Christianity/Peace

Going Pentecostal II

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

If only Pentecost hadn’t been so fleeting, and so quickly misunderstood and misused….can you imagine? Is it too late to re-understand it, and get it right, re-understand all of what happened in that part of the world back then, and experience it as a positive rather than negative force in the world? (A comment on yesterday’s post)

Never too late…we have recent examples and living examples of Pentecost–people. Every generation is responsible to remember, relearn and rehearse the spirit of Pentecost.

togethernessEven Peter had to relearn the meaning of his own blazing experience. He was given a dream.The contents of heaven were lowered to earth in a sheet and inside he saw all the different species of animals mingled together-in his world the unclean with the clean. It was a reoccurring dream that finally ended with Peter’s face to face receiving of someone culturally, historically, and religiously outside of his circle.

Of this Peter explains, "You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean."

This was Peter’s time to stand beside his new friend, elated, barely comprehending the revolutionary beauty and possibility of his inclusive act.

Pentecost envisions universal restoration. Pentecost is the dream of togetherness, the dream of the sacredness of all things.

But your right, it is still largely a dream in-waiting. We’ve read the stories but we really haven’t been possessed by them. We still prefer the neat divisions of us and them because it’s easier to be over and above than to love. Easier to manufacture division than to merge with differences and work creatively within them.

It is achingly hard to find our meaning beyond divisions because from childhood we have been candle-dipped in ways of pegging others and identifying with any inside group. Some of us even call this a gift of discernment. Thinking it a skill valuable for staying on the righteous side of some line.

The manufacturing of division pretends to give us meaning. But the story of Pentecost gives us our meaning in love, in inclusion, in beauty, in seeing the earth, our world, as sacred, as one.

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Christianity/Peace

Going Pentecostal

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

I like to keep track of the liturgical calendar and so I’m thinking Pentecostal this week. This Sunday is Pentecost. It marks the end of the Easter season and the beginning of what’s curiously called "ordinary time." The time, I suppose, when nothing extraordinary happens.

But in thinking about Pentecost the first thing that came was a particular stripe of Christianity and a particular way of being a Christian. And I’m reminded of larger and deeper divisions. The many divisions within protestant Christianity, the greater division of Catholic and Protestant, the division of world faith traditions, and finally the divisions of holy and profane.

Brueghel’s Babel
brueghels babel

And all this reminded me of a knack I had for sorting out the “true Christians” from the non-Christians, or the "carnal-Christians," or the straight up pagans, or for that matter, anyone other than Baptist.

It’s a knack I learned early through a kind of osmosis while growing up in a small town with a big church. But I was willing enough. The knack we sometimes had the gall to call, the gift of discernement.

My discernment, through opening up to other osmotic sources, has undergone some adjustment. (I’m hoping perhaps even a reverse osmosis from my early one.)

I know now for instance, that Pentecost is not a denomination. Pentecost is the story of the undoing of all the hard divisions along these lines.

While the ancient story of the Tower of Babel describes a world fractured through misunderstanding, and scattered by subsequent tribal wars and blood-feuds, Pentecost, rightly read, is the radical coming together of the broken and the undoing of confusion and misunderstanding.

And in this mutual understanding lies the Pentecostal dream and vision of universal restoration. And this is the direction life in "ordinary time" should take us.

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Beauty

Graffiti I Love

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Yesterday we walked across the High Level bridge. At the south end we saw this bit of graffiti on a warning reflector.

Listen

And we did…listen. And just beyond the bridge as we entered the lane bordered by thick spring green caraganas, the traffic quelled and the robins sang.

I listened through the day. Listened to the excited chatter in Starbucks on White. Listened to the quiet shuffle and rustle of feet and pages in the used book store across the street.

And on the way home I listened to the creaks and groans of Edmonton’s old trolley car. I listened to clack of iron wheels on the steel rail joints.

And I listened to the little girl dressed in a Captain Hook costume, unable to contain information as to why. She was off to a birthday party with costumes.

I listened to the streetcar’s stooped ticket master who was full of history and loved the old trolley–this being the opening weekend for another season of crossings–who was telling us all about the car and the bridge as we crossed back over. But who stoped and took time to listen to the little girl’s story, twice.

conductor listens

And this morning as I walk for coffee, the grey of yesterday’s day-long cloud cover lifted and I’m rewarded by more graffiti. The graffiti of reflected light.

Light on brick

Light poetry.

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Christianity/Religion/Spirituality

Atheists just ask for proof

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

cover600span

In a somewhat biting but entertaining bit of writing, "New Atheists" just asking for proof, God," Dan Gardner takes the authority of Dawkins and challenges all comers. And outside of some misguided understanding about scriptural interpretation he makes some fine points concluding with this:

But just what is the core of Dawkins’ radical message? Well, it goes something like this: If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

As the ensuing letters to the editor attested, Gardner’s article managed to twist the noses of a few Christians.

But, now, the first thing a theist might ask regarding "New Atheists" just asking for proof," is why does the burden of proof fall entirely on the side of God’s existence. Isn’t it reasonable to ask for a shared burden? In the realm of origins, is it really out-of-bounds to ask an atheist to consider proving the non-existence of God?

This brings up what I see as a critical issue. In my view, (certainly not mine alone) asking for proof of God from within the realm of science, as atheists would have theists do, amounts to something like asking for proof of the Big Bang. (Most, if not all atheists hypothesize a Big Bang.) Neither God nor the Big Bang can be observed, measured, repeated, or shown to be false, therefore they are outside the realm of science.

For Dawkins however, there is nothing outside the physical, so he’s not being dishonest or objectionable when he asserts, “the presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question.” But how does that work? I could as easily assert that it is unequivocally a metaphysical question. Because, what possible observable, measurable, repeatable evidence could verify or falsify the God hypothesis? The question of why there is something and not nothing is simply not answerable by science.

And that’s the rub. Science and faith are two different species (not my analogy). Of course when two different species mate they produce a hybrid which is almost always infertile. The attempted mating of religion and science has produced many mules. But once in awhile, just as in evolution, the offspring is fertile. I think Kenneth R. Miller, a leading micro-biologist and an admirer of Dawkins, is providing some fertile ground.

Miller was a critical witness in the victory of evolution over Intelligent Design in the Dover school trial. He is categorically an evolutionist. For Miller Intelligent Design is dressed up Creationism. For Miller evolution is not only theory, it is also science, tried, tested, with a host of verifiable scientific conclusions.

Now, what you can do from evolution is draw anti-theistic conclusions. That’s legitimate. And that’s what Dawkins does. And Dawkins is no fool. But it’s also legitimate to draw theistic conclusions from evolution. That is, that something beyond the physical is being pointed to. This is what Miller does. Miller is no fool either. His evolutionary biology squares with Dawkins’. But he is also a devout Catholic Christian.

I believe Miller would say that there is something called mystery. And not mystery in the sense that we just haven’t figured it out yet, but mystery as inhered presence.

So until mystery is banished I am not foolish for drawing a something-beyond-the-physical conclusion. And obviously I’m not alone. If the mystery i.e. religious impulse is an evolutionary modul of our make up, then so is the scientific impulse. They can and should live in harmony.

In the mean time, the mystery that I believe I have existentially experienced, hand in hand with the rationality bequeathed by my scientific culture, seems to be pointing me toward mercy and love and peace in the acceptance of the commonality of all things.

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