Thursday, May 12, 2011

We'll meet May 12 at Escape in Allen. Ron Cheshire will facilitate the conversation and he asks that you read the section headed CONTEXT below, and then think about the questions he lists below. It should be a great evening. Hope to see you there.

CONTEXT:
From what I hear and have read, the Emergent Community in general, including
our own small group, has been exploring a less traditional view of the
Christian Religion, and its faith traditions specifically. While some of
these discussions and critiques have been quite critical of main stream
religion's management, marketing & administration, we all seem to have
retained strong spiritual beliefs and intuitions from our more traditional
beliefs that are still in our lives. To some, it may seem like with all the
talk of meditation, presence, non-duality, mindfulness, and consciousness;
God has become lost. A direct and personal relationship with God is almost
nowhere to be found in many of the spiritual conversations that we read and
discuss. Yet, there is no denying that many Spiritual people in the world
are recognizing that the new theologies are attempting to adjust to a new
understanding of the universe and human beings. These new developing
theologies and psychological insights are attempts to reconcile the
discoveries of science with the traditional concepts that have been
expressed in the various faith traditions around the world. Many of these
"new" ways of viewing, understanding, and talking about God, Jesus of
Nazareth, Religion, and Scripture in the Christian faith traditions are
precipitating changes in our traditional and historical images of God, as
well as our personal relationships to the Divine. The language around terms
like World View, Growth of Consciousness, Unitive Consciousness,
Evolutionary Panentheism, Morphic Fields, Stages of Human Evolution &
Development, Deep Time Eyes, and other terms are attempting to express new
understandings and interpretations of the ineffable "Mystery" we call God.
Yet, even a superficial appreciation of these new concepts and
understandings may lead us to entirely new questions regarding what we
actually believe - and more importantly, how we live out those beliefs,
understandings, and responsibilities within this new unfolding reality.
Simple science-rejecting creationism and faith-rejecting atheism are no
longer the only games in town. Tens of millions in the middle, represented
by people like us, see no conflict between faith and reason, heart and head,
Jesus and Darwin.

Now-and-then, as we attempt to integrate modern scientific discoveries with
our own life experiences of the Divine and our image of God, I believe it is
important to stop and take stock of how our beliefs are developing. In that
spirit, I invite us to explore some of our ideas that have been percolating.
Our society seems to be in desperate need for a new spirituality - a
spirituality that speaks to the present moment and the cultivation of a new
kind of confidence: a spiritual self-confidence.

QUESTIONS:
1. If we are moving away from talking about God in the traditional theistic
and anthropomorphic way - a super human or old man in the Sky image of God -
and toward an understanding of The Divine using more non-personal, process
orientated, scientific terms such as Consciousness, Non-duality, Energy,
Force, Source, Light, etc.; Can we still have a personal relationship with
God?

2. Does humanity's increasing level of creditable scientific information,
development of higher stages of consciousness, and overall growth in our
spiritual maturity do away with our need for a theological response (an
affirmation of God) to our questions about life?

3. Is the Christian concept of God as Trinitarian still essential?

4. When you hear or read terms like the "Second Coming" and "Kingdom of
God", what do you now understand that to be saying? How do the incarnation
of Jesus and His predicted triumphant return fit into your concepts of
evolution and faith?

5. If the Kingdom of God is an ongoing, "evolutionary project", what would
heaven on earth look like?

6. Can we integrate what evolution and science is telling us about the world
with our traditional understanding of Deity?