Praising Contradictions

There is one thing that many scientists and orthodox Christians share: that is, a dislike of contradictions. That an electron can appear as either a particle or a wave is as disturbing to the scientist, as the mystical phrase You are God and not God is to the evangelical Baptist. Literal Bible readers take extraordinary flights of fancy to erase the many contradictions of the Good Book, or simply ignore them altogether. Even among Progressive Christian writers, contradictions are usually avoided while they try to build a logical edifice on which to hang their theological hats.

But there is no inherent shame in contradictions. Contradictions are not always antithetical to logic and reason, but often arise from the very nature of human reality, a direct result of the limits of human language and individual perception. This is the reason why neither Jesus nor Buddha wrote down their teachings.

It is the tension of opposites (between good and evil, particle and wave, heaven and earth) that gives rise to the Spirit of Truth. It is through paradox’s window that we view the unity and diversity of Life.

George Orwell once said that “to accept an unorthodoxy is always to inherit unresolved contradictions”. That is the inheritance of Progressive Christianity, and one which we must embrace wholeheartedly. A contradiction need not be a sign of weakness but one of strength.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. — Walt Whitman

In the end, we just might see that there weren’t any contradictions after all: only apparent contradictions.

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If you would like to read about why Progressive Christians do what they do, please go to: Why Progressive Christianity?

If You Meet Jesus On The Road, Kill Him

A famous old piece of Zen wisdom says: “If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.” There are a couple of reasons why we are called to take Buddha out. The most commonly cited reason is that the prophet in the road is not really Buddha at all, but a figment of our imaginations–a psychological projection of the person we want Buddha to be. To approach the real Buddha we have to eliminate (kill) these projections.

The other reason for killing Buddha in the road is that by doing so we drop our last crutch and begin walking our spiritual path with full freedom and independence. In other words, we kill Buddha in the road to attain Buddha-hood ourselves. By killing Buddha we honor Buddha and ironically give him life.

This teaching actually finds great resonance in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In the Gospel narratives, the disciples insist on seeing Jesus of Nazareth only through the prism of their own psychological projections, expecting him to assume the crown of an earthly king,¹ all the while refusing to truly honor Jesus by accepting the kingdom of heaven within, where Christ reigns eternally.

So, today, let the Progressive Christian be the Zen Christian: If you meet Jesus on the road, kill him.

Where you want this killin’ done? God said, “Out on Highway 61.”
– Bob Dylan

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The Living Hour’s motivational series combines history, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion to help bring about new perspectives on Progressive Christianity and spirituality. Sign up to have these SBNR Motivationals delivered to your e-mail box three times a week. Enter your email address into the “Opening the Small Gate” box in the right corner of this web page.

1. On the following day great numbers of people who had come to the festival, hearing that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, took palm-branches, And went out to meet him, shouting as they went: “God save Him! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord: the King of Israel!” John 12:12-13 [↩]

Trust Your Inner Wisdom?

Trust your “inner wisdom” is a lot like Joseph Campbell’s dictum follow your bliss. It sounds good on the surface, but it can just as likely lead us away from the Christ within as lead us toward our divinity and life’s purpose. This is because wisdom is not planted inside us like a burning bush but a mustard seed–a seed which takes years of learning, living, and loving for it to bloom up with fire. The seed of our inner wisdom also demands that we dissipate the cloud cover of our egos which so often stunts its growth and blurs its message.

Jesus’s wisdom, we are told, grew as he grew in years.¹ It was only after he had surpassed the wisdom of King Solomon² and put the devil (ego) behind him in the wilderness of his soul that he fully trusted his inner wisdom and began his ministry in earnest.

Inner wisdom is not downloaded from On High. It is a process of coalescing, of unification. Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree didn’t arrive like a thunderbolt from the heavens. It was a coalescing of all his past meditations, learning, and experiences: all of the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. But before that could happen, Buddha had to collect all those pieces of knowledge. And that took time, patience, and diligence.

So, by all means do look toward your inner wisdom for guidance. But remember that there are many inner voices battling for your attention. Don’t trust the voice that you think is your “inner wisdom” blindly. Enter into a dialogue with it. Make sure the road it is calling you on has a heart. And look for the traps that your pride and ego sets along the way.

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The Living Hour’s SBNR motivational series combines history, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion to help bring about new perspectives on Progressive Christianity and spirituality. Sign up by entering your email address into the “Opening the Small Gate” box in the right corner of this web page.

1. Jesus grew in wisdom as he grew in years, and gained the blessing of God and men. – Mark 2:52 [↩]
2. She came from the very ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon; and here is more than a Solomon! – Luke 11:31 [↩]

Grammatolatry

After talking about the Buddhist statue controversy at St. Mary’s South Brisbane, we were reminded of just how many similar teachings and attitudes exist between Jesus and Buddha. One of the most prominent behaviors which these two prophets share is that neither one wrote anything down. By today’s standards (where everyone seems to be writing about every triviality under the sun, and then sharing it with millions of online strangers) the idea of possessing profound wisdom but then not writing it down sounds absurd.

Why in the world did Buddha and Jesus do that? After all, it certainly would have solved a lot of headaches and conflicts had they just put their thoughts down on paper (ok, parchment).

If we return to consider the “Buddha” incident at St. Mary’s, an answer to this conundrum actually emerges. As we mentioned in our earlier post, some Christians (including a few St. Mary’s parishioners) mistakenly confused the placement of Buddhist statue with idol worship. Idol worship is something that greatly concerned Jesus and Buddha.¹

Not so much the worship of golden calves or physical idols, but the far more insidious idolatry of the written word—because when words become canonized, codified, and literalized they quickly lose their transcendent, life-transforming, power. The living Word becomes dead letter scripture, which now petrified can be used to bludgeon all those who disagree.

During the 1870s, the American social reformer Robert Dale Owen eloquently stated that: “The worship of words is more pernicious than the worship of images. Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry. We have arrived at an era in which literalism is destroying faith…The letter killeth.”

If we were only arriving at Christianity’s destructive era in Owen’s time, then today we certainly have reached its denouement. The question that remains is whether or not from these ashes a new, brighter, Phoenix of faith will rise for Progressive Christians. If the goings-on at St. Mary’s South Brisbane are any indication, there is some reason for hope.

1. Do not believe in anything because it is rumored and spoken of by many; do not think it is proof of its truth. Do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not be sure that the writing has never been revised by the sage, or can be relied on – Buddha – Wheel of the Law [↩]

Buddha At St. Mary’s?

In an earlier posting, we lent our moral support to the progressive ministry of St. Mary’s Church, South Brisbane in their dispute with the Roman Catholic Church. The issue that seems to be receiving the most debate (and disagreement) among Progressive Christians is Fr. Peter Kennedy’s placing of a Buddhist statue inside the church.

A few have stated that this is the equivalent of promoting idolatry, something which no Christian can tolerate. First, we should set the record straight and recognize that the statue in question was not of Buddha but a Buddhist monk praying. But even if it were of Buddha, this shouldn’t really matter. Gautama Buddha did not profess to be God but a man, and he is not deified by Buddhists.

If having iconography or statues within a place of worship is equivalent to idol worship, then we Christians are (as they say) guiltier than sin. Statues of Jesus, Mary, and the Saints fill thousands of churches, and cross jewelry adorns the bodies of millions. Yet most Christians are no guiltier of idol worship than most Buddhists.

In our meditation on How We Worship, we mentioned how rituals only point towards divine truths. They are not spiritual canisters that contain power in and of themselves. The same goes for religious iconography like statues: be they statues of Jesus Christ or Gautama Buddha. Religious followers are expected to use them as visual reference points to help them turn inward toward a communion with their own inner divinity.

In other words, when the Buddhist monk kneels down in prayer, he (like the Christian) is seeking God’s Kingdom with reverence and humility. And that is something Progressive Christians should not only support but welcome into our churches—recalling Jesus’s words that those who are not against us are with us (Mark 9:40).