lecture...

Yes! I found another site with the lecture I talked about a few days ago by Marcus Borg. This is a great lecture by a person that has saved me from completely loosing my faith. I realize much of what he says is a summary of many theological views of the last hundred years, but his ability to distill that information is remarkable. It takes about 50 minutes, so for all of you that are too lazy to read the books, here is the movie (or at least a really indepth trailer).

FYI... Before reading his books I thought my choices in life were either...

A) Believe the fundamentalist Christian view of the world complete with 6-day creation, virgin-birth, and an angry God ready to throw the majority of the world into a literal/physical Hell for eternity.

or

B)Atheism.

Thank you Marcus Borg for showing me that there is a plan C,D,E and F and letting me realize that it is ok to ask questions and figure this stuff out for myself!

Video for High-speed Connection

A brief note about Marcus Borg

Quote of the Week...

To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world. The paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do not believe in the salvation of the world, and those who belive in the future of the world do not believe in God.

Christians believe in "the end of the world", they expect the final catastrophe, the punishment of others.

Atheists in turn... refuse to believe in God because Christians believe in him and take no interest in the world...

Which is the more culpable ignorance?

Louis Evely, In the Christain Spirit - 1975

Relationship 101

I feel like a 37 year old 3rd grader when it comes to relationships but I think I just got over a small hurdle. The jury is still out on if it will manifest into real changes in my life.

If a relationship is going to succeed it has to grow. That means discovering more about a person and revealing more of me. As a relationship grows we get to see the real person. Eventually talking to a person at church or work will turn into meeting in home group which leads to regular dinners which leads to sharing ideas, thoughts and feelings which leads to friendship. That sounds great right? Well, eventually you are bound to find things you don't like. There is no way around it. Nobody is perfect and you will always find something that seems wrong about their personality, habits, views, etc. What do I do now? If I’m not careful I can slip into the frame of mind that no matter what happens it seems like their flaws are the only thing I can see and all the things that made me grow to love them seem to disappear in light of their flaws. Do I ruin all the relationships that I love because I can't deal with their flaws? Maybe everyone inherently knows this and that is why most people keep their relationships at arms length. That is no way to live.

After some prayer I realized that the problem is ME not the flaws of all my friends. My flaws are probably even bigger and my inability to see past their flaws is just wrong. My first impression is to try and "fix" them but that is stupid and I could never have a deep relationship with anyone if I'm always trying to "fix" all my friends. I wonder how God does this so well. I'm convinced that when God looks at people (even the most evil person) he still sees beauty so why can’t I overlook simple character flaws?

Grace is NOT forgiving someone when they say "I'm sorry". Real grace is looking right past flaws and not expecting or even wanting an apology. I think the skewed image of God and misunderstanding of the Bible handed down to me by the church has led to this downfall in my character. The whole atonement/repentance/forgiveness/bloodshed concepts about God have made us all apology centric. We think that is what God is waiting for from us, so we constantly are waiting for that from others. What if the thing God really gives us is compassion NOT forgiveness and maybe what he really wants is for us to show compassion also. Maybe that is what the life and message of Jesus was really about. Maybe people created the traditional image of “God as judge and jury” because that is what we would be like if we were God.

Well said...

I found a great video of one of my favorite Christian authors Marcus Borg. I've read 4 of his books and this 50 minute lecture really sums up the most important points that have helped reshape my view of religion. If you can't spare the time to read the books at least set aside an hour to give this a listen.

Borg at the National Cathedral (video)

FYI... I don't think the video is on a very robust server, so if it doesn't start right away you may need to give it a couple tries or try again later. This is worth the wait.