Starting a new church isn't easy, particularly when it's an Interfaith church and there's no real roadmap, let alone institutional support.  I'll be meeting soon for the second time with a fine group of committed people to work on starting that new church.  

 

There had been a few bumps this last week.  I'm sure there are more bumps to come.  But I was feeling a bit down when question came to me from a visitor to this website.  It was timely.  It was heart-felt.  And it reminded me why I'm doing this.

 

The question was this.  A fundamentalist friend was insisting that if this person didn't commit to Jesus, there could be no salvation.  The writer wanted to believe in Interfaith, a respect for other traditions.  But how? 

 

Below is my reply.  And since replying I have thrown myself back into the work of starting a new church.

 

Dear    ,

 

You ask an important and difficult question.  And I can understand your feelings, as I have experienced the discomfort of having people I care about who truly felt they had to convince me that their path to God was the only way to salvation.  I can only give you an opinion.  And in an e-mail it must be a somewhat abbreviated opinion.

 

There are, of course, people who are not of good will who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist or whatever.  But here, let us assume that we are talking about good-hearted people of good will.  How can there be, as you say, so many paths to God, with so many people declaring that their path is the only true path?

 

There is an interesting Buddhist story, of four blind people who are introduced to an elephant for the first time.  One feels the tail.  An elephant, this person concludes, is long, tube-like, and thin.  And that IS certainly true from that person’s experience.  Another blind person feels the trunk.  That person agrees that an elephant is indeed long and tube-like, but disagrees that it’s thin.  A third blind person feels the ear, and can’t understand what the other two are talking about.  For this person an elephant is flat and wide, not long and tube-like: thin or not!  The last blind person feels one of the feet of the elephant and questions the perceptions and perhaps even the sanity of the other three.

 

One of the amazing things for me when I was studying to be a minister, was how in a theology class at one moment the professor would talk about how BIG God was, and how mysterious.  And yet the very next moment would come the doctrine.  God is this, but not that. 

 

I believe I have encountered God.  But I recognize that what I have encountered is but a small part of an infinite presence.  Perhaps I have encountered the “ear” of God, while the Christian you talked to has encountered the “trunk.”  It doesn’t make either of us “wrong” unless we insist that what we have encountered is ALL there is to God. 

 

One of the gifts we are given is our mind.  Surely we were meant to use it.  Consider that throughout time, and in all of our religious traditions, what is consistent is that we are called to be compassionate towards one another, to love one another, to “love our neighbor as ourselves.”  This is the consistent theme, whether we are immersed in Judaism, or Islam, or Christianity or any other spiritual path.  THIS has gotten through to us: loud and clear.

 

Yet, three thousand years after Moses, two thousand five hundred years after the Buddha and Confucius, two thousand years after Jesus and fifteen hundred years after Muhammad, we still can’t agree on the “right” way to pray.  Not only this, but Christians  divide into Catholic and Protestant, and Protestants divide into Lutheran and Methodist, and Lutherans divide, etc. etc..  With Judaism it is the same thing (Orthodox, Conservative and Reform to name but three).  With Islam, the same (Sunni, Shi’a and Sufi ).  The same for Buddhism.  And so forth.  This tells me that either God is incompetent, which I do not believe, or that how we pray is up to us!  What is  important is that, whatever our spiritual path, we walk it in love and compassion, reaching out to the stranger and looking out for the hurt and hungry.

 

I have, then, no argument with a Christian who has encountered God through Jesus and the Trinity.  I have no argument with a Muslim who has encountered God through the Qur’an.  I have no argument with a Atheist who has encountered spiritual enlightenment through the Humanist Manifesto.  The question for me is always, “What did you do with it?”

 

You might recall that both Mother Teresa and Tomás de Torquemada (the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition) were believing Catholics.  Both believed in Jesus, and both participated in the Mass regularly.  But one dedicated her life to helping others, and the other dedicated his life to torturing and burning people. 

 

For me, the question is not how have you encountered the sacred?  but rather, having encountered the sacred, what do you do about it?   This is why I became an Interfaith minister.  I strongly believe that no one spiritual path has a lock on the truth.  All spiritual paths can lead us to God, and all spiritual paths can lead us away from God.  For me, the example of Mother Teresa and Tomás de Torquemada shows that.  The question, for me, remains not what path do you walk, but how do you walk your path?

 

Gandhi was Hindu.  Do I think God would do anything other than embrace him? 

 

I’ve just finished writing a book on Interfaith, but it is not yet published.  You might want to read Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki’s book “Divinity and Diversity: A Christian Affirmation of Religious Pluralism.”  She writes of the diversity of paths and says, “But the fact of a variety of revelations in no way lessens the importance of any one.  It is because God adapts revelation to our condition that each form of revelation is of inestimable importance.”

 

I hope this helps.  And thank you for writing.  Making peace, as you put it, with the idea that there are many paths to God, is an important way that our fractured world can begin to heal. 

 

Steven

 

 

Let’s Call An Obscenity What It Is

 

A lot of people got all in a lather over folks in financial companies who drove their companies into the ground only to walk away with multi-million dollar bonuses.  Then people applaud when the government says that those companies which took billions of tax-payer dollars (and still have them) can’t pay multi-million dollar bonuses.

 

Today I’m reading about a worry many financial “experts” seem to have, that a bank or brokerage house can’t keep good workers if they can “only” pay them $250,000!  Why, they ask, should a person accept a paltry quarter of a million a year, when s/he can easily get more than twice that at some other bank or brokerage house?

 

We live in a very sick society, and it’s time to name it.  If this is capitalism, then capitalism is a morally bankrupt and spiritually devoid system.  So where’s the anger? 

 

I’m not talking about the anger over Goldman Sachs which all but destroyed the financial fabric of the country and then rewarded its workers with BILLIONS in compensation.  I’m talking about the anger about a country that lets the greedy flourish while the sick go without care and the hungry starve.

 

Once again, Wall Street isn’t the problem.  Main Street is.  We are the problem.  Our acceptance of the existence of Wall Street as it is, is what makes it all possible.

 

The time has come to call things as they are.  Obscene!  More than that, it is time to do something about it.

 

What can we do? you may ask.  Actually, if the public REALLY got up in arms and demanded it, Congress could remedy the situation with a simple piece of legislation. 

 

Over the last generation, our laws, from tax code to Wall Street regulation has been rewritten to penalize the Middle Class, impoverish the weaker classes, and not only make the wealthy even wealthier but protect them in the life that their wealth makes possible.

 

So what could Congress do?  For a start, how’s this?

 

Keep the tax code where it is for any single taxpayer making half a million a year (that’s $500,000!), and for any family making a million a year.  Ok?  No one’s going to the poorhouse here.

 

For income beyond these amounts, there are no tax exemptions.  None.  No tax shelters.  Whatever income that comes in BEYOND these rather generous amounts cannot be sheltered from tax.

 

If a family makes more than a million but less than five million, it pays 50% of that additional income (the income over a million) in taxes.  A family making more than five million but less that ten million pays 75% of that additional income in taxes.  Make over ten million, and your the tax rate for the excess becomes 90%.

 

With the money that comes in, we can bring down the national debt, give all our citizens health care and completely eliminate hunger in the country.

 

And we won’t have to tell a single Wall Street firm what they can or can’t pay their employees.

 

Now there’s a compassionate capitalism I can live with.

 

To return to the essential question of Genesis … we are our brother’s and sister’s keepers.  As people of faith, it’s time to live it!

 

To return to Iran.  Let us please, not only remember that it has been 125 days since Neda was murdered on the streets of Tehran.  But also the struggle for religious and political freedom that continues there.  Seven of our Baha’i friends are on still on trial for their lives.  And at least one Iranian religious leader is still speaking out.

 

Who Are We, Really?

 

Ok.  So a lot of us are furious that our financial institutions, whose rotten handling of their jobs if not downright malfeasance brought us to the brink of a depression, are now handing out multi-million dollar bonuses to virtually everyone who works for them.  Meanwhile the U.S. has a mountain of debt and we still can’t manage to do anything as civilized as have universal health care for our citizens.

 

Yes, I’m offended at the comment these institutions make, that they MUST hand out these outrageous “bonuses” in order to keep their employees.  If they MUST pay out bonuses, how about multi-billion dollar bonuses back to the U.S. citizens who bailed these turkeys out and who are still suffering from the lash of recession?

 

But this actually begs the point.  Outrage regarding this overkill example of “show me you appreciate me: give me money” doesn’t recognize that as a culture we still allow our lives to revolve around

1) dollars and

2) our capacity to earn them.

 

Our ability to make money determines how well we can eat, if we can eat.  It determines the nature of our health care, if we can afford any.  It determines where we can and can’t send our children to school.  In truth it is no exaggeration that we not only celebrate the dollar but also show how much we value a person by how much we pay that person. 

 

What does it tell us about ourselves that according to what we pay them, sports stars have value, but teachers do not.  CEOs of large corporations have value, but police and firefighters do not.  Movie stars have value, but librarians do not. 

 

Leave aside the insanity of Wall Street.  How can we, as a society, stand by and condone star athletes receiving more, often a hundred times more, than star teachers?  Forget “them.”  Where are our values? 

 

It’s easy to throw rocks at “them.”  But who are we, really?

 

I believe our very definition of “success” is corrupt and poisonous.  I believe none of us can be a success if our neighbor is homeless, or hungry, or cannot get health care. 

 

Moreover, I submit that possessions, glitz, power and so many other things that our culture values are indeed nothing more than distractions.  I would submit that in the end, who we are is all that matters – for who we are is all we ever truly have.  Our possessions are transitory.  Our power is transitory.  Our wealth, if we have it, is transitory.  Who we are is not. 

 

And right now, who we are, as a culture, is nothing to write home about. 

 

That we have a Senate that is trying to figure out the least it can do to “solve” the state of health care in this country is deplorable.  But what is worse is that we refuse to see our own complicity. 

 

This is nothing new.  Jesus told those who would listen, that he would judge how they felt about him by how they treated the poor.  You will find similar thoughts in the Talmud, in the hadith of Mohammed and in so many sacred traditions. 

 

Let us stop ranting about “others.”  What about ourselves?  What are we willing to do to change ourselves?

 

 

REWRITING JESUS

 

I was listening the other day to what some people are calling “socialist” these days, and wondering if those people realized that, according to them, Jesus was a socialist.  So was Moses.  Indeed, virtually every religious and spiritual leader was, again according to how these people seem to reckon, a socialist.

 

Now, it did occur to me that these folk had clearly no idea what “socialism” is.  But let’s take a look at the man who, according to some "conservatives," appears to be the most famous socialist in the history: Jesus of Nazareth. 

 

Jesus calls upon us to attend to the poor and sick.  He tells a rich young man to sell what he has and give it to the poor.  Jesus further states that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.  Jesus wants us to, shudder, share!

 

And what, I wondered, would these self-styled “conservatives” of today do with this socialist Jesus?  Well, yesterday I found out.  They want to re-write Scripture!

 

Don’t believe me? (and it is hard to believe – when I first heard of it I was sure it must be a put-on, some kind of joke)  Go to conservapedia.com.  There it is.

 

There you will find the suggestion that a new and improved “conservative” translation of Scripture would substitute “liberal” for “Pharisee.” 

 

It’s not that Scripture, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, et al, hasn’t be hijacked before by those who didn’t like traditional interpretations.  But this, to me at least, is rather new.  A complete rewrite of Scripture because it just doesn’t fit a political point of view.

 

Our spiritual leaders and our spiritual paths call upon us to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers.  Our Scriptures reinforce this call.  But rather than abide by what our Scriptures, leaders and varying religions call us to: to attend to the weak, the widow, the sick and the hungry, there’s a group among us that have decided the best way around the conundrum is “simply” to rewrite Scripture.  If you want to talk about complete moral bankruptcy, here it is.  If you don’t like what Jesus (and others) call you to, just rewrite the Scripture!

 

I realize this will be seen by some as “revolutionary,” but here’s a thought.   Why not actually follow what our spiritual paths have been begging us to do for centuries.  Why not care for the sick?

 

With this revolutionary thought in mind, I shall close with a plea. 

 

For crying out loud, Congress, pass a health care reform bill that Jesus, Hillel, Mohammed, Black Elk, the Buddha, and so many others who have called us to reach out to “other” could be proud of!

 

 

Eyes to See

 

A few weeks ago something happened that I wanted to write about.  Then other things seemed to take priority.  But this is worth making time for.  The subject?   The joy of sight.

 

I have two members of my UU choir who are blind.  One is completely blind.  The other is “legally blind,” meaning she can still see shapes, and the outline of things that are very large.  These two intrepid and committed singers are always a reminder to me not to take sight for granted.  And I don’t.  And yet …

 

A few weeks ago I was purposely early for a dinner meeting so that I could walk a bit in an area I haven’t been to in years: West Seattle.  As it happens, the day was perfect.  Absolutely clear.  And I happen to love walking near the water, so that’s where I headed.

 

Where I first walked, there was no beach.  But what a vista!  I looked up from the water and there was Mount Baker.  Magnificent.  Huge.  Humbling.  Mount Baker is fair distance north of Seattle.  But today it seemed much closer.  And when I could draw my eyes away from that sight, there was the Space Needle ... just across the water.  Crystal clear, and at this angle dominating the skyline.  Both Baker and the Space Needle were truly breathtaking. 

 

I got back in the car and drove a little further.  Now there was a beach, and people.  And somehow a switch had been turned on in my head.  My eyes were taking in things that might otherwise have gone right by me without notice.  Some beautiful rocks.  Parents with ever-moving children.  Probably the fattest seagull I’d ever witnessed (clearly the folks of West Seattle either feed the seagulls or leave a host of food just sitting around).  I mean, this guy could have played defensive lineman on a football team!  

 

I got back into the car and drove further.  I’d gone as far east as I could and the road now turned south, and as it did, out popped Mount Rainier.  I got out of the car and walked, gazing up at the glorious sight.  But when I turned back towards the car, I discovered a view of the “new” Seattle, the post Space Needle Seattle skyline.  All of the buildings were just across the sound.  All were absolutely clear.

 

I had to tear myself away in order to make my dinner commitment.  But the mind still boggled.  And once I was past the overwhelming beauty and magnificence, the signs of life and of what humanity can do to a skyline, I was struck with how long it had been since I had been treated to such a sight.

 

I remember that day vividly, though it was many years ago.  I took some friends to Orcas Island and we drove to the top of Mount Washington.  It was again, one of those rare but wondrous absolutely clear days.  To the north we could see the Canadian Rockies.  To the east, Mount Baker.  To the south was Mount Rainier.  To the southwest were the Olympics.  All of the sights, stark and stunning on that crisp, clear day.  The snowpack glistening as if it were just beyond touch.  Breathtaking and truly inspiring.

 

And I am moved to wonder.  Sometimes we talk about taking the time to stop and smell the roses.  Perhaps we also need to remind ourselves to stop and truly SEE the roses!

 

We use our eyes every day.  It’s how we keep from stumbling.  It’s how we keep from crashing into the car in front of us.  It’s how we read a newspaper, or catch up with the world on the web.  But how often do we just look and truly see what is around us?  I wonder if it might be helpful to have a sight appreciation day?  The only “downer” was and is realizing how much we have done to the air, to make such clear, crisp vistas so unusual.