Lost In the Wilderness

The bible has a long tradition of wilderness experiences.  When Moses was young,

he killed an Egyptian slave-driver and fled to the wilderness in Midian.  When he was out shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, he encountered a "burning bush that was not consumed." The still small whisper in the quite of his soul he recognized as God told him he was in the presence of the holy. From the bush God gave him instructions to go back to Egypt and free his people.  God told him the Israelites will listen to him if he tells them "I am who I am" (translated Yahweh) sent him.  It was the Israelites' introduction to the name God gave himself.  "I am He who is."  This became a sacred name for them, to the point that they would not spell it out in writing.  Moses returned and freed his people, setting a reoccurring theme in Israel's history of a return from bondage to freedom. In Genesis 21, Abraham sent Hagar into the wilderness to protect her from his wife, Sarai, and her jealous wrath after Abraham's legitimate heir, Isaac was born. There, Hagar ran out of water, and seeing to her baby son Ishmael's tears, she cried out to God in distress.  An angel appeared to her and told her God would make a great nation from Ishmael.  This was actually the second time she was sent out into the wilderness.  The first time is when she had become pregnant with Ishmael.  In that experience an angel also told her that her son would be the father of a great nation.  She named God "El Roi":  which means “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”  Later in the book of Kings, Elijah flees into the desert wilderness when he is afraid for his life because of the persecution of Jezebel. He is said to be in the wilderness for "forty days and forty nights." This phrase, in Jewish scripture, is short hand for "a very, very long time."  He goes to Mount Horeb where he encounters God in a still, small voice at the mouth of the cave.  The story from 1 Kings is my favorite story from the whole of scripture:

Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah and said, “I swear that by this time tomorrow, you will be just as dead as those prophets. If I don’t succeed, may the gods do the same or worse to me.”

3 When Elijah heard this, he was afraid. So he ran away to save his life. He took his servant with him, and they went to Beersheba in Judah. Then Elijah left his servant in Beersheba 4 and walked for a whole day into the desert. Then he sat down under a bush and asked to die. He said, “I have had enough, Lord! Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors.”

5 Then Elijah lay down under the bush and went to sleep. An angel came to him and touched him. The angel said, “Get up and eat!” 6 Elijah looked around, and by his head there was a cake that had been baked over coals and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then went back to sleep.

7 Later the Lord’s angel came to him again, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat! If you don’t, you will not be strong enough to make the long trip.” 8 So Elijah got up. He ate and drank and felt strong. Then Elijah walked for 40 days and nights to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There Elijah went into a cave and spent the night.

Then the Lord said to him, “Elijah, why are you here?”

10 Elijah answered, “Lord God All-Powerful, I have always served you the best I can, but the Israelites have broken their agreement with you. They destroyed your altars and killed your prophets. I am the only prophet left alive, and now they are trying to kill me!”

11 Then the Lord said to Elijah, “Go, stand in front of me on the mountain. I, the Lord, will pass by you.”[a] Then a very strong wind blew. The wind caused the mountains to break apart. It broke large rocks in front of the Lord. But that wind was not the Lord. After that wind, there was an earthquake. But that earthquake was not the Lord. 12 After the earthquake, there was a fire. But that fire was not the Lord. After the fire, there was a quiet, gentle voice.[b]

13 When Elijah heard the voice, he used his coat to cover his face and went to the entrance to the cave and stood there. Then a voice said to him, “Elijah, why are you here?”

Elijah learns something of the nature of God and learns to recognize him in the still small whisper in the quiet of his soul.  This whisper asks him why he has come, then gives him instructions on what he is to do when he returns back the way he came.  

Before the start of his ministry, Jesus likewise goes into the wilderness and is "tempted by the devil."  I believe Jesus went into the wilderness and met himself, and his own faults and flaws.  Christians say Jesus was "fully human and fully divine."  This is where the legend of Jesus meets the human Jesus. A desert experience is common in peoples' lives.  It is an experience I too have had, time and time again.  Jesus has been there and done that. The story in Luke 4 goes:

"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you,’ and, “‘On their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time."

    I have been having my own experience of the wilderness.  I left our little Methodist church because I believed the greater church, in the vast majority, usually un-revealed until a person felt threatened or fearful of their own unbelief, silently held a judgement against me because I do not believe Jesus was divine.  I thought that the majority of Christians would judge that I was lost in sin and error. And I thought they would judge that I was not saved because I didn't believe as they did.  I thought they would judge that I was lost. It had started from something a Christian very close to me from our church had said.  She told me that we do not pray to the same God.  It dredged up all those times in the Christian church I had heard that others who didn't believe Jesus was divine were lost in sin and error. And that they were worshiping something other than the "true God." That weekend, I wrote the following post:

    Sunday mornings have become a great source of sadness for me.  My wife is the worship leader at a church in a small town 1/2 hour north up the expressway.  We used to get up at 6:00am and she would get ready and I would get our baby girl ready.  Then she would leave to go practice with the worship band and I would follow.  My two year old in the back seat, we would race through the curves in the country road in my stick-shift as we listened to music, just me and my daughter.  Then I would drop her off in the nursery and go write while we waited for the service.  I would come back and pick her up at the start of the service and we would listen to her mom sing worship.  I would stay for the service.  Afterwards we would all go home and take a long nap in the afternoon.  

None of that happens any more. Now my wife and daughter go up themselves.  Sometimes I follow later and drive a half hour just to rattle around at the cafe down the street from the church, writing or reading.  My baby girl wonders why I am not there to take her to the service or play with her in the nursery.  My wife is sad that we don't come to listen to her sing.  For 5 hours on Sunday mornings, we are divorced.  You see, after many years of reading and studying scripture, I came to believe something that is incompatible with the teachings of our small church.  I believe the church has missed the whole point of Jesus' ministry by making him divine. We have taken Peter's response to Jesus's "who do you say that I am" and misunderstood Jesus's response when Peter said "you are the son of the living God."  We took this to mean he was God.  I don't believe that he was.  I don't believe the real Jesus thought he was either.  He believed we are all sons of God. This is the Jesus hidden in scripture beneath the theology and legends passed around about him.  I think Jesus was one in a long succession of prophets and messiahs in the history of the Jewish religion who called us back to the simple faith of Abraham and Jacob and David.  Every few generations another prophet or agitator stood up and told the rest of Israel that they had gotten away from this simple, striped down, "come as you are" faith of their forefathers like Abraham. That they had gotten lost in the trappings of man-made religion. It is the story of the entire Old Testament.  And that story has gone on to this day.  It is the repeating cycle of us getting lost in religion and theology and someone standing up and reminding us of it, calling us back to simple relationship with God as we understand Him.  Each of us understands God differently.  Each of us has our own own, unique, never-before-seen relationship with the Creator who made us and all that exists.

    Jesus stood up and railed against the exclusionary system of religion that the "Teachers of the Law" had built up - which, de facto said that he vast majority of the people in their religion who could not afford the sacrifices to atone for their daily "sins" were separated from God.  Jesus, on the contrary, said God is our intimately-loving Father. And we are all his sons and daughters.  And this God forgives: all we have to do is ask.  Jesus prayed to, loved, and taught this God to the world.  And when the world reacted by killing him brutally, stories circulated that he rose from the dead because many of his followers believed he was God. And then we built up a theology and codified these stories in the new Testament and began to worship Jesus as God.  And my divorce on Sunday mornings started happening to billions of people all over the world and has done so for over 2000 years. Billions of people have not, and never will, believe Jesus is God. And they are all cut off? It seems to me that if we believe this, we have missed the whole point.  It's the opposite of what Jesus was trying to say to the world. If we believe that there is a condition on salvation, that God withholds his forgiveness until one believes Jesus is divine, I think we have become the Pharisees and the "sacrifice" we require for atonement is that one must hold this belief that the majority of the world will never accept. We have then inadvertently separated others from God by requiring they believe Jesus was divine, or else they must not know The True God. They are not "saved." They are lost in sin and error.  Wouldn't that make us the modern Pharisees?  Wouldn't Jesus stand up and call us out on it?  Haven't we lost our way?

   It is for this simple reason the church in its current form will never spread the world over.  And so the kingdom the church is waiting for will never come.  You see, Jesus said that the Kingdom is already here.  But we cannot see it, because of the simple fact that we don't believe it.  There's got to be some hitch.  It's the human in us.  We think that there must be some requirement.  There must be some reason it is not here.  Because when we look around us with our human eyes, and see what we see all around us: how can Kingdom of God be here?  How can it be with so much suffering, poverty, war, hate, disease, and injustice?  I've seen more suffering in my travels and time spent with others in dire circumstances than I care to remember.  Oftentimes, I was there involuntarily because I was suffering of the same thing the people with me were.  And there is no knowing another's suffering unless you too suffer from the same thing. Our human minds think, something must have to happen.  People have to accept Jesus and be "saved."  Then the world will improve.  And of course, the hope that Jesus will come back in the flesh once the whole world has come to believe in him - a hope that drove countless generations of missionaries out into the remote corners of world for centuries - with never happen.  I don't think Jesus is coming back in the flesh. That may sit as well as a pound of brick.  But when I let go of that baggage, which I could never bear, "the ruins to the right of me soon lost sight of me, and I was standing at the entrance to a new world I could see."  He may not be coming down from the clouds, but his message and character, come back over and over, time and time again.  And, waiting for Jesus to come bodily down from the clouds, we miss him, over and over again, decade after decade, century upon century. 

Modern churches are making themselves into community centers with giant indoor playgrounds for families and community programs, relevant sermons and modern worship music. They spend most of their time, energy, and resources on outreach. They do so much to help the hurting, the downtrodden, the hungry, the poor, and, every day, people go out from them and make the world a better place for all of us to live in. But, because of the theology Christianity built itself on, the doors are inadvertently locked from the inside for so many people. The salvation of the world over will never happen until we drop the judgement: and that very thing is the original sin in the Adam and Eve story in the opening of the first book in the bible. Man wanted to be able to have the wisdom to judge good and evil.  We tasted the fruit of it, and it was bitter. We were cast out of the Garden, lost, East of Eden.  And ever since, we have longed to get back. Instead, why don't we simply present Jesus's teachings to the world without any requirement in the belief that Jesus is divine to be saved.  His teachings stand by themselves.  There is no need to credit them to God on Earth to substantiate their wisdom. I know my pastor now, and the pastors I have had before, do not stand in judgement over who is lost, who is "in" and  who is "out." But I fear it is still common in the laity, especially in younger Christians. While I was writing this my wife told me the sermon preached today was about the joy of knowing God from psalm 84.  Psalm 84 is a beautiful picture of a life spent knowing God.  "Better is one day in your courts, than thousands elsewhere," it says. I stayed at the cafe because I don’t believe Jesus is divine: I stayed away because I didn't feel like I fit in any more. Is this the story we want to write for the majority of people in the world? Or can we bring them the teachings of Jesus and his love? If the world accepts his teachings, the kingdom comes. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is already here. All we have to do is see it.  And Jesus fulfills his purpose.  I long to see that day.  I want to bring Jesus' wisdom and love to the world.  The church strives to love the world. The vast majority of the people in the world historically have never believed in a divine Jesus, and I seriously doubt the majority of the world ever will. Jesus longed to see the arrival of the Kingdom in his own religion in his time.  And it is a story that runs the whole bible through and up to today.  Let's write the happy ending to it.  All we have to do is open our eyes.  It is here.  We are in it. All we have to do is truly believe it, to truly "know it in our knower," as my pastor used to say.

    I attended a Unitarian church the next weekend.  But I didn't feel at home there either.  I felt homeless and alone.  I felt separated from my wife and two year old daughter.  I was separated from the people who cared for me.  When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, I believe he was tempted by the devil within himself.  He was forced to confront his natural inclinations as a human.  Christians believe he was fully human and fully divine.  I don't put much stock in the divinity bit.  I believe he was a man, and that to me, makes him far more extraordinary. In the wilderness, we find ourselves.  In the wilderness, we are faced with ourselves.  We "wrestle the angels" as Jacob did in the wilderness. Just as Hagar, Elijah and Moses would have. And it often isn't a pretty picture. You see, the root of my separation from the church was a judgement.  It was my own judgement on the people in my church that they held me at arms length and thought I was lost in sin.  It was my own judgement of their views which turned out to be actually a fear that I held, not a belief that they all necessarily held.  The "devil" was me. While I was away from the church I was in contact with my pastor.  I related my ordeal to her.  I told her I felt that I was lost in the wilderness. I believe it was God speaking though her when she revealed to me that she too believed that so many Muslims, Jews and others have a rich relationship with God. The source of my separation was me. In the wilderness, I found that the evil that sent me out there was me.  And the realization of this fact made the path home possible.  Just as it did for Moses, Hagar, Elijah, and Jesus too. The wilderness is necessary.  The wilderness is hard.  But confronted with ourselves and with the help of God we return home wiser and better and more spiritually mature.