Yesterday, a friend of a muslim told me this story about Christmas. This devout muslim said, that they respected Christmas more than many Christians. They told a story, that they were at a office Christmas party and people were openly disrespecting Jesus Christ and the story of Christmas. The muslim asked 3 times if the Christians would quit because they looked upon Jesus as a great prophet. After the third time they left because in their religion they would not tollerate such mistreatment of the memory of a prophet.
Many times we forget that other religions respect Christmas also. Think of all the wars that have experienced a lull because of christmas. Aren't we happy when another religion decides to slow down its agression because of a holy day that we don't understand. For many Christians it goes way beyond that we find ways to be a blessing to people of all faiths and even those who have no faith. I believe Christmas transends religion. And I believe it happens all over the globe every single year. What are your thoughts?
Friday, December 14, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Soren Kierkegard and Meta Religion
"Don't suppose for a minute that I ahve come to demolish the Scriptures - either God's Law or the Prophets. I'm not her to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama."
Matthew 5:17 The message Bible remix
Soren Kierkegard (1813-1855) is thought of today by many as the Father of Existentialism. He began life as the son of a very religious father who was bitter against God and the state run church. He wrote what would be an equivelent of a PhD dissertation on The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. I have great interest in this as my son's masters thesis at the University of Iowa is on Plato's antagonism to the use of Irony and is a written creative dialogue of several contradictory voices analysing modernity. There are many illustrive ideas in the journals and many writings of Kierkegard. I have been reading his works on Love. Something that is very interesting since he had such a struggle in this area. He fell in love with an beautiful intelligent 18 year old girl named Regina. They became engaged but he was such a thinker and a natural meloncholy person who also believed that his life was cursed by God because of the sins of his father that he knew that he would bring nothng but pain to the love of his life. After much thought and anguish he decided to break off the engagement and to help her save honor by spreading the word that she had broken up with him because of his unfaithfulness. He wrote about this under one of his many pseudonyms telling the story and having it end in the philosphers suicide. When he found out that she became engaged to a prominent person in copenhagen social life he changed the ending to this being the reason or muse for the philophers success. Later in life he asked her husband for permission to speak to her and he was denied but he loved her until the end of his life and left everything in his will to her. Kierkegaard was a great critic of organized Christianity which brings us to his point of discussion in looking at Meta Religion. Christianity which transends religion. He did write about faith becoming personal as more important than universal and he discussed the concept of a leap of faith which he believed applied to faith in God and love. Even in all of his criticism of organized Christianity he said, "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." (written August 1, 1835 from the Journals of Soren Kierkegaard) Some of the main points of his attacks on Christianity were:
*Church congregations are meaningless: The idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsiblity for their own relation to God. Kierkegaard stresses that Christianity is the individual, here, the single individual.
To me this runs contradictory to both scriptural christianity and historic christianity. It is understandable when people are kept in a state of dependence on a leader and they never discover and use thier gifts - work collaboratively or agree to disagree. If the local church is not a conversation of disagreement and unity than it is exactly what Kierkegaard is talking about.
*Christianity has become secularized and political.
If Christianity is nothing more than a religious political party and the political lines must be inforced than it becomes meaningless as a personal faith and a relational journey with a living God and a thinking individual.
*Christianity has become an empty religion. Thus it reduces faith to fashionable agreement. This is nothing more than another religion for what he calls philistines who do not what to think or are not bold enough to be themselves.
Attacking the incompetence and corruption of Christian churches. Kierkegaard seemed to have anticipated philosophers like Nietzche who would go on and criticize the Christian religion. of course Adorno disagreed with his philosophy and considered it the most irreesponsible ever and that he is incoherent and incomprehensible. Sarte in being and nothingness attacks Kierkegaards faith as a point to attack the existence of God at all.
Kierkegaard regards life as spheres. There is a civic life which includes marriage, career and social responsiblity, A religious life with involves conforming to social norms. An ethical life as not just a strategy to escape pressure from boredom and dispair but everything tha trelates to the eternal. Then their is the aesthete. A peson may be an aesthete who is trying to live in the religious sphere and it is not working. Or they may be civic person who is trying to live as an aesthete and that is not working. Each individual life cannot be viewed from the outside as was the mission of philosphy and religion.
While this seems to leave one in boredom and dispair as Kierkegaard points out to me genuine meta faith which transends religion must become aboslutly authentic. If God is there he will show himself to the honest searcher. We only need to open our eyes and be authentic in our journey. God is not afraid of our doubts or questions because you can not have faith without first doubting and you cannot find an answer without first a question. And I think all of us would agree that religion as a noun has many that are simply conforming when faith can become personal and authentic when we discover a personal relationship with the living God. What are your thoughts?
Matthew 5:17 The message Bible remix
Soren Kierkegard (1813-1855) is thought of today by many as the Father of Existentialism. He began life as the son of a very religious father who was bitter against God and the state run church. He wrote what would be an equivelent of a PhD dissertation on The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. I have great interest in this as my son's masters thesis at the University of Iowa is on Plato's antagonism to the use of Irony and is a written creative dialogue of several contradictory voices analysing modernity. There are many illustrive ideas in the journals and many writings of Kierkegard. I have been reading his works on Love. Something that is very interesting since he had such a struggle in this area. He fell in love with an beautiful intelligent 18 year old girl named Regina. They became engaged but he was such a thinker and a natural meloncholy person who also believed that his life was cursed by God because of the sins of his father that he knew that he would bring nothng but pain to the love of his life. After much thought and anguish he decided to break off the engagement and to help her save honor by spreading the word that she had broken up with him because of his unfaithfulness. He wrote about this under one of his many pseudonyms telling the story and having it end in the philosphers suicide. When he found out that she became engaged to a prominent person in copenhagen social life he changed the ending to this being the reason or muse for the philophers success. Later in life he asked her husband for permission to speak to her and he was denied but he loved her until the end of his life and left everything in his will to her. Kierkegaard was a great critic of organized Christianity which brings us to his point of discussion in looking at Meta Religion. Christianity which transends religion. He did write about faith becoming personal as more important than universal and he discussed the concept of a leap of faith which he believed applied to faith in God and love. Even in all of his criticism of organized Christianity he said, "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." (written August 1, 1835 from the Journals of Soren Kierkegaard) Some of the main points of his attacks on Christianity were:
*Church congregations are meaningless: The idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsiblity for their own relation to God. Kierkegaard stresses that Christianity is the individual, here, the single individual.
To me this runs contradictory to both scriptural christianity and historic christianity. It is understandable when people are kept in a state of dependence on a leader and they never discover and use thier gifts - work collaboratively or agree to disagree. If the local church is not a conversation of disagreement and unity than it is exactly what Kierkegaard is talking about.
*Christianity has become secularized and political.
If Christianity is nothing more than a religious political party and the political lines must be inforced than it becomes meaningless as a personal faith and a relational journey with a living God and a thinking individual.
*Christianity has become an empty religion. Thus it reduces faith to fashionable agreement. This is nothing more than another religion for what he calls philistines who do not what to think or are not bold enough to be themselves.
Attacking the incompetence and corruption of Christian churches. Kierkegaard seemed to have anticipated philosophers like Nietzche who would go on and criticize the Christian religion. of course Adorno disagreed with his philosophy and considered it the most irreesponsible ever and that he is incoherent and incomprehensible. Sarte in being and nothingness attacks Kierkegaards faith as a point to attack the existence of God at all.
Kierkegaard regards life as spheres. There is a civic life which includes marriage, career and social responsiblity, A religious life with involves conforming to social norms. An ethical life as not just a strategy to escape pressure from boredom and dispair but everything tha trelates to the eternal. Then their is the aesthete. A peson may be an aesthete who is trying to live in the religious sphere and it is not working. Or they may be civic person who is trying to live as an aesthete and that is not working. Each individual life cannot be viewed from the outside as was the mission of philosphy and religion.
While this seems to leave one in boredom and dispair as Kierkegaard points out to me genuine meta faith which transends religion must become aboslutly authentic. If God is there he will show himself to the honest searcher. We only need to open our eyes and be authentic in our journey. God is not afraid of our doubts or questions because you can not have faith without first doubting and you cannot find an answer without first a question. And I think all of us would agree that religion as a noun has many that are simply conforming when faith can become personal and authentic when we discover a personal relationship with the living God. What are your thoughts?
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
wacathedral.org
A meta church is an experiment in building a great caring network. It is an attempt to allow the church to be led by multiple ministries all pulling mostly in the same direction. Working synergistically to reach children and divorced people. Singles and married people. Those who need 12 step and a revival of their own personal physical health. Those who want to develop as a leader and those who want to be in fellowship. Those who want to invest their lives in the most hurting people in the world and those who are focused on reaching their neighbor. Huskies and cougars working together. A phenomena at wacathedral.org
Friday, November 9, 2007
Meta Religion
Meta has become a popular word today. We refer to meta biology, meta programing, meta churches, meta physics. It comes from the greek preposition which is taken to mean something a little different depending on which time in history it is used. Meta is also used as a prefix in the greek language but it is the preposition that fasinates me the most. The angel in Luke after the resurection uses meta as a preposition when the angel says to the woman searching for the body of Jesus. Why do you look for the living meta the dead. In other words, meta means something similar but not like. Something that goes outside the lines of normal linear thought. So meta physics conscerns itself with material related to but outside the lines of normal physics. In fact, a great degree of abstraction. This is where Charles Simonyi who is called by Bill Gates the greatest programer ever wrote about in his article, Anything you can do I can do meta. This article appears in Tecnology Review magazine and envisions a higher degree of abstraction in computer programing which introduces us to a new level of computer programing.
I am the founding pastor of Washington Cathedral in Redmond Washington for the last 23 years we have referred to ourselves as a meta church rather than a mega church. A meta church cherishes diversity in its organization. It challenges institutional entropy by allowing a degree of chaos is multiple organizations that appear more as a grass roots movement than an organized institution. Institutions die because of something that looks like entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. Useful energy becomes so smoothed out that it becomes usesless energy. The creative chaos that caused the explosion in the first placed becomes organized and innovation is replaced with religious conforming and a living organism becomes a dyning institution. Therefore we are intentional in trying to be horizontal rather than vertical in our organization. Our church is made up of hundreds of Tiny Little Churches each with a rich culture of its own. Each Tiny Little Church has a good samaritan project that they do for the community with no expectation of glory or return - they want to be like Jesus or at least mother Theresa. These Tiny Little Churches form together weekly into 11 major worship services. They also ally themselves with five separate 502c3 organizations which are out to serve the community again with no expectation of return. These organizations each have a president, an executive director and a board of directors. They include Charity alliance which is focuses on ministering to children living in city dumps throughout the emerging world. Build the Family alliance which focuses on helping build the central cell of society the family however it might be defined. It may include single parent families, blended families, an traditional nuclear families. Their mission statement is to make the world a safer place for children. It includes excel buisness minstries which focus on helping people in their career lives through helping small business networks, inspiration, career counseling and changes and finanacial counseling for struggling individuals in our community. The last is Washington Seminary which is a lay seminary providing post graduate degrees in leadership to help these people excel in their life ministry. That is the meta church.
Now for meta religion. If God is bigger than any religion and I believe he is. If understanding the universe is greater than any of us can fully accomplish than there is room for conversation between athiests, jews, hindu, muslim, fundamentalist christians, liberal christians and budist and any other philosphy. The world is a global village so can't we look for categorical imperitives in our religions that are binding upon all reasonable humanity as to an ethical way for us to interact. And cannot we begin todiscuss our differences as if we are sitting in a coffee shop in our community and our children will be playing in the same soccer league all the while knowing that if the meta religion conversation breaks down the world is going to become a very messy place. Those are my thoughts - I am wondering what your thoughts are and Im excited to begina conversation.
I am the founding pastor of Washington Cathedral in Redmond Washington for the last 23 years we have referred to ourselves as a meta church rather than a mega church. A meta church cherishes diversity in its organization. It challenges institutional entropy by allowing a degree of chaos is multiple organizations that appear more as a grass roots movement than an organized institution. Institutions die because of something that looks like entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. Useful energy becomes so smoothed out that it becomes usesless energy. The creative chaos that caused the explosion in the first placed becomes organized and innovation is replaced with religious conforming and a living organism becomes a dyning institution. Therefore we are intentional in trying to be horizontal rather than vertical in our organization. Our church is made up of hundreds of Tiny Little Churches each with a rich culture of its own. Each Tiny Little Church has a good samaritan project that they do for the community with no expectation of glory or return - they want to be like Jesus or at least mother Theresa. These Tiny Little Churches form together weekly into 11 major worship services. They also ally themselves with five separate 502c3 organizations which are out to serve the community again with no expectation of return. These organizations each have a president, an executive director and a board of directors. They include Charity alliance which is focuses on ministering to children living in city dumps throughout the emerging world. Build the Family alliance which focuses on helping build the central cell of society the family however it might be defined. It may include single parent families, blended families, an traditional nuclear families. Their mission statement is to make the world a safer place for children. It includes excel buisness minstries which focus on helping people in their career lives through helping small business networks, inspiration, career counseling and changes and finanacial counseling for struggling individuals in our community. The last is Washington Seminary which is a lay seminary providing post graduate degrees in leadership to help these people excel in their life ministry. That is the meta church.
Now for meta religion. If God is bigger than any religion and I believe he is. If understanding the universe is greater than any of us can fully accomplish than there is room for conversation between athiests, jews, hindu, muslim, fundamentalist christians, liberal christians and budist and any other philosphy. The world is a global village so can't we look for categorical imperitives in our religions that are binding upon all reasonable humanity as to an ethical way for us to interact. And cannot we begin todiscuss our differences as if we are sitting in a coffee shop in our community and our children will be playing in the same soccer league all the while knowing that if the meta religion conversation breaks down the world is going to become a very messy place. Those are my thoughts - I am wondering what your thoughts are and Im excited to begina conversation.
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