Interspiritual Insights

Was Jesus God? If so, when did he become God? What does it matter? What changes if we say that he was born God, or became God during his life, or became God after he died? History now tells us that there were many, many Gods before Jesus came along who died and were resurrected, to the point where it was an archetypal story. Are we to believe that all of them died and resurrected, but only Jesus' resurrection counted, or were they all God? What would that mean? How would it impact our beliefs? If we are saying that all the other stories were fabricated but Jesus' was real, how do we know that? What evidence is there? What if Jesus' divinity comes from him being a great prophet, teacher, and contemplative who achieve full union with God, what the orthodox call Divinization, and so on that basis he is and was God? Other than that this allows for others who have done the same thing, would it render his life, ministry, and teachings irrelevant? If they found the tomb with his bones in it next week, would it destroy your faith? Why or why not? This and more, today on Interspiritual Insights!

Religion has a lot of critics these days, and not just the Christian religion, either. From religious promises that can't be fulfilled, including promises of prayers being answered and miraculous healing being just around the corner, to an obsession with thought and behavior control, religion has taken a beating over the last several decades - and deservedly so. It's not just Christianity, however. Buddhism is plagued with as many sex scandals as the Roman Catholic Church, especially Zen Buddhism. Religious insitutions of all kinds seem to struggle with fiscal responsibility, to the point where one group I know requested a huge bail out to not lose property last fall and now is seeking a huge cash injection for a building project. Is there a limit to how frequently a group can responsibly go to the well, or is it whatever the market will bear? We'll discuss these and other important signs that your religious group might not be acting in the best interests of everyone involved today on Interspiritual Insights.

Karl Marx famously said that religion was the opiate of the masses. With organized religion in steady decline, what will take its place? I believe that sports have already taken its place. From children being chauffeured around the countryside to play in sporting events of all types to adults who are scandalized about the inflation level of the balls athletes play with, we are a culture obsessed with sports. It's no better in Europe, where they seem to never have met a soccer match that didn't call for a riot or trampling other spectators. What's this about? Is it healthy, or is it a sign of a bigger problem? This and more, today on Interspiritual Insights.

Eddie Money isn't the only one who wants to go back. In fact, the older I have gotten the more I have realized his famous song of that title is a spiritual masterpiece. Who among us, having left the farm of the comfortable spirituality of our childhood, hasn't at one point or another - perhaps many times - wished we could return to that simpler time with simpler answers to simpler questions? Yet, we also realize that life is not simple and so engaging it with integrity requires perhaps increasingly complex answers with each passing year. That doesn't stop the occasional, and sometimes frequent, yearning to return home. What does that yearning mean?

These questions were brought home for me in a unique way late one night when I visited the website of a local Episcopal parish. They had pictures on their site of the bishop's visitation, and I was struck by the fact that there was only a handful of families present - so few in fact that the children's homily he gave before his sermon had only a few children listening to it. We could see this as a referendum on his Episcopacy - he certainly is a pompous ass of epic proportions - but I suspect the smattering of people in attendance actually reflected the state of the religion to which we sometimes long to return - the death rattle is being breathed. What do we do when that to which we long to return is no longer viable? This and more, today on Interspiritual Insights!

Last week, terrorists shot up the offices of a satirical French magazine that has run pieces perceived as being critical of Islam and Mohammad. Conservative Christians have of late returned to their book burning tactics of old, and are themselves far from innocent in the "killing people we can't get to comply" category. Buddhist monks in Myanmar have become violent and attacked Muslims, despite belonging to a tradition that expressly prohibits violence. It's to the point where you almost couldn't blame somebody for thinking that religion does more to increase violence than to work for peace. The problem is that the only way to hold such a belief is to work very hard to ignore the teachings of the founders of the great religious traditions and instead focus only on a subgroup of practitioners of those traditions.

The problem is that fundamentalists of all stripes care very little about the historic teachings of their tradition and prefer instead to focus on the teachings of modern day leaders who distort the original teachings of their tradition beyond recognition. Why and how that happens - and how such practices feed into the same kind of nonsense on the Atheist side - are the focus of today's program.

The New Year has begun, and after taking New Year's Eve off because we were pretty sure most of you wouldn't remember the show anyway, we are back with a vengeance. There is plenty to talk about, from NYPD officers who can't seem to get used to the idea that they may actually have to be accountable for their behavior to the Governor of New Jersey being too stupid to realize that Americans aren't too stupid to realize that Dallas Cowboy's owner Jerry Jones is buying him like a cheap streetwalker - which may be the best description of Chris Christie anyone has ever offered.

More importantly, how many New Year's Resolutions did you make? Yay for those who answered "none." If you made any, how many of them have you broken already? If you regularly go to a gym, you can attest that while the place gets a bit crowded in January it's back to normal by February. Might New Year's Resolutions be the worst example of doing something over and over while expecting different results? What might work better? 

This and more, today on Interspiritual Insights!