(This is the final part of the lecture I gave at First Unitarian Church Omaha back in April 2017)The very first matrix plug… the first illusion that I discovered and dealt with…..which was the source of most of my anxiety and fear in my life at that time was the teaching of the Rapture. It is not a simple teaching but a very complex system –a schematic timetable of last days events. It not only generates a conspiracy mindset but it generates fear especially when you center on the Tribulation and rise of the antichrist….

 

But it was in my own personal life, that the effects of the “rapture belief” were clearly evident. I had decided that there was no time for furthering my education. No time for looking at my career; only getting souls into the Kingdom. Everything took a back seat to the ministry, sad to say, even to family.

 

I do not remember why I began to study the “rapture” but in 1993 as a Pastor, I started to look at the Biblical references ..and not even realizing it I was beginning to use the principles of Biblical Criticism ..and those Bible verses contextually just did not match the doctrine. And then I looked at the history of the doctrine of the rapture and I came to realize I had been sold a bill of goods…this Rapture was not as old as Christianity as I had been led to believe- it only appeared in 1830 by John Nelson Darby. I slowly and quietly without fanfare remove references to “rapture” from my sermons and altar calls/ I also began to breathe a little easier realizing this wrathful God was not due yet and that the promised 7 year period of “hell on earth”  was a myth. My life became easier…I began to think about returning to school. I had discovered one of my perceptions- was wrong and I removed it. Or to use the term from the movie The Matrix One of the matrix’s plugs was detached. My theological box was beginning to unravel.

 

 

 

          In 2000, I started back to school and obtained a BA in Business Management from Buena Vista University. In 2005 I started a Masters in Theology program at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio…how I got there is another story…it is the most conservative Catholic College in America…But The first class I took was Introduction to the Bible It was revolutionary- it introduced me to Biblical Criticism.  In a strange ironic way, I am thankful of that Catholic institution for introducing me to a way of studying the Bible that delivered me from reading the Bible literally…

 

The basic underlying principle of Biblical Criticism is that although God is an absolute being, the Bible does not have an absolute value but is conditioned on the historical and cultural setting in which it was written.

 

Then I made a terrible mistake as a Catholic theology student…I began reading other scholars…James Barr –Princeton and Oxford Bible Scholar, Hans Kung, the dissident catholic scholar and Paul Tillich

 

And I came away with a new perspective of the Bible. The Bible was never meant to be a historical, economic, legal or scientific textbook. But most importantly it was not meant to be the defining theological textbook, the final word or the only word about God. In less than two three months, I lost my fundamentalist “lenses” through which I had viewed the world.  Another matrix plug removed…

 

After this class..The year was 2006, and I began to think…

 

 Had I in the past, in my zeal as a Fundamentalist preacher, misinterpreting the scriptures about the fundamental moral issues of our time?.

 

I will limit my comments to one issue that dominated the majority of my preaching: homosexuality. Almost every Fundamentalist preacher focuses on this issue. You cannot tune into a Christian radio station and not hear how this “sin is destroying foundation of our country…”

 

The question I asked …is it a sin?

 

My study covered the 7 key Bible verses that I had used to condemn homosexuality. I was surprised- shocked by my findings. It revealed my ignorance of homosexuality. Some of it was just simple basic grammar. I discovered that no ancient text- Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic contained the English word homosexuality. The fact is the word “homosexuality” did not appear in any language until the 19th century.. 

 

Now I do not have time to spend on those 7 key verses this morning…allow me just to say this…I discovered that none of those 7 key verses have anything to do with today’s understanding of committed same sex relationships.

 

 I discovered that I was wrong in judging homosexuals. I was discovering that I was a bigot; that I had committed acts of prejudice in the name of God.

 

But in  2006, I had crossed over…and in my own personal way, I took personal responsibility and stopped what I called the core essence of Fundamentalism…I stopped being a judging meddler in people’s lives.

 

I discovered late in life that spirituality is not limited to one certain religious persuasion. I discovered that my arrogance, the kind of arrogance that I used to live and thrive in;  the arrogance of fundamentalism, of putting God in a box and saying “ HE ONLY WORKS IN MY BOX”- that limited God and my experience of God. My box, that is my system of ideas and perceptions about God and about Jesus had become a form of idolatry. The idolatry of the box limited my relationship with God and with others. It disconnected me from others/

 

Why do I call it idolatry? I will close with this thought…this set of ideas that learned from Paul Tillich. I call it idolatry because what was of ultimate concern to me was not God but my ideas about God.  I had put my ideas on the pedestal of life and God help you if you held to different ideas. I have also discovered that it is a very unhealthy way to live spiritually, mentally and physically.  I have discovered that in order to rightly relate to God and to others, I had to let go of absolute theological certainties and that realize God is not an angry old man sitting on a throne wait out- just waiting to punish me….but God  is bigger and better and lovelier then my mind can conceive or imagine.

 

Part two of a lecture given at the First Unitarian Church Omaha…April 23, 2017

Before we go any further let’s talk about the term fundamentalism…We here in America, talk about Fundamentalist Moslems; Extreme Fundamentalist Moslem and we use that term in a kind of flippant manner as if the only Fundamentalists were over there. We seem to forget that the most Fundamentalist Country in the world right now is America. Fundamentalism is a rich American term with a unique American history

Now I do not have enough time this morning to talk about that history but considering the current religious political situation in America today…I want to refresh your memory of something that should give you hope…because we have been through this kind of battle before…

From 1900 thru 1925 there was a battle for the soul of this country when Fundamentalists were attempting to rid this country of what they saw as the enemy of truth…that one common enemy was…science.

The science applied to the Bible – known as Biblical Criticism and the science applied to the origin of man known as Evolution.

Many of you know the history of the Scopes trial when a teacher was prosecuted for violating the anti-evolution laws in Tennessee, so I am not going to talk about that except to say this:   Remember the outcome…yes, Scopes was convicted and the ACLU paid the fine …. but in the end…The Fundamentalist movement may have won that battle but they lost the war. The movement was lampooned out of the public arena…they went quietly into the night at least until 1980’s

Remember the outcome…Maynard Shipley argued in his book WAR ON MODERN SCIENCE,   1927,  and I believe this was a very prophetic warning… if the fundamentalist managed to seize power in the denominations and impose their strictures on the people by law, Americans would lose the best part of their culture, and be dragged back to the Dark Ages…he said that in 1927 and it is something we are seeing today.

Allow me to give two definitions of a Fundamentalist…

A fundamentalist is one who believes everybody else is having too much fun… I believe that describes me twenty years ago. I honestly believed everybody was having too much fun.

On a more serious note:

A fundamentalist is one who believes and lives their lives as if their perceptions of God and the way God operates is the only valid absolute truth. Think about that for moment.

Here is an observation that I have recently come to acknowledge after spending 25 years of life wearing a narrow exclusive religious spectacles……Fundamentalists are a deeply anxious-fear dominated people. You might not know that…or you might not have perceived their fears-because they wear a mask of confident arrogance. I know.. I wore it. Now, I am not trying to draw sympathy for fundamentalist here…

But I am hoping to share just how important empathy is especially if you are desiring an honest compassionate dialogue with Fundamentalists…Then understanding- where they are coming from…how they are feeling…getting to know them individually because …no two Fundamentalist are alike. Do not lump into the same bag…do not commit the same mistake that many Fundamentalist do about us Liberals – that is to generalize about them all- because we are not all the same…right??? Just an observation that I think is important to understand…One more observation, it is very difficult to be a Fundamentalist Christian today because everything you encounter in our American culture rubs you the wrong way…

Oh….I should mention this…my goal and I hope it is your goal as well is not to change people – not to change fundamentalists…let me tell you I have a hard enough time changing myself…no…our goal should be to understand fundamentalists…dialogue begins there….

Part Three continues next week.

In 2000, still a Fundamentalist…I saw a movie called The Matrix which made me stop and think. It is not so much the action, although there was much action; but the story that fascinated me. The theme of the movie was that the material world is not reality but an illusion created by the dominating controlling AI- artificial intelligence machines. The real world was a ravaged wasteland and most of humanity has been captured by a race of machines and made to live out their lives in pods- that while it sapped the energy from the their bodies, it also continuous fed sensory stimuli to their brains which gave them the illusion of leading ‘ordinary’ lives. This computer driven dream world is called the Matrix..

There are two main characters- Morpheus- the leader of the resistance and Nemo- a young man who Morpheus was able to save- release from the Matrix, Nemo in one dialogue asks Morpheus a question “what is the matrix?”

By the way…all religions and philosophy are an attempt to answer that question…in one form or another ,,,what is the matrix…what is truth…

Pilate asked Jesus …what is truth….what is real?

Morpheus answers…The Matrix is…

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth…Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is. You have to see it yourself…

In a certain sense, the world had been pulled over my eyes for the first fifty years of my life and twenty-five of those years as a minister. The matrix was my box, my set of beliefs.

You see part of the illusion, the matrix plugs that I have lived with since I was a child was that God was an angry old man sitting on a throne way out there, waiting to punish me when I did something wrong. Scott Peck called it the “monster God” in his book the Road Less Traveled. This angry God illusion was the root of my “fire-brimstone” preaching as a Fundamentalist preacher. This was my religious box…my matrix.

Now this idea of certain religious ideas being an illusion is not new…matter of fact, in my recent studies I discovered a 18^th century philosopher by the name of Ludwig Feuerbach who introduced the Western world to the notion that religion is a dream, that objects of religious faith are human projections in which we unconsciously create God in our own image. Never heard of Ludwig Feuerbach? I am not surprised. Most people have not heard of him. You’ve probably heard of Sigmund Freud…right? Freud was a student of Feuerbach at the University of Berlin. It was Freud who got all the publicity for his ideas about “religion being an illusion.” But it was the 20^th century Philosopher John Hick, that I found a kindred spirit as he also migrated out of fundamentalism later in his life. Building on Immanual Kant, he stated we cannot know noumena, that is things as they exist in themselves independent of our finite perception. What that means is- each one of us experience the divine differently based on our cultural and cognitive filter.

Now, using the movie-the Matrix is not exact analogy for my life for example- Nemo was pulled out of the matrix all at once…For myself the change was not abrupt- immediate…meaning- I did not wake up one morning and say- “well, today I think I am going to be a liberal …or today I think I am going to be kind and compassionate to gays….

No it was a slow process of removing the illusions that clouded my mind or to use the image from the movie…of pulling out one matrix plug at time…And that process began in 1996 after having experienced a depressive suicide crisis which revealed to me that I had a problem with my thinking and I begin a period of self-reflection…

My transformation began when I began to think for myself, that is when I began to look at my belief system – my box and question everything.

But…Understand for me …as for any fundamentalist to think outside the box and to question and doubt one’s beliefs is a frightening experience.

To be continued…Watch for Part Two next week at this time.