A History of God: Thoughts so far
Based on a recommendation from my friend Cuyler, I started reading A History of God (by Karen Armstrong) this week. Past being completely floored by her credentials and impressed by the sheer amount of information that she has crammed into the volume, I am already sure that it is going to give me a lot to think about. For a person like me, a book like this would make me create a blog like [Opinionated Spiritual Commentary], if it didn't exist already.
While I'm not even done with the first chapter it has already touched on one of the things that bothers me so badly about the modern mentality that seems to permeate theistic religion. To avoid creating yet another immense treatise on the subject itself, I'll try and be brief as I have a bit more reading to do before I get back to "work."
If you read this blog often, it may seem to you like I "attack" Christianity a lot. I know attack is a strong word, but there aren't may other ways to convey the opposing and skeptic views I have in comparison to the established orthodoxy. What I'm coming to understand about my viewpoint is that it requires what Christianity (and other religions) cannot: possibilities.
What I continue to hear from the pulpit and general scholarly types is the intellectual surety of a theological certainty - that there is a God, "he" is made of up of three personae, created the world in seven days, and inspired the books of the Bible through predestined folks. All of this is a given to them; it is a very abridged version of the "truth" that they hold in their hearts as they conduct their daily lives, and a reference of the words they use to proselytize and inspire modern people toward whatever end ad nauseum. After re-reading this, I think it sounds a bit pessimistic, but there you are.
What I think people, as a whole, require are options. By taking away choices (or at least the illusion of choice) you inch attitudes closer and closer to rebellion, as evidences quite a few times in the history of mankind. I don't want to be prophetic by predicting that a religious revolution is coming (or moot by saying that one is already here) but I do think that modernity has become a combating force against the surety that religions like Christianity once held as their prime directive. People are still certain they have the truth, of course, but others are seeing more and more that there is a possibility that they do not.
In religion, as well as everything in our daily lives, there is the possibility that we are not getting the whole story. There is no greater example of a one-sided story than early Christianity when viewed from the perspective of Hebrews circa 30-40 CE, when it became (to most) a certainty that the foretold savior had come. Possibilities were laid to rest and continue to be scratched out even today, two thousand years later.
It doesn't look like I'm able to avoid creating a treatise on this (or sounding "down" on Christianity) but I hope my intent comes through. I don't like being put in a box of certainty; I don't like relying on the incomplete stories and inexperiences of others when being told that "eternity" is on the line. I'm not afraid of commitment - I just think it matters more than making a considerably hasty decision before all of the information can be reviewed. The ignorance of possibilities is nearly staggering to me at every turn and with every new thing I read and hear.
Or, at least, that's the way I view it today. You are more than welcome to disagree.
While I'm not even done with the first chapter it has already touched on one of the things that bothers me so badly about the modern mentality that seems to permeate theistic religion. To avoid creating yet another immense treatise on the subject itself, I'll try and be brief as I have a bit more reading to do before I get back to "work."
If you read this blog often, it may seem to you like I "attack" Christianity a lot. I know attack is a strong word, but there aren't may other ways to convey the opposing and skeptic views I have in comparison to the established orthodoxy. What I'm coming to understand about my viewpoint is that it requires what Christianity (and other religions) cannot: possibilities.
What I continue to hear from the pulpit and general scholarly types is the intellectual surety of a theological certainty - that there is a God, "he" is made of up of three personae, created the world in seven days, and inspired the books of the Bible through predestined folks. All of this is a given to them; it is a very abridged version of the "truth" that they hold in their hearts as they conduct their daily lives, and a reference of the words they use to proselytize and inspire modern people toward whatever end ad nauseum. After re-reading this, I think it sounds a bit pessimistic, but there you are.
What I think people, as a whole, require are options. By taking away choices (or at least the illusion of choice) you inch attitudes closer and closer to rebellion, as evidences quite a few times in the history of mankind. I don't want to be prophetic by predicting that a religious revolution is coming (or moot by saying that one is already here) but I do think that modernity has become a combating force against the surety that religions like Christianity once held as their prime directive. People are still certain they have the truth, of course, but others are seeing more and more that there is a possibility that they do not.
In religion, as well as everything in our daily lives, there is the possibility that we are not getting the whole story. There is no greater example of a one-sided story than early Christianity when viewed from the perspective of Hebrews circa 30-40 CE, when it became (to most) a certainty that the foretold savior had come. Possibilities were laid to rest and continue to be scratched out even today, two thousand years later.
It doesn't look like I'm able to avoid creating a treatise on this (or sounding "down" on Christianity) but I hope my intent comes through. I don't like being put in a box of certainty; I don't like relying on the incomplete stories and inexperiences of others when being told that "eternity" is on the line. I'm not afraid of commitment - I just think it matters more than making a considerably hasty decision before all of the information can be reviewed. The ignorance of possibilities is nearly staggering to me at every turn and with every new thing I read and hear.
Or, at least, that's the way I view it today. You are more than welcome to disagree.
Labels: a history of god, certainty, possibilities
posted by Todd Newton at 13:38
3 Comments:
i'm way too tired to coherently respond to your (what should actually be a) treatise, but that's a moo point. you know...a cow's point of view.
however, i recently had a philisophically intense conversation revolving around this naive young CCU chap commenting, "If you're not one thing, then you're the other...". FALSE. i don't buy into the argument of a neccesary equal-or-opposite. that being said, what major immpossibity do you see christianity requiring? (do i even need to define christianity as "christ-following"?)
we can start there...
The "impossibility" is the validity of other attitudes and faiths. Christianity (read: not Christians, themselves, but the "establishment," if there is such an amalgamous thingy that can be referred to as such) elbows out the possibility of rightness anywhere other than itself and uses out-of-context Bible verses to do so with a very elitist and exclusionary point of view.
The basic premise that "if you don't believe these things exactly then you are crap unless you, by some questionable circumstance, come to believe them in the future while I'm treating you like crap from now till then" tends to turn me off.
Again I'm talking about the "group" here, not the individual people, unless of course you count the mouthpiece of the group as an individual person, in which case they have to be singled out at some point by the group who doesn't in truth believe in what they're spewing (which I don't see happening anytime soon at CCCC).
i'm not sure if i said this, but if i didn't, you'll probably find the section(s) devoted to islam endlessly fascinating. i did. it boggles my mind that here i am, 2000 years after muhammad drawing similar conclusions he did in virtually disparate cultures.
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