Untimely Thoughts Of An Immortalist

I awakened at - 8:47? I think, 8:47. Too late to Uber the morning rush.

It's now 10:50. I have spent most of the past two hours in my office with the blinds pulled and the lights off so that it's dark. Not nighttime dark. In-between, neither-here-nor-there dark.

No TV, no radio. Silent.

I think the ill-defined darkness and the silence have both contributed to me spending most of the past two hours browsing online - for nothing in particular. After spending perhaps half an hour or more trying to recall an article that I read once about luxury cars that can be bought at discount (I don't remember now why I chose to look for that article in the first place), I've Googled random terms that came to mind, ending with a search for electric cars and hybrids.

I have checked the time at intervals, noting its passing, and noting that I am not getting anything done, And I asked myself, "Why am I doing this?"

What type of pleasure am I getting out of this? It's more than the intellectual/cognitive pleasure of learning new stuff. It's like a physical thing, a feeling.

And this word popped into mind: timelessness.

I know that time is passing, but the darkness, the silence, and the very fact of not getting anything done help to create a feeling as if it weren't. It's sort of like Flow, except it's not. Or maybe it's an aberration of Flow, a mal-Flow.

I feel like I could do this - Google in the dark, follow random link after random link - forever.

******************

Rather, I felt like I could do that forever. But now I'm doing this- writing a blog post: a significant shift in direction of my attention and a heightening of intention. Finishing this, publishing this, matters.

A few minutes ago, part of what I felt was a sense of nothing mattering. I don't mean despair, I mean indifference. A pleasurable indifference arising from the feeling of being disconnected from time. The feeling of timelessness led to feeling as if it did not matter what I did, and that feeling was not painful. It was rather pleasant. Okay, I'll say it - I was comfortably numb.

And it occurred to me that the feeling of timelessness may be a preview of eternity.

As a resurrectionist and an immortalist, I expect to live forever (along with everyone else) in a way that is not limited to this planet. Living forever will mean never running out of time, never experiencing a lack of time. Not being limited to this planet will mean not being bound by the 24-hour day.

I have tried to imagine this. How will we experience time? Or will we experience time at all? Will the concept itself fade away as useless - No time, only life?

And just now the notion came to mind that if time as we know it disappears, nothing that we do will matter.

In respone to which this notion popped up, knocking that one down: in eternity, everything matters.

It suddenly seemed clear to my imagination that the Christian's post-transition life will not be a life in which we need to redeem time, because the days are evil. Nor will it be a life in which we waste time. Rather, it will be a life full of good activity spanning galaxies, and ever-deepening relationships with an ever-increasing number of people, all rooted in intimacy with the Godhead.

It will all matter.

Now, iinteraction with lots of other people would seem to require some means for measuring time. Otherwise, how will I make my appointments with Johann Sebastian Bach for composition lessons (that's on my post-transition bucket list)? But what that means will be, I have no idea.

And given that I have spent 1.5 hours writing this (yikes!), now is not the time to figure that out. I am still largely Here rather than fully There, and here, I am already late for starting an insane day of meetings and tasks. I want to devote more time later to the matter of demonstrating eternal, galaxy-encompassing life within the context of time and space. For now, I'll end with: in eternity, everything matters, so for immortals, everything here matters now.

P.S. - I'm yielding to temptation: this came to mind while writing. Enjoy!

If I Were A Pastor, I Would Not Preach Today. Instead, I Would Say This.

Good morning, brothers and sisters.

I am not going to preach this morning. Instead, I am going to ask all of you to join me in an experiment.

For the next 30 days, I would like all of us together to play, "Let's Pretend."

To begin the experiment, I ask you to put away your Bibles, your notebooks, and your pens or pencils. You won't need to read anything or take any notes for the next few minutes. Just get comfortable, and prepare to listen.

Okay, now close your eyes for a moment, and imagine that it is no longer January of 2014. Travel into the future. Five years...ten years...maybe even 20 years...

Many changes have occurred - in technology, in business, in politics.

One of the biggest changes has been the replacement of several members of the Supreme Court. And today, as I take the pulpit, it is not to preach, but to speak regardings two rulings that have come from the Court in recent months.

Now open your eyes, and let's pretend.

Good morning, sisters and brothers.

The recent months have been a difficult and confusing time for many of us, as we have sought to understand two rulings issued by the Supreme Court of the United States.

I am not going to preach this morning. Instead, I am going to try, as briefly and simply as possible, to help everyone understand what these rulings mean for us, right here, right now.

First, the Supreme Court has ruled that if government shows favor to churches, it helps to establish churches. Therefore, exempting churches from paying real estate taxes violates the establishment clause of the Constitution.

This means that churches must now pay real estate taxes.

More than that, the Court made the ruling retroactive, requiring churches to pay so many years' of back taxes by a certain deadline.

We have missed that deadline, and the government has taken possession of our building. It is now their building.

We can't meet here any more.

In a second decision, the Court has defined - some would say created - a right to non-proselytization, meaning that the non-religious have a right not to be preached to in public. To protect that right, the Court has prohibited public gatherings of a religious nature. They have defined a public gathering as any meeting of more than four people in a public space. 

This ruling on gatherings hinges on the distinction between public and private space. The Court has said that religion is a private matter, to be practiced in private. Therefore, while no more than four people may gather in public for religious purposes, people may hold religious meetings of any size in their homes.

I hope you understand now why I am not preaching a sermon this morning. These edicts are already in effect, and if I preached, every man, woman and child here would be taken to jail.

Therefore, you are dismissed. Go, and live your faith.

That is the end of the message, and of the first step in the experiment.

For the next step of the experiment, you ARE dismissed. On your way out, each of you will receive a printed summary of the rules under which we will operate for the next 30 days, namely:

1. We cannot meet in this building,
2. Any meeting in any public space must be limited to four people, and
3. We may hold meetings of any size in our homes.

Now go, and live your faith.

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If your church went through this experiment, what results might it produce?

PASTORS: Feel free to steal this - but if you do, please let us know how it goes! Thanks!

ON WISDOM: An Imagined Conversation with God

An imagined conversation:

"Lord, please grant me wisdom."
"How?"
"Hunh?"
"This wisdom you're asking for. How should I get it to you?"
"Uhhh..."
"Have I not given you the ability to read?"
"Yes."
"Do you not have available in written form the law of Moses, the wisdom of Solomon, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the teachings of Peter, Paul and John?"
"Yes."
"Beyond all of that, have I not placed you within walking distance of a public library where you can read everything they have for free?"
"Yes."
"Have I not allowed you to acquire a device which you carry in your pocket, which you can use to ask essentially the entire world any question you want, 24 hours a day?"
"Yes."
"Are there not people in your life right now who are favorably disposed toward you, of whom you could inquire regarding their areas of expertise?"
"I guess."
"You guess?"
"Yes, there are."
"So, this wisdom you're asking for, what else do I need to do to deliver it to you? Inject it into your veins?"
"Can I get back to you on that?"
"Yeah. Do that."

For My Own Good: Exploring Sabbath

The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” 
He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”
Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
- Mark 2:24-28

I believe that when Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man - i.e., given for man's benefit - He meant it. And that we would do well to pay attention.

Last week, I began an experiment to explore the idea of sabbath.

Because the sabbath is for our benefit, I didn't want to enter the experiment with the idea of striving to fulfill an obligation. I wanted to enter it with the idea of receiving a gift.

The gift? A period of time - one "day" out of seven - during which I don't try to make anything happen. I don't try to change the world. I don't try to increase my wealth. I don't try to achieve goals. I dedicate the time to rest, recreation, and the celebration of God and His plentiful gifts. 

I put the word "day" in quotes earlier because I decided to take my sabbath from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday. Besides being Biblical, that makes it easy to begin my workweek on Sunday evening with the work of preparation so that I can hit the ground running Monday morning.

The sabbath intention has given me a new pleasure: the sabbath anticipation. The sun is sinking as I write; I look forward to this night more than I think I have ever looked forward to a Sunday morning.

To spend an entire evening and day luxuriating in the presence of the Lord - not just worshipping, but enjoying Him in everything during that time, and crafting the time toward the end of enjoying Him...YUM!

I've been thinking about what activities are sabbath-appropriate. The first answer that came to mind was the phrase, "rest, recreation and celebration." Reading, listening to music, watching movies, and physical play all come to mind.

The most surprising answer that has emerged is, "playing with Linux." I have long wanted to install Gentoo on a machine, just to see how it works. Or to follow the instructions in "Linux from Scratch" to build my own version of Linux. Or to create virtual machines under Ubuntu on one of my netbooks, to run Windows 95 (or 3.1!) software.

All of those possibilities now seem sabbath-appropriate to me under this rubric, which popped into my head as I thought about playing with Linux: "useless learning."

I spend a lot of time trying to learn things toward the end of accomplishing goals. I think I need a time when I give myself permission to learn stuff just for the fun of learning it.

And for me, that seems sabbath-appropriate, totally in keeping with the original mandate to cultivate the potential of creation (Genesis 2:15), a mandate which necessitates a great deal of play.

I also think that the sabbath intention will make it easier to fulfil what might be considered a corollary: to work my butt off for six days a week.

I would like very much to make all the money I need in a four-hour workweek, but - as the head of Luminaria Productions LLC, as the head of Homewood Capital Partners LLC, as a Legal Shield representative, as chair of the Save Race Street Committee and of Block Watch Plus - doing all that I see may require a 60-hour workweek.

And here's the thing - I think that I can do a 60-hour workweek, and enjoy it, with the right set of practices. And I think that one of those practices is sabbath. I think that over time, having sabbath to look forward to (or to look back upon) will help to keep me energized and motivated. We'll see!

Do you observe sabbath? If so, what sabbath practices have helped you to enjoy God, or have energized and motivated you for a week of work?

Internet journalism and the Black Church's $420 billion.

This post is in response to an article at Urban Intellectuals, titled "Black Churches Have Collected $420 Billion?"

It opens with these assertions:

"LiveSteez research shows that Black churches, in aggregate, have collected more than $420 billion in tithes and donations since 1980. With a Senate investigation into the finances of several mega churches underway, the “Prosperity Movement” has been the target of mounting criticism from inside and outside the Black Church."

I learned of this article via a friend's Facebook posting, which linked to it, and which generated a somewhat heated thread of discussion. Comments below the article itself exhibit a similar heat, as the piece seems to validate many people's worst suspicions about Black pastors pimping their congregations. In a typical response, one commenter wrote, "They are leeches that starve our communities... Woe to them."

After all, $420 billion is a lot of money. It's an eye-popping amount of money. It's so much, that I tried to verify the article's information.

Please read the entire thing, so that you will know what I'm talking about from this point on (it's shorter than this!).

In trying to verify this article, I learned that:

1) The article itself was lifted word-for-word from a piece published by Harlem World on July 1, 2009. (I guess that's what it means at the bottom when it says "Source.") So it's nearly four years old. The investigation by Sen. Chuck Grassley, which it refers to as "ongoing," concluded in January 2011, so in that regard it is now inaccurate (the investigation concluded "with no definitive findings of wrongdoing."). (ADDED June 5, 2013: The original article also contains an inconsistency that Urban Intellectuals does not correct - the $420 billion in the headline mysteriously changes to $350 billion further down.)

2) The research that it cites, by LiveSteez, seems impossible to verify. Every reference I have found to the $420 billion leads back to LiveSteez - whose website, LiveSteez.com, no longer exists.

3) The promised investigative series was apparently not done, as searches for it prove fruitless.

4) A Google search for the Tyler Media Services study cited also comes up empty-handed; the Harlem World article is the sole source for all mentions, not only of the study, but of Tyler Media Services itself.

5) Henry E. Felder's "study of Black donation habits" is not to be found. He did a paper on "Black Seventh-Day Adventists and Church Economics," but obviously that is a much narrower scope. And its numbers don't match the "$508 per person" cited, anyway.

I'm not defending televangelists or anybody else; I'm just pointing out that I haven't found any way to verify that the article is accurate. The ease of transmitting and re-transmitting information via the Internet places upon every user the obligation to think more carefully about what we read, how we respond to it, and especially what we pass on to others. Each of can add light to others' understanding, or merely stir up passions in the dark.

In that regard, Urban Intellectuals has not done anyone a favor by anonymously re-posting a four-year-old article that may not have been accurate when first published.

Having said all that, I will say this: Even if the $420 billion figure is correct, it is not inherently a cause for outrage. Here's why:

If LiveSteez (whoever or whatever they were) did their research well, with 1980 as their starting point, they likely covered at least 25 years (some references to the article say 30 years, but that seems unlikely, since the original article was published in 2009).

Dividing $420 billion by 25 years gives you $16.8 billion a year collected by Black churches. That's $323,076,923 a week. We'll come back to that.

According the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a 2007 survey showed that 59 percent of African-Americans are affiliated with "historically Black Protestant churches." Combine that with the U.S. Census Bureau's estimate of the country's black population in 2007 - 38,756,452 - and you get 22,866,307 Black folk affiliated with Black churches. Let's call them members.

Take the $323,076,923 that Black churches collect each week, divide it by the 22,866,307 Black church members, and you have an average weekly donation of $14.13 per member.

If the time period under consideration is longer that 25 years, that weekly average will be smaller.

Thoughts about that:

1. $14.13 is a relatively small amount.
2. The money is being given voluntarily. It is not coerced under threat of impoverishment, imprisonment or worse (I'm looking at you, IRS).
3. The people giving it must, ultimately, be satisfied with how it is being used, or they would stop giving.

So, to people who are pitching fits about the $420 billion, I say: Exhale. Chill. Take a break. If you want to rail against something, there are larger targets available than how people choose to spend their own $14.13 a week.

Are some pastors gaining unjust enrichment from the pulpit? No doubt. But most churches, especially Black churches, are not nearly as large as the ones on TV, and most Black pastors not nearly as well off as Eddie Long or Cashflow - er, Creflo - Dollar. If you are committed to opposing the outliers, at least acknowledge them as such. Black communities still contain multitudes of small churches, some of whose pastors need to have other jobs to make a living. In those churches, a member's $14.13 a week might keep the lights on.

As for that eye-popping $420 billion figure, the most important thing that it illustrates is not how pastors are pimps, but how small amounts of money can grow into very large amounts of money - especially when the small amount comes from a lot of people, over a long period of time. That is how McDonald's became a $100 billion company - one Big Mac, one Happy Meal, at a time. And that is how anyone else who decides to could build a $100 billion company over time. The math will work for anybody who does it.

MEMO TO SELF: In that light, a $1 billion company is super-doable, with time and smart work.

Rediscovered: An Ecstasy Remembered

My office occupies one of two attic rooms on the third floor of our house. The other attic room has accumulated God-alone-knows-what-all for a decade or more, and about a week ago I followed the impulse to start clearing out stuff that all reason says will never be used and no longer has value.

In the process, I am rediscovering long-ignored things that do have some value, including a journal from a time when I journaled sporadically.

Here's an entry from that journal, written at 6:30 am on Wednesday, December 5, 2001 (inspired by a device used by David Bradley in "The Chaneysville Incident," I headed each entry with a timestamp).

0630120501WE
I saw this one day while I was in the tub. I was not sleeping, so it wasn't a dream; but I dare not call it a vision. It was simply something I saw.
I saw my life as a single thing. All of my past experiences, my present moment, and everything I do in the future were part of this one thing. From birth to death, it was all contained in a single strand of light.
The strand of light was no longer than a piece of thread, but as I watched, it grew even smaller, as if I were backing away from it. As it grew smaller, I saw more of its surroundings. But I saw those surroundings as I'd never seen anything before, for I saw both space and time. I saw not only the earth upon which I lived, but I saw times before my life and times after.
The strand of light continued to shrink - I saw stars and galaxies, and I saw millenia and eons. And the stars and galaxies shank, and the millenia and eons shrank, until I felt that I was beholding the entire creation and all of time, as a single thing. And as a part of that thing, my strand of light was so infinitesmal that it was barely visible.
Then creation itself, and all of time, shrank, and I saw it all enclosed in a crystalline globe, which was resting in the palm of a lady's hand. Not just a woman's hand; a Lady's hand. And I realized that I was viewing creation itself, and all of time, from that Lady's point of view - that I was looking through Her eyes. And I knew that, while She saw all of creation and all of time, She was looking at that tiny, tiny strand of light.
Then it became clear that I was not only looking through the Lady's eyes, but that I was somehow part of Her, for I found myself sensing Her movement, feeling Her emotion, and sharing Her thought. As we gazed upon that miniscule filament of light, I sensed a smile coming across Her face, and I smiled with Her; and I felt Her sense of amusement as She and I shared this thought:
"To think that I once considered THIS to be my life!"
Thus the hallucination, for want of a better word, ended; and here my telling of it ends, for I have nothing to add.

Remembering that challenges me never to forget.

Do I need to say that the Lady is the ecclesia, the Bride of Christ? Okay, then; I have.

On Guiltification

This post is a first for me. For the first time, I am porting a Facebook status from there to here as a blog post.

A little background: This morning, a thought popped into my head that I wanted to talk with other believers about, so I posted it on Facebook with a question:

It just struck me that in the religious environment of my childhood, the key to pleasing God was neither faith nor works, but emotion - i.e., feeling guilty. The idea, pervasive without ever being fully articulated, was that the worse I could feel about myself, the more likely I was to find favor with the Almighty.

Has anybody else been there?

To my surprise, my first, almost immediate response came from a non-Christian friend, Khrys Myrddin:

Khrys Myrddin That is a profoundly sad realization, isn't it? If God is love, then should He not rejoice in your goodness? Should He not support you in your weakness, ever calling you to be the best person you can be? I hope that you have moved beyond this in your spiritual life now because, aside from just the crappiness of feeling crappy about yourself all the time, guilt is not a useful emotion. Intelligent regret is another thing--this helps us learn and improve our commitment to acting better and changing our minds and hearts.

I said that for me, it wasn't sad at all, but that it would take me some time to explain why. That was this morning. This evening I wrote this:


Okay, here goes... The phrase "God is love," like "to be or not to be," is so much a part of our culture that many people who use it don't know where it comes from. So, a little background:

It comes from the first of three letters written by the apostle John that are part of the Christian Bible, referred to as 1 John. John also wrote the Gospel of John, one of four accounts of Jesus' life found in the Bible. The letter is short, but is jam-packed with themes like the holiness of God, the divinity of Christ, the centrality of love and the reality of sin.

Also, the letter draws upon the Gospel so much that it's practically an extension of it, so to fully appreciate what he means when he says, "God is love," one would need to read the Gospel, then the letter. The following is just a tip of the iceberg, to provide a taste of context (he said, awkwardly mixing metaphors).

John's letter says twice that "God is love." The first time is here (1 John 4:7-10):

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

Note what happens here. John says "God is love," then talks in almost the next breath about God sending His Son to satisfy His anger against our sins by dying (that's "propitiation"). That's a big chunk of stuff that many people do not associate with God being love, but that's what John meant when he wrote it.

You ask, "If God is love, should He not rejoice in your goodness?" I can't say what God should do. But I can restate John to say what He HAS done and IS doing: BECAUSE God is love, He HAS forgiven my badness - at the cost of His Son's life. BECAUSE God is love, He IS giving me His own goodness from the inside out. Which is a better deal than simply celebrating my goodness, because my goodness is not nearly as sturdy as His.

My original post oversimplified things; my religious teaching was not ALL about guilt. It would indeed be sad if it were "only the feeling of guilt that bears one closer to the source of all love and goodness." But in fact I was taught that because God is love, He has removed my objective guilt through His Son's death; thus I was drawn to God by gratitude.

The problem was that somehow, that teaching was overlaid with the idea that I still needed to cultivate guilty feelings. Somehow, while believing that God's Son paid the price for all of my sins, I believed that I still needed to pay for them in some fashion myself. Thus, guiltification - using guilt as a qualification for God's approval (yep, I made that up).

This morning's realization was not sad precisely because I did receive the above teaching from John (and the rest of Scripture) deeply enough so that it went deeper than guiltification. If it hadn't, I might have developed a level of resentment that would have led me to turn away from God altogether. As it was, I merely suffered some neurosis for a while. Given that every child of human parents gets screwed up somehow, I got off much easier than many others, and on the whole I am deeply grateful.
_______________________

Are you a Christian for whom justification has sometimes been obscured by guiltification? For that matter, have you seen guiltification at work in purely human relationships ("I'll like you more when you act more guilty.")? Share your story in the comments!