This article was written from a Judeo/Christian viewpoint (emphasis on the "Christian"). I elected to do so for a couple of reasons: First, America is still predominantly a Christian nation, with a long tradition of following Christian principles, and deep cultural roots immersed in the Bible and scripture. Secondly, I am a Christian myself.
And right there we come to the first of several cans of worms we will come across in this article. What do I mean when I say "I am a Christian?"
We tend to assume that when we use the term "Christian" we are all on the same page regarding what we are talking about--not so. When I look around at Christianity in America these days, what I see is a Byzantine mess of half-baked spirituality, conflicting theologies, anemic beliefs, apathetic parishioners, charlatans, fools, arrogant demagogues, and "shepherds" leading their flocks with milquetoast watered down platitudes in place of genuine spiritual truth and power. There are exceptions to be sure, but they are few and far between.
Before proceeding any further, it may be a good idea to point out that what appears in this article are simply my beliefs--my opinions if you will. I do not and will not pretend to be Moses coming down from the mountain. What I hope to accomplish with this article is to in a small way start a dialogue about matters that I consider to be of the utmost importance--both to America as a whole, and to each of us as individuals. I have no degrees in theology, but I do have over half-a-century of fascination with, and research into, spiritual/ religious concerns.
What/who is God?
First things first I suppose, and the single most important term to define in an article such as this is "God." It is well to keep in mind that in any group of people, religious or otherwise, everyone will have in their mind a different concept of who or what God is. This holds true even in a group of Christians belonging to the same denomination, attending the same church service.
In such a group of, say a hundred people, there will be a hundred different ideas/beliefs of what the label "God" represents. This is not because God changes, of course, but because each of the "flock" will have different conceptions of God due to their differing life experiences and their differing levels of consciousness.
It seems to me that one of the first orders of business, if we are going to straighten out the mess that is contemporary Christianity, is to come to some degree of consensus regarding what the word "God" means.
A few words on words
Before tackling what has historically been a tough nut to crack, it would behoove us to delve briefly into the difficulty of describing the ineffable using language--i.e. words. How do you describe the
infinite in words designed to describe the
finite? Well, in all honesty you can't. This is not to say that words are of no use when dealing with spiritual matters, but that they must of necessity "beat around the bush," so to speak, and make use of metaphors, analogies, similes, symbols and the like.
It is seldom something that we think about, but words are "stand ins," that is, they
represent things and are not the things themselves. They are a sort of code used to imply the reality that they represent. For example, in the sentence "The 'green fuse' of the red rose possessed protective thorns," the words "green" and "red" have no color; the word "thorn" won't prick you, the word "protective" doesn't protect squat, and the word "rose" has no fragrance--words are stand-ins; symbols for the ineffable reality that they refer back to. (Besides being a self-contained metaphor in its own right, the phrase "green fuse" also serves as an allusion to another metaphor; the line from the Dylan Thomas poem: "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower." Literature's use of metaphors alluding to other metaphors in a "Hall of Mirrors" reflective dance is an interesting topic for discussion--but not one we will not be dealing with today).
My point here is that "we see through a glass darkly." Our "reality" is generally filtered through multiple layers of labels which deposit a thick patina of symbols and metaphors over that which is, when experienced directly, experienced as glorious, sacred, and beyond the ability of words to describe. (I am speaking of words as they are commonly employed in everyday usage. The transcendent experiences sometimes evoked by mantras, poems and high prose will not be discussed here).
The dulling, dampening, dimming effect of labeling things is what the author Joseph Conrad was referring to when he wrote "Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality." It is what the poet/artist William Blake was alluding to in the line "If the doors of perception were cleansed
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." Blake is talking about the direct experience of reality
sans the filter of words (coupled with "cleansed" senses and a refined state of consciousness).
Please do not get the wrong impression here: I deeply admire and highly respect the usefulness and versatility of words. Words are wonderful devices for eliciting and communicating an infinite range of emotions and ideas--but they are
not the reality that they act as a stand-in for. The word "hot" will not burn you, the word "ice" will not chill you, the word "knife" will not cut you, and the word "God" will not save you. Only the reality that the words
represent can do those things.
Back to God
Different religions deal with the problem of how to deal with defining the ineffable, the transcendent, the untranslatable. For example the ancient Jews used an unpronounceable "word" to describe G-d (YHVH), and Buddha bypassed the whole subject altogether. (Note: Some folks were apparently unhappy with the whole "YHVH" gambit, and pronounced the unpronounceable anyway--Yahweh or Jehovah).
Believers in God are presented with quite a conundrum right off the bat--if you believe in God, yet God is ineffable, infinite, and undefinable, just what are you believing in? Are all believers by default forced to be agnostics? That is, believing in God, but required to make no attempt to define Him? Is it true, as Lao Tzu reputedly observed, ""Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know?" Hmm.
As a Christian, I consider the above to be a nonissue, as we have a plethora of attributes describing God. Perhaps most importantly, the New Testament tells us that God is Life, Love, Spirit, and Truth. James calls Him "the Father of Lights" -- and of course we have the example of God Himself in the incarnation of Jesus--and Jesus left us a divine presence variously known as the Friend, the Counselor, the Advocate, the Redeemer, the Comforter, and the Helper--that is, the Paraclete, or Holy Spirit.
I also consider it important that God is Trustworthy. It is highly unlikely that you can love someone wholeheartedly if you distrust them--and yet Jesus told us to love God totally and unconditionally (quoting from Deuteronomy and Leviticus):
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with
all your soul and with
all your mind.
This is
the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."--Matthew 22:36-40
[Sidebar: I find it useful to try to keep in mind as I read the New Testament that there
was no New Testament during Jesus' lifetime. Jesus was raised as a Jew, and was what we would today call a Rabbi, who had the utmost respect for what Christians call the Old Testament (the TaNaKH, especially the first five books, or Torah). It was the Jewish religious leaders of the time that Jesus held in contempt ("You blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel"). And it was the Jewish "powers that be"--not the Romans so much, and certainly not the common Jewish people--who decided that this upstart Jewish iconoclast must die. The head of the Jewish orthodox hierarchy in Jerusalem, Caiaphas, especially had it in for Jesus. In Bill O'Reilly's book "Killing Jesus" he and co-author Martin Dugard do an admirable job of (1) setting "The Greatest Story Ever Told" into a gratifyingly clear chronological order, (2) explaining the nature of the society Jesus lived in, and (3) explaining the political/religious intrigue that swirled around Jesus. I also like the fact that O'Reilly was open about, and unapologetic about, his seeking the help of the Holy Spirit while writing the book. I pray for inspiration and guidance from the Holy Spirit whenever I write an article, so I can relate to O'Reilly's attitude. As faithful readers can attest, sometimes I am more receptive to divine guidance than others.]
To get back to the topic I was discussing before the sidebar--trust -- specifically, trust in God; I have found the following verses from Isaiah helpful in this regard:
You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.
Trust in the Lord forever,
For in YAH, the Lord, is everlasting strength.
--Isaiah 26:3-4 NKJV
I find that the above verses profit and enlighten me when I contemplate them. Emmet Fox (1886-1951), long one of my favorite Christian/spiritual guides, wrote that God's perfect peace is one of the greatest blessings God can bestow on a person. How does one acquire this "peace that passes all understanding?" By following Jesus' admonition to love God "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (a mind "stayed on" God). And how does one do such a thing? According to the above verses it happens because we
trust God.
At the risk of belaboring the point, the author of the verses continues, "
Trust in the LORD
forever." And then concludes by reminding us that God is "everlasting strength." (I remind myself when reading that last bit that it says in Nehemiah that my strength comes from "the
joy of the LORD"). Acquiring total trust in God is of course easier said than done, and it is something that I pray to acquire and deepen frequently.
I would also add that God is
Intelligent. If you will permit me to expand on Psalm 94:9: "Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see? Is he who created intelligence not intelligent?"
Although there are some wonderful descriptions of God in the Old Testament (especially in "Psalms"), there are other depictions of God in the Old Testament that, when taken at face value, I have serious problems with (more about that in a bit). I'll stick with the New Testament descriptions for the most part, thank you very much.
[Sidebar: Please keep in mind that I have been discussing
facets of God -- I am not attempting to
define God. Although God
can be
experienced, He cannot be understood by the intellect--the finite cannot intellectually grasp the infinite. Attempting to do so can all too easily lead to idolatry, which is of course a violation of the First Commandment. But by using the clues given to us in the Bible, especially the New Testament, we can avoid the directionless morass of agnosticism.]
We have been discussing some of the attributes or aspects of God that we can use to get a sense of
what God is--but
where is God? Most of us have some murky impression that God is in heaven, which is "up there" some place. But Jesus could not have made it any clearer that heaven is
not some geographic location. He told us in no uncertain terms not to listen to people who tell us "Look, heaven is there--no, it's over
there!
"Neither shall they say, 'See here!' or, 'See there!' for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."--Luke 17:21 NKJV
Jesus told us that "the kingdom of God" (heaven) is
within us--and where might one expect to find God? In heaven one assumes. When Jesus told us that heaven (and God) are within us he was not referring to some
place in our bodies--He had just finished pointing out that heaven is not in any physical location. So if it's inside us, what does that mean?
It is not in our brain, or our physical heart--those are, after all, physical locations. It is in our mind, or to be more precise, it is located in an elevated state of consciousness -- most of us live our entire lives without ever suspecting its existence. As Emmet Fox put it:
We live in God's world, but we do not in the least know it as it is. Heaven is all about us -- it is not a distant locality afar off in the skies, but all around us now. ...We do contact a very tiny fragment of it, and that tiny fragment we call the universe; but even that little bit we see, for the most part, all awry.
...We are very much in the position of a color-blind man in a beautiful flower garden. All around him are glorious colors; but he is quite unaware of them and sees only blacks, whites, and grays. If we suppose him to also be devoid of the sense of smell, we shall see what a very small part of the glory of the garden exists for him. Yet it is all there, if he could but sense it.
Mystics, saints, seers and such have contacted (had the
experience of) heavenly states of existence throughout history. Just one example--the author, mathematician, and theologian Blaise Pascal had a breakout experience of this sort several years before his death. I do not know if he ever told anyone about it, but he did write an almost cryptic account of the experience, which he had sewn into one of his jackets over his heart. It was discovered after his death.
The year of grace 1654,
Monday the 23rd of November, St. Clement's day...
From about half past ten in the evening
until about half past twelve, midnight,
FIRE
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob
not of the philosophers and the wise,
Certainty, joy, certainty, feeling, joy, peace.
--Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Pascal's mention of FIRE (all in caps) reminds me of Dr Richard Bucke's (1837-1902) description of his own experience with a highly elevated state of consciousness (
Bucke coined the term "cosmic consciousness
"):
[While visiting London] All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure [n. chance; doubt; question] all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain.
Getting things bassackward
Why are not more of us aware that such states of consciousness exist? A substantial part of the reason is the absurd, destructive, and puerile animosity that has blossomed over time between religion and science -- and I suppose a fair amount of blame can be thrown René Descarte's (1596-1650) way for his famous dictum "I think, therefore I am" ("
Cogito ergo sum").
Au contraire René. The proper axiom is: I am
aware that I am thinking therefore I am. Thoughts without awareness are for all practical purposes nonexistent. How could you claim to know you exist because you
think, if you were totally ignorant (unaware) of
having any thoughts? Doh! Awareness is the
sine qua non of the intellect having any value at all. The intellect is a wonderful, marvelous tool, but it is not the crown of creation.
My point here is that by thinking that our intellects are the grooviest things since sliced bread, we have relegated awareness (and states of consciousness) to a
déclassé philosophical backwater seldom visited by anyone serious about their professional reputation. Consequently, awareness and states of consciousness (which can be used as highly useful interfaces to interact with the spiritual realm) have been largely ignored, much to the detriment of our spiritual growth, which has as a result been mostly stagnating and shrinking in importance and power over the past few centuries. (The unrelenting war against Christianity by atheistic forces, and the indecisive dithering and pathetic lack of true spiritual knowledge/experience among the various "shepherds" of the "faithful" have played their part as well, but we will not be discussing such things at this time).
By considering the intellect to be the
summum bonum, the highest good of existence, we have managed to get most everything backwards. Instead of following Jesus' commandment to love God with all our hearts, and minds, and souls--in the only place where we can find Him--inside ourselves -- we have directed our attention outward and focused on manipulating the material world around us, while ignoring the one area that matters most--our hearts and minds, our psyches and souls. As Tolstoy, (1828-1910) observed long ago:
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
Jesus said basically the same thing when he accused the orthodox religious hierarchy of his day of being hypocrites who made sure that they looked like "all that and a bag of chips" on the outside, while their insides were "full of greed and self-indulgence." Joseph Campbell, (1904-1987) makes a
similar point:
The warrior's approach is to say "yes" to life: "Yea" to it all.
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
When we talk about settling the world's problems,
We're barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect.
It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
Although I disagree with Campbell's "hands off" attitude toward changing the world (after all, my spiritual guide, mentor, and God--Jesus -- changed things in his world dramatically, often, and indeed miraculously), but I agree wholeheartedly that our main focus should be on changing
ourselves. I also like Campbell's statement that a spiritual warrior should say "YES" to life (it reminds me of some verses from Paul: "Jesus Christ...was not Yes
and No, but in Him was
Yes.
For
all the promises of God in Him are
Yes....").
Well, I could go on, and on, and on in this vein, but when you are dealing with the infinite there is only so much you can discuss (and still only scratch the surface of things). Besides, there are several other points that I wish to touch on, so we bid a fond
adieu to getting things bassackwards, and move to other concerns. I'll just mention in passing that when Jesus told us to be about the business of bringing God's will to earth as it is in heaven, I do not believe He was simply referring to changing outside material things. In fact I'm sure of it.
A transcendent God versus an immanent God
A theological and ontological question of some importance is whether God is transcendent or immanent. By which I mean is God separate from His creation, or immanent (within) His creation. In other words, are we talking about an absentee landlord, or the Creator
as creation?
Most Christian orthodoxy favors the absentee landlord view of things--God created the universe, but is not the universe. How that jives with God being omniscient and omnipresent is something I don't grasp, but there it is. I have no axe to grind with folks who see things that way--for all I know they may be right--but that's not how I see it.
For me the concept of an immanent God fires me up and makes the universe vibrant, sacred, and alive, and it also is in harmony with those teachers and teachings that have helped me on my spiritual journey. Seeing God in the mundane is a typical experience for those with an elevated state of consciousness. J.D. Salinger described such an experience in his novelette "
Franny:"
"My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean."
Not to bludgeon the anecdote to death, but in such a state of consciousness the glass having the milk poured into it was also God, and the table that everything sat on was God, and the room and everything in it was God; the air and the space between things was God--in short there was nothing
but God.
This is the type of experience that Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1902) was referring to in his poem "The Higher Pantheism:"
Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet-
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
History is full of such tales of transcendent consciousness. I even hear the echo of one
in Shakespeare's "As You Like It:"
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in everything.
I would not change it.
In addition I believe that having a God that is One (i.e. everything) helps to explain Jesus' statement that loving God was "like unto" loving other people.. If God is everything (immanent in His creation) then loving your neighbor
is "like unto" loving God.
Pantheism
People who believe that God is separate from His creation tend to cavalierly dismiss the word "pantheism" as if it referred to something
louche, puerile, and laughably immature. If you define pantheism as the belief that there is a pantheon of gods, (as in Greek mythology--with gods of trees, gods of ponds, and so), then I agree with them. But pantheism defined as "a doctrine that equates God with the forces and laws of the universe" is a different matter altogether.
[Sidebar: It is worth noting that Hinduism, with it hundreds of gods and goddesses, is oddly enough a monistic religion--that is, ultimately it is a belief system that posits
one God--Brahman (the creator)--from whom all the various gods and goddesses emerge. To be more precise the lesser gods and goddesses are created through the trinity (
Trimurti) of Brahman and the first gods He/She/It created--Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer). It may appear tempting to make comparisons between the Hindi
Trimurti and the Christian Trinity, but unless you are someone with a compulsive urge to pound round pegs into square holes I would advise against it. It is ultimately a futile exercise. Due to the fact that I just used the sexually neutral term "He/She/It" to describe Brahman, now might be a good time to point out that I have been referring to God in the masculine sense throughout this article because (1) it is the traditional, and therefore more accepted and familiar way to refer to the Christian God, and (2) it is how the Bible refers to Him. The whole issue of sexuality and spirituality is no doubt of great importance, but it a topic that would take us too far afield from the main themes of this article, so we won't be going there at this time. Suffice it to say that I consider God (and indeed our spirits) to be transsexual. That is, above sexual identities and concerns. (I
do believe in aspects of God that might be referred to as the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine, but again, such topics are beyond the focus of this article).]
A rather daunting bump in the road we are traveling here is the fact that common sense and experience tells most of us that life ain't no bowl of cherries, and nobody promised us a rose garden. In short, life is often hard, sometimes terribly, heartbreakingly so, and the idea that heaven is all around seems like the most foolish sort of deluded Pollyannaism. For the type of person driving around with a "Life Sucks and Then You Die" bumper sticker on their vehicle such counterintuitive bulls--t isn't even worth flipping a bird at.
Nonetheless after over half-a-century of dealing with spiritual detours, dead-ends, traps, pitfalls, charlatans, fakes, frauds, the misguided and the naïve, I came to the conclusion some time ago that the spiritual realm is real, and there is no more important project that I can spend my time on than furthering my spiritual growth. I believe that Jesus is the Way, and that heaven is "inside" me, and that God very much would love to see me come home at long last. The Prodigal Son is me, is us, and after wasting my time and money on frivolous entertainments in "a far country" I finally came to my senses and am now determined to return to my Father's home--heaven.
The author and sage Alan Watts, (1915-1973) knew well how absurd and ridiculous the whole experience of heaven on earth can sound to the skeptical and uninitiated. Watts had his own experiences with elevated states of consciousness, and described his feelings about these states for us:
The most astonishing feature of this experience
is the conviction that this entire unspeakable world is
"right," so right that our normal anxieties become
ludicrous, that if only men could see it they would
go wild with joy.
Quite apart from the difficulty of relating this
sensation to the problem of evil and pain, there is
the question of the meaning of the assertion "All
shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner
of thing shall be well."
I can say only that the meaning of the assertion
is the experience itself. Outside that state of
consciousness it has no meaning, so much so
that it would be difficult even to believe in it as a
revelation without the experience.
For the experience makes it perfectly clear that
the whole universe is through and through
the playing of love in every shade....
...Such insight has not the slightest connection with
"shallow optimism" nor with grasping the meaning of
the universe in terms of some neat philosophical
simplification.
Fundamentalism
Oh boy, talk about opening a can of worms...this is a subject that prudence might suggest I leave alone--but the Holy Spirit tells me "Go for it boyo." In truth, although I have some disagreements with fundamentalists, I hold no animosity toward them, and actually agree with them more than I disagree. They believe in Jesus and the Ten Commandments, and that carries a lot of weight in my book.
In any event, let me try to tackle the fundamentalist quandary. I call it a quandary because by taking the Bible verses literally, fundamentalists throw up an insurmountable wall between themselves and scientific thought and reason.
Eugene Kennedy has observed that "This [insistence by fundamentalist Christians to interpret the Bible literally] leaves organized religion to work through...an endless summer of "monkey trials.... [With] the best of intentions and the worst of reasons, men [and women] battle against truth to defend their outdated beliefs. Thus institutional religious leaders unnecessarily embrace a frail caricature of religion which is easily demolished by popular lecturers, totally out of their depths in theology, such as the late astronomer Carl Sagan."
Kennedy is of course referring to famous "Scopes Trial" (the "Monkey Trial") of 1929, in which attorney Clarence Darrow pretty much made mincemeat of William Jennings Bryan's largely fundamentalist based defense. (The Left of course loved the way that Darrow ridiculed Christianity (at least the fundamentalist version) and have been making hay with it ever since--including a play, a movie ("Inherit the Wind"), and two TV adaptations ( the last one aired in 1999).
[Sidebar: There is much more to the story of the "Scopes Trial" ("Monkey Trial") than the popular liberal-driven myth would have us believe. The "Scopes Trial," so the myth goes, was about a religious zealot refusing to teach Darwin's theory of evolution to his students. The truth is that the teacher in question, John Scopes, was opposed to using a biology textbook called "A Civics Biology," written by George William Hunter and published in 1914. Scope's problem was with the racist, genocidal teachings contained in Hunter's (nationally popular) textbook. For example, Hunter writes:
At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America (Hunter 1914, p. 196). (Italics added)
Professor/author Jerry Bergman notes that "Hunter also wrote that, if we can improve domesticated animals by breeding then 'future generations of men and women on the earth' can also 'be improved by applying to them the laws of selection' taught by Darwin."
One can understand why Hollywood chose not to quote from Hunter's book. Can you imagine Spencer Tracy (who played Clarence Darrow in the movie) turning to the jury and in a self-righteously impassioned manner quoting from "A Civics Biology?"
[If these inferior races (i.e. non-Caucasian)] people were lower animals; we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways [e.g. sterilization and abortions] preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such...low and degenerate race(s) (Hunter 1914, pp. 261--263). (Italics and words in parenthesis added)
I can certainly see why John Scopes would be opposed to teaching such abhorrent racism--but eugenics (which "A Civics Biology" is an example of) has long been held in high esteem by the Left. The leftist Progressives may be said to have written the book(s) on the topic. Hitler took notes from the American Progressive's teachings on eugenics, and Planned Parenthood's "sainted" founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist of the first order. Her admittedly brilliant plan to reduce the ("inferior") negro race through the slow genocide of abortion has worked exceeding well. It is estimated that Sanger's plan has resulted in the reduction of the black population by around 16 million individuals--that is, there are 16 million less black people due to abortions. I leave it to you to decide if that is incremental genocide, or planned "parenthood."
Before I get too far off message let me return to the main focus of this section, which is the fundamentalist or literal interpretation of the Bible. First of all let me reiterate that although I disagree with
only interpreting the Bible in a strictly literal manner, I personally have no problem at all with anyone who chooses to do so. My attitude is knock yourself out--whatever floats your boat (or ark).
My problem is with the fundamentalists with a "my way or the highway" attitude. Atheists love nothing more than to pretend that fundamentalism
is Christianity, but as anyone who has studied Christianity knows, there are numerous ways of interpreting the Bible, of which the fundamentalist or literal interpretation is only one. A recent
Gallup poll says that only three out of every ten Christians believe that the Bible should be interpreted literally, and only literally.
Muddying the waters even more are the various anecdotes and traditions that have over the centuries come to be accepted as "gospel" by many Christians. For example:
The Bible makes no mention of an apple tree in Eden--let alone Eve passing an apple to Adam. The "tree" mentioned in Genesis is a metaphorical device called the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil." The "forbidden fruit" of this "tree" was not apples or something else you might eat along with a wedge of cheese. The
knowledge contained in the "tree" (the knowledge of duality replacing unity) is what caused the expulsion from the halcyon paradise of Eden.
The word fruit has different meanings of course. For example, when Jesus said "By their fruits you shall know them," he was not suggesting that we examine a person's collection of grapes, apples, and bananas in order to ascertain their spiritual status.
He was using the word fruit in its sense of "the effect or consequence of an action or operation," as in "the fruits of their labor." This is the sense that the word "fruit" is used in Genesis--i.e. the
effect or
consequence of "eating" (absorbing) the knowledge of good and evil.
There is a small gem of a book ("Thou Art That"--
tat tvam asi) which is a collection of some of Joseph Campbell's observations on Christianity, put together by Dr. Eugene Kennedy (whom I quoted earlier). I agree with Campbell's statements wholeheartedly for the most part, but we part ways over statements such as the following: "My favorite definition of religion: misunderstanding...mythology. The misunderstanding consists in the reading of the spiritual mythological symbols as though they were primarily historical events."
I have no doubt that Joseph Campbell was a
rara avis, a rare bird whose elevated state of consciousness allowed him to personally experience much of the spiritual realities that most of us can only visit in the nominal sense, that is through the limited, distorted, and smudged lenses of words (i.e. the intellect). Nonetheless, Joseph Campbell
being Joseph Campbell, with his love for, and vast knowledge of mythology, goes overboard at times in statements such as the one quoted above. He comes dangerously close at times to stating that the Bible is to be read strictly as myth, metaphor, and symbolism.
Such an attitude seems to me to be as misguidedly biased as the fundamentalist view of taking everything in the Bible literally. I believe that the answer is to be found in the biblical injunction to "Let your moderation be known to all men." That is, the answer is somewhere in the middle, with the Bible being a mix of
both history
and metaphor--sometimes both at the same time.
[Sidebar: This is an opportune time to briefly discuss something that I have written about in previous articles--the either/or dichotomy vs. the both/and point of view. To be sure, sometimes the either/or view is the correct one--
either it is night
or it is day,
either it is cloudy
or it is clear skied,
either you tripped and fell down
or you did not, and so on.
But...and this is a big but, very often an either/or statement is not only misleading, but stating things in such a way will commit you to following a path that leads nowhere by a circular route. One of the most famous of these bogus conundrums is the perennial question "Is it nature or nurture?" Meaning, of course, is human behavior controlled by our environment (nurture), or by our genetics (nature). It is rare indeed to get the right answer by asking the wrong question, and the very nature of the either/or format guarantees that the question "Is it nature or nurture?" will remain an unsolvable riddle, due to the fact that human nature is controlled by
both nature
and nurture (note the use of
both/and, please).
Try this thought experiment: imagine playing poker with some friends while dressed in swimsuits -- on the Greenland icecap (in midwinter yet). I promise that you will find that your behavior
will be influenced by the fact that your body (nature) will respond to the environment (nurture) and the interaction between
both nature
and nurture
will directly and unmistakably have a noticeable influence on how you behave socially. As I say,
both nature
and nurture play a part in defining human behavior. This isn't rocket science folks.
I bring this up because this article is, after all is said and done, chiefly concerned with spirituality, and no one gets very far in the spiritual realm if they are uncomfortable with paradox (i.e. both/and). For example, it is an indisputable fact that the moment we start living we start dying (in the physical sense that is). (Granted this is more of a physical paradox than a spiritual one, but it does help underline the limitation of the either/or dichotomy). There is no question that we are all
both living
and dying at the same time, all the time. Much as
Schrödinger's Cat is
both alive
and dead before its kitty box is opened, much that one confronts in the spiritual realm is
both this
and that, at the same time. One example of the many paradoxes to be found in the spiritual realm is that it takes
both a strong ego
and substantial humility to make much headway on the spiritual path--that may sound counterintuitive, but it is true.
God as a petty tyrant
Moving right along --- I mentioned earlier that I have a few problems with some of the depictions of God in the Old Testament, and said I would get back to that. Seeing as we have been discussing literal interpretations of the Bible, now might be an apropos time to discuss certain troubling depictions of the OT G-d, as it is some of the
literal OT interpretations that I have a problem with. As a representative example of what I am talking about I will use the description of God as presented in Exodus, especially 32:1-24. (Before I begin, permit me to apologize in advance to anyone who may be offended by what I write on this subject. I assure you that I mean no offense, and I am being as honest and straightforward as I can be about the biblical verses that I discuss below. They have puzzled me for years, and I imagine that I am not alone in that).
As God is preparing Moses to lead the Jews from servitude in Egypt, He tells Moses to tell the Pharaoh to let the Jews go, but then He tells Moses that He will "harden Pharaoh's heart" so that the Pharaoh will ignore Moses' requests. In other words, God sets up Pharaoh like a bowling pin--so much for free will. It sounds more like Zeus and the other capricious, narcissistic, and manipulative deities of the Greek pantheon then the Christian God--"Our Father."
During one of Moses' visits up Mt. Sinai to converse with G-d his brother Aaron collects gold from some of the Jews; and melts it down to fashion a new "god" to worship--a Golden Calf. The Jews of this period seem to have possessed extremely short attention spans, and not had any recent word from God or Moses (their attitude seems to have been "What have you done for me
lately") decided to start worshipping a new, and hopefully improved, God (hence the Golden Calf).
G-d, being omniscient knew all about this of course, and when He meets Moses He tells him in no uncertain terms that He is quite wroth, and is going to do some big time smiting--"I will burn hot against them and I may consume them." Uh oh.
Moses, who is quick on his feet, reminds G-d of the several promises and sacred covenants G-d had made with Abraham, Isaac, and others. G-d whose omniscience seems to have been rather spotty at times, has a Homer Simpson moment ("Doh!") and after being reminded of the promises He made He agrees with Moses that He should put His smiting on hold for the moment.
Moses is none too happy himself with his ADD riddled followers, and upon returning to the foot of the mountain and seeing many Jews worshipping the Golden Calf he threw down the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments written on them and broke them (the Bible does not record how G-d felt about Moses smashing the sacred gift that He had recently entrusted to his keeping--one imagines that He was sorely tempted to grow wroth again).
Moses asks his brother Aaron what's up with the Golden Calf? Aaron tells Moses that he had asked the people for all their gold, "So they gave it to me, and I cast into [a] fire, and his calf came out."
The Bible does not mention Moses' reaction to his brother's explanation of "Hey, this Golden Calf popped out, what was
I supposed to do?" In any case Moses wasn't buying any of it and grew quite wroth indeed,
And said to them, "Thus says the Lord God of Israel: 'Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.'" ...And about three thousand men of the people fell that day.--Exodus 32:27-28
I am sincere when I tell you that the above episode reads to me like a "
Marx Brothers" skit written by collaboration between Kafka,
Sam Kenison, and the Marquis de Sade. Taken at face value, that is literally, this is a deity that I not only would cross the street to avoid, I'd cross International Date Lines. Love this G-d with all my heart, my mind, and soul? Trust this G-d with all my being? I think not. In fact there is not a snowball's chance in h--l that He would be on my Christmas list. Such a deity's chief attribute is fear, and the New Testament tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. This depiction of a short-tempered, capricious, forgetful, manipulative, tyrannical despot would never gain my respect, let alone my love and trust.
Seeing that I consider the Bible to be a holy book, filled with divine wisdom, what I am I to make of all this? The simplest answer (I am not saying the
right answer) is that the Bible is uneven in the truth that it provides. That is, some books, chapters, verses, and even individual words may be more divinely attuned, and more in harmony with God's Word than others (through human error). It may be that the depiction of G-d from the section of Exodus that I just examined might simply be an attempt to portray G-d as a similitude of the arrogant and capricious patriarchal potentates familiar to the Jews of that historical era. (To be fair, there are, as I mentioned before, depictions of G-d in the Old Testament much more in keeping with the Christian God -- one of my favorite OT scriptures of this sort is Jeremiah 29:1):
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Perhaps Joseph Campbell has the right of things here, and these passages should be understood as myth, metaphor, and symbolism. And as mentioned earlier, perhaps it is best to read it as
both historicity
and metaphor. In any event, when I read the Bible I always ask for help and guidance from the Holy Spirit so that esoteric meanings and divine epiphanies may shine through bright and clear.
Regardless of
how one reads the Bible the most important thing to me is that the Bible be read. I feel adamant that biblical teachings should be reintroduced into our school curriculums. I believe that
all of the various ways to interpret the Bible should be taught, along with Darwin's (
largely discredited) theory, and the sciences of
Intelligent Design (ID) and the burgeoning science of
consciousness study.
Our children must again be taught
how to think and not merely propagandized about
what to think.
Dominionism
The last subject that I'll discuss will be dominionism--briefly, as I am no expert on the subject. But it is worth knowing about for those unfamiliar with it, so a few words seem in order.
Wikipedia describes dominionism as "the idea that Christians should work toward either a nation governed by Christians or one governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law." Although it behooves one to keep in mind Wikipedia's liberal bias when using them as a source, their definition here seems pretty straightforward to me.
The first part of the definition is the part that troubles me--working toward "a nation governed by Christians." That would mean a theocracy, and America's Founding Framers in their wisdom decided that a theocracy was not what America wanted or needed. As should be clear by this point in my article, there are Christians, and then there are Christians. In an American theocracy you had better believe that there would be intense internecine conflict between the various Christian denominations and sects to see who would rule the roost. Every Christian denomination believes that
it has the inside track to God, so whichever denomination turned out to rule the roost would attempt to promote its version of Christianity by hook or by crook. Guaranteed--it's a no brainer.
Would you want to live in an America dominated by one Christian denomination over all others? Me neither. I am, however, in total agreement with the second part of the definition given above--"a nation...governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law." I love the idea, and so did the Founding Framers who directed the new United States along
that path, rather than choosing to turn us into a contentious theocracy.
Conclusion
The Progressives
claim to be...well, progressive. But they are not; they are anything
but progressive. They are a regressive movement intent on returning humanity to serfdom by stripping "we the people" of our God given freedoms and replacing them with government controlled "rights."
I am over sixty years old, and in my time I have watched the slow steady decline and decay of America's pride, morals, accountability, decency, honesty, integrity, honor, and a host of other virtues that used to be so prevalent as to be commonplace. Now they are the exception rather than the norm. I have seen it; I have lived it, and don't try throwing any of bulls--t my way about how America has "progressed."
At the same time that I watched the decline of the cultural health of my country I have been witness to the steady growth of incivility, crudeness, crassness, mean-spiritedness, greed, dishonesty, violence, narcissism, willful delusion, arrogance, lust, and just general all around insanity. Again--I've lived it; I've seen it, and I'm not buying any bulls--t that says otherwise.
The younger generations do not know what they are missing, and have missed. They don't know how bad things have gotten--they can't know, because the old, saner, decent America is not something they were fortunate enough to experience. And now they are being saddled with trillions of dollars of debt, and yet they are so clueless, so deluded, narcissistic and propagandized that they just don't understand how screwed they are.
So in order to straighten things out and turn our country around I guess it's up to those of us with some years on us, and memories of better times and a healthier society. I've got at least one more good fight in me--how about you?
In closing, I apologize to anyone who may have felt upset by something I wrote in this article, and I hope that I have given some direction and comfort to those who need it. In any event, I hope that what I have written here might be instrumental in encouraging some profitable dialogues within the Christian (and Jewish) communities. Regardless, thank you for taking the time out your busy and hectic schedule to read my article. I pray it has been worth your valuable time.
Let me finish with the final sentence from "The Declaration Of Independence"--words that I consider well worth pondering: "...with a
firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." The signers of the Declaration meant what they said, and a number of them
did lose their fortunes; indeed their lives--but they retained their sacred Honor. Are "we the people" still capable of such integrity and bravery? I imagine we will find out soon enough.
