Do I take God for granted?

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Reading a couple of emails from friends the last few days has set me to wondering - do I take God for granted?  

My personal question is prompted by the messages I've received regarding someone's attempt to endorse the validity of Holy Scripture, to once more - PROVE - that the Holy Bible is accurate in its stories of God's wonder and power.  I read the messages with some interest but mostly I read them out of respect for the sender's sincerity in sharing the words with me.  The messages prove nothing to me - they're just stories that someone has made up OR proven, OR tested that makes them "right" in some way in their own personal beliefs about "the" Word.

So, do I take God for granted?  Or maybe it's the word faith that I should insert in my question rather than the word God - do I take my faith for granted?  Perhaps I do in that I find it unimaginable that anyone could prove to me that there is a God or is NOT a God.  I BELIEVE in GOD - there's no changing my mind.  Without literally accepting the Bible's creation stories, I wholly believe in God's existence and creation.  I wholly believe in God's power to move in my life, to draw me to the wisdom portrayed in Jesus' life and teachings - again, not necessarily believing that every word I read in Holy Scripture was transcribed by a heavenly stenographer from God's lips into the quills of human scribes.  I love the story of Noah, yet I don't have to believe that Noah built the ark and left all mankind behind to die; yet, I understand a  message to me about the importance of exclusive worship, honor and dedication to my Creator.

I can believe in the story of Jesus' Mother, of his Divine Birth, of the hardness of the circumstances of his birth without believing that there was a little drummer boy present - I know, I know, the drummer boy is not in Holy Scripture.  But the details of three (not 4, not 2 but three) wise men, shepherds, angels - I don't need to know the details - in the Bible's written word - they are lovely, they speak to me of the preciousness of the gift of my Savior.  It matters not to me that the story is told again and again in different versions, in different languages, in different understandings.  The literalness is not a cause for me to prove someone else wrong if they choose to believe the exact words and argue with me that I'm wrong in NOT believing the exact words.

Taking for granted my faith in God is to say that when I pray (and when I don't) I believe God is always there, always ready, always loving, always coaxing me towards his love, resurrection, redemption; always giving me opportunities, encouragement and discouragement in the daily decisons I'm drawn to make.

So perhaps my question could be restated another way...........my faith is something I take for granted, in that I believe there is a Creator, a Receiver, a Giver, a Lover to whom I owe my existence, to whom I choose to worship and to whom I dedicate myself to a living relationship of honor, worship, praise and prayer. 

And you?  Do you need to believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant text from God?  Do you need to believe that another's faith is weak if they do not believe in that inerrancy?  Well, in the same way I read the emails of inerrancy or proof out of respect for my friends, I appreciate your reading this post today out of respect for my beliefs and writings.  Thank you and may the God that we both share in our lives bless you, keep you, and continue to be there for you for all eternity! 

The Law and the Love - How do we grow?

Reading from Franciscan priest Richard Rohr's book  this week - Things Hidden/Scripture as Spirituality - I came upon the paragraphs below and have been thinking about them for a few days.  His premise (I believe) is that we Christians can get so hung up on the letter of the law that we cannot see nor hear Jesus' teachings to us about the law............maybe you'll read on, find it interesting, boring, confusing or enlightening - Happy Sacred Sunday!

"The reason we can move toward real freedom is because we started with moral laws and clear expectations from authority figures, which put good and needed limits to our natural egocentricity.  I'll bet most of you reading this book began rather conservatively.  A good therapist will tell you that predictability, order and tradition are really the only way to create a healthy ego structure in the early years.

Torah, or Law, is the best and most helpful place to begin, but not the place to stay, and surely not the place to end.  "Written letters bring death, but the Spirit alone brings life," as Paul said (2 Corinthians 3:6).

One person who understood this is Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit, possibly the single greatest Catholic theologian of the twentieth century.  He wrote volume after volume of theology as the church rediscovered itself before, during and after Vatican II.  Rahner wrote in his 1972 book, The Shape of the Church to Come:  "We must show men and women today, at least the beginnings of the path that leads credibly and concretely into the freedom of God.  But have no doubt, freedom is the goal.  Where men and women have not begun to have the experience of God and of God's spirit who liberates us from the most profound anxieties of life, and from our endless guilt, there is really no point in proclaiming to them the ethical norms of Christianity"  But that is exactly what we do. Unfortunately, most do not take the law as a foil, but rather as a fulfillment.

Until people have had some level of inner religious experience, there is no point in asking them to follow the ethical ideas of Jesus.  Indeed, they will not be able to understand them.  At most they would be only the source of even deeper anxiety.  You quite simply don't have the power to obey the law, especially issues like forgiveness of enemies, nonviolence, humble use of power and so on, except in and through union with God.  But Paul comes at it from the opposite direction, "Give them the law until it frustrates them to hell!""

Any thoughts?.......

Sacred Life Sunday

Reading from the Episcopal Lectionary pages yesterday my eyes and mind paused and tried to absorb  these verses - seemingly a nice cap to my week of blogging about choices and changes:

Ecclesiastes 5: 19-20

Likewise all to whom God gives wealth and possessions and whom he enables to enjoy them, and to accept their lot and find enjoyment in their toil - this is the gift of God.  

For they will scarcely brood over the days of their lives, because God keeps them occupied with the joy of their hearts.

Choicing and changing, how can I avoid the undeniable gift of joy and free will, the opportunity to use my mind and physical being to care for others, to love those I would not love, to revel in the unimaginable beauty of this island home human creation calls earth?  How can I refuse to make the choices that will lengthen my life and the life of others, how can I refuse to live with no thought for the future of my great great grandchildren?  How can I deny for a single moment that God has given me the most wonderful gift of all - my life?

Choices and changes - may we all pay attention to those that we are called to make this day.  Amen

Jesus the sophisticate

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Right now I'm reading an interesting book entitled - "Writing in the Sand - Jesus and the Soul of the Gospels" by Thomas Moore. In the introduction, Moore writes the following:

"Jesus was a sophisticated man who lived simply, walking from town to town, healing and comforting, while espousing a spiritual philosophy that has yet to be fully appreciated and understood. He lived in primitive times compared to our own, but his thinking was more advanced than ours. I suspect that our tendency to sentimentalize him or turn him into a moral crusader is a defense against the sheer radical challenge of his intellect. As long as we piously enshrine his personality, we don't have to feel the full force of his vision for humanity."

So, have you ever heard Jesus referred to as a sophisticated man? What do you think of that concept?