GOD AND LOVE: A learning curve for me. February 19, 2014

Two quotes of C.G. Jung came up on my Facebook screen today. I've been familiar with both of them for many years. But it came as a reminder of the two most fundamental and far reaching changes in my perception of things most important over the past 30 years. Like most of my changes, which to me are of the nature of the meaning of the Greek word 'metanoia- 'to perceive something very differently than one once did', they came quite suddenly in the 'vision' experiences I had strongly for several years beginning es

 in mid August 1985. I was  working full-time  during all this except for a couple of months before the visions started. It was only after such ideas had been integrated into my mind that I found writers who were able to give me ways to understand this process of inner transformation. The one writer who helped more than any other was Carl Jung. Since those initial changes I have benefited from many of the things he wrote coming out of his amazingly wide range of study, both from outside sources and what he discovered in his own depths. 

As I have crossed the 70 year mark of life and am being encouraged by my doctors to have surgery on my neck to prevent more serious spinal cord and nerve damage, I feel prompted by the appearance of these two Jung quotes to state afresh the two themes that appear to me as ones fate had wired me to become more informed about. And to live out the implications of them as much as possible. I did not become significantly aware of these themes and how central they are to me until I was close to forty years old. And then quite quickly they both were calling for my attention from the outer events of my life and from the inner stirrings as well. The two themes have to do with the 'nature of God' and the 'nature of love.' These are not new to anyone and the world is full of words and ideas about them both, maybe more than any others. But I've come to believe that our conventional ideas and images of these two realities is far from being completed in the personal and collective development and of humankind. I think the new perceptions I came to have and am still working with point to changes in both that our Collective Consciousness is on the threshold of beginning to embrace. 

 If one went through my blog posts it is obvious that God and Love are central in the dreams and essays recorded there. So in this little essay I'm not going to repeat what I have learned or described of how my perception of these have changed. I will simply place here the two quotes of Jung with a simple preface to each of them. It is significant to me that on January 6, 2014, without any initial plan on my part, I stood for an hour and a half in the room where Jung, 60- 80 years ago, first wrote these things.

I. The first has to do with the nature of love. What Jung does here, written in the last years of his life and in the last pages of his quasi autobiography, is to confess his conviction that love is beyond any formal definition, though we must try to find the best metaphors for it and seek to observe its effects. And that the power of love can potentially still awaken humanity to a higher quality of living and consciousness which is beyond anything we have even imagined. This expresses my own estimate of love. A strong notion I carry is what the fullness of love would look and feel like in individual and collective human life , in ways I can't explain, is palatable in my deepest being. Some have felt I have romanticized love. I think I have simply taken it very seriously and been open for its living reality to teach me something of itself and about myself. I apologize for the Latin and Greek phrases. But you won't miss the general picture.

“In classical times, when such things were understood, Eros was considered a god whose divinity transcended our human limits, and who therefore could neither be comprehended nor represented in any way.

I might as many before me have attempted to do, venture an approach to this daimon, whose range of activity extends from the endless spaces of the heavens to the dark abyss of hell; but I falter before the task of finding the language which might adequately express the incalculable paradoxes of love.

Eros is a kosmogonos, a creator and father-mother of all higher consciousness. …. In my medical experience and my life I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able to explain what it is. … No matter, no worse expresses the whole. To speak of partial aspects is always too much or too little, for only the whole is meaningful.

Love “bears all things” and endures all things” (1 Cor. 13.7)

These words say all there is to be said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest sense the victims and instruments of cosmogonic “love.”

I put the word in quotations marks to indicate that I do not use it in its connotations of desiring, preferring, favoring wishing, and similar feelings, but as something superior to the individual, a unified and undivided whole. Being a part , man cannot grasp the whole. He is at its mercy.

He may assent to it, or rebel against i; but he is always caught up by it and enclosed within it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it.

Love is his light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see.

“Love ceases not”-whether he speaks with the “tongues of angels,” or with scientific exactitude traces the life of a cell down to its uttermost source.

Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self-deceptions.

If he posses a grain of wisdom, he will know, ignotum per ignotius-that is by the name of God.

That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedom to choose between truth and error.”
(Carl Jung – Memories, Dreams and Reflections p. 354 )

II. The Second theme that underscores the not consciously planned goal pursued by my life has to do with the nature of God. We should know as obviously true that no human thought or words can capture a full meaning of what our consciousness bearing species has always called God. For, similar to love, God is a whole of which we are only a part; a part can never grasp the whole. But we are an important part, for we bear the capacity of an ever widening consciousness through which to better know God. As humans we are the one thing in the universe, we yet know of , that can create any 'knowing of God.' If not for us(or conscious ones like us somewhere in the universe) God would not, could not be 'known' at all and in a most real sense not exist. It is a general fact that humans had from most ancient times carried the intuition that they might come to 'know God.' To know God fully would to be fully conscious which is impossible but it is reasonable that we could 'know' God more fully than what God has been known before, simply because we are potentially more conscious here and there than were our ancestors. As you listen to Jung speak of God from a very deep place within himself you hear him describe a reality that is far more present and real than any orthodox image has allowed. He sounds much like the N.T. description of God being that in which, 'we live, move and have our very being.'

The most troubling aspect of God that I came up against, and I think that any human could come up against, is that God is not morally perfect, not perfectly good. This for sure is the big kicker which seems to be the last idea any believer in God wants to even consider much less to claim. When the subject is raised most any orthodoxy leaves the room in an emotional disgust. The perfection of God is that last bastion that any orthodoxy or prejudice is willing to surrender for fear of losing God. It is the greatest taboo of all. Some would say that such an estimate of God's nature is to render God not God anymore, but I would say that is not true. It is even quite the opposite. 

This is not the place for me to go into any defense of this significant change in my perception but in a way I'm convinced; that one day in the life of any human taken with full seriousness and without anything to defend would teach this to all of us. Or a perusal of a few Old Testament stories, heard objectively with nothing to defend but the truth would send us away with some need to 'tell on' Yahweh for his immature and obnoxious ways at times. But because of the metaphors of God developed over time immemorial our resistance to such a notion is the very last aspect of an ultimate God that we would ascent to. It has been no different for me. And like the other rediscoveries I've made on my journey, this was through a direct raising of consciousness, not by academic discussions or reading Jung or anyone else.

There are many posts in my blog that work through this alarming aspect of God along with suggested readings of some of the finest minds of the human family. These quotations about God from Jung's mature work remind me that Jung experienced, as many others have, that what is actually God is far nearer and real than most dare to imagine and that God can be as terrifying and amoral as God can be a radiant expression of all that is good, light, faithful and loving. God is not a simplex of perfection to be defended but a complex to be discovered, as it is in reality, in the center of human life and consciousness.

Far from lessening my conviction of God's reality, crossing this threshold of perception brings God to greater constant reality and to my surprise leads to a strong and tender empathy for God. For it has made me aware that God suffers precisely the same kind of ways that I and my fellow humans do. For, after all, we are made in God's image. One N.T. Writer speaks of the Sacred as being one who knows suffering and disappointments (I would add imperfections) as well as us humans, thus making it possible for us to actually identify with each other. And it is from such suffering, and the raised consciousness it gives birth to, that both God and the creature human move to higher levels of consciousness, bringing to my mind a grander hope for a bright future for humanity and for the our planet than I ever could have had with my previous conventional perceptions. Here are some  words for your consideration about the nature of God from C.G. Jung.

Jung 1. “To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.”

“For the collective unconscious we could use the word God. But I prefer not to use big words, I am quite satisfied with humble scientific language because it has the great advantage of bringing that whole experience into our immediate vicinity.

“You all know what the collective unconscious is, you have certain dreams that carry the hallmark of the collective unconscious; instead of dreaming of Aunt This or Uncle That, you dream of a lion, and then the analyst will tell you that this is a mythological motif, and you will understand that it is the collective unconscious.

“This God is no longer miles of abstract space away from you in an extra-mundane sphere. This divinity is not a concept in a theological textbook, or in the Bible; it is an immediate thing, it happens in your dreams at night, it causes you to have pains in the stomach, diarrhea, constipation, a whole host of neuroses.

“If you try to formulate it, to think what the unconscious is after all, you wind up by concluding that it is what the prophets were concerned with; it sounds exactly like some things in the Old Testament. There God sends plagues upon people, he burns their bones in the night, he injures their kidneys, he causes all sorts of troubles. Then you come naturally to the dilemma: Is that really God? Is God a neurosis?

“Now that is a shocking dilemma, I admit, but when you think consistently and logically, you come to the conclusion that God is a most shocking problem. And that is the truth, God has shocked people out of their wits. Think what he did to old Hosea. He was a respectable man and he had to marry a prostitute. Probably he suffered from a strange kind of mother complex.”
 
Jung 2. “The absence of human morality in Yahweh is a stumbling block which cannot be overlooked, as little as the fact that Nature, i.e., God’s creation, does not give us enough reason to believe it to be purposive or reasonable in the human sense. We miss reason and moral values, that is, two main characteristics of a mature human mind. It is therefore obvious that the Yahwistic image or conception of the deity is less than that of certain human specimens: the image of a personified brutal force and of an unethical and non-spiritual mind, yet inconsistent enough to exhibit traits of kindness and generosity besides a violent power-drive. It is the picture of a sort of nature-demon and at the same time of a primitive chieftain aggrandized to a colossal size, just the sort of conception one could expect of a more or less barbarous society–'cum grano salis."

“This image owes its existence certainly not to an invention or intellectual formulation, but rather to a spontaneous manifestation, i.e., to religious experience of men like Samuel and Job and thus it retains its validity to this day. People still ask: Is it possible that God allows such things? Even the Christian God may be asked: Why do you let your only son suffer for the imperfection of your creation?

“This most shocking defectuosity of the God-image ought to be explained or understood. The nearest analogy to it is our experience of the unconscious: it is a psyche whose nature can only be described by paradoxes: it is personal as well as impersonal, moral and amoral, just and unjust, ethical and unethical, of cunning intelligence and at the same time blind, immensely strong and extremely weak, etc. This is the psychic foundation which produces the raw material for our conceptual structures. The unconscious piece of Nature our mind cannot comprehend. It can only sketch models of a possible and partial understanding.”

jung3“It is only through the psyche that we can establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these actions emanate from God or from the unconscious. We cannot tell whether God and the unconscious are two different entities. Both are border-line concepts for transcendental contents. But empirically it can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness. Strictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the unconscious as such, but with this special content of it, namely the archetype of the Self.”

“God is reality itself.”

“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.”

“All modern people feel alone in the world of the psyche because they assume that there is nothing there that they have not made up. This is the very best demonstration of our God-almighty-ness, which simply comes from the fact that we think we have invented everything physical – that nothing would be done if we did not do it; for that is our basic idea and it is an extraordinary assumption. Then one is all alone in one’s psyche, exactly like the Creator before the creation. But through a certain training, something suddenly happens which one has not created, something objective, and then one is no longer alone. That is the object of certain initiations, to train people to experience something which is not their intention, something strange, something objective with which they cannot identify.

“This experience of the objective fact is all-important, because it denotes the presence of something which is not I, yet is still physical. Such an experience can reach a climax where it becomes an experience of God.”

http://thesethingsinside.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/carl-jung-says-god-is-reality-itself/

Jim Hibbett

SERMON: "YOU'VE HEARD IT SAID,,,," Matthew 5: 21-32 January 16, 2014

This sermon is about a giant step in spiritual development and challenges me as much as it may any of you. The creative believer who wrote the gospel of Matthew's purpose was to convince Jewish people that Jesus was superior to Moses and other Old Testament Heroes. He was also establishing the idea that the final authority in an ethical human life lies in Jesus and what he taught. Chapters 5-7 is called Jesus' Sermon On The Mount and is considered the central teaching of Jesus and a guideline for living the most ethical life in harmony with God's will. Coming from a strong Conservative tradition, which usually takes the Bible quite literally, I once saw these things as straight forward and meaning 'what they say.' But I came to believe that is not the most informed way to view them. I wish to share with you basically where my process of reflection has led me.

"You have heard it said from the ancient past...."

We see immediately that Matthew is urgent to establish a high and ultimate authority to use in making the most important ethical and moral decisions in life. Here he has Jesus speak about what are still three of the most emotional, disturbing and controversial issues in private and public life. Murder, Adultery and Divorce. Matthew approaches each topic with ' You have heard it was said in the ancient past' ….such and such . But I tell you now... such and such.' So he has Jesus getting people to acknowledge that what they have till now viewed as final authority in the human life simply isn't, not in the way they had always thought.

Now, do you and I fully escape having to surrender what we have taken as absolute truth and authority as not being that way nearly as much as we thought? If the gospel is a timeless connection to life that is applicable afresh to each age of human development the answer must surely be 'No.' We too have likely taken on conventional handed down statements as fully true and final that we would be wise to reexamine. The human condition requires us to also hear Jesus saying, “You have heard it was said in the past... But not anymore. There is a richer, more grounded  source of ethical truth.'' It is so easy for us to think ,  "Well sure those people had to accept a new standard. But we have had that new standard now for 2000 years so all we need to do is do and believe as we have been told by the church and how we've interpreted Bible.” This, I fear, is the overly simplistic trap that every age and every church tends to fall into. It continues to be the human condition of an insufficient moral standard. I don't think it is just my ultra conservative heritage that has decided with too much certainty what Jesus is saying here about Killing, Adultery and Divorce but also much of the teaching of our so-called mainline churches as well.

We tend to hear Jesus saying, “The laws given by Moses, including the ten commandments, say to not kill, commit adultery or to divorce but I am putting these laws into a new framework and creating a new and better and higher written law.” I'm believing we need to challenge that. The more open minded, usually get it that Jesus is pointing the emphasis away from the the outward acts of these dangers of life and advising that we look to the heart and its intentions. This is surely a good and sound direction. Not only is murder wrong but to want to murder or harm another is wrong, not only is adultery, or breaking intimate covenant, wrong but even the desiring thought of that is wrong. And canceling the intimate relationship of marriage was never God's intention but a make-shift plan  because humans were just not up to making a monogamous love relationship be permanently alive. (Please keep in mind that people Matthew is writing to believed that it was nearly always a woman who committed adultery. Men were permitted to have multiple wives and the only way he committed adultery was to 'take another mans wife which was legally the other man's property. So Our American view of marriage is higher and far more monogamous for men than the Hebrew law was. Yet our divorce rate of over 50 % is far higher than many cultures.)

My main point is that to think Jesus is discontinuing one written, literal, for all -people for all times law about murder, adultery and divorce and replacing with another  is to widely miss the much greater and radical change in authority to which he is actually pointing. If we see Jesus as giving a new external law then Jesus' approach for a higher ethical standard will be fully missed. We, in our childlike need to always be told what to do by a rule or law, will miss 'where' Jesus says the final authority for life's most personal decisions is to be found. And I think this is what most orthodox Christianity has often done. If these words of Jesus are taken as 'new law' then he only makes the law more impossible to comply with. How much guilt has been heaped onto people by their thinking that their divorce, even their sadly confessed adultery, has so blackened their lives that they see themselves as spiritual failures. In some churches divorced persons are seen as not fit to serve in positions of leadership, sometimes being told they can never be married again or that a new marriage is not as holy as if it were their first? How many have grieved that they find themselves admiring the attractiveness and appeal, of someone other than their spouse and feel a load of guilt and distance from God for a very natural and innocent, possibly appreciative and respectful, inner awareness ? This all demonstrates the need of hearing Jesus' words not as any 'new law' but as pointing the way to the place where the ultimate personal authority can be found. That unlikely place is our own human heart, our very own inner being and its multifold processes. Jesus' teaching has said all along the human heart is the place where the image of God , the final authority, lives; not in any written or spoken law.

"But I tell you now...."

I believe Jesus taught that in the questions and decisions of life we are not to go primarily first to the outer act or event and with 'will power' say, “I am or am not going to do that.” This has been tried and found wanting. Will power is not spiritual power. We are a nation of well intended marriages with some 50 percent ending in divorce in spite of well intentioned will power. Jesus saying to go first to our hearts to find a judgment, a direction, an attitude seems to be a dangerous thing, but is it not the spiritually mature approach to the issues of life? Is it not where Jesus was always pointing people? 

I'm not suggesting this as a quick or easy way to 'know' what the highest ethical answers are to our complicated issues but I think Jesus points to a process that may be different and surprisingly helpful. I will give one general example of how going first to our heart might feel and look like.

Jesus said to not murder or even have the wish to murder. From an outer law perspective I know I(and I question the one who says they can) can't promise that, especially the second part. Might as well ask a rabbit to not hop. So you ask me, "Jim, are you a total pacifist?" From Christian teaching would you for sure refuse to kill another person, even if that person were about to kill another innocent, maybe your own child? I think I would be following Jesus' teaching by taking that to my most inner place and pondering it; putting aside any 'law' I 'must obey. If I fail to take an inner focus the more creative spiritual solutions are likely blocked from consciousness. We become 'stuck in law', not 'freed by Spirit.' What do I honestly find? I  presently find that I do not ever want to take another life. I am aware of my truth that such would be a most deep, sad heartbreak for me. That is for this moment the 'final authority' on the subject for me. What Jesus says about the heart being a place where killing can be seen for the horror it is I find to resonate with my heart and head reality. Beyond that I can make no oath or promise that in all circumstances I would choose to not kill a person who was threatening to kill another or myself. My heart's strongest desire-prayer would be that life would not require that of me. If I did kill, out of a sad heart, I  trust I would not see myself as turning away from God or Jesus. For I was doing the spiritual inner work of preventing this horror as much as I humanly could. This is a simple example but how I see Jesus pointing to an authority that is above all law , an authority that may even require a person at special times to move against all other conventional law whether it be civil , criminal or church law.

Determining to focus inwardly rather than on outer law  is  how we can see Jesus  directing us to the final authority  in our day to day , moment to moment living, in our decisions great and small. This then must also be the basic process which Jesus is saying is the path of humans finding  the way to  more fully love and be loved in this world.

Sermon: The Kingdom Of God Is At Hand....Matthew 4:12-23... January 26, 2014

The author of the gospel of Matthew uses the phrase 'Kingdom of Heaven' thirty times, three times saying, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” So for Matthew's first hearers to have a real feel for what Jesus had taught his closest followers was for them to have a heart felt experience of what 'kingdom of heaven being at hand' means. Surely if the Jesus story is to stay relevant it can mean something like that for us now. And, because Matthew says we enter it through 'repentance' or metanoia we potentially can claim that state of mind and reality by experiencing our view of life and living being turned on its head in some significant ways. Repentance for Matthew is not so simple as to, by our personal will power, stop some bad behavior and start good ones. No, it meant to have ones deepest evaluation of inner and outer reality transformed from whatever cultural and conventional point of view we have inherited.

Finding Treasure In A Field.

One may say, “But I’ve inherited my Christian faith. I was taught it. So surely I have the mindset of the 'Kingdom of Heaven is at hand' in blood, in my soul already. I need to expect nothing more or different.” To some degree just being around the stories of Jesus may result is some measure of a 'kingdom of heaven' attitude being absorbed into who we are. But we all likely have something still to look forward to if we have not had those moments when we are aware of the stark contrast between 'the kingdom of heaven' state of mind compared to our cultural, including church culture, point of view we have so deeply drunk from. Many devout persons of various Christian traditions are learning that much of our inherited Christian world view has become instead of a 'Kingdom of Heaven' mindset yet another conventional, materialistic and often moralistic point of view---much as we often find our assumptions about marriage, politics and nation are often as much un-pondered fantasy as fact. The Kingdom of Heaven being present, on the other hand, is something that the author of Matthew is saying we are invited to and can come by grace to experience authoritatively deep in very own being. And it comes not primarily because we have been told we should believe something but rather have had some convincing personal experience.

We find that Matthew believes himself to be in touch with a deep and truthful authority when he says Jesus taught and believed that the 'Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'  In this narrative Matthew illustrates  how strongly a genuine inner religious authority can strike a human being in his/her depths. He illustrates this kind of unconventional authority by saying that those who were called by Jesus 'immediately left their belongings, occupations and parents' when they were face to face with such genuine authority. Is leaving our livelihood, belongings, and even family the way we would ever properly advise someone to respond to some conventional change in life? Of course not, we would rightly say, 'Examine it further. Sleep on it for goodness sakes. You may be being misled.' The kind of thing we say when one is car shopping. But surely still today when one comes face to face with the deeper inner spiritual forces of life, such as some did who were near Jesus, the need to obey this higher voice and its call is so authentic and authoritative that one would have no reasonable desire but to follow at nearly any cost. This is the nature I believe of what has always been referred to as 'call' and its not reserved for only prospective preachers. It is a natural phenomenon of the human soul.  And an experience of such authority is the nature of what it means to come under a fuller awareness of the reality that the 'kingdom of heaven is truly at hand.'

Off The Beaten Track

What might it mean and feel like to be moved by such a truth that Matthew says is so central to what it meant to be a Jesus follower? It would mean that as many questions as one may have and as imperfect his/her pattern of loving themselves and and others is, to trust the Kingdom of heaven is near means nothing less than: the potential of loving and being loved as the ordinary and expected experience of being human in this world. It means being given permission by the highest authority that it is appropriate and customary for a human being to live with an incomparable hope that life and the world is headed toward a better condition, not worse. And that each of us has something significant to do with which way it goes. The Kingdom of heaven being a hand means that no mater what other realities and disappointments are observed in life that there are means and forces beyond our present mortal comprehension whereby unsolvable political/social/family/moral issues may be transcended, even at a mass level. And to bring us all to a far more glorious view of just who we are and how each is part of the whole of reality and connected always to the Sacred foundations of all this is. This means that we can, without discrediting or splitting off our intellectual capacities and our latest technologies, be confident that life and love may be experienced on a scale far grander than any of our forebears were able to imagine. Such conclusions as these I think are natural to the state of mind that trusts 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'

A Fig Tree

May I leave you with Matthew's grand belief: Each of us is capable of coming to a new and broader point of view which affirms in us the right to trust that the very best of God and humanity is potentially yet to come. Even better, it can always be viewed as just around the corner, giving one a consistent 'stay tuned' attitude toward life. When we are open to and blessed with such a mindset we will be living our days and situation very much the way the first and closest friends of Jesus lived  theirs.... trusting that the 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'

SERMON- CROSSING THE GREAT PIT...Luke 16:19-30...Sept. 29, 2013

To many scholars this story is the climax to how the author of Luke presents the good news or gospel

of Jesus. Luke's primary emphasis is on bringing justice to human  life and our capacity as human participants to foster more just environments. His thesis Luke 1:52 says,  “God hath put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the humble and meek.”

This story also illustrates that the really deep questions of life are actually the most down to earth and practical issues, ones that any of us can become fully conscious of and involved in. When I was once deep in the preparation of a sermon my wife brought me me down to earth by saying. “ Jim, you ponder the really deep questions of life don't you? ' Who am I?' , 'Where am I going?' And most often, 'Where are my keys.?'

This story is truly a living symbol in that it has the capacity to grip ones whole mind and heart in a way that mere word descriptions could ever do. That is how Sacred texts are intended to work. It is the image of the 'deep pit' 'a bottomless chasm' which causes a permanent separation of persons who should be together, connected, united in life. But through negligence a pit so deep and wide has formed there is no hope of crossing it in either direction. A startling image of the potential of huge permanent losses and regrets. And this horror, keep in mind, is caused by human carelessness. This pit was allowed to grow deeper, not by cruel intention but by neglect, by carelessness, unthoughtfulness. It fits with Jesus' teaching, we truly can ' have eyes but not see, ears but not hear.' The rich man just simply 'cared less' than a human is allowed to, and get by with it. This story alerts us to our carelessness toward those around us right now in this life and the irretrievable harm it can do to our soul. We risk losing our essential humanity when we 'care less.'

One day I was careless with a skunk. Visiting my uncle's farm I was shown how to check my cousins traps and told how to handle the live animals caught. I was shown how to handle a skunk so it did not spray its stink on me. Sure enough, a skunk was in the trap the next morning. Carefully I managed to handle it , keeping it tails down. I headed to the house holding it by its tail. As I got near I began to yell, ' I've got a skunk, I've got a skunk'. I was already hearing fantasizing the praise coming from everyone about my achievement. Nearing the house in my exuberance I became 'careless' , the skunk got too close to my body, pulled itself up and sprayed me down good. The skunk got a way, my mother sent me to the barn, told me to hand out my clothes to be burned and instructed me I'd be sleeping in the barn until I was fit for human company. I had a moment's carelessness.

This story is about six well off brothers and a sick beggar man. Like most natural families the brothers care for each other but the sad thing is their care pretty much stops with their own circle. One of the brother's died. He is described as very wealthy compared to most. Lazarus is the only figure in all of Luke's parables that he gives a name. He names him Lazarus, 'God comforts.' Thus seeming to say, 'you had best take a good look at the Lazarus figures in our world' for our attitude about them shapes the person we will be forever. At first Lazarus is just a sick sore-infected beggar man. But when the two die suddenly they are both the same, both fully claimed by their human mortality. Both with no more control over earthly situations. They left behind only the aroma of how they had lived. The one who was so favored by this life is now pictured in much suffering and the one so cursed in this life experiences great joy.

The rich man and the poor man are in stark contrast to each other. They live side by side. The see each other come and go. All that separates them is the front door of the rich man's home. But they never connect because the rich man does not let his gaze, his attention, his care go toward the poor beggar. Because of his position and power the rich man had a greater obligation to close this gap, to cross the deepening pit, than did the poor beggar. But by not looking, by pretending the beggar and his suffering did not exist he turns away from him. Luke is showing us that it is here, in this life now, that the most serious chasms or pits exists It is the pits between us and our fellow humans in this life that need our attention, that we need to cross time and again. These are the chasms we can and must do something about. Luke is saying that any eternal pit of separation only exists because we have allowed pits and chasms to grow beyond measure right now in this life. The wealthy man could have easily behaved in a way that the pit between him and Lazarus could have been kept crossable. He could have crossed it by giving Lazarus opportunity and responsibility to do the same. He could have offered conversation to Lazarus. He could have kept face to face open eyed contact. He could have taken interest in his suffering and sought some ways to relieve it.

My skunk carelessness was real but not the serious moral and ethical carelessness this story is warning us about. All our close relationships.... family, children, spouses, friends, colleagues at work, friends at church have some measure of a pit separating us all the time. When we notice that someone is behaving differently, is withdrawing from normal interaction... that is our cue to step across the pit now. Don't ignore, don't wait and let it grow. Also, we are to learn that we have obligation to those groups and individuals in our culture who are different than us and maybe from the social norm. The ones we'd first prefer to turn away from. We either allow those differences to separate or we are earnestly cross the pits that otherwise become ones we can never cross. When others are struggling against being ignored in our social order or denied their rightful place, we need to offer our word and hand in support, cross that pit now. How thoughtfully we relate and gently cross such pits with honest communications and up-building words and deeds is all that prevents them from becoming eternal separations. Crossing these pits in our present lives is what our human experience here is most about. We are reminded, this kind of carelessness with life brings the greatest regrets imaginable. So our charge and warning is to keep crossing those potential pits in this life or else they will succeed in becoming separations that can never be crossed. Jim H.

MY PART OF A CHURCH OF CHRIST THREAD REGARDING CHANGE...September 18.2013

 

This thread, and others of Phil Garner's, has been an unusual and important experience for me. I identified myself earlier as one who at age 40 withdrew, after being fired from an eight year promising ministry with no reason given me for why, from my beloved heritage of mainline COC. In time I became a pastor in the UCC and Presb(USA). As a 'liberal' I have had many times over the experience of realizing that I must, to maintain integrity as a Christ follower, to give up an endeared certainty or absolute belief  for I discovered they are not really that certain or absolute. I think the amount of change I've experienced is rather unusual in a life time. No one who knew me or myself could have predicted such a change was in my fate. I think such giving up these absolutes and certainties is a general characteristic of spiritual growth and living by the Spirit, walking by faith ,not by sight etc. I sense that many in this thread group have had their share of this kind of eye opening experience. It  can involve strong sadness and  hurt, being misunderstood and disappointing ones you love. I say all this to get to these points. 

Though it seems to me that spiritual growth involves a broadening and ever more inclusive process rather than the opposite, I would not want to leave the impression that if one  gives up enough certainty or becomes 'liberal' enough that one eventually escapes what it means to sit face to face with another person just as sincere and truth seeking  and realize you have very real and uncomfortable differences. Every church fellowship has arguments, some of them being more productive than others but strong disagreements nevertheless. So we never arrive at some place of no more  need for change, and the tensions involved, is expected of us on our journey. I noticed long before my major changes that a solid translation of 'repent' is to 'see differently afterward.' On the spiritual journey we often come to 'see' some things very differently than we did before. This is a good sign but also a frightening one. An example- I came to 'see' that the NT contains no 'pattern' for the church the way I had placed so much confidence in. It simply doesn't and yet most mainline COC history of  the past 150 years is based on that tragic supposition. Many of the things valued and considered 'truth' for the church came out of that idea imposed on scripture. Intelligent/sincere  people can continue to believe and follow that their whole life.  Unfortunately we can't responsibly wait for everyone to become convinced of  very needed change we have come to whole heartedly  understand and visualize.  Great harm happens to  the many when needed change is not occurring. From such presumptions as the 'pattern' idea  the church  is set up for arguments that no one can win without rejecting the supposed loser.  So there is one church  split after another. As much as we  love  those caught up in such mistaken perspectives on the Bible  I would lie to think that a great spiritual  price has not been paid by such a misguided belief and practice. So what is our responsibility in such a situation?  

Some of us, for whatever reasons, wake up to the disappointment, ' I have to give that up ' for any number of beliefs and practices in our communions. The same for me has been the doctrine of inerrancy of the Bible and a primarily literal interpretation of these Sacred materials rather than a more symbolic one, which I have found to be the natural language of religion. When one finds themselves 'seeing' that important practices and beliefs in ones community are simply not healthy or reflective of the Spirit of Jesus, what do we do? What is our obligation following Jesus? For me it meant the necessity of leaving the community though it will always be very important to me. No one ever finds a replacement for their church of origin. There is so much emotional attachment  to the COC and will be till the day I die. Fortunately,  I do not think my response is what is required or is always the best response with ones new perspectives. I would say you now have a greater responsibility to your fellowship when you become aware of Spirit quenching beliefs and practices. Because every group is in process of change toward what can be  genuinely 'better and more Christ like' church communities, just in different ways and different issues. 

So it is a matter of how we can best be a contributing  'agent of change' to that 'better' you know in your heart you have discovered. To arrive at the  need to  leave a fellowship is like finding we need to leave our family. If that is what is required there is an enormous price. But if we see, what is likely more typical, that our task is to stay and help support change we should take seriously what that also requires of us. For example we may not be ready or think it is most responsible for us to announce that we no longer believe that instrumental music in worship is wrong. We may even suspect it can be an avenue for a church to greater praise God if that is the gifts the members have. But if a member in your church is having to take up the struggle of owning openly that to condemn music, and maybe deny persons using their gifts in that area, is quite wrong; as one who also knows that, would you not have at least the responsibility to let that struggling burdened person know that you personally believe they are right but that you are not yet feeling able to be open about it? I am asking you this ? You may see this as cowardice. I don't.  I'd like to hear how you view such a  typically  real  situation. This way you do not discourage the out front agent of change, such as a woman expressing her concerns that  teen girls are not asked to help serve communion or lead singing etc, but you do take the real risk(Risk I think  is always a necessity in bringing change of any kind. To not take  some risk at some real level is to be content to not be an agent of change. This is central I think to any Christ model of living.) that this woman will respect your need to not yet join her openly. I find that when sincere open changers( ones in our communities who bring a particular gift of potential change) are given this kind of honesty and support they will not violate your trust. But the risk is certainly there, ALWAYS. 

 I have to think if we sit back and let the open change makers take all this heat and often abuse without giving them at least this kind of indirect support is very self deceiving and spiritually dangerous. This contrasts to the  attitude,  'I'll just  be quiet, let the open changers take their knocks  and see what happens.' If one can't be supportive in that way than maybe the  most spiritual  path would be to leave this fellowship and find a place where what you have discovered is 'better and more Christ like' is already the status quo. For by sitting back you are not contributing to the spiritual change you have been informed in your heart that needs to happen for the better.

 My rambling may make little sense to you. But, stumbling upon this group of truth seekers, many from my own background, I wanted to give more explanation of the dynamics of the changes in belief that I have experienced. I have blogged for the past two years in an effort to describe the nature of the spiritual/psychological process I have and am experiencing regarding such  personal change. I do feel I owe much to my  heritage, the Chruch of Christ.  It was so good to me in so many ways, and maybe an honest statement of why and how my changes have happened can be my gift to ones in such a process themselves. I say this also realizing that most of you are several decades younger than I am. 

Blessings to you all. 
An example of my blog: http://jhibbett.blogspot.com/2012/07/word-of-god-and-bible-are-not-equvilent.html

DREAM: ANIMA WOMAN OF THE PALACE ... August 9, 2009

As I began a nap a very vivid dream image, so totally unexpected and so totally not anything I would have consciously developed: A beautiful woman dressed in sheer flowing material with all the colors of the rainbow was gracefully, practically dancing, spreading a rug on the white marble floor of the central large luxurious room of a palace. This looked like an ancient scene from a place like India or Pakistan. The rug was a very large square with concentric squares of all the colors of the rainbow. As she spread it she said, 'It was the most dazzling experience of my life.'  This has the earmarks of being an archetypal dream more than a personal one, thus applies to the whole culture of the dreamer. 

REFLECTION: How can I possibly put words to an image, a symbol like this? I find it better to simply let it soak in and make its own impression on consciousness. It certainly makes a positive mesmerizing impression. The woman reflects the erotic and also the spiritual. Her movement is more than just a physical thing, it is a worshipful dance. She is not this way to get attention or to seduce, she simply is a creation of physical and spiritual beauty. These are common qualities of the 'inner woman' that Jung and others have described as the living 'anima' of the human unconscious. 'She' also appears in many of my dreams in various forms. 

Can you imagine  the disappointing consequences if a man were to project such an image onto a real woman? This woman is an inner woman, the anima. This is a living image  of my, and likely many others', soul. And she seems to have my full attention and serious devotion. If a man were to go out looking for her in the world among human women he would be missing the truth, that she is not 'out there' but 'in here.'   True, if taken seriously, if fully acclimated into one's inner life , it is possible that a real woman could then be 'seen' to be just as amazing and beautiful in her real humanity as the anima figure is in a person's inner realm. But in our day and for the past several centuries men unconsciously have tried to find such an image of woman on the outside and in the process have failed to appreciate actual real women. This has justified men in keeping women inferior and failing to allow them equal rights and power in our cultures. This distortion and failure to differentiate between inner and outer erotic life is usually called 'romance' in Western culture. Real women, without knowing why, have not felt fully adored and loved. They do not know that 'another woman' is present that they were being compared to and found wanting. How terribly unfair and a lousy trick of nature on both the man and the woman. But it is now humanly possible  for us to 'see' our way through this and to arrive at human mutual relationships of a spiritual/psychologically quality that have not been before possible, but only 'dreamed' of. Humanity's capacity to grow in individual and collective consciousness is the key for this potential.

Think of how  commercial industry has exploited this eternal image of the feminine by presenting the 'princess'  to children as 'only' make believe. (I'm not opposed to that.) This is actually a product of the collective adult unconscious and as such it is a Sacred image. And because of its Sacredness carries  the potential  to transform human consciousness, even ushering in part of a new and needed image of God.  Many an adult is likely as mesmerized by  the Disney princesses as the children but the adult has no permission in our restrictive culture to 'see'  it as inner reality to be taken seriously, as even an expression of our personal or collective soul.

She spread a square rug. The square along with the circle is a symbol of wholeness, unity and successful combining of the opposites of human experience. The colors speak for themselves that the spiritual and the physical realities of nature are a unity of harmony and unsurpassed beauty. The rug is 'on the floor'. This pictures the anima as bringing a man finally totally back to earth, to solid ground, to earthy stability after she has perhaps led him to the ethereal heights and the lows of a symbolic, but very real experiences of , heaven and hell.(One outstanding example of this in literature is the Dante Masterpiece of the 14th century The Divine Comedy, especially the third part called Paradise.) She is undoubtedly the Queen of the palace. The palace is a spiritual symbol of the dwelling of the Sacred. It is the inner Temple from which all our physically beautiful  Temples and Sanctuaries have received their templates. The dream shows the woman interested and delighting in creating environments of beauty, peace and safety for others. Should this become a primary way of thinking of  an aspect of God, it would revolutionize what such believers would see as 'God's Will' for the people of the world. The Bible speaks of 'ivory palaces' and the 'throne of God.' This dream reflects these same timeless symbolic descriptions of the Sacred.

Ivory Palaces

Her seemingly ambiguous words leave much, nearly all, to the imagination. To what does she refer when she she says, 'It was the most dazzling experience of my life?' This part human, part goddess woman personality says she has experienced the indescribable, the dazzling, the incomparable. She has been in ecstasy. There is no reference to the male in the dream at all. But that may say more about the male than if he were present. The dream does not tell anything of her ecstatic experience. But whatever it is it must surely be the source of her present grace, her wholeness, contentment and beauty. And her experience of ecstasy must have made her suitable to live in, if not the co-creator of, the heavenly palace. Since this image of the anima is certainly a reflection of the soul of man, if not also of women, her 'dazzling' 'ecstatic' experience must also refer to what the human's soul wishes every human man and woman to be introduced to and perhaps to live in and out of in their daily earthly life. This could be another way to describe finding the 'pearl of great price', the 'treasure hidden in a field', even the very 'Kingdom of God.” It may be a prophecy of a coming evolutionary quantum leap of what it can mean for humans to experience intimately loving and being loved. And for it to be the common  occurrence of humans, like God, actually loving and embracing   the whole  World. Jim Hibbett

*The reader will find another reference to Dante in this post: http://jhibbett.blogspot.com/2016/02/that-dam-pillar-of-salt-february-5-2016.html

FOUR THEMES TOWARD REVISIONING /REINTERPRETING CHRISTIAN ATONEMENT ...July 2013

JULY 2013

This blog post is my response to four short essays on 'Atonement Talk- Fine Tuning' by my friend and conservative New Testament  and Historic Christianity scholar Edward Fudge. As I look these over I find I have described four of the most important religious/spiritual/psychological themes which I have come to highly value the past three decades. My response to each is above Edward's essay. All of Edward's words are in italics to make clear who is writing . These can be read as four stand alone essays or taken as a whole. These fundamental views are not just my own but all have been formulated in various ways and places throughout Human history, especially in humankind's religious endeavors. I credit Carl Jung as most helping to connect these themes from their many sources. They are all consistent with the Vision-like experiences I had, especially strong beginning Mid August 1985 and persisting for several years.

The four themes in this order are:

1. The Imperfect Aspect Of God 2.God And Human Mutual Need For Each Other and An Important Role Of ancient Gnosticism 3.The Manifoldness Of The Word Of God 4.The Importance of Jesus Not Being Viewed Humanity's 'One And Only' Literal Sacrifice.

1. The Imperfect Aspect Of God

Hi Edward.  I hope this finds you with minimal pain and many of  moments to enjoy.  I think there is plenty of  room in scripture for your arguments. But there is also lots of evidence  in scripture that make, from the common folk's perspective,  1,2,4 being very  Biblical and very much foundational in Historic Christianity's teaching. The general concept of  Christ as 'atonement for our sin' is very problematic for more and more thoughtful people I think. Maybe similarly as how  people came to question the concept of a literal Hell , an image that has been fully assumed by nearly all believers, from taking the New Testament literally. We know that from a human , and a parent , perspective  the 'atonement concept'  is not a healthy way of relating or of reconciling differences. One can argue, if they wish, that atonement dogma was generated primarily  by the later church and I think there is much truth in that. But the gospels do have Jesus saying, ' The son of man  came to give his life a ransom for many.' But to read the record of Jehovah's dealing with people in the Old Testament and  say that he was not a generally angry God and not pleasant or secure to be around is an understatement.

Yes, like even  many an  out right brute, we can hope Jehovah wanted to be better , had his good moments and people were glad to appease him by making  grand statements about his faithfulness, forgiveness and kindness. I surely believe such  character has been and  is the goal that the Ultimate  Sacred set for itself  and humanity but  just like our own personal moral development and collective psychological/spiritual human development, it is a long time coming.  One does not have to look hard to find Jehovah not coming across according to his own high ideals in his relationships with humans. Often  a more conscious human is seen cajoling  him into being in fact the high moral image that  he has set for himself.  Like Abraham pleading with him to not destroy Sodom or Job asking  him to reconsider his temper outbreaks and outright wrong judgment and immoral treatment  of Job. This darkness of  Jehovah is what led Gnostic thought to see him not as the Ultimate God but a god who had forgot his origins and assumed he was more ultimate than he could possibly be. Also images of God should always be seen as how a people at a given  time viewed and experienced God. That need not  and should not be our image of God today in our situation. Many people have noticed the monumental change in moral character between the Old Testament Jehovah image and that of God incarnate in Jesus of the New Testament. This correct observation needs to be taken seriously if we are to move closer to an image of the ultimate God. Edward, I think you overstate your case and try to talk people out of realities that they know from repeated experience and story  is how the Biblical Jehovah has come across. His nature would demand someone to be slaughtered for him to accept those he is suppose  to already  faithfully love. People are just now letting such Biblical reality become more conscious.  Most have excused and rationalized such  obnoxious behavior coming out of God. We have not let it register consciously the way we would if a social leader treated us or someone else that way.  This development process is not unlike  how we finally let the faults of our earthly parents become hard fact for us. We love them none the less for  it but much more honestly and hopefully mutually.  When people are under the impression that the Bible and Christianity teach 1,2 and 4  they are not, I think,  misinformed to have those reservations. Thanks for your messages. God bless you always. Wish we could have coffee still. The mature shaded  pond  has appeared in my backyard just when I have needed it most.  Jim H.

On Sun, 23 Jun 2013 03:59:00 -0400 "Edward Fudge" <edward@edwardfudge.com> write

ATONEMENT TALK--FINE TUNING (1)

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Sometimes Christians hesitate to speak to others about Jesus Christ because they think they know too little. However, we share testimony, not theology, and God gives the words. But our theology shapes our testimony and is shaped by it, making it worthwhile for us to note four theological details that are widely-held but actually are unbiblical.

1--UNBIBLICAL: God was angry with sinners until Jesus came and died in their place, but then his wrath turned to love.

TRUTH: God loved the world before Jesus ever came, and that love motivated God to give his Son to rescue sinners (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9-10).

2--UNBIBLICAL: God "punished" Jesus instead of punishing sinners.

TRUTH: The Bible nowhere says that God "punished" Jesus. It does say that Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the cross (1 Peter 2:2), that he was made to be sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), that he was made a curse for us (Gal. 3:13), and that the chastening for our well-being fell upon him (Isaiah 53:5).

3--UNBIBLICAL: God was angry with Jesus while he was bearing our sins.

TRUTH: The Bible nowhere says that God was ever angry with his beloved Son, with whom it repeatedly said that he was well pleased (Isaiah 42:1; Matt. 3:17; 17:5).

4--UNBIBLICAL: The death of Jesus satisfied God's wrath.

TRUTH: The Bible nowhere says that God's wrath was "satisfied" or that it needs to be. It does say that Jesus rescues us from the wrath to come (1 Thes. 1:10; Rom. 5:9).

2.God And Human Mutual Need For Each Other and An Important Role Of Ancient Gnosticism

Edward, by denying that historical Christianity  teaches 1,2, and 4 you take practically all the emotion that has driven Christianity historically  out of the story as  taught for all these centuries.  Unfortunately a large part , certainly not all, of that emotion has been fear and anger and pride. Any story of salvation must have  a driving emotion  or it fails to grip the whole person. I  gladly grant we can look at these passages non literally and insist they do not teach what 'Christianity' as understood by Christians from 100 CE on. But is that what you are really willing to say, that you are now at odds with dominant Historical Christianity and its atonement teaching?

That is what I have  eventually become willing to say regarding the literal Idea that God can only fully accept the individual human by Christ  specifically dying 'for him/her.' And I have also arrived at the reality that the Sacred was not yet perfected  in the Trinity Godhead but created humans out of It's own deep need for increased moral consciousness so lacking in the Old Testament Yahweh. At the Creator's impulse and need  historical humanity was the only place  sacredly conceived where the initial imperfection and flaw in the Sacred could be first perceived, then encountered   and potentially redeemed in human history. This could only be achieved in the Sacred's judgment by   'God becoming man' and this is , to my knowledge, a best explanation for  the story of Jesus' suffering and his   truly sacrificial death. And for his awareness of the  human experience of being 'forsaken' by the dark  undeveloped aspect of God. But in that experience  God also became far more conscious.... a giant step in consciousness development in the Sacred  was taken is how I can best comprehend it. 

But that was not the 'one and only and final' redemption of God and man.  Conscious human suffering today is accomplishing this same continuing  redemption of God and ourselves. God's Incarnation is a continuing  process in us humans- not a story 'once and forever' told.   It is forever a truly cooperative  opus of a consciously suffering God and  Humans at the most intimate level. God and Human need  and must have each other mutually yet it is correct to understand that this whole process was a necessary aspect always present in the undifferentiated consciousness that was the nature of the ultimate beginning of all that is and can be.... that is the Sacred before any human ego and thus  any human consciousness in which to suffer in behalf of God was present. God was truly and totally unknown before human consciousness appeared.  To not be in consciousness is equivalent to not existing. This becomes a very mature no blaming  or finger pointing explanation for all conscious  suffering, for the Christ story and for our present and collectively dangerous historical situation on our planet. This is an explanation that provides the highest motivations, with emotions all accepted and experienced(not repressed) and most respectful, empathic and mutual relationship between God and human that I have ever come to imagine or  partially experience. This preserves the integrity, while not denying the imperfections,  of the Sacred , of every human and of all creation.  And as well  it proposes to generate  a higher , broader and more inclusive consciousness in both God and Human. These ideas of God and Humans are what I experienced in the 'vision' experiences beginning in mid August of 1985 and persisting strongly for a least two years. And have continued to be in harmony with my experience ever since.

And (this explanation)  is in  full accordance with the higher plane of the NT regarding the fullness of love  potentially coming into being, such as Paul's ode to the priority of love in I Cor 13. Edward, at some point just as protestant Historical Christianity has finally rejected a literal Hell, with your self-surprised intellectual support, as not consistent with a mature and  morally conscious and loving God, neither is an image of God that blames all the suffering and evil in the world on the created Human. We abhor such self serving and blind  blaming in human behavior. Yet we are told to be imitators of God. There are times when the creature has had to prove himself more moral than some aspect of God for God's own sake is what I am suggesting and seeing  it in the overall Bible story as well.
 

I suspect you will say of my brief statement , "Jim has become Gnostic."   No I have not become any collective   'ic' or  'ism', but acknowledge that some of  the so called  'Gnostic' interpretations of   the O.T and of Jesus were sincere and as legitimate  and 'revealed' as those whose interpretations which  gained the power to erect Historical Christianity, including the synoptic gospels. (It is important to me that  much of what I am saying can be supported  strongly by the canonized scriptures not taken primarily as history but as spiritual texts, especially John's gospel. We have just historically ignored  these implications that do not fit the majority rule.)  Some 'Gnostics', this became a pejorative term used by the church fathers much like 'anti' was in my youthful experience, were also quite misguided in some of their literal mindedness as were those on the other side of the argument. Historical Christianity has hidden this genuine debate of reality. And well it had to in order for a institutional religion to have been built up. Christianity owes much to Gnosticism in that it was its war against it that produced the powerful institution it became. It is only through the painstaking writings of the church fathers that we can now know what  the 'Gnostics' were trying to say. The psychology they display is parralled in alchemy, all world wide mythologies, Biblical symbolism as well as present day depth psychology.  In these matters I am never saying, 'What should have happened instead is......".  But what we must do is be honest in our interpretation of what DID happen in the early centuries of Christianity's development and what implications and understandings  that brings down to our very moment.

I think the 'Gnostics'  were surely onto something  essential in emphasizing that 'gnosis' , a knowledge by direct experience rather than by  collective story only, has always been central to the birth of any extended  religious movement.  I note that Peter and Paul, both according to sacred tradition, had direct 'gnosis' as the basis of their deepest spiritual  conversion to a new and 'transformed mind.'  The basis was not in informational knowledge of  'what they had been told by others.'   The 'gnosis'  realty of the history of religion should, but it hasn't in general, keep us ever aware that nowhere along the line has  the genuine experience of 'gnosis' been somehow ruled out as the most  transformative, essential for religions to form and  religious experience a human being can have. It does become a question for us all  of how to know when one has actually had such an experience.  And I must add that such an experience would  not make that person fully perfect or whole nor does it protect them  against perhaps the greatest temptation of all ...'to think their personal experience is a one and only revelation of God.'   God help us individually and collectively in finding our way through the present  national and world Chaos that some are more sufferingly aware of than others.  May the greatest present Human  and God cooperative sufferings be accompanied by the highest meanings so it can be borne by  the small but amazingly strong  individuating human conscious ego.  Blessings to you and yours. Jim H.

 P.S. Edward. This is a very spontaneous unplanned writing. It reminds me that you asked me soon after my experiences of Aug. 1985 to write down what I learned from that. That is what I have been attempting to do for 28 years. That is what I have partly made public on my blog the past two years. This two responses may be one concise way of my answering your question. Notice there is no mention of Jung for it clearly was not Jung who taught me through those experiences. But Jung was able to talk about such similar things in ways that were a helpful tool in my  better understanding  what I was being taught by a truly higher power.

On Sun, 30 Jun 2013 03:59:00 -0400 "Edward Fudge" <edward@edwardfudge.com> writes:

gracEmail® Edward Fudge ATONEMENT TALK--FINE TUNING (2)

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Biblical texts such as Romans 4:25; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 20-21; and Galatians 3:13-14 are sometimes thought to teach the four following statements that I have called unbiblical:

1--God was angry with sinners until Jesus came and died in their place, but then his wrath turned to love.
2--God "punished" Jesus instead of sinners.
3--God was angry with Jesus while he was bearing our sins.
4--The punishing of Jesus satisfied God's wrath.

Although the four passages I just mentioned do not teach the four things I called unscriptural, they do teach us two very important truths. First, that we humans sinned, and that our sins resulted in Jesus suffering and dying on the cross. Second, that Jesus' life and death resulted in our forgiveness and many other spiritual blessings. In these texts, Paul reasons on the basis of three principles from everyday life that enable us to regard the action of one person as the action of another. Those principles are cause and effect, representation, and identification.

Friend Jim,
 Thank you for sharing your heart to me as one invited into your inner circle. Thank you for your good wishes concerning my health.
 As we each come to the threescore and ten year marker  in our lives, each in his own way is  evaluating his own life, his relationship to ultimate reality, and his relationship to those closest to himself by nature and by choice. I wish you only the best, and, convinced as I am of the validity of orthodox Christianity in its most inclusive and ecumenical form, I pray that God will in the end see the humility and obeisance of Abrahamic faith in both our hearts and by the atonement accomplished by Jesus Christ keep us for himself through all the timeless eons that never end.

Cordially,
Edward

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3.The Manifoldness Of The Word Of God  
Dear friend Edward. I expect that I have  been much a pest in recent years. I desire so strongly that your health is improving and that your pains and physical discomforts are minimal.( I have just received word that  my brother George in Florence is failing rapidly. After he leaves there remain two of us  brothers.  I am grateful  for the important role each of my brothers has had in my life.)
 
 I'm wish to express some things here  and will  also attach some pages from a commentary on Jung's final scholarly work Aion. He was I think  73 years old.  I hope you may find time to read the pages at the bottom. The order is pages 90-94 followed by pages 75-79 with pages 90 and 75 being partial. (These pages are copied in this order at the end of this blog post.) The book is The Aion Lectures, Exploring The Self In Jung's Aion by Edward F. Edinger. I share these readings  not that they are unusual or all that special for me personally but as  very typical of the manifold ways and places that depict what I think I have experienced as a matter of personal spiritual development. Though very appreciative of my religious heritage I'm generally let down or put off by conservative orthodox Christian teaching in that it suddenly, and I think very unnaturally and dogmatically,  restricts and cuts off  the human from the manifold places the 'Word of God' is free to  approach us from.

 It seems most reasonable to me to expect a manifold of sources that together continue to express a common pattern in what matters most, how the human is most profoundly confronted by and encounters God. This is a  significant disposition of Jung  which is often at variance with Christian orthodox teaching. He was open and intentionally searching in all those places in human history where the brightest and most sincere minds were seeking to find meaning in the human situation and also were often convicted that there is indeed an 'other' that we are prompted to seek and hopefully find. Sometimes people without those credentials have been a mouthpiece unknowingly in such matters. In general the 'other' , God , the Self or the 'Collective Unconscious' is seeking to make itself more conscious through the wide full range of human culture and experience.  Jung did not probe into just any areas but those that were authentic, patiently practiced and had, in time,  offered the most  meaning to significantly  large parts of the human community. He does not fully separate , as any orthodoxy  nearly always does, the so called 'secular' from the 'religious.'  It is all a part of  Sacred creation and development and together holds the secret referred to in more than one place as the 'pearl of great price', the 'narrow path',  a 'treasure hid in a field' and arriving at a perception of having a 'single eye.' How could it  be otherwise that the God of creation would make itself known in manifold ways and places  to human consciousness?  Thus we find Jung drenched from youth  with the  canonical Biblical materials but he surely was not a 'sola scripture' person for he found in human life that God is obviously not 'sola scripture' but  His manifold voice is found in a multitude of sources. But Jung was demanding in his search to find the major  underlying patterns that all these sources reflect in their unique way. Also  at variance with orthodoxy one's actual experience, both inner and outer but especially for Jung inner, is a continuing, vast and acutely  reliable source for finding the fundamental patterns of  human development  with regard to its connection to the other, to God. So this is why we  find Jung quoting and examining the common patterns in scripture, Apocrypha, Kaballah, Christan mysticism, church fathers,  alchemy, gnosticism, Greek -Roman and many other mythologies and  Astrology, as it was found and used by the finest minds in the ancient world, to name a few.  His range and thoroughness  of resources is mind boggling to most any serious reader.

 
This, though mine more limited to explaining my personal experience and never with  the scholarly and academic standards employed by Jung,  has been the nature of my path for 30 years.  It does make the search far more  daunting but I think also eventually more full. It seeks to truncate nothing from life's history and experience.   My central task in life or fate  is very different than his. My under-girding search, at work long before I had significant consciousness of it, has to do with human love, at the personal intimate level  and collectively with how such personal love is the potential redeeming experience to put humankind on a new, long yearned for and  renewed path of  hope I can only imagine. But the patterns of development that Jung finds in all these manifold places have matched the pattern of my own personal experience, more and more as time passes. So his work has been a primary and essential (It can be said that all other  influences have been also essential. Each conscious raising experience has its effect on the whole of life.) tool in my holding  together in an ever surprising measure psychologically and spiritually.  This has required a most  unexpected and still to me mysterious state of mind and psychological functioning.  In my dealings with family and outside world I think any difference is barely noticed but I sense that my inner reality is not typical, but it is uniquely the one needed to under-gird my specific life challenge.  A simple  example of such functioning is my spontaneously composing such a detailed letter as this to you. This, as with much of my behavior,  is motivated from beyond any rational purpose or goal.
 

Dr Jim Pancrazio

Dr Joe Bohlen

I received significant personal  professional  counseling support in 1984 from professor-counselor Jim Pancrazio. My only formal 'analysis', a word frequently mentioned in the book pages below,  was near the beginning of such experiences twenty eight years ago with  therapists, Dick Dayringer, my long time  supervisor-counselor, and  Eugene Qualls, a Jungian counselor I  fortunately worked with for three months. My work with Dr. Qualls  immediately preceded my  nearly overwhelming direct  'discovery' of the reality of the  objective Collective Unconscious. (Edward, this is when  you attended me in mid August of 1985, the most    stirring way I think  our paths have or likely ever will cross.) I also found consulting with Dr Joseph Bohlen was most helpful at times when I was assimilating Unconscious contents.

Dr Richard Dayringer

I find it synchronistic  that here you make reference to Christians being like 'fish in the river.'  This is likely what motivated me to write you.  I had just read  these  copied pages below   where a church father is quoted using the same symbol from a dream in  about 500 CE.  But  Jung explains in Aion the development of the 'fishes symbolism' did not stop there. For then Jung shows another Christian dream, about 1500 CE that shows the individual Christian not being  like a 'fish in the river' but like one who 'carries the water' describing a significantly less collective,  more developed, individuated, psychological position than the earlier idea that you are still interpreting as being most  'up to date' and completely applicable. The apocryphal  'fish' story, bottom of page 92..ff , included the three fold process of  such an encounter  with the 'other' which is stated as 'capture, extraction and transformation.'  

Dr. Eugene Qualls

Edward, You were with me at a stage that may slightly  precede these. The 'fish' was  compellingly  and surprisingly discovered by my conscious ego. I guess the fact that I could express to you anything then was the beginning of me both being 'captured' yet also managing to begin 'capturing' something myself.   It came to me like a giant ocean Leviathan with me being like a gnat  on the shore as it came bursting out of the water to give me the first glimpses  of its gigantic spiritual/psychological proportions. When you saw me I was mesmerized and in danger of being engulfed by the shear difference in my smallness and its largeness. It was obvious that I and my conscious ego  were a creation of 'it' , not the other way around. Yet it was my feeble ego doing the apprehending and comprehending of the 'other' which was an ecstatic exhilaration. Thus is my experience of your 'God is God and I am not.'  In the months and years that have followed I have experienced my own stages of 'capturing, extracting and  transformation.' Unlike orthodoxy of any kind, which always degenerates into a 'conventional wisdom'  where ones  group all confess like 'fish in a river', this process I'm convinced  is experienced mutually by 'me and the large fish' or God. Each of us is being 'captured, something precious and needed is  extracted from each, and each is being transformed' in a natural harmony with the needs of both the human and the Sacred. An example of this psychological/spiritual process is laid out in the  Bible story of Jacob 'wrestling with the Angel.' There both 'the Lord' and Jacob experience 'capturing, extracting(Jacob a blessing for himself and the Lord a wound to Jacob's privates) and transformation.'  Each party we can assume was significnatly more conscious of the other after the  horrific encounter.


 These paragraphs may say all that  is on my mind for this communication. And it sounds and feels  like a final one of this type to you. Please take the readings I forward as primarily only an  example of how 'manifold' the ways of God are in that, it seems to me is most reasonable, the ' patterns of development' in an ordered world are presented in seemingly  numberless  ways throughout creation.  Especially through the finest developed minds and most spiritually developed hearts of God's humanity over the course of recorded history does the manifold nature of the Sacred  come into sharper focus. This view of the manifoldness of  'Gods voice'  is what is most at variance with my personal religious heritage and any collective orthodoxy that I have become familiar with, including much of Western Christian which I also claim now as my heritage. 

Edward, in closing, I maintain that as important as intellectual formulations such as this may be , as a partial intellectual expression of whatever is the ultimate reality,  that friendship freely and responsibly  exercised does transcend any differences no matter how painfully felt.

Blessings always to you and yours, Jim

gracEmail® Edward Fudge ATONEMENT TALK--FINE TUNING (3)

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Paul uses at least three principles common to law, logic, and rhetoric to describe how Jesus' life record can count for us as if it were our own. He uses the principle of cause and effect when he says that Jesus was delivered up "because of our transgressions," and that he was raised up "because of our justification" (Rom. 4:25). Scholars agree that the Greek text of this verse says "because of" both times, but the second statement is not immediately easy to understand and the New American Standard Bible is apparently the only major version to translate it literally both times in Romans 4:25. Yet, as surely as our sins were a cause of Jesus' death, just that surely God's declaration of our acquittal was a cause of Jesus' resurrection. Just as Jesus' death proved that we were sinners, so Jesus' resurrection proved that God had declared us righteous.
The principle of representation involves a proxy or other authorized representative who is empowered to act in the stead of another. An illustration of representation is Paul's statement that Jesus died "for all" and therefore "all died." Jesus died as the representative or proxy "of all," and when the representative died, in the eyes of God all whom he represented died as well (2 Cor. 5:14-15). Paul has an ethical purpose in his logic. Since the "all" who died now live again only through Jesus' representation, they are morally obligated to live for Jesus their representative and not for themselves.
We see the principle of identification at work in the statement that Christ became a "curse" for us by hanging on the cross, so that "in Christ Jesus" we Gentiles might receive "the blessing of Abraham" (Gal. 3:13-14). Paul is noted for his vision of believers as living members of the spiritual body of Christ, which means we are "in Christ" just as a 'fish is in the river.'(quote marks are mine J.H.) And just as a purified river means that the fish will be purified as well, in the same way whatever is true of Jesus Christ can be truthfully said of everyone who is "in" him.
It appears that the principles of representation and identification both are at work in the statement that God made the sinless Jesus "to be sin on our behalf," in order for us to "become" the righteousness of God "in Him" (2 Cor 5:21). Jesus identified with us so closely that our sin became associated with him. And we are so closely identified with Jesus ("in him") that the divine righteousness he so faithfully and perfectly demonstrates becomes associated with us as well as with him.
When we read the New Testament, we discover a wide variety of illustrations of the blessings that flow from the saving work of Jesus Christ. However, we find no theory of the atonement that attempts to explain its mechanics or inner workings. Perhaps we should be content to believe and to say what the Bible says—and to stop with that. If we did so, we would avoid creating theories and explanations that are human constructs lacking divine authority. Indeed, if everyone had used only biblical language, we would not face the risk today of confusing what God has revealed in Scripture on this subject with what we or other human beings have thought, imagined, and passed on to others.

4.The Importance of Jesus Not Being Humanity's 'One And Only' Literal Sacrifice.

Edward. It's of highest  human spiritual accomplishment and value when a person under the ethical complications of living the human life chooses to sacrifice some measure of itself, even  if necessary to the point of dying.  This is the great spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. That very human and courageous decision is screened from full consciousness when such  a divine/human accomplishment  is interpreted as an appeasement to ones belief of God's disappointment or disapproval of the very ones this individual is sacrificing for. As appropriate as 'obedience' is  when freely chosen, a bit of reflection reminds us that frequently 'obedience' is quite the opposite of  love. Jesus primarily loved, he loved the world. That is enough to know his motivation for dying.  It is important to recall  the gospel speaking of  Jesus 'choosing to lay his life down , not responding to a demand  to prove his  obedience to a higher power.'(paraphrase). For that choice to be diminished  is to ascribe 'obedience' as Jesus' highest value rather than love.  This greatly clouds the richness of  his choosing to die and of our aspiring in a practical way  to such ethical character ourselves. I agree it can help to keep in mind  the idea of 'Jesus being God as human incarnate' makes such sacrifice one that is made mutually by both God and Human suffering together.

This can be true potentially of any Human person. Human nor Sacred integrity is attacked in that view when it is kept clear that Jesus and God is one.  Eventually I think we will understand that God and All, including us, is one. Then it  will become clear that saving sacrifice is a mutual participation, not the action of just one human.  I think most words that Jesus likely said stop here and I think that is where we should stop if we are not going to give homage to an aspect of  God or Human that carries  some evil self grandiosity. There is an aspect of the God Image, especially demonstrated in the Old Testament, that is precisely this negative and destructive. But with increased awareness and consciousness post-modern Christians can and really must stand against demanded sacrifice as a model of moral conduct. Any source, human or Sacred, that says in essence 'One must die in order that 'I' can fully accept the one being died for' is not a source we should give our obeisance too. It is surely a source that is not fully individuated itself. It is a narcissistic source. It is a continuing of the powerful and violent  archetypal energy that inspired literal human sacrifice  in some of the most ancient religions.

This is the kind of  soul-searching work today's believers might pray to have the consciousness and courage to do if we would be like Jesus and desire to stand by Humanity which even God depends on for God's own redemption. Man and God  mutually needing, working  and sacrificing together is the picture of  religious realty needed today and I think that is what we can see in the Jesus story if we so responsibly choose. Thank you for this stimulating  series on the idea of Atonement.  May all Jesus followers continue to explore our deepest heart for how it is that God and Human are becoming One.  Best to you  Always Edward, Jim

On Sun, 14 Jul 2013 03:59:00 -0400 "Edward Fudge" <edward@edwardfudge.com> writes:

gracEmail® Edward Fudge ATONEMENT SERIES--CONCLUSION

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When we read the New Testament, we find that all the classic theories of the atonement have some biblical basis, and also some room for improvement. We learn that New Testament writers employ a variety of metaphors to illuminate the atonement, but that none of them creates a full-bore theory to try to explain its inner workings. And we discover that the metaphor used most often for the atonement in the New Testament is the Old Testament sacrifice known as the sin offering. Not surprisingly, the New Testament author who uses that metaphor most broadly and who explores it most deeply is the unknown author of Hebrews (perhaps Barnabas of Cyprus, a Levite no less).

But even the writer of Hebrews works with multiple metaphors and similes. He likens Jesus' atoning work to the activity of a divine rescuer who engages the tyrant who previously held them and their ancestors captive, then defeats him man-to-man (Heb. 2:14-17). Jesus is like a wealthy man who leaves his riches to his brothers and sisters as an unqualified inheritance (Heb. 9:16-17). He is the runner who first completes the marathon, but instead of going home remains at the finish line to encourage the other runners to cross it and enjoy their own prizes (Heb. 12:1-3).

Most conspicuously, Jesus is the high priest who, having once lived and then offered a human record of unbroken faithfulness consistent with every divine wish, was exalted and invested by God as king and high priest in heaven in fulfillment of Psalm 110:1, 4). There he lives forever, serves forever, and saves forever (Heb. 7), dispensing grace and mercy to his people as needed (Heb. 2, 4). As high priest, Jesus was chosen by God from among those whom he represents (Heb. 5). He was chosen with an oath as to his perpetuity (Heb. 6) because he was chosen on the basis of his unchanging flawless character (Heb. 7). One day he will return to gather his people and to give them their full reward in new heavens and new earth (Heb. 11-13).

By definition, any theory of the atonement is commentary, not canon. For that reason, when we create theories and explanations beyond the Bible’s actual words we should always make it plain that they are only as authoritative as our human logic. And we should regularly remind ourselves and others not to confuse what God has revealed with what we or other human beings have thought, imagined, and passed on.