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Religious Or Spiritual Questions by Robert Francis

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Religious Or Spiritual Questions by Robert Francis 120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions 17. Could you please describe your worldview? What exactly is a river? How does one define its boundaries? Can a river be separated, dug up, removed from its place? Can a river even exist apart from the entirety of the Earth or the entirety of the Universe? What defines a human being? From my perspective, a human being is defined within the context of the People and the Land and beyond that as a part of the whole, an integrated aspect of the Earth and of the entirety of the Universe or of Creator/Creation. In my experience, when a traditional Chickamauga Cherokee person asks the questions “Who are you?” and “Where are you from?” they are really asking “Who are your people and to what place are you connected? Where do you fit in?” Those of the Abrahamic Traditions are Peoples of the Book. We Chickamauga Cherokees are a People of the Fire. We speak in terms of the Elder Fires Above, of the Sacred Fire Entrusted to our People and of the Fire that Burns in the Heart. Just as the Fire that Burns in the Heart connects the individual person, so the Sacred Fire is a direct connection between the People as a whole and the Elder Fires Above and by extension to the Center of the Universe and to every part and aspect of the Universe. Everything is connected. We may look out and see what looks like empty space, what scientists mistook for empty space for hundreds of years, but it is not empty. It is filled with connection. The Earth is a living organism, but so is the Universe as a whole: One Living Organism – Unity in Diversity – Harmony. There is no real division, not even a real divide between energy and matter. Matter is simply energy in another form. There is also no real divide between the spiritual and the physical. Since everything is connected, since each one is a part or aspect of the whole, what each one does has an effect on the entirety. 18. How would you describe your faith in God? The way I see it or from my own observation and experience, the Creator/Apportioner of the Universe, the source of all being, indwells all of creation, and makes all creation, not just humankind, in Creator/Apportioner’s image. Creator/Apportioner meets with us, where we are, walking with us, talking with us, calling creation into co-creatorship, communing and providing the 14 120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis center of all communion, all community, all life. Far from maintaining complete control, Creator/Apportioner grants freedom to creation, to all creation, from the tiniest atomic particle to the largest galaxy. All creation has freedom, even the freedom to make horrendous mistakes, to become unbalanced. Creator/Apportioner is there to help all who seek help in bringing creation from chaos or in bringing balance from imbalance. This is how I see and understand it, at the same time; I understand that the Creator/Apportioner of the Universe, the great mystery, is beyond all attempts at analysis or description. 19. Is the one you call “Creator/Apportioner” the same as the God of the Bible? To begin with, the word “God” is not in the Bible, at least not in the original Hebrew or Greek. It’s a Germanic/English word originally used in reference to any spirit understood as more powerful than a human being. Maybe that’s why some people who use that word as a referent for Deity are so concerned about which God someone may be talking about. Now, I will answer the question with another question: Is “the God of the Bible” also the Creator or Creative Spirit or Life of the entire Universe? There is Deity and there is what people say about Deity. What people say about Deity is, by definition, theology. There are many theologies. Many things are said about Deity. There are private theologies and group theologies. A serious problem arises when human beings become enamored of their own theology or of their group’s theology to the extent that they mistake their theology for the unlimited and transcendent reality of Deity – that Great Mystery which may neither be defined by theology nor contained within the pages of any book. 20. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? If so, how would you describe your belief in Jesus Christ? How and when did you come to faith in Jesus? I consider Jesus Christ to be Creator-Offspring born as a Jew in Palestine, some 2,000 years ago. As I read the accounts of his life in the context of the place and time, I see that he lived his life and gave his life and took up his life again all for the purpose of decolonization and cultural restoration. Having been raised in a Christian household with parents who took me to church and taught me from the Bible in our home, my faith in Jesus goes back as far as I can remember. At the age of nine years, I had what could be described as the standard, General Baptist salvation experience: going forward in an altar call and later being baptized. This experience was very meaningful for me. However, looking back I see that, while I am sure the Spirit of Creator was involved, I was conditioned by Sunday School teachers and preachers toward hyper-guilt feelings and to an abject terror of a controlling, vengeful, wrathful god, and I was acting on that conditioning. The unfounded guilt and fear did not 15 120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis permanently go away with the salvation experience, so I returned to the “altar” several times over the course of the next few years. It is truly only by the grace of Creator/Apportioner that I ever came to a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ. I appreciate the stories recorded in the Synoptic Gospels for the very human picture of Jesus they present. I appreciate the Gospel of John for the expanded vision of Creator-Offspring, the Cosmic Christ, if you will, as Matthew Fox puts it, the Word or Order of the universe, the one whose acts, if written down, would fill the earth with the books. Putting the stories of Jesus within the context of our ancient Cherokee traditions, I have come to understand Jesus in terms of that whom Cherokees refer to as Creator-Offspring, the one who came to our land as Jiya Unega (White Otter) thousands of years before Jesus was born in Palestine, the Morning Star who shines brightest in the darkest part of the night when all other stars go dim, the one who shines not with his own light but with the light of the Sun and ultimately with the power and light of Creator/Apportioner. However, informed by our Cherokee culture, my understandings of Creator-Offspring are very inclusive. Creator-Offspring is the bread and the wine but also the corn bread and grape juice. Creator-Offspring is the air that we all breathe and the water of life that flows through all who live in the earth. Creator-Offspring is the lamb, the deer, the buffalo, the salmon and the whale slain that the people may live. Creator-Offspring is every new baby born among the people, among every people. Creator-Offspring is every good thing we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. Creator-Offspring was here before the missionaries and here before Jesus was born. Even though I have pretty much lost faith in Christianity and in Christian doctrines, theologies and Christologies that began developing in the early centuries of the Common Era, I have never lost faith in Jesus. I no longer call myself a Christian, but I do consider myself to be a follower of Jesus. As such, the stories of his life, telling of a few things he did and said in Palestine over 2,000 years ago, are still of value to me. I do my best to live by the example presented there, the example of one who set out to bring decolonization and cultural restoration to his own colonized people. Even so, the relationship is not with a book or dependent on a book. Even if we had never had the Bible and had never heard of how Creator-Offspring was born, lived and died as Jesus of Nazareth, we would still have the relationship, just as millions, having never heard of Jiya Unega, still have the relationship. 21. What church experience have you had? Have you had any formal Bible training or education? I was raised General Baptist. This denomination, close in doctrine and practice to the Freewill Baptists, is headquartered in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. When I was nine years old, I joined Brownwood General Baptist Church, in the village of Brownwood, Missouri. When I was 10 or 11, my family moved our membership 16 120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis to New Hope General Baptist Church, in a large farming area known as The Old Field, between Advance and Painton, Missouri. This was the church in which my father had grown up, and my mother had also been a member there as a teenager and young adult. I might add that most of the families, who originally formed up that church, including my father’s family, were of Cherokee descent, even if few would openly identify themselves as such.
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