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The 1960s have, for years, been known as a time of confusion, violent upheaval and drugs. That decade and the ones to follow were so much more than that, just below the surface.
As I have stated many times, there was also a spiritual revolution and it continues to this very day.
In addition to a very obvious anti-war movement, the Hippies and the Flower children were ripe for new spiritual philosophies; ones that made some kind of logical sense. For whatever God was, it must be logical.
Like many in my generation, I had had enough of hypocrisy and hell-fire and damnation, preached form Baptist or other pulpits in angry voices that made a small child cringe.
Today I consider myself a follower of Christ, not a Christian, as that word has taken on ugly connotations with which I do not wish to be associated. As I have watched the last couple of decades unfold, I have felt myself move further and further away from the organized religion I had accepted only 20 years ago.
I had taken a round about journey from the 1960s until the 1980s back to the Christ I new years before, but not the Jesus of Nazareth I had been taught about by the Southern Baptists as a child. That one and that God just never made sense to me. The God Jesus talked about would never have sent him to the cross. For that it took what it always takes. The fragmented egos of the powerful; a corrupt temple (religion), an illegitimate government and an oppressive Empire. It was the powerful and the fearful who did not want to hear the truth that Christ spoke.
To them he was a trouble maker and a heretic. Fact was and is, he was everything they said he was. He was dangerous to everything they stood for, because what they stood for was corruption in high places that put untenable burdens on the common people. Between the corruption of the Temple, the corruption and illegitimacy of the local government, very much in league with the oppressive empire of the day, there was no room for those who would speak truth to power.
But I did not understand that as a child. All I was taught was that a loving God, whom we should call Abba or Daddy, loved his only begotten son so much that he sent him to die for my sins. This made no sense to me. I didn't want any part of a God who would do such a thing. I couldn't reconcile the God of the Church's understanding.
Just as I was coming of age, I saw other good men brutally slain for speaking truths that many angry people, some of them very powerful, did not want to hear. JFK, MLK and RFK, all blown away for being good men, as far as I was concerned. I started to understand a few things. Jesus did not die for my sins, he died because of the sins of powerful men and weak common folk who had no better sense than to run from the danger he faced, nor the courage to stand with him against corrupt power of all kinds. It does take courage to stand with the courageous against those who would shut then up any way they can.
As the 1960s came to a close, I began to be exposed to other forms of faith traditions. Different forms of meditation, for example. This continued through the 80s and until today. With the help of a man, wise beyond his years, I chose a few spiritual tools that wove nicely for me into a practice that would keep me in good stead for the years ahead and, to some extent, they still do. My journey hasn't been easy. No one guaranteed that it would be.
Yes, eventually, I returned to the Christ of my understanding, not the one always preached by the Church of my youth. Most of Christianity, as best I could tell, was still seriously creedal and made no sense to my modern, scientific, philosophical mind. But the Christ I have come to know does make sense.
How did I come to know him, you might ask. Well, I had to make friends with people like Lao Tsu, the Buddha and quite a few Buddhist monks (men and women), many different Yogis, a few Rabbis and even a Sufi or two. It was through knowing them, that Jesus Christ became real to me and, yes, alive in me and in others, some of whom laid no claim to Christianity at all and others who did.
It seemed to me that the Christian Church had done the same thing with Christ that they had done with God. The put him way out in space somewhere, so far away that they would not have to deal with either of them until sometime after their demise. It seemed that they did not realize that Jesus was a Jew. If one were to look for a modern day Jesus one might find him in a reform, Jewish Hippie.
More On my journey later..............
Dear Readers, please do not assume that you understand anything you read on this blog.
