Category Archives: Existential Ethics

Freedom and the Long View

Donald Trump does not have a long view. His view is limited to his own ego and therefore extends only until his own death. It does not matter to him whether industrial society is collapsing or not, whether a climate crisis exists or not, whether the U.S. has a long-term public-health service or not. His concern extends only to the short span of time between now and his death. He is concerned about being rich, about being able to do what he thinks he wants to do, about having a crowd adore him, about having a “high” place in the world pecking order. Even if Trump is somewhat concerned for his descendants or his peer group, that is also an ego concern. He is a poster boy for what it looks like to not have a long view—a view for humanity, or for the planet, or even for the U.S. nation.

To the extent that we are bound up with our own ego, we will also be without a long view. Even if our ego concerns seem to us better than Trump’s ego concerns, we can still be missing a long view—a view for something larger than our own selves or our own tiny concerns.

So Who Does Have a Long View?

The writers of the Old Testament had a long view. They reflected back hundreds of years and they reflected forward centuries as well—seeing their peoplehood as a servant body on behalf of all the nations of the world.

Jesus had a long view. In laying down his life for the people of Israel, he was laying down his life for the restoration of this servant people and thereby for the whole of humanity.

Paul had a long view. Augustine had a long view. Martin Luther had a long view, Paul Tillich had a long view. The priest and author, Thomas Berry, had a long view. He not only had a long view for Christianity, Berry promoted a next Christianity that has a long view for the whole of humanity. He viewed humanity as an integral part of the planet. He saw humanity as Earth’s champaign of deep awareness and joyous celebration on behalf of this wondrously unique planet that can sustain life, including human life.

The Battle of Two Regimes

We who comprise the progressive portion of the United States voters and activists need a simple and easy-to-teach narrative about where we are as a society and how the various types of Republicans and Democrats relate to some “big story” of our existing conditions and our possible futures.

Before the beginnings of the industrial revolution in about 1760, there was only one regime of governance headed by a King or perhaps by a Queen, or perhaps by a Royal Council. These high class members of the traditional caste system controlled both political and economic life. The rise of the industrial revolution assisted by colonialism enabled the accumulation of great pools of privately controlled wealth. This wealth-power had significance in both the economic and political governance over the course of events. The economist and author, Robert Heilbroner, called these pools of wealth “the regime of capital,” This second regime of governance initiated a tension with the regime of state —a fight between these two regimes of powerful governance.

As the regime of capital became more independent, the regime of royalty was weakened and social space was opened for the more democratic form of state initiated in the United States and elsewhere. The democratic state retained legal and coercive force, but the regime of capital with its powers of investments and conditions of employment also possessed a strong governing reality in the lives of people and in direct influences upon the decisions of the state.

These elemental dynamics of history are important for seeing clearly the historical options we face today in the United States and elsewhere. Here are five styles of governing that are being pursued in our world today:

option 1: This style of governing is illustrated by the Vladimir Putin type of control of both the regime of the state and the regime of capital—both regimes are in the hands of very wealthy oligarchs of which Putin is one as well as head of state. This is the option that Donald Trump and his cronies favored and still favor. They lie about their poorly hidden dictatorial direction for their governing. Lying, misinformation, and deception in order to assemble support is a characteristic of this option for governing. When taking this option, democracy becomes a social veneer that has no real power over the course of events. Option one policies seek support from the super wealthy and from the long-enduring forms of the caste system—racism, patriarchy, gender, and so on.

option 2: This style of governing is illustrated by those U.S. conservatives who are quite critical of various aspects of the reigning caste systems, but who insist that the regime of capital must manage the regime of the democratic state. The policies of this political constituency are crafted to benefit big business leaders and their corporations. They claim that “business friendly” policies benefit everyone with a “trickle down” of prosperity. Many anti-Trump Republicans hold this view. A number of Democratic Party leaders and thinkers also hold this view. The majority of the Democratic Party, however, now hold the view that the “trickle-down” of wealth is microscopic compared with the “siphon-off” going to the upper classes. Option 2 style governing persons are also typically uneasy about a “too powerful” democratic government regulating the regime of capital “too severely.” In the view of U.S. option 2 policy-makers, “small” government, which they favor in the regulations department, does not exclude, “large” outlays for the defense industry, or “large” tax give-aways to the fossil fuel industries, and other governmental perks to the existing economic powers.

option 3: This style of governing is illustrated by those who view the need for a strong regime of democratic governing that sets the rules and enforces fairly and strongly the rules that structure the economic playing field for the players of the regime of capital. Option 3 policy-makers expect the capital-owning forces to control the micro-economic choices, but they maintain that the macro-economic choices are to be made by a democratic government focused on serving all the people. The still valued regime of capital takes on a secondary role with regard to the basic ecological, economic, political, and cultural directions for the society. The regime of capital is expected to be obedient to these large-direction choices made by the representatives of a democratic government.

option 4: This style of governing is more aggressive than the option 3 style with regard to the role of democratic government in regulating the regime of capital. The option 4 style of governing applies especially to those portions of the society that are fundamental for everyone. Currently, these topics include healthcare, education, energy provision, water quality, soil quality, air quality, basic transportation, internet fairness, and the building of a whole new infrastructure designed to moderate the climate. Option 4 directions on such topics currently include specific policies like: Medicare for all, the Green New Deal projections, and the long-range energy polices that will compel oil companies to submit their business plans for how they are going to phase out their product from its current massive use to a mere trickle in the next three decades. According to option 4 voices, this huge, but necessary, energy transition cannot start someday; it must start now. Under this option, energy companies (such as oil, coal, and nuclear) would start now facing severe penalties if they do not assist rather than oppose these necessary directions of energy transition.

option 5: This style of governing is illustrated by those members of almost every society who support some form of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”—the style of governing that we now find manifest in China and Cuba. This option has a slim following in the United States, but we do find a significant amount of appreciation for the accomplishments of China and Cuba in their ecological policies and in their ability to sustain a solid social order that is not ruled by the regime of capital. The obvious downside of option 5 is the absence of an ever-deepening democracy. Concern for the working population does not make a dictatorship into a democracy. Even if we agree that a strong state government may have been required in China or Cuba to put a ruthless regime of capital in its subservient place and keep them there, option 5 still amounts to a revival of a strong economic caste system—a “new class” as some critics have spelled out, a new form of dictatorship that resists serious challenges to democratize.

Naming Some U.S. Names

Richard Nixon in the U.S. story might be viewed as a bridge person between options 1 and option 2 politics. While Nixon had a strong enough hold on democracy and on international affairs to remain an illustration of option 2 polices, he leaned into “the unitary executive” strongly enough to be a preview of Trump’s more thoroughgoing option 1 authoritarianism. Also, Nixon’s “southern strategy” was a move toward Trump’s more fully developed white-nationalist appeals. And, Nixon’s “tricky Dick” politics pre-stage Trump’s more incredible lack of respect for truthfulness and fair dealing.

Ronald Reagan is a good historical example of option 2 policy-making in U.S. politics. He consistently supported the regime of capital over the regime of the democratic state—viewing regulative government as a “problem” and democracy as a process that needs to be “managed” by big business experience and loyalties.

Option 3 policy-making has been given prominence by Barack and Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and in 2021 is being carried on by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Whatever be the leanings that any of these competent persons have toward Option 4 policy making, Option 4 policy-making is better represented by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ortega Cortez and an expanding “squad” of young women of color. Many other persons might be named as strong voices in one or the other of these two types of politics, but these well-known persons approximately define the trends of these two styles of policy-making.

Cooperations

Option 3 and 4 political styles can currently work together in their common love of a competent, strong, and thoroughgoing democracy—of, by, and for the people.
However passionate the differences between option 3 and 4 persons may be, they are currently able to cooperate on many measures of good government. They also cooperate well in their firm opposition to an option 1 autocracy laced with racism, patriarchy, or other forms of caste system.

The cooperation between option 1 and option 2 policy holders is much more strained than the cooperation between option 3 and option 4 policy holders. Indeed, following Trump‘s take-over of the Republican Party, those persons of option 2 leanings have become a much slimmer group of people. In fact, most option 2 Republicans are now conflicted between (1) their need for support from option 1 citizens in order to “manage democracy,” and (2) their reluctance to support option 3 and 4 lovers of a more aggressive democracy in their regulation of the regime of capital. Option 2 persons find themselves choosing between: (1) remaining a Republican voter in a Party that remains a Trump-ruled authoritarian body, and (2) choosing to become more strongly democratic, yet bringing some of their conservative leanings with them into the Democratic voting constituency.

If the cooperation between option 3 and option 4 remains strong enough to actually accomplish a large number of systemic changes, then a coalition of political power may come into being that remains in power for a very long time. However frightening large systemic changes may be to millions of people, not making these changes is becoming even more frightening to increasing millions of getting-wiser people. Also, realism in social affairs, however frightening, is also a source of joy and confidence—especially among the young, the oppressed, and the steady students of history. Reality in its Wholeness of Power is on the side of those who are living realistically. Though a tough taskmaster, Reality is producing our best case options. Fighting with Reality creates the maximization of our suffering, and realistic living, in spite of our setbacks, includes the benefits of more freedom and of simple joy.

Option 5 members within our U.S. society will, at least for now, tend to go along with options 3 and option 4 policies. But even for the long haul, I believe that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” will continue to be viewed by most U.S. citizens as a ditch of doom—an avoidable destiny almost as grim as the Trumpian ditch of doom. I do not believe that U.S. citizens will go along with or need to go along with the option 5 route.

Democracy rather than authoritarianism” has become our core political conflict, all across the planet. “Capitalism versus socialism” has become less severe. Everyone is a socialist now, in some ways. And everyone is a capitalist now, in some ways. All realistically thoughtful persons are drinking water from both of these fountains of economic and political discoveries and action policies. Option 5 members of our U.S. society will do well to join the consensus building going on between the option 3 and option 4 democracy lovers, and forget any dreams they may have for a working-class dictatorship.

Ecological Democracy

If ecological solutions are to be forged and carried out for the big ecological challenges, a fuller and fuller democracy is the key correction that must be made in each society on the planet. Climate moderation is the biggest of the big matters among these ecological challenges. Without a solution to the climate crisis, we face irresolvable difficulties afflicting progress in all our other challenges. We have already delayed solutions to the climate crisis so long that many catastrophes are now unavoidable. But if we are to bet our lives on the emergence of possibilities for the survival of our species, we must now put the climate crisis first on our list of challenges and see every other challenge in that context.

I understand writers and teachers who recommend that we turn our attention to accommodating to the inevitable collapse of our current societies before the impending climate impacts. But instead of any mere accommodation to the collapse of current societies, let us imagine investing trillions of dollars in the search for ways we cannot yet see to replace these collapsing societies with better ways of doing human socializing. Several years ago I began advocating “building Eco-Democracy societies.” In order to be successful, building Eco-Democracies must not wait until after the current societies finish collapsing. Rather, we can take charge now of our collapsing civilizations—transforming the energies of these societies into opportunities for designing and building societies that are substantially better.

The great transition from hunter/gather societies to civilized societies took thousands of years. The transition from agricultural societies to industrial societies took hundreds of years. We now face the opportunity, and the necessity of doing our great transition in a few decades. In the next three decades, we might get half way there. Two hundred years form now, we may still be finishing up some elements of this transition, unless, of course, we have missed the turn with our further delays. This is a “long emergency” as David Orr calls it in his book Dangerous Years. We are being challenged to exercise our freedom in the light of this living now—to form right now a long view about which we can continue to be more specific.

Freedom and the Interpersonal

Martin Buber’s book I and Thou introduced an approach to truth different from the scientific approach to truth. No matter how accomplished we may be with the scientific method, living closely with another person is a whole new game of ignorance and of learning. This also applies to the contemplative approach to truth. No matter how accomplished we may be with exploring our inner space, living closely with another person is a whole new game of ignorance and of learning.

Imagine yourself an accomplished high school science student moving into the wonder of dating, of initiating for the first time a serious interpersonal relationship in addition to your family of origin. Your science excellences do not help you discern the challenges present in your consciousness meeting with the consciousness of another person and continuing in this tangle of relations between him or her and me.

Scientific research is about knowing the objective world. We can call science the I-it approach to truth in contrast to Buber’s I-Thou approach to truth. Another human being cannot be appropriately or fully related to as an “it”—a status friendship, a sexual conquest, or a cog in the machinery of some project of my devising. Another person is another consciousness, like myself. To relate to the encountered reality of another person as I relate to the encountered reality of an “it” is to suppress a full experience of that person and of myself.

The I-Thou approach to truth also differs from inquiry into my own being. My inquiry into the contents of my own consciousness may help me relate to others, and others may help me become more aware of the contents of my own consciousness. But the I-Thou relation itself is not simply personal inquiry. Another person is another consciousness, not my consciousness. However mature we may be in the practice of meditation or in some other method of contemplative inquiry, we enter a different world of truth when we are engaged in a realistic interpersonal relationship with another person, or group of persons.

So, what is it about an interpersonal relationship that brings us into such a different universe of truth than the universes of truth we explore with our scientific quests or our contemplative inquiries? A few times I have met a stranger whose eyes met my eyes in a way that I knew that this other human being saw me, perhaps as clearly as some of my long-time friends. Such meetings are not about physical admiration or intellectual stimulation, or romantic possibilities. Such moments have to do with my conscious person noticing another conscious person who is noticing me.

We humans are an extremely capable social species. Most of what we know has come to us through contact with other humans. A child raised by wolves or in some other way separated from other humans in early life can miss out on extremely crucial aspects of human development. We are seldom fully aware of how deep a role has been played in our development by being with other humans—honest talk, dancing, physical play, singing, creating music, touching, hugging, and so very much more.

The “I-Thou” approach to truth can also be distinguished from a fourth approach to truth that I will call the “We-They” approach to truth. This fourth approach to truth has to do with politics; with sustaining, repairing, and replacing economic systems; and with preserving and enriching the systems of knowledge, life styles, and the media of art, language, mathematics, and religious formation. I will discuss freedom in relation to these social commonality features of our lives in other essays. In this essay I will focus on how freedom interfaces with the interpersonal relations of the I-Thou.

Freedom and the Interpersonal

Freedom may be even more obviously present in interpersonal relations than in scientific research and contemplative inquiry. In our interpersonal relations we are constantly responding to the ongoing experiences of taking in these other persons. We are experiencing the need for raw creativity in each response. Habitual actions or rote words simply will not do for the pursuing of a realistic personal relationship.

Choice, freedom, invention, initiative, resonance, wildness, are words that describe an interpersonal relationship. If I reduce the full wonder of an interpersonal relationship into an object of empirical science, I have lost the full reality of what is taking place.

Similarly, if I reduce the full wonder of an interpersonal experience to being helped by another with my interior life, or with my helping another with their interior life, I have again lost the full reality of what is taking place. It is not that our interior lives are missing or do not add to an interpersonal experience, but an interpersonal relation is something more than an enhancement of our contemplative experiences. An interpersonal relationship is an on-going whole-body, whole-mind, whole-consciousness, whole being process that calls forth a challenge to our raw freedom that we may not notice so vividly in our scientific or contemplative quests for truth.

Response-ability for the Inter-personal

So we find ourselves engaged in a responsibility for our personal relations with other humans. We can enhance our wisdom for doing this by taking advantage of the many great books on interpersonal relations. But simply reading these resources is not good enough. We have to apply our interpersonal thoughtfulness to actual interpersonal relationships. Learning to experience our interpersonal freedom comes into play when we are actually living together with someone, working together with someone, spending time together with other human beings who are spending time with us.

There exist in our culture many therapies, workshops, and retreats that include interpersonal learning for people who want to learn these skills. It may be a responsible use of our freedom to get our body to one of these events. If you and one of your interpersonal peers are struggling with the processes of your relationship, it may be a responsible use of your freedom to get the two of you to one of these helpful events. The time and money to do this kind of interpersonal work can be well spent if the wisdom learned is actually worked into our ongoing living.

And when two or more of us are attempting to live together, we will need to set aside daily and weekly times together that are specifically directed toward our interpersonal practices. We may also find helpful a committed membership in a weekly meeting religious practice that takes interpersonal realities seriously.

A Weekly Meeting Christian Circle

Excellent theological study alone will not spawn a vital movement of Christian renewal. Nor will the addition of relevant social activism be enough. A necessary third of this particular trinity of practices is a weekly meeting circle that knows how to practice the I-Thou dynamics of interpersonal relations with a profound level of consciousness.

The sociological fabrics of such a circle consist of having no one leader, priest, guru, or any other such “holy one” in charge of the group. No one personality needs to dominate this practice. Everyone sits in a circle, and symbols of human authenticity are placed in the center of the circle. The only leader is the Christ exemplar (or whatever other model of true humanness holds for this group the essence of being human in this particular religious practice). Perhaps a coffee table has on it three candles that hold the symbolism of the Christ presence. However symbolized, our leader symbolically “sits” in the center of the circle, and every person in the group can reach into that center and embody for a moment or a period of time the overt leadership of the group.

However experienced in deep awareness any one person may be, that person’s leadership capacity is limited, and is balanced with the leadership of others. Every personality quality has limitations as well as gifts. Every self-image is an approximation of our real humanity. All states of being are passing realities. The permanent essential humanness that is potential within each human being sits in the center of the circle as our only complete leader. This complete ending of hierarchical relations, does not make everyone in a group equal in any specific way. We are just equal before God. And each person becomes more aware that each of us who is dedicated to a Christian life is continually faced with this possibility of reaching into that center of the meeting for our moments of approximate Christ leadership.

In this symbolism, I see a primary vision of the future practice of Christianity. I view all those who choose to join a weekly-meeting circle of freedom-loving Christian practices as thereby being washed with a new sort of baptism and being ordained to a new sort of priesthood. We become pastors to one another. We become a co-pastorate to the community or the bioregion where we live, and to the planet on which we dwell. Such an interpersonal intimacy of Christian “life together” is step one toward a viable and vital contemporary Christian practice of renewed religion.

The details of what any group of us do together in our Co-paster Circle can be important as an illustration, but these details should not become a prescribed pattern for all Circles. The patterns for each Circle are only correct when they are decided through a true consensus of those Circle members. And each Circle needs to design some stabilities—stabilities that nevertheless come up for review on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly.

In the circle to which I belong, we open the meeting by lighting three candles and singing a triune song to a secular tune. We end the meeting singing the same song. while extinguishing the three candles. This ritual has worked well for us. We have kept this bit of stability for many years.

The overall drama of the evening is flexible, and evaluated each quarter, but a broad pattern persists: confession, celebration, and dedication are ritual activities that are done in that order. This order of nurture is also has an “inner flow” of conscious states described by these words: humility, gratitude, and compassion.

The first hour of our two-hour meeting is devoted to various exercises that provide content to the above ritual framework. These ritual components include singing, dancing, confession, absolution, celebration, and a personally grounding conversation on a small portion of poetry or scripture.

The second hour of our two-hour meeting is devoted to the study of a small portion of well-suited written material. We intend to become good students and teachers of one another, using methods that help each other become personally thoughtful about some of the best written resources that are accessible to non-specialists. Study of written material is our default pattern. Occasionally we see a video and hold a spirit discussion of it. Or we may conduct a workshop, hold a celebration, or do an evaluation of the quarter. If a video is the assignment of the evening, the screen sits in the circle with us. A guest from anywhere on the planet might visit us on that screen. Perhaps a film drama visits us. Perhaps a white board sits in the circle with us, and on that white board is a chart of the material we are studying or perhaps the brainstorming of some workshop.

The word “study” has a wide spectrum of meanings, but in our circle we require of each of us to be a good study facilitator who makes our study a spirit-deepening event or an ethical prioritizing event for the living of our specific lives. Good group processes are as important as good written content that is carefully selected for this purpose.

The details of this CoPastor Circle practice matter, but they do not matter ultimately. What matters ultimately is the quality of the interpersonal contact sought in each of these specific activities of these two-hour weekly meetings. This quality has to do with accessing our profound reality—our essential reality that is never absent, though we can be absent from our essential reality. Our aim for having a meeting at all is to occasion openings within our lives toward a return from our ditches of estrangement to our essential reality, and to learn how to live such realism in the temporal flow our lives.

The specific events of return to realism will differ for each person and will differ for the group each week of this practice. What endures is the basic aim of continuing openings within each of us to the call to becoming a Christian priesthood—assisting one another toward a deep realism. By choosing to attend this Circle, we are each allowing the ongoing process of becoming Christ-quality priests or pastors for one another and for our local community. We trust in our forgiveness and in the reality of our fresh starts upon this ever-opening journey into profound consciousness.

Conclusion

This description of the realism and freedom of these interpersonal meetings is only a sketch of this deep topic, but the freedom spoken about in this essay is understood to be an essential part of this interpersonal style of Christianity. Freedom means starting where we are in allowing that ever-deeper movement into where we Eternally are in order to be more creatively real where we temporally are.

These values can also apply to other-than-Christian religious practices.

 

Some Do Ride Out the Floods

The story of Cain and Abel is followed by an overlapping set of stories about a mammoth flood that only a boatload of the old ecology lived through. The story begins with tales of such extreme estrangements from Profound Reality that Profound Reality, poetically speaking, is said to have become sorry to have created the human species.

However, one family and its leader, Noah, had continued to love realism just enough to get Reality’s attention. So Reality shared with this small group a secret: prepare a big boat, for a flood of chaos is arriving to wash away the whole landscape as you know it. So Noah, the original outsider, built a boat on dry land to the consternation (even scorn) of all his peers.

This is a symbolic story. We don’t need to go looking for a fragment of the true ark. This is a parable about the operation of history itself—our own history as well as happenings long ago. Profound Reality eventually floods unreality with a washing that is only anticipated by our various dunkings in our own personal River Jordans. Sometimes, our unrealistic living stores up geography-wide cultural establishments of estrangement from Profound Reality that are so great that they reach serious reckonings. Noah and family is a symbol of the truth that we are still “here” in spite of all those historical downers.

For example, looking toward our own future in 2019, we can already see forerunners of the impending consequences of our huge fossil-fuel burning. A Reality-baed reckoning is coming our way. Ark building is the realistic command, if we love having a viable planet for our and many other species.

Continue reading Some Do Ride Out the Floods

Radical Gifts

For this month’s Realistic Living Pointers I am going to share with you the preface and table of contents of my new book just published by Wood Lake Publishers. The title is:

Radical Gifts: Living the Full Christian Life in Troubled Times.

In 1963, two years before his death, Paul Tillich gave three lectures on “The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message.” These lectures were published in 2007 in a book by that title. Tillich’s conclusions clarified our awareness that the Christian message can only be relevant when it is shaped for our times. This core challenge has remained all these years.

In 1984, I offered the initial version of Radical Gifts under the title A Primer on Radical Christianity. This update for Wood Lake Publishing now stands on the shoulders of not only the great 19th- and 20th-century Christian theologians, but also on the shoulders of Christian and secular writers in these early decades of century 21. In this 2018 publication, I continue the effort to envision for the general reader the radical gifts of the Christian revelation for the tasks of realistic living in our contemporary settings. This current book contains some updating, yet the core challenges for Christianity have endured.

We are living in the midst of a turning point in the history of Christianity that is more radical than the Reformation period, perhaps as radical as the birth of Christianity itself. This emerging form of Christianity is so new that it does not seem to be Christianity at all to many people.

Such a topic deserves an elaborate book, but this is a simple book written for you no matter who you are or what relationship you now have to a Christian practice. By “radical gifts” I mean both a recovery and a going forward. I intend a recovery of the full New Testament witness, and a moving beyond both the intellectual and social forms that have defined the term “Christian” for hundreds of years.

I see this work as a useful study book, but also as a condensed pull-together for Christians who are willing to continue, or to begin now to build new forms of Christian-life-together that both nurture Christians and reach out to challenge the spirit confusions that characterize our global societies. I see this as more than a theology book and more than an outline for action; it is a program for living our whole lives in relevant and vital interaction with the times in which we have shown up.

Having a fresh Christian practice is not the only way to make a deep difference, but I am sure it is one way. And it is a way to enter into the needed interreligious dialogue with something to say, and with something to do together with other faiths for the healing of persons and for the justice of societies within these interreligious times. We are all facing these same troubled times together. This book outlines the Christian gifts to these discussions and these actions.

The first six chapters of this book contain theological poetry that still speaks to our times. Chapter 7 on ethics is printed in its original form and updated in an appendix. Similarly, Chapter 8 on Christian community has been updated in another appendix.

Following is the table of contents and how order this book:

1. What is Spirit?

2. What is Spirit Sickness?
and How is it Healed?

3. What Does Spirit Health Include?

4. What Reality in Human Experience
Do We Point to with the Word, “God”?

5. What Does All This Have To Do
with Jesus Christ?

6. What is Commitment to God,
to Christ, to Holy Spirit?

7. What Consequences Does this Commitment
Have for Ethical Thinking?

8. What Will Be the Coming Social Shape
of the Community of the Committed?

Appendix A: Prayer and the
House Church Meeting

Appendix B: Reality, God, and
Liturgical Language

Appendix C: Immortality, Reincarnation
and the Spirit Self

Appendix D: A Chapter 7 Update on the
Commitment to Ethical Thinking

Appendix E: A Chapter 8 Update on the
Community of the Committed

You can order this book from www.woodlakebooks.com. A print copy is $15.96 plus shipping; e-book or kindle $9.96. Shipping costs to the United States for 1-6 books is $17. For 7 or more books, shipping is free. To Canada shipping costs for 1-6 books is $12. For 7 or more books shipping is free. Contact Gene Marshall for other options.( jgmarshall@cableone.net ).

The Good Shepherd Lives

Here is a much mistreated passage from the Fourth Gospel about shepherds and sheep.

I have come that human beings may have life and may have it is all its fullness. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hireling, when he sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away, because he is no shepherd and the sheep are not his. John 10 :10-12

Those who give sermons on the good shepherd often assume that this ancient image applies to a contemporary pastor who tells his flock what they should believe and how they should act. Such a view also assumes that most people are sheep in the sense of being gullible, go-along, authority-addicted dumbbells.

I do not believe this was the meaning intended by the original author of these verses. The original shepherd image was grounded in the experience of noticing highly dedicated persons working on a hillside with a flock of sheep, providing them grass and water and protecting them from wolves. Being a follower of Jesus means being such a leader.

So where can we actually experience this Good Shepherd in our lives today? Let me answer this with a fictitious story—a story made out of my own experiences. In my story, Sally McGillicutty teaches an adult class in the Sunflower room of the Umpity Ump Christian Church. Sally trusts the Ultimate Message that the Infinite Silence we meet in every event of our lives loves Sally and every other person (and creature) on this planet or any other planet. Because of her trust in that Eternal Wholeness that is faced by Sally and by us, Sally is thereby an embodiment of the Ultimate Message from Eternity.

Continue reading The Good Shepherd Lives

The Depth of Christian Social Ethics

All social ethics takes place in a context of history. Christian social ethics is no different: as Christians we do not have a set of principles that apply to every generation of history. The ethics of Leviticus and the ethics of Deuteronomy were shaped for those times in history. The same applies to the ethics of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and H. Richard Niebuhr. Time moves on and social ethics moves on with the times.

Continue reading The Depth of Christian Social Ethics

The Flight From Freedom

Freedom is a component of our essential nature along with trust of Realty and care for self and neighbor. Yet we flee from this freedom, just as we distrust Reality and neglect care for ourselves and others. Flight from freedom is an estrangement from realism.

The Primal Merging with Freedom

When we have been blessed to see beyond our self images, personality structures, and social conditioning, we discover our intentionality, our initiative, our freedom to act beyond those self-inflicted boundaries. Too easily, we tell ourselves that we can’t do what we can do. The truth is we don’t know what we can do. We think we are determined where we are not. For example, if I am by habit a shy person, I can still discover my freedom to risk myself in gregarious contact with others. If I am by habit a boisterous person, I can still discover my freedom to calm down into being sensitive to others. Personality impulses exist, but so does freedom, unless we have squelched it.

Our essential freedom does not control the future—almost always he future comes to us as a surprise. Our freedom is not absolute control, but a participant in options. And this freedom is a gift—a gift that must to be received and enacted by us. Freedom is our profound initiative to make a difference in what the future turns out to be. Our free initiatives mingle with massive forces beyond our control to form a future that is both a surprise to us and a result of our initiatives.

Continue reading The Flight From Freedom

Innocent Suffering

Several Christian theologians, including H. Richard Niebuhr, have used the term “innocent suffering” to provide us with clues to our ethical priorities. What do we mean by this term?

For example, it is certainly true that African American persons in the United States confront an up-hill slope compared to their white brothers and sisters. To even be a candidate for the office of president, Barack Obama had to be qualified way beyond the norm for this job. Though we might not support some of Obama’s policies, we had in him a superbly qualified person: a law scholar; a public speaker of Abraham Lincoln class (many of whose speeches will be remembered for centuries); a talented comedian seldom seen in public office; a person of self control, obvious sanity, and sincere intent to be a positive influence. Had he had any of the flaws or weaknesses of Donald Trump, he would never have been elected Senator, much less President. Can we imagine the response of voters, had Obama said things about women that Trump apparently got away with (at least with millions of voters)? A white man in our culture often avoids sufferings that a black person will almost certainly experience.

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Time?

In both contemporary physics and contemporary religious writings “time” remains a mysterious topic. Nothing is more obvious than time to an elder who has watched babies grow into adults. “How time flies!” is almost an automatic exclamation. Nevertheless, in both our scientific quest for truth and in our interior or contemplative quest for truth, “What is time?” arises as an unusually profound topic.

Contemplative Time

When we look within our own conscious being, we see ourselves living in an ongoing quality we call “now.” Time seems to flow through this now. The past is just a memory taking place now as content in our memory banks. And the future is only an anticipation, taking place now in our guesses about future nows that have yet to “happen.” In our experiences of contemplation or art participation or solitary brooding, “now” continues to be our core experience of time

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The Road and the Retreat

Your vision of the world is your world,
until you find a better vision of the world.

In the four years preceding 2011, five unknown visionaries, Ben Ball, Marsha Buck, Ken Kreutziger, Alan Richard, and myself, wrote a book entitled “The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy.” This book named ten positive trends toward a viable and promising future for humanity on planet Earth. Trumpism manifests the opposite of all ten of these trends. If there were a Trumpite book on such topics, it might be titled “The Retreat from Eco-Democracy to Anthropocentric Empire.”

I am going to name those ten trends examined in The Road and give names to Trumpism’s ten retreats that are reversing those positive trends.

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