“We can either stay within the Christianity we have mastered with the Jesus we have domesticated, or we can leave Christianity as a destination, embrace Christianity as a way of life, and then journey to reality where God is present and living in every person, every human community, and all creation” (Samir Selmanovic)
I know this has been a long time coming, but I’ve finally organised some thoughts in my head about this fabulous book by Samir Selmanovic. Here are some of the ideas in the book that got me thinking more about how I live my life.
If God is present here (in my life, beliefs, church), does it mean he has to be absent elsewhere (in your life, beliefs, church)?
If you believe God favours anyone over anyone else, is he really worth worshiping?
Of course we want to defend the God we believe in, but can anything meaningful be said about God from a posture of defence?
We have shrunk the sacred and segregated life. “A gospel that is not as wide as the earth, that is without meaning for the whole earth, is no gospel at all”
Why are so many Christians bent on denying grace outside the boundaries of Christianity? This makes Christianity seem small, withdrawn from life, unappreciative of human experience, ungrateful. “As long as those of us who are Christians insist on staying enclosed in our own world of meanings, we have nothing more to say to the world”
Religion dreams of actually confining and managing God. We want to use God to grow our religions. Religions have become ‘God management systems’. “Have we turned our religious texts, traditions, and rituals into containers and dispensers of God?”
“Jesus repeatedly said, ‘The Kingdom of God is here. Enter it.’ Jesus never said, ‘Christianity is here. Join it.’ Christianity is a religion. The Kingdom of God was, is, and will always be more.”
How is your religion good for all people? Are you willing to make your religion take a backseat to something larger than itself?
Some churches exist for the purpose of avoiding God – they think God can be contained by the words of our theology and tamed by the motions of our liturgy.
Forgive and absorb injustice instead of deflecting it back into the world.
Any meaning we attach to the word ‘God’ will sooner or later be found wanting. Words reveal AND obscure.
“People who destroy themselves or others in the name of their religion are actually people who don’t know how to love and be loved. And that’s why perhaps, paradoxically, there is nothing but love that can really stop them.”
We are actually lessening our understanding if we interpret revelation solely as something that makes God knowable.
Risk more, and sooner.
EVERYONE, no matter if you are religious or not, assigns worth to something. Everyone’s heart goes somewhere. Everyone worships. What if our differences are not nearly as significant as we think? What if ‘religious’ or ‘nonreligious’ people are both just trying to simplify and manage the human experience?
Anything that isn’t God has the potential to become an idol. Religion is not God, so it too has the potential to become an idol.
We must recognise that our understanding of God is NOT God. When we talk about God, we need to realise that we are not really talking about God, but rather of our understanding of God (our religion). “When we free our religion from the burden of being our God, we empower it.”
But we also need religion – without it, we’re left drifting with our own meanings, isolated. Religion, at it’s best, leaves us desiring more of God than that same religion can ever contain.
It’s not the question of whether God exists or not, that stops most people from becoming Christians – it’s the refusal of religious people to admit that they idolise themselves in the form of their own religion.
“Why don’t religious folk present their ideas where everyone else does? They don’t come to book clubs, poetry readings, discussion groups, community service events, and social clubs. There are venues that we as a society set up together for people to share ideas. Why are Christians, and other religious people for that matter, absent from the places where they can’t be in charge?”
People of other religions shouldn’t be thought of as ‘guests’ – they are part of our world, and without them we’d be worse off.
“When humans take and hold strong positions with humility, we all gain.”
Can a rejection of God be something that honours God? God doesn’t have an ego that can be wounded by our disbelief in his existence.
“Religion must learn to live on earth. If religion does not work on earth, it does not work at all.”
Religious and nonreligious people often end up using God, and bringing conversation to an end.
The question shouldn’t be “Does God exist” (exist in what? in space? in time?), but the questions should be
(1) what do you believe in when you believe – or not believe – in God?
(2) What can you do to protect and hear those who subvert your ideas about the God you believe in or don’t believe in?
(3) How to turn the tensions between us into something that is life-giving instead of destructive?
Religion approaches life by producing a map and putting it in everyone’s hands – we say that life is chaos and needs to be reined in. We try to pull people out of this chaos and give them the purposes of our religion. We collect these ‘maps’, look for the right map, compare maps, argue about which map is correct. The problem with this is that we are left focusing on a destination – life loses its immediacy. The journey IS the destination. People aren’t looking for an escape from life. They’re looking for someone to help them walk the journey of life.
“Life – not religion or theology – is the medium of love… people who know how to love well are our guides and the embodiment of the Christian story.”
You can see the height of how self centred we are, in how we are so focused on getting to heaven that it’s at the expense of excluding God’s life from the world we are actually living in. “One world at a time, my friend, one world at a time.”
Are you interpreting the Bible in a way that helps you to love well? We need to learn to interpret (or reinterpret) the Bible through the eyes of reality. “Whatever separates us from one another is what separates us from God. Whatever brings us to one another brings us to God.” The world will need Christians once Christians learn to need the world. Don’t seek God out of this life – seek him further, and deeper into it.
When you imagine a boundary, is it a wall? Why not a window, a door, a bridge?
We’re called to bless and TO BE blessed, to give (strength) and to receive (weakness). We don’t know how to love because we don’t know how to receive.
Understanding our relationship with a Divine Other is inextricably linked with our relationships with Human Others.
“Follow me, and you might be happy – or you might not. Follow me, and you might be empowered – or you might not. Follow me, and you might have more friends – or you might not. Follow me, and you might have the answers – or you might not. Follow me, and you might be better off – or you might not. If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless. Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have: you will learn to love well.”
Is that all a bit heavy for a Tuesday night read?
