Is it a literal word? The five letters J-E-S-U-S? (Which is an Anglicisation of what was probably Yeshua, or Joshua, in the original Hebrew? Except that it would have been Aramaic, or Koine Greek?) Is it a specific pattern of sound waves in air, ink on paper, or photons on a screen?

Do you think God is a machine moved by symbol manipulation? Do we use ‘in the name of JESUS!’ as a magical incantation? Is power absent from us when those two Latin syllables are not on our lips? Does the sign of the cross or the fish contain the Most High?

What do you make of ‘Lord, Lord, have we not done all these mighty works in your name? But he shall say to them, depart from me, I never knew you?’ Or ‘Jesus I know, Paul I know, but who are you?’ Or ‘The gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power’?

What do you make of ‘In God We Trust’ engraved in the coins of America in 1864, as Christians killed Christians in the Civil War, singing ‘I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel’ and ‘Glory glory hallelujah’? Or ‘Gott Mitt Uns’ inscribed on the belt buckles of German Army soldiers in WW2? Do you think the display of sacred Christian phrases in political discourse held any power in history to turn back the night, when it was also allied to sword and gun and fire?

I do believe that there is spiritual power in symbol, word and ritual, when combined with faith and right intention. And a name is one way of picking a person out of a crowd, and if that is all we have and we mean it honestly then God will honour it. But one of the heresies of Christianity – Protestantism particularly – has been to place faith in symbols and strings of letters rather than in what they point toward. I grew up in a church that placed J-E-S-U-S prominently over its steeple, while disobeying his commands. God is not a symbol, and Jesus is not a name.

A question I asked myself long ago, and still do, is this: if I were in a foreign country, and I knew no words, and there were no name by which I might know Jesus – by what feature would I recognise him?

The quote is from the alternate ending to Terminator 2. August 29, 1997 is the nuclear war of Judgement Day in the original (pre-T3) Terminator mythos. It’s kinda a significant date to science fiction fans. Amusingly retro. It seemed so futuristic – and inevitable – in 1984 when the first Terminator movie was made.

You know, I was just talking to my coworkers about T2 and Judgement Day today, and went looking up Wikipedia to try to find out when the day was, because I’d forgotten. I knew it was in August. Then I come home and read your comment, which I had seen in my email intray but had no idea what it was about. :)

Makes me giggle, because I was just reading Rupert Sheldrake talking about telepathic awareness of emails and I was feeling left out because I didn’t think it had ever happened to me. :)

August 29, 2007 will be exactly one week from today for me.

Michael Jackson will turn 50.

Ten years ago, here in Christchurch, there was a big rave party on August 29, 1997 in honour of the date. Wonder if there’ll be one this year. Wednesday’s kind of an awkward day for it to fall on though.

You know, it makes me laugh to hear you say that and quote that story, which I read in the exact opposite way you seem to. Peter certainly isn’t healing the cripple using the power of his body. Is the Holy Spirit not a Mind? Does he not live in us who believe in Jesus? Can He be localised as a physical organ within our bodies? How then does He live in us if not in our minds? And how does He act through us if not through our minds?

Do you think that the human mind is irredeemably evil and corrupt, and that God has absolutely no way at all of communicating with us in ways we can understand? Or that when God wants to act through us there is a sort of electrical zap and we become something like God-controlled zombies with no conscious awareness of what we are doing?

Or might it be possible to consciously learn to understand and cooperate, even in our finite and limited human minds, with what the infinite and loving mind of the Father would like to do through us? Because that’s what I’d like to do, and I think it’s what Jesus wants to do.

You can use another word than ‘mind’ if you’d really like. ‘Heart’, ’spirit’, ’soul’. But it means the same thing, so why put up barriers to communication by using a special religious-only language?