Cowardice and Human Essentials

A couple of friends and I spent the night in the Devil's Tramping Ground recently, and aside from the fact that nothing strange at all happened (even though we were actually within the circle itself the whole night), it was a very enjoyable time. However, something struck me about the whole experience.

When we arrived at the site, we were surprised (and somewhat disheartened) to find that there were two cars already parked on the side of the road! We parked, entered, and found a small group of 18-26 year olds checking out the are. They were supposed paranormal investigators. They claimed to have photographic evidence of high spiritual activity within the circle, and also claimed to have been physically affected by spiritual forces (a push, a scratch, etc.). I made it clear to this group that I did not believe in the legend (or any of their supposed paranormal activity) and was simply there to disprove it. After some fairly civil conversation (and watching them try to contact spirits), they went on their way. I was told something very interesting, however, before they left.

I had made a comment that I do not remember, but it was simply another expression of my disbelief. I realized that it might have sounded more mocking than I had intended, so I apologized for the tone of my statement, and then simply told them again that I did not mean to mock them, I just did not believe as they did. The leader of the group told me that was fine, and then that "Disbelief and skepticism are simply signs of cowardice." I did not know how to respond to this statement immediately, so I just shrugged and expressed my apathy towards his claim, promptly disregarding it, not fully understanding what he meant. This morning, I think I began to realize what he could have intended, and then I realized that if his logic is correct, there exists not a man who isn't a coward.

I think what was meant by his statement was that I was refusing to believe in something because I was afraid of it, and instead of facing my fear, I escaped it by not allowing myself to believe it, thus, I was being a coward. I think a good example of this logic is when someone I knew found out I did not believe in Hell. This person believed that I must be going to Hell because I didn't believe in it. This was the logic: I knew I was going to Hell and that terrified me, so I decided to dismiss the idea of it so I could live my life without changing. The cowardice I was being accused of was that I dismissed anything that frightened me so I would not have to deal with it. Allow me to ponder that for a moment.

What would frighten me about the spiritual activeness of legendary locations? What would it do to me if I had a paranormal experience? I suppose that may frighten me because it would be something that didn't fit into the way I saw the world. I would not be able to explain a ghost in my worldview. I have little room for hauntings and angry spirits in the way I see things, and to experience a specter would shake the foundations of my beliefs. The idea that spiritual forces really are active and manifest in the world just doesn't fly with me. I do not deny that spiritual forces exist, but I do deny that they care enough about spooking superstitious people for the fun of it.

Shaking the way people see things. That really is the only fear that I think people have. I do not mean fear as phobias; I do not count fear of spiders or heights true fear, I consider those severe emotional drives of disgust and anxiety. I think that true fear is the unraveling of the way things are for a person. I think that everybody "knows" how the world works, and they will rationalize it to stay the way it is. Therefore allowing myself to believe in these "superstitions" as I call them would unravel my worldview, and I would thus be afraid.

My answer, however, as I have already stated, is that everybody has this fear. The man that implied I was a coward had his own worldview which probably didn't allow for these superstitions not to be true. If this man had devoted his free time to studying paranormal phenomena (as he had expressed to us that he had) then what would it mean for him to find out that he was completely wrong? He would be afraid. I cannot blame him. I would never call him a coward for it either. I would simply say that he has the same fear as all of humanity. Take a look at the man of deep faith who has devoted his entire life to the worship of the Christian Trinitarian god of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What would happen if that man found out that there really is no god at all, and all of his life's faith was in vain? He would be afraid. And what would happen to the lifelong atheist who spend his life debating and arguing that there is not god or eternal life? If he found out he was wrong he would probably be afraid for his soul.


What I am saying here is that every man is a coward if I am correct in stating that the only fear humanity has is that one's worldview is wrong, and that cowardice is hiding from fear. I believe this is essential. What would man be if he did not fear the error of his worldview? He would have no follow-through. He would be principally flimsy. He would believe nothing. If I had no reason not to do something, I would probably do it. If a man had no fear of changing his worldview, I would question the validity of his humanity. There is not one human being I have met that didn't believe the world to be a certain way. Certainly, there are many (myself included) that do not know or understand every part of the universe, but they do believe in a system (worldview) that everything is based on. There is no one that believes nothing. Believing is a human essential. Understanding is not. I claim much understanding, but I claim stronger subjectivity.

I conclude in saying that I do not believe that either skepticism or faith arises from cowardice, but that they arise from being human. It is only when they run against experience that I believe they become scapegoats from reality. It is probably commonly thought that I have fallen far away from faith in the theology I grew up with, but I believe that if I had held to it when my life's experience has pointed in another direction, only then would I really be a coward.

A Mind to Interpret What Is Seen

It pleases me to see that Kirk has responded to my post, and again, I am going to show that I have no life and respond the very next day. He begins by being shocked that he needed to define "salvation" for me. I was actually a little shocked from his answer, but I suppose I can understand what he is intending. He claims that it doesn't take a long look at the world to see that we need salvation, and names things such as malnutrition, disease, genocide, deaths and tsunamis to show. I want to stop right here to make a small point. These aren't spiritual items. I think that Kirk would believe salvation to be a spiritual occurrence, and that regardless of whether one is saved or not, these things that he named would still happen. I still don't understand what he is trying to say. Salvation will rescue us from these things? Furthermore, these are not things that I believe us to need salvation from. Malnutrition, as horrible as it is in some parts of the world, is the result of overpopulation. In nature, when the food supply runs out for a species, the species does not flourish as much, and then after the food source can be replenished, the population of the predator species can increase again. In nature, it is balance, but with us, it is an evil? Now I don't want to give anyone the impression that I don't care about the poor children who are starving in the world, but I do want to say that that's just the way things work. When we reproduce to the point of making our children starve, it is not "evil" or anything we need to be saved from, it is the result of poor planning and irresponsibility. If we were to ever be "saved" from this, we would be asking to be saved from the beautiful balance that God established in creation. Again, I am not saying that I think there is beauty in starving children, but I am saying that the system itself is God's beautiful creation, and it has been abused, and now people think that we need salvation from it. I think there's something wrong with that. Kirk then names disease. I believe this falls in the same line of reasoning. What is disease but the exploitation of our fragility and mortality? It is not something that we need salvation from, it is something that we have been conditioned to reject. We are obsessed with immortality and have this ridiculous notion that there is something so wrong about death. Disease kills people. In nature, again, this is part of the balance of creation. The circle of life, I suppose one could call it. But when it applies to us, we think it's evil. We have double the life expectancy right now than we did maybe a thousand years ago, and yet we think cancer is so evil. If it wasn't cancer, it would be something else. In a few hundred years, when the life expectancy is 150, we are still going to be complaining when someone dies of a disease at 120. The disease is not the problem; the perception is. Genocidal governments are something that I think Kirk hits closer to the truth on. This is a deliberate malicious act from human beings. I will not attempt to refute this. I will discuss the human issue below. I already talked about "daily deaths." Tsunamis are again, something completely natural that is a beautiful occurrence of creation, but viewed as a terrible act of nature. There is nothing evil about a tsunami, we just happen to get in the way. This is not something we need salvation from. It's just nature.

Kirk's point is that he takes these examples and says that the victims of these occurrences need a greater hope. I think he had something going here, but then went on to talk about Americans, so I shall as well. He says that we seek our own glorification above the good of others, and then names homicide, thievery, strife, loss, difficulty in work, and fear as examples. Yes, this is true, we tend to put ourselves over everyone else. However, I would again say (with later qualifications) that this is just nature. In my limited studies on nature and species, I have approached the conclusion that animals want to survive. Everything animals do, whether it is evolving through natural selection (something that humans would call evil if they knew it was happening to them no doubt because it involved dying) or mating habits or diet or anything, organisms do what they can to survive. They will kill other members of their species for food or mates. They will scavenge (steal) food from others in the night to survive. Red in tooth and claw I suppose. I would propose that humans are not except from this animality. Does that make it evil...or natural? If this is what Kirk is saying that we need salvation from (our own bestial desires), then I would say that I could agree with that. But I would say that an atheist anthropologist could come to the very same conclusion. If one studied nature and saw that we need to better control and overcome our subhuman drives of self-preservation over the well-being of others, then they are on their way to "salvation." This is something that anyone could do (without the Bible). Kirk ends this segment by saying that "There should be no way that we miss the fact that we need something/someone from outside of us to save us." I think that if this is his definition of salvation then it can actually be done within the heart of the individual, with God or without.

Kirk then states that I have the foundational proposition "that our Reason is not flawed and therefore that it will lead us to 'the Good (God)'." I want to make a qualification that I think is important. I do not believe that our Reason is flawless; I just do not share Kirks idea that it is fundamentally flawed. I believe that people can be misled by their Reason, but I do not believe that we should be discouraged from leaning on it nonetheless. Furthermore, I do not believe that Reason will lead us to God, but that it won't necessarily lead us away from God. Kirk's statement "if our reason will lead us to God, then why hasn't it yet?" is not was I was getting at. I don't believe we will ever "lead us to God" in this life. I simply believe we have to use everything we possibly can (as I believe the Jesus of the synoptics advises us to), and that includes not neglecting Reason for Tradition. I also think that Kirk's use of wars as an example of how our we are flawed is an attack on politics and nationalism as opposed to Reason.

Kirk continues to say that through the entirety of my post I chose to start from an "unproven assumption." I believe Kirk means that my statement that we all are left to our own reason and experiences to tell us who God is is the assumption. I would like to say that this is a fact. We cannot escape our reasoning. We can convince ourselves of illogical things, but because we have to convince ourselves, we are using our reason. I believe this to be a poor use of it, but it is a use nonetheless. Kirk's theology makes sense to him for the most part, and he believes it. He believes it with his reason. I think that his reason is often spent working out things incorrectly (as he probably would think of me as well), but that does not mean he isn't using it on his own. I think it is important to note that I used Kirk himself as an example as to how he uses his Reason to work things out himself. I would like to see how he would respond to my analysis of him. Finally, the fact that Kirk states that his "assumption" is no more valid than mine goes to show that it's not really a relevant topic. I never accused Kirk of stating an assumption as fact.

Kirk proceeds to talk about how the Spirit "opens our souls to God's Word." I cannot really refute this logically. What I can say is that I don't necessarily believe it. What does it take for the Spirit to do this? I can honestly say that even when I believed that the Bible was the inerrant word of God, that I never felt anything really spiritual when I read it. I figured I was just doing something wrong. I read the Bible more like a rulebook or a history book. It says something about God, therefore it must be so. Once I actually started to learn about the reasons for the Bible to be written, I realized it wasn't inerrant, I came to the conclusions that it was often biased, often unfactual, and I believe I came to a much more mature understanding of what the text really was. What I didn't do is feel some type of mystical/spiritual effect from learning or reading the Bible. This is where I want to really clarify something. I do not claim to know how God works for everybody. I place such a strong emphasis on experience and I don't want to discount Kirk's (or anyone else's) experience. So if Kirk really feels some type of spiritual closeness to God or some type of divine calling, then there is nothing I can really say to put that down. What I can do is say that whatever it is that he's feeling, I do not, and cannot, unless I tried with everything I have in me to brainwash myself out of thinking the way I do now. I deny the need for this. I deny that God would require me to do that to myself. I believe that even if I tried to do that, it would be insincere, and I don't think God would appreciate that. I am what I am, and as long as I am seeking God, regardless of what I believe about the Bible, I think God will be OK with that. I just think that if the Bible was what Kirk thought it was, then it would have a better success rate (especially for people like me who try). One last thing: I do not believe John 1.1 was referring to anything biblical. The ancient Jewish notion of the logos was not the written word, but more like the agent of creation and wisdom.

Kirk addresses my statement that neither Jesus nor his disciples had the New Testament. He says that's not really true, because they just wrote down what was revealed to them from the Spirit. What counts as the end of revelation then? Why did the Spirit stop inspiring people to write? We only needed this much to combat heresies, pretty much. What about the letters of Timothy? Do those count? What if we found another letter of Paul to the Corinthians? Would that count? Do we have the only inspired books that were ever written? Kirk knows where I'm going with this. What if I wrote something inspired by God? What if Kirk did? How are we to know what counts as inspired? This is just as troublesome to me as the idea that they're inspired in the first place. What makes Kirk think that the Bible is the only thing that was inspired? My answer would be he was raised to think so. I can't do it. It would be great to believe that it is what he thinks it is, but I just can't believe it because I see little good reason to.

If it is not evident, I (unlike Kirk) have no problem with wearing out my readers. Kirk mentions what I noted that Jesus could not relate to our finiteness (if you have the same opinion as Kirk does). He asks why I worry about things, and says that Jesus told us not to. I don't see how this really addresses my question though. If Jesus is omniscient, then him telling other people not to worry about things isn't speaking from experience. It may be speaking from wisdom, but not experience. I hardly see Jesus needed to "tap into" any type of omniscience. I don't tap into any of my knowledge, I just have it. I couldn't be otherwise. I know some things, and I forget others. If I knew everything, it wouldn't be like I had a storage case of knowledge somewhere that I had to take the lid off and get what I need to know. It would just be there. I don't see that Kirk has answered my problem with the idea that an infinite being can relate to a finite one. Jesus was tempted to worry, but didn't? Just because I shouldn't be worrying doesn't mean Jesus is off the hook for not being able to relate. If he was also perfect then he wasn't even tempted to feel guilt. I'm not just trying to be difficult here. I just can't believe that he would be able to relate to a finite being like me if he was not.

Kirk accuses me of seeing what I want to see (just as I accused him). I cannot tell him he is wrong. I can dispute his statement that I "take out" parts of the Bible that don't fit my experience, but he raises a good point. However, as this could be true for anybody (seeing what they want to see), I would rather see what makes sense to me. Kirk admits that he accepts things that he is incapable of explaining and that go against his nature. He states examples like dying to himself, loving his enemies, praying for those who persecute him, and believing in the resurrection. He states that he would not want to make himself see these things, but that he accepts them "based upon God's promise of life through them." I would disagree with some of this. I believe that Jesus was teaching the Kingdom of God, and in that Kingdom, people are dead to themselves, but alive to God. They love everyone, especially those that hate them and persecute them. This is utopia. I said above that an anthropologist could see the problems in the world and reach conclusions, but this is apart from the Bible or "salvation." I think that these conclusions can be reached apart from the Bible (and have been). The resurrection bit is different. That really isn't something that anyone would believe apart from believing that the Bible has some type of authority over the matter. I am not ready to refute this.

I must add here that I am not as atheist/anti-Christian as I sound. I still consider myself a Christian, I just stand at another end of the spectrum from Kirk. I am not ready to commit to the idea that the Resurrection didn't happen (and I know I'm leaving myself open to the argument of inconsistency, but hopefully I'll cover myself before this post is done). I honestly don't know how a small movement of farmers and fishermen could have become what it did if something magnificent never actually happened. I suppose it's more important that people believe something happened than it is that it actually happened, but something sparked something. Whatever happened after the death of Jesus, it was miraculous. I do not mean miraculous in that it defied the laws of nature, but I mean miraculous in that it was revolutionary and unexpected. That's as far as I'm willing to go at the moment.

As this relates to Kirk believing things contrary to what he would want to believe, I want to question that. I think Kirk sees his life as being much more fulfilled because he believes what he does. I'm not saying he's a fair-weather believer or anything, but I think that he is happier as he is now, and that his life is better because of it. It is therefore not really contrary to his nature to believe these things. I, however, am more satisfied in my beliefs, and I could not believe otherwise (at this point in my life). So we are doing the same thing I guess. I just want to defend the idea that just because he's satisfied with his way of looking at things doesn't mean it's "Truth" or anything. I don't claim to know that I'm right, I just claim that I make a lot more sense to myself and I could be no other. I am what I am (maybe God can relate after all).

The Need for Truth Indeed

I must say, I am honored that my blog was interesting enough to anybody that they felt the need to write in opposition. Indeed, fellow religion major Kirk Norris has written a response to my blog where he addresses the questions I am asking about God and man (his blog can be found at http://eklektostheou.blogspot.com under March 13). He is correct in his thought that I enjoy his foiling (it's so much more fun when we disagree), and I am pleased that he is expanding the world of internet thought by expressing his disagreement with my ideas. Although it did make me smile to see that he hopes that I take up "the challenge of confronting a truthful response" to my heresies ("heresy" being my word not his).

Kirk first states (correctly) my belief that the Bible is man's understanding of God, and not God's revelation to man, and therefore we can't simply read the Bible and hope for definitive pictures of God. He then claims that if the Bible is not "God's fully true revelation of himself to us, then no one will ever come to salvation." My first question would be for Kirk to define "salvation." I would assume that Kirk sees Jesus as the answer to salvation, and since the Bible is the most trustworthy source on the life (and afterlife) of Jesus, without it we would have no trustworthy information, and nobody could be saved (because we wouldn't have the record of God's revelation in the incarnation). I might respond that Jesus never expresses concern with people knowing their Bibles, but with how we treat other people, and so to claim that we can't know God without the Bible (more specifically the New Testament) is a fallacy. I will not develop this argument at this time, but I will put it out there. I feel like Christians often elevate the Bible to an uncomfortably high standard (when you take into the fact that neither Jesus nor any of his disciples had any knowledge of the NT during his ministry). Kirk then states that without the Bible we would be "left to our own reason and experiences to tell us who God is." This is exactly what we have done anyway! Everybody (even Kirk) has a view of God that has been shaped by his own reason and experience. He believes that the Bible is God's revelation, and so he reasons from this belief and then either shapes his experience to support it, or at the very least looks upon his own existence in light of the logic following from this assumption. I don't believe that Kirk would believe what he did if it didn't make sense to his Reason. Granted, there are things that we both do not understand, but I believe there is a difference between not understanding something and believing something that is contrary to one's own Reason. He is left with his subjective view on God, as I am to mine. Of course, he allows the Bible to be the authority on his view, but it remains his interpretation of the Bible (which is subjective) that is shaped by his experience (which he interprets subjectively). I believe Kirk to be correct in his claim to a higher level of agnosticism than I by defining it as what we can know about God outside of the Bible, but I would simply want to put a check on how objective a reading is possible by anyone (including Kirk) on this document.

Kirk then states if "even parts of the Bible are untrue," we have to decide for ourselves what is and isn't true or culturally conditioned. He claims that if we are left to our own reason, then since we are corrupted and sinful we will lead ourselves into untruth. I enjoy poking fun at his Calvinism, and this represents the T of the TULIP, Total depravity (just for the record, I don't think Kirk is a Calvinist, but he has Reformed tendencies). I think Kirk's theology (and perhaps most Christians') is too heavily influenced by his view of man's corruption. I am actually quite Pelagian in this aspect. I think that Christian tradition pressures us to think about ourselves way too negatively. I don't believe in original sin, I don't believe that we inherit some type of corruption that prevents us from getting to God. I think we have our own struggles against selfishness that we must overcome, but I think that's what it is, selfishness, not necessarily "sin." For Kirk, his view that we are sinfully corrupted does not allow him to trust his own reason to approach the Good (God). I, on the other hand, believe that all reason that we possess comes from the Good, and therefore we can follow it back to the source (Neoplatonism anyone?). I don't think our sin is corrupting our ability to reason, I believe it is corrupting our ability to love others. I believe that the "evil" caused by man is really our egocentricity. We can only overcome our "corruptness" when we think of others before ourselves. I don't think it is possible to do that (I don't believe that altruism exists), but I don't believe this is "sin" that separates us from God. I am digressing, but suffice it to say that I do not find anything wrong in relying on our God-given (in my opinion) reason over an interpretation of the Bible that our parents tell us because their parents told them (etc).

On a shorter note, I have some problems with Kirk's statement that "God's Word and His Spirit are never separate from one another." I'm not sure how he meant it (obviously not in way that implied biblical divinity), but I would question the need for God to rely on man's written word. No matter how high you view the Bible, it remains man's written word. I don't think the infinite God of being is reliant on a book in the way it seems Kirk thinks he is.

For the most part, I have answered Kirk's question already of where I believe my knowledge comes from, but I think it's the same place as Kirk; we just call it different things (although I do not expect him to agree with me). He states that he believes his knowledge comes from God giving it to him "through the coordinated work of His Spirit and His Word" (again, it seems like he is elevating the Bible to a divine status I am uncomfortable with). I am going to assume that Kirk means that he gets his knowledge of God from God, and not all knowledge in general. Kirk knows that the current President of the United States is George W. Bush. I do not believe that he thinks God gave him this information. He has this knowledge because he keeps up with current events through news, conversation, reading; basically, his experience. So it seems as if he has drawn a line dividing what he can know through experience and what he can know from divine revelation. I don't want to expound too much on this as it regards to Kirk, because I do not know how far I could go before he objects and corrects my understanding of his beliefs, but I would like to continue my reasoning impersonally, and allow Kirk the freedom to place himself wherever he may or may not be in my situation. Continuing, then, where is this line drawn? Can one only know theological truths from revelation, but all other truths are from experience? This does not sit well with me. I believe that all truth is God's truth, and he wouldn't set us up so that we can trust our experiences for everything except himself, and then send down this book from his graces to fill the gap in our knowledge. I believe that Kirk's knowledge is from experience, not from God, but he interprets his experience in a way that compartmentalizes his knowledge into divine and non-divine categories, the former of which he can only realize from revelation. He was raised a Christian, therefore he remains one. He was raised to believe the Bible had divine authority, and he believes this. Is this a coincidence? Is it just a random coincidence that he just so happens to believe the faith that his parents taught him?

Allow me to introduce a possible corrective. If Kirk was not actually raised in a conservative background (whether it be parents or other influential authority figures of his past), then I stand mistaken. Furthermore, if he turns the argument on me, and claims that since I was raised in a conservative Christian world and turned out like this there can be no trustworthy correlation, then I suppose the only answer I can offer is that we are different people. I was conservative for the majority of my aware life, but I allowed my own reason and experience (and academic study) to shape my current beliefs. I do not understand people like Kirk, who can be exposed to the same ideas as me and yet do not accept them because it contradicts what they had believed prior, but I am not them.

Not to get too bogged down for the moment, Kirk expresses concern about this statement of mine: "What we can say is that God cannot possibly experience anything like what we experience in our finite mortal bodies. Whether or not he knows what it would feel like if he could, the fact remains that in his infinite state he does not feel like we do." Kirk's response, of course, is the incarnation. Quite appropriately, he quotes Hebrews: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." I am glad he exposed this, for it will allow me to divulge a little in what was behind the statement (which I apologize, I probably did not make as clear as it should have been). I suppose I must ask Kirk a few questions concerning the nature of the incarnation. First, was Jesus omniscient? Could he read the thoughts of other men? Did he know the intent and destiny of men even before they knew it themselves (Peter's denial)? If the answer to these questions is "Yes" (and I believe Kirk's answer would be), then my next question would be "What human possesses these abilities?" Can Jesus sympathize with the stress I'm under concerning my unawareness of the future? I am worried sick about my life right now because I thought I had next year figured out, and there is good possibility now that I'm going to have to change everything about my life and it may affect me for years. Can God relate to that? If Jesus was never in any doubt about his future or his destiny, then that is one aspect in which he cannot relate to any human, because no human possesses that knowledge. If Jesus could read other's thoughts, then he cannot relate to the stress I have in social relationships, never knowing if I'm accidentally offending someone, never knowing if somebody is interested in my speech, etc. Can Jesus relate to this? What about when Jesus supposedly saw Nathanael under the fig tree before Philip called him to meet Jesus? Did Jesus possess the ability to see with his mind any occurrence on earth (in a sense, omniscience)? If he did, then he cannot possibly relate to the finiteness of humanity. The frailty and fear of being kept in the dark, of not knowing our future or the future of our friends, not knowing what we should do with our life is lost on God. Now what about sin? I would ask Kirk if he feels guilty about his sin. Could God relate to this? Could Jesus relate to the self-degradation, guilt, and low self-esteem that humanity feels? If Jesus was perfect and without sin, how can we say that he knows how we feel when we sin? Can God even fathom what it would mean to feel sinful? Kirk seems to think that sinful is all we are. We are totally corrupted in everything we do. How then has Jesus experienced anything close to this if he was perfect and sinless? That is what I meant by my statement. Jesus may know physical pain and emotional pain (from the rejection of his friends), but does he know guilt and self-loathing? Does he know the fear of uncertainty? I have made the argument before that Jesus did not in fact know the future based on his prayer in the garden preceding his crucifixion, but I am not asking myself these questions, I am asking Kirk (and those that believe as he does).

Kirk concludes that we can know who God is, and once we accept that we need his revelation we can "come to the Scriptures with a readiness to know the God who came to us and speaks to us." I have a problem with this. It seems that if the only way to see God revealing himself in the Bible is to come to the Bible with that very expectation then we are being set up to see what we make ourselves see. It seems that Kirk makes the assumption first, and then goes to the Bible and finds support for his assumption (I am not talking about proof-texting, I mean an honest interpretation). I think that no matter how much Kirk thinks that God didn't leave us "to our own devices, to seek him and find him as we are able," even Kirk himself is doing just that. He believes human knowledge outside the Bible is inferior, so he is going to the best that he can figure, and finding God just as I am: just as we are able.

How Do We Know?

One of the biggest questions man has ever had is "If there's a god, what kind of god is it?" This is not a question that I believe anyone will ever be able to answer definitively (in this life anyway). I am not going to discuss the assumption that there is a God; I am more interested in what kind of god this being is. From hereon out, I will refer to this being as "he" for simplicity's sake (it's faster to type "he" than "she") and I will capitalize "God" when using it as a title.

First of all, I must say that I stand within the Judeo-Christian tradition, and most of my views of God are therefore biased in that direction. I will try to stay as ecumenical as I can, but I will also try and be clear on what I believe.

The first place a Christian would probably look for information about God is the Bible. I believe this to be a good thing and a bad thing. The Bible is a written record of man's experience with the divine, and is therefore extremely valuable to our own understanding. Just like anything else, we all build off of the information gathered by others. As Newton said, he stood on the shoulders of giants. There are unreasonable methods of interpreting the Bible, however, and if one limits their understanding of God to strictly what the Bible states, I believe they are misunderstanding what the Bible is. Furthermore, if one believes that the Bible is God's revelation to man, and not man's understanding of God, then the descriptions of God would be interpreted as objective fact instead of culturally influenced subjective experiences of the writers. I believe the latter to be true, and the rest of this article will be from that standpoint.

How are we to understand the many descriptions of God given in the Bible? There are a few options of methodology that we can choose from. We can either assume that all of the descriptions are equally true, and meld them together to make one picture, or we can recognize that some descriptions cannot be as accurate as others, and hold certain pictures as closer to reality than others. Then there's the question of how literal we read the descriptions. When should we recognize anthropomorphisms and metaphors, and when should we accept the text as completely factual? These are all questions that must be taken into consideration.

How do we really know anything anyway? The only know things relationally. That may sound like a ridiculously simple statement, but it is important to realize that the only way we can understand anything is to relate it to something that we have experienced ourselves. For example, if there was somebody who didn't know what the color orange was, I could tell them to imagine yellow, then imagine red, and then tell them that orange was the color in between them, just like green is the color between yellow and blue. I could only describe it to them by using what they already knew. Now if you made that person blind from birth, there would be absolutely no way of describing to them what orange was, because they would have nothing to relate it to. Another example could be describing a picture to someone. If I was describing what a sunset looked like to somebody who had never even seen the sun, I could do so by describing the color, the size, brightness and shape of the sun, and then I could describe how it made other objects look. This would require the listener to understand colors and shapes. If I told them the sun was a half-circle, they could visualize a half-circle, and then if I told them it was brilliantly bright golden yellow, they could imagine a yellow half-circle and then the brightest light they had ever seen. All knowledge relational in this way.

So what does this have to do with God? Well, it has everything to do with how we understand God. If the only way we know anything is relationally, then the only way we can know God is relationally. For example, when you talk to somebody about an experience with the divine, what might they say? They might tell you that it was "calming" or that they felt a "strange warmth" or that they felt "excited." None of these terms completely capture the experience, but it helps the listener understand. The listener can relate to times he or she had been warm, calm, or excited. Furthermore, if one were to describe being "held" by God or "seen" by God, they would be speaking in anthropomorphic terms. Does God really "see" us? Does he have eyes? Does light bounce off of us and reflect into his pupils? Does the image appear on the back of his eyeball to be transferred to his brain by rods and cones and then interpreted by his brain to show him what he is looking at? Well, of course not; the idea is ludicrous. The whole idea that God "sees" us is the only way we know how to talk about his knowledge of our activity. It may be more appropriate to say that God "senses" us, but even there lies some tricky semantics. We sense things through our 5 senses, so it would be as if God had a 6th sense but skipped 1-5! What I am trying to say is that we have no idea how God works, and the only way we can try to understand is by making him human. The only way we can understand God is to make him in our image.

To further the point, I will discuss in brief the emotional attributions of God. What are these emotions? To name a few, anger, joy, sadness, regret, jealousy and love are human emotions that are biblically attributed to God. We follow the example of the biblical authors and also claim these descriptions as accurate. These, however, are anthropopathisms, the attribution of human emotions to nonhuman objects. It is well known that hormones and brain functions have much to do with our human emotions. How then are we to explain God having these same feelings? Does God have endorphins that trigger chain reactions in his brain? Does God have a limbic system? Does he have a hypothalamus, a cingulate cortex, or a hippocampi? How ridiculous. How can one feel emotions without hormones or chemicals or even a brain? We have no idea. What we can say is that God cannot possibly experience anything like what we experience in our finite mortal bodies. Whether or not he knows what it would feel like if he could, the fact remains that in his infinite state he does not feel like we do. How then can we explain anything he does, or further still, how can we know why he does anything? I suppose we couldn't.

It may seem like this is an argument for agnosticism, but I believe there is a vital difference between agnosticism and what I am saying. Agnosticism is the belief that one can never know whether or not there is a God. I believe there is a God; it is the inability to know as much as we think we may know about him that I am proposing.

I believe that it is extremely important for Christians (and other monotheists) to understand that there is no such thing as pure objectivity, only subjective attempts at objectivity. Any type of understanding that we (as humans) try to obtain of the divine will end in introspection. We will project ourselves onto God, and we will see what we want to see: ourselves.

5 Minute Answer

My dad called me an atheist the other day. This is not the case at all, and he wasn't serious, but it made me realize how my beliefs and opinions on much of Christian tradition come off sounding like to one of more conservative faith. I didn't think much of it, however. My friends know more or less where I stand, so I rarely have to define my faith to them. New issues arise, and they find out my thoughts on it, but it isn't revolutionary to them; they know where I'm coming from. I'm still overly-blasphemous at times (in good humor, of course), and unfortunately vulgar depending on the company, but little I say needs defense, because my friends know when to take (or not take me) me seriously.

I was somewhat troubled, however, when I was explaining to my mother a bit about Anselm's "fides quaerens intellectum" (her Sunday School class is using a book that, upon opening to the introduction, included a heading "Faith Seeking Understanding" and nowhere gave any mention of Anselm), and she asked me why I was a Christian, or if I was one at all. I suppose she asked me because I was expressing my dissatisfaction with Anselm's theory. I was saying that I didn't like the idea of coming to the table with assumptions, and interpreting one's experience in order to fit the prior assumptions. The question caught me off guard, and I did not know how to respond to it. For a while now I have barely considered myself a Christian. I have thought of myself as a "liberal Christian," or most recently a "Judeo-Christian Agnostic," but I have long known that my beliefs lie outside what most Christians would call "Christian". My first response was yes, of course I consider myself a Christian, but then I conceded that it all depended on how you defined Christianity. As a "Judeo-Christian Agnostic" it is much easier for me to explain what I don't believe rather than what I do believe.

Telling your mom what you believe when you know full well that she would label it non-Christian and therefore wrong and hell-binding is a difficult thing to do when you have to go to work in 5 minutes. This is the stuff of hour-long conversations, not 5 minute quibbles.

Needless to say, I got nowhere in my defense. When people ask me something about my beliefs and I fear that they may react strongly against it, I always try to explain the "why" before explaining the "what." For example, I love using the example of the Passover as it relates to the crucifixion. John's gospel records the crucifixion occurring before the Passover meal, whereas the synoptics record the Last Supper as the Passover meal, therefore the crucifixion occuring the day after. The theological significance of this is that John wanted to portray Jesus as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." So if Jesus didn't really die on the day of the Passover meal, did he really die as our atoning sacrifice? But how can I explain this in 5 minutes? It seems that any theology you can explain in such a short amount of time is not a very deep one. I tried to address the statement of Jesus as "Lord" and "Savior," but that would require somewhat of a word study on these words and redefining them from each biblical authors writings.

It seems that most Christians may be able to say that they are Christian because they "believe Jesus died to save them from their sins." Unbeknownst to them, however, is the reality that they are actually expressing a specific theory of atonement that was put forth not simply from the Bible, but from medieval theologians, and it is not the only theory out there that is "Christian." Now, one of the five fundamentals of the early 20th century says that one must believe in the Sacrificial theory of atonement for one to be a Christian, but that is hardly the only way one can look at the crucifixion and remain biblical. I think that any pithy statement of believe carries a lot of weight, and the terms must be defined before one can claim them as gospel and bet their eternal soul on them.

It almost seems as though it would be easier for me to start off the conversation by admitting that I am not a Christian, and then as I explain my views, let my audience determine whether or not they accept my opinions as valid and encompassed in the broad Christian tradition. Not that I need it to, but it seems that if people believe that you are a Christian they treat you as an equal (since most people around here claim to be Christian). I sometimes wonder if I'm intolerant because I don't tolerate people that don't tolerate others. Does this make sense?

I can be arrogant in my faith, because behind my faith stands much education, personal research, and reflection. In a matter of months I will have a degree in Religion, and I would be lying if I said that this reality didn't make me somewhat arrogant of my beliefs. However, if someone is not a Christian and has come to their faith through education, study, and serious thought and personal reflection, then I will respect them much more than a fellow Christian who believes because his/her parents brainwashed them to believe.

Although I seem to be detracting from my initial point (assuming I had one to begin with), I suppose what I want to emphasize is that the relationship between God and man is a simple one, and yet it isn't. When explaining what I do believe, it is very simple. I believe in the love of God towards man, and man's moral responsibility to share that love with his fellow man. Now when I am questioned as to how that ties in with Jesus and the traditional dogmas of the Christian religion, it gets really hard. I would have to explain biblical criticism and historical/contextual studies of specific books of the Bible; I would have to discuss history from 1st century gnosticism to 5th century monasticism to 12th century scholasticism through 17th century reformed theology, and then the crisis of the 19th century that the 20th century tried to clean up before I could adequately explain my faith as it ties into the Christianity of today.

I'm not part of an "anything goes" religion, but I think that different people find their way to God in different ways. My way falls most closely in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but I lack belief in many dogmas that most would call essential to the faith. Does that make me un-Christian? Perhaps, but it does not make me ungodly. One of my favorite illustrations is Jesus' story of the "least of these." Many will come to heaven and Jesus will say "I did not know you." Many will respond and say "But we did everything in your name, for you!" And he will tell them that they didn't feed him or clothe him, and that every time they did these things, they did it to him. Jesus feels with us, he experiences life with us, he has that solidarity. In the same way, I believe those that feed and clothe him will get their inheritance in Heaven even when those that claim they lived in Jesus' name may not. Now my opinions on the afterlife are perhaps not completely biblical, but I believe my interpretation of this particular story of Jesus is. I think God would rather us love our neighbor than convert them. This, I believe, is what the true Christian message is, which is why I still like associating myself within the Christian tradition. Unfortunately I anger more than I love, it seems, because of the lack of love I see in my fellow men.

That's the easy answer, I suppose. I am Christian because I love. I don't think it's much more complicated than that. I think that's a 5 minute answer.

Who Is Jesus?

The last post that I had on here about fundamentalism caused quite a stir at the website http://www.justgivemetruth.com. In the controversy I caused I was told that unless I was born of the Spirit I couldn't understand the Bible because the Truths had to be revealed to me by the Spirit, and no man-knowledge could show me these. I was asked who Jesus was to me, and this was my response. The moderators on this site believe that speaking in tongues is the initial sign of receiving the Spirit. Everything else should be self explanatory. Instead of saying directly who I thought Jesus was, I gave them a short (very much abridged) spiritual journey of sorts as it relates to the question. Here it is:

I start my spiritual journey in 10th grade.

I was not "saved" as you may say, nor was I actually baptized. I was raised Catholic in Montreal, and when I moved to North Carolina 9 years ago I started attending 2 churches, a Baptist and a Methodist church. I never became a member of either of them. To keep it brief (since this is not the topic), I did not take Christianity seriously until I got into an argument with a Catholic friend which pushed me to the boundaries of my beliefs, and then that night as I was struggling with the possibility (or impossibility) of God I felt a calming, unreal presence with me. It is hard to describe how I felt, but I was totally calm in an instant, and I knew it was the hand of God.

Over the next 2 years I started reading the Bible more and attending the FCA at my school, leading the music when needed to at Fifth Quarters and other FCA events. The Jesus I knew in high school was God. All I knew about Jesus was in the Bible, and I believed it because it was the Word of God. Jesus was one with God and all it took to go to heaven was to confess that Jesus died on the cross to save the world of its sins, and then when I repent of my own sins I would be forgiven so long as I believed it was Jesus who did it (Pray this prayer and you're in!). Jesus was the cosmic communicator that would save me from the wrath of God so long as I prayed in his name and confessed him Christ and Lord and Savior and all that stuff. That is who Jesus was to me in High School.

It should be noted that I did not come to a Jesus on my own terms. The Jesus I came to know in high school was the Jesus that I was conditioned to know. It was the Jesus that my friends claimed, it was the Jesus that FCA claimed, it was the Jesus that certain teachers claimed, but I can honestly say that most of what I knew about Jesus came from either shallow readings of the Bible or what I felt like people around me believed. It was not my own soul that accomplished my belief, it was the manipulation and peer pressure of those around me who I felt must have been right.

I went off to college an eager student wishing to learn more in order to validate his own beliefs. That is worth unpacking a bit. I was pretty confident in what I knew. I was pretty confident that the Bible was inerrant, and that if it said it, that was the end of it. Proof texting worked on me (What I mean by "proof texting" is taking a single verse or phrase out of its biblical context and using it to back an argument or point; I have hence learned that this one of the most irresponsible ways out there of reading a text). I did not go to college to have my beliefs changed; I went to learn more so that I would know that I was right (which I believe is unhealthy).

My first religion class freshman year was Old Testament survey. I learned a bunch of stuff about the Old Testament as a whole, but the class was pretty shallow because there's just so much to cover. However, one of the most valuable things I took from that class is that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but it was a collection of documents that were weaved together by a later hand. Stories told multiple times in different ways, texts that would have been impossible to have been written by Moses (like his death in Deuteronomy 34, which actually implies strongly in verse 10 that it had been written long after this event), passages that would only make sense if they were read by a much later audience (such as the reference to the kings of Israel in Genesis 36.31), and evidence that has been researched over the past few hundred years all led me to the conclusion that I could only take the Pentateuch seriously (and hold it to its true value) if I acknowledged that it was a rich collection of traditions that were brought together as a composite tradition of Israel.

This allowed me to break free of the idea that it was somehow dictated to man by God. It became more and more apparent the more I studied it that it could not have been such, and that it actually makes more sense and becomes so much more valuable when that view is discarded. This of course changed my view of the New Testament as well. I could now make sense of the Gospels in a way I never could before. I realized that these were recorded traditions about Jesus, and I should understand them as such.

As I furthered my studies from this class onward (into New Testament studies and Christian History), I came to see that the "inerrant" view of the Bible is very new, and that what many Christians claim as the way to salvation (Inviting Jesus into your heart and the likes) is really a very new phenomenon that would have fallen on deaf ears more than a few hundred years ago. This radically changed my view of salvation.

I began to read the New Testament not as one book, but as a collection of works by different authors. I ceased interpreting Paul by what John had wrote, or interpreting Luke by what Matthew wrote, because I saw this as irresponsible. It would be like reading Wordsworth and interpreting it through Blake. Most of the New Testament authors were probably not aware of the other literature that was to become New Testament canon. Surely Paul was not aware of the gospels, and one could justifiably question whether or not Paul would have agreed with literature such as the gospel of John. He may have called it heresy! We cannot know for certain. All we can do is give each book the respect it deserves by trying to understand the context in which it was written.

I began to learn about the priority of Mark, and how it was probably the earliest Gospel and then Matthew and Luke used it as an outline of sorts (sometimes copying verbatim from it) and then expanding using their own traditions (M and L respectively) and both using a common source (that has since become known as Q). This allowed me to understand more clearly what each Gospel's emphasis was. For example, Mark perhaps viewed Jesus as temperamental and quick to anger (In Mark 1.40-44 shows Jesus healing a man and then "sternly warning" him and kicking him out. In 1.41 Jesus is moved with "pity," but other manuscripts have "anger." When Mathew and Luke retell this story, they copy almost verbatim, and then leave out that sentence. They also leave out the stern warning and the sending away (Matthew 8.2-4, Luke 5.12-16). Mark also records in 3.1-6 the story of Jesus healing a man and getting angry at those around him. Mathew 12.9-14 and Luke 6.6-11 retell the story but leave out Jesus' anger), whereas Matthew and Luke omit parts in order to show that Jesus was not. I began to see how Matthew spiritualized certain things. Luke has Jesus saying "blessed are the poor" (Luke 6.20), whereas Matthew's Jesus says "blessed are the poor IN SPIRIT" (Matthew 5.3, emphasis added). This allows me to see that Luke viewed Jesus as caring about the poor and oppressed, whereas Matthew made it more universal, and allowed anybody to be able to relate by interpreting Jesus' saying as a promotion of humbleness. Both of these I believe to be true, that Jesus had an emphasis on humility and lived by example, but that he also genuinely cared for the poor and the outsiders of society. I believe this was who Jesus was and how we should be, but I do not believe he delivered the speech twice. I believe that the tradition existed (either oral or written), and then each gospel writer interpreted it to promote their view of Jesus. This is how I can make sense of it.

Then I studied the gospel of John, probably the latest of the gospels. In it Jesus is very different. Jesus doesn't tell a single parable in John (whereas he supposedly never taught in anything BUT parables in the synoptics Matthew 13.34), he never conceals his identity (Andrew proclaims him as the Christ in the 2nd chapter whereas Jesus doesn't want people to know yet in the synoptics).

There is much to the Gospel of John that I feel is important to take note of. John contains the highest Christology of the canonical gospels. John was the last of the gospels written, and is probably 60 years removed from the death of Jesus, and the community that produced the gospel probably lived in an isolated area, perhaps in Ephesus. The gospel is quite theological, and is less concerned with reporting history as it is concerned about interpreting Jesus. Jesus is placed at many Jewish festivals for the purpose of reinterpreting the festival in light of Jesus, or better, interpreting Jesus by using the festival as a starting point. For example, the Bread of Life discourse is given on the Passover as he feeds the multitudes (it isn't the Passover in the synoptics). He says that those who ate the manna in the wilderness died, but those that eat the bread that Jesus provides will live forever (much like the story of the woman at the well, and how Jesus' water will not allow one to go thirsty again). Jesus' Light of the World discourse is given in context of the Jewish Festival of Booths, and that festival contains huge candles in memory of the light that led the Hebrews in the wilderness.

What should be seen in these stories is that there is a lot of symbolism. Jesus told parables of God, he told stories to tell us truths about God, but the stories or parables would not necessarily true themselves. Did the story of the prodigal son actually happen? I highly doubt it, but that wasn't important. The importance was that God is like the father who sees his son while he is still far off and runs out to meet him in love. The stories that the author tells may have some historical basis, but for the most part they appear to be illustrations that may not have happened but are used to reveal something about who Jesus was to the Johannine community that produced the gospel.

So the question is that of validity. If the stories that are told in the fourth gospel are not historically factual, then do the abstract truths hold? Well, I would say that as far as they can be understood, yes, they do.

As I'm sure you can see, there are consequences to this view. One such consequence is it makes you think for yourself too much. It is really easy to NOT think when you think the Bible is just dropped down from God. All it takes is looking it up like a dictionary, and let it dictate your life for you. When you admit that men wrote it using the traditions they had and developed their own opinions and theology (that may be different than other NT books such as the gospel of John vs. the synoptics), it opens the doors to some legitimate questions.

One such question is why it should be worth anything. That is a legitimate but silly question. Why do we read Shakespeare? Why do we read Descartes? Why do we read anything? We read to enrich ourselves and to learn. When we read the Gospels, we can learn about God AND ourselves. We can learn about the effect that he had on his followers and his followers' followers. This is the best we can really know about him. We cannot look into the past yet; all we can do is read what generations after Jesus thought of him. We can read about how Mark saw him suffer, and how we should live sacrificially. We can see how Matthew saw him as a continuation and fulfillment of the Jewish tradition of the Annointed of God. We can read of Luke's Messiah who is universal and not bound by social taboos. We can read about John's Christ who was united with God and desired for all of his followers to be united as one as well. We can see how John's Jesus was so much more than a teacher confirmed and exalted by God.

Again, the question is one of validity. John's theology is late and farther removed from the person of Jesus than the Synoptics or the writings of Paul. In fact, Paul's Jesus is Lord and example. Paul was probably unaware of John's idea of Jesus as pre-existent Logos (cf. Romans 1). Does this mean it is invalid? Well, I am not willing to say.

What I AM willing to say is that Jesus had such a profound effect on his followers that he cannot be ignored. How else could his followers have led something so revolutionary, as fishermen? How could Paul, a Jewish Pharisee and persecutor of Christians have such a change of heart? He saw the risen Jesus. How could this man Jesus still be changing the lives of people 50 years later in the Johannine community unless he had a real presence with them. How could people be willing to die for a man they never met unless they could feel the presence of God?

Who is Jesus to me you ask. He is a man that cannot be studied enough. He is a man who changed the lives of his followers, his followers' followers, down to my own life as I strive to live for the Kingdom and glory of God. I never grow tired of reading and studying the Bible because I want to learn more about the effect that Jesus of Nazareth had on his followers. I can't ever get enough of Paul's writings because I am fascinated by the way in which Paul calls us to a higher righteousness for God. I love the universality of the gospel. I love the message of self sacrifice in the name of Jesus. I believe that the spirit of God lives in his people as it came alive in Jesus.

You probably think I'm still evading the question. Well here is my answer: Jesus is a mystery.

Have you ever seen the movie Phenomenon? It is about a man who gets brain cancer, and instead of shutting down brain function, it unlocks it. The result is genius and telekinetic power. The man tells people that he is not something magical or supernatural: he is the potential. He says that he has become the potential of everybody.

John tells us that Jesus was the incarnated Logos. This is not all that he tells us about the Logos. He says it was the light of all men. Genesis tells us that we are made in the image of God. This image, this Logos, this "divine spark" as it has been called, was incarnated in the man Jesus. Schleiermacher talks about a "God-consciousness." Imagine the moment, if you will, that you felt God with more presence than ever. Imagine one of the moments that you felt completely present with God; that his hand was holding you, that he was within you, and that you just knew that God was with you. Imagine that moment (or those moments). What if you could feel that all the time? What if your life was one consistent presence with God? This "God-consciousness" is what we only have a peek of. We only see it now and again (some more often than others). What if Jesus had this all the time? How would one live if they were at all times being inspired by the presence of God? What would it be like if the Logos and imago dei came alive in a person and took hold of their every being? I can only imagine, but I believe that this is who Jesus was. Nobody can deny that strange things happen; miraculous healings and mind over matter phenomenon are common. Who's to say that Jesus' miracles weren't because he was so in tune with nature and God that he had some amazing power of influence and charisma that bent the boundaries of the mind and body? I'm not a doctor, so I can't say what it would take to make the blind see or the lame walk. But people ARE cured. Jesus was calling us to become more than we had ever been.

You may say again that I am avoiding answering, and the only response I have for that is, maybe.

Because of the study I have put into the biblical texts, I cannot give a simple black and white answer. Can I with good conscious tell you that I believe Jesus is the Jewish Messiah? Well, no I can't, because the Christian definition of "Messiah" is very different from the Jewish definition, so as I have stated in a prior post, I cannot simply say "Jesus is the Christ" without some reservations.

I am not "avoiding the answer," I am simply sharing the reason why I am extremely hesitant to pass judgment on the man of Jesus. He called us to have faith in God, he called us to a higher morality, he called us to be more than just "religious," he called us to be true images of God as he was. When one looks at Jesus, one looks at God. There is no more physical way in which one can do that, I believe. Do I believe he was God incarnate? Well geez, I don't think there's a human being who ever lived that could explain that question. Even the Fourth Gospel shrouds that in mystery. That is what it is, a mystery. How does an infinite being inhabit a finite one? Well, I don't know, and neither does anybody else. It is beyond our comprehension. I simply claim ignorance. We are made in the image of God, and God breathed his spirit into us to give us life and consciousness, so couldn't one argue that we are ALL God incarnate? Before I get labeled a blasphemer I must say that this all depends on your definition of "incarnation." The Logos of God became flesh, according to the Fourth Gospel, and this Logos lived among us. But it didn't just inhabit the earth in Jesus. The Greek word there for "live" or "dwell" in John 1.14 is "skinao." This verb literally means to "pitch a tent" or even "tabernacle." It recalls the imagery of the Exodus and how the people would build a tabernacle (tent) whenever they stopped, and the glory of God (his very presence) would abide in it. This is the same way that the Logos abided in Jesus, according to this gospel. A very real presence of God lived in Jesus. This is how Jesus and the Father are One. But how then could he pray that his followers be One as He and the Father are One? Is he asking God to incarnate his followers? Isn't that what you guys claim he has done? If you are Trinitarian then the Holy Spirit is just as much God as Jesus or the Father is, so by claiming you have received the Holy Spirit and that it dwells inside you, then you are claiming equality with Jesus. It is the same imagery that the prologue of the Fourth Gospel depicts. Is this not what Jesus prayed for? Is this not why the curtain in the temple was torn? That we all may be one with God as Jesus was, that we all may be ever conscious of the presence of God, and that we all may live in the Spirit, not only in the Flesh (which is kind of mandatory), but in the freedom from sin and death granted to us by the grace of God?

Jesus is the Way, sure. But does that mean belief in Jesus or following his teachings? I can say wholeheartedly that I believe Jesus is the Way, but how I interpret it is probably not the same way you would interpret it. It's a metaphor, obviously, but most Christians probably interpret it to mean "if you're not a Christian, you're going the wrong way." I disagree. I think it means that the Way of Jesus is the Way. For example, if you have a cage full of prisoners, and one man goes to the front of the room and presses a blue button that opens the door and then says "I am the way" and exits, what he obviously means is that we should all go up and press the blue button to free ourselves. The prisoners are not to start debating about whom that man was, they are not to claim he is the way out of the cage if they only believe that he will get them out, they are not to believe this man is going to make anything better for them. They are to go and press the blue button to escape. If Jesus is the Way, I believe that means the teachings of Jesus are the way. For example, what happens if an observant man was scanning the walls for a way out, and because he is examining the walls he does not see the man escape? He works his way around the room, and he discovers the button, presses it, and escapes. He has found the way. Jesus told the story of those who say "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?" but Jesus tells them "I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers" (Matthew 7.21-23). I always imagine Christians in heaven seeing Buddhists getting in and claiming the same thing. The way of Jesus is that salvation. So I could say "Jesus is the Way," and you guys would agree with me, but I don't believe he is the Way in the same way that you believe he is the Way. I could say Jesus is Lord, but one would have to define Lord. Lord (Greek kurios) means master or leader, pretty much. Lord doesn't mean "God." So someone could claim Jesus Lord without professing any other Christian doctrine. They could say that Jesus is Lord and they will follow their master by selling everything they own and giving all of their money to the poor. That may be the only thing they do. You have a different definition (I do too) of Lord than that, but it's all interpretive.