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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
SCRIPTURE
But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Master Jesus Christ, by which [or, through Whom] the world-system has been crucified to me, and I to the world-system.
*Galatians 6.4
SPIRITUAL TEACHING
Recently, I struggled to decide what gift to give my dearest friend and Soul Companion. I had a gift in mind, and was sure I would give it to her. Yet, during meditation the Holy Spirit kept impressing on me that I was to give her my beloved cross and necklace. This cross was dear to me. And I was befuddled as to why for me to give her the cross. Yet, I gladly obeyed and sent it. Then, I wrote her of what the cross symbolizes to me.
Let us see the cross as a symbol of out-pouring Love. And I want us to see the Cross as not only the manner in which God says “I Love you,” but as the symbol and pattern of the way we love each other in our one God.
The Cross has a different message for different persons. For some, it means this sad image. God was hurt by our sin – many say angry - and for us to be saved from our sinfulness, Jesus had to die to satisfy the justice of this God. This sounds so ultimately egocentric, like a reflection of our own petty grudges and resentments, demanding “payment” before we will forgive.
Yet, what if that is not the message of the Cross? What if there is a beautiful message, a freeing message positive and liberating, yes, most lovely? What if it has nothing to do with sinfulness, with anger, with judgment? Then, maybe our view of God would aid us in a deeper devotion to God and self-effusive loving of one another? What if the Cross is not a legal satisfaction of an offended God but, rather, purely and only a Love Letter to us all?
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In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o’er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.
When the woes of life o’ertake me,
Hopes deceive, and fears annoy,
Never shall the cross forsake me,
Lo! it glows with peace and joy.
When the sun of bliss is beaming
Light and love upon my way,
From the cross the radiance streaming
Adds more luster to the day.
Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,
By the cross are sanctified;
Peace is there that knows no measure,
Joys that through all time abide.
In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o’er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.
A tradition has it that the above verses were penned by John Bowring, about 1825, upon sailing past the coast of Macao, China. On the shore were remains of an old, fire gutted church. Above the ruins, Bowring saw the church’s Cross still standing. The title of this hymn was carved on Bowring’s tombstone.
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I love the Cross, for it speaks of Love and Life. Yet, many persons have been raised on a view of the Cross which implies something less than a God of such Love as the Friend, Jesus, I love.
Anselm of Canterbury influenced much of the thought of the Catholic and Protestant branches of Christianity with regard to the Cross. Anselm posited, in his 11th Century classic Cur Deus Homo? - “Why Did God Become Man?” - a rational theory for the incarnation of the God-Man, Jesus.
Anselm affirmed that the birth of God as the man Jesus was logically necessary. Human sin wounded God's honor. Due to God being infinite, the wound was infinite; therefore, divine justice demanded an infinite satisfaction. Yet, finite humanity could not provide an infinite satisfaction of divine justice. Only God, then, could satisfy the Divine honor and demand for justice. For the transaction to work, due to the sin being by humans, God had to become human to fulfill the demand for justice. Since the God-Man, Jesus, was free of punishment for sin, He gave his life willingly for us. Then, God's justice was appeased, and He extends mercy to all.
Is this sort of God bound to His own justice in such a legal way as given by Anselm, and who demands blood for freeing His own being to forgive, the kind of God that appeals to you? Not to me; yet, this is the God-image I was shaped by early in life. I agree fully with the assessment of Albert Haase, a Roman Catholic professor of spirituality at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, Illinois:
Anselm's God seems better suited for the courtroom than for the heart of a disciple. More strikingly, God's greatest gift to the universe, the Son, is only occasioned by the sinfulness of humanity.
*Living the Lord's Prayer.
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Fortunately, there is a better way to see the meaning of Jesus' Gospel, and the Cross. The great Franciscan theologian and mystic John Duns Scotus gave a view that has shaped Franciscan spirituality. Scotus did not believe the Incarnation was occasioned by sin in space-time. Rather, Jesus was in the mind of the Creator from before the beginning of time, and Jesus was already intended apart from any sin of humans.
According to Scotus, Jesus is the beginning, middle, and end of all Creation, all Nature. And this teaching appears in Scripture on several occasions in explicit form, and is implied often. This is known theologically as the Doctrine of the Absolute Primacy of Christ in the Universe. This teaching affirms that Jesus' life on earth is first and foremost, in the words of Haase - a fountain of self-effusive divine love.
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The practical implications of this, Haase offers in words inspiring for us to live out self-effusive Loving, in following Jesus:
The Franciscan image of God is a fountain-fulness of selfless love, of a divine love whose very nature is to move beyond and outward. Clearly, divine love comes before divine justice. That love is experienced in daily life and calls forth the same selfless, sacrificial love from the heart of every disciple. [T]he attitude and actions of the Father become the disciple's measure and standard of living.
What are ways you see possible for you, in your daily life and relationships, to practice this self-effusive, divine Love?
©OneLife Ministries. Jan 8, 2010.
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. While within the Christian path, he is an ecumenical-interspiritual teacher, author, and chaplain. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Jail, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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