Shut up and listen!

OK, so maybe that was just a little rude. But it was necessary.

Know the difference between a Buddhist and an Evangelical Christian?

Buddhists know they don’t know so they seek. Evangelical Christians think they know everything so they preach.

By that definition I am far, far more Buddhist than I am Christian.

I have not returned to this blog (I still hate that word!) of late because I have been working on our homeschool effort. It is a real challenge and very time consuming to develop a school program for three kids, one that will speak to all of them and help them understand each subject. But that’s not the subject today, so I go on (as opposed to shutting up myself!).

Shut up and listen!

That’s what I have to say quite often to my boy. He is my pride and joy, a brilliant just-turned-eight year old whose brain runs faster than mine. He’s always thinking. He’s always talking. His problem–like mine sometimes–is that he doesn’t stop long enough to listen. In order to get his thinker in tuned with the thought at hand I have to cut it off and re-direct it sometimes.

I used to be just like him. I still am, too, on occasion. I have learned, however, that listening and learning is far more conducive to understanding than constantly talking. Maybe you need to learn the same thing.

My return to blabber-blog on this beautiful Sunday morning was spurred on by conversations with a friend via email and an introduction to a movement I somehow missed. Living in the backwoods is a bit isolating. The movement, called Emergent or Emerging, is encouraging. But there I find a lot of overthink.

Definition:

overthink noun. 1. Thinking more than necessary. 2. Attempting to discover the unknown merely by stressing out one’s brain. 3. Exercising one’s limited human faculties in a vain attempt to understand the nature of God and the Universe. 4. Putting too much effort in analysis of flawed or incomplete data and drawing erroneous, unsubstantiated or unreliable conclusions from said data.

Shut up and listen.

Evangelicalism and Buddhism are at the opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum. I was born an Evangelical. But I was born retarded. I had a brain defect. I was born a thinker. And a doubter. Maybe Thomas is a distant relative of mine. Or Socrates. There is one word in the English language I never could unlearn even though it is the nastiest and ugliest word in Evangelical circles. That word is why.

Evangelical theology says there ARE reasons but follows that up with the phrase “God’s ways are not our ways.” I will completely agree with the phrase but absolutely and vehemently disagree with the way it is used. God’s “ways” may not be our ways but God is not stupid and neither am I. One thing I’ve said for decades, long before my thinking drug me out of Evangelical circles, was that if God didn’t want us to think he should not have given us a brain.

That does not mean we CAN figure out the meaning of the universe. It isn’t that God’s ways are not our ways but that God’s ways are above our ways. To be honest I am not happy that God has not given us more insight than he has but I must assume there is a purpose. In private and to myself and even to others I might speculate what the purpose is but I will not ever presume to know absolutely what that purpose is. I can never, ever be so convinced as Evangelical (or many other) theologians. That would be overthinking.

Buddhists are taught and firmly believe that they are not “enlightened.” They don’t know diddle and they know it. Buddha had to search for a lifetime and though he reached “enlightenment” he still never professed to knowing everything. The enlightenment he claimed wasn’t one of explanation, it was one of direction.

Isn’t it ironic that Jesus said much the same thing as Buddha. Christians always freak when they hear such a statement but it is true. Jesus said to seek and you’d find, knock and the door would be opened, ask and you would receive. “But Ted, he meant blessings….” No he didn’t. Stop being so selfish and so naive. And stop taking Jesus’ words out of context. Jesus would never tell people to ask for “things” or “blessings” because his entire life and ministry and message taught against such selfishness and self-indulgence. He meant to ask, seek, knock for TRUTH. Duh. He said, more or less, “shut up and listen.”

I have to admit that I have been remiss in meditation for quite some time but meditating is a far more effective tool to discover God than sitting in a pew listening to some self-convinced religious person try to convince everyone of something he’s not so convinced of himself. Trust me, I’ve been on the “inside” of church ministries enough to know that the people on the podium are not saints.

Shut up and listen.

I keep saying that, don’t I? I say it to myself, too. Shut up and listen to others. Shut up and listen to your heart. Shut up and listen to the words of Jesus. Shut up and listen to the Spirit who is a very still and very small voice in a very loud universe. It doesn’t matter as much if you listen to me but you might be inspired to learn something if you do. Not because I’m a sage or prophet but because I have begun to shut up and listen myself and I really, really wish you would try it.

Stop listening to the Talking Heads of the Christian Right and listen to the words of Jesus. Stop listening to your gut and start listening to your heart. Stop listening to theological speeches. Stop thinking you know it all. In fact, stop thinking. (That’s the hardest thing for me to do!) Start listening. Go out in the woods, sit under a tree, and do what Jesus said to do, ask, seek, knock. Hang there long enough and you might just discover something worth talking about.

When you do get a bit of insight come on back and tell me to shut up. I will listen. None of us will ever figure out everything but together we might be able to clue in on the true message of Jesus and figure out not so much what “it” is all about but what we’re supposed to do about “it.”