St. Mark’s Adult Education Meeting Summary
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, by Marcus Borg
Preface and Chapters 10 and 11:
"The Heart of the Matter: Practice" and
"Heart and Home: Being Christian in an Age of Pluralism"
> Learn more about Marcus Borg: click HEREDiscussion Led By Mike Kreutzer
Sunday, May 08, 2005GROUP DISCUSSION:
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004)
Session 6, May 8-11, 2005
Chapter Ten --- The Heart of the Matter: Practice
187-188 "Loving God means paying attention to God and to what God loves. The way we do this is through 'practice'... Christianity is a 'way,' a path, a way of life... But the point of practice is not to earn one's salvation by accumulating merit by 'works.' Rather, practice is about paying attention to God... But Christian practice historically is about our relationship to both God and neighbor, about both Spirit and behavior, about both God and the world.'
189 "By practice, I mean all the things that Christians do together and individually as a way of paying attention to God. They include being part of a Christian community, a church, and taking part in its life together as community. They include worship, Christian formation, collective deeds of hospitality and compassion, and being nourished by Christian community. They include devotional disciplines, especially prayer and spending time with the Bible. And they include loving what God loves through the practice of compassion and justice in the world."
189-193 The Purposes of Practice
· Practice is paying attention to God; life with God; "It involves attending to the relationship, spending time in it, being intentional and thoughtful about it, valuing it, and, ideally, enjoying it."
· Practice is about the formation of Christian identity; "The formation of Christian identity will thus always involves a transformation of identity - from an identity given by the 'world' to an identity in God, in Christ... it is a continuing process that goes on throughout the course of the Christian life."; 'to be Christen means to live within a Christian cultural-linguistic world, a Christian ethos, and to be increasingly shaped by it."
· Practice is about the formation of Christian character; 'the internalization of a deeper Christian identity shapes character. The shaping of character also happens through deeds of compassion. .. We become what we do."
· Practice is about nourishment; "Practice is not simply something we do. Rather, it nourishes us."
· Practice is about compassion and justice; "loving that which God loves and becoming passionate about that which God is passionate about"
"In short, practice is about living 'the way.'"
193-200 Practice: Formation and Nourishment
"In my judgment, the single most important practice is to be part of a congregation that nourishes you even as it stretches you."
200-205 Practicing Compassion and Justice
"God's passion is not the redemption and salvation... of individuals from the world, but the redemption and salvation of the world. God loves the world, not just you and me and us."
Chapter Eleven --- Heart and Home: Being Christian in an Age of Pluralism
207 "In this chapter, I move from 'what' to 'why': from what it means to be Christian to why be Christian."
208 "A central claim in this concluding chapter is that we understand Christianity most clearly when we see it in the context of religious pluralism."
211-215 Three Ways of Seeing Religions
1) The Absolutist Understanding of Religion ("one's own religion is the absolute and only truth"
2) The Reductionist Understanding of Religion ("all religions as human constructions, as human projections")
3) The Sacramental Understanding of Religion ("religions as sacraments of the sacred")
a) "religions as human creations"
b) "religions are human constructions in response to experiences of the sacred"
c) "religions are 'cultural-linguistic traditions'' ("it refers to both the origin and function of religions")
d) "the enduring religions of the world are "wisdom traditions"
e) "religions are aesthetic traditions"
f) "religions are communities of practice"
g) "religions are communities of transformation"
"Religion's purpose is to mediate the sacred and, by doing so, to inform, engender, and nourish a transforming relationship to 'the More'... Christianity is not absolute, but points to and mediates the absolute."
217-219 "the religions of the world are most similar in the experiences they report, the path they teach, the practices they commend, and the behavior they produce, the 'fruit' of compassion... They are most different, in their beliefs and doctrines."
"The primordial tradition is a set of core understandings underlying all the enduring religions. These core understandings are twofold. The first is a multi-layered understanding of reality: what is real includes more than just the space-time world of matter and energy. The second is a multi-layered understanding of the self: we are more than our bodies and brains, and open out in our depths into the sea of being that we name God, Spirit, Allah, and so forth. The enduring religions are all different expressions of this primordial wisdom; it is the core underlying their different forms."
"the external forms matter because they are sacraments of the sacred. They mediate the sacred, and they mediate the path. In a primary sense, they are the path: practical means for living life with and in God."
224-225 "Religions are homes, and Christianity is home for me... To be Christian means living 'the path' within this tradition."---------------------------------
St. Mark’s Adult Education Meeting Summary
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, by Marcus Borg
Preface and Chapters 8 and 9:
"Thin Places: Opening the Heart" and
"Sin and Salvation: Transforming the Heart"
> Learn more about Marcus Borg: click HEREDiscussion Led By George Snyder
Sunday, May 01, 2005GROUP DISCUSSION:
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004)
Session 5, May 1 and 4, 2005
CHAPTER 8 THIN PLACES: Opening the Heart
149 INTRODUCTION
> "'Open hearts' and 'thin places" suggest much of what is central to being Christian. Together, these two metaphors express the emerging paradigm's rational and transformational vision of the Christian life. They name both the goal and the means of transformation, the purpose and practice of the Christian life for us as individuals and in our life together as church."
149 THE HEART: A METAPHOR FOR THE SELF
> "Heart" is a comprehensive metaphor for the self-metaphor for the inner self
151 "The heart is an image for the self at a deep level, deeper than our
perception, intellect, emotion, and volition. As the spiritual center of the total self, it affects all of these: our sight, thought, feelings, and will."
150 THE CLOSED HEART
> "The heart, the self at its deepest level, can be turned toward GQd or away from God, open to God or closed to God."
152 Closed heart-blindness; limited vision; enclosed in our own world; affect the reasoning process; can deceive ourselves; "closed heart and bondage go together" ; lacks gratitude; can feel self-made, entitled, bitter; "insensitive to wonder and awe"; a closed heart forgets God.. .loses track of the Mystery always around us"; preoccupied with self; separated, disconnected; lacking in compassion; insensitive to justice; "the self builds up layers of protection to defend itself against an unreliable and hurtful world;"
> Closed heart is a natural process of growing from childhood to adulthood; "birth and development of self-awareness involves an increasing sense of being a separated self."
154 "The hatching of the heart-the opening of the self to God, the sacred-is a comprehensive image for the individual dimension of the Christian life." This happens with the help of the Spirit of God operating through thin places.
155 THIN PLACES
> "Thin places"-part of Celtic Christianity
> "sees God, 'the More,' as the encompassing Spjrit in which everything is. God is not somewhere else, but 'right here.'"
> "God is a non-material layer of reality all around us, 'right here' as well as ' more than right here.'" Denotes two worlds-"our visible world of our ordinary experience and God, the sacred, Spirit."
> Thomas Merton: "lt becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it."
> We do get glimpses of God-at the "'thin places"'... where these two levels of reality meet or intersect." The veil lifts for a moment and we are able to see God
> Can be a geographical place-different places for different people.
> "A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened. To use sacramental language, a thin place is a sacrament of the sacred, a mediator of the sacred, a means whereby the sacred becomes present to us. A thin place is a means of grace."
>Thin places can be secular or religious.
157 THIN PLACES AND CHRISTIAN PRACTICE
> The central purpose of traditional Christian practice "is to become a thin place where our hearts are opened."
> "Worship can become a thin place. Indeed, this is one of its primary
purposes... worship is about praising God. But worship is not about God needing praise... worship as the power to draw us out of ourselves. Worship is directed to God, but is in an important sense for us.
> Worship is about creating a sense of the sacred, a thin place."
.Different denominations create this in different ways; different people require different means of creating thin places.
> "The primary role of music of participatory music-congregational singing-is to provide a thin place...We sing to God, and our hearts are opened. The hymns that do this best combine two features: words that move us and music that can be easily sung."
> "Hymns that are difficult to sing are very unlikely to work as a thin place. Hymns intended for congregational participation need to be accessible to musically untrained and musically challenged voices."
> 158: Baptism and the Eucharist can be thin places-means of grace.
> "The preaching of the word is meant to become a thin place, a place where our hearts are opened."
> "The Bible can become a thin place...when read well, the lectionary readings can become sacramental."
> Liturgical words-e.g. the Lord's Prayer, creeds, confession, responses. "When we say words that we know "by heart," is not an intellectual exercise in which we think about the meaning of the words. Liturgical words are not about intellectual content. They serve a different function... the point is to let the drone of these words that we know by heart become a thin place."
> The creeds "affirm the co-centrality of God, Jesus, and the Spirit... through these chunky words...God is mediated...[they] become a thin place as we join ourselves in the sound of the community saying these words together. As we do so we also join ourselves with a community that transcends time... we become
part of the communion of saints, together in thin places.
> Liturgical times move us. They open us to a deeper level of ourselves.
160 "ln general, the spoken word is the least effective way of opening the heart.
The spoken word, unless it is poetry or story, tends to address the head, and we have to pay attention with our minds."
> Prayer-Creating a thin place "is one of the central functions of prayer: to become a thin place in which our hearts are opened...this is especially the purpose of the prayer of internal silence. The silence becomes a thin place in which we sit in the presence of God: 'Be still and know that I am God.'"
> "In a comprehensive sense, the opening of the heart is the purpose of spirituality, of both our collective and individual practices. The Christian life is about the 'hatching of the heart,' the opening of the self to the Spirit of God by spending time in the thin places.
161 THE OPEN HEART
> "An open heart and seeing go together." See better when heart is opened; we move from darkness to light. Open heart-alive to wonder and knows 'radical amazement.' Gratitude goes along with an open heart.
> "An open heart, compassion, and a passion for justice go together. An open
heart feels the suffering and pain of the world and responds... The purpose of the Christian life, of life in Christ, is to become more and more compassionate beings.
CHAPTER 9 SIN AND SALVATION: Transforming the Heart
164 INTRODUCTION
>""Sin' and 'salvation' are very familiar words to Christians. Loaded and multi- layered in meaning, they have been central to Christian vocabulary from the
beginning. Yet both are often poorly understood. Some understandings obscure their meanings, even trivialize them."
> "The language of sin ( and forgiveness) dominates the Christian imagination." Almost every church service contains a confession of sin. .Lord's Prayer is centered on sin.
> Sin is thought to be the reason for Jesus' death. 165 WHAT IS SIN?
> Sin-failure to keep God's law
> Reinhold Niebuhr-'root sin' is pride-hubris-self-centeredness
> Paul Tillich-sin is separation; separation from that to which we belong; estrangement from God.
> Sin is unfaithfulness to God; idolatry; centering in something other than God; lack of trust in God
166 WHAT IS SIN?
> Sin-failure to keep God's law
> Reinhold Niebuhr-'root sin' is pride-hubris-self-centeredness
> Paul Tillich-sin is separation; separation from that to which we belong; estrangement from God.
> Sin is unfaithfulness to God; idolatry; centering in something other than God; lack of trust in God
167 IS "SIN" THE BEST TERM FOR OUR PROBLEM?
> Sin is part of the human condition; so are being blind, being in exile, being in bondage, having closed hearts, being hungry and thirsty, being lost
> "So also 'sin' has a correlative image in the Bible and in the Christian imagination-'forgiveness.' Thus, when sin is need as the issue, the logic of the
image suggests that the solution is forgiveness. When sin becomes the one-size- fits-all designator of the human condition, then forgiveness becomes the one-size fits-all remedy. And this is the problem." Forgiveness does not end blindness, exile, bondage, hunger, thirst, etc.
> "Estrangement, the birth of the separated self, is the natural result of growing up; it cannot be avoided. For the same reason, we develop closed hearts, a shell around the self. There is a sense in which we are blinded by the imprinting of culture on our psyches and our perception. In a sense, we fall into bondage through no fault of our own. It's the inevitable result of growing up."
169 Borg suggests we should let go of the term "sin" covering all aspects of the human condition, and use it as one of many terms for what ails human beings.
> "...sin in popular Christianity is often understood individualistically, obscuring the reality of 'social sin.'... much of human suffering and misery is not because of our individual sins, but because of collective sin."
171 SALVATION
> Salvation is also a loaded term with many layers of meaning
171 SALVATION AS HEAVEN
> "Whenever the afterlife is emphasized, the most invariable result is that it turns
Christianity into a religion of requirements."
> As a result, "there must be something that separates those who do get to go from those who don't."
> This thinking creates an "in" group and an "out" group.
> "My critique of what happens when the afterlife is emphasized involves no denial of an afterlife."
172 SALVATION IN THIS LIFE
> "The biblical understandings of salvation are focused on this world, not the next." .A clear, stated belief in after life first appears in book of Daniel, written about 165 CBE.
> ... the notion of an afterlife arises as compensation for those killed for their loyalty to God. The possibility was soon extended beyond martyrs to others."
173 Jesus apparently believed in an afterlife; doesn't mention it much.
> Jesus's message "was not really about how to get to heaven. It was about a way of transformation in this world and the Kingdom of God on earth."
> New Testament writers believed in an afterlife.
> Paul: speaks of being with Christ forever; but his emphasis was on a new life in
Christ.
> John-"eternal life" is one of his major themes. This is often spoken of in the
present tense. "Eternal life does not refer to unending time beyond death, but to something that can be know now."
> In its broadest sense, salvation thus means becoming whole and being healed. The language of 'wholeness' suggests movement beyond fragmentation, and the language of 'healing' suggests being healed of the wounds of existence."
175 STORIES OF SALVATION
> Exodus from Egypt "images the human problem as bondage and slavery...our problem is that we live in Egypt, the land of bondage... it's a life of powerlessness and victimization."
> The exodus is not the end; the Hebrew left Egypt and went into the wilderness, journeyed for forty years, and ended up in God's promised land.
> Exile in Babylon-Jews living under foreign domination in a foreign land. This is ! a "story of separation from one's homeland and longing for home, it is marked by
I yearning, grief, loneliness, anger and despair...the solution is a journey of return, a journey that God both invites and energizes... The story of salvation is a story of reconnection with the one in whom we live and move and have our being, the one who has always been here even though we have been estranged."
> Temple Story-shows the human problem as sin and impurity; both of these prevented entrance into the presence of God; temple sacrifice could end-the problem. "The story addresses our sense of being stained and soiled, of being sinful and unworthy. The story of salvation is thus a story of being cleansed, forgiven, accepted. [This is the story that most Christians identify with.]
> Jesus comes to set the captives free-the liberator. "Salvation is liberation."
> is seen as "the way." He embodies the way of return. ; "Salvation is homecoming."
> his death was "the once for all" sacrifice for sin, replacing the
need for temple sacrifice. "Salvation is about forgiveness and acceptance."
178 SALVATION AS BOTH SOCIAL AND PERSONAL .Salvation is personal.
> Salvation in the Bible is also social. "Salvation is about life together. Salvation is about peace and justice within community and beyond community... Salvation 'is never only an individual affair in the Hebrew Bible."
> Social Salvation is also a New Testament theme. "The Bible is not about the saving. of Individuals for heaven, but about a new social and personal reality in the midst Qt this life."
179 SALVATION AND RESPONSE
> "Salvation comes from God, even as it involves our response."
> "yet salvation always involves our response... Without our response, little or
nothing will change in our lives or in the life of the world. Salvation is the work of God, and yet we must respond ."
> "Without us, without our response, God will not do it; and we, without God, cannot do it. Without us, without our response, God will not transform us or rescue us, either as individuals or societies. We without God cannot bring about transformation. But God without our response will not bring about transformation. "
179 SIN, SALVATION AND REPENTANCE
> "The trivialization of sin sees it individualistically as 'breaking God's rules' and thus as deserving God's punishment. It is a much richer and more perception notion. The trivialization of salvation sees it as being about individuals 'going to heaven' because they have believed or done what is necessary. It is a much richer, more life-affirming, and hopeful notion. In the richer sense of these words, the Christian life leads from sin to salvation-from living within our predicament to being in a transforming relationship with God."
> Biblical meaning of "repent" is not about sorrow, 'it is about resolution; repent means to return from exile, to reconnect with God."
> In the New Testament, repentance is about following Jesus.
> "The Greek roots of the word combine to mean 'go beyond the mind that you have."
> "Repentance is the path of salvation. It is the path of reconnection, the path of
transformation, the path of being born again, the path of dying and rising, the path of response to the message of the Kingdom of God..."
180 SALVATION AND THE AFTERLIFE
> Life after death is a mystery; Borg has no concept of what might occur.
> "I see no way of deciding among these different ways of imagining what lies
beyond death."
> "And the sense of a 'More' is the ground of our hope, and even more of our trust. We live in God. We move in God. We have our being in God. And when we die, we do not die into nothingness; we die into God."
---------------------------------
St. Mark’s Adult Education Meeting Summary
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, by Marcus Borg
Preface and Chapter 6 and 7:
"Born Again: A New Heart" and
"The Kingdom of God: The Heart of Justice"
> Learn more about Marcus Borg: click HEREDiscussion Led By Mike Kreutzer
Sunday, April 24, 2005GROUP DISCUSSION:
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004)
Session 4, April 24 and 27, 2005
Chapter Six --- Born Again: A New Heart
103 "the Christian life as a relational and transformational vision"; "the two transformations at the heart of the Christian life: the individual-spiritual-personal and the communal-social- political."
105-110 "being born again" // "dying and rising"; a radical transformation
109-111 Dying and Rising in Paul's Letters
"Embodied in a ritual, baptism symbolizes the internal transformation of dying to an old way of being and birth into a new way of being. Death and resurrection - being born again - as a metaphor for perpetual transformation is the foundation for Paul's shorthand phrase for naming the new life. It is life 'in Christ.'"
111 Dying and Rising in the Gospel of John
"Just as Jesus is the 'Word made flesh,' so he is 'the way' made flesh, the path embodied in a life… For John, as for the New Testament generally, 'the way' embodied in Jesus is the path of death and resurrection. Dying and rising is the only way to God."
112-113 The Cross and Being Born Again
"Sometimes this internal process of dying is spoken of as a 'dying to self' or the 'death of the self"… 'Dying to self' has been used to encourage the repression of the self and its legitimate desire. Oppressed people, in society and in the family, have often been told to put their own selves last out of obedience to God. When thus understood, the message of the cross becomes an instrument of oppressive authority and self-abdication. But the cross is the means of our liberation and reconnection. It is not about the subjugation of the self, but about a new self… of an old and new identity and way of being."
119-123 "Being born again is the work of the Spirit. Whether it happens suddenly or gradually, we can't make it happen, either by strong desire and determination or by learning and believing the right beliefs. But we can be intentional about being born again. Though we can't make it happen, we can midwife the process. This is the purpose of spirituality: to help birth the new self and nourish the new life."
"For Jesus, the primary quality of a life centered in God is compassion."
Chapter Seven --- The Kingdom of God: the Heart of Justice
126 "The Bible is political as well as personal. It combines sharp political criticism and passionate political advocacy: radical criticism of systems of domination and impassioned advocacy of an alternative social vision."
127-129 The biblical emphasis on God's justice has been neglected for several reasons.
· "the 'powers that be' were Christian."
· "a common misunderstanding of God's justice"; "Most often in the Bible, the opposite of God's justice is not God's mercy, but human injustice."
· "our culture is dominated by an ethos of individualism"
· "We more easily recognize the negative impact of systems on human lives in retrospect."
"The test of the justice of systems is their impact on human lives. To what extent do they lead to human flourishing and to what extent to human suffering?"
129-131 The Hebrew Bible; three characteristics of pre-modern domination systems:
· "They were politically oppressive."
· "They were economically exploitative."
· "They were religiously legitimated."
131-138 The New Testament
"The Kingdom of God" is a political metaphor. "it is what life would be on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not."
"the kingdom of God for Jesus was something for the earth."
"the best-known Christian prayer names the two central material concerns of peasant life in the time of Jesus. The coming of God's Kingdom involves bread and debt forgiveness."
"God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."
(Acts 2:36)
138-145 Meanings for Our Time
Consciousness-raising in the Church
Advocacy of God's Justice
"the politics of the Kingdom. It would be a politics suspicious of the way wealthy and and powerful classes use their power and wealth to structure systems largely in their own interest. Elites have always been very good at that. It would be a politics concerned not with privilege, but with compassion for 'the least of these.'"
"Militarily, we are the world's superpower. We are also the world's major economic power. The combination of global military and economic power is the defining characteristic of empire. We are the Rome of our time.
"The perennial temptation of empire is the overuse and misuse of imperial power. We need to be as thoughtful, responsible and creative as possible in the use of our power, for it can be used in two very different ways. We can use it to try to control the world in our self-interest, to structure the system so that it serves us, to impose our will on the world. Or we can use it to build up. We can use our power with the world's well-being in mind rather than primarily our own."
Here is a related article for suggested reading by G. John, as authored by religious scholar, Karen Armstrong:
Compassions Fruit
Psychologist Carl Jung once said that a great deal of institutional religion seems designed to prevent the faithful from having a spiritual experience. Instead of teaching people how to live in peace, religious leaders often concentrate on marginal issues: Can women or gay people be ordained as priests or rabbis? Is contraception permissible? Is evolution compatible with the first chapter of Genesis? Instead of bringing people together, these distracting preoccupations actually encourage policies of exclusion, since they tend to draw attention to the differences between "us" and "them."These policies of exclusion can have dramatic consequences. Most notably they have given rise to the militant piety that we call fundamentalism, which erupted in every major world religion during the 20th century. Every fundamentalist movement, whether in Judaism, Christianity. or Islam, is convinced that the modern secular- establishment vents to destroy it. Fundamentalism is not inherently violent; most fundamentalists simply want to live what they regard as a good religious life in a world that seems increasingly hostile to faith. But when a conflict has become entrenched in a region,-as in the Middle East. Afghanistan, and Chechnya,-religious fundamentalists have gotten sucked into the escalating violence and become part of the problem. Even in the United States members of the Christian Right believe that their faith is in jeopardy- and that they have a sacred duty to protect it by attacking their liberal opponents. When people feel that their backs are to the wall, they often lash out aggressively. Hence the hatred that continues to cause so much turmoil around the world.
Yet such religiously inspired hatred represents a major defeat for religion. That's because, at their core, all the great world faiths-including Confucianism, Hinduism. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-agree on the supreme importance of compassion. The early sages and prophets all taught their followers to cultivate a habit of empathy for all living beings.
Why, then, do supposedly "religious" leaders declare war in God's name? And why do some people use "God" to give a sacred seal of approval to their own opinions?
I would argue that these people have forgotten what it means to practice compassion. The word compassion does not, of course, mean to feel sorry for someone. Like sympathy it means to feel with others, to enter their point of view and realize that they have the same fears and sorrows as yourself.
The essential dynamic of compassion is summed up in the golden rule, first enunciated by Confucius in about 500 B.C.E.: "Do not do to others as you would not have done to you." Confucius taught his disciples to get into the habit of shu: "likening to oneself." They had to look into their own hearts, discover what gave them pain, and then rigorously refrain from inflicting this suffering upon other people.
The Buddha also taught a version of the golden rule. He used to advise his monks and lay followers to undertake meditative exercises called The Immeasurables. They had to send out positive thoughts of compassion, benevolence, and sympathy to the four corners of the earth, not omitting a single creature (even a mosquito!) from this radius of concern. They would thus find that once they had gone beyond the limiting confines of egotism and self-interest, their humanity had been enhanced. They would even have intimations of infinity.
Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, taught the golden rule in a particularly emphatic way. One day a heathen asked him to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching while standing on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and replied: "'That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn it!-This is an extraordinary statement. Hillel did not mention any of the doctrines that seem essential to Judaism, such as belief in one God, the Exodus from Egypt, and adherence to the complexities of the Law of Moses. Jesus taught the golden rule in this way: he told his followers to love even their enemies and never to Judge or retaliate. If somebody struck them on the face, they must turn the other cheek. In his parable of the Last Day, when the King comes to judge the world, those who enter the kingdom do not do so because they have adopted orthodox theology or observed the correct sexual mores, but because the\- have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, and visited the sick and criminals in prison. St. Paul agreed. Christians could have faith that moved mountains, but if they lacked charity it was worth nothing.
Islam is also committed to the compassionate ethic. The bedrock message of the Koran is an insistence that it is wrong to build up a private fortune, and good to share your wealth fairly in order to create a just and decent society where poor and vulnerable people are treated with respect. On the Last Day the one question that God will ask Muslims is whether they have looked after the widows, the orphans, and the oppressed, and if they have not, they cannot enter Paradise.
Why was there such unanimous agreement on the primacy of compassion? Truly religious people are pragmatic. The early prophets and sages did not preach the discipline of empathy because it sounded edifying, but because experience showed that it worked. They discovered that greed and selfishness were the cause of our personal misery. When we gave them up, we were happier. Egotism imprisoned us in an inferior version of ourselves and impeded our enlightenment.The safest way of combating ego was to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put others there. Perhaps one can explain it this way: we are programmed for self-defense; human beings completed their biological evolution during the Paleolithic Period, when they became hunters. Aggression is thus deeply written into our nature. If we make a consistent habit of countering this aggression, we probably do experience a change of consciousness.
Human beings by nature seek ecstasy, a word that comes from the Greek ekstasis, meaning "to stand outside" the self. If we do not fund ecstasy in religion, we turn to art, music, dance, sex, sports, even drugs, But such rapture can only be temporary. Religious leaders claim that the practice of the golden rule can give us an experience of ecstasy that is deeper and more permanent. if every time we are tempted to speak unkindly of an annoying colleague, a sibling, or an enemy country we asked how we would like such a thing said of ourselves, and, as a result o€ this reflection, desisted, in that moment we would transcend our ego. Living in this way, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, we would enjoy a constant, slow-burning ecstasy that leaves the self behind. The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once remarked that when we put ourselves at the opposite pole of ego, we are in the place where God is.
The practice of compassion has to be consistent; it does not work if it is selective. If, as Jesus explained, we simply love those who are well disposed toward us, no effort is involved: we are simply banking up our own egotism and remain trapped in the selfishness that we are supposed to transcend. That, I think, is why Jesus demanded that his followers love their enemies. They were required to feel with people who would never feel affection for them, and extend their sympathy without expecting any benefit for themselves.
Does that mean that we are supposed to "love" Hitler or Osama bin Laden? The practice of compassion has nothing to do with feelings. According to the 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas, what we call love simply requires that we seek the good of another. If we allow our rage and hatred to fester, this would not hurt our enemies-it would probably gratify them-but we ourselves would be diminished. Anger is what the Buddha called an "unskillful" emotion. Peelings of rage are natural, but if they are indulged they are unhelpful, since they often proceed from an
inflated sense of our own importance.I have noticed, however, that compassion is not a popular virtue. In my lectures I have sometimes seen members of the audience glaring at me mutinously: where is the fun of religion if you can't disapprove of other people! There are some people, I suspect, who would feel obscurely cheated if, when they finally arrived in heaven, they found everybody else there as well. Heaven would not be heaven unless those who reached it could peer over the celestial parapets and watch other unfortunates roasting below.
We need training in compassion because it does not come to us naturally: The ancient Greeks knew this. Even year, on the festival of Dionysus, Athenian citizens watched tragedies written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and other play-wrights. It was a course in empathy. Suffering was put on stage, and the audience was able to weep for people whom they normally would have considered beyond the pale.
These tragedies were part of a religious festival; they were designed to make the audience extend their sympathy to people such as Oedipus, who murdered his father and had incestuous relations with his mother, or Heracles, who in a fit of divinely inspired madness killed his wife and children. These powerful dramas gave people a liberating purification of the emotions that helped transform the horror and disgust inspired by these human tragedies into compassion. We need to find similarly imaginative ways to educate people today.
The history of each faith tradition represents a ceaseless struggle between our inherent tendency to aggression and the mitigating virtue of compassion. Religiously inspired hatred has caused unimaginable suffering around the world. But secularism has had its failures too. Auschwitz, the Gulag, and the regime of Saddam Hussein show the fearful cruelty to which humanity is prone when all sense of the sacred has been lost.
None of these atrocities could have taken place if people were properly educated in the simplest of all principles, the golden rule. We live in one world, and we have to learn to reach out in sympathy to people who have different opinions, at home and abroad. We need the compassionate ethic more desperately than ever before.
Former nun turned religious scholar Karen Armstrong is the author of The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004) and Buddha (Penguin, 2001).
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St. Mark’s Adult Education Meeting Summary
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, by Marcus Borg
Preface and Chapters 4 and 5:
"God: The Heart of Reality" and
"Jesus: The Heart of God"
> Learn more about Marcus Borg: click HEREDiscussion Led By Mike Kreutzer
Sunday, April 17, 2005GROUP DISCUSSION:
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004)
Session 3, April 17 and 20, 2005
Chapter Four --- God: The Heart of Reality
63-64 Two Kinds of Worldviews
(1) "In a religious worldview, there is..., a 'More.'"
(2) "In a nonreligious worldview, there is no 'More.' There is only 'this' - the space-time world of matter and energy and whatever other natural forces lie behind or beyond it."
"Most Christians basically accept the modern world view image of reality and then add God onto it... God becomes a supernatural being 'out there' who created a universe from which God is normally absent."
data "suggestive" of the reality of God: "the collective witness and wisdom of the world's religions..., the data of religious experience…, the provocative affirmations of postmodern science, especially postmodern physics."
65-66 Two Concepts of God
"Supernatural theism imagines God as a personlike being."
"Panentheism..., imagines God and the God-world relationship differently... Rather than imagining God as a personlike being 'out there,' this concept imagines God as the encompassing Spirit in which all that is is. The universe is not separate from God, but in God."
69 Paul Tillich: "if, when you think of the word 'God,' you are thinking of a reality that may or may not exist, you are not thinking of God."
"The word 'God' is the most common Western name for 'what is,' for 'ultimate reality,' for 'the ground of being,' for 'Being itself,' for 'isness.'"
72 "God has more the quality of a 'presence' than of a nonpersonal 'energy' or 'force.'"
74 The Character of God; two different approaches
(1) "God is a God of requirements and rewards."
(2) "God as a God of love and justice."
77 "unconditional grace is not about the afterlife, but the basis for our relationship with God in this life... it's about seeing what is already true - that God loves us already - and then beginning to live in this relationship."
Chapter Five --- Jesus: The Heart of God
80 "one of the defining characteristics of Christianity is that we find the revelation of God primarily in a person."
81 "The emerging paradigm affirms the decisive centrality of Jesus, even as it sees Jesus quite differently than the earlier paradigm does. Its historical, metaphorical, and sacramental approach leads to 'seeing Jesus again,' just as it leads to seeing the Bible and God again."
81-91 five major reasons why "seeing Jesus again" matters:
1) "the earlier image of Jesus and the image of the Christian life that goes with it have become unpersuasive to millions of people in the last century."
2) "the important distinction between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus"
3) "it helps to see the nature of the gospels and thus to understand them better." (the product of a developing tradition; combine memory and metaphor; helps us to see rich meanings in the text that a literal reading misses)
4) "it helps us to see the meaning of our Christological language" (the language is post-Easter; the language is metaphorical; it is a language of confession and commitment)
5) "because Jesus is for us as Christians the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like, what we can glimpse of the pre-Easter Jesus matters." (Jesus was a Jewish mystic, a healer, a wisdom teacher, a social prophet and a movement initiator)
91-96 New Testament interpretations of the cross
1) rejection and vindication
2) "the defeat of the powers"
3) the revelation of "the way"
4) revelation of the depths of God's love for us
5) "died for our sins"
96 Jesus as Metaphor and Sacrament of God
96 "Jesus discloses what God is like. We see God through Jesus."
97 "a sacrament of God, a means through whom the Spirit of God becomes present."
98-99 "the purpose of the church, of Christology, of the creed is to point us to Jesus. And then Jesus says, 'It's not about me.' He points beyond himself to God - to God's character and passion. This is the meaning of our Christological language and our creedal affirmations about Jesus: in this person we see the revelation of God, the heart of God. He is both metaphor and sacrament of God."
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St. Mark’s Adult Education Meeting Summary
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, by Marcus Borg
Preface and Chapters 2 and 3:
"Faith: The Way of the Heart" and
"The Bible: The Heart of the Tradition"
> Learn more about Marcus Borg: click HEREDiscussion Led By Mike Kreutzer
Sunday, April 10, 2005GROUP DISCUSSION:
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004)
Session 2, April 10 and 13, 2005
Chapter Two --- Faith: the Way of the Heart
25 "Christianity is about a way of life, a path, and it has been from the very beginning.";
"the Way"
27 the centrality of faith
28-37 four meanings of the word "faith"
28 "assensus": "believing that a claim or statement is true"; dominant in modern Western Christianity
31 "fiducia": "radical trust in God"
32 "fidelitas": "faithfulness to our relationship with God"
34 "visio": "faith as a way of seeing"; how we see the whole of what is; three ways:
(1) hostile and threatening
(2) indifferent
(3) life-giving and nourishing; seeing reality as gracious
37 "Returning to Faith as Assensus": "affirmations that are central to Christian faith":
"Being a Christian means affirming the reality of God."
"Christian faith means affirming the utter centrality of Jesus."
"Christian faith means affirming the centrality of the Bible."
39 "Returning to Faith as Believing": "credo" = "I give my heart to"
The last three of these senses of "faith" are relational.
Chapter Three --- The Bible: the Heart of the Tradition
43 the Bible as our sacred story
45-46 "The Bible as Historical Product"
46 "Within the emerging paradigm, inspiration refers to the movement of the Spirit in the lives of the people who produced the Bible."
47-48 "The Bible as Sacred Scripture": refers to both its status and its function
48-49 historical context: "the historical approach can ask about the history behind a text. Did the reported event really happen? But the question is not always important and is seldom ultimately important."
49-55 The truth of metaphor
A metaphor is "a more-than-literal" meaning.
50 Thomas Mann described a myth as "a story about the was things never were, but always are."
56-57 "Metaphor as a Bridge" between the two paradigms
57-59 "The Bible as Sacrament"; "a means by which the sacred becomes present to us"
59-60 "The Bible and the Christian Life"; the three relational meanings of faith; "The Christian life is about a relationship with the one whom the Bible both points to and mediates - namely, a relationship with God as disclosed through the Bible as metaphor and sacrament. To be Christian is to live within this tradition and let it do its transforming work among us."
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St. Mark’s Adult Education Meeting Summary
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, by Marcus Borg
Preface and Chapter 1 (pages xi-21):
"What Does it Mean to Be Christian Today?" and
"The Heart of Christianity in a Time of Change"
> Learn more about Marcus Borg: click HEREDiscussion Led By Mike Kreutzer
Sunday, April 03, 2005GROUP DISCUSSION:
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus Borg
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004)
Session 1, April 3 and 6, 2005
xi earlier (still dominant) form of Christianity; "emerging vision"
"In this time of change and conflict within the Church, what is the heart of Christianity? What is most central to an authentic Christianity and Christian life today?"
3 "The differences between the earlier and emerging ways of seeing Christianity and being Christian involve specific conflicts as well as more foundational issues."; 3 examples given
4-5 paradigm change; "A paradigm is a comprehensive way of seeing, a way of seeing a "whole."
observe same phenomena, but see differently; the difference "between two comprehensive ways of seeing Christianity as a whole"
6 Christian life and Christian tradition
9-11 The Earlier Paradigm:
sees the Bible as a divine product; infallibility and inerrancy (harder and softer forms); literalism; applied to creeds as well [see the John J. Collins article]
Faith as believing is central.
The afterlife is central.
The Christian life is about requirements and rewards.
Summary (page 11): "it sees the Christian life as believing in Christianity now for the sake of salvation later. It sees the Bible as God's message of salvation (meaning a blessed afterlife), and sees the Christina life as believing in the message and seeking to live accordingly. And believing is the central requirement: it is believing that will save you."
This "earlier paradigm" is a modern phenomenon.
13-14 The Emerging Paradigm
sees the Bible as Historical, Metaphorical and Sacramental
"The emerging paradigm sees the Christian life as a life of relationship and transformation."
15 chart comparing the two paradigms
16 -18 "Bridging the Differences"
Christian Diversity
What the Paradigms Share in Common
"Being Christian isn't about getting our beliefs (or our paradigm) 'right.'"
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