Christian Grostic

One of the cool things about an evolutionary understanding of the Kosmos is that we need not rely on myth alone to make

Listen to progressive Christian blogger Christian Grostic's insightful sermon at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, OH.

What tells us more-a lot more-is someone's worldview, the stage of development in which they operate. Two people who ostensibly share the same beliefs, but have different worldviews, are far more different than two people with the same worldview but different beliefs. This is one reason why churches are increasingly useless. Defining your affiliation with others based on beliefs, despite different worldviews (often starkly different), holds us all back.

But Easter invites us to a radical new perspective. What has to die? Everything! Our roles, our identities, all of who we believe we are, personally, culturally, socially, even spiritually. It all has to go!

So what do I mean by God, Spirit, the Higher Self? Two things. First, God is the Ground of Being, the absolute, unqualifiable emptiness-in-form. That's what the mystics in every religion and culture have told us for thousands of years. I believe this because that's what the evidence tells me - those independent, cross-cultural reports of mystics, and the few glimpses I've experienced myself.

Bible stories, including all of the Jesus stories, were written in a particular time and context. Feel into it for a moment-you're living in a time when there are almost no scientific explanations for anything, and even if there were, virtually everyone you know is illiterate. What you all know is that, most of the time, things happen as they have, but every so often, something unexpected happens (good or bad).