Category Archives: fundamentalism

Prayer and God and such

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It was about a year ago that the Bolivian miners were rescued from the bowels of the earth.  I was so deeply touched by their ordeal and the heroic efforts to rescue them and when they were successfully brought to the surface of the earth again, I was even further moved.  I remember praying for them daily and when they were rescued I thanked the good Lord for his mercy.

This experience helped me to further understand the mystery of prayer.  Even as I prayed, I knew that there was no God “up there” with really big ears, considering the prayer volume from around the world, and pondering over what he would do.  And I certainly knew that my simple little prayer, coming from someone so completely obscure, was not going to persuade God to intervene.  And when they were rescued, I’m afraid the cynical thought crossed my mind, “Hmm.  Now what’s going to happen when the next mine disaster occurs?  Will God be so merciful?  And if not, why?”  Sure enough, within the next month or so two more mining disasters took place and everyone of the miners died.

So, why pray?  Is it just a foolish gesture like so many of our intellectual hoity-toity contend?  Perhaps so.  I just don’t know.  But, even with all of these doubts and suspicions of my own cowardice, I pray daily.  One could say that I even “pray without ceasing.”  I do this, first of all, because it centers me and calms me.  And that is one important dimension of prayer.  But I also pray because spiritual teachers from eons past…and present…speak of the importance of prayer.  Does it make a difference?  I have no definitive answer but these aforementioned spiritual teachers suggest that it does.  If nothing else, it releases good karma and hope into this void that has us all.

And a central issue in all of this speculation is, “Is there a God?”  I believe there is but He is far beyond our intellectual grasp and can be known only with a faith that is willing to look beyond our rational mind.  He is so transcendent that we cannot own him like the fundamentalist believe.   BUT, he also is immanent as in “the kingdom is within” and he is with us each moment and there is a critical sense in which He is us.  Or, as Paul put it, “nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

Desmond Tutu on “the light”

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Richard Rohr’s latest book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, presents an eloquent argument for the need to use the second half of life to pursue spiritual maturity, to forego the certainties of earlier decades when ego-identity needs were paramount.  Early in the book he reminded readers of the need to remember the admonishment of St. Paul to always remember that we “see through a glass darkly.”  He then quoted Desmond Tutu who quipped re this Pauline wisdom, “Remember, we are only the light bulb and it is our job to merely keep screwed in.”  The light bulb is merely the bearer of the light.  Without its source, there would be darkness.  It is so easy to become intoxicated with our “light” and forget to honor and affirm our Source.  When that happens, regardless of how profound and “wise” we may perceive ourselves to be, we are then purveyors of darkness.

 

Marilynne Robinson and Neediness

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One of my favorite lines from Marilynne Robinson‘s novel, Housekeeping, is, “need can blossom into all the compensations it requires”  We are by nature very needy creatures, you might even say “needful things”, and one of our tasks in life is to explore this neediness and find appropriate, adaptive compensations.

And neediness is a quality that we should not insulate ourselves from; for, it should beckon to us at times in our life and we can learn that it can be the doorway into further, more mature “compensations.”

Unfortunately, we often attach ourselves to maladaptive, immature “compensations” and it is always hard to give them up.  We are often addicted to them.  We prefer to “cling to these ills that we have, rather than to fly to others that we know not of.”  (Shakespeare, Hamlet.)

 

Worshipful hysteria

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Formal worship is very important.  It is often a very prosaic enterprise and should not necessarily be otherwise.  The Spirit of God can be present nevertheless, ready to respond to the beckoning of a ready heart.

But some churches don’t deign to trust the Spirit of God to do its work and set out to whip-up a spiritual frenzy.  In earlier years there was the ever-present and trusty use of hysteria.  That ruse included manipulation and even outright terror.  In modern times, many churches have gone high-tech and use “sis, boom, bah” to overwhelm its membership and get them psychologically open to manipulation.

The love of God is not present in this setting; it is not viewed as adequate to accomplish the purposes of the church.  As Shakespeare noted in Julius Caesar, “When love begins to sicken and decay, it useth an enforced ceremony.”  He then added, “There are no tricks in plain and simple faith; but hollow men, like horses hot at hand, make gallant show and promise of their mettle.”

 

homo sapiens sapiens

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“Consciousness is the subtle and all-embracing mystery within and between Everything. It is like the air we breathe, take for granted, and do not appreciate. Consciousness is not the seeing but that which sees me seeing. You must step back from your compulsiveness, and your attachment to yourself, to be truly conscious. Consciousness cannot be “just me” because it can watch “me” from a distance.”  (Richard Rohr)

Rohr’s comment reminds me of a phrase that a friend recently introduced to me—“homo sapiens sapiens” or “man knows that he knows”.  We all “know” but it is possible for us to “know that we know” and immediately we have went “meta”.  That means we have developed a conscious awareness of our “awareness”.   Someone once said, and I think it was the philosopher Ricoeur , “We cannot have a perspective on our perspective without somehow escaping it.”

This meta-cognition is important as it introduced a “gap” (see Deepak Chopra) into our reality.  It gives us pause.  And, in that pause we have an opportunity to realize that there might be another way of looking at the world.

“Getting saved” in terms of culture

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I was born and raised in a religious world where “getting saved” was a mandate.  And, I might add that I still see it as a valid cultural initiation to spirituality but I fear it is often misused.  Too many times the concept is introduced and promulgated in a culture of manipulation and fear…terror even…and young children are “saved” before they have any idea of what they are doing.  And when they are introduced to religion in that atmosphere and if they continue to live there, they often to do not allow their spirituality to deepen and mature.

We must not fail to recognize the socio-cultural dimension of spirituality/religion.  That is one fundamental dimension that is often overlooked.  When spirituality/religion is not allowed to mature, when it continues to be only a socio-cultural phenomena, the deeper meaning is not allowed to develop.

O’bama faking terrorist threat!!!!

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“Yeah, O’Bama and his cohorts are making up this terrorist threat for 9/11 just to divert attention from a failing economy!”

No, once again, I don’t really believe that.  I made it up!   But if I happen to hate him and/or “liberals”, I am inclined to interpret news in a fashion to confirm my bias and therefore arouse passions in similarly uncritical thinkers to hate him/them like I do.  It is similar to the prophets of doom and catastrophe-monger-ers–they are full of existential insecurity and dread (i.e. the poison of self-loathing) and thus compulsively announce, “The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!”  The simpleton “birthers” and “O’bama is a Muslim” crowd are guilty of the same lack of critical thinking.

Now, conservatives are going to interpret O’Bama and liberalism from their perspective.  And they should!  We need different perspectives, certainly the conservative one.  But it is important that conservatives, or liberals, or libertarians pause briefly before they make pronouncements and consider, “Now, am I just grinding my axe again?”  Now most of us will, after that pause, go right ahead and grind our axe.  I know I will!  But it is important to pause, and in that pause, from time to time we might learn that there is another way of looking at things.  And, it is important to look at things differently on occasion.

And this touches on a core issue in our culture right now—what is real and what is unreal.  I am of the conviction (i.e. “bias”) that “real” is a very nebulous term.  We are now at a point in our species development where we need to embrace the nebulous nature of reality and be willing to re-define a lot of the “categories” that we fall into and into which we project our world.  But this kind of “sophistry” is anathema to the hyper-conservatives who are not willing, or able, to compromise with what they know to be “real.”  An old fundamentalist bromide sums up this attitude, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.”

 

 

All Republicans are racist!!!!!!!

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The Republican party is united against President O’Bama and O’Bama is a black man.  Ip so facto, all Republicans are racist.

Well, actually I don’t think this is so.  BUT, why not say that it is so, and say so with vehemence and self-assuredness, and do so on the “lame-street media”, and therefore make it so. For, most people do not watch or read the news with any discrimination and believe whatever is presented to them as fact.  This is particularly so with the right-wing of the conservative movement.  They live on a steady diet of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh (and his ilk), and conservative religion.  And they are now dug in at the heels.  And, they hate O’Bama and I do suspect that with the fringe element there is a racist dimension to their acrimony.

It is fascinating to watch what Limbaugh, Fox News, and Company have done with the “O’Bama is a Muslim” and “O’Bama in not an American” stuff.  There are millions of people who believe that non-sense and do so because that is what has been presented to them and because it feeds the poison that festers in their heart.   Sure, liberals are not objective either.  But they are much more likely to have a healthy self-doubt and be aware that they are not objective.  Such a perspective makes some allowance that other view points have some degree of validity.

The core issue here is, “What is real and what is unreal?”  Hermeneutical willingness is the issue.  Each of us interprets his/her world and does so on a daily, minute-by-minute basis.  The more conservative one is the less likely is it that he/she will grasp the flimsiness of his/her perspective and be willing to consider other interpretations of reality.  That is the reason I subscribe to my particular bias–liberal Democrat!  So don’t dare confront me with anything which might challenge this assumption!  And let me gravitate to a social context that has the same bias and then all will be well with the world.

(On the last note, I hope you are not ironically-challenged!)

 

Purity and Danger

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Mary Douglas, a noted anthropologist, wrote a very provocative book in 1966 entitled, Purity and Danger.  In this book she explains the origin of a need for purity in primitive tribes and the perceived “danger” of impurity.  (And though I hear described this as a “perceived” danger, that is not to dismiss the very real danger of impurity run amok.  Boundaries are necessary.)

I was raised in a sectarian, fundamentalist church which also emphasized purity and did so to excess.  It emphasized rules and regulations to a fault, believing that the essential dimension of Christian piety was combating the forces of darkness, inside and outside.  And to those who failed to live up to those standards there was always a hefty dollop of shame and guilt that was heaped upon them.  In retrospect, I now see that shame and guilt was the essence of their belief system.

We have modern-day examples of purity run amok.  The best one is the Taliban.  It was interesting, though horrifying, to watch them rise to power as they emphasized purity morally, politically, and socially.  But purity when it is running amok always runs out of grist for its mill when its primary focus is within its own ranks.  At some point the machinery of purity has done all it can do within its own ranks and has to turn its focus outside, seeking to purify the world.  Unfortunately for groups like this, the outside world always has a mind of its own and fights back.

Now there is nothing wrong with purity.  It is an essential dimension of human experience.  But mature purity will recognize that the impurity that it resists cannot be obliterated and that the very effort to obliterate it will result in a catastrophe if balance is not found.  As Jung noted, “What we resists, persists.”  The goal is to acknowledge the presence of impurity in our hearts and actions but to consciously pursue the pure instead.  And I think that the Christian obligation to “confess ours sins, one to another” (James 5:16) is a ritual that facilitates this recognition of impurity and provides an opportunity for catharsis.