New Consciousness. . .

(from "Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World" by John Shelby Spong,
 ©2011 John Shelby Spong)
". . . As post-Darwinians we now know that there never was a perfect creation.  All life has evolved from a single cell into our present self-conscious, enormously complex human life, which is, for the time being at least, at the top of the evolutionary ladder.  Since there was no perfect creation, then there could not have been a "fall" from perfection.  One cannot fall from a status one has never possessed.  If we have not fallen from perfection, we do not need to be saved, redeemed or rescued.  So the way Jesus has traditionally been interpreted vanishes into irrelevance.  One can artificially resuscitate a dying form only as long as the presuppositions undergirding that form are still believable.  The human experience, however, still cries out for some other explanation of this experience.  What is it?

We are self-conscious creatures.  All living things are survival-oriented.  Plants stretch to receive the light of the sun in order to live.  Animals fight for life or flee danger in order to survive.  Neither plant life nor animal life, however, is aware of its survival drive.  Human beings are.  When self-conscious creatures make their own survival their highest goal, they then organize their world around that need.

Paul's experience of human life was correct.  His explanation was wrong.  His experience of Christ as life-giving love was correct.  His explanation of how that love was manifested in Jesus' life was wrong. 

Can one find salvation by being rescued from this fatal flaw in our humanity, as Paul seemed to believe?  I do not think so.  We can, however, find wholeness in the experience of being lifted beyond these boundaries.  I am now convinced that this experience of being lifted into a new consciousness was the heart of what the Jesus experience was and it is this experience alone to which Christians must witness. . . "

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Have you ever really. . .

. . . read the story of Sodom from the book of Genesis? This is the text used by the literally 'uninformed' to defend their homophobic positions; those who think their Bible must be interpreted 'literally'.

(paraphrasing from The Sins of the Scriptures, by John Shelby Spong, © 2005 John Shelby Spong)
'Travel in the ancient world was hard and dangerous, so travelers were few. Visitors depended upon the hospitality of a citizen of the place they were visiting. Without it, more often than not, strangers became fair game for abuse which usually took the form of ribald play in which the manhood of the strangers was compromised.

The two 'messengers', who accompanied the Lord in his inquest of the citizens of Sodom with the intention of destruction, left the Lord with Abraham and visited the city of Sodom. Late on the evening of their arrival, Abraham's nephew Lot offers the strangers hospitality, much to the dismay of the town's menfolk who had been eagerly anticipating a night of debauchery since the arrival of the two. They surrounded Lot's house and demanded the surrender of the two visitors. Lot refused knowing that once the protection of a home had been offered, the honor of the entire household was at stake if that protection was compromised.

So Lot makes a counter offer, one that literal interpreters of the Bible generally fail to criticize. He offers his two virgin daughters to the crowd to "do to them as you please." (Also consider the literal interpretation of offering daughters as though they were property, precisely the ancient biblical view of women.) The daughters have, of course, not been consulted regarding the proposition, as being property only, they have no say in the matter.

Well, in short, Lot and his family (including the daughters) escape and the city is destroyed by the visitors in accordance with the Lord's intention.'

Have we learned the biblical condemnation of homosexuality from this fascinating little story? I must have missed it. What I did, and we all should, learn from it is that NONE of this material should be taken LITERALLY!




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Sunday. . .

. . . seems like an appropriate day to quote everybody's favorite atheist. . .

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

"[O]wners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."

"Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse."

"Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it."

"[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."

"The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me."

"Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence."

"To "choose" dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid. "

"Organised religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children."

"I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me."

. . . Christopher Hitchens



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