Spirit in Action
James Mulholland - Praying Like Jesus
James Mulholland is an author and Quaker pastor who's religious path has spanned tremendously, including fundamentalist Christian to United Methodist to Quakerism. He fearlessly faces the big questions and shares the fruits of his learning through his writing.
- Broadcast on:
- 04 Jul 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives Of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, Creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots And produce sacred fruit in your own life. [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along My guest today for Spirit in Action is author and Quaker Pastor James Mahaland His first book was "Praying like Jesus" The Lord's Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity And then he went on to co-write two books with Philip Gully "If Grace is True and If God is Love" He's a deep thinker and a writer of great integrity And his books stir profound thoughts and call us to a life of peace, justice, and grace He joins us today by phone from his home in Indiana Jim, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action Good to be here Mark Which town in Indiana do you live in? I know that you're somewhere pretty near Phil But where about exactly are you? I actually live right downtown Indianapolis In one of the neighborhoods that's just along the fringe of the downtown area Have you been a big city man all of your life, a big city boy to a big city man? Well ironically I grew up in a small town But once I came to the city I fell in love with it and wouldn't want to live anywhere else As you know, I'm here to interview you about a couple books that you participated in You co-wrote with Phil Gully "If God is Love and If Grace is True" And there's a book that you wrote back about 2000 called "Praying like Jesus" The Lord's Prayer and a Culture of Prosperity I want to say before we go into the detail that I love all three of these books They're wonderful, inspirational, and I love the way that you approach with both integrity and with intellectual rigorousness all the topics that you touch So I'm going to thank you before we start Well thank you Mark, I appreciate that Tell me a little bit about this, I think you must have written "Praying like Jesus" Before you entered your collaboration with Phil Gully on the other two books Is that true or perhaps the co-writing of those books took forever and ever? Yeah, actually Phil and I took three and a half years to write "If Grace is True" That we co-authored In the midst of that, the book "The Prayer of J. Bez" came out and was wildly popular And so the publisher we were working with, Harper San Francisco now, Harper 1, came to me and said "We'd really like someone to give a response to that, would you be interested?" And actually there were several people who wrote responses from different perspectives But that was kind of the impetus to that book Even though we were actually working on "If Grace is True" actually praying like Jesus came out first Well let's start with praying like Jesus It's a wonderful book, did you use it already in a whole series of sermons in the French church where you're the minister? Yeah, that was actually the beginning I had written some sermons and those sermons given to the editor He read them and said "I think other people would enjoy these reflections" Turn around on that book was kind of interesting, they asked me if I could make that into a book in 30 days So did that, the book came out about the time of September 11th Kind of the irony of that was that "The Prayer of J. Bez" which had skyrocketed to all the top of the best-seller list plummeted after September 11th And it was as if many of the kind of claims of prosperity that that book made seemed kind of hollow after those events In some sense life challenged that approach even before my book did Although I think the book "Prene like Jesus" is really more about prayer and specifically the Lord's Prayer than it is trying to refute some other kind of approach to prayer and theology So I think while the book kind of had its beginning and kind of a reactive situation It really became kind of my proactive attempt to understand prayer And I think for many of us, especially when kind of interventionist God that many of us were raised with doesn't make as much sense Prayer becomes a difficult thing to understand, articulate, sometimes even to continue I'm mentioning the number of people out there might not be familiar with prayer of J. Bez Could you share with us what it is because it was a phenomenon I somehow ignored when it actually came out Essentially it's a prayer in the Old Testament in Chronicles that basically suggests that this man named J. Bez prays this very simple prayer and he's blessed kind of beyond his expectation And so this book "The Prayer of J. Bez" really suggested that if others would simply pray this prayer of J. Bez that their boundaries would be moved and they would be healthy and wealthy Very much in line with kind of the prosperity theology that has kind of been within our culture Especially our American culture within the last 50 to 100 years So this was in some sense just another manifestation of that kind of theology But as I said wildly popular sold millions and millions of copies over about 18 months Was highlighted on 60 minutes and date line and was quite a phenomenon And for me I think as a pastor a troubling phenomenon In fact I became aware of the book because people in my congregation were reading it And I guess I would say being sucked in to this kind of approach to life and to prayer That in some ways was very manipulative Well I don't think in some ways and most ways was manipulative It really projected God as someone who needs to be appeased When God has properly appeased and often with very specific words or prayers Then God produces in certain ways So while I don't want to suggest that the author of that book intended all of that That certainly is what seemed to be happening in our culture That again was what was happening and as I said I think the events of September 11 I know through people in the publishing world that there were millions of copies of that book sitting in warehouses After September 11 that ended up in clearance bins because people weren't interested in that perspective Did this mean that your book started out selling them and then you were prosperous And your character is expanded because of 911? Well the book's done well but I think it largely has helped people again who are more concerned about how do we pray The premise of the book is that we didn't need the prayer of J. Bazz That as Christians there's a much more recent prayer in the kind of the biblical record And that is what's called the Lord's Prayer or sometimes the disciples prayer And that prayer offers a very different perspective on what prayer is about And what is involved in saying a prayer Now let me say that since writing that book There are probably some things even about the Lord's Prayer that I'm not completely comfortable with But the essential thing that I think makes the Lord's Prayer kind of a superior approach to prayer The many prayers is that it really reads like a vow It's not so much trying to manipulate God But it's more of a vow of how we're going to be in relationship to God and to each other to the world And again I think for many of us that works much better Than trying to manipulate or cause God to intervene in our lives in some specific, often kind of self-absorbed way You mentioned that the prayer of J. Bazz and its popularity kind of came out of I think an ideology that has pervaded American society for some time Now those are my words, you said it slightly differently Are you referring to the fact that we have this idea in American culture That we're the rich, most powerful nation on earth because God loves us best Or God's favorite child, that's why we're doing so well and if you're not doing as well as we are It's because God loves us better? Well, exactly, Mark, I mean, and I don't want to say that's a brand new idea I mean, if you go back into the Old Testament into the Hebrew Scriptures It's clear that this idea of chosenness and therefore blessing is part of that record as well And I think Christianity kind of claimed some of that same special favor And I think that God connected to American prosperity in a fairly powerful way Even very early in American history If you think about the Puritan work ethic, even within Quakerism, the kind of the frugality and simplicity The Quakers emphasized It often led to some real prosperity Now what was often left out in that discussion was how often that prosperity happened On the backs of African Americans who were brought here slaves Or by stealing land from Native Americans By the fact that this nation was blessed with incredible natural resources But there was kind of a mythic understanding that this was the new promised land You know, the new city on the hill That current runs through so much of American Christianity This idea of connecting our prosperity to God's blessing As a long, long history Then on top of that, I think you add what is prayer about And for many people, prayer is often seen as the way I keep myself in line with that Keep myself connected to that blessing Now, that whole understanding says some things about God that I think many of us come uncomfortable with And what does that mean about God who loves all of creation, all people? What does that say about our responsibility in terms of so much of what Jesus said In terms of caring for our neighbor So there's some large contradictions in this whole struggle To understand prayer and to understand prosperity and whether they should be connected at all Absolutely. You can refer to the prayer that most people know as the Lord's Prayer You say that you prefer to call it the prayer of Jesus Why do you prefer that alternate name? What is significant about that change in name? Well, I think one of the reasons when we make it the Lord's Prayer I think we tend to kind of give it a holiness that I'm not sure Jesus ever intended That it wasn't really intended to be kind of a ritualistic ceremonial kind of expression of religion In fact, what Jesus actually said is when you pray, pray like this But what he was suggesting is the prayer, the prayer ought to have certain dynamics Those include certainly gratitude Those include our relationship to others And specifically our need for forgiveness and for offering grace to others There's a sense of understanding God in a more intimate way There's a sense of understanding that we're all connected And then there's finally a real sense of making a commitment to be about on earth As we imagine things to be in heaven Or you might say to be about on earth as we would imagine the ideal or best to be So when you talk about it in terms of the prayer of Jesus It then becomes the kinds of values that Jesus thought were important And the kinds of things that Jesus emphasized Rather than something that just kind of trips off our tongue as a way to appease the Lord So I think it's maybe a semantic difference, maybe it's subtle But I think sometimes what we call something shows our hand about how we approach it And what we think about it theologically Again, I have to say, Jim, your thoughts in this book This will closely mesh with the way that I've thought for many years It seemed to me a stunning idea that most people didn't realize Jesus starts that prayer out by saying don't do it with vain repetitions like the heathens do Don't endlessly repeat words And then the Catholic Church, which I grew up in They said let's turn it into the rosary where we repeat these things ad nauseam And that's maybe unfair characterization of that Catholic practice But certainly go through the words so many times that it's impossible to be present to their sense That's my own experience of it You note any number of these things But it doesn't seem that the vast majority of Christianity engages with these ideas at all Now maybe I'm wrong because I haven't had all of the exposure maybe that you've had as a pastor But isn't that true that most of the people accept this prayer as something to be repeated As opposed to something to pray like? I think that's certainly the case I think one of the things that we have to understand Is that religion as a whole is often attempt to try to gain some control or power over what is often a very chaotic And sometimes frightening life So I think for many people what they seek is something that gives them some immediate comfort And that perhaps they think will position them to be in a better place So the irony is that while I'm a critical of the prayer of J. Bess Obviously people can do with the prayer of Jesus the exact same things They can make it into a mantra that they can make it into a way to manipulate God So certainly there's a deeper issue in all of this On the other hand when you have a prayer that millions of people can say without thinking Then I think it's worthwhile to challenge them to think about it If that prayer is so embedded It lets at least force people to think about what they're saying and what the implications of it are When that happens I think it can be a pretty powerful learning moment And one of my challenges in both in pastoring and writing and speaking Unless we're ready to completely abandon religion Which there are some strong arguments for that But if we're not in that position if we really think religion still can offer something to society and to the world to history Then I think our challenge is how do we take what's been handed to us And use it in the most appropriate and transformative ways As I mentioned Jim I was raised Catholic and one of the things that I was taught to do as a Catholic boy Was to pray certain prayers including of course the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary And I recall when I was ten years old kneeling by my dad and praying in the prayer of Jesus And thinking about each line reflecting about it deeply So I think maybe I was on a track to become Quaker even then at the age of ten How did you get to Quakerism and what was your history with prayer that prepared you for the place you are now? My journey is very much through conservative evangelicalism grew up in the Wesleyan holiness movement Very conservative both in theology and in practice It's been a considerable journey to come to Quakerism and many stops along the way I think what ultimately brought me to Quakerism was my sense that there was that of God in every person The more I became aware of that the more unhappy and dissatisfied it became With so much of the theology and Christianity that I was raised with Ironically I think I came to that realization that I was seeing the world in that way Before I even really realized that's what Quakers believed And still remember the first time I read Barclays apology of being amazed At several points that someone back in the 1600s was saying some of the things that I had thought and wondered And realized this had been part of our Christian heritage for hundreds of years and I had been completely unaware of it Now that's not to say that there's everything within Quakerism that I agree with or that resonates But I think that that deep conviction that however we describe God That God has to be that which is in relationship and connects all people And that relationship and connection comes with a responsibility Comes with also the blessing of what I would call grace and compassion that's given to each of us And that's kind of in the journey it's been both a theological journey in terms of shifting and letting go of a lot of things in the process But it's also been a spiritual journey of really seeing the practice of my religion have to change at several points And that's always painful And if I'm not mistaken that theological spiritual change that you went through Also significantly changed how you see the application of that in the world, the politics, the way we structure our society Yeah, that's very much the third book, which is "If God is Love" really tackles that In fact if you look at the three books, I think "Train Like Jesus" was really looking at a specific practice of prayer And how the shifting theology in me might impact that The book, if grace is true, was looking at more of a theological shift And that was around this whole idea of heaven and hell and the salvation of some and damnation of others And then "If God is Love" was an attempt to say, well, if you're going to make some of these shifts Theologically and spiritually How does that change our day to day life? How does it change how we think of ourselves, how we interact with our families, the church, the end with the world politics? How does it alter the way we approach people not only within our own nation but across the world? Before I move on, I want to ask you a couple more specifics about praying like Jesus One of the things that you mentioned just a moment ago, and I don't know if this is related to praying like Jesus But you said, there's some good arguments out there to abolish religion But that maybe there's still some important role it has to fill for us right now What do you mean when you say there's possibly some good arguments to abolish religion? Well, I've spent a lot of time reading what the atheists have been writing over the last Well, there's been a flurry of best sellers recently by Sam Harrison, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens But even before that, I've read Bertrand Russell and people of his ilk What I found again and again is that their criticisms of the church and of religion were my criticisms That what they found troubling was exactly what I found troubling And so I think it's been important for me to honestly confront that religion has a mixed track record There are certainly glorious things that I think you can attribute to the church But there's also an awful lot of ugly things And as a pastor, I've experienced that I've seen how the church can be part of someone's transformation But I have heard far, far too many stories of how the church has damaged people in some pretty debilitating ways When you're in that situation, you have to at least confront the possibility that sometimes religion can offer a lot But that other times religion seems to be the very obstacle to what it would be good in the world and in society And I think on top of all of that, we have to understand that there are some nations now in our world And I think Denmark and some of the Scandinavian nations would be good examples Where God is really no longer part of society And yet, I think you could argue that those societies have some beautiful ways of being in community and intimacy and caring for one another So I think the old idea that somehow without religion, society would degenerate into chaos and to hedonism and morality That just is obviously not true Well, when that's not the case, then religion and specifically Christianity rather than having some kind of monopoly on what's good, monopoly on salvation Really becomes one of many competing approaches to the problems of our world Now, if religion in that competing marketplace of ideas offers that which is wonderful and effective, I want to celebrate it But I also want to no longer promote or encourage a religion that thinks it has the trump card That somehow it doesn't have to compete, it doesn't have to be relevant, it doesn't have to answer to its critics I guess that's what I mean by taking seriously those who would say, well, maybe we should abolish religion I mean, I don't think any of us in the midst of this fundamentalist terrorism would not admit that sometimes religion seems to be the problem I think that abolishing religion in your case would have one very serious defect That would increase your personal unemployment, wouldn't it? Well, it depends on whether you think that spirituality and religion are the same thing Because I think I've always been interested in spirituality or maybe even kind of the existential question So I would think one of the faults I find in some of the more recent atheist books is that while their critiques I think are really valid There are some central questions that they can't escape And just saying there isn't a God still doesn't answer those existential questions Right now I'm working on a book called "Lukewarm Christianity" is the church really necessary And just struggling with what does it mean when Christianity doesn't see itself as having a monopoly on salvation or upon goodness? What does it mean for the church to exist and to be relevant? The bottom line is there are millions of people, especially in America And certainly in Western Europe who have decided the church isn't necessary So those of us who are still in the church to be part of that conversation and to take their questions and their concerns very seriously I'm sure that your definition of God must have changed over the years You said, Jim, that you started out on this fundamentalist conservative end of Christianity First of all, I want to know what age did you start making this transition to another place But specifically I wanted to ask, there's a phrase that you discuss in praying like Jesus When Jesus says in that prayer that kingdom come And you talk about what this means, the kingdom of God being present Some people think that means heaven or Armageddon And there's also an inward meeting So what did you start out with? When did that change? And what does that phrase mean to you now? Yeah, my understanding of God and religion were very conservative orthodox I was raised to understand things pretty much along the lines I see and creed I suppose I began to question that from college I loved to read, so I began to read lots of different people And I was curious about other religions, so I began to read other religious expressions And many of the things that I've been told specifically about other religions I found quickly to be false And I think once that happens, then you begin to ask the question, "What else have I been told that was false?" The other thing that happened is, I did have the benefit of religion that took Jesus very seriously That what Jesus said was in red letters, it was the most important thing in all of the Bible That in some ways is dangerous, because when I read the things that Jesus had began to see That some of the things Jesus said Really implied a different understanding of both the world, both earth and heaven That specifically, there's a lot of indication that Jesus' primary focus was to change the world That as he spoke to his disciples, that's really what he was interested in Now, I think what happened, we can talk about in detail about why this happened But I think what happened is Christianity within a short time after the death of Jesus Certainly by the time Rome adopted Christianity Had largely moved to a religion that offered most of its benefits after death That much of what Christianity evolved into was the promise of eternal life and blessings in heaven Not unlike what kind of fundamentalist Islam has done In terms of promising such things to people who strap bombs on themselves And so what was about really changing and transforming the world As the prayer says, making earth as it is in heaven Really became just waiting for heaven either in terms of our own deaths or in the return of Christ So I think it's vital and I think this really probably is why I began to rethink the whole afterlife And what the afterlife should be and how it should be perceived Changes how we approach everything If our religion is primarily a hope for the afterlife, it's probably not going to be much earthly good And if our religion is focused on making our life and the lives of those around us wonderful Then it's probably not going to focus on the afterlife very much at all And so in some sense I think you can almost judge religion on where its hopes are And if the hopes are on the other side of the grave Usually it does serious damage to people on this side of the grave And if religion's hopes are on this side of the grave Then it's much more serious about what does this earth look like and how do we make this earth into a good and wonderful place The subtitle of your book is "The Lord's Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity" And there's a significant section of the book where you address concerns about riches, prosperity, giving to the poor Ideas which are richly documented throughout the Hebrew scriptures and Christian scriptures That that is a primary focus of the religion or at least should be Because America is one of the richest nations on earth, does that mean from your point of view that we are more likely to have a hard time Getting through the eye of the needle, getting into heaven, getting into that place where we really can do God's will? Well I don't know, when I talk about a culture of prosperity, well it certainly has its roots in western Europe and the United States Clearly this culture is more pervasive than just those nations One of the ironies right now is that the church is growing in the third world While it's not growing in western Europe and in North America it's growing in the third world But the religion that's growing is largely a religion built on a prosperity theology The irony is that we've kind of exported the very kind of religion that many thoughtful people in western Europe and in the United States and Canada I've really questioned, I've begun to question I don't know if we can necessarily say that wealth is the obstacle I think it's in understanding that as the goal of life And unfortunately that can happen for persons in almost every socioeconomic strata I think when that becomes the goal of life that does really serious damage to us and to others Now I think you could certainly make the argument that when you are surrounded by that wealth It's pretty easy to take that for granted to be kind of seduced by it But having done ministry now in the inner city for 25 years I've learned to be a little careful about kind of dividing the world into the rich and the poor Because often what the rich and the poor struggle with are pretty much the same thing And I've been amazed by poor people who have nothing and are extremely greedy And by wealthy people who are extremely generous So there's something deeper going on and it may be this whole issue of how we understand each other And our responsibility to each other Do we really see ourselves as children of God, as brothers and sisters Do we really see ourselves as connected to one another and therefore responsible for what happens to one another? That to me may be the more important question for all of us to struggle with Rather than, you know, what should the rich be doing or what should the poor be doing? I think that question kind of cuts through what could easily become some kind of social warfare And really asks us to talk about something much more personal And that is, you know, I am on my brother and sister's keeper And what does that mean? When I was interviewing your friend and co-author Phil Gully He mentioned that you had been for him a very helpful conscience He was a good reminder of proper stewardship of the resources And he passed on something that I think came from you When he started making money from his harmony books and the other books When he started selling a significant number of them and all of a sudden he had larger income He told me that you reminded him not to let his standard of living rise to the level of his income Does that reflect what you think? Have you been able to avoid having your income come up so you didn't have to have your standard of living go up to? I mean, certainly that's the case. I really do think it's important that our standard of living not increase as our income increases I think that is a large part of what we're dealing with right now with our economy Is that many, many people simply allowed their standard of living Not only to increase with their income but to increase with their credit And that can do some dangerous things as we're all seeing On the other hand, I want to be careful of my wife and I, even though we're committed to this, still live Compared to most of the world, I think a very affluent, comfortable life But the trick has been to really establish based in our present American culture What is a reasonable standard of living? And then to really understand everything we make beyond that As being that which we should be given away and sharing with others Now, I think that is not something I can determine for anyone else And what each of us understand to be a reasonable standard of living is certainly open to debate But I think whenever we approach any purchase, which my wife and I try to ask this question With the idea of do I really need this? And if I need this to really think everyone in the world should also need this That begins to shift our whole understanding You know, my wife and I are not going to help the economy break out of this by buying a lot of things And I think that's one of the arguments people have said is it's really about needing to buy more things If that's the case, we're in a serious problem And we not only have a culture of prosperity, we have an addiction to prosperity So I think when we begin to ask those kinds of questions It does allow us to take seriously that responsibility to care for others To look for ways in which I can take whatever excess I have and give it to others And I think that is so well supported in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures How we think to miss that so easily is disconcerting, but it's certainly there All thoughts that I agree with wholeheartedly I want to remind our listeners you're listening to Spirit in Action This is a Northern Spirit radio production, I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet And we're visiting today with James Small Holland And I'll just call him Jim because he said I could do that And he's joining us, he's co-author of two books with Philip Gully And there's a book that we just finished discussing called Praying Like Jesus The Lord's Prayer and a Culture of Prosperity I want to say that all three of these books are books that I found extremely valuable, extremely deep, extremely insightful And so again I want to thank you, Jim, for sharing them with me and with the world And I want to go on to talk a little bit more about if grace is true and if God is love If grace is true, it takes on this theological idea that God will save every person Sometimes known as universal salvation or just universalism I'm assuming that over the course of your thinking about this, almost all of your ideas about heaven, God, sin, and salvation have changed That sentence, I think, must mean something very different to you today than it did when you started the books Well, that's certainly true. I often tell people that I didn't write if grace is true, that actually the book wrote me And as I said earlier, it was a three and a half year journey to write that book And about a year of that was stuck on the whole question of Jesus Because Jesus, who has always been very important to me, was so intricately connected to a certain understanding of salvation And that was an understanding of salvation that said that only through his death and the shedding of his blood Was God willing and able to forgive the sins of humanity? And only through that death could we be reconciled and in relationship to God And finally, only those who acknowledged their sinfulness and accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior were then part of this new reality So having been raised in that, the idea that all might be saved just seemed kind of ridiculous And I can remember early in my life kind of ridiculing that whole idea And then I met Phil and Phil and I became very good friends and in seminary, he and I, one spring evening, went out to do some camping We were just kind of tired of classroom, so we said, "Well, let's go camping" We made a campfire and sat around and sometime during the evening we were talking about some heinous crime that had happened in Indianapolis And I said, "Well, you know, I think sometimes hell is too good for some people" and Phil looked across the fire and said, "Well, I'm not sure I believe in hell" And that began a long conversation that went late late into that night and then many weeks afterwards As we debated it, for him it was much more of an intuitive thing He really couldn't tell me why he believed it in terms of theology or in terms of scripture or even the tradition of the church He just had a sense that it didn't make sense to him, I should say For me, that was a tougher transition, and I didn't have that same intuitive sense I told Phil that night, I said, "Well, I'm going to go look in the Bible and if I can find anything in the Bible that supports this idea I might give it some further thought" So I did what I'd done many times in my life, I think that the Bible began to read from Genesis to Revelation And had my highlighter and to my surprise found many passages that I'd never heard Honestly, I'd never heard preach, never heard taught That if I was honest, began to suggest that there was this voice in scripture that suggested that perhaps all was not as I thought And out of that, I began to read some of the early church fathers and discovered that This whole question of who would save was an open discussion for the first couple hundred years of the church at least And that there would have been a time in which those who thought there was a dual destiny, heaven and hell, would have actually been the minority You know, in the midst of all of this, I was doing ministry in the inner city With people that often didn't fit all the categories that I'd been taught growing up in pretty much middle class Christianity And as I began to have to make more room for those people in my life And in my understanding of God's work in the world The more room that I made for them here on earth, the more room I had to make for them in heaven And so ultimately, I thought that that book was going to be a book that would argue that everyone would be saved When they finally bowed down and acknowledged Jesus as Lord and Savior And the book ends up making the argument that, to some extent, that's irrelevant That God's love is eternal That love and forgiveness existed long before Jesus appeared on the earth It existed long after his death and continues to operate and transform the world Now, obviously, that decision meant a lot of other things had to shift And that was not an easy shift, it was often painful to kind of re-image some of that On the other hand, there were pieces of that old theology that had never quite worked And in some places it was really relieved to just let some of that go and say, you know, that always seemed ugly anyway Somehow through this, you've been able to retain your post, I guess, as a pastor in a friend's church And I'll just say for our listeners, I'm Quaker and Jim O'Holland is Quaker But I'm from the branch of Quakers where we don't have hired ministers We don't have pastors in the same sense that most churches in the U.S. do You've evidently been able to keep your post as a friend's pastor in this time And yet, I imagine that you're shifting view on God, salvation, and all of this It brought you plenty of heat, if not from hell, at least from your co-religionists You said that you turned to the Bible when you had this discussion in the field You turned to the Bible right away to see if there was the proof there, the evidence there, that salvation could be universal How valuable is the Bible to you today? It certainly pervades the books that I've seen you write What is the Bible to you as opposed to what it used to be In terms of proof, in terms of evidence, in terms of trustworthiness? Well, certainly when I grew up, the Bible was the inherent word of God And the final word and authority on all things Even in college, I began to realize that that didn't quite work I began to run into things that clearly were contradictory There was always explanations in our attempts to explain those things away But if you're honest, fairly soon, you begin to have to shift Initially, that shift was to say, well, there are certainly some errors in the Scriptures, some contradictions But on all things of any importance, the Bible is still out there and still authoritative And certainly, the words of Jesus You don't come a long way since even that transition To, I still remember the first time that I wrote in the margin of my Bible, this is wrong And I'll admit, I wrote it in pencil partially because I thought I might have to erase that later on And say, this is right, but also because there was a little bit of trepidation in writing those words in the Bible But over time, I think what has really happened for me is that I've begun to realize That the Bible is still an important book to me It still deals with the deep existential questions that I care about But I've also been able to understand that often the way it answers those questions And interpretations that it's given are heavily influenced by the cultures, by the world views By the religious pressures and societal pressures of those days And to also understand that the whole pageantry of the Bible kind of represents a continued conversation That from a minute you read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 and 3, you begin to see even there There's two very different stories about the creation of the world And they are not the same worldview Now, we tend to pick and choose, in fact, one of the early criticisms still and I often heard Whenever we would speak, as people would say, well, you know, you guys used the Bible in your book, well, you just pick and choose To which I've always said, absolutely And everyone has to pick and choose The whole question is, what filter are you going to use? What are you going to use to decide what you're going to give weight to And what you're going to ignore? Because we all ignore passages, I mean, even the most strict literalist You know, just ask them why they haven't sold everything and given it to the poor They'll give you a reason to which I always say, so you have a filter Now, if we want to debate the filters, I think that's a very healthy thing to do I mean, it's important to understand what do I use to understand the world to decide what's important But as soon as you make that transition, the Bible isn't a trump card anymore I had to give that up, and it's almost to the point where I try to be very careful in my most recent preaching and writing Not even to say God said, or Jesus said, because I'm not always even clear about that But to try to be very honest and say, well, this is what the Bible says, and this is why I can understand someone's faith And this is the part of that that really resonates with me, and this is the part of it that doesn't make any sense to me And then really forcing other people to do what I think is really essential And answer this question, what do you say? How do you understand the world, and that it isn't enough just to say the Bible says It's really important, and again, this fits with Quakerism, to take personal responsibility How do you relate to God? And I think what Barkley said, an early Quaker theologian that was so important to me is Is that understanding that there is the spirit that we believe inspired many of the people who wrote words that are now in the Bible And that therefore we are responsible to be in relationship to that spirit Not in simply what that spirit may or may not have produced through other people Now that's difficult, again, in a world where sometimes people are really looking for what will make them give them certainty and comfort So don't ask me to think about the Lord's Prayer, just have me say the words of the Lord's Prayer That's a very significant shift to make people have to engage with what they're reading, to think about what they're going to claim as their own As you co-wrote the book, If Grace is True, and you're talking about "My God will save every person" I have a feeling that you and Phil came from somewhat different perspectives on this I talked to Phil, and he said that he had never had an explicit experience of being saved, you know, on January 24th I was saved at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, that kind of thing Did you have that kind of experience of being saved personally, and what does that mean to you now if you did have such an experience? Well, I grew up in a church, so I got saved multiple times Because I grew up in a tradition that altar calls were at the end of every worship service So, when you're young, probably between the age of maybe 8 or 18, I don't know how many times, because of the emotion and power of many of those worship services You know, I get saved. My wife grew up in very similar kind of situations, talks about how to end an altar call Somebody always had to take the bullet, somebody had to go forward, or we were going to keep singing So, it's kind of hard for me to say when exactly I was saved That kind of language that I'm very familiar with, because it's usually the language of conversion So that people who, in my church, the churches I grew up in, who were converted, could tell you the day Those of us who raised in those churches, it was a much more difficult thing Because kind of our whole climate was this climate of confession of sin and coming to the altar However, having said all that, ironically, my most powerful experiences of God never happened in church They often happened with family, they happened in nature You know, the most powerful experience I've ever had of God was actually in the jungles of Honduras After spending time just working with a very poor village there in the mountains of Honduras And really being stretched in so many ways, both theologically and philosophically And in terms of my lifestyle and the way I looked at the world, had a profound experience of the presence of God Now, ironically, I had that experience I told people that I hadn't met Jesus Eventually, that language changed and I said, "Well, I had an experience with God" And now, if you asked me to explain that experience, I would say that I felt incredibly connected and accepted by the universe And my hunch is that all of those words I just used are probably culturally biased And we use the language that we have to explain the experiences that we encounter One of the things, you know, earlier I talked about the atheists, one of the things that the atheists can't quite adequately address for me Is what that experience was, and when they try to suggest that it is simply irrelevant, they no longer resonate with me Because I know the power of that moment, and I know how that began to shift so many things within me So, this whole question of salvation to me has gone from being something that's kind of an episode, something you do at an altar On a specific day, at a specific time, to really being something that is part of what it means to be human That it is this gradual transformation, it is this experience of that which is other than us and yet greater than us It's this attempt to connect to that, and through that to connect to one another, and in that I find that I almost always am on common ground And it's probably why, while more and more people in America say they are religiously unaffiliated The number of people that identify themselves as atheists, they stay fairly small And I think it's because for most of us, there are those experiences that they get explanation They may not happen often, they may be very confusing to us, and yet they cannot be ignored And for me, that is what I've grown to really enjoy, is talking to people about those experiences Now, to go back to if grace is true, once I had that experience, that became the context to much of my discussion about salvation What did it mean when I tried to understand this experience of what I would call universal connection and acceptance? Did I really believe that in that Honduran jungle, I was treated in a way that no one else was treated Or did I experience what is available and what is possible for every human? And I really came to that second conclusion I assume you believe in miracles, because certainly I think you're a living proof of miracles How was it that it came that you did not get kicked out of the church for all of these changed beliefs that you've come down to? Well, I may have gotten out the door right before I got kicked out I was actually in the Methodist church for about a dozen years, and I want to say I had wonderful experiences with the Methodist But as my theology changed, that became more and more difficult, even in that denomination that many would call mainstream liberal But that was not always the positions I was moving to were not always easy for others to handle When I went to the Quakers, one of the advantages was that when they asked me to consider pastoring a congregation that I'm at I said, "Well, I will preach for a month, and after that month, if you still want me, then we'll talk" And so I basically preached my forced sermons most likely to get you fired I kind of put them back on their heels a little, but at the end of that month, we sat down and they said, "I think we want to try this" And I've been very fortunate in that I've been at a congregation that has allowed me to voice my questions about nearly everything and to do that in sermons Now, you know, there have been a few people along the way that have left because of that, but there's also been a large number of people who have come because of that In terms of the pressures that come with being a public about many of these ideas and speaking and writing Certainly, Phil and I have got our share of bad press, of critical reviews, certainly some ugly letters But if I'm honest, 95% of the response to what we've written has been positive And again and again, I've heard people say, you know, you have said in your books things that I have often thought But was either afraid to say or needed permission to think So my hunch is that there are millions of people in our society right now who often sit in church and bite their tongue I mean, there are many that question much of what the church has taught and said and recognize that it doesn't seem to always match up with experience or with knowledge And I think it's important for those people to know that you can challenge the church, that you can ask those questions, that you can ask and seek and knock I think if we don't do that, I think every indication is that the church will become increasingly irrelevant and disappear And again, as we talked earlier, that may not be the worst thing in the world It may be how the next thing happens, but as somebody who is still in the church, obviously, I'd like to hope that we might still play a role in whatever humanity is going to become I want to turn to the third book in the series that we're talking about And I want to relate it to what you just said The progression you described is where the church can become increasingly irrelevant And then the possibility you allowed is that it disappeared It's possible, I assume from my point of view, that the church becomes increasingly irrelevant as regards the will of God or connecting with the universe in that way But that it becomes dominant in our society, such as the church takes over the government And we have to do things the way that whoever the fundamentalist in charge says The third book we want to talk about, if God is love, addresses your ideas about what would happen if we allowed this grace, this universal salvation, this acceptance of becoming agents of the kingdom of God If we did that, what the world would look like, and you describe gracious politics and gracious religion And grace pervading all of these forms in our daily lives and the world that surrounds us Can you give me, in very short time, since we're almost done with our hour together Some ideas of how you think the world would be different if we allowed grace to be as pervasive as you described in that book First of all, let me say that I'm optimistic, I think much of that is happening Even in this past situation with the war in Iraq, as difficult as it was for me to see us once again go to war I was reminded that this was the first time in the history of humanity When really the whole planet debated whether a war should happen Now unfortunately in the end, we just decided to do it regardless of what the world thought But the very fact that we had that discussion to me was a positive sign This discussion about global warming, that is predicated on the idea that we're all in this together And that what the Chinese are doing in terms of burning coal really does have impact on all of us And what America does in terms of burning oil really does matter to the rest of the world First of all, I want to say that I think that much of this has begun to happen Certainly not that Phil and I wrote a book and now that people are getting inspired I think as much as anything Phil and I were recognizing some of what is happening in the world And maybe some of the theological shifts behind that Now having said that, I think what I imagine is really a world where this connection between human beings and cultures just becomes a given And once we understand that connection, then our responsibility and compassion towards each other also becomes a given Now there are certainly still strong forces of tribalism and nationalism that are going to need to be overcome But even our technology, I think, is going to help us here And when I talk to my children who are in their 20s, I'm amazed how connected they are with the world And Facebook, which I don't have a page and I haven't done it yet But my children are connected to people through that, around the world, when we begin to have those kinds of connections And we begin to see each other and the needs of others in that way The world shifts, I guess the question is, will the church and will the gracious message of Jesus be the engine or will it be the caboose? And I think that's largely up to the church We have the option of being part of this new transformation and indeed have some real important resources and gifts to give to that transformation But I'm not sure it's going to wait for us and I think it's largely going to begin to happen I'm not really concerned about fundamentalism winning And I have a real sense that much of what we're seeing is its death throes Now, often death throes can be very violent But I think the reasons many of those fundamentalists' religions try to control, for instance, the internet Or fundamentalists' governments try to control the internet It's simply because they understand the danger of when people begin to connect At whatever level people connect So, you know, without trying to talk about all the details that we kind of outline and have got us a lot of, I think, kind of broad strokes I'm optimistic, I'm hopeful, regardless of if the church is heavily involved in whatever the next thing is I'm still optimistic I think that must be a good note to go out on being optimistic Thanks so much for all three books, praying like Jesus if God is love and if grace is true All three of them I recommend them for any of our listeners Where can they find them if they want to go track them down and is there a way that they can enter into communication with you If they have questions, feedback, further discussion Amazon is probably the best place to find books, new or used You know, obviously bookstores can order the books Some bookstores will carry them, but in the book world most books are only on the shelf Maybe a couple years after publication In terms of being in contact with Phil and I, there are some websites If you punch in our names, you'll find those websites And certainly we try to respond to whoever we can Thanks again, Jim, for joining me today and for the wonderful light that you're bringing to the world through your books Oh, thank you, Mark That was today's spirit and action guest, James Mahaland Quaker author of "Praying Like Jesus" If grace is true and if God is love From his home in Indianapolis, Indiana You can also look forward soon to his newest book, "Lukewarm Christianity" The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson This spirit and action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website NorthernSpiritRadio.org Thank you for listening I am your host, Mark Helpsmeat, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is "Spirit in Action" With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [MUSIC PLAYING]