1.

We keep coming back to the sacred texts. En archei en ho logos. (John 1:1) "In the beginning was the word." When we become alcoholics or drug addicts, in the face of death, to sanctify marriage vows, to provide moral guidance for our children, to give power to political rhetoric, to ask for a handout on the street when we find ourselves among life's losers, we turn to Higher Powers inscribed in ancient phrases. ...en auto zen en, kai he zoe en to phos ton anthropon. "In Him [i.e. in the word] was life, and the life was the light of men." (John 1:4)

2.
The ideal of the modern world can be summarized in one word, Kant's word, Mundigkeit. (Immanuel Kant, Was Ist Aufklarung?, page 1) it is usually translated "maturity." "Maturity" is Kant's answer to the question "What is enlightenment?" He plays on the connection of Mundigkeit with Mund, "mouth." To be mature is to own my own mouth, to speak my own voice, to obey only that law which I as a rational being give myself.

Jesus had a different ideal: "Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3) "If anyone loves Me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him." (John 14:23)

3.
Whose ideal --Kant's or Jesus's-- is more realistic? Which is more scientific? Which idea accords better with human nature as it has developed biologically and historically? Which offers more hope for a sustainable future for homo sapiens and the other species for which this planet is home? To ask these questions is to answer them.

4.
For the problems of the suffering masses of the world, of the poor, of the lonely, of the confused, of the sick, of the millions trying to get enough money to live, I do not propose an exotic solution. On the contrary, what I propose is to work towards making it possible for everyone to live a normal life.

5.
When I was in elementary school in Pasadena, it was normal among the kids I knew to go to church. The Catholic kids went to catechism, the Methodists to Sunday School, the Nazarenes to gospel music concerts. The Nazarenes had the most fun at church, but Catholicism had its privileges. In the summer Catholic kids would get church over with by going to the 7 a.m. mass, and then spend the rest of Sunday at the swimming pool.

6.
What is a normal life? Pancakes and coffee in the morning. A goodbye kiss going out the door. A safe ride to work. Many useful years of service to others in a job that pays enough to live on. A happy home and family. God in your heart. Someone to cry at your funeral. A decent burial.

7.
Clarity and truth are not always friends. When I simplify for the sake of clarity, I hope the that resulting falsity will be corrected elsewhere.

8.
"God in your heart." In the 1920's there were logical positivists who made it their business not to understand what such phrases meant, and to convince those who thought that they understood them that they really did not and could not, because (according to the logical positivists) statements about God claim to be true a priori but only formal logic and mathematics are really true a priori. The logical positivists were answered at the time by Owen Barfield, who pointed out that if there is no poetic language, then there is no language at all. (Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction reprinted by Wesleyan University Press, 1987)

I hope that by now all mystical attitudes toward formal logic and mathematics have been dispelled, so that nobody cares anymore what may or may not be true a priori, and we can get on with realistic questions about the roles that religions and religious ways of talking play in life.

9.
In later life I traveled and saw many religions even stranger, from my point of view, than the "holy rollers" us kids used to ridicule at Oak Knoll School in Pasadena. There are children who go to mosques. They consider that normal.

10.
"The child takes in his world as if it were food. And his world nourishes or starves him. Nothing escapes his thirst. Secrets are impossible. He identifies with his surroundings and they live within him unconsciously; it is perhaps for this reason that the small child has been characterized as naturally religious."

-Mary Caroline Richards, Centering
(Wesleyan University Press, 1989. p. 102)
(First published in 1964. In the introduction to this reprint, the author says that she would not now use the masculine pronoun to designate persons of both sexes.)

11.
Am I saying that region is only for children? Let the one who is no longer a child at heart cast the first stone.

12.
In re pancakes and coffee:
There are people who have tortillas and beans for breakfast; or eggs with grilled tomato; millions take tea and a piece of bread without butter. Some eat fried bananas. Plantains. Or rice. So how do I mean that it is normal to breakfast on pancakes and coffee? Do I mean that all people need food? Not exactly. No one can eat food. If you do not believe me, ask your waitress or your waiter, or your grocer, for "food." You will not be able to eat what you get.

13.
As a matter of nutritional fact, pancakes and coffee have some drawbacks: cholesterol, caffeine, and (in the syrup) sugar.

I could say something similar about many of the customs of my culture. It is our way, but it is not the best way. It is normal, but there could be a better normality. However, we do need some normality. We can do without any particular cultural structure, but we cannot do without cultural structure. Anomie (normlessness) is worse than cholesterol, worse than caffeine, worse than sugar. (cf. Emile Durkheim, Suicide)

14.
According to the story told by Max Weber, the principle of modernity is rationality. (Max Weber, Economy and Society) The principle of traditional societies is custom. That is what Weber says about the discourse and practice of traditional peoples; what they say about what Weber calls their "customs" is their story.

15.
Temples which were an integral part of the ways of life of early peoples are dismantled, and pieces are moved to cities where multinational corporations and banks have their headquarters, where they are put in museums and called "art." I am beginning to think that "art" is an ethnocentric concept proper to a culture that is not sustainable.

16.
It is sometimes lamented that while tribal peoples, for example the Hopis, have sacred stories which weave meaning into their lives, we moderns have none. But we do. Modernity comes from Europe, and Europe early on adopted certain sacred stories from the Eastern Mediterranean. It is not that we do not have sacred texts; it is that the ones we have, we do not trust.

17.
She came back to campus to see me, having left college the year before and devoted herself to following rock concerts around the country, and as she stood unkempt under a tree, looking at me out of her big eyes prematurely deep in their sockets because of too many drug trips, I knew that she wanted my approval. Her parents did not understand, but --she hoped-- I would. I wanted to tell her that her life lacked limits, that absolute freedom was absolute nonsense. However, I did not believe that the particular part of our cultural heritage which she had internalized would provide me with any basis of support for the message I wanted to communicate. Perhaps a gentle hug would have been the right gesture. Anyway, as it turned out, I did not know what to do or say, and I ... failed.

18.
If I were a prophet I would say, "I speak from the depths and those who know the depths will hear me. This is the truth: you will not save yourself. Only a higher Power will save you."

But I am not a prophet. My words have no authority. Much of John is devoted to showing that Jesus's words did have authority. "The words I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or believe me for the sake of the works themselves." (John 14:10-11.)

19.
(The word translated here as "believe" is pisteuete, a form of the verb pisteuo. I wish King James' translators had not seen fit to use the word "believe" so often, because the English word "believe" tends to dryness; it tends to let the blood of personal relationships trickle away. Instead of "Believe Me," King James' translators could have rendered Jesus's words into English as "Trust Me," "Have faith in Me," or "Rely on Me." [See Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek Lexicon Oxford, 1968. p. 641]

20.
I have learned something from my addiction. Only a trusting personal relationship can overpower my vice. If religion can save me, it is because I have a trusting personal relationship with Mary and with Jesus.

21.
Kai ho logos sarx egeneto. . . "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:14) The Word, according to John, illuminates and guides. It is life and light; light, in turn, is clean and true, while darkness is associated with sin and falsity. It was a complete cultural structure which became a set of ideals shown in the flesh of a Person.

22.
If my choices were limited to three--free market economy, planned economy, or mixed economy--I would not hesitate to chose the third. For two reasons: (1) Bureaucracy works best where people complain about bureaucracy, where there is an alternative to bureaucracy, where bureaucrats must give justifications for what they do. (2) Capitalism works best where people complain about capitalism, where there is an alternative to capitalism, and where capitalists must give justifications for what they do. These two reasons presuppose something more fundamental underlying them: that the community shares stories which give strength to the normative discourse used for making complaints and giving justifications.

23.
When the economy fails, and the government is bankrupt, where will the people turn? To families.... To churches....

24.
Here and now: we serve God by washing the dishes. Non-economic labor. Use value.

25.
I use the King James translations not to be faithful to the Greek but to be faithful to English, because they have over the centuries become irreplaceable components of the power of the English language; I use them even though I know that newer translations are more accurate, even though I do not approve of the King's translators' choice of "righteousness" for dikaiosyne --a choice which mutes the Bible's demands for justice, even though the Catholic Church never approved the King James' translations.

26.
The healing waters: Water cleans; it is purification. In dry countries like the Holy Lands, water is life. For thirsty people water is joy. If the earth or the throat is parched enough, then the gray dull need for water colors every relationship, and the coming of the rain or the arrival at the oasis is conversion.

27.
John the Baptist baptized with water. Jesus turned water into wine. He said that unless one is born of water and the Spirit one cannot enter the kingdom of God. Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink of water, and offered her living water. He walked on water. He said that whoever trusted in Him would never thirst. And here is a water-story from Pilgrim's Progress: an old lady was dusting, but the more she dusted the more the dust flew, until she sprinkled a little water on the dust and swept it out.

These stories have touched many lives for many years. What they have done, their work, is far more extensive and varied than anything I could possibly comprehend.

28.
(Philosophers and theologians have sometimes said that water was a physical reality standing for a spiritual reality. When they could no longer make sense of their idea of spiritual reality, they could only conclude that the New Testament writers were mistaken because there was nothing for water to stand for.)

29.
The sacred texts heal by what they do. So does water. The action of the word is not generically different from the action of water.

30.
Although I believe that on the whole my tradition wiser than I am, I find that I cannot achieve wholeness simply by surrendering my will and judgment to collective wisdom. The Good Book says, for example, "the light of men." What about women? I could go back to the Greek and say that the proper contrast of anthropon is with the Gods, not with women, so that the translators should have written, "...the life was the light of mortals." But there is a limit to excuses. In the end I have to say that my relationship to the sacred text is like that of two broken people to each other. We both need to be healed.

31.
Am I acting like an "enabler" (to borrow a term from family systems theory) for John the Evangelist, covering for him by saying "No problem here!" when really the texts he composed on the Isle of Patmos are too patriarchal, too committed to spirit-body dualism, too disdainful of "the world," too idealistic. Perhaps so. If I am, then my motive is the same as that of most enablers: to keep the family together.

32.
Pursuing the family analogy: suppose we decide to divorce John. After our divorce we would be atheists, or if not atheists then "Hebrew Christians," whose gospels would be the three synoptic ones, and who would systematically exclude "Greek" elements from the epistles or wherever they might appear. We would disown Augustine and Aquinas. I doubt that anyone knows how many words, concepts, and nuances would have to be expunged from English and other modern languages in order fully to eliminate the direct and indirect influence of the theology of the indwelling word of the Father, abiding as a principle of love in the soul, which is found in John's Gospel and First Epistle.

33.
The indwelling word of the Father: "The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved --by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace yielding sacraments given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through the millenniums." --Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press, 1949. p. 23.

34.
Fatherhood is obviously an issue for a text where the word Patros is found on every page. Nobody wants to defend the absence in John of sufficient feminine divinity, but whether the presence of Patros is defensible is still controversial. In these times when some feminist critiques have made us question whether any culture could possibly define useful roles for persons whose biological endowments include male hormones and musculature, I rely on "being a good father" as one of the praiseworthy male ideals. I am in favor of motherhood too.

35.
If trusting personal relationships could be based on the certitude that there would be no betrayal, then trust would not require forgiveness. Knowledge could replace religion.

36.
The forgiving of the text: Has the Bible lied to us? Have the Torah, the Koran, the Gita, the Sutras, the Upanishads, the Analects, the Zendavesta, lied to them? Not intentionally, perhaps, but the Bible, at least, admits that it does not tell us the whole truth. (John 16:12) Those among us who would be capable of taking back a lover who had lied to us would perhaps also be capable of becoming Christians.

37.
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." 1 John 1:8. John wisely used the first person plural, including himself, the writer of the text, among the sinners.

38.
The disciple Peter, whom certain traditional interpretations of scripture designate as the rock upon which Christ's church was founded, was a liar (John 18:17, 25, 27), a batterer (John 18:10), and a hypocrite (John 13:37). I suppose that the reason why I mention this is to use the image of Peter to make the point that the healing process does not require a perfect church any more than it requires a perfect text.

39.
John had the foresight both to define God as love (1 John 4:8) and to quote Jesus defining God as Spirit (John 4:24) and also promising to send the Spirit of the Truth (John 14:16-17). "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak of his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak; and He will tell you things to come." (John 16:12-13) Was the equality of women one of the truths we could not bear then? Can we bear it now?

40.
If someone were to say, "Say whatever you wish about economics, as long as you do not mention religion," it could be used as an example of what Sigmund Freud called "resistance." The most important thought is the one the patient does not want to think.

41.
"When I think of economics," she said, "I think of numbers. When I think of the Bible I think of images - Joseph wearing his coat of many colors, the man who built the house upon a rock, the cross, the lilies in the fields, the cup running over, the Samaritan setting the wounded man on his own breast and bringing him to an inn, the daily bread, the light shining in the darkness...."

42.
I oppose free trade for a reason more fundamental than those usually discussed. Because intense international economic competition reduces the scope for ethical decisions when the actions ethics prescribes deviate from those prescribed by economic rationality. The numbers tend to dominate the words and the images.

43.
It was not really very many years ago - about three hundred more or less--when economics replaced theology as the ideological medium of political conflict. It happened about the time of the end of the thirty-year-long wars of religion; and about the time of the beginning of a series of wars in which England, the cradle of economic ideology, fought Spain, Holland, and France for unabashedly commercial reasons. It happened about the time of the last of the religiously-inspired peasant revolts, and about the time when socialist ideologies began to claim the authority of scientific economics. Now, three hundred years later, the credibility of economics as a social science independent of history and the other social sciences is shaken, and we may be at another ideological turning point. I think that the direction ideology will turn will be toward a more comprehensive and more philosophical social science which appreciates the spiritual life, i.e. that life which transforms the will.

44.
The sacred texts serve social cohesion in ways that economics cannot. Our economic problems have no economic solutions; they have no numerical solutions; they have no solutions within the limits of a logos limited to the rational calculation of self-interest. It really does not help to expand economics to include social choice theories which rationally calculate the public interest, unless there is also a public spirit which makes people care about the public interest.

46.
La buena voluntad no sobra nunca. "There is never a surplus of good will."