When Marcus Borg visited us two weeks ago, he and I enjoyed some lengthy one-on-one conversations. We fell into talking about spiritual practices. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Professor Borg, he is the author of one novel and 19 scholarly nonfiction books about Jesus, the New Testament, and the heart and language of Christianity. His understanding of Christianity is that it is not about being rewarded with heaven or hell because you believe or don’t believe the right things about Jesus and God. Christianity certainly is not about God sending Jesus to earth to be executed on the cross as some kind of cosmic payment for the sin of humanity. God doesn’t need a sacrificial pay-off as some satisfaction to cool down divine wrath, as if God had an anger management problem. God’s nature, power, and love are to forgive freely. That’s the nature of grace – forgiveness freely given. God is too big to have neurotic issues with anger and punishment. So believing a set of beliefs is not the road to wholeness or salvation. In fact according to Marcus Borg, before the year 1600 the verb “to believe” did not mean to believe something to be true. The object of the verb was not an idea, statement or a theory, but a person. To say that we believed someone meant that we trusted them, felt loyal to them and loved them. Borg says, “Most simply, to believe meant to belove,” as in We belove (or trust in or feel loyal to) one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible…. Or, “for God so loved the world that God gave the only-begotten Son so that whosoever beloved in him would have everlasting life.” That’s a very different matter than believing a set of beliefs about Jesus. It is actually about beloving – loving Jesus. And all of us know that whenever you and I do something out of love instead of fear we have immediately suspended the limits of space and time and are already, now, in eternity. You want to do something eternal? You want to live in eternity? Base your life and practices on love and love’s expressions, and you have already passed from death to life – so says the Bible. Marcus Borg and I were at Denny’s in Arcadia (don’t ask how we wound up there) eating bagels with extra cream cheese (Borg) and a spinach omelet (me), talking about spiritual practices through which Marcus and I try to practice in real life how we belove or love God—how we participate in the resurrection in our daily lives. The way Marcus Borg thinks, Beliefs are less important than Practice or Participation in God’s inexhaustible ever-flowing love for us and everyone else. The heart of Christianity is participating in that flow of love. We covered morning meditation, prayer and meditative reading. We spoke about faithful and prayerful political action. Then we fell into a surprising conversation about how to treat strangers. Marcus told me of a common friend of ours who travels a great deal. When she is waiting in a plane terminal, she makes a point of looking at people individually and blessing them. I described a practice of smiling at everyone as a way of eliciting a smile back and noting that when a frowning person returns my smile it is as if that face is transfigured and returns to the rather child-like attractiveness it must have had as a child. The individual becomes 5 or 10 or 15 years younger. Since then I have begun thinking about the phrase, “Seeing someone in their [the] best light.” There’s something about having a relationship in which the other person always sees you in the best light – not in a false light and certainly not without your faults, but in a way that frames all your choices in their best light. When that happens something changes. I want to do better in the face of someone who sees me in my best light. In fact I do do better. And when I as a spiritual practice – as a way of participating in Jesus’ Resurrected Life and Way of Being – put absolutely everyone in their best light, I see the world very differently. Im not talking about having a Pollyanna view of someone or being blind to the world’s oppression, bigotry, and addiction to war and guns. My perspective is still realistic about the reality of evil. But putting individuals in their best light is an effort to participate in the loveliness that God created in every person. That is resurrection, my friends—coming to a new realization about the meaning of your life because you have the light of unquenchable love in your core. Marcus Borg argues that the heart of Christianity is about practice and participation not about believing a set of orthodox beliefs about the empty tomb. https://youtube/watch?v=TfnNaU46Tqw&feature=youtu.be
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 08:01:58 +0000
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