Jesus Christ Superstar

I’m tired of people trying to take Jesus and use him for their own benefit, whatever that might be. I can not stand the old, WWJD because usually what people say he would do is not what he would do but what they do do.  For example, Jesus would never vote Democrat, or would he only vote Democrat, or maybe he wouldn’t vote at all. My niece has a bumper sticker on her van that says, “Who would Jesus bomb”, I’m not quite sure what to make of this? Better said is WWYD? What would YOU do as a follower of Christ? You are the body of Christ btw, if you are a believer that is. Be a man, (as my four feminist girls jokingly love to say), and stand up and make your decision!

Who was Jesus anyway? This seems to be dependent on who you ask or what church you go to? There are over 400 Christian sects alone, yikes! I get my ideas from the Synoptic Gospels as they are four similar accounts. I was also amazingly fortunate to have a personal encounter, the kind that everybody but me had had, or so it seemed. That experience made more sense to me than all the reading in the Bible I had done previously.

For sure he was a revolutionary, he did not come to make everyone comfortable. Personally I DO NOT think he was lily white, either in skin color or in personality as he has so often been portrayed. I think he hung with the people most of us would not want to associate with who we might be downright afraid of. He said what he said, and what exactly was on his mind and in his heart no matter the consequences. Wow., he was here to do the will of his Father and that was that.

I am finding myself more liberal as I age whereas most people my age are becoming more conservative. Perhaps it is living with three teens that is opening my mind and yes my heart to all the causes that are out there and all the people that need to be loved. People that in some cases might even spit in the face of religious types. Strange as it seems I think they need and even deserve God’s love.

I am tired of trying to be the square peg in the round hole. I voted Democrat, I am an environmentalist and feminist, I believe in evolution, love science, real science and can’t wait for the newest amazing discovery. I love people of all faiths and believe they too are part of this big family called the human family, the family of God. I believe everyone is my “brother from another mother” even if they don’t accept Jesus, radical for Christians I know. I believe salvation isn’t just a string of words uttered at a moment of conversion but a lifelong journey and process. I am not obsessed with going to heaven or hell. I rarely think of it. God loves me and this I am sure of!  I am who I am and Jesus loves me too, just as I am.   I claim Jesus as mine.

Recently I had an epiphany moment, ironically it was working with Epiphany Ministries Inc. If I really want to be a follower of Christ I have to let bygones by bygones but most importantly I have to pick up my cross and really follow. I actually have to make that decision. I can sit around in my comfortable little life or I can pick up the dang heavy thing and get a move on. It is a painful way, especially when it involves meeting people I would normally not be involved with, say like murderers and rapists and this is not figurative either. I can only do this with the help of God, but strangely this is a joyful thing and I can not fully explain why. My heart sometimes feels it will burst with love from within and from without. Maybe it’s just menopause though? I truly am amazed.

Faith and Reason

As I wrote some time ago in another blog, I often feel like my interest in and even admiration of Charles Darwin and his amazing discoveries about the emergence of life on earth is a dirty little secret. I get frustrated that the people I often associate with seem to feel that it’s one or the other, science or religion. I have always found God in my study of the natural world. To me nothing makes sense without a creator to have designed the plan for everything and one who is still intimately invovled in human lives. I do not believe there could be any scientific discovery that could shake my faith.

 For a number of years I tried to understand Intelligent Design, at least it sounded more scientific than Creationism which makes absolutely no logical sense at all given our knowledge of radiocarbon dating and plain old fossils, very old fossils that is. I could never seem to understand what the heck the proponets of Intelligent Design were even talking about. Then I came upon a book by Francis Collins called The Language of God and though it was fairly scientific and I am not a scientist, I could understand it and better yet it made amazing sense to me.  I realized that Charles Darwin did figure out quite a lot and that much of it has been proven not disproven.

I have read much about Francis Collins and wish I knew him well enough to call him up and say, “Hey Francis what do you say to people that assume that if you believe evolution you can not possibly be a Christian?” I generally don’t bring it up but wish I could because it is actually one of my favorite subjects. However, there are so manythings I like to talk about because, well, I like to talk and  have many interests. Anyway, to end this post I have this amazing video which is kind of long but well worth the time to watch. If you don’t have time, at least read this CNN article on how science and religion can co-exist.

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln

I just didn’t want to miss the actual date. More on this subject later. I do think that eventually I will have more than two seconds to sit and gather my thoughts but then maybe not… For those who may be interested there is a wonderful article comparing the two men in National Geographic and sorry I can ‘t find a link to it but it is well worth the read.

For Goodness Snakes!

For my job I had to go out to one of my favorite places in the universe and help build a trail. I brought my two middle girls and with my boss and good friend, we worked our butts off, (though mine seems still fully in place) and tramped through the woods creating a new place for hikers. It was great fun, though I did feel it immediately in my lower back. I’m feeling fine now but I had to make sure I rested and did my core exercises.

We arrived for our project a bit early so the girls got to go in to play with Pocket the corn snake. I love snakes but not up close, far away in their natural habitat is best for me. I opened the door to Jenna with the snake around her neck and couldn’t help but jump backwards. In fact, scientists have come to the conclusion that a fear of snakes is inborn. I can imagine it has helped lots of folks over the eons keep from being bitten by poisonous snakes. The study has found that even small children quickly pick out a snake from random objects. They are amazing creatures but I still rather see them from afar. However, I am proud to say that I will handle Pocket when my snake loving daughters are not around.

My Dirty Little Secret

How’s that for a great opener? Actually I’ve been thinking of this post for a while but wasn’t sure if I should let the cat out of the bag or not. Some of my faithful readers, all two or three of you, may say, “Yeah and so what, that’s not news”, others may not feel that way.

Since I was a young child I have wondered about where humans came from and how the world developed. I am fascinated by human evolution and archeology. I have recently been reading and thinking more deeply about evolution and finally it hit me like a ton of bricks, Charles Darwin did have the basics figured out well and really it is rather simple when I think about it. So what, you say, that’s rather old news. Well not for me, I had always avoided Darwin’s writings. I wrongly assumed that anyone who believed in evolution must be an atheist or at least an agnostic. I am neither, actually I am a Christian, United Methodist to be specific, though I am not typical nor would I try to represent Methodists because I have a sort of universal belief that somehow God will save us all despite our feeble attempts to figure it all out, no matter our religion. Religion is man made and God is much bigger than religion, thank goodness.

Well along comes another book, The Language of God which I’ve plugged three times now on my blogs. Finally a book that put it all together and made sense to me. It also dawned on me that I can believe anything I want even if the ideas are not popular within the eclectic variety of people I associate with, or seem to match with each other. By this point you may be scratching your head and saying, DUH!  Well the so what part is, I love to talk and I tend to get very enthusiastic with the ideas I am learning.  So my  dirty little secret is that I believe in evolution, it is the most simple and straight forward theory on how the world and its inhabitants developed but  would certainly be ostracized if I dared to breath a word of this in some of the circles I travel.

So I find myself really wanting to say to folks, don’t knock Darwin, how many of you have ever even read any of his writings? Darwin was never an atheist. He began as a Christian, a Unitarian to be specific, and eventually became an agnostic because he couldn’t work out the problem of evil, not an easy one as people have been working on that  for as long as people have been thinking and at best each person just has to come to their own conclusion.

How many know that he was a devoted Father of ten? He also adored his wife Emma and had a wonderful relationship with her. Part of his loss of faith came after his beloved daughter Annie died a horrible death of what we now know was tuberculosis, who wouldn’t struggle in such a case? He was known as a kind and sensitive man and was much affected by the ridicule he endured. He knew his ideas would shake up established religious ideas and so hesitated to publish The Origin of the Species (this link is the actual entire text of the book) I learned this information from a wonderful book written by his great great-grandson, Randal Keynes called Darwin, His Daughter & Evolution.

What I can’t  figure out is why people feel that God couldn’t have used evolution to create this amazing, wonderful, complex and sometimes strange universe? I fully admit I have more questions than answers but I see absolutely no reason why science and religion should be at odds, why I shouldn’t fully accept evolution and a loving creator who wants to relate to me in my daily life. More on this later, perhaps…

Mimi