The Christian Drama

September 10, 2016

The whole Christian drama makes sense to me. The Biblical Narrative follows the arc of a well-known plot: Paradise…Paradise Lost…Paradise Regained. Another way to state the narrative arc is: Union…Disunion…Reunion. Or this: Wholeness…Brokenness…Healing. So many plays and novels follow the pattern of: (a) Everything is normal—(b) Uh oh, something has gone wrong—(c) But the crisis is overcome. 

I can assert that the Christian story is based on factual events. I can support the historical factuality of the life of Jesus and his resurrection. That is, from the written reports in the Christian Propaganda Book, it all falls into place. An argument can be made that the reports are realistic and not the result of a conspiracy of deception. But when I step outside the theatre of the Christian drama, I look around and see ordinary, daily existence with no reference to any religious or spiritual reality, and I am able to sympathize with people who live without that reference point. An a-theist or a-gnostic feeling about life is one I can enter into without any trouble. I see no God. I see no angels. I see no miracles of the kind reported in Scripture. Two different worlds. One past, one present. One potentially fantasy, the other in-my-face real. The Christian story of the past doesn’t seem to be continuous with life as it is in the 21st century. Yes, there is an institutional continuity through the Church. But the explicit way God spoke and intervened in life in the Biblical narrative is absent in our present experience. So, we metaphoricalize the story. The story continues for us in a metaphorical manner. But doesn’t that seem like a cop out? The real problem is that God never shows up. The emperor has no clothes. 

Whither God? The word “God” connotes a Reality that encompasses the whole shebang. It infers a trust in Life as a moving, labile Process of loving purpose. Evolution is the biological term for the gradual unfolding of the drama of Love. Those of us with a sense of Large Hope might believe that the whole Evolutionary Project is moving toward an Omega Point designated by the symbol of the Kingdom of God in Scripture. We have no way of saying what that will be except in terms of the Biblical values we affirm, such as Love, Reconciliation, Justice, Freedom, etc.

Like the discipline of science, religion has theories—accepted understandings of reality described in spiritual terms. From time to time our religious theories change as we come to understand the need for correction through experience. Therefore, religious beliefs are provisional just as scientific beliefs are. Both are subject to correction. In fact, one of our religious beliefs is that God is always doing something new. (“Behold! I am doing a new thing.”) Therefore, we expect to be surprised. In the Christian story, the Exodus, the return from Exile, and the Resurrection are the Three Great Surprises. All three speak of freedom. A humanizing freedom. The Exodus is freedom from restriction. The Return from Exile is the freedom from alienation. The Resurrection is freedom from non-being. To reframe in a positive mode: The Exodus is the gift of Freedom. The Return is the gift of Home. The Resurrection is the gift of Life. 

If we get hung up on whether the Jew, Jesus, actually came out of the tomb alive after being dead for approximately 50 hours, we miss the point. The continuous life and explosive growth of the early Christian community was inspired and empowered by something. Some would say it had to be some exceptional impetus. They first century writers called it the “resurrection.” Whatever that was, it caused an explosion of love and courage. Something energized those Middle Eastern Jewish companions of Jesus to spread a Way of Life throughout the known world, and that energizing hope continues to this day to spread over the globe.

A question is: If that man came back to life, to live forever, where is he now? Why doesn’t he show up to convince us of this good news? It all sounds like something made up. That’s a question that makes sense to me. That is my question.

This answer might be made: Jesus, a Spirit-filled man, was killed. On Sunday morning he appeared to several people in an esoteric body—like no one had ever seen before. In other words, Jesus wasn’t merely resuscitated, coming back like he was. That is not the report of the gospels. Rather, the report is that he reappeared in a real corporeal form, one in which he could eat fish, for example. But it was a body that could dematerialize and rematerialize. Something that sounds like science fiction to us. But many of our science fictional ideas proposed in written or film material, have actually come about. The resurrected body of Jesus may be one of those “sci-fi” sounding things that really happened—something we will one day understand, but not yet. That is a possibility that can’t be disputed as a possibility.

But that still begs the question: If that really happened, why did he disappear and keep us in the dark? Of course (if it happened) he left witnesses and their reports, but wouldn’t an actual appearance convince us if he wants to convince us? It doesn’t make sense. It’s like the silence of God. If God exists, why doesn’t “he” say something? Even a grunt would do. It all looks good on paper, but in real life it doesn’t pass the sniff test. 

I find it difficult, if not impossible, to let go of a belief in Something or Someone “out there.” The idea of Transcendent reality makes sense to me. In fact, it seems to me that life without transcendence gives only one option which is nihilism—life devoid of meaning. But do we have to have meaning? What would we live “for”? Perhaps the joy of life. Not a philosophical meaning; but an experienced meaning. Meaning as a phenomenon, not a metaphysical reality. The meaning is found in the living. 

If God is the “mind” of the universe, then we are all in the Mind of God. The God-Mind is not material. When we die we continue to be part of the Mind. Our minds keep living in the Mind. God “keeps us in Mind.” Ergo, humans have minds apart from their brains.  

Einstein thought of “God” as the Ordering Principle of the universe. Not a personal God.

If God is Mind, then God can communicate with us, and vice versa. Because minds share ideas and experiences. Prayer, then, is two minds sharing thoughts/experiences. 

If the universe is analogous to a star that is born, burns for a while, then dies, where does thought and empathy come from?

The New Testament Book of Acts does not contain the word “love.”

Some form of the word “kiss” is found about 47 times in the Bible.