What a treat to spend Tuesday Evening with John Tucker! Bill and I spend this podcast processing what he had to offer. Tucker’s analogy for the problems with doctrinal religion is the fairy tale The Princess and the Pea. He compares the mattresses to layers of denial we need to shed that protect us from living an authentic ‘religious’ life. All the mattresses just provide some delusional protection from death when in fact that absolute grief awaits us all.

Shedding our mattresses of denial will help us to wade through so much! It will help us address our history with clear eyes so that we may create new tomorrows. It will help us deconstruct our religious traditions so that we may participate in them with more clear hearts. If we can get that neither the world nor God works specifically for us we can shape it to work for everyone.

James Baldwin wrote:

“In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history which has place one where one is and formed one’s point of view. In great pain and terror because, therefore, one enters into battle with that historical creation…one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power, and also changes history…On the other hand, people who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.”

So let us un-impale ourselves from stagnation, denial, and doctrine that keeps us from seeking freedom. Go read Zero Theology. It will both disrupt and comfort you. Both are necessary to get to the core of what is really going on! Thanks for listening & see you Sunday.

*Illustration from The Princess & the Pea from Wikipedia*