"Prophets of Doom" and a Faith That Operates Through Love

I spent a few days glued to "The Prophets of Doom" episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. Carlin opens the podcast by apologizing to everyone that he is going to offend in his attempt to tell the story of the Münster Rebellion of 1534-1535. That list included both  the religious and atheists. It's that powerful of a story.

I highly recommend the podcast to anyone who can stand a little gore and isn't afraid to plumb the depths of religious violence and Christianity. The story begins relatively quietly as a militant strand of the persecuted Anabaptist Christian religious minority takes over the town from the Catholic Prince Bishop and and the Lutheran City Council that had been in charge.

The roots of this Anabaptist movement include powerful concepts that have reverberated through history like the equality between human beings, a more modern view of marital relations, adult baptism, and the communal ownership of property. The rebellion eventually devolved into delusional religious fervor, murder, polygamy, starvation, and cannibalism. Every side committed violence that we would now consider war crimes. If you're not into podcasts, you can read a full description of the siege on the All Empires website.

I don't know what the next version of the "Doomsday Prophets" will be, but their arrival is as inevitable as winter snow on the Rockies. However, the spectrum of this issue doesn't just include "Doomsday Prophets." How many churches are classified as hate groups? How many churches are more easily identified by the people they don't like rather than the people they love?

While Münster's "Prophets of Doom" bring up a lot of interesting psychological and sociological questions, the one that I think is most important to the modern day religious reader is how to we ensure that we do not inadvertently travel down the same twisting but well-worn path that turns a good religious faith into something evil.

I think that the answer is that your faith must operate through love. Charitable love must be your faith's connection to other human beings. For Christians, any other connection between your faith and others risks defying Jesus's clear mandate, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Matthew 7:1-2.

Beyond the danger of losing salvation through judging others harshly, the Christian theological basis for having your faith operate through love is summed up in Matthew 22:34-40. In that passage, a Pharisee lawyer asked Jesus, "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment under the law."

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

As Christians, we must constantly evaluate our faith and our actions against those two commandments. That is as close as we can come to inoculating our faith against becoming exactly the opposite of what it should be.j

p.s. Here is another "Running with the Current" video.

Running with the Current: Psalm One

I've started a new "Running with the Current" project focusing specifically on one spot of Ten Mile Creek near Rimini, Montana.  The goals is to do all 150 Psalms.

I hope you like them.  Here's Psalm One.

Hanging Clothes Between Storms: Accepting Adversity

June 2013

I pulled the shirt from the bundle of clothes in my left hand and placed it on the white line. I pulled the fabric apart and it expanded in the breeze.

Five minutes before, wind would've whipped the shirt to the ground. The rain hammered onto our roof well into the clothes' spin cycle. Thunder rumbled. It threatened to hail. Then the storm gave way to calm.

I looked up from the clothes line and watched the storm push over East Helena to the Spokane Hills. Rain drops poured down in sheets. Lightning rippled and danced between the ground and the clouds. A small rainbow struggled in the middle of the storm. Churning in the maelstrom. It could not build up any more colors beyond a red glow.

I placed another sheet on the line. Not sure whether it would have time to dry or share the same fate as the rain-soaked rainbow. The late spring storms came in legions over Montana's Rocky Mountains. Storm then calm, then storm, then calm.

Still the laundry had to be hung. Like the rainbow, we don't always get to decide between the storm and the calm. Both will come and there is limited purpose in questioning why.

Life is a constant learning process. While I'm at the midway point of life, I haven't proceeded anywhere near that far on the path of learning. I have gotten far enough to be able to identify some of my earlier beliefs that were completely wrong.

Those wrong ideas more than outnumber the spring storms. The most glaring example may be the belief that I held as a youth and as a young man that men and women could work hard for years and decades to reach a point where life wouldn't be a struggle.

Now I realize that life's struggles are guaranteed whether they be personal, physical, financial, spiritual, or a combination. Clearing one hurdle will lead to another. The struggle can be embraced, but it cannot be removed or overcome. For participating in struggle of is essential to our time on Earth, proving our faith and love for the Divine.

It's a lesson taught in the lives of Job and Abraham, but the clearest statement in the New Testament may be when the mother of James and John asked Jesus to have her sons sit beside Jesus in his kingdom. Jesus asked them point blank, "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" Matthew 20:22.

This was not a question about experiencing peace, joy and happy times. Can you share in the struggle, suffering, and humiliation of the Cross?


It's the highest calling, but it can't be gained without the storm of adversity.


Note: Thanks to my sister-in-law Anastasia Gurinovich for taking this picture of the storm.

Cars Seat Spiritual Guides And Saint Paul: Conversing Between Beliefs and Faiths

Zen pilgrims traveled from monastery to monastery across ancient China to learn from spiritual masters who used puzzling, of paradoxical statements and stories, to prompt spiritual awakening. I undergo a similar process while driving my daughters around town.

The spiritual masters sit in their flower-print, front-facing cars eats and pepper me with theological questions, revelations, and absurdities.

"God is the sky!"

I hear the statement, think about it and then respond. The masters question me until I give them an appropriately tangible and well-reasoned response. Or, until a yellow car drives by. If a yellow car drives by, the spiritual masters chant "Banana!"

During a recent trip, my oldest daughter Fiona said that her best friend "doesn't know God."

My wife and I paused for a second and then asked to elaborate. It became clear that the issue wasn't due to any lack of sermoning from Fiona.

Fiona wanted to know what to do.

In other words, how can she balance the love and respect she has for people with different beliefs than she has while still fulfilling her duty to share her own spiritual vision with the world?

The relevance of that question is only going to grow. Fiona's immediate family is full of Catholic, Russian Orthodox, evangelical Christian, and "spiritual but not religious" people that she loves and depends upon. Her extended family is even more diverse. We've got dear friends that follow Islam, Hindu and Native American traditions.

My wife and I did our best to answer Fiona. It was a hard response and hardly guided by a grown up world filled with warring factions fighting over faith. The following night, I found guidance from Saint Paul in his second letter to Timothy.

"[P]ursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord with purity of heart. Avoid foolish and ignorant debates, for you know that they breed quarrels. A slave of the Lord should not quarrel, but should be gentle with everyone, able to teach, tolerant, correcting opponents with kindness." 2 Timothy 2: 22-25.

It's a heavy challenge, but an essential one. To ensure that we honor the Lord not only in what we tell others about the Divine, but in how we tell them.


p.s. Let me know if you have a biblical quote or other spiritual guidance that you'd like included in the "Running with the Current" videos. Even better, post your own "Running with the Current" video on youtube and I'll add it to the playlist. Thanks again for reading.

Running with the Current: Psalm 51

Here is the next piece of "Running with the Current." The text is Psalm 51, Verse 1-17. The background was filmed at the Missouri River Headwaters near Three Forks, Montana.

I hope you like it.

matt