MOVING MOUNTAINS

MICKEY: Yeah, but see, again, that brings up the same issue of overstating: Jesus says you can move mountains. (Mt 17:20) You can't move mountains.

REV. ANDREW: Yes, but you're forgetting that it's a metaphor..

MICKEY: ..no it's not it's not a metaphor!

REV. ANDREW: No, no, I know he SAYS that, but he's not saying, "You're going to dig this mountain and it's going to disappear"; he's saying you're going to surmount the things that, to you, appear to be immoveable mountains.

MICKEY: No, he doesn't! The context is: He makes the fig tree wither. And Peter is astonished at that, and then he tells him, "if you have the faith, you'll do even greater things than me." He's referring to PHYSICAL miracles.

REV. ANDREW: It's referring to the miraculous, yes.

MICKEY: We cannot do miracles, no matter how much faith we have...

REV. ANDREW: Well, you and I know that you CAN move a mountain it would help to have a bulldozer and a few other things, and if we spent our entire lifetime, I suppose we could move a mountain, couldn't we?

MICKEY: Aha, but that's not the way he says it he says that by COMMANDING it, by just SAYING it, you can get it done. That's somebody who's feeding people what they like to hear. People love to imagine...

REV. ANDREW: He's saying, "You are overcomers."

MICKEY: No, he's not. If he was saying, "You are overcomers," he would have said, "You are overcomers." Or, "You can move 'MOUNTAINS' " quote unquote figurative mountains. He wouldn't have said, "You can move THIS MOUNTAIN."

REV. ANDREW: Oh, but he does use those kind of phrases, his whole manner of speaking is very vivid, better than ours.

MICKEY: Yeah, but it all comes RIGHT WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF MAKING A FIG TREE WITHER PHYSICALLY, LITERALLY.

(Do you see the liberal's predisposition of interpretation? He will ignore context; he will override it with the pervasive presupposition that Jesus would only say wise things. To Andrew, the passage can't be literal because he presumes Jesus is too wise to have meant it literally. To me, the passage, taken within its context and without any presuppositions about Jesus' wisdom, clearly IS literal. And therefore Jesus is not that wise. Jesus has badly overstated here.

Later Andrew says:)

REV. ANDREW: I'm of the view that what is sacred about Scripture isn't the words themselves, but what happens as the words are mulled over in our experience...

(Now that comment is a very good, succinct description of the liberal Christian's attitude toward Scripture. That IS their approach: They use the Bible as a TOUCHSTONE to better spiritual insights. But it is their own reason and experience that is the ultimate authority for them. Scripture itself and the actual mindset of its writers are just jumping off points.

But, for me, if I'm going to regard a book as sacred, it has to be objectively sacred, not subjectively sacred. It can't raise moral and philosophical issues and speak with just haphazard accuracy; it must speak accurately. It cannot overstate and misstate, the way the Bible and Jesus so often do.)


IS MY RELIGIOUS QUEST DEPRESSING?

REV. ANDREW: You're obviously a person who is proactive in this regard. You're interviewing ministers, you're going out there after it. I want to ask you one thing though. Well, let me tell you a story, and then you'll understand what I'm after.

When I was a young minister in Vermont, a man asked to see me. And he said I want the common denominator of all religions. And we talked. That was a summer parish experience and I was at seminary, and I left, and I learned later that fall that he took his life.

And, being as green as I was, I didn't appreciate how
depressed he was, and that he was looking for anything he could grab that made sense in his worldly existence, and he wasn't finding it. He had lost his wife, he was lonely, he had experienced trauma in his own existence. And it led eventually to his committing suicide.

And I was deeply disturbed at the news. And I had that feeling as every one of us does when we've stood alongside somebody who took their life what could I have said, what could I have done that might have made a difference?

You realize that in your conversations with people, if they're struggling with profound depression, there are medical things that can be done. There are verbal things we can do and consultation and so forth.

Have you ever had, or are you struggling ever in this quest of yours with that thought, that if you can't find some answers, then there's no point in going on?

MICKEY: You're asking me personally?

REV. ANDREW: Yeah.

MICKEY: No, not at all.

REV. ANDREW: That's not where you're at.

MICKEY: No, that's not where I'm at, at all. It's just the exact opposite. I feel I've come to definite, positive conclusions..

REV. ANDREW:..good..

MICKEY: ..it's just that, heh, they don't coincide with Christianity. Except, you know, so much of what you say makes good sense. I just feel that the theological framework for it is all wrong. What you say, your values, shouldn't be based on the Bible. It should be based on a book which doesn't even exist unfortunately. There should be a real Jesus somewhere, but there isn't. So we just have to go by our reason.

REV. ANDREW: There's a discipline that you might explore. For you to and you essentially told me you were working at it for you to write your own..

MICKEY: ..assessment of what I think religious truth is..

REV. ANDREW: ..your philosophy and religious perspectives, yes.

Now, what's damning about that is, once it's put all together, then those of us who read it can take shots at you, ha, ha, ha.