(This is the fourth in my series of Bil’s ideas about ten misconceptions in Christianity today. This post suggests that the institutional church thinks the trinity makes sense. It doesn’t!)
As a child preparing for confirmation, I learned about the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I knew the Father was God, the Son was Jesus, and the Holy Ghost was a ghost, spooky like the Halloween kind.
Then, in the 1960s, the church, influenced by the Vatican II, replaced the Holy Ghost with the Holy Spirit, which was much more acceptable than the Halloween version.
Seminary taught me more about the Trinity than I knew as a layperson. It went something like this: The three—God, Jesus, and Spirit—look like three distinct entities, but they are one. Math was never my strong suit, but no matter how it was explained, the one was still three. I couldn’t teach, preach, or believe this. If I, as clergy, had that problem, how could I expect the folks in the pew to buy into it?
This became even more challenging when I threw out the god that lives in his mansions above the third filament of the flat earth, is meaner than a junkyard dog, killed my best friend on his motorcycle, and runs a mucked-up world. But then I found the word Creation. It has no gender and doesn’t write Bibles, make bad things happen to good people, have children out of wedlock, go to a church/synagogue/mosque/temple, or respond to prayers.
Creation is my concept of God. If I take care of it, Creation will take care of me.
I just destroyed the first member of the Trinity, and now I’m about to destroy the second. In Creation, there is no son, so suddenly Jesus loses his divinity and becomes human like the rest of us.
Two down and one to go. The Holy Spirit? The church has given me many answers, but they all sound like double-talk.
Before that can happen, I need to destroy a lousier piece of theology as the institutional church tries to push its original sin (OS) baloney. It claims we’re born bad. (I’ll admit it; it’s a great money maker.)
The church says that if you’re bad, we’ll make you good for a day or so. Come back in a week, and we’ll do it again. This never made sense to me: Why would a supposedly good God invent bad people? (My answer: $$$$$$.) So I put OS down the proverbial toilet and replaced it with OG, original goodness. I know people do bad things, even good people. (Just watch the news.) I see that as a mental issue or a disability; good people lose their moral compass for a long list of reasons.
It is my job as a preacher to help every human being (including me) connect with their goodness. I call this goodness the Holy Spirit (HS). We are born with it, and as Jesus has taught me, the HS is agape, unconditional love, for and toward all, no matter where they are on their life’s journey.
In my past, I worked with youth gangs and people in prison, not to judge them, but to challenge them to get in touch with their OG and to use their OG to change their direction. It worked!
What do you think of my heresies?
Why do I feel that someday these heresies might be the theology of the Reformed Church?
PeaceLoveJoyHopeKindness
Bil
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P.S. People often ask me provocative questions about current events, both religious and secular. I have found that some of these questions are being asked universally. I’ll be periodically alternating regular articles with one of those questions and my answer. I invite you to send me your question to bilaulenbach@yahoo.com.
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Love
The Bible is a Jewish Book—written entirely by Jews except for Book of Luke. In the NT they were ‘half-breeds’ (my term) still Jewish but starting to embrace Christianity. Still they were conflicted and the gospels d not agree with each other, As Bishop Spong said, “If you cannot read the Bible through Jewish eyes, you have NO idea what it is saying.” For the record Jews DO NOT believe in the same kind of Heaven the Christians are taught. It appears we have LOTS OF LEARNING TO DO.