincarnation and resurrection have, traditionally, been mutually exclusive. Among Christian conservatives, a private hope of reincarnation would be seen as not just illogical but heretical.

Cremation, once viewed as the ultimate desecration of the human body, an insult to God who makes the resurrection happen, will soon surpass burial as Americans' preferred way to dispose of a corpse. Already, a third of Americans are cremated, not buried, and that trend line is headed straight up. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University and author of the forthcoming God Is Not One, believes that the rise in cremation is linked to a growing disregard for the doctrine of resurrection. "It seems fantastic and irrational that we're going to have a body in heaven," he says. Even the Roman Catholic Church has softened its stance on cremation: bodies are better, it said in 1997, but ashes will do in a pinch.

Resurrection presented credibility problems from the outset. Who, the Sadducees taunted Jesus, does the man who married seven wives in succession reside with in heaven? The subtext of their teasing is obvious: if the resurrection is true, as Jesus promised, then in heaven you must have your wife, and all the things that go along with wives: sex, arguments, dinner. Jesus responds in a typically cranky way: "You just don't get it," he says (my paraphrase). "You are wrong," he said in Matthew's Gospel, "because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God."

Even in biblical times, resurrection deniers who hoped for an afterlife took an alternative route. This is what scholars call "the immortality of the soul." Embraced by Plato and popular today especially among progressive believers (Reform Jews and liberal Protestants, for example) and people who call themselves "spiritual but not religious," the immortality of the soul is easier to swallow than resurrection. After death, the soul—unique and indestructible—ascends to heaven to be with God while the corpse, the locus of our senses and all our low human desires, stays behind to rot. This more reasonable view, perhaps, has a serious defect: a disembodied soul attaching itself to God in heaven offers no more comfort or inspiration than an escaped balloon. Consolation was not the goal of Plato's afterlife. Without sight or hearing, taste or touch, a soul in heaven can no more enjoy the "green, green pastures" of the Muslim paradise, or the God light of Dante's cantos, than it can play a Bach cello suite or hit a home run. Rationalistic visions of heaven fail to satisfy.

Another popular way out of the Easter conundrum—"I want to believe in heaven but can't get my head around the revivification of human flesh"—is to imagine "resurrection" as a metaphor for something else: an inexplicable event, a new kind of life, the birth of the Christian community on earth, the renewal of a people, an individual's spiritual rebirth, a bodiless ascension to God. Progressives frequently fall back on resurrection-as-metaphor, for it allows them to celebrate Easter while also expressing a reasonable agnosticism. They quote that great theological cop-out: "We cannot know what God has in store for us.

The intellectual flabbiness of this approach causes agonies for such orthodox Christians as N. T. Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham, England. "People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor," he once told my editor Jon Meacham and me in an interview for this magazine. "In other words, [Jesus] went to heaven, whatever that means. And they've never realized that the word 'resurrection' simply didn't mean that. If people [in the first century] had wanted to say that he died and went to heaven, they had perfectly good ways of saying that." The whole point of the Christian story is that the Resurrection really happened, Wright insists. The disciples rolled back the rock on the third day, and Jesus' body was gone. This insistence on the veracity of resurrection is no less sure in Judaism, where the Orthodox pray thrice a day to a God "who causes the dead to come to life," or in Islam. "I swear by the day of resurrection!" proclaims the Quran. "Yes, Indeed!

And so, the paradox. Resurrection may be unbelievable, but belief in a traditional heaven requires it. I think often of Jon D. Levenson, a Jewish scholar at Harvard Divinity School who hopes to bring the idea of resurrection back to mainstream Judaism, where it has been lost in practice for generations. I visited him one cold November afternoon because, as a literal-minded skeptic, I wanted him to explain to me how it works. How does God put bodies—burned in fire or pulverized in war—back together again? Levenson looked at me, eyes twinkling, and said, "It's no use to ask, 'If I had a lab at MIT, how would I try to resurrect a body?' The belief in resurrection is more radical. It's a supernatural event. It's a special act of grace or of kindness on God's part." For my part, I don't buy it. I do, however, leave the door open a crack for radical acts of grace and kindness—and for humbling ourselves before all that we don't understand.