From time to time I hear about people like Manute Bol who have possessed large sums of money and spend it not on personal comforts but on a greater good. I wonder if I would have the spiritual courage to do the same.

Manute was spotted playing basketball by an American college coach in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. He was hard to miss standing a skeletal 7 feet, 7 inches tall.

Manute moved to the U.S. attending High School at Case Western in Cleveland, and college at the University of Bridgeport. Bol was drafted by the San Diego Clippers in 1983 playing 10 seasons in the NBA. He is the only NBA player to average more blocked shots per game than points, ranking second all-time with 3.34.

Manute Bol died of a rare, painful skin disease called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome last week at the age of 47. It is believed he contracted the disease from kidney medication he received in Africa.

From an integrated spiritual perspective here is the heaven on earth stat the matters the most. One of his former teams the Washington Wizards released this statement: “Despite his accomplishments on the court, his lasting legacy will be the tireless work and causes he promoted in his native Sudan and the cities in which he played.”

Bol donated nearly all of his $6 million in career earnings to his native Sudan.

This calls to mind a classic sacred teaching story.

“Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much. Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, worth only a fraction of a penny.” Stay tuned, the spiritual punch line is to come.

Bol’s native country has been ravaged by civil war since at least 1983. He was a product of Southern Sudan, where people are primarily Christians, like himself, or animists.

Murder and slavery have been used against non-Muslims for decades in Sudan. Bol, a native of the Dinka tribe, has had some 250 family members “killed at the hands of Muslims” through the years. But Bol, insisting extremists were the problem, championed the cause of unifying the warring factions.

He’d taken part in peace talks, appeared before Congress and protested outside of embassies. He’d visited refugee camps and given millions of dollars to support a rebel group.

According to reports, Bol exhausted the last of his money supporting 20 family members while trapped in Sudan. The government accused him of being a spy after the U.S. bombed Sudanese targets, in response to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Bol wasn’t allowed to leave until he paid a bribe, which required a yard sale of his furniture and other possessions.

Even as he rested on his deathbed, Bol was planning appearances to raise funds. He was a busy advocate for peace and the end of oppression in Sudan. His latest, and final, contribution was his pledge to build 41 schools in the country.

As Jesus is surfing the heavenly web today he is reprising the lofty praise he offered in regard to the impoverished widow 2,000 plus years ago.

“I tell you the truth, Manute has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but he, out of his poverty, put in everything–all he had to live on.”

Manute Bol embodied the riches of the adherents in Jesus’ sermonette and the spirit demonstrated by the widow.

As Jesus declared elsewhere, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the value of total production of goods and services in a country over a specified period, typically a year. How much GDP grows from one period to the next is an indication of a country’s economic health.”

Old money religion:

“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of their possessions.”

Right here on planet earth, in our day, old money religion meets new money religion. In King Khesar’s coronation address December 17, 2006, the 5th King of Bhutan proclaimed that fulfilling the vision of Gross National Happiness will be one of the primary responsibilities of his reign. The King spoke.

“Our country, in these changing times finds immense new challenges and opportunities, whatever work we do, whatever goals we have – and no matter how these may change in this changing world – ultimately without peace, security and happiness we have nothing. That is the essence of the philosophy of Gross National Happiness. Our most important goal is the peace and happiness of our people and the security and sovereignty of the nation.”

Gross National Happiness consists of nine core dimensions.
1. Psychological Well-being
2. Time Use
3. Community Vitality
4. Culture
5. Health
6. Education
7. Environmental Diversity
8. Living Standard
9. Governance

New money religion is one dimensional and predicated on forever increasing consumption.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke speaking before the House Budget Committee on June 9 assured the legislators.

“Even with a pullback in government stimulus, strengthening consumer spending should be sufficient to support the nascent recovery.”

Old money religion speaks a contrasting story.

“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”‘

But God said to him, `Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

An Ancient Jewish Avatar and a Contemporary Buddhist King unite old money religion and new money religion in an eternal ethos.

“My deepest concern is that as the world changes we may lose these fundamental values on which rest our character as a nation and people. It is critical that we are able to recognize Bhutanese character irrespective of how far we look back into the past or into the future…the character of our people and the nature of our fundamental values have remained unchanged. Henceforth, as even more dramatic changes transform the world and our nation, as long as we continue to pursue the simple and timeless goal of being good human beings, and as long as we strive to build a nation that stands for everything that is good, we can ensure that our future generations for hundreds of years will live in happiness and peace.”

How do you say “Amen!” in Buddhist?

Jesus opened his mouth and taught them…“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

I raised my hand in our freshman Bible class at Abilene Christian College. “God seems to be very different in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. Did God change? Did God evolve over time?”

Dr. Brecheen answered calmly and reliably. “Oh no.” “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

I was just a 17-year-old kid, and I had no doctor’s degree but it seemed like there was some Olympian religious gymnastics going on here. First of all the text says, “Jesus Christ is the same.”

Now, I was willing to make the Gospel of John leap, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

But beyond that, my professor’s response though sincere lacked basic candor or authenticity. In one scripture God is ordering revenge & genocide and later his Son is teaching us to love and pray for our enemies so we can be like God! Jesus wouldn’t be the first son to rebel against his father, but from all I read they seemed to have a pretty tight oneness.

At this point I committed myself to reading the Bible cover to cover making every effort to forget what my fundamentalist preacher Father and Church had told me it said.

I still have that worn out Harper’s Study Bible, a holy artifact of my spiritual pilgrimage. Before I ever heard of Jung, Campbell, or Process Theology it became clear to me that either God or Humanity had evolved along the way. I have come to believe now we have essentially created God in our own image.

Ever since Emperor Constantine’s dream that envisioned a symbol of Christ on his victorious soldier’s shields Jesus Christ became a warrior God like his Old Testament father. He became the God of Empire.

In more contemporary western history this Christ God imbued and blessed the British and American Empires. The American creed is Manifest Destiny.

How did God’s non-violent conversion come about?

In 1846 a Universalist preacher named Adin Ballou wrote a book titled Christian Non-Resistance. Thoreau read it and penned an essay, Civil Disobedience. Gandhi read Thoreau and was inspired to employ non-violence to bring down the British Empire in India. A Christian Minister named King emulated Gandhi and brought non-violence to the American Empire.

An American Universalist influenced a New England Unitarian Transcendentalist who invigorated an Indian Hindu to set the captive Christ God free from Empire. The zealous Hindu served as a model for an African American Christian to call his nation to conscience through the liberated Jesus.

Here at home the urgent necessity for an evolved non-violent God comes to mind as riled up “Christian nation patriots” throw bricks through windows, spit on elected leaders, hurl vile epithets threaten lives, and “Christian Militiamen” are arrested for plotting to murder police officers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009.

All the while our President makes a Sunday surprise visit to Afghanistan with an impassioned defense of the war exhuming the putrefied argument, “We were attacked viciously on 9/11…this is the region where the perpetrators of that crime, al Qaeda, still base their leadership.”

Gandhi declared & then admonished, “Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. His was non-violence par excellence…I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”

The Bagram tent revival closed with the ritual Presidential altar call. “God bless you. God bless the United States Armed Forces. And God bless the United States of America.”

Which God will we pledge our allegiance to; the tribal warrior Father, or his “converted” risen Son?

One of his disciples, Glenn Beck went off on Jesus. “Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.”

Jesus gently chuckled and explained. “This is a party where each successive course is eaten at a different host’s house – the guests progress from house to house. Hence, the name progressive dinner party.”

Glenn was still suspicious, but this was Jesus for God’s sake. He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

The first stop was at the home of a fellow disciple who was an IRS agent. While they were having dinner many other tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with them. Glenn began to mumble to the other disciples, “Why does Jesus eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Righteous Glenn kind of liked this. He considered them to be sicko “tax and spend” sinners as well.

On the next stop of their progressive dinner party Jesus took his followers to a big rally.
“When Jesus saw the large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” This disturbed Glenn because not one of them presented an insurance card. It seemed a bit “socialist” to him.

As evening approached, Glenn came to Jesus and demanded, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”The other disciples offered, “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish.”

“Bring them here to me,” Jesus said. He directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

By now Glenn was getting exasperated with Jesus. He turned to the other disciples and railed.

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion…are going to come under the ropes in the next year…I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’. If Jesus uses these words run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising you to leave this group? Yes!”

Glenn aimed to show Jesus the way it should be done. So, he volunteered to host the final leg of the progressive dinner party.

Glenn provided a sumptuous feast. He sat at the head of the table with all of his prominent FOX broadcasters seated in order of their cultural eminence.

Then Jesus said to Glenn, “When you give a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Glenn was enraged. He knew now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was not only a socialist but a Marxist. Glenn had his Foxwater security agents evict Jesus from the progressive dinner party.

As the door hit Jesus on the backside he looked at Glenn with the same compassion he offered to the tired, penniless peasants he had healed and fed earlier.

With sorrow in his eyes Jesus spoke. “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

December is the traditional Christian holy season celebrating the birth of Jesus. We will be saturated with sappy images of the “babe, wrapped in swaddling clothing.” Once again the prevailing storyline will sentimentalize the righteous holiness out of Jesus, reducing him to a cutesy babe whose cheeks we want to pinch.

Most folks will never allow the prophetic zeal of Jesus to permeate their being. The grown up Jesus disturbs us with teachings like this, which foreshadow those who wade in the shallow end. “The road to life is crooked and winding, and those who find it are few.”

I got to know Jesus as a radical prophet by reading the gospels like I had never even heard of this Jesus guy. I tried like heaven to strip away all of the hearsay about him in an effort to uncover the soul of the upstart Rabbi. I was frankly bewildered to hear the “Song of Mary” when John the Baptist’s mom testified about the babe in Mary’s womb. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… he has scattered those who are proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

Jesus turned out just like his Dad. He emerged from his wilderness temptations to preach his first sermon, fittingly in his hometown. The Nazareth old-timers synagogue society discounted him. “Isn’t this the kid who grew up down the street?” Jesus answered sharply, “Don’t call me babe!”

The sacred work of Jesus has not changed one mouse click. Let us grow up with Jesus, radiating this living testament to corporate and government halls from Washington to New York, from Bentonville to Islamabad, from Moscow to Rangoon.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me…he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites. What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?”

What true patriot, what defender of our constitution, what champion of human dignity delivered these insightful salvos? Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela last September before the United Nations. If you edit the feel good “devil” hyperbole, a truer word has never been uttered.

In soul sickening fashion the well-worn reliable adage, “it takes one to know one” is being born out. The Austin American Statesperson writes; “On Sunday, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez expects to become president for life through a referendum revising his country’s constitution.

That vote is a breathtaking grab for absolute control by an autocrat who already commands most of the levers of power. If the constitutional changes pass, Chavez will have dictatorial power rivaling that of his hero, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Since being elected president in 1998, Chavez has steadily eroded the checks and balances on his office. He has shut down media outlets, taken control of the courts and the legislature, and now controls the petroleum industry.

But that was just a start. The Dec. 2 referendum includes 69 articles that, if passed, would abolish term limits on the presidency, grant the president control of the central bank and give presidential appointees power over locally elected officials.

The changes also allow Chavez to declare a state of emergency in which he can suspend the right to due process of law and freedom of information. The president also would be able use to the military to maintain order.”

These developments are particularly heart breaking because our world needs high profile leaders and heads of state that have earned the moral authority to confront the American Empire. Our imperialism has existed before Shrub and will continue after he slithers out of office. President Chavez had that potential, but he has sold it out for his own narcissistic tyranny.

Jesus warned us of the George W. Chavez’s of the world, “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” A capitalist pit is no better than a socialist pit. A white pit is just as perilous as a black pit. A patriarch pit and a feminist will both wreck your hybrid in the bar ditch. A ditch by any other name is just as foul to the sniffer!

The Tao Te Ching offers an alternate way; The Tao is like a bellows: It is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces;

Hold on to the center.”