The Godless Saint

In Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, there is a curious character named Tarrou who organizes the volunteer sanitary teams in the city of Oran, a town afflicted by the bubonic plague. He also assists the lead doctor in his rounds helping patients. Tarrou does this for no other reason he says than his code of morals, which he defines as “common decency.

A little bit later in the book, though, he mentions to the doctor that he is driven by the desire to become a saint. The doctor is shocked by this pronouncement and replies, “But you don’t believe in God.”

To which Tarrou replies, “Exactly! Can one be a saint without God?”

No answer is explicitly provided by Camus or his characters, but on finishing the novel the reader has the feeling that indeed one can become a saint without God. But how can this be if we hold to the belief that God and sainthood are inextricably linked? The idea that an atheist can become a saint will sound absurd to many Catholics and Christians.

The answer lies in a saying that the renowned psychologist Carl Jung had engraved above the front door of his home and on his tombstone: Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit. These Latin words are derived from the oracle of Delphi and translate to, “Invoked or not invoked, God is present.” Or what we might paraphrase enigmatically as, “With or without God, the Christ is present.”

Progressive Christians would be wise to take this message to heart, spending less time looking back toward scripture or forward towards heaven, and spending more time looking directly at ourselves and our neighbors, working with our daily bread in a spirit of righteousness (aka common decency) as we joyfully seek the Kingdom at hand.¹

If we do that everything else will be added to us and fall into place, including the recognition that God has been with us all along, providing us with what we’ve needed to grow, whether we’ve asked for it or not.

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To read about William Blake, poetry, and the power (or lack thereof) of words, please go to: Heaven in a Wildflower.

1. ”All these are the things for which the nations are seeking, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But first seek his kingdom and the righteousness that he requires, and then all these things shall be added for you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own anxieties. Every day has trouble enough of its own.” – Matt 6:32-34 [↩]

Jesus’s Audacity of Acceptance (Not Hope)

The latest e-Bulletin from the Center for Progressive Christianity is titled “Why Do We Dare to Have Hope?“–a somewhat tepid title variation of Barack Obama’s well-known book The Audacity of Hope. In the newsletter we thus have articles dealing with the role of HOPE in the Progressive Christian path. We have President Fred Plumer talking about “hope” as an action of creative transformation, SBNR Pastor Ian Lawton arguing that being filled up with “hope” is a choice, and a book review about how “hope” brings beauty to the Christian journey.

But as is so often the case when it comes to “hope,” none of the writers seem compelled to seek out their answers in the Gospels and teachings of Christ. The reason so many Progressive Christian writers omit the Gospels when writing about “hope” is because the Books teach not hope but the trappings of hope misdirected. The disciples in their longing for Jesus to become an earthly messiah who rules over Rome become poster children for those who place misguided expectations on others.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus preaches not the audacity of hope, for hope is as common as a lack of hope: they are natural human reactions to the events around us. What he teaches (which truly is unusual) is the audacity of acceptance. To accept God’s Kingdom “at hand” even when the hand we are dealt is hard or painful. Jesus calls us not to pray for future wants but for simply “our daily bread,” because God already knows what we need before we ask him.¹

Some will say, “But won’t this steal the zest from living? Won’t this allow evil to thrive without opposition? Won’t this halt the progress we all so long to see?” The answer is No, No, and No. For the audacity of acceptance should not be confused with the lassitude of resignation. Acceptance means to accept the challenge of life today, without injecting the future with our personal desires: To work with love and diligence at whatever job is at hand, no matter how small or insignificant: To embrace the skills that God has blessed us with and put them to use for the joy and benefit of others: To speak the truth, regardless of the consequences: And to forgive abundantly.

When we do this successfully, the future will take care of itself, and his Kingdom will have indeed come–and that is the only hope that matters.

Let God Almighty rule eternity. My precincts are the minutes and hours of every day. And as long as people have hopes and dreams, well then, I will have work to do. – The Devil in The Book of Life by Hal Hartley.

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1. God, your Father, knows what you need before you ask him – Matthew 6:8 [↩]

Carpe Diem, My Captain?

Oh, Captain, My Captain! The film The Dead Poet’s Society inspired a generation of young creatives with its refrain of “Carpe Diem” (seize the day). Robin Williams (aka Professor John Keating) urged his students to make your lives extraordinary while standing memorably before a school photograph of alumni who had long become “worm’s meat”.

Yet most of us live decidedly unextraordinary lives, while licking the wounds of our would-be greatness. Why does this happen? Well, it’s because life is not the brass ring at a merry-go-round. It can’t be seized and pulled to our breast, to have and to hold. Life is like water: as soon as we try to seize it, it fast slips through our fingers, leaving only the remnants of what we wanted it to be.

If we are to have a life mantra it should not be Carpe Diem (seize the day) but Suscipe Diem (accept the day)–welcome both the happiness and the sadness, the challenges and the blessings, the victories and the losses. This is the lesson of The Lord’s Prayer, when we are called to pray “give us this day our daily bread.” Our daily bread consists of all of life: all those experiences that make this moment in time such an extraordinary adventure, and which can make our lives extraordinary too, if we but accept each of the cards we are dealt, and don’t fold our hands, cry cheat, or bet it all on a pair of deuces.

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The Lord’s Prayer for Children

The book The Living Hour: The Lords Prayer for Daily Life was written in a way that we hope appeals to both teens and adults, each group of readers being able to take certain lessons from it, or simply food for further thought. But what about the child?

The Lord’s Prayer is the kind of prayer that children can learn at a young age, and it far surpasses that old standard: Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake; I pray the Lord my soul to take–a prayer which makes children think that the Grim Reaper is going to descend upon them in their sleep.

So, to assist Progressive Christian parents we’ve taken inspiration from the material of The Living Hour book to write some thoughts on how you can teach The Lord’s Prayer to your kids in a meaningful way, so that the act of childhood prayer goes beyond simple recitation.

Our Father who art in heaven. Jesus begins The Lord’s Prayer by letting us know that we are all in this together. God, the Father, is the father of all people. He is the father of people we like and who we dislike; people who we agree with and who we disagree with; people who look like us and don’t look like us; people who believe in him and who don’t believe in him. By telling us that our one true Father is in heaven, Jesus is reminding as that we are all Sons and Daughters of God, and that our lives go on forever.

Hallowed be thy name. You know how when someone calls you by your name, it is like they think they know you? Well, Jesus doesn’t tell us God’s name in The Lord’s Prayer because God is so big we can never know all of him. Jesus can describe God’s name, though. He calls it hallowed. The word “hallowed” comes from the word “holy,” which comes from the word “whole”. Jesus wants us to see us and God always together as a whole being. We are not separate. We are one.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Jesus teaches us in the Bible that the kingdom of God is within us and all around us right now. The problem is that we often don’t see it. Because we don’t see his kingdom, we end up making a lot of bad choices. When we make good choices though we are doing the will of God. We are making his kingdom come alive inside of us and in other people. That is why we should always try hard to make good choices and love each other.

On earth as it is in heaven. When people die they go to heaven, but when they live they go to heaven too. It is just that on earth, heaven (like the kingdom) is pretty hard to see sometimes. People hurt each other and do bad things. We get angry when we don’t get what we want or when people are not nice to us. But Jesus wants us to know that if we can just let those bad feelings go and forgive people, the world can be a pretty wonderful place.

Give us this day our daily bread. We all need food to live, right? Well, in this part of The Lord’s Prayer Jesus is talking about something that we need to live. But he is not talking about food. When Jesus taught he liked to use symbols. You know, like a smile is a symbol that you are happy. Jesus is using bread as a symbol of our experiences. Every day we have new experiences. These experiences can make us happy, sad, angry, or whatever. But we need them all, even if we don’t like them all. Because every experience helps us grow.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. We all makes mistakes. Sometimes we hurt the feelings of other people and don’t even know it. In The Lord’s Prayer Jesus calls these things that we do wrong “trespasses”. When we trespass the most important thing is to understand what we’ve done. Then to ask for forgiveness. If you forgive other people, then they are more likely to forgive you. It is no good to stay angry at someone. It doesn’t feel good to be angry. When we get angry we just hurt ourselves. So, just forgive people, and you’ll feel a whole lot better. You will also feel a lot better when they forgive you, too.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. When we talk to God, sometimes we are tempted to ask him for things we don’t need. We pray to him for special favors. But with this line of The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is telling us that God is not our private wish factory. God already knows what we need, so we shouldn’t be tempted to pray for stuff. We can though pray for him to protect us all from harm; to protect us from doing things that hurt ourselves and other people–that is what deliver us from evil means.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen. Jesus ends the prayer with some great news. He tells us that God, our Father, has a great kingdom, has great power, and has great glory. It must be great because it lasts forever and ever. Why is this such great news? Because God shares all of this with his children. That means us! We can share in his kingdom, his power, and his glory, if we pray a lot, forgive a lot, love a lot, and treat others like we want to be treated.

Adults can read more about The Lord’s Prayer by reading some excerpts from our book. Click here: Our Father who art in heaven..

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Our Daily Bread

Give us this day, our daily bread… Knowing that we can claim ownership of our inheritance in the living hour is one thing. But what are we supposed to do with that knowledge? The childhood keys of wonderment and immediacy help unlock the door to the kingdom of heaven, but they don’t have the power to usher us across the threshold. To cross into the kingdom and gather our inheritance, we have to move beyond the carefree world of the child and into the care-driven world of adults–to expand our concerns beyond the “me” to include the “us”.

We can begin by recognizing that although the spontaneity of the child and the adult are similar, they are not one and the same. Take for example the miracles that Jesus performs in the Gospels. If we can set aside the unanswerable question of whether or not these miracles actually occurred, we can begin to see the miracle stories as parables of spontaneity, ones which teach us that living in Christ means immediately responding to the needs of others. Whether it is healing the sick, (1) walking on water, (2) or turning water into wine, (3) Jesus never hesitates but responds spontaneously and confidently to those who call out to him.

Spontaneous charity is taught also by the story of the Good Samaritan. (4) In this well-known parable a man gets robbed and beaten while on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho. A priest and a local man pass by him as he lies half-dead on the road. Finally a stranger from Samaria stops, tends to his wounds, and takes him to an inn to recuperate, paying the man’s bills–all without giving his actions a second thought.

The genuine caring shown by the Good Samaritan sheds light on Jesus’s enigmatic teaching: “When you do acts of charity, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your charity may be secret; and your Father, who sees what is in secret, will recompense you.” (5) By performing our acts of charity spontaneously like the Samaritan, we keep them secret from our egos (that part of us which wants to debate whether we have the time, money, or energy to respond to others in need), and we allow our Christ consciousness to rise (that part of us which recognizes that when others suffer we suffer too). Our charity is thus driven by nothing except a true generosity of spirit…

This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). A faith book especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life. The book’s SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious) meditation is richly supported by over 200 Gospel book citations.

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To read the next excerpt from The Lord’s Prayer Book, please go to The Lord’s Prayer – Removing Our Hindrances.

And Forgive Us Our Trespasses

We’ve just described our journey toward a life in Christ as a rising. But the act of “rising” (such as rising above petty arguments and concerns) can sometimes get us into trouble, especially we Christians. The reason is that when we rise toward our divinity, we often look down on others with a misguided sense of superiority. (1) Jesus condones none of that. He knocks us off our pedestals by insisting that we wash the feet of others if we are to have any part of him. (2)

To keep us grounded Jesus also teaches that our rebirth in Christ is owed to both spirit and water. (3) This lesson is one that’s largely been forgotten. Most Christians today see water simply as an accoutrement to the ritual of baptism, forgetting that the performance of rituals was something that Jesus only grudgingly accepted–for he knew how often they become codified into new forms of idolatry.

We can see such idolatry in the way the Pharisees rigidly held to their laws of the Sabbath. (4) When it came to baptism, Jesus saw it as something which needed to be done for the sake of the community, rather than for himself–telling John the Baptist they must suffer the task so as to “satisfy every claim of religion.” (5) In other words, Jesus allowed himself to be baptized to fulfill the religious expectations of Israel, so that their minds would remain open to receiving the gospel of Christ.

That the heavens are said to have literally opened up during Jesus’s baptism, with the Holy Spirit descending on his head like a dove, (6) does not mean that we are magically turned into Christians during this ritual. Instead, these metaphors are used to illustrate water’s essential role in our spiritual transformation.

To understand why Jesus says that our rebirth in Christ is owed to water, we must look at water as a parable, or character in a story…

This is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of the SBNR book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). A faith book especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life. The book’s SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious) meditation is richly supported by over 200 Gospel book citations.

Buy the Trade Paperback from our Bookstore for $15.99

Buy the full PDF eBook Now for $4.99

To read the next excerpt from The Lord’s Prayer Book, please go to The Lord’s Prayer – Removing Our Judgments.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Having led us through forgiveness, The Lord’s Prayer turns to temptation. Jesus approaches the subject from a curious angle. He asks us to pray that the Father will not lead us into temptation. This inevitably causes us to ask: Why would an all-good God lead us to the devil’s doorstep? If we believe in the Lord, does he not reward that faith by leading us away from temptation?

Before answering those questions, we need to remember that we are partners with God in this life. Although he regularly grants us blessings in the form of our “daily bread,” how we use and respond to that bread is up to us. Every blessing and talent bestowed by the Holy Spirit carries with it the seeds of our salvation, and our ruin.

This lesson is taught through the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. Jesus becomes “full of the Holy Spirit” (1) before it leads him to his sit-down with the devil (a confrontation the Spirit will arrange on our behalf, too, since we must follow in Jesus’s footsteps). (2) But why does the great tempter appear when we are full of the Holy Spirit and its glory? The popular cry among Christians is for God to save us from temptation because our spirit is weak. The whole sequence of events sounds strange.

We often don’t pray when we feel strong in spirit, because we don’t even recognize the risk–which makes these moments all the more dangerous. But Jesus warns us of the threat we face when he says that many who are first shall be last (3) and that the rich man will find it easier to pass through the eye of a needle than the gates of heaven. (4)

This is an excerpt from Chapter 10 of the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). An SBNR faith book especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life. The book’s SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious) meditation is richly supported by over 200 Gospel book citations.

Buy the Trade Paperback from our Bookstore for $15.99

Buy the full PDF eBook Now for $4.99

To read the next excerpt from The Lord’s Prayer Book, please go to The Lord’s Prayer – Overcoming Our Ego.