Responses to "My problem is that I have said things and done bad things and I have a very difficult time forgiving myself."

 A friend of mine posted the following message on Facebook last night:

In my life, my walk of Faith is difficult and fraught with doubt. I have no trouble with believing that Jesus loves me; He proved that to me 2000 years ago on the Cross at Calvary. He loves us all.
My problem is that I have said things and done bad things and I have a very difficult time forgiving myself.
Does anyone out there relate to me in this situation? I'm a Senior citizen with health issues. In my last years, I want to be useful to God, not running away from Him
I was prayed over by five Christian friends today....
Maybe I just need to trust God's Love and help others...

These are common and real concerns that many people have. How do we know love and do forgiveness? How do we help ourselves and help others along as we struggle with questions of faith and meaning? My starting point here is in the Christian Bible with Philippians 4:4-9, but I am not one for giving people a Bible verse and leaving things there. I asked a few trusted people in my life for their reactions and suggestions. I'm going to post their responses as I get them, but please feel good about posting your reactions as well and please check back to see additional responses. 

One friend wrote:

When Jesus died on the cross he said it was finished... I struggled with that too but one day someone asked me if the God of the universe forgives everything I've ever done wrong then who am I to not forgives myself. I would suggest prayer and read the bible ask God to help and he will praying for ya in Jesus name. Also tell him to think about Paul the man who wrote most of the new testament. He was a persecutor of christians.

Another friend wrote:

Well . . . To me, this falls in the “What is mine?” category. Forgiveness of my sins is not mine to decide. My opportunity is to ask for forgiveness. My responsibility is to learn how to not do it again. Too much time worrying about my future - obscures my seeing and serving others. [Easier said than done] One more: The future is unknown. We can plan. We can guess. We can discuss. We can worry. How much have we spent on the unknown.

And another friend wrote:

Sounds like that cloud of doubt is trying to block him from really knowing God’s love.
God loves us like we love our children, unconditional love. When He looks at us, he doesn’t see our faults and sins, He sees his Son, Jesus, who gave his very life for us.
Love beyond measure is hard to accept.
We only see our sinful selves. But God looks at us with the eyes of a Father. It brings Him joy to forgive us. He wants to smother us with His love.
But we see ourselves as unworthy and miss out on the blessings He willingly gives us.
God is love, that’s not a feeling He has, it’s who He is.
Sometimes we just need to be silent and feel that love He has for us.
We need to stop arguing in our hearts and minds and just be quiet and listen.
We get in our own way.
I’ll pray your friend finds that peace he’s looking for. More important I pray he sees who God really is.

What's the problem?

 

Some things to do, some things to smile on, some things to ponder

"The mountains are my bones, the rivers my veins. The forests are my thoughts 

and the stars are my dreams. The ocean is my heart, its pounding is my pulse.

The songs of the earth write the music of my soul."

"I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free, His eye is on the sparrow

and I know he watches me."

Brian Zahnd provides a helpful reflection on one of the Christmas lectionary passages, John 1:1-14

The following was lifted from the Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice. Amy Dalton of the Center writes that "CLBSJ was founded a little over a decade ago out of the conviction that Biblical scholarship needs the perspectives of activism in order to accurately understand the Bible, and that activists need the insights of Biblical scholars to disarm the ways that the Bible has been used to undermine movements for justice. We are working in slow-cook mode to build this project as a deeply cooperative effort, and we need you to do this. CLBSJ has been built almost entirely out of the volunteer energy and generous giving of individuals like yourself." They need money, and you can help by checking them out on Facebook or going here.

Brian Zahnd provides a helpful reflection on one of the Christmas lectionary passages, John 1:1-14:

"The relationship of John the Baptist to Jesus Christ is analogous to the relationship of the Bible to the Christ as the true Word of God. John is to Jesus what the Bible is to Jesus. Think of it like this:
There was a book sent from God whose name was Bible. It came as a witness to testify to the Light, so that all might believe through it. The Bible itself was not the Light, but it came to bear witness to the Light. The True Light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. The Bible testified to him and cried out, “This is he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”

Indeed, what is true of John the Baptist is also true of the Bible. Jesus came after John and the Bible but ranks ahead of John and the Bible because as the Eternal Logos he was before them both. The true witness of the Bible is to point us to the True Light that is Jesus Christ. Our question is not, can we find it in the Bible; the question is, can we find it in the life of Jesus Christ. We can find many things in the Bible that we cannot find in Christ. Wars of conquest, ethnic cleansing, the institution of slavery, capital punishment, and women held as property are all things present in the Bible but absent in Jesus. If we go to the Bible to find the light of truth, the Bible will faithfully point us to the True Light who is Jesus Christ. Some parts of the Bible belong to a dim archaic past, but the Light of Christ never dims. The light of Christ is the true enlightenment.

From "The Anticipated Christ: A Journey Through Advent and Christmas" (Spello Press, 2022), pages 141-43. More info at https://brianzahnd.com/2022/09/the-anticipated-christ/
Thanks to Rev. Paul Nuechterlein from girardianlectionary.net for providing this quotation.

Caleb Taylor: The Translation Trap: LGBTQ+ Rights Vs. The Christian Right's Bible

Caleb Taylor has written the following in an article that takes on the Christian Right and how the Bible is (mis)interpreted regarding LGBTQIA+ people. The article approaches the thorny matter of Biblical translation and how God's calling and revelations are heard and acting upon. Taylor's essay is short and to the point in the sense that it poses questions and states the socialist case well. Christians who take issue with his points are welcome to p[ost their disagreements in the comments section below.

Caleb Taylor writes:

One of the biggest debates in Christian churches today has to do with full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in the pews and the pulpits. Not only are denominations poised to split over the treatment and ordination of LGBTQ+ people, there’s even a documentary called 1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted Culture arguing that the English word “homosexual” should not be in the Bible at all. The film made it into Indie Wire’s “DOC NYC 2022: 10 Must-See Films at America’s Biggest Documentary Festival” and has garnered a fair amount of publicity. [Watch the trailer here.]

The argument goes that in 1946 the team working on the Revised Standard Version (RSV) mistranslated the Greek words malakos and arsenokoitēs as “homosexuals.” Malakos typically means something like “soft” and was, at times, used euphemistically. Arsenokoitēs is trickier because it occurs so infrequently with such little context that it is very difficult to pin down its meaning. Still, the translation in the RSV (specifically in regard to 1 Corinthians 6:9) was passed on to most biblical translations produced in the following years.

Those working on the RSV, however, were not the creators of anti-homosexual bias. Criminalization of homosexual sexual activity goes back to at least the 1500’s as the Human Dignity Trust succinctly depicts. And, that is just in English law. Sodomy Acts criminalizing homosexuality were well established long before the 1946 RSV translation. Moreover, “sodomy,” the word from which the Acts derive their name, comes from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which alludes to sexual abuse but has been used by traditionalists to condemn homosexuality. Thus, even if the word “homosexuality” did not appear in English translations of the Bible before 1946, the powerful did not need it to oppress LGBTQ+ people.

Translation is important, but using the correct words will not fix the “problem.” Nor will correcting a few words deter the will of the powerful who benefit from the suppression of LGBTQ+ people. There is the text, and then there are the communities that utilize the text. The group gives meaning to the text, and as long as the power structure of the group is built for suppression, it doesn’t matter what the original writers meant. Dismantling the power structure must take priority; otherwise, we’re doomed to the fate the Anabaptists suffered during the Reformation.

Please read the entire article here.

A meditation/reflection by Carl Davidson

MANY THINGS DON’T BOTHER ME MUCH, BUT A FEW THINGS BOTHER ME A LOT. One is how our minds work, especially about what we think we know, mainly the memories and lessons we draw on when we are faced with choices and problems. Some are rules we believe workable. But most of us most of the time, and all of us some of the time, rely on NARRATIVE, OR STORIES, some told to us yesterday, some we overheard, many more that we recall from our memories, both of things we directly experienced or indirectly heard or read about.

Our minds are full of bundles of stories. When we confide in friends about our troubles or our victories, we start with telling stories. I’ve given thousands of speeches, and by far the best way to give a speech is to start with a story about yourself. (You don’t usually forget these, so you get rolling comfortably). Then you connect that story to other stories about the topic at hand, and so on. Audiences like stories more so than a string of propositions or a list of facts. So make sure you put these facts and propositions into your stories.

But here’s the hard nut to crack. What if our stories are fully imaginary and have little to do with the real world? In fact, a few philosophers today tell us there is no ‘real’ world,’ that we only have our ‘lifeworlds’ that are comprised of our stories, and who is to say one lifeworld is superior to another? Wouldn’t that be tyrannical? (These people are called ‘postmodernists,’ and they posit a ‘post-truth world’, so now you have a decent idea of what these $10 words mean.)

Why is this a problem? Because it leaves your mind open to narratives and stories that make you feel good, that confirm what you and those close to you like to hear about yourselves, your family, your friends, your fellow church members, your country. But it also allows leaving you open to anger and outrage over undermining stories that make you uncomfortable, and these thus become lies and ‘fake news.’ iT LEAVES YOU OPEN TO FASCISM.

The truth will make us free, Scripture tells us. But I’m also reminded of Jack Nicolson’s movie outburst, ‘The truth? You can’t handle the truth!’

There is a real world, a multilayered universe of inorganic, organic, social and intellectual values that operate by laws and rules. Here I’m affirming a social reality, and we can find it, but sometimes the means of finding it are uncomfortable, even painful. I’m not a postmodernist, but a dialectical guy, asking pointed questions like Socrates did. If it stings a bit, good. That means you’ll remember it.
One tool I use these days is to ask some disgruntled people what seems a simple question, ‘Who is your neighbor?’ A few will immediately mention family or people on their block, but they quickly realize it’s far from a simple question.

It’s a profound one, and like Jack Nicholson said in the movie, many people can’t handle it. They know where it’s coming from. They’ve heard it for years. It’s the question a snarky lawyer tossed at Jesus to trip Him up. Jesus answers with a story too, a story about a Samaritan, a group of people despised by Jews back then. It’s perhaps the deepest story in the entire New Testament, one that applies to all faiths and people of no faith, well worth reading again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan

"Why I don't quote the Bible."---Retired Methodist pastor Barbara Nixon and sacred texts

An interesting article by the retired Methodist pastor Barbara Nixon appeared in The Albany Democrat-Herald newspaper of August 13, 2022. The article has the provocative heading "Why I don't quote the Bible." That isn't something that you expect to hear a pastor say. Please read the article before judging.

The sermon that I heard in church this morning was based on Luke 12:49-53. The priest began by admitting that this was one of the most difficult passages for her. She went on to preach an excellent sermon against Christian nationalism and the far-right, but she did not reconcile her views with the scripture reading. How do we understand the challenges of our times in light of Luke 12:49-53? How do we understand and experience scripture and build our lives on it? These are questions to struggle with, and I doubt anyone who is absolutely certain that they have the answers at hand. There can be a holiness in these struggles; let it happen.

Barbara Nixon's opening lines immediately engaged me: 

There are some who understand the Bible to be the direct word of God — flawless in every way that could matter. There are others who say that God is not exactly the author, but those who did write it had a direct line to God as the source.

From both of these understandings comes the view that the Bible is authoritative and contains all God would have us know and believe in order to be saved.

I am among those who see Scripture differently in that the Bible offers many distinct views of God’s interactions with humanity, experienced by various people and recorded by still others, over extensive periods of time.

The Bible is my sacred text, but I do not read it as fact-based history. Rather, it offers insights and interpretations from various writers and editors about how God was experienced in another time and context. Only when carefully read can those understandings be good news in our time and context.

Some Reminders From Scripture

 

Understanding John 14:5-7 with Jim Palmer

The following comes from Jim Palmer's Facebook page and has been lifted without permission. I hope that readers will find Jim Palmer's Facebook page and engage with him.

Question: Jim, there's the verse where Jesus says, "No one comes to the Father except through me." I don't believe that verse anymore, but I don't know what to do with it.

Response: The entire statement attributed to Jesus in the Book of John reads, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The message of Jesus to the world was that there is no separation between ourselves and the ultimate reality that is at the heart of all things, which we most experience as love, peace, happiness and belonging.

When Jesus said, "I AM the truth", he was saying that he was a human expression of this ultimate truth and reality. Jesus wanted humankind to know that we are not separated, divided, or in conflict with this transcendent reality we touch and feel deep within our hearts.

When Jesus said "no one comes to the Father except through me," Jesus was saying that the entire paradigm of separation - separation from love, separation from belonging, separation from worth, separation from hope, separation from wholeness - is a farce. We will never know these realities fully in that paradigm of separation, which requires striving to achieve them. The only way of knowing them is through the truth that Jesus demonstrated, namely that these realities are knit into the very nature and essence of our being.

The Christian religion often makes it difficult to understand verses like these because it built a religion based upon the separation paradigm, which was largely constructed by the teachings of Paul, who shoehorned Jesus into it.

The way the Christian religion interprets John 14:6 typically comes off sounding like this: "Listen up everyone! You know all those other religions and religious leaders and their teachings about God? Well, guess what? They are all deluded and wrong! It's me and my way or the highway to hell. You can only be right with God if [insert Paul's elaborate theology or denominational requirements for salvation]." That interpretation couldn't be any further from the truth of what was meant by these words of Jesus.
Jesus was basically saying, "You strive to be right with God, yet I have shown you that you and God are not separated but one. There is no other truth to invent or scheme up. Even if you tried, you could not ever come up with anything better than the way it already is."

Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

He didn’t say “I KNOW the truth,” as if truth is a piece of knowledge held by the mind. Neither did he say, “I HAVE the truth,” as if truth is a possession you can pass along to another. Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

Truth is a reality at the level of being.

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is an actuality inside to be realized. What is this actuality? Oneness with God. This is your true Self.

Jesus is the Truth that God and humankind are one. This is the Truth that sets you free.

Hope that helps.
Jim

P.S.: The relevant verses from are here:

5 Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth* and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

7 If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.

11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.

12 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

13 And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

14 If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

Some good things for prayer and meditation...

 

7 VERSES CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS MUST IGNORE

I'm not sure if I agree with everything said in this post or not, but I do agree with its central points: This comes from Jim Rigby writing on the Progressive Methodists Facebook page.

7 VERSES CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS MUST IGNORE

“A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN”
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is a strange little passage that rejects any rigid moral absolutes. Instead, Ecclesiastes says “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.”

“THE SABBATH WAS MADE FOR HUMANS NOT HUMANS FOR THE SABBATH”
Fundamentalists sometimes attack progressives as "humanists." In Mark 2:27 Jesus defends those who place human need over religious institutions. He says the Sabbath (perhaps a metaphor for all religion) was always intended to serve human beings not the other way around. The Sabbath was understood as a call to value human rights and ecological sustainability over religious rules and institutions long before Christianity.

“LITERALISM KILLS”
2 Corinthians 3:6 says, “God has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” If Christianity is to be a religion of love it must come from internalized compassion not heartless and mindless obedience to an external law.

“THE NEW COVENANT OF CHRISTIANITY DOES NOT DISPLACE JUDAISM”
The “new” covenant was being talked about long before Christianity. Jeremiah and Isaiah both spoke of a new covenant for Israel that would be written in people’s hearts and minds not just in external codes (See Jeremiah 31:31-38)

“JUSTICE IS NOT LIMITED BY ANY BORDER”
Leviticus 19: 34 says, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am your God.” Deuteronomy 27:19 goes even further, “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the orphan or the widow.” Capitalistic Christian nationalism completely rejects this foundation.

YOU CAN’T LOVE GOD AND HATE PEOPLE
The First Epistle of John says in chapter 4 that we can’t love God and be indifferent to human beings. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates a member of their human family, that person is a liar; for one who does not love their human family whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. And this commandment we have from Jesus: whoever loves God must also love their human family”

“WHOEVER HAS LOVE HAS GOD”
The Epistle of John also says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” In other words, a loving Atheist is closer to the message of Christ than a loveless Christian.

And a note from us:

Dear Disciples: Grief and the Wisdom of Howard Thurman---Acknowledging the lives lost to COVID

 

What The Gospels Are And Aren't

 

"Childlike faith?"---Read the small (and holy) print

 

For working-class people everywhere...

 

Bishop McKissick: "Do not count me out!"

There are some recording problems around 21:20. That's okay. Reactions to this sermon will vary. I'm posting it here because of its energy and those parts of the message that affirm people and reassure them. Stick with it and hear what Bishop McKissick has to say. In my language there is much here about solidarity and much commonsense. The notion of an active God Who is present in human affairs and the need for faith and the point that "overcoming sermons" may have their value but that more is needed are strong points. I'm sorry that the clip cuts off when it does.

 

Dear Disciples: Imagining a World with More

 

The Nature Of Truth And Lies: Truth in Transition with Carlton D. Pearson

 

Pentecost and the Promise! Acts 2:1-4 (Pastor Julius Hawkins) 4.24.2022

I find lots of encouragement in this sermon. There is some real boldness also. If you can't put in the 43 minutes to listen to the entire talk, try to catch the last 15 minutes.

 

In the interests of Biblical accuracy