Author: Brian Legate

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 – Paraphrased by Brother Joseph Schmidt

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

If I live my life to perfection, doing what is right and good on behalf of others, but act with compulsion and without love, then I am nothing at all. 

If I take care of the needs of everybody in the world, especially the poor, because of my own need to help, but am without love even for myself, then I am nothing at all.

If I am efficient and successful in all that I do for the sake of justice, but act out of drivenness and without love, then I am nothing at all.

If I am cultured and refined, and in touch with the pain of existence, but am absent from the pain of persons in the present moment who need my empathy; and if I act without love and compassion, then I am nothing at all.

If I have the gifts of wisdom, insight, and understanding, but am not engaged with those around me in the present moment and am without a spirit of compassion and love, then I am nothing at all.

If I am faithful, loyal, and obedient, and never deviate from the law, but am judgmental and blaming, and am without love, then I am nothing at all.

If I live in a pain-free world of dreams and plans, enjoying optimism and pleasurable options, but am not addressing present problems and am avoiding people in actual distress and am without love, then I am nothing at all.

If I am strong and powerful, but lose my best self in a spirit of resentment, retaliation, and vindictiveness, and know nothing of the vulnerability of love, then I am nothing at all.

If I am settled and accommodating, holding onto a sense of distance and calm, but am not journeying inward to know and appreciate my weaknesses and gifts, and am neglecting my own legitimate calling to love myself, then I am nothing at all.

Love is always patient and kind;

it is never jealous;

love is never boastful or conceited;

it is never rude or selfish;

it does not take offense, and is not resentful.

Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in truth;

it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.

Love never fails, never ceases.

Does Christianity Have a Future? by Marcus Borg

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

Patheos Blog
Oct. 22, 2013
I have just returned from a lecture event in Houston with Joan Chittister and Dom Crossan. The theme was the same as the title of this blog. None of us tried to predict the future of Christianity, even as we all spoke about our hopes for its shape in the future.

The question, “Does Christianity Have a Future?” is interesting to think about. And the answer is greatly affected by the time span, short or long. Will Christianity still be around a hundred years from now? Yes. Five hundred years from now? Probably. A thousand years from now? Maybe. Five thousand years from now? The further into the future we imagine, the less likely it seems that Christianity will be part of that present.

For many Christians, the notion that there will come a time when Christianity will no longer exist except as past history is a thought that has not been thought.

Christians who think that the second coming of Jesus and the end of this world are near are not at all worried by how long Christianity will last. It doesn’t need to last much longer. Moreover, to those and many other Christians, the thought seems alien. Most of us learned as we were growing up that the Bible and Jesus were the ultimate revelation of God – and thus that Christianity was the exclusive and only revelation, or at least the best. How then could there come a time when it would be no more?

But the realization that there will come a time when Christianity is not (assuming that humans and our descendants are still here a thousand and five thousand years from now) has pedagogical value. It leads to reflecting about what Christianity is, and what its foundational document, the Bible is.

Are the Bible and Christianity the final revelation of God and thus destined to last until time is no more? Or are they humanly-constructed historical products – the fruit of our spiritual ancestors in ancient Israel, early Christianity, and subsequent theological interpretations of what it means to be Christian? Are the Bible and Christianity THE revelation of God, and thus exclusive and absolute? Or one of many revelations in many and perhaps all cultures, great and small, with all of them articulated in the language of their time and place? Is it not obvious that all religions are historical products? They had a beginning and they will have an ending. Just as most ancient religions are no more, so it will be some time with Christianity, whether five hundred or a few thousand years from now.

Though this notion has not been thought by very many Christians, it is not bad news. Rather, it leads to a strong appreciation of what the Bible and Christianity are. They are, to use language from Paul, “treasure in earthen vessels” or in some recent translations “treasure in clay jars.” Of course, Paul was not referring to the Bible (whose canonization had not yet happened) or Christianity (which did not yet exist). Rather, he referred to the messengers of the gospel, including himself. All that we say and proclaim is in earthen vessels, clay jars. The treasure comes to us through human words and human beings.

The treasure is sometimes missed. Often and still today, the Bible and Christianity have been sources of judgment and rejection, brutality and violence, suffering and manipulation.

But at its best, which has happened and continues to happen, Christianity is a tradition of wisdom, beauty, and goodness. The triad is central to ancient Greek philosophy and to the enduring religions of the world. Wisdom about what is real and how then we should live. Beauty in its language, music, art, worship, and architecture. Goodness in lives filled with compassion and passion for a transformed world.

And it is a sacrament. Just as the human products of bread and wine become sacraments, so Christianity as an earthen vessel is a massive sacrament that mediates the reality to which it points, a means of grace and a means of transformation. It is our approximation, in our time and place, of what life with God – and for Christians, life with God as revealed decisively in Jesus – is about.

A Toxic Image of God – Richard Rohr

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

 

Your image of God creates you. This is why it is so important that we see God as loving and benevolent and why good theology is still important.
One mistaken image of God that keeps us from receiving grace is the idea that God is a cruel tyrant. People who have been raised in an atmosphere of threats of punishment and promises of reward are programmed to operate with this cheap image of God. They need deep healing, because they are actually attached to a punitive notion of God. Many experienced this foundational frame for reality as children, and it is hard to let go. It gives a kind of sick coherence to their world.
Unfortunately, it’s much easier to organize people around fear and hatred than around love. Most people who want to hold onto power view God as vindictive and punitive. Powerful people actually prefer this worldview, because it validates their use of intimidation. Both Catholicism and Protestantism have used the threat of eternal hellfire to form Christians. I am often struck by the irrational anger of many people when they hear that someone does not believe in hell. Threat of hellfire “works” because it appeals to the lowest level of consciousness, where we all start.
Much of Christian history has manifested a very different god than the one Jesus revealed and represented. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, but this “cultural” god sure doesn’t. Jesus tells us to forgive “seventy times seven” times, but this god doesn’t. Instead, this god burns people for all eternity. Many of us were raised to believe this, but we usually had to repress this bad theology into our unconscious because it’s literally unthinkable. Most humans are more loving and forgiving than such a god. We’ve developed an unworkable and toxic image of God that a healthy person would never trust. The mystical, transformative journey cannot take place until that image is undone. Why would you want to spend even an hour in silence, solitude, or intimacy with such a god?
It’s true that there are some troubling passages of Scripture; even Jesus used dualistic and judgmental statements. Jesus was an honest and wise teacher. He knew that clear-headed, dualistic thinking must precede non-dual or mystical thinking. Jesus was particularly emphatic about issues people normally want to avoid, especially social justice teachings. Here he used dualistic examples like God and mammon (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13), the rich person and the eye of the needle (Matthew 19:24; Mark 10:25), and the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25: 31-46). Jesus had to make these points absolutely clear, otherwise it’s far too easy to avoid issues of justice for the poor and inclusion of the outsider.
It seems to me that in Matthew 25, when Jesus appears to make threats of “eternal punishment,” he is making strong contrasting statements about issues of ultimate significance, calling the listener to a decision. The trouble with this passage is that we focus on the threat more than on Jesus’ positive promise of “eternal life.” Jesus presents the teaching first in a dualistic manner. When pressed, he explains it in a non-dual way that encourages universal compassion: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers [and sisters] of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Non-dual thinkers can see that he is creating a moral equivalence between what we do to the least of the brothers and sisters and what we do to Christ. So Matthew 25 is supreme dualism overcome by supreme non-dualism. That is what we need. First do your clearheaded, rational, logical study of all sides of the issue of concern. Then you will see that the issue deserves much more subtlety than taking one side and damning all others. Non-dual thinking allows us to calmly hear, calmly detach, and calmly see from a higher level.
In his book, Inventing Hell, Jon Sweeney points out that our Christian notion of hell largely comes from several unfortunate metaphors in Matthew’s Gospel. Hell is not found in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It’s not found in the Gospel of John or in Paul’s letters. The words Sheol and Gehenna are used in Matthew, but they have nothing to do with our later medieval notion of eternal punishment. Sheol is simply the place of the dead, a sort of limbo place where humans await the final judgment when God will finally win. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, in the end “God will be all in all” (15:28). Gehenna was both the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem–the Valley of Hinnom–and an early Jewish metaphor for evil (Isaiah 66:24). The idea of hell as we most commonly view it came much more from Dante’s Divine Comedy than the Bible. Dante’s Purgatorioand Inferno are brilliant Italian poetry, but horrible Christian theology. Dante’s view of God is largely nonbiblical; however, there are some great insights in theParadiso.
In his book, Introduction to Christianity, Pope Benedict XVI explains his understanding of the curious phrase in the middle of the Apostles’ Creed: “[Jesus] descended into hell.” Benedict says that if Jesus went to hell, that means there is no hell–because Jesus and hell cannot coexist. Once Jesus got there, the whole game of punishment was over, as it were. One of the most popular icons in the Eastern Orthodox Church shows Jesus with his legs spread, bridging the abyss of hell, pulling people out of the darkness. This is called “the icon of icons” in the East because it shows the highest level of contemplative perspective and the essence of the Good News.

The Sacred Wound – Richard Rohr

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Friday, October 16, 2015

Only the wounded physician heals. –C. G. Jung [1]

When life is hard, we are primed to learn something absolutely central. I call it God’s special hiding place. The huge surprise of the Christian revelation is that the place of the wound is the place of the greatest gift. Our code phrase for this whole process is “cross and resurrection,” revealing that our very wounds can become sacred wounds, if we let them. Read more

Walking in the shoes of the other | Timothy Kurek | TEDxUniversityoftheAegean

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

Timothy Kurek is a living example that you can only trully understand someone if you have walked a mile in their shoes. He proved exactly that when he decided to pretend to be openly gay in his very conservative community for a whole year. When his experiment ended he had managed to change not only his way of thinking about the homosexuals and any other person who could be different, but also his family’s way of thinking, making of himself a living example of the verse ” Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32

Timothy Kurek is a passionate writer, tackling some of the front burner issues of our day. His unrestrained style of immersion lends a uniquely empathetic perspective, engaging his audiences with empathy, humor, and refreshing candor. Through his work he unravels a tale of self-discovery, and the perks of questioning ones’ own beliefs. Dedicated to opening the eyes of the broader public to issues of social justice and equality through the medium of story, Timothy shows the way to new ways of thinking and believing.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) courtesy of Fr. Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

In Teilhard’s view, Christian life is essential to the progress of evolution. He emphasized that the role of the Christian is to divinize the world in Jesus Christ, to “christify” the world by our actions, by immersing ourselves in the world, plunging our hands, we might say into the soil of the earth and touching the roots of life. . . . The world, he claimed, is like a crystal lamp illumined from within by the light of Christ. For those who can see, Christ shines in the diaphanous universe, through the cosmos, and in matter. He posited a “mysticism of action” in a universe moved and com-penetrated by God. For him, union with God means not withdrawal or separation from the activity of the world but a dedicated, integrated, and sublimated absorption into it. [2]

Teilhard . . . viewed the cosmos on a journey to God in a process of divinization, which he called Christogenesis. . . . Love is the force that energizes the process because love permeates the entire cosmos, that is, the affinity of being with being. Teilhard wrote, “Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being.” He identifies this energy of love with Christ, the Omega, saying, “the love of Christ is an energy into which all the chosen elements of creation are fused without losing their identity.” [3]

Teilhard held that the whole of natural evolution is coming under the influence of Christ, the physical center of the universe, through the free cooperation of human beings. God evolves the universe and brings it to its completion through the instrumentality of human beings. Thus we are not called to relate to God without a world. To love God we must also love what God loves. We are called to love this created world as God loves it. . . . We are to help transform this universe in Christ by seeing Christ in the universe and loving Christ at the heart of the universe. [4]

References:

[1] Ilia Delio, O.S.F., Christ In Evolution (Orbis Books: 2008), 18-19.

[2] Ibid., 139.

[3] Ibid., 81.

[4] Ibid., 81-82.

“We Call You Different Names” Prayer by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

O God, we thank you for the fact that you have inspired men and women in all nations and in all cultures. We call you different names: some call you Allah; some call you Elohim; some call you Jehovah; some call you Brahma; some call you the Unmoved Mover. But we know that these are all names for one and the same God. Grant that we will follow you and become so committed to your way and your kingdom that we will be able to establish in our lives and in this world a brother and sisterhood, that we will be able to establish here a kingdom of understanding, where men and women will live together as brothers and sisters and respect the dignity and worth of every human being. In the name and spirit of Jesus. Amen.

Dear Indiana Governor Mike Pence – By Caleb Woods

/ Brian Legate / Leave a comment

Dear Indiana Gov. Mike Pence,

You’ve made a mistake. You’ve signed a very dangerous bill into law.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows discrimination against LGBT people. FACT. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows businesses to refuse service to LGBT people. FACT. Not only that, but the law allows discrimination against a multitude of people.

You are aware of how many sins are in the Bible, right? Businesses can claim “religious freedom” and refuse to serve anyone who might be seen as a “sinner.” This isn’t limited to LGBT people.

This law opens up possible discrimination against:

  • interracial couples (Deuteronomy 7:3-4, Ezra 9:1-2, Daniel 2:43, Matthew 25:32, Deuteronomy 22:9-11)
  • people who are divorced (Matthew 5:31-32, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18, Matthew 19:89-9)
  • known adulterers (Proverbs 6:32, Matthew 5:28, Hebrews 13:4, Exodus 20:14, John 8:4-11)
  • unwed parents and single mothers (Ephesians 5:5, Galatians 5:19)
  • people who have tattoos, piercings, or jewelry (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Leviticus 19:28, 1 Timothy 2:9, 1 Peter 2:3)

That’s a lot of discrimination to go around!

When you go out to eat, do you openly pray before every meal? When you attend church, do you openly pray in front of everyone? Are you aware that “the Bible is quite clear on the issue” of praying in public? Matthew 6:5-7, Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16, and Luke 6:12 all condemn praying in public. And all of those verses are from the New Testament!

Do you eat bacon? Leviticus 11:7-8, Isaiah 66:17, and Deuteronomy 14:8 all state that eating bacon is a sin.

Do you eat shrimp or shellfish? Leviticus 11:9-12 is quite clear on the issue. If you’d like to see what the world would look like if people viewed eating shrimp as a sin, view my article on that here.

Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, you have made it legal to discriminate against a multitude of people. Christians can refuse service to Atheists, Buddhists, and Muslims. Atheists can refuse service to any religious people. People who have a religion other than Christianity can refuse services to Christians.

You have opened up a huge can of worms.

You claim that you abhor discrimination, but your record shows otherwise. You claim that the law doesn’t discriminate against gay people, yet you refuse to support laws that would help protect gay people from discrimination. It’s ironic that you keep using the word “abhor” in your interviews. You know who also used that word? David. Psalms 119:163.

“I hate and abhor lying…”

The Bible is VERY clear about lying (Leviticus 19:11, Proverbs 12:22, Proverbs 13:5, Proverbs 14:5, Proverbs 17:7, Hosea 11:12, Acts 5:3, Colossians 3:9, James 3:1). By openly lying about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, people now know that you’re a liar. You’ve been open about it. When you walk into your favorite restaurant, it’s possible that the business may refuse you service due to their “religious convictions about lying.”

I’m going to be blunt. You’re not fooling anyone anymore. You’ve been caught. Instead of making things right, you continue to dig your hole deeper by lying over and over.

You were warned numerous times that this law was discriminatory. Unlike the “Good Samaritan,” you looked the other way.

Your willful ignorance has cost you and the state of Indiana dearly. Instead of apologizing and showing that you don’t want LGBT people to be discriminated against, you’ve built a house of lies and retreated into the corner.

It’s not good enough for you that the First Amendment already protects the freedom of religion. You and many other conservatives have to go one step further and force your religion on others. But don’t you see? You DO have the right to any religion (or lack thereof) and to worship freely!You DON’T have the right to use your religion as a tool of hate and discrimination.

And quite frankly, why would any “god” support discrimination? That raises questions as to what kind of “god” you believe in. If you honestly believe that your “god” wants you to treat LGBT people differently, then you should re-evaluate your religion.

Jesus Christ taught love, compassion, friendship, and hope. He didn’t teach fear, discrimination, and prejudice. If you’re not using the Bible to learn more about understanding, compassion, acceptance, and love, then you’re reading the Bible completely wrong. Period.

So, I beg you, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence — show compassion, acceptance, and love to LGBT people. Sign a non-discrimination law for LGBT people. Show that you truly abhor discrimination just as much as David abhorred lying.

As Governor, show that you support ALL of your people in Indiana.

Sincerely,

Caleb Woods

Caleb Woods is a Communications and English major. He is a reader, a writer, and an activist for LGBT rights, women’s rights, and the rights of the American people. He has lived in Alabama for his entire life and has experienced first-hand discrimination and bigotry. He hopes to change hearts and minds across the world so that people may show more compassion and empathy for their fellow man and woman. Click here if you’d like to donate money to Caleb’s coffee fund.