Selling Water By the River (4) - Paralyzed or Pathological Because of Fear

I've become aware over the years that we who claim to be the most ardent Christians are some of the most anxious of people, fearful of making mistakes or wrong decisions or of not believing the right doctrines or not being spiritual enough, etc, etc. In the chapter on "touching the stove" in Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps says the following:

"Those of us raised in Christianity often live with a lot of fear. Fear that we are doing it wrong (whatever 'it' is). Fear that some unfamiliar idea might hurt us. Fear that God may not like who we are, or what we've done, or what we think. Fear that a particular interpretation of the Bible is hurting the Bible or even God. Fear that we, or others, might be offending God, who apparently has quite fragile feelings and a hair-triggered temper. Some religious people are even afraid that other people are not frightened enough."

Hipps goes on to say that fear has a legitimate initial role in our early formation in that it teaches us what is needed in order to stay safe. He uses the illustration of teaching his small daughter to fear the stove with the instructions to not touch the stove. However, as we mature we must "leave the fear behind or we become paralyzed or pathological. If a 20-year-old is frightened of stoves in the same way he was as a 2-year-old, we have a problem.

"Fear is a developmental ingredient in the life of faith. It is useful in learning to prevent harm and nurture wisdom...and helps us develop basic impulse control...But fear also has some serious limits...

"The first stage of development is a much safer place to be...But as we grow, we are more and more moved and opened by Love, or God...we could say that fear is about closure and contraction, whereas Love is about opening and expansion. Love by nature is free from fear. The process of becoming open by Love can be unnerving, and is not for the faint of heart. Doubts emerge when what we thought were solid foundations begin to feel like shifting sands beneath our feet. Love opens us more and more to a freedom that moves us beyond self-justification, self-protection, and self-preservation..."

"If we are to access the Living Water Jesus promised, ultimately Love must become the only thing that governs behavior, not fear...Love does not do away with all boundaries; instead, it makes use of them in ways that serve the purpose of Love. 

"As we grow, the question we learn to ask moves from 'What is right or wrong?' to 'What does Love require?'"...fear is actually the absence of Love, not the opposite (of Love)...ridding ourselves of fear is as simple as letting Love in."

Selling Water by the River (3) - Jesus Does Not Bind Himself to any Religion

In his chapter about "wind and sails" in Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps shows how Jesus went out of His way to disregard the boundaries that religion had established. In His first miracle of turning water into wine Jesus "sets the stage for his way of operating in the world. It frames his entire ministry."

In this miracle what's astonishing is not only that Jesus changed the chemical composition from one liquid to another but that he flagrantly broke the ceremonial rules which insisted that wine not be put into vessels that were dedicated for ceremonial washing. This is exactly what Jesus did - he had the servants use the jars that were for ceremonial cleansing rather than use the empty wine jars. By doing this, he was mixing wine and water thereby defiling both and causing the people to be unclean.

Why would Jesus do such an offensive thing (and continue doing this sort of thing throughout His ministry)? Hipps contends that it was because He was always trying to get people beyond the banks of the river and into the great expanse of the river of God's love. "He kept moving people toward the vast ocean, beyond the narrow confines of the riverbanks."

"Religions have a tendency to get stuck. Institutions aren't made to stay limber...Thus the trajectory of any religion is always to become brittle. A basic law is at work in most things we humans create: whatever the intended purpose of our creation, when overextended, it can reverse on itself...when it (Christian religion) becomes overextended, the impulse is to preserve the institution rather than the message...Jesus consistently undermined the natural inertia of institutions. He was the embodiment of pure, unbridled creative force. Creativity is often disruptive. It has little interest in preservation; it is about making new things and making things new."

Jesus is not against religions. The author says that Jesus is the wind while religions are the sails. His own conviction is that the Christian religion is the sail that best catches the wind but adds the following, "Just because Christianity claims Jesus as its own does not mean that Jesus claims Christianity as his own. Christ does not bind himself to a religion any more than wind binds itself to a sail...We must never make an idol of the sail and thereby miss the wind. But it is also a mistake to say the sail doesn't matter. Without a sail, the wind is difficult to catch..."

We must continually be reminded that it is not the "sail" but the "wind" we are after. Jesus continually broke the rules and boundaries established by religion so that people could get to Him. To live and move in this reality as his followers will cost us...

Selling Water by the River (2): No One Comes to the Bible without a Lens

In the second chapter of the book, Selling Water by the River, Hipps talks about the lenses through which we read scripture and life:

"No one comes to the Bible or life without a lens...A lens can be a set of assumptions or beliefs that we have...When it comes to the Bible, religious authorities usually tell us which lenses we should use. We learn what to believe about the Bible as a way to help us understand how to read it. We are also taught what to be afraid of or angry about..."

The author goes ahead to list the first set of biblical lenses he was given, which included such things as: 

*The Bible is flat; no teaching or doctrine in the Bible is privileged above another...

*The Bible is unified in its message...

*God doesn't speak outside the Bible...

(Authority figures also taught him what lenses he should NOT look through at the Bible.)

"Our lenses - our assumptions, our way of seeing the world - shape the way we interpret the Bible and how we relate to God and those in the world around us...When we see our lenses, we can evaluate them consciously...An examination of our lenses is not a process of changing the Bible, the world, or truth; it is a process of changing ourselves. 

     "The most limited Bible interpreter is one who claims to have no lens." 

        "Even Jesus, the Son of God, made deliberate use of a lens..." 

Hipps goes on to illustrate this by showing how Jesus elevated certain scriptures over others. The Pharisees tried to trick him by asking which was the greatest commandment, believing that the only correct answer could be that all of the commandments are the greatest. But Jesus didn't hesitate to respond in a way that shows his understanding that some commandments carry more weight than others and that all of them should be understood in the light of the two commandments to love God and our neighbor.

"The implications of what Jesus says here are enormous and often overlooked. He is actually showing us that he has a lens - a set of assumptions. He doesn't see the Bible as flat...

"We all have lenses, but not all lenses are created equal. Some help us see more, some cause us to see less...Perhaps this Jesus-centered lens is one we should adopt. One that elevates love of God, and love of neighbor and self as the interpretive keys to the Bible."

Selling Water by the River

In the coming weeks I will share quotes from parts of Shane Hipps' book, Selling Water by the River, "a book about the life Jesus promised and the religion that gets in the way".

This book had a significant influence on my early years of unlearning and relearning and reworking much of what I was raised to believe about God and Jesus and Christianity. 

The summary on the book jacket says of this book: "Work, sex, ice cream, religion - they all promise fulfillment. But what they deliver is fleeting...We want something that lasts, that doesn't rise and fall with the fate of the stock market. Jesus understood this quest. He came to show us that peace is possible in this life, not just the next one. Yet Christianity, the very religion that claims Jesus as its own, has often built the biggest barriers to him and the life he promised."

In this book Hipps shows how available the water of life is; it's a river available to all, but we have built our institutions next to the river to sell the water. In so doing, we often create hindrances for people to get directly to the river of life - Jesus.

"...problematic are the beliefs we are taught to adopt that truncate our imagination of God...Then there is...fear. Fear is one of the great barriers to this river...Ironically, religious Christianity is often the purveyor of the very beliefs and fears that get in the way of the water.

"...What we believe matters, but not for the reasons we may assume. Our beliefs (or lack of beliefs) do not qualify or disqualify us from the river. Instead, they determine how clearly we will see the river...Some beliefs clear the way and give us high visibility, while others create a thick fog..."