A Father's Prayer

   In all my years of living in the church - in the community of believers, I never would have realized that I was the closest to God when I was a boy hunting for frogs in the marshes by the pond near where I lived.  After all the Christology and the Seminary and the dogma, I have found that God is not in any one place.  He is not in a church building only, but he is there.  He is not in the street corner ministry only, but he is there.  He is not only in the eyes of the needy, but there too, he can be found.  I find him most often now in nature. And I find him in the times I spend soaking to the music on my God mix of secular music.  I find him in the words of Bruce Springsteen and The Fray and The Killers. I feel I share something with the prophets of the Old Testament, and the desert fathers who retreated to the wilderness and desert to commune with God.  And anyone can do this.  Anyone can go outside, find a quiet and beautiful spot and take in God.  Anyone can meditate.  Anyone can commune with God.  When the barriers of religion fall away, and all the dogma is seen for what it is - man's creation.  It is man's way to explain the inexplicable.  But it falls horribly short of describing the true infinite nature of God.  I thank my years of swimming in the edges of the pool of "belief" in the Christian church for showing me the love of God and how it comes through the love lavished on you by other people in church. The church defined as community clustered around a similar set of beliefs.

     I still long for community.  But I gravitate toward those who have a less defined picture of God.  I tend to find this way of viewing God outside of religion in older believers and people who have spent time in Seminary.  Seminary is where one finds that the lines drawn in religion are not of God; they are man's devices.  You come to a more clear-headed and universal view of God.  You come to see the scriptures for what they are - a collection of writings that paint of broad picture of communion with God.  They are not a set of rules or formulas.  They are not The Truth, defined as the only way to view God.

     I posit that Jesus' death did not push some magic cosmic button that wrote a giant if/then statement in the code of the universe. "If I believe Jesus is divine then I am going to heaven." This sort of thinking is exactly what Jesus was trying to tear down when he said he would tear down the Temple. Why have we built it up again? Why have we rebuilt the negative aspect of the Temple. I think God is far to big for pitiful human rules such as this.  I think God is bigger than the ancient Jewish Temple. Now that system of belief is one way to God. I have seen many people come into a right relationship with God in this system. But many people have a right relationship with God who have transcended this system. And many people outside of this system, too, have a right relationship with God. 

     You may balk at this, quoting Jesus's words "no one comes to the father except through me."  But didn't Jesus die for all people? What does it mean to come to the father through him?  Couldn't it be that his words and teachings lead people into a right relationship with God?  I don't think that his death on the cross somehow magically makes everyone right with God.  It is his life, not his death, that brings us into communion with the creator of the universe.  We did not have to torture and kill Jesus to be right with God.  This thinking is contrary to the nature of God. Psalm 103:11 says

"The Lord is compassionate and gracious, He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities." It is thinking left over from the ancient Jewish system of sacrifice and sin that believes his death was a cosmic sacrifice at the alter of wrath - the very thing Jesus came to tear down.  I love the violent unrestrained Jesus who appeared in the temple courts and fashioned a whip with cords and drove out the money changers and sacrificial animal dealers who were polluting his father's house.  I feel this same anger when I see the religious excluding others, especially people of other faiths, from communion with God.  Aren't we all pursuing the same God in our own way?  Isn't every Christian's path different?  Then how can we say a Muslim's or a Buddhist's path is not true to God?  Clearly the only people who are not on the path to God are those who are not pursuing him.  In this way, all that pursue God should realize they are in a great brotherhood.  It is a brotherhood that eradicates the boundaries of religion - boundaries drawn by the "pious," not boundaries drawn by the Children of God.  Why would a loving father exclude seventy percent of his children because they didn't believe Jesus was divine?  It's preposterous. God is not a jealous, self absorbed drunk who abuses his children and picks favorites to save from retribution.  The bible is not a literal history of God's actions.  It is a collection of stories that bring us into a basic understanding of God.  And from there, we seek God in community with others and with his creation. 

     I still go to a Christian church because I love Jesus and I want to hear his words as they were passed on through time.  Perhaps they are not his actual literal words, but I want to hear the essence of his teachings.  Because there is life to be found in the teachings of Jesus.  I think he was as close to God as any human being can get.  And so, perhaps he was divine in this way.  I don't believe in the virgin birth or that his blood is the thing that covers over sin.  I believe that his life, not his death, brings us closer to God.  The focus on his death in the Catholic church has always irked me. (Though the Catholic tradition gave me some of my favorite writers like Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton.) Jesus lived for me. He did not die so I could be magically made right with God without any blood sweat and tears of my own.  Without revering the LIFE of Jesus, we get a lazy man's path to God.  It is a magical system of thinking that says we don't have to change at all to get to heaven. Properly understood though, the point is not lost on me.  We are already right with God and so we are driven to seek him.  And for some people, believing in the sacrificial death of a divine Jesus sets them on a path to transformation.  It is a path to late night scripture study and daily communion with God through prayer.  But one does not have to believe that Jesus was a lamb slaughtered for them to get there.  And what is prayer?  The more mature our spirituality becomes, we leave rote prayers behind.  We leave words behind.  We begin to pray with our essence and actions.  We pray by communing with God in our own individual way.  This is the bright burning, purified, fire-refined relationship with God.  The rest of is burned away.

  I want to instill in my daughter a thirst for God as she understands him. A belief that cannot be contained by any one "true" path to God. I want her to grow up in a Christian church but she can find her own path. I want her to have the thirst of a deer for water, not a desire to walk some thin line in the fear of falling off. The God I've found in my life doesn't respect man's lines, and I don't want hers to either.  I want her to have a wild, unrestrained, unfettered love of God.  Because I know that this is how (he) loves her.  God, I believe, is love.  He is anywhere a human being gets enough outside him or herself to help another.  That is transcendent.  That is transforming. That lasts. It stands the test of time. That is eternal.