Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Is Religion the Cause for War and Societal Disruption?


Man plays John's Lennon Imagine at Paris after the attack
Published on Nov 14, 2015


A man pulls his piano with a bike up to rue Richard Lenoir ten meters from the Bataclan, the theater which last night was the scene of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Paris. Then he began to play the notes of Imagine by John Lennon. Around the pianist, a small crowd gathers....

* * * * * * * * * *


War of the Gods

by Diana Butler Bass, author, Grounded: Finding God in the World -- A Spiritual Revolution
Posted: 11/17/2015 11:18 am EST Updated: 11/17/2015 9:59 pm EST


True faith consists of one thing and one thing only: love. And love does not mean you
get to kill your neighbor in the name of God or destroy the planet. It resists apocalyptic
nightmares in favor of a dream for a world household of peace.


One of the most poignant moments in the wake of the Paris attacks was the street musician who played a moving rendition of John Lennon's Imagine. As the melody sounded, the familiar words rang in my mind:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

The Paris attacks reignited an argument we have been having for a long time, but most especially since 9/11. Religion, particularly when twinned with nationalism, is to blame for division, terrorism, violence and war. Not just Islam. Religion. As Lennon lyrically opined, the planet would be better off without it. Religion is the problem.

And I agree. Religion is the problem.

By its nature, religion embodies particular understandings of God. For the last millennium or so, the world's most influential religions have envisioned a hierarchical God who ruled over a vertical universe. God lived above in heaven; we lived on a sinful or evil earth; and the terrors of death threatened us from below.

Thus, religion became consumed with an issue: getting people from here "up" to heavenly bliss with God in order to escape damnation. Although a crude image, religion basically functioned as a sort of holy elevator between heaven, earth, and hell. And an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-distant God in the clouds oversaw the whole business, ready to condemn or punish heretics and infidels at a moment's notice.

Vertical religion has made a mess of the earth

First, it diminished life here in favor of obsessive concern about eternal destiny. The planet served as little more than a temporary station on the way to the heavenly afterlife.

Second, religions developed different plans about how to receive eternal reward. Each designated their path as the only one, making everyone else spiritual and ethical competitors in the process. And each valorized divine violence against outsiders as a mark of holiness.

Many people still believe in a hierarchical God and the vertical universe. Despite each religion's claim to uniqueness, this conception of God is not exclusive to any one. Adherents of the vertical God are Christians and Muslims and are counted in most other religions as well.

And that is the problem.

The followers of the sacred hierarchy seem behind much of the world's most insidious evil at the moment. This is especially true when they view everything as a battle of "our" true God against "your" false one, hoping to force an apocalyptic confrontation that assures heavenly reward for the faithful in a global holy war.

With such a horrifying narrative, it is no wonder so many other people have come to believe that no religion is the best option for our time. But I think there is another way, one that is even hinted at in John Lennon's song:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Although the old God is the source of much trouble, there is a spiritual possibility that does not banish God from the moral equation.

  • What if the vertical universe with its heavenly rewards and hellish threats, and not the divine presence itself, is the real problem?

  • What if the whole point of faith is life here, on earth, living for today? This does not exclude God from the human story. Instead, ridding ourselves of the vertical universe relocates God with us.

In my new book Grounded: Finding God in the World, I argue that there is a spiritual revolution that is doing just that. And this revolution has everything to do with what just happened in Paris.

Millions are rejecting "religion" in favor of "spirituality," a turn that can be empirically demonstrated in polling data, church membership statistics, and changes in faith practices. Recently, for example, a Pew Research Center study showed that Americans were less conventionally religious but more spiritual than ever.

The data, however, is odd. While people are less religious, belief in God remains high. People believe, but they believe differently than they once did -- it is increasingly clear that they have lost trust in distant institutions and the distant God of the old vertical universe. They find it increasingly difficult to sing hymns that celebrate a heavenly realm, recite creeds disconnected from life, pray liturgies that emphasize personal salvation, participate in sacraments that exclude others, and listen to sermons that claim there is only one way to God.

But this is not a negative revolution. Instead, God is being relocated with the world and with all of us, in nature and with our neighbors. It is a revolution of divine nearness -- as if people are storming heaven and dragging the sacred into the here-and-now. True faith consists of one thing and one thing only: love. And love does not mean you get to kill your neighbor in the name of God or destroy the planet. It resists apocalyptic nightmares in favor of a dream for a world household of peace.

What if the real choice is not between a Christian God and a Muslim one? What if the choice is not about embracing the hierarchical God or rejecting him? There is a different choice -- to walk a way of compassion, justice and kindness wherein God is discovered in the earthy horizons. This is a grounded God whose primary concern is not eternal life but life abundant for the whole human race.

Fundamentalists get all the headlines with their brutal dedication to a deity whose day is nearly done. But this other God revolution is happening as well -- and it is that which can heal and save us. 

You may say I'm a dreamer. But I assure you, I am not the only one.