The Third Question

This is the last "installment" of my own attempt to answer the three questions posed by Ashley in her blog, A Passionate and Determined Quest for Adequacy.


3.  What one thing would you say to people to describe your relationship with Jesus?


The way I relate to Jesus is as a master, like a chess master.


The gospels are about Jesus, placing him at the center of "the good news."  I cannot get my mind around the life of Jesus as good news for me if he was "the pre-existing God" or "born God."   To say that Jesus "lived a perfect life" doesn't speak to my condition because I am not God.   To say that he lived a "perfected life," however, aligns our lives.


This is a notion, of course.  It's as speculative to say Jesus was human as it is to say he was God (no matter what the probabilities) because there is no way to know, one way or the other.   One can believe, one way or the other.  As I have said many times believing things in the realm of spirituality and morality that we can't know is dangerous due to the limitations--lack of data and presence of thinking errors--of rationality.  


Where such notions have value to me--and then only when I don't invest in them to the point that I care if anyone else invests in them or not--is when they seem consistent with my own experience.   It is notional, speculative, for me to think that such things as  God talking to young Samuel in the temple could happen but the story "rings true" with me.   That's not because I hold up theological and/or scientific propositions about how a universe would have to work for such a thing to happen.   It's because I have had that experience, myself.  That makes it seem plausible to me.


The story of Jesus is "the good news" to me because it is the story of a man who, with diligent attention to the leadings and openings of God to him, attained a degree of perfection that  demonstrated life that transcended the world we all inhabit, a life he is written to have said "was" and "was coming."  


I see that.  Not in my head, I don't "understand" it, it doesn't "make sense," or "stand to reason."  I mean I see it, around me.


I don't (and can't) know that there is an afterlife.  But I know that there is a here and now.  And I know, from my experience in it, that if I pay attention to what God is telling me from moment to moment, I am going to be a lot better off--as will those around me.  The faith and practice of Jesus, insofar as it is portrayed in the scriptures, is one of a person who spends a lot of time with God, in different ways, and who is always seeking--and following--divine guidance.


Having been dragged to it enough times to have finally figured out that it's easier all around to just walk where I am told to go, I cannot say that I live in that transcendent space that Jesus seems to have occupied.  I can say, though, that when I am able to be faithful  I catch glimpses of it all around me.   


I think about the scene at the river when, it is written, John puts Jesus under.  The spirit descended on Jesus (like the form of a dove).  I don't know what that means, any more than anyone else does.   But I can see it meaning that it marks the perfection of a human being, the attainment of maturity, wholeness and fitness for a particular purpose.   From all accounts, accounts being what they are, this was the Perfection of all Perfections, and maybe it was.  What it was for Jesus, though, is not as important to me as what it is to me.


For me that is the good news.  I am not, nor is anyone else, doomed to a life of depravity, hopeless under the power of sinful states of mind, creating an endless stream of evil that will dog me and everyone around me for the rest of my life, finding relief, perhaps, only after I die.  The Protestants are wrong.  Fox was right.   There is perfection, maturity, wholeness and fitness on this side of the grave.  


Or maybe they were both right.  God's grace, orthodox Protestantism teaches us, "saves us."  I have been taught that God's grace is some kind of  a "get out of jail free card" issued for whatever reasons it might please God to issue it--eiher in this life or the next.  It certainly has nothing to do with anything I can do.


However, God's grace as I have come to know it is the willingness of God to talk directly to me, to show me the way and to change me.  If I will take the hints and submit to the process I will be by some measure saved.  Can I make that happen, myself?  No, but accepting the grace of God--doing what I am told to do--I can make sure it does.


 I will not get to where Jesus got, but I have come nearer than where I started, and I can keep putting that starting place farther behind me.   In the dynamic of the faith of Jesus I recognize the outlines of that which has been trying--with uneven success--to bring me along for years.


There is a similar view of Jesus, I have discovered, in the work of Elias Hicks.   That doesn't give my notion any more (or less) weight.  Mine or his, it's still just speculation.  I don't really care if anyone else validates it or not.   What matters to me, as I have stressed through answering these three questions is that what matters is my doing what I am told to do, going where I am told to go, and following to where I am led.   


But for being moved to answer the first question I might not have ever addressed the other two--and especially not this last.


But, hey--you asked.       ;-]

Question Two

I answered the first of the "three questions" addressed by Ashley in her blog post, Jesus and Me.  The questions grew from a "homework assignment" that a friend of hers was working on in the course of her participation in the School of the Spirit.


Here is my answer to the second question.


2.  Who is Jesus in my life?


This is where things get hard for me to talk about because I don't know whether Jesus is "the same" as Christ.   


I hear a lot of people talk about Jesus in the same way I talk about what I have explained I mean by Christ and it's fine with me if people want to do that.   As I have said many times, I don't care if people call the intervening agent of authority in their lives The Light, The Spirit, God/Goddess, Christ, Jesus, the Messiah or The Big Kahuna.  I don't really care if they see it as an intervening agent--whether "that of God in everyone" is conceptualized as a little piece of God that is some kind of aspect of us that grows on our inside and shapes us or as something in our make-up that "put there" and belonging and responding to God and thereby shaping us.


Don't care.  Inney shaping agent or outtey shaping agent--no matter to me.


I care about the shaping.  


I have conceived of God (and no God) in a lot of different ways in my life, and have struggled earnestly with myself and others who have conceived of It is the same and different ways from what I was believing, the conceptualization I was holding on to, at that moment.   


None of those beliefs and notions has a been of real help in the "conversion of my manners" or "conforming me to Christ"--although some of them have been a real hinderance.  Looking back, I can see that "The Work" has proceeded in me, over the years, as I described it in my Answer to Question One, no matter what I believed or didn't believe, although sometimes an episode in my shaping ended with my laying down what I believed before the episode began.


I have reached a point that I prefer to lay down (or, perhaps, lay aside) all "belief," at least all belief about things I have not experienced: all "belief" about where my experience "comes from"--all speculation about the nature and character of God--and all "belief" about where it's taking me (except that which I can see)--all speculation about the purposes of God.


I don't know what to believe about that experience and what's behind it.  I do know, though, to have faith in it, to trust it and act on it.


I have never "met" Jesus unless, as I say, Jesus and Christ are the same thing.   I can't know that (although I could believe that and have).   


For a long time the writings of Lloyd Lee Wilson have been influential on my "beliefs" and I am more comfortable with some of the theology he writes than I am with the works of others, especially the works of theologians long on the more "orthodox" Protestant notions.   HIs Pendle HIll Pamphlet (409), "Who Do You Say I Am?" sits easy with me, and I encourage all to read it.   This theology "makes sense" to me in light of my experience--his Jesus "explains" my experience, is consistent with it.  It accounts for the "known data."  


But, again, in the most loving and respectful way, I have to say say that like all belief about the nature, character and plans of the Divine, it can't be shown to be "true"--to the exclusion of other explanations.  Is the "known data" all the data about the ineffable?  And, most important, my acknowledging  it's "truth" has not a condition precedent to the work that has been done and remains to be done in me.  


 "Who Am I, as a Disciple of Jesus?" is the title for the last section of Friend Wilson's pamphlet.  In it he writes:  "My faith commitment is to God on the path illuminated for me by Jesus the Messiah."   I would not say that (although his choice to use of the word "faith" instead of "belief" is certainly one I would make).  I know, though, that he means the same thing by "Jesus the Messiah" as I mean when I say "Christ."


Why is this distinction so important to me?  


Equipped with an experiential/experimental Christ, as opposed to a notional Christ/Jesus, it's the difference between listening and thinking--and that is all the difference in the world, all the difference between the world and the kingdom.


I remember the "What Would Jesus Do" query.  It invited us, in making moral choices, to consider--to reason from--what we thought Jesus would have done.  One cannot do that unless one has some kind of notion--and speculation it cannot help but be--about who Jesus was and what made him tick.  That kind of reasoning from theology/speculation has led me into some pretty painful places.


There is no necessity, in my experience, to reason from any set of notions, even from my notions (or anyone's notions) about what Jesus would do, if faced with and particular moral  situation.   


I have plenty of my own notions about Jesus, though, and I will share at least one of those in my upcoming answer to the Third Question.

Addressing a comment to my last post ...

Jay asked, in a comment to my last post:


"Please tell me how you discern Christ's voice from that of your conscience. How does it sound different to you?"


Way too long an answer for that little comment box, so I will address here it before moving on to questions 2 and 3.


I am not so certain about what conscience is.  


I look at it as a part of my cultural conditioning that governs morals and ethics, as an orientation within the social, political and religious consensus in which I live.   The abstraction I call "conscience" seems to work to keep me within that consensus when I am tempted or urged to act outside of it.  


The culture that conditions conscience is the collection of norms a group has adopted to accomplish the universal activities that fulfill human needs.   Eating, staying warm, reproducing and resolving disputes are examples of these universal activities.  Everyone, everywhere, at all times, has done these things in an amazing array of ways.  Conscience is the part of those norms, in a given time and place, that focuses on moral and ethical behavior.


Such consensus, and therefore conscience, always contains exceptions to its rules and, along with flexibility necessary to meet complex situations, these exceptions create the possibility for rationalizing in the matter of morality.  That makes conscience vulnerable to sinful states of mind (greed, anger, pride, lust and so on) and an actual accomplice in breaking through its own moral limitations.   After all, for every cliche--or love song--that we can hang our hat on as we make a decision, there is another that counsels us to do exactly the opposite.  In other words, we can corrupt conscience, or allow others, especially authority figures, to corrupt it for us.


Conscience is also vulnerable to the limitations of the group's knowledge.  Even in the most loving states of mind our moral and ethical direction from our conscience can bring us to a bad end for lack of data or information that, if we had the benefit of its possession, we might have been able to choose better.  Notions about race and sex and sexual orientation are examples of how conscience is misled, even sometimes without malice, by the definition of "reality" that exists--or is accepted--by a group.


It seems helpful, to me, to think of conscience a belonging to to realm of "the powers"--those institutions--including religion--that are said in some theologies to hold the world together in its fallen condition. (I realize that sentence is packed with notions--all theologies are--but it may (or may not) help communicate how I think about conscience.  I certainly do not lean on that--or any other--theology to add validity to what I am saying, just to illustrate it).


My discernment allows Christ to push conscience aside (Christ has defeated the powers, it is written) and leads me to act outside of the consensus of my cultural conditioning (there is one, in effect, that can speak to my conditioning), or to do things included within that consensus but not taken seriously by most of its members.


So, with that said, discerning Christ's "voice" from that of my conscience seems to be a function of  three things:  the amount of pressure brought to bear on me by the visitation, persistance of that pressure and my experience with Christ and the various other "voices" out there, in the past.


When confronted by a choice, or when I start hearing myself taken to task about something, I know it's Christ when the amount of discomfort or suffering associated with the confrontation causes me is great and becomes greater over time.  


The second hall mark of a "visitation" is its persistence.   If one of my normal rationalizations or a countervailing cliche does not cause the pressure to dissipate then it's probably Christ.   (Sometimes my powers of rationalization have been able to dismiss Christ, but only temporarily.  I can crucify Christ, sometimes, and lock It in the tomb of my heart, but when it's Christ I am dealing with I soon hear the rock rolling aside and know that It's back.)


The third discerning factor is my experience.   As scary, and humbling, as it has been, at times, following high pressure, persistent urgings has led to good outcomes for me, not only in regard to the situation at hand but also improving my overall condition and ability to function in the future.  Like others, I have seen my condition portrayed in the Bible, and elsewhere.   For me seeing the Fruits of the Spirit, described in Galatians 5, is validation of good discernment.  The five testimonies, a restatement of those Fruits, is another set of benchmarks--as is being led to those green pastures and still waters, notwithstanding what I had to go through to get there.


If I am being visited about something that sounds familiar--something about which I have been visited in the past (shocking that there should be backsliding, I know) or something similar to the subject of a previous visitation then it's easy for me to discern who it is knocking on my spiritual chamber door.


This thing about conscience, though, becomes difficult for me, at this point.  I begin to suspect that "mere conscience"--as a pure manifestation of cultural conditioning and a product of secular or religious (second hand) reasoning--is changed, or shaped or conformed or made peculiar when I respond to Christ's visitation.  Perhaps it's just that conscience is an abstraction, but the accumulation of wisdom from Christ's leadings and that from conscience seem to have less a bright line boundary than once they did.  Again, that may be because in reality there is no such "thing" as a conscience, it's just a notion.  It may also be helpful, though, to conceptualize the "conscience" as changed by visitation and so no longer representing just the conditioning by one's culture but, rather, a conditioning--a transformation--by God or Christ or the Holy Spirit.  The conscience may, then, become a vehicle for transmission of Christ's wisdom rather than just the wisdom of this group of people, at this time, in this place.  


I seem to recall that in the literature of early Quakers the clear communication that The Light was not conscience (which seemed to be cast as a function of reason in Enlightenment thinking).  But I think that alongside that clear distinction between the Light and conscience was that idea, in some writings, that The Light could inform conscience as I speculate, here, that it might.

I dunno about that, though.  And I don't think it's all that important, one way or another.   What is important is that I behave myself.  As the masthead of this blog indicates, the purpose of religion/spirituality--its sum and substance--for me is improvement of the moral condition (specifically, my own), and therefore the moral behavior, of human beings.  

The short answer to your question is that if what I hear makes me uncomfortable enough, and lasts long enough, then I discern it to be Christ and follow it.  I can't recall a time when, dragged around like that, it turned out not to be.


In addition, I strongly suspect it's Christ when I am hearing, again, about something I've been called on, before, and, in dealing with it, previously, my condition was improved.

Question One

After my post on equality it makes sense that I am interested in a blog called "A Passionate and Determined Quest for Adequacy."  In a recent post there Ashley W. (also a Quaker lawyer, who lives in Oregon) answered three questions posed in a paper a friend of hers is writing for an assignment in The School of the Spirit.

• Who is Jesus in your life?
• What does it mean to you to live a Christian life?
• What one thing would you say to people to describe your relationship with Jesus?

As I set out to answer these for myself I realized I would have to change the order in which I would answer them.  

Also, as I thought about these I realized it was too much to cover in one blog post.   This, then, is the first of three posts, one for each question.

1.  What does it mean to you to live a Christian life?

A Christian life is one given over to living under the guidance of  Christ.  My experience is that reported by many Quakers since the founding of the movement, and by many people before and since, in and outside the Society: God communicates with everyone--the Light shines into the hearts of all and illuminates the way.

I think, by the way, that the fact God does communicate  with us is the functional definition of grace.   Grace  to me is not being spared in the plane wreck, or recovering miraculously from cancer, or given lots of money and resources, or even being saved despite our inevitable failures.   Grace in my sense of things is that God is there to lead us in our lives.

And, for clarity sake, I don't mean that God communicates with me through the Bible, or theological writings.    I am talking about direct communication, revelation, openings--whatever.  This is first hand, not second hand communication.

My experience with this is of being confronted when my behavior does not conform to that which is required of me and, if I acknowledge that it does not, and submit to that conviction, I am led to be changed, improved, perfected--whatever--by that submission and my repentance.

If I don't acknowledge and don't submit then I can render myself less likely to do so next time although as I have become older I have found it well nigh impossible to shut Christ up for long, at least on some things,  with whatever rationalizations I have for my behavior.  

This experience, over the years, and bumpy years they have been, has changed my condition.   I am being constantly shaped to conform--in my own inadequate way--to what is described in the liberal domain of the Society as the testimonies of simplicity, peace/harmony, integrity, community and equality (or to the fruits of spirit in Galatians 5).  Successive trips to the spiritual wood shed, and the lessons learned there, have improved my experience of living and certainly improved the experience of those who live with and anywhere near me.  If you think I am a mess today, which I cannot deny I am in some ways, you should have seen how it used to be with me.

This communication "breaks into" my world in the sense that it often overrides the "best advice" available from the people in our culture who are "certified smart" in matters of ethics, law, culture and religion.   I have learned that if I follow these rather than Christ I will get no manner of peace--and cause problems for others--until I come around.

That's my experience.   I identify with Fox about there being one who can speak to my condition. 

That's my faith and practice, to me that's a Christian life.   

I call it Christian even though, as is clear  to anyone who has read to this point, and will made even more obvious, below, much of what our religious culture calls "Christian" is of no value to me in this process described in Quaker literature as "perfection" (maturity, wholeness, fitness for a particular/peculiar purpose).  

Theology--thought structures built on inferences drawn from spiritual experience (and from other sources, not the least of which are the creations of our "reason")--has proven to be of no real help, and sometimes has been a real hinderance, to the work that is being done in me.   Sometimes the sound of scripture ringing in my ears has temporarily drown out the voice of Christ.

What I hear from Christ, by the way, never has anything to do with how other people behave.   Christ talks to me to improve me, not so I can improve others.  The only time I hear about others is when it is pointed out how I have hurt them in some way, or could help them in some way, and that a different approach is called for on my part.   

When I think I hear Christ talking to me about others the outcome--if I give those others the benefit of what I heard--is never good.   It does serve to remind me that there are a lot of spirits out there in the world and their babbling on and on about the shortcomings of others only serves as a signal that I am hearing from one of these, not from Christ .

I may well see someone behaving in a certain way and conclude that he is headed for a bad end because when I behaved that way, once upon a back in the day, I came to a bad end.  But I no longer confuse the conclusions I am drawing, the judgments I am making, about this person with  Christ telling me to do something to straighten him out.  

This is the end of part one of this three part blog post.