What does it take to give yourself permission to think outside your religious box?

James 3.1-12 (CEB):

My brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers, because we know that we teachers will be judged more strictly. We all make mistakes often, but those who don’t make mistakes with their words have reached full maturity.

Like a bridled horse, they can control themselves entirely. When we bridle horses and put bits in their mouths to lead them wherever we want, we can control their whole bodies.

Consider ships: They are so large that strong winds are needed to drive them. But pilots direct their ships wherever they want with a little rudder. ⁵ In the same way, even though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts wildly.

Think about this: A small flame can set a whole forest on fire. The tongue is a small flame of fire, a world of evil at work in us. It contaminates our entire lives. Because of it, the circle of life is set on fire. The tongue itself is set on fire by the flames of hell.

People can tame and already have tamed every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and fish. No one can tame the tongue, though. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it, we both bless the Lord and Father and curse human beings made in God’s likeness. Blessing and cursing come from the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, it just shouldn’t be this way!

Both fresh water and salt water don’t come from the same spring, do they? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree produce olives? Can a grapevine produce figs? Of course not, and fresh water doesn’t flow from a saltwater spring either.

Being a pastor in the 21st century presents a unique set of challenges. I spend a fair amount of time monitoring our social media pages, and it recently hit me just how important that aspect of my job is.

The online audience requires patience and close adherence to James’ advice about blessing and cursing coming from the same mouth. It’s great to see people shouting “Amen!” to a post. We have many regular followers who like our universalist, progressive, reasonable, science-based, inclusive Christianity. There are also people who don’t like our posts, most frequently because we mingle Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Einstein, Sagan, Hawking, and Dawkins in with Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and humanist philosophies about what it means to be.

For some, anything outside a narrowly defined Christianity is the mark of an unbeliever who must be corrected to be saved. However, the postmodern world affords us a valuable opportunity to embrace religious pluralism. I realize there will always be some people who think they’re the only ones with a bead on “God’s will.” Whatever. There are also millions and millions of people interested in being part of a spiritual community that gathers together to do the hard work of Jesus in the world. This includes (and perhaps is foundational to acting like Jesus) thinking the way he thought: It’s more important to love your neighbor than to take the words in a book literally. Any book.

Since Jesus seemed untroubled by expansive new ways of interpreting Scripture and is himself a radical teacher of original thought, I don’t understand how anyone can take issue with a postmodern church like ours that teaches a Christianity of all-inclusive love and commitment to the greater good. I have a theory about why this bothers people, though, and I think it’s a permissions issue.

Before I became a Pastor, I co-owned a large technology consultancy. Computer people deal with permissions issues all the time. Every file on your computer—a Microsoft Word document, for example—has a set of permissions associated with it. These permissions tell the computer who can open the file, read it, edit it, etc.

In the old days (it still happens these days only much more infrequently), these permissions would often become corrupt. A document you wanted to add data to was suddenly read-only. This meant you could open the file and read whatever was in it, but you couldn’t add anything new to it. So, someone like me would have to go in and change the permissions by hand from read-only to write-enabled. Once the permissions were changed, the file could receive new data again.

That’s the sort of permission adjustment that needs to be made to us if we want to be able to discuss what it means to follow Jesus—or even to be religious—in this new, postmodern era of constant incredulousness.

This is a demanding time to believe in God. Our knowledge of medicine, the functioning of the human body, the vast weirdness of outer space, and the even more bizarre quantum realm, demands we reconsider everything we think we know about anything. I think this is especially true when someone is telling us that what they believe is the only way to believe.

Postmodern Christians must give ourselves permission to acknowledge that not only are there many different ways to follow Jesus, there are also a remarkable number of alternative, non-Christian, even non-religious pathways to God’s loving presence in the world. It’s vital that we understand it’s okay to think differently. Jesus encourages his students to think outside the box, to question, to push at the edges, even to disagree. It is well within his Jewish tradition to invite lively debate.

Once we realize thinking differently (or thinking in general) doesn’t condemn us to hell, I know we’ll find that our relationship with God deepens. It’s happened to me over the last four decades. The more I question, the more deeply I am compelled to God’s unconditional love and to act accordingly. Piecing together a more complete picture of Jesus by studying him in various faith and secular traditions has led me to a profoundly more intimate relationship with him. Understanding his human struggles comforts me in mine. Understanding his Oneness with God reveals my own divine connection, a connection I have come to realize as universal—inclusive of all beings, whether or not they believe in God.

This progressive, postmodern Christian view allows the Bible, the Qur’an, Buddhist and Taoist texts, string theory, quantum physics, archaeology, history, and philosophy of all sorts to intermingle and reveal a God that, to put it simply, just astounds me and fills me with humble wonder. How can you not feel the splendor of God when you see a picture from the Hubble space telescope?

Imagine how differently the Bible might read if its many authors had seen that picture.

I often refer to progressive Christianity as “The Tao of Jesus.” (“Tao” means “The Way,” the earliest name for Jesus’ teaching). Believing in him, or anything about him is secondary (for many, unnecessary) to understanding and integrating his way of life into the core of our being. Jesus teaches a way of life, not a dogma. The Tao of Jesus teaches us we are all, without exception, made in the image of God, the Creating Consciousness of multiple realities.

I imagine a God of multiple realities is also a God of multiple paths to Oneness, connection, salvation, heaven, enlightenment, and all the other very human labels we use to describe the unimaginable, wholly unnamable, but absolutely foundational love of every being, God. So, open your minds to God’s newest revelations. You just might be surprised at how deeply you feel—and can share—love.

For discussion this week, take a look at this chart and see where your beliefs overlap and diverge. This is just a little chart about understandings of Jesus in a few of the more prominent Christian sects in the USA. For more information, please visit http://www.religionfacts.com/ an organized, useful, unbiased site with lots of fascinating comparative religion information.

May the Universal God of Love light your way and warm your souls with revolutionary love.

Amen.

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