Part X Matthew: The Story of the Magi and Their Gifts

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 25 December 2013 3 Comments
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Question

I admitted the loss of my fundamentalist beliefs about a year ago. I was 26. I had no idea at the time that I was a fundamentalist. I thought fundamentalists picketed gay funerals, believed in a young, flat earth and “spoke in tongues.” I told myself that my beliefs (that Jesus somehow bodily became undead, that his body was not the product of natural biology, or that he rocketed into space after he was finished here) were somehow less silly. I hope they were less harmful to others.

Through my journey of doubt, I came upon some of your video lectures online. I also read several of your books and very much enjoyed them.

I am writing to you with two questions. First, although I was enraptured by your willingness to question what I thought were the basic tenets of Christianity, I was frustrated by your insistence on continuing to use the word “God.” I understand that your definition of God is very different from many people’s, but you have also expressed a certain eagerness to rid Christianity of meaningless clichés. Why is God not also a cliché?

Second, whatever disagreements we may have over the nature of God (and I suspect that even if they may be very great, you care very little), our plan of action is the same. Living fully, loving wastefully and being all that we can be seem to me to be a very, very good way to exist in the world today. I am at a loss, however, as to how to interact with others still caught in the trap that I have only just escaped from into exile. My parents and most of my friends still believe those things I cannot. Arguing with them seems an unloving, selfish and destructive thing, yet perhaps because I am young, I strain at the traces to do just that. It is deeply saddening to watch them waste their own lives in fear and confusion and to be separated from them by this divide. Is there no way to engage conservative fundamentalists in a non-destructive, life-giving manner?

 

Answer

Dear Brad,

Thanks for your letter. The journey out of fundamentalism takes many different paths. I appreciate your sharing yours with me.

In regard to your two questions, I use the word ‘God” because I think it, though a human word, points to something that is real. I refuse to let the fundamentalists define God for all people. For me, the word “God” describes not an external divine being, but to an internal human experience of expanded consciousness, heightened transcendence and a sense of “New Being.” God is a presence, something into which I live, not just an idol that I have constructed in my own image. I do believe that the word “God” points to something that human language can never encompass.

Second, it is not my job to convert anyone or everyone to my understanding. I bear witness, I hope, to what I believe by the way I live my life. Part of loving another person is to give them the freedom to process truth and reality at whatever rate they might be able to do so. What is both inappropriate and revealing comes into my awareness when I experience “irritation” because someone has differed with me.

The journey into the mystery of God is a life’s work. The only thing that is ultimately destructive is when you or I or anyone else begins to believe that we have arrived and that now we possess the ultimate and final truth.

Live well.

John Shelby Spong

 

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