I will be away from my computer for a few days so it seemed like a good time to go back and revise some of my old posts. In doing so, I spotted some patterns in what I have been writing.
This post will be to point out the patterns in what I have written so far.
1. Trying to keep the main thing, the main thing. Jesus departed from earth leaving us our instructions. Mat 10:7-8 “And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.”
I am concerned that because carrying out Jesus’ command has proved so difficult, the church has turned to just doing what it can do and not what it was ordered to do.
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2. In a number of my posts, the operative word is hegemony. Hegemony is when one state assumes domination over another state. The word is used regarding political states, but can also be used to indicate states of consciousness. I stay alarmed at how many Christians are so naive as to how they have let the discursive, rational operation of the mind claim hegemony over the non-rational states of consciousness.
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3. As a psychologist and priest, I am also addressing psychological problems people have with God and His Church.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
My Themes
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Doing Bad Theology
When I was a child, my grandmother use to scold me with “what you do, speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you are saying.” My grandmother’s teaching helped when I became a psychologist. Whenever I was confused about something someone said, I could watch actions. “Actions speak louder than words” she taught me.
For example, Jesus confused me when he told the story we call the Good Samaritan. He had just finished telling people to love their neighbor, when someone asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Obviously, they all knew who their neighbors were. For thousands of years, a neighbor was a fellow member of their tribe plus anyone who worshiped Yahweh. Everyone else was excluded. Typically, when people asked such obvious questions, they were baiting Jesus.
So did Jesus take the bait and scandalize them that day by making Samaritans their neighbor? If He did, then where was the reaction?
You want to see a reaction? One day Paul declared to the Jews that the Spirit ordered him: “Depart for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.” At the word “Gentile,” the listeners went nuclear: “Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live!” They screamed. He barely got away with his life.
So how did Jesus get a pass that day if He said something similar? Why was there no riot?
Maybe the reason they did not react to Jesus’ story of the Samaritan was because they heard the story the way Jesus told it. Reading carefully, we see the neighbor in need of love was their fellow citizen in a mess. It took a hated Samaritan to remind them how to treat him.
The story is a very shaky foundation upon which to build an entire theology. Yet a lot of people who do not know their Bible well, do just that.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Repost of New Chapter in Anglican Split
The Anglican primates met at Tanzania and demanded two specific things from the bishops of the American Episcopal Church: first, unequivocally promise not to authorize Rites of Blessing for same-sex unions; second, unequivocally promise not to consecrate any more actively homosexual bishops. It has been described as an ultimatum, and it comes with a deadline (September 30) and consequences: If not followed, the Episcopal Church will not be invited to next year’s Lambeth Conference and so in effect will be judged to have walked apart from the Anglican Communion.
The American bishops were also told to desist from persecuting those bishops, priests and church people who are staying with the the worldwide Anglican Communion rather than remaining in the disfellowshipped Episcopal church.
After meeting together, the Episcopal Bishops on March 20, 2007 REJECTED the ultimatum.
For a background of today's post, the following is taken from an earlier post.
They met and this is what they got:CNN
The above was the secular press' take and the following is from one of the PRIMATES.
Today, another chapter: The Southern Cone Primate says "it is time to split." Read More......
Irrational Hangups With God
Deliverance from irrational reactions to God can come slowly and sometimes immediately.
As a psychotherapist, I have had patients whose negative issues with God cleared up along side the issues with their earthly parents. Somehow, parent emotional responses had cross-wired with God responses. Often the person only recognized their problem with God, after they were cured.
I have also seen people supernaturally delivered from what I have learned to call: Paranoia of the Father. Both type healings happened to me.
I frequently likened what occurs as similar to having a physical disorder; take anemia for instance. The person accepts the tired feeling as the norm. One day a doctor diagnosis anemia, gives some pills and zappo, they feel good. Only when they have been delivered can they exclaim “so this is the way a normal person feels!”
In my post,The Zapped Psychologist, I relate an encounter with God and a deliverance from my paranoia of Him which I did not recognize until it was gone. Besides my story, I have seen other sudden deliverances. The one I am about to describe is one of the more dramatic ones.
I was in an office one day with a woman who was almost totally catatonic. Usual approaches had failed. In desperation, I took off my psychologist’s hat and donned my priest’s. Suspecting something deeper than I had ever encountered, I tried to get her to just say aloud the name of Jesus. She tried, but the word would not come out.
I was treading somewhere I had never been, and really did not know what I was doing. So, I retreated to my office. There I began to quietly pray.
Suddenly, an inner, almost audible voice, said, “Brace yourself, she is coming.” To my alarm, there she was at the entrance to my office. Pathetically, she began to beg me to stop praying. “I know you think you are helping, but you are damaging my brain. You must stop!” She begged.
In my panic, I had enough presence of mind to realize that there was no way she could have known I was praying, plus there was no way I could have known she was coming. I knew I was in over my head.
So, I said to her, “I will call a friend of mine who knows about these things. But, Jane I am not saying this to you, I am talking to that something or someone who is talking to me.”
I dialed my friend and he responded, “I am on my way right now.”
At that exact moment, she snapped up straight, color returned to her face and she exclaimed, “It’s gone! It’s gone!” Raising her hands to her head, she said “It was like a giant vulture had his talons deep in my brain. I heard a whirring noise, and he was gone!”
(Afterwards, she went back to college, graduated with honors and did the same in graduate school.)
People have all sorts of hangups with God. If they ever get delivered from them either through psychotherapy or supernaturally (Mt 17:21), they often look back and exclaim “Man, I was really messed up and didn’t even know it!”
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Inventing One's Own Religion
Larry King once asked Oral Roberts: “Rev. Roberts, when God does not heal someone you have prayed for, how do you explain that?” The famous healer's reply: “I don’t know."
I always admired Oral Roberts for that answer.
As Christians, we take our stand on the Scriptures to tell us who God is and what He does.. Sometimes Scriptures are very confusing. The subject of healing being an example. Confusion though, does not give us license to make up our own religion.
I do have my own way of resolving difficult Scripture for myself. I always start with Jesus. When even His words confuse me, then I fall back on a saying my grandmother taught me: "Actions speak louder than words." That saying even helped me be a better psychotherapist. When I don't understand what a person is saying, I watch what he does.
Therefore, if someone asked me the question posed to the Rev. Roberts, why did God not heal someone, I would have to reply, "I don't know, I never saw Him (Jesus) not do it."
Jesus healed everyone who asked Him. When did any one ever see Jesus do such things as these: “God took your little sister to heaven because she was so sweet, He wanted her with Himself.” Or, “God did not heal in order to bring you closer to Himself, or "God uses your sickness to teach you." etc. etc. Fill in the awful explanations you have heard.
Where do such people get their religion?
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Episcopal Bishops Thumb Nose at Primates
The Anglican primates met at Tanzania and demanded two specific things from the bishops of the American Episcopal Church: first, unequivocally promise not to authorize Rites of Blessing for same-sex unions; second, unequivocally promise not to consecrate any more actively homosexual bishops. It has been described as an ultimatum, and it comes with a deadline (September 30) and consequences: If not followed, the Episcopal Church will not be invited to next year’s Lambeth Conference and so in effect will be judged to have walked apart from the Anglican Communion.
The American bishops were also told to desist from persecuting those bishops, priests and church people who are staying with the the worldwide Anglican Communion rather than remaining in the disfellowshipped Episcopal church.
After meeting together, the Episcopal Bishops on March 20, 2007 REJECTED the ultimatum.
For a background of today's post, the following is taken from an earlier post.
They met and this is what they got:CNN
The above was the secular press' take and the following is from one of the PRIMATES. Read More......
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Anti war colors
Did anyone notice today the banner colors for the anti-war protests? On one side of the street, we saw red, white and blue. On the other side, we saw yellow. Al Queda
says they can beat us because yellow is American's favorite color.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Would Jesus' Praying Embarass the Uptight?
Writing on speaking in tongues and looking for other blogs on the subject, I was dismayed at the number of bloggers who are put off by the experience. It seems that so many are shaken up by the behavior of Charismatics.
A lot of these nervous folk are Bible readers, so I point them to today’s Lectionary reading. There we find a description of Jesus at prayer: “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears.” How embarassing.
The Cherokees and the Eucharist
Click on this link and read it first.Sand Creek Massacre and the Eucharist
One day, my wife and I discovered the book “A Guide to Healing the Family Tree” by Kenneth McAll, M.D. of England. Dr. McAll, describes many supernatural healings as a result of breaking ancestral curses by the use of the Eucharist. After having some successes healing family trees, we became interested in another observation Dr. McAll had made. He believes that even past atrocities by one group against another can be blotted out by the power of the Eucharist.
Around that time, some close family members were in the process of building a golf course and resort. They hit a point in the construction when nothing was going right. At times, the project teetered on disaster.
My wife had always been moved by the story of the Trail of Tears –the atrocities committed against the Cherokees as they were driven off their land.
The maps of the trail revealed the Cherokees had been brought through the territory. There was evidence that Indians had been on the land where the golf course was being built. Because we had just come off the moving experience regarding the Sand Creek Massacre, we wondered if perhaps the evil that had been perpetrated against the Cherokees, still lingered to curse the land.
We offered to do a Eucharist. It was another of those mystical beautiful days.
Almost immediately, the whole project did an upswing and moved rapidly to success.
The Sand Creek Massacre and the Eucharist
Please also visit our new site. Father Charles and I will post our experiences on that one, and I will continue posting on this one as well.
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Thursday, March 1, 2007
Suffering and The Medium is the Message
In the 60's Marshall McLuhan coined an important phrase: "The Medium is the Message". According to Wikipedia, the phrase means that the form of media delivering the message, is more important than any "meaning" or "content" that the media conveys. The form of the medium itself is what changes our consciousness.
For me personally, McLuhan’s insight has always explained the Book of Job on the question of suffering. Job’s comforters’ timeworn answers were totally useless to Job. At the same time, their insensitivity to his pain carried their message.
Then God Himself shows up. God’s explanation did not satisfy me any more than those of the others. Job though, was obviously pleased. His life completely turned around and he lived happily ever after.
I have always wanted to believe that “The Medium was the Message.” Think of it. What would it be like for the Creator of the entire universe to drop whatever He was doing, to give you His personal response? When He did that for me, my life was changed forever.
As a priest, when someone asks me to explain his or her suffering, they are asking the wrong person. I don’t have a clue. I do know though, that if they will ask God, eventually He answers. When He responds, not only does one get an answer, but the Medium can become the Message.