"A wonderful human being" - Marcus Borg

There he was, delicate with his words but allowing himself to "stammer" in the face of the ineffable mystery of his god. Marcus Borg's polemics, for me at least, separated error from truth. He brought a god to life. He witnessed.

I. You don't know about me without you have read some book.

So said Huck Finn. What about your god? If it's from 'The Good Book," Marcus Borg says, that's not enough.

At least you don't know about the god of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, the god of Jesus. Even if you've read the Bible cover-to-cover and can recite verse from memory. If knowing this god is important to you, you have to know something about the Hebrew language, the Roman Empire, the subjugation of the Jews, resistance and the power of poetry. If you want to know the god of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, you have to think like them.

"Adult religious re-education." Marcus Borg's passion. He offered a different Christian god, a different Jesus, a different Bible. He tried to bring the Jews and early Christians who experienced the things recorded in the Christian texts into the room. For me, he went a long way towards that goal. I was moved. Scripture came to life.

Marcus Borg is quite candid about one thing: the stories of the Bible should be read as metaphor, as poetry, as "language stammering" to communicate the ineffable knowledge of the human spirit embedded in the physical world. To some, this might seem like a demotion: the literal truth of religious education is replaced by stories, interpretations, wishy-washy and mutable. Not for me. The words of the Bible do not resonate with my childhood; they were not part of my childhood education. The stories do not make sense to me as an adult. Marcus Borg wants to talk to the adults in the audience. For me, he elevated scripture by working to replace a brittle and childlike faith in something not understandable with a supple and mature comprehension of experiences that only a grown-up could understand.

II. The Intent and Passion of God

You have to be there to really get it: His god is not a superhuman, but an indescribable totality. His Jesus was not born miraculously of a virgin, but was the "decisive revelation of God," "the incarnation of God's intention and passion." His Bible is not literal history and unquestionable instruction, but a collection of stories and metaphors, some lost to our understanding, some clearly not applicable to our situation.

However, to Marcus Borg, "God's intention and passion" are readable in the Bible. Justice, Justice, Justice. Notably, distributive justice, that is, an equitable distribution of the benefits of society. And we are all called to participate in the transformation of society to increase justice. All this is surely a threatening heresy to some.

To others it will be unsatisfying. It was to me. I asked him if his conception of the Christian "God" allowed for the contingency of humans, that our species was not inevitable. He said brightly, "yes." I asked then, what would the intent and passion of this god be if humans had not appeared. He stammered a bit and said, again brightly, raising his hand in a characteristic way, "I have no idea!"

Well... but he answered my question, at least for me. For one, he doesn't know how to understand his god outside of human experience; for another, it doesn't matter to him.

III. The Evolution of God

Marcus Borg didn't go all the way; he didn't let the Christian god just become just another story, a part of history, like Zeus. Does he think that Vishnu has a passion for the world? I looked up Vishnu in Wikipedia and I see that Vishnu "is one of the five primary forms of God" in one tradition of Hinduism. "God?" Why the capital G? Why do so many people, including Marcus Borg, insist that there is such a thing, when scholarship shows that it is an historical construction—and not a Hindu one, to boot. And why the syncretism? Why does Marcus Borg, in particular, insist "God has a passion and intention" for the universe?

God is evolving, evolving under pressure and within a new "adaptive zone," to borrow a phrase from evolutionary theory; and Marcus Borg is offering up an adaptive radiation, a venture toward a new species, a new line of descent for God.

IV. Idiosyncratic Monotheism?

Language is idiosyncratic. That is, we each have our own language, based on our experience, and with implicit faith we expect that our words are understandable to another. It is surely this way with our gods as well, even the monotheistic ones.

Somewhere near the end of his talks, Marcus Borg spoke of his friend, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, calling him a "wonderful human being." You could tell he meant it. As I watched this man just then, speaking in front of me, raising his hands as if in a blessing he seemed the picture of a religious icon himself. I thought, "this man's Christianity is a literary frame; it's not judicable by the laws of physics; it is a vehicle constructed to ferry the ineffable qualities of his god."

And what are those qualities? Language stammers. If you at all can, go listen to Marcus Borg. Watch him, his charm, his humor, his delicate use of language, his command of history, his respect for people, his quiet passion. For me, a god should be experienced directly. Yes, I was moved. We are not given easy access to the name of "God," the "I Am Who I Am;" but the god I felt in the room is, for me, approachable through a bit of language. What I felt present in the room was, in short, the very thing that Marcus Borg named—a wonderful human being.

Not a bad step forward, in my book. Perhaps one you can find comfort in yourself.