Jesus - One Experience Of The Ultimate Among Many?
RY: TIME asked you an interesting question, we thought, “Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?” And your answer, equally interesting, you said “We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.” And I read that and I said “What are you: a Unitarian?!?” [laughs]
What are you– that is another concern for people, because, they say Scripture says that Jesus says he was The Light and The Way and the only way to God the Father.
KJS: Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. Umm– that is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through… human experience.. through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus.
RY: So you’re saying there are other ways to God.
KJS: Uhh… human communities have always searched for relationship that which is beyond them.. with the ultimate.. with the divine. For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus. Uhh.. uh.. that doesn’t mean that a Hindu.. uh.. doesn’t experience God except through Jesus. It-it-it says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their.. own cultural contexts; they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships; and Christians would say those are our experiences of Jesus; of God through the experience of Jesus.
RY: It sounds like you’re saying it’s a parallel reality, but in another culture and language.
KJS: I think that’s accurate.. I think that’s accurate.
posted by PSA+ at 10:36
3 Comments:
After her election, many people demonized her. And I said, hey, she's hasn't even done anything yet as PB. Let's give her a chance. She might suprise us.
Between this and the letter to FW and Quincy, I feel kind of silly now.
LIke, Ministry-of-Silly-Walks silly?
It's unbelievable. I’m blown away by that interview, and, frankly, filled with dismay. She was raised up through a parish discernment process, passed through a diocesan commission on ministry and bishop, educated at a seminary and recommended for ordination by the faculty, called to a parish, elected to the episcopate, received consents from the several dioceses, and finally elected to be presiding bishop with consent of the GC delegates, and no one ever was concerned that she’s not a Christian.
Lord, have mercy.
I want to modify part of what I said above, which was at best uncharitable. I don't know, and can't really know, the state of KJS' soul. I know she is a Christian - at least in her own sense of "practicing the Christian tradition." But if Jesus Christ is the Incarnate God the Son, that trumps the claims of all other religions. So, I should only have said that her understanding on this point is deficient and sub-Christian.
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