This series is based on Mark Feldmeir’s book, Life After God.

Below are some quotes used in Sunday’s teaching.

Letting go...

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

But before you dismiss everything or even anything you already believe, attend first to that which you know, through your lived experience, has gladdened your soul and added beauty and wonder and joy to your life. Consider the very real possibility that such experiences might be hints of the transcendent, holy epiphanies, divine encounters, the quiet, hidden work of God. Behold them with kindness and reverence and astonishment. Protect them fiercely, even if they do not conform to what tradition or convention or orthodoxy calls authoritative or even real. Love them for what they are, for their courage to have shown up, for their companionship, for their generosity. Hold them closely, tenderly. Give thanks. (44)

Tohu va-vohu

The preexistent, primordial chaos and disorder, the wild and waste, the empty and void between being and not-being. (49).

Let there be...

The God of the Bible is a God whose power is expressed not in the capacity to make something happen, to prevent something from happening, or to coerce anything or anyone to act, but in the power to persuade us to pursue the divine wish, dream, hope that the tohu va-vohu stuff of our lives and world would say yes to all the hidden possibility that only God can fully perceive. Some theologians call this divine power of persuasion the lure of God that draws, leads, entices, and calls us and all creation forward by saying, Psst! You can do this! You could be this! (52)

Unilateral v. Relational Power

The first, unilateral power, is the ability to produce intended or desired effects in our relationships through influence, manipulation, or control to advance our purposes.

Unilateral power is one-sided, one-directional, one-dimensional, non-relational in nature, and almost always diminishes or robs the agency of the other. It takes whatever is necessary to get whatever it wants. (55)

Relational power is the capacity both to influence the other and to be influenced by the other. Relational power is grounded in mutuality, openness, responsiveness, persuasion, and interdependence. It involves both giving and receiving. (56)

Creating God in Caesar’s Image

The early twentieth-century mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead reminds us where and when the Christian tradition departed from ancient Jewish thinking about God: When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers. . . . The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly. . . . But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers, was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar. (58-59)

Yahweh and El Shaddai

Yahweh means simply, I Am, or I Am What I Am. The ancient rabbis believed Yahweh was not a noun but a verb form that expresses past, present, and future tenses all at once. They said YHWH means something like the one who was-is-will be. I Am is everywhere, in all things, in every moment, for all time. (60)

El Shaddai is from the Hebrew root word, Shad, meaning breast. The Hebrews translated the name El Shaddai not as God Almighty, but as The Breasted God. Can you envision the divine as The Breasted God who desires to embrace and hold you like a mother or a father, to nourish and care for you with a deep and abiding love? (61)

Jesus’ Abba/Dad

Life after the God we can no longer believe in can be one of the most fertile seasons for claiming a life in pursuit of the God we have never met— a God who loves us too much to coerce or control us, a God who lures, beckons, persuades, and woos us toward the divine dream, calling us to becoming, to goodness, to beauty. (65)

All quotes are from Mark Feldmeir’s book, Life after God: Finding Faith When You Can't Believe Anymore. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

Questions to think about...

1. If you imagine organized religion as your “boat in the storm,” how do you decide when the challenge of hanging on is worth the risk of letting go?

2. Consider Walt Whitman’s advice to “Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” What beliefs have you found to be insulting to your soul? How do you feel about the author’s advice to, before discarding, “give them permission to exist, to sit beside you, to just be,” and then, if you find they have no further value for you, “Tell them thanks for sharing, but it’s time for them to move on now”?

3. In contrast to those things that insult your soul, what has “gladdened your soul and added beauty and wonder and joy to your life,” as the author says?

4. Is there anywhere you see God currently at work in your life or in the world? Are there small or ordinary things presently beckoning or calling you toward greater meaning, beauty, or wonder?

5. What is the difference between a God who works through relational power and one who works through unilateral power?

6. What do you make of the ancient rabbinical idea that “God/Yahweh” is not a noun but a verb? How does that affect the way we might choose to relate to God?

7. Can you identify with a call from God that sounds like “Psst. You could do this. You could be this”?