Spiritual Growth Archives - Christ the Healer UCC

What if ‘True’ Christianity Is More Than We Have Ever Known?

Feb 21, 2022 | All, Biblical Knowledge & Wisdom, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Practice

By: Thomas Chavez, Heather Dennis & Julie Gorham

“We don’t want anybody telling us what to do, what to think, or what to believe!” This was the first thing out of anyone’s mouth at the inaugural gathering of what was to become Christ the Healer, United Church of Christ. This focus group had been called together by Gabrielle and I, and we got our fundamental marching orders from its participants: in twenty-four years there has never once been a preaching service at CtH, UCC. And in these twenty-four years of existence, we can honestly affirm that no two meetings of our group have been carbon copies of each other.

That is not to say that preaching has never happened among us. When new folk discover that we are a group that has practiced the art of listening to one another (Friends in Grace), many take this as their big chance. When this happens pontification, glittering generalities, and personal opinion are likely to flow over us like glop from an overheated glue pot. But, what is most valuable is to hear the visitor’s personal experience, unvarnished efforts at self-evolvement, and interactions with spirit (however achieved). We are not so interested in their conclusions, surmises, doctrines, and declarations of “You damned well should.” In this manner, through group exploration, shared and individual study, hard-won experience, and practice, we all learn. And in learning, we teach one another. Eventually everyone figures this out, or moves on.

For those who stick around, this process has been both satisfying and extraordinarily enlightening. But nobody gets the benefit who did not invest in their evolution by making the commitment to heal, and allowing the necessary time to grow. This requires being willing to lovingly face the deeper realities within, together.

Spiritual growth is not a cookie-cutter process, and the old methods often leave people feeling dissatisfied and stuck in life. This journey has demanded that we examine the long and somewhat tortured history of our Christian heritage. Here, we are sharing with you our most valuable treasures from this close examination which apply to us today. This will be more complicated than it sounds because everything about our Christian “thought world” affects everything else in that ecosystem of belief.

Christianity is like a single tapestry of understanding, every thread pulling upon every other. When we come to understand any one thing about scripture or tradition more completely, everything else that we believe naturally shifts to make room for this change in our understanding. One of the greatest challenges Christian truth-seekers face is that there are so many varied interpretations of Biblical wisdom and instruction. How do we interpret teachings of a God who appears in parts jealous, angry, and vengeful, and yet claims to be loving? How do we make sense of the iconoclastic Rabbi – Jesus Christ – we meet in the pages of the New Testament? Because there are so many seeming contradictions within scripture, it seems almost inevitable for there to be divisions, and regrettably, conflicts arising from them.

Most of us learned what we know about Christianity from Sunday school, sermons, and regular Bible studies, but there is a rich world of knowledge beyond this. The teachings we encounter through such devotions are often valuable, but may be incomplete and in need of closer examination.

If you are feeling incomplete in your understanding of Christianity, and searching for a more unified, compassionate perspective, then we hope that you find the reflections shared in our blogs riveting, delightful, and illuminating.

What if The genius exhibited by Jesus through his commandments, parables and living example, and thus the “true” Christianity that grows from that genius is way, way more than we have ever known? Come, help us find out!

Science, the Bible, and Truth Part 2

Nov 6, 2021 | All, Biblical Knowledge & Wisdom, Body & Mind Connections, New, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Practice

We Don’t Need to Change the Story, Just Change Our Eyes as We Read.

The entire point of this two-part blog post, of which this is the second half, comes down to this one statement: What we find when we each read and ponder passages in our Bible is a stirring together of our own previous personal scholarship, and what the complexity in the neuro-networks of our individual brains allows us to see.

In earlier posts, I have focused on many “missings” in the scholarship of most people who profess to be Christian. So let’s look at the other part of our issue this time, OK? To do this in a fun way, here is an exciting “What if?” In a recent talk given at our sister church, Hillsdale Community UCC, our own Christ the Healer UCC co-organizer, Gabrielle asked the question, “What if all of that serious stuff that Jesus is remembered as having declared with great solemnity, had really been tossed lovingly at his listeners with a smile on his face and a chuckle in his voice?”

That would be a mind-blower wouldn’t it? If this so-called suffering man of sorrows had been showing off a life of unconditional joy in his own thought, word, and deed? The implications of this idea are more than explosive, they would be an earthquake under the entire twin enterprises of teaching Christian thought, and of our understanding of his message. Most importantly of all, we would have a clear demonstration of why the tales about Jesus and what he did, and what he said were called “Gospels” which means “Good news,” from the first, bearing in mind that some folks look at the doctrine that says, “Believe that I am God, or you go straight to hell,” as anything but good news. Let’s test out a couple of more-or-less random samples paraphrased to make them more sharply pointed, alright?

There is one shocking story where Jesus is recorded as rebuffing a Canaanite woman who begs for a healing of her daughter, with the chilling words “When the children of Israel go hungry, should I give food to the dogs?” Hardly a loving, all-embracing attitude right? This passage has occasioned a lot of ducking, shuffling, jinking, and excuse-making down the centuries, but whatever is said to slide past the bad impression, these words that dismiss a non-Jewish woman as a dog continue to create an unpleasant stir in many hearts. But what if, Jesus, already established as a famously clever debater, was laughingly playing to the surrounding crowd, poking fun at their tribal prejudice, rather than showing off his own? If that is the case, then his instant cave, when the quick-witted foreign woman shoots back with her own saucy answer, “Even the dogs under the table get to eat scraps,” makes far more sense.

Well, OK, you might say, but what in the Bible can possibly tell us that Jesus had a sense of humor? He always seems like such a hard-core sobersides. My reply has to be multi-layered and nuanced, so please follow along carefully. Our first step is to admit that thousands of years of worshipful tradition, along with a groveling style of reaction to what is called “high Christology” – which means putting our first attention on the ancient doctrine that Christ is fully God, in preference to balancing that understanding with the co-equal doctrine that Christ is also fully human. This co-equal doctrine was issued, by the way, by a Council of Bishops at the very same long-ago moment. The result is that this impression has been stamped into nearly everyone’s mind. So, let us examine that.

If Christ is fully God along with being fully human, then what we know about God applies to him, right? So, let’s consult Isaiah, where in one passage we find that prophet, speaking for God, declaring, “My thoughts are not like your thoughts, nor are your ways, my ways.” Deity, which is one and only one absolute totality, needs no self-protection at all. Deity merely loves, and does so joyfully. That is Jesus’ actual inner nature, and ours too, once we can find it under our knee jerk need to battle for our lives.

Returning to Jesus’ stories and sticking with his relation to women, let’s examine the story of his being buttonholed by a bunch of self-righteous men, heavy rocks already in hand, who bring him a woman, saying “This slut was caught right in the act of committing adultery. Speak your holy judgment, teacher, and join us in stoning her to death.” The story says that he bent down and wrote in the dust. What if he was simply hiding his knowing smile from the boys, whose hearts he knew? What if he was giving them time to hunger for, then hang on his coming words? “OK, then let the one without sin throw the first stone.” Then he looks down again. When he looks up the woman and he are alone, and she is still alive. When he addresses her directly, his tone is fatherly, loving, and smilingly kind as well as sad, not a thundering admonishment. Instead amounting to a directive: “Go home, clean up, think about what has happened, and miss the mark no more. Your sin is forgiven, but you must learn to do better.”

Or how about his dealings with that iconic pair of sisters, Mary and Martha? Jesus the itinerant Rabbi has slogged into Bethany, just two miles outside of Jerusalem proper, and is putting up at their house. It is clear that he has been their guest before, and they are very familiar with one another. Both women are excited with the visit and determined to get the most out of the evening. Mary by taking advantage of Jesus’ teaching and general aura, Martha by honoring her beloved guest with the best feast that she can prepare. She sets to with a will, yet it is soon obvious to her that she has bitten off too much. She can not get it all done in time. Many are the highly responsible adults who read these words will recognize that sudden, sinking feeling, and recognize also, what happens next.

Put yourself in the scene. You are Martha, your big gift is about to flop, your nerves are stretched thin, and you are about to snap. Instead of presenting Jesus with warmth and celebration the way you had planned, you go to the teacher with a whine instead. A further humiliation. “Rabbi, don’t you even care that my sister has left me alone in the kitchen? Tell her to come out and do her part the way she should!” Then hear Jesus’s sweet reply, imagining that he smiles, lowers his voice and speaks softly, teasing slightly, maybe pulling at the strings of her apron. “Martha, Martha you get so distracted by so many things! There is only one thing that’s important, and Mary has zeroed in on that very thing. Calm down, take a rest, maybe some of the others will lend a hand, maybe I will help out when my teaching job is done for the evening. It is all going to be all right.” How do you react to this picture?

Or, how about this: The same family in the town of Bethany, the brother, Lazarus took ill days ago. Jesus the miracle worker was sent for, but for some unknown reason he has dragged his feet for a total of four days, and Lazarus has died. When the Rabbi reaches the dwelling, Martha, who has been on the lookout, meets him on the road. “Master! You are here at last. If you had been here in time, my brother would not have died. In the ensuing dialogue, Jesus gets Martha to declare that she knows that his is the awaited “Anointed One,” in a manner that implies that God’s grace will of course respond to his word even at this late date. Then he says that they should go to the tomb, implying that they will pray together.

Meanwhile the weepy, more volatile Mary has also rushed out, and stings him with the same message. “Had you been here, our brother would not have died!” delivered with an undertone of, “Didn’t you care enough?” When they get to the tomb a big group of mourners is loitering about, everyone down-hearted. Jesus weeps to see their pain. That is when he orders the huge stone wheel that blocks the tomb be rolled aside and Martha, ever the practical one, squeals in protest, “It has been four days! It will stink!” Yet what has been ordered is accomplished, and Jesus, showing of his chops at last, yodels into the cavity that has been carved into that limestone ridge, “Lazarus come out!” And of course, in our story, Lazarus does.

Does the above amount to historically accurate reportage like something we might expect to see in the New York Times? I absolutely have no way of knowing, and sort of suspect not, but I can say this with confidence: “At the deepest level available to me today, it is definitely true.” If you are eager to have ever deeper levels of reality within your own grasp, or merely wish to explore the “whichness of why,” and what makes that old mystery tick: please, sign up joyfully, delightedly, ebulliently to receive our Christ the Healer UCC newsletter.

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Science, the Bible, and Truth Part 1

Nov 6, 2021 | All, Biblical Knowledge & Wisdom, Body & Mind Connections, New, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Practice

The setup – issue – so-called problem

One of the most valuable insights that repeatedly arises for us in the fields of psychology, philosophy, sociology, meta-position studies of theology, and communications theory that we find being explained through recent developments in neuroscience, is that we, humans, do not see things as they are, as we all so fondly like to pretend, but as we are. It is the most hateful who are easiest to hate. The most dedicated to love who are easiest to love. The most afraid of theft who are tempted to steal, the most jealous who are most liable to turn faithless. We are stuck in front of our mirrors. Thus our many traditions, cultures, political opinions, or other strongly held commitments that we can’t understand why someone would see in any other way.

This situation can lead to estrangement, conflict, and war. The implications for religion, theological reflection, and for Christians, in particular, are gargantuan. To put the issue baldly, what we find when we each read and ponder passages in our Bible is a stirring together of our own previous personal scholarship, and what the complexity in the neuro-networks of our individual brains allows us to see.

This is universally true, not just for us moderns – who look at those two thousand years (or more) old passages in English translations, which have twenty to fifty centuries of years separation from their cultural context – but for each translator or translation committee that rendered Latin into English, and those who previously wrote down Latin from Classical Greek, and those who had rendered Hebrew into Greek, and for us, the still earlier editors who transferred memories spoken in Aramaic, the vernacular tongue of Jesus’ place and time, into Temple Hebrew, a related language, but emphatically not the same.

Moreover, and most important of all, we must remember that the traditions and habits that we all follow, most of us without much personal thought, have been laid down by the many, many thousands of preachers and teachers of previous generations who influenced our traditions, who lived in their own times and cultures, and faced their own problems, worries, and psychological misfires through the lens of their own cultural biases.

What then are we to do? Give up? Many tens of millions in both Europe and North America who have confronted aspects of this problem, or run up against emotional sour points, have done just that. Not to blame these folks, every human knows her or his own needs best, but I sorrow for these unfortunates. They are missing out. When approached with exuberance and trust, the Gospels are an endless source of inspiration, personal and emotional support, and credible, down-to-earth information about how we (the human species) are hard-wired. And they provide information about what we can do with the downsides of those existing neurological apparent impediments to spiritual growth. Every wonderful, valuable thing that we need is there, in those stories, just buried under encrustations of historical misuse and sadly ignorant misrepresentation.

Again there is no possible use to be gained in blaming our predecessors: they, one and all, were simply doing their best with what they had – just as we in the twenty-first century still must do what our descendants are sure to recognize as our own best, however inadequate. But let it be said that many, many threads of slow, painstaking evolutionary development have at last come together to give us, in this and following generations, a delightful chance to do better. That is, if our species’ previous mistakes are not allowed to eradicate our breed entirely in the next few decades. For details of how the hopeful, bright, and ebullient side of this observation can be realized by connecting with Christ the Healer UCC, keep your eyes on this space. It will not be long in appearing. And if you cannot wait, you are always invited to join in on the fun just by asking to become enthusiastically involved today.

Different by Design

Sep 13, 2021 | Spiritual Growth

How and why Christ the Healer UCC is different than the Church you met before.

Just a week or two gone by, not long after the take over of Afghanistan, there was a radio interview with an MIT professor who had devoted his life to the study of politics behind war and what those political realities meant. The upshot of that talk revealed a principle deeper than explaining how wars are thought of. It revealed how “Profeshinals” in a beleaguered activity are continuously motivated to report to the interested public shadings of truth, cherry-picked facts, best faces on the situation, and outright lies. The way that every U.S. President, from Bush to Biden, every press secretary, every state department spokesperson, and every commanding general has felt obligated to do from the day that America invaded that country. Those fonts of official information’s official interests strenuously conflicted with the interests of truth-telling

So here is our point. The main line of the Christian Church has, for over fifty years been facing statistics showing decade over decade, year after year shrinking in membership. No one in charge seemed to know why other than to blame the surrounding culture. The institutional response has been a fifty-year snowstorm of articles, books, videos, and forums on how currently configured Christian congregations should re-grow themselves using this nifty tactic or that. Always offered with self-assurance, expert opinions, and hope. And by and large, absolutely nothing works for everyone, and those few who do get results do so for a few years, and then something else seems to go wrong, and the slide in numbers starts again. Still, the advice pours out from on high.

Twenty-five years ago CtHUCC started as a focus group of utterly unchurched individuals who had been invited to talk about what they would need to nurture their own spiritual growth and development. Our commitment was not to do something that experts considered “Right,” but to do our collective best, and make “New” mistakes along the way. We would be fearless. We would be diligent. We would pay close attention to what happened, and change course accordingly. We had no pre-determined formula, and no conflicting interest to be taken into consideration. We simply asked questions and explored. Today we have collected reams of answers and vast territories of explored terrain, Biblical, in the Christian tradition, Neuro-psycho-theological, and mystical. Yet still, we are seeking to learn as we make available to our members the gleanings, both scintillating and humble, found through our always fascinating journey of spiritual adventure. We are a learning church, and we are delighted to be a teaching church. Want to come along?

The Original Purpose of the Christian Movement (Continued)

Jul 13, 2021 | All, Biblical Knowledge & Wisdom, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Practice

Part B. Why we at CtH seem so different – The Denominations

By Thomas Chavez

It is rushed to my attention that by talking about how all of our many denominations tend to identify the main channel of Christian understanding with their own place in an ever-widening delta of flow, I seem to be dissing denominations. Yet, Christ the Healer UCC is itself a member community embraced by a denomination, and we embrace that denomination in turn. I had better explain this, right?

Let’s start with a gallop through UCC history and see what makes it an admirable companion on our CtH spiritual journey. UCC stands for United Church of Christ, with the strong emphasis on UNITED, as there already existed a Church Of Christ before Our unified denomination formed. Sadly, for decades radio, TV, and newspaper reporters and editors when mentioning various reasons why the UCC had done something newsworthy, The members of the Church of Christ, and especially the “Conservative “group would gnash their teeth, because both Theologically and Politically, our UCCC’s point of view, at least in “This world” terms looks especially “Progressive.”, How did this come to be?

The United Church of Christ we know today is the continuously evolved outcome of than twenty centuries of constant effort to understand Our ancestral Hebrew vision of God, firmly rooted in the Jewish declaration: “Know O’ Israel that the Lord, your God is ONE!” The foundation for all western Monotheism. We share this with many, many denominations. But in the USA we are the only denomination that has lived this out by being the result of a merger of five previously existing denominations, four with significant membership, one a bit less so.

Yet that is not our only major distinction. Living out oneness has over the years shown up in striking ways in our heritage. One of our predecessor denominations was instrumental in organizing support for escaped slaves who had in the 1830s taken over the slave ship Amistad, upon which that group of captured Africans had been bound for sale in the slaveholding American South. This coalition of believers in extending love to the apparent “Other” paid for the defense of these escaped captives in both the court of law and of public opinion and continued to gather and spend resources for the benefit of oppressed black Americans for more than a century and a half onward. One predecessor denomination was the first to ordain women, more than a decade before the American Civil war. Both white and black Ancestors of what became the UCC followed directly on the heels of Union troops as the Confederacy met military defeat, founding hospitals, schools, and churches as they went. One of the results of this effort is that one of the denominational strands that later merged itself into the UCC was a distinctly African American strand.

One of our predecessor denominations made sure that widely separated communities spread all through the western frontier had spiritual comfort and connection, riding horseback huge distances from group to group to accomplish this. A bit closer to our time, the UCC itself was the first denomination in the US to ordain an openly Gay person over forty years ago. Over the decades since, as other denominations have been convulsed over this issue, leading in some cases to more splits, our churches have often become refuges for homosexual Christians rejected by their childhood churches. Yet, as a denomination, we never attempt to chase out any congregation that cannot bring itself to come on board with such a position. We are a loving home for everyone, including those with whom we no longer agree. We as the UCC constantly declare that “God is still speaking,” and often ask ourselves how we might discern what God has most recently communicated. The list of firsts and commitment to the best for all of creation, including not merely humans and human institutions, but for the living environment goes on, both nationally and locally. Since its founding twenty-five years ago, Christ the Healer UCC has been at the forefront of these environmental, peace-promoting, inclusion of the other sorts of efforts to be widening of welcome, and embrace of the formerly marginalized. We are committed to waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up for the Kin-dom of heaven. That is our covenantal pledge. Yet we are not the usual sort of activist community. We fit into this tradition by listening ever more deeply for the evolutionary impulses of our hearts which we learn to attune to creator, creation, and one another. As we become ever more well-practiced at these exercises and consequently change, our commitment to both personal and planetary transformation grows apace, and we do stuff from that growing edge. Want in on the fun? We welcome you with open hearts and arms.

Like this article? Read the first in this series: The Original Purpose of the Christian Movement – Part A. Why we at CtH seem so different

The Original Purpose of the Christian Movement

Jul 11, 2021 | All, Body & Mind Connections, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Practice

Part A. Why we at CtH seem so different

By Thomas Chavez

Over the course of twenty centuries, Christian teaching, for the most part, no matter which specific church or denomination you talk about, has sought to maintain a consistent image. Wanting 5to present a picture of unchanging truth. This is powerfully illustrated by the fact that in the 1860s the Pope, head of the Roman Catholic Church issued a declaration that Catholic doctrine has never changed and can never change, despite the simple fact that a close reading of history shows that Catholic doctrine has time and again tied itself into knots to go along with changes in emphasis, and function necessary for the church to answer issue after issue, with shifts in understanding in what the then-current power structure in the Vatican saw as most important, either spiritually or politically. What is more, that same Pope created a new doctrine that whatever a Pope said while speaking “ex-cathedra,” meaning in his official capacity, is always flat out infallible.

At Christ the Healer UCC we take a diametrically opposite tack. We have done everything that we could to unbury the original vision of Christ as shown in the words and actions of Jesus, and then have sought to understand that intention in the most attentive, detailed, and functional ways, so that we can do what Christ asked, and follow his way says Thomas Chavez.

That is where the difference starts. By realizing that we are directly asked to follow, we are never asked by Jesus himself to worship him. Jesus in fact related to, as his substitute for worship, his people’s image of the one and only God, whom he named, “Daddy.” So the first doctrinal shift was right there, the morphing of the religion “Of Jesus,” into the religion “About Jesus.

This bend in the path was more or less accidentally worn deep when the Apostle Paul, in his efforts to sell Jesus’s program to non-Jews, spent so much ink in his letters explaining why Jesus was so important. Furthermore, The Theology of Apostle Paul is divided into three, depending upon which Pauline letters a person might read. There was an original Paul totally dedicated to the image of a radically giving God revealed by Christ through Jesus. He said that in Christ there was no Greek nor Jew, meaning that there was no difference between tribes, nations, or races. No Male or female, no difference between the genders. No slave or free, meaning no difference between social classes. Contrast this with a reactionary Paul greatly concerned with the order within congregations, eager to make women shut up in church, submit to their husbands, have enslaved people meekly obey their masters, and so on. These letters when looked at carefully use language that the original Paul never used, and expressed views that the original Paul never hinted at. For long years these were called “Attributed,” now scholars are simply calling them forgeries. Then there is a third Paul, who seems from a doctrinal point of view to be suspended between the two. But when these letters are examined it turns out that when the few paragraphs of contrary material is removed, the rest of each letter flows along without a hitch. Showing that the regressive material was inserted into original texts. That is three changes right there. Then, the Early Desert Fathers had a theological take somewhat different from the Theology of Paul. Saint Augustine in the sixth century issued Theological opinions that became church doctrine that was an “An Advance,” on those views, then the late Middle Ages “Scholastics,” especially Thomas Aquinas, argued with, “Advanced and corrected” those doctrines, and Theology has evolved generation by generation ever since. Including the Protestant reformation and the subsequent splitting up of Protestants into hundreds of strands of Christian thought. All claiming to be the one, unchanging central understanding of the Gospels.

By sticking with, and clarifying what we see as the original purpose of the Christian movement, we at CtH feel that we have recovered the deep, founding momentum of what Christ as Jesus had in mind, and was determined first to work miracles to attract attention to; second, to give his life for, and third, becomes himself a jaw-dropping miracle of resurrection to hammer home. Because we have this incredibly powerful perspective, we are eager to invite anyone who is intrigued by the prospect of both personal and planetary transformation to check out what we teach, and climb on board. We welcome you with loving arms.

Like this article? Read our companion article Part B. Why we at CtH seem so different – The Denominations