RE Slater - Personal Update

https://www.maryfreebed.com/

To my readers,

Hello,

I've had a bit of a setback this month and last. Though I was productive through the month of February I was undergoing at the same time a very difficult foot-and-ankle infectious pain due to a surgical infection inhabiting those spaces over the past nine years at my first surgery.

Though I have had ups-and-downs over the past nine years these past several weeks have become unbearable from February through mid-April. I've experienced more pain than I could humanly endure. Consequently, I decided to go with another healthcare provider and all that they offered, including a new doctor, who could give to me counsel and direction. Which he did and who I was fortunate to find.

Basically, I knew I could no longer save my foot-and-ankle without risking internal organ damage because of PICC lines to be placed into my heart and all the heavy medication required to get me healthy again. This would not be an avenue I wished to revisit having had this done several times in the past.

So with my spouse attending my appointments with me, we have decided to lose the foot-and-ankle limb by having it removed.

This was done a week ago.

The healthcare system I switched to also offered an amazing rehabilitation center for amputees and people struggling with various disabilities. So once losing the foot-and-ankle my health issues have disappeared... although I have now traded a new set of health circumstances in recovering from a lost limb and learning to be self-caretaking for the next two months.

Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital

Restoring Hope and Freedom

After staying 3.5 days in surgical care I was then transferred to the disability center wherein I was able to graduate rapidly into self-care at home over a period of 4.5 days. This means I came home yesterday to struggle with residual pain and self-management issues. To help with any offsets, the rehabilitation center I had stayed in is providing "At-Home" nursing care, OT, PT, and nursing aides as needed.

So, as of yesterday, it has been one week since my radical surgery and recovery. I am at home presently working towards better health. This means in two months my half-leg should be healed and I will be able to be fitted with several foot-and-ankle prosthetics. Which also means I will be re-enrolled as an outpatient two or three days a week to learn how to walk again.

By mid-July of 2024, and after four months from first to last, I should be fully mobile with only ensuing health checkups over the next year or two.

And as I can, I will return to this website soon to work out what process philosophy, theology, process sciences, and all other disciplines and human pursuits might look like when using Whitehead's "philosophy of a living organism" (e.g., the universe; the earth; and ourselves as evolving processual entities).

Till then, use all the resources here to begin your own processual journey. Please pass along suggestions, needs, and ideas in the comment section.

To comment you have to be part of Google's membership which is free. When I see the comments - and if they are appropriate to the content - I will post them. If not, I will delete them. If users wish to speak to one another I can adjust my site to allow for conversation but discourage any frivolous comments or weblinks not pertinent to the subject matter.

Blessings,

R.E. Slater

April 19, 2024

Process Futures Grant Hope as well as Being

Process Futures Grant Hope as well as Being

R.E. Slater

Introduction

After 8 years of working from the bottom up through the Scriptures using a variety of evangelical tools, methodologies, and structures, I have concluded as of early last Fall of 2020 to purposely move more fully into process philosophy and theology and will now intentionally restructure this next phase of biblical exploration at Relevancy22 using process thought as the primary modus operandi (sic, a method or procedure) as fully as I can throughout biblical and systematic thinking.

Let me cite several reasons:

(i) Because I am convinced that biblical process thinking is an enhancement to all previous discussions, systems, and doctrines of God over the centuries, it is felt that it should be explored more fully.

(ii) That it leans into the doubt, uncertainties and questions today's contemporary religious, quasi-religious, and secular societies are facing.

(iii) And that it comports very well between the Christian faith and today's postmodern/metamodern sciences. In fact, extremely will.

All of which is to say that process thought seems very promising - especially as it can bridge the church and science gap so very well and does include all religions around the globe into its observations both richly and expansively.

As an example, as Christians learn to read the bible by a specific method, based upon a particular system, or a multiple set of doctrinal systems, those methodologies would influence how a reader might perceive the teachings of Scriptures thereby reinforcing those learned systems onto one's existential faith. If I had learned to read the bible through the quizzical, wonderous mindset of Dr. Suess, the children's book author, I would naturally read "Suessian Structure" throughout the bible. I wouldn't question my reading of the bible because I wouldn't have questioned the methodology by which I had learned to read the bible in my earlier contexts of faith formation.

Similarly, I wish to now learn to read the bible from a process theological perspective. A system which is more fully expansive of the Christian faith and more fully centered in the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord. It would be more fully introspective and self-critical of its postulations, more open to doubt and uncertainty, and more willing to explore other avenues of thought without limiting conjecture or discussion (if properly done).

And if process thought is as much a part of our limited view of reality as it seems to show, then I would expect to find process theology throughout the pages of the bible as I read it. Why? Because the kind of perceived human experience I am having in today's present society should show up in the more ancient narratives of human experience. Woe, travesty, travail, hardship, disbelief, wonderment, beauty, and so on. To which I think we can all agree is as relevant today as it was in earlier individual experiences and societies.

But not only should I read of process reality in the bible but also find it embedded throughout past civilizations struggling with similar religious ideas, corruption of power, disinterest in altruism, or reflectivity to the harm mankind seems to always carry with it. Process reality should be found everywhere, in every era, and every human space of activity.

The bible recast in the form as Process Christianity should then lend even more insights to the extuant church doctrines of our day, the theodicy questions we have of God, and of our own experience, and what we might expect the future to hold. Process Thought might therefore be our best help and guide through doctrinal dead ends and Christian teachings straying away from God's love to poorly enacted instances of unloving human justice, justifying the ends by the means, if you will.

I was reminded of this the other day by an older, ex-minister of the CRC church, a Calvinist friend and trained graduate student from Calvin Seminary. He had asked me to share with him what process theology is and how it might be applicable to the Christian faith. Like the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill, I spent 90 minutes in personal tutorial and discussion until he felt sufficiently informed. At once, being enlightened, the old minister began quoting Scripture after Scripture to me, using process thinking. He was learning to see process theology everywhere he turned upon its pages. Now this didn't change his mind... which for me is ok. That's the Lord's job. But needless to say, we understood each other very well in the Spirit and the Fellowship of the Lord, which perhaps may have been the better result.

Process Theology is the New Big Boy on the Block

Let us begin. First, chose any "biblical" system you want - whether Catholic, Protestant, East Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever. Any-and-all theological or religious systems will be found to be subtended over and smoothed out in Process Theology when given a chance.

How do I know? In the Christian tradition when one spends time reading and parsing the bible we hope to pull from the lived realities we know into the texts we are studying. And when doing so, compare our bible studies to reality itself so that our faith is applicable to life's contexts. If our faith didn't measure up, then such a faith belief would be unhelpful and unnecessary.

Let me suggest then that in the face of Whiteheadian Process Philosophy and Theology this reality which is everywhere about us is a process relational reality found in all events, at all times, everywhere.

Pick the psychology, sociology, economic, politick, governance, science, or theology, and all human endeavors and disciplines will comply to the process paradigm of being and event. Of becoming and outcome.

Consequently, all past and future rubrics mankind has attempted to utilize to explain life may either help to further explain life or fail to capture life's sublimity. Process thought is a way of perceiving the world which will encompass some systems or reject others. Hence, Jungian Type-and-Archetype can be easily included. But the philosophical worlds of Platonism and Neo-Platonism will come crashing down against the newer eras of quantum possibilities.

Platonism Has Died

The Westernization of Plato has ended. After 2500 years we may be free of its grasp. The new philosophical theorem it must now interact with is process philosophy for the moment. Just as Newtonian physics gave way to Quantum physics so too must older constructs of the world give way to newer constructs of the world until such a time as they must be given up or restructured in some other way.

Even now, process philosophy is on the rise in the West, across the East, Indo-Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Middle-East, Africa, and the Americanas. All future beliefs, conjectures, and sciences will now have to deal with process thought even as they are currently working through what quantum events might mean across all areas of research, study, and application.

In process relational terms, quantum events may be recast as "timeful processes of temporary moments" which come as quickly as they pass. This is the new reality. A quantum reality circumscribed by process event.

Moreover, there are no eternal objects as Platonism had decreed and has flooded into our Westernized thinking over the centuries as we think about the world, God, and life in general. Instead, we now must restructure our thinking to include momentary experiences hinting at future process outcomes. Outcomes that give rise to actualities which give rise to further occasions of becoming. But nowhere in this process can there be eternal objects of the kind and type we were raised to comprehend. More on this in a moment....

Hence, Whiteheadian Process Thought may be understood in this greater philosophical context as an Integral Theory of all things. Thinking in mathematical terms of set theory, such designated theories are the greatest set of all subtending subsets proceeding from them, or contained within them. Process Thought is the greatest Set of all other sets that includes everything including itself. This then is how we might describe a philosophical Theory or Everything, or Integral Theory.

Process Theology Is Found In All Previous Systems

Biblical Theological Systems attempt to act as all-inclusive theories. Attempting to describing God as fully as they can from the narratives of the bible, found in history, in the sciences, and in our everyday experiences. Some theologians like to call these testimonies as the four witnesses: (i) the bible, (ii) church history and tradition, (iii) natural  theology of nature including anthropological studies of man and human societies, and, (iv) our life experiences.

Classic Calvinism (as found in the Reformed Churches) has come-and-gone, morphing nowadays into  the more restrictive evangelical conservative churches across America in newer forms of neo-Calvinism with its Trumpian emphasis on personal liberties over that of other people's liberties. Not caretake or concern for others as could be displayed in the simple act of mask wearing during these times of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. But care and concern for themselves, their beliefs, their religious laws, and condemnations.

In comparison, Classic Arminianism (Wesleyans, Methodists, Baptists) has transitioned towards an expanded form of itself as Open and Relational Theology which is composed of equal parts open theism (the future is open, not closed, predestined or foreordained) and relational theism (all in God and in the world are relational and relatable).

Need another example? Salvation theories revolving around Christ continue to reposition themselves through our human experience of hope, despair, abandonment, imprisonment, betrayal, lostness, and so forth. Early Church Hellenism, Catholic Church Scholasticism, Sectarian, if not Cultic forms of Gnosticism, and even Jewish Rabbinic readings of the OT Law into today's contemporary societies are all forms of biblical theological systems attempting to make sense of one's faith and the world.

Looked at another way, there have been (and still is) many proposed historical schematics described in terms of (i) occupation periods of imperial empires, or (ii) by world crisis events (disease, pandemics, weather), or (iii) the failure or success of human governance, comportment, or congeniality. We've moved from the Dark Ages, to the Renaissance Era, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Modernism, Postmodernism, even Metamodernism, and whatever else will be forthcoming.

In all these descriptions - whether by religious doctrine or by historical period - one could further describe each one in terms of process relational events irrespective of their qualities or characteristics. They have come-and-gone exactly as we have lived them out. A different choice here, a different act there, by an individual or a group, and the outcomes would either differ by degree or altogether by the event itself.

Reality is a Process Reality

Life, whether in the bible, or in the world, is an event process. What we read of in ancient literature tells us this is so. As a Christian, I should like to take this newest Integral Theory of Process Events and further describe it in theological terms using metaphysics, ontology, and cosmos-centric experiences.

As it has been state that all reality can now be understood in terms of Whiteheadian process theory as an overall integral theory of all previous systems theories both secular or biblical. And that whether we read the narratives of the bible or the comparative literatures of the world, all observe a form of process event as part of creation's relational realtiy.

More so, every philosophy, every theology, every cultural anthropology, every scientific observation will observe process, process, process.

Westernized Platonism use to described the world we live in by eternal objects. No longer. Those objects are secondary objects to the human experience itself. In effect, they are unreal. Objects we give reality to by our inquiring thoughts and speculations. But ethereal objects serving at best as descriptors to the real events of process experience.

Eternal Objects Are No More

Essensentially, all eternal objects are derivative effects of event processes proceeding along temporal lines of spacetime acting upon each other while giving the phenomenological occurence of newer occasions and actualities we may surmise into meta-events but are consequential to our human experience.

Platonism believed eternal objects to be real. As separate and outside of timeful history. Process Thought says they are not but a consequence to the acts of process events. That there is nothing which is separate nor outside of timeful history as immaterial, unsubstantive ontological objects unless we posit God Himself. Which, in the Christian system, as in many other religions, we will and we do.

Otherwise, these descriptor objects simply inform us of our experience living within a process-based universe or momentary spacetime with its matter and forces and consequences.

As example, we think of the universe as eternal. It was until it wasn't any longer. From its Big Bang beginnings (as some conjecture), to perhaps its Big Crunch ending (as some conjecture); or whether it will be absorbed into another multiverse even as it was birthed by a previous multiverse (as some conjecture), the universe is not static but living and dying moment-by-moment. Its eternality lies in its endless streams of birth and death events.

So too may we describe our reality. A reality entirely dependent upon the antecedent past colliding with the ever forming present as it morphs and reshapes in response into future processes repeating themselves over and over, again and again.

What is Eternality?

Eternality is actually the repetition of the eternal moment. It is a time-and-event dependent process to give it shape and form found within its deep interactivity with its relational organism.

Process Theology takes these process events of life - regardless of their cosmological, metaphysical, or ontological antecedents and recasts them into the fabric of temporality of the human experience.

From the ancient days before homo sapien man was, to their primal cultures, then their ancient societies of which the bible and other ancient literature speak, our human experience is receiving, reshaping, and retelling its hopes and dreams of a future outcome. Outcomes generally seeking goodness and wellbeing in the midst of suffering and tragedy.

In postmodern - or metamodern - terms, Process Relational Theory is redescribing philosophy, theology, literature, science, and human ecological civilization. Process societies are remeasuring themselves in terms of relational goodness and wellbeing to the creative ecological order which they have pushed away and now are re-embracing in novel and formative restructuring of ecologically-driven postmodern societies.

And where is God in all this? God is right here with us and with creation.

God is a Process God of Novel Relationships

God, who has breathed upon the formless void of matter, has breathed His process-substance into its deeps. Disturbing its structures. Recasting its formless matter. Has given it His eternal Personage as the only real eternal object ever existing.

God has imbued Himself into the void's creational structures by His Image and by His Essence. God is the ontological difference that gave to formless matter its process event constitution. And thereby recast its constitution to house within its physical structures God's own metaphysical Being. The divine wind which carries the re-constitution of matter along into spacetime process relations is the same divine wind which is carried within these self-same structures.

When we think of creation we must think of the God who formed creation within the very processes of Himself. Both as an active exterior force as well as a divine presence within creation's very structures. 

Structures which bear God's Essence of relationality to all things. God's creativity. God's goodness. God's wellbeing. Each-and-all of these qualitative differences have been birthed from God's divine Self into the formless primordial oozes (or densely hot plasmic forces) of pre-creational mass.

And because God's Self is love so we may expect creational freewill agency to part of this divine love flowing through creation's veins. It beats within every part of its divinely energized creation. Not by divine fiat but by God's presence of Self within and without the creational process. Note too, that we speak not of pantheism but panentheism. As God is ontologically different from creation He is also intricately a part of creation's process relational events.

Process Theology and Theodicy

Similarly, when evil arises, it comes not from God who is good, but from creationally-imbued freewilled agency as an aftermath of God's Self imparted into creation. God is a freewilled Being. He is a relational Being. We therefore should expect, and do find, creation to have relational agency within and without itself as it moves through time and space. God's Image has been not only stamped or imprinted upon creation. It is it's lifeblood. It's energy force. What drives it and makes it go.

God is good. God can do no evil. Though death and destruction is a part of life it is not an evil unless it is formed as an evil by the freewill agency of creation itself. Creational processes are birthed and they die. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes explosively. This is its process. But where human sentience (and that of the sentience of the animal kingdom) come into play, the normal interplay of life and death may become something more ruinous, more evil. This is not of God. It is of a freewill agency stepping beyond God to be its own godlike force.

Is there a hell? Not by God who is good. Nor does God cast sinful mankind into hell. Whatever hells there may be God is in the life-giving, heavenly restructuring of harm into care and wellbeing where and when He can in an agency driven cosmos.

Evil is a part of the creational process. It is an agency-driven event impacting other relational events within a complex process structure of intra- and inter- process activity.

God Is the Future

One last...

The future is a concept, a process concept which arises from past processes forming current processes and thereby affecting "future" processes. These processes and their effects carry with them many possible futures but each future is contingent upon every other possible event process.

God should not be conceived as an eternal object controlling spacetime contingency  - though God does breathe into creation it's continuity. This contingency is given to creation as its own future to write by the kind of constitution it has been formed as previously explained.

What this means is that God does not control creation's destiny. He cannot. God has imbued creation with Himself. Creation is driven by God's Essence. His Being. Creation has been imbued with freewill agency. A relational agency affecting all of its organism, or parts.

But rather than saying God is controlling the future, or its destiny, we may quite freely state that God is  affecting creation's future destiny with goodness and wellbeing through imbued processes events urging to creation to come into fellowship with the Divine Essence it was birthed by and formed in.

Though these processes may or may not obey their nature of godliness, it will strive within itself to become what it is or further separate towards a less fulfilling image or identity. Christians speak to this event as either hearing and being drawn to the Spirit of God in spiritual penitence and transformation or fleeing from the Spirit of God call to them to repent and be saved.

In-and-through of the process events of life the Spirit of God strives against the agency of creation calling it from death back to life when moving towards process events which are less than fulfilling, less than good, less than what it was made to be.

Process Futures are Dynamic

We may also say that such futures will be good or bad dependent upon the processes we as mankind chose to initiate. Even so, we cannot know the future anymore than God can know the future. The future is unknowable (open theism based upon Process Theology).

The future holds many possible outcomes each affecting other possible occasions and actualities towards many other possible outcomes. We might call this the Physics of Possible-lism.

Yet the future is formative. It is not set. Not predetermined. Not known.

The future may lean Godward as much as it leans away from God. But God has given creation agency to it. An agency He cannot control because it bears His Image. His Essence. His Being of freewill.

Yet strangely - if not strangely hopeful - the very processes of creation bears God's Self, His Imprint, His Urging.

God is Imbued in all Process Futures 

The future does not need to be known nor determined as God's Self is the future in this process world of being and becoming.

Even as creation continues to expand or retract - or be absorbed by another creational process perhaps that of a multiverse - in all those futures to come God is there, with it, with us, ever and always.

God in this manner has no need to know or determine the future because the future is essentially formed in God through the very process God has birthed and birthed Himself into.

God has internalized His Self into the very fabric of the process relational event. Where it goes He goes. Where it ends up He ends up. The Future and God are one and the same. Even as God inhabits the past and the present God so then inhabits the future. Not by determination nor control but by His being which is ever becoming in the becoming events of relational process transactions.

"I AM Who I AM" says God. He is who He is coming to Be. What God was He will Be Something Else in the Future, regardless of where the Future goes. Why? Because is there with it, driving it, forming it back to Himself. God is the Future, as God was the Past and now our Present. God Is. And God Will Be and Become. Let us follow God's example. Let our beings become usurping all possible worlds and worldly outcomes urging each element towards love by the divinely driven redemptive processes of salvific reformation.

R.E. Slater

April 17, 2017

*My apologies as my metaphors have clashed with the theological presentation of panentheism. I have attempted to expand its structures without confusing the ontology of the Creator with His Creation. Like Jesus' parables let's go with what I've written and take away what may be helpful in healing ourselves and the worlds we interact with. I, myself, would like to see goodness define our worlds rather than sin. In this regard I've attempted to emphasize goodness over sin. Yes, there is sin. No, sin isn't what defines God's creation. Creation is imaged in God. So are we. We, like it, bear God's imprimatur through Christ. Peace and grace to you till the end of days. - res

Re-Reading Scripture Through Process Eyes

ADDENDUM

After writing this post yesterday I happened to listen to Tripp Fuller and Peter Rollins last night discuss nearly the same subject on-an-off during a podcast they made a couple days earlier which I had missed.  I met Peter once or twice through Rob Bell and Mars Hill Church when Pete occasionally spoke there and have followed him ever since. I especially enjoy his Jack Caputo-like approach to radical theology (the weakness of God, the death of God) and ability to update the philosopher Hegel from the Continental Philosophical tradition into Jack's (and Peter's) application of it into the atoning work and resurrection of Christ and what this means for the church today.

Anyway, about 30 minutes in Tripp and Pete tag into process theology and what this means about God and how we think about God (I believe it releases God from our confining religious holds upon Him granting God permission to be God's Self). Then later, about 25 minutes near the end of they're conversation, they mention it again.

Needless to say, those both in the process camp, and those outside of it, who are working with process metaphysics and Hegelian philosophy carried through in the tradition of Continentalism are feeling the productive energy of process thought and are responding in some way according to their backgrounds and studies. Here it is...

R.E. Slater

April 18, 2021

Peter Rollins: friends are friends forever

https://trippfuller.com/2021/04/17/peter-rollins-friends-are-friends-forever/

April 17, 2021 By Tripp Fuller

Peter Rollins returns to the podcast and we have a bunch of fun.

Pete’s past visits:

• Peter Rollins Casts Out a Demon & Plans a Middle School Purity Retreat #theologybeercamp
• Tony Jones & Peter Rollins on #TheGreatDebacle
• Soapbox Blabbery with Peter Rollins & Tony Jones
• Paul w/ Daniel Kirk & Peter Rollins
• Paul: Rupture, Revelation, & Revolution [High Gravity class w/ Peter Rollins]
• Plundering Religion with Kester Brewin, Peter Rollins, & Barry Taylor #Mutiny
• Bootlegged Christianity with Philip Clayton, Jack Caputo, Bill Mallonee, Peter Rollins, & Jay Bakker
• #PodcastDay Surprise with @PeterRollins
• Revelation of Darkness LIVE Event: Taylor’s F-it Theology, Rollins reaches behind the curtain
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The Christian Liberation of Being Gay

~ Unhelpful advertisements sharing and extending pain and harm ~

"Homosexuality is not a disease.

The name 'therapy' alone is misleading."

I must apologize once again. This time for the simple fact that I don't put up enough articles on homosexuality as I should. To be sure, there are many articles on this site, but not lately, as I've been exploring many other topics which need to be said and taught. Especially when requiring religious faith, and especially the Christian faith, which I was raised in, that it be updated into contemporary forms of constructive, postmodern theology.

If you don't know my background let me share briefly share it here.

I have had deep bible training and education through the college and seminary level (an undergrad Bible Minor; and, graduate M.Div.). My Baptist faith studies centered on language-based inductive and expository biblical studies. I tried to shun any indoctrinating classes in favor of biblical studies classes.

In my childhood I attended public schools and later, the University of Michigan, entering with a full academic ride to study Aerospace Engineering after turning down a Congressional appointment to the USAF Academy in Boulder, Colorado. At Michigan I majored in applied mathematics, science, and as much classical language, literature and history as my schedule could manage. There I met George Medenhall and David Noel Freedman along with many other very helpful professors and TA's.

During my time at Michigan I became involved with a vibrant local church campus ministry along with the organization Campus Crusade for Christ. Though this latter was welcomed and quite well attended by students across the Michigan campus it was my local church which had the larger, more indoctrinating programs and active ministries which attracted me the most. Each fellowship provided many wonderful years of faith acquisition, witness, studies, fellowships, and ministries towards examination of my inherited faith. But as you can guess, with so much of the good, came acceptable standards of non-biblical thinking and testimony based on conservative doctrine.

To my everlasting regret, I burned out deep in my third year having prematurely attained the level of graduate mathematics. To this day I have wished I had completed my senior year. But be that as it may, I was too conflicted to go any further, having lost any interest and reason for going forward until the Lord cleared up my confused heart.

By the following fall I had regrouped enough to enroll and begin an additional two years of undergraduate studies completing a Psychology major (added to previous psych and sociological studies at Michigan) with a deep minor in biblical studies at the local Baptist College. At graduation I left latter that summer from my home state of Michigan to teach at a small private Christian high school in West Palm Beach, Florida, where I met many wonderful students, parents, church members, and staff.

I taught one year, had been blessed, and been a blessing, to my students, and returned back home feeling called to finish biblical studies this time on a graduate level. When coming back I first worked at a commercial electrical trade business to fill up my empty bank account. As you can guess, Christian schools pay poverty wages while requiring nearly all of your time. By January of the following year, with the encouragement of a dear friend, I applied and was accepted into Seminary.

After 34 years of local lay ministries in several churches I have, even as I was then, been rethinking how the Christian faith might better be centered around the love of God instead of my interpretation of the Bible which my faith circles called Truth. When done, Christ's love won out over my more limiting doctrinal worldview of how things should be, and should be done. It took awhile but thankfully the Lord has led me to spend these past eight ten years laying out important differences between my traditional faith inheritance and where I think its orthodoxy should better be directed given the context of God's love when considered first, last, and foremost above all church doctrines.

The result has been this blog here, Relevancy22, wherein I share doctrine by doctrine, topic by topic, in as methodical fashion as I can, reasons why the Christian faith must be reconstructed when re-centered on the love of God and Christ's atoning death. This re-orientation into the Love of God has been revolutionary in my life as I hope it may be in you, my readers.

Which, I think, at the last, was probably why I never finished Michigan nor held a decisive job in life. Though I spent my years, like the Apostle Paul, in tent ministries, as a consultant and technician to small area businesses. When not working or volunteering at Civic, Educational, or Ecological organizations, I have spent nearly all my life in ministry in one form or another. Out of sight, underneath the fabric of interfering church eyes, ministering to thousands and thousands of youth, college age, and young professionals. From deacon, elder, and pastor's kids, to the many youths and young adults searching for life's questions, direction, and meaningful purpose.

In the end my real business has been the Lord's. My dedication was to the same. My long, oft times difficult journey was worth the lost of mathematics degree and career. It was my time the Lord wanted. My dedication. Nothing else. Peace.

R.E. Slater

May 9, 2020

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"This so-called therapy makes people sick, not better. The ban is an

important signal from society to all those who are unsure about

their homosexuality that it's okay to be the way you are."

When I consider homosexuality I think back to my dear friend and homosexual roommate of two years at the University of Michigan. To his testimony of lifehood, value, and personal respect for himself,  I also discovered the gay students I had met during those years along with dorm-mates and homosexual groups I inadvertantly discovered along the way. As a lad from a country farm and small country school background, I had entered the Land of Oz. One of strangeness and mystery.

My overall experience has been one of positiveness. I discovered a loving, beauty-appreciating gay lifestyle which I admired along with the sad fact of constant societal assaults upon their being and personhood. This latter was what saddened me the most.

From these experiences I can tell you I am not gay, but gay-appreciating. I may not have understood it in my youth but as the years have rolled by I believe I can welcome and embrace gay men and women better than I had been taught by the church in my formative years of youth and college.

When considering Conversion Therapy I consider it one of the most harmful practices by the state and church. It leaves nothing but emotional and spiritual scars, suicides, feelings of worthlessness, and deep separation from the mainstream of humanity.

As a Christian, I wish for all to know how deeply loved and accepted the LGBTQ community is for who they are, as persons and as a group. To personally convey that God does not ask LGBTQ's to change their personhood or identity. If any change is to be made at all, perhaps it might be made in removing toxic relationships from their significant circles of identity and fellowship rather than put up with its continued abuse. Life is difficult enough without bearing the additional burdens heaped on by toxic judgmental voices of misunderstanding speaking death and not life into one's soul.

In all this I, and other Christian brothers and sisters, send prayers of peace and love always!

R.E. Slater

May 9, 2020

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

From a well meaning friend who deeply vibrates with the homosexual community:

"So Russ, do you mean you can't pray the gay away?? 😆

My intentional response meant in kindness and support:

"No. Nor do I wish to. To quip Dr. Suess, 'A person is a person no matter how gay.'"

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rainbow flags in front of the Brandenburg Gate at an event to celebrate the legalization of same-sex marriage in Berlin, Germany, June 2017.

Germany bans gay conversion therapy for minors

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/08/europe/germany-gay-conversion-therapy-ban-intl-scli-grm/index.html

by Frederik Pleitgen and Amy Woodyatt, CNN

Updated 8:26 AM ET, Fri May 8, 2020

Berlin (CNN) Germany has become the latest country to ban gay conversion therapy for those below the age of 18.

On Thursday, the country's parliament approved a ban of so-called conversion therapies -- which claim to be able to change a person's sexual orientation or identity -- for minors, and for adults who have been forced, threatened or deceived to undergo the controversial treatment.

So-called conversion therapies, also known as reparative treatments, rely on the assumption that sexual orientation can be changed or "cured" -- an idea debunked and discredited by major medical associations in the UK, the United States and elsewhere.

Oklahoma takes a step toward banning conversion therapy

Under the ban, advertising the intervention to young people is also outlawed, and those in breach of the law will face fines or a jail sentence of up to a year.

Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said that the ban was an "important signal from society for all those who are unsure about their homosexuality."

"Homosexuality is not a disease. Therefore the name therapy alone is misleading," Spahn said in a statement.

"This so-called therapy makes people sick and not better. The ban is also an important signal from society to all those who are unsure about their homosexuality: It is okay to be the way you are," he added.

Studies have found that efforts to change a young person's sexuality can put them at a greater risk of depression or suicide.

Despite being condemned by medical bodies and having its science debunked by experts worldwide, the practice is legal throughout most of Europe, where campaigns and petitions to halt it exist in several countries.

CNN's Rob Picheta and Jamie Ehrlich contributed to this story.

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What Gay Conversion Therapy Is Really Like

The new movie "Boy Erased" tells the true story of Garrard Conley — the son of a Baptist pastor who, after being outed to his parents at 19, was sent to a two-week long "gay conversion therapy" program. Conley talked about what the experience was really like, and discussed his efforts to make the practice of conversion therapy on minors illegal. It is currently legal to practice conversion therapy on minors in 36 states. Conley was joined by his mother Martha, who experienced a change of heart while Garrard was in the conversion therapy program and removed him before it was complete. "Boy Erased" arrives in theaters on Friday November 9.

Conversion therapy: God only knows

An estimated 700,000 adults in the U.S. have received a controversial treatment known as reparative, or conversion therapy, under the belief that homosexuality is caused by nurture, not nature, and can be "cured." Erin Moriarty talks with young men and women who had undergone the treatment (voluntarily or at the behest of their families) in order to adhere to their church's teachings; with Alan Chambers, who was the charismatic director of Exodus International, which promised to convert those with "same-sex attraction"; Nashville pastor Stan Mitchell, who has rejected conversion therapy; and Jeff Johnston of Focus on the Family, which continues to promote the practice for parishioners who do not want to be gay.

Does a Good Theology Help Alleviate Suffering or Does It Just Defend God?

HOSTING A DAY OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta's inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony: Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta's inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta’s inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony: Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta’s inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony. Aga Khan Council | Naz Samji

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Belief in God is meaningless if that faith does not move us towards responsible, loving, generative attitudes and actions. As the Apostle Paul said, if a theology or belief does not love then there is no reason for God, religion, hope, or faith. A good theology is a theology which shares meaning, value, purpose in ways which lifts up those around us with hope, affirming action, true empathy, and life-giving words. A theology, faith or religion which speaks death is not the same as a theology, faith, or religion which speaks life. One is to be abandoned. The other nourished in revitalized ways of empowering healing of self, society, and nature around us.

R.E. Slater

April 16, 2020

1 Cor 13

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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This Barrel Aged podcast was originally released in 2008 as episodes 8 & 9. The quality of the conversation was so good we had to put it back out. Who doesn’t enjoy a good conversation about evil, suffering, Buddha, Bible & a little Whitehead? Clearly someone who hasn’t listened to this episode yet. Bob Mesle is a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Graceland University.

Dr. C. Robert Mesle’s 136-page introduction to process-relational philosophy is a must-read for anyone new to process or who wants to be able to clearly articulate Afred North Whitehead‘s philosophy to others without a lot of technical language or headaches. You can check out his podcast about the text HERE. You should also check out his introduction to Process Theology which again is the best for a newbie.

Go to audio podcast here

or here

Evil & Divine Power
by R.E. Slater

*The podcast sets up a separate discussion questioning
the need for a theology to defend God; my discussion
here starts in the same direction but tails off differently.

Introduction

Theology, religion, and metaphysics asks the question of "What is the fundamental nature of reality?" Especially as it relates to the Self, Others, and Nature around us.

What makes for a good theology or life view? "Any approach which might put the welfare of children, humanity, and earthcare above the fundamental need to protect one's religious beliefs or view of reality. An approach which might reduce pain and suffering and make the world a better place."

The Problem of Evil

Rather than accepting the reality of suffering and evil many Christian responses have been to deny its existence in the face of facts. The Church Father Augustine captured this idea many centuries ago and it has been a popular church response ever since. In doing so Christians are supposedly protecting their idea of God by reframing suffering and evil around its purposes. We will also find this same response in the Jewish and Muslim religions.

In this sense of denial the common Christian view of evil is that it is good if we react to its experience in a better way to its harm. As illustrated:

    The Pain of Suffering                   Whereas the Pain of Suffering

        hurts more when it feels   ------>    hurts less if goodness is achieved

         meaningless                          in the midst of our suffering

Often, suffering feels meaningless which explains why we go through such lengths to find meaning in its expereince. We search for the philosophical, religious, social or ecological good of its harm.

Is There a God?  --> Why Evil? --> Perhaps Neither God nor Evil?

If God is Good, Loving, All Powerful than why is there Evil? Maybe God doesn't Exist? Maybe God is too distant from us to care? Maybe God is weak and unable to prevent evil?

The Old Testament book of Job asks these questions over 40 long chapters of back-and-forth dialogue between Job, his "friends", and God. Job's friends say, "You have sinned and must repent." "You are proud and your pride has brought this disaster." "Your sin has justified your suffering." And on and on it goes. The Job questions God for most of the remainder of the book but gets very little in the way of answers excepting that we live our lives in the mystery of divine event.

And so, do God's faithful live lives held in the mystery of divine event? Can we question God at all as to why we suffer and whether our suffering is pointless or not? Whether it makes our lives more meaningful?

The Apostle Paul presents suffering in the context of a future goodness (Romans 8.28) - "All things work together for good." Or that we learn from our suffering because God allows it (Romans 5.3-5) - "Suffering provokes endurance which produces character and Christian hope."

Christian teaching then goes on to deny the actuality of evil while granting to God the duty of "bringing evil upon us" to improve us. And, in a round-about-way, says that God allows the evil He doesn't prevent. If it doesn't come then God didn't allow it.

If these appeals to divine mystery, character building, future event, disallowance of sin and suffering, personal blame for cusaution, or a God who damns, judges, and determines our lives is mystifying to you as it is to me, then we are both asking the right questions.

What problem are we trying to solve when it comes to good and evil? The theological concept for this is known as "The Theodicy of God." That is, how is God just and loving in the face of sin and evil? Is He all powerful (omnipotent) as He says He is? Does God determine all aspects of our lives (omniscience)? Is God there when we need Him or so distant as to be unavailable to us (omnipresence)? How we answer these questions will frame our theology of God and how that faith lives itself out in the world around us.

If we are trying to solves the whys and wherefores of suffering and evil, whether its has come into our lives so brutally as to be no meaning for us at all, then we are asking the right questions. We are seeking answers which might resolve the pain and harm we bear.

But if we are trying to protect God, to give Him a pass in someway, or have gathered around us worthless friends like Job had, who offer opinions over silence, and provocation over love, then we are approaching this entirely the wrong way. God doesn't need protection - which is why we find no straight answers in the book of Job other than that He is God and things are the way they are. And it may oftentimes be the case that these facts are the only things we have. But I might suggest we may have a few more things to cling to as well....

One is to recognize that sin and evil, pain and suffering, will be legitimate items we all will deal with in this life. The paramount reason for this is that God has granted "agency" or "freewill" to nature (indeterminate agency) and to humanity (limited freewill; limited in the sense of our birth, environment, circumstances, etc).

Secondly, God is as real as reality; He is always dearly present with us in every life event and at all times; and thirdly, His power is real but mitigated by creaturely agency. Not by allowance, not by primordial divine fiat, but because He birthed a world from love. A love which may make choices, create order from chaos, generativeness from hatred and misery, compassion, mercy, forgiveness to those having none. We, God's children, are very much like our God. We bear passion, anger, despair, grief, and all the things which make up life. We are because He is.

So how does one respond to suffering that it might be reduced? One way is to act redemptively, to live compassionately, to be available to those who themselves are suffering, to provide nourishment to one another, to gather about us those might listen and support us in love and not criticism, and to seek to alleviate the passing of this pain forward to other circles of humanity or the earth.

Evil is real. In God there is no evil. But we do not need to defend God to ask the questions of sufferings due to sin and evil. We live in a lost world which many times chooses not to love, nor to do the right thing. To ignore and not alleviate the pain of others. To promote its pain and make it all the worse. These are not loving actions. This is not how the gift of "agency" is to be used.

Christians give 5 (6) reasons for suffering. They may help but they are not recognizing several factors. First the list. Five (Six) reasons for suffering:

1 - Its painful but I'm better off now so the harm is good (optimistic stoicism) 

2 - Its a difficult experience but I've learned from it and am moving on (forgiveness, hope) 

3 - ?? 

4 - Yeah, its hard, and I wish it will never happen again (admittance, wishfulness) 

5 - It was really, really bad. Its terror and horror I am trying to live with. Perhaps learn something from. I've tried to reconcile it but will always, always regret that it happened to me. There can be nothing that will ever make up for this terrible tragedy. (grief and lost) 

6 - My suffering has reduced my voice to a place where it can never speak again. I find myself incapable of finding any good out of it. It has left me dead, miserable, angry, in full despair. I will never be able to learn from it or grow forward with it. (irrecoverable grief and lost)

In any healthy response the individual, or society (I think of Laos under Pol-Pot), must be allowed to suffer. To grieve. To feel the (tragic) lost of a part of their life. How the road to any kind of recovery proceeds from there is left up ultimately to the individual. It can occur in the strangest of ways and if it is really real, it will have really real affects and consequences that provide healing and hope.

Secondly, do not feel you have to vindicate or protect God. God will always be there and is always meaningfully real and loving to us. God does not project the control Christians demand of Him because He cannot in a freewill world of agency. What He can do is be there when harm and tragedy comes, and try to mitigate the suffering you are enduring. His love will not be the less for any doubt, uncertainty, or anger you have. It is a constant even as life is left open to us to move forward as best we can under His care and divine agency in our lives as best as He can do in a sinful world.

Looking at Jesus, through the sufferings of His life, God was with Him, fully loving, fully guiding, but the world can be evil and cruel and live with stopped up ears and hearts. Jesus died not only for our sins but because of our sin and evil. But what He did was to bridge the gap between God and humanity in sublime ways of identity with us in our humanness. Our joys and pains.

The other thing is how we think of God's power. In Jesus God's power was made strong by being weak. By allowing sin and evil its affects. By bearing this sin and pain that an atoning efficacy might be made. Did God determine to die or make efficacy in this way? It both yes and no. As God he knows our hearts and surmised He would be placed in a position like this in some manner.

Why? Because God doesn't determine the future, He allows any futures their fullest possibilities and opportunities. The future is borne of infinite processes each yearning towards generative fullness. But it has also been mitigated by sin with is the opposite yearning. One that leads to death instead of life. A God who is in full control of our circumstances has failed us already. But a God who speaks "to become as He is becoming" is a God worthy of worship.

May God's peace and healing be with you this day.

R.E. Slater

The Power of Love

by Catherine Keller

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FREE SPEECH AND RELIGION

Hosting a Day of Religious Pluralism:

Two Cities Celebrate the Energetic Engagement of Difference

Article Link

by Allison K. Ralph

April 24, 2019

There have been too many instances of bias-motivated violence in recent years: parishioners murdered at their own bible study meeting, holiday shoppers run over at a market, young people executed by a neighbor who didn’t care for their faith. Incidents like these, says Joumana Silyan-Saba, who has helped the city of Los Angeles organize its Day of Religious Pluralism since 2015, were moments of pain, but also “moments where we decide what defines us.” It was incidents like those that were the impetus for the city of Los Angeles to partner officially with its thriving interfaith scene to establish a unified stance to promote social cohesion and “celebrate our unity and shared compassion for our fellow human beings by honoring and respecting diverse beliefs and practices.” For the last four years, the annual Day of Religious Pluralism has drawn diverse participants, established and solidified partnerships across boundaries of faith and no faith, and galvanized local leaders to engage each other in practical efforts to strengthen the greater community using common virtues.

The resolution and events showcase the kind of efforts promoting religious pluralism that the Inclusive America Project has championed for years. Believing that few issues today are as vital for American civil society as maintaining our national commitment to religious pluralism, our focus includes developing relationships between religiously affiliated organizations and government agencies. We aim to highlight and disseminate proven long-term strategies to increase respect for diverse religious identities in the public sphere, foster positive interfaith interactions, and form productive partnerships among people of different beliefs to advance the common good. This is why we are thrilled to report that the expansive vision of the city and interfaith community of Los Angeles has been so successful.

The organizers in LA wanted the event to become a template for other cities to establish their own unique Day of Religious Pluralism. There is even a toolkit available. Four years after the inaugural event in LA, the city and faith communities of Atlanta designed their own inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism, which took place on April 4. Farida Nurani, a volunteer of the Ismaili Muslim community and part of the Aga Khan Council for the Southeastern United States, was one of the organizers. Inspired by LA’s resolution and events, she says her Ismaili community reached out to other local faith leaders and to the mayor’s office to tremendous response. Like LA, city and faith leaders collaborated to draft and pass a proclamation to “affirm our shared, cherished values of dignity, unity, respect and compassion for our fellow human beings” and establish their inaugural event. As the planners in LA had hoped, Atlanta then took the idea and made it their own. In formulating their event, they drew also on the articulation of pluralism at the Global Centre for Pluralism.

With a theme of Beauty in Harmony, Atlanta’s event was centered on art as a language that can cross all barriers. Curated art exhibits as well as poetic and musical performances showcased faith-inspired beauty in harmony with diverse compatriots. It was a tangible representation of pluralism at its best: an intentional meeting of commitments rather than a surface-level assimilation of beliefs. The evening ended with a Civic Dinner that included a facilitated conversation on religious pluralism. Organizers are already planning for next year’s event.

Events in both cities have spurred tangible outcomes that have bettered society at large. In LA, the city’s collaboration with its faith partners created a kind of institutional frame where non-governmental actors – faith leaders, community members, non-profit leaders – could connect. From there, collaborations developed organically around numerous issues including homelessness and emergency management. In Atlanta, the Civic Dinner template for conversations on religious pluralism had never existed; now the organization is expanding what it developed for the Atlanta event and plans to add religious pluralism to its regularly offered topics.

Although organizers in both cities are proud of the work done and thrilled with the outcome, they stress that success depended on strong collaboration between civic and civil partners who developed real relationships with each other. These events were not organized and dictated by any one organization with the hope that everyone else would get onboard. Instead, resolutions and events were planned on a consensus basis and documents were developed iteratively with participation from a diverse group of faith leaders. That collaborative process set the stage for real buy-in from the communities.

Organizers in both cities also stressed the importance of the public ceremonial aspect of civic involvement. The symbolism of the public ceremony around formal proclamations and resolutions recognized collective representation of city, community, and country. These documents were symbolic of us as citizens, all of us, acting as one to stand with and protect each other not in spite, but because of, our differences.

In addition to the toolkit mentioned above, the Inclusive America Project can offer further resources to those interested in this work. Developing a Day of Religious Pluralism is a tangible and generative way for civic and faith leaders to address the rising tides of hate. Such work, done in good faith through difficult moments, is not only a practical approach to building local community resilience, it is also a very real way to build a joyful human community.  As Joumana Silyan-Saba, oversight committee member for the Day of Religious Pluralism in LA said, “It is a shining light in a very dark time.”

Using Music to Tackle Hate

MAY 17, 2018 • MARCI KRIVONEN

https://aspeninsight.simplecast.com/episodes/4f883832