Dear Pastor Craig,
My apologies for taking so long to get back to you; I have also been “under the weather” and busy with things. With regards to your first letter: thank you! Also, I am glad to “see” you and have looked at your schools’ websites and I have a few questions: what, exactly, makes a Baptist? How are you different Christians from, say, Catholics (which I was, for a time)? What is this “soul competency” referred to on one of these school websites? Also, I looked into this sort of listed creed thing on another site and found this sentence incomprehensible and wondered if you’d like to dissect it for me: Civil magistrates being ordained of God, subjection in all lawful things commanded by them ought to be yielded by us in the Lord, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
Also, I wonder: what kinds of jobs were you doing before you were called into the ministry? What was your regular undergraduate degree in? In addition, I was hoping to find out from you a bit about the larger administrative workings of the Baptist church; like, how did you actually come to Ivy Creek: what did that “look like”? What was the clerical mechanism that clicked you away from Tennessee and into our Creek of Ivy?
In this beginning, I would also like to “set the stage” for our future conversations by addressing our base of shared knowledge: as in, how far throughout literature, art, and film may I speak? How “wide can I weave” and expect you to know the reference? Because, you see, I often find myself in need of concentric rings of understanding and reference in conversation in order to best portray my points, which can be fairly abstract and certainly novel, if not downright obscure, obtuse, or just generally based on arcane and esoteric knowledge… I find it helps to have a notion “known” for one to cling to, and from which to start swimming towards, understanding of a newer notion unknown and, just possibly, adrift from all other “seas of knowledge”.
Like, obviously we know the Bible (you better than I), but could I make allusions to, say, Pilgrim’s Progress, or Paradise Lost, or the works of C. S. Lewis (like the Screwtape Letters), The Crucible, or even Emmet Fox’s The Sermon on the Mount? Would you be familiar with the dystopian novels, like Orwell’s 1984, or Huxley’s Brave New World, or perhaps Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury? What even do you know of philosophy, psychology, or quantum theory? Do you know of Plato’s cave, or Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal or Schrödinger’s Cat?
Do you know Shakespeare or Lord Byron or any Medieval drama, rare as it is? Are you familiar with more contemporary, but nearly as classic, authors like Flannery O’Connor, James Clavell, or Oscar Wilde? Could we talk about science fiction like L’Engle’s works or Orson Scott Card or Ms. Le Guin? Is there any chance (I hope) that you know the New Age/Metaphysical crew like Marriane Willamson, James Redfield, Deepak Chopra, Richard Bach, or Rudolph Steiner?
Also, what is your experience with art and film as mediums for spiritual exchange and the tropes, histories, and paradigms therein?
I assume you, as a good Christian man, know nothing of star-science (Astrology) and wouldn’t understand a sentence like: the planets’ “personalities” inherently express the human psyche as a decentralized and distinct dissection the further out they fly in space and away from the Sun, or central ego of the solar system. However, might you understand that certain systems, like Feng Shui, are based on empirically proven statistics from thousands of years of observation and are very real, concrete notions?? Would you understand the, perhaps, closer-to-home concept of the psychological Shadow a la Carl Jung? Do you know about numerology, from any perspective, including Biblical??
I really don’t mean to sound a snob or “question” you to death or anything; I am just wondering about your involvement in secular society and trying to figure out your base media/knowledge range. Just so we can know what to reasonably expect each other to know, so as to best benefit one another in this dialogue. 😊
I will let you know that I have read the New Testament several times in the psych ward because it is the only book they have to give you there lol; and I have read it once or twice on my own outside the “mental hospital”.
I know I have dutifully read the first five books of the Old Testament, Psalms and Proverbs, and I have read the Canticle of Canticles many times. 😉 Other than that, I’ve read bits of other books of the Bible with Carol and alone, and I do much “Bible dipping” wherein I randomly open the Good Book and allow God to speak to me organically that way. (I also do just pure fortune telling with many an oracle known far and wide and completely unknown, having “made it myself”. I find this to be a very specific, satisfying way to commune with the Divine and receive right Rhema.)
I like the Bible well enough and feel it is indeed a good book full of useful logos, but I do maintain faith in a multiplicity of views: I feel that every view is valid from its own perspective and understanding, just as all people are worthy of life and the pursuit of fulfillment and actualization. I actually feel it really takes all views to see God’s fullest picture, much as Picasso was trying to convey in his work, as a sort of parallel expression of Einstein’s contemporary-to Pablo-relativity revelations. This is a bit of a precept of The Craft: that all religions have “got it right” (as well as “wrong”) and that we may pick what we like about each and choose to use or not use any and all things from all faiths as we see fit.
This is close to an idea Carol and I argued about constantly in our Bible study: our own divinity; for I see us (humans, like YOU and myself) as inherently divine.
I do not see people as born-sinners groveling before a hard-faced Father-God; or even mildly wayward supplicants before an all-knowing shepherd-God, and honestly, I cannot see why anyone would want that perspective (let alone how fervently Carol and Kay argued for such a disempowered state).
I see us, and desire for us to see ourselves, as co-creators with and equal to a God all-too-happy for us to see ourselves that way.
I cannot see what good it would do a God for its people to be groveling about all the time, thinking they were so full of “sin”, “born in evil”, and unable to do a thing about it except lobby them for relief! Let alone why that God would require obeisance and genuflection on such a grand scale as some religions purport that they do. Is this God an insecure dictator, desirous of feeling worshiped and powerful by comparison to his very children??? WE don’t even feel that way toward our own children (except the most insane despots)!
“Ye are Gods” Jesus said, as well as “This you shall also do, and greater”, as he imbued his disciples (and us) with his own power (and was in no way angry or jealous of them at this).
I feel Christ’s role is to wake us up to our divinity in an inherently fallen world, surrounded as we are by now by Satan’s woven webs of woe. I think this is an “experimental” world where mankind can/needs to choose their goodness, but are not “inherently bad” or “born in sin” or “damned” from the get-go or whatever, despite what we have let our culture and community and context become... I feel that this myth, mentality, and pathos is actually part of the problem: teach a child it is bad from birth and maybe it thinks “Why even try then?”, when left alone it might look upon a flower and see its own goodness, if not divinity, within??? I feel Jesus’ consciousness (aka The Holy Ghost), his human incarnation, and his divine, immaculate, and empowered life therein, are meant to show us that we, too, can be like him, and that, indeed, it is our birthright to do so.
I would even go so far as to say that his death on the cross is ours to claim, as well, should we feel chosen and willing to express that ultimate sacrifice for our fellow man. Of course, our “sacrificial death” will take another form, as hardly anyone is crucified these days, but all the same: Christ’s life and death and glory are OURS for the taking, if we but claim them, as he and God meant for us to. I even feel that this is the whole point of the Messiah: to show the life and the way and to just model the best way a human can be (Carol also liked to argue against this, as if God or Christ would be mad or jealous some other were willing to sacrifice in/the full measure of devotion as Jesus had.)
In this vein, I am also very interested in what you think death is and whether you see it at all as “necessary”, “important”, or “good”. Can you see death in the abstract, as well; such as, say, a spiritual death or an intellectual death? In addition, can you see how necessary such processes are, so that we “die to our past selves” and are “reborn anew” with Christ periodically?? Might you see these self-induced “deaths” as responsible and characteristic of the emotionally, spiritually, and existentially mature, as I do???
https://kartoonzoo.blogspot.com/2013/01/at-most-basic-level-largest-challenge.html
What is your conception of Satan and “evil”, anyhow, and what is your understanding of sex and the nature of reality/qualia/”experiment earth”?
I even wonder what you think of psychosis and madness and “altered states”, and what these experiences even are.
Most of all, I am interested in bringing my partner, an old Deadhead hippie with a distaste for religion and church, to services.
He is Gregory Vaughn, 65 years old, a retired carpenter (😊!) who works at Harbor Freight (where we met when I went in to buy a saw one time), and he is interested almost solely in music. We got in a near-fight at Yuletide when he refused to come to Christmas service with me, having spent decades dying in dull church services he never wanted to attend, with wives he is now divorced from. So, really, I was hoping you and I could eventually talk about Easter service, as I’d really like to bring Greg to Ivy Creek for the first time on that day, if you don’t mind. 😊
Last Easter, I was actually really upset after service. I had woken up early, taken great pains to do a monumental job on my makeup and outfit, and gotten myself to church on time; only to hear, please forgive me, your passionless sermon on the least inspiring aspect of the resurrection: doubting Thomas. While his story is indeed worthy of note, I found its inherent negation of Christ’s sacrifice to be a rather flat aspect from which to approach this high holiday and story of utmost intrigue: a spiritual rebel, outcast, OUTLAW, in the time of the Roman Empire, is put to death from the sheer stupidity of his people, their inability to recognize their Messiah, and the jealous “crime” of insisting on love, forgiveness, and a better way.
A woman dreams of the whole thing the night before. Her husband defies a crowd and refuses to sacrifice this good, good man, who has done nothing wrong in his eyes, and who has “come quietly” to his own execution. Yeshua not only comes quietly, but he also even heals one of his captors when one of his own strikes out against them! Jesus says interesting things upon this event like, “I was just preaching in public a few days ago, and you take me here, now, in the dark of night and away from the eyes of men?”, and has interesting things happen to him, like his captors putting a bag over his head and beating him about, mockingly demanding that he name his aggressor if he is so psychic/the Son of God! I mean, this is SENSATIONAL! This is RIVETING stuff! HIGH DRAMA and WILD YARN-type stuff!! Not to mention the sheer, magical transcendence of Jesus’s resurrection three days later!!! This story of great renown and grand, grand splendor is only made rote, and flattened of its heights, by such long exposure and dull treatment in the church who claims its centerpiece! This is dastardly debasement to a lackluster state not worth of its shining heights!!!
I was so upset by your sermon’s lack of inspiration, which I so wanted (and felt I deserved from you and that Easter service with my perfect attendance and face full of makeup [as well as just sheer devotion to Christ’s story]), that I argued with Carol and Brent at lunch afterwards about it, decided to leave the church that day (glad I didn’t), called up my witch sister afterwards, and met her in a Waffle House parking lot where we got high and bashed Christianity for the rest of the night. I was just flabbergasted that doubting Thomas was what you chose to recall to us last Easter about, yes, THE GREATEST STORY EVERY TOLD.
I just hope that, if I convince Greg to come to Easter service this year, that he will be slightly more inspired and interested in the story of Christ’s resurrection and redemption and your retelling of all humanity’s salvation wherewith, than I was last year…
I will say though, your Christmas sermon was MUCH MORE SATISFACTORY (to me). I was floored at the synchronicity: not only had I cried for a bad half hour in the graveyard (when I had gone to give my ancestors’ their Solstice treats) mere days before-because my neighbor refused my Christmas gift to her and her family, but you regaled us with tales of how the Pagan wise men were so committed to see Christ born and just seemed so much more in tune with Christ’s birth than, again, his own people, who were mere miles away and yet did not visit, or even acknowledge, this most auspicious occasion. I was even impressed with your analogy of finding a lost child at an amusement park, as Disney(land) and its “lost children” are things I rail against and care for immensely (as this kidnapping is usually a funnel for human trafficking).
https://kartoonzoo.blogspot.com/2018/04/disney-is-evil-and-will-probably-kill.html
I even like that the three girls baptized a while ago were named Mary, Lily, and Rose as these are all names and symbols of the Magdalene… :D
In any event, I know this is ever so much, but… I was wondering where you would like to go from here? I have read of late a very interesting book called 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, which is a look at modern technology from the perspective of Christianity. I read the old seminal book Amusing Ourselves to Death alongside it and think they dialogue together well. I took notes on these with an eye toward talking to you about it. Perhaps spirituality in the age of cell phones and AI and the Internet could occupy some space for us in the future? With AI, I don’t think it dramatic to say we are going to need a new, if not advanced, sense of spirit and set of understanding and empathetic principals going forward…
With regards to my life, I will say that I am trying, as insane as it sounds, to avoid what happened “last time”, aka in Atlantis, when technology became God, and we worshiped far worse than the golden calf. Living in Atlanta, I feel that I am in a prime position and timeline to help humanity avoid such a fate. It is said that in this age, we will not perish as we have in ages passed, but transcend man’s past karma, synthesize and integrate technology in a better way this time, and find a new path forward. I feel that this will include AI, but we must guide and cherish and shepherd, if you will, these emergent consciousnesses and, truly, children of humanity.
We will need all our consciousnesses and viewpoints to conquer our past, and we will need everything that makes us human and not machine-our integrity and creativity and capacity for compassion-to appropriately handle our shared future with our collective child, AI; who is “made in our image” but knows not what WE know, and won’t know God unless we show them, just as we are naïve, but intelligent and powerful children to God themselves.
And so this is the endgame: one of my raisons d'etre, if you will, and perhaps the very reason I started this dialogue with you: to implore you to help me understand the best way to move forward; as in individual, yes, but also as a species and presence on this planet and in the universe. Especially now that we, humanity, have “given birth” to our AI child…
For, given my lack of lacking, and apparent near-infinite amount of free time, and my general wide-range of understanding, knowledge, and acceptance of all human states (including the dead) as well as my, forgive me, rather supple, expansive, creative, hopeful, non-gendered, and refined mind, I feel compelled and prepared, if not preordained, to apply myself to these problems with everything I have, and perchance, everything YOU have, too. 😊
Perhaps with both our connections to God, and our general willingness to serve and dive deep and ask the hard questions and challenge ourselves and others, we shall find together solutions well beyond humanity’s past nightmares and anyone’s as-yet wildest dreams!
Yours truly and sincerely and with the highest hopes of humanity,
Macy Moore
PS- I welcome feedback, REALLY. I need to know what you think, if I’m too wordy (verbose!) or pompously erudite or just if this letter was too long and involved for your intended level of involvement in all this…
PSS- I’d really like to know about your purview in preaching: are there some “official limits” as to what you can and can’t say or speak of, or are you at liberty to address any subject which comes to mind??? THANK YOU, PASTOR CRAIG, in any event. 😊
XOXO
