Handbook for Spirituality in North America

INTRODUCTION

In discussions of faith and spiritual life, many people of our time are saying, “I’m not particularly religious, but I am trying to be spiritual.” Maybe you are one of those people. If so, this Handbook is written with you in mind. I, the author, can identify with the idea of spirituality apart from religion.

I am a pastor with over twenty years of parish experience. I served congregations in urban, rural, and town settings. I attended more meetings than I care to remember, and many educational conferences and seminars. One in particular that I remember involved goal clarification for the purpose of evangelism. The seminar leader classified people the church tries to reach with the gospel in four categories: There are churched believers, unchurched believers, churched unbelievers, and unchurched unbelievers.

I was amazed to discover in my own heart and mind that one of my life-long goals was to become an unchurched believer. Since I have now retired from parish ministry, I am in the process of achieving that goal, and this handbook is primarily addressed to people like me. People actively involved with the church and its activities may also benefit from using the handbook because the ideas and methods I will advocate would be useful for any person interested in spiritual growth.





I. ONE GOD

There is only one God: our Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier and Lord. This One God is the One in Whom we trust, as we say in the motto of the United States of America, “In God we Trust.” Ethical monotheism stands near the heart of spirituality in North America. Because we trust in the One True God, we live together and relate to each other in ways that are informed by our faith. Our life of faith has sometimes gone terribly astray as we have misunderstood people whose faith is expressed differently from our own. Yet without our faith, our spiritual life has no foundation and is doomed to collapse.

In the United States we tend to identify our spirituality with a mythical people called the Pilgrims. They are mythical because they mean more to us than their history alone would dictate. They came to North America seeking the freedom to practice their faith as their conscience required, but they did not offer freedom of religion to any others. They established a Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts, and their conservative Calvinism established a work ethic and a stark view of the relationship between the Creator and people that has persisted in American civil religion.

The one, true God has many faces, and people approach and think of God with the face they know or the one they are most familiar with. The most familiar face to many North Americans is the face of Christ. The Great Mother is another face of God with Whom people are most comfortable. To many people in North America, the Great Mother’s face is the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe; indeed, She is known as the Queen of the Americas.

Spiritual life throughout North America has been enriched by the presence of a people whose life of faith is blended inextricably with their racial identity, the Jews. They have lived as loyal citizens of many nations, but their ultimate loyalty has always belonged to a higher authority. Even the nation of Israel is a secular state, and it does not command the ultimate loyalty that belongs to God alone. By their good citizenship in our lands and by their higher allegiance to God, the Jews have given an example to all people who live on this planet. Our life here is a pilgrimage. This is our home for now, but it is not our final destination. While we are in time we are associated with the Earth, but our human spiritual life is not limited by time. We belong to eternity.



II. RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

Beware of religious institutions in every form. Genuine experience of spirituality is often thwarted by religions and their institutions. An analogy of vaccination has sometimes been used as a way of understanding the most common relationship of religion to spirituality: When a person is vaccinated against a disease, a weakened or dead form of the disease is injected into the body, and the person’s system can develop resistance to the disease when exposed. Likewise, religion is often a weakened or dead form of spirituality, and people involved in religious activity often develop resistance to genuine spirituality whenever it appears. Yet spirituality is not a disease. It is a universal human need, as vital to the life of the human spirit as nourishment is vital to the life of the human body. Religious institutions are not evil in themselves, but they tend to thwart genuine spirituality because their first priority is always the promotion of their own programs and institutional systems, even if that promotion comes at the expense of the very experiences of spirituality that led to their founding.

Participation in religious activities is certainly no indication of a lack of spirituality in anyone; indeed, the trappings of religions can be used as tools to enable spirituality by anyone who knows what she or he is doing. At the same time, the warning needs to be clearly stated early in the life of any believer’s spiritual experience. Most people enter religious institutions expecting to find nourishment and nurture for their spiritual life. The disappointment that inevitably results when religious institutions work against spirituality has ended spiritual growth in too many people. In the great treatise, The Screwtape Letters , C.S. Lewis wrote with detail and good humor about the dangers of disappointment in religious experience.

Many people regard their own practice of spirituality as their religion. This is generally a good way of understanding religion, but there are dangers. Problems arise when an individual begins to believe that another person’s spiritual practice must resemble her or his own in order to be “true” religion. At that point religion becomes something that one person can try to impose on another. Many of the worst atrocities committed by human beings against each other in all history have been the result of attempts to impose one kind of religion on people.

Much can be said in exploring the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and the religious institutions in His own life. For now I simply want to say that I believe that one of the goals of the ministry of Jesus was the abolition of religious institutions and their power. Jesus was always concerned with relationships with God and with one’s neighbor. Religions and their rules often weaken relationships with God and with other people, and when those rules damaged relationships, Jesus always sought to place the relationships first. In His own human life, his primary opponents were most often leaders of the religious establishment of His time. His prosecution and execution were the result of collaboration of religious and political leaders. Jesus was Master of human spirituality, and religion, including the Christian religion, has generally thwarted the individual development of spiritual life that Jesus enables.



There is good news for us all. Our spiritual life does not depend on our religious affiliations. As a friend once said to me, “I think that a lot of people will be saved in spite of the church they belong to.” Maybe that could be said of all of us. The resources that we need to grow in grace are inside all of us. The Christ is God in each of us, and Christ is not limited to Christianity. The Koran speaks of the Christ, and a Kurdish proverb tells us, “Search yourself, and you will find Allah.” When we find the God (and the word, Allah, means the God in Arabic) in ourselves, we have met Christ who lives in us. As Teilhard de Chardin said, “The supremely personal is the universal Christ.”



III. MUKYOKAI



The Japanese word, Mukyokai refers to non-church Christianity, proclaimed and taught by Kanzo Uchimura

Kanzo Uchimura was born in 1861, eight years after Japan was re-opened to foreigners. Japanese religion at the time consisted mainly of Buddhism, Shinto, and folk religion. Confucianism was and still remains a strong influence.

Uchimura became a Christian while he was in college at Sapporo, a city on the island of Honshu, the main northern island of Japan. Christian students at the university there had meetings in their rooms, and eventually founded an independent, non-denominational church in Sapporo.

Uchimura eventually resigned his membership in the church he helped start, partly because he did not want to cause trouble for other members of the church. While teaching in a college in another city, he felt compelled in conscience to refuse to bow to the portrait and signature of the emperor. In Japanese custom of the time, such a refusal was seen as an act of disloyalty, and one's family, friends, and associates could easily be negatively affected by the consequences.

Uchimura was not impressed with the denominational divisions of Christians in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. The disagreement and competition among church organizations have long been a source of scandal and frustration in the mission field, especially for converts.

Uchimura's relationship with church organizations was not always mutually beneficial. A divorce early in his life was condemned by some church authorities. The independence of the church in Sapporo was seen as an affront to missionaries and their churches on the part of the students who founded it. Disagreements over doctrine and practice sometimes led to unpleasant confrontations among Uchimura's Christian friends. His own life experiences led Uchimura to believe that organized religion is not an essential aspect of Christian faith.

The term Mukyokai, non-church, first appeared in Uchimura's book, THE CONSOLATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN, published in February, 1893. It is important to note that Uchimura's writings are well known in Japan, and he is still a widely read and admired writer. In the United States, none of his works are in translation or in print, perhaps partly because no organization has a vested interest in promulgating them.

Kanzo Uchimura was never opposed to the church, not even to the institutional churches that he did not choose to join. While he spent his life in ministry, he was never an ordained pastor in any church organization. He believed that the church exists wherever Christ is present, and, according to His own promise, Christ is present wherever two or three people are gathered in His name. (Matthew 18:20)

Today there are thousands of Mukyokai Christians in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Since they have no central organization, it is impossible to know how many there truly are. A rough estimate is that in Japan alone they number twenty to fifty thousand. They gather in homes and in public places of assembly. When there are larger gatherings, admission may be charged to cover the expenses. There are teachers and preachers, none of whom are ordained or paid professional church workers. Their influence is far above their numbers, for they are widely admired in Japanese society.

Uchimura wrote that the believers who do not belong to organized Christianity still need a church while living on this earth. Such people have the best of all churches: God's universe, the world of nature. The ceiling is the blue sky, with stars as jewels upon it. The choir is the birds of the forest. Branches of the trees are the musical instruments as the wind plays them. Their music is the sweetest song because God is the composer. No church on earth is its equal, and believers who worship there can worship God in spirit and in truth.

Throughout the world there are believers in Christ who do not claim membership in any church. Those who participate in Mukyokai are the true priests of the Christian faith of the future. They share the priesthood given and ordained by God for all the human family. Anyone who prays for another person exercises that holy priesthood. Any time we worship God in any time or place we are in the church made possible for us by God's great gift of Christ to the world.

Unchurched believers, whether in Japan or anywhere else in the world, need the moral and spiritual support of gathering together. Such gatherings in homes and public places for study, prayer, and worship are the practice of the Mukyokai, the non-church Christians, especially on March 27, the anniversary of Uchimura's death.



IV. MYSTERY

Central to human experience of spirituality is the attendant experience of mystery. Modern humans seem to want to push mystery to the fringe of our daily experience, or to limit its meaning to the solving of puzzles. Even so, a popular song of the sixties includes the wonderful line, “Working on mysteries without any clues,” referring to the sexual explorations of youth. The word mystery has a broad range of meaning, including anything that is not readily subject to explanation.

The principal, universal mysteries of human experience are birth and death. They raise the questions, “Where do we come from?” and “Where are we going?” Although the mystery is less obvious, the simple fact of our asking the questions is a mystery of our identity. We are physical and spiritual beings who reflect on the meaning of our existence.

Religious faith seeks to provide answers to the questions that arise out of our experience of our spiritual nature. Every religion has insights that are valuable, and those insights are useful to every seeker. The importance of freedom of inquiry calls on us to explore any and every answer that faithful people have discovered. The inquiry would require far more than the years of a human lifetime, but there are some universal categories of mystery and ways of approaching them that can be mastered easily.

They mysteries implied by birth and death are addressed in some way by every religion. Eastern religions see them as part of a great cycle: We are born and we die over and over as we grow and evolve in spiritual life. Western religions see them as experiences on a time line, with a beginning and an end. Obviously we all experience time in both ways: Seasons and years, hours and days come and go as repeating cycles. Events and experiences have a beginning and an end. So who is right about the mystery of birth and death? With the analogy of our experience of time, it is obvious that both points of view are correct in some sense.

At this point it is important to recall the dialectical principle of Hegel. Almost every statement of truth has its opposite, which also may be true from another point of view. These opposites come together as a higher truth is understood. The history of ideas can often be summarized simply in terms of thesis and antithesis coming together as synthesis.

The mysteries of birth and death are subject to a similar analysis. Birth and death come together to allow the experience of eternal life. The cyclical and linear experiences of time come together in eternity. The theory of reincarnation (cycle of birth, death, rebirth) and the experience of birth and death as beginning and end are in the process of coming together in our understanding. We live in a profoundly interesting time as scientists begin to study human experiences of death and resuscitation, providing new insights into the universal experience of the mystery of the transition from life to afterlife. The shape and form of the synthesis of reincarnation and a single lifetime are yet to be seen.

Any discussion of mystery leads us to a study of religious doctrine and dogma. We try to understand the mysteries we experience, and we express our ways of understanding in words. Human language always falls short of the reality it tries to describe, more so when the reality is spiritual experience. When people begin to agree on the words they will use to describe a spiritual experience, a doctrine is born. When people tell others that they must believe a doctrine or else, a dogma is born.

As an example of the development of dogma, I want to make a digression to explore a Christian experience of mystery. When Christians eat and drink the bread and cup of Holy Communion, we experience the presence of Christ. We try to describe the mystery of Christ’s presence, and we develop doctrines. The doctrine of the Real Presence is one example: The doctrine says, simply, “Christ is present in Holy Communion.” Some Christians focus on the elements of bread and wine, saying there is a change in them that conveys the physical presence of Christ. Others focus on the experience of eating and drinking, seeing the presence of Christ in the gathered community of believers. Those who focus on the elements have developed dogmas: Transubstantiation claims that bread ceases to be bread and becomes flesh, the Body of Christ, and wine ceases to be wine and becomes the Blood of Christ. Consubstantiation claims that flesh and blood are conveyed physically in, under and with the bread and wine. Those who focus on the experience of eating and drinking have developed other dogmas: The community is what matters; the bread and wine are symbols only, nothing more. Those who insist upon these dogmas apply various levels of threat to impose them. At least they will say, “You must believe as we do, or else you cannot receive Communion with us.” Some will go so far as to say, “You must believe as we do, or else you are not a real Christian.”

The development of dogma is clearly an evil thing. The least harm it does is the separation of one human being from another. People have willingly killed each other, fighting wars in the name of religious dogmas. The only cure for dogma is humility. It is vital, a matter of life and death, that we admit that our words are always inadequate to describe our experiences of mysteries. Doctrines are our attempts to describe our spiritual experiences in words, so they are never true on the same level as the experiences themselves. To remember this inadequacy of doctrine should be enough to prevent our insistence on dogma.



V. RELIGIONS

Every human religion is based on revelation by God or nature spirits. Sometimes the revelations take a second place to political or institutional interests of religious organizations, but the revelation that stands at the base of the religion can be discerned, and all religions offer tools that are useful for spiritual growth and understanding. Many religions claim to be the final, ultimate, or most complete revelation of truth. Sometimes even a particular sect of a religion claims to be the only true expression of faith. All such claims are false. No single religion has a monopoly on Truth. There are true statements and there are false statements, and one can find some of each in every religion. Truth is more than true statements. Truth is an expression of God’s own nature. When we experience relationship with God, we experience our own, personal spiritual life. We try to talk about that kind of experience, but words always fall short of the shining, bright reality. Where any religion provides unique insights for spiritual life, those insights provide a glimpse of Truth.



THE OLD RELIGION

People who sing, “Give me that old time religion…” do not have the old religion in mind. The old religion dates back to the garden of Eden, where our first ancestors gathered all they needed to eat and to live from their environment. Every rock and tree was alive, and if Julian Jaynes is correct, they could see the spirits that inhabited them. (In his monumental work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind , Julian Jaynes theorized that ancient people actually saw the nature spirits their stories described.)

While the old religion provides a foundation for all others, it still exists in nearly pure form in the modern world. Wicca has a valid claim as inheritor of the ancient forms of Celtic and Western European religion. Christians have attempted to suppress the old religion by claiming that witches worship demons and work evil, but the truth is that theirs is simply the old religion with which Christianity has always tried to compete. There is evidence that some forms of early Christianity sought to coexist with the old religion, but the dominant forms consistently tried to suppress the old religion. To learn more about the old religion and its ancient spirituality, a basic text is Sybil Leek’s book, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A WITCH. A retelling of the legend of King Arthur from the point of view of the old religion is THE MISTS OF AVALON by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Just for fun, a positive portrayal of the old religion can be seen in the movie, PRACTICAL MAGIC.

In Sybil Leek’s Diary of a Witch , she beautifully illustrates the universality of spiritual truth in her appreciation of the Catholic Mass. She recognizes the mass as a white magic ceremony in which ordinary material elements are set aside and made holy to become the means of communicating the Presence of God to believers.

Quite apart from Wicca, the modern religion of Hinduism provides a living link to the old religion. Hindus have many gods and goddesses, all of whom they recognize as faces of the One true God. Hindu faith recognizes the presence and importance of nature spirits. In every living thing one can experience the presence of God, and God is all things, especially the natural world and all its manifestations. This view of the world and the Creator, seeing the Creator as all things is called “pantheism.” Like virtually all “isms” one must beware of this one. At best it is a distortion of the relationship of the Creator to creation. It is well to see God in all things, but that is very different from seeing God as all things.

Native American forms of Shamanism are contemporary forms of the old religion. Their Shamans’ closeness to nature and to the spirits that inhabit the natural world are legendary, and all spiritual seekers will do well to learn from their example and witness. Native American spirituality also bears witness to the One true God as the Great Spirit is widely known and worshipped.

Japanese Shinto tradition provides a link to the old religion. Shinto regards anything natural as sacred. A small garden can be a place of refuge for body and spirit. A window may be placed in a strategic way to show only a natural scene as one looks through it. Nature spirits are respected and venerated.

The old religion was known and practiced in Biblical lands and times. The Queen of Heaven was recognized and revered, and the nature spirits inhabiting the landscape were venerated as Baal. The patriarchal tradition repudiated the old religion, but many of its elements and its wisdom have persisted within Judaism, especially in the mystical traditions of Kabballah.





ISLAM

Islam offers a radical form of monotheism: “There is no God but the One and only God (Allah), and Muhammad is His messenger.” These words are the foundation of Islam in the simplest terms, and they are words of comfort and hope to Muslims through all of life and as they approach death. To say that Allah is a false god is to deny the truth proclaimed by all monotheistic religions, for Allah is simply an Arabic form of the same word for God used in its plural form in the Hebrew Bible, Elohim. Yet the meaning and implications of the Hebrew plural and the Arabic singular are not nearly the same. Elohim can be translated, the gods, although it is normally rendered also correctly simply, “God.“ Allah is God in God’s own self, more nearly comparable to En Sof of Kabbalistic mysticism. (To learn more about En Sof, visit the following URL: http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/en_sof.html) The Quran argues that Allah is not one of three, no doubt reflecting on arguments between early Christians and Muslims over the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, but there was misunderstanding on both counts, as with most religious arguments. The argument was probably made by early Christians that the Arabic term Allah refers to God the Father within the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. To move the language of faith from one religion to another always presents complications, but there are surely ways we can learn to appreciate and learn from the Islamic faith as it bears true and radical witness to the oneness and uniqueness of God.



CHRISTIANITY

For the Christian, the experience of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a mystery that has led to the doctrine of the Trinity. A seminary professor of mine said that the idea of the Trinity is the least the church can say about God. All too often Christians seem to think that their doctrine is the final word. Of course, it must be said that not all Christians are Trinitarians. Unitarians and Deists provide a needed contrast within the range of Christian tradition, for their concept of God does not include the doctrine of the Trinity. Quakers (the Society of Friends) have a wonderful way of dealing with all doctrines: They call them “notions” and ascribe them all to other religious groups. Quakers do believe in Christ, without clear doctrinal definitions, and they rightly emphasize faith in Christ as God Who lives in us. So strong is their belief that Christ is the Divine Light in every human being that their mainstream tradition is strongly pacifistic. Under no circumstances will a traditional Quaker fight or kill a person in whom Christ lives.

The most basic teaching of Christianity is salvation by grace through faith. A person is rescued from despair and fear by trusting in the goodness of God applied to each and every person. To know that the Creator of the world loves each and every creature She has made is to live in hope in every possible life situation.



VI. PRAYER

There is a standing joke among Christians that human prayer life tends to stand a Biblical phrase on its head: “Speak, Lord, for thy servant is listening,” becomes, “Listen, Lord, for thy servant is speaking.” Prayer is meant to be conversation with God, and any conversation needs to run in at least two directions, speaking and listening. The silence of the mind necessary to listen to God is one of the goals of prayer. Such silence is often called meditation.

In human experience there are many vastly different kinds of prayer. The broadest definition of prayer is probably best. The old Baltimore Catechism of the Roman Catholic church provides a broad and simple definition: Any lifting of the human heart and mind to God is prayer.

Prayer and meditation are the personal experience of the presence of God in an individual human life. They move spiritual practice from the realm of theories and notions to the realm of action, word and deed.

From Hindu masters we learn that meditation is best enabled by special sounds called mantras. These sounds lead the mind inward toward its natural goal of communion with the indwelling God. Union with God is the goal of every form of yoga, which is Sanskrit for union.

The sounds that guide meditation can carry meaning, and for many adherents of western religions, the meanings are the most important part of their process of meditation. Several prayers that have provided meaningful mantras to me follow.



From the Patriarchal era of Judaism, the Prayer of Jabez:

Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border,

And that your hand would be with me

And that you would keep me from being hurt and causing harm.



From a Psalm of David:

Be still and know that I Am God.



From ancient Christian tradition, The Jesus Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.



From the teaching of Jesus, The Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever,

Amen.





A Christian Prayer for the sick:

Oh, Heavenly Father, watch with us we pray Thee, over the sick persons for whom our prayers are offered,

and grant that they may be restored to that perfect health which is Thine alone to give,

through Christ our Lord,

Amen.



A Greeting of the Mother of God, adapted from Eastern and Western Christian versions:

Hail Mary, full of Grace! The Lord is with you.

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,

For you have borne the Savior of our souls.



From the opening chapter of the Quran, the Scripture of Islam, Seven Oft Repeated Verses:

In the name of the One God, the Compassionate, the Merciful!

Praise be to the One God, Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful!

Ruler on the Day of Judgment!

You do we worship and You do we call on for help.

Guide us along the Straight Road,

The road of those whom You have favored,

With whom You are not angry,

Who are not lost!

[Ameen.]





Any or all of these prayers, or any other that focuses the mind on the presence of God, can be used for meditation. Choose a comfortable place to sit upright, assume a comfortable position, allow the eyes comfortably to close, and let the prayer guide the mind inward until there are no conscious thoughts. Distractions are part of meditation, and can be allowed to come and go. The goal of meditation is a silent moment in which the mind is aware of the inner presence of God. As soon as the inner voice says, “I’m there,” the mind is no longer there, for a thought has intruded. Yet nothing is easier or more natural than reaching the state of God consciousness, and nothing is more renewing. Consistent practice without pressure, hurry, or worry will be rewarded. Some people may achieve the inner, silent awareness at the first attempt. Others may take years. There is no right or wrong method or time; for each of us the opportunity to meet God within is God’s gift. The gift comes to each of us uniquely, as God has made each of us a uniquely precious child of God’s own heart. If one falls asleep in meditation, sleep is right meditation and far more restful than ordinary sleep. In any case, it is important to allow time to return to ordinary thought, not leaping from deep meditation to activity. The return may take two to five minutes, more or less, and without the return one may feel dizzy or disoriented. Meditation is an important spiritual practice, a way of hearing God as God says to you and me, “Come to me, my child; I love you.”

Our petitions that we present to God are important to us and to God. The answer we receive may not always be what we seek, but God always knows best, and to follow Jesus’ example, saying, “Thy will be done,” is always wise. Any prayer that so seeks the will of God is in the Name and Spirit of Jesus. Likewise, whenever we pray for others, exercising the priesthood God offers to all believers, we pray in the Name and Spirit of Jesus. My own Lutheran upbringing taught me that praying for the dead is wrong because it is useless. I have come to believe otherwise. God is not limited by time as we are, and our prayers can ease the way of those who experience the transition from life to life. From our side of the veil, the transition can be seen to be difficult at times, and the prayers and tender loving care we can give to the dying can be immensely helpful to them. Likewise there is evidence that our prayers for them can be of help to those who have died. We can entrust them to the loving care of the Heavenly Father Who is with them in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit can provide a link between us and those who have gone ahead of us. Our prayer can be simply that: “We commend our loved ones to Your loving care.” We ourselves are comforted as we pray for them, and the feeling of being closer to them as we pray is very real, based on a spiritual reality in which we all live. A great and simple traditional prayer we can offer is:

Rest eternal grant them, O Lord,

And let light perpetual shine on them.

Amen.





VII. Introduction to the Study of the Bible in English

Welcome to the adventure of Bible Study! I call it an adventure because any Bible you can hold in your hand represents many miracles. The first and most important miracle is that God can speak and will speak to you, personally, through the Bible. God's word can come to any person through the Bible, but the most important thing for us to do is listen. God speaks to each person in a way that is unique to each person's needs and abilities, but God always speaks consistently. The message will always be one of love and affirmation of the person to whom God is speaking, and God will never call a person to violate another person in any way. Reading and studying the Bible is a good way to understand the ways God has spoken in the past. A faith community, a group of believers in God listening to His word together, is another important way to check out our own listening. The miracle of God's speaking to you is not dependent on anything but your own faith. At the same time, checks and balances from the Bible and from other believers will keep you from being led astray.

Another miracle involves the text of the Bible itself. Some of the documents on which our Bible is based are almost three thousand years old. The oldest copies are about two thousand years old. Through the intervening years, the Bible has been copied and translated, interpreted and reinterpreted over and over again. That we have anything close to the original is a miracle in itself. Just how great is the miracle may be seen through the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those include copies of parts of the Bible that are a thousand years older than any copies known before they were discovered between 1947 and 1956. There are some differences between the oldest copies and the later ones, and some of the differences are important. Yet the essence of the message of the Bible remains clear and intact across the years and even in the midst of all the changes and mistakes that come about with human efforts at copying and translating.

The essence of the Bible's message is that God cares about the world He has made. What happens to you matters to Him. God wants to be your friend; He wants to be a friend to all creation. He wants all His creatures to live in harmony. In seeking friendship with human beings, He has given His best, His utmost, over and over again. When God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, He was not doing anything new. He simply gave new meaning to everything He had done before, and showed the heights and depths of His loving heart.

The word of God to you today comes first and most clearly through the words of the Bible. Although a lot has been lost in translation, the most important things are as clear in English as they were in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic: (1) God cares. (2) God reaches out to people, including you and me. (3) God is absolutely consistent in His methods and loving demands. (4) God will call people to obey Him, but He will never force His will on anyone. (5) God's victory of good over evil, light over darkness, will be complete.

The struggle of good and evil is the good fight that God continues to fight along with all who side with Him. The Bible is and always has been deeply involved in the struggle. Through history, one of the most shocking surprises can be seen by examining the sides that are taken. Church leaders are often on the side of darkness, of suppressing the message of God through the Bible. When the Bible was first being translated into English, one of the first translators, John Wycliffe, was condemned by the church of his time for his "crime" of translating Scripture into the language of the people. He died in 1384, but he was not the first or the last person to suffer on account of God's word. His part in the battle of the Bible is especially important to English speaking people because he was a pioneer in translating the Bible into our language.

Today leaders of churches are all too often obscuring God's message of love by quibbling about questions that can never be answered. The most popular quibble of our time revolves around "inerrancy" or "infallibility" of the Bible. Both words refer to the idea that the Bible was inspired by God word for word, without any mistakes of any kind. Those who claim that the Bible contains no mistakes of any kind are only talking about original manuscripts. Any copy of the Bible, even early copies of original manuscripts, contain all kinds of mistakes. We have already seen how those mistakes have never obscured God's message of pure love to the world. No one has yet found even a portion of an original manuscript of any book of the Bible. The issue probably cannot be resolved in this world. So the arguments over the purity of perfection in original manuscripts of the Bible are only distractions from the more important task of communicating and understanding God's word more clearly day by day.

Many human languages have been shaped by the efforts of translators and interpreters to communicate God's word. The Latin of Western European scholarship was influenced by St. Jerome's translation of the Bible, the Vulgate. Many Eastern European languages have some of their roots in Old Church Slavonic, a language whose written form depended heavily on the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius, missionaries who translated Scripture into the languages of the people they served. The German language was unified, and many of its modern forms were codified by Martin Luther's translation of the Bible. Our own English language has been shaped in many ways by the King James Bible, published in 1611. A fascinating case study in the development of a language in relation to communication and translation of the Bible may be seen in Universal Sign Language.

Many of the most popular versions of the Bible in English have their roots firmly set in the fertile ground of the King James Version. Revision of the King James Version was authorized by the Church of England in 1870. The Revised Version which resulted was published between 1881 and 1885. The American Standard Version was published in 1901, and it reflected the work of American scholars who had been involved in the earlier British revision. In 1952 the Revised Standard Version was published by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. The RSV was greeted by a storm of controversy, and copies of it were even burned by some religious groups. Such was the quality of the work, however, that it endured more than a generation in our changing times. By 1977, with the inclusion of texts received by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, it was officially authorized for use by all major Christian churches. A more politically correct version of the Revised Standard Version was published in 1989, the New Revised Standard Version. Inclusive language has been used rather than gender-limited language, and in many cases the meaning of Biblical passages in the original languages has been better represented in this newest version.

As a rule of thumb, the later the publication date of any Bible you may use for study, the earlier the manuscripts on which it is based. Some of the oldest complete manuscripts of the Bible were discovered as recently as the 19th Century. One of the most famous 19th Century discoveries was of a Greek manuscript found by Konstantin von Tischendorf in 1859. The manuscript was in the library of St. Catherine's monastery, located on the Sinai peninsula. It was in a basket of old, discarded parchments, likely to be burned before long. Known today as Codex Sinaiticus, the manuscript is likely from the Fourth Century A.D.,and it is one of the primary witnesses to the text of the New Testament and the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Another ancient witness to the Biblical text is a manuscript called Codex Vaticanus, also from the Fourth Century A.D. It has been in the Vatican library at least since 1475, when the first catalog of materials in that library was published.

Fragments of the Bible and examples of ancient literature are being discovered every day. Some of the documents recently coming to light have brought the meaning of the Bible into sharper focus. Words and phrases that once were impossible to translate or interpret are now beginning to make sense. In terms of study of the Bible, ours is an exciting a time to live. Just as natural science is making constant discoveries that make more sense of the universe in which we live, careful study of the Scripture is making more sense of the relationship of human life to our Creator. Recent archaeology continues the process of shedding new light on the Bible and its meaning. The announcement of the discovery of a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt where sons of Ramses II may have been buried is a good example. Many Bible historians believe that Ramses II may well have been the Pharaoh with whom God dealt through Moses in the book of Exodus. Any information on Ramses II would be of great interest to students of the Bible.

Bible study is, above all, a journey of faith. Study of the Bible as great literature is immensely satisfying and will yield good results, but only the student of the Bible who seeks to deepen a relationship with God will find the true adventure there.

At the same time, the faithful believer will want to use all the best tools of study at the disposal of any scholar who scrutinizes ancient documents. Various kinds of historical research into ancient literature are called "criticism." This does not mean that the scholar is going to criticize the Bible. It means that the scholar is going to examine and analyze the Bible with the greatest possible care. No question is to be considered forbidden or irreverent. No possibility should be disregarded simply because it goes against our assumptions and beliefs. So often those of us who claim to stand firmly on the authority of the Bible are very clear on what the Bible may or may not tell us. It would shock many devout believers to learn that the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere spelled out in the Bible. Clearly the doctrine is implied, and I have found no simpler way to account for the experience of the people of God, but doctrine is intended to be an expression of the continuing ruminations of a mind open to God's revelations. It is not intended to be a definition of final answers that can never be revised or expanded. Above all, it is important to allow the Bible to be what it is, not to make anything else of it, and especially not to approach it with preconceived notions about what it can and cannot be.

First and most simply, the Bible is a library of ancient literature. It is not just one book; to be exact, it is sixty-six books, counting only the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. There are many different kinds of literature included in the Bible, and knowing the kind of literature of any given book gives us appropriate clues about its meaning. For example, the book of Jonah is a satire. It is a magnificent example of humor in the ancient world. It dares to poke fun at prophecy and prophets. There may indeed have been a prophet named Jonah, and he may have experienced the bizarre events recorded in the book that bears his name, but history is not the point of the story. The nature of God's relationship to prophets, the concern God has for the worst of sinners, and the importance of humble obedience to God's call are the basic points of the story, and they do not depend on the historical facts of the story. A speaker on the floor of a recent church convention said, "If the Bible said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe it." Such a statement, in my humble opinion, reflects a tragic missing of the point. Another recent statement could better be applied to many of the stories in the Bible: "All the stories are true; some of them actually happened!"

Some of the kinds of literature found in the Bible are poetry, liturgy (that is, public worship), traditional wisdom, histories of kingly courts, law (that is, Torah, God's love gift to His people), prophecy, Gospel (a New Testament literary form invented to tell the story of Jesus), letters or epistles, and revelation of mysteries. There are numerous other forms and subcategories of all of them. The Bible is an exceedingly complex collection of literature, and no one has ever exhausted its wealth of inspiration and enlightenment. The complexity need not deter anyone; it is simply a way of saying that no matter how well you know and understand the Bible, you still have more to learn.

No introduction to the study of the Bible in any language would be complete without at least a cursory examination of some of the characteristics of the literary forms just mentioned. Many of the forms overlap, so that a given passage may be classified as poetry, liturgy, and law, but some understanding of literary form is important as we attempt to understand the meaning of the words of the Bible.

Biblical poetry follows its own special cultural characteristics. There is a rhyming of ideas, an echoing of thought patterns that is more important than meter or rhythm. Most of the plays on words are lost in translation, but the echoing of ideas within a Biblical poem comes through clearly in any language. English lends itself well to Biblical poetry, and a little attention to style on the part of the translator has often borne fruit in some of the most beautiful phrases of our language. The King James Version is unsurpassed in this regard, and the majesty of its poetry is without parallel. From Isaiah 40:1 & 2 we read, "Comfort, comfort ye my people. Speak ye

comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished and her iniquity is pardoned..." In Psalm 46 we read, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

Biblical liturgy is closely related to Biblical poetry, and many of the Psalms are designed for use in public worship on particular occasions. Some of the most ancient liturgical formulas are in the book of Deuteronomy. One of the best known is the creed of ancient Israel, the most basic statement of faith of God's covenant people to this day. It is called the "Shema," so named for the Hebrew command, "Hear!" In Deuteronomy 6:4 & 5 we read, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." With these words, God's people are called to acknowledge Him as the only true God and to love Him with all their being. Phrases from the public worship of the early church are recorded in the New Testament. For example, in Philippians 2:6-11 is a statement of faith in Christ Jesus, "Who, although He was equal with God, He did not hold on to His divinity. He emptied Himself and took the form of one who serves others. He was born in human form, and as a human being He lowered Himself in obedience to the point of being put to death in disgrace on a cross. Because of His humble obedience, God raised Him up to the highest level. He gave Him the name that is above every name. At the name of Jesus every knee will bend, wherever that may be, in heaven, on earth, or in the world below, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Traditional wisdom is summarized in the Proverbs and in Ecclesiastes. A simple, down to earth philosophy is expressed in the Bible's Wisdom Literature: The only experience of lasting value that mortal human beings can have in this life is to serve God. In Ecclesiastes 3:14 we read, "I know that God's actions last forever; no one can add to or take away from the things that God has done: God does it so that everyone should stand in awe before Him."

Many scholars believe that the oldest literary form in the Bible is its histories of kingly courts. Many passages in other literary forms represent much older material, but the forms have been changed and edited many times before they were written down in the way that we see them in the Bible today. Some of the court history of King David was composed during his reign in the 900's B.C., and the words we read in 2 Samuel are likely very close to the words that were recorded in David's lifetime. The books of the Bible that record the good and bad experiences of God's people under the rule of kings are 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. Many of the same stories are told twice in these books, and it is a fascinating study to see how the author's point of view and purpose affect the way a story is told. Political and religious opinions had their effect on Biblical literature in much the same way as they have their effect on the literature of today.

Law as a literary form in the Bible is far more than a code of laws as we think of them today. For ancient Israel, the Law was the heart of God's revelation of Himself to His people. The first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are often called the Law, or in Hebrew, the Torah. When the Lord Jesus referred to the Bible, He often called it, "the Law and the Prophets," by which He meant the books of the Hebrew Bible. He was calling the first five books the Law, and everything else He was calling the Prophets. If we distinguish Law and Gospel as Christian theology often does, it might seem strange to call Law a love gift from God. As a Biblical literary form, however, Law includes a lot of God's love, even in ways that Christian theology would have to acknowledge as good news. The form of Law as God's gift is best seen in Exodus 20:1-17, where God gives the Ten Commandments through Moses. The pattern is consistent wherever God's law is given: God first tells His people what He has done for them, then He tells them what He expects of them. In Exodus 20:2 & 3 we read, "I am the Lord your God. I am the One Who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery. You shall have me as your only God." With these words, God established a relationship of friendship, a covenant, between His people and Himself. God's people cannot break this covenant; we can only destroy or break ourselves by moving away from that relationship. There are many codes of law, like the Code of Hammurabi, that have come down to us from the ancient world. Some of them bear significant resemblance to the codes of law included in Scripture. Yet there is nothing in the world like the Law of God as revealed in the Bible. God's Law has established a living, loving relationship with God in which people can live to this very day.

Prophecy is a form of literature in which the prophet speaks for God. The words, "Thus saith the Lord," are the classical introduction of prophecy. When a prophet speaks God's word, the message may or may not involve prediction. Insight into the meaning of events is more important in Scripture than predicting events. A prophet's insight may provide hope and encouragement to God's people across the ages. A prediction is of interest only until it comes true. According to the Bible, the way to know a true prophet from a false prophet is to test the evident truth of the words the prophet speaks. In Deuteronomy 18:22 we read, "If a prophet speaks a word from the Lord, but that word does not take place or prove to be true, then the Lord has not spoken that word. The prophet has spoken out of presumption; do not be afraid." If the prophet has made a prediction for the near future, time will tell whether or not the prophet's word comes true. Some predictions are concerned with the end of time, the Day of the Lord. Those are more difficult to test, but consistency with other prophets' words is a good sign of truth. A prophet's analysis of the current political and cultural situation can be tested against common knowledge of current events. If a prophet obviously does not know the time or place to which the prophetic word is addressed, then the prophet is false. These criteria were applied in Biblical times to judge the truth or falsehood of a prophet. The words of false prophets are rarely quoted in Scripture, and then they are clearly identified as false. They are important for us as examples of the kind of word that should not be believed. Some of the true prophets, whose words still speak to believers, are Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and John the Baptist. If God is to speak to you or me, personally, then the message of the Biblical prophets is especially important to us. Those who spoke for God in the past teach us many vital lessons about how God speaks to people generally. God does not say the same thing over and over again, but the messages are consistent. Basic principles of discernment enable us to recognize the voice and the word of God in the midst of many different voices. Some voices we hear may seem to contradict whatever God is saying to us, and we always want to be able to distinguish the true from the false.

In order to tell the story of Jesus, some of His followers invented a whole new literary form called a Gospel. The English word, Gospel, is a contemporary form of a much older word, Godspel. In its original form the word meant glad tidings or good news, and as such it was an excellent translation of the Greek word, Evangelion. Another way we could incorporate the older word into modern understanding would be to think of the "Godspel" as the "Spell" that God has cast over all the world in sending His Son to live and die as one of us. A "spell" is an invocation, the speaking of words of power. When God sent His Son to become a human being, the Word was made flesh. The beginning of the Gospel, the story of Jesus, is unique in each of the four New Testament books called, "Gospels." John begins at the beginning of Creation, echoing the opening words of Genesis, "In the beginning..." Mark begins with the preaching of John the Baptist. Matthew and Luke both begin with the story of the birth of Christ, but Luke is unique in that he begins the story of Christ's birth with the story of the birth of His cousin, John the Baptist. All four Gospels tell the story of Jesus' public ministry: teaching, preaching and signs of God's Kingdom. All four tell in greatest detail the story of His suffering and death, and all four bear witness to His glorious resurrection. Comparing the four Gospels to each other would be a useful exercise in understanding the relationship of all the books of the Bible to each other. The four Gospels clearly tell the same story, but they are very different from each other. In the final analysis it is not possible to outline them together without doing some violence to the literary integrity of each. Each Gospel has its own point of view and its own theology. They disagree with each other at important points; yet, they are deeply consistent with each other. For example, Matthew reports many disagreements among the disciples of Jesus, and even some between Jesus and the disciples. If you read only the Gospel of Luke, you could easily have the impression that they all got along just beautifully and hardly ever disagreed with each other. In much the same way, different books of the Bible represent different points of view, and we miss a lot of the important information that the Bible has for us if we try to force those points of view into some kind of artificial agreement. Even so, the points of disagreement do not lead to irreconcilable differences, and the consistent message of God's deep concern for and involvement in this world comes through with great clarity. The clarity may be even greater because it comes through such different witnesses.

Letters and epistles were a means of mass communication in the ancient world. Sometimes it was not possible for state or religious leaders to go in person to instruct their followers and to settle disputes, so they would send letters that would be read in the communities that needed to hear from them. Some of those letters wound up in the Bible. In the Old Testament, the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the people who were in exile in Babylon. The letter to the exiles was included as part of the book of Jeremiah, in chapter 29. He tells the people who are far from their homes that God wants them to settle down in the city of Babylon, even though they are in exile. He tells them to build homes and plant gardens, to have families, and to seek the welfare of the city in which they find themselves. These words have had universal application for the people of God when they have found themselves scattered all over the world. Likewise many letters have found new meaning and new applications for people long after those to whom the letters were addressed. Hence, letters by many of the apostles have been included in the text of the New Testament. In St. Paul's letter to the Romans, he outlined his basic theology and faith, and so that letter has become a basic instruction in the meaning of Christian faith for all time. Following the book of Acts, St. Luke's history of the early Christian Church, all the books of the New Testament up to the book of Revelation are letters that have been widely circulated and have been found to include principles of universal application. Those New Testament epistles are all unique, bearing the personality traits of the authors and the needs of the people to whom they were addressed. They even sometimes present the disagreements among leaders of the early church, but they speak with one voice in bearing witness to Christ, the Savior of the world.

The final literary form that I want to consider in this introduction is by no means the last in a complete list of literary forms of the Bible. It is called the revelation of mysteries, or "apocalyptic literature," to use the widely accepted technical term. The final book of the Bible is called the Revelation, or, the Apocalypse. It is one of the purest examples of the revelation of mysteries. It is written in code, a way of protecting the book and its readers in times of severe persecution. Indeed, Christians find it easiest to understand such revelations when they are facing severe persecution. The most recent circumstance in which the book of Revelation and other Biblical revelations of mysteries were understood was in the life of the confessing church under the Nazi regime. The books of Daniel and Ezekiel are two examples of this kind of literature in the Old Testament. In every case, the clearest and most important revelation that comes through this kind of literature is that God will prevail over His enemies, and His people will share in His victory. If this one word of hope is all that we can understand of these books of revelation, then that is all we need from them at the present time, and we can give thanks that our circumstances are not so terrible that we need much more.

A fascinating contemporary interpretation of the revelation of mysteries is offered in the immensely popular science fiction series called, “Left Behind.” The Left Behind books are written by two leading evangelical writers, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. If you enjoy science fiction and have an interest in end times prophecy, I highly recommend these books. They are beautifully written, and every chapter has a significant witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At the same time it is important to remember that these are science fiction books, not a new form of Scripture itself. The interpretation of Biblical prophecy that the authors present is not authoritative; there are many other approaches that are equally valid. If you want to learn more about the Left Behind series, visit the authors’ website: http://www.leftbehind.com/

Many Christians like to believe that the early church was made up of one great united church over the whole known world. In reality something like denominations existed already in the Second Century. The Bible itself was the principal source of disagreement. For most of the early Christians the Bible was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Greek translation contained a number of books that were not included in the Hebrew Bible, and those books are today known as the Apocrypha, or the Deutero-canonical books. Since Greek was the language spoken by most people in the Roman Empire, the Greek version of the Old Testament was the Bible used by most Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians alike. The books of the New Testament were being composed in this period, and each local area of Christians had its own collections of New Testament books. For example, the church at Ephesus had its letter from the Apostle Paul, Ephesians, and the Gospel of John may well have been composed and compiled there. In addition they may have obtained copies of some of the other letters. The church at Rome would have had a copy of Romans, and if the traditions are correct, the first Gospel in use there was probably Mark. The controversy that raged in the 150's was about the use of the Old Testament. Some Gentile Christians, especially one by the name of Marcion, believed that the Old Testament should not be part of the Christian Bible. His followers used only the Gospel of Luke and a collection of some of the letters of the Apostles. I find it fascinating that the earliest church sign, a label for a Christian house of worship, referred to the congregation as a "Marcionite Christian Synagogue." I am thankful that most Christians continued to use the Old Testament as part of their Bible. The unity of God's covenant and the universality of God's grace are better and more clearly seen in the Bible as we know it.

No matter what kind of Biblical literature we may be studying or reading, the version we use will make a lot of difference. The King James Version is unsurpassed for literary quality and history, but later versions are based on much better and earlier manuscripts, as we have seen. In addition, we sometimes find it difficult to understand correctly what we are reading since the language and the meaning of words have changed so much. The Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version are excellent, and these are the most likely for us to hear read in churches. The New English Bible is a superb translation, and it offers excellent literary quality in modern English. The Jerusalem Bible is an English translation of a French version by renowned contemporary Roman Catholic Bible scholars. The footnotes are excellent study aids, and the literary quality is second to none. The Amplified Bible is a good effort at a study Bible, and it attempts to provide a wide range of possible meanings for every verse, based on the original languages and their contemporary uses at the time that the Bible literature was written. If a good translation in simple, contemporary English is wanted, one can do no better than Today's English Version, published by the American Bible Society. The Living Bible is very easy to understand, and it is a paraphrase of the King James Version. It is important to understand the difference between a translation and a paraphrase. A translation is based on currently available texts in the original languages, and the words are rendered into English by scholars who are versed in the ancient languages. A paraphrase is based on one or more translations, and the editor seeks to restate the words in more easily understood modern language, based on his or her own interpretations. As such, a paraphrase is a kind of commentary, and it should be read as such. Throughout this Handbook, whenever I quote Scripture, I use the King James Version, or I use my own original paraphrase. Therefore if the reader or hearer wants more clarity of meaning, I would strongly recommend the use of another translation for purposes of comparison.

This Bible introduction should not be considered exhaustive in any sense; it is simply a way to introduce the student of the Bible to some of the contemporary insights about the meaning of the Bible for the modern world. It is not primarily for devotional purposes, and it is not simply an overview of the literature. I hope that those who share this adventure with me experience the study of the Bible as a form of personal spiritual renewal. All people of good will are able to share the experience. The main gift that the Bible offers the world is a personal encounter with the Creator and Savior of the world. Whatever doctrine we may use to try to describe the process, the experience of God's ever-present concern is for everyone, without any consideration of religious background.



This version of Handbook for Spirituality in North America is © copyright February 27, 2003 at Moscow, Idaho, USA by Pastor Fred Toerne: pastor_fred@compuserve.com