Hubbard and Jesus

At our library-ette Saturday morning, I happened to see a DVD about Scientology, the religious philosophy masterminded by L. Ron Hubbard.  Since our hamlet is tiny and is not particularly religiously cutting-edge, I assumed that this DVD would be either a quasi-neutral documentary or an exposé, written from a more mainstream vantage point.  I think the subtitle used the word “overview” rather than “expose” or “examination,” so I guess I should have been more discriminating, but I hadn’t noticed that at a glance, and there aren’t just oodles of choices at our library . . . so off I went with this, two G/PG-rateds, and a couple of kids books chosen by Jedd.

The video proved to be a pro-Scientology series of explanations and ads.  I am not impressed by propaganda. In the 30 minutes I spent with this, I came to an estimate that L. Ron Hubbard was probably frequently more sane than Mary Baker Eddy of the Christian Science religion, and of course much more sane than Joseph Smith, the Mormon founder.  However, the Scientology religion seems to be a syncretistic concoction of one human — albeit a rather unusually high-functioning one — and, as such, it will come to nothing.

As a spiritual inquisiteur, the next question I might ask would concern the distinction, if there be any, between Hubbard and Jesus.  Having quickly formulated an assessment of the former, I find much to distinguish the two figures.  For what it’s worth:  Hubbard thought too highly of himself and created stuff and structures out of nothing, whereas Jesus thought appropriately of himself and created nothing; rather, He simply did His Father’s bidding.

So much of Scientology seems to be me-oriented.  Self-help philosophy and pragmatic religionism abound.  In the DVD, almost all of the clipped testimonials from adherents speak in some way to what Scientology “does for me,” and even the notable charitable activities associated with this religion seem to be myopic.  Scrolling words on the screen encapsulate the purpose of Dianetics, the 1950 book that touched off the Scientology firestorm in earnest:  ” … used by millions everyday to help them lead more stable, happier lives.”  Of course, there is much of consumer-driven Christianity that plays this game, as well, but pure Christianity is different.

Today, newly, I’m thankful for Jesus — His own emphases, and the mission emphases of His progeny — e.g., Philip of Acts 8, Barnabas of Acts 4 and beyond, Saul-Paul of Acts 9 and beyond, and others.  While one might pick up a helpful tidbit or two from reading something like Hubbard’s seminal Dianetics or from taking a course offered by the Scientologists, the words and works of Jesus’ Way are in a different league.  He was, and is, God–His own claims, teachings, and actions are corroborated unequivocally by the writings of the early Christians.

Jesus, I honor You as the unique Word of God to the world.  And I ask You to strengthen my trust in You.

Events of the world “largely inconsequential”

As I’ve (mostly not) followed the Republican primaries and all the commentating and pundit activity,¹ I’ve come pretty close to publicizing a vow.  It would go something like this:

I, Brian Casey, being of questionable, but arguably sound, mind, do hereby vow that from now through November 2012, I shall not intentionally turn on any TV or radio news that I know to be covering politics.  Neither will I intentionally click on any link on my phone or computer that will lead me to stay informed about political “races”–presidential or otherwise.

I lean.  I think the lean is like 50 degrees (yeah, I’m almost tippin’ over) toward an apocalyptic/kingdom worldview rather than toward a politically or otherwise temporally motivated one.  And so I am persuaded a) that whatever happens politically doesn’t ultimately matter all that much, and, perhaps more important for this particular blogpost, b) that of all the words exhausted on politics in an election year, about 98.6% of them are a feverish waste of time.  I simply choose not to spend my time following all that closely.

Oh, sure, I’m interested, on some level.  A word-searching glance back through my blogs will find “Romney” and his ideals more than once, for instance.  I don’t think I’ve said anything about Santorum, but I would tend to trust him as a person quite a bit more (for me, his particular religious flaws make him much more a victim of circumstance, whereas any Mormon’s egregious headlong rush into insane error ought to be viewed with less charity).  What I heard from Ron Paul a month or two ago made me think three things:  a) he makes more sense than most people, b) he doesn’t seem like he puts up a front in the slightest, and c) he will never be viewed as electable.  I’m still a little sad that Sarah Palin didn’t pass muster 4 years ago; Michele Bachmann was not her equal.  Cain was never a viable candidate, and I don’t even remember another name or two at the moment.

Truth be told, I’m not all that convinced at this point that any current options are any better for this earthly country than President Obama.  (I once heard conservative radio talk show host quoted as having suggested that another four years of Obama are probably best for us, because that would really make the country do an about-face toward something different in 2016.)  No, I haven’t liked things I’ve heard that he’s done all that often, and there are multiple things about him that have caused me not to trust him or his motives, but he is the president, and one of my duties — yea, my only bona fide duty, I would suggest — is to respect him and his office.  That much I should do as I travel on toward my eternal country, because my primary citizenship is there.

I may have a few things yet to say about politics this year, but it won’t be because I make a hobby out of following the goings-on this summer.  I have better, more productive things in mind to do with my time.  (For instance, walk a quarter-mile to watch a few Little League games with my son.)  But for now, I will simply share this meaningful passage from a book I’m currently reading.  Although it speaks of the 1st century, not the 21st, we would do well to apply today what Barnett has noted about the early Christians’ focus on the Kingdom, not on this world.

We are struck by this:  world history, apart from generalized comments in Tacitus and Josephus, makes no reference to the new “child” (i.e., of Judaism), Christianity.  It is preoccupied with the passing parade of emperors, governors, and high priests.  For its part, Christian history in the book of Acts is focused on the continuing works of Jesus, the now-risen Christ.  For those first Christians the events of the wider world are largely inconsequential and only noticed if they bear in some way on the progress of the word.  – Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity, p. 41

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¹ Can there be a kind of pundit other than the political kind? I don’t think I’d have much use for a musical pundit or a Christian pundit, either.

A tale of two Ananiases

This is a brief, dichotomous tale of two Ananiases — men about whom significant narrative appears in the document we call “Acts.”  Sit back, but don’t relax too much.  (Remember, it’s brief.)

Ananias #1 (chapter 5)

He was named “Ananias.”

As the new movement was burgeoning, he was in the thick of things.  He had good intentions—at least, at first … sort of.  Given 15/20 hindsight, we might say he was more interested in impressions and attention than in genuineness and integrity.  He was killed.  (Not just “died.”  Was killed.)

Ananias didn’t marry too well.  She was killed, too.

The end (of them, but not of God’s people).

Ananias #2 (chapter 9)

He was named “Ananias.”

After the envious murder of Stephen, his “dispersion” pathway led him to Damascus.  He, too, was in the thick of things as the new movement was burgeoning.  He, too, was interested in impressions — and was particularly concerned about the impression Saul had been making.  He had good intentions and was worried that those intentions were being turned on their head.  This Ananias was not only a man of integrity but also one with good hearing.  He was instructed by the Spirit of God.  Not just “led,” but instructed to do something very specific.  He listened.  He was used.  Likely in view of their common Jewish heritage, or in anticipation of future relationship, he called Saul “brother.”  Ananias was more interested in God’s purposes than in making an impression on anyone, and he initiated Saul officially into The Way.  History was changed.

The beginning (of something very big).

* * *

Two Ananiases.  Two very different Ananiases. . . .

The name “Ananias,” which was a variant of the name of the high priest Annas, is also said to be related etymologically to the personal name of God, and might have meant something like “Cloud of God” or “God is gracious” in the ears of the ancients.  In one case above, the grace of God seems almost absent—for the man Ananias and his wife Sapphira, that is.  And yet, in the exhilarating, continuing story of the early weeks and months of The Way, God’s grace is surely shown as an empowering force—not only behind the scenes, but woven throughout, in the historical writings of Luke.

World-renowned theologians can be off-base (1)

I learned to respect the name N.T. Wright when he was on the “good side” (contra Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, widely considered to be bona fide heretics) of the “Jesus at 2000″ debate.  I have since picked up two of Wright’s commentaries and have glanced a few times at his website.  He’s a good communicator and is renowned as an Anglican bishop, theologian, writer, and speaker.

However, Wright is not always right.  Case in point from Part One of his commentary on Acts:

As a bishop, one of the things I do quite a lot is to go round laying hands on people and praying for God’s holy spirit to come upon them.  It is often a very moving and exciting time, not least at the Easter Vigil when we come in darkness into the great cathedral, led by the candle symbolizing the risen Jesus, and then, with lights coming on, playing on the organ and other instruments, and shouts of “Alleluia!,” we celebrate the resurrection.  We renew the vows made at our baptism; and then, sometimes pausing to baptize people as well, we welcome into our fellowship through confirmation (the laying on of the bishop’s hands, with prayer) those who had been baptized earlier, probably as infants, and who now want to make real for themselves the promises which had been made on their behalf some while before.

When people ask me, as they sometimes do, what it’s all about, the present passage (Acts 8:4-25 -bc) is one of the ones we usually go back to.  I do not imagine for a moment that our modern practice, in the church to which I happen to belong, is an exact reproduction of what Luke says took place in Samaria on that occasion.  I am not an apostle come from Jerusalem, and the people I confirm are not Samaritans, needing for the first time to know the presence and power of the spirit.  But since there is in fact no single, identical pattern of Christian initiation running right across our earliest documents, the church has, in my view wisely, developed patterns which broadly correspond to what seems to have been done by the first apostles themselves, as much by decisions taken as they went along as by carefully thought-out regulation.  I should say, by the way, that sometimes when I meet people I have confirmed a year or so before they have remarkable stories to tell of what God has been doing in their lives since then.  It is by no means, as sceptics sometimes assume, an empty and irrelevant old bit of ritual.  (N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part One, Chapters 1-2, pp. 125-127)

Now, before I protest several elements of the good bishop’s words above, I want to say that I am not throwing away or defacing his books.  They’re borrowed from the library.  I am not returning them in disgust.  I can still learn from this man, this Anglican official who has a great deal of insight and communicative gift.  But he can be off-base, and here, off-base he is.

I’ll also say that there are a couple of very important, apt insights contained in the middle of Wright’s messy, mixed bag.  The very first problem is his conclusion to this topic of discourse:  we are apparently supposed to believe that because he says people have great stories to tell, his “confirmation” practice is valid.

I enjoy poking holes, or at least attempting to poke them, in other people’s logic.  In so doing, I am probably not doing my best “Golden Rule” work, but as a perpetually aspiring neo-Protestant, I continue to believe this is important work.  So, here I go.  I count five subjective (or less-than-fact-based) elements in the quoted passage above:

1. Wright’s memory (in his humanness, he may be conflating and amalgamating events)
2. Wright’s perception of the people’s genuineness (his judgment is not flawless)
3. The people’s actual genuineness (they may be as interested in impressing the great bishop as in recounting actual happenings)
4. The people’s memory (they are human, too, and could have forgotten sequences and times)
5. The people’s perception of what God is “doing in their lives” (this phrase is always dubious)

Conclusion:  never trust a bishop.  Just kidding.  Actually, never trust any human.  (Not kidding.)  We are all flawed.  (Yes, even the Pope.  If any Catholics are reading, you need to know this.  Don’t get all hot-and-bothered and take leave of your senses.  Down deep, you know that the assertion of papal infallibility is ridonculous, and you need to toss it overboard from the ship of your life and beliefs.)

Despite the goodness of heart and thoroughness of thought that N.T. “Tom” Wright manifests so regularly, he is not always right.  The implicit suggestion that the laying on of a denominational bishop’s hands means something is questionable.  And the pragmatically, morally absurd notion of “baptizing” an infant (of course, they are just sprinkled or poured upon, not really baptized, for that would be child abuse) is eclipsed in the spiritual plane by the inability to see that there was actually a pattern of initiation–shown pretty clearly in the record we call Acts of the Apostles.

Denominational loyalties and mass marketing are enemies of truth.

The misread part of John 3

The advance “moral of the story” is this:  Neither a sinner’s-prayer utterer nor a membership-placer be!

From John 3:

¹ Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. ²He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

³ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Members of some religious groups read the first part of John 3 and become inspired by the vague notion of being reborn.  As they consider this important spiritual concept, some may head off into fanciful ideas of what spiritual rebirth is, or isn’t.  Rather than paying too much attention to this idea or that, though, let’s listen in on the continuation of the conversation, as revealed by John the apostle:

⁴ “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. ⁷ You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.^“

Now, there’s a lot in this account of the interaction of a clout-toting Council member with a no-account rabbi, and I don’t presume to deal with all of it here.  I do suggest that it is apparent, based on one aspect of the recorded response of Jesus, that there are two things at work in the rebirth process — that is, two primary elements to be attended to, as one moves from the world into Jesus’ way:  1) water and 2) God’s Spirit. It further seems — and this part may temporarily rattle some of my forbears and nearer siblings — that the second thing, God’s Spirit, is the more emphasized here.

In other words, the role of water is not to be obliviated or reduced to “optional” status — after all, Jesus Himself indicated  “water” in same breath as “Spirit” and submitted to immersion Himself  — but the Spirit of God should probably be seen as the primary, spiritually active element in the process of coming into the Kingdom.  In the case of the water, there is, and should be, human effort.  In the case of the Spirit, the activity is God’s, not ours; this reality had been prefigured in John 1:12-13.  As with the wind, it’s kind of hard to discover its origin or trace its exact path.

The water (1) and the Spirit (2) appear to work sequentially, or at least together somehow.

P.S.  We might also note that Jesus doesn’t once mention the so-called “sinner’s prayer” … confirming my understanding that, despite millions of unfounded opinions to the contrary, the sinner’s prayer and utterances like it have nothing to do with what is presented in scripture about putting on Jesus Christ and identifying with His spiritual family.  Oh yeah, and other local-church routines for “becoming a member,” such as “placing membership,” catechism classes, confirmations, West Side Church 101 classes, and so forth, have much less place in this conversation than a humble prayer acknowledging sin and need.

(There.  How many people could I offend in a couple of paragraphs?  Being a neo-protestant has its risks as well as its benefits.)

Context (yes … *again*)

Caveat lector: This is post # 776 on this blog.  That means I can wait till the next one to be really coherent, and this one must be viewed as short of perfect.  :-)

Context.  It figures in often to my thinking.  I was particularly proud (somewhat ironically!) of this post last month, which I think made a great point in a fairly succinct way.

Context.  It makes the difference in understanding others in casual conversation, in reading or seeing news reports and developing or changing a worldview, and in the study and performance of various styles of music.  When you see a syncopated rhythm in the context of Brahms, it’s interpreted differently from an identical-looking rhythm in Glenn Miller or Chicago.  (Who knew an art-music orchestra that plays Mozart and Prokofiev and Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov could also play Keith Getty and Tim Hughes contemporary worship music another day, and KANSAS rock accompaniments the next?)

Sometimes, context is obvious.  If you’re in Vermont and you say “skiing,” you likely don’t mean water skiing.  Conversely, if you’re in Alabama or Oklahoma, you probably don’t mean “snow skiing.”  The question in Vermont is not “lake or mountain?”  It’s “cross-country or downhill.”  The question in Oklahoma might be “Is the lake too full of boats on this hot day? or maybe “Does my speedboat still leak?”

Context.  It also makes a difference in the study and consideration of God’s message revealed in scripture.  For instance, if you see “breaking bread” in the context of daily life and long-term patterns in Acts, written in the latter half of the 1st century, it probably doesn’t mean “communion table with formal procession and 1 Corinthians 11 and incantation-prayer and cracker bits and thimbleful of grape juice.”  Oddly enough, it probably means more along the lines of what coarse-voiced Mafia toughs mean when they say, “We’ll sit down and break bread together.”

The question isn’t some heavy, theological “transubstantiation or consubstantiation or no-substantiation?”  The question to ask is “What does this mean, in its historical and literary context?”  “What would the first readers have understood it to mean? (… and then and only then, “What does that mean for me?”)