The Jesusonian Fellowship: Recent Episodes
The Jesusonian Fellowship
We possess free will. With this endowment comes responsibility and the potential for error, evil, sin and iniquity. Though we are the final arbiters of our own destiny; pre-destination and fore-ordination are reality factors with which we must contend. To put it another way, each child of destiny has the power to accept or reject the divine plan. Whether we achieve our first, best destiny is entirely up to us.
Within our wide range of choices are perfection and imperfection, the mature and the immature, the complete and the incomplete. Between life and death stand the committed and the uncommitted. To every person across a far-flung universe of universes, Our Creator's message is consistent; "I set before you life and death, therefore choose life."
The first point of law is life. We are, first and foremost, commanded to live. Evil is more than just a reverse spelling. It runs contrary to survival. Now we often have problems thrust upon us or difficulty letting go of certain things, attitudes, and patterns of thought that tend to eclipse or impair a full and fruitful life. Figuring out what's good and what's evil is part of the growth process, right? Is experience a necessary part of life? Yes! Is there the potential for error? Yes! Are you responsible for your decisions? Of course! Are you unjustly held accountable for the sins of your forebears or everything that goes wrong in your life? Hardly!
In the seventeenth chapter of Genesis it is written: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said; I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.” Although we can hardly hope to attain perfection in the infinite sense, it is entirely possible for us to fit perfectly into our highest and best destiny, to attain all that God has set before us. When we achieve this, in accordance with His will, we will be just as replete in our finite domain as God himself is in his sphere of infinity and eternity. We may not be universal, unlimited in intellectual insight, or final in any spiritual sense, but God is working right now to perfect our motivation, and our understanding of his will for us.
We live in a strife-torn world. And honing our effectiveness when the situation demands articulation in matters of faith and a world of competing ideas, is essential if we are to fulfill our ministerial obligations. Perfection in life temporal is a progressive attainment; and this applies to discernment and perception. God reveals himself to us in accordance with our capacity to behold him. Because we each minister within our own sphere of influence, it is important to see that world and its proper context within God’s Universe of Universes.
As we blow through our circumscribed world view and challenge each other’s assumptions, we become better positioned to explore the notion of adjusting to Infinity and Eternity. We are ambassadors of an Infinite and Eternal Heavenly Kingdom operating on an isolated, temporal, finite, rebellion torn world. Our understanding of this world and its people is crucial to our success.
When realities are meaningful, we develop an appreciative consciousness of values. When relationships are recognized and appreciated, we grow individually, socially, and spiritually. Our most closely held values are ideally cultivated within the context of personal experience thriough relationships.
William Glasser was an American psychiatrist. His theories were arrayed largely in opposition to conventional mainstream psychiatry. Where the prevailing tradition was to focus on classifying psychiatric syndromes as "illnesses" and prescribe psychotropic medications to treat mental disorders, Glasser believed that people sometimes process their frustrations in unhealthy ways, acting out due to a lack of any meaningful personal connection with the most important people in their lives.
Glasser's emphasis was on education and in developing frameworks for finding and following healthy therapeutic direction. After being thrown off the staff at a VA hospital due to his anti-Freudian beliefs, He worked as a staff psychiatrist at a school for delinquent youth. There he developed many of the ideas that became the basis for what he called reality therapy. He authored and co-authored many influential books on mental health, counseling, school improvement, and teaching.
At the heart of Reality Therapy is Control Theory, and the latter is how Glasser often referred to his body of work. By 1996, the theoretical structure evolved into a more comprehensive methodology and it was renamed Choice Theory. From the very beginning, reality therapy, emphasized the present. The goals are to change current behavior, improve relationships, and thereby address the prevailing mental health conditions. Glasser believed that disconnects, from others, are at the core of the unhappiness that ensues, a person's general dissatisfaction with life, and sometimes a variety of physical symptoms, including chemical imbalances.
There are those among us that have been unable to tell the difference between that liberty, as enjoyed by the truly faithful, and the license that is sometimes sold as liberty. To be sure, any so-called liberty that is exercised in ways that works to the detriment of others is not genuine and contrary to what Jesus taught and exemplified. Stoking anger, resentment, and a sense of entitlement is easy. Backbiting, while offering no clearly articulated vision for a future of light and life is also easy.
Leveraging the FIBS of Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear as used by integrity challenged politicians is only an effective technique when the consumer is unquestioning. Fear is an unworthy motivator for a person of faith. There is no excuse for ignorance with such diversity in the way information is gathered and delivered. Bigotry has always been rooted in delusions of superiority and an exaggerated sense of self-importance. And smear? What excuse is there for someone who professes love and an allegiance to the things our Heavenly Father holds dear?
We must ask ourselves, just what is it that any true parent holds dear? It is that we all cherish our children's future. The likelihood that anything resembling a bright future will be brought about by militant factions is just about zilch. Jesus made it clear that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Even so, those cherrypicking the words of his followers can usually find some phrasing, in some interpretation, through some translation of the bible, to justify leading with an AR-15. Are such people faithful representatives of the good news? Or are they selfishly setting themselves up as the arbiters of your destiny?
Jesus said: “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus loved all of humanity. Those who would convert the flock into their own club of self-righteous exclusivity, those who aim to do a makeover and thereby shrink the Kingdom of God to fit their nationalist, sexist, and racist ideology, and those who think hate mongering is somehow compatible with our rebirth into the Family of God, are indeed fortunate that Our Father is a Person who bestows unmerited favor upon all of his children.
In his second epistle to the various Churches in Asia Minor, Peter writes: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” In Genesis we read: On the first day He said “Let there be light,” and there was light. On the second day God separated the water under the vault from the water above it. On the third say he let the ground appear and the land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit, with seed in it, according to their kinds.
On the fourth day God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. On the fifth day God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.
On the sixth day God created mankind in his own image, male and female. He said “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Now I've summarized these passages to underscore that there was a sequence, these were “days” of epochal significance, Genesis was prose for creativity over time.
Now in light of this I must say that it frosts my petunias whenever I hear any debate, between believers and non-believers framed as one of Creation versus Evolution. That clearly suggests a misunderstanding of just what is meant by the word 'evolution'. In Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, evolution was defined, in the 1828 edition, as a noun stemming from the Latin term evolutio, which meant "The act of unfolding or unrolling." In the very first definition offered, he wrote "A series of things unrolled or unfolded; as the evolution of ages."
I recently read an article by Valerie Tarico, a psychologist and writer who describes herself as having “a passion for personal and social evolution.” It was written for people she describes as having left biblical Christianity behind. She suggested “that popular Christian versions of heaven would actually be hellish.” I must admit, I have never really liked the idea of sitting on a damp cloud strumming on a four string harp. But, I also never entertained such childish notions with respect to the afterlife.
Tarico refers to her intended readers as “recovering believers” and, while the article zeroes in on Bible-belief and fundie culture, it never ventures beyond the secular context. It's one thing to rail against the control freakery characters that enjoy excessive prominence within the context of religious authoritarianism. It's quite another to understand the larger reality that may not have even been discerned by those who have traded the Word made flesh for the Word made book. Jesus never promised more holy books or more layers of hierarchical ecclesiastical authority. In fact, the Promised Helper Jesus spoke of is not material but rather The Spirit of Truth that will lead us into all truth.
Psychology is also not pseudo-science. Although the most disciplined working within the hard sciences, consider psychology to be the softest of the soft sciences. This is likely because of subjective interpretations by the observer, together with selectivity as it relates to relevant facts. There is no denying that the Tarico article carries a lot of her personal experience, with fundamentalism, into the analysis. And, to be sure, she has also shared valuable insights from which we can all learn.
There is a crater on the moon named after William Francis Gray Swann. He is widely recognized for his research into cosmic rays and high-energy physics. His book, The Architecture of the Universe, was published in 1934. In that seminal work Swann, referring to chemical elements, made the statement:
Starting from any one of them, and noting some property such as the melting point, for example, the property would change as we went along the row, but as we continued it would gradually come back to the condition very similar to that which we started ... The eighth element was in many respects like the first, the ninth like the second, the tenth like the third, and so on. Such a slate of affairs point[s] not only to a varied internal structure, but also to a certain harmony in that variation suggestive of some organized plan in building the atom.
The uniqueness of the individual elements and the recurring features that Swann describes are similar to the way our seven note diatonic scale plays out within our musical heritage, together with seven named colors of the rainbow. Of course there are other ways to segment a musical scale and the colors of the rainbow are clearly in the eye of the beholder. The naturally occurring and recurring relationships in chemistry and those that can be attributed to human preference may be worlds apart. But, why do we have such an affinity for sevens?
At about 10 years of age Cub Scouts enter into a pact summed up by the acronym WEBELOS which unpacked stands for We'll Be Loyal Scouts. Fourth grade boys work toward a Webelos Badge, while Fifth Graders work toward what's called an Arrow of Light badge. These older Scouts carry the responsibility of being good role models to the younger Cub Scouts. The seven rays of the highly symbolic Arrow of Light represent wisdom, courage, self-control, justice, faith, hope, and love.
In Hong Kong, the Brownie Promise contains the words I will promise to do my best, – To be true to myself, – To my God, and my country. In Singapore they say I promise to do my best, – To do my duty to God, – To serve my country, – And to help other people, and to Keep the Brownie Law.
In Canada the girls will say: I promise to do my best, To be true to myself, my beliefs and Canada, I will take action for a better world. In that country an earlier promise contained the line I promise that I will do my best to love God. In the United Kingdom the girls say: I promise that I will do my best – To be true to myself and develop my beliefs, To serve the Queen and my community. Before September in 2013 they said I promise that I will do my best To love my god. . .
A yoke originally referred to a wooden frame. It could be fitted to a person's shoulders to help them carry a load in two equal portions. It was used to join two animals, such as oxen, to help them work together. It refers to the bar, at the end of a wagon's tongue, that is suspended from the collars of the team's harness. It can be the frame from which a bell is hung or a crosspiece on the head of a boat's rudder. it was also an arched device clamped about the neck of a defeated person when the authorities wanted to subject someone to conspicuous ridicule, scorn, or indignity.
The control wheel and column used by aviators is also called a yoke. It is used to control the plane's elevators and ailerons to effect movement about the pitch and roll axis. Throughout history, the yoke has been a device for doing work whether it involved multiplying foot-pounds, incentivizing man or beast to fall in line, or some other means of directional control.
When Jesus said “follow me,” he coupled it with the statement “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This is definitely welcome news for anyone that's tired of getting yanked around. When God gave his son, we beheld this gentle giant of a man as the best possible example for leadership. We are fond of saying that the best leaders lead by example. And, one of the foremost qualities of a leader is that they are driven. They're not driven like beasts of burden that are pushed but they are drawn to achieve something.
One of my favorite TV characters was the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live. Her facial expression had all the warmth of a descending hatchet and appeared as though it was ultimately achieved through a lifetime of sucking on green persimmons. To many of us, enthusiastic about matters of faith, she represented an outmoded type of churchianity that was, not only amusing but, wholly foreign to us. It was simply unattractive as its adherents slavishly sought to suppress their innermost desires while attempting to obey and conform to rules of living that only made life more burdensome.
By contrast, the Gospel of Jesus strengthens us through the constant spiritual renewing of our minds and hearts. As we become increasingly responsive to Divine Leading by the Spirit of Truth, our inner soul transforms us, much like the small amount of leavening by which the whole loaf becomes leavened. When we are endowed with the power to advance the perfect will of God, we experience a new way of living that is joyous, gracious and, most importantly, acceptable in his sight.