Sunday, December 28, 2008

Morning meditation - Good News The World Is Waiting For


"To rescue humanity from exile and punishment, God sent Jesus to die on the cross. Divine justice was satisfied by Jesus' perfect willingness to follow God's command, to do what his "father" said - even when his "father" demanded his death." p.43

Rebecca Ann Parker, Blessing The World

And when a country sends its soldiers into foreign lands like Iraq to kill and be killed ordered to by "Uncle Sam" it all seems perfectly normal to a so called "Christian country" like the United States whose children who have been told about a God who kills His own son to satisfy his thirst for vengeance for what human beings have done wrong to thwart His will.

And fathers and husbands standing in for God beat their children and wives sanctimoniously behaving in God like ways to express their wrath not only condoned but encouraged by the religion which they profess.

In our civic life, the public supports the death penalty wherein the State acting in God like ways and kills those who have offended the State in divine retribution which under the law is deserved and justified and sends the message that killing human beings is required if justice is to be served.

The perverse and dysfunctional behavior of human beings gets rationalized in accordance with the cultural myths we have created that God wants His own creatures killed in certain circumstances when His will is thwarted.

Jesus, of course, in whose name, these practices have developed and are implemented, never taught this. This fact is the huge irony of our Western Civilization that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are ignored while heinous things are done in his name.

The power of Unitarian Universalism is to point all this out and help redeem the world. The early Universalists did this but then they got distracted, defocused, and the movement is dying. What would inject life into Universalism is to get back to the basics which is what Jesus, Buddha, and the Earth Religions taught about life and the interdependent web of existence.

Jesus and Buddha had very little to say about sex, a major pre-occupation of modern day so called Christians, except in how it is to be utitlized in right relationship, and they had a lot to say about respecting life and compassion.

Unitarian Universalism has the power to offer a model of true redemption and restoration, but its teaching and preaching is weak and its call to people to work together for a better world in new ways is barely audible.

Unitarian Universalism has the tools to redeem the world. Will it get its act together to use them? The first challenge is to create new and healthier cultural myths of free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and justice, equity and compassion in human relationships.

Let's be clear - Unitarian Universalism doesn't believe in a God who wants God's sons and daughters to die to appease God. The old theology has not served us well. It is time for a new theology. As Unitarian Universalists we have a much bigger God we call The Spirit Of Life and it's time that God gets preached. It is The Good News that the world is waiting for that The Spirit Of Life does not want us humans to destroy life to appease it. In fact, destroying life is the ultimate blasphemy as Jesus and the Buddha knew but human beings have yet to learn.

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