Forget my name. That is okay. But don't forget that I am...

Within the bible is a story about Moses encountering God. It is a more iconic story you may have heard of it. In this story Moses asks God what God's name is. Specifically Moses wants to tell others that he was sent by a powerful God named _____! God responds with the phrase loosely translated as "I am what I am." 

The idea that God claims the name of "I am" is important in a number of ways in the bible, but perhaps one of the unappreciated ways is that "I am" is how humans introduce themselves to one another. "Hello, I am Jason. It is nice to meet you." 

In our culture we place a lot of emphasis on learning people's names. It is important. However, when we place the emphasis on the individual name of the person, we miss that when we introduce ourselves we are invoking the "I am" phrase. To put it another way, when we introduce ourselves we are reminding others that while I have a unique name, I also carry the name of God (I am) with me. And so do you. 

I am Jason. I have within me a mark, reside, spark of the divine. And so do you. While we may have different names, we all share the same "I am".

You can forget my name. That is okay. But don't forget that "I am" is in all of us and that we ought to treat each other as such. 

Why are they called denominations?

There is a guy named Peter Rollins who is brilliant and is also someone who I have a very difficult time understanding him. It is not because of his accent (he is Irish*) but because he is a philosopher and I am not. In a conversation I heard between him and Science Mike and Michael Gungor and Peter Rollins said something that hit me.

From what I recall, Rollins was talking about metaphor. A metaphor does both describe and negate that description simultaneously. For instance, if you described someone as having a heart of gold, you are both saying something about that person's heart while at the same time saying their heart is not a block of metal. Metaphors both affirm and negate. 

The next step of the conversation was about how all language about God is metaphor. When we say God is father we are both saying something and negating something. God is like a father, but God is also not a literal father. This is the beauty of language about God, it is both helpful and limited. It gives us insight into something but it also leaves us a little lost. 

We Christians have had a habit of elevating one half of the equation while dismissing the latter half. That is to say, we like the side of language that affirms (God is father) but do not like the side of language that negates (God is not father). Rollins points out that the role of religion is to move people to embrace that which is unknown and so religion needs to elevate the side of language that negates in order to help us mature. 

Rollins pointed out that he likes that Christian divisions are called "denominations" - they are groups that de-name. Can we be a denomination that embraces the power of language in it's fullness? Can we be a people that is at ease with both what God is and what God is not? Can we be a people who are courageous enough to look at a situation that is done in the name of God and stand up and say in fact this action is not of God? Are we mature enough to see that God is and at the same time God is not? 

Maybe this is why they are called denominations. They are groups that are trying to be mature enough to embrace the fullness of God, and not just the parts of God we can name.

* I originally identified him as Australian. I apologize to all Australians and Irish and all thinking people.  

Just a reminder, it is Sin. Not sins.

"Have the men of our time still a feeling of the meaning of sin? Do they, and @@do we, still realize that sin does not mean an immoral act@@, that "sin" should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great, all-pervading problem of our life? Do we still know that it is arrogant and erroneous to divide men by calling some "sinners" and others "righteous"? For by way of such a division, we can usually discover that we ourselves do not quite belong to the "sinners", since we have avoided heavy sins, have made some progress in the control of this or that sin, and have been even humble enough not to call ourselves "righteous". Are we still able to realize that this kind of thinking and feeling about sin is far removed from what the great religious tradition, both within and outside the Bible, has meant when it speaks of sin?"

"I should like to suggest another word to you, not as a substitute for the word "sin", but as a useful clue in the interpretation of the word "sin", "separation" . Separation is an aspect of the experience of everyone. Perhaps the word "sin" has the same root as the word "asunder". In any case, sin is separation. To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of a man from himself, and separation of all men from the Ground of Being. This three-fold separation constitutes the state of everything that exists; it is a universal fact; it is the fate of every life. And it is our human fate in a very special sense. For we as men know that we are separated. We not only suffer with all other creatures because of the self-destructive consequences of our separation, but also know why we suffer. We know that we are estranged from something to which we really belong, and with which we should be united. We know that the fate of separation is not merely a natural event like a flash of sudden lightning, but that it is an experience in which we actively participate, in which our whole personality is involved, and that, as fate, it is also guilt. Separation which is fate and guilt constitutes the meaning of the word "sin". It is this which is the state of our entire existence, from its very beginning to its very end. Such separation is prepared in the mother's womb, and before that time, in every preceding generation. It is manifest in the special actions of our conscious life. It reaches beyond our graves into all the succeeding generations. It is our existence itself. Existence is separation! Before sin is an act, it is a state."

The Shaking of the Foundations by Paul Tillich - Chapter 19: You Are Accepted