Change and religion

I don’t think anyone, especially Christians, should be surprised at the pope’s remarks that entertain the validity of evolution and the big bang theory, or the church’s attempts to reach out the LGBT community, or seminaries teaching us to read the bible critically instead of just taking the words on the page in English as the will of God.  Jesus followers are doing what Jesus taught us to do: to seek out those who do not know the gospel, bring the gospel (ONLY THE GOSPEL) to them stripped of all the trappings of religion, remove the disease of man’s desire to exclude and to never miss a chance to rail against religion at every chance we get.  Jesus turned the Jewish religion on its head because he saw what was in men’s hearts – the desire to know good and evil, and its result, the desire to push one’s views of good and evil on others by excluding people from the community.  Look at how he treated the Pharisees: the entrenched religious who had a vested interest in promoting their way of interpreting God’s actions, because they were paid for it and were given their status by enforcing it.  They were the product of a long line of men interpreting the history of God through man’s eyes. And Jesus, “meek and mild,” lashed out at them angrily because it grieved him as much as it grieves God.

So where are the Sadducees and Pharisees today?  They are everywhere.  Everywhere a man thinks he has a corner on the truth and attempts to exclude people from his own righteous club by insisting that he knows “the truth.” I submit, that the church, stripped of love, is a breeding ground for Pharisaic thought, left to the device of time. Man’s heart is inclined toward religion. The ONLY way to avoid it is selfless, wild, self-abandoned, radical love.  And once religion takes hold, the only way to break out of Pharisaic thinking is revolution. Whenever we take what we hear (or especially, READ in scripture) at face value without looking carefully into its context and through a critical lens, we are in danger.  And when we apply it to others without love, we are the enemies of Jesus.  When we even want to judge what is good and what is not, we are guilty of sinning THE original sin, the desire to judge between good and evil. We are called to love and leave judgement to God.

If you study Jesus’ actions (as well as they can be known through the dim lens of history) long enough, you will see a common thread.  Jesus spoke to the wayward Samaritan woman and made her a missionary. That was unheard of. Jesus called the original 12 disciples from the all walks of life outside of the religious system, and called among his inner circle women and even prostitutes. Ridiculous! He made followers of uncircumcised Gentiles. My god, they’re the enemy! He, a rabbi, shared meals with those religion labelled as sinners. Scandalous! Meals are sacred community!

And if we get a little ruffled by change, I think it is the living spirit of Jesus doing what he always does, calls the religious to abandon religion and follow him by loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our neighbors.