Progressive Christian Reflections by Chris Glaser: Literalism vs Spirituality
Happy
90th birthday today to progressive Christian author Bishop John (Jack) Spong,
who has helped Christians better understand our faith with the help and support of Christine
Spong.
The
following post appeared on July 16, 2014.
The
trend of people identifying as “spiritual but not religious” is sometimes a
rejection of biblical literalism, religious fundamentalism and official orthodoxy.
To me that can be a good thing, and, in my reading of a recent translation from
Middle English by Bernard Bangley of the book, The Cloud of Unknowing, very traditional.
The
anonymous author encourages readers to discard what’s not helpful in the book,
and so I freely disagree with the writer’s rejection of physical and sensual
experience as unspiritual, even ungodly. This 14th century English monk must
not have met the 14th century English nun, Julian of Norwich, who
wrote, “In our sensuality, God is…”
The
beliefs of the church regarding creation, incarnation, and resurrection all
support a hallowing of bodily experience. As James B. Nelson and a diverse
group of other contemporary Christian body theologians have affirmed, we know
God through our bodies or we don’t know God at all. Nelson goes so far as to
add, “Pleasure is the strongest argument for the existence of God.”
Yet
I wholeheartedly embrace The Cloud
author’s understanding that literalism interferes with our spirituality, and he
offers many examples. I once wrote that we do a disservice to religion when we
treat matters of faith as matters of fact.
For
example, the writer cautions against taking the ascension of Jesus literally.
As a college professor of mine once said, “If Jesus had ascended at the speed
of light, he still would not be out of the known universe.”
The Cloud of Unknowing asserts that “the spatial
references are only symbolic. … The spiritual realm is always near, enveloping
us on every side. Whoever has a strong desire to be in heaven is already in
heaven, spiritually. Measure the highway to heaven in terms of desire rather
than miles. … Love determines a soul’s location.”
Earlier
the writer explained, “Similar in nature to heavenly bliss, divine
contemplation already participates in eternity.” I once wrote that people we
recognize as living saints are those who experience God’s commonwealth here and
now. Spiritually they have found heaven in their desire to love and serve
others. Heaven for me is where God’s will and human will coincide. Saying the
Lord’s Prayer (“on earth as it is in heaven”) is a way of aligning ourselves with that greater purpose. That’s why Jesus could say, “Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand” or “among us.”
There
are many pearls of wisdom about the spiritual life in The Cloud of Unknowing. Here are a few quotes I underlined in my
copy:
+
Remember your spiritual needs rather than your spiritual achievements.
+
Continue until your prayer life becomes enjoyable.
+
You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God.
+
Loving contemplation destroys our tendency to sin more effectively than any
other practice.
+
The essence of contemplation is a simple and direct reaching out to God.
+
Judging others, pronouncing them good or bad, is God’s business. We may evaluate
behavior, but not the person.
+
Christ taught us in Matthew’s Gospel that spoken prayers are best when they are
not too long.
+
A little prayer of one syllable pierces heaven because we concentrate our
entire spiritual energy into it.
+
The person in great distress will continue calling for help until someone hears
and responds.
+
The little word “God” can flood your spirit with spiritual meaning without
giving attention to particular activities of God.
+
I desire to help you tighten the spiritual knot of warm love that is between
you and God, to lead you to spiritual unity with God.
+
Love functions as your guide in this world, and it will bring you to grace in
the next.
+
[After meeting our physical needs,] sensuality urges us to take more than we
need, encouraging lust.
+
The important consideration is not what you are, or what you have been, but
what you want to be.
Finally,
this anonymous monk seems to echo the axiom that spiritual guides remind us of what
we already know:
Writers used to think that humility required them
to say nothing out of their own heads, but to corroborate every idea with
quotations from Scripture or the [Church] fathers [and mothers]. Today this
practice demonstrates nothing but cleverness and education. … If God moves you
to believe what I say, then accept my ideas on their own merits. (p 99-100)
Given
its encouragement to surrender certain knowledge of God for intimacy with God, I
can’t help but think The Cloud of
Unknowing would be a great text for the “spiritual but not religious”
crowd. As they say in recovery programs, religion is for people afraid of going
to hell; spirituality is for people who have already been there.
My dear friend and
longtime supporter of this blog, the Rev. Steve Pieters, will be featured as a
character in a film about televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker due out in
September of 2021. Her interview with him on national television opened many
evangelical hearts to people living with AIDS and more broadly, the LGBTQ
community. Watch the trailer.
My
final post on my blog “Progressive Christian Reflections” will occur on June
30, 2021. More
than ten years of posts will remain available to you on the blogsite, https://chrisglaser.blogspot.com and I encourage you to
enjoy them. I regret that I never created an index of post titles, but the search
engine in the upper left corner of my blog can help you find posts of interest
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holy day. Or you may work through them by year and month listed in the right
column.
Though
they may have been written with current events in mind, I intended them each to
be read meaningfully at any point in time. You may continue to contact me at my
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particular post. FeedBurner has announced it will discontinue all subscription
services sometime in July, the occasion for my timing. It has been a pleasure
writing this blog, but now, I believe, is a time for silence, something I
considered when writing the Zen series.
I
assure you I am well, content, and thankful to God for this extension of my
ministry. Thank you for your interest, comments, correspondence, and
contributions. I am grateful to Metropolitan Community Churches for recognizing
this blog as an “Emerging Ministry” and ProgressiveChristianity.org for reposting many of my reflections, as well as the dozens of Facebook pages that allowed me
to provide links to particular posts. I am grateful for the free services of Blogspot,
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artist and friend Becki Jayne Harrelson and my husband Wade Jones for their
technical and moral support.
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Learn
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