Status Updates From AARP Falling Upward: A Spir...

The terms Heaven & Hell refer firstly to PRESENT experiences. Heaven is a state of union both here & later- everyone is in Heaven when they have plenty of room for communion & no need for exclusion. The more we exclude the more hellish & lonely our existence is. No one is in hell unless they choose a final aloneness & separation. It ends up being about desire; we get what we wish for-‘on Earth as it is in Heaven’

Jesus says we must become like a little child (Matt. 18:3) in response to the egotistical and ambitious question of the apostles (“Who among us is the greatest?”). We may be surprised & disappointed by what it means that our faith is “built on the faith of the apostles”- they barely ever got the point and seem as thoroughly foolish as we are. But God still used them- like us, they were little children too.

“It is the whole of nature, extending from the beginning to the end, that constitutes the one image of God Who Is.”
-St. Gregory of Nyssa (330-395), “On the Creation of Man”

We are created with an inner drive & restlessness that sends all of us looking for true self (whether we know it or not)- on to the risks & promises of a second half of life. Numbing addictions & mindless distractions are the real sins- the shape of evil is SUPERFICIALITY rather than cliché ‘hot sins’. God is found in the DEPTHS of things (even of our fallings/failures). Sin is to stay on the surface of things.

Jesus’s talk of “losing your life” to save it (Matt.16:25) can be thought of as losing the false self. Your false self is your role, title, & personal image- largely a creation of your own mind & attachments. It will & must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real. Such necessary suffering will always feel like dying, which topic (dying) should be addressed by spiritual teachers- if they are good.

When Jesus talks about “hating” family (Luke 14:26), he is undoing the 4th commandment (which is necessary for the 1st half of life). Many people are kept from mature religion because of the pious, immature or rigid expectations of their first-half-of-life family. It takes a huge push, self-doubt & some degree of separation for people to find their own soul/destiny apart from what Mom & Dad wanted them to be/do.

So the church is both my greatest intellectual & moral problem, and my most consoling Home. She is both pathetic whore, and frequent bride. In a sense the church itself is the next cross that Jesus is crucified on, as we limit, mangle, and try to control the always too-big message. All the churches seem to crucify Jesus again & again by their inability to receive his whole body, but they often resurrect him too.

Carl Jung believed that so much unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the ‘legitimate suffering’ that comes from being human. He wrote that neurotic behavior is usually the result of refusing that legitimate suffering. Ironically, this refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person 10 times more suffering in the long run.

Spiritually speaking, you will be, you must be, led to the edge of your own private resources. At that point, you will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone (as Isaiah 8:14 calls it)- you will, and you must ‘lose’ at something. This is the only way that Life-Fate-God-Grace-Mystery can get you to change, let go of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further & larger journey.

The Hebrew scriptures (full of stories of destiny, failure, sin, & grace offer) almost no self evident philosophical or theological conclusions that are always true. There is not one clear theology of God, Jesus, or history presented, despite our attempt to pretend there is. The only consistent pattern (Richard) can find is that the books of the Bible seem to agree that somehow God is with us, and we are not alone.

The genius of the biblical revelation is that it refuses to deny the dark side of things, but forgives failure & integrates falling to achieve wholeness. Salvation & sin are correlates; salvation is not sin perfectly avoided as the ego would prefer. Salvation is sin turned on its head & used in our favor. This is how transformative divine love is. If this is not the pattern, what hope is there for 99.9% of the world?

“Remember that church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus” (Richard’s professor of church history)- meaning that we prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust & resolves every question – even when it is not entirely true – over the mercy & grace of God. We have been formed by a Newtonian worldview where everything has a clear cause & equal effect: “if-then”

Truth is not always pragmatic problem-solving and making things work, but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either. Life is inherently tragic, and that is the truth that only faith, but not our seeming logic, can accept.
(Philosopher Unamuno)

St. John of the Cross taught that God has to work in the soul in secret & darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what God/Grace/Mystery would eventually ask of us, we would try to take charge or stop the whole process! No one oversees their own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying. The Mystics tell us that God has to undo our illusions secretly when we are not watching.

Our inner loyal soldier gets us through the 1st half of life safely, teaching us caution, impulse control, the sacred ‘No’ that gives us identity, direction & boundaries. Without it we would be aimless & shapeless, with no homebase or ‘Me’ to have a relationship with. Its voice is that of all our early authority figures, & may contain shame/guilt/warnings/self-doubt. It cannot get us to the 2nd half of life.