Tag: Faith Defined

I think the following passage from Book 2, Chapter 2 of the Bros. K, is a decent response to the question why walk in the Way.  Whether the Way is that described by Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed.  Or whether the Way is a meaningful, rich existence available to the secular humanist.

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a
pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him,
and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no
respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself
without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and
sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other
men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily
offended than anyone. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take
offence, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but
that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and
exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a
mountain out of a molehill- he knows that himself, yet he will be
the first to take offence, and will revel in his resentment till he
feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But
get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful
posturing….”

Thoughts?

Oedipus Rex explores man’s inability to run from his destiny.

Oedipus, his parents, and a few other people became aware that something unthinkable is going to happen. I focus on the sexual component because it seems that Oedipus was not particularly traumatized my coming across some folks on the highway and killing them. Perhaps the Thebes-Corinth corridor observed a version of the stand your ground law. Also, frankly, it is not hard to imagine a circumstance that leads to a father killing a son, particularly in the king-crown prince dynamic.

Also, Sophocles devotes some significant energy to describing Oedipus’ sexual perversion in new and different ways.

He sowed the same womb as his father . . . Time, which watches everything and uncovered you against your will, now sits in judgment of that fatal marriage, where child and parent have been joined so long. . . . She lay moaning by the bed, where she, poor woman, had given birth twice over—a husband from a husband, children from a child. . . . As he moved, he kept asking us to give him a sword, as he tried to find that wife who was no wife—whose mother’s womb had given birth to him and to his children.

The play ends with Oedipus mutilating himself and his mother/wife killing herself.

Uplifting I know. I can’t help but be reminded of the torment we inflict on the gay community by insisting that they deny their sexuality. Running from one’s destiny, Sophocles teaches, leads to suffering.

I wonder if it matters whether one considers something to be a predestiny rather than a predisposition. I wonder whether my heterosexual orientation and cisgender is destiny or disposition.

I bristle at applying “extremist” to terrorist who justify their actions with religion. Violence in the name of God, I contend, displays a lack of faith, not a surplus. [note 1] I have a similar distaste for those who would withdraw from society as an act of faith, but find it less easy to condemn that behavior as a perversion of faith. In Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon gives me fresh reason to question my distaste for such social separatists.

Chapter XV of Gibbon’s work deals with the nature of early Christianity. He notes that during the first century of the common era “the disciples of the Messiah were indulged in a freer latitude both of faith and practice than has ever been allowed in succeeding ages.” [note 2] According to Gibbon, the movement split into three major components: those who adhered completely to “Mosaic law,” Ebionites; those who completely reject Hebrew tradition and other doctrines, e.g., bodily resurrection, Gnostics; and the less discussed Orthodox.

But whatever difference of opinion might subsist between the Orthodox, the Ebionites, and the Gnostics, concerning the divinity or the obligation of the Mosaic law, they were all equally animated by the same exclusive zeal, and by the same abhorrence for idolatry, which had distinguished the Jews from the other nations of the ancient world.

Gibbon goes on to describe the early Christian experience as one of constant concern over the possibility of cultural interface with the pagans. Pagan ritual was present in everything from wedding ceremonies to the currency. If someone responded to a sneeze with “Jupiter bless you,” according to Gibbon, the ancient Christian would be compelled to take the occasion to condemn Jupiter. “Such was the anxious diligence which was required to guard the chastity of the Gospel from the infectious breath of idolatry.”

I cringe at the notion of such isolationist behavior and Christians focusing on every trivial custom. It reminds me of the annual War on Tolerance waged by Christianists who are offended by the “Happy Holidays” greeting. But, I reading this passage gives rise to my own anxiety. Is my tolerance, my integration into mainstream society at odds with what it means to be Christian? How much credence should I give the behavior of Christians so shortly after the formation of the Church?

[note 1] For an opposing view see Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. A book that intensely frustrated my Sunday morning study group at Chalice Christian Church, but at the same time inspired some amazing conversations about faith.

[note 2] This lines up nicely with Harvey Cox’s thesis in The Future of Faith. Cox explains that Christianity went through three phases. First the Age of Faith, which was free of dogma for the first 300-400 years. Then the Age of Belief, which was all about dogma and lasted for 1500 years or so. And finally, we are in the Age of Spirit, which nicely coincides with Cox’s youth in the 1960’s. Our group was less offended by but more suspicious of Cox’s work on Faith as compared to Harris’s.

After finishing Montaigne’s lengthy essay on education, I discovered that my Great Books reading list included his short essay “It is folly to measure the true and false by our won capacity” and decided to finish it too, in my effort to catch up. I think it to be a much better conversation starter.

Montaigne talks about the dangerous habit of those “who think they have more than common ability” to attribute “belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance.” He confesses that although he was once guilty of this himself, he is now reformed writing,

I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these follies. Whereas I now find, that I myself was to be pitied as much, at least, as they; not that experience has taught me anything to alter my former opinions, though my curiosity has endeavoured that way; but reason has instructed me, that thus resolutely to condemn anything for false and impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the will of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the bounds of my own capacity, than which no folly can be greater.

In our modern context it is easy to generate a list of beliefs that are generally attribute to simplicity and ignorance, at lease by the Prius-driving, NPR-listening, espresso-drinking liberal crowd to which I belong. Creationism, Virgin Birth, Bodily Resurrection, Intercessory Prayer, Physical Afterlife.

Montaigne, as it turns out, may be thinking of a pretty similar list. The direction he takes it, however, is different than I would go. Montaigne issues another of his condemnations of the Reformation and defenses of the Catholic church, including this, which likely sounds familiar to modern readers, “We are either wholly and absolutely to submit ourselves to the authority of our ecclesiastical polity, or totally throw off all obedience to it: ’tis not for us to determine what and how much obedience we owe to it.”

In contrast, I am wary of my own certitude, despite the frequency with which I am certain. Nonetheless, my wariness is not generated by the notion that I should submit to authority, but that perhaps I am missing value tucked away in these believes held by those who I belittle with the tag of simple or ignorant. Perhaps the Truth lies somewhere in between prayer is valuable as a breathing exercise and prayer is a way to call on God to remove a tumor or heal a liver. Perhaps the inability to access the Truth is a measure of the limits of my own capacity.

In his Confessions Book II, St. Augustine focusses on a number of adolescent sins. He obliquely suggests that he had sex out of marriage, but is more comfortable to confess stealing pears from a tree and then throwing those pears at some pigs. He wonders why do we sin? One problem was that his bodily urges produced such a cloud in his reasoning that he could not “distinquish the clear light of love from the murk of lust.” Another, he says, is that he desired to imitate God’s power, although his was a perverse imitation. He also cites to peer pressure, which in his case was also pear pressure, saying that if he were alone he never would have stolen the fruit. Indeed, he even recounts claiming to have done wicked things he did not do in order to avoid ridicule or to receive praise. See Book II. It is interesting how much his confession strikes me as the text of a “hip” teenage youth group lesson.

The idea of sin is problematic when it is used to declare that someone else deviate from your cultural normal is not only different from you, but in defiance of God. On the other hand, I think the notion of sin is very helpful for those of us who wish to live the best possible life. The idea that we periodically miss the mark makes us better.