Dear Cynthia,
It is nice to be doing right now your Introductory Wisdom School – 2 or 3 more sessions that are going well.
My question grows out of the integrative inner theological work I am doing today, as I write, about the gospel of John and the particular verse that grounded my evangelical growing up in the South – John 3:16. John is often called “the Quaker gospel” so I am chewing on that in relation to how the chapter functioned in my youth. The issue is the “original sin” that accompanied as a devoted and devout teen upon reciting John 3:16 as a creed for accepting Jesus as personal savior. Now through a rabbi friend with whom I do longtime dialogue, she invited me to join Kol Nidre eve of Yom Kippur – I was so stunned by their mystic humility at having been born with such goodness and yet do wrong so as to need Yom Kippur. Of course, I know Robert Barclay repositions sin as well in his Apology, but the affective practice of seeing 50 people confirm their original goodness at the same time they practive forgiveness of themselves was quite moving. So is there a possible reinterpretation theologically of John 3:16 that can allow for the integrative move from creed to self-care?? I can receive the gift from Judaism, Islam, and Barclay, but I also wonder if there is way to dialogue with evangelicals – ie friends and family – that can be inclusive and caring theologically? I am exploring accepting joining the board of the School of the Spirit after the turn of the new year. Interesting possibility.
Thanks for any teaching/wisdom, Rebecca Mays
Dear Rebecca,
Ah, the journey from the evangelical Southern Christianity of your childhood to the Quakerism of your maturing spiritual adulthood can be a bumpy road indeed, and John 3:16 is notorious for rekindling old associations and projections. The real challenge is to listen to what it’s actually saying, not the sin-marinated and “personal Savior” version you’re familiar with.
To begin with, just start with the first statement, “For God so loved the world.” Period. Stop right there, and don’t move until you can taste that love directly, simply, no associations.
Drink in the love. Then pay attention to “gave” his only Son. Gift, pure gift, not bargain or blackmail.
Then move to “everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And realize that “believe” doesn’t mean what we nowadays rotuinely impute to it—i.e.,signing on the dotted line to a series of dogmatic statements. In the mystical Wisdom lineage the word “believe in” means to “trust,” To “open to.” To believe in Jesus is to open to the world that he is himself stirring up and evoking in you: the world of “eternal life,” of boundless, infinite divine love, the courage of conscience, the boldness of compassion. The light within. To believe in him is to step across the threshold into that world he is laying before you: to open to it, let it enter you and become you. To claim that light as your own. That is itself the gift of eternal life, enacted right here and now…as it was for George Fox, James Naylor, John Woodman….all those Quaker luminaries in whose footsteps you are now following.
The rest is all projection. Nowhere in this passage is there actually any talk about “saving you from your sins” in return for a commitment of personal fealty. That is all evangelical midrash, and it simply gets in the way. Once you see that none of that is actually in the text, it frees this beautiful, gererous divine gift from its captivity to lower orders of human fear and mean-spiritedness.
I hope this helps, or at least offers a start.
Warmly, Cynthia