Religious freedom is precious to Friends so when people begin complaining that theirs is being compromised our ears perk up.
I think that the Catholics who run hospitals currently complaining about the "unconstitutionality" of requiring them to follow federal law regarding birth control are confused about the concept.
Catholic hospitals, like all hospitals, are businesses. They are not religious institutions. Religion is incidental to the business. Although people who run these businesses have the right to religious liberty, as do those who work there, the hospital, itself, does not. The fact that a business, even a non-profit, is owned by a church does not mean that business can choose to ignore the laws that apply to all such businesses.
There are provisions to protect people who claim violation of conscience if they are required to dispense contraception. The hospital, however, does not have a conscience--it has a business license. If no one currently working for that business is willing to do work the law requires the hospital to do then the hospital has an obligation to hire people who are.
The Catholic church is not prohibited from hiring a priest who refuses to marry same sex couples, and cannot be required to hire one who will, but it cannot run a hospital that hires only doctors who refuse to treat patients simply because they are gay. It's hospital--a business--not a church.
People most often think of freedom of religion as a way to protect churches from the state. Actually, it's the other way around. Most of the time it works (in so far as it does) to ensure freedom from religion, to keep the government from being corrupted into a tool one religious group can use to force others to conform to its orthodoxies.
And that's what's going on here. Catholics want to run the businesses they own in such a way that they can refuse to provide services to those who don't live a Catholic life style, those who refuse to be a Catholic in form if not in content.
It's really a pretty clear cut example of why religion--all religion--needs to be kept out of civil government.
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Protestant First, Quaker Second (a simple desultory screed re "heresy")
A Quaker blogger wrote a piece about whether a current theology of Christian universalism is heresy or not.
Moving in fear of spreading division and strife (as if I had the capacity to do that), I want to clarify that for some Friends the Protestant orthodoxy that is implicitly the reference point in this piece for what "Christianity" is, does not cover the waterfront. This Protestant orthodoxy seems, to some of us, like a heresy, itself.
As the few who give notice or pay attention to this blog know, Christianity is not, for some, a set of rationalistic, propositional beliefs about the nature, character and plans of God. Christianity is, rather, about finding Christ in one's every day experience, developing a quotidian spiritual practice that sharpens and tests such imminent discernment, and acting in the present on the discerned leadings.
Christ is the only authority. And that means Christ, the living presence, and not Christ, a set of ideas (approved or not) from which people try to reason what Christ wants done. The problem with Protestantism is that it denies the word of God and substitutes words about God as the supreme authority. Hence the chaos in Christianity--human minds working with human ideas to figure out what God wants us to do. Individuals with the bounded rationality inherent in the human condition, using one version of the Bible or another as a more or less closed data base, parsing its words to "work out their salvation." (the verb is "work" not "think") Protestantism, like any religion based on manipulation of propositional beliefs, is as much a faith in human rationality--and as little a faith in an actual God in any sense of the word--as is the atheism of a Dawkins or Hitchens; Doctor Tweedle-dee Dawkins, meet Doctor Tweedle-dum Dobson.
No one knows whether or not all will eventually be saved (or even what "saved" means) except in their own reasonings, hopes and imaginations. And, except in such places, no one ever can. One can believe but one cannot know. Notions, notions, notions. A blunt, square blade makes a spade and problems arise in using such a tool as a shovel.
But we do know how we are supposed to be living our lives--a knowledge that anyone can (and does) come to fairly easily. We're not very good at living that way, but it's been clearly revealed many times in many places (including our own individual hearts) for a good long time. It's a part of all spiritual traditions--it's just stuck in the middle of a lot of theology and, as it is written, in for a dime, in for a dollar. You can't take the word of the living Christ (or even the written one, sometimes) if it's contradicted (in fact or by "reason") by some other part of the theology in which it has become imbedded. What is revealed in our hearts is denied by our brain--and our cultures have created marvelous thought structures to ensure this denial sticks in favor of "common sense."
That's how we got the "just war" doctrine. Just one more way to reason/rationalize our way away from clearly defined leadings and openings we all have about killing other people.
So, this is why, by the way, the revelation of early Friends so easily turned away from the teaching of the universal access of all humans to direct guidance from God and the necessity of one to obey that guidance. Given that they were led out of the bondage of Protestant rationalism by reality of an indwelling Christ it was easy for them to return there while claiming to be carrying that Christ back with them. Then came the reconciling of their direct experience of God to all that theology (so familiar to them from their upbringing) that they were led so recently to deny. So, bit by bit, the Judaic books of law and practice and historical "lessons learned" (along with all the theology that has developed to "explain" all that stuff) pushed the living Christ further and further out of Quakerism. There can apparently be no co-existence between the ideas about God and word from God. The Bible may reflect some Christian experience, along with a lot other things antithetical to it--but it does not define it and is certainly not the place to learn about it. All of those doctrines presented and parsed out of the Bible apparently inevitably overwhelm and subsume reliance on discernment and obedience God--perhaps because it's hard to hear that still small voice with all those Bible verses buzzing around in our ears.
That is why the 19th Century was so turbulent, fractious, backbiting, faction ridden (and so Un-Quakerly in so many ways) for Friends. That was the outcome of Protestantism becoming completely ascendent over the indwelling Christ, the Christ who was completely drown in the rising tide of what some would call Biblical worship. It took that kind of discord and even hatred and violence to turn the Quaker movement just another "denomination" of Protestantism, with a few quaint oddities that did not allow it to retain its peculiarity. And so it was revealed to Bible parsing Friends that Christ was only available to those who were sanctified as described by the Protestant ideology and not, as it appears to say in John something born in the heart of all people entering the world. Yes, the indwelling Christ was declared .... wait for it ... a heresy by Protestant Quakers.
The problem is that theologies, Protestantism among them, consist largely of a mapping out of strategies of escape from living as we know we are supposed to live (and therefore from the difficulties entailed in living that way). This substitution blunts our urgency to obey God (making it "safe" for us to live in our cultures) and facilitates our living by the book, or, rather, by what we can convince ourselves, or the keepers of our orthodoxy can convince us, the book really says. Our Christ comes to us with a David chaser, so to speak, and David and Jesus don't mix, no matter what is written to the contrary. (Jesus may or may not have descended, as it is written, from the house of David --we will never really know--but can you picture him at the dinner table there?)
So that makes me a heretic because what I am saying definitely undermines the Protestantism that so many identify as being Christianity.
If heresy is that which, in the name of Christ leads people from Christ, that puts me the position to ask what really is the heresy, here?
It's fine with me if one says "I believe that a rationalistic ideology about the nature, character and plans of God is the supreme authority of my life--and should be the supreme authority of everyone's life-- because that rationalistic ideology tells me it is the supreme authority and that stands to reason." I hope it's just as fine with them if I say I believe something else because, notwithstanding it "standing to their/our bounded reason," the outcomes don't indicate that their ideology leads people to those green pastures and still waters described in its brochures.
And I am convinced that it is those green pastures and still waters--and our transformation into beings fit and able to live there--that is the point of our spirituality. That is, of course, a belief that got Friends in big trouble way back in the founding generation because they spoke out against Protestantism's teachings that there could be no improvement in human spiritual condition "this side of the grave." That notion, that denial of the possibility of human transformation in this life, so integral to Protestantism, allows us to shrug at all evil--in ourselves and in the world--and go upon our merry way as people whose first allegiance is to the world and whose hope for kingdom is reserved for the great by and by.
And yet, it is written, the kingdom is and is becoming...who's the heretic, here?
A contemporary prophet wrote, "You can't talk your way out of something you acted your way into. You have to act your way out." He might well have written, for the context of discussing the Protestant heresy, that one cannot "think" or "believe" one's way out--one must hear and act (obey) one's way out.
Moving in fear of spreading division and strife (as if I had the capacity to do that), I want to clarify that for some Friends the Protestant orthodoxy that is implicitly the reference point in this piece for what "Christianity" is, does not cover the waterfront. This Protestant orthodoxy seems, to some of us, like a heresy, itself.
As the few who give notice or pay attention to this blog know, Christianity is not, for some, a set of rationalistic, propositional beliefs about the nature, character and plans of God. Christianity is, rather, about finding Christ in one's every day experience, developing a quotidian spiritual practice that sharpens and tests such imminent discernment, and acting in the present on the discerned leadings.
Christ is the only authority. And that means Christ, the living presence, and not Christ, a set of ideas (approved or not) from which people try to reason what Christ wants done. The problem with Protestantism is that it denies the word of God and substitutes words about God as the supreme authority. Hence the chaos in Christianity--human minds working with human ideas to figure out what God wants us to do. Individuals with the bounded rationality inherent in the human condition, using one version of the Bible or another as a more or less closed data base, parsing its words to "work out their salvation." (the verb is "work" not "think") Protestantism, like any religion based on manipulation of propositional beliefs, is as much a faith in human rationality--and as little a faith in an actual God in any sense of the word--as is the atheism of a Dawkins or Hitchens; Doctor Tweedle-dee Dawkins, meet Doctor Tweedle-dum Dobson.
No one knows whether or not all will eventually be saved (or even what "saved" means) except in their own reasonings, hopes and imaginations. And, except in such places, no one ever can. One can believe but one cannot know. Notions, notions, notions. A blunt, square blade makes a spade and problems arise in using such a tool as a shovel.
But we do know how we are supposed to be living our lives--a knowledge that anyone can (and does) come to fairly easily. We're not very good at living that way, but it's been clearly revealed many times in many places (including our own individual hearts) for a good long time. It's a part of all spiritual traditions--it's just stuck in the middle of a lot of theology and, as it is written, in for a dime, in for a dollar. You can't take the word of the living Christ (or even the written one, sometimes) if it's contradicted (in fact or by "reason") by some other part of the theology in which it has become imbedded. What is revealed in our hearts is denied by our brain--and our cultures have created marvelous thought structures to ensure this denial sticks in favor of "common sense."
That's how we got the "just war" doctrine. Just one more way to reason/rationalize our way away from clearly defined leadings and openings we all have about killing other people.
So, this is why, by the way, the revelation of early Friends so easily turned away from the teaching of the universal access of all humans to direct guidance from God and the necessity of one to obey that guidance. Given that they were led out of the bondage of Protestant rationalism by reality of an indwelling Christ it was easy for them to return there while claiming to be carrying that Christ back with them. Then came the reconciling of their direct experience of God to all that theology (so familiar to them from their upbringing) that they were led so recently to deny. So, bit by bit, the Judaic books of law and practice and historical "lessons learned" (along with all the theology that has developed to "explain" all that stuff) pushed the living Christ further and further out of Quakerism. There can apparently be no co-existence between the ideas about God and word from God. The Bible may reflect some Christian experience, along with a lot other things antithetical to it--but it does not define it and is certainly not the place to learn about it. All of those doctrines presented and parsed out of the Bible apparently inevitably overwhelm and subsume reliance on discernment and obedience God--perhaps because it's hard to hear that still small voice with all those Bible verses buzzing around in our ears.
That is why the 19th Century was so turbulent, fractious, backbiting, faction ridden (and so Un-Quakerly in so many ways) for Friends. That was the outcome of Protestantism becoming completely ascendent over the indwelling Christ, the Christ who was completely drown in the rising tide of what some would call Biblical worship. It took that kind of discord and even hatred and violence to turn the Quaker movement just another "denomination" of Protestantism, with a few quaint oddities that did not allow it to retain its peculiarity. And so it was revealed to Bible parsing Friends that Christ was only available to those who were sanctified as described by the Protestant ideology and not, as it appears to say in John something born in the heart of all people entering the world. Yes, the indwelling Christ was declared .... wait for it ... a heresy by Protestant Quakers.
The problem is that theologies, Protestantism among them, consist largely of a mapping out of strategies of escape from living as we know we are supposed to live (and therefore from the difficulties entailed in living that way). This substitution blunts our urgency to obey God (making it "safe" for us to live in our cultures) and facilitates our living by the book, or, rather, by what we can convince ourselves, or the keepers of our orthodoxy can convince us, the book really says. Our Christ comes to us with a David chaser, so to speak, and David and Jesus don't mix, no matter what is written to the contrary. (Jesus may or may not have descended, as it is written, from the house of David --we will never really know--but can you picture him at the dinner table there?)
So that makes me a heretic because what I am saying definitely undermines the Protestantism that so many identify as being Christianity.
If heresy is that which, in the name of Christ leads people from Christ, that puts me the position to ask what really is the heresy, here?
It's fine with me if one says "I believe that a rationalistic ideology about the nature, character and plans of God is the supreme authority of my life--and should be the supreme authority of everyone's life-- because that rationalistic ideology tells me it is the supreme authority and that stands to reason." I hope it's just as fine with them if I say I believe something else because, notwithstanding it "standing to their/our bounded reason," the outcomes don't indicate that their ideology leads people to those green pastures and still waters described in its brochures.
And I am convinced that it is those green pastures and still waters--and our transformation into beings fit and able to live there--that is the point of our spirituality. That is, of course, a belief that got Friends in big trouble way back in the founding generation because they spoke out against Protestantism's teachings that there could be no improvement in human spiritual condition "this side of the grave." That notion, that denial of the possibility of human transformation in this life, so integral to Protestantism, allows us to shrug at all evil--in ourselves and in the world--and go upon our merry way as people whose first allegiance is to the world and whose hope for kingdom is reserved for the great by and by.
And yet, it is written, the kingdom is and is becoming...who's the heretic, here?
A contemporary prophet wrote, "You can't talk your way out of something you acted your way into. You have to act your way out." He might well have written, for the context of discussing the Protestant heresy, that one cannot "think" or "believe" one's way out--one must hear and act (obey) one's way out.
Friday, May 06, 2011
What I Can Say...
I heard confusion among us about the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the confusion echoed in my own mind. The conclusion I came to is a familiar one: if my thinking about something leads me to confusion one of the causes of that might be that I am trying to reason about something not amenable to reason. I'm a lawyers so I can take a lot of different sides and argue them convincingly, but I once had a poster on my wall that said "People who argue better are not necessarily right."
Thinking about how to react to the killing of Osama Bin Laden is confusing because, like all issues of morality, reason cannot help but fail us. But that's fine because I don't need reason to know how I am supposed to react to this.
My experience has been that any time I have used coercion (or entertained the possibility)--be it physical force or sarcasm--to protect myself or someone else from something I perceived as threatening or something I feared I have not been made safe and my condition has been compromised in the effort.
Christ/The Light has made it clear to me that, regardless of the harm I do others in this regard, I do harm to myself, to my spiritual (and psychological and even, perhaps, physical) condition. I know because it has been revealed to me (no thinking necessary) that as the powers and thrones and governments (and those acting under their control) struggle and war among themselves around me I am supposed to resist being sucked into it (by thinking errors like the "just war doctrine" or some concept of "justice") and, if the way is opened to me, to do what there is to do to ameliorate the suffering and damage done to all involved.
I can't say if that's what others are suppose to do, but I know it's what I am supposed to do. It's not that this "makes sense" to me or that it "stands to reason"--because often it doesn't. It's just that if I don't go with what I know, as opposed to what I can be persuaded (or persuade myself) to do, I am going to hear about it later and I am going to be sorry.
Thinking about how to react to the killing of Osama Bin Laden is confusing because, like all issues of morality, reason cannot help but fail us. But that's fine because I don't need reason to know how I am supposed to react to this.
My experience has been that any time I have used coercion (or entertained the possibility)--be it physical force or sarcasm--to protect myself or someone else from something I perceived as threatening or something I feared I have not been made safe and my condition has been compromised in the effort.
Christ/The Light has made it clear to me that, regardless of the harm I do others in this regard, I do harm to myself, to my spiritual (and psychological and even, perhaps, physical) condition. I know because it has been revealed to me (no thinking necessary) that as the powers and thrones and governments (and those acting under their control) struggle and war among themselves around me I am supposed to resist being sucked into it (by thinking errors like the "just war doctrine" or some concept of "justice") and, if the way is opened to me, to do what there is to do to ameliorate the suffering and damage done to all involved.
I can't say if that's what others are suppose to do, but I know it's what I am supposed to do. It's not that this "makes sense" to me or that it "stands to reason"--because often it doesn't. It's just that if I don't go with what I know, as opposed to what I can be persuaded (or persuade myself) to do, I am going to hear about it later and I am going to be sorry.
Friday, March 18, 2011
As if ...
This is one more of those comments on another's blog so long that turned into a whole post of my own.
This iteration of The Lamb's War, Micah Bales' outstanding vehicle, centered as it was around this quotation from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, really spoke to me.
[People] are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'if I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it. - C.S. Lewis,Mere Christianity, pg. 132
I was one time thrown off--way, way off--by this thinking error, which did not take me to green pastures and still waters. It led me through rapids and into the desert. Getting back has been a journey.
I saw descriptions of a direct experience with God, much like my own, validated in Protestant scripture and theology, in the Protestant notions that have come to be incorporated into Quaker faith and practice. I therefore came to the conclusion (thinking, thinking) that everything else described in orthodox (mere) Christianity had a validity equal to that of my experience.
In for a dime, as it is written, in for a dollar.
The Quaker cliche that spiritual experience is validated by scripture led me to the thinking error that spiritual experience requires scriptural validation but that scriptures do not require the validation of spiritual experience.
In for a dime, it is written, in for a dollar.
Lewis says fake it, act on what you can reason from theology tells you is true, until you make it, until your experience shows you it's real. If your experience never validates the theology/ideology then keep right on distrusting your experience and keep right on trying to live in the "reality" the keepers of your theology recommends to you. Even though your experience never aligns with notions about the nature, character and plans of God (say the certified smart interpreters of this theology/ideology) do not distrust it, do not lay it down in favor of what you are hearing from God. Who are you, anyway, to be hearing things from God?
That did not work out for me, at least it didn't move me toward realizing the fruits of the spirit in my own life. In fact, it worked the other way around. I accepted orthodox Protestant notions--inferences humans have made--conclusions to which they have jumped--based on their own experience with God or on second-hand descriptions from others of their experiences with God. These inferences (built on other inferences), came to me in the same package as the description of "that still small voice" that I recognized and raised those notions to a level of validity that was not proved in my experience.
These orthodox notions completely subverted the experiential leading of God in my life and left me, and many like me, signing on to notions such as "the teachings of Jesus do not require us to help the 'undeserving' poor." Most notably, to me, was the idea that the church should line up to support the wars waged by the powers against one another.
No matter how many times I crucified Christ when It showed up to lead me out of that mess, no matter how many times I buried Christ in the tomb of my heart so as to raise theological notions to lead my life, sooner or I later I heard the rock rolling away and found myself, face to face, with Reality (AKA Truth). Could this, and not all the theology, be Reality?
From the time of that opening I began to "deconstruct" my "Christian" "beliefs," winnowing them down to what I could say from my own own experience. I can say that God deals with me as scripture describes David (and many others, including Jesus) being dealt with, at times. I can say that by going with that, and not resisting it, I more closely resemble the image of Galatians 5:22-26 and Matthew 5-7. That's what I can say.
When C.S. Lewis talks up what comes down to "What Would Jesus Do?" he loses me completely. It' a trap that lured me into relying on drawing rational/rationalizing conclusions about my moral choices based on second hand, hearsay notions (reasonings) about the nature, purpose and plans of God. Did Augustine really not hear God's voice when he thought out the theology of "just war?" Or was he relying on his own reasoning, compromised by the values and power he and the church had, anointed as they were by the powers Christ, it is written, came to destroy? When Augustine spoke was he seeing himself and the church as the power behind the thrones? Was he clueless that the thrones were the power behind him and his church?
Am I the only person who ever noticed how many times "interpretation of scripture" actually rationalizes evil, allowing us to continue in the states of mind from which that evil springs in our lives?
This I can say: I have lived in and been delivered from this trap.
The other thinking error from which I have been delivered that came to mind in reading Micah's blog was the necessity to work my own way through the "dry periods"--the times that God seems so far away that I could not find God.
I remember a line from a play (Inherit The Wind) in which it was said of someone that he was a good man who got lost looking for God too high up and too far away. It was both liberating and edifying to realize that the absence of burning bushes is not a sign of the absence of God. It's a still small voice. It caused an earthquake in my soul, but it didn't sound like a freight train, all the time. And it certainly didn't, and still doesn't, leave me feeling all warm and loved all the time.
In line with that, I remember telling a Presbyterian pastor, after a Bible study, that sometimes it's hard to hear God for all the scripture ringing on my ears, for all the interpretations of scripture available to occupy and distract me when I should be listening to God. I can always find a way to avoid the hard and beautiful stuff by throwing a couple of Bible verses together and going out for a spiritual cheeseburger.
My experience of God's presence is not about being blissed-out. My experience of God's presence and guidance is as mundane and quotidian as remembering to feed the dogs, not letting the dirty dishes (actual and metaphorical) stack up in the sink, yielding the right of way and deciding to pick my daughter up from school when it's raining before she calls. Those are the kinds of things God seems to care about most, in my life.
God is always about what I am doing, or not doing. God never tells me about God, other people tell me about God, boy oh boy do other people tell me about God. I hear God telling me to love others, I never hear God telling me that God is love. That's an inference I could draw from my constant instructions to be loving, but God is not proved to be loving by telling me to love--and it isn't necessary for me to believe that God is loving, anyway. What's necessary is for me to love.
People tell me to love God. God doesn't. I don't even know what it means to love God. Maybe, because it's what I constantly hear about, I am loving God by loving other people--but that's just a notion. Maybe I am loving God when I accept the Grace of God's guidance and act on it. I don't know if any of that is true but what I know is I need to love people and accept God's guidance.
And God never tells me about other people. I have learned (the hard way--how else?) that when I think God is telling me about someone else it's really my compromised, judgmental little reasoning skills inferring things about other people's lives based on my experience. And when I am deluded enough to act on those kinds of inferences I discover, very soon, the immanent presence of God--insisting that I meditate on the conflict and strife I had stirred up and how much good I have done anyone involved.
Although I struggle with anthropomorphizing about God, I have very commonly envisioned God as standing with folded arms, tapping a foot with an expression that says "how many times, man, how many times, do I have to tell you to stop thinking about what I am and what I want and just do what I tell you?"
My experience is that God does not take vacations and that those times I used to think God was not present were times I didn't want God present to me (in the tomb you go!) or times that, trying to wade through all the theology to find God, my ears were full of second hand notions--religious ideology--about things that it did my condition no good to think about--thinking about things that ended up compromising my condition.
Odysseus, it is written, filled his sailors' ears with wax so they could not be led astray. Filling my own ears with theological wax actually worked the other way around--it made it possible for me to be misled, cut off from my guidance, into relying on what I thought that guidance would say if it could get through.
Micah has an idea about what God not seeming present might be about: He writes:
"It seems from my experience of this process that God periodically removes our training wheels. God gives us the freedom to experience the full possibilities of life in Christ.
This makes sense, doesn't it? As Christians, we believe that God desires us to freely choose relationship with God."
I honestly don't know if that's true, and no one else does, either. It might make sense, if the notional mainstay of Protestantism he describes as something we believe "as Christians" is, indeed, true. But I don't know if that is true. (That's part of the "free will" doctrine that seems as useful to me, spiritually, as the notion of a "free market" seems useful in understanding the real world of economics.) My experience actually cuts the other way, insofar as I can draw conclusions about it from how God treats me. God does not wait around for me to make the choice about being in relationship with God. I am and when I have tried to leave that relationship the "hounds of heaven" pulled me right back home. I cannot speak to the experience of others in this regard--I can only say what I can say.
I recall "dry spells" from my younger days. There were times I felt separated from God, but what I feel like is not necessarily what I really am. How many of us have felt fine while a terrible sickness developed in our bodies or while alienation from someone we loved eroded a relationship upon which we relied? And how many times have we known, although we still felt lousy, that we were on the mend, or that although it was still awkward and sometimes difficult a relationship was heading in the right direction? Feeling alienated from God is a feeling--it's not a description of my actual condition.
Those "dark nights of the soul" were times I was hung up trying to reconcile all the orthodox propositions about God so as to "understand" God and figure out what to do. Those were times I thought it was only if I understood the nature, character and plans of God that I could hope to live my life according to God's will.
But that's a thinking error. It's not for me to figure God out. It's for me to hear and obey--even if, perhaps especially if, what I hear doesn't "make sense" in light of all I have been told has been "figured out" about God.
Sometimes I really wish there was a book in the Bible that tried to get this across to me. I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.
This iteration of The Lamb's War, Micah Bales' outstanding vehicle, centered as it was around this quotation from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, really spoke to me.
[People] are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'if I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it. - C.S. Lewis,Mere Christianity, pg. 132
I was one time thrown off--way, way off--by this thinking error, which did not take me to green pastures and still waters. It led me through rapids and into the desert. Getting back has been a journey.
I saw descriptions of a direct experience with God, much like my own, validated in Protestant scripture and theology, in the Protestant notions that have come to be incorporated into Quaker faith and practice. I therefore came to the conclusion (thinking, thinking) that everything else described in orthodox (mere) Christianity had a validity equal to that of my experience.
In for a dime, as it is written, in for a dollar.
The Quaker cliche that spiritual experience is validated by scripture led me to the thinking error that spiritual experience requires scriptural validation but that scriptures do not require the validation of spiritual experience.
In for a dime, it is written, in for a dollar.
Lewis says fake it, act on what you can reason from theology tells you is true, until you make it, until your experience shows you it's real. If your experience never validates the theology/ideology then keep right on distrusting your experience and keep right on trying to live in the "reality" the keepers of your theology recommends to you. Even though your experience never aligns with notions about the nature, character and plans of God (say the certified smart interpreters of this theology/ideology) do not distrust it, do not lay it down in favor of what you are hearing from God. Who are you, anyway, to be hearing things from God?
That did not work out for me, at least it didn't move me toward realizing the fruits of the spirit in my own life. In fact, it worked the other way around. I accepted orthodox Protestant notions--inferences humans have made--conclusions to which they have jumped--based on their own experience with God or on second-hand descriptions from others of their experiences with God. These inferences (built on other inferences), came to me in the same package as the description of "that still small voice" that I recognized and raised those notions to a level of validity that was not proved in my experience.
These orthodox notions completely subverted the experiential leading of God in my life and left me, and many like me, signing on to notions such as "the teachings of Jesus do not require us to help the 'undeserving' poor." Most notably, to me, was the idea that the church should line up to support the wars waged by the powers against one another.
No matter how many times I crucified Christ when It showed up to lead me out of that mess, no matter how many times I buried Christ in the tomb of my heart so as to raise theological notions to lead my life, sooner or I later I heard the rock rolling away and found myself, face to face, with Reality (AKA Truth). Could this, and not all the theology, be Reality?
From the time of that opening I began to "deconstruct" my "Christian" "beliefs," winnowing them down to what I could say from my own own experience. I can say that God deals with me as scripture describes David (and many others, including Jesus) being dealt with, at times. I can say that by going with that, and not resisting it, I more closely resemble the image of Galatians 5:22-26 and Matthew 5-7. That's what I can say.
When C.S. Lewis talks up what comes down to "What Would Jesus Do?" he loses me completely. It' a trap that lured me into relying on drawing rational/rationalizing conclusions about my moral choices based on second hand, hearsay notions (reasonings) about the nature, purpose and plans of God. Did Augustine really not hear God's voice when he thought out the theology of "just war?" Or was he relying on his own reasoning, compromised by the values and power he and the church had, anointed as they were by the powers Christ, it is written, came to destroy? When Augustine spoke was he seeing himself and the church as the power behind the thrones? Was he clueless that the thrones were the power behind him and his church?
Am I the only person who ever noticed how many times "interpretation of scripture" actually rationalizes evil, allowing us to continue in the states of mind from which that evil springs in our lives?
This I can say: I have lived in and been delivered from this trap.
The other thinking error from which I have been delivered that came to mind in reading Micah's blog was the necessity to work my own way through the "dry periods"--the times that God seems so far away that I could not find God.
I remember a line from a play (Inherit The Wind) in which it was said of someone that he was a good man who got lost looking for God too high up and too far away. It was both liberating and edifying to realize that the absence of burning bushes is not a sign of the absence of God. It's a still small voice. It caused an earthquake in my soul, but it didn't sound like a freight train, all the time. And it certainly didn't, and still doesn't, leave me feeling all warm and loved all the time.
In line with that, I remember telling a Presbyterian pastor, after a Bible study, that sometimes it's hard to hear God for all the scripture ringing on my ears, for all the interpretations of scripture available to occupy and distract me when I should be listening to God. I can always find a way to avoid the hard and beautiful stuff by throwing a couple of Bible verses together and going out for a spiritual cheeseburger.
My experience of God's presence is not about being blissed-out. My experience of God's presence and guidance is as mundane and quotidian as remembering to feed the dogs, not letting the dirty dishes (actual and metaphorical) stack up in the sink, yielding the right of way and deciding to pick my daughter up from school when it's raining before she calls. Those are the kinds of things God seems to care about most, in my life.
God is always about what I am doing, or not doing. God never tells me about God, other people tell me about God, boy oh boy do other people tell me about God. I hear God telling me to love others, I never hear God telling me that God is love. That's an inference I could draw from my constant instructions to be loving, but God is not proved to be loving by telling me to love--and it isn't necessary for me to believe that God is loving, anyway. What's necessary is for me to love.
People tell me to love God. God doesn't. I don't even know what it means to love God. Maybe, because it's what I constantly hear about, I am loving God by loving other people--but that's just a notion. Maybe I am loving God when I accept the Grace of God's guidance and act on it. I don't know if any of that is true but what I know is I need to love people and accept God's guidance.
And God never tells me about other people. I have learned (the hard way--how else?) that when I think God is telling me about someone else it's really my compromised, judgmental little reasoning skills inferring things about other people's lives based on my experience. And when I am deluded enough to act on those kinds of inferences I discover, very soon, the immanent presence of God--insisting that I meditate on the conflict and strife I had stirred up and how much good I have done anyone involved.
Although I struggle with anthropomorphizing about God, I have very commonly envisioned God as standing with folded arms, tapping a foot with an expression that says "how many times, man, how many times, do I have to tell you to stop thinking about what I am and what I want and just do what I tell you?"
My experience is that God does not take vacations and that those times I used to think God was not present were times I didn't want God present to me (in the tomb you go!) or times that, trying to wade through all the theology to find God, my ears were full of second hand notions--religious ideology--about things that it did my condition no good to think about--thinking about things that ended up compromising my condition.
Odysseus, it is written, filled his sailors' ears with wax so they could not be led astray. Filling my own ears with theological wax actually worked the other way around--it made it possible for me to be misled, cut off from my guidance, into relying on what I thought that guidance would say if it could get through.
Micah has an idea about what God not seeming present might be about: He writes:
"It seems from my experience of this process that God periodically removes our training wheels. God gives us the freedom to experience the full possibilities of life in Christ.
This makes sense, doesn't it? As Christians, we believe that God desires us to freely choose relationship with God."
I honestly don't know if that's true, and no one else does, either. It might make sense, if the notional mainstay of Protestantism he describes as something we believe "as Christians" is, indeed, true. But I don't know if that is true. (That's part of the "free will" doctrine that seems as useful to me, spiritually, as the notion of a "free market" seems useful in understanding the real world of economics.) My experience actually cuts the other way, insofar as I can draw conclusions about it from how God treats me. God does not wait around for me to make the choice about being in relationship with God. I am and when I have tried to leave that relationship the "hounds of heaven" pulled me right back home. I cannot speak to the experience of others in this regard--I can only say what I can say.
People I have loved have died. It doesn't do me much good to think about why "God lets that happen." It just does. I can't say why. I can say, though, that that my knowing why (or thinking I do) is way less important than my knowing how to respond to them. As I say, my experience is that God is long on the "how to deal with it" and very short on the "why it's coming down." What I get is really what I need. "Why me, Lord?" is totally beside the question. The question is "What do I do with this, Lord?"
I recall "dry spells" from my younger days. There were times I felt separated from God, but what I feel like is not necessarily what I really am. How many of us have felt fine while a terrible sickness developed in our bodies or while alienation from someone we loved eroded a relationship upon which we relied? And how many times have we known, although we still felt lousy, that we were on the mend, or that although it was still awkward and sometimes difficult a relationship was heading in the right direction? Feeling alienated from God is a feeling--it's not a description of my actual condition.
Those "dark nights of the soul" were times I was hung up trying to reconcile all the orthodox propositions about God so as to "understand" God and figure out what to do. Those were times I thought it was only if I understood the nature, character and plans of God that I could hope to live my life according to God's will.
But that's a thinking error. It's not for me to figure God out. It's for me to hear and obey--even if, perhaps especially if, what I hear doesn't "make sense" in light of all I have been told has been "figured out" about God.
Sometimes I really wish there was a book in the Bible that tried to get this across to me. I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Third Question
This is the last "installment" of my own attempt to answer the three questions posed by Ashley in her blog, A Passionate and Determined Quest for Adequacy.
3. What one thing would you say to people to describe your relationship with Jesus?
The way I relate to Jesus is as a master, like a chess master.
The gospels are about Jesus, placing him at the center of "the good news." I cannot get my mind around the life of Jesus as good news for me if he was "the pre-existing God" or "born God." To say that Jesus "lived a perfect life" doesn't speak to my condition because I am not God. To say that he lived a "perfected life," however, aligns our lives.
This is a notion, of course. It's as speculative to say Jesus was human as it is to say he was God (no matter what the probabilities) because there is no way to know, one way or the other. One can believe, one way or the other. As I have said many times believing things in the realm of spirituality and morality that we can't know is dangerous due to the limitations--lack of data and presence of thinking errors--of rationality.
Where such notions have value to me--and then only when I don't invest in them to the point that I care if anyone else invests in them or not--is when they seem consistent with my own experience. It is notional, speculative, for me to think that such things as God talking to young Samuel in the temple could happen but the story "rings true" with me. That's not because I hold up theological and/or scientific propositions about how a universe would have to work for such a thing to happen. It's because I have had that experience, myself. That makes it seem plausible to me.
The story of Jesus is "the good news" to me because it is the story of a man who, with diligent attention to the leadings and openings of God to him, attained a degree of perfection that demonstrated life that transcended the world we all inhabit, a life he is written to have said "was" and "was coming."
I see that. Not in my head, I don't "understand" it, it doesn't "make sense," or "stand to reason." I mean I see it, around me.
I don't (and can't) know that there is an afterlife. But I know that there is a here and now. And I know, from my experience in it, that if I pay attention to what God is telling me from moment to moment, I am going to be a lot better off--as will those around me. The faith and practice of Jesus, insofar as it is portrayed in the scriptures, is one of a person who spends a lot of time with God, in different ways, and who is always seeking--and following--divine guidance.
Having been dragged to it enough times to have finally figured out that it's easier all around to just walk where I am told to go, I cannot say that I live in that transcendent space that Jesus seems to have occupied. I can say, though, that when I am able to be faithful I catch glimpses of it all around me.
I think about the scene at the river when, it is written, John puts Jesus under. The spirit descended on Jesus (like the form of a dove). I don't know what that means, any more than anyone else does. But I can see it meaning that it marks the perfection of a human being, the attainment of maturity, wholeness and fitness for a particular purpose. From all accounts, accounts being what they are, this was the Perfection of all Perfections, and maybe it was. What it was for Jesus, though, is not as important to me as what it is to me.
For me that is the good news. I am not, nor is anyone else, doomed to a life of depravity, hopeless under the power of sinful states of mind, creating an endless stream of evil that will dog me and everyone around me for the rest of my life, finding relief, perhaps, only after I die. The Protestants are wrong. Fox was right. There is perfection, maturity, wholeness and fitness on this side of the grave.
Or maybe they were both right. God's grace, orthodox Protestantism teaches us, "saves us." I have been taught that God's grace is some kind of a "get out of jail free card" issued for whatever reasons it might please God to issue it--eiher in this life or the next. It certainly has nothing to do with anything I can do.
However, God's grace as I have come to know it is the willingness of God to talk directly to me, to show me the way and to change me. If I will take the hints and submit to the process I will be by some measure saved. Can I make that happen, myself? No, but accepting the grace of God--doing what I am told to do--I can make sure it does.
I will not get to where Jesus got, but I have come nearer than where I started, and I can keep putting that starting place farther behind me. In the dynamic of the faith of Jesus I recognize the outlines of that which has been trying--with uneven success--to bring me along for years.
There is a similar view of Jesus, I have discovered, in the work of Elias Hicks. That doesn't give my notion any more (or less) weight. Mine or his, it's still just speculation. I don't really care if anyone else validates it or not. What matters to me, as I have stressed through answering these three questions is that what matters is my doing what I am told to do, going where I am told to go, and following to where I am led.
But for being moved to answer the first question I might not have ever addressed the other two--and especially not this last.
But, hey--you asked. ;-]
3. What one thing would you say to people to describe your relationship with Jesus?
The way I relate to Jesus is as a master, like a chess master.
The gospels are about Jesus, placing him at the center of "the good news." I cannot get my mind around the life of Jesus as good news for me if he was "the pre-existing God" or "born God." To say that Jesus "lived a perfect life" doesn't speak to my condition because I am not God. To say that he lived a "perfected life," however, aligns our lives.
This is a notion, of course. It's as speculative to say Jesus was human as it is to say he was God (no matter what the probabilities) because there is no way to know, one way or the other. One can believe, one way or the other. As I have said many times believing things in the realm of spirituality and morality that we can't know is dangerous due to the limitations--lack of data and presence of thinking errors--of rationality.
Where such notions have value to me--and then only when I don't invest in them to the point that I care if anyone else invests in them or not--is when they seem consistent with my own experience. It is notional, speculative, for me to think that such things as God talking to young Samuel in the temple could happen but the story "rings true" with me. That's not because I hold up theological and/or scientific propositions about how a universe would have to work for such a thing to happen. It's because I have had that experience, myself. That makes it seem plausible to me.
The story of Jesus is "the good news" to me because it is the story of a man who, with diligent attention to the leadings and openings of God to him, attained a degree of perfection that demonstrated life that transcended the world we all inhabit, a life he is written to have said "was" and "was coming."
I see that. Not in my head, I don't "understand" it, it doesn't "make sense," or "stand to reason." I mean I see it, around me.
I don't (and can't) know that there is an afterlife. But I know that there is a here and now. And I know, from my experience in it, that if I pay attention to what God is telling me from moment to moment, I am going to be a lot better off--as will those around me. The faith and practice of Jesus, insofar as it is portrayed in the scriptures, is one of a person who spends a lot of time with God, in different ways, and who is always seeking--and following--divine guidance.
Having been dragged to it enough times to have finally figured out that it's easier all around to just walk where I am told to go, I cannot say that I live in that transcendent space that Jesus seems to have occupied. I can say, though, that when I am able to be faithful I catch glimpses of it all around me.
I think about the scene at the river when, it is written, John puts Jesus under. The spirit descended on Jesus (like the form of a dove). I don't know what that means, any more than anyone else does. But I can see it meaning that it marks the perfection of a human being, the attainment of maturity, wholeness and fitness for a particular purpose. From all accounts, accounts being what they are, this was the Perfection of all Perfections, and maybe it was. What it was for Jesus, though, is not as important to me as what it is to me.
For me that is the good news. I am not, nor is anyone else, doomed to a life of depravity, hopeless under the power of sinful states of mind, creating an endless stream of evil that will dog me and everyone around me for the rest of my life, finding relief, perhaps, only after I die. The Protestants are wrong. Fox was right. There is perfection, maturity, wholeness and fitness on this side of the grave.
Or maybe they were both right. God's grace, orthodox Protestantism teaches us, "saves us." I have been taught that God's grace is some kind of a "get out of jail free card" issued for whatever reasons it might please God to issue it--eiher in this life or the next. It certainly has nothing to do with anything I can do.
However, God's grace as I have come to know it is the willingness of God to talk directly to me, to show me the way and to change me. If I will take the hints and submit to the process I will be by some measure saved. Can I make that happen, myself? No, but accepting the grace of God--doing what I am told to do--I can make sure it does.
I will not get to where Jesus got, but I have come nearer than where I started, and I can keep putting that starting place farther behind me. In the dynamic of the faith of Jesus I recognize the outlines of that which has been trying--with uneven success--to bring me along for years.
There is a similar view of Jesus, I have discovered, in the work of Elias Hicks. That doesn't give my notion any more (or less) weight. Mine or his, it's still just speculation. I don't really care if anyone else validates it or not. What matters to me, as I have stressed through answering these three questions is that what matters is my doing what I am told to do, going where I am told to go, and following to where I am led.
But for being moved to answer the first question I might not have ever addressed the other two--and especially not this last.
But, hey--you asked. ;-]
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Question Two
I answered the first of the "three questions" addressed by Ashley in her blog post, Jesus and Me. The questions grew from a "homework assignment" that a friend of hers was working on in the course of her participation in the School of the Spirit.
Here is my answer to the second question.
2. Who is Jesus in my life?
This is where things get hard for me to talk about because I don't know whether Jesus is "the same" as Christ.
I hear a lot of people talk about Jesus in the same way I talk about what I have explained I mean by Christ and it's fine with me if people want to do that. As I have said many times, I don't care if people call the intervening agent of authority in their lives The Light, The Spirit, God/Goddess, Christ, Jesus, the Messiah or The Big Kahuna. I don't really care if they see it as an intervening agent--whether "that of God in everyone" is conceptualized as a little piece of God that is some kind of aspect of us that grows on our inside and shapes us or as something in our make-up that "put there" and belonging and responding to God and thereby shaping us.
Don't care. Inney shaping agent or outtey shaping agent--no matter to me.
I care about the shaping.
I have conceived of God (and no God) in a lot of different ways in my life, and have struggled earnestly with myself and others who have conceived of It is the same and different ways from what I was believing, the conceptualization I was holding on to, at that moment.
None of those beliefs and notions has a been of real help in the "conversion of my manners" or "conforming me to Christ"--although some of them have been a real hinderance. Looking back, I can see that "The Work" has proceeded in me, over the years, as I described it in my Answer to Question One, no matter what I believed or didn't believe, although sometimes an episode in my shaping ended with my laying down what I believed before the episode began.
I have reached a point that I prefer to lay down (or, perhaps, lay aside) all "belief," at least all belief about things I have not experienced: all "belief" about where my experience "comes from"--all speculation about the nature and character of God--and all "belief" about where it's taking me (except that which I can see)--all speculation about the purposes of God.
I don't know what to believe about that experience and what's behind it. I do know, though, to have faith in it, to trust it and act on it.
I have never "met" Jesus unless, as I say, Jesus and Christ are the same thing. I can't know that (although I could believe that and have).
For a long time the writings of Lloyd Lee Wilson have been influential on my "beliefs" and I am more comfortable with some of the theology he writes than I am with the works of others, especially the works of theologians long on the more "orthodox" Protestant notions. HIs Pendle HIll Pamphlet (409), "Who Do You Say I Am?" sits easy with me, and I encourage all to read it. This theology "makes sense" to me in light of my experience--his Jesus "explains" my experience, is consistent with it. It accounts for the "known data."
But, again, in the most loving and respectful way, I have to say say that like all belief about the nature, character and plans of the Divine, it can't be shown to be "true"--to the exclusion of other explanations. Is the "known data" all the data about the ineffable? And, most important, my acknowledging it's "truth" has not a condition precedent to the work that has been done and remains to be done in me.
"Who Am I, as a Disciple of Jesus?" is the title for the last section of Friend Wilson's pamphlet. In it he writes: "My faith commitment is to God on the path illuminated for me by Jesus the Messiah." I would not say that (although his choice to use of the word "faith" instead of "belief" is certainly one I would make). I know, though, that he means the same thing by "Jesus the Messiah" as I mean when I say "Christ."
Why is this distinction so important to me?
Equipped with an experiential/experimental Christ, as opposed to a notional Christ/Jesus, it's the difference between listening and thinking--and that is all the difference in the world, all the difference between the world and the kingdom.
I remember the "What Would Jesus Do" query. It invited us, in making moral choices, to consider--to reason from--what we thought Jesus would have done. One cannot do that unless one has some kind of notion--and speculation it cannot help but be--about who Jesus was and what made him tick. That kind of reasoning from theology/speculation has led me into some pretty painful places.
There is no necessity, in my experience, to reason from any set of notions, even from my notions (or anyone's notions) about what Jesus would do, if faced with and particular moral situation.
I have plenty of my own notions about Jesus, though, and I will share at least one of those in my upcoming answer to the Third Question.
Here is my answer to the second question.
2. Who is Jesus in my life?
This is where things get hard for me to talk about because I don't know whether Jesus is "the same" as Christ.
I hear a lot of people talk about Jesus in the same way I talk about what I have explained I mean by Christ and it's fine with me if people want to do that. As I have said many times, I don't care if people call the intervening agent of authority in their lives The Light, The Spirit, God/Goddess, Christ, Jesus, the Messiah or The Big Kahuna. I don't really care if they see it as an intervening agent--whether "that of God in everyone" is conceptualized as a little piece of God that is some kind of aspect of us that grows on our inside and shapes us or as something in our make-up that "put there" and belonging and responding to God and thereby shaping us.
Don't care. Inney shaping agent or outtey shaping agent--no matter to me.
I care about the shaping.
I have conceived of God (and no God) in a lot of different ways in my life, and have struggled earnestly with myself and others who have conceived of It is the same and different ways from what I was believing, the conceptualization I was holding on to, at that moment.
None of those beliefs and notions has a been of real help in the "conversion of my manners" or "conforming me to Christ"--although some of them have been a real hinderance. Looking back, I can see that "The Work" has proceeded in me, over the years, as I described it in my Answer to Question One, no matter what I believed or didn't believe, although sometimes an episode in my shaping ended with my laying down what I believed before the episode began.
I have reached a point that I prefer to lay down (or, perhaps, lay aside) all "belief," at least all belief about things I have not experienced: all "belief" about where my experience "comes from"--all speculation about the nature and character of God--and all "belief" about where it's taking me (except that which I can see)--all speculation about the purposes of God.
I don't know what to believe about that experience and what's behind it. I do know, though, to have faith in it, to trust it and act on it.
I have never "met" Jesus unless, as I say, Jesus and Christ are the same thing. I can't know that (although I could believe that and have).
For a long time the writings of Lloyd Lee Wilson have been influential on my "beliefs" and I am more comfortable with some of the theology he writes than I am with the works of others, especially the works of theologians long on the more "orthodox" Protestant notions. HIs Pendle HIll Pamphlet (409), "Who Do You Say I Am?" sits easy with me, and I encourage all to read it. This theology "makes sense" to me in light of my experience--his Jesus "explains" my experience, is consistent with it. It accounts for the "known data."
But, again, in the most loving and respectful way, I have to say say that like all belief about the nature, character and plans of the Divine, it can't be shown to be "true"--to the exclusion of other explanations. Is the "known data" all the data about the ineffable? And, most important, my acknowledging it's "truth" has not a condition precedent to the work that has been done and remains to be done in me.
"Who Am I, as a Disciple of Jesus?" is the title for the last section of Friend Wilson's pamphlet. In it he writes: "My faith commitment is to God on the path illuminated for me by Jesus the Messiah." I would not say that (although his choice to use of the word "faith" instead of "belief" is certainly one I would make). I know, though, that he means the same thing by "Jesus the Messiah" as I mean when I say "Christ."
Why is this distinction so important to me?
Equipped with an experiential/experimental Christ, as opposed to a notional Christ/Jesus, it's the difference between listening and thinking--and that is all the difference in the world, all the difference between the world and the kingdom.
I remember the "What Would Jesus Do" query. It invited us, in making moral choices, to consider--to reason from--what we thought Jesus would have done. One cannot do that unless one has some kind of notion--and speculation it cannot help but be--about who Jesus was and what made him tick. That kind of reasoning from theology/speculation has led me into some pretty painful places.
There is no necessity, in my experience, to reason from any set of notions, even from my notions (or anyone's notions) about what Jesus would do, if faced with and particular moral situation.
I have plenty of my own notions about Jesus, though, and I will share at least one of those in my upcoming answer to the Third Question.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Addressing a comment to my last post ...
Jay asked, in a comment to my last post:
"Please tell me how you discern Christ's voice from that of your conscience. How does it sound different to you?"
Way too long an answer for that little comment box, so I will address here it before moving on to questions 2 and 3.
I am not so certain about what conscience is.
I look at it as a part of my cultural conditioning that governs morals and ethics, as an orientation within the social, political and religious consensus in which I live. The abstraction I call "conscience" seems to work to keep me within that consensus when I am tempted or urged to act outside of it.
The culture that conditions conscience is the collection of norms a group has adopted to accomplish the universal activities that fulfill human needs. Eating, staying warm, reproducing and resolving disputes are examples of these universal activities. Everyone, everywhere, at all times, has done these things in an amazing array of ways. Conscience is the part of those norms, in a given time and place, that focuses on moral and ethical behavior.
Such consensus, and therefore conscience, always contains exceptions to its rules and, along with flexibility necessary to meet complex situations, these exceptions create the possibility for rationalizing in the matter of morality. That makes conscience vulnerable to sinful states of mind (greed, anger, pride, lust and so on) and an actual accomplice in breaking through its own moral limitations. After all, for every cliche--or love song--that we can hang our hat on as we make a decision, there is another that counsels us to do exactly the opposite. In other words, we can corrupt conscience, or allow others, especially authority figures, to corrupt it for us.
Conscience is also vulnerable to the limitations of the group's knowledge. Even in the most loving states of mind our moral and ethical direction from our conscience can bring us to a bad end for lack of data or information that, if we had the benefit of its possession, we might have been able to choose better. Notions about race and sex and sexual orientation are examples of how conscience is misled, even sometimes without malice, by the definition of "reality" that exists--or is accepted--by a group.
It seems helpful, to me, to think of conscience a belonging to to realm of "the powers"--those institutions--including religion--that are said in some theologies to hold the world together in its fallen condition. (I realize that sentence is packed with notions--all theologies are--but it may (or may not) help communicate how I think about conscience. I certainly do not lean on that--or any other--theology to add validity to what I am saying, just to illustrate it).
My discernment allows Christ to push conscience aside (Christ has defeated the powers, it is written) and leads me to act outside of the consensus of my cultural conditioning (there is one, in effect, that can speak to my conditioning), or to do things included within that consensus but not taken seriously by most of its members.
So, with that said, discerning Christ's "voice" from that of my conscience seems to be a function of three things: the amount of pressure brought to bear on me by the visitation, persistance of that pressure and my experience with Christ and the various other "voices" out there, in the past.
When confronted by a choice, or when I start hearing myself taken to task about something, I know it's Christ when the amount of discomfort or suffering associated with the confrontation causes me is great and becomes greater over time.
The second hall mark of a "visitation" is its persistence. If one of my normal rationalizations or a countervailing cliche does not cause the pressure to dissipate then it's probably Christ. (Sometimes my powers of rationalization have been able to dismiss Christ, but only temporarily. I can crucify Christ, sometimes, and lock It in the tomb of my heart, but when it's Christ I am dealing with I soon hear the rock rolling aside and know that It's back.)
The third discerning factor is my experience. As scary, and humbling, as it has been, at times, following high pressure, persistent urgings has led to good outcomes for me, not only in regard to the situation at hand but also improving my overall condition and ability to function in the future. Like others, I have seen my condition portrayed in the Bible, and elsewhere. For me seeing the Fruits of the Spirit, described in Galatians 5, is validation of good discernment. The five testimonies, a restatement of those Fruits, is another set of benchmarks--as is being led to those green pastures and still waters, notwithstanding what I had to go through to get there.
If I am being visited about something that sounds familiar--something about which I have been visited in the past (shocking that there should be backsliding, I know) or something similar to the subject of a previous visitation then it's easy for me to discern who it is knocking on my spiritual chamber door.
This thing about conscience, though, becomes difficult for me, at this point. I begin to suspect that "mere conscience"--as a pure manifestation of cultural conditioning and a product of secular or religious (second hand) reasoning--is changed, or shaped or conformed or made peculiar when I respond to Christ's visitation. Perhaps it's just that conscience is an abstraction, but the accumulation of wisdom from Christ's leadings and that from conscience seem to have less a bright line boundary than once they did. Again, that may be because in reality there is no such "thing" as a conscience, it's just a notion. It may also be helpful, though, to conceptualize the "conscience" as changed by visitation and so no longer representing just the conditioning by one's culture but, rather, a conditioning--a transformation--by God or Christ or the Holy Spirit. The conscience may, then, become a vehicle for transmission of Christ's wisdom rather than just the wisdom of this group of people, at this time, in this place.
I seem to recall that in the literature of early Quakers the clear communication that The Light was not conscience (which seemed to be cast as a function of reason in Enlightenment thinking). But I think that alongside that clear distinction between the Light and conscience was that idea, in some writings, that The Light could inform conscience as I speculate, here, that it might.
The short answer to your question is that if what I hear makes me uncomfortable enough, and lasts long enough, then I discern it to be Christ and follow it. I can't recall a time when, dragged around like that, it turned out not to be.
In addition, I strongly suspect it's Christ when I am hearing, again, about something I've been called on, before, and, in dealing with it, previously, my condition was improved.
"Please tell me how you discern Christ's voice from that of your conscience. How does it sound different to you?"
Way too long an answer for that little comment box, so I will address here it before moving on to questions 2 and 3.
I am not so certain about what conscience is.
I look at it as a part of my cultural conditioning that governs morals and ethics, as an orientation within the social, political and religious consensus in which I live. The abstraction I call "conscience" seems to work to keep me within that consensus when I am tempted or urged to act outside of it.
The culture that conditions conscience is the collection of norms a group has adopted to accomplish the universal activities that fulfill human needs. Eating, staying warm, reproducing and resolving disputes are examples of these universal activities. Everyone, everywhere, at all times, has done these things in an amazing array of ways. Conscience is the part of those norms, in a given time and place, that focuses on moral and ethical behavior.
Such consensus, and therefore conscience, always contains exceptions to its rules and, along with flexibility necessary to meet complex situations, these exceptions create the possibility for rationalizing in the matter of morality. That makes conscience vulnerable to sinful states of mind (greed, anger, pride, lust and so on) and an actual accomplice in breaking through its own moral limitations. After all, for every cliche--or love song--that we can hang our hat on as we make a decision, there is another that counsels us to do exactly the opposite. In other words, we can corrupt conscience, or allow others, especially authority figures, to corrupt it for us.
Conscience is also vulnerable to the limitations of the group's knowledge. Even in the most loving states of mind our moral and ethical direction from our conscience can bring us to a bad end for lack of data or information that, if we had the benefit of its possession, we might have been able to choose better. Notions about race and sex and sexual orientation are examples of how conscience is misled, even sometimes without malice, by the definition of "reality" that exists--or is accepted--by a group.
It seems helpful, to me, to think of conscience a belonging to to realm of "the powers"--those institutions--including religion--that are said in some theologies to hold the world together in its fallen condition. (I realize that sentence is packed with notions--all theologies are--but it may (or may not) help communicate how I think about conscience. I certainly do not lean on that--or any other--theology to add validity to what I am saying, just to illustrate it).
My discernment allows Christ to push conscience aside (Christ has defeated the powers, it is written) and leads me to act outside of the consensus of my cultural conditioning (there is one, in effect, that can speak to my conditioning), or to do things included within that consensus but not taken seriously by most of its members.
So, with that said, discerning Christ's "voice" from that of my conscience seems to be a function of three things: the amount of pressure brought to bear on me by the visitation, persistance of that pressure and my experience with Christ and the various other "voices" out there, in the past.
When confronted by a choice, or when I start hearing myself taken to task about something, I know it's Christ when the amount of discomfort or suffering associated with the confrontation causes me is great and becomes greater over time.
The second hall mark of a "visitation" is its persistence. If one of my normal rationalizations or a countervailing cliche does not cause the pressure to dissipate then it's probably Christ. (Sometimes my powers of rationalization have been able to dismiss Christ, but only temporarily. I can crucify Christ, sometimes, and lock It in the tomb of my heart, but when it's Christ I am dealing with I soon hear the rock rolling aside and know that It's back.)
The third discerning factor is my experience. As scary, and humbling, as it has been, at times, following high pressure, persistent urgings has led to good outcomes for me, not only in regard to the situation at hand but also improving my overall condition and ability to function in the future. Like others, I have seen my condition portrayed in the Bible, and elsewhere. For me seeing the Fruits of the Spirit, described in Galatians 5, is validation of good discernment. The five testimonies, a restatement of those Fruits, is another set of benchmarks--as is being led to those green pastures and still waters, notwithstanding what I had to go through to get there.
If I am being visited about something that sounds familiar--something about which I have been visited in the past (shocking that there should be backsliding, I know) or something similar to the subject of a previous visitation then it's easy for me to discern who it is knocking on my spiritual chamber door.
This thing about conscience, though, becomes difficult for me, at this point. I begin to suspect that "mere conscience"--as a pure manifestation of cultural conditioning and a product of secular or religious (second hand) reasoning--is changed, or shaped or conformed or made peculiar when I respond to Christ's visitation. Perhaps it's just that conscience is an abstraction, but the accumulation of wisdom from Christ's leadings and that from conscience seem to have less a bright line boundary than once they did. Again, that may be because in reality there is no such "thing" as a conscience, it's just a notion. It may also be helpful, though, to conceptualize the "conscience" as changed by visitation and so no longer representing just the conditioning by one's culture but, rather, a conditioning--a transformation--by God or Christ or the Holy Spirit. The conscience may, then, become a vehicle for transmission of Christ's wisdom rather than just the wisdom of this group of people, at this time, in this place.
I seem to recall that in the literature of early Quakers the clear communication that The Light was not conscience (which seemed to be cast as a function of reason in Enlightenment thinking). But I think that alongside that clear distinction between the Light and conscience was that idea, in some writings, that The Light could inform conscience as I speculate, here, that it might.
I dunno about that, though. And I don't think it's all that important, one way or another. What is important is that I behave myself. As the masthead of this blog indicates, the purpose of religion/spirituality--its sum and substance--for me is improvement of the moral condition (specifically, my own), and therefore the moral behavior, of human beings.
The short answer to your question is that if what I hear makes me uncomfortable enough, and lasts long enough, then I discern it to be Christ and follow it. I can't recall a time when, dragged around like that, it turned out not to be.
In addition, I strongly suspect it's Christ when I am hearing, again, about something I've been called on, before, and, in dealing with it, previously, my condition was improved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)