gratiae veritas naturae
.!-' |
My beliefs have undergone several revisions over time but many of my core tenets are unchanged. I've often considered that some people are involved in religious groups for the status. Religion often brings out the worst in people: hypocrisy, fanaticism and cruelty.. Isn’t that sad? Religion is intended to bring people together, to show and share love, but instead, we have rigidity, inflexibility and a tendency to exclude and separate others. We're perfectly capable of turning into Pharisees-a word that means "separate"-and erecting banners where we should be welcoming others. There are those who want explain all the details of life; to flatten out the mysteries and miracles. The demand for miracles and wonders is the mysticism of extroverts – or rather, it is the point from which extroverts begin. Everything has to be ‘out there’: apparitions, messages, strange occurrences and coincidences…. Highly rational people are often the most readily convinced by these. This is puzzling until you hit the key word: extrovert. For a highly rational person a ‘miracle’ is new data in the lab. It was the highly rationalistic theologies that depended most heavily on them. Meanwhile there is a whole world untouched: the world of self-deception, projection, wishful thinking.... But that is outside the frame of rationality, so it is not acknowledged: it is not ‘objective’, so it is merely ‘irrational’. When it is acknowledged at all, it is seen only as wilful self-deception. To call it wilful is the way to dismiss it. But it is far more potent when it is not wilful. That is a place where the extrovert person does not want to look.
The difficulty with mysteries is that there is a level of messiness in the world. We are not comfortable with mess-we have an urge to tidy things up and create a sense of order. The more tidy-minded we are, the greater difficulty we have with messiness. The Church is messy: not in its ideal, but in actual experience. There are Christians who are unable to live with this, and who become angry with everyone who is different from themselves. This is to begin at the wrong point. The real beginning is one’s own conversion, not that of others. When I begin at the wrong point my religion becomes a crusade, a search for a ‘pure race’. Certainly, faith is not just my own business, but if I am converted I will go to others with the Good News, not with a critical and hypocritical spirit.
The difficulty with mysteries is that there is a level of messiness in the world. We are not comfortable with mess-we have an urge to tidy things up and create a sense of order. The messiness of life is copied in the messiness of religious belief. Our attempts to rationalize and flatten everything just complicate things further. In my interpretation, religion helps us understand where we go into the universe. It would be ideal if we could make every thing simple and eliminate all the questions but that's neither practical nor realistic.
It was explained to me once that we use imagery for God that really only applies to people who are privileged in certain ways. We talk about God as a loving Father. Sadly, there are far too many who do not have the experience of a loving earthly Father, so it's impossible to translate that to a Father in Heaven. We also find it easier to provide rigid discipline, which might explain our tendency to create and enforce inflexible men. It's tragic that we would then try to enforce our rules on others! Anyway, my view is that because we lack the actual experiences, it's difficult to be able to help others understand how God interacts with in. Therefore, it’s hard for us to comprehend a loving God. For some of us, then, we turn to harsh rules to try to control everything. In reality, we should be reaching out to each other, building relationships, because God is revealed through our interactions with each other.
There will be one more of these to finish my thoughts on religion, but for now, this is it. Good night
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