CCpart2ch16

15 Aug
I-24 in middle Tennesee

“If God invited you to a party and said,
‘Everyone in the ballroom tonight
Will be my special guest.’
How would you treat them when you arrived?
Indeed, indeed!
And Hafiz knows there is no one in this world
Who is not upon his Jeweled Dance Floor.”
--translated by Daniel Ladinsky

What a magnificent Sunday morning! Blue skies, a light mist hanging onto the mountainsides, and the air is as gentle and
soothing as one could ever hope to feel in the South in August. It has been that way for a couple days at least. My friend
Ben, who has been living within the Old Confederacy long enough to be considered a “southerner” I reckon [he later
corrected me and stated he prefers to be known as a “misplaced Yankee transplant”], says it is because of Hurricane
Charley, which plowed through Florida Friday and is now probably churning up the South Atlantic region. He said the
swirling atmospheric vortex that is a hurricane tends to draw all the humidity in the area toward itself, apparently over a very
large area in a big storm. Charley was a Level 4, pretty serious.

So some people get unseasonably pleasant air and fair skies, while others get their roofs blown off. Such is the way of
God. And who are we to quibble? God is the experiencer, and if there is a cosmic “reason” why God wants to experience
the devastation of hurricanes, it is far beyond our capacity to understand from this limited perspective anyway, so why
fuss? We will all have our roofs blown off someday by one big storm or another, and when mine goes, I hope someone will
be driving by, not too far away, and saying, “Wow, what a magnificent morning God has given us!” That way I will know
I have eternal life.

["PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may
think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to
toll for me, and I know not that.....
....all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book,
but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several
translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's
hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every
book shall lie open to one another....
....No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be
washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's
or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
--John Donne, from "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris - "Now, this
bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die."]

* * * *

Now, after some white space in which I did ten thousand things and went almost nowhere (I won’t even begin to describe
how Sunday went; let’s just say I got a lot of time online and typed a huge chunk of Part One at various Nashville
truckstops), I am finally heading west for sure. Just passed the 140 yardstick on I-40, on schedule for a twilight crossing
of Ole Man River in Memphis.

So, where were we? Feels like it was ages ago that I last wrote something topical….ah yes, (chuckle chuckle) Jesus didn’t
say everything He said.

Few things will sound less blasphemous in the ears of a Bible-believing Christian than that. I am prepared to face a full-
frontal assault in the theological theater during this scene (remember the idea that this is all “drama for drama’s sake,” that
no one actually gets hurt during these skirmishes). I will not try to defend my stance with proof, for there is none to be had
on either side. I wasn’t there with Yahshua ben Yosef, and neither were you, and neither was anyone alive now and capable
of debating this issue. Let’s start with that even playing field and see what either side has with which to debate.

Like I said, I don’t bring much, only what I consider to be common sense deductions based upon what are the shared and
acknowledged beliefs of both sides, ie. that Jesus represented the infinite qualities of God in finite form, that He lived His life
fully submitted to God, etc, and using as a foundation for these deductions the perceived qualities of God which are also
shared.

But for the Biblian to argue that every word attributed to Jesus in the Bible

is 100% historically accurate, there is really

nothing to stand on other than

the Bible itself.

Entire libraries could be filled with the Christian scholarship

of the last 1,900

years that had tried to build this edifice onto adjoining

properties, or just make the damn thing so tall and overwhelming that

the

lazy will not bother to look at its shaky foundation and will simply bow

before its massiveness.

In this sense, the Biblian

claim to world spiritual

supremacy is merely a teetering Goliath waiting to be toppled

. And it

probably should be –the

building isn’t up to code—just as the Catholic

Church was knocked off its block by the Reformation. It survived just

fine,

and so would Biblian Christianity.

I dare say it would flourish in a

leaner, more humble building.

The reason that Biblian “faith architects” cannot expand onto adjoining

properties, so to speak, is self-contained within their

own belief system:

the Bible is literally God’s exclusive Truth, then all theological

territory around it is murky

swampland, with marshes and sinkholes

that should never be built upon

Which is fine I suppose; it doesn’t hurt

anybody else. And it is good for Biblian Christians too, to the extent that

they use the Bible to turn their attention to the

infinite qualities and eternal

presence of God.

But when we start to let the word-based, finite concepts of the Bible define God for us, define Christ, it makes a god
out of the book itself –like a fourth member of the Trinity, you could say—and I don’t know of any other way to
see that than as the kind of idolatry that Christianity is supposed to overcome or supercede.

Does this make sense, what I am trying to say here? In the first option, the symbols of the Bible point to the
substance of God. In the second option, the symbols become the substance, which is similar to confusing a map of
Michigan with the state itself, or the menu for the meal.

(Another Hafiz poem:
“Why just show you God’s menu?
Hell, we are all starving—
Let’s eat!)

Now the problems arise. Whereas the substance of God is, or course, universal, the same to a Christian as to a
Buddhist as to a Muslim as to a Hindu etc, the symbols used by the various faiths vary anywhere from slightly to
drastically. When the symbols point to the substance, there is no conflict and no contradiction: all roads lead to Rome (or
in this case, Home). But when confusion of symbol for substance has made the symbol into the substance in the mind of
the Biblian Christian, the “rightness” of the perception of the substance of God gets tangled up with the perception of
rightness in the symbols. In other words, the reality of God with which all seekers agree and partake as one family,
becomes to the Biblian (and many others as well) a reality which only those who employ the same symbols can be
experiencing authentically. The road that is validated by its accord with our particular symbols is the only one that really
leads to Home, and all the others that appear to go there must be some kind of deception.

But by what authority do they make this claim of being on the one true road to Home? God’s authority? But all orthodox
faiths make the same claim, and there is no objective reason to accept one claim over the others –only subjective, and by
that I mean the subjective experience of seeing our favorite symbols of God as the substantive experience of God’s reality
and presence. This leads us to say something like, “Wow, I just felt the presence of God for the first time as I read this
scripture, so this must be the one true way to find God.”

[Ed. Note: This seems more peculiar than ever to me as I type it. No one would read, say, a particularly good book about
dinosaurs by Joe Blow, and presume that Joe Blow is the world’s only valid authority on dinosaurs…But I digress.]

Worship of the symbols (“God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”) –the definition of idolatry-- will naturally follow,
and perception of the substance must now be validated by the symbols in order to be authenticated. The rules are
now dictating to the Rulemaker. God-in-a-box.

So the symbols end up becoming self-validating, hence the image of a towering edifice of Biblical scholarship built upon
nothing but the Bible itself. It cannot look elsewhere for validation; there is no corroboration for the Christian Bible’s
exclusive status as God’s truth in, say, the Mahab h arata, or the Q ur'an, or the Talmud. It is not reflected in the daily
spiritual lives of people of other faiths, or in the secular, irreligious world. There is little to confirm it in the natural world as
well –the Bible says we were given “dominion” over the plant and animal kingdom, and this seems to make sense in the
realm of domestication, but whenever we confront the worlds of flora and fauna in their natural environment, we are forced
to recognize that we meet on the terms of equals, each with their own style of God-given cunning and survivor’s tenacity.
Likewise every “natural disaster” –every hurricane or flood or tornado or earthquake or drought—drives home the point that
to “go but for the grace of God” also means to exist within the delicate web of balance that is the natural world.

So, in making the claim of exclusive spiritual Truth for their Bible, in calling it the inerrant, infallible, unadulterated Word of
God, Biblian Christians stand alone. In most people I know who adhere to this belief, it is manifested in attitudes
toward life that are not at all repugnant and in many cases quite desirable: a sad compassion for the “lost souls” of
the world, a heartfelt urge to reach out to others with a message of Hope and Love, an often boundless gratitude to God for
literally everything in their lives (even salvation, for at ACF we are taught that the saved were chosen by God, not vice
versa), and in some cases even something approximating “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding”
(Phillipians 4:7). In others, this belief creates a kind of a siege mentality where their faith feels threatened by the
existence of other faiths. There are constantly barbarians at these people’s gates, and the thought of inviting them inside
or meeting them to engage in meaningful dialogue is too threatening to consider. I reckon it is the latter approach, more than
the former, that is responsible for the proliferation of literature in Christian bookstores –the teetering edifice—explaining,
always in purely Biblical terms, why theirs is the only road that leads to Home. But again, this is merely the choir preaching
to itself. It doesn’t carry any spiritual authority, and it doesn’t have to harm anybody –just don’t go near the fortress.

My only reservation about both Biblian perspectives, in fact the whole reason why I’ve addressed these Chronicles to Biblian
Christians at all –and this is nothing but frank, unsolicited opinion—is that I personally cannot see how either one is more
desirable than the alternative in which symbol is used only as the guidepost to substance.

Why “build your house on the rock” of the Bible, and the Bible only, when the whole world can be your home
through the direct, substantial experience of God?

Why alienate yourself from more than half of your brothers and sisters by believing that their beliefs are based on
lies, when you can share with them in the direct, substantial experience of God by opening up to a Truth beyond
words?

Why seek validation for the substance of your God-experience in the symbols of one text, originating from one
culture only, when all the world’s scriptures are screaming “GOD!” in different languages, using different symbols?

Why insist on seeking God’s face in heaven tomorrow, when you can live within God’s entire body today?

In other words: why settle for a peace that will never pass understanding –because it is based in your verbal
understanding—when God is so eager to outgrow you and give you a peace that is so much larger than your
understanding that, search as you may, you will never find its boundaries?

Biblian brothers and sisters, I cannot emphasize this point enough: the peace and
truth of God's love for us is real, but when Paul wrote that famous line to the
Christians in the church at Phillipi, they did not have New Testaments in their
pews to consult for validation. What turned them on to the peace which passeth
all understanding? --HC Salina, Kan.

© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production

N ext -- Chapter 17