I was an active atheist for most of my life. I realized that the only thing I would leave behind would be my works and my effect on people. I had no hope of being absolved of my trespasses. I could not treat someone ill and blame it on a myth or parable. I had to take completely responsibility for my every action. I based my life on chaos theory. Contrary to common thought, chaos theory does not say that small things are causal; it says that small things may contribute to larger things. Small things can change things in unexpected ways.
I used to tell this parable: What if there had been a kindly old Jewish couple who lived in Austria in the late 1800's and made soup and cookies for the three boys next door, who befriended the Hitler family? Could the world be different today simply due to a kindness; soup and cookies?
I am not saying this is how every atheist feels. I am saying that there is room on both extremes for people to do good, and room in the big fat middle for people to exercise their most horrible extremes. If you've ever watched parents in the animal kingdom with their young and with their partners you know that compassion is a common trait in all mammals, regardless of their ability to worship or acknowledge a deity.
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. - Robert M. Pirsig
Evil is simply; evil. There will be those who blame it on the ready availability of guns, pornography, alcohol, drugs, tootsie rolls, etc., but it's still just evil. The emperor threw Christians to the lions. Christians burned women at the stake. Who gets to have the last 'horror'?
Atheists are no better and no worse at keeping 'morals', for acting in kindness and compassion, than are Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Quakers, Italians, Jews, or even people from Oklahoma We all make a choice at some point in our lives either to throw caterpillars into the bed of ants and giggle as they squirm, or to watch the caterpillar in awe, marveling at the face of God.
Blaming evil on words in a book is cowardly at best. Witness the massive and bewildering variety of Christian denominations. You can giggle madly and praise God when a person dies of aids, proclaiming that to be the will of God, and find a denomination that will revere your insanity. You can fatten up your stock portfolio and drive a hundred thousand dollar car and find a denomination that will praise your success and hold you up as an example of God's promise of success, praising you for spending a hundred dollars on a 'Christmas angel'. Or, you can find a denomination that accepts all, loves all, and denounces wealth and anger. Religion itself is broad enough to cover Mother Theresa and Teresa of Avila while burning Copernicus at the stake.
Pull up your big girl panties; it is your choice to be either good or evil. Don't blame your evil on God, and don't be so pious as to not take credit for being a good person. We aren't little flesh and blood puppets, dangling by strings, driven by His every word. He tried that for forty years in the desert. It didn't work out.
Virtually every religion has at its core compassion. Non-Hebrew philosophers long before the birth of a man named Jesus waxed poetic about fairness and equality.
Perhaps I am a heretic... no; I am a heretic... I believe that the capability for good or evil resides in all of us. Our connection to deity (spirituality) does not create this; it can only heighten and sharpen what is there. I have known people that are truly good. I have known those who are truly evil. I neither blame nor give credit to either condition on deity, on God, or on Christianity. To do otherwise would be to demean the Buddha.
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself. - Robert M. Pirsig
Elisheba Ruth
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. - Plato
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Why being right means that I am wrong.
A friend recently asked me for my opinion on the Book of Mormon. I have known a few Mormons in my life. They are a bit rare in my area, but I have befriended several in the past three or four decades and have always found them to be both gentle and kind. In several I have detected the malodorous presence of doubt. I find that I must be sympathetic to this; the deep south is the province of the evangelical Christian. Being Mormon here must be no less arduous than is being Muslim, atheist, or gay.
A few days later in my almost daily scrounging for books at thrift shops and on clearance aisles I found Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. I needed a break from my intense study of the bible so I picked it up yesterday as I was on my way to a Drs. appointment, hoping that a brief sabbatical would bring me back to the book of Isaiah refreshed. I was pleasantly surprised at both how fascinating and how familiar I found the story of the man that Mormons refer to as the Prophet.
Raised in poverty and living an indigent lifestyle due to his fathers need to move around for work, Joseph Smith says that he was; born... of goodly parents who spared no pains to instruct me in the Christian religion. I would suspect that the King James Version may have been the sole book the family owned, and certainly the one most treasured. Teachings goes on to say that Joseph's parents recognized that some of the gospel principles taught by Jesus and His apostles were absent from contemporary churches... Though only a boy, Joseph was deeply concerned about his own standing before God and about the confusion among the various religious groups.
This background led Smith to ultimately found his own religion. While I have opinions and theories on why he did this and, perhaps, how, those opinions and theories are irrelevant to my topic. What interests me is the pattern by which most of us, being concerned about the confusion among the various religious groups, come to the opinion that all or most of them are wrong.
I found in Smith a kindred spirit, both admiring and even perhaps envying his dedication to finding piety and truth in God's word. I understand completely his dismay at the seemingly meaningless variation of the views of God's word. Seeing my own thoughts so clearly written on the life of a man who ultimately took a path at odds with virtually every other Christian denomination forced me to look deeper into my own thoughts.
Follow me briefly while I endeavor to define a few terms:
The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in the Indian subcontinent from where it has widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies; broadly, the parable implies that one's subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth. At various times the parable has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behavior of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.
19th century Hindu mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used this parable to discourage dogmatism:
A number of blind men came to an elephant. Somebody told them that it was an elephant. The blind men asked, ‘What is the elephant like?’ and they began to touch its body. One of them said: 'It is like a pillar.' This blind man had only touched its leg. Another man said, ‘The elephant is like a husking basket.’ This person had only touched its ears. Similarly, he who touched its trunk or its belly talked of it differently.
The common reaction to difference views is to proclaim that that one of the views must be correct, while the others are wrong. Our society is based on teaching children to strive for first place, the blue ribbon. At the Olympic ceremonies winners of the Gold medal stand triumphantly in the center and above the winners of the Silver and Bronze, who are often crying hysterically that each was only second or third best at her chosen sport in the entire world. Game shows have winners who make thousands or millions (re: Slum Dog Millionaire), and losers, from second-place loser down. You are either the winner, or you are a loser. You are either right, or you are wrong.
While this philosophy may appear normal or perhaps even correct in the classical school of thought where f=ma and e=mc2, we only think we're smart. In 1 Corinthians 1 Paul says that; God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.
Like the blind men who each felt confident based on his observations, we like to pat ourselves on the backs confidently and believe that, since we can see and touch something it must be true. Yet mysteries abound, shaming both our strength and our wisdom.
We can't define the formula by which a zebra's stripes are both completely unique, with no two zebra ever having lived that has the same pattern, yet each pattern even in the absence of the shape of the animal is recognizable immediately as uniquely that of the zebra. We know that there is a formula. We know that it is probably in the DNA; a genetic sequence. But we can't define it. We don't know it's language. We know neither the grammar nor the syntax.
Some of, or perhaps solely, the oldest living things are trees. Bristlecone pines live to be over five thousand years old, thought to be older, for an individual life form, than any other living entity. During the course of millenia each tree persists through flood, famine, fire, ice, storms, and abuse of many kinds. There are no tree firemen, emergency rooms, doctors, or engineers. Each tree must survive the abuse of Time herself to live to the age of Methuselah. When damaged, rather than remove and replace the damaged component or part, the damage is isolated by a barrier zone which both prevents the spread of the injury and supports the structure around it. The damaged area becomes a part of the tree itself, allowed to remain with the whole, but limited in the damage it can inflict.
The damaged, or simply different, part is neither rejected nor does it become unlike a tree. It is contained within the tree itself, accepted as part of the whole for all the millenia that the tree lives. Paul recognized this natural phenomena in 1 Corinthians 12; The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.
Trees respond to wounding or injury in two ways: compartmentalization and the development of barrier zones (Shigo 1986).
Life does not operate on the principles of math or science as we understand them. Life operates on a formula so simple that it can be contained within each cell among the trillion, trillion, trillion..., while defining beauty as elegant as the stripes of a zebra or an individual snowflake; yet so complex that it can define the life of a tree, the colors of a butterfly, or the song of a whale.
Life is not binary. Life does not have the concept of right or wrong. Life is a ballet of variation, a dance so chaotic that it defies even the imagination while painting rainbows of beauty among us.
Why would the will of deity, the will of God, be any different? Why would we limit God to only the rewarding of Gold, Silver, or Bronze medals?
There have always been those such as Joseph Smith who will seek to lay the label of right or wrong on the musings of others, and the labels of heretic or blasphemer on those with whom they disagree. The path is well blazed; our earliest writings from every culture seek to define right verses wrong, good verses evil, lawful verses unlawful. Our very society consists of red lights and green lights, with only a yellow light to warn that you are approaching a point of no return, but rarely any intermediate ground between extremes.
I find myself distressingly eager to follow suit, to proclaim that I have figured it out. That I now understand. That I have the answer.
I have begun to question my own faith, not because I question my belief in deity, nor because I question my spirituality. I have begun to question my faith because I am becoming aware that I have based it on religion; the codification of someone else's spirituality. I do not mean that it is my intent to discard my bibles and start meditating while seeking deity without the influence or knowledge of others to guide me. I mean only that I find myself wanting to back away from the categorization of deity and spirituality as if they were a taxonomy of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. I am not sure that I want to know how many angels may simultaneously dance on the head of a pin. I am not sure that I am meant to know. I am becoming more convinced that I do not even wish to engage in that line of rhetoric.
I have begun to question whether it is possible that both Joseph Smith and I can be correct in our understanding of deity, in our spirituality. Can the faith of the Methodists be just as true as the faith of the Baptists? Can Greek orthodoxy be no less true than Catholic? Can Mormons be just as righteous as Presbyterians? Can Buddhists know what Christians do not and can Christians share knowledge with Muslims? Could Jehovah's Witnesses and the Metropolitan Community Church understand the same truth? Can we all be blind, or are we simply myopic?
Can it be true both that it is not a sin for me to be gay, and that homosexuality is a sin? Can it be true both that it is a disgrace for a woman to speak in the church, and that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Can it be both that whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and that there are those who can piously say; I exhort you, be imitators of me.
In Romans 14 Paul admonishes us to; Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall.
He continues to make the thought more comprehensive; One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.
He makes the radical statements that; I am convinced... that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean... But whoever has doubts is condemned... and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
He summarizes with; Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. If your brother or sister is distressed [by what you do]... you are no longer acting in love... Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of [belief]... it is wrong for a person to [do] anything that causes someone else to stumble...
I have applied some selective editing to Paul's statements, but it has been primarily to consolidate his comments into categories and understand them as pertaining to and about more than just culinary issues. You may, of course, read them directly from your own bible and see them in the order intended by the apostle...
He includes an interesting remark; Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.
Is he referring to the faith of the individual? Is he exhorting us to respect the spirituality of each person, and her right to her own communion with and understanding of deity? Reading much of Paul's writings you may not be able to draw this conclusion from his message here. But consider that he wrote the following two passages both in the same letter, 1 Corinthians:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.
Paul was quite capable of holding multiple opposing thoughts in his head simultaneously, or at least within a short span of time. I wonder if I should, rather than dislike him as an egomaniacal, homophobic, misogynist with psychotic tendencies; perhaps I should instead admire his insanity, his passion, and his dedication, accepting the thread of madness, the break from reality, that seemingly bonds us to a common refusal to accept both the extremes and the simplistic judgment of a traffic light.
Does Paul make the the lunacy of the Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine seem mundane by comparison? Was Paul's spiritual gift the ability to both see and have compassion for the extreme positions of the omnivore and the vegetarian, the prostitute and the pious, the priest and the plebeian? Should I pay more attention to Paul, or am I doing the equivalent of finding messages encoded in the letters running diagonally in the scripture, of hearing the voices of dead men by playing the music of the Beatles backwards?
Mystic Paramahamsa finishes his version of the parable of the blind men and the elephant with this:
In the same way, he who has seen the Lord in a particular way limits the Lord to that alone and thinks that He is nothing else.
What I have begun to understand and which I have written about here may impact my own studies and my own beliefs little. I still believe the best way for me to understand the word of God is through the filter of the words, actions, and meanings of Jesus of Nazareth. What is changing for me, and I think may lead to a new understanding of deity and of my own spirituality is the acceptance of others. And that may impact my own studies and my own beliefs dramatically.
I have always been willing to listen to the opinions of those with whom I did not agree. I have always maintained that, were I to make the effort to understand their perspective, their opinion, albeit right or wrong, would be of value to me. I have had trouble applying this same principle to my spirituality. The orthodoxy of the inerrant and infallible Bible has dogged even me, who has run the gamut from outspoken atheist to evangelical Christian.
What I think may be the most profound change that this new awareness will impact upon me is the way I share my beliefs and my experience with others. If I, by what I eat, may cause another to sin, should I not eat what is set before me as Jesus admonishes the seventy in Luke before sending them out? Perhaps even if I am correct in my understanding of His word, I can be incorrect in sharing it with you if I do not do so with compassion for your beliefs and your spirituality.
What if my interpretation and understanding of His word are less important to my doing His will than are my acceptance and encouragement of the faith of others? What if I I can be a better servant of His word by encouraging my Mormon friend to refresh her own faith than I can were I to try and convert her to mine?
In John 13 Jesus tells us; By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
What if He really meant all that stuff He said?
A few days later in my almost daily scrounging for books at thrift shops and on clearance aisles I found Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. I needed a break from my intense study of the bible so I picked it up yesterday as I was on my way to a Drs. appointment, hoping that a brief sabbatical would bring me back to the book of Isaiah refreshed. I was pleasantly surprised at both how fascinating and how familiar I found the story of the man that Mormons refer to as the Prophet.
Raised in poverty and living an indigent lifestyle due to his fathers need to move around for work, Joseph Smith says that he was; born... of goodly parents who spared no pains to instruct me in the Christian religion. I would suspect that the King James Version may have been the sole book the family owned, and certainly the one most treasured. Teachings goes on to say that Joseph's parents recognized that some of the gospel principles taught by Jesus and His apostles were absent from contemporary churches... Though only a boy, Joseph was deeply concerned about his own standing before God and about the confusion among the various religious groups.
This background led Smith to ultimately found his own religion. While I have opinions and theories on why he did this and, perhaps, how, those opinions and theories are irrelevant to my topic. What interests me is the pattern by which most of us, being concerned about the confusion among the various religious groups, come to the opinion that all or most of them are wrong.
I found in Smith a kindred spirit, both admiring and even perhaps envying his dedication to finding piety and truth in God's word. I understand completely his dismay at the seemingly meaningless variation of the views of God's word. Seeing my own thoughts so clearly written on the life of a man who ultimately took a path at odds with virtually every other Christian denomination forced me to look deeper into my own thoughts.
Follow me briefly while I endeavor to define a few terms:
What is religion?
Postulates
Deity
Deity is what we call that for which we all yearn; the 'God shaped hole' in our soul, the need for something more. Call it Jesus, God, Father, Yahwey, Enlightenment, the Great Spirit, the Holy Ghost, or the Great Turtle; virtually all humans yearn for something that we cannot find in either ourselves or in relationships with others. This is deity.Spirituality
Spirituality is how we define the way that we both commune and communicate with deity. Meditation, prayer, silence, stillness, listening; we all have a way that works best for us, a means of becoming one with and understanding deity. Spirituality is our understanding of deity.Religion
Religion is the codification of spirituality such that it may be shared with (or forced upon) others. Religion is the Bible, the Talmud, the Torah, the Koran, the Gnostic scrolls, the Essene scrolls, and the Hindu Song of the Lord. Religion is the tool by which we communicate first the spirituality of an individual, then the spirituality of a group.Assumptions
Knowledge of deity
No one person can ever fully comprehend or understand deity. Deity is by definition greater than a mortal being. If any one mortal being could fully comprehend or understand deity, it would either not be deity or that mortal being would also be a deity (re: the Son of Man).The will of deity for the individual
Each individual has a unique path defined by her skills and experience, her intelligence, suffering, and characteristics such as humility and empathy, and her spirituality; her relationship with deity. No two people could be expected to ever have exactly the same directive, mission, goal, or objective from deity; as each of us is unique, no two of us could fulfill exactly the same requirements. Nor could any two people be expected to understand a directive, mission, goal, or objective in the same way even were they both given the same!The parable of the blind men and an elephant
From Wikipedia:The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in the Indian subcontinent from where it has widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies; broadly, the parable implies that one's subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth. At various times the parable has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behavior of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.
19th century Hindu mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used this parable to discourage dogmatism:
A number of blind men came to an elephant. Somebody told them that it was an elephant. The blind men asked, ‘What is the elephant like?’ and they began to touch its body. One of them said: 'It is like a pillar.' This blind man had only touched its leg. Another man said, ‘The elephant is like a husking basket.’ This person had only touched its ears. Similarly, he who touched its trunk or its belly talked of it differently.
The common reaction to difference views is to proclaim that that one of the views must be correct, while the others are wrong. Our society is based on teaching children to strive for first place, the blue ribbon. At the Olympic ceremonies winners of the Gold medal stand triumphantly in the center and above the winners of the Silver and Bronze, who are often crying hysterically that each was only second or third best at her chosen sport in the entire world. Game shows have winners who make thousands or millions (re: Slum Dog Millionaire), and losers, from second-place loser down. You are either the winner, or you are a loser. You are either right, or you are wrong.
While this philosophy may appear normal or perhaps even correct in the classical school of thought where f=ma and e=mc2, we only think we're smart. In 1 Corinthians 1 Paul says that; God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.
Like the blind men who each felt confident based on his observations, we like to pat ourselves on the backs confidently and believe that, since we can see and touch something it must be true. Yet mysteries abound, shaming both our strength and our wisdom.
We can't define the formula by which a zebra's stripes are both completely unique, with no two zebra ever having lived that has the same pattern, yet each pattern even in the absence of the shape of the animal is recognizable immediately as uniquely that of the zebra. We know that there is a formula. We know that it is probably in the DNA; a genetic sequence. But we can't define it. We don't know it's language. We know neither the grammar nor the syntax.
Some of, or perhaps solely, the oldest living things are trees. Bristlecone pines live to be over five thousand years old, thought to be older, for an individual life form, than any other living entity. During the course of millenia each tree persists through flood, famine, fire, ice, storms, and abuse of many kinds. There are no tree firemen, emergency rooms, doctors, or engineers. Each tree must survive the abuse of Time herself to live to the age of Methuselah. When damaged, rather than remove and replace the damaged component or part, the damage is isolated by a barrier zone which both prevents the spread of the injury and supports the structure around it. The damaged area becomes a part of the tree itself, allowed to remain with the whole, but limited in the damage it can inflict.
The damaged, or simply different, part is neither rejected nor does it become unlike a tree. It is contained within the tree itself, accepted as part of the whole for all the millenia that the tree lives. Paul recognized this natural phenomena in 1 Corinthians 12; The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.
Trees respond to wounding or injury in two ways: compartmentalization and the development of barrier zones (Shigo 1986).
Compartmentalization
When a tree is wounded, the injured tissue is not repaired and does not heal. Trees do not heal; they seal. If you look at an old wound, you will notice that it does not “heal” from the inside out, but eventually the tree covers the opening by forming specialized “callus” tissue around the edges of the wound. After wounding, new wood growing around the wound forms a protective boundary preventing the infection or decay from spreading into the new tissue. Thus, the tree responds to the injury by “compartmentalizing” or isolating the older, injured tissue with the gradual growth of new, healthy tissue.Barrier Zones
Not only do trees try to close the damaged tissue from the outside, they also make the existing wood surrounding the wound unsuitable for spread of decay organisms. Although these processes are not well understood, the tree tries to avoid further injury by setting chemical and physical boundaries around the infected cells, reacting to the pathogen and confining the damage.Life does not operate on the principles of math or science as we understand them. Life operates on a formula so simple that it can be contained within each cell among the trillion, trillion, trillion..., while defining beauty as elegant as the stripes of a zebra or an individual snowflake; yet so complex that it can define the life of a tree, the colors of a butterfly, or the song of a whale.
Life is not binary. Life does not have the concept of right or wrong. Life is a ballet of variation, a dance so chaotic that it defies even the imagination while painting rainbows of beauty among us.
Why would the will of deity, the will of God, be any different? Why would we limit God to only the rewarding of Gold, Silver, or Bronze medals?
There have always been those such as Joseph Smith who will seek to lay the label of right or wrong on the musings of others, and the labels of heretic or blasphemer on those with whom they disagree. The path is well blazed; our earliest writings from every culture seek to define right verses wrong, good verses evil, lawful verses unlawful. Our very society consists of red lights and green lights, with only a yellow light to warn that you are approaching a point of no return, but rarely any intermediate ground between extremes.
I find myself distressingly eager to follow suit, to proclaim that I have figured it out. That I now understand. That I have the answer.
I have begun to question my own faith, not because I question my belief in deity, nor because I question my spirituality. I have begun to question my faith because I am becoming aware that I have based it on religion; the codification of someone else's spirituality. I do not mean that it is my intent to discard my bibles and start meditating while seeking deity without the influence or knowledge of others to guide me. I mean only that I find myself wanting to back away from the categorization of deity and spirituality as if they were a taxonomy of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. I am not sure that I want to know how many angels may simultaneously dance on the head of a pin. I am not sure that I am meant to know. I am becoming more convinced that I do not even wish to engage in that line of rhetoric.
I have begun to question whether it is possible that both Joseph Smith and I can be correct in our understanding of deity, in our spirituality. Can the faith of the Methodists be just as true as the faith of the Baptists? Can Greek orthodoxy be no less true than Catholic? Can Mormons be just as righteous as Presbyterians? Can Buddhists know what Christians do not and can Christians share knowledge with Muslims? Could Jehovah's Witnesses and the Metropolitan Community Church understand the same truth? Can we all be blind, or are we simply myopic?
Can it be true both that it is not a sin for me to be gay, and that homosexuality is a sin? Can it be true both that it is a disgrace for a woman to speak in the church, and that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Can it be both that whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and that there are those who can piously say; I exhort you, be imitators of me.
In Romans 14 Paul admonishes us to; Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall.
He continues to make the thought more comprehensive; One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.
He makes the radical statements that; I am convinced... that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean... But whoever has doubts is condemned... and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
He summarizes with; Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. If your brother or sister is distressed [by what you do]... you are no longer acting in love... Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of [belief]... it is wrong for a person to [do] anything that causes someone else to stumble...
I have applied some selective editing to Paul's statements, but it has been primarily to consolidate his comments into categories and understand them as pertaining to and about more than just culinary issues. You may, of course, read them directly from your own bible and see them in the order intended by the apostle...
He includes an interesting remark; Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.
Is he referring to the faith of the individual? Is he exhorting us to respect the spirituality of each person, and her right to her own communion with and understanding of deity? Reading much of Paul's writings you may not be able to draw this conclusion from his message here. But consider that he wrote the following two passages both in the same letter, 1 Corinthians:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.
Paul was quite capable of holding multiple opposing thoughts in his head simultaneously, or at least within a short span of time. I wonder if I should, rather than dislike him as an egomaniacal, homophobic, misogynist with psychotic tendencies; perhaps I should instead admire his insanity, his passion, and his dedication, accepting the thread of madness, the break from reality, that seemingly bonds us to a common refusal to accept both the extremes and the simplistic judgment of a traffic light.
Does Paul make the the lunacy of the Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine seem mundane by comparison? Was Paul's spiritual gift the ability to both see and have compassion for the extreme positions of the omnivore and the vegetarian, the prostitute and the pious, the priest and the plebeian? Should I pay more attention to Paul, or am I doing the equivalent of finding messages encoded in the letters running diagonally in the scripture, of hearing the voices of dead men by playing the music of the Beatles backwards?
Mystic Paramahamsa finishes his version of the parable of the blind men and the elephant with this:
In the same way, he who has seen the Lord in a particular way limits the Lord to that alone and thinks that He is nothing else.
What I have begun to understand and which I have written about here may impact my own studies and my own beliefs little. I still believe the best way for me to understand the word of God is through the filter of the words, actions, and meanings of Jesus of Nazareth. What is changing for me, and I think may lead to a new understanding of deity and of my own spirituality is the acceptance of others. And that may impact my own studies and my own beliefs dramatically.
I have always been willing to listen to the opinions of those with whom I did not agree. I have always maintained that, were I to make the effort to understand their perspective, their opinion, albeit right or wrong, would be of value to me. I have had trouble applying this same principle to my spirituality. The orthodoxy of the inerrant and infallible Bible has dogged even me, who has run the gamut from outspoken atheist to evangelical Christian.
What I think may be the most profound change that this new awareness will impact upon me is the way I share my beliefs and my experience with others. If I, by what I eat, may cause another to sin, should I not eat what is set before me as Jesus admonishes the seventy in Luke before sending them out? Perhaps even if I am correct in my understanding of His word, I can be incorrect in sharing it with you if I do not do so with compassion for your beliefs and your spirituality.
What if my interpretation and understanding of His word are less important to my doing His will than are my acceptance and encouragement of the faith of others? What if I I can be a better servant of His word by encouraging my Mormon friend to refresh her own faith than I can were I to try and convert her to mine?
In John 13 Jesus tells us; By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
What if He really meant all that stuff He said?
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Suffering
I've read a lot about suffering recently. I've experienced suffering. I still suffer, much as we all do. I have accepted God into my life and dedicated myself to doing His will. I want to understand why there is so much suffering.
In The Case For Faith, Lee Strobel relates a story from an interview; On my door is a cartoon of two turtles. One says, “Sometimes I would like to ask why God allows poverty, famine, and injustice when he could do something about it.” The other turtle says “I am afraid that God might ask me the same question.
I often use Hebrews 8 in my conversations and writing;
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.
1 Corinthians 3 comes up along with Hebrews 8:
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?
Luke 17 follows immediately after:
The Kingdom of God is in your midst.
In the Old Testament God was with His people every day. He gave them hundreds of laws about how to act and He interfered daily in their lives. They resented Him and ignored Him because of it. They would obey the laws but seemed to miss the spirit, the intent of them; to glorify God. When Jesus came He brought the New Covenant. God still does touch us occasionally. He healed me. But God has essentially passed the baton to us.
We are the lucky ones. The addicts, alcoholics, manic depressives; those of us who struggle with demons that threaten to consume us. Most people go through life with enough money and the stuff it buys to be comfortable and to not need God in their lives. When I was finally able to pray while in treatment, I thanked Him for allowing me to take a path and to take up burdens that weakened me so much that I could hear Him. Before, I was so strong I thought I didn't need Him. My suffering was God's siren call.
I've never asked Him for anything since except for understanding of His will. As the 11th step states; I Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry that out. Actually I have asked for one thing; I told Him to point me at the bus and I'd throw myself under it if that's what He needed, but I did ask for enough time so my kids would know that I got clean and got off the street before He needs me to go. That's all I care about really.
Without suffering I would have never known God. Without suffering we wouldn't get the chance to do His work and feel how wonderful it is to help one another. I know it could sound trite and self serving to say that you suffer so I can feel better about myself by helping you. I will admit that I do feel a twinge of guilt for the joy I receive when I help someone else.
Because God has left the Hebrew temple and has taken up residence in each of us, we get to do His work, experiencing His joy. Because of suffering, we get to help others. I would never have known the joy of helping other addicts had I not become one. I cannot even begin to imagine how this sets right all the suffering in the world, nor will I make the argument that it does. I can only speak to what God conveys to me; when I help others, I am doing His work, and when I help others I become more like Him.
Philip Yancey wrote that, in his research on suffering, he spoke with people all over the globe who were dedicated to service; I was prepared to honor and admire these servants, to uphold them as inspiring examples. I was not prepared to envy them.
I don't envy me. But I'd rather be me, now, the former addict and prostitute, than me, formerly, believing in nothing but cold, hard cash and that I was all alone in a huge universe. I wish that I could have gotten here by an easier path, but if I had, how would I understand those who have come by the harder path?
Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. - Martin Luther King Jr.
In The Case For Faith, Lee Strobel relates a story from an interview; On my door is a cartoon of two turtles. One says, “Sometimes I would like to ask why God allows poverty, famine, and injustice when he could do something about it.” The other turtle says “I am afraid that God might ask me the same question.
I often use Hebrews 8 in my conversations and writing;
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.
1 Corinthians 3 comes up along with Hebrews 8:
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?
Luke 17 follows immediately after:
The Kingdom of God is in your midst.
In the Old Testament God was with His people every day. He gave them hundreds of laws about how to act and He interfered daily in their lives. They resented Him and ignored Him because of it. They would obey the laws but seemed to miss the spirit, the intent of them; to glorify God. When Jesus came He brought the New Covenant. God still does touch us occasionally. He healed me. But God has essentially passed the baton to us.
We are the lucky ones. The addicts, alcoholics, manic depressives; those of us who struggle with demons that threaten to consume us. Most people go through life with enough money and the stuff it buys to be comfortable and to not need God in their lives. When I was finally able to pray while in treatment, I thanked Him for allowing me to take a path and to take up burdens that weakened me so much that I could hear Him. Before, I was so strong I thought I didn't need Him. My suffering was God's siren call.
I've never asked Him for anything since except for understanding of His will. As the 11th step states; I Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry that out. Actually I have asked for one thing; I told Him to point me at the bus and I'd throw myself under it if that's what He needed, but I did ask for enough time so my kids would know that I got clean and got off the street before He needs me to go. That's all I care about really.
Without suffering I would have never known God. Without suffering we wouldn't get the chance to do His work and feel how wonderful it is to help one another. I know it could sound trite and self serving to say that you suffer so I can feel better about myself by helping you. I will admit that I do feel a twinge of guilt for the joy I receive when I help someone else.
Because God has left the Hebrew temple and has taken up residence in each of us, we get to do His work, experiencing His joy. Because of suffering, we get to help others. I would never have known the joy of helping other addicts had I not become one. I cannot even begin to imagine how this sets right all the suffering in the world, nor will I make the argument that it does. I can only speak to what God conveys to me; when I help others, I am doing His work, and when I help others I become more like Him.
Philip Yancey wrote that, in his research on suffering, he spoke with people all over the globe who were dedicated to service; I was prepared to honor and admire these servants, to uphold them as inspiring examples. I was not prepared to envy them.
I don't envy me. But I'd rather be me, now, the former addict and prostitute, than me, formerly, believing in nothing but cold, hard cash and that I was all alone in a huge universe. I wish that I could have gotten here by an easier path, but if I had, how would I understand those who have come by the harder path?
Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. - Martin Luther King Jr.
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