Book, Interrupted. On the fringes of Christianity.

      2 Peter verse 1 was the final stone to fall in the wall.  2 Peter says specifically it was written by Peter the disciple.  And goes on to say, " 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”[b] 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

19 We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable,and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."
     But it has been firmly established in biblical scholarship that this book was written a lifetime after Peter's death. 

     It was fuel to my fire. You see I had been moving further and further out in my place on the fringes of Christianity for a long time.  Ever since I became a Christian 20 years ago, I had my doubts that Jesus was God in the flesh.  I wrestled with these doubts a lot through the years and into Seminary.  7 years after seminary, in my blog that drifted further and further from the center of Christianity I wrestled with the amazing text I loved. I slowly came to a realization.  I had learned while writing that I should talk about my experience not as a universal truth, but as what is right for me. I found I had a bone to pick with the side of Christianity that proclaimed it was the only truth.  And this thorn in my side spurred me on in my journey as I built up resentment against the universal only-way-to-God attitude that many Christians seemed to have.  But just as there is this judgmental side of Christianity, there is on the other hand, so much to love about it.  The simple faith of the church fathers down through the poor in spirit to this day has been a catalyst for huge efforts to clothe the naked, feed the poor, comfort the brokenhearted and sick and visit the prisoners in their physical or spiritual cells.  I can't abandon this side of Christianity.  This attitude gave me new purpose in life to reach out to others and do these things in my own little way.  But the dichotomy of these two poles of Christianity has caused me to fall into something just outside the gradient of the Christian belief system.

     Since my late teens, I grew into a love of God that started in a Native American literature class.  The ideas about God I was introduced to resonated with me.  During a struggle with a deep clinical depression, I had reached outside myself and come to believe in a loving Creator that was involved in my life.  I saw this in some of the Native American ideas of God.  Not too long after, I started going to a Christian church.  There I found similar ideas about God that would shape my view of him (or her) over the course of the next 20 years.  I began reading the bible voraciously and fell in love with the text.  As I did, I began to fall in love with God, and in the last 10 years, in love with Jesus.  I came to see this amazing man, Jesus, doing everything he could to lovingly point all people back to communion with God.  A God whom he called his Abba or "daddy."  This was someone I could really love because he loved God the way I was falling in love with God.  And the accounts of his actions and attitudes in scripture made me want to be like him.  Of course I do fall horribly short.  But I think he would pick me up, dust me off, give me a hug, and encourage me on. 

     The gift of Christianity to the world is to know you, individually, are loved jealously by the creative, loving, tender artist of the cosmos.  And this becomes your identity: Beloved.  You are one who is loved with all his faults, failures, weaknesses as well as strengths, gifts, and accomplishments.  You are one who is loved like a loving father loves his only child. All the good things you have done in your life are praised.  And all the bad things are forgiven. The slate is wiped clean. "Where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?" Jesus asks the woman caught in adultery after he stopped the mob from stoning her, "I do not condemn you either. Go now and sin no more." (John 8)  By following Jesus, change happens.  Some people change more than others.  It of course, depends on a host of environmental and genetic factors as to how much their attitudes and life will change.  This change happens in the context of relationship.  Christianity is all about relationship.  It is about relationship with God, with Jesus and with other people.  It plops you down in the middle of a church were you become known.  El Roi means "the God who sees me and knows me." That God is the center of Christianity. I learned that God works just as much through other people who know me in my life as through "the still small whisper in the quiet of my soul."

     But this still small voice is there too.  One of my favorite stories from the bible is in 1 Kings. Elijah flees certain death at the hands of Jeezebel.  He goes deep into the desert and has a wonderful encounter with God that tells me such much about the personality of God.  Here is the text:

     "Elijah was afraid[a] and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

7 The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

10 He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still, small whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. "

     I identified with the mystics and the desert fathers who paid attention to this still, small voice.  Some people call it a conscience.  Others may think it's just one's thoughts.  But some of these thoughts stand out and don't seem to come from anywhere I would have found on my own.  And the thoughts have a character that matches with the character of the God I found in scripture.  Sometimes, they were not thoughts but feelings or impressions.  They were ways of thinking about things that were outside the box of my comfortable lens that I saw the world through.

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     That was the beginning of my book.  I was writing it to explain how I felt about my time as a Christian who never really believed Jesus was God in the flesh.  By some definitions then, I was never a Christian.  But I was immersed in it and immersed in receiving the love of God and others for 20 years.  The book was going to be about this experience and its point was that Jesus, though he was a man, still saves.  He saves not so much by his death on the cross and purported rising again, but by his personality and teachings and way of being.  He was my salvation in that he pointed me into a right relationship with God. I don't believe this salvation is something you come into in your last breath as you leave this world. It is a thing that changes you here now, in the middle of life.  Whether or not there is any kind of afterlife is irrelevant to me in this respect. But how can I love the text and study it and still not believe that Jesus was God in the flesh?  Clearly the authors of the New Testament go to great lengths to establish the divinity of Jesus and put him in the context of Israel's history as the fulfillment of God's plan for humanity. But I learned in Seminary that the bible is far from a history book.  It is a large collection of wildly different types of literature, all of which, have to be read in the context of the type of literature they are.  And the authorship of the books is as varied as the books themselves.  Most of the books are made up of amalgamations of different texts and oral traditions compiled by biblical scribes.  The Gospels themselves are not histories.  I liken them more to propaganda of the early church. They set out to prove a point: that Jesus was God in the flesh.  Especially the Gospel of John.  It was an account written with an ax to grind.  Or a truth to tell.  Same thing.  The only difference is if the hearer accepts it.  It was written some 50-60 years after the death of Jesus to establish the validity of the fledgling Christian movement.

     So I rejected the claim that Jesus was God in the flesh.  I think it is worshiping the messenger for a divine message. This did not diminish his loving grip on me or how much he affected my life.  Then, the Friday after I began writing my book, I went to pick up my wife at a meeting at a church down the street from us.  I smoke and drink too much Pepsi, so I went in to use the restroom.  I walked up to the urinal, and hanging over it was a picture I have in my basement that I had never seen before or since.  It is a picture of a young man in a leather jacket, sleeping back

and pack at his feet, sitting on a bench.  Next to him is Jesus in white.  Sitting in a receptive pose that says, I am here, talk to me.  I have the picture hanging in my prayer room in the basement. It is called "Lost and Found." Every time I read about Jesus I try to put myself in that young man's shoes. Under the picture on the bathroom wall was written, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don't know who I am?" (John 14:9)  
    I wept.

    I once said belief is the sum total of uncanny coincidences that occur when you immerse yourself in the search. That is why Christians say they worship the living Jesus. He shows up. God in the flesh. But the character of the God I know is such that he brushes the back of your hair in the breeze.  An encounter involves a choice to believe, and that choice is never forced on us. I don't believe that our salvation is dependent on something as simple as a choice for or against.  It's a lot more complicated than that.  It is more individualized than that. It is a lot more amazing than that. For me, it is not a choice. It is a journey. "Go in peace" on your journey.  For me, like Jacob, the wrestling is the salvation.