The Way, the Truth, and the Life

“I am the way, the truth, and the light, no one comes to the Father but through me.” These are rather blunt words that people who have come in contact with Christianity may have at some point heard. Unfortunately, these words spoken by Jesus have been twisted to represent something that I don’t think they were meant to. 

The Evangelical Christian way of interpreting this verse has been with the mindset of Jesus being the only way in which we can come to the “Father.” In other words, Jesus is our keycard into eternity with some God somewhere else. Not only is this a rather domineering perspective on Christ, it also closes people off from the encounter with beauty other perspectives can offer. Furthermore, I believe this is a complete misreading of the passage and in this post I aim to relay what I think Christ really meant when he said this.

In the verse before this one, Jesus' disciple Thomas asks Jesus the driving question. How can we know they way to God? This is a question a lot of us have at some point. We want to have a path to follow, a blueprint that outlines our best course of action. To side track a bit, Thomas’ question just goes to show how incredibly human the Bible is. It’s a book about humans who have a lot of the same questions we all do. Jesus offers an answer to Thomas’s question about life by pointing to himself.

“Thomas,” Jesus says “I am the the way. I am the truth. I’m the life. The life that represents all those things. All the things that the father is defined by, I represent. Because of this I am your way to the father. When you understand the ways in which I act and what I represent, then you can see the ways and characteristics of the father. Then your cataracts will be peeled away.” 

Jesus could care less if Thomas were to accept him, he wants Thomas and all of us to know him. To know his ways, to know the life he represented, to be in tune with his truth. To accept is meaningless, it offers no real life change. But to know… to know is to encounter, and to be involved with something on an intimate and personal level.

This is all good and wonderful, but I think for truths to hold significance, they have to be attached to objective and applicable realities. With that being said, lets talk about gardens.

Gardens are a wonderful representation of diverse beauty. Yet through all their diversity, there is one thing that remains constant in every garden in order for life to be sustainable. Soil. Without soil, a tulip cannot bloom, cherry trees cannot blossom. Soil is the foundation of all the beauty around us. 

I like to view John 14:6, the passage above, with gardens in mind. Just as the soil in a garden is the foundation of the beauty, so Jesus represents the foundation of truth and life. When we recognize this about Jesus, we see God in all things that are tied to those ways and that truth. When we recognize the soil, we recognize what is tied to it by looking at the flowers a garden holds. 

Jesus is the foundation of beauty, however he need not be the only beauty. The ways of Jesus are the ways of God. The soil is in many ways the pulse of the garden. However, what makes a garden beautiful is the diversity that the pulse creates. The fruits of God are everywhere, and they can on the surface appear vastly different. A garden has many different colors and many different scents, but it’s all tied to the same soil, even if at times we aren’t consciously aware of the soils role. To focus strictly on the soil limits the recognition of what the  soil is actually doing. To put strict focus on only Jesus limits the potential of what God is doing through Jesus' characteristics all around us. 

The ways, truth, and life Jesus represents are the same that the insistent God represents. As Jesus says later in the passage, he and God are one in the same. Jesus is the image or physical manifestation of the characteristics that define what an invisible insistence is doing. Wherever the traits of Christ are found is a place that God is actively engaged in, even if Jesus isn’t consciously tied to that reality. 

If all this is true, that means we can encounter God all around us. Things that are tied to love, a recognition of something more going on, and justness are all things tied to the garden of God do to them sharing the characteristics of Christ. So where in your life is this garden bursting forth and how can you be open to encountering that even more? 

A Noah Gundersen song that I’ll attach a link to at the bottom comes to mind when thinking of about this. The chorus states, “But wait, oh wait. See how the morning breaks, it’s the simplest of love songs but it’s all our hearts can take. Though we may lose our stake, heaven is where we make it. Even in the smallest of places, can a garden grow.” 

The beauty of the garden of God is all around us, we just need to open ourselves up to that possibility. To know the ways, truth, and life of Jesus gives us a blueprint into knowing the ways truth and life of an insistent God. This in turn opens us up to the potential of everything all around us.

To close, I want to offer a parable for any of you who are like me and grew incredibly exhausted of the language of Jesus being a man tied to deity and being a life giving being…

There once was a man who refused to associate himself with soil in his garden. He hired a hand, a young man not knowing much about gardening, to till the soil for him and plant flowers. The boy did as he was told day after day in the hot sun of summer. But one afternoon, the boy decided to ask the man why he despised soil so much. The man replied that when he was young, his father was obsessive about his garden and had made him plant all the flowers. Throughout his youth, he began to associate soil with long hot days where he couldn't do anything he desired to do because he was forced to work in the garden. He loved the garden, and found it beautiful, but the heat of the day combined with the messiness of dirt made him hate soil. The boy said to the man, "Yes, I see how that could be troubling. But when you see the soil for what it really is, rather than associating it with what is was forced to be to you, you see a whole new potential." The man asked the boy what he meant. "Well, you see, the soil is the pulse of the garden. It's what allows all the characteristics that you love about it come into being. With it flowers can become beautiful, and smell sweet. Without the soil, life in the garden wouldn't thrive, but with it, it can be fruitful and diverse." At this the old man realized the connection and larger system the soil was tied to, and was able to see the soil in a whole new light that was tied to the life of the whole garden rather than something that was a forced tie to his youth. 

Jesus can be something that is forced on us when we are young. When that happens, he lacks potential in our mind. We grow sick of him. But Jesus is not some guy trying to merely grant us access to life somewhere else when we die. He’s someone calling us to recognize the life all around us here and now. He’s producing gardens with a vast array of flowers. Flowers that may be tied to other worldview’s. Flowers tied to scientific advancement. Flowers tied to things that some may say are”secular.” He is the foundation to all the beauty and goodness, for he gives us a blueprint to what beauty and goodness look like. 

Noah Gundersen- Garden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SHHhnU9W-w

A Fresh Perspective on God

When thinking about God, a lot of things come to people’s mind. From the dawn of time, people have come up with theories to try explain the “otherness” that is tied to reality. This has formed religions and, naturally, has formed the rebellion or disbelief in the God associated with those religions evident through atheism. To try and stake a claim in this discussion is touchy, and quite frankly like dumping a cup of water into the ocean. But, I’ll do so anyway.

I’ve been raised a Christian, so naturally my worldview has adjusted to present itself within that framework. Although Christianity has an unGodly (ha ha…) amount of baggage tied to it, I do believe something about it is incredibly interesting, and that is the way God is perceived within it. 

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Christian theology, God is understood as a “Three in One” being. There’s Son (Jesus), Holy Spirit (usually identified through an image of a dove), and the “father” or “other” figure. Christianity believes these are three separate things that are all collectively one within the understanding of God. Right… confusing. But this post is my attempt at relaying how I perceive this and to hopefully offer a new perspective that can subvert ones perception of Christianity in order for you to see how it can be life giving and beautiful. So, here it goes…

There are three words that are incredibly important to remember through this post… Existence, insistence, and persistence. I believe each one of these adjectives can describe one facet of the trinity, and, when perceived collectively, represent the character of God. My opinion of God, that is.

First, let me define these adjectives. Existence, as I understand it, is something that can objectively be proved to be real. For example, I know music exists not just from the record that it is on but also by the sound that that record makes. I know a record exists not just because I see it, but because I can feel it. 

Insistence on the other hand simply requires one of our five senses to lead us to a place of understanding informing us that something more is going on. Or, stated differently, to some sort of transcendent experience. The sound of the music can insist me to recognize some sort of beauty or truth in a song through its melody or lyrics. In this sense, insistence is reliant upon existence, but insistence doesn’t necessarily exist itself, it is the recognition of higher order or meaning amidst all things. 

Persistence is the push to try and get us to share the insistence of the objectively existent thing with those around us. There’s a persistent push inside of me when I hear a beautiful song telling me to share it with others so they can encounter the beauty as well.

Existence

Insistence

Persistence

When understanding God through the understanding of Christianity, we must see Jesus as the existent character. He was alive, had a pulse, and is our springboard to understanding the characteristics of God as… 

Insistence. Jesus urged us to transform and renew our minds to see the heavenly realms before us. The insistence that we feel then when something beautiful happens is from an insistent God. This God is not orchestrating things somewhere else, but insisting through all things beautiful and life giving here on earth right before our eyes. 

The Holy Spirit then, when viewed through the lens that the book of Acts gives us, is a persistent beckoning within us to share the good message of the insistence we’ve felt. This is accomplished through multiple means and can take many forms. Spanning from acts as simple as sharing the insistent reality to standing up to wrongdoing. 

To review:

Jesus is the existent basis that provides the blueprint of what the insistent God is trying to get us to recognize and the Holy spirit is the persistent push in us to get others to recognize this insistence.

Simple enough, right?

This, at least to me, portrays what exactly the “Three in One” idea of Christianity means. The only part of God that is not “active” then, ironically, would be the existent part of God found through 

Jesus. 

Some people may have just raised some red flags to that comment. But I mean active in the sense that it is something we are constantly encountering when we recognize this reality. The interesting thing though is Jesus tells us that we will go on to do far greater things than him… So, perhaps it is on us to be the existent reality of God in our world today. If we do this, we in turn help people recognize, see, taste, and encounter this insistence. Which would then lead for more people to tap into the persistent push of the Holy Spirit urging us to stand up to injustice, help those who are sick, give to the poor, care for the environment, and other things. Which, in turn, would craft a very real Heaven on Earth here and now. A place of peace, prosperity, and overflowing love due to the recognition of the beauty all around, and the desire to bring hope to struggling situations. 

For more on the Insitence of God, check out these works below:

The Divine Magician by Peter Rollins

http://www.amazon.com/The-Divine-Magician-Disappearance-Discovery/dp/1451609043

The Insistence of God by John Caputo

http://www.amazon.com/Insistence-God-Theology-Philosophy-Religion/dp/0253010071/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424388502&sr=1-2&keywords=john+caputo

For a song touching on the insistence of God (unconsciously at least) check out this song by The Decemberists 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm6xtkX_Dvs

On The Native Sibling and the Potential in Everyhting

This past Saturday, February 7th, I hosted my first concert. On the bill was an opening act by the name of “Ishkov” who describe themselves as “post folk” music. Comprising of an acoustic guitarist, drummer, and saxophonist, their sound was incredibly unique and captivating. I and the rest of the attendees enjoyed their performance, but what this review/post/reflection is mostly going to focus on was the headliners performance and its symbolic implications.

This summer, while home in Michigan, I happened upon Ryan and Kaylee Williams, the brother/sister folk duo who go by the name of “The Native Sibling.” Their debut album “Letters Kept to Ourselves” was played on nearly every late night drive I took. Its captivating lyrics and stripped down musical style provided a sense of comfort that meshed well with being back in the presence of my loved ones. With them being based in Seattle, I knew I would have to try to bring them to Spokane when I got back.

Before I knew it, I was back at school and fall break had rolled around. I was headed to Seattle to spend time with some friends. The Native Sibling were playing a living room show in a Seattle neighborhood one of the days I was over there. A few friends and I bought tickets to see them. It was incredible and my hopes of bringing them over to Spokane soared. After the show, I talked to Kaylee about how they had to make it to Washington’s east side. A few email exchanges later, we set a date for them to play a Saturday night show at my church building.

Their performance is still incredibly fresh in my mind and will be one that I don’t think I or any of my friends in attendance will forget for a few reasons… For one, the attendance was very low, just over 20 people. Far more memorable, however, was the captivating experience it turned out to be. Due to the small number of people, Ryan came up to me and proposed the idea of performing strictly acoustic. No electronics of any sort, just their voices accompanied by an acoustic guitar and occasionally a harmonium. I was all for it.

Illuminated by nothing but dangling Christmas lights and performing to 20 or so college students cross legged on a cement floor, The Native Sibling tapped into a beauty that only authenticity can yield. My friend Brayden and I exchanged multiple glances of approval as Kaylee and Ryan’s voices united in such a way that couldn’t help but engulf ones body in chills. Their songs took myself and others to a place of peace. A place that casted aside whatever burden, sadness, or hardship we had walked into the building with. We became so captivated in the beauty of what was presently playing out in front of us that all presuppositions were cast aside.

An acoustic show like this says a lot about a much larger reality that was made apparent to me that night. Even the most simple, stripped down, or “unpolished” moments can provide a very real and heavenly experience when they are tied to truth and authenticity. At this show, I experienced a setting where people were blown away by no more than two voices and two instruments. Four different things that merely produced sound communicated truth and beauty in a way that was only made possible from a combination of beautifully crafted lyrics, wonderfully crafted music and, what I believe to be most important, an honest heartfelt performance.

We can create heavenly states all around us through being raw and authentic. This show yielded a very beautiful reality, one that recognized the potential of a situation and capitalized on it. The Native Sibling could have been flustered due to the small crowd, but instead, they were able to transform the situation into a memorable and profoundly beautiful experience. Crafting a very literal heaven on earth is possible. All it takes is a shift in perspective that results in providing the most beautiful reality that reality itself is capable of. We must let how we view things change and then allow that shift of perspective lead us to a place of experience that the current reality is capable of but maybe not consciously tapped into yet. 

Within every negative or uncomfortable situation is an unconscious positive waiting to be unveiled. Music does an amazing job with this. Heart breaking songs can express the recognition of how tough life can sometimes be which in turn yields the ability to cope with the reality of those hardships. But on a far larger scale, life is full of realities waiting to be shifted into something more beautiful than their surface makes them out to be. For this to happen though, we need to begin to become consciously aware of the positive reality all may not be conscious of. This in turn allows us to create a way of being that sustains peace and life giving realities. A large building that only has twenty fans in attendance can appear to be an uncomfortable and awkward situation. Yet it can also become an incredibly memorable experience if one is able to shift the expected reality into something unexpected that in turn becomes something beautiful and profoundly impactful. I challenge anyone who reads this to try and see how they are able to reframe a negative, difficult, or even as simple as common perspective into one that can be life giving, beautiful, and potentially memorable. Begin to see how a tree is not simply a tree but a lesson on the importance of community. How a song is not just a song, but a personal narrative reflecting on the potential we have as humans. Or how a phone call home is not just an exchange of current events, but an exchange of love. There is a lot of depth to life, and the more we experience it, the more we want to provide it. And the more we provide it, the more heaven can become unveiled right before our eyes.

On Ideology and Seeking Satisfaction

Everyone wants something that will satisfy them in their lives. We are in a constant search of this item, or as Peter Rollins refers to it in his book The Divine Magician, this “sacred object.” We are tied to the idea that once we can finally grasp whatever this object is, we will experience satisfaction, security, or a sense of peace. The problem with this idea however, is that the very thing we thought would provide satisfaction ends up falling short of the ideal we had crafted in our mind. In this sense, when we seek a sacred object, we are like dog digging a hole under a fence only to discover that on the other side there is a much smaller and less entertaining yard. 

When we try and place some sort of excessive value on a particular object or way of being, we limit the potential of all other objects and ways of being. If I believe that a certain product will satisfy my need for fulfillment, say a car, I miss out on the value and potential that every other means of transportation can have. The best way to experience true significance and value is by allowing the value within the whole of a category to be felt, rather than simply a specific item within that category holding your steadfast focus. This is true for things as basic as transportation all the way to particular forms of ideology. However, in order for this to happen, it requires an individual to suspend the ill informed belief that individual items are capable of providing long term satisfaction. In doing this, satisfaction becomes something not sought after, but encountered through authentic, across the board experience.  

When we adjust our mind to see the potential in all things rather than placing a hopeful standard on one particular sect within a broader category, we begin to see nothing as ordinary and everything as holding some sort of worth. When we look for specifics to satisfy, we make an idol of individual items. But when we see the potential of all things, we are transformed to how meaningless and harmful the idol is due to the recognition that all things have. It is one thing to look at a light, but it is a whole other thing to use that light to see everything it is illuminating. A dog digging to another yard fails to recognize the full potential of the yard he already has, but even more troubling is the fence between the two yards because it represents a separation of potential. 

This has obvious implications for the way in which we go about forming ideology. Just as specific objects can be viewed as sacred, the same can be said about specific and stern ideological leanings. A person who holds to a very rigid belief system is almost undoubtedly doing so due to their longing for security rather than their longing for authentic life change and beauty. The sacred object is used as a sense of security, it puts blinders on our eyes, allowing us to be focused on a steadfast pursuit of one thing due to the comfortability that it offers. To rid of the blinders can be overwhelming, scary, and incredibly hard at first, but with it comes a much broader understanding of the potential of everything else around you. 

An ideology can do one of two things, put blinders on to everything else, or rid of blinders and see how ones ideology can extend and unite itself to other ways of thought. The second, at least to me, seems much more life giving. The question then of course becomes on what basis can we best unite ideology? I believe that the answer to that is found through a largely overused word nowadays; love. Love is quite simply, in this sense, the process of unification that results in a thriving coexistence. Love does not abandon ones core belief system, but it unites different cores. It first analyzes how ones ideological core could potentially be corrupt, and sees how the benefits of another way of being could mend the corruption that inhabits it and vice versa. Love does not simply accept with open arms because that’s the right or acceptable thing to do. Love seeks reform, reform that changes ones specific ideology first and then, in turn, others ideology in oder to unite the ideologies into a more fruitful and self aware way of being.

This requires people to analyze what they believe critically in order to see their faults. It requires a humbleness that at the same time doesn’t abandon conviction. Humbleness allows other ideologies to mend whats wrong in ones own ideology and conviction allows specific ideologies to not be taken over by ideologies not doing enough self analysis. Truth is discovered through conversation with differing perspectives. It is through that conversation that we can learn how to best reform our faults and the negative ways in which we go about doing things. For this to happen however, we must be able to not idolize our perspective, but rather use it as a springboard for conversation and reform.