“For a Good Time, Call God” Says Minister and Author of New Book
by Lael
Co-author of The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx famously quipped, “I am not a Marxist.” Had he lived long enough to see the birth of Christianity, would Jesus, another Jewish revolutionary of even greater cultural significance, similarly have declared “I am not a Christian”? Although it may be tempting to imagine Jesus disavowing conservative, fundamentalist Christianity, to quote a recent sermon by Rev. Joan Steadman of the Oakland Center for Spiritual Living, “Who knows what the dude was thinking.”
A new book by self-proclaimed heretic and Baptist minister Robert V. Thompson provides a refreshing take on the Christian God or, given the tome’s universalizing impulse, on God in general. Borrowing from a passage by medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, Thompson has named his book A Voluptuous God, a title that suggests the tack — counter to his faith’s traditional emphasis on suffering — that the author is taking.
Not one to shy away from the sensual, Thompson goes so far as to describe God as “delicious” and hearteningly proclaims “that laughter is the best medicine, that only love can heal what ails us, and that only joy can cause our hearts to sing.” Sounding a bit like a marriage counselor, he invites readers to greater intimacy with God, an experience he locates in the here and now “where we belong to God and to each other.”
Along with the rehabilitation of pleasure as a Christian value, Thompson emphasizes the importance of ambiguity over doctrine. He reminds us that Christianity’s very roots were heretical with Jesus time and again ignoring accepted norms in favor of the dictates of the heart. Hence Thompson’s distinction between heart-centered and head-centered religion:
Religion of the head involves thinking about life’s questions in order to come up with answers. Religion of the heart is about seeing our innate and unalterable connection to all others as both the question and the answer. The heart is a compass that points to specific experiences that carry universal meaning, beyond doctrinal formula.
Given these sentiments and ideas, it is unsurprising that New Age stalwarts like Deepak Chopra and Joan Borysenko have praised A Voluptuous God. As Borysenko’s blurb reminds us, “when all the dogma of religious difference is peeled away…we finally realize that we are all travelers on the same journey.”
| 11/05/07
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Religion
