Liberal Christianity

Lesson 4: Spiritual Constructs of Reality and Society

Constructs of Reality and Society – God as Boss of the Universe; God as the Head of a Patriarchal Order; The God of Compassion and Feminine Aspects of God and/or the Trinity.

Our lives are living myths of our own creation. Our companion is our personal story, all the stuff inside we use tell us who we are and tell the world the same.

We must address our personal cosmic vision first and foremost. We need to understand the assumptions we have made as we internally constructed our definition of both reality and, if we are spiritually inclined, the spiritual world.

In a very powerful subconscious way, those who practice a Christian religion do so with an internal image (something imagined) of that spiritual reality not seen but that we believe exists; the very reality where God “is”, where Jesus “is” and to many, where Satan “is” or “wants to rule.”

For many Christians, this imagined reality readily assumes a male-dominated patriarchal "order of things."

In mortal or human terms I call that internal image of the spiritual world upon which we have based our Christian religious foundation a "mental construct" – a perceived spiritual reality.

That reality - what each of us personally has imagined the spirit world and/or realm of God to be- serves as the context for how we combine our mortal practice of religion with our understanding of God and Jesus.

Although for all or most Christians the realm of God truly exists, we do not all agree on what that existence means or how it impacts our lives. For many Christians, the spirit world exists in some other dimension and interacts with our own world in supernatural ways.

This is consistent with a view of a purely supernatural, all-wise, all-knowing and almighty God who some times intervenes in the affairs of mortals in dramatic or not-so-dramatic ways. These believing Christians easily accept and live according to the idea of an invisible Jesus/God personage who is vitally invested in human life and directs forces of good against the other supernatural power and source of evil, Satan.

Others do not see the supernatural Jesus/God as a personage who exists “somewhere else” and as someone outside the sphere of mortal perception and who communicates spiritually from a distance through the Holy Spirit. Taking a cue from Jesus’ words, “The kingdom of God is within you,” they have a sense of God being omnipresent and an on-going constancy in which the Holy Spirit is an uninterrupted and steady influence toward good works and a desire to live, for example, the Golden Rule.

On the one hand there are people who talk about spiritual warfare, evoking images of the spirit world as some sort of zone of conflict in which Satan and God operate simultaneously for and against human life.

On the other hand, others see Satan more as a conceptual part of their attempts to get a grasp on the idea of the existence of evil. Evil for them is not something we are tempted to do by a supernatural Satan. It is more an active part of life that serves as a kind of resistance or counter force against our intention or tendency to behave in an independent manner – acting in a ways that reflect the "goodness" way that Jesus wants us to be.

A similar controversy exists between biblical literalists regarding God as the “Boss of the Universe” who is commanding humans to behavior based purely on obedience and morality as opposed to a non-judgmental God who fully encourages positive human behavior as a consequence of total agency.

To literalists, Satan becomes the direct opposite and yet needful counter to the goodness and righteous-requiring Commander-God; a supernatural reality who tempts mortals to both “sins” of commission and of omission.

To non-literalists Satan represents among other things the natural mortal tendency to self-focused, self-interested acts that disregard the good of anyone else. In this regard concepts of laziness, selfishness, arrogance and intolerance, for example, represent an awareness of evil and its impact on their actions.

In my opinion, we, as a Christian society are strongly impacted by our own internal imagery - imagery that began for many of us in childhood. Many of us, as Dr. Marcus Borg has written, have never gotten away from our pre-critical naiveté.

Our Internal Imaginative Spiritual Reality

Among many of us in our generation we tend to imagine that Moses looked like Charlton Heston; that the good versus evil portrayals in Exodus portrayed by Edward G. Robinson, Debra Padgett and Yul Brynner were what it was really like; That 600,000 Israelites walked away from Egypt on a grand camp-out trek. This is part of how our minds and imagination respond when the story of Moses comes up.

Our internal imaginative interpretation of reality is always up, always running and the curtains of our internal stage are always pulled back as we “look and see.”

Most of our internal religious constructs are inherited. What well-meaning but spiritually immature Christians have tended to do is hide behind the more simple acceptance of the myth of an inerrant Bible containing the once-spoken will of a Judgmental God who cannot tolerate sin with any degree of allowance; a god more interested in obedience than experience; a God limited to rewards or punishments as He presides over a conflict with Satan, giving lie to the literality of an Almighty God who cannot tolerate sin and evil with the least degree of allowance.

Sin and evil are present because Satan just keeps on keeping on.

The God of Compassion taught and patterned by Christ contrasts that Old Testament either-or mindset. Realizing the total implication of "the kingdom of God is within you" ought to unleash our willingness to trust the internal sense we have of God's reality. Otherwise, we're left to wait on extra-ordinary external events such as miracles or perceived "divine retribution events" - from which we may then say, "Aha! There is a God. Or God DOES exist."

Exercises:

1. Again to literal thinking: Jehovah of the Old Testament comes across as a mean-spirited, vindictive and judgmental old guy. We are handicapped by more than 2000 years of a Catholic Christian distortion of a Jewish reality already confused and grown lethal by the time Christ came.

Only an imperial, monarchical and remote God who sits apart from humanity but communicates from a distance fits the traditional formal Christian vision of reality. The heirs of Rome bought into that. The Protestant reformers and their heirs bought into that. That kind of remote God operating from a divine and unseen distance is like a mechanic who only maintains and repairs an automobile engine by working through the tail pipe.

a. What do you think are the reasons behind the drastic contrast between the judgmental and punitive God of the Old Testament and the God Jesus preached in the New Testament?

b. The traditional Christian image of God as a judgmental monarch who insists on obedience and responds with reward and punishment has endured now 2000 years. This despite the fact that Jesus’ teachings do not seem to entirely support that image.

Is it mere coincidence that this particular image reflects the Roman pattern of civil governance under which Roman Catholicism became powerful and established as official Christianity? Elaborate.

2. One of the most powerful aspects of linkage between the soul and the mind lies in our power of imagination. Imagination expresses the visual aspect of inner creativity. Imagination, as we are all aware, is not something “spiritual” in the sense of being something “religious”. Yet, imagination is an action of the spirit from within.

Things “imagined” from outside sources are products of those sources, for example, a frightening suspense story where “what might happen” to the hero or heroine roosts solidly imaged in our minds. Plot and well-crafted words of the story trigger our imagination and hold our interest. As we are captured by the story and anxiously turn page after page, it is not the words themselves that drive us, but the images they evoke – images we create from within as prompted by something outside ourselves.

The images created in our minds as we read of the actions taken in the name of God by religious officers over all of these 2000 years will more powerfully evoke feelings than the mere words in historical accounts.

Whether we speak of crusades, inquisitions and witch trials, as contrasted by martyrdoms, incredible acts of faith and sacrifice, of love and devotion, it is the images that provoke feeling. Hollywood movies with images from the life of Jesus or Moses touch us more thoroughly than does film dialogue. Television images of being touched by angels contrasts mightily with news stories of betrayal and hypocrisy at the hands of abusive priests or scandalized evangelists.

a. “’How shall we tell who are the heretics?’ [Amaury’s] now infamous answer undoubtedly expressed the spirit of the Albigensian Crusade. ‘Kill them all, the Lord will know his own.’" -Tobias Churton- The Gnostics .

What sort of internal mental imagery would it take to morally authorize a Catholic cleric to commit murder in the name of God?

b. Do you think this attitude has a connection to the contemporary attitude that authorizes someone to murder an abortion doctor? Elaborate.

c. Fundamentalist doctrines also severely limit perceptions of God, Christ and scripture. To interact with those doctrines, you have to be willing to accept strict and dogmatic statements about who God is, what God does, what God wills, and yes, what God has said - including for some a notion that all that God has said is in the Bible and we need no more than that from God. Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

3. In a fundamentalist sense, life must be a microcosm of the macro-assumption that God is a monarch, rules by edict and an extortive factor that is supposed to be both loving and harsh, simultaneously merciful and judgmental. God’s kingdom is a kingdom of enforceable order So long as we view our world as something strictly ruled by God it will never be a world managed or loved by God in the purest sense of love and parenting.

For me, life as a microcosm of the world managed by God is more reflected in the nature of family. In truth, I came to the understanding I have of God more by fathering and parenting five children than anything ever encountered in a context of religious training, doctrine, sermonizing or patterning.

I learned very painfully what it is to be God-like to very young children - then watch that God-like status wane as they grew older and more independent.

a. Can God be an inflexible monarch and a God of war and a loving parent at the same time? Why or why not?

b. Define what it means to say that God cannot tolerate sin to any degree of allowance.

c. If, as advocates of Old Testament law declare, God’s law demands justice and retaliation ( an eye for an eye revenge), why would an omnipotent God practice such an extreme inflexibility?

d. How would the above question relate to God having the attribute of mercy?

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