Paul Wilczynski's Observations

An interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong

BeliefNet has an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong, a leader of the worldwide liberal Christianity movement. Within the interview is this:

What is the basis for your faith?

I have to start at the basics, and that's God. And the thing that I think you have to say about God first is that nobody knows who God is, nobody knows what God is. I don't care what they say--all any human being knows is how they believe they have experienced God. They do not know what God is.

That would be like a horse saying they know what a human being is. A horse knows how a horse experiences a human being. And even when you say, this is my "God experience," there is always the possibility that you're deluded. And a lot of deluded people think that they have had "God experiences" and hear voices. So I start with that--I can't tell you who God is or what God is; I can only share what I believe my God experience is.

I think that's a good start for anyone's faith - Christian or not. After adding two more definitions of God (the source of life, and the source of love) and bringing Jesus into the discussion, he says

I have no difficulty asserting the traditional Christian claim that somehow God was in this Christ. I don't know that Jesus is different from Debbie or Jack, except in degree. I think he's so fully human, that he can be a channel through which people can experience this transcendent God presence. That's a very different way of approaching the Christian story, but it's one that I think is the future, because the old mythology doesn't work

As a non-Christian Unitarian Universalist, I could almost buy into that.

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 7:25 AM