I think I would have to agree it’s not a blind process but starting from knowing nothing it’s not that hard to see where religion came in. After all in the kingdom of the blind… Like wise philosophy and then science. Although of course both science philosophy and religion have always been around, we just didn’t call them that. Religion was what we could not explain through physical means. Philosophy was a means to explain it by reason, and science was noting that certain rocks made fire and then anally and obsessively trying to find out why, so we might do it again. Or making a stick just right so that it flew straighter than another and then over reaching the aim of our strength by noting that some things elastic make things travel further than ever they could under our own steam.
That she has a far more mature view of religion than many Christians. And that I really have no problem with her views at all.
I suppose I’ve never been one for preaching hell and brimstone at people. It ultimately achieves the opposite in religion and everywhere else. Which is probably why I think Dawkins should stick to evolution not philosophy, which is where others excel. There’s a myth that science attacks religion, since the age of enlightenment that has only ever been philosophy’s remit. I neither believe in militancy of faith or atheism, I think either is just preaching to the converted. Honey will achieve more than vinegar.
Where I get into contention is when people try to force their views on others by way of some knowledge they do not really have. That comes from both sides. I suppose I am an agnostic I believe logically it’s better to let the chips fall where they may than trying to force knowing and knowledge into a round hole when all there is nothing but opinion. Let logic decide matters of faith and science matters of science. The two are like oil and water mixing them is never going to provide a solution. Let philosophy be the great emulsifier then…
I think I learnt a lot from my parents. And I learnt a lot from religion and philosophy after I grew up. I like to take a look at moral systems and decide which bits are good and which bad. After all that is what society has always done. It seems pluralism is better than adhering to one pure faith untainted, as it is in philosophy, and as it is in religion. All that happens there is contention and war of philosophy or religion, both of words and of physical conflict. It should be at least a goal to achieve compromise, even if it is a dream. I don’t believe that when in Rome do as the Romans do, but I do believe that there is a figurative place that is Rome, or as close as we can get to it despite ourselves.
I think I understand what you are saying here, but what I asked for (essentially) was for God to come into my life, and make me notice it. I believe He did. But yes, I see your point. I didn’t ask for a ghostly appearance of a figure resembling Christ. Rather, a wish to make things happen that would not have happened without some intervention. For instance, while I was going through this process (I first tried this process without actually believing, but asked sincerely anyway): my heater was broken on my car, it had snowed really hard the night before and I had about 2 inches of ice on my windshield with no way to get it off. Scraping was useless after this ice storm I tried for about an hour with no luck. I had to get to work, so I decided to drive with my head out the window. I only had to go about two miles. On the way, I prayed to God to clear the windsheild of my car and for safety on the drive. It was gone in 30 seconds. Keep in mind the outstide temperature was somewhere around 12 degrees F, with a wind chill resulting in a -10ish degree weather. Also, it’s worth noting that it’s not like I broke up the ice when scraping, it didn’t break off into fragments. It MELTED. One example.
The word of God is about as close to God speaking to you as you get, so I can understand why there would be so much emphasis on it. Especially when these kinds of texts- not just the Bible, get taken out of context and have numerous interpretations and meanings.
The success I was referring to was not financial- at least not “riches.” I wish sometimes. Generally, I was referring to God’s gift of music. Historically speaking, most of the best musicians are far from rich in the monetary sense. Also, I don’t believe God looks down upon making lots of money- I think He looks down upon keeping it for yourself.
fair enough- my apologies. However, if you believe in God, you don’t have to do anything except die saved. The kingdom will come either way.
thanks for your measured responses- it’s appreciated.
I assume that the sequence was perception, exploitation, reflection and then careful application – probably with a bit of procrastination and stubbornness, repeats and “back to the drawing board” in between. I think that science was really a simple inquisitiveness until people put on frills and had themselves celebrated for their “incredible genius”. Philosophy was a simple case of, “how do you think it all happened then …?” Religion is the enquiry that asks where the inquisitiveness comes from, why we yearn so much and what the point of such life is.
I can accept people like Bill Maher holding up a mirror and saying, “Look what you look like!” I think that he has a point. Dawkins and Hitchens just go off at a tangent, completely overlooking what Religion could really be about and fulminating at the least informed, making as much noise as they do. It is ok to challenge each other, but when the issue is over, it’s over! Even if some of the least informed need some time until they latch on.
Yes, I think we are allergic to the same kind of behaviour, but I doubt whether logic I the deciding factor in matters of faith. It is far too intuitive and a matter of feeling “in one’s bones” – and consequently something quite different to science. But we shouldn’t think in dualistic terms but understand that the two, and perhaps other, areas of life are complementary. I am quite interested in science and numerous other aspects of life, but I don’t mix them up with religion or assume that they are in opposition to each other.
Perhaps philosophy can tell us how the two relate to one another, and investigate the “truths” and “principles” that motivate us and influence our perception of life or our behaviour. The old idea that philosophers were people who loved wisdom seems to have passed. Perhaps there are a few philosophers who could act as “emulsifiers”, as you jokingly suggested, but most of them are far too concerned with the luxuries of such a pursuit and with trivia, steeping themselves in the thoughts of the classics and demonstrating their abilities than to be concerned with wisdom. That kind of discernment has long left western society.
A curious occurrence – I think I may have experienced similar ones. I tend to spontaneously say “thank-you” when these things happen, although I wouldn’t say that God did them. I just think that it is fitting to express thanks for whatever circumstances have helped me. However, I have had to learn (perhaps the hard way) that many occurrences in my life that were unpleasant and disappointing were sometimes much more beneficial in the long run, than when things went right.
It has been something that has been difficult to accept because I noticed that when these things were happening, I was afraid of losing something that I was clinging to. It was this aspect that was making what was happening unpleasant, not the occurrence in itself. Even if it was my esteem that I was about to lose, or my reputation, it was just as bad as losing someone I loved, or losing my job, or my flat or any of my possessions. It is only when we can’t lose anything, because we are not clinging to them, that we start realising how much our suffering is self-inflicted.
It was after this realisation that I began to comprehend that the kingdom of God threatened those things I held dearly – not in itself, but because I realised that I want to cling to both, but that I couldn’t. I was the rich man who had a hard job of entering the kingdom of God. It isn’t hard to see a parallel to how Buddha understood the cause of suffering. In my mind it is faith that enables us to let go of such things and that when we do let go, we then appreciate them all the more as the gift of God. Even life can be given up, instead of clinging to it as though it were the loot we had gained by hook or crook. Then we can be “the same mind as Christ Jesus” who “did empty himself, the form of a servant having taken, in the likeness of men having been made, and in fashion having been found as a man, he humbled himself, having become obedient unto death–death even of a cross.”
You say that because you don’t see the Kingdom as something in this life, which I can understand, since the Church doesn’t look very much like the world of the New Covenant. I believe that the Kingdom is a very real experience, if only we can follow the Way of Christ – and that seems to be our problem.
Thanks Bob and others, it is wonderful to read this post.
My observations have been that Christianity has degenerated and moved so far from the teachings that it no longer knows what it teaches. When asked, Christians struggle to define their own faith. The best answers that most Christians can give are ones like “Jesus is the way” or other over simplified catchy jingles.
I have not met many Christians that understand the symbology of the teachings of the New and Old Testaments. The Bible, for most Christians, is a used as a set of instructions to navigate through the material world and there is little, if any, understanding of how to navigate through the inner world. Christians, as a general rule, are ignorant of how to train in the virtues.
A Christian, as a general rule, has the obsessive habit of focusing upon externalised events rather than internalised events. The very Genesis of their faith is misunderstood and there is little comprehension of the purposes of fear and love. What is the symbology of when Adam and Eve wore garments, what is the symbology of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, what is the symbology of Adams rib, what is the symbology of Eve’s creation, what is the symbology of the serpent, what is the symbology of Adam’s apple, what is the symbology of when Adam knew Eve, etc, etc.? What is this symbology telling us and how should we view the world and live our lives?
Christians have lost the ability to search for a deeper meaning as their individual faith essentially has no essence to them. They as individuals are ignorant and yet claim to have divine knowledge. If they look too hard they will find that there is nothing there and, in the Biblical sense, they are hypocrites. If a Christian was alive when Christ was, their faith would be so fragile that they would happily hammer the first nail in and think nothing of it.
For e.g. One of my favourite Psalms is Psalm 139 and ironically it is often the most abused Psalm by Christians and one of the most misunderstood.
I have met a few Christians that have deeper understandings of the teachings and their view is unshakable. They can discuss the New and Old Testaments and see no contradiction. They can discuss the teachings and not get angry. They can engage with others and express love and compassion for even a paedophile, rapist, murderer, terrorist, or even me, you and them. There is equality amongst others as they have immeasurable humility and even see the good qualities of the paedophile.
These Christians are rare but when they are met, they leave an impression and give hope for Christianity.
S’what happens when indoctrination is the only option.
That’s because most Christians haven’t cracked a Bible except when the preacher says to open their Bibles to verse [fill in the blank] and read along with me… They don’t believe/think, they emote.
A superb metaphor that is often swept under the rug.
The pedophile drags whatever good qualities he might have had into oblivion with him.
The oversimplification is indeed a sign of a lack of definition, since with most of them it is more an emotional or moralistic feeling than awareness. How can you define a feeling? If you become aware, you can at least circumscribe the content of your awareness in the sense of what you have learnt. It is also true that many of the people I have been inspired by are not members of a particular denomination, or Christians at all, but they inspire me to understand or better, experience the Christ-phenomena all the more.
There is a basic truth that accompanies humanity throughout the ages, which is also ignored in every age by the impulsive, about the basic wisdom of the golden rule and the awareness that the way we interpret things emotionally is more often than not the opposite of the truth. This will say that we have to think and understand before judging, which always leads to compassion. “Walking in the moccasin of another” just means to develop the ability to be compassionate rather than being impulsive.
The reason for this is that we have a built in protective system that jumps in, more and more pre-emptively, to protect what it impulsively believes to be our interests. It is called the Ego as well as a number of other names, including the “old man” or “old Adam”. It is the part of us that has chosen the “knowledge of good and evil” over innocence and perfect completion in God. In Christianity it is Jesus and the Way of the Christ that lead us back to that wholeness in the Unity of God, enabling us to overcome the “old Adam” and realise that we are not our ego, but that ego is only a part of us that is no longer under control.
The material world and the reality that abounds around us is only grasped when we have “trained the virtues” in learning first of all to overcome our ego. Without having a routine that helps us become mindful, we are on “automatic pilot” for most of the time, reacting in the conditioned fashion we assume will get us attention, accepted, praise, promotion or whatever it is we have set as our goals. Christians have these goals just as anybody else; it is just that to be a Christian means that the first goal is the Kingdom of God, where rightly understood virtue dwells, which unfortunately often suffers neglect and abuse by being called “works” as against faith.
If the early church fathers warned against stopping at a literal exegesis, why would we stop there? It has always been the task of exegesis to find compassion (or Christ) in the scriptures and develop that. In fact, Karen Armstrong makes a case for the fact that this is also true of Judaism and Christianity as well, let alone Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism. You are quite right about the misunderstanding of symbols. Often, during the history of the Church, these symbols have become utilities of superstition and false notions. I have noticed that Roman Catholics (here in Germany at least) are among the most superstitious people I know. Instead of faith being the path to emancipation from such worries, some people take on the worries of the world. Compassion doesn’t mean to “feel sorry” for people, but to feel with them and understand.
Joh 16:33
(33) I have spoken these things to you that you may have peace in Me. You have distress in the world; but be encouraged, I have overcome the world.
The Pharisees were probably the closest to Jesus theologically, but his main accusation against them was hypocrisy. They were well meaning and devout people, but it was ego that ruled them, not the Spirit of the God of the fathers. Their inward life was dead, despite their appearance. This seems to be, to a large degree, the problem of many Christians.
I know people who maintain they are Christians but who cannot be alone in a room for twenty minutes, but rather need the high of ecstatic singing in the church to make it through the week. I watch the internal struggles of the many Christians I know and how they fall away from prayer in such fraught, rather than turning to prayer. In fact, prayer becomes a burden to bear – because according to the Pharisees of our age, it is something we have to do. However, the less they maintain an external faith, and instead seek the “chamber experience” (Matt. 6:6) as I call it, the more they are able to surprise me.
Oh yes, what a wealth of understand is expressed in that Psalm, I sing the central verse of Psalm 51 regularly:
Psa 51:10-12
(10) Create in me a clean heart, O God;
and renew a right spirit within me.
(11) Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord;
and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
(12) Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Yes, the problem with our Christianity today is that it is generally moralistic in approach and it tends to hype up things instead of healing. Loving is regarded as a feeling of affirmation to what people do, rather than what they are. If we understand that we too do not spontaneously do the good we want to, but rather do those things we do not want to do, all the more can we understand how the perverted urge to exploit and kill other human beings is something gone desperately wrong, but which has more moderate beginning in us all. It is a further and more extreme expression of the fall of man.
The call to love is a call to love what people are, respecting that we are alike and we have the same basic needs. We are all under the weight of our ego, the conditioning of our society, and the misconceptions of our senses. This all tends to cripple the soul, harden the heart and make us slaves to voices in our heads and basal urges. The Way of the Christ leads us to the New Covenant of Jeremiah (31:31ff) and the promise of Ezekiel:
Eze 11:19
(19) And I shall give to them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the stony heart out of their flesh, and I will give them a heart of flesh,
reading these posts have been great. I also started to wonder if it’s ok for Christians to not understand these things. I think they should try, (and many don’t). However, I also do not think you have to be smart to be a Christian. Maybe that’s part of the beauty of the religion? Is it necessary to know everything about your religion to be considered a good Christian (or Jew, Muslim, etc…)?
I think the problem with Christianity today is that it could be separated into “serious” Christianity and “popcorn” Christianity with a flowing crossing point and no real indication for enquirers what the difference is. Christ warned quite seriously that people should “count the cost”, but in our western society it is assumed that we can assimilate everything without major changes. Therefore, not understanding these things is more a case of having a completely different outlook on being Christian. Some are superficial, nominal Christians who need the feeling of being religious. Some are fervent literalists who try to cram their everyday experiences into a reduced world-view that only encompasses what they read in the Bible or hear from preachers. Some are literalists who see the devil in all things that do not share their worldview.
The fact that the Church Fathers did not support their views is something that such people are just oblivious of. There is a lot of cherry-picking going on, what I call reductionalism, and emotional hype which is the other extreme when Christianity isn’t just plain boring, because the preachers and congregation are not inspired and committed. Both sides are however curiously adherent to their system of faith, and become desperately repetitive after a while, picking up on issues they can get upset or excited about just to spice it up a little. They all mean well, but they struggle with their own mediocrity and imbalance, attempting to meet the conditioned image of the Believer of their choice.
You don’t find this in the Bible except when it is criticised, either by the Prophets, by Jesus or in the Epistles. Trying to find a position between exhilaration and mediocrity in everyday Christianity can be difficult simply because of the lack of alternatives and the insistence on both sides that Christianity is supportive of society as we experience it. I disagree, the teachings of Christianity are extremely critical of society as we experience it, whilst at the same time understanding that human beings are being seduced daily by short-termed advantages that they believe they can’t do without.
It depends on what you mean by “smart”. If you mean by that having or showing quick intelligence or ready mental capability, or being shrewd about your dealings in the world, I believe that this is something that Christ taught us to be. What smartness cannot be is having a heightened alertness for personal gain and egotism. But Paul mentioned that the “smart” of our age are confounded by the “smartness” of God, because it doesn’t satisfy the ego, but instead holds others higher than itself.
It doesn’t have anything to do with IQ, since some of the simplest of people are the most beautiful Christians. The Song of Love in Corinthians makes the point beautifully:
1Co 13:1-13
(1) If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
(2) And if I have prophecies, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
(3) And if I give out all my goods, and if I deliver my body that I be burned, but I do not have love, I am not profited anything.
(4) Love has patience, is kind; love is not envious; love is not vain, is not puffed up;
(5) does not behave indecently, does not pursue its own things, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil;
(6) does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth.
(7) Love quietly covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
(8) Love never fails. But if there are prophecies, they will be caused to cease; if tongues, they shall cease; if knowledge, it will be caused to cease.
(9) For we know in part, and we prophesy in part;
(10) but when the perfect thing comes, then that which is in part will be caused to cease.
(11) When I was an infant, I spoke as an infant, I thought as an infant, I reasoned as an infant. But when I became a man, I caused to cease the things of the infant.
(12) For now we see through a mirror in dimness, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will fully know even as I also was fully known.
(13) And now faith, hope, and love, these three things remain; but the greatest of these is love.
Finally, it has less to do with being a “good” Christian as being a whole human being. If we can overcome the duality that causes strife and misunderstanding and learn what it means to be “meek and lowly in heart”, we will find “rest for our souls.”
