Tag Archives: bad faith

More Blasphemy!

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As I increasingly find comfort using my literary license to approach Holy Writ, I find that I’m leaving behind almost daily the carcass of sacred cows. And it dawned on me recently, as “literal lew” whispered to me again, that my view of faith appears to invalidate that of the people I grew up with. In the childish mind of “literal lew,” those people are “going to hell” while “I am saved because I believe the ‘right’ way.” For in that mind set, there is only one way to believe, one way to think, one way to feel and if you don’t comply you will immediately find yourself banished to the prison of “them,” not allowed to bask in the comfort of being one of “us.” In other words, you won’t have the comfort of belonging to the tribe.

But I don’t think that Jesus had in mind rigidly carving the world up into categories like “good”, “bad”, “us”, “them”, “saved” and “unsaved.” Jesus came to tell us that we were free and always had been as He was “the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.” He was the embodiment, the “en-fleshment”, or incarnation, of a freedom that had been written into the depths of the human heart from the very beginning, a freedom that at that moment was finding an expression in terms of time and space. So, Jesus said, “You are free but freedom is very risky and takes a lot of courage. In fact, you will have to die. You will have die to your pre-conceptions about everything including your faith. But you don’t have to and I won’t make you. You are free to do as you choose. In fact, you are free to take my teachings and turn them into another version of the same bondage you are under now if you wish…possibly even under my name…but that is your choice.”

The conservative believers that gave rise to “literarylew” were and are just as saved as he is. The story of Jesus is that we are all forgiven, we are all free, but that freedom finds expression in our life only if we are willing to die, only if we are willing to allow His Spirit to loosen the grip of our ego a bit even in the area of our faith. But when the ego is threatened, it is very skilled at calling in reinforcements and fending off the assault as disillusionment is too painful. As W. H. Auden noted, “When Truth met him, and held out her hand, he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

NOTE — See I have blasphemed again! “Universalism” is verboten in the faith I was presented with as a child.

Southern Baptists and “The Wisdom of Humility”

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Terry Mattingly reported re a recent discussion with leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention re decline in baptisms, reflecting a decline in “conversions.” I here provide a link to this article so you can see how the SBC is attempting to explain this decline. (http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/jun/14/terry-mattingly-baptists-with-fewer-baptisms/)

But, having been a Baptist myself, I have an opinion which I shared weeks ago after a newspaper article reported about a new demographic category, the “nones”, people who now selected “none” when asked about which religion they are affiliated with. (https://literarylew.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/an-open-letter-to-the-clergy-re-the-nones/)
I feel that Baptists err in that they adhere rigidly to the “letter of the law” even while preaching against this very thing. But by taking the Bible literally, they fail to see the nuances of the Scripture and fail to appreciate the layers of meaning that it offers. They fail in exercise of hermeneutic discipline.

I here would like to share a paragraph by a professor of religion in San Antonio, Glenn Hughes:

…there are those who try to hold on their sense of the divine by tenaciously attaching themselves to religion in a quite uncritical manner—in a closed-minded manner that renders the world of everyday responsibilities, and the awareness of historical complexities, more bearable though massive psychological reliance on intense, unexamined feelings evoked by religious symbols, rituals, and texts. Thus is forged an attitude of intransigent certainty that one is in possession of the sole and absolute truth about divinity. And thus the full complexity of the challenges of existential self-making and of responsibility for history is sidestepped, to some degree, by ignoring the problematic fact of the transcendence of divine transcendence—that is, its profound mysteriousness and its unavailability to direct or substantive human understanding—that the former child’s sense of the nearness of the divine absolute becomes transformed into an inflexible, dogmatic, and (as we all know) sometimes murderous conviction that the intense feelings evoked by one’s own religious tradition are infallible guides to absolute, exclusive religious truth.  (A More Beautiful Question:  The Spiritual in Poetry and Art)

If the Gospel is to be meaningful, it must be refracted through a heart in which meaning is present. By that, I mean a heart that is “petal open” and full of “penetrable stuff” (Shakespeare’s term) not one that’s keeping human frailty at bay with rigid, compensatory certainty. In other words, a heart that is humble. And, as T. S. Eliot noted, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. And humility is endless.”

“When Religion Becomes Evil”

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CNN on-line offered a story today entitled, “When Religion Becomes Evil.” Now, of course, we immediately think of “them”, that vast category of people who believe differently than we do, and say of some of them, “Yes, evil!” But, evil is possible even with noble ideas, even those that you and I hold. For, with noble ideas like the teachings of Jesus, we can find ourselves suddenly being obnoxiously intolerant and blatantly overbearing and even brutal. Well, we can make this discovery if we are honest and most of the time we are dead set against that!  You might want to read the article at the following link: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/28/when-religious-beliefs-becomes-evil-4-signs/?hpt=hp_c3. The author, John Blake, suggests four signs that you are verging on evil with your religion:

1.  “I know the truth, and you don’t.” When you run into someone cursed with this illness, you have learned to turn around and walk the other way. There is no way to have an intelligent conversation with them. They are, to use the title of an Eric Hoffer book, “True Believers” which is tantamount to saying they are Taliban-ish.

2.  “Beware the charismatic leader.” Charismatic leaders often carry great wisdom but it is necessary to “try the spirits to see if they be of God.” For charismatic leaders are often in love with themselves and are enthralled with the power of having throngs of people subscribe to their beliefs. Witness Jim Jones and the Jonestown, South Africa tragedy of 1979. Witness also many of the contemporary tele-evangelists.

3. “The end is near.” Well, technically it is as at any minute we could drop dead from a multitude of circumstances and ultimately scientists say that our universe itself will collapse in upon itself. So, sooner or later, one of those “end is near” guys…and they are usually “guys”…will be right. I think that the global catastrophe they prophesy has already occurred…deep inside their own heart.

4. “The end justifies the means.” If you feel you know the truth, then you inevitably feel that you are justified in taking any means necessary to bring about the arrival of truth. The alternative would be to merely believe in Truth, and humbly live your life in patient faith and hope and allow that Truth to become manifest in due time without your ego-maniacal machinations.

The word “religion” has at its stem the same as that of “ligament.” Just as ligaments tie muscles together, religion purports to “tie together” a fragmented soul. We need religion because we know, in the depths of our collective hearts that we are fragmented, but we inevitable create ersatz religions which only blind us to reality. But in the religious sentiment, if we allow a spirit of humility to visit us on occasion, we can find glimpses of that re-integration and find that, in faith, it is in process in our lives…and in the lives of people who believe differently than we do!