if God were a place holder in our algebraic imaginations

setting aside the unknown allows you to get on with grasping the subject

The 'people of the Book' all worship the God of Abraham, who before their meeting is described as chief among the gods, also named YHWH. But each brings different linquistic, historical and geographical particulars to their vision and relationship to God and each other. Having heard many passages of the Bible read and preached more than once, and having grown accustomed or complacent in the regularity of the liturgical year, at some moments my hearing of the message jumps off the tracks and then it all seems a bit hollow or has the sense of trying too hard to force the world view to work in each person's circumstances and changing times we inhabit. For example, instead of freely resonating with the praise and preaching of God's goodness; of doing as did Jesus when reaching out in response to strangers, this morning the possibility of God being a signifier or place holder entered my mind. Suppose it is the weekly declaration of our love of God that makes it so, not any sort of external flow of reality. In other words, you can 'fake it until you make it' by living a righteous life, forgiving sin and asking one's owns sins against others to be forgiven. By pressing forward as if the Kingdom already has come, then indeed something that looks and feels of the Kingdom does indeed take shape; at least in one's own heart and responsiveness to others.
       Perhaps this is overthinking; after all, mere mortals can dance verbal or analytical circles around scripture, but the full and true meaning will always be bigger than we can wrap our minds around. But there does seem to be something in the observation that we see one thing, but mistake for another. We call the beginning of the church worship service an invocation, as if some external force is hailed. In fact the work of calming the restless mind for a moment, of opening one's heart, and of paying attention to one another all takes place in one's self; not an external invocation but an internal one. Likewise, we look far away for God's will, but if the God notion is instead a place holder, then it is rather for us to look inward for that will of goodness and hunger for mercy, love, and righteousness. This string of reasoning seems to hold together from Protestant context and custom of discussing, but I wonder if the same wondering can take place from a Muslim or Jewish point of view.

win the race versus run the race

click for full size, or see https://www.flickr.com/photos/respres/13768813703

The imagery of competition does not seem to be very prominent in either Jewish or Christian Bibles. Economic success is not frowned on, but with wealth comes burdens different to those of poverty; a weight of responsiveness, responsibility, stewardship, highest and best use, and so on. So what is the role of striving relative to one's peer group (versus striving to beat your own best records; or rising to your fullest ability). Surely God knows what one is capable of, even better than one's own sense of physical, emotional, and spiritual limits. And we are told of God's unconditional love, in spite of sloth, stupidity or mean spiritedness, and the many other frailties that take one's eyes off of God.
       It seems to defy logical syllogism or linear thinking that a person should seek to be ever more righteous and closer to God; to more perfectly hear and respond to God's call. But that no matter how badly we fail (or succeed), the consequence to one's relationship to God is the same - unbreakable love; at least God's unchanging love of his creatures. Perhaps it is the other side that displays the most shift in consequences: a person getting closer and closer to God's will and heart will reciprocate the bottomless love that God has for his people. Whether we have a good day or a bad day; God is still unbending in his love for us, but our hearts move closer or farther from God's will, depending on our circumstances on life's arc, or over the course of a single day.
       Moving to another seeming paradox: We are taught to be "in the world but not of the world," to engage in relationships with other sinners, but to guard against (and remove ourselves from) keeping bad company. We are exclusive (the gate is narrow) but work to make our doors open to all (the road is wide), to meet people where they are (inside the church building or in the street). We want to be righteous, but acknowledge we are sinners. We want to advance in (interior) moral stature but with our feet of clay we shy from (exterior) moral superiority. We want to harness a competitive spirit as a motivator to do better (than our old selves; possibly to keep pace with mentors) and yet we want to regard all in common and equal terms. Somehow this all spells out a certain tension.
     So, yes, run the race your hardest; hopefully without trampling others along your way. But know that how long you run or how quickly you reach the finish line, God's love is given in grace. You may be motivated by benchmarking your progress in reference to peers, or even in reference to your own precedents, but however that may shape your own heart and your own expression of love for God, the part shown you by God will not be any less or any more. It is full and complete, come rain or shine. Getting back to the picture above and the figurative language of races, winning, gold medals, and competitors, a good summation of God's love and our place along the road of mortal life is consider yourself a winner, no matter what the worldly games may be: having the mindset or heart of a winner will serve you better than striving to win the race itself.

Going to church?

Ancient monument is the status of a notable place or thing that remains present in today's landscape of cultural meaning, despite no longer being actively in service as it was in use during its heyday. Examples are locations for past battles, recorded by historians or ones older than written records, or the traces of structures now in disuse and disrepair, like this picture of a religious center. But why visit ruins or seek faint traces of long ago people and events? What is the attraction and significance?

Some visitors might claim direct descent from the people of that long-ago place and time. Others might visit for education, according to the guidebook advice or in the course of a field trip led by one's teacher. Visitors with the most distant connections to the subject or event tied to the site could be seeking physical, tangible communication with the past, somehow knowing by direct perception a little more about that place or time.

In the case of a house of worship now-defunct, some might say that a place once sacred is always infused with righteous meaning. Others might take a technical perspective and say it has no roof or assigned spiritual leader, therefore it is no longer alive as a fully functioning church; possibly soon after its last worship service the site was deconsecrated, thus downgrading the edifice to ordinary building. Remembering that a church is a body of believers not a building, very likely the religious community was gone long before the building began to leak and decay. So why do visitors come here but not sight seeing at an active church?

This place could once have been the scene of intense belief, high aspirations, deep doubts or feelings of guilt, or fear of disapproval. Learning and preaching could have gone on at the same time as economic redistribution, medical and spiritual healing, and decision-making for project and services.  Plunder - sanctioned by rulers or the illegal kind, poaching of building materials or decorative elements, and simple vandalism combined with the annual cycle of weather events and seasonal pattern of damp, freeze-thaw forces, and flooding to render the site as we now see it.

The passage of time keeps the vivid, personal, or engaging side of the thing at a distance. Visitors from the year 2016 can wander and let themselves wonder at the thing and what it did, it stood for, it resulted in, and the conditions needed initially to bring the structure and its functions into being and then to sustain its vitality from one generation to the next. By contrast a visitor to a currently functioning house of worship can still wander to some extent and can still wonder how it came to be and continues year by year. But there is little or no distance between the visitor and those within the church. And without that (psychological /historical) distance, the visitor may be asked questions, or the visitors reverie may be contradicted by the interpretation of a church leader or lay member.  In other words, one may go to an ancient monument to discover something distant and to exercise imagination unfettered. At a modern religious center that is fully functional, the physical part is only a fraction of the complete entity, since the body of believers is the living church, not the bricks-and-mortar or the sermon podcast on offer, for example. For a visitor seeking a taste of yore and the free play of imagination there is nothing like a ruin. A religious place of our time lacks the necessary distance of time and the quiet absence of movement that allows one’s imagination to roam.