Dear Friends,
We change our understanding of Bible and theology as we gain more experience. The Lutheran congregation where I grew up was pietistic and fundamentalist. I trembled as I approached the altar for communion. There was no doubt that God created the world in seven, twenty-four hour days, and that heaven was up and hell was down. In seminary, the theology professor relied on Franz Pieper’s four volume Christian Dogmatics which seemed rigid and dogmatic. But, I did my best to articulate the traditional teachings at the mission congregation in Maine.
Then came a longish period when Bible and theology seemed largely irrelevant to larger societal events. Neither gave clear, detailed, policy answers to the pressing problems of racism, sexism, homophobia and the great social issues of the day whereas it was very clear that people counted and their pain was real. In the early 1970s Black, Latin American liberation theology and emerging feminist theology provided new hope because they talked about empowerment for the neglected and the alleviation of their suffering. But, these views were mostly marginalized in seminaries and congregations.
Subsequently, I came to view many of the texts as evocative metaphors rather than literal events, stories of faith, not history, and the Bible became more relevant again. For example, biblical scholars think the resurrection story is more an affirmation that life is stronger than death than a literal description of Jesus physically rising from the dead.
Take another example: heaven. If Jesus ascended into heaven on Ascension Day, exactly where “up there” is that from the viewpoint of a round planet? Jon Meacham’s “Heaven Can’t Wait: Why rethinking the hereafter could make the world a better place” argues that for many people, especially in the affluent West, notions of heaven are changing (Time, April 16).
He writes that scholarly definitions have shifted from pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye to a “redefinition of heaven as a manifestation of God’s love on earth. . . . Heaven thus becomes, for now, the reality one creates in the service of the poor, the sick, the enslaved, the oppressed. It is not paradise in the sky, but acts of selflessness and love that bring God’s sacred space and grace to a broken world suffused with tragedy until … the unknown hour when the world we struggle to piece together is made whole again.” This view doesn’t deny an afterlife, but emphasizes the here instead of the hereafter; emphasizes creating as much heaven on earth as possible, now.
What if we, nonetheless, need magical, non-empirical, thinking to cope with life’s challenges. A Scientific American article (Oct.19, 2010), suggests that magical thinking works for some people, e.g. if you think a golf ball is lucky, you are likely to do better on the course. Perhaps we do need a certain amount of magical religious thinking, e.g. the idea that God has a specific plan for our individual lives, or that when I talk to my deceased father, he can hear me. I don’t know whether he can or not, but I hear him because his voice is inside me.
Bottom line? Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, not only with your God, but your ideas of God. But, keep walking on “The Way” (as Christianity was first called).
Peace,
Pastor Hoehn
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