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Jun. 5th, 2006 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaOnce upon a time, i was a conservative Christian. I turned away from this during my early teens, when i began to realize that certain of my beliefs simply could not be reconciled with logic, science, reality, and my personal experience.
During my years as a non-Christian, as i explored many different approaches to spirituality i never stopped feeling like a spiritual refugee, and so when i learned about Gnostic and liberal Christianity i began to think maybe i had found a way to come home, spiritually speaking.
Liberal theology is rooted in an approach to scripture at odds with the fundamentalist belief that the Bible is literally true, infallible, and designed as a timeless guide to life, belief, and morality. It has nothing to do with liberal politics, though many liberal Christians are also liberal politically.
Finally, a kind of Christianity i could sink my teeth into!
But after years of exploration in the realm of liberal theology, i find i still cannot reconcile Christianity, this time with economics, ethics, philosophy, justice, and again my personal experience.
Christianity is based on the idea that humans are separated from God in some profound way. The conservative Christians talk about "original sin" and "sin nature" which passes from father to offspring. In the Calvinist formulation, people are inherently "totally depraved," utterly incapable of embracing good and worthy by default of eternal damnation.
The problem with this belief is that it is damagingly divisive. Someone who is "lost in sin" is too easy to see as less than fully human, less than fully capable, worthy of pity or rejection. It is too easy to justify to oneself participating in the mistreatment of people who are called by one's leaders less than fully human; and history bears out the problems this has allowed.
Liberal Christians understand how divisive this belief has been and rejects its overt forms. But most of the liberal theology i've encountered does not, in the end, truly reject it -- because they still rely on Christ for some sort of salvation.
Spong, for example, proposed we understand humanity as "incomplete," still a work in progress. Other liberal theologians describe us as in need of healing from without, in need of divine guidance or leadership.
In the past, i looked to the idea of soteria as "healing" or self-improvement in the hopes of understanding Christian doctrine in a non-divisive way. This approach can only work if and only if healing is seen as voluntary, as something we seek if we recognize a need for change in ourselves. It should never be seen as something which all of us must undertake -- because then it becomes, in turn, an "us vs. them," a question of "who is seeking healing and who isn't?"
But the idea of Christ as an envoy from God, or a reflection within humankind of the divine presence, makes it impossible to think of healing as something voluntary -- because Christ, as the perfect human, the ideal to which we are to aspire, is a yardstick by which we will always come up short.
The fundamentalists see Christ as God in human form. Liberal theologians are likely to see Christ as a metaphor for human potential, or the divine presence in an understandable form; or they see Jesus as an extraordinary person, someone of immense charisma who moved socio-political mountains and taught people a lot about tolerance and love and co-operation.
I was striken then very hard by the observation of Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza that perhaps the proper way to view the early Christian movement is not one that starts and ends with Jesus, a single extraordinary individual, a man who saves us all by leading the way to a bright new world, but as a broad and diverse social movement to which many people contributed with their bravery and their witness. In this view, Jesus is simply a person who became, for a time, the movement's chief galvanizer and spokesperson.
To take a galvanizing figure and make him a figure of worship or emulation and to make him the central focus of theological inquiry takes the emphasis from where it must be (justice and compassion). The idea of Christ is therefore misappropriation; it diverts inquiry from the hard questions of justice and ethics and spins us in a whirlpool of philosophical auto-eroticism. (ETA: Alright, i know that's harsh. But immersion in a quasi-Marxian-inspired point of view has made it difficult for me to see anything that does not immediately contribute to justice as a potential contributor to the status quo, by taking our energy away from the important areas of focus. I've always been accused of being too serious for my own good.)
Is there any way to preserve the idea of Christ and maintain a focus on justice and compassion? I eagerly sought one. The best i could come up with is the idea that Christ is something which those who follow the Christian path are called upon to become or to embody when we they confronted with a person in need or an ethical dilemma.
But if that's the way it works, then phrasing it in terms of "Christ" or "savior" is distraction -- or worse, because the loaded cultural values of these terms means that phrasing discourse about acting justly or compassionately in this way makes us forever in danger of being diverted away from ethics and onto the distraction of Christology. It's safer just to say, "We have to be just and compassionate with one another," than to bring a religious term into it that risks diversion.
This leads to another concern i had, which is that once you apply a word to something for ease of description, people take the word and run with it as a label, and use it in a normative way to distinguish between one thing and another. Similarly, any kind of organization formed by people of one generation to solve the problems they face becomes a rigidified edifice which tends to cause problems in future generations.
In other words, anything resembling "systematic" theology or philosophy -- the attempt to coalesce one's worldview into a concise set of concepts -- puts us in danger of creating fodder for the perpetuation or justification of injustice.
That's a damn drastic thing to say, i know: but i've expounded several times in recent months on why i have concluded that there is no way any ideology can be "the answer" to human ills. This is a thunderous insight that continues to reverberate throughout my brain and shake down wall after wall. It's a threatening idea to anyone who has a pet ideology, and i even sometimes find myself resisting it. But if there is anything that has been shown to be true by the witness of human experience, it is this.
During my years as a non-Christian, as i explored many different approaches to spirituality i never stopped feeling like a spiritual refugee, and so when i learned about Gnostic and liberal Christianity i began to think maybe i had found a way to come home, spiritually speaking.
Liberal theology is rooted in an approach to scripture at odds with the fundamentalist belief that the Bible is literally true, infallible, and designed as a timeless guide to life, belief, and morality. It has nothing to do with liberal politics, though many liberal Christians are also liberal politically.
Finally, a kind of Christianity i could sink my teeth into!
But after years of exploration in the realm of liberal theology, i find i still cannot reconcile Christianity, this time with economics, ethics, philosophy, justice, and again my personal experience.
Christianity is based on the idea that humans are separated from God in some profound way. The conservative Christians talk about "original sin" and "sin nature" which passes from father to offspring. In the Calvinist formulation, people are inherently "totally depraved," utterly incapable of embracing good and worthy by default of eternal damnation.
The problem with this belief is that it is damagingly divisive. Someone who is "lost in sin" is too easy to see as less than fully human, less than fully capable, worthy of pity or rejection. It is too easy to justify to oneself participating in the mistreatment of people who are called by one's leaders less than fully human; and history bears out the problems this has allowed.
Liberal Christians understand how divisive this belief has been and rejects its overt forms. But most of the liberal theology i've encountered does not, in the end, truly reject it -- because they still rely on Christ for some sort of salvation.
Spong, for example, proposed we understand humanity as "incomplete," still a work in progress. Other liberal theologians describe us as in need of healing from without, in need of divine guidance or leadership.
In the past, i looked to the idea of soteria as "healing" or self-improvement in the hopes of understanding Christian doctrine in a non-divisive way. This approach can only work if and only if healing is seen as voluntary, as something we seek if we recognize a need for change in ourselves. It should never be seen as something which all of us must undertake -- because then it becomes, in turn, an "us vs. them," a question of "who is seeking healing and who isn't?"
But the idea of Christ as an envoy from God, or a reflection within humankind of the divine presence, makes it impossible to think of healing as something voluntary -- because Christ, as the perfect human, the ideal to which we are to aspire, is a yardstick by which we will always come up short.
The fundamentalists see Christ as God in human form. Liberal theologians are likely to see Christ as a metaphor for human potential, or the divine presence in an understandable form; or they see Jesus as an extraordinary person, someone of immense charisma who moved socio-political mountains and taught people a lot about tolerance and love and co-operation.
I was striken then very hard by the observation of Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza that perhaps the proper way to view the early Christian movement is not one that starts and ends with Jesus, a single extraordinary individual, a man who saves us all by leading the way to a bright new world, but as a broad and diverse social movement to which many people contributed with their bravery and their witness. In this view, Jesus is simply a person who became, for a time, the movement's chief galvanizer and spokesperson.
To take a galvanizing figure and make him a figure of worship or emulation and to make him the central focus of theological inquiry takes the emphasis from where it must be (justice and compassion). The idea of Christ is therefore misappropriation; it diverts inquiry from the hard questions of justice and ethics and spins us in a whirlpool of philosophical auto-eroticism. (ETA: Alright, i know that's harsh. But immersion in a quasi-Marxian-inspired point of view has made it difficult for me to see anything that does not immediately contribute to justice as a potential contributor to the status quo, by taking our energy away from the important areas of focus. I've always been accused of being too serious for my own good.)
Is there any way to preserve the idea of Christ and maintain a focus on justice and compassion? I eagerly sought one. The best i could come up with is the idea that Christ is something which those who follow the Christian path are called upon to become or to embody when we they confronted with a person in need or an ethical dilemma.
But if that's the way it works, then phrasing it in terms of "Christ" or "savior" is distraction -- or worse, because the loaded cultural values of these terms means that phrasing discourse about acting justly or compassionately in this way makes us forever in danger of being diverted away from ethics and onto the distraction of Christology. It's safer just to say, "We have to be just and compassionate with one another," than to bring a religious term into it that risks diversion.
This leads to another concern i had, which is that once you apply a word to something for ease of description, people take the word and run with it as a label, and use it in a normative way to distinguish between one thing and another. Similarly, any kind of organization formed by people of one generation to solve the problems they face becomes a rigidified edifice which tends to cause problems in future generations.
In other words, anything resembling "systematic" theology or philosophy -- the attempt to coalesce one's worldview into a concise set of concepts -- puts us in danger of creating fodder for the perpetuation or justification of injustice.
That's a damn drastic thing to say, i know: but i've expounded several times in recent months on why i have concluded that there is no way any ideology can be "the answer" to human ills. This is a thunderous insight that continues to reverberate throughout my brain and shake down wall after wall. It's a threatening idea to anyone who has a pet ideology, and i even sometimes find myself resisting it. But if there is anything that has been shown to be true by the witness of human experience, it is this.
Tags:
- anarchism,
- answering modern christianity,
- christianity,
- compassion,
- compassion as solution,
- edifice,
- embedded theology,
- empire,
- ethics,
- gnosticism,
- gods nature,
- ideological divisiveness,
- language,
- liberal christianity,
- marxian analysis,
- mcarchons,
- meta-neo-,
- misappropriation,
- my beliefs,
- philosophy of language,
- political theory,
- radicalism,
- religion,
- renewal perspective,
- schussler fiorenza elisabeth,
- spong john shelby,
- tyranny of the written word
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:12 pm (UTC)To me, the concept of "healing" implies that one was one whole, then damaged. I do not buy that we were once more perefect than we are now. I see us as having the potential to grow into something more than we are now. Not thru an external agency, but by lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps.
To take a galvanizing figure and make him a figure of worship or emulation and to make him the central focus of theological inquiry takes the emphasis from where it must be (justice and compassion).
I am reminded of Crowley's hit on the Ape of Thoth.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:22 pm (UTC)But i agree that when you start with the presumption that once upon a time there was wholeness, and now there is brokenness, that you are heading towards a damaging ideology. If it is possible to be forward-looking without too much backwards-looking, i think the idea of healing can be helpful.
But to look backwards means to look for blame. Sometimes blame needs to be assigned; sometimes not. There is no "lost human wholeness," there was never a transcendant golden age of perfection spoiled by miscreants or disobedience.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 06:07 pm (UTC)"There is no God but Man" reconciles that nicely for me. As does the quote attributed to Jesus about "all I do ye shall do also, and even greater things..." Which, in terms of restoring the lame, blind, and (in some cases apparently) dead has turned out to be fairly true within our own lifetimes.
In my current view, DNA is evolving towards creating a vehicle complex enough to hasten its own evolution. The intelligence test is, of course, can we become smart enough to reprogram the DNA that created us specifically for that task without futzing the entire experiment. If not, well, evolution is long and DNA is patient.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-07 03:53 am (UTC)If you can accept it is easier to look for/at causes whether now or in the past without the painful emotions that block the way of really seeing what we want and how best to get there. Show yourself forgiveness/compassion/acceptance (any, all three, whichever word works for you). "Whenever traits develop it is for a purpose. Some may be maladaptive and stick longer than they should, but when it emerged there was a reason for it. It isn't about saying "this is good, so why change" ; rather it is about with-holding value judgements and going from one state to another without thinking that one is "better" than the other. Just one is more suited to your present and goals than the trait other is.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:51 pm (UTC)This is where I think most of the religious community gets distracted from the point. They try to describe their beliefs in a set of statements, rules, guidelines, whatever, and it inevitably leads to conflict when you encounter a situation not explicitly described in the canon. That confusion feeds the "us vs them", which usually results in injustice.
I don't think WWJD is a valid way to go about Christianity either. It places too much emphsis on the individual of Christ, instead of what he was trying to teach. I don't think he'd give a rat's ass, really, if people remembered his name as long as they remembered what he said, the kinds of behavior he encouraged. Personally, I think any description more detailed than the Golden Rule of how we as Christians are supposed to act is getting into dangerous territory. The example of Christ gives us some good object lessons in how to apply it, but we should not LIMIT ourselves to those examples.
The Golden Rule is evidenced in multiple religions because it is the guiding philosophy for how to make life better for us and those around us. I am Christian because Christianity reinforces for me (in ways and language I can understand and relate to) applying the golden rule. I use my religion as a tool to keep me focused on the objective, not as a goal and rulebook, an end in and of itself. It also reinforces for me the concept of "you are valuable" in the very basic "Jesus loves the little children" kind of way. I was taught from Day 1 that I am valuable because I am a child of God, and that I am loved at all times because of the same, and I find that reassuring, even while I continue to struggle with believing in my self worth as relates to other humans.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 07:20 pm (UTC)I agree, well put.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 07:27 pm (UTC)I am Christian because Christianity reinforces for me (in ways and language I can understand and relate to) applying the golden rule.
Here's where i fell off the edge of the slippery slope, because that was the way i felt for a long time, but then one day i just realized that i was spending extra time and energy hanging on to this ancient stuff that has little bearing on my everyday life -- mainly because i was just totally enthralled with it (and still am a bit). But what it came down to for me was this: if our conduct towards and respect for others is what is important -- and that is what i believe -- then am i just distracting myself by phrasing that in Christian imagery? Maybe it's time to move on and create our own imagery.
Would you mind elaborating a bit on how you benefit from seeing the ethical imperative through the lens of Christianity, as opposed to seeing it "raw" so to speak?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 07:39 pm (UTC)The imagery and examples found in the gospels remind me to keep thinking outside the box, to look for "what works for this situation?" not "what are the laws/rules/standards I'm used to?" especially when presented by educated theologians/biblical scholars who can emphasize the drastic departure from "normal" that Christ's behaviors were in his time/culture. I am good enough with the idea that parables were not meant to be taken literally (and many of the recountings of Chrsit's actions are parables in themselves) that I can use them as object lessons without getting bogged down in literalism. If the vocabulary/imagery is distracting for you, I highly endorse finding other vocab/imagery that helps focus you instead.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:51 pm (UTC)The world is flux, and people by their very nature want--and even maybe need--stability. The world is a question that's always changing, and no answer can be commensurate with it for long, or for many, or deeply.
I'm not sure that "justice" is possible. Perfect justice is almost certainly not possible. But I know that without some kind of definition, some attitude or set of precepts, no matter how sketchy, even the very imperfect human justice is impossible.
Likewise, compassion is not an emotion that people tend to feel towards everyone: without a good story and some justification to universalize things a bit, compassion tends to be only for compadres--people feel with people who are like them, who they can see themselves in.
Naturally, conceptual structures can't be adequate to the flux of experience. But a constant progress of . . well, I've heard it called "perches" and "flightings."
The bird doesn't live in its nest all the time. One nest is not good for more than a season. So you settle down and rest, and then, when the place where your resting isn't adequate anymore, when the season gets too cold for where you built it, you get up and fly again.
So, build a system. Tear it down and move on. And if you're going to try to systematize on the long run, you can try to build the process of moving on into it.
To reject systematic thought generally on the ground that it might perpetuate injustice is a little like saying, 'I shouldn't cut a walking stick. Someone can use it as a club.' Of course they can. But you still need the support at times.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 07:48 pm (UTC)Paradigm shift is not something that humans seem to do very well (so far), and i wonder if it isn't a "hardware limitation."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 10:49 pm (UTC)Coming out of my teenage years with a painfully-acquired stoicism and dedication to freethinking, I've been able to shift myself to pragmatism with a non-dogmatic mystical ironic idealism skulking in the background.
Don't know how far afield I could get before the software compatibility issues cropped up too much. I know I could never boot a personal God without some real serious changes.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 06:01 pm (UTC)The best MacDermott I could find online was which is typically like him but horribly punctuated due to some kinda HTML screwup. It's still worth reading.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 12:30 am (UTC)That's a damn drastic thing to say, i know: but i've expounded several times in recent months on why i have concluded that there is no way any ideology can be "the answer" to human ills. This is a thunderous insight that continues to reverberate throughout my brain and shake down wall after wall. It's a threatening idea to anyone who has a pet ideology, and i even sometimes find myself resisting it. But if there is anything that has been shown to be true by the witness of human experience, it is this."
Now that's what I call Gnosis.
In Xaos and Bliss,
-Sam
P.S. Mind if I quote the above in my journal?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 07:04 pm (UTC)Curiously, I've found my beliefs tend to... grow, to keep bringing up new questions for me as I gain more life experience. I've realized I don't have any firm, conclusive, permanent answers -- just good solutions for the moment. My new thinking and beliefs are informed by what's gone before for me, but I try not to let it become a mental straitjacket, if that makes sense.
It sounds a bit to me like that's what your religious journey has been like also. Maybe there's a way to extrapolate from those individual personal growth journeys, to a means of aiding many? Could an Edifice be created which required not future destruction, but rather perhaps periodic revision? Or is that something you've said already?
P.S. Your LJ entry titled "Edifice and Empire; Revolution vs. Renewal" was quite fascinating! Thank you for linking to it.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-07 04:28 am (UTC)Precisely. The problem with codification into a set symbology is that the tendancy to think of the words as the way themselves rather than the words as a necessarily limited (because language encompasses so very little of thought) description of a way to find the path. From my understanding, following the laws and rituals is not equal to salvation, but a way that the heart/spirit or whatever you want to call it could become open to whatever term one wants to use to describe the inherent dignity of all creation and the principle of universal connectedness. Too ridgid a belief in the laws/rituals as being the equivalent of "salvation" would close off the possibility of finding the very thing one is claiming to try to seek.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-09 07:08 pm (UTC)I don't know if I'm odd or what, but religion in general makes no sense to me whatsoever. I firmly believe that it impossible for anyone to know if god exists and that there has never been real divine intervention in the lifetime of humanity.
Anyone who claims they know God exists is in essence telling a lie. He may have convinced himself that the lie is true. However, he does not know God exists. He merely wants him to exist, or in rare cases fears that he exists, so he has suspended his doubt because he has been taught that proper faith leaves no room for doubt. Those who doubt do not have faith, and those who do not have faith are not welcome among those who do. Without doubt, you can not reason or use your judgement, the answer is already spelled out for you.
This seems to be the central problem to me, if you must suspend reason and judgement for the sake of faith, then all that is left is emotion. Is it no wonder that so many tragedies are perpetrated in the name of faith? Once faith is involved in an issue then for the believers, neither logic, facts, nor reason can touch it. For acknowledging that logic, facts or reason could trump faith would be an admission of doubt and would bring the core beliefs around which the believer has structure his life into question. This will not be allowed except in moment of terrible emotional distress. Therefore, the only appeals that are left are emotional, you must convince the believers that they should feel the answer is different from the one they currently feel is correct.
Or at least, it frequently looks that way to me.