Tag Archives: faith

Otherness, Hell, and Grace

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“Otherness” is the paramount issue for our day. ‘Otherness” (and it is usually enclosed in quotes) refers to the awareness and experience that “beyond the small bright circle of our consciousness lies the dark” (Conrad Aiken) and that beyond that darkness lies the object world. The task is to venture into that darkness, struggle through it, and find the “light” that lies beyond. This “light” represents our escape from the Platonic shadow world and allows us to see things, including people, as they are and not merely as a means to fulfill our needs. They are “other” than we are. Their wishes, their desires, their fancies, their intents will be different from ours in very critical ways. And we don’t have to like them, we don’t have to even put up with them, we can always just leave them alone and try to avoid them. And, yes, there are times when their “otherness” is of such a nature that our “respect” for them will not over rule a responsibility to call the cops! But we will still respect them, realizing that “there go I, but for the Grace of God.”

But venturing into this darkness of “otherness” is often scary as hell and somehow hell is very related to this spiritual adventure. But that is another story. This experience of “otherness” has been written of from ancient times though it was described in different words. For example, I think Jonathan Edwards famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is an example of the terror that is often encountered in this adventure. And too often the terror is so intense that a quick antidote is sought and one will do as Kierkegaard suggested and grab the nearest bit of flotsam and jetsam that the vortex provides. And these antidotes can play a role if they are merely used as a respite and are not glommed onto as a means of preventing any further spiritual growth; further spiritual growth will always entail imbibing more of this terror.

St. Augustine’s conversion also reflects this same subjective anguish. In his “Confessions” he declared, “At the very moment wherein I was to become other than I was, the nearer it approached me, the greater horror did it strike into me; yet it did not strike me back, nor turned me away, but held me in suspense.” He even used the term “other” and I liked his phraseology, becoming “other than I was” which reflected he knew this was a moment of transformation, rebirth, or salvation. And though this terror was great, yes this “God” appeared very angry, “it did not strike me back” but actually…if I might exercise my literary license here…”held me in its loving arms.”

And I love Aeschylus’ reference to the “awful grace of God.”. This Grace is perceived to be “awful” because our pretenses, our illusions, our vanities, our false gods are melting in the “judgment of God” which precedes are awareness of God’s infinite mercy and grace. It is not that God is awful, or even judgmental. It is merely that our ego clings so desperately to our fig leaves that having them dissolve so suddenly….and even if it is over the course of a lifetime it can still be conceived as “suddenly”…feels like we are “sinners in the hands of an angry (judgmental) God.”

Rilke in the Duino Elegies described this experience with otherness as a terrifying moment, declaring, “Beauty is only the first touch of terror we can still bear and it awes us so much because it so coolly disdains to destroy us.”

And then there is Emily! Ms. Dickinson certainly understood and embodied otherness and her brilliant poetry illustrates this so beautifully. I’m going to share one of her poems which is so terrifying, not merely because of the imagery, but because in this poem she does not conclude with the Grace that she acknowledges elsewhere in her work:

He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow.

Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool—
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.

Paean to Ignorance

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I really believe in ignorance!  I guess I watched too much of Hogan’s Heroes and remember the wisdom of Sergeant Schultz, “I know nothing, nothing, nothing.”  I remember a wonderful pastor from my youth who would quip, “If ignorance was bliss, we would all be blistered.”

Yes, I’m intelligent, well educated, erudite as heck!  I can throw 35 cent words around for nickle ideas like anyone.  But, to quote the observation of Paul, the “wisdom of this world is come to nought.”  We don’t know jack!  For, words are but means to an end, they lead us to the truth, they lead us to the precipice of Truth,  but we can never cross over and apprehend the truth in a definitive fashion.  The Truth only glimmers our way and then only on occasion.  For example, one such “glimmering” was the life of Jesus.  And in the course of my life I have seen a “glimmer” or two but admittedly nothing that matches the Light that Jesus brought into the world.  And the “glimmerings” that I have been privy too have never been cognitive;  they have been the Light of Christ manifested in the life of other persons, some of them not card-carrying, born-again, USDA certified “Christians.”

So, let’s get ignorant today and hear a primordial word.

For example, Gerard Manley Hopkins noted in The Habit of Perfection:

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe to me pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From where all surrenders come
Which alone makes you eloquent.

And then there is William Butler Yeats who wrote:

Throughout all the lying days of my youth
I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun.
Now may I wither into the Truth.

Churches and “group think”

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The origins of my recent concern with spiritual incest lie in my youth when I was raised in a very cloistered denominational environment. I would like to elaborate as it would help shed light on my observations.

My first year out of high school I spent in a very conservative seminary.   This seminary taught formally and rigorously themes which I had already imbibed in my church upbringing.  For example, there was pronounced emphasis on the Pauline admonishment to, “Come ye out from among them and be ye separate.”  This meant to be morally upright so that the community would clearly know that you were different because of your faith, that your Christian testimony was unsullied by the temptations of the world.  But this same teaching was applied to ecclesiastical teachings as we were taught that our churches also should be “set apart” by our doctrinal purity and by our hard-line stance on moral issues of the day.  Furthermore, we were taught that this moral and doctrinal purity had set us apart throughout history, even back to the time of Christ, as we had been the only church which had been “stead fast in the faith” even as other churches routinely departed from the “faith once delivered unto the saints.” And another dimension of this teaching was that we were the only true church, the only church with historical continuity back to the original church that Jesus had started when he noted,  “Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

We did allow that there were people in other denominations who were saved…somewhat… provided that in some shape form or fashion they had “accepted the Lord Jesus as their Savior”;  but by virtue of not belonging to the “true church” they would not be part of the “bride of Christ” when they got to heaven.  This “bride of Christ” was an exalted status that would be given to the true church that had steadfastly held to the foundations of the faith throughout history.  However, there were many who were not saved and who would spend eternity in hell,  among them being Catholics, Jews, and Mormons and that is not even counting the hordes in other cultures who had not even heard of Christ.

Now, one example of the “historical scholarship” alluded to already needs to be further explained.  Great emphasis was placed on tracing church lineage back to the time of Christ as the only true church had to be able to prove historical continuity back to the time of Christ.  This was done by painstakingly researching church history and ascertaining which religious groups and movements adhered to cardinal teachings of the faith, one of which was “believer’s baptism”, meaning rejection of pedo-baptism (sprinkling of infants).

I could go on and on with an endless litany of beliefs and practices which set us apart as special people.  And, indeed it was often noted that the Bible taught that God would create a “peculiar” people (and, oh my Lord, were we ever “peculiar”!!!!), a people “set apart”, a “chosen people” who had the task of representing the Kingdom on earth.  Furthermore, we had the task of “standing in the gap” and acting as a deterrent from the onslaught of the evil forces that always beset this “wicked world.”

Now, so much of this dogma has a place if taken with moderation and with humility.  For example, I think that persons of faith will stand out and be conspicuous by simply representing quality and by seeking value in their life.  But they will not have to flaunt it!  And they certainly will not have to announce it with pride and arrogance!  They will not have to be ostentatious with it.  It will not have to be a response to an impoverished identity;  it will not have to be a fig leaf that hides them from their existential nakedness.

And this “incest” label is admittedly heavy-handed and is not exclusive to sectarian religion.  All religions, and indeed all groups, tend to be self-serving and tend to set their boundaries too rigid.  All groups tend to err towards “group-think” in which their primary purpose becomes the perpetuation of their own dogma and the exclusion of those who are threatening.  I recently quoted W. H. Auden on this note, where he described the individual who would deign to question conventional wisdom, diving into

…the snarl of the abyss
That always lies just underneath
Our jolly picnic on the heath
Of the agreeable, where we bask,
Agreed on what we will not ask,
Bland, sunny, and adjusted by
The light of the accepted lie.

More about Getting Un-stuck

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So, precisely how do we get “unstuck”?  How do we extricate ourselves from that morass of unconsciousness, that residue of poor decisions that has left our life unmanageable?

There are easy maneuvers such as psychotropic medications.  Sometimes simply being tweaked biochemically can create enough personal space for us to get out of ourselves and get beyond our impasse.  And simple psychotherapy can be very effective.  On that note, it is very important that the therapist must avoid the temptation to “fix” the client, allowing  that client to stew in his/her own juices for a while, to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.”  Karl Jung contended that the therapeutic frame was a crucible and if the process worked correctly, the client would “heat-up” to a boiling point and a break through could be achieved.

But, as noted yesterday with the Shakespeare quotation, ultimately we are all alone with our spiritual battles and must wrestle in solitude with our demons.  However, I feel very strongly that therapists, counselors, pastors, and certainly friends must be present to facilitate the catharsis.  I think the most important step in alleviating the “stuck-ness” is for the individual to have the humility to admit that he/she is “stuck”;  and, I don’t mean some glib conciliation to the concept of being stuck.  I mean, for example, the old-fashioned fundamentalist paradigm, “I am a lost sinner” or the 12-step “I am powerless before my addiction” or “out of control” schemata.  It is necessary to realize and feel that one is out of control and that all of the rational, ego-based perambulations one can muster up will not suffice.  It is not a matter of “figuring out” anything.  It is a matter of trusting someone…and ultimately trusting a Source, or a Higher Power, or God or, in the words of Nikos Kazantzakis, “Surrendering to a rhythm not our own.”  It is a matter of humility.  And humility comes hard to the ego.   I think “stuck-ness” like all other human spiritual maladies is an issue of the ego.

A caveat is necessary.  I don’t think getting un-stuck is a simple one-time and your done phenomena.  I think we get through one episode of “stuck-ness” and later run into another one, and another one, and another one.  That has certainly been the case with me. I think there is a sense in which we always find ourselves “stuck”…in reality, with all its limitations.  The issue is discerning which of these limitations we can live with and which ones we must wrestle with and get beyond to some degree.

I have one very readable book to recommend on the subject, How People Change by Allen Wheelis.

Faith and adversity

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Faith is easy when we are in our glory days.  But it is often more of a challenge when adversity sets in.  Please read the following article about a former evangelical pastor who is battling a losing battle against ALS.  (You will have to “cut and paste” as I have even yet to figure out how to import a link to this blog.)

Facing death, a top pastor rethinks what it means to be Christian

Faith is so easy when we can bask in the “sizz, boom, bah” of carefully orchestrated, entertainment-oriented religion.  It used to be so comforting to know that I belonged to a “happenin'” mega-church.  We were sooo cool.  God, what a false reality!.  I do not think that God had in mind creating a false reality when he sent Jesus into the world.  I think he had in mind a meaningful faith in which life’s difficulties were embraced, not covered up with sham, canned religion.

Faith and doubt

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I was taught in my youth that faith and doubt were incompatible.  Now, I find they go hand-in-hand.  I feel that faith without doubt is largely dishonest, or as Sartre described it, “Bad faith.”

And note what Unamuno had to say on the subject:

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe in the God idea, not God himself. ~Miguel de Unamuno

And William Butler Yeats puts this truth so pithily:

Oh God, guard me from those thoughts

Men think in the mind alone.

He who sings a lasting song

Must think in the marrow bone.

 

Faith and the transitoriness of life

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The goal of all spiritual practice is to help us see that we are more than temporary and meaningless collections of automatic emotional and physical responses. All spiritual practices are designed to lead us to see a higher reality — that we are, in truth, eternal consciousness, occupying physical form for a purpose, animated and connected to the creative and sustaining source of everything. (Rabbi Alan Lurie)

It is challenging to pay attention to “the automatic emotional and physical responses” that we are; for, to borrow a line used in the past, asking one to do this is like asking a fish to see water. We are very ephemeral creatures, existing for but a moment in this mysterious, ever-expanding universe, and it is human nature to take ourselves way to seriously and assume that we objectively grasp “reality”. As Rabbi Lurie noted, our task is to grasp our finitude and affirm, by faith, a “higher reality” which I like to describe as our Source. It is much easier to cling to what Kierkegaard described as the “flotsam and jetsam”, i.e. the prevailing dogma of the day…that we fleetingly see in this vortex of life. The goal is to let go of the “flotsam and jetsam” for a moment and, by faith, cling to the Ultimate.

Anne Frank and courage

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In spite of everything, I still believe
That people are really good at heart.
I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation
Consisting of confusion, misery and death.
I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness,
I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too,
I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet,
If I look up into the heavens
I think that it will all come right,
That this cruelty will end,
And that peace and tranquility will return again.
In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals,
For perhaps, the time will come
When I shall be able to carry them out.
— Anne Frank

It is marvelous that she could have such an optimistic viewpoint of life, given the circumstances in which she was living and even more so given how she would die. In my clinical work I have come across many teen-agers with similar courage and faith even in difficult circumstances. For courage and faith are not merely a function of maturity and education but often of some intrinsic hope in the human race, and more importantly in God.

Elif Shafak and faith

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English: Elif Şafak

Image via Wikipedia

Elif Shafak delves into faith in her book, Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within. From her book, I think she would call herself a “Sufi” personally. But she makes a thoughtful distinction between atheism and agnosticism. She noted that she lacked the arrogance to outright reject the notion of God, as in atheism, but implied that she found herself agnostic at times. She described an agnostic as “befitting of people who were perpetually bewildered about things, including religion.” She described an atheist as “sure of his convictions, and speaks in sentences that end with a full stop. An agnostic puts only a comma at the end of his remarks…he will keep pondering, wondering, doubting.”

Shafak might describe me as an “agnostic.” Hmmm. But, I appear to have the gift of faith which perseveres through the tribulation of doubt. Though to reiterate on old refrain of mine, “I’ll take an agnostic ( or an atheist ) over the notion of blindly regurgitating what one has been indoctrinated with.”

The origin of religion

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I don’t know how everything started. It must have been an incredible experience to realize, just shortly after we had washed off the primordial ooze, to recognize that we were here on this really strange, dangerous, and beautiful world, that we were all alone…and that our life would end long before we were ready for it to happen.

I imagine that we first had the notion of god as we sat around the campfire, gnawing the last vestige of flesh from the bone of the day’s prey, grunting a song or two, crudely “discussing” the latest raid on the neighboring tribe. Someone wandered aloud…crudely again, “How did this all happen? How did we get here? Where will this all lead?”

To make a long story short, someone looked up into the heavens and was stirred by what we call today “the glory of God’s handiwork”. He then noted…and it would be a “he” as women were disposable property at the time…”Well, there must be a god up there.” Someone answered with enthusiasm, “Yes, Yes, Yes.” (Later that would become a resounding “amen” in some circles.”)

Someone else then posed the question, “Well, what must we do to appease him? He is really powerful and we have done some really shitty things in our lifetime. What must we do to appease him and earn his forgiveness?”

Someone else then suggested, “Well, we should jump over the fire three times.” So in a matter of weeks there was a lot of jumping over the fire each night as the validity of this experience was proven in that the success of hunting forays increased dramatically, no savage beast killed any of the children, and none of the neighboring tribes raided the campfire and carted off the women and children.

But before too long the first theological dispute arose. Some suggested that spiritual valor was proven by jumping the highest over the camp fire. Others said, “Oh no. The greatest spiritual valor lies with those of us who can jump over the fire so low that we drag our feet through the flames.” So pretty soon the tribe was divided and eventually split, each side of the debate seeing no reason to debate something that was so clearly apparent to all reasonable human beings.

Well, this could go on and on but I must cut to the chase. I am so pleased that we have come so far that in our culture we have a Christian tradition and at this time of the year we can all offer praise and gratitude to Him, each in our own way. And none of us have to get our feet burned!