Category Archives: bible

Quotations of scripture and commentary

Christian social grooming

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CNN over the weekend posted an article about “talking Christian.” The author, John Blake, describes this as the Christian habit to obsessively regurgitate various words and phrases, sometimes having little idea what is really meant by them. The author had stolen my thunder! I was at that moment preparing to blog on the subject of what I call, “God talk.” To illustrate my version of this phenomena, let me describe another “talk” of the same genre—“car talk.” This “car talk” is chatter, usually between men (young and old) about the intricacies of the automobile. (I can’t do this glibly for I don’t know how to do “car talk”.) But it involves lots of discussion of the subtleties of carburetion….”four-barrel Holly” comes to mind. And there are the complexities of engine compression and possibly the desire to bore out the cylinder and install larger pistons to get enhanced power. And I remember “glass pack mufflers” being the rage. And there were details about “the struts” and “the cam shaft” or perhaps the fear of “throwing a rod.” Now, if I knew how to “car talk”, I could tie all the above…and more…into a meaningful conversation which would constitute an example of “car talk.” AND, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this “car talk.” It is one example of human engagement, it can be thought of as “social grooming”, much like chimps in a cage picking fleas off each other. ( Another example is “talking baseball” which I can do very well!). This social grooming is an essential part of day to day life.

Now though I am a “mal-adept” at car talk, I can recall being very adept at “God talk”, especially the hyper-conservative variety. It involved “well worn words and ready phrases” (Conrad Aiken) such as, “Jesus is my savior” or “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” or “He’s on the way back this very moment” or “I’m just a sinner saved by God’s grace” or “Why weren’t you in Sunday school yesterday, Brother Lewis?” or “Well, let’s remember to pray about it”. These and others are worn into a tapestry of routine conversation, the point of which was that each would recognize each other as a Christian and as a particular type of Christian. One would fit into the social context, one would be able to “offer a convincing performance” in that social context. And, once again there is nothing necessarily wrong with this variety of “talk”; for, religion does have a social dimension and this example of Christian “social grooming” has its function.

The problem lies when Christians, or persons of other faiths, never go beyond the social dimension of their glib expressions and search-out the hidden meanings. Failure to do so means that one has merely imbibed his/her faith, or the verbal trappings of his/her faith, from the social context. The words and phrases have only superficial meaning. They are “shop talk”. They amount to “chimps picking fleas off each other.”

I and Thou

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Martin Buber’s I and Thou is one of the pivotal books in my life.  I think it is one of the finest works in spiritual literature of the 20th century.  This book is about relationship and the infinite grace which is involved in establishing relationship, establishing connection with another person.  Buber writes of the “in-between”, what Deepak Chopra would call “the gap” which separates us all.  And, actually this “gap” separates us from all objects/persons in the world.  To have meaningful communication…or connection…with another human being, we must experience this “in-between” which always comes to our ego consciousness as a loss.  (I personally think that this experience is what “the judgment of god” is in Christian literature and tradition).  It is knowing our aloneness, our alienation from the rest of God’s creation.

Buber also apparently believed that animals have a soul, noting that this can be experienced when one gazes into the eyes of an animal.  I have two dachshunds and I can affirm this conviction.  Those beautiful little doggie eyes convey mystery and love, suggesting the presence of another soul.  Buber credits the animal with anxiety, the anxiety of becoming, “the stirring of the creature between realms of plantlike security and spiritual risk.  This language is the stammering of nature under the initial grasp of spirit, before language yields to spirit’s cosmic risk which we call man.”

If I was more mature spiritually, I would become a vegetarian.  Any time I drive behind a Tyson chicken truck, I feel the need to take that leap of faith.  But, I don’t think I’m going to pull that off in this lifetime.

 

 

the shadow

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Karl Jung wrote extensively of “the shadow”.  He described this dark side of human nature as always with it and insisted…iin my own words…“Resistance is futile”.  Or to use one of his bromides, “What we resist, persists.”  His teaching, of course, was not that this dark side should be indulged or acted upon, but that it should be embraced as part of our nature.  He taught that in this embracement we diminished the power of this shadow, given us more freedom to make mature, appropriate decisions.  In recent readings of Buddhist literature, I’ve learned that the Buddha called this shadow-side “mara” and reported that it was a daily part of his life.  Even the Apostle Paul lamented, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.”  And, of course, in the Christian tradition, there is the ever-present “Satan.”

I think the Catholics have the right idea in confession.  There in the confessional booth, Catholics are encouraged to come and bare their deepest, darkest secrets.  In my work as a mental health counselor, much of the work I did was merely to listen to my clients lament their short-comings, to acknowledge their baser instincts.

The key is to just not pretend!  It is there and it will always be there.  To live in a world of duality is to realize that “mara” is there but to believe its power is diminished as we openly acknowledge it.  Even more so, as we openly acknowledge it “to another human being.”

 

The Secret

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I’ve read The Secret by Rhonda Byrne several times.  And I’m about ready to read it still again.  However, I am embarrassed to admit this.  I am an intelligent, educated, and erudite man so this book is “beneath” me.  It is such a light-weight, new-age, self-help book that it is roundly criticized in the professional circles that I function in.  If offers so much to so many desperate people who then lamely cling to its promises of wealth and health even though their circumstances are so limiting.  It is the new age equivalent of the “prosperity gospel” of the right-wing religious fundamentalists.

HOWEVER, I have read it repeatedly and am about to again.  This is because I whole-heartedly believe in one of its central theses—-that our thinking shapes our reality.  Get rid of “stinking thinkin “, and your world can change.  Yes, I do subscribe to that belief though I have so much “stinkiin’ thinkin” that remains.  But, as they often say in the 12-step movement, “Progress, not perfection.”

Proverbs declares, “As a man thinketh, so is he.”   Someone once said, “Our thoughts become us.”  And Mike Dooley declares daily on his web site, “Thoughts are things.  Choose the good ones.”  Byrne quotes Henry Ford in her book, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you’re right.”

 

 

meditative prayer

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I don’t think most of the prayers in my life have made it past my halo.  Most of my prayers have been mere chatter or desperate petitions for God to undo some bit of foolishness that I had trotted out.  And I’m not for sure what prayer is about, even now; but I know it is helpful, if for nothing else than a meditative effect.  “Chatter” prayer is simple, you merely trot out the usual verbiage, the usual “well worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.”  (Conrad Aiken).  But meditative prayer is a challenge for me.  It is so hard to quieten the mind, to follow the biblical admonishment, “Be still and know that I am God.”  Shakespeare grasped the importance of the meditative dimension of prayer.  In Hamlet, King Claudius kneels in prayer and laments:

My words fly up; my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

 

 

 

“penetrable stuff”

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Hamlet, here speaking to his mother:

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace! sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff;(40)
If damned custom have not braz’d it so
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

Hamlet felt he could not communicate with his mother, that she was unreachable, because her heart was not made of  “penetrable stuff”.  He then explained why, blaming “damned custom” for having “braz’d” (or, “bronzed”)  her heart so that it be “proof and bulwark against sense” (or feeling).  Hamlet lamented that his mother had been so enculturated with the thought-forms and ideologies of the historical moment that there was nothing else there, there was not any “feeling” which is necessary if there is to be any communication.

“Damned custom” insulates us from feeling, from our bodies, and thus from experience.  In fact, it is “proof and bulwark against” feeling.  “Damned custom” is an internalized world view, an “introject” (if I might borrow a term from psychoanalysis) which serves a useful purpose in that it allows us to function in the “real” world.  The problem lies only in failing to mature at some point and realizing…and feeling…that there is another dimension to life that is being missed.

If I might make a bit of a leap, let me quote e e cummings:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

Or, a further leap, to the words of Jesus:

“What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

 

losing god

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Donovan in the 1960’s made famous a zen koan:  First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.  This is a pithy note about object loss, one important step in the road to emotional and spiritual maturity.  The mountain first exists as a concept, then the mountain is lost, and then it is again.  The experience of “mountain” is transformed in this process—the concept becomes infused with emotion…one might even say with spirit.  Now this idea can be applied to any notion, including even one’s very identity or conception of self.  But, I want to apply it to “God.”  Therefore, to make a long story short, I am saying, “First there is a god, then there is no god, then there is.”  One first learns “god” as a concept but at some point in one’s life it is important that the conception becomes spiritual.  But this must entail a period of “loss”.  Now for some people, this “loss” is dramatic such as with the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road.  For most of us this loss is much less dramatic, often appearing as an identity crisis, a period of doubt and confusion, even depression and despair.  But the experience can deepen our faith, taking it into the domain of the “spirit of the law” rather than the domain of the “letter of the law.”

 

If one never undergoes this loss of god, his/her religious expression will merely be whatever he/she happens to have been indoctrinated with.  And even though this indoctrination might be with a very noble ideal or spiritual leader, it will still merely be an idea and one will merit the description “ideologue” or, even better, “fundamentalist.”  Fundamentalists are in love with ideas, mistaking words and ideas for the “thing in itself.”  The “thing in itself” always lies just beyond our reach as words and ideas cannot be wrapped around it.  Or, to borrow a Buddhist line quoted last week, “The finger pointing to the moon must not be mistaken for the moon itself.”

prayer

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I pray daily now.  One could even say that I follow the biblical admonishment and “Pray without ceasing.”  But this “praying without ceasing” is not what I used to think it was.  I do not go around compulsively praying.  My prayer is more of an attitude of prayer, of simple acknowledgement of God’s presence and an expression of gratitude for the blessings and beauty of life.  I like the Buddhist notion of “mindfulness” and this might describe what I mean by prayer.  “Mindfulness” is just paying attention from time to time at what is going on in one’s life, in one’s day to day experience.  For example, in recent weeks it has meant being “mindful” at the beauty of a yellow warbler cavorting in the underbrush on the shores of the lake, or a mockingbird sipping water from a birdbath, or a Great Blue Heron gently and elegantly patrolling his station on the lake.  It has meant being “mindful” of the first taste of coffee in the morning, or savoring a fine glass of wine, or spending time with friends—and certainly with my lovely wife.

 

Prayer has a meditative dimension.  It facilitates focus, the reining-in of a mind that is prone to wonder, of a mind that is often consumed with idle chatter.  The Bible admonishes, “Be still and know that I am God.”  The “being still” is often difficult but spiritual wisdom tells us that it is only in primordial stillness that we can acknowledge our Source.  Gerard Manley Hopkins noted:

 

ELECTED Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

 

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:       

 5 It is the shut, the curfew sent

From there where all surrenders come

Which only makes you eloquent.

 

 

“spirit vs. letter of the law”

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Last posting concluded with the notion that faith required “losing sight of the shore” at some point.  The issue here is going beyond the mere conceptual dimension of spirituality and addressing the finitude of existence and even the finitude of faith itself.  It is to reach that point in one’s spiritual development that he/she recognizes emotionally that “we see through a glass darkly’…no longer is this merely a biblical bromide to trot out…. and that there is a definite limit to the function of intellect in spiritual matters.  For most of us, to reach this point in spiritual development is to encounter anxiety/depression to some degree.  To some this experience amounts to what D. W.  Winnicott described as a “psychic catastrophe.”  I would apply that clinical term to the Apostle Paul’s Demascus Road conversion.  I would use the same term to describe Eckhart Tolle’s spiritual crisis when he was aged 29.

 

But it is easier and more comforting, in the immediate, to keep our spiritual experience confined to the conceptual or rational.  There we can find “true belief” or religious fundamentalism.  (See Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer)  Another way of addressing this issue is the distinction made in the New Testament between “the letter of the law” and the “spirit of the law,”—-the conceptual is the “letter of the law” and that which transcends the “letter of the law” is the “spirit.”   And I think it was the Apostle Paul who noted that “the letter killeth, but the Spirit maketh alive.” (2 Corinthians 3)  In the 20th century Paul Tillich noted, “A religion within the confines of reason is a mutilated religion.”

 

And Tillich was certainly not recommending the irrational.  He speaking of the need of balance, that persons of faith recognize that their intellect does not give them command or control over God, that there is another dimension which must be given attention.  There is a Buddhist aphorism that is appropriate:  The finger pointing to the moon must not be confused for the moon itself.  Words are not the “thing in itself”; words are merely pointers.

“just a passin’ through….”

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“This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.”  This old trope from conservative Christian hymnody reflects the ancient notion that this world is transitory and fleeting, that there is some other dimension of life from which we emerged and from which we are cut off.  Einstein himself held a similar conviction, noting that ultimately there is a “mystery” at the bottom of life and that this “mystery” is ultimately “impenetrable.”  The New Testament noted that at best “we see through a glass darkly” and that we “hold this treasure in earthen vessels.”

 

This “other dimension” is often in our culture thought of as “heaven.”  But I remember when growing up I took it too literally and thought of it as some place far off but nevertheless “out there.”  However, if it is “out there” then it is present in time and space.  Paul Tillich and other theologians have posed the notion of God and “out there” as being “Wholly Other”, believing that a chasm separates us from “out there” and thus, from our Source.  And only faith can bridge that gap but it requires a faith which is willing to face that  “impenetrable” chasm.  Someone once noted that when we’re taking a far journey it is often necessary to lose sight of the shore for a moment.