God is Not a White Man

This is my new favorite Youtube video I came across today via Andrew Hackman on Facebook. The video says it all.



I've never heard of Gungor but I plan on looking into them later today. Here's their Youtube page and if you enjoy the video, pass it on!

Finding God After Leaving Religion

There is an insightful article published on Saturday in the Huffington Post by Steve McSwain on the spirituality of us 34 Million American 'Nones' who've left organized religion behind. You can read it here. McSwain doesn't so much attack organized religion as he explains why this movement is gathering momentum. People who can not connect with the divine in a church, temple, or mosque are connecting with it daily, intimately, wherever they might be and with whomever they might encounter. Or I should say we, now shouldn't I.

But that 's the thing about being a 'None' or an SBNR there is no concrete definition because the definition rests upon the individual, what SBNR.org has creatively tagged as the subtitle to their homepage, Open Source Spirituality. This is not to say that organized religion is so last millennium but that it doesn't speak to the 34 million Americans still yearning to connect with the divine.

I am Spiritual But Not Religious. I still go to church not for God but for community. I meditate in the mornings and I interact with other spiritual explorers online as I read and write on matters of the spirit. Throughout my day I consider the suffering of others and if I can I try to alleviate it (although my pride and my urge to look out for my own neck gets in the way a lot). I spend time working with my hands fixing things up in our new home, and I settle down to relax with my family. This is my spirituality, to simple Be. I hold no grudge against religion, nor do I consider it my enemy. Religion is a human language used to interpret and communicate the awe and wonder we behold in simply being alive. It is the creative expression of man which resulted in different religions based on their experience of the divine. Man felt something, and continues to feel something, we just express that something with different words and symbols. I believe the SBNR movement is a response to mankind elevating our religious narratives and symbols to an idolatrous state equal to the divine. Finding God after religion does not mean God can not be found in religion but that the divine is always present in every corner of our lives. McSwain expresses that nothing has to be done to enter into the presence of the divine, to know God, since God is already here. To be here now is to dwell in the constant state of divine fullness, to simply BE.

The Sacredness of Ground Zero

There has been a passionate yet polite discussion on the Spiritual But Not Religious Facebook page on the building of a mosque near Ground Zero. The discussion seems split down the middle between those for and against the building of the mosque. The main argument against it seems to be that the decision to build the mosque should be left to the people of NYC and the survivors, while the main argument for building is that allowing it would encourage Americans to dialogue and learn more of this commonly misunderstood faith. A few thoughts struck me as I read through the discussion.

First, it seems as if the land at Ground Zero bears a since of sacredness from the aftermath of the attack. This I do not argue with but we must be careful that honor and respect for those who died upon that now sanctified ground does not turn into idolatry, and idolatry into tribalistic hatred for Muslims. I'm just urging caution. Second, not all residents of NYC are Christian (or other), many of them are Muslim, several hundred thousands of them, and since they're also NYC residents their voice should not be dismissed simply because they are a minority group. If a church were to be built there instead I doubt this would have made the papers and caused non-Christians to protest.

My final thought on the matter is on the huge amount of misinformation floating around the internet on how this mosque will be used for terrorists to infiltrate the U.S. There is a great Q&A with the Lead Developer of the Park 51 Project, Sharif el-Gamal which sheds some light onto the detail of the planned project. Aziz Poonawalla over at City of Brass conducted the interview, click here to read the entire article.

So what do you think?

Hardee's Faith, The Lunatic, and the Possibilian?

Don over at Reflections has posted an intriguing article by Dr. Richard Beck on the horizontal (God) and vertical (our fellow man) obligations of the Christian. James of Exploring our Matrix and Sabio of Triangulations write on whole packaged faith and thinking vs. from scratch faith and thinking. (Oh, and Exploring our Matrix has had a new face lift.) Andrew at Hackman's Musings has shared a creepy but excellent video rendition of Mark Twain's "The War Prayer". And via Faithful Progressive Robert Jensen writes on Neuroscientist David Eagleman as a Possibilian, living "between the facts we think we know and the fictions that illuminate what we don’t know."

I've also received my new Droid Incredible yesterday and was wondering if there were any religious apps out there, or any period that I must have? Any suggestions?

The Reason for Salvation

"The reason we're Saved is not to have a better life here, it's because we broke the holy laws. We stand guilty before Him and we don't want to go to Hell." ~Pastor Roberson, Calvary Baptist Church-Redbank, TN.

I was hoping for something a bit more uplifting and "Christ-like" than saving our own necks from Beelzebub's boiling stew as I sat on the edge of my seat for the reason why people yearn for salvation. Is salvation really all about divine justice and avoiding Hell? What if you don't believe in either, what then? I do believe in justice but the divine justice portrayed in Christianity and Islam (they are quite similar, you know) sounds immensely unjust.



Why the need for punishment in the afterlife anyway? Why must sins be paid with blood? Is there no other way, a more compassionate way? Why must God demand sacrifice, human sacrifice, from its flawed creation to laws God put into place? Is there no other way in approaching the divine without blood as the ticket to dwelling in the presence of the holy?

The reasoning in Christian theology sounds reasonable at first: the price we pay for giving into our carnal nature is the destruction of life. This speaks to our desire to survive, and if we want to survive and honor the gift of life we must redeem ourselves. But to us in the 21st century there is a disconnect. We (the Nones, SBNR, the secularist, etc.) feel that sacrifice is unnecessary to connect to each other and to the divine (however you may define that). Not only does distancing ourselves from the sacrificial interpretation relieve ourselves of unnecessary self-created fear and guilt this gives us all the more reason to honor life in THIS world. There is no stick and carrot prompting us to love our fellow man, we love from an inner desire to do so. Is this not more genuine than love propelled by the fear of hell? I do not love to save my own skin, I love to honor the skin of my neighbor. Does this redefinition of the Crucifixion devalue the good news of the gospel? This depends on your views on theology. A brief study into the history of God shows that our views of God has evolved and continues to do so. Maybe it is time to review the popular beliefs of God. There is a growing trend that people are becoming dissatisfied and disconnected with the traditional views since spirituality has not declined only the religious envelope in which it is presented. I believe that humanity is on the verge of a global awakening, we are becoming aware that the old notion of 'every man for himself' is not going to cut it anymore. We are aware of the humanity of our global neighbors and it's becoming increasingly difficult for us to hate Them when we know Them. How can we damn our neighbors to eternal hell fire when the lines between Us and Them are blurring?

22. Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom."

They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) kingdom as babies?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]." [Gospel of Thomas, Logia 22]