1. I read the Roman's reading 2 times and couldn't understand it...at all. And I'm a deep reader.
It jumped all over the place and I couldn't find the "tie-things-together" thread till I read what you (DBB) said/explained about the passage.
Much thanks for making the ideas/ideal in the text relatable/understandable.
The other is that it's soooooooooo hard to get people to understand that WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER--God, Gaia, and us (as so many have noted below). And the Aspen clone (how amazing!!!!) is (to me, anyway) a perfect example of just how "all in" we could be.
Loved your most recent Sunday Musings, thank you.You mentioned the 25% of Americans who say they don’t believe in God. I was wondering have any surveys further queried those folks to ask what they do value? I know many people who reject religion ( tho not sure if they would consider themselves atheists) but have strong moral values for justice, human and earth rights. I do not imagine this 25 % to be an homogenous group ( I have read some pretty mean spirited atheists) but am curious as to their guiding values. I suspect, hope many have a compassionate compass. They may well be allies in the struggle for the Kingdom over empire. It is the fundamentalist view of a retributive God, a God of violence who I think to be more of a roadblock to advancing God’s compassionate, loving will for creation.
Unitive Justice is a model that has no punitive elements; instead of being an eye for an eye justice, it is based on lovingkindness, do no harm, address harm but in ways that do not compound the harm. We have not been implementing Unitive Justice for over a decade and it works beautifully. Its moral consistency makes it powerful and effective. We do not advocate eliminating the present punitive system, rather as Unitive Justice takes root and people choose it when they have conflicts, UJ will grow and the punitive system will diminish in importance. www.a4uj.org
Umm. . . I can certainly sympathize with your feelings about "I told you so," having concluded my 50-year (UMC) pastoral ministry on three continents, with adjunct teaching New Testament on the side. And I certainly agree with you that everything is connected. I came out of a fundamentalist/apocalyptic background in the Christian & Missionary Alliance into "mainline" Methodism, in of all places, Asbury Theological Seminary. However, I'm not nearly as sure as I once was about something even more fundamental--the very notion of God itself and its manifestation in the wildly- varying collection of religions. In fact, it was my mission experience in SE Asia that began to change my understanding of religion itself, and in particular, the notion that Christianity was the only true religion.
After retirement some years ago, I've had time to catch up on reading in a much more diverse smorgasbord of subjects that I never had time to do before--such as the trilogy by quantum gravity physicist Carlo Rovelli, the new discoveries in cosmology, as well as a much deeper dive into church history, particularly Diarmaid MacCullough's magisterial works and Mark Noll's equally magisterial history of America's relationship to the Bible. More and more, I'm learning to be comfortable with a more humanist and secular approach to knowledge of the world than a religious one, and with a more honest agnosticism that has always been lurking in my brain, but which I kept under wraps to a large degree while serving local churches (an institution which I still value nonetheless). This has not made me more optimistic about the future of our species. But the earth itself has seen innumerable species appear and disappear and will still go on. We have the power to destroy ourselves and do much damage to the earth, but I have no doubt that it will survive us for a least a few million more years.
One of the things I love about the Cottage is there’s no dogma to follow to be in the community here! I love everyone being free to share their stories and be validated. I’m impressed with your dedication to follow your own spiritual path and for continuing to question All. Glad you don’t feel you have to keep where you’re at “under wraps” here! Peace.
Wonderful and wise musings as usual. I quoted an excerpt and restocked this in Notes. I’ll add here that as a seminary graduate well aware of the political messages against Rome in the New Testament that many people miss, I was not aware of that Paul’s use of “flesh” might be one of them. I like that idea so much better than the standard understanding of it as a condemnation of our sexual desires and a message that our bodies are inferior and in opposition to our spirits and God’s.
God, earth, us – everything is connected in essence, yes. But in everyday life most of us are divided from god, earth, and neighbor. Yes, the power and greed of empire divide us from God, earth, and neighbor. But we are also divided from god, earth, and neighbor through cooperation with the power and greed of empire.
Aren’t we living according to The Machine, the “fleshly” empire of our day, and its trappings? Our lifestyle is killing our habitable climate, and so we are killing ourselves, are we not? Divided from earth and god through cooperation with empire, aren’t we “children of the evil one”? (Matthew 13:38)
To Ellen Dooley’s fine point about identifying the “we” in connection with empire, even if we are not wealthy or powerful people, aren’t we complicit in the harm empire does as long as we cooperate with it through our lifestyle and failure to confront it? Our friend and teacher Yeshua confronted empire through everyday life, living and teaching the land of god’s love. He cooperated with execution by empire only to practice the harmlessness he preached.
Paul learned from Yeshua how to live in sharp contrast to empire and thus overcome it through everyday life as well. How else can we – yes, we, the relatively poor and powerless – confront empire and overcome it? By exercising the little power and wealth we have – rejecting The Machine lifestyle to embrace everyday life with god, earth, and neighbor instead.
Diana as usual your comments are important to ponder. Climate changes we are experiencing now is alarming.
I however want to ask you to explain why you and other scholars still use male pronouns (Abba) to describe God. I know many of us no longer want to use pronouns to even talk about our Creator. Most of the writers were men etc. etc etc. so figures.
For years when I tell scripture I change the pronouns and listeners have responded favorably.
I wonder if with all this banning of books if the “Women for Freedom” would ban the Bible. It has it all - sex, violence, ie. How about those Songs Of Solomon.
Hello Diana, I am a recent subscriber of yours and am enjoying your reflections on a new Awakening. It suddenly gave me a new frame to describe what I have been a part of for the past 36 years, beginning in 1987 when I was a trial attorney and realized there are two models of justice, vengeance and love. I immediately recognized justice as vengeance as what I was taught in law school. I had no idea what justice as love might look like, but I instantly made a commitment to find out. 36 years later, we now have a developed theory for what I now call Unitive Justice, aka Justice as Love, and it is being practiced in many places. There is a Unitive Justice school in Uganda. I am teaching Unitive Justice in 2 schools and in a prison. (I left the practice of law in 2003 to devote my energy to UJ). Others are now implementing Unitive Justice in different environments, all of which will be presented at the 1st Unitive Justice International Conference in Richmond, VA Oct. 2-4, and available online. Is there an email address that I can send you more information about the conference and an announcement of my upcoming book called Unitive Justice: Bending the Arc of Justice Toward Love? Unitive Justice and the Sermon on the Mount are in alignment, while the justice I practiced in the courtroom was Old Testament eye-for-an eye justice. I am convinced it is at the root of today's dysfunctional institutions --out of which a new Awakening is perhaps emerging. If so, Unitive Justice is definitely a player in the Awakening. I hope I can email you more information. Would love to talk to you about all of this and your ideas on the Awakening we are now in. sylviaclute@gmail.com
For anyone who is interested, the link to the Unitive Justice conference is available on the home page of the Alliance for Unitive Justice website at www.a4uj.org.
This is copied from the end of Old Pete's comment below. And I couldn't agree more.
You describe an emerging global awakening that brings Christianity into alliance with other faiths and even non-religious spiritual seekers. How will that awakening reshape Christianity’s past understandings of God, Christ and the Bible? Won’t a global awakening require a larger God and a letting go of Biblical certainty to make room for mystery?
It’s obvious to me that the answer is a resounding YES.
My own belief is that God is presently evolving humankind into a race of mystics, prophets and actors who at the very beginning of being able to hear and respond to God in a different way. It is no tragedy that 74% of Americans profess to "believe in God". It costs nothing to profess that belief. What is costly is giving over one's life to seeking, knowing and cooperating with God in the requirement to become kinder to others, and to the whole of Creation. To learn to love as God's Grace would help me to love, in all circumstances and all situations. To use everything in my life as a Gift from God---my time, my talents, my money, my relationships---to put more good into the world. To truly understand and live out my interdependence--my inter-being--with everything.
This Evolution of Love, like all evolutions, will involve, errors, setbacks, opposition from those who want things to remain as they are. But the evolution foreseen and expressed in the life and work of Teilhard de Chardin is under way. And this Universal, Impersonal, Unknowable Singularity that we have called God, who is the Creator and Sustainer of All Forms, is asking us humans to be in cooperation with It in a long, long evolution that eventually will result in some approximation of us all being "made in the Image of God", and will bring Salvation to us All.
Jul 23, 2023·edited Jul 23, 2023Liked by Diana Butler Bass
Wow!
I did hesitate. I hope this is OK.
As a 15 year old Brit in 1950 I got into serious trouble at school for daring to suggest that the British Empire had been built on greed and selfishness. I have watched the demise of that empire ever since!
My parents had left school at 13 and 14 and never owned a Bible. (I left school at 16). I became a Christian as an adult (a long story). I was treasurer of the local Anglican Church for 5 years but walked away some 3 years later because of what I saw as a lack of ‘radical’ Christianity, and an inability to get answers to some of my questions. I later spent 20+ years as a member of a Sabbath-keeping Christian Church that was very interested in the rise and fall of empires (and also rejected the teaching of the trinity). It was directly as a result of a church-split in 1995 that I ended up as an outside observer of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism especially in America (another long story).
I was very involved with the Emerging, Emergent and House Church movements in the early 2000’s and met Brian McLaren in 2004. I first read ‘The Shack’ in 2007 when it was published privately. I finally stopped attending church in 2009. I was introduced to Diana and ‘Christianity After Religion’ in 2012 and ended up with a faith that I could hold on to ‘loosely’. With hindsight my faith had been almost entirely 'head knowledge' and little 'heart awareness'.
But then everything started to change again in 2013 (when I was 78). I joined U3A (University of the Third Age) and started attending classes where I was introduced to Philosophy, Psychology, Counselling, History of Christianity, History of Religion, Buddhism and Islam – just 2 or 3 hours a week for 4 years.
I have a story to tell about the evolution of my thinking and my understanding of the meaning of the word ‘God’ – an evolution that seems to have taken place one step at a time, going around the circle several times, for over 50 years without any formal theological training.
I have had the privilege of sharing stories with over 2,000 people including several leaders or former leaders, who have been drawn away from churches that they might have attended for many years.
It was after listening to Barbara Brown Taylor In 2019 talking about her new book, ‘Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others’ that I made a decision to get away from all the divisive, denominational theology that had been so much part of my life for so long.
There were times when I wondered if I had anything to offer that might help others to see more of the broader picture. It was then in 2022 that I saw a presentation by a retired Anglican Priest titled ‘Christianity Expanding into Universal Spirituality’.
It was yesterday on another post by Diana that Rick Davis wrote:
You describe an emerging global awakening that brings Christianity into alliance with other faiths and even non-religious spiritual seekers. How will that awakening reshape Christianity’s past understandings of God, Christ and the Bible? Won’t a global awakening require a larger God and a letting go of Biblical certainty to make room for mystery?
It’s obvious to me that the answer is a resounding YES.
Your interpretations and dialog merge to address concerns that I have had for quite some time but could not articulate clearly or integrate as neatly into a strong message as you have done. My career in the environmental field, lifelong mainline church affiliation, and heart-felt concerns for future generations, who will suffer the severe consequences of our ongoing exploitation of God's creation, are all woven together beautifully in your faith-based perspective about why all people should rightly be concerned.......especially those who are living in relative luxury now when we have the opportunity before us to mitigate the ultimate disaster. RJay
“Our freedom and earth’s liberation are caught up with one another — only if we are truly born of the Spirit can the creation itself give birth to the world for which we’ve been longing.”
Another wonderful Sunday musing. Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox has been preaching, teaching, and paying the price for this very kind of counter to Catholic and literalist Christian dogma since the 1980s. I think it quite likely that the only way any kind of Christian “religion” (in the sense of “realignment” with Earth spirit) can survive is in the reclamation of Christian scripture and Jewish midrash. Christian theology must be realigned with the natural balance of earth forces and systems of abundant life. So much of Christian scripture is considered irrelevant, because the stories have been misinterpreted – sometimes deliberately so. We are also up against the reality that many progressives – Christian or not – do not “believe” in “God.” The task is to rescue it all from literalism.
Thank you Diana for your timely words and connections. I have recently returned from time in CO where I traveled through Aspen covered mountains. Your words remind me of my ministry: working to help small congregations to become more vital and relevant in their communities, working for justice and sharing hope. It was an uphill climb. I appreciate your support during my ministry. I keep on learning from you.
Two comments:
1. I read the Roman's reading 2 times and couldn't understand it...at all. And I'm a deep reader.
It jumped all over the place and I couldn't find the "tie-things-together" thread till I read what you (DBB) said/explained about the passage.
Much thanks for making the ideas/ideal in the text relatable/understandable.
The other is that it's soooooooooo hard to get people to understand that WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER--God, Gaia, and us (as so many have noted below). And the Aspen clone (how amazing!!!!) is (to me, anyway) a perfect example of just how "all in" we could be.
Loved your most recent Sunday Musings, thank you.You mentioned the 25% of Americans who say they don’t believe in God. I was wondering have any surveys further queried those folks to ask what they do value? I know many people who reject religion ( tho not sure if they would consider themselves atheists) but have strong moral values for justice, human and earth rights. I do not imagine this 25 % to be an homogenous group ( I have read some pretty mean spirited atheists) but am curious as to their guiding values. I suspect, hope many have a compassionate compass. They may well be allies in the struggle for the Kingdom over empire. It is the fundamentalist view of a retributive God, a God of violence who I think to be more of a roadblock to advancing God’s compassionate, loving will for creation.
God, the earth, and us. I will be thinking more about this idea in the coming days.
Unitive Justice is a model that has no punitive elements; instead of being an eye for an eye justice, it is based on lovingkindness, do no harm, address harm but in ways that do not compound the harm. We have not been implementing Unitive Justice for over a decade and it works beautifully. Its moral consistency makes it powerful and effective. We do not advocate eliminating the present punitive system, rather as Unitive Justice takes root and people choose it when they have conflicts, UJ will grow and the punitive system will diminish in importance. www.a4uj.org
Umm. . . I can certainly sympathize with your feelings about "I told you so," having concluded my 50-year (UMC) pastoral ministry on three continents, with adjunct teaching New Testament on the side. And I certainly agree with you that everything is connected. I came out of a fundamentalist/apocalyptic background in the Christian & Missionary Alliance into "mainline" Methodism, in of all places, Asbury Theological Seminary. However, I'm not nearly as sure as I once was about something even more fundamental--the very notion of God itself and its manifestation in the wildly- varying collection of religions. In fact, it was my mission experience in SE Asia that began to change my understanding of religion itself, and in particular, the notion that Christianity was the only true religion.
After retirement some years ago, I've had time to catch up on reading in a much more diverse smorgasbord of subjects that I never had time to do before--such as the trilogy by quantum gravity physicist Carlo Rovelli, the new discoveries in cosmology, as well as a much deeper dive into church history, particularly Diarmaid MacCullough's magisterial works and Mark Noll's equally magisterial history of America's relationship to the Bible. More and more, I'm learning to be comfortable with a more humanist and secular approach to knowledge of the world than a religious one, and with a more honest agnosticism that has always been lurking in my brain, but which I kept under wraps to a large degree while serving local churches (an institution which I still value nonetheless). This has not made me more optimistic about the future of our species. But the earth itself has seen innumerable species appear and disappear and will still go on. We have the power to destroy ourselves and do much damage to the earth, but I have no doubt that it will survive us for a least a few million more years.
One of the things I love about the Cottage is there’s no dogma to follow to be in the community here! I love everyone being free to share their stories and be validated. I’m impressed with your dedication to follow your own spiritual path and for continuing to question All. Glad you don’t feel you have to keep where you’re at “under wraps” here! Peace.
Yes....dogma free!
Wonderful and wise musings as usual. I quoted an excerpt and restocked this in Notes. I’ll add here that as a seminary graduate well aware of the political messages against Rome in the New Testament that many people miss, I was not aware of that Paul’s use of “flesh” might be one of them. I like that idea so much better than the standard understanding of it as a condemnation of our sexual desires and a message that our bodies are inferior and in opposition to our spirits and God’s.
God, earth, us – everything is connected in essence, yes. But in everyday life most of us are divided from god, earth, and neighbor. Yes, the power and greed of empire divide us from God, earth, and neighbor. But we are also divided from god, earth, and neighbor through cooperation with the power and greed of empire.
Aren’t we living according to The Machine, the “fleshly” empire of our day, and its trappings? Our lifestyle is killing our habitable climate, and so we are killing ourselves, are we not? Divided from earth and god through cooperation with empire, aren’t we “children of the evil one”? (Matthew 13:38)
To Ellen Dooley’s fine point about identifying the “we” in connection with empire, even if we are not wealthy or powerful people, aren’t we complicit in the harm empire does as long as we cooperate with it through our lifestyle and failure to confront it? Our friend and teacher Yeshua confronted empire through everyday life, living and teaching the land of god’s love. He cooperated with execution by empire only to practice the harmlessness he preached.
Paul learned from Yeshua how to live in sharp contrast to empire and thus overcome it through everyday life as well. How else can we – yes, we, the relatively poor and powerless – confront empire and overcome it? By exercising the little power and wealth we have – rejecting The Machine lifestyle to embrace everyday life with god, earth, and neighbor instead.
Difficult? Yes. Possible? Yes. Necessary? Definitely!
Diana as usual your comments are important to ponder. Climate changes we are experiencing now is alarming.
I however want to ask you to explain why you and other scholars still use male pronouns (Abba) to describe God. I know many of us no longer want to use pronouns to even talk about our Creator. Most of the writers were men etc. etc etc. so figures.
For years when I tell scripture I change the pronouns and listeners have responded favorably.
I wonder if with all this banning of books if the “Women for Freedom” would ban the Bible. It has it all - sex, violence, ie. How about those Songs Of Solomon.
Jesus knew failure, so do we.
We hope for what we do not see.
Hello Diana, I am a recent subscriber of yours and am enjoying your reflections on a new Awakening. It suddenly gave me a new frame to describe what I have been a part of for the past 36 years, beginning in 1987 when I was a trial attorney and realized there are two models of justice, vengeance and love. I immediately recognized justice as vengeance as what I was taught in law school. I had no idea what justice as love might look like, but I instantly made a commitment to find out. 36 years later, we now have a developed theory for what I now call Unitive Justice, aka Justice as Love, and it is being practiced in many places. There is a Unitive Justice school in Uganda. I am teaching Unitive Justice in 2 schools and in a prison. (I left the practice of law in 2003 to devote my energy to UJ). Others are now implementing Unitive Justice in different environments, all of which will be presented at the 1st Unitive Justice International Conference in Richmond, VA Oct. 2-4, and available online. Is there an email address that I can send you more information about the conference and an announcement of my upcoming book called Unitive Justice: Bending the Arc of Justice Toward Love? Unitive Justice and the Sermon on the Mount are in alignment, while the justice I practiced in the courtroom was Old Testament eye-for-an eye justice. I am convinced it is at the root of today's dysfunctional institutions --out of which a new Awakening is perhaps emerging. If so, Unitive Justice is definitely a player in the Awakening. I hope I can email you more information. Would love to talk to you about all of this and your ideas on the Awakening we are now in. sylviaclute@gmail.com
For anyone who is interested, the link to the Unitive Justice conference is available on the home page of the Alliance for Unitive Justice website at www.a4uj.org.
This is copied from the end of Old Pete's comment below. And I couldn't agree more.
You describe an emerging global awakening that brings Christianity into alliance with other faiths and even non-religious spiritual seekers. How will that awakening reshape Christianity’s past understandings of God, Christ and the Bible? Won’t a global awakening require a larger God and a letting go of Biblical certainty to make room for mystery?
It’s obvious to me that the answer is a resounding YES.
My own belief is that God is presently evolving humankind into a race of mystics, prophets and actors who at the very beginning of being able to hear and respond to God in a different way. It is no tragedy that 74% of Americans profess to "believe in God". It costs nothing to profess that belief. What is costly is giving over one's life to seeking, knowing and cooperating with God in the requirement to become kinder to others, and to the whole of Creation. To learn to love as God's Grace would help me to love, in all circumstances and all situations. To use everything in my life as a Gift from God---my time, my talents, my money, my relationships---to put more good into the world. To truly understand and live out my interdependence--my inter-being--with everything.
This Evolution of Love, like all evolutions, will involve, errors, setbacks, opposition from those who want things to remain as they are. But the evolution foreseen and expressed in the life and work of Teilhard de Chardin is under way. And this Universal, Impersonal, Unknowable Singularity that we have called God, who is the Creator and Sustainer of All Forms, is asking us humans to be in cooperation with It in a long, long evolution that eventually will result in some approximation of us all being "made in the Image of God", and will bring Salvation to us All.
🙌
Wow!
I did hesitate. I hope this is OK.
As a 15 year old Brit in 1950 I got into serious trouble at school for daring to suggest that the British Empire had been built on greed and selfishness. I have watched the demise of that empire ever since!
My parents had left school at 13 and 14 and never owned a Bible. (I left school at 16). I became a Christian as an adult (a long story). I was treasurer of the local Anglican Church for 5 years but walked away some 3 years later because of what I saw as a lack of ‘radical’ Christianity, and an inability to get answers to some of my questions. I later spent 20+ years as a member of a Sabbath-keeping Christian Church that was very interested in the rise and fall of empires (and also rejected the teaching of the trinity). It was directly as a result of a church-split in 1995 that I ended up as an outside observer of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism especially in America (another long story).
I was very involved with the Emerging, Emergent and House Church movements in the early 2000’s and met Brian McLaren in 2004. I first read ‘The Shack’ in 2007 when it was published privately. I finally stopped attending church in 2009. I was introduced to Diana and ‘Christianity After Religion’ in 2012 and ended up with a faith that I could hold on to ‘loosely’. With hindsight my faith had been almost entirely 'head knowledge' and little 'heart awareness'.
But then everything started to change again in 2013 (when I was 78). I joined U3A (University of the Third Age) and started attending classes where I was introduced to Philosophy, Psychology, Counselling, History of Christianity, History of Religion, Buddhism and Islam – just 2 or 3 hours a week for 4 years.
I have a story to tell about the evolution of my thinking and my understanding of the meaning of the word ‘God’ – an evolution that seems to have taken place one step at a time, going around the circle several times, for over 50 years without any formal theological training.
I have had the privilege of sharing stories with over 2,000 people including several leaders or former leaders, who have been drawn away from churches that they might have attended for many years.
It was after listening to Barbara Brown Taylor In 2019 talking about her new book, ‘Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others’ that I made a decision to get away from all the divisive, denominational theology that had been so much part of my life for so long.
There were times when I wondered if I had anything to offer that might help others to see more of the broader picture. It was then in 2022 that I saw a presentation by a retired Anglican Priest titled ‘Christianity Expanding into Universal Spirituality’.
It was yesterday on another post by Diana that Rick Davis wrote:
You describe an emerging global awakening that brings Christianity into alliance with other faiths and even non-religious spiritual seekers. How will that awakening reshape Christianity’s past understandings of God, Christ and the Bible? Won’t a global awakening require a larger God and a letting go of Biblical certainty to make room for mystery?
It’s obvious to me that the answer is a resounding YES.
Your interpretations and dialog merge to address concerns that I have had for quite some time but could not articulate clearly or integrate as neatly into a strong message as you have done. My career in the environmental field, lifelong mainline church affiliation, and heart-felt concerns for future generations, who will suffer the severe consequences of our ongoing exploitation of God's creation, are all woven together beautifully in your faith-based perspective about why all people should rightly be concerned.......especially those who are living in relative luxury now when we have the opportunity before us to mitigate the ultimate disaster. RJay
“Our freedom and earth’s liberation are caught up with one another — only if we are truly born of the Spirit can the creation itself give birth to the world for which we’ve been longing.”
Another wonderful Sunday musing. Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox has been preaching, teaching, and paying the price for this very kind of counter to Catholic and literalist Christian dogma since the 1980s. I think it quite likely that the only way any kind of Christian “religion” (in the sense of “realignment” with Earth spirit) can survive is in the reclamation of Christian scripture and Jewish midrash. Christian theology must be realigned with the natural balance of earth forces and systems of abundant life. So much of Christian scripture is considered irrelevant, because the stories have been misinterpreted – sometimes deliberately so. We are also up against the reality that many progressives – Christian or not – do not “believe” in “God.” The task is to rescue it all from literalism.
Thank you Diana for your timely words and connections. I have recently returned from time in CO where I traveled through Aspen covered mountains. Your words remind me of my ministry: working to help small congregations to become more vital and relevant in their communities, working for justice and sharing hope. It was an uphill climb. I appreciate your support during my ministry. I keep on learning from you.
This sounds wonderful. I’d love to know more...
I will be pondering this whole musing and Romans 7-8 for a long time. Thank you.