Removing Jesus from the Throne of My Heart

Jesus used to be on the throne of my heart, directing my life--at least in theory. The idea of inviting Jesus to be on the throne of one's heart is that we humans make a mess of our lives when we are in charge, but that when Jesus is in charge, he transforms our lives so that we are deeply fulfilled and are pleasing to God.

Unfortunately, this never worked for me the way it was supposed to. After I invited Jesus to be on the throne of my heart, I simply felt guilty whenever I wasn't doing what Jesus wanted, which was frequent. I wasn't telling others about Jesus enough, and I certainly wasn't as selfless as Jesus wanted me to be. In fact, doing all the selfless things Jesus wanted just didn't appeal to me at all. When I did try to do what I thought Jesus wanted, I often wound up a total grump because I was forcing myself to do things I didn't want to do.

Then I reached a turning point. I did something that I absolutely knew Jesus would not want me to do--and I did it on purpose. I flew to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to hear a friend sing the role of Susanna in Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro. I wanted so much to hear my friend sing in this opera that I love. So I bought a ticket to the performance and a plane ticket from New Orleans to Cedar Rapids and back, and I reserved a hotel room in downtown Cedar Rapids, a block from the theater where the opera would be performed. I flew to Cedar Rapids on Saturday morning, saw the Saturday evening performance, and flew back to New Orleans on Sunday.

I knew absolutely that Jesus did not approve of such frivolous spending. It cost approximately $500 for the opera, the plane ticket, and the hotel room. Jetting around the country to see an opera seemed decadent and selfish. Instead of spending that money to please myself in such an extreme way, I should have given that money to people in need.

But I wanted to see my friend as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. I wanted to give myself that experience. And I chose my own desires over those of Jesus. And I enjoyed it. Oh, it was so wonderful! I was floating on the joy and beauty of that opera for weeks. My friend was pleased that I came, too.

It wasn't too long after this that I decided to dethrone Jesus. I actually sat down one day for the dethroning. I said something like this: Jesus, I won't pretend any more. I don't want you in charge of my life. I don't enjoy it when you're in charge. In fact I'm way more grumpy when I try to do what you want. So I hereby officially remove you from the throne of my life and enthrone myself. Maybe my life will be a mess, as they say, with myself in charge, but at least I'll enjoy it more and I won't feel so guilty all the time.

I told a few of my friends about this, and I was struck with something my friend Dick said: "It will be interesting to see what kinds of things you do now--whether you do good things or bad things." Yes, it certainly will, I thought.

And you know what? My life did not become a mess. I did not find myself doing bad things. In fact, I noticed something interesting. I found myself actually wanting to do good things. But they were good things that I naturally wanted to do, not all these good things that Jesus wanted me to do that had no relation to the kind of person I am. Jesus wanted me to talk to people about being saved and to do extraverted kinds of helping behaviors. I, on the other hand, wanted to have more honest conversations about what I and others believed. I wanted to read, write, draw, and enjoy music. I wanted to have friends over for meals and parties. And I wanted to be helpful to others in ways that suit who I am.

I also noticed that I do indeed want to do wrong things at times. The kind of wrong things I find myself wanting to do are based on satisfying an emotional impulse or assuaging fear. For example, if someone hurts me, I want to lash out in anger or to hurt that person back in some way. Likewise, if I'm afraid that I won't have what I need, I feel compelled to grasp and hoard. But I'm also aware of a deeper part of myself that doesn't want to give in to anger or fear. What I want most deeply is to be compassionate--to act with deep respect for the other person and for myself. I want to pull back, recognize that I'm feeling angry or fearful, and choose to act from a place of love and respect instead.

Without Jesus on the throne of my heart, I am free to discover my own core of divine compassion and wisdom. This compassion and wisdom is already there. It is an intricate part of who I am as a human being. But I cannot be in touch with this part of myself if I am constantly focused on what Jesus wants rather than on what the deepest part of me wants. With myself on the throne of my heart, directing my life, I can examine my sometimes conflicting desires and choose to be who I most deeply want to be.

I have found that, at my core, there is not a chaos of wrong desires that make a mess of my life. Wrong desires, such as wanting to satisfy an angry impulse or to grasp greedily what I think I need, are very much on the surface. At my core, if I take the time to go there, is a well of compassion, respect, and wisdom. This is not pride speaking. It's simply part of the package--it's part of who we humans are, if we can but recognize our deepest core.

God-in-Karenshape

Some Christian see a crucial difference between Christianity and the other major world religions: in other major religions humans must strive to reach God, while in Christianity God reaches out and comes to us. I, however, think that it is important not to let this crucial difference obscure an even greater similarity: Christianity and the other major religions share a common assumption that God is outside of us. Whether we are striving toward God, or God is coming to us, in both cases God is assumed to be outside ourselves.

This assumption, that God is separate from and outside us, shapes the experience of many Christians. These Christians speak of a God-shaped void inside us, a void which can only be filled by inviting God into our lives to sit on the throne of our hearts and direct us. I believe that many people feel a God-shaped void because of their basic assumption that God is Out There. Believing that God is outside us actually creates the experience of an inner emptiness. Those who believe that God is outside us will put all their energy into striving toward God-Out-There, or into inviting God-Out-There to come in.

Even after God has been invited in, a Christian often continues to experience God as Someone Else, Someone who was outside and who has now come inside her from without. This Christian senses that she is no longer in control of her life but that God, who has now come within, is controlling her. In fact, when such a Christian does something good and helpful for others, she often says, “I didn’t do that in my own strength. It was God acting through me.” God is perceived and experienced as completely separate from the self. God is within the Christian, but as an outside Power: what God wills and does within the Christian is separate from what the Christian wills and does on her own.

For me, this perception of God as Someone separate caused serious problems during my earlier Christian years. It prevented me from listening to and knowing myself. I believed that I had to be concerned with God’s will, and since God was separate from me, this meant shutting down and negating my own thoughts and feelings so that God could take command. All my energy and attention went into God: God’s thoughts, God’s ways, God’s desires. I was prevented from listening to and discovering who I was, for I did not matter; it only mattered who God was and what God wanted of me. I had to suppress myself and my own voice in order to think God’s thoughts, speak God’s words, and do God’s actions. Karen had to disappear. In fact, I was cut off from myself in two ways: both as an individual and as a woman. Since the Christian God is male, doing God’s will meant doing His will. I was under the control of a male God. I had to deny both my individual self and my womanly self.

Thus, the assumption that God is separate from us leads to the experience of an inner void without God, or of an outside Power controlling us when God enters our lives. This can cause us to feel that we must deny and negate ourselves in order to hear and do God’s will.

But I now believe that a different basic assumption about God is far closer to the truth of what is: the assumption that God is already within us as an intrinsic part of who we are as human beings. In other words, I am created with a part of myself that I might call God-Within-Karen, or God-in-Karenshape. This very different assumption creates an entirely different set of experiences.

With the basic assumption that God-in-Karenshape is an integral part of who I am, I do not experience a God-shaped void, or inner emptiness. I do not perceive God as Someone Else toward whom I must strive or whom I must invite into me from without. Instead, I find God within me. Listening to God and listening to myself are not two separate activities. Listening to God is listening to myself. Just as I learn to listen to my rational thoughts as part of myself and to my feelings as part of myself, so, too, do I learn to listen to the voice of God-in-Karenshape as part of myself.

I believe that the perception of God as separate from and outside us makes us effectively blind and deaf in a spiritual sense because it prevents us from using our inner eyes and ears. Imagine a person who keeps her eyes shut all the time, not because she has no capacity for vision, but because she is unaware that she has eyes to open! Such a person is effectively blind, not because her eyes don’t work, but because she never uses them, not realizing that they are there to open and use.

In the same way, many of us do not open our inner eyes and ears to God within, not because God isn’t there, but because of our basic assumption that God is separate from us. Unaware of God within, it never occurs to us to connect with the God part of ourselves; hence, we feel a void. Feeling a void, we assume, not that we are ignoring a part of ourselves, but that we are empty. Our belief in a separate, outside God creates this experience of inner emptiness. We look to be filled by God from without because we do not realize that God is already within. We cannot have an experience of God within us unless we go within ourselves to experience God there. And we will not go within ourselves to experience God unless we first assume that God is within us to be experienced.

I believe that God is meant to be experienced in this earthly life from within: within myself, within others, within the world. In fact, I find it impossible to have an experience of God as separate and without. God comes to me as God-Within-Friend, God-Within-Stranger, God-Within-Sunset, God-Within-Full-Moon, God-Within-Oak, God-Within-Azalea, God-Within-Elephant, God-Within-Spider, God-Within-Hurricane, God-Within-Rainbow, God-Within-Color, God-Within-Music, God-Within-Poetry—and most frequently and powerfully as God-in-Karenshape.

Breaking Taboos

In 1969, when I was nineteen years old, I decided to leave the Roman Catholic Church, in which I had been raised. This was during the spring of my first year at Newcomb College of Tulane University. At this secular college, I was away, for the first time, from the homogeneous environment of the Academy of the Sacred Heart, which I had attended from Pre-Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade. At the Academy of the Sacred Heart, all my classmates had been upper-middle class, white (the dominant race), Catholic (the dominant religion in New Orleans), and Democrat (the dominant political party in the South at the time). That very homogeneous social context had presented me with the unified worldview of the Roman Catholic Church prior to Vatican Council II, a worldview in which everything was white or black, right or wrong, good or bad.

But in college, I was exposed to ideas beyond this sheltered Catholic environment. I met atheists with strong moral convictions, like Linda, homosexuals who were delightful and compassionate people, like Fred, and women with ambitious goals for their lives, like Chachi, who planned to be an orchestral director (and who achieved that goal). Madeleine Murray O'Hare spoke on our campus. In my biology textbook, I read a compelling argument for evolution. This was all very exciting to me.

I became angry at the way I had been controlled by fear of God in the Catholic Church, and I decided to leave. My first conscious act of severance was to miss Mass on Sunday, an act of defiance that the Catholic Church classifies as a mortal sin, the penalty for which (if not confessed and forgiven) is an eternity in Hell. Accordingly, Sunday came and I did not attend Mass. I intended to spend my Sunday morning enjoying myself in my own way, instead.

But I was not prepared for the internal consequences of my act. I had defied the One True Righteous Omnipotent Omniscient Omnipresent GOD by defying the command of the Catholic Church, the voice of God on earth. Ugly internal voices assailed me and blocked out all other thoughts.

"What if it's true after all?" these voices hissed. "What if you've really committed a mortal sin? What if you die, and you find out it's all true, and you go to Hell for eternity?"

These thoughts were insistent, and they terrified me. The fear was indescribably intense and crushing. How had I dared to go against the All-Powerful God? How had I dared?

I endured this terror for several weeks before these voices began to subside.

Years later, in my thirties, I learned to name the experience I've described above. This happened as I was reading Sonia Johnson's memoir, From Housewife to Heretic: One Woman's Struggle for Equal Rights and Her Excommunication from the Mormon Church. In this book, Sonia names my experience of leaving the Catholic Church and the resultant terror. Sonia herself had experienced a simlar inexplicable terror afrter deciding to disobey the elders of her Mormon Church by speaking publicly in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1978. She felt as though a deadly threat was approaching from behind, and she kept jerking around in panic to glance behind her. Like me, Sonia was uprepared for this internal reaction, and she didn't understand it.

Several months later, Sonia had a conversaton with Alison Cheek, a member of the very first group of women to be ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church. Sonia learned that Alison, too, had felt this strange terror while on her way to celebrate her first Eucharist. Alison was able to name the experience for Sonia (and for me): breaking a taboo.

Alison explained to Sonia that every culture has taboos, rules that govern life and death. In our culture, many taboos are unspoken, but they exist--very strongly--below the level of consciousness. The chief taboo in any patriarchal society is women's disobedience to men in authority. In breaking this taboo--by becoming an ordained Episcopal priest, by disregarding the Mormon elders, by leaving the Catholic Church--Alison Cheek, Sonia Johnson, and I had defied male authority, and we knew somewhere in the depths of our being that we had broken a major life-governing rule. Hence, the terror.

I have been amazed at how many women have had this experience of terror after breaking a taboo. When I have told other women my story of leaving the Catholic Church, along with the taboo-breaking explanation provided by Sonia Johnson through her conversation with Alison Cheek, I have often received responses like these: "I felt that same kind of terror the first time I had sex outside of marriage, after my divorce"; "I felt like that the first time I had lesbian sex"; "I felt terrified the first time I told a family secret, in therapy."

Women know, deep in their bones, that disobedience to powerful males means death. (Just a few hundred years ago, this was literally true, and in some places in our world, it still is.) The terror remains with us and surfaces when we break this taboo.

I would be interested to know if men have this experience. Are there taboos, which if broken by men, result in an intense internal terror? I wonder if engaging in homosexual sex might be one. Perhaps also cross-dressing. It would be interesting to know more about this as regards men.

Why I Believe That the Bible Is Not Inspired by God--My Fourth Reason

The Bible gives a twisted view of God: in the Bible, God is pictured exclusively as male. This is a distortion.

Certainly it is a good thing to depict God in a personal way. To relate to God personally, we need to think of God in personal terms, and all the persons we know are either male or female. God, of course, is not a person with a physical body, so God is neither male nor female. But we need male or female images of God so that we can relate to God personally; otherwise, God becomes an It, and it's hard to relate personally to an It.

Unfortunately, in the Bible, God is depicted as exclusively male. God is always He, Father, King, Lord--never She, Mother, Queen, Lady. This is a distortion. If we need to speak of God as He or She in order to relate personally to God, then we need to use both. To picture God only as male suggests that God is indeed more male than female, or that God is male and not female, which is untrue.

I know from my own experience that we need to picture God both as He and as She. Here is how I know this. I grew up relating to a male God--the Biblical God the Father. God the Father was scary--very exacting, easily roused to anger, quick to punish. I never succeeded in trusting God the Father. I knew that I should love and trust God, and I tried to persuade myself that I did, but I was actually terrified of Him. I simply could not feel close to God.

This problem was solved when I read When God Was A Woman by Merlin Stone as an adult. Merlin Stone explains how God was viewed as female, the Great Mother, for millennia--going far back into pre-history. God was Mother long before God was Father. This was wonderful news to me! I decided to pray to Mother God--and immediately I found that I could love and trust God. I determined that I would forget about God the Father--I had given Him His due--and pray exclusively to Mother God for the rest of my life.

Now, here comes the interesting part. I prayed exclusively to Mother God for several months, and then I felt that something was wrong. Something was out of balance. Picturing God exclusively as Mother was as unbalanced as picturing God exclusively as Father. I needed Father God as much as I needed Mother God.

It amazes me that I could have received this insight even though I had had so much trouble with God the Father. Yet I found that I was able to picture a Father God that Mother God would wish to be associated with.

Given that I was able, in a matter of a few months, to figure out that an exclusively female God was as unbalanced as an exclusively male God, and to figure this out even though I had had such difficulty relating to God the Father of the Bible, it does seem odd to me that the Bible writers, over several thousand years, could not figure out that they were way off balance in picturing God as exclusively male. I could see, within months, that I needed both a male image and a female image of God. Why couldn't the Bible writers see this within thousands of years?

Well, of course, I have an idea of the answer. It goes back to what I said about culture in my previous post. In a dominance/subordination culture, where women are subordinate, it is not within the realm of possibility to picture God as female. Of course, God would be a dominant male within such a worldview.

Nonetheless, it remains the case that picturing God as exclusively male, as the Bible does (or picturing God as exclusively female, as I did for several months) is a distortion. We need both male and female images of God. Because the Bible doesn't offer both, the Bible's depiction of God is twisted.

Why I Believe That the Bible Is Not Inspired by God--Three Reasons

Francis Schaeffer said that he became convinced of the truth of the Bible upon reading the Bible all the way through. He could tell that the Bible was inspired by God. It had the ring of truth. This astounds me.

I, too, have read the Bible all the way through--more than once--and this has convinced me that the Bible is most definitely not inspired by God. I say this for four reasons. I will discuss three of these reasons in this post, and the fourth reason in my next post. If Francis Schaeffer were alive today, I would love to hear his response to what I have to say.

CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS. First, I'll need to explain something about culture. All of us grow up within a culture and absorb our culture's values and assumptions. We absorb these values and assumptions at such a deep level that we believe them to be Reality--The Way Things Are.

For example, our culture places such a high value on individualism and competition that it is obvious to us that species and individuals within species are competing to survive. Nature operates on the principle of survival of the fittest--that's Reality, The Way Things Are--it's plain to anyone who looks at the world around us.

It might shock us, therefore, to learn that survival of the fittest is not plain at all to a Native Australian, whose culture emphasizes cooperation. Looking at nature, a Native Australian sees a vast web of cooperation, where some animals volunteer to be food for other animals so that life on earth may continue. To Native Australians, it is obvious that nature cooperates and that some creatures sacrifice themselves for the sake of life--that's Reality, The Way Things Are--it's plain as day to anyone who looks.

My point here is that cultures have different values and make different assumptions about Reality. God, though, dwells within what is truly Real. The Creator of the entire universe is not enmeshed in any earthly culture, as we are. God, the Creator of all, stands outside culture and would speak to any culture with clear moral discernment based on true Reality, What Really Is.

Yet God as depicted in the Bible does not do this. The Biblical God makes the same cultural assumptions as the Hebrews! I find it nonsense to believe that the Creator of the universe cannot get past seeing the world through a Hebrew cultural lens.

Hebrew culture was based on relationships of dominance and subordination: men over women, parents over children, masters over slaves, Hebrews over foreigners. Slavery was a given. War was the accepted means of settling disputes as well as simply expanding one's territory.

The Biblical God accepts all this as Reality. It's The Way Things Are. But if we're talking about the real God of all, wouldn't we find God dismantling the dominance/subordination system, the institution of slavery, and violence as a means of settling conflict?

Instead, we find the Biblical God commanding the Hebrews to invade the land of the non-aggressive Canaanites. And when nations beyond Canaan were conquered, we find that God tells the Hebrews to take for themselves all the young unmarried women. This is SEXUAL SLAVERY! Of course, these young unmarried women belonged to three subordinate classes: woman, foreigner, conquered. In a dominance/subordination world, they were doomed.

The Biblical God is so imbued with the Hebrew cultural worldview--the dominance/subordination system is such an intricate part of Reality for this God--that this God can authorize sexual slavery without batting an eye. God doesn't even SEE the horror.

This does not have the ring of truth. It has the ring of despair. What chance would I have in a world where God blithely offers young conquered unmarried women to their conquering males?

So we have a Biblical God who can't see past Hebrew cultural assumptions. How did Francis Schaeffer answer this, I wonder.

FEAR-BASED OBEDIENCE. The Biblical God uses fear to command obedience. God scared the Hebrews to death with all that thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai when God gave Moses the commandments. The least disobedience received incredibly harsh punishment: God ordered that a man be stoned to death for the crime of gathering sticks on the Sabbath. And one didn't even necessarily have to do anything wrong to incur God's wrath--one could be punished simply for being related to a person who disobeyed God. When Achan stole some of the spoils of war that God wanted destroyed, not only was Achan stoned but also his whole household, including Achan's children and--get this--all Achan's oxen, asses, and sheep! This is rule by terror.

There is no ring of truth here. Again, we have the ring of despair. What chance would I have in a world where God kills a man's child and animals for that man's disobedience?

How can I believe in a God who would have me tiptoe through life with a knot of fear in the pit of my stomach lest I misstep and be crushed by God. What did Francis Schaeffer say to this?

DON'T QUESTION. The Biblical God does not seem to want us to use our minds. Whenever a Biblical prophet brings God's word to the people, it is clear that the people are to obey--or else. They are not to question.

This is far different from those present-day prophets whom I respect, such as Gary Zukav. When Gary has a message from God to impart, he always says something like this: I have something to say that I believe is from God. But it's very important that you not swallow what I say automatically as absolute truth. Instead, use your own discernment. Listen to what I have to say and see whether or not it rings true for you. Always remember that this word is coming to you through a human filter.

None of the Biblical prophets ever says anything like this. And considering the huge filter of Hebrew cultural assumptions through which we hear God's word in the Bible, it seems that discernment in reading the Bible is highly in order. Without that discernment, what do we have? We have people who believe that God approves of slavery, that God assigns women a place subordinate to men, that God condemns any homosexual act even between two people in a life-long committed relationship.

This does not have the ring of truth. Truth is not afraid of questions. Truth welcomes discernment. I actually do have some idea of what Francis Schaeffer would say to this because he believed in absolute truth. But I would still like to hash out the ideas of discernment and human filters with him.

This post gives three reasons why I believe that the Bible is not inspired by God. My next post will give a fourth reason, a reason that deserves a post of its own.

The Dead Are Close to Us

I believe that the dead are very close to us. They are no more than a thought away. They are not gone. They are very present.

Often, though, when someone dies, we experience gone-ness. As far as we can tell, our loved one is gone. Here's why it feels that way. Something, indeed, is gone. What's gone is our loved one's presence in a physical body on earth. Our loved one is no longer with us in physical form. This means that we can no longer see or hear or touch our loved one. And we are so bound to the physical experience of each other that, when we can no longer perceive someone with our five senses, we feel that the person is gone.

When a loved one dies, our grief and longing are intense. We want to sit down with our loved one as we used to do, gaze into our loved one's eyes, hear our loved one's voice, hold our loved one's hand--but we cannot. And since this physical way is the only way we know to experience someone, for us our loved one is gone.

But there is another way to experience and be with those who have died. It is not a physical way. But it is a way.

I learned about this other way to be with the dead when my mother died. I'll try to explain what happened, starting with my mother's funeral.

I knew that people would come up to me at my mother's funeral and say things. And I determined that I would do my best to accept graciously whatever they said. It is not easy to know what to say to family members of the dead and people try their best to say something comforting and empathetic, so I determined to take everything anyone said as a gift.

What people actually did say fell into two categories: (1) it's terrible that your mother died, and we'll miss her immensely, and (2) it's a blessing that your mother was spared prolonged suffering, and she is in a better place. I was able to respond gratefully to both types of comments.

One woman, however, told me something that turned out to be a special gift in an odd way. She said, "Karen, these next months are going to be difficult. You'll find that you'll have to remember again and again that your mother is dead. As things happen during the day, you'll think, I'll have to tell my mother about this, and then you'll remember, Oh. I can't tell her. She's dead. And you'll have this experience many times."

I realized that this woman was telling me these things to help me, but as she talked, I became aware that I knew I would not have the experience she was describing. A thought formulated itself in my mind: No. That is not how it will be for me. When I want to tell my mother something, I will simply tell her. And she will hear me.

So this woman gave me the gift of making conscious something that I hadn't realized I knew: I can continue to communicate with my mother.

And this is what I have done. I know that my mother is present, just not physically. When I want to tell my mother something, I simply tell her. I can tell her out loud, or whisper it to her, or think it to her. And I know she receives my message. Here's an example. My mother loved flowers. I have no doubt that she still does. When I see lovely flowers, I can admire them, think them to my mother, and know that she's right beside me enjoying them, too.

I do not feel my mother's presence in any tangible way. I simply know she's there. And that's enough for me. I don't need to feel anything.

My mother died in 1997. Since then, my father died in 2000 and my sister Sandra in 2002. Occasionally, I believe that one or another of them says something to me. This comes simply in the form of a thought--a quiet, natural thought, not at all jarring or attention-catching. The thought is something that I probably wouldn't think on my own, and it has a Mom quality or a Dad quality or a Sandra quality to it. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, I pause and say, for example, "Mom, I hear you. Thank you for this thought. I love you and wish you all joy in the spirit world." I am grateful when this happens, but I would be content without this, just knowing that my dead loved ones are near and that they hear what I think to them.

I feel very sad when I hear people say of the dead, "If only my mother could be at my wedding," or "Your father would be so proud if he could only be here to celebrate your achievement." I believe that my dead mother and father are at all my important events. They themselves are really and truly present, just not in physical form. This means that I don't see them or hear them or feel them. But I know they are there.

I believe that if we can open ourselves to a different way of being with the dead, we'll find that they are very close to us. If we cling to what we can no longer have--seeing, hearing, and touching our loved ones--we will experience only gone-ness. But if we can let go of that need for the physical experience, we can send our dead loved ones thoughts and know that our loved ones receive these messages. We can even reconcile with someone who has died if we were not able to reconcile on earth.

I find that I don't need a tangible experience of my dead loved ones. I simply know that they hear what I think to them. And that's enough for me.