Here are four words used frequently and extensively in many circles: God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, and Church.  My take is confessional more than catechistical, conciliatory more than polemical, the testimony of one deeply rooted in the Christian tradition, still evangelical though inactive in organized Christianity. I go beyond the current discourse that is stuck in the medieval skyward looking of “the Santa Claus in the sky that sits to determine the fate and destiny of humankind,” an image that tickled one of my students but nonetheless current in Christian discourse.

Let us get first to the etymology of the word “god” that English translators use to name YAHWEH (the Way Life Is), Adonai, Elohim, and Messiah in the Judeo-Christian Bible, Christos for the Messiah in the Septuagint version.

“God” derives from “good” in English, “gott” in German, a translation of the Anglicized “Jehovah” of Yahweh, reaching out to the Zeus-Deux of the Greco-Roman realm, the Sanskrit dyauḥ, and Zhongguo’s Mandate of Heaven.  The word means “reality”, the only real and true condition that one can live before, as everything else is a mirage and an illusion, a heritage from the desert, witnessed by the Torah and commented extensively to this day.

As one of the 20^th century theologians clarified, “god” is a devotional term; it is at once a “what, when, where, who, and why” dynamic not the limited designation of “who” in current usage.  As Episcopal Bishop Spong observes, “God” is often referred to as a being in outer space orchestrating our daily existence on Earth, and we can influence that power with prayer.  That is not his Christianity. 

Humans in current Church discourse are designated as children of God, and those who receive that reality in the manner of Jesus Christ, called to be his disciples, are the chosen ones in the world.  It is the self-understanding of chosen-ness that set the Jews apart.

God, and in the world of scientific cause-and-effect, refers to the religiously recognized power that creates and innovates the evolution of humans and the universe.  Just think of 14.3 billion years where the solar system includes a planet with a biosphere that waters molten lava at its core, and a human history that is, at best, 40,000 years.  “God” in its stumbling “belief” system is huge beyond Einstein’s imagination, which is only 10% of human brain cells, and our insignificance infinitesimal, but a dear colleague insists on praying for open space in the parking lot before she goes shopping, assured of the efficacy of her prayerful piety.

It was an unknown Gabriel Vahanian who wrote a book in 1961 on the Death of God, which raised the question on whether the word was still appropriate to designate the call to take life in its raw reality and celebrate it, when it has become personalized as the old man in the sky.  Time magazine boldly asked in a 1966 issue the question, Is God Dead?  Pascal and Hegel already raised the same question that was a heritage of the Enlightenment against the stuffy medieval theology of Aquinas and Luther.  Nietzsche popularized the phrase and Christendom went on the defensive.

Time magazine got Paul Van Buren, William Hamilton, John Robinson, Thomas Altizer, John Caputo, and the rabbi Richard Rubenstein into a serious conversation that got labeled as a movement.  Van Buren went ahead to write a scholarly search for the Secular Meaning of the Gospel but preferred not to be identified as part of the group.  The movement name got stuck, nonetheless, and the question of the non-existence of God remained relevant.

The fact is, the skyward looking of religious metaphors had long ago relinquished its hold when we started sending rockets up stratosphere.  The human imagination got a great image in the earthrise photo of 1968 when Apollo 8 mesmerized the world with a lunarscape view of the Earth.  It ushered a turn in human consciousness.

The skyward view got turned around towards the earth, and suddenly, the monastic practices of meditation, contemplation and prayer took special significance over the more externally demonstrated virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience.  The external dictates of deity took a back seat in the shift on practices of deciding to be human.

“Lord and Master” as metaphor revealed the meaning of divinity to be nothing but a leftover from medieval liege-hood, when one was “saved” from the infidels like the Moors of Spain, or got cleansed by the sword of the Crusaders who wrestled Jerusalem from the unfaithful.  The social stratification of the empire lent itself to the language of “lord and master” but when it entered the religious lexicon, the metaphor got stuck, still used by catechists today.

“Nietzsche is dead; God lives forever” is a slogan to revive piety of a heavenly creator.  It works among schizophrenics that separate their belief system from daily life.   But when Christian theologians like Vahanian take the Nietzsche phrase to the sanctuary, a new chosen-ness has begun.

I learned in the anthology of faith that the designation “Christ” is a role, not the last name of Jesus of Nazareth, as commonly understood.  Having spent time on the Westside of Chicago, that phrase itself is a polite expletive to indicate dismay, in the same way as “God Damn” does.

Before devotion on Jesus got formed, written up in the four gospels, and elevated into Kristo Rei in Gualo Rai of Roman Catholic ecclesiology, Jesus was but a barefoot boy in the foothills of Galilee whose exemplary life earned him a following.  Their metaphor rooted in the mindset of the times followed the chosen-ness of the Jews, but with a Christological twist.  Being a disciple meant going to “do likewise”.

We have the Christian canon that chose the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as authoritative (sufficient for faith and morals), each written for a particular audience. Matthew convinced the Jewish synagogue that Jesus was the expected King of Israel of the line of David.  Mark wrote a brief write-up for the practical and no-nonsense Romans who were sufficient with the title Son of Man.  Luke addressed the gentiles, particularly those of the Greco-Roman world that longed for the Son of God to descend from the lofty heights of Mt. Olympus to dwell “with us”.  John, the last in the series, took the Mediterranean mysterious creative force, infinite but dynamic sustainer of life, the LOGOS, and identified the Nazarene carpenter as the One.

Letter-writing Paul gets into the picture, a former prosecutor turned convert to the “redemptive-salvific” role of Jesus to turn back those who missed the mark (hamartia), a “sin” from realistic living so that they may return to their chosen authenticity rather than live in illusions, the later moralized as the original depravity of humans. 

From Paul and the Gospel accounts, Jesus was not popular playing this role, thus, crucified.  In fact, as revealed on the scene of upsetting the tables set outside the temple of Jerusalem, he was perceived to disrupt more than console.  Here lies the enduring image that later made Jesus as “lord and savior” in medieval metaphor where royals donned shield and sword to “save” the unfortunate, mostly those in the lower rung of society.  The image was not to affirm heavenly divinity as to assert the reality of our common humanity we refuse to live.

The cruciform lifestyle spawned a religion that led not into saving one’s life but into spending it.  Jesus-the-Christ role is sheer expenditure, and the practices it spawned, especially meditation, contemplation, and prayer, had the latter addressing the stance of confession (refusing to live the way life is), gratitude (nevertheless, TY for reality’s mono-tenacity), petition (for strength not to keep running away from reality into illusions), and intercession (intentionally living one’s life expending it on behalf of others).

The skyward looking propensity of most religious practices before the earthrise consciousness of 1968 stayed with the image of old grandpa in the sky, and with the formulation of the triune personhood of the godhead, it did not take long for the Son to reign over all with the promise of living in heaven unto eternity with disciples and followers.  Jesus of Nazareth became a sovereign metaphor to whom prayers were addressed, primarily as a deux ex machina, thank you, and Amen.

Earthrise consciousness pulled down the entrapment of the adored Jesus-in-the-sky. The barefoot carpenter once again joined the ranks of humanity and the table-up-setters in the colonnades of the social temples of our Jerusalem.

Not too many would extricate the Jesus of faith from the gold-plated crucifixes and the altars of adulation, for the sting of discipleship is precisely that, a “sting” in the call to “go do likewise.”  The cruciform lifestyle is not to be trifled just so one gains widespread acceptability; it is a lifetime of total engagement and absolute expenditure.

Just as the prayer of intercession is not wishful thinking that “someone” will make things happen for us, it prays that one puts one’s life on the line, and this is where fakery is called into question.

In the desire to gain registration in the CNMI, there are those who came with student visas and converted them to contract worker status.  Now the CW window is closed for 2017.   One of the construction workers in my dwelling bewails the fact that he has difficulty changing his student visa to a CW category.  He physically looked my age, though I am sure he is younger, but coming to the CNMI, or staying here on a student visa meant someone was paid to get him one.  Neat-to.

Those who pray as if divinity can suddenly change the laws of the CNMI to fit someone’s religious beliefs, is playing with heavenly fire, if one will excuse the hyperbole.

Devotion to Jesus is not hoping for a miracle worker in heaven.  It is to follow one who affirmed with his life that to pray without ceasing is to lay one’s whole body on the line on behalf of others.  That’s it.

In the ancient Ascription, the triune godhead is in the “Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”  That is really ancient since “ghost” lost its punch long time ago; “Spirit” has also lost any sense of substantive-ness as it became simply the “essence” of something, maintained its meaning in the fragrance of a perfume, or the aroma of the chef’s kitchen.

I stay with “Holy Spirit” for now since this article is more of an explication of how the four words are normally used in the lexicon of Christendom.  The word “holy” for instance is related to the word “whole”, so wholeness speaks more of holiness rather than the immaculately cassock (sutana) Monsignor we honor with the address of “Your Holiness.”

Wholesome spirit would do well as a translation of the ghost save that the term has been adopted to refer to the sojou of Hangkuk or the baijou of Chengdu.  Japan calls it wain (adaptation of English word); I prefer osake of the rice wine.

The triune godhead, by its progeny, is terribly patriarchal, although the goddess was a mainstay of divinity in ancient traditions, so Catholic ecclesiology functionally created the office of the Holy Mother (theotokos, mother of God) as there is one for the Holy Father, and the Holy Son.

I grew up a Protestant, and my preacher Dad’s theological master’s thesis was on Marian Dogma, written at a conservative Seminary, so it labeled the doctrine as heresy.  But in my Mom’s tradition, the nuns were “married” to Jesus, and the priests are beholden to Mother Mary, involving spirited relationships even in the cloister itself.

We are threading on apostacy, much as the metaphor of the Body Ascension into Heaven of Jesus and the Virgin poses difficulty to modern science.  “Virgin” was evidently a metaphorical bias not too difficult to explain, but literal bodily ascension in the era of earthrise consciousness defies the laws of physics of our familiar.

So Mary as the wholesome spirit will have to be a role model more than just fingering the beads of the Rosary (adopted from the practice of Middle Easter prayer beads), or be adored as the Virgin in a pedestal of our adulation.

“Women” has been a subject of our NMC class concern when in learning how to listen and speak we heard a speech delivered by Hillary Clinton at a U. N. Conference on Women in 1966 outside of Beijing at Hairou.  In the speech, she averred what has since become a cause slogan:  Women’s Rights is Human Rights.

That took us to the 30 articles on Human Rights adopted by the UN and before we knew it, we had members of the class to talk on how, in their view, do women fare in China, South Korea, Japan, Palau and the United States.

Are we straying too far from the triune godhead, and the image of the Holy Spirit as embodied in the lifestyle of Jesus’ mother Mary?

Today, we are feted by various feminine styles outside the pulchritude of Hollywood’s MM of the sewer wind blown skirt.  Indira Gandhi of India led her country and continue the Nehru family’s political presence.  We had Golda Meier of Israel leading her kibbutz into the Israel that Europe begrudged to support.  Angela Merkel of Germany just announced her country’s ban on the manufacture of gas powered car engines as we realize how much of our oil consumption contributes to climate change.

Meg Thatcher was England’s PM who stuck to the Empire’s remaining far-flung islands of the Falklands over neighboring Argentine’s claim.  Park Geun-Hye of Korea steers her country’s Hyundai-Samsung fame.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta had just been sainted by Rome’s blessings.

The CNMI had Rita Inos and Rita Sablan at Education; both kept the CNMI aligned to the US system.  Born in Pea Eye but taking Uncle Sam’s blue book while Ferdie and Imelda filled Malacañang closets with Marikina shoes, I was impressed by yellow-frocked Cory Aquino’s transition from Martial Law to irreverent democracy of Senor Felipe’s former Spanish colony.

We note the likes of Norway’s Brundtland, China’s Soong Ching-Ling, Argentina’s Peron, Pakistan’s Benazir, Ireland’s Mary Robinson and Nicaragua’s Violetta Barrios de Chamorro.  Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar smile’s her incarceration, while Anne Frank’s diary reveals a little girl’s take on the Nazi occupation.  Billie Jean King at Tennis, the tragic Princess of Wales Diana, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Amelia Earhart, Helen Clark, Mireya Elisa Moscoso de Arias, J. K. Rowling, Katharine and Audrey Hepburn, Queen Elizabeth II, and Rosa Parks exuded women’s power.

The (w)holiness of Mother Mary is an affirmation of the Chinese saying popularized by Mao Zedong: women hold half of the sky (fùnǚ néng dǐng bànbiāntiān), and perhaps, if we have God the Father, God the Son, the Mother of God, how far are we from the Daughter of God?

I didn’t mean to go further than the triune designations of ecclesia but the spirited style pointing to a Holy Spirit bubbles with life, energy, and engagement.  The wholeness shown by the women in our discourse lies precisely in that vein.

From the German kirche (sovereign’s house) Church was sufficient for our religious purposes, richly endowed by the varied and diverse traditions “Christianity” spawned through the ages.  Ecclesia was the popular and secular assembly of Greek’s democracy but adopted and translated as “the household of God” in Christendom.

Its use refers to the assembly of g-o-d’s people who do not waver to live realistically, in the manner of expenditure as demonstrated by Jesus, and the energy of the Holy Spirit where “motherly” engagement knows no end.

God-Jesus-Holy Spirit is the triune formulation, and the gathered assembly of those who profess this triune persona of divinity is the assembly we now call “Church”.  Two views prevail, the Jewish Yahwishtic grounding that came to be Christian theology, and the Jesus salvific and redemptive role, exemplified by the Crusades who “redeemed” lost souls, and exhibited devotion to the personhood of Jesus the Christ as the only and final savior of the world.

In current usage, it is the assembly of those who still hang on to the feudal metaphors that characterized our series so far.  They continue the medieval metaphors of “God-Jesus Christ-Holy Spirit”.

Among the Protestants of Saipan, the Church spirit in feudal metaphors at its best is exemplified in the gathering around the wall-less structure of the Community Church related to the General Baptist Association by Beach Road between the Susupe Beach Park and the Saipan Community School. 

Our Lady of Mercy at Mount Carmel not far from the old Sugar Dock wharf centers the Roman Catholic tradition though other parish churches that dot the whole island landscape follow similar religious Masses at their altars.

Many other confessional congregations (the multifarious Baptists, Assemblies, and Witnesses) and structured denominations (the Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal) are scattered around the island, here churches after WWII before they established their parochial schools, but the Chapel without walls by Beach Road is by design and intent a faithful Micronesian gathering place of celebration and worship.

The ekklesia in our narrative is a complex tradition from the Jewish stubborn adherence to fealty in the Way Life Is, to the evangelistic Jesus the Christ marriage with the Greek notion of “essence” and “identity”.  With the Renaissance return to the “originals” and the Enlightenment promotion of “reason”, we added the Wesleyan corrective of the affective practice that personalized deity in G-O-D, and divinity turned human in Jesus, in my case, especially after the earthrise consciousness.

The complexity and diversity of the household has been both the celebrated and bewailed character of the Christian faith of our time.  It is its feudal metaphors that still reign within the congregations and community for which this earnest Christian now take exception, not as a denial of what had gone before but as an authentic affirmation of what has always been the case, that the language of divinity has been about “mankind created in God’s image” turned around into interactive role of redeeming humanity from itself.

The Church at the corner of Main and Elm is presently an insistence on the household of God rather than the gathering of humankind.  Humankind gets its reality from our secular understanding that at conception for everyone, one sperm out of 200 million makes it to fertilize an egg that chooses out of the first arrivals the sperm that merge with it, to then create in nine months a complex digestive, respiratory, circulatory, excretory, endocrine, skeletal, and muscular system whose complexity and the response of wonder knows no bounds.  Before one is born, one is already a bonafide “winner and free”, and a creative one to boot.

The Church of the earthrise consciousness remains a dispersed group but the ecumenical impetus that has always characterized Christendom since 5^th century Vincent of Lérins insisted that there is a corpus of Christianity “believed everywhere, always, and by all” (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est), one Church universal.  True or not is not a cognitive matter, but it is true as a fundamental life stance of faith that guides anyone when waking up in the morning.