966 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/44e8da811264e2f0b9d709ccfb34484d.jpg cb2eab5edcf5f87a84256a1da349c3ab Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Summers in Saugatuck-Douglas Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Kutsche Office of Local History Description An account of the resource Collection contains images and documents digitized and collected through the project "Stories of Summer," supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage Grant. The collection aims to document the twin lakeshore communities of Saugatuck and Douglas, Michigan, as they transformed through the state's bustling tourism industry and acceptance of minorities. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1910s-2010s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Various Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich.) Douglas (Mich.) Michigan, Lake Allegan County (Mich.) Beaches Sand dunes Outdoor recreation Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Saugatuck-Douglas History Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Stories of Summer (Common Heritage project) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Text Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-07_SD-Brigham-D_0073 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brigham, D. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1954 Title A name given to the resource The Paton Ladies Description An account of the resource Photograph of Esther Paton Eddy, Elizabeth Trevarrow Paton (mother) Barbara Paton Eddy and Dorothy Paton in front of the R. G. Eddy cottage on Lakeshore Drive. Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich.) Allegan County (Mich.) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digital file contributed by D. Brigham as part of the Stories of Summer project. Relation A related resource Stories of Summer (project) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4272f840692e1d088f176a1b30d32d45.pdf 5514c588e131844ea296192885b43962 PDF Text Text A Charismatic and Open Future From the series: The People of the Way Text: Acts 1:8; 3:19-21; 10:34; 11:2, 4 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan January 22, 1995 Transcription of the spoken sermon The Lesson from the Epistle is a reading from the Book of Acts, in fact several passages, in my attempt to give you a sense of how the Jesus Movement was founded and continued, and how the New Testament document was put together. We have spent a couple of weeks looking at the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the founding story. Those stories were written a long time after the event itself and they were not biographical in the sense of simply telling the story of Jesus. They were faith documents. They were written with a selective vision in order to create a portrait that would elicit faith in people. Those four Gospels come first in the New Testament, I suppose, because it would seem logical that the founding story would be there first. The other large piece of the New Testament are the letters, particularly the letter of Paul. Between the letter of Paul and those gospels you have the Book of Acts. Sometimes we call it the First Church History. Well, that’s as erroneous as to call the gospels the lives of Jesus. Just as the gospels were proclamations of faith in a narrative form, so the Book of Acts was a proclamation of faith in a narrative form. It does in a sense create a bridge, but it really is volume two of the Gospel of Luke. If you would read the opening verses of Luke and then the opening verses of Acts you would see that it’s the same hand, the same intention to set forth these things in orderly fashion. But, just as the gospel was the founding story in narrative form to tell about the life and ministry and resurrection of Jesus, so Acts was the continuing story to show how the Jesus Movement developed and spread. So, as I read, I want you to see that this Jesus Movement was the movement empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, and was thrust out into the world, not without conflict and resistance, but finally breaking the narrow bounds of Israel and going to all nations, or to the Gentiles. There are those who say this may be one of the earliest formulations of the conception of Jesus that the Church eventually came to. This was a very primitive © Grand Valley State University   �A Charismatic and Open Future Richard A. Rhem Page 2   understanding; this Jesus that they all knew, this Jesus, God has made Lord in Christ. There’s a dramatic healing at the temple and everyone wonders about it, and then Peter has another chance to preach. On that occasion he says, “Now, brothers and sisters, I know that you acted in ignorance as did your rules. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn again that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that God may send Christ (the Messiah) appointed for you. Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of the holy prophets from of old.” It is as though Peter is saying, “Come now, turn. If you’d just turn, then God could get on with it, you see, and this Jesus could come, Messiah, Lord, and wrap everything up.” Well, it wasn’t to happen. The community continued to grow and to develop and it was very much a Jewish community. What Luke does is to give us some models, or some paradigms of how that movement developed and took shape. The Cornelius story, Peter and Cornelius, was certainly a classic paradigm of how this gospel broke the bounds of Israel and was brought to the non-Jew. It happened simply because Peter was given a vision that he couldn’t deny and an experience that simply overwhelmed him. So he has a vision, hears a knock at the door, there are men beckoning him from Cornelius who has had a vision, and he comes to Cornelius’s house and he says, “You know I shouldn’t be here. This is contrary to everything I’ve ever been taught, associating with the likes of you. What do you want?” They asked, “What’s God telling you? Tell us.” Peter opened his mouth and said, “Truly, I perceive that God shows no partiality.” [Pretty good for Peter.] “But in every nation, anyone who hears him and does what is right and acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all. The word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth of the Holy Spirit and with power. How he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest—not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God, as witnesses. Who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead, and he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he was the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness and everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins in his name.” © Grand Valley State University �A Charismatic and Open Future Richard A. Rhem Page 3   While Peter was still saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard and the believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. They heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God, and Peter declared, “Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” He commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and they asked him to remain for some days. Now the apostles and the brethren who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem the circumcision party criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcized people and eat with them?” Peter began to explain to them step by step. About the same time, sometime between 70 and 100, the Gospels were written: the Book of Acts was written and the Gospels as well, the Gospel of John maybe toward the end of the century. But John, too, was trying to shape the future by understanding the present. So he tells the story of Jesus, and in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John is the familiar story of the woman at the well in Samaria. She’s a woman. She’s a Samaritan. Jesus talks to her, already shattering the preconceptions of his day. Then he indicates to her that he knows a thing or two about her, and she thinks to herself, “This is getting too personal, let’s talk theology.” So the woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. The hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For such the Father seeks to worship.” The problem with following the course is not that Jesus has failed us, but that we failed Jesus—over and over and over again. So there’s a Christian church instead of simply the blossoming of Israel into a great world religion with a message of light and salvation for the whole world. The Gospels tell the story of Jesus, but as I said, they’re faith documents trying to create faith in those to whom that story, that narrative form of that faith commitment is woven, and the Book of Acts as well. Often we see Acts as a bridge between the Gospels and Epistles, as I said at the scripture reading. As a matter of fact Acts is not a history, although it is in the shape of history. What the Gospel writers were doing and what the author of Acts was saying was the same as the Gospel of Luke, Volume II. What they were doing was telling the story not simply recording the past. You know, historians are sneaky people. You think they are sort of harmless because they just grub around in the past. But you know what historians are? They grub around in the past until they can understand the present so they can © Grand Valley State University �A Charismatic and Open Future Richard A. Rhem Page 4   determine the future. There’s not a historian alive who is an objective observer of what really happened, because most of the time we can’t really determine what really happened. So, there’s data back there. There’s a connection with concrete events, but the historian is one who weaves that data into a story. And that story becomes compelling. That story interprets the present and it shapes the future. This story was written sometime between 70 and 100. We are four decades, minimally, away from the event. The Jesus Movement has started with some considerable success already. It has permeated the ancient world, and it’s in crisis. The Church is always in crisis; it’s nothing new. The crisis is that the Jesus Movement starts out very understandably as a Jewish movement. Jesus was a Jew. Sorry to tell you, folks, Jesus wasn’t a Christian. I don’t think Jesus ever intended to be anything other than a Jew, a faithful son of Israel—the fulfillment and the blossoming and the culmination of all that marvelous tradition. So it is understandable, as well, that the first movement, the Jesus Movement, was a Jewish movement you could call People of the Way. In the story of Paul’s conversion, from Saul to Paul, in Acts 9:2, you’ll read that he went after the People of the Way. Acts 19:23: once again, when the talk in Ephesus was about some controversy, these are People of the Way. How do you characterize new movements? No one knows quite what to call them and so they were called People of the Way. So it’s a Jewish movement, those who believe that this Jesus of Nazareth was indeed God’s anointed one, God’s Messiah. It is a community in Jerusalem in which Jesus’ brother James becomes a dominant figure. But the intention, Luke tells us, was that this thing go in concentric circles out to the whole world and so it started in Jerusalem, a Jewish community, where it gets some opposition. There was a good solid Jew named Saul, who was on his way to persecute the People of the Way. Bingo, he receives a vision, a light from heaven, and he turns around—a dramatic conversation – and he becomes St. Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ. Now, his vision entails a ministry beyond the limits of Israel. He begins to go out into the Roman Empire. He tells the story at the synagogue to the Jews first but, when he gets turned away there, he preaches in the marketplace to anybody who will listen. Before long there’s a community there: the cities in Galatia, Asia Minor, etc. Now there’s trouble brewing. This I think is what the Book of Acts is really about. It is not a bridge between the Gospels and Paul’s letters. It is attempting to be a bridge between the Apostle Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles or the nations, and James—the Lord Bishop of the First Reformed Church of Jerusalem. That’s the tension. You see, there were a limited number of Jews to evangelize in the world, but there was a whole world of Gentiles. And when the consistory met in Jerusalem at the First Jewish Christian Reformed Church, they said, “You know this fellow, Paul? If he keeps doing what he’s doing, saying that those Gentiles can be members © Grand Valley State University �A Charismatic and Open Future Richard A. Rhem Page 5   with us in the community of faith without first becoming Jews, the whole character of our church will be changed. It will no longer be like it has been. They don’t know our customs. They don’t know how to act. They don’t know the inside jokes of the family when they gather. They’ve got a lot of strange things about them. It doesn’t feel comfortable. How can we be a family when people are coming right out of all kinds of pagan practices and expecting to sit down at table with us?” Anybody with any insight could see that, if Paul was successful and the mission to the Gentiles should prosper, it was going to be a whole new ball game. There was sharp tension because the things that have been for us, the mediators of grace, the things that we have grown up with, the things that we feel in our depths without having to think intellectually about, those are precious to us. We don’t let those go easily and we don’t open ourselves up to that which might threaten that very easily. Well, poor Peter got caught in the crossfire between James and Paul. And what Luke does as an author, as a spinner of a literary tale, is to give us marvelous paradigms. The central paradigm, the hinge-point of the Book of Acts, is the story of Peter and Cornelius. We read it earlier together. Peter, kind of against his will, finds himself in a setting and doesn’t know what to do but to tell a story of Jesus—his ministry, his death, his resurrection. Bingo, the Spirit zaps these nonJewish listeners and Peter says, “I can’t believe this, but it would appear that God shows no favoritism, there’s no partiality with God.” So he says, “Go ahead, baptize them.” Well, it’s one thing to have a vision as Peter had, it’s one thing to have one’s concrete experience confirmed, the intuition, but it’s another thing to have to go back to headquarters. And he got it in the neck. They said, “We understand you had ham and eggs?” So Peter started to tell the story, step by step. Now folks, that isn’t just an interesting little tale. Today when I’m preaching the truth, which isn’t always the case, of course. (Laughter) But, preachers are like historians, they are also trying to understand the present in order to shape the future out of the facts of the past. That’s what was going on. So, this People of the Way, a Jewish movement, was developing a People of the Way, a Gentile movement. The People of the Way, Jewish movement, were able to be brought around to where they could see that this Way [involved more] than they first dreamed of. Unfortunately, not much of the leadership of the Jewish church at the time was able to do that 180-degree turn like Paul did, and like Peter did, and maybe the 110-degree turn that James did. James never quite came around, but he turned around enough to get in and stay in. But what happened is that a Jesus movement within Judaism began to get an identity and then it got connected to this Gentile movement of Jesus. Before long, even though these people were so close together, as history developed they separated because what happens in human groupings is that when there’s a lot at stake we need to © Grand Valley State University �A Charismatic and Open Future Richard A. Rhem Page 6   justify our separate existence. And we justify our separate existence over against the other. It works both ways. Before long the People of the Way were comprised of Jewish and Gentile people, but it becomes a separate movement from Israel, the womb that gave it birth. That Jesus movement was a charismatic movement, which means that it was a movement gifted by the Spirit. In the Christian church today we talk about certain charismatic churches. Well, I want to tell you the whole church is charismatic or it’s nothing. Now, in the whole church some groups come alive suddenly and they experience the power and presence of the Spirit, and they begin to sing and dance and stomp their feet. Then we say, “Oh, they are charismatics.” Well, so are we, although we’re kind of dull and boring. Because what was happening, what moved that Jesus Movement out, was the gust of the Spirit. As Luke tells the story in the Book of Acts, it is the risen Christ whose presence, not in flesh but in Spirit, whose power was still on—the power, the presence, everything that they had experienced with Jesus – was still there. It was within their community. It was a movement of the breath of God, the wind of God, the Spirit of God. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b3336e016660cf125f204f20b8ac97ec.mp3 5bf932278e3edd7385616bf57b0067cc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Epiphany III Series New Testament Series Scripture Text Acts 1:8, Acts 3:19, Acts 10:34, Acts 11 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19950122 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-01-22 Title A name given to the resource The People of the Way: A Charismatic Community, An Open Future Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 22, 1995 entitled "The People of the Way: A Charismatic Community, An Open Future", as part of the series "New Testament Series", on the occasion of Epiphany III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 1:8, Acts 3:19, Acts 10:34, Acts 11. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Followers of Jesus Historical Jesus Liturgical Calendar Spirit of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dc78c69735af4885dffe0e4dfb268b96.jpg 4effe6c6f952a445f20b2edf27e35cae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Summers in Saugatuck-Douglas Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Kutsche Office of Local History Description An account of the resource Collection contains images and documents digitized and collected through the project "Stories of Summer," supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage Grant. The collection aims to document the twin lakeshore communities of Saugatuck and Douglas, Michigan, as they transformed through the state's bustling tourism industry and acceptance of minorities. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1910s-2010s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Various Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich.) Douglas (Mich.) Michigan, Lake Allegan County (Mich.) Beaches Sand dunes Outdoor recreation Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Saugatuck-Douglas History Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Stories of Summer (Common Heritage project) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Text Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-07_SD-Pie-Factory-39 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lloyd J. Harris Pie Co. Title A name given to the resource The Pie Pan Washer Description An account of the resource A black and white photo of the pie pan washer, which is being operated by two women i white dresses. The caption reads: "Designed by Lloyd J. Harriss and built to his specifications this machine does the most thoorough washing and sterillizing job that has ever been introduced in the pie industry." It goes on to explain the way in which the machine works. Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich.) Allegan County (Mich.) Factories Bakeries Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digital file collected by the Kutsche Office of Local History from the Saugatuck Douglas History Center for the Stories of Summer project. Relation A related resource Stories of Summer (project) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/02cd9fb24e9d9f5ccc1b473ccf0e110e.mp3 f9c4e7a981799d63fbddd98b447d5d08 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/64b29f5b4287791a35ae38aa7a422f35.pdf 9aa61f64592a50159b3e73adbb028b2d PDF Text Text The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Fifth sermon in the series: What the Church Has Forgotten, AA Remembers Text: Psalm 32:1; I John 1:10; 2:2 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 22, 1982 Transcription of the spoken sermon "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven..." Psalm 32:1 "If we confess our sins, he ... will forgive our sins and cleanse us..." I John 1:9 How did you react to the Corporate Prayer of Confession this morning? You probably recognized it as one of the more familiar Prayers of Confession because we use it from time to time. If you were ever part of the Episcopal or Anglican tradition you likely knew it by heart. It is the General Confession from the Book of Common Prayer. Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us. But Thou, 0 Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare Thou those, 0 God, who confess their faults, restore Thou those who are penitent; according to Thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, 0 most merciful Father, for His sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of Thy holy name. Amen. I ask about your reaction because it has often elicited strong reaction. In a book written in 1942, an Anglican priest, D.R. Davies, discussed the prayer phrase by phrase. He gave the book the delightful title Down Peacock Feathers. That says it very well. Honestly to offer the General Confession is to have one's wings clipped. It is an exercise in genuine humility. But that is precisely why the prayer elicits such strong reaction - it hits us where it hurts; it assails the citadel of our pride. Davies writes, Nothing has been a subject for greater merriment or jeering raillery in the pages of our modern novelists than that part of the Confession on which © Grand Valley State University   �The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Richard A. Rhem Page 2   people describe themselves as "miserable offenders." I seem to remember that Mr. H.G. Wells found this a particularly rich vein for his brilliant and riotous pen. With his incomparable facility for skinning people's souls, he has pictured Anglican congregations – which, of course, were very bourgeoisie, very complacent and very respectable – describing themselves, with the greatest hypocritical gusto, as "miserable offenders." And somehow the whole confession withered away in the contempt that flowed from Mr. Wells' pen. And how his readers - of whom I was one rocked with laughter. That was a long time ago, and today we are rocking with something that is very different from laughter. Mr. Wells himself has ceased to laugh. (p. 116, The Centenary Press, 1942) D. R. Davies makes reference to World War II and the great peril in which Europe and the world stood. In a most penetrating analysis of the historical scene of his time he shows that the General Confession is not overstated but rather the kind of humble confession that alone is fitting in the world writ large with war, bloodshed and violence. I came across another reference to the General Confession in a more recent book, Madeline L'Engle's A Circle Of Quiet. She was raised in the Episcopal tradition and attended an Episcopal boarding school. She tells of her encounter with the prayer, which was part of the liturgy at chapel every morning. She writes, When it came to the General Confession in Morning Prayer I was, with proper humility, willing to concede that I occasionally left undone a few things which I ought to have done (I was, after all, very busy), and I occasionally did a few things which I ought not to have done. (I was, after all, not "pi" (pious); but I was not willing to say that I was a miserable offender and that there was no health in me. (p. 233. The Seabury Press, 1972) Later in her life, having married and in process of raising her family, she lived in New England and attended a Congregational Church. They came out with a new hymnal which had a section of prayers in it, as does our own. The General Confession was printed but without the two offending phrases. She says. It is an interesting commentary on human nature in this confused century that precisely those words which I could not, would not say as an adolescent were deleted from the congregational prayers. But by now a mature Madeline L'Engle had lived enough and had enough selfknowledge to know that it was precisely those words which reflected honestly the human condition. She goes on, © Grand Valley State University �The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Richard A. Rhem Page 3   By that time, in the midst of my fumbling agnosticism, it had become very clear to me that I was a miserable offender, and that there was very little health in me. (p. 234) She told her pastor, It's all right to think you can be virtuous if you try just a little harder when you're an adolescent, but I don't like having the Church behave like an adolescent. (p. 234) Coming from a different perspective, Robert Schuller contends that the Prayer of Confession in the liturgy is detrimental to human self-esteem. You will never have to confess to being a "miserable offender" with "no health in you" at the Crystal Cathedral. Schuller has a point. The Church has certainly done the world a disservice with its dour emphasis on human sin and failure and its failure to communicate effectively the Gospel of Grace. He is quite right that the Church has been responsible for creating for many of its people low self-esteem, producing a lack of ego strength and thus crippling psyches. But the question remains whether the remedy lies in deleting the Prayer of Confession from the liturgy. If we were to submit the question to Alcoholics Anonymous they would tell us in no uncertain terms that to drop the element of confession of sin from the Church's liturgy and from the Christian life is to court disaster. I suspect there is a good deal more honest and humble confession going on in AA than in the Christian Church, and AA claims that only through such confession and forgiveness is human transformation possible. Human transformation. That is what we are about. Since it seems to be happening with greater regularity and greater effectiveness through AA than through the Church, perhaps we ought to ask why. That is what this series is about. What the Church has forgotten, AA remembers. What is the central act of Christian worship has become a practical steppingstone for the recovering alcoholic on the way to health and wholeness. AA recognizes the truth D.R. Davies was driving at; the great human problem is to rein in the peacock feathers. Step One was a giant first step: We admitted we were powerless...our lives were unmanageable. © Grand Valley State University �The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Steps Two and Three were a reaching beyond oneself to a Power greater than oneself to find help - to be rescued. Step Four was the beginning of the life of sobriety - a searching and fearless moral inventory, revealing the roots of one's drinking in character faults. But having gained self-understanding, having gotten insight into who one really is, standing exposed with all one's glaring faults, what does one do? To whom does one turn; what does one need? It must be obvious: one needs Grace. One needs forgiveness, the assurance that all the wrongs one has discovered and all the damage one has done do not hang around one's neck like an albatross, but rather are removed, pardoned, covered. One needs the freedom that God's forgiving grace alone can provide. That is where we are: Step Five: We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step Six: We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step Seven: We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. There you have confession in the life of the recovering alcoholic. Again, here there is great wisdom and insight. After taking the moral inventory, which we noted last week was a painful process, the alcoholic is counseled to come to terms with it. It must be admitted to God. Now that is an awesome assignment. If we have a sense of the majesty and holiness of God, then, to borrow a phrase from Kierkegaard, we will come before Him with "fear and trembling." But that is not all that is required. We must have faced our faults honestly and owned them ourselves and then, further, shared them with another human being. It is one thing to tell God; but we can get accustomed to that. It is another thing to blurt out the whole sorry tale to another person. Confessing our sins to another gives a certain concreteness to the act. Here is the wisdom of the Roman Catholic practice of the confessional booth. You have no doubt heard many Protestant sermons affirm that Jesus is our High Priest. He is the one mediator between God and humankind and we need no other priest. That is true in theory, but it is less than successful in practice. We should have reflected more carefully before we did away with the booth. Did not God reach us in the flesh of Jesus? Should not the incarnation have given us a clue that God's love and grace and forgiveness are always mediated through the tangible encounter with another? © Grand Valley State University �The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Richard A. Rhem Page 5   If we really believe and act on the priesthood of all believers, we will still be all right. This is in fact what happens in AA. Fellow members hear confessions and mediate grace. This we must learn again in the Church, for there will be no profound religious experience for anyone, who has not given place to confession in the Christian life. The Scriptures give wide place to the experience of confession and forgiveness. Psalm 32 is a classic statement of the confession of sin and the joy of forgiveness. The opening verse is a ringing announcement of the happiness of one who has confessed his sin and experienced the grace of God's forgiveness. The Psalm is attributed to David. This would then be a song written sometime after that passionate cry for cleansing found in Psalm 51. David loved and longed for a woman who belonged to another. He took her to himself and she conceived his child. Failing to cover the transgression, he had her husband, Uriah, the Captain of his army, exposed to the thick of the battle where he lost his life. He then took Bathsheba as his wife and she bore a child. David lived with all that on his conscience and the experience, he writes, on reflection, was pure hell. Confronted with his sin by Nathan, the prophet, he acknowledged his wrong and sought the mercy of God. Now he sings of that experience, expressing vividly both the agony of guilt and the freedom of forgiveness. The New Testament tells the story of Jesus who came to mediate to us a knowledge of God, of His grace and to secure for us, for the whole world, the forgiveness of sin. John writes in his First Letter, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is the Gospel. This is the Good News! To those who truly repent, acknowledging their sin, genuinely seeking its removal, God will grant forgiveness, full and free. Involved in that forgiveness is the love of God and the agony of crucifixion. He will forgive us and cleanse us because Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree, in the words of Peter, and God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, in the words of Paul. In another marvelous expression of the same truth, Peter says, There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. © Grand Valley State University �The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Richard A. Rhem Page 6   This is the word we so desperately need. There is no health in us and, as AA well knows, as long as wrong rages within us, unrecognized, unacknowledged and unconfirmed, it creates hell within us. The manifold disturbance of human personality is the devastation wrought by wrong-headedness and wrongheartedness, rationalized, excused, justified by the person who uses huge amounts of emotional and psychological energy to repress the truth. Great relief has come to troubled people through the insights of psychoanalysis, and Sigmund Freud has made a large contribution to our knowledge of ourselves. There is a great deal of distortion and misconception, resulting in a sense of guilt which has no basis in reality and much relief can come to one who gains such insight. But when all wrong-thinking and damaging psychological experience has been discovered and exposed, there is still one great problem remaining... Real guilt. For we are wrong. And for this hard core of real guilt, what we need is not insight, but forgiveness. Grace is our only hope. It is precisely Grace that is offered through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Psychoanalysis can expose and reveal; it cannot heal. Only God can heal; if we confess our sin, He forgives our sin. The General Confession can be prayed only by one who has faced his sin, admitted it, and sincerely desires its removal. It is a strong statement: There is no health in us, miserable offenders. Why does that offend us so? Perhaps we can understand that better if we remember that it is offensive both inside and out of the Church, but not in an AA meeting. For those outside the Church there is still the need to mask the truth, to deny the dark reality. For those taking their chances, leaning on their own resources, there is the necessity of self-justification. No one going it alone is about to admit such a devastating truth. For those in the Church - at least for many in most churches the reality of sin has been handled, not in the context of grace, but in a moralizing, judgmental manner. Too often in the Church we have not addressed the biblical doctrine of sin but rather have condemned sins, too often concentrating on minor matters while leaving great issues untouched. I am convinced that any serious, thinking person can read the biblical doctrine of sin written large in the course of human history as well as reading it in his own heart. And such a person will recognize that the only answer to radical evil is the radical grace of God. But the Church majors in minors and denies its own message of grace with the self-righteous posture of the Pharisee. Congratulating itself that it is not like others, it fails to take sin with sufficient seriousness. © Grand Valley State University �The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Richard A. Rhem Page 7   Here we must learn from AA. There is no soft-pedaling what is wrong. The recovering alcoholic knows too well the folly of excusing his behavior. He learns to say, "I am wrong." And in the environment of grace provided by those in the meeting - which is concretely an expression of the grace of God - he dares to look at himself honestly. He experiences grace. He finds himself forgiven. He learns to forgive himself and others. Let me suggest that, if the Church is to be a redeeming, reconciling fellowship, if the Church would be the instrument to set people free, give them hope and a new self-image, filling them with self-esteem, the best method is not to downplay the problem but to lift up the forgiving grace of God that is the salvation to our greatest human need. The Church, then, must reclaim this truth - that the Grace of God, mediated through persons, alone brings health and wholeness to humankind. The Church is not institution. The Church is you and me, in honest relationship together, embraced by the Grace of God. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Series What the Church Has Forgotten, AA Remembers Scripture Text Psalm 32:1, I John 1:9 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19820822 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-08-22 Title A name given to the resource The Place of Confession in the Christian Life Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 22, 1982 entitled "The Place of Confession in the Christian Life", as part of the series "What the Church Has Forgotten, AA Remembers", at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 32:1, I John 1:9. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Alcoholics Anonymous Confession Forgiveness Grace Transformation https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8fb0e8af7f94eacb7df373b922927353.jpg 07e5d434772d62a69d08b14adce55f4d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PS3527.I35 P6 1907 c.2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01_Bindings0455 Title A name given to the resource The Port of Missing Men Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Booth, Franklin (Designer) Description An account of the resource Binding of The Port of Missing Men, by Meredith Nicholson, published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1907. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1907 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4558969206963df0a78c1458e3f75666.pdf f276c3fc17f166177f665d34b04d3de4 PDF Text Text West Michigan Women's Studies Council Presents: bell hooks The Positive Power of Feminism Monday October 2, 2006 '~:00 p.m. Talk to be followed by a reception and book signing Fountain Street Church 24 Fountain Street NE, Grand Rapids, Ml 49503 FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Sign Interpreter Free Screening and Panel Discussion of bell hooks' "Cultural Criticism and Transformation" 7:00 p.m. September 25 Wealthy Theater, 1130 Wealthy St., SE 7:00 p.m. September 27 Grand Rapids Public Library Auditorium , 111 Library St., NE For more information call GVSU Women's Center (616) 331-2748 http://wmwsc.org ,...-:.....• .··-•~.............;:' . .•. ~.,•.... ··~-, ·-.,..,.. ' ·~·,. ' ~·••· · ~ ,~''~•··· .... . ' ..... ,, ' ... ' ..... .... •-. .. :. ••f •i • ,, ••• , ..... 7 ••, • • •• - •••• , I I ~ RAD I 0 ' • ' \ • ', . •,r I··- •··-.. Community Sponsors ;-. ': ''J' •,. ,_ "' • • •• • ~ ~ t •'... '1.. -.~~ .. •, I ,, J f I• • • CALV IN 1'. :1 • .,~ •·• .. , ~ ~.J.t..·• ..... GRAND RAPIDS PUBLIC LIBRARY AQ!JINAS COLLEGE Graphic design: Lisa M. Yarost \,· ..·.- ,:. '•• ••"',• ,t"t·;,••"' 1 Media Sponsor I t\ ' ~ 1 I f 1 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource GVSU Sexuality and Gender Flyers Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Rainbow Resource Center Women and Gender Studies Department Women's Commission Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity Description An account of the resource Digitized posters, flyers, event notices, and other materials relating to gender expression and sexuality at Grand Valley State University, with materials spanning from 1974 to 2019. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974/2019 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digitized from collections at the Rainbow Resource Center (formerly the Milton E. Ford LGBT Resource Center), Women and Gender Studies Department, Women's Commission, and Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Gender identity Gender expression Sexual orientation Women's studies Queer theory Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource eng Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09_SGF_WGS_2006_InvitedSpeaker_bellhooks_Poster.pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Women's Center Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-10-02 Title A name given to the resource The Positive Power of Feminism Description An account of the resource Poster including the date, time and location for the lecture by bell hooks. Signed by the speaker with text that says: "to love again" Subject The topic of the resource Community centers Women's studies Lectures and lecturing Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c17d0e217ef68ab9da3514640150ee86.mp3 a4cfadf0c139195f8b50715186017661 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost XV Series Human Transformation: The Gospel & AA Scripture Text Luke 11:1, Luke 22:42, Luke 23:34, 46 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19890827 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-08-27 Title A name given to the resource The Practice of the Presence of God: Serenity Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 27, 1989 entitled "The Practice of the Presence of God: Serenity", as part of the series "Human Transformation: The Gospel & AA", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 11:1, Luke 22:42, Luke 23:34, 46. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/825350f5eb80af66371989503859dd04.pdf 186ce621cf2f895f1c94b4e5a444377b PDF Text Text The Presence of God in the Face of Love John 1:1-5, 14, 18; I John 4: 7-8, 12, 16 Richard A. Rhem Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation Muskegon, Michigan April 29, 2012 God is Love. Such a familiar affirmation; who would argue with that? Doesn’t everyone believe God is Love? But so what? What difference does it make? What has that to do with the everyday reality we live? God is love – has it become perhaps a cliché? It is one of those religious claims in the great traditions in one form or another which is seldom questioned but which too often remains a belief that has little real impact on the manner of our living. Hopefully we live in loving relationships in our families and our communities, but the human family remains divided – where would one begin the catalogue of current conflicts around the globe and the toxic atmosphere we live and breathe in our own nation destroys relationships and human community. One would never suspect that for the majority of us it is assumed that God is love. And that may be why it fails to create loving community – it is a belief but too rarely a practice and good religion is not a matter of belief but practice. Perhaps that is obvious in a community like this but it is far from obvious in much of the Christian Church and I understand that from my own experience. Perhaps the simplest way I can explain my own pilgrimage as a Christian and, indeed, a minister of the Gospel is to say I have moved from being a vertical Christian to being a horizontal Christian. Let me explain what I mean. As a vertical Christian I understood myself as a child of God through Jesus Christ and “through Jesus Christ” meant through his death on the cross as an atonement for my sins, gaining thereby for me forgiveness and peace with God. Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world through his death offered as a sacrifice to God puts me in relationship with God. As it has been popularly expressed, Jesus took the rap for me. This is a vertical transaction – I, now with sins forgiven, am in relationship with God. To be fair, the Heidelberg Catechism on which I was nurtured has three sections: 1. How great my sins and miseries are; 2. How I may be delivered from my sin; © Grand Valley State University   �Presence of God in the Face of Love Richard A. Rhem Page 2   and, thirdly, now moving from the vertical issue with God through Jesus’ atoning death, 3. How I ought to live in gratitude for such salvation. The third section deals with the Ten Commandments and The Lord’s Prayer – the redeemed person lives a life of obedience and prayer and thus a Christian expresses in her life gratitude for salvation. Thus there is a horizontal dimension to the old scheme of salvation I’ve described as vertical, but such an understanding is first and foremost a vertical transaction between God and me. I go into this in such detail because we are talking about two radically different understandings of Christian faith. The traditional, orthodox understanding in which I was nurtured, and which in the early part of my ministry I preached, was marked by God, wholly other and beyond us, who was the focus of salvation out of which was to flow a Christian life of obedience and prayer. So what is the conception of Christian faith I’ve called the horizontal Christian understanding? It is an understanding of Christian faith as experiencing the God who is Love in the love of my brothers and sisters. Such an understanding begins with the affirmation – God is Love – and holds that God is experienced in the concrete love of another. Thus, not in a vertical event through Jesus’ death as atonement opening Heaven’s gates, but in the horizontal human relationships as the medium through which God is experienced. Let me be clear; in moving to Scripture I am selective. The biblical case for the vertical conception of salvation and knowing God is strong. But there is another track and it is that track to which I would point you, a track I believe that has the potential to lift the claim “God is Love” to our attention such that we look for the experience of God in the face of our neighbor and trigger a chain reaction of love that has the potential to transform the human adventure. My lessons are John 1: 1-5, 14, 18 and I John 4: 7-8, 12, 16. John 1:1 reminds us of Genesis 1:1 – the creation of the Word (Logos) of God. Now the Gospel writer will tell the story of Jesus but roots that story in Creation, in Israel’s history. So in John 1:1 he says “In the beginning was the Word (logos).” Someone translated that as “in the beginning was The Divine Intention” – the Divine Intention to effect Creation. And then, to tell the story of Jesus, the writer in verse 14 says, “...the Word (logos) became flesh and lived among us.” The Christian Church speaks of this as the Incarnation; it is the Christmas story in a sentence. The Gospel writer roots the Incarnation in the original creation and then declares that the Eternal Word became enfleshed, became human. Now the clue to the Sacred Mystery is in a human being. In the face of Jesus we get a clue to the Being of God. The writer acknowledges, No one has ever seen God. © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God in the Face of Love Richard A. Rhem Page 3   but he declares, It is God the only Son...who has made God known. That is the Good News of the Christmas Gospel – now we have in human form a clue to the Being of God. But it gets better: I read from John’s First Letter because he picks up the theme and marvelously broadens it. He calls us to love one another because “God is love.” He then picks up the Gospel writer’s acknowledgement, repeating it: No one has ever seen God. It is at that point that the Gospel writer points to Jesus, the Word become flesh, in whose face we see God. But now in the First Letter of John, after repeating, “No one has ever seen God,” this writer greatly expands the Gospel’s claim. Now, not just the face of Jesus as the locus of revelation; now he writes, following the acknowledgement, “No one has ever seen God,” that If we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us...God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. (Note: not those who abide in God abide in love. No, rather amazingly, radically even, he says those who live in love live in God.) Thus the title of my message: “The Presence of God in the Face of Love.” In the Face of Love – the horizontal love of human to human – the Presence of God is known and experienced. God is love. God is known, experienced in loving. Perhaps by now you are wondering if I’m going to tell you anything you didn’t know and believe before you came. And maybe that is my point: God is Love. God is experienced as we love across the whole human community. Ho hum.... And the whole human community continues with war, violence, and conflict. Yesterday’s New York Times had a long article about Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s nuancing comments by his Defense Chief, General Gantz, who had seemed to suggest Iran’s leadership was rational, thus seeming to strike a less © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God in the Face of Love Richard A. Rhem Page 4   militant tone than has been that of Barak. As I read the piece my mind was full of the call to love and I realized anew the urgency of moving love out of the arena of personal relationships and into the arena of international affairs. If we don’t, we risk ending the human experiment. I’m reminded of James Carroll’s House of War, in which he documents the rise of American Empire and the domination of Pentagon politics. It was in the wake of our use of atomic bombs over Japan in 1945 that Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote a memorandum to President Truman. Carroll writes, ...less than a month after Japan’s surrender, and just over a month after the detonation of the Nagasaki bomb, Stimson composed an urgent “Memorandum for the President,” which began, “Subject: Proposed Action for Control of Atomic Bombs.” First Stimson told the president what the dawning of the nuclear age meant: If the atomic bomb were merely another though more devastating military weapon to be assimilated into our pattern of international relations, it would be one thing. We could then follow the old custom of secrecy and nationalistic military superiority relying on international caution to prescribe [sic] future use of the weapon as we did with gas. But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit into the old concepts. I think it really caps the climax of the race between man’s growing technical power for destructiveness and his psychological power of self-control and group-control – his moral power. If so, our method of approach to the Russians is a question of the most vital importance in the evolution of human progress...The crux of the problem is Russia. Carroll comments further: “To put the matter concisely,” Stimson wrote, he proposed that the United States take immediate steps to “enter into an arrangement with the Russians, the general purpose of which would be to control and limit the use of the atomic bomb.” He suggested that by bringing the Soviets into our confidence, they would have reason to believe it when Americans said that “we would stop work on any further improvement in, or manufacture of, the bomb as a military weapon, provided the Russians and the British would agree with us that in no event will they or we use a bomb as an instrument of war unless all three governments agree to that use.” Give up the secret. Give up the monopoly. Give up sovereignty over use. Give up control of existing bombs. Stimson, in the cover letter that accompanied this memo, summed up his proposal by using the word “share” twice. (p. 113f) © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God in the Face of Love Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Tragically Stimson’s counsel was not heeded. Strongly against it was Secretary of State James Byrnes who stood adamantly against any attempt to cooperate with Stalin. Byrnes prevailed and the consequence was the long, costly and dangerous Cold War that caused us to live on the brink of disaster, living in terror of mutual assured destruction. And not only the Cold War but still in the present, North Korea’s saber rattling to say nothing of the threat of a strike on Iran and the potential for a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. One might respond regarding the Stimson Byrnes conflict that I’m operating with 20/20 hindsight. Not so! Rather that critical moment of history with its disastrous results was determined by two different mind-sets, two different spirits – a spirit of trust vs. a spirit of fear. Carroll points out that Stimson was fully aware of Byrnes’ opposition to his position regarding nuclear weapons. Carroll writes, Very much against Byrnes, in one of the most remarkable statements ever made by an American statesman, Stimson presumed to assert in his September 11 letter to Truman, “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show him your distrust. (p. 114) He speaks of trust. I am speaking of love but they are related. One who loves, trusts. In the reading from First John 4 we read in the 18th verse, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear...” A heart that loves enables trust and removes fear. We know that is true in our interpersonal relationships but, as the Stimson memo demonstrates, it is just as true in international affairs. It is universally true because God is Love and Love is God. I lunch weekly with a friend, present here, and we speak of our lunches as our Wednesday Liturgy. Peter Hart has put me on the trail of some major works on this morning’s reflection: Pitirim Sorokin’s The Ways and Power of Love which, incidentally, relates his life work on the study of Love stimulated by the emergence of the Atomic Age; and Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization, which claims it belongs to the core of the human to feel empathy for another human being rather than living over against, by nature aggressive, materialistic, utilitarian and self-interested, basing his claim on recent brain science and child development. In the past few months we have engaged in an internet conversation with his philosopher- theologian brother Hendrik, on various subjects but, somehow or other, the nature of God is never far from the discussion, God as Love and the implications for our lives and human wellbeing. In a recent post “Henk” wrote “Reflections on Love and love” which emerged from our “conversations” via the © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God in the Face of Love Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Internet. He introduced his reflection with reference to his loss of both a daughter and his wife as well as his own health: My daughter Esther died of cancer the Tuesday of Easter week 2007. The moon was full. This year the Easter dates will be the same and the moon will again be full. My wife Anita died December 14, 2009, my birthday. In February my own cancer, almost forgotten, re-entered my life with a potential of death. All of this came together in reflections that appeared in letters and then in a brief summary: Reflections on Love and love Hendrik Hart Lent 2012 I have of late given much thought to ... the meaning of love and Love. I think that, at its core, a human life gains immeasurably in depth and scope when it is exposed to giving or receiving love as the primeval energy of all that is. Once we begin to be in the embrace of Love and begin to experience ourselves as vessels of love, we become aware of an irresistible energy that compels us to become centered, in all we do, in that energy; to seek for ourselves and others peace, justice, joy, life, fulfillment, patience, hope, life and much more. Love then begins to guide us in setting our priorities, distributing our energies, choosing our relationships, valuing our involvements and in so doing fills us with a blessed awareness that whenever and wherever we follow this guidance we find that, step by step but irresistibly, darkness recedes and light spreads. We become driven by a Spirit (Ruah, Wind, Breath) that blows where it wills and that without exception harvests light and life wherever it blows. The more we trust the Presence of Love in our life the more we ourselves become a presence of love in that Presence. That expresses what I would affirm in this meditation: Love is at the core of reality, the creative center of the cosmos. The grain of the universe is Love. It is to love we are called every day in every way to one and all. It is the Way of Jesus for me, a very concrete way to which I am called, which I betray and fail miserably to fulfill. Yet a way I will not deny or rationalize away, a way I will self-consciously cultivate because it compels me. I choose that way and will not give up in spite of falling so far short. Love is the answer to the world’s violence, to humanity’s brokenness and finally Love will prevail because there can be no doubt, Love wins and in the face of Love I experience the Presence of God. No one has ever seen God. To dwell in Love is to dwell in God, for God is Love. © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God in the Face of Love Richard A. Rhem References: James Carroll. House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. Houghton Miflin Harcourt, 2006. © Grand Valley State University Page 7   � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5749ebdaaa1e9e20fb8141e28a0ac72e.m4v 6fa49fd4cf4b9cbca9cb7b0cf0a2ae0b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Harbour Unitarian Universalist Church Scripture Text John 1:1-5, 14, 18, I John 4:7-8, 12 & 16 Location The location of the interview Harbor Unitarian Universalist, Muskegon References James Carroll. House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. Houghton Miflin Harcourt, 2006. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20120429 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-04-29 Title A name given to the resource The Presence of God in the Face of Love Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 29, 2012 entitled "The Presence of God in the Face of Love", on the occasion of Harbour Unitarian Universalist Church, at Harbor Unitarian Universalist, Muskegon. Scripture references: John 1:1-5, 14, 18, I John 4:7-8, 12 & 16. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/x-m4v application/pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives God as Love Nonviolence https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dc35bd2dad1d50bcd97d74fce79cd9b3.mp3 b894fd7f6586dd05b576240465ef03f1 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/58576bf55689509de0f96a8d4bc3ca33.pdf f5b4e87aaaec8924aad3d60eda211d74 PDF Text Text The Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Pentecost XIII I Kings 19:1-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 26, 2001 Transcription of the spoken sermon Gary Eberle, in The Geography of Nowhere, commenting on the passing of the age of faith, uses a marvelous poem by Philip Larkin, an English poet. Eberle comments, In "Church Going," Larkin imagines that someday Christian churches will fall into disuse and ruin as had Stonehenge and the Acropolis. Perhaps scholars will come with their notepads, or the superstitious will come at night to perform half-remembered magic. He sees the old church becoming: A shape less recognisable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was... And yet, he notes one thing about this place will not pass away - the inner spiritual need and hunger of the beings who built it in the first place. A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blest air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete. Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious. And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in. If only that so many dead lie round. Sometimes it happens as it happened to Elijah. It's no accident that chapter 19 follows chapter 18 and the story of Israel's history recorded in I Kings. Chapter 18 is that story of the duel between Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh, and the prophets © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 2 of Baal, introduced by Queen Jezebel, the foreign royalty who had brought another worship and cult into the very heart of Israel. Do you remember that story of the prophets of Baal in a contest with Elijah? They pray for their gods to consume the sacrifice and the heavens are brass and there is no response. Then, Elijah, as the sacrifice is drowned in water, calls upon the name of the God of Israel, and fire consumes the sacrifice. What a mountaintop experience, literally. As is often the case after such spiritual exhilaration, there set in upon Elijah a deep depression, for he was struggling in a very difficult time in the life of Israel. It was not an easy time to be a prophet of God, and he fled to Mount Horeb or Sinai, the mountain of Moses and the encounter of God with Israel in the Exodus experience. God is not altogether sympathetic with this prophet. He says, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" And Elijah pours out his self-pity as though he and he alone is left faithful to God. And then, God says, "Stand in the mouth of the cave," after which Elijah experiences dramatic effects in nature, an earthquake, wind and fire. But, God is not in any of these dramatic displays, but rather, in the sound of sheer silence. Richard Elliott Friedman, commenting on that passage, notes that that is the point of transition in Israel's experience of God. That experience is the last time it is recorded, "And God said ..." Early on in the scripture story of Israel, God is speaking all the time and acting all the time, but now the sound of sheer silence is a signal that theophany is over and, along with that, is increasing responsibility on the part of humanity to carry on the story. There was a shift, and the writers who put the story together were obviously signaling that shift and that juxtaposition of Carmel and Sinai and silence. The scriptures signal those cultural shifts in the understanding of God and of reality and of all things that pertain to our human experience, and we know those cultural shifts, as well. In our own Christian tradition, there was a move in those early centuries from classical Greek and Roman culture to a culture that, over a few centuries, became totally shaped by the Christian vision, finding its apex in that high Medieval period, only to be shifted in the Renaissance to a focus from heaven to earth. And after the detour of the 16th century Reformation, there was the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment and the whole Modern period, and that Modern period, of which we are the heirs, saw the rise of secularism and, to large extent, the questioning of God and the undercutting of that faith tradition which had built cathedrals. Gary Eberle, speaking about our own present Post-Modem situation, points to the cathedral as the symbol of the Modern period, and, as a matter of fact, how the cathedrals of Europe particularly have become more tourist stations than places of worship. Those of you who have gone on tour with me know that they are always ABC tours, "another bloody cathedral." So, I have been guilty of turning them into tourist places, but not simply tourist places, for we have often stopped and © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 3 worshiped in those holy places. Nancy will never forgive me for one Sunday when the two of us were alone in Rome and we spent five hours in St. Peter's, if you can believe it. It is not as though that holy space does not continue to speak, but there is no question that the cathedral is a monument to the faith of an earlier age and, in modernity, the faith that built the cathedrals has been seriously challenged and in many ways undercut. For the thing that marks the modern age is the rise of critical thinking and the rejection of all forms of authoritarianism, whether it be the authoritarian claim of the Church as institution, or of the tradition as in Eastern Orthodoxy, or of the Bible, as in Protestantism. The thing that marked modernity was that rise of critical thinking, the scientific method, the empirical method of investigation, no longer taking some word from prelate or scriptures or tradition as authoritative, but rather going out and looking at the world, experimenting, probing, investigating, accepting nothing on some authoritative word, but with critical rationality evaluating the evidence. That is what has marked modernity. In large measure, the Modern movement has been a movement very, very seriously weakening the Christian Church. I sat a couple of weeks ago with the New Testament professor that I studied under in Leiden back in the 60s. He was in the area and called, and I picked him up and we shared a breakfast together, and we talked about the European situation today. For example, in England just 6% of the people go to worship in that land that has these magnificent cathedrals and this grand Anglican tradition. We talked about the Netherlands where he still lives and where I had so many wonderful experiences. I looked across the table and I said to him, "How long can it last?" He said, "Jesus came, in my understanding, not to build the church, but to proclaim the kingdom." I like that, because what he was saying is what the poet Larkin is saying, that institutions, forms and structures may flourish and flounder. They may rise and pass away. But, somehow or other, there is that within the depths of the human being that will seek out a place like this, a serious place, on serious ground, because no matter how secular, no matter how lacking in any kind of observance, there will now and again, here and there, rise up that which will surprise that hunger and that yearning for the presence of God, for that which is sacred and holy, for that dimension that always accompanies our ordinary human experience, suggesting something more, not a supernatural being "out there" that runs the universe. I came across the other day a sermon of a year ago when, out in front of our house, a child was drowned in the waves of Lake Michigan, and I remember preaching that Sunday on the pitiless universe. God does not interrupt the rip tide or the raging surf, and God plays no favorites. That understanding of God, if we would be honest, has been undercut by everything that we know, thanks to the natural sciences and the investigation of all of those respective disciplines of © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 4 human learning. But, does that mean, because that image of God that has marked our tradition in the past, does that mean, then, that God is dead? Richard Elliott Friedman, who comments on the Isaiah experience in his book, The Hidden Face of God, uses Nietzsche as the prophetic voice of the modern, Nietzsche who said, "God is dead." Nietzsche said it with not any sense of triumphalism. Nietzsche said it in anguish because he said, "God is dead and we have killed God." The modern with all of the wonder and all of the amazement, and all of the fruitfulness that has come to us, to the exercise of critical rationality and the empirical method - all of the wonders of mathematical formulas that have tied our earth into a network of communication creating the possibility of a global community - all of that, all of that without the sense of the presence of God becomes empty and hollow and now and again, here and there, we will be surprised by a hunger because we have been created with a God-shaped hole in our soul. And so, we have entered into a period of time which is called the Post-Modem period. The Post-Modem period into which we have entered and the periodization of cultural shifts is very untidy, but basically this 20th century has come to see the limitations of human rationality. And so, when medievalism broke apart and authoritarianism was undercut, we entered into the Modern period, and there was a sharp break. When modernity comes to understand its limits, we have called it Post-Modernity, which means it is after the modern. It is not a rejection of the modern, for we had better never reject all of the fruitfulness that has come from critical thinking, from critical rationality, from the use of intelligence, from the mind that probes and investigates. We cannot go back to some authoritarian claim that hears voices from heaven. The exercise of critical intelligence is a continuing and ongoing dimension of the Post-Modem period. But, Post-Modernism has come to be a time in which it is more and more being recognized that intelligence, thinking which we value so highly here, is not enough. Intelligence and attention, or I could call it awareness. Or, I could call it simply an openness to that which is beyond the limits of our minds to grapple and grasp, an openness to that which is sacred and holy and which permeates the whole of reality so that I would speak of God not as some supernatural being "out there," beyond creation, intervening and tinkering and arranging here and there, arbitrarily and capriciously, but rather the God of whom I would speak naturally as the Soul of the universe, as the creative Spirit that now and again rises into our conscious attention or awareness, taking the time consciously and intentionally to open our lives to that dimension that cannot finally be captured in a syllogism or a mathematical formula or a test-tube, to that dimension that demands a poem or a painting, a sunset or a starry heaven, a gathering with friends in a common search for the touch of God of which Peter spoke earlier, brushed with angels' wings, washed by grace. How? © Grand Valley State University �Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Richard A. Rhem Page 5 Who can tell? When? Who could predict? But awareness that, as I live my ordinary days, what I can see and touch and handle is permeated with something that is always beyond my grasp, that alwayspresent to the soul that seeks and searches and is open, the presence of God. Not in spite of my mind, my intelligence, my probing, my serious thinking, but, when all of that is done, an attention to a reality that once was so beautifully expressed in the stone of a cathedral, but continues here and now to be expressed in a variety of ways. Mies van derRohe, one of the great architects of the 20th century, who with Frank Lloyd Wright and a couple of others, were the pioneers of the clean lines and objectivity and efficiency of architectural form, was asked shortly before he died, "If you could build what you have never been able to build, what would you build?" (I should note here that post-modernism came to expression first in architecture.) This leading modem architect of form and structure that has marked the city and the skyscraper, this one said shortly before he died, "If I could build what I have never been able to build, I would build a cathedral." Indeed. References: Richard Elliott Friedman. The Hidden Face of God. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. “Church Going,” by Philip Larkin, in The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern World. Sheed and Ward, 1995. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost XIII Scripture Text I Kings 19:1-14 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Richard Elliott Friedman. The Hidden Face of God. HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. "Church Going," by Philip Larkin, in The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern World. Sheed and Ward, 1995. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20010826 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-08-26 Title A name given to the resource The Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 26, 2001 entitled "The Presence of God: Intelligence and Attention", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Kings 19:1-14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Critical Thinking Open Mind PostModern Sacred Dimension of reality https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d8f8508b751adecb16235d46510f5316.pdf 22e41ed765b9ee42c6692908863753d0 PDF Text Text THE PRICE OF PLEASURE: PORNOGRAPHY, SEXUALITY AND RELATIONSHIPS How far will the porn industry go? Who is impacted? What is the effect on our society? The film paints both a nuanced =--c::-~-~ andcomplex ·p ortraif of novtplecisure~ drid priiri; -rom-merceand power, and liberty and responsibility are intertwined in the most intimate aspects of human relations. It also examines the unprecedented role that commercial pornography now occupies in U.S. popular culture. Robert Jensen will lead the discussion as we critically examine pornography and its impact on men and women. ROBERT JENSEN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM University of Texas, Austin Author of the book : "Getting Off: Pornograp hy and the End of Masculinity" WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2011 PERE MARQUETTE ROOM (RM 2204) - KIRKHOF CENTER 6 :00pm - showing of video "The Price of Pleasure" (Viewer Discretion Strongly Advised) followed by discussion with Robert Jensen . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource GVSU Sexuality and Gender Flyers Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Rainbow Resource Center Women and Gender Studies Department Women's Commission Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity Description An account of the resource Digitized posters, flyers, event notices, and other materials relating to gender expression and sexuality at Grand Valley State University, with materials spanning from 1974 to 2019. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974/2019 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digitized from collections at the Rainbow Resource Center (formerly the Milton E. Ford LGBT Resource Center), Women and Gender Studies Department, Women's Commission, and Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Gender identity Gender expression Sexual orientation Women's studies Queer theory Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource eng Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09_SGF_WGS_2011_InvitedSpeaker_RobertJensen_Poster.pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Women's Center Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-03-16 Title A name given to the resource The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships Description An account of the resource Poster with a synopsis of the topic, as well as the time, date and location of the discussion. Subject The topic of the resource Community centers Pornography Sex in mass media Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/91fcb6cdef948fed53054e970e3ddf2b.jpg baad7de06f9e5f9a96617d530a9f8b65 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. HV9468 .T72 1908 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01_Bindings0204 Title A name given to the resource The Prisoner at the Bar Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Decorative Designers (Designers) Description An account of the resource Binding of The Prisoner at the Bar: Sidelights on the Administration of Criminal Justice, by Arthur Train, published by C. Scribner's Sons, 1908. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1908 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3331b9a474ab3ded2bd6865b662c6e2c.jpg 748c0a6416a4f87f7ff3684d94441787 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PS3503.U56 W37 1943 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01_Bindings0314 Title A name given to the resource The Prisoner at the Bar Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Decorative Designers (Designer) Description An account of the resource Binding of The Prisoner at the Bar, by Arthur Train, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1906 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/26e9286327863eb428caebb1b1672d3d.pdf 64663dc1aeea0b82478414649c3e549d PDF Text Text Stories Jesus Told The Prodigal Son’s Father “Do You Suppose God Is Really Like That?” Richard A. Rhem Luke 15:11-24 Editorial Note: The parable of the Prodigal Son was explored in the first of a three part series entitled “Stories Jesus Told” and preached at the Lakeshore Interfaith Community in Ganges on August 19, 2007. It’s a story that was also the subject of the following sermon, preached in 2004 as the fifth in a Lenten series entitled “REMEMBERING JESUS, EXPERIENCING GOD”. Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, Michigan. March 28, 2004 This Lenten season we are remembering Jesus, hoping thereby to experience God, and we remember Jesus not because he was alien, a God-figure from beyond that entered our history, donned our human nature and effected our salvation only to return to that eternal state. Rather, we remember Jesus because as John’s Gospel said, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” and that marvelous insight which is much more profound, I think, than anyone has ever plumbed, is that God has become human. So, in remembering Jesus, we are remembering a human being about whom our tradition has said, “There God is embodied.” A couple of weeks ago, Walter Wink was with us to suggest that our calling as human beings is not to become God-like, but to become fully human, because God is the only Human Being with a capital H and a capital B; and, that this cosmic process of billions of years has been evolving and has issued into this present state in which we are the products of that emerging process - alive, conscious, able to contemplate it all. That cosmic process of billions of years has culminated in the likes of us, but as Walter Wink reminded us, we are only primitively human, we are only human on the way, and if that insight of Jesus as the Son of the Man would indicate, then it is toward that full human existence that we are moving, by God’s grace, in order that we might become human as God is Human. And so, in remembering Jesus, we are seeking to experience God. Jesus is our story. There have been other human beings who have been overcome with encounter, who have been overwhelmed by some moment of epiphany, some rifting of the sky, some theophany, some manifestation of that Ultimate Mystery. Abraham heard a voice or saw a vision or had a dream and the instruction was to leave his family and his environment and go out. For �Richard A. Rhem The Prodigal Son’s Father Page 2 Moses, it was a burning bush. The experience of the Buddha in enlightenment was not other than that, and Mohammed had visions which he then recorded in the Koran. Our window on God is Jesus and in John’s Gospel again, in that conversation with Phillip, as we noted, Jesus said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the father.” To look upon the face of God, look upon the face of the human. And so, we have our window, Jesus, and it was Jesus’ life. But in his life, Jesus was a storyteller, and he told the story which I read a moment ago which is perhaps his most familiar and best-loved parable, the parable of the Prodigal Son. The story has a lot to say about the son, about human nature, but it’s more profoundly a parable about a prodigal God. It is a parable about the nature of God, for the father in the story is obviously God. As Jesus tells that story, he reveals his understanding, his sense of the nature of God. I want to think about that with you this morning with a question, and this is my question to you: Do you suppose God is really like that? The father represents God in Jesus’ parable. Do you think God is like the father in the parable? If the father image bothers you, if that is too much a throwback to an old, supernatural being beyond us, or if the father image as father bothers you, let it go. Think in terms of the Ultimate Mystery, or a source and ground of being, that abyss of limitless being out of which flows all that is. I don’t care how you think of it; image it any way you want to, it doesn’t matter. But, Jesus was talking about that which was ultimate. He was talking about Ultimate Reality. He was talking about the sacred, the holy, the Mystery. He was talking about God. I wonder, and I want you to keep asking yourself this morning, “Do I really suppose that that Ultimate, that God, is like that? Like the father figure in the story?” The story is so familiar. There is the request of the younger son against all tradition and all decency, really, to have his inheritance ahead of time so that he can depart, and he goes off into the far country. Since we’re focusing on the father figure, I want you to simply note that there was total freedom given to the son. There was no injured pride. There was no weeping and wailing. There was no judgmental attitude. There was no alienation. Jesus says the son made the request and we know the request was contrary to family order. But, there was no protest. The father gave him his inheritance and he left without any brokenness, any estrangement, which says to me that the Ultimate Mystery in Jesus’ mind is that which offers freedom, total freedom, that we write our own script. Now, when I say total freedom, I know I am speaking in a community where we have such ability to write our script. We are, of all people, most blessed with our resources, with our context. And I know that that is not true of millions and millions of earth’s children, so when I speak about the freedom to write our own script, I am mindful of the fact that that freedom has in some cases severe limitations. You perhaps have been reading again about women in Afghanistan © 2004-2011 Richard A. Rhem �Richard A. Rhem The Prodigal Son’s Father Page 3 immolating themselves, setting themselves on fire. Can you imagine? Can you imagine how tragic must be the human existence of one who would be driven to that kind of absolute desperation? Did you catch in the newscast last night that in Palestine the little children are collecting cards like our kids collect cards? Baseball cards, right? No. The Palestinian children are collecting martyr cards. Some Palestinian entrepreneur has created cards with the pictures of those who have been martyred. There were all these little children with their cards and they were filling their albums with martyr cards. Can you imagine a child growing up who, rather than having baseball cards, has martyr cards? Or, that young lad, 14 years old, with a bomb strapped to him who was fortunately intercepted by the Israelis, a suicide bomber really not wanting to die? So, when I think about freedom to write our script, I know I’m talking to those of us who have so much, so much beyond so many of the world’s peoples. There are limits to that freedom, but nonetheless, if there is no longer any freedom, there is no longer any humanity and so I would say that in the story Jesus tells, what he is saying in that getting over the yielding to the request of the younger son is that there is no absolute script that is written; there is no predestinated story that is unfolding according to some eternal plan; there is no sovereign, ultimate, absolutism in history. It is rather that we write the story with freedom in greater or lesser degree. Do you think God is like that? Do you think that reality is like that? Do you think that our human experience is like that? We can go from the departure of the son directly to his return. We don’t have to go into the far country and linger there, although a lot of great sermons have satisfied prurient interest about what went on in the brothels and the pig sties, but we don’t really need to go there because this story isn’t about the experience of the son. It’s really about the father. And so, from that granting of freedom, we go to that gracious welcome, a welcome that if you knew the color of the local society, the father an elderly gentleman picking up his robe and running to meet the son, defies all of the local custom about dignity and honor and what is right and proper, the father who doesn’t let the son get his well-rehearsed story out, but rather, embraces him with tears. Eighteen months or so ago, a few of us were in St. Petersburg and I stood in the Hermitage before that huge canvas of Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal,” and pictured there is that old man, his arms straight from his shoulders, the son stooping before him, with a welcome without recrimination, with a welcome without any sign of alienation, with a welcome without any word of rebuke, that spoke not at all of some period of probation, a welcome that simply was a reunion and a celebration full of love and grace. © 2004-2011 Richard A. Rhem �Richard A. Rhem The Prodigal Son’s Father Page 4 Do you suppose that God is really like that? Do you suppose that the ultimate mystery of reality is like that? Well, if we would put it in contemporary terms that we have been talking about God becoming human, do you suppose that the cosmic process of 13 billion years has a bias toward love and grace? Would you think that maybe in this evolving process onto which stage we have emerged there is something intrinsic in the process itself that has a bias, a tendency toward love and grace, that kind of magnificent picture that Jesus drew for us? Or, would you say “No. No, a cosmic reality has no bias toward love and grace. It is a random process, a random, neutral process unfolding.” You may be right about that. But, if that is the case, we have emerged and one emerged about whom they said there is the embodiment of what is ultimate in the mystery of God, and that one told a story about this kind of love and grace and we have made that one our centerpiece, that one we say is our window on God; and that one spoke about that which is ultimate in terms of love and grace. So maybe it is a random process. Here we are; who would have thought it? Nobody directed it. That’s one possibility, but here we are and we can gather around a story like © 2004-2011 Richard A. Rhem �Richard A. Rhem The Prodigal Son’s Father Page 5 that which says that the ultimate values are freedom and love and grace effecting reunion and reconciliation. So, whether the process has that within itself or we come on the stage and recognize that and invest it with ultimate meaning, it doesn’t really matter. Whether intrinsic in the process or affirmed by us, love and grace and reconciliation and reunion are the Ultimate. Do you think, do you suppose that that’s the way it is at the heart of things? That’s not the way it is in traditional religious understanding. That’s not the way it is in traditional Christian understanding, for while in traditional Christian understanding the parable of the Prodigal Son is a piece of the puzzle, it is jammed into the blender with a lot of other stuff and what we get is an homogenized view in which you have to add some stuff to the parable of the prodigal in order to get a decent God. In the traditional view, there is something more that you have in the parable of the prodigal. The father who, in freedom, allows one to write one’s own story, and with gracious openness receives that one back into the bosom of love, in traditional Christianity you have, and it’s right at the heart of this season, you have the whole atonement thing and of course, the world will never be the same after Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” It will take another whole generation to wash out that popularization of the very worst conception of the death of Jesus. But there that violent suffering, that horrible suffering of Jesus is a sign of the costliness of the sacrifice that was demanded in order for God to be able to forgive us. That’s 180 degrees from the parable of the prodigal, for the father in the prodigal needed no payment, no pound of flesh nor pint of blood. The father in the prodigal parable simply, with heart broken with joy, received the son home. And that is 180 degrees from traditional Christian atonement theology which says yes, God is loving and because God is loving, God provided a way, but God is also just and therefore needed God’s honor to be satisfied. Those two are in irreconcilable conflict. I see it more clearly every day of my life. Those are two conceptions of God. Those are two conceptions of Ultimate Reality. In yesterday’s paper, perhaps you read that the final volume of the Left Behind series is out. This is a series of novels about the last things, the end times, a dramatization of the Book of Revelation. It is a total misreading and misunderstanding of the revelation of Jesus Christ to John, the last book of the Second Testament. It is a literalization of that which is highly symbolic, and it makes that writing, which was aimed at its own historical context in a time of intense persecution in the early days in the Christian movement, into history written ahead of time of the last times; and it is a travesty of any kind of intelligent biblical understanding or interpretation. But, be that as it may, other than that, how did I feel about it? This is more serious. This is a book review. The title of the book is Glorious Appearing, The End of Days. Apparently, those few believers who were not raptured at the time that Jesus came to take them out of history, those who were left and those who were converted during the time of tribulation are hovering in a rock fortress, and this review says, © 2004-2011 Richard A. Rhem �Richard A. Rhem The Prodigal Son’s Father Page 6 ... This rock fortress has been protected by God time and time again, but now its inhabitants face a mighty army whose sole goal is absolute annhililation. This battle is the Battle of Armageddon, it is the battle of the end time. Armageddon is a valley in Israel and this is the final battle when Jesus comes and encounters Satan and Satan’s hosts who have been, of course, afflicting the believers. Apparently this head dog is Carpathia and Carpathia himself leads the charge. But, he is no match for Jesus Christ who returns as prophesied to save the fortress. The battles continue with Jesus’ words alone wiping out hundreds of thousands of troops. The culmination is at the holy city of Jerusalem fractured into three by earthquakes as Jesus wins his final victory. Judgment comes for followers of Satan, but it is the peace that Jesus brings to believers that touches the heart. While Jenkins’ writing is swift and a bit colloquial, his use of scripture is truly inspired. Nothing but scripture is spoken by Christ, portions of the Bible that bring comfort, judgment, war and love. That Jesus is a warrior. That Jesus slays thousands with his words. That Jesus wins the final triumph, and effects the salvation of those that believe and the eternal damnation of those he destroys. That Jesus is totally contrary to the Jesus who tells the story that we looked at this morning, where the Ultimate Mystery is love and grace, where there is no final “No,” where the door is always open and the light is burning forever in the window. This is not just an incidental matter. This conception, the traditional conception of a God who needs a pound of flesh and a pint of blood, whose son will return as a warrior to destroy the wicked, this God is a God drawn by the myth of redemptive violence that ultimately the peaceable kingdom will be issued in by violence. Walter Wink used that phrase, the myth of redemptive violence. It is a totally different conception of the heart and center of reality, and in that myth of redemptive violence, you effect finally peace through war. President Woodrow Wilson had a dream of the League of Nations which his own Senate voted not to enter when it was established, but he led us into the First World War, a war to end all wars. More recently we have gone into Iraq in order to bring democracy into the Middle East and we continue to live under the delusion of the myth of redemptive violence. You may say to me, “Well, what is the other answer, then? Passivism?” I would say no, not passivism. It is non-violent resistance, and the cost of non-violent resistance may well be crucifixion and there may be hell to pay for a long time, but I’ll tell you this - it is the way of Jesus and it is the only hope of salvation of the world. There will never be peace brought by violence if we believe Jesus. If we believe Jesus, then there is wonderful news and scary news. The wonderful news is that the ultimate values are freedom and grace and love, that love and grace alone transform. Violence can coerce. Violence can control. Violence can keep the demons at bay. Love and grace alone transform. Love and grace alone alter consciousness. Jesus told the story about the Ultimate Mystery, God, being a God of freedom © 2004-2011 Richard A. Rhem �Richard A. Rhem The Prodigal Son’s Father Page 7 and grace. That’s the good news. The scary news is that it is in our hands. It is in our hands. So, do you suppose that God is really that? Where did you get your image of God? Handed down, of course, as with all of us. But, isn’t it time for us to receive those traditional images critically and then take responsibility for the choice we make as to what is ultimate? The choice we make will determine whether the human family has a future, whether the peaceable kingdom will ever be realized. What do you think? © 2004-2011 Richard A. Rhem � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Location The location of the interview Lakeshore Interfaith Center, Ganges Series Stories Jesus Told Event Lakeshore Interfaith Gathering Scripture Text Luke 15:11-24 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Prodigal Son’s Father Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on entitled "The Prodigal Son’s Father", as part of the series "Stories Jesus Told", on the occasion of Lakeshore Interfaith Gathering, at Lakeshore Interfaith Center, Ganges. Scripture references: Luke 15:11-24. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004-03-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kll-01_RA-0-20070819 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/646dd9182bc1493d439250ad2db9b4ad.pdf 007c57d2e02729a80c96d321d55514c1 PDF Text Text The Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Text: Isaiah 65:23, 25; Romans 11:32, 36 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost V, July 4, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon “They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity.” Isaiah 65:23 “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mansion,” says the Lord. Isaiah 65:25 “… that he may have mercy upon all.” Romans 11:32 “For from God and through God and to God are all things. To God be glory for ever.” Romans 11:36 This is a wonderful and exciting day in which to be alive in our fast-moving world. Since this Lord's Day is also the anniversary of this nation and our Declaration of Independence, I want to reflect just a little bit about the world in which we live and the movements of history of which we are a part, the tides of history that move back and forth. Sometimes in the midst of our own human experience we get so overwhelmed with the immediate and the present circumstance we fail to get that broader picture. At the beginning of this century, after World War I, the great English poet Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, the best have no conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Although that was written decades ago, it could be written as well today from some perspectives. The poets often see more deeply and see farther than most of us. But it is an interesting and fascinating time in which to be alive for, in the broader picture, we can see that we stand at the end of a long historical development. This nation was born at the dawn of the modern period. The periodization of history is somewhat arbitrary, I suppose, but most scholars would agree that the 18th century was the dawn—it had some beginnings before that during the Age of the Enlightenment—and in this 18th century, The Age of Reason. That whole period of the ascendancy of the human was the context in which this nation was born. The human spirit began to come to flower in the fifteenth century, and in the Italian Renaissance there was a great flowering of art, of sculpture, and of © Grand Valley State University   �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 2   architecture. It was like after that long period of medievalism when the Church was so dominant and so oppressive, when there was a linkage between throne and altar. And finally, in the fifteenth century there was this breaking out, this blossoming of the human spirit. I think perhaps the sixteenth century of which we are the children—children of the Reformation and the counter-reformation– the sixteenth century was perhaps a detour. Maybe for a time the authoritarian structures of society once again asserted themselves. But inevitably the human person was going to break out. Our nation was born in that context of history when all forms of authoritarianism were overthrown. There was the assertion of the human spirit. There was the conviction that there was dignity in every human person and that freedom and liberty were the God-given and God-intended virtues with which the human being and society was to live. So our nation was born at a point of newness. That's really the first thing that I want to say to you this morning: that in the midst of history there is development. There is newness. Sometimes we get so depressed by the present. It seems as though things don't go anywhere and we get all enmeshed, and in a situation of no movement, of gridlock. We throw up our hands and we wonder if there's any hope, and if anyone can make any difference, if anyone can change things, if anybody can get things moving again. What I want to say to you is “Yes. Yes. Yes, in the long run there is movement. There is development.” This nation was born at a point of newness. There was a new understanding of human government. There was a new understanding of the human person. There was an appreciation for the necessity of liberty and freedom in which the human individual could develop potential, God-given purpose. There was recognition that the finest form of human government was the government that governed least, that was a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” in that definition that Lincoln gave to this form of government 100 years later in the crisis of the Civil War. Lincoln really redefined the revolution when he said that this nation was “dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal,” and that the test of the Civil War was a test of whether of not this experiment indeed could come to fruition and realization of that high ideal of which it was initiated in the first place. There is newness. We were born in the conception of things and in the understanding of reality and the understanding of history, and understanding of the human person that recognized the necessity of freedom, liberty, and democracy for the full flowering of the human person. For two hundred years plus we have been blessed. We have lived in this grand tradition and we have flourished and prospered as no other people. We come into this 20th century. It has been a tumultuous century. Yeats did not overstate the case early on in the century when he said, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” There was WWI, WWII, and the Cold War when we were locked in ideological conflict over © Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 3   all those decades, using all of our resources for armament, escalating the arms race, bringing ourselves to the brink of disaster. Then 1989, that amazing year. The columnist, George Will, says that there has not been such a year since the 16th century; in fact, he says there has never been such a fascinating, interesting, potentially devastating consequential year in all of history as the year 1989, when more people and more societies were thrust into the vortex of change than at any time in previous history, even more than in the tumultuous 16th century. The images of our present world tumble through our minds. The Leipzig prayer meetings, the candle light in the streets, hundreds, thousands of people praying. The Berlin Wall falling. People dancing, singing, hugging each other, celebrating. The removal of that oppressive Iron Curtain, allowing them to breathe, to be, to be free. And, with the disintegrating of that Iron Curtain and that panoply of oppression, in the midst of our euphoria, we find the sparking of ancient feuds and ethnic cleansing. Our television screens are filled with old women in babushkas weeping over the bodies of wounded or dead soldiers: sons or grandsons. People destroying each other. Our world with all of its promise, yet so filled with peril. The fundamentalisms of the world, Judaism, Islam, Christian, the reactionary fearful tides that would turn the clock back, that would tear the world apart. Images of terrorism. The World Trade Center smoldering in the aftermath of the bomb. Time Magazine a week ago addressed the whole question of terrorism. Arrests in our major cities. Fear. A world that has such technology that small bands of committed people can hold the world hostage. Our today, so full of promise, so full of peril. Somalia children starving. South Africa, less than a year away from a popular vote. Latin America. Our cities. In 1989 the walls fell. We sang, we danced. And in the face of that promise we experience all of the peril. But there is newness. We were born in newness, during a major shift in the understanding of the human person and the nature of human government. In 1989 a State House Planner named Fukuyama wrote an essay entitled, “The End of History,” in which he said that western liberal democracy has been proven to be the only reasonable, rational government, and it will prevail. It has prevailed. Well, his essay stimulated counter essays, and there were those who said he was premature and he was far too optimistic. But it was his point that what we realized in 1989 was already signaled in 1806 when Napoleon's troops moved into the German city of Vienna and overcame the czars, the Prussian leader’s forces bringing to fruition the French Revolution slogan of liberty and equality and fraternity. The French Revolution, the American Revolution, all of that simmering and in ferment for a couple of centuries, finally eventuates to where one can look at it and say, “The end of history: This is the way it will be.” Well, whether you agree with that or not, we are in a period full of ferment, full of promise, and full of peril which is always the case in the human situation. Let me suggest that not only is there newness in human history, but I believe that we are © Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 4   on the threshold of a new age that holds tremendous promise for those who are not fainthearted. That newness must now not only be our national heritage, but it must be shared with a global community. It is not simply because I would have you be Christian or altruistic, if I appeal to you simply out of your own self-interest, out of our national self-interest. Then I would say that it is time now on this anniversary of our Declaration of Independence that we make a Declaration of Interdependence with the whole global community. Do you realize that the peoples of this entire globe are more closely knit today than the peoples of the thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard in 1776? This is a smaller world. This is a global village and it is incumbent upon us to commit ourselves to the whole world and the whole human family. We cannot live in narrowly nationalistic purposes, looking out only for America, Number One. If we were no more than selfish, it is incumbent upon us today to have a world vision. But of course for us, the people of God, there is no choice, for we are a people of hope who are fired by a vision, who are shaped by a dream. It is a marvelous picture of the poet-prophet in Isaiah 65 of a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, aligned with the purposes of the one eternal God, the creator of all. This God says, “Behold I create a new heaven and a new earth. I create Jerusalem anew, a joy. I will restore my people and I will bring my people into a period of peace and justice, such as they have never known. A kind of society where there will not be oppression, where there will not be exploitation, where a person can build a house and live in it, plant a garden and eat the fruit thereof, a society where children will not be raised to calamity, where people would live a long life, where they would call and the Lord would hear, where the wolf and the lamb would lie down together and the lion would eat straw like an ox. Where they would not hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain. That's the biblical vision. There are those who say, “You have to be realistic. You have to be pragmatic. This is the real world. That's a dreamer. That's a poet.” I want to say, that dream, that vision is the only real possibility for a world to be renewed, characterized by justice and peace, and the integrity of creation. It is not in the assertion of power. It is not in the measurements of dominance. It is not in being Number One. It is in seeking justice, being committed to peace, and taking care of the environment that holds the only possibility for the human family. I believe that we may be on the threshold of a new age of which the present chaos is to be the prelude, the disorientation before the new configuration. You can look at it all and wish you could turn the clock back, you can look at it all and long for some golden age behind you, but I'll tell you, you can't go home. There is movement in history. There are hinge-points. This nation was born in newness and this nation stands today urgently in need of joining arms and hands with the peoples of the world in order to find Shalom, which is the purpose and the intention of God. Paul struggled with it. He couldn't figure out why his own © Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 5   people were not seeing in Jesus the Way. He tried to put it together and figure it out - what in the world was going on. I don't think he was very successful, but he knew that God had an intention for the world that included not only his people, but also the nations. He knew that finally it was the covenant of grace with Abraham that this specially called people would be the blessing of God to all nations. Paul knew that just as all were disobedient, so God intended mercy for all. Therefore, the Christian who lives in the biblical vision is a dreamer. The biblical Christian is one who will leave no stone unturned to bring people together. Hans Küng said, “There will be no peace among the nations until there is peace among the religions. And there will be no peace among the religions until we can find peace among the churches.” So we sit and diddle and twiddle our thumbs while the world stands more in danger by religious power than any other power in the world. And we recognize that we cannot speak about the political and the economic, and then over here the spiritual. It is all one world. It is one God concerned about the totality of things, about a world in which there is not political oppression, a world in which there is not economic exploitation, and a world in which there is not adversarial relationships among those who are finally the children of one God. The choice is always before us. We can dig in our heels, set our jaw, clench our teeth and try to resurrect yesterday. Or we can be people of the dream. People of the vision casting themselves in with a spirit that would move toward newness, for it is possible also here in the pulse of this new day as the poet Maya Angelou said, “You may have the grace to look up and out and into your sister's eyes and into your brother's face, to your country and say simply, very simply, with hope, ‘Good morning. Good morning.’” © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c716771bed7acae1f4cf2b42d7464b70.mp3 345c62470689d5141da840b1a82b0960 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost V Scripture Text Isaiah 65: 23, 25, Romans 11: 32, 36 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930704 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-07-04 Title A name given to the resource The Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 4, 1993 entitled "The Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 65: 23, 25, Romans 11: 32, 36. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Freedom Global Community Interdependence Shalom https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bf67a22aeb5639c1a65b13177dc8f20c.pdf 5ad0844f46282b4138011b50c861aa71 PDF Text Text The Promise and Peril of Being Human Psalm 8; Genesis 3:1-7; Revelation 21:1-4; 22-25; 22: 1-2; Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution Richard A. Rhem Lakeshore Interfaith Community, Mother’s Trust Ganges, Michigan August 9, 2009 Today is August 9, 2009. Do you know what happened on this day in 1945? Well, I would not have become aware of August 9, 1945, had not our gracious host, Tapas, responded to my email giving him my theme for today – “The Promise and Peril of Being Human.” He wrote, Interesting numerology. You speak on the perils and promise of human potential on August 9 at 11 am and August 9 1945, was Nagasaki Bombing day – mere coincidence, of course… Well, coincidence or not, I replied to Tapas that at least he had provided my introduction and I did check out the Wikipedia piece on the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 – the first and only use of the atomic bomb bringing horrific devastation and great loss of human life and bringing Japan to surrender. I was sobered as I reviewed those days of terror and death, of devastation and the unleashing of atomic power into the world. Of that event, Einstein said famously, The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. Or, in another citation – The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. I am grateful that Tapas’ reference to August 9, 1945, put me on this track because it reminded me that the issue of human progress has always been accompanied by promise and peril. The splitting of the atom was obviously in a class by itself beyond any emergent and any evolution to that point, except the dawn of consciousness and the radical evolution on whose threshold we stand today in terms of the Information Revolution, Genetics, Robotics and Nanotechnology likewise far exceeds the consequences of any previous © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University   �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 2   breakthrough in human progress. Nonetheless, there is a long history of human progress which has been welcomed and resisted. In 2005 I immersed myself in this subject and gave a lecture entitled “The End of the Human Story.” As you may surmise, I was playing on the ambiguity of the word “End;” it can mean the point of termination – the game ended after midnight – or, it can mean the successful achievement of the purpose of an endeavor – as in, the project achieved its end of creating a new vision. Therein lies the ambiguity of my title: will the explosive expansion of technology lead to humanity’s demise – the end of the story? Or, might technology be the means whereby humanity realizes its divine intention, its purpose in process? Put another way: will technology lead us to the gates of Hell, the final conflagration, or usher us into Edenic bliss, the Garden of Paradise, the City of God? Lest I build too great expectations with such cosmic queries, let me say at the outset that both consequences are possible – coming to our end, or realizing our end, and which possibility will prevail I do not know. No one knows. But, the value of reflection on the theme “Human and Technology” is bringing to awareness what must be the critical issue confronting the human family – not simply what as yet undreamed-of possibilities there are for technological development, but rather, given whatever technological advances that emerge, how will humanity respond in terms of control, utilization and application? Technology is not a neutral instrument; it has and it will radically transform a cultural paradigm. Yet, at this moment in our cosmic journey, human decisionmaking can still determine whether technological development will spell our end or be a means of realizing the full blossoming of the human spirit – which would be simply Divine. It is in coming to a sharpened awareness of the critical nature of the choices that even now confront the human family that the value of our theme lies. As one whose whole life has been given over to contemplating the human before the Face of God, I must admit that I have been shocked into a new awareness of the real situation of our present existence, literally teetering between the end and the End – between extinction and the next stage of human development. Let me begin to address the subject by putting the issue of humanity and technology in an historical context. The tension between human values and technological development has a long history. Without attempting a full account of that history, let me simply point to what for me was new insight and understanding – the beloved Robin Hood of English legendary saga was not simply one who with his band of merry men took from the rich to aid the poor. In his Rebels Against the Future, Kirkpatrick Sale points out that the Robin Hood legends recount the struggle against the early English wool industry: © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 3   It is probable that one of the real figures at the center of the legend was the victim of an early industrial policy of the rising English monarchy to encourage a native wool industry by transforming some of the commonly held central forests into private grazing lands for sheep, and his troubles with the Sheriff of Nottingham no doubt stemmed from a clash between his desire to keep on using the woods for food and fuel, as his father and forefathers had before him, and the royal policy (proclaimed in 1217=18) of cutting them down for pasturage. This conflict between old and new, custom and commerce, was dramatic enough to fix itself in the stories of the locals, take life in several early narrative poems (most effectively in the Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode of 1495), and eventually be resurrected by several early 19th-century Romantic novelists (notably Scott, in Ivanhoe), from where it passes into modern films and fables…. But for all the enduring resonance of this tale, in historical fact it was the royal policy of clear-cutting and wool manufacturing over the forest commons that prevailed. The heartland forests were enclosed and harvested, laid bare for grazing, and within a few centuries nothing much was left of either the great Barsdale or Sherwood forests but a few scattered clusters of conifers and a few stately oaks in tracts deemed unsuitable for development; wool weaving became the key industry of England and woolen cloth for centuries its most important export, an enterprise nurtured and protected by a succession of kings and parliaments down to the 19th century. Robin Hood’s name may have lasted, and a legend about heroic commoners resisting the noble and the powerful may have become burnished by time, but in truth it was not the practice of robbing from the rich, nor the benefaction of the poor, that became the principle means of enterprise in middle England. (p. 2f) Sale recounts the Robin Hood legend of the 13th and 14th centuries to introduce his history of the Luddites who are his “Rebels” whom he uses to address our contemporary crisis created by the present explosive technological advances. It is fitting, and perhaps not accidental, that this triangle of central Britain, seven centuries after it immortalized Robin Hood, was precisely the site of the risings of the Luddites. The Luddites – many of them weavers and combers and dressers of wool, but many of them artisans in the cotton trades that became increasingly important at the end of the 18th century – were, like Robin’s Merry Men, victims of progress, or what was held to be progress. Having for centuries worked out of their cottages and small village shops on machines that, though far from simple, could be managed by a single person, assisted perhaps by children, they suddenly saw new, complex, large-scale machines coming into their settled trades, or threatening to, usually housed in the huge multistory buildings rising in their ancient valleys. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Worse still, they saw their ordered society of craft and custom and community begin to give way to an intruding industrial society and its new technologies and systems, new principles of merchandise and markets, new configurations of countryside and city, beyond their ken or control. And when they rose up against this, for fifteen tempestuous months at the start of the second decade of the 19th century, they did so with more ferocity and intensity than anything Robin Hood ever mustered, and were put down with far more force than anything King John ever commanded. The Luddites took their name from a mythical Ned Ludd – whose origins are still obscure… – but they were conscious throughout that they were traveling on ground trod by an earlier set of courageous troublemakers; one of the earliest Luddite letters was posted from “Robin Hood’s Cave,” another was said to have come from “Ned Ludd’s office, Sherwood Forest,”… ( p. 3) Sale writes of the critical nature of the Luddite rebellion as the Industrial Revolution was transforming English life. The response of the English establishment threatened to betray the very character of the nation, sensing as they did that the whole future of industrialization was at stake. Sale writes, … the various Luddite armies that operated in 1811 and 1812 were so carefully organized and disciplined and so effective in their attacks, causing damage to machines and property that amounted to more than £100,000 that they seemed a strong and highly threatening movement of a kind Britain had not known before – of “a character of daring and ferocity,’ the Annual Register for 1812 said, “unprecedented among the lower classes in this country.” Then, too, they had enough popular support in the manufacturing districts to be able to carry on their secret, illegal activities for months on end without being betrayed, despite official bribes and threats, nighttime arrests, and interrogations, suggesting to certain minds at least that they were only the most visible part of a very widespread insurrectionary – possibly revolutionary – tendency in the land…. Last and perhaps most important, the Luddites were understood to represent not merely a threat to order, as riotous mobs or revolutionary plotters of the past, but, in some way not always articulated, to industrial progress itself. They were rebels of a unique kind, rebels against the future that was being assigned to them by the new political economy then taking hold in Britain, in which it was argued that those who controlled capital were able to do almost anything they wished, encouraged and protected by government and king, without much in the way of laws or ethics or customs to restrain them. The real challenge of the Luddites was not so much the physical one, against the machines and manufacturers, but a moral one, calling into question on grounds of justice and fairness the © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 5   underlying assumptions of this political economy and the legitimacy of the principles of unrestrained profit and competition and innovation at its heart. Which is why the architects and beneficiaries of the new industrialism knew that it was imperative to subdue that challenge, to try to deny and expunge its premises of ancient rights and traditional mores, if the labor force were to be made sufficiently malleable, and the new terms of employment sufficiently fixed, to allow what we now call the Industrial Revolution to triumph unimpeded. (p. 4f) The impact and implications of the Industrial Revolution were creating serious questions and deep foreboding in the minds and hearts of many of the thoughtful and reflective English folk of that time. Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin (living with but as yet not married to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley), Shelley, his friend Lord Byron and Byron’s physician, Dr. John Polidori, spent the summer of 1816 in Switzerland, a summer of perpetual rain. Creating their own entertainment, they decided to see who could write the most frightening ghost story. Mary Shelley was 18 when she began to write her story and 21 when the book was published under the title Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (18118). The numerous film versions of the story are in the horror film genre and mask Shelley’s real intention in the novel. The name Frankenstein has been switched to the Monster in the dramatic versions of stage and film whereas, in the novel, Victor Frankenstein is the student experimenter fascinated with the power of electricity in lightning. He determines to pursue the secret of life. The reference in the title to Prometheus reveals what was on Shelley’s mind as she wrote – a modern Prometheus, not thief of fire, but attempting to become the Creator. Patricia A. Neal, in an essay entitled “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Myth for Modern Man,” stresses the serious intention of the author about concerns which continue very much with us as we wrestle with the tension between human values and the explosive technological advances we are witnessing. Neal writes, The power of the myth of an unattended scientific creation, left to destroy innocent lives, assumes importance in the final decade of the twentieth century. The book questions the morality of Frankenstein’s actions. Did he have a right to create and abandon the creature? In her novel, Mary Shelley anticipated the problem of a destructive force created by man, a force with no genuine means of control. Kirkpatrick Sale likewise recognizes Shelley’s serious purpose in the writing of her myth – …Mary Shelley’s prescient tale of techno-madness, Frankenstein, published in 1818, was so vivid a message of the dangers of mechanization and the problems of scientific invention – “You are my creator,” the © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 6   monster tells the scientist at the end, “but I am your master” – that it has survived to today, unforgettable…. Thus the recognition of the potential and peril of scientific knowledge and technological development has a long history, but the pace and peril of that development is increasing in our day, not gradually, but exponentially, creating, according to Kirkpatrick Sale, more passion and urgency than at any time in the past two centuries. This is the subject of a fascinating book by Joel Garreau, a journalist with The Washington Post, entitled Radical Evolution, the sub-title being “The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies – and What It Means To Be Human.” A reviewer says of the author “…he’s neither a technology booster nor a Luddite. The questions his moral quandaries raise are among the deepest questions we know how to ask: What kind of creatures are we – the apelike animals from which we evolved, or the angels we imagine we can become?” Author Kevin Kelly writes, It isn’t often an author gets to herald the biggest news in the last 10,000 years. But you’ll get the full, uncensored, mind-blowing report here in this entertaining and surprisingly deep book. Meet soldiers who don’t sleep, animals controlled with joy sticks, computers controlled by merely thinking, the blind driving cars, and parents designing their kids – and that is just what is happening right now. Veteran scout Joel Garreau prepares ordinary readers for the ultimate question of this century: Who do you think we should be? He makes it clear that as of today, human nature is now under the control of humans, and we are doing something about it – but we aren’t aware of it. To guide you through this boggle Garreau offers astonishments, conundrums, and sanity. I cite Kelly because he points to what most of us, the uninitiated, might write off as far-out science fiction but is present day reality in the advanced laboratories of our most elite research universities and agencies. Garreau declares we are at an inflection point in history. The dictionary defines inflection as 1) “The act of turning from a direct line, or the condition of being so turned,” 2) “A turn, bend, or curve,”…5) “A change of a curve or arc from convex to concave or the reverse.” This is how Garreau describes it: We are at an inflection point in history. For all previous millennia, our technologies have been aimed outward, to control our environment. Starting with fire and clothes, we looked for ways to ward off the elements. With the development of agriculture we controlled our food supply. In cities we sought safety. Telephones and airplanes collapsed distance. Antibiotics kept death-dealing microbes at bay. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 7   Now, however, we have started a wholesale process of aiming our technologies inward. Now our technologies have started to merge with our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny and perhaps our souls. Serious people have embarked on changing humans so much that they call it a new kind of engineered evolution – one that we direct for ourselves. “The next frontier,” says Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at the UCLA School of Medicine, “is our own selves.” The people you will meet in Radical Evolution are testing these fundamental hypotheses: We are riding a curve of exponential change. This change is unprecedented in human history. It is transforming no less than human nature. This isn’t fiction. You can see the outlines of this reality in the headlines now. You’re going to see a lot more of it in just the next few years – certainly within your prospective lifetime. We have been attempting to transcend the limits of human nature for a very long time. We’ve tried Socratic reasoning and Buddhist enlightenment and Christian sanctification and Cartesian logic and the New Soviet Man. Our successes have ranged from mixed to limited, at best. Nonetheless, we are pressing forward, attempting once again to improve not just our world but our very selves. Who knows? Maybe this time we’ll get it right. (p. 6) This isn’t fiction; it is that which I want to stress. Garreau is not into sensationalism; he is not writing to scare, nor is he simply wanting to sell books. He is a serious writer writing about the most profound questions facing the human community. Neither is this a book about technology per se. It would not be on my reading list if it were. I am technologically challenged but I do sport a titanium hip, I use a cell phone sparingly and I am able to utilize about five per cent of the capacity of my computer to work the wonders of cyberspace. I mention this because I don’t want you to think you are in for a lecture on the intricacies of the latest technological developments. What I do hope to do is make you aware that technology has advanced to the point where most people now living will be faced with real existential questions about how they will live their lives and maybe not as much their lives but the lives of their children and grandchildren. Garreau opens this up with a simple question parents might ask their son or daughter returning from their university – “What are your classmates like, honey?” The answer reveals some of the ways humans will be able to be enhanced given the technology now available or in process of being perfected: How does she explain what the enhanced kids are like? She wonders. She knows her dear old parents have read in their newsmagazines about some © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 8   of what’s available. But actually dealing with some of her new classmates is decidedly strange. •They have amazing thinking abilities. They’re not only faster and more creative than anybody she’s ever met, but faster and more creative than anybody she’s ever imagined. •They have photographic memories and total recall. They can devour books in minutes. •They’re beautiful, physically. Although they don’t put much of a premium on exercise, their bodies are remarkably ripped. •They talk casually about living a very long time, perhaps being immortal. They’re always discussing their “next lives.” One fellow mentions how, after he makes his pile as a lawyer, he plans to be a glassblower, after which he wants to become a nanosurgeon. •One of her new friends fell while jogging, opening up a nasty gash on her knee. Your daughter freaked, ready to rush her to the hospital. But her friend just stared at the gaping wound, focusing her mind on it. Within minutes, it simply stopped bleeding. •This same friend has been vaccinated against pain. She never feels acute pain for long. These new friends are always connected to each other, sharing their thoughts no matter how far apart, with no apparent gear. They call it “silent messaging.” It almost seems like telepathy. They have this odd habit of cocking their head in a certain way whenever they want to access information they don’t yet have in their own skulls – as if waiting for a delivery to arrive wirelessly. Which it does. For a week or more at a time, they don’t sleep. They joke about getting rid of the beds in their cramped dorm rooms, since they use them so rarely. Her new friends are polite when she can’t keep up with their conversations, as if she were handicapped. They can’t help but condescend to her, however, when she protests that embedded technology is not natural for humans. That’s what they call her – “Natural.” In fact, that’s what they call all those who could be like them but choose not to, the way vegetarians choose to abstain from meat. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page 9   They call themselves “Enhanced.” And those who have neither the education nor the money to even consider keeping up with enhancement technology? These they dismiss as simply “The Rest.” The poor dears – they just keep falling farther and farther behind. Everyone in your daughter’s law school takes it as a matter of course that the law they are studying is changing to match the new realities. The law will be upgraded. The Enhanced believe, just as they have new physical and mental upgrades installed every time they go home. The technology is moving that fast. In fact, the paper your daughter is working on over the holiday concerns whether a Natural can really enter into an informed-consent relationship with an Enhanced – even for something like a date. How would a Natural understand what makes an Enhanced tick if she doesn’t understand how he is augmented? The law is based on the Enlightenment principle that we hold a human nature in common. Increasingly, the question is whether this still exists. (p. 7f) Garreau doesn’t just throw out portraits of the “Enhanced,” as he calls them, to shock, nor are these preposterous constructions of his imagination. He references all these seemingly outlandish capacities and characteristics to actual scientific work in progress. The most ambitious work on the most “far out” ventures is carried out under the auspices of the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA – one of the world’s foremost drivers of human enhancement. Not surprisingly, it is national defense (or is it imperial offense) that is the driving force of this enterprise. DARPA doesn’t do the actual work but commissions leading research universities to do the research and experimentation – 90% of its budget of billions of dollars is spread around to schools like Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon. If it determines there is a need for companies to exist, it sees that they are funded in order to be founded – companies such as Sun MicroSystems, Silicon Graphics, Cisco Systems. NASA was spun off from DARPA. The list of subsidized companies today is in the information industries because that is where the pay-off has been in the last few decades. In the eighties the push was for biologically inspired robots, since the nineties the focus has increasingly been on human biology through the Defense Sciences Office. I cite a paragraph simply to give you a sense of the radical potential of what is in process: Blinded rats are being made to see by Harry Whelan, a professor of neurology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. In a battlefield, a laser powerful enough to burn is a very lethal thing if it is aimed at pilots’ eyes. Using light in the near-infrared spectrum, however, in a process called © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page10   photo-biomodulation, wound healing is accelerated. Vision in rats is being largely restored in anywhere from 5 to 24 hours – not yet quick enough to help pilots, but this is a work in progress. The research is sufficiently advanced that it is about to be tried on monkeys. The hope is that it will also mend wounds to skin, bone, neurons, cartilage, ligaments and tendons within four days. Whelan is also exploring what the process might do for spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease and brain tumors, as well as tissue and organ regeneration. If it works, he will have created something akin to the “physiostimulator” of the original Star Trek, the curative device Bones waves over injuries to heal them. The Navy SEALs are deeply interested in that. Henry is also directing a gaggle of researchers who have discovered that the natural chemical cascades in the body that stop bleeding can be triggered by signals from the brain. The implication of this is that you might be able to train people to stop hemorrhaging within minutes, simply by concentrating their mind on their wound. (p.27) For one not accustomed to the growing edge of the scientific-technological revolution, such possibilities are mind-boggling. But once again, this is not fantasy but hard science. Garreau has had his own “aha” moments when he suddenly awakened to the incredible dimensions of that about which he writes. Such a moment came as I realized that this story was not about computers. This cultural revolution in which we are immersed is no more a tale of bits and bytes than the story of Galileo is about paired lenses. In the Renaissance, the big deal was not telescopes. It was about realizing that the Earth is a minor planet revolving around an unexceptional star in an unfashionable part of the universe. Today, the story is no less attitudeadjusting. It is about the defining cultural, social and political issue of our age. It is about human transformation. The inflection point at which we have arrived is one in which we are increasingly seizing the keys to all creation, as astounding as that might seem. It’s about what parents will do when offered ways to increase their child’s SAT score by 200 points. It’s about what athletes will do when encouraged by big-buck leagues to put together medical pit crews. What fat people will do when offered a gadget that will monitor and alter their metabolisms. What the aging will do when offered memory enhancers. What fading baby boomers will do when it becomes obvious that Viagra and Botox are just the beginning of the sex-appeal industry. Imagine that technology allows us to transcend seemingly impossible physical and mental barriers, not only for ourselves but, exponentially, for our children. What happens as we muck around with the most fundamental aspects of our identity? What if the only thing that is truly inevitable is taxes? This is © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page11   the transcendence of human nature we’re talking about here. What wisdom does transhuman power demand? (p. 11) “Moore’s Law” is named after Gordon E Moore who was one of the founders of Intel whose computer chip ushered in a new age. In 1965 he predicted that the complexity of microchips would double every year for the next ten years. This came to be called “Moore’s Law”– “The power of information technology will double every 18 months, for as far as the eye can see.” And it has proven to be the case. This doubling of the power of information technology has moved the curve of development in a straight line upward bringing us to the inflection point in human history we are experiencing and, Garreau writes, “The Curve implies one of the all-time changes in the rules. Those who study it call it “The Singularity.” ( p. 67) Garreau explains The Singularity concept thus: Vinge (rhymes with stingy, which he distinctly is not) in 1993 introduced the idea of The Singularity to describe huge but unpredictable social change driven by The Curve. In a seminal academic paper delivered to a NASA colloquium he wrote, “I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.” He’s anticipating the possibility of greater-than-human intelligence. He’s talking about some form of transcendence. As a metaphor for mind-boggling social change, The Singularity has been borrowed from math and physics. In those realms, singularities are the points where everything stops making sense. In math it is a point where you are dividing through by zero, for example. The result is so whacked out as to be meaningless. Physics has its black holes – points in space so dense that even light cannot escape their horrible gravity. If you were to approach one in a spaceship, you would find that even the laws of physics no longer seemed to function. That’s what a Singularity is like. “At this singularity,” writes Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time, “the laws of science and our ability to predict the future would break down.” Another borrowed metaphor is “the event horizon,” the point of no return as you approach a black hole. It is the place beyond which you cannot escape. It is also the point beyond which you cannot see. Some people think we are approaching such a Singularity – a point where our everyday world stops making sense. They think that’s what happens when The Curve goes almost straight up. The sheer magnitude of each doubling becomes unfathomable. ª (p. 71f) A helpful technique of Garreau is his condensing in a paragraph the major subjects he handles as he seeks to portray the present era in which we find © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page12   ourselves – the concepts of The Curve, The Singularity and the three possible futures that lie before us as a human global community. He gives us scenarios. He begins this method with a description of a scenario. What are Scenarios? Scenarios are rigorous, logical, but imaginative stories about what the future might be like, designed to help people plan. Scenarios are not predictions. They are tools for preparation. Recall how pilots just returning from combat – no matter how complex the conditions they encountered – frequently say, “It wasn’t as bad as the simulator.” That is the value of scenarios. Simulators do not predict the future; they allow those who use them to carefully and calmly anticipate and rehearse their response to almost any sudden eventuality. Think of them as idea maps. Scenarios have rules: they must conform to all known facts; identify “predetermineds” – future events so locked-in by those of the past that they can usefully be viewed as inevitable; identify “critical uncertainties” – possibilities that logically might occur in the future but which are both highly uncertain and highly important; identify “wild cards” – possible but highly improbably eventualities that would have great impact should they occur; reveal “embedded assumptions” – unprovable and often unexamined foundations on which our thinking about the future rests; and, identify in advance certain “early warnings” that serve as an alert that a particular scenario is coming to pass. ( p. 78f) With this description of a Scenario, Garreau describes what he has just discussed – The Curve and The Singularity. Subsequently he will put in capsule form what is his central purpose – describing three possible scenarios of the future given the present state of our science and technology: A Scenario of Heaven, of Hell and of what he calls Prevail. Reviewing his earlier discussion, he summarizes both The Curve and The Singularity. The Curve Scenario In this scenario, information technology continues to explode at a rate comparable to that from 1959 through the early 21st century. These unprecedented rapid doublings of information power and dramatically reduced costs continue to spawn new transformative technologies, such as genetics, robotics and nanotechnology. These in turn also proceed to grow at an unprecedented rate, merging and intertwining to produce novel opportunities and challenges. Within the current human generation, these events transform society and ultimately test the meaning of human nature itself. Predetermined elements: There are Curves of exponential change. Many of these describe the realities of technology. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page13   These Curves especially describe the increase in capabilities of information technology. The Curves of information technology increasingly enable new Curves of exponential change to emerge in other fields, especially genetics, robotics and nanotechnology. All of these Curves of exponential change have major impacts on society, culture and values. Critical uncertainties: Are the Curves of exponential change smoothly accelerating, or will they display unexpected slowdowns, stops or reversals? Are these Curves of exponential change under the control of society’s culture and values, or are they impervious to human intervention? ( p. 80f) The Singularity Scenario (Builds on The Curve Scenario) In this scenario, The Curve of exponentially increasing technological change is unstoppable because new discoveries confer great advantage on those who adopt them – economically, militarily and even artistically. Either intentionally or accidentally, this leads, before 2030, to the creation of greater-than-human intelligence. This greater-than-human intelligence in turn proceeds to replicate and improve itself at such a rate as to exceed comprehension. This produces an inflection point in history called The Singularity, comparable to that in which humans rose from the lower animals. (Alternatively, The Singularity is triggered simply by the rate of change accelerating so greatly as to be beyond understanding, with or without the creation of greater-than-human intelligence.) The impact on everyday life is profound, as if we are being swept up by an avalanche. Succeeding scenarios in this book do not depend on The Singularity coming about. It would, however, dramatically influence the speed and scope of their outcome. Predetermined elements: There are Curves of exponential technological change. These Curves of exponential change especially describe information technology. These Curves of information technology increasingly enable new Curves of exponential change in other fields, especially genetics, robotics and nanotechnology. All of these Curves of exponential change have major social, cultural and value impacts. Critical uncertainties: Are The Curves of exponential change smoothly accelerating, or will they display unexpected slowdowns, stops or reversals? © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page14   Are these Curves of exponential change under the control of society’s culture and values, or are they impervious to human intervention? Will software improve at a rate as great as hardware, or will human ingenuity be stymied by the sheer size, complexity and bugginess of the software required? If these Curves are predetermined, must they result in the creation of infinite change? If these Curves are predetermined, must they result in greater-thanhuman intelligence? If infinite change or greater-than-human intelligence is inevitable, will this happen soon – that is, before 2030? Embedded assumption: The only event that can alter this path is a cataclysm that will ruin civilization, such as nuclear war. (p. 82f) With the above framework for confronting the present moment in human history, Garreau moves to his purpose in writing – setting forth three possible Scenarios – as noted above: At least three alternative futures flow from this accelerated change, according to knowledgeable people who have thought about all this, as you will see in ensuing chapters. The first scenario is one in which, in the next two generations, humanity is rapidly replaced by something far more grand than its motley self. Call that The Heaven Scenario. The second is the one in which in the next 25 years or so, humanity meets a catastrophic end. Call it The Hell Scenario. You will find chapters on each, because both scenarios are plausible, and either would lead to the end of human history as we know it, and soon. The third scenario is more complex. It is the one we might call The Prevail Scenario. In this scenario, the future is not predetermined. It is full of hiccups and reverses and loops, all of which are the product of human beings coming to grips with their own destinies. In this world, our values can and do shape our future. We do have choices; we are not at the mercy of large forces. We can prevail. The Heaven Scenario – The Vision of Ray Kurzweil Ray Kurzweil may be one of the greatest creative geniuses to have ever lived. His imagination seems never to cease and he has the brilliance to actualize that of which he dreams. Soon after college he developed three technologies – the first practical flatbed scanner which resulted in a multibillion-dollar industry. He invented the character recognition device that could read any typeface and he invented the first full text-to-speech synthesizer which together brought The Kurzweil Reading Machine to life. Kurzweil has created nine technology companies that continue to be leaders in their fields. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page15   Kurzweil has become famous however because of his writing. The 1989 The Age Of Intelligent Machines predicted the World Wide Web, the chess championship by a computer and the dominance of intelligent weapons in warfare – all pretty far-fetched at the time. In 1999 he published The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence in which he predicted, because of The Curve, many intelligences will roam the earth that are not traditional humans. His 2005 work, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, goes further, laying out the case for the imminent and cataclysmic upheaval in human affairs associated with The Singularity: But even that isn’t the audacious part. What makes Kurzweil an outrage to some and an inspiration to others is that he is relentlessly and fiercely optimistic about these futures. He uses charts and graphs to systematically portray a near future that to some seems indistinguishable from the Christian version of paradise. On top of everything else, he is convinced that medicine is moving sufficiently fast that any person who can stay healthy for the next 20 years may so benefit from the explosion in biological technology as to be immortal. He lays out an extensive scientific, nonreligious, non-New Age case for personally planning to live for a thousand years. When challenged, he doesn’t retreat from his logic at all. Once, to rattle his cage, I paraphrased the author Arthur C. Clarke’s renowned line, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I asked him, So, Ray, what are you saying? That any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from angels? He did not back off an inch. “Depends on what you mean by angels,” he replied. I call his scenario Heaven. (p. 90f) Kurzweil was born of Viennese Jews who fled the Nazi Holocaust coming to the United States where he was born. He still belongs to a Reform temple but more as a cultural identification. His parents, wishing to avoid the provincialism of narrow religions, joined a Unitarian church which introduced Ray to a broad spectrum of religious understanding through which he came to understand the different religious stories as speaking the same truth. Today his is a “Buddhist’s view of God – as the sort of life force, the force of creativity, as opposed to a specific cranky personality that makes deals with humanity and gets mad and exacts vengeance.” This worship of a life force fuels his optimism about the coming transcendence of human nature. “What we see in evolution is increasingly accelerating intelligence, beauty. We find evolving organisms, like humans, that are capable of higher emotions like love. I mean, if you go to the point where there were just reptiles, there was no love. They don’t have much emotional intelligence. They don’t have art, music. So part of © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page16   the evolutionary process – and this has continued with our technological growth of human cultural and technological history – is an increase of those higher emotional, intelligent functions. We see exponentially greater love. “Even 200 years ago, 98 or 99 percent of human beings lived lives of utter desperation. Extreme poverty. Extreme labor. Spending all their time to prepare the evening meal. Extremely disaster-prone. No social safety nets. Now at least an increasing portion of human civilization is free of that level of desperation. So our ability to appreciate arts and music and to have stable relationships is increasing. That was relatively difficult to do even 200 years ago, let alone thousands of years ago.” ( p. 93) Garreau summarizes the core of Kurzweil’s thinking thus: The core element of Kurzweil’s thinking is that The Curve of exponentially increasing technology is rising smoothly, as if on rails. It is in command, in his view, and unstoppable. Everything flows from that. He sees The Curve as a force of nature. He sees it as an extension of evolution. He does not particularly see The Curve as something humans chose to create. Like evolution, it is simply a pattern of life to be recognized, the outcome of billions of small actions. He calls it “The Law of Accelerating Returns.” In his view, nothing any one country or collection of countries can do will deflect it or even slow it down. Forget oil shocks or climate change. The only possible limit he sees is a complete and catastrophic collapse of civilization or the extinction of the human species, worldwide, and he only inserts that as something of a rhetorical footnote. “Exponential progress, in recent times, has marched right through” disasters such as the Depression and World War II, he observes. “It really is an evolutionary process. Biological evolution is full of unpredictable events like visitors from outer space in the form of meteors and asteroids. But nonetheless, out of that chaos comes a very smooth curve. Now the progress is so rapid that The Curves are on a very fast track. But they still emerge from an evolutionary process that is full of disruption. I mean, a lot of people ask me, “Well, now with 9/11 things must be different? Or with the high-tech recession and the meltdown of communications and Internet stocks, surely that has disrupted these curves?” Well, no they haven’t, Kurzweil says. ( p. 94) It is difficult to dispute Kurzweil’s claim that the Curve is simply the ongoing march of the cosmic evolutionary process into which we humans have come to participate and, to some extent, direct. A brief historical review is fascinating as Garreau sets it out. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page17   The essence of The Heaven Scenario is stealing fire from the gods, breathing life into inert matter and gaining immortality. Our efforts to become something more than human have a long and distinguished genealogy. Tracing the history of those efforts illuminates human nature. In every civilization, in every era, we have given the gods no peace. Efforts to transcend our origins begin in the most primitive of times. Sorcerers would create a likeness of a living thing and, with the rituals of magic, seek to animate it. In our earliest epic, the Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh, the climax is the king seeking, finding and losing the secret of immortality. Barely three pages into Genesis, the serpent is telling Eve that she doesn’t have to worry about losing immortality by tasting of the fruit of knowledge. No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be open and you will be like gods.” He says. (Not coincidentally, one of the biggest attractions of Christianity, even as an upstart religion, was its promise of eternal life.) Ancient Greece was full of heroes harassing the deities. Prometheus not only created humans, teaching them many of their useful skills, but he filched fire for them. Daedalus confounded King Minos by crafting wings of wax and feathers to flee Crete. His son Icarus, of course, flew too close to the sun, giving us one of our earliest warnings against taking presumptuous pride in our technologies. But remember, Daedalus did succeed – his mythic wings worked, and ancient Greece gave us the tools of logic, skepticism and natural philosophy that became the underpinnings of science. The market for harvest and fertility goddesses has never been the same. The cultural humanism of the Renaissance pushed ancient pieties aside. Make something of yourself! was its message to mankind. Human nature was not predetermined by anybody’s secondhand image and likeness in this view. We could shape ourselves to make the world better. Pico della Mirandola’s 1486 Oration on the Dignity of Man, the manifesto of the Italian Renaissance, eloquently centers all attention on human capabilities. In it, says God to Adam: “We give you no fixed place to live, no form that is peculiar to you, nor any function that is yours alone. According to your desires and judgment, you will have and possess whatever place to live, whatever form, and whatever functions you yourself choose.” Indeed, in 1580, the kabbalistic Jews of Prague imagined creating a Golem – an artificial man made from clay – who would protect them from persecution. Galileo, as he laid the foundations of modern science, believed that for peering directly into the mind of God, there was nothing like a telescope. It was more profitable to study the deity’s handiwork than it was to study scripture. “Philosophy,” he wrote, “is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze.” © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page18   The Age of Enlightenment elevated scientists over priests. The notion was that the logically deduced laws that governed human behavior were an even purer expression of God’s law than that which could be gathered from scripture. Since God’s law will always work to good ends, the same must be true of the natural laws governing our individual lives, this hypothesis concluded. Francis Bacon was among the first to see critical reasoning as a means of finding the destiny and nature of man. “The formation of ideas and axioms by true induction is no doubt the proper remedy to be applied for the keeping off and clearing away of idols,” Bacon wrote in Novum Organum in 1620. He saw it as a new grounding for morality and, indeed, the perfection of society. The idea of a rationally discovered natural law to achieve a heaven on earth would fuel both the American and French revolutions…. In 1780, Benjamin Franklin wrote to the chemist, biologist and minister Joseph Priestley, “The rapid progress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born too soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. We may, perhaps, deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labor and double its produce; all disease may by sure means be prevented or cured (not excepting even that of old age), and our lives lengthened at pleasure….. (p. 106f) Turning from Kurzweil, Garreau points to a document of 415 pages entitled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance. The document is the joint publication of the National Science Foundation and The United States Department of Commerce and affirms “It is time to rekindle the spirit of the Renaissance” to achieve “a golden age that will be a turning point for human productivity and quality of life. ( p. 112) The report concludes, “The twenty-first century could end in world peace, universal prosperity, and evolution to a higher level of compassion and accomplishment.” (p. 114) Garreau points out that the leading scholars of this aspect of The Heaven Scenario point to the future of human genetics. He cites Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at The School of Medicine at UCLA: Stock’s version of The Heaven Scenario departs from Kurzweil’s He doesn’t think humans will transcend because of computers. He things humans will transcend because of genetic engineering. Such biological remodeling is “a plausible way for people to overcome their bodily frailties, but a larger game is afoot,” he says. It is “biology’s bid to keep pace with the rapid evolution of computer technology.” © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page19   “No one really has the guts to say it, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn’t we?” he approvingly quotes James Watson, co-winner of the Nobel prize for discovering the structure of DNA, as saying. The titles of several of Stock’s books display his position. One is called Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future. An earlier one is called Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism. “To not be human in the sense we use the term now” is the fate of our descendants, Stock says. We will soon see humans as physically and intellectually divergent as “poodles and Great Danes.” But the passing of people like us is hardly a tragedy, he believes. “Unlike the saber-toothed tiger and other large mammals that left no descendants when our ancestors drove them to extinction, Homo sapiens would spawn its own successors by fast-forwarding its evolution.” ( p. 115) The acronym GRIN stands for four interrelated technologies that together are in process of modifying human nature – Genetics, Robotics, Information and Nano processes. Beyond what has been discussed about Information and Genetics, amazing possibilities are being realized in nanotechnology and robotics but to discuss that here in a meaningful way is beyond both this writer’s capacity and purpose. Rather let me bring this discussion of The Heaven Scenario to conclusion. Garreau concludes The Heaven Scenario by returning to Kurzweil. Do you believe in a God you plan on meeting when you die? I ask. “I’m not planning to die,” Kurzweil responds. “I expect to use the power of ideas. I am a survivor as an entrepreneur and a human being. It’s my plan to be involved in this next phase of humanity where we get past some of the frailties of these Version 1.0 bodies we have. The way to ‘meet our maker,’ so to speak, is, in fact, by staying alive. We will be part of this very rapid explosion of intelligence, and beauty, and a very rapid acceleration of this evolutionary process. And that, to me, is what God is. Evolution, I think, is a spiritual process because it moves closer to what we have considered God. It moves closer to infinity.” I am nonplussed by this answer. He is not talking about us someday meeting God. He is talking about us becoming God. Aware of how this sounds, he rephrases a little. “I don’t think we actually ever become God. But we do become more God-like,” he clarifies. He then barrels right back to a grand view of The Heaven Scenario. “I see it, ultimately, as an awakening of the whole universe. I think the whole universe right now is basically made up of dumb matter and energy and I think it will wake up. But if it becomes transformed into this sublimely intelligent matter and energy, I hope to be a part of that.” He is talking about participating in the creation of Heaven. (p. 128f) © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page20   That is radical evolution indeed; Garreau has titled his account accurately and his portrayal of the present state and future potential of the exploding and intertwining scientific-technological enterprise backs up the claim that we are on the cusp of radical evolution. Not surprisingly, not everyone agrees that the scenario in process is one of “Heaven.” Equally brilliant and responsible leaders in the fields of science and technology suggest with alarm that we are on the threshold of Hell. The most articulate spokesperson for such a claim is Bill Joy. The Hell Scenario – The Joyless Fears of Bill Joy Though Joy sloughs it off, he has been called “The Edison of the Internet”. Garreau affirms the comparison. Yet the comparison is not all wrong. Joy’s had a hand in some of the most important aspects of the Net. In 1978, while still a grad student, Joy became the principal programmer for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project inventing the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD), the first operating system linking computers over this newfangled thing that would come to be called the Internet. (“It was fun,” he says, predictably enough.) In the early 21st century, the BSD architecture was still the main rival to Microsoft’s server system, being the basis of Apple’s OS X operating system and Sun’s machines, and an underpinning of Linux. In 1982, Joy married that system to a cheap but powerful computer called the S.U.N. workstation, after the Stanford University Network. This is how he wound up as chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, until he resigned the post in 2003…. Joy enjoys a reputation in Silicon Valley as thoughtful and level-headed. “Nobody is more phlegmatic than Bill,” says Stewart Brand, the Internet pioneer. “He is the adult in the room.” That’s why it came as such a shock in March 2000 when this godfather of the Information Age predicted “something like extinction” of the human race within the next generation. Most extraordinarily, he blamed it on the accelerating pace of technological change he had helped create. He intended his warning to be reminiscent of Albert Einstein’s famous 1939 letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt alerting him to the possibility of the atomic bomb. (p. 137f) In the journal Wired, April, 2000, Bill Joy wrote a powerful essay in which he expressed his shock at the rapid advance of the technology in which he himself was engaged and the potential for bringing the human story to its end. The essay is entitled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” and a bold print subtitle gives the essence of the piece – Our most powerful 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech – are threatening to make humans an endangered species. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page21   Bill Joy relates the moment that his unease with the whole current direction in which new technologies are being created arose. At a telecom conference, he listened to a Berkeley philosopher, John Searle, discuss with the famous inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil, the acceleration toward the time we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that. John Searle said it couldn’t happen because the robots couldn’t be conscious, but Kurzweil said such a phenomenon was a near-term possibility. Joy writes, I was taken aback, especially given Ray’s proven ability to imagine and create the future. I already knew that new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots surprised me. Kurzweil gave Joy a preprint of his then forthcoming book, The Age of Spiritual Machines in which he described the utopia he foresaw – One in which humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology.. Joy was sobered and his unease intensified; he felt certain the dangers were being underestimated, failing to understand the potential of a tragic outcome. He found himself most troubled by a passage detailing a dystopian scenario – that is a scenario of a state or situation in which conditions and the quality of life are terrible. This is the disturbing passage which Joy introduces with the subheading, The New Luddite Challenge First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case, presumably, all work will be done by vast, organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But, we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page22   for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide. On the other hand, it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case, the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques, the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary, the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite are ruthless, they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane, they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consist of softhearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals. And, now here is the shocker, in Joy’s words: In the book, you don’t discover until you turn the page that the author of this passage is Theodore Kaczynski – the Unabomber. …Kaczynski’s actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this single passage. I felt compelled to confront it. Kaczynski’s dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a wellknown problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to Murphy’s Law – “Anything that can go wrong, will.”…The cause of many such surprises seems clear: The systems involved are complex, involving interaction among and feedback between © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page23   many parts. Any changes to such a system will cascade in ways that are difficult to predict; this is especially true when human actions are involved. I started showing friends the Kaczynski quote from The Age of Spiritual Machines; I would hand them Kurzweil’s book, let them read the quote, and then watch their reaction as they discovered who had written it. At around the same time, I found Hans Moravec’s book, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Moravec is one of the leaders in robotics research, and was a founder of the world’s largest robotics research program at Carnegie Mellon University. Robot gave me more material to try out on my friends – material surprisingly supportive of Kaczynski’s argument. According to Moravec, …our main job in the 21st century will be “ensuring continued cooperation from the robot industries” by passing laws decreeing that they be “nice,” and to describe how seriously dangerous a human can be “once transformed into an unbounded superintelligent robot.” Moravec’s view is that the robots will eventually succeed us – that humans clearly face extinction. Joy wonders why more people do not share his concern and unease and suggests an answer: …Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21stcentury technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology – pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: they can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once – but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control. Much of my work over the past 25 years has been on computer networking, where the sending and receiving of messages creates the opportunity for out-of-control replication. But while replication in a computer or a computer network can be a nuisance, at worst it disables a machine or takes down a network or network service. Uncontrolled selfreplication in these newer technologies runs a much greater risk: a risk of substantial damage in the physical world. Each of these technologies also offers untold promise: the vision of near immortality that Kurzweil sees in his robot dreams drives us forward; genetic engineering may soon provide treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases; and nanotechnology and nanomedicine can address yet more ills. Together they could significantly extend our average life span © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page24   and improve the quality of our lives. Yet, with each of these technologies, a sequence of small, individually sensible advances leads to an accumulation of great power and, concomitantly, great danger. Joy summarizes what he sees as the clear and present danger that confronts us: The 21st-century technologies – genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) – are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them. Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals. That is a sobering conclusion from a very responsible and well-informed scientist who has made his mark as one of the chief architects of the present state of cybertechnology. And he declares, “…I trust it is clear that I am not a Luddite.” Rather, he affirms a strong belief in the value of the scientific search for truth and the ability of great engineering to bring material progress. Why is he surprised to find himself in his present state of unease and foreboding? Because, he writes, Perhaps it is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change. Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science’s quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own. This is what he sees developing before our eyes: As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor. In designing software and microprocessors, I have never had the feeling that I was designing an intelligent machine. The software and hardware is © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page25   so fragile and the capabilities of the machine to “think” so clearly absent that, even as a possibility, this has always seemed very far in the future. But now, with the prospect of human-level computing power in about 30 years, a new idea suggests itself: that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable. Having struggled my entire career to build reliable software systems, it seems to me more than likely that this future will not work out as well as some people may imagine. My personal experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities. Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn’t we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution? There is much more in Joy’s essay, but what I have lifted up is surely enough to answer his question in the affirmative. Let me be clear – in all of this discussion of the accelerating pace of technological breakthroughs, I am over my head; nanotechnology is beyond my capacity to conceive. When I read of molecular level “assemblers” and that “one kind of nanomachine is the assembler, which is a tiny factory that can manufacture other machines, including replicas of itself,” I confess I am in a deep fog. But, I can at least catch some sense of the frontiers on which research and development is being executed. What it means that there will be robotic humans or human robots, I can hardly imagine, but I am now aware that this is no longer the stuff of science fiction; this is where we have arrived and where the next two or three decades will bring us if we survive – an open question! Joy puts it this way: The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20thcentury weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st-century genetic, nanotech, robotic technologies have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology – with science as its handmaiden – is delivering a series of almost magical inventions that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen. We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial incentives and competitive pressures. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page26   This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself – as well as to vast numbers of others. And then he continues: It might be a familiar progression, transpiring on many worlds – a planet, newly formed, placidly revolves around its star; life slowly forms; a kaleidoscopic procession of creatures evolves; intelligence emerges which, at least up to a point, confers enormous survival value; and then technology is invented. It dawns on them that there are such things as laws of Nature, that these laws can be revealed by experiment, and that knowledge of these laws can be made both to save and to take lives, both on unprecedented scales. Science, they recognize, grants immense powers. In a flash, they create world-altering contrivances. Some planetary civilizations see their way through, place limits on what may and what must not be done, and safely pass through the time of perils. Others, not so lucky or so prudent, perish. That is Carl Sagan, writing in 1994, in Pale Blue Dot, a book describing his vision of the human future in space. I am only now realizing how deep his insight was, and how sorely I miss, and will miss, his voice. For all its eloquence, Sagan’s contribution was not least that of simple common sense – an attribute that, along with humility, many of the leading advocates of the 21st-century technologies seem to lack. Well, there you have it – one person of genius celebrating our near approach to an heavenly existence, the other of equal stature predicting the damnation of hell. Which will it be? And is there no third way? Garreau answers in the affirmative – a Third Scenario. Prevail Garreau introduces us to a fascinating human being named Jaron Zepel Lanier, “one of the world’s more startling combinations of philosopher, creative artist and computer scientist” – a remarkable combination of gifts and interests, described thus: He is best known, however, for inventing “virtual reality” as a shared experience, and naming it. In his early 20’s Lanier founded VPL Research – yes, in a garage in California. It was the first company to provide research labs around the world with the then-almost-magical virtualreality paraphernalia. When he was 24, his groundbreaking work made the cover of Scientific American. Few recent innovations have had such consequences. It is difficult to buy an automobile or fly in an airplane today that wasn’t designed in virtual reality. The petroleum to fuel them © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page27   was probably found with Lanier’s inventions. City planning, building design, surgery and scientific visualization – especially of molecules important to the creation of new drugs and the understanding of proteins and genes – are being redefined by virtual-reality imaging. So is the training of police, firefighters, emergency response teams and the military. In the early 21st-century, Lanier was the chief scientist of Advanced Network and Services, the engineering office of Internet2 – a coalition of 180 American research universities sharing an experimental nextgeneration network so powerful that when they fired it up, lights dimmed all over campus, or so the story goes. He led the National Tele-Immersion Initiative. It aimed to create alternative worlds in which people at distant sites work together in a shared, simulated environment that makes them feel as if they were in the same world. “Our social contract with our own tools has brought us to a point where we have to decide fairly soon what it is we humans ought to become because we are on the brink of having the power of creating any experience we desire,” writes Howard Rheingold, an analyst of technology’s impact on society. Virtual reality “represents a kind of new contract between human and computers, an arrangement that could grant us great power, and perhaps change us irrevocably in the process.” (p. 191f) Lanier claims, “The degree to which I was a social failure is impossible to even state…It was just extreme beyond…” He had no friends in a hostile environment. Such an early life experience, Lanier points to as putting him on the track to The Prevail Scenario. Garreau compares Kurzweil, Joy and Lanier: When faced by the prospect of a sudden transformation of human nature, Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy and Jaron Lanier each responds from the deep recesses of his soul. Kurzweil worships the power of ideas to resolve all problems; Joy in his lonely fashion engages death; Lanier attributes all his subsequent work to finding “the connection I lost.” The thinking of Kurzweil, Joy and Lanier describes a triangle. Lanier’s is not some middle vision between that of Kurzweil and Joy. He is off in an entirely other territory that pokes and prods their technological determinism. Lanier agrees with Kurzweil that it is not tremendously likely that you can stop radical evolution by willing it gone. He agrees with Joy that The Curve could lead to mortal dangers. Yet Lanier would not relinquish transcendence even were that possible. Indeed, he views the prospect of exploring all the ways humans could expand their connections as the greatest adventure on which the species has ever embarked. Lanier’s critical difference is that he does not see The Curve © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page28   yielding some inevitable, preordained result, as in the fashion of the Heaven and Hell Scenarios. “If it turns out Bill or Ray are right, I’ll be disappointed mostly because it’s such a profoundly dull and unheroic outcome,” he says. “It’s such a gizmo outcome. There is no depth to it at all.” Lanier believes it is well within the power of the species to transcend to something far beyond the current understanding of human nature. He just views as sterile the prospect of uploading some portion of our brains into computers. Instead, he pictures a rich and tasty brew of opportunities. He can see a vast array of transcendences. He imagines humans making intelligent decisions, exercising creative control. If you were graphing Lanier’s idea, it would not be represented by smooth curves, either up or down, as in the first two scenarios. It would doubtless have fits and starts, hiccups and coughs, reverses and loops – not unlike the history we humans always have known. It would be messy and chaotic, like humans themselves. Technology would not be in control. It would not be on rails, inexorably deciding human affairs. At the same time, the outcome would definitely involve radical change. I call visions like this The Prevail Scenario. Uncertainty suffuses The Prevail Scenario. For Lanier, that’s not a bug. It’s a feature. “The universe doesn’t provide us a way to have absolute truth,” he says. “I am not fanatical about my ideas. I’m perfectly happy to see where there are holes in them. This idea is something I believe – in the sense that I act on it. But let me tell you the trap I want to avoid falling into.” He judges Kurzweil and Joy to be “severe exaggerators and overstaters. Their reasoning is similar to that of a paranoid person in that they find only the little bits that fit into their worldview and build this cage in which they imprison themselves. I’m not willing to be a fanatic and demand that people see that every bit of data supports my view. I want to be given the latitude to present my own thing more softly. I actually perceive it with less of a sense of certainty and bullheadedness. It’s just my best guess.” His key point about The Prevail Scenario: “I will argue for perceiving a gradual ramp of increased bridging of the interpersonal gap. I believe that that’s demonstrable. I do not perceive it as being an exponential increase. I do not perceive it as something where there is an economy of scale and it’s compounding itself and it’s heading towards some asymptotic point. I am not saying it’s accelerating.” The Prevail Scenario, he’s saying, is measured by its impact on human society. He is specifically arguing that even if technology is on a curve, its impact is not. This is why he is skeptical about the idea of a Singularity – technology increasing so © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page29   quickly as to create an imminent and cataclysmic upheaval in human affairs. In his version of The Prevail Scenario, Lanier is talking about transcendence through an “infinite game.” “The future that I’m trying to find is one where people are in the center and there’s this everyexpanding game of connecting people that creates a game into the future.” (p. 195ff) In Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse writes of the familiar contests of everyday life – played in business and politics, in the bedroom and the battlefield. Finite games have winners and losers, a beginning and an end and players try to control the game and set the bottom line in advance and are serious and determined about getting that outcome, fixing the future based on the past. But players of infinite games, by contrast “enjoy being surprised. Continuously running into something one didn’t know will ensure that the game will go on forever…A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing to play…Infinite players play with the rules. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is an infinite game, Lanier believes. Infinite games are the real transcendence games. They allow you to transcend your boundaries. They allow you to transcend who you are.” (p. 197) Reading Lanier’s thoughts one cannot help but sense quite a different spirit and tone than we found in both the Heaven and Hell Scenarios. Lanier is dismissive of what he describes as “the religion of the elite technologists,” from Moravec to Minsky, in the halls of “true believers” at Stanford, MIT and Carnegie Mellon. They believe in a key anticipated outcome of The Heaven Scenario: “That computers are becoming autonomous and a successor species.” “My feeling about spiritual questions is that there is a tightrope that I try to stay on, not always successfully. If you fall to the right side, you become an excessive reductionist. You pretend to know more than you do and you become overly rational. If you fall to the left side, you become superstitious and you believe that there are magic tricks of meaning. Staying right on that line is where you’re a skeptic but also acknowledge the degree of mystery in our lives. If you can adhere to that, I think that’s where truth lies. Sometimes it’s lonely and frustrating. For a lot of these questions, I think ‘I don’t know’ is the most dignified and profound answer. A profound ‘I don’t know’ is the result of a lot of work.” Lanier wants to stay open to the possibility that “the world we manipulate here isn’t all there is. The world accessible by technologies isn’t all there is. I don’t want to become a superstitious fool and believe I can say anything about this other world. That’s very important. I don’t want to © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page30   start saying, ‘Oh, there are these angels here.’ The idea of God as an entity that talks and stuff doesn’t quite fit for me. It’s also not something I’m gonna dismiss.” He makes a small joke by pretending to be the systems administrator of all creation: “We have limited privileges in this area.” To describe his version of transcendence in a Prevail Scenario without falling off his tightrope, Lanier likes to talk about octopi. Actually, he also likes to talk about the psychology of early childhood, as well as the day that aliens visit the earth and perceive human nature for the first time. But these to him are all stories about the same thing – a steadily increasing ramp to transcendence that leads to deeper and better ways of bridging the interpersonal gap. Lanier’s Prevail Scenario is the search for a complex, evolving, inventive transcendence. Because it is an infinite game, it never goes into a Singularity, as in the Heaven and Hell Scenarios. Because it’s fundamentally imaginative, it doesn’t have any such simple measurement. It just expands forever. Human connectedness is “a much more profound kind of ramp,” Lanier believes. “The thing about a Singularity hypothesis is that it’s profoundly uncreative.” (p. 199f) There are unlimited Prevail Scenarios but Garreau claims Lanier’s is well articulated. They all, however, begin with these principles: • Humans have an uncanny history of muddling through – of forging unlikely paths to improbable futures in defiance of historical forces that seem certain and inevitable; • The wellspring of this muddling through, of this prevailing, is the ability of ordinary people facing overwhelming odds to rise to the occasion because it is the right thing – for example, the British “nation of shopkeepers” that defied the Third Reich. To these, Garreau relates, Lanier adds one more proposition: • Even if technology is advancing along an exponential curve, that doesn’t mean humans cannot creatively shape the impact on human nature and society in largely unpredictable ways. Thus, Garreau concludes, Prevail is an odd combination of the marvelously ordinary and the utterly unprecedented. It is so common and so rare – so old and so new – that the history of the Prevail Scenario is less well defined than that of The Heaven or Hell Scenario. (p. 206). It is not predictable by use of human logic. Ironically, it is driven by faith “in human cussedness;” we can be counted on to throw The Curve a curve! And one more proposition from Lanier regarding Prevail: • The key measure of Prevail’s success is an increasing intensity of links between humans, not transistors. If some sort of transcendence is achieved beyond today’s © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page31   understanding of human nature, it will not be through some individual becoming superman. In Lanier’s Prevail Scenario, transcendence is social, not solitary. The measure is the extent to which many transform together. (p. 210) Lanier measures the idea of progress by technological and economic advance – fire, the wheel, the steam engine. There is a second ramp – moral improvement. But neither of these is sufficient; for Lanier the third ramp is the increased connection between people. That is the real measure of the idea of progress. The third ramp, historically, starts with the invention of language and then moves to writing, drama, literature, printing, film, the telephone, radio, television, the Internet and so forth. “What you are measuring is an increase in the quantity, quality, variety and complexity of the ways humans can connect with each other. Not ways in which they become identical, but ways that they become closer. (p. 214) Garreau concludes his Radical Evolution with a chapter entitled “Transcend,” which he begins by recounting his experience at a conference called “The Adaptable Human Body: Transhumanism and Bioethics in the 21st Century” cosponsored by the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Program Working Research Group on Technology and Ethics and a young organization called The World Transhumanist Association. Transhumanists are focused on the enhancement of human intellectual, physical and emotional capabilities, the elimination of disease and unnecessary suffering, and the dramatic extension of lifespan ( p. 231).Transhumanists believe it naïve to think the human condition and human nature will remain pretty much the same for much longer. They believe rather that the GRIN technologies are fundamentally changing the rules of the game. The transcend proposition rests on three premises: •The undeniable competitive advantages that the genetic, robotic, information and nano technologies convey on those who embrace them for economic, medical, educational, military, or artistic reasons suggest that these methods will continue to advance at an ever-increasing rate. •So many of these technologies – “designer babies,” augmented cognition, metabolic makeovers, anti-aging medicine and all the rest – can alter basics of the human condition. If they can modify our minds, memories, metabolisms, progeny and personalities, it seems reasonable to think that these procedures might well have an impact on what it means to be human. • The history of technologies as disruptive as these suggests that there will be unintended consequences. We will be surprised by many of the outcomes. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page32   If you accept these three propositions as reasonable bets, what you’re looking at is that rare bird, the high probability, high-impact scenario. Transcend builds on, expands and gives measure to The Prevail Scenario, in which technology does not control us, but we control technology. ( p. 233f) As he draws together the lines of the three scenarios with his discussion of transcendence, Garreau states that “the central argument about the future of human nature is whether it is fixed and immutable, once and forever, or whether it can continue to evolve.” (p. 235) A number of scholars from a variety of disciplines are heard from. Garreau has succeeded in presenting the respective scenarios honestly and without prejudice. His own leaning, however, would seem to be toward The Prevail Scenario and his final chapter reflects the manner of the Transcendence he affirms and the spiritual dimension such transcendence calls for. Coming down on the side of a continuing evolution, he recognizes the necessity of an evolving spirituality to guide that evolution in a positive, lifeaffirming direction. He writes, “Perhaps it is with our devotions that we can start choosing to steer. Right now the stories we tell do not match the facts.” (p.264) He recognizes as the most influential thinker of the twentieth century, seeking to unify the truths of science and religion, the French Jesuit scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In his magnum opus, The Phenomenon of Man, 1940, he argued that someday our technology would allow us to create a web of thought and action that would make the world more complex, diverse and alive, moving humankind toward an ultimate evolution – the Omega Point. He envisioned the earth as a single living organism, with all the elements of it – from the people to the birds connected like cells in a body. The goal of evolution, he suggested, is to link up individual human minds, bringing an explosion of intelligence and even global consciousness to the whole of Being. With the rise of the World Wide Web, we can see hints that he may have been right. Although Garreau does not pursue Teilhard any further, it is interesting that this amazing prophetic voice recognized the imperative of spiritual transformation in light of exploding technological breakthroughs and especially in light of the explosion of the atomic bomb whose anniversary we mark today. Teilhard believed so strongly, both as a religious thinker and as a scientist in the evolutionary process and the ongoing forward movement toward the Omega Point as he called it – a process not pushed from behind but pulled from the future, that he was not critical of the development of research on the splitting of the atom. He quoted The New Yorker, August 18, 1945, in the wake of the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – “Political plans for the new world, as shaped by statesmen, are not fantastic enough. The only conceivable way to catch up with atomic energy is with political energy directed to a universal structure” – The Future of Man, p. 146. This citation appeared in an essay entitled, “Some Reflections on the Spiritual Repercussions of the Atom Bomb.” He was aware of the devastating potential of the splitting of the atom but was so © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page33   convinced of the forward progress of the Evolutionary Process which he understood in total cosmic breadth, that he foresaw the event as leading not only to a massive leap forward in scientific and technological mastery but to spiritual growth as well. The following citations will indicate his confidence. Thus the greatest of Man’s scientific triumphs happens also to be the one in which the largest number of brains were enabled to join together in a single organism, at the same time more complex and more centred, for the purpose of research. Was this simply coincidence? Did it not rather show that in this as in other fields nothing in the universe can resist the converging energies of a sufficient number of minds sufficiently grouped and organized? Thus considered, the fact of the release of nuclear energy, overwhelming and intoxicating though it was, began to seem less tremendous. Was it not simply the first act, even a mere prelude, in a series of fantastic events which, having afforded us access to the heart of the atom, would lead us on to overthrow, one by one, the many other strongholds which science is already besieging? The vitalisation of matter by the creation of supermolecules. The re-modelling of the human organism by means of hormones. Control of heredity and sex by the manipulation of genes and chromosomes. The readjustment and internal liberation of our souls by direct action upon springs gradually brought to light by psycho-analysis. The arousing and harnessing of the unfathomable intellectual and effective powers still latent in the human mass….Is not every kind of effect produced by a suitable arrangement of matter? And have we not reason to hope that in the end we shall be able to arrange every kind of matter, following the results we have obtained in the nuclear field? (p. 149) ….But now, after that famous sunrise in Arizona, he can no longer doubt. He not only can but, of organic necessity, he must for the future assist in his own genesis. The first phase was the creation of mind through the obscure, instinctive play of vital forces. The second phase is the rebounding and acceleration of mind itself, the only principle in the world capable of combining and using for the purpose of Life, and on the planetary scale, the still-dispersed or slumbering energies of matter and of thought. It is broadly in these terms that we are obliged henceforth to envisage the grand scheme of things of which, by the fact of our existence, we find ourselves a part. (p. 150) …To me it seems that thanks to the atom bomb it is war, not mankind, that is destined to be eliminated, and for two reasons. The first, which we all know and long for, is that the very excess of destructive power placed in our hands must render all armed conflict impossible. But what is even more important, although we have thought less about it, is that war will be eliminated at its source in our hearts because, compared with the vast field © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page34   for conquest which science has disclosed to us, its triumphs will soon appear trivial and outmoded. Now that a true objective is offered us, one that we can only attain by striving with all our power in a concerted effort, our future action can only be convergent, drawing us together in an atmosphere of sympathy. I repeat, sympathy, because to be ardently intent upon a common object is inevitably the beginning of love. In affording us a biological, ‘phyletic’ outlet directed upwards, the shock which threatened to destroy us will have the effect of giving us a sense of direction and a dynamic force and finally (within certain limits) of making us of one mind. The atomic age is not the age of destruction but of union in research. For all their military trappings, the recent explosions at Bikini herald the birth into the world of a Mankind both inwardly and outwardly pacified. They proclaim the coming of the Spirit of the Earth…. (p. 152) In short, the final effect of the light cast by the atomic fire into the spiritual depths of the earth is to illumine within them the overriding question of the ultimate end of Evolution – that is to say, the problem of God. (p. 153) The great scientist, humanist Albert Einstein, was not as sanguine about the atomic breakthrough. Teilhard, so convinced of evolutionary progress, recognized the need for a supra-national governing authority to control the atomic breakthrough, but that was not what was his over-riding concern. For Einstein it was. In his 700-page volume, Einstein On Peace, (including notes and index) one could cite his grave concern on almost any page. While Einstein’s passion for supra-sovereign authority and the end of war is not the subject of this address, in light of yet another anniversary of the dropping of the bomb, I quote Einstein in this context. Before the raid on Hiroshima, leading physicists urged the War Department not to use the bomb against defenseless women and children. The war could have been won without it. The decision was made in consideration of possible future loss of American lives; but now we have to consider the possible loss, in future atomic bombings, of millions of lives. The American decision may have been a fatal error, for men accustom themselves to thinking that a weapon which was used once can be used again. Had we allowed other nations to witness the text explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, the bomb would have served as an education for new ideas. This would have been an impressive and favorable moment to make considered proposals for world order to end war. Our renunciation of this weapon as too terrible to use would have carried great weight in negotiations and would have convinced the other nations of our sincerity in asking for their co-operation in developing these newly unleashed powers for good and peaceful purposes. (p. 386) © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page35   In an interview with newscaster Robert Trout, CBS, May 28, 1946, Einstein was asked, “And you believe, Dr. Einstein, that this thinking man can solve our great problem for us?” Einstein gave a lengthy answer which began, “I believe nothing else can.” Further along in the interview, prompted by Archibald MacLeish, Einstein said, “Just as we have changed our thinking in the world of pure science to embrace newer and more useful concepts, so we must now change our thinking in the world of politics and law. It is too late to make mistakes.” (p. 378f) Garreau brings his discussion of transcendence to a close on a religious note. Humans find an absence of explanations for how the world works profoundly unsettling. That’s why the search for this new grand story becomes important. Yet when you start talking to professionals who are thinking about what this narrative might be like, you find it to be an almost entirely secular group – the subject of God rarely comes up. I am not particularly religious myself, but the American people overwhelmingly are. So it occurred to me to wonder what transcendence might have meant historically to the worldwide range of the devout. You’d think over the last three thousand years or so, we might find a few hints in their work as to how to think about this fix. (p. 257) Garreau points to Karen Armstrong and her reference to Karl Jaspers, the German philosopher of history, who spoke of the Axial Age – “a period of unique and fundamental focus on transcendence that is “the beginning of humanity as we now know it.” All over the world, humans simultaneously began to wake up to a burning need to grapple with deep and cosmic questions. All the major religious beliefs are rooted in this period. “The search for spiritual breakthrough was no less intense and urgent than the pursuit of technological advance is in our own,” she says. “That’s quite endorsing, actually. Instead of seeing your own tradition as an idiosyncratic, lonely quest, it becomes part of what human beings do, part of a universal search for meaning and value. This is the kind of scenario that the human mind goes through in its search for ultimate meaning.” “If there is an axis in history, we must find it empirically,” Jaspers wrote. The spiritual process which took place between 800 and 200 B.C. seems to constitute such an axis. It was then that the man with whom we live today came into being. Let us designate this period as the “axial age”. Extraordinary events are crowded into this period. In China lived Confucius and Lao Tse, all the trends in Chinese philosophy arose, it was the era of Mo Tse, Chuang Tse and countless others. In India it was the age of the upanishads and of Buddha; as in China, all philosophical trends, including skepticism and materialism, sophistry and nihilism, were © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page36   developed. In Iran Zarathustra put forward his challenging conception of the cosmic process as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine prophets arose: Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah; Greece produced Homer, the philosophers Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, the tragic poets, Thucydides, Archimedes. All the vast development of which these names are a mere intimation took place in these few centuries, independently and almost simultaneously in China, India and the West. The new element in this age is that man everywhere became aware of being as a whole, of himself and his limits. He experienced the horror of the world and his own helplessness. He raised radical questions, approached the abyss in his drive for liberation and redemption. And in consciously apprehending his limits he set himself the highest aims. He experienced the absolute in the depth of selfhood and in the clarity of transcendence. Armstrong is fascinated by the human universals operating amid the tumultuous upheaval of that cultural revolution. What caused dispersed civilizations simultaneously to develop these broad, transcendent ideas? There is no human culture that does not incorporate some notion of religion. Even nonbelievers develop systems such as Marxism that sport all the trappings of religion. This evidence causes Armstrong to believe that religion is an essential human need, as unlikely to be outgrown as our need for art. She sees religion as a universal search for meaning and values. She believes it is hardwired. “Human beings cannot endure emptiness and desolation,” Armstrong writes. “They will fill the vacuum by creating a new focus of meaning.” Think of the constellations in the night sky. Humans eagerly connect dots and come up with the most elaborate – even poetic tales, adorning them with heroes and myths, rather than tolerate randomness. The desire to believe goes way back in evolutionary history…” (p. 258f) Garreau suggests that this may give us a clue about human nature. Maybe this tells us something about human nature. That we are patternseeking, storytelling animals. If one sees belief as reflecting a hardwired need for meaning and values, then perhaps in the Axial Age we filled the emptiness of our emerging consciousness with the highest aspirations for human nature we could possibly imagine. This raises the interesting question of whether we are due for a new Axial Age. If our narratives of how the world works are not matching the facts, are we seeking a new era of sense, intelligibility, clarity, continuity and unity? If profound restatements of how the world works arose all over the planet the last time we had a transition on the scale of that from biological © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page37   evolution to cultural evolution, will it happen again as we move from cultural to technological evolution? (p. 259f) Garreau quotes Betty Sue Flowers who was the editor of The Power of Myth, the book by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers that accompanied the acclaimed PBS series by the same name. Flowers affirms, “This is a spiritual crisis. It’s not about science.” He references Martin E.P. Seligman who points out that there are three levels of human existence – the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life. The third form of happiness that is inevitably sought by humans is the pursuit of a meaningful life. “There is one thing we know about meaning,” says Seligman, “that meaning consists in attachment to something bigger than you are. The larger the thing that you can credibly attach yourself to, the more meaning you get out of life. Aristotle said the two noblest professions are teaching and politics, and I believe that as well. Raising children, and projecting a positive human future through your children, is a meaningful form of life. Saving the whales is a meaningful form of life. Fighting in Iraq is a meaningful form of life. Being an Arab terrorist is a meaningful form of life. Notice this isn’t a distinction between good and evil. That’s not part of this. This isn’t a theory of everything. This is a theory of meaning, and the theory says, joining and serving in things larger than you that you believe in while using your highest strengths is a recipe for meaning… It’s impossible that there will be a drug for meaning, Seligman says. But if meaning suggests deploying your greatest strengths in the service of something you believe is larger than you – pursuing the infinite game – that would seem to go to the heart of the measure of The Prevail Scenario: increased human connections. (p. 261f) Garreau references Karen Armstrong again pointing to what is a dominant theme in her work – compassion. “Religion isn’t about believing things,” Armstrong says. “It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness. It doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as it leads you to practical compassion. If your belief in a traditional God makes you come out imbued with a desire to feel with your fellow human beings, to make a place for them in your heart, to work to end suffering in the world, then it’s good.” Introducing compassion into the equation is at the core of meaning. “Without more kindliness in the world, technological power would mainly serve to increase man’s capacity to inflict harm on one another,” Bertrand Russell once wrote. Compassion may thus be at the core of successfully © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page38   managing transcendence – of coming up with a practical way to Prevail over the blind forces of change. (p. 262) In this context, Garreau reaches back to Kurzweil, the champion of The Heaven Scenario along with one more reference to Teilhard: “Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and more of other abstract and subtle attributes, such as love,” observes Ray Kurzweil. “And God has been called all these things, only without any limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably toward our conception of God, albeit never quite reaching this ideal. Thus the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form may be regarded as an essential spiritual quest.” “Someday after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love,” writes Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. “And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will discover fire.” (p. 262) Garreau concludes by suggesting that perhaps we should create new rituals – maybe “a liturgy of life everlasting as a person receives her first cellular agereversing workup.” Will these rituals do any good? I don’t know. Do baptisms, marriages and funerals – sanctifying birth, copulation and death do any good? My experience says yes. At the very least they are celebrations of transformation where people cross barriers – barriers of class, gender, region, race and religion. They bring us together by officially marking and embracing critical moments. On these occasions, human connections that are rarely achieved elsewhere routinely occur. If we are embarking on a path in which we stand to transform ourselves more than at any brief period in our species’ time on earth, we are creating new critical moments. Perhaps we might start formally marking the occasions. If we did, inviting those we know from all walks of life and all levels of ability to these ceremonies, it would continue to knit together the fabrics of all the different kinds of human natures to come. It would be about creating the third happiness, the happiness of being part of something much larger than us. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page39   It would be about continuing to march up the ramp of human connectedness. That, after all, might just possibly be the ultimate transcendence. (p. 265) As I set forth the current human situation regarding the radical evolution we are experiencing, I think of it in terms of the biblical story. Garreau suggests quite rightly that the story we tell does not fit the facts. However, as the philosopher, Santayana, counseled, guard the story because it takes 2000 years to create a new one. And maybe the story still speaks if we can move beyond the ancient mythic form in which it comes, taken literally, and ask what questions those ancient writers were addressing. Take, for example, the story of the first temptation in the Garden of Eden recorded in Genesis 3: The First Sin and Its Punishment Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die’.” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. Is this really about snakes and apples? Isn’t it really about the potential and the limits of human knowledge? The biblical tradition in the Christian tradition speaks of this yielding to the temptation to seek knowledge as “The Fall”. The great English poet, John Milton, however, spoke of “the paradox of The Fortunate Fall.” Was not the ancient author perhaps expressing the very thing we have been occupied with – promise and peril of ever-expanding human knowing and taking under control the “building blocks” of Creation. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page40   Or, think of Psalm 8: Divine Majesty and Human Dignity O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; You have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Thinking of the human being in the midst of the majestic wonder of the cosmos, the writer recognizes our smallness, yet the reality is that it is precisely the human who is contemplating the cosmic miracle, and then goes on to affirm that we are made “a little lower than God”! The older King James version has “a little lower than the angels” perhaps drawing back from any reference to God. Quite an amazing affirmation of the human over two millennia ago. Finally, look to that final vision in the New Testament, The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John. It is a violent, bloody apocalyptic vision of the End. Yet it closes with a marvelous picture of The City of God – The New Jerusalem – coming down from God in Heaven, when tears will be wiped away and death will be no more. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of Being Human Richard A. Rhem Page41   The New Heaven and the New Earth Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And, finally, in the final chapter, the moving vision of The City. The River of Life Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. From the Garden of Edenic bliss, through slings and arrows of human history to the City of God. That’s The Story. Maybe there is more there than meets the eye. Perhaps if we react to it with new eyes, it still fits the facts or gives room for them. References: Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human. New York: Doubleday, 2005. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Lakeshore Interfaith Gathering Scripture Text Psalm 8, Genesis 3:1-7, Rev. 21:1-4, 22-25, 22:1-2 Location The location of the interview Lakeshore Interfaith Center, Ganges References Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution, 2005. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20090809 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-08-09 Title A name given to the resource The Promise and Peril of Being Human Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 9, 2009 entitled "The Promise and Peril of Being Human", on the occasion of Lakeshore Interfaith Gathering, at Lakeshore Interfaith Center, Ganges. Scripture references: Psalm 8, Genesis 3:1-7, Rev. 21:1-4, 22-25, 22:1-2. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Divine Mystery Emergence https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fad2510feb2e51fd75a90a58d92b7d32.mp3 6a71d53452f26dc0ea43ab66e11cff00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event New Years Eve Scripture Text Lamentations 3:22-23, Romans 11:33-36 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19921231 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-12-31 Title A name given to the resource The Promise of Chaos Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 31, 1992 entitled "The Promise of Chaos", on the occasion of New Years Eve, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Lamentations 3:22-23, Romans 11:33-36. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/585feda97d5b66be549dcc229d1275a3.mp3 6beda3e6f21cfe2fd56bc14a3abae9a6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Eastertide VI Scripture Text Matthew 11:28 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19870524 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-05-24 Title A name given to the resource The Promise of Rest in a Violent and Hostile World Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 24, 1987 entitled "The Promise of Rest in a Violent and Hostile World ", on the occasion of Eastertide VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 11:28. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b8d39b67042d470cabfd05debbdc3b33.pdf 903807a576789eda8603b8e2135b1928 PDF Text Text The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? From the series: Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Text: Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 8:28-39 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 13, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon The title of this sermon, “The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?” raises a tough question for which there is no easy answer. And that is what I have named the sermon series I begin today. Tough Questions. By that, I mean questions that matter, that impact my life and society; questions that raise critical issues for ourselves and our world. These are questions for which there is no easy answer, no answer that can be checked by a scientific experiment or calculated by computer technology. So much hangs on the answer, but the answer will finally involve a commitment of faith because the nature of the question defies a clear and simple answer. We will open ourselves to some critical questions that most of us wrestle with some time or other, but often leave unspoken in conversation because we are not always ready to admit to the question or to face the possibility that some tried and true formulas of faith may need revising, which is scary. But a healthy faith, a positive spiritual life can hardly be possessed if there are questions that now and then surface but are pushed down and denied. And so, let’s raise some tough questions these weeks, seeking not easy answers, but honest engagement with the questions and hopefully a place to stand that provides freedom and confidence for our lives. That we have questions about some of the “answers” that our traditional biblical faith has supplied is not surprising. How could it be otherwise? The whole biblical story arose from 2000 to 4000 years ago. The human experience of God was portrayed in narrative, saga, myth, allegory and parable, which conceived of the physical universe and of God within the framework of an ancient picture which was believed to be the way things were, but not at all in terms of our present understanding of the universe, humankind, society, or historical development as we know it. © Grand Valley State University   �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   The ancients wrestled with fundamental human questions as we do - Where have we come from? Where are we going? Is there some purpose unfolding? Does it all mean something? Those questions are addressed in all the world’s religions. And the stories, myths, and teaching of all religions are attempts to find some clue to the meaning of Reality we encounter as humankind. The Bible is the cumulative religious understanding of Israel, culminating in the event of Jesus Christ, and the belief about God, the world, nature and history formed the framework within which the biblical answers to ultimate questions were articulated. But that framework no longer reflects the reality of the universe or humanity or God’s interaction with the world. I don’t think I have to belabor that fact; it must be obvious to any reasonable reflection on the ancient worldview. But then, if our whole understanding of the nature of the universe and humankind has undergone radical re-conception, is it still possible to believe the ancient answers to life’s tough questions? For example: The Providence of God: Is it wishful thinking? To engage that question, let’s look at the model or the paradigm from Scripture within which the providence of God was declared and proclaimed. But, first, let’s see what Providence has been understood to consist in. I had the Questions and Answers of the Heidelberg Catechism printed in your liturgy. These questions come in the second part of the Reformation Catechism out of the 16th century - the discussion of the Apostles’ Creed, the opening statement of which declares, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. QUESTION 26: What dost thou believe when thou sayest: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth? ANSWER: That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of nothing made heaven and earth, with all that in them is, who likewise upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ his Son my God and my Father, in whom I so trust as to have no doubt that he will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul; and further, that whatever evil he sends upon me in this vale of tears, he will turn to my good; for he is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father. QUESTION 27: What dost thou understand by the Providence of God? ANSWER: The almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth, with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things, come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   QUESTION 28: What does it profit us to know that God has created, and by his providence still upholds all things? ANSWER: That we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and for what is future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from his love, since all creatures are so in his hand that without his will they can not so much as move. In the Catechism’s statement, the Providence of God is rooted in the biblical teaching of creation. The God Who creates, likewise upholds and governs. In consequence, “all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” In order to picture this biblical model of God’s interaction with the creation, I drew a diagram which still needs some work, but I think will make the point THE BIBLICAL MODEL - A THEISTIC SALVATION MODEL God is predominantly transcendent/omnipotent. God intervenes in nature/history. The biblical story is largely a redemption story centering in God’s saving action to redeem the human creature and effect God’s Kingdom. Creation is largely a stage area for the drama of salvation. This model does not deny God’s presence or immanence in Creation; the Spirit is present in Creation and Jesus is God’s presence in flesh. However, God’s transcendence predominates; God is “above,” other than that which God calls © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   into being by God’s Word. And what God creates is perfect, harmonious, “very good.” The Genesis story in the succeeding chapters through chapter 11 then recounts human rebellion, disobedience and the consequent corruption of the perfect paradisical state. The human creatures’ disobedience is spoken of in subsequent Christian teaching as the Fall and the human family is marked by that original disobedience, which moral failure is the root cause of all that goes wrong in Creation. The biblical story beginning with Genesis 12, the calling of Abraham and Sarah and the covenant of Grace constituted with them, marks the turn from the Creation theme to the salvation or redemption theme - the long movement toward the End of history with paradise regained - the Holy City, the new Jerusalem and the dwelling of God with humankind. In this scheme, which is the traditional biblical model or paradigm, the focus is the Divine-Human relationship; the stress is on salvation and the physical universe is simply the stage on which the redemptive drama is played out. God is outside but intervenes and really controls what happens, because God is Fatherlike, God can be trusted to turn even evil to good purpose, but all things good and evil, come from God’s “fatherly hand.” That is the picture, the framework, the model within which God’s Providence is affirmed in Scripture and has been taught in the Christian faith tradition. This understanding is held not only by folk in the churches, but finds expression again and again in popular conversation. This idea has permeated the consciousness of Western culture - “God has a purpose in it.” Over and over one hears it in the face of tragedy and suffering of every sort. It is not a reasoned conclusion on the basis of evidence; it reflects a deep, deep, uncritical response to life’s experiences. It must reflect a deep longing in the human heart that it be so. That’s why I raise the tough question - Is it wishful thinking? Is it something within us that craves such a Providence to be operative because we are aware of the fragile nature of our lives, how vulnerable we are to a hundred or a thousand perils beyond our knowledge and control? But if such “comfort” is posited on a conception of God and cosmos and human reality that we can no longer really believe, then are we only fooling ourselves? Simply believing something does not make it true. Well, how do we understand our reality? If not the biblical model of Creation in Perfection/Fall/Redemption, then what model might be more reflective of what has been discovered about our universe and our human reality? How might we conceive of God and God’s inter-action with the world? © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   An Alternative Creation Model: If you eliminated God as Mystery and the immanent Divine Spirit permeating the movement from Big Bang toward Shalom, I think those scientists who deal in cosmological thought, astrophysics, sub-atomic biology and the related fields would agree that this diagram reflects our knowledge of the physical universe and our total reality. All that was present in the Big Bang has been unfolding, developing from that micro-second to the present. Some scientists sense the presence of a Mystery; some deny any possibility of positing purpose and goal. But, the phenomenon of religion is a human response to some ultimate Creative Source or Force from which all reality derives, some purpose or intention - a movement toward a Goal. We have reflected on God as Mystery whose creative life-giving “Breath” or spirit permeates all that is, whose nature is given definition by the Word/Spirit in flesh in Jesus from whose life we see the nature of the Mystery as gracious. This is the claim of faith; it is not verifiable as are the echoes of radio waves from the Big Bang of 15 billion years ago. Such a claim is not provable by any means derived from the sciences. But, the question arises: Is such a claim consistent with a conception of the universe, our experience of God and our experience of being human? It is my contention that it is. Further, I would contend that the old model of Creation/Fall no longer convincingly explains our experience of ourselves, of God, of cosmos. © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   The Creation model posits by faith the Mystery that is God as the Creative Fount of all that is, claiming that that which sparked the whole cosmic drama of fifteen billion years was endowed with the whole potential that is being actualized; all that is was there “in the beginning.” The operative term for this model is Emergence, the continuous unfolding of the potential that was contained in the originating Creative explosion. Over 15 billion years the inorganic moved to the organic and there was life. Organic life emerged into consciousness, selfconsciousness, the pre-human, the human. And the human moves toward the level of spirit. And where will spirit lead? Will there be a level of spiritual community beyond anything our human community has yet known in its warring, despoiling, rapacious madness? Let me be clear; the model might suggest that it is ever upward and onward, but that is not necessarily so. Why? Because at the level of the human, the creature becomes co-creator, able to respond to the beckoning of the Spirit or to be dragged down by the pull of the lower from which he/she has derived. This is where the claim of the Providence of God must be re-thought. The old Creation/Fall model posited a God Almighty and all controlling, a transcendent/wholly other Being whose “life” was not really immanent within the cosmic process. That God, spoken of as male, existed apart from the cosmic drama, but rather directly governed, controlled all that transpired. Thus, the Heidelberg Catechism claims, “all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” The nurturing parental conception of God softens this claim and the positive value of such a faith is that one becomes patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, with good confidence for the future. But there are problems here. All things from God’s hand? The Holocaust? There are serious voices that claim we can never think the same about God after the Holocaust - 6 million of God’s special people? Or, what of the beautiful child living in close proximity to this church in a life/death struggle with cancer? And the instances that we encounter again and again are beyond number. Is it a comfort to believe all things come from God’s fatherly hand? And then, too, such a claim is contrary to the emerging, unfolding, developing, evolving reality of which we are a part. There seems to be no tinkering with the amazing universe about which we have learned so much. Further, such a view of God’s interaction with the world and our lives runs contrary to our own concrete experience. We do determine the course of history and of the cosmos in a very real sense. We can destroy the planet or we can nurture it. We can work for peace or create conflict, violence and death. We can © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   work for dialogue and mutual understanding among religious traditions or use religion as the fuel to warfare. We may wish it were not in our hands, but it is. So, then, is the answer to our question, “Yes?” Is trust in the Providence of God just wishful thinking? My answer is not an easy answer. It is not a simple “Yes” or a simple “No.” I do believe one can yet believe in the providence of God within the cosmic drama of which we are a part, but it will undergo a significant revision. The classic biblical story of God’s Providence is the Joseph story in Genesis. I cannot here re-tell that story. You can read it in Genesis 37-50. It is a story of human arrogance, meanness, grief and deep pathos. The family of Jacob is human, all too human. The brothers hate Joseph, their father’s favorite who himself is not wise in relating his dreams of superiority. In the end, Joseph becomes a powerful ruler in Egypt. Jacob sends his remaining sons to Egypt to buy grain because of a famine in Canaan. They are recognized by Joseph who puts them through tests and great stress. Finally, he reveals himself to them. They fear for their lives. But Joseph spares them. Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good... Joseph had a choice. He could have wiped them out in an act of vengeance. Rather, he forgave them, breaking the cycle of violence. In so doing, I believe Joseph was responding to the Spirit that beckons toward shalom rather than yielding to the impulse from below that would have satisfied the desire for vengeance and retaliation. Joseph discerned in the milieu of human conflict a way of peace that led to reconciliation; Joseph acted with grace. Paul is probably as responsible as anyone for the traditional conception of Providence. The 8th chapter of Romans is a statement of his conviction that all things are directly determined by “God’s fatherly hand” as the catechism claims. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. Paul believed God had pre-destined that we be conformed to the image of Jesus. He goes on to make an absolutely marvelous claim that whatever befalls us in no way can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ. Can we translate Paul’s confidence in terms that reflect our understanding of our world, our experience? I think we can, but not as straightforwardly and simply as Paul claimed. The biblical model of God in direct control of all that happens so that nothing happens but that which “comes from the Fatherly hand” collided with the model of the universe that arose in the modern period - we speak of the Newtonian model - the great machine that grinds on its way according to ironclad laws of cause and effect leaving room only for a Creator at the beginning to get things © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 8   started and then from outside the system becoming an observer, perhaps on rare occasion intervening, tinkering with the system. This is a Deist conception - God the Supreme Clockmaker who creates, winds it up and lets it run on its own. This model left little room for God’s intimate involvement in the universe or in our lives. It collided head-on with the idea of Providence as conceived in Scripture and catechism. This understanding of the universe has dominated the last three hundred years and created the tragic gulf between religious faith and scientific understanding of the world. The conflict has been costly to both science and religion and is the cause of large-scale defection from religious faith by the intellectual leadership of the world. But, there are leading thinkers today in both science and religion who see in the more recent understanding of the universe the manner in which God’s continuous immanent creativity is operative in the unfolding drama influencing the course of cosmic development toward a goal according to a gracious purpose. As my thinking - the I that I am - influences the whole of my being, even to the most elemental physical processes, analogously so a God transcendent - more than the totality of all that is but not apart from any aspect of it – might influence the course of its development in ways that are life enhancing, creative, and increasing in complexity, moving the whole to higher levels of development. Computers remain a mystery to me, but I do know there is hardware and software. The hardware is mechanical; it functions according to physical law. But, the “machine” is useless without a program that determines how its myriad circuitry operates. The program is determined by a human mind with a purpose in mind. The program is encoded on a disk and inserted in the hardware equipment so that the desired result is achieved. Might God be the author of the software of the cosmos? And if God as Mystery is revealed to be mirrored in Jesus, then could we not trust in the creative, gracious intention written into the universe’s program of development? Finally, when we speak of God, we speak of mystery and when we think deeply about our own being, we run up against mystery, as well. All analogies break down; we come to the end of rational discourse. Yet, I believe there are resources in our faith tradition and in the amazing unveiling of the wonders of the cosmos that point to a God much larger than the old, biblical stories portrayed, but a God, nonetheless, full of grace with a purpose far grander than we’ve yet conceived of. The old conceptions gave confidence for the future and comfort for the present. Comfort is “com-fortes” - that is, enabling one to live with strength. I do believe that is possible, to an even greater degree, given what we are learning about the nature of our world. But there is this critical difference: in the model I am suggesting, we are called to be co-creators with God. We can thwart the Creator’s © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 9   purpose or join in its realization. The dice of the universe is loaded, biased toward life and creative movement toward spirit and community, toward Shalom. But, it will not happen unless or until the human species catches the dream and forsakes its warring madness. The Providence of God - is it wishful thinking? If we see ourselves passively being played upon, waiting for God to unilaterally create heaven on earth, sparing us all harm and suffering -Yes. But, if we understand that providence as God’s continuous top-down influence nudging, beckoning, urging toward humane community - No. When we learn to react to our life situation as did Joseph, with humility and grace, then I believe we will experience the reality of what Paul expressed If God is for us, who can be against us? What can separate us from the love of Christ?... nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Living thus, open, free, confident, I will see how God works all things together for good and, yielded to that overarching Divine persuasion, I will find my life being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, whose highest expression of human selfhood was the integrity of offering his life for the Divine Dream that drove him, praying, Thy will be done. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/063cf23767e2bedba7d37632acae5caa.mp3 5a72b8bd702c0a8ed24e2eb1cfa0f89b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost VIII Series Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture Text Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 8:28-39 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19970713 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-07-13 Title A name given to the resource The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 13, 1997 entitled "The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 8:28-39. Mystery Nature of God Nature of Religion Shalom https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a7920ad49059b0b26a52436b6d4b4376.jpg 359e668edc1b26f970e0e2413b27da79 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. S411 .R87 no.6 1916 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01_Bindings0189 Title A name given to the resource The Pruning Manual Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource W. (Designer) Description An account of the resource Binding of The Pruning Manual, by L.H. Bailey, published by the Macmillan Company, 1916. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1916 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/187bd8e3a2b29fba1cdc64c7ebf3c00f.jpg 08e0b55902f64c0a30f59da86b59ced3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PS3525.A2423 P87 1901 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01_Bindings0457 Title A name given to the resource The Puppet Crown Description An account of the resource Binding of The Puppet Crown, by Harold MacGrath, published by The Bowen Merrill Company, 1901. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1901 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7a9bfc59732add47c871f85e4fe306fc.mp3 c127a30d609807b73cc6210303f4899b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event The Fall of the Berlin Wall Pentecost XXVI Scripture Text Psalm 33:10 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19891112 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-11-12 Title A name given to the resource The Purposes of God and the Tides of History Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 12, 1989 entitled "The Purposes of God and the Tides of History", on the occasion of The Fall of the Berlin Wall, Pentecost XXVI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 33:10. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/acb4c6dd9b7f45249d09517bf531b1b1.mp3 1f61837e3ce74743b6a6cb564978c994 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecosst XXIV Scripture Text Genesis 2:4-9, I Timothy 6:11-19 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20011118 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-18 Title A name given to the resource The Pursuit of Happiness Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 18, 2001 entitled "The Pursuit of Happiness", on the occasion of Pentecosst XXIV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 2:4-9, I Timothy 6:11-19. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4b65fa8665b6d06e1c20ec197cc74804.pdf 5c635614d80c4cdf40645a38bdf18891 PDF Text Text OnGoing LGBT Conference: The Queer State of the Union LIB 100 Approved � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource GVSU Sexuality and Gender Flyers Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Rainbow Resource Center Women and Gender Studies Department Women's Commission Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity Description An account of the resource Digitized posters, flyers, event notices, and other materials relating to gender expression and sexuality at Grand Valley State University, with materials spanning from 1974 to 2019. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974/2019 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digitized from collections at the Rainbow Resource Center (formerly the Milton E. Ford LGBT Resource Center), Women and Gender Studies Department, Women's Commission, and Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Gender identity Gender expression Sexual orientation Women's studies Queer theory Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource eng Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09_SGF_LGBTQ_2009_OnGoing-LGBT-Conference-Queer-State-of-the-Union-Poster.pdf Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-09-21 Title A name given to the resource The Queer State of the Union Description An account of the resource Poster with a synopsis on the topic, and information of the event, including the place, time and date. The 2009 LGBT & Politics event of the LGBT OnGoing Conference series. Subject The topic of the resource Sexual minorities Community centers Gay rights Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Rainbow Resource Center Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Rainbow Resource Center https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c9245356d84ed98ff9659fd6c979a504.pdf dd9730e1f7dc5a95b2797f7a468305b5 PDF Text Text The Quest From the series: Q & Q: The Religious Quest and Question Text: Micah 4:5; Matthew 2:1-2 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Epiphany, January 10, 1999 Transcription of the spoken sermon Since worship had to be canceled because of the weather last week, this is the first time we gather in worship in 1999, and I wish you a Happy New Year. The calendar is not all that important; we are on the threshold of the turn of the century and of the millennium, but, that really is no big deal, if you really stop to think about it, for the calendar is a rather parochial matter. It’s a human product; we’ve produced it and it’s a western Christian calendar. If you were in China, I suppose it would be the year 6000 or something. If you were in Jerusalem, last year you would have celebrated the 3000th anniversary of the city and I think for the Jewish people it’s the year 5,600 and something or other. I didn’t know where to find all that information, but it’s close. The point is, the year 2000 is no big deal. If it really were a big deal, it would have happened four years ago because there is a mistake in the calendar from when it was first put together. Anyway, what I’m saying to you is don’t get excited about going into the year 2000. Relax. Have a party. And don’t believe any of the rubbish that’s around; just don’t believe it. There are a few advanced human beings who I understand use computers - they may have a problem for a while. But, outside of that technology, there’s going to be no big deal at all. But the calendar does have this advantage: it reminds us that our life is involved in a movement and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can dig in our heels, we can fret, we can try all sorts of things to freeze the moment and hold it back. We can sing the song, "Stop the World and Let Me Off," but it won’t do any good, because time marches on and our human story marches on. We are historical people marked by the movement of time. Our days and weeks and months and years go on and the calendar’s turning. The calendar on the wall is a sign of the fact that time moves, we move, inevitably. And so, the calendar is an opportunity for us at this time of the year to take stock and to look to the future. In the Church, the 6th of January is the Feast of Epiphany which means the manifestation, the celebration in the Church of its conviction that Light has come into the world, that the child that was born who we believe was the Word made flesh, whose name in the Gospel of Matthew was Emmanuel, a name hardly ever used beyond that, and yet perhaps the finest name of all, that in the flesh of the © Grand Valley State University   �The Quest Richard A. Rhem Page 2   child, Emmanuel, God with us, that is the heart of our faith and that’s the heart of Christmas. On the Feast of Epiphany we celebrate the fact that in the child, God became human flesh and we have Light in the world, Light in the world for our ongoing journey. For that is the nature of our human existence - we are on a journey. Within us, deep within us there is a quest. We don’t pause often enough to acknowledge the quest. We probably don’t think about it very often, and then those moments intrude themselves upon us when we ask the ultimate questions, and we ask about the mystery of our existence before the face of the Ultimate Mystery - Who are we? And Why are we here? From whence have we come; whither are we going; and what in the world is God doing? We are people who have within our depths a question and a quest. It is the very nature of our humanity, and the quest that is endemic to our humanity is the religious quest. The questions are religious questions; they’re questions about the Ultimate, about meaning, about purpose, and there is that within our human nature that senses that we are on the way, that we are not where we are going, and that what we have yet experienced lacks completion and fulfillment. When we stop to think about it, we know that that’s the very nature of being human, that we are people on the way. We have a past and today we are able to have a sense of that past as no generations before us, recognizing that whole cosmic story of billions of years that emerged into a story of life, and then life at some point emerging into selfconscious life, some creature in its animality, in a moment becoming aware of itself and of the other, and at that moment, the universe became conscious, and we, humankind, are the consciousness of the cosmos, and it is that which marks us as humans that we ask those ultimate questions, that we are able to go back and to trace that long, long progression, that we become aware of ourselves at this moment and that we contemplate a future into which we are moving, a future uncharted that has surprises that we have not yet dreamed of. That’s really the nature of being human. To be human, I believe, is to be on a quest. And to be on a quest is to be asking the religious questions. Something within us, some yearning, some longing for some clue as to what this is all about, who we are, and what in the world God is doing. A beautiful statement written by C. S. Lewis entitled, “The Signature of the Soul,” found in The Problem of Pain, says very well what I want to say about that mark of our humanity as having a question embedded in its depths. C. S. Lewis writes, There are times when I think we do not desire heaven, but more often I find myself wondering whether in our hearts and our heart of hearts we have ever desired anything else…Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling of that something which you were born desiring and which amid all the flux of other desiring and passion, day and night, year after year, from childhood to old age you have been looking for, watching for, listening for. © Grand Valley State University �The Quest Richard A. Rhem Page 3   You’ve never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it, tantalizing glimpses of it, promises never quite fulfilled. But, if it should ever really become manifest, if ever there came an echo of it that did not fade away but grew louder and swelled into the sound itself, you would know it. Beyond all doubt, you would say, "Here it is. This is that for which I was made." We cannot tell each other about it; it is the secret signature of the soul, the incommunicable, unappeasable want, the thing desired before we made any conscious choices which we shall still desire on our deathbeds. To lose this is to lose all. The signature of the soul is the quest for meaning, for completion, for fulfillment, for some sense, some clue as to the mystery of our lives before the face of Mystery. That’s the nature of our human existence, and maybe the turning of the calendar, if it does nothing more, reminds us that we are a people on the way, living always with that deep question, "What is it all about? Who am I? Whence have I come? Whither am I going? And what in the world is God doing?" Micah speaks of a vision of another world where they’ll turn their weapons into farming implements and the nations will learn war no more, where Israel will walk in the name of its God and the nations will walk in the name of their God, and everyone will be unafraid, sitting under his or her vine and fig tree. That peaceful, serene setting that must be at the depths of the longing within us when we realize that what is cannot be all there is, that there must be something more, some other world, some new age. But, it was not only the Hebrew prophets who had such a longing, who had a sense of quest, for it is the symbol of Epiphany that a star aroused Magi, those mysterious astrologers from the East, to seek out the birth of one whom they felt signaled in the stars was destined for royalty, and they made their way to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem and knelt before the child. The Church has, somewhat triumphalistically said, "You see, it was the beginning of the coming of all nations to the true God, to the true Light." Well, I would say rather, it is an indication of the universality of the longing of the quest for God, for truth, for reality. The journey of the Magi is simply symbolic in the way we tell the Christmas story of our conviction that we are on a quest for the living God, and the celebration of the fact that that God has caused the Light to dawn upon us, not to end our quest, but to whet our appetite, to dig more deeply into that quest, following the star, seeking to fill that hole in the soul that marks us as the restless ones who are ever on the move. On this first worshiping Sunday of the New Year, I’m really excited to announce the establishment of a new ministry at Christ Community. It is an adjunct ministry of The Center for Religion and Life. I have in my hands a brochure which you’ll all have in your hands before long. The Center for Religion and Life, which announces the coming in February and the first weekend of Lent, February © Grand Valley State University �The Quest Richard A. Rhem Page 4   19-21, the presence of John Dominic Crossan, who is, I think I can say without refutation, the world’s preeminent scholar in the research for the historical Jesus. John Dominic Crossan will inaugurate a lecture series in 1999 under the auspices of The Center for Religion and Life. He’ll be followed by Marcus Borg, the most popular writer and author in this whole historical Jesus quest. In the fall, we’ll have Amy-Jill Levine who is a Jewish scholar teaching New Testament at Vanderbilt University, and then perhaps the most controversial churchman in America today, Bishop John Shelby Spong coming to us, as the brochure says, to help us re-imagine Christian faith for the third millennium. This Center for Religion and Life has a logo, which is Q & Q, selected very deliberately, because today popularly you will see, "Q & A." What’s the question? This is the answer. And I think throughout the long history of the Church, Q & A would fit appropriately. What’s the question? We have the answer. Christ Community is going to inaugurate a Center for Religion and Life that will be marked not by Q & A, but by Q & Q, by Quest and Question, for we come to acknowledge, as I said a moment ago, that it is the very nature of our human existence that we are in movement, on a journey, and that within our depths there is a quest for meaning which is, I believe, the quest for God. We will honor that quest, seeking to help people clarify the questions, for to be human, to be honest is to live without absolute answers. Life is a mystery. Too often, for too long in the Church, we have promised too much. We have made premature closure on those Ultimate questions that drive our restlessness, and so we felt that it was time for a congregation to establish a Center where the quest can be honored and the questions sought to be clarified, the quest of our human existence, the questions that impinge upon our human existence, a Center where, as an adjunct to this total ministry, we can create a space, a forum, if you will, where those questions can be honestly pursued. Why? Because the Christian faith needs desperately to be translated in light of the explosion of modern knowledge. I am not being critical; I am stating a fact quite simply: The Church at large has never come to terms with the knowledge, the explosion of knowledge in the modern world. Why do it? Because our story comes out of an ancient world and an ancient framework which is not in any way to denigrate the truth that came to expression, simply to recognize that the structures within which the story was told are structures that have long since been put to rest while a whole new world has exploded, a world that needs to have the interpretation and the critique of the faith, but which also must critique the faith drawing from it new answers and new understandings and insights in order that faith and life may illumine each other. Why do it? Because the Gospel is good news, and it does need to be presented in such a fashion that it can connect with people of contemporary experience so that the Church doesn’t become a museum piece, lauding yesterday’s answers to today’s questions, but allowing the Gospel fresh expression through hard work, © Grand Valley State University �The Quest Richard A. Rhem Page 5   theological reflection, biblical study in order that we may find a way to speak good news into the future. Why Christ Community? Well, because we’ve been doing it for a long time here. You have been a wonderful congregation that has encouraged me to continue to think the faith, and Christ Community is a rather rare situation. Not many people with my passion and my interest go into the ministry or stay in the ministry. Not in the pastoral ministry. There are all kinds of places to go where one can think unfettered by the pastoral setting, but it has been who I am, but you have allowed me in this setting to continue to think and to think out loud on this stool, and we’ve always had a freedom here to think the faith, reflect on the faith, probe the edges. Why Christ Community? Because this is a most rare place where over a quarter of a century of theological reflection has been translated into preaching that has developed a community that is the laboratory by which the theology can be tested. You are the fruit of the theological reflection which has found expression in preaching, and there aren’t a lot of situations like this. But there’s another reason why Christ Community and that is that we have not only that tradition of free inquiry combining evangelical passion with intellectual integrity, but we also have a new burst of freedom and freshness. We, in our independent status, have no ecclesiastical pressures or obligations. We are free to think the faith as never before. I’ve had an interesting experience in the last year and I’ve mentioned it to you, I’m sure, in conversation, if we’ve talked about it. I’ve always felt I had a free pulpit here and you’ve been a wonderful congregation to allow me to indulge my habit, but I have today a freedom that I didn’t know I didn’t have, and that’s a fascinating experience. I have a freedom today I didn’t know I didn’t have. And so, while this is nothing new, really, we’re going to do it with a new intentionality and a new deliberateness and a new publicness. We’re going to do our best to create here an oasis where every question is honored, where there is no subject that is off limits, where in conversation, in community, we can think together in the presence of the mystery that is God. Why do it? It needs desperately to be done, and there aren’t many, either in academy or congregation, that are doing it. Why do it here? Because of the position of freedom that allows that kind of honest inquiry. Why do it now? I’m getting old. I don’t have long to go anymore. I have to get on it. If we’re ever going to do it, we’ve got to do it. I mean, if you want to do it with me, and I’d like to do it with you, so let’s do it together. Honoring the quest, clarifying the questions; breaking new ground, unafraid, because we really believe in the Good News, in the grace of God that has appeared in the Word made flesh who is the Light of the world, who beckons wise ones. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/37f08f1b5913669c88e7388e4ca19f47.mp3 f543154db5e7a11d12d3649f9b35eaed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Epiphany II Series Q & Q: The Religious Quest and Question Scripture Text Micah 4:5, Matthew 2:1-2 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Gordon Kaufman.In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology, 1995. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19990110 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-01-10 Title A name given to the resource The Quest Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 10, 1999 entitled "The Quest", as part of the series "Q & Q: The Religious Quest and Question", on the occasion of Epiphany II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Micah 4:5, Matthew 2:1-2. Epiphany Meaning Mystery of God Religious Quest