Praise for Andrew Sullivan and his beautiful writing on the subject of God

Recently, I came across Andrew Sullivan’s wonderful blog The Dish on The Daily Beast website.  In addition to thoughtfully covering the political and social/cultural landscape, Andrew – when inclined – produces some of the absolute best writing I have ever heard on God, theology & religion.  Now, as a graduate of a seminary, I have read and heard a lot of academics speak on a myriad of topics.  The issue I take with most of them is how much of academia flies over the heads of the general cultural discourse, thereby having a lesser impact on the way Christian religion and spirituality interacts with, confronts and reclaims us as human beings apart of the Creation.  Then I read someone like Andrew, who in one post, responded to some critical readers in such a way that was simply beautiful, engaging and important for the wider discourse.  he seems to have little agenda, being an openly gay Roman Catholic who is not beholden to a single political or religious ideology.  It is refreshing and YOU should be reading his blog daily.  I highly recommend checking it out.  here is the text, which a beautiful defense for the importance of a new, current reading of the existence of God:

“What is God?” by Andrew Sullivan

In response to someone who might substitute science for God in explaining beauty in the world, Sullivan writes:

The idea that science can explain beauty is a non-sequitur. They belong to different categories of thought. Science can no more explain the wonder of a Van Gogh masterpiece than Van Gogh could have explained the chemical composition of the paint, or need to. As for the notion that it is heresy that God is not a grey-bearded figure in the sky, I beg to differ. It is in fact heretical to conceive of God in such an anthropocentric manner. Jesus referred to God as his Father and ours. But that is obviously a metaphor – Jesus’ human father was Joseph. In fact, Jesus really called God dad, an intimacy that, to me, reflects exactly the tone of voice that has at times entered my life to remind me I am loved and cared for.

WOW.  ”Science can no more explain the wonder of a Van Gogh masterpiece than Van Gogh could have explained the chemical composition of the the paint, or need to.”  That right there, is one of the best metaphors for a definition of faith that I have ever heard.  It points to the idea that both spirituality and science are valid in their ways, and that it is not necessary to use them to (dis)prove a concept or belief.  It can just be.

To me, wonder ceases to BE WONDER when we require scientific proof alone.  While we may open the mechanism of nature with science, the wonder and awe of it all still lies in what Sullivan calls – and I agree – the “acceptance of mystery.”

That is faith: the acceptance and value of mystery as vital to our own acceptance of the rhythm of our own lives in a larger arena of human and Creation existence.  I rarely need literal readings of the Bible to validate my belief in the inherent beauty, pain and redemption of its story.  I merely need a faith that is open to the mystery of it all.

So, bravo, Andrew…you write with a conviction and balance I admire and try to emulate.

From The Archive: Some Thoughts on Drops Like Stars by Rob Bell

My thoughts on our household’s reading of Rob Bell’s Drops Like Stars, on Lost In Drawers.

The text (only) here for your consideration, although I think Heather formats posts beautifully in a way that escapes my abilities as a blogger/writer.  Enjoy…let me know what you think about this topic.

From Lost In Drawers:

In his book, Drops Like Stars, Rob Bell quotes – among other people – Catherine of Aragon, who said, “None Get To God But Through Trouble.”

It was never meant to be easy, was it?

This is the tension of our world…this disconnect between what we are told, that this or that will make it easy, and the fact that for the 99% of us, this life is often unbearably hard.  Each day is is filled with these highs and lows, these moments of joy and agony.  And what are we to do with it all, in the light of what many of us believe to be the “good news” of the gospel of Jesus?  How can we be what we are meant to be?  These questions are big, and when in the valley of shadows, very hard to see the fairness of the reality we see and the mirage presented by celebrity, et al.  So, how do we be authentic?  How do we be creative, each of us in our own way in the face of much suffering?  These are the types of questions Bell asks us to consider in this book that uses words, images and a whole lot of questions for our consideration.  The premise is such, that the most authentic people are those who move from great suffering towards a creative response.  I tend to agree, in that I don’t think the greatest art comes from sadness but from those who use art as their own catharsis to move forward with their lives.  We need to see suffering as the last wall between us and the discovery of the best of ourselves.  The interesting thing about this book, as with most of the writings by Bell, is the truth in confronting those topics and questions most Christians don’t want to acknowledge.  Many people expect and present religion as a miracle cure-all for life’s problems.  And that viewpoint has very little to do with the narrative of God and humankind.  Suffering is simply a part of our lives.  The world is very much broken, and we are all very much humans.  It doesn’t surprise me that many people walk away from religion that promises much and often does not deliver an instant miracle.  The truth is that we can never see our dreams come true without the suffering to propel us into realizing our passions by our own belief that a greater God created us to do a certain thing with our lives.  If we never suffered, we would never know ourselves.  Rob Bell asks us to see the good in the midst of the pain.  It just might be the best thing that ever happens to any one of us.

Rob Bell is a pastor-turned-author/speaker and can be found here.  His works can be found in various forms here.

Bo

Make It Mine – Art & Subversive Creativity

So what happens when artists re-purpose old religious artifacts into something new?  Does it create a new artistic work or does it merely redefine the value of the original piece?

Here’s a a track that was chopped and screwed from a sample of an old gospel cassette tape.  And I love it, even though the intent is obviously not a religious one.  Rather, it’s creative, atmospheric, quite good.  Authentic, even.

Art has its greatest value when it is subversive in nature.  Progressive theologians and artists dealing with and exploring spirituality, faith and doubt should see this concept of subversion as key to reclaiming and redefining corrupted practices and traditions and forms into that which it means to live authentic, spiritual lives.

Now, grab your headphones and get lost in this:

Them Thats Got

Some Kind Of Genius

What is genius?  Is it a person or thing that innovates?  Something that redefines how daily life functions?  What is the unique thing that makes genius…genius?  It’s easy to call the late Steve Jobs genius – the man had hundreds of patents in his name.  But, there are cases where genius could applied on a more base level.  In a word, Genius is very much a descriptor of simple acts of bravery.

Much of how humanity lives and organizes itself is in to groups.  Groups that define, refine and adapt common codes of thought, belief and behavior.  We find ourselves being asked to make decisions of affiliation: political parties, religions (and then what sect of said religion), subcultures, music genres, movie genre preference, conservative & liberal, and a more recent designation – 99%er or 1%er (in socio-economic terms, it should be clarified).  The group one chooses goes a long way in cultivating a public persona and social life.  This phenomenon is not new, but is clearly amplified to 11 (I always wanted to reference Spinal Tap in an essay) in a world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, among others.  We are asked to join groups, often without ever asking if this is something we actually want or believe in.  We are asked to be apart of a group, the goal of which is simply to be the biggest group.

This desire to grow is regardless of innovation (although the group is often born out of innovation – see Microsoft & the PC culture), often ignores morality (although the founding principles are often products of a desire for freedom and checks & balances – see capitalism, Wall Street & the resulting outcry of the OccupyWallStreet movement), and typically ignores social justice (although with out it, the groups would not have the opportunity to exists – see democracy & religious freedom in the Western World).  Simply put, we are told we need to be the apart of the biggest group because it is right and important to be the biggest group in whatever field/genre/subculture/world/universe that group is inhabiting.

Genius may form these groups, but that genius will die (often slowly) and is then reborn out of a breaking away from the group once it plateaus and becomes stagnant.  GENIUS IS THE BRAVERY TO GO A DIFFERENT WAY.  There are many examples of this.

For example:

Polytheism -> Monotheistic Judaism -> Early Christianity -> Universal Catholic Church -> Protestant Church -> Evangelical Church -> Emergent Church -> ?

Decrees/scrolls -> Mail posts (pre-industrial revolution) -> Telegraphs -> modern Mail -> Faxes -> Email -> Chat Rooms -> Instant Messenger -> Text Messages -> Facebook -> Twitter -> ?

Computers: it is easier to just post this link: A computer timeline

You may see my point.  Genius is simply the brave choice to do something different.  This why Steve Jobs was genius.  And he did it twice with Apple.  This is why, despite the conservatives and other economically comfortable (this can mean a lot of things, as in you can be technically poor but comfortable with your life choices/desires), the Occupy Wall Street movement is genius.  {{Which oddly enough is being mocked for using the tools of the corporate greed (technology) to fight the way in which our system works.  No one has stopped to consider that the rifles used in the Revolutionary War were most likely sourced through British means, yet we do not decry the genius of the Founding Fathers.}}  It is why the internet is continually genius, because it does not plateau or rarely becomes stagnant as a whole.

And it is why the Christian church in American today – typified by the Protestant  evangelical movement – is not genius in the way God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are genius at work in history and culture.  A bold sweeping generalization, I know, but one must think in these broader terms when examining the evangelical church in particular.

A great article highlighting this by Zach Lind, framed in the controversy surrounding the resignation of prominent pastor Rob Bell & the conservative evangelical response, highlights the way the church (and its factions) tend to operate within this construct:

Conservatives main tendency is to protect the current state of the Church. Despite its many imperfections, Conservatives generally see the Church as it is worth protecting and preserving while ushering in incremental changes along the way. Conservatives, for the most part, want to conserve the traditions and structures of the church. Liberals, on the other hand, generally don’t share that same tendency to protect the current state of the Church. Liberals yearn for a kind of resetting of the church, from the ground up without the obstacles that the tradition brings. The default mode of liberals is to operate with a healthy skepticism of the Church as well as the conventional wisdom that directs the current trends of American Christianity. To use a forestry metaphor, conservatives prefer to use controlled burns and firebreaks to tend to the health of the forest. For them the forest isn’t in perfect shape so just a little maintenance is needed. On the other hand, liberals wouldn’t mind the prospect of an all out forest fire to clear the way for new trees to eventually come back even stronger, which is often the case. For them, the forest is beyond mere maintenance. The major difference is between how both groups evaluate the health of the Church and that greatly impacts their involvement in the church now and their vision for the future. The conservative response to the departure of a well-known Christian leader is generally summed up by saying, “if you leave the church, you are minimizing your influence to communicate the love of God to the world.” But the liberal response would be summed up by saying, “the church in its current state is doing such a poor job of communicating the love of God to the world that we must venture outside the church walls, free from the obstacles the church has constructed.”

One can see how the camps have sided with a clearly defined courses of action.  They cannot build on each other’s ideas because they see the other’s actions as fundamentally opposed to the truth of Jesus as they have defined it through a mountain of words, debates and conferences (while the poor still starve and generations have lost their god-given spirituality).

The brave act of genius is not entirely shunning that which birth it (again, genius) as pure Christian liberalism is prone to do,  nor is shunning innovation/change/paradigm shifts, as conservative Christianity is prone to doing.

Genius is taking that which is pure and grabbing hold of it and running into a new and uncharted direction that can lead to something creative, helpful, life changing, spiritual and eternal.

That last word trips us up.  Eternal.  We think of it in terms of an unending, unchanging existence.  But the amazing thing about spirituality (which is God’s ultimate genius) is that the only way for something spiritual (or religious) to be eternally genius and vital to our life is that it must change – change, but by building and altering, not ignoring that which it came from.

For the church to be united and not considered an increasingly less vital part of daily life for humanity, it must be willing to constantly innovate (and not with programs and lights and bigger buildings) itself in overarching theology &  across doctrines and in the application and approach to those sacred things of the faith.

Because a computer will always be needed to make an iPhone or an iPad.  You change, but you know what is at the core.

Therefore we know that Christ will always be at the center of Christian faith, but how we adapt, grow, shed and are reborn as Christians will determine the ultimate survival of Christianity in the course of an eternal history.

And the fact that this need for an adaptable faith is laid out, prophesied and then bore witness to by Jesus in scripture?  Well, that is genius we cannot and should not continue to ignore.

The Heart Cannot Lie

Have you ever been dishonest?  Have you ever lied about your feelings?  Have you ever tried to be something you are not?

We have, we do and we are often miserable.  We know within ourselves that a single lie will have a ripple effect into every area of our lives and we will never be whole until the lie is uprooted thrown aside and lit on fire until the smoke dissipates into the past.  The heart cannot lie, and our heart is always in our ears.  It guides us, saves us, confronts us and keeps us alive.

The heart is the center of faith.  For the heart is where we hope, and in hoping we cross into the realm of faith…where hoping can move mountains and life takes on meaning.  And many of us call ourselves “people of faith” – 85% of Americans claim some affiliation to spirituality, and 76% cite Christianity as a formative part of their belief system.  Christianity is based on a belief in the person of Jesus as the culmination in the redemptive act of God to love and heal the Creation of both humanity and the entire surrounding universe(s) we find ourselves in.  Jesus spoke of a kingdom of love, of God and neighbor, in a manner in which we would want to be treated.

So, ask yourself…ask you heart: would you want to be categorically rejected for just being yourself?  Do you deserve to be judged and thrown to the margins of society simply because you are trying to be true to your heart that cannot lie?

You would say that it would not be fair for yourself to be treated in such a manner, and yet there are brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and friends and strangers who are outright rejected, vilified and subjected to hatred by many who claim Jesus to be their center, their ethos, their redemption.

I can no longer stand silent along the narrow path Jesus spoke of, while Christians of all denominations choose to reject the message of Jesus and reject my friends and strangers alike who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).  It is time for a reexamination of the cultural bias of fear that has intentionally misread and wrongly interpreted Biblical scripture to condemn homosexuality and gender identity.  We, as a faith, are wrong in condemning anyone that God flatly calls good and whole.  We have sinned against Christ and we have sinned against all who we have ever judged.

Why am I, an ordained minister of the Christian faith, coming out in my support of a sexual ethic that supports equal rights for heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual persons?

Because, I find that Jesus never once in public ministry ever condemned anyone for sexual orientation or gender identity.

I am tired of allowing those who would deny grace, love and full acceptance to any person who is by birthright a part of the kingdom of God.  We must redeem scripture from inaccurate readings and twisted interpretations that are presented out of context and without serious study of time and place in which they were written.  Six “clobber passages” in a book of tens of thousands of verses do no a sexual ethic make.  Especially when we would agree that we would never want someone to discriminate against us for those parts of ourselves that make us uniquely us.

We have to stop thinking that love is blind.  Love is not blind, but it is without bias or discrimination against any person.  Rather, love sees with 20/20 vision while hate thrashes around in the dark, blindly hurting innocent people.

I could spend another few thousand words breaking down the ways in which the Christian church has wrongly vilified our innocent friends who are LGBT.**  I could show you how the word “homosexuality” was inserted into the scriptures in the 1950′s in the same spirit that used scripture to justified racism towards African-Americans and Latinos in American culture.  I could show you how those scriptures are really about rape, child abuse and those who devalue and minimize the value of sex as a part of the human & divine relationship.

But, I would rather ask you to search your hearts.  Are you one who would lie to yourself and think that any person should be discriminated against for being honest with themselves?  Our dishonesty as Christians over those who are willing to risk everything (safety, relationships, social acceptance, etc) to be honest with themselves has no grounding in the message of Jesus.  There is no theology in scripture that ever says that dishonesty leading to hate is ever more acceptable than honesty.  It is time to accept those who are gay and bisexual in the Christian church.  Their courage in coming out is more Christ-like than much of the political posturing of Christians who hide behind issues that divide and destroy us as a people.  I am asking you to see all persons as equal and expect no other sexual ethic than you would require of yourself – an ethic of love, respect, monogamy & faithfulness, spiritual in practice and free of abuses of all types.

There is no other option if we want to see our faith redeemed and accepted in the kingdom that is based on love conquering hate and life vanquishing death.  We have to be the catalysts for change, and the truth is that Jesus is calling us to lay down our weapons of words, and throw our non-biblical biases about sexuality onto the redeeming fires of grace and love that form our faith.

God loves us all, and never judges us when we accept the life we are granted in that moment when the heart choose truth…a truth that echoes love divine.

Grace be to us all,

Bo Liles

**This paragraph is directly influenced by and explored more perfectly than I can do here by Jay Bakker in his new book, Fall To Grace: A Revolution of God, Self & Society.  I recommend it highly.

From The Archives – April 2011: Into the restless sea, our bodies bottled hearts and dreams, a love letter to the world

From our blog, Lost In Drawers:

you look tired, with all the winds conspiring at your back, and the salt on your hands. thrown into the restless sea, the undertow is writhing at your feet. – Lewis “Bitter Days”

The night air is heavy – the dew has yet to touch down – and we are sequestered to a tangled mess of sheets and the white noise of a whirring fan.  My love sleeps lightly and our dog naps and listens for trains.  I sit upright staring at a glowing screen – and I wonder where we stand in the midst of history and the world to come.  How do you go about building a life that leaves an imprint?  Not just a tracer than fades in the sky of the future, but a imprinted fossil that those who loved you can share with those they choose to cherish.  How do you build a dream-filled life in a world where our culture somehow killed the American dream?  The dream was one a formula that eventually collapsed under the weight of expectation.  So, our parents, aunts and uncles built eutopian dreams of freedom and love that were fake excuses for the sex drugs and rock and roll of naive youth.  It was a socially conscious excuse to party.  But, the money and 2.5 kids came calling and suburbia grew around the crumbling cities of our ancestors and we were born into divorce and new wave.  Religion gave way to football and brunch.  We became disillusioned with rules – by freshman year we formed bands, we dressed differently in our high schools and we read book and then quit reading when we discovered the Internet.  Our clothes went from tight to loose to even tighter to tailored and here we are…a couple of generations with all the talent in the world and we are standing about deconstructing the lives of all our friends/friendemies/strangers/reality stars.  It’s like a person walking their brand new bicycle up the hill instead of learning to use the gears.  We have the future square in front of us and we are stuck staring at our smartphones.  Is our future listed on 4Square?

Why are we waiting?  Why have I waited so often?  I am nearly 32 and yet I spend too many nights examining all the angles, yet the move is simple and it is in the one direction we rarely take: straight forward.  The angles, our post-modern discontent is exhausting…I am tired and for once in my life I am ready to move on.  No more editing as not to offend the narrow and outdated puritanical views of life and love.  No more bowing to the status quo of relationships and habit.  We are who we were created to be – no one should have to apologize or edit for what their natural make up is.  You are who you suspect you might be – embrace yourself, get over yourself and give your love and life to a cause greater than yourself.  We all benefit from simply letting go of the ties than bind us.  We all are somebody.