Three ideas have turned my thinking around:

1. Judeo-Christianity is one of the world's great cultural myths, as Joseph Campbell understands myth.

2. Scripture is to be understood metaphorically rather than literally.

3. Faith is a way of seeing.

As I experience my environment, the natural world, it is value-neutral. It has no inherent meaning, no purpose. It is simply there. "As it was, is now, and ever shall be." Was it created by some intelligent consciousness? I don't know. That is a matter of faith. Through some sequence of natural events and long eons of trial and error, the universe evolved to its present state, and it continues to evolve. Natural forces stand in cause/effect relationships which can result, for humankind, in great good or disaster. This is the way the universe works, even to the point of destroying itself. This is our environment, and we can improve it or destroy it. The universe doesn't care. We are part of it; we are the only part of it that cares about its survival.

I don't believe, literally, the creation stories, the destruction of everything except breeding stock in a great flood, the political/military intervention of God on the side of a chosen tribe, or any other "acts of God" to set aside what we now know as natural processes. I include the miraculous conception of Jesus and his physical resurrection in that statement. They do not accord with what we know of how the universe works; to believe that such things can happen is to leave my expectation that the sun will rise again tomorrow in doubt. How then does God act in the world? Or does God act?

Why do we have these myths in our tradition? Because human beings are meaning-makers. What is it within us that requires that we try to create order from chaos, that we impute meaning and purpose to the natural world? Why do we seem to need to explain mystery? Do we create a network of meaning and place ourselves within it in order to validate our own worth? Is the making of meaning, perhaps, an expression of the natural homeostatic process by which organisms seek to maintain equilibrium? Is it a natural expression of the force for survival in a thinking species?

Whatever the reason(s), we experience the natural world and we create an overlay of meaning. In order to make as much sense as possible of the way the universe works we create folk-tales, myths, and from them belief systems, that respond to the great mysteries: Who am I? What am I here for? How did it all begin? To what purpose? How can I control it? Why? Why? Why? And whether we create Greek myths or Native American spirit stories or Hindu or Judeo-Christian deities, we create God(s), some of them in our own image. Or we find a non-personal way to express what is deemed ultimate, as in Taoism: The Way. These belief systems become the ways that we put an acceptable spin on what happens to us.

What, then, we ask, with Pilate, is truth? There is scientific, objective, empirical truth that serves rather well to describe our current knowledge of "how the universe works." Scientific discovery has removed mankind from the geographic center of the cosmos, has altered the Biblical timetable for creation, and has called the Biblical designation of human ancestry into question. Science continues to narrow the gaps of mystery that some have explained by using the name of God. Much remains to be explored, and I wonder if the exploration of "bigger picture" issues, of the connective links in the natural world, may give us spiritual insights as well.

The truth of faith is not objective truth, as the Biblical literalists hold, but mythic truth, poetic truth, spiritual truth. When I walk into a church, I need to remind myself of what kind of truth I can expect to hear in that place. It is not the truth of the scientist or the probability of the statistician (though I don't expect to find that truth refuted). In a church I expect to hear the truth of a particular tradition of meaning-makers. When I walk into my church, I expect to find Christian truth spoken, with something of a Methodist spin, but I have learned to expect a broad enough range of spiritual truth to permit Yogic meditation and Native American rituals that are not inconsistent with basic Christian principles. It is, mostly, I think, inclusive rather than exclusive. I take heart in the knowledge that a Methodist ecclesiastical trial in the early twentieth century reached the conclusion that a very wide range of theological teaching is allowed in the Methodist tradition. (I don't have the reference -- I think the theologian on trial was Bowne.)

What difference does faith make? It must be clear from the previous paragraphs that I do not believe in a God who can change the path of a tornado or choose the time when a loved one will die. Weather patterns, continental drift, and living/dying are neutral, natural processes that have to run their courses. It is we who choose to believe (or not to believe) that "God turned aside the tornado so that I might live to be of greater service" or that "God called him home." It does, however, make a great difference in my quality of life (and in the lives of those I touch) whether I believe that what happens to me is a matter of chance or whether I see each happening as an opportunity or a gift (grace) from which I can learn and grow. It makes a difference when I believe that life is more than I find in just the material, natural world -- when I find (because I expect to find) in it a spiritual dimension. I choose the overlay of faith.

Yet not a blind faith. As I said earlier, I will not, and need not, reject what the scientific ways of seeing tell me in order to accept a spiritual perspective. They need not be inconsistent; they serve different facets of life and they use different criteria. I would like to think that there is a single fabric of truth, that there is no discontinuity between scientific and spiritual truth. I do not want or need one to contradict the other, and so far as I have experienced them, they do not. But I am not sure about that.

Because I believe (or hope) that truth is of one piece, I expect that we can find a correspondence between natural processes and spiritual processes. One of my special interests in the building of a theology is to discover common, "natural process" definitions for the traditional Christian theological terms. For example, salvation is spoken of as wholeness; grace as a gift; and I understand the cross/resurrection process to be that of healing, of turning defeat into victory -- that from death (in its various meanings) comes new life. I would like help with such other traditional words as sanctification, justification, redemption, atonement, and, for that matter, God. What others am I not thinking of? Oh yes, I would like to have imagery other than "body and blood" for the Communion Service.

Thinking about God has blocked me for some time. I grew up picturing God as a being, not necessarily an old man in a long robe and beard, but an entity, somehow separate and other from "His" creation, the universe and its inhabitants. Even as I came to know that the flow of natural events would not be disrupted by God choosing to act on some individual's or nation's behalf or at their behest, I had this lingering belief that "with God all things are possible," And I am very much aware that there is much that I do not know. But if not a separate being, with what or whom could I have a relationship; to what or whom could I pray? And what did prayer mean if God could not reach down a finger and stir the pot for my benefit, if God could not respond to even my most altruistic prayers?

As those in my church continued to use personalistic terms for God, I began to translate all that I heard into more naturalistic terms, but that is wearisome and could almost make me feel that I don't belong. And anyway, I didn't have the naturalistic process sorted out enough to translate with any degree of confidence.

But now I see that I was empowering God to act in that physical world, and at the same time doubting that God could. That wasn't God's problem; it was mine. I think I have resolved that issue: God is not creator of, or active agent within, that natural world; God is the expression of faith that we use to give significance to the world of which we are a part.

With respect to prayer, I have come to recognize that I can be grateful, and express it, without being grateful to someone. I can express affirmation, aspiration, regret, even awe, without the necessity of addressing it to an other. The effectiveness of that prayer will depend on what I do to carry it out. And the very expression of that prayer is a step toward effective action.

What does God signify in our Christian way of seeing? What do we experience that leads us to identify God?

1. We explain how all of this started by making God central in one (or two) of the many creation myths.

2. We look at the history of a particular tribe and see divine action at crucial turning points.

3. We see orderly patterns, both micro and macro, in the universe, and we assume a divine plan.

4. We continue to experience unexplained events, call them miracles, and ascribe them to God.

5. From our tradition, we come to think of God as unitary, spiritual, eternal, omnipotent, ubiquitous, omniscient, immutable, wise, good, and holy. That is to say, when our experience calls for one or more of these adjectives, we think "God."

6. We look beyond the fire circle and see only darkness, the unknown, the mysterious, and we express our awe, our fear.

7. We experience what we identify as the deepest/highest in creativity, unconditional love, beauty, goodness, truth, integrity, and no word in our vocabulary fits as well as "God."

8. When we are most centered, grounded, connected, we feel in touch with a power beyond ourselves.

Let's approach it differently and, for me, more centrally, because we can start with a fact. Jesus was a great historical figure, a teacher and leader who epitomized a way of life for which the central characteristic is unconditional love. Jesus stood firmly in the Jewish tradition, as did his immediate followers, and so he emphasized that heritage and used its scriptures, which he modified and refined to replace law with love. He taught that:

1. God is love (Love, a process of relationship, is God).

2. The kingdom of God is within.

3. Love is universally applicable.

4. Prayer is a way of life -- of constant application of his teachings, of his faith pattern as a way of seeing.

5. Love is healing.

6. Grace is to be found in every facet of life.

7. And more...

Christian faith is a way of seeing that transforms the world of experience into one in which life can be lived abundantly, in which the broken are healed, in which unconditional love (God) is present, i.e., is incarnate, in which supportive community is the product of love -- the agent of healing.

God is within (immanent), as I find in my deepest self that unconditional love, oneness, integrity, beauty, mystery ... for which the word "God" seems the best fit. When I am most in touch with myself, I am closest to God.

God as Other (transcendent) is the way I identify these same qualities when I find them in the larger community, in the archetypes of the collective unconscious, and when I project those qualities onto the mystery beyond what we know and experience.

This is not to say that God is all and in all. It is to say that God (as love, beauty, oneness, integrity, etc.) is the central concept or image in the overlay of meaning through which a Christian views all experience.

When St. John of the Cross said, "God will come in the ways that we need," was he saying that our needs define God for us? Do we create an image of God in order to met our needs? I suspect that he meant it the other way around, but he does leave himself open to my question.

If my thinking is going in a direction of discovering that all of the teaching of my tradition is metaphoric, analogic, allegoric, poetic, mythic, then does Christianity have any greater truth than the other great religions? Or does it hold greater truth for me because it is my tradition? I opt for the latter, but we are increasingly citizens of the world and, therefore, heirs of the world's traditions. I am a Methodist, but I an also a citizen of a pluralistic society. I find strength in reading some non-Christian scriptures, and the more I am able to see them as metaphoric, the less I see them in conflict with my own tradition. When I take away the literalism, I find them all to be inclusive.

One further issue: Are there not recent writings that are fully as expressive of spiritual truth as are the Old and New Testaments? And are they not able to speak to us even more effectively because of our familiarity with their contemporary settings? We have illustrations from "E. T." and other modern sources, and they are apt. Are they scripture? Why not?

And the journey continues.

I want to write in celebration of mystery, confusion, ambiguity, paradox...

I want to write more about how we do the work that we have ascribed to God: answering prayer, healing ourselves and others, changing what we have the power to change, accepting the things we cannot change, getting wise enough to know the difference...

I want to write more about the strength and glory of humankind who has created meaning and Gods and truth beyond scientific discovery. I want to explore the mistake (sin) of acting as though we are God, alongside the importance of not debasing ourselves.

I want to look for implications of my theology that have not yet become apparent to me.