And so we speak of this again.
Jul. 30th, 2009 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgHi, I believe in God. Sorry, can't help it. Most of the time I feel pretty much ignored or abandoned by God, but - can't deny it. Keep getting reminded there's Something that keeps coming to visit me, and there's no other explanation.
So.
Why not accept there are Good ways to take a hint, and Bad ones?
I'm also a Christian...but I don't hear "Jesus Christ Was A Person and that's who you gotta know to get in," but "Jesus Christ is God, there's something to that and once you know, you're in and that's that." God forgives, we're the ones who want to make sure there are rules in the first place. (It's lazy work to qualify your faith by deciding other people don't qualify. You're not in because someone else is out, sorry - thanks for playing.)
So.
The FL has coughed up some wonderful links for the day - read, enjoy - and your mileage may vary:
...It is a sad thing, because we know that there is a brand of Christianity that is better than the widely-practiced, widely-publicized brand of Christianity that is ethnocentric, anti-scientific, homophobic, imperialistic, defensive, condemning, rejecting, and afraid. We know that a different Christianity exists. We know that there are followers of Jesus who are open-minded, well-educated, and accepting. We know that there are followers of Jesus who are spiritually mature, intellectually honest and psychologically savvy. We know that there are followers of Jesus who guard against unfair stereotypes and who attempt to check their ungenerous judgments and who work to eliminate prejudice in their own minds and wherever else they see it.
But there are hosts of people outside of Christianity who do not know that, because people who practice Christian spirituality with spirits and brains and souls fully engaged have sadly become the Christian minority. And when many people think of "Christian" or "church," they often do so with pejorative overtones because the Christianity that is most widely-practiced and mostly widely-publicized is the brand of Christianity that smacks of religious fundamentalism and adheres to the impossible agenda of Biblical inerrancy.
(BTW, the kind of Christianity I grew up with? The well-educated, accepting, loving kind. It was only when I got into my teens and older that the crazy showed up and wanted me to join THEIR church. Yanno, the RIGHT one. Didn't then. Won't now. Got my God already, see? WAAAAA - *slaps self*)
This is so important, I can't tell you. We do exist. We just don't run for office, build huge edifices that turn equally large profits (and require credit checks if you want in), scream in your face and condemn you if you make our status quo uncomfortable.
...In fact, most major religions encourage exactly that. I find I am in a constant swoon of giddy amazement at this universal phenomenon, the fabulous, hubris-loaded idea that God is not actually an unfathomable river of cosmic energy to be supped from like liquid light, while you still take complete responsibility for your own life and choices. Nor is God simply the idea of universal love and compassion, coursing through all things at all times everywhere. How silly to think.
No, God is, apparently, actually far more like some sort of heavyset, hectoring grandmother who reads your email and pokes through your underwear drawer and hates your girlfriend and is, for the most part, very, very disappointed in you. Great!
Really, it almost does not matter in which God you believe, what sect or major denomination. Nearly all are of the same idea, offer up the same unquestionable truth: Of course God cares what you do, who you screw, upon which sliver of dust-choked holy land you live, how high you raise your flag and which statue you kneel before. This is the greatest wonder of all: In the impossible vastness of time and space, God cares most desperately, most fanatically about this particular swirling blue dot of inconsequential dust we call home. Hey, we invented God, right? We can do with Him whatever we want.
We know this not to be the case. You ask God for wisdom, patience...and my favorite - "Here, I haven't got a CLUE how this is going to work out and I gotta sleep. You take it for the night."
I always take it back up in the morning, and take it on faith everything will go how it must. I'm still here, aren't I? No, God did not give me a Mercedes-Benz. I'm good.
These days, I see a lot of people just throw their figurative hands in the air and give it all up. NOTHING makes more sense than NOTHING - this is all a bunch of bull!
Except I keep getting visited. *shuffles* Um, well. Nothing doesn't exactly work, either.
We didn't invent God - we just tried to write the documentation, with mixed results. Buddhism is very useful in conjunction with Christianity (yes, they DO cohabitate VERY well) - they share the concept of divest, divest, divest - to a point. Strip the bullshit away and get down to the heart of things. Today's burnt toast will be a faint memory and then be gone before you know it - so why not drop it now? What lasts? What will remain constant? (The Buddhists will tell you nothing...the Christians will say you - well, your spiritual you at least, call it what you will. SOUL.) So take the 'documentation' for what it is - consider the source - and move on.
Want to know what that looks like? Just change a few words...and this fits nicely. OMG TEY AIN'T - nevermind. It's valid.
Scary? Oh, get over it. PSSST - lemme tell you a secret. You know all those prayers?
They're all going to the same place. The documentation is only as good as the very fallible people who tried to get it down.
Religious wounding takes place at an intersection. It takes place at the intersection of faulty religious teaching and incipient human unfolding. At every stage and juncture of life, we humans are in the process of unfolding. And if we're truly alive, then there is always some new part of us longing for expression. When that tender new growth collides with faulty religious teaching, and when that new growth is therefore destroyed or squelched or snuffed out or damaged or broken, a wound is often the result. And that wound can be very deep and burdensome and even paralyzing. All we really want as we unfold is for those around us to nurture our growth and to love us and hold us. So when religious teaching thwarts growth instead of promoting it, when it steps on human blooming instead of tenderly nurturing it, it is traumatic and injurious to people. Now, time today does not permit that I treat the topic of religious wounding with sufficient breadth and depth. I'll be taking it up in some detail in future blogs.
Oh, I'm looking forward to it.
So.
Why not accept there are Good ways to take a hint, and Bad ones?
I'm also a Christian...but I don't hear "Jesus Christ Was A Person and that's who you gotta know to get in," but "Jesus Christ is God, there's something to that and once you know, you're in and that's that." God forgives, we're the ones who want to make sure there are rules in the first place. (It's lazy work to qualify your faith by deciding other people don't qualify. You're not in because someone else is out, sorry - thanks for playing.)
So.
The FL has coughed up some wonderful links for the day - read, enjoy - and your mileage may vary:
...It is a sad thing, because we know that there is a brand of Christianity that is better than the widely-practiced, widely-publicized brand of Christianity that is ethnocentric, anti-scientific, homophobic, imperialistic, defensive, condemning, rejecting, and afraid. We know that a different Christianity exists. We know that there are followers of Jesus who are open-minded, well-educated, and accepting. We know that there are followers of Jesus who are spiritually mature, intellectually honest and psychologically savvy. We know that there are followers of Jesus who guard against unfair stereotypes and who attempt to check their ungenerous judgments and who work to eliminate prejudice in their own minds and wherever else they see it.
But there are hosts of people outside of Christianity who do not know that, because people who practice Christian spirituality with spirits and brains and souls fully engaged have sadly become the Christian minority. And when many people think of "Christian" or "church," they often do so with pejorative overtones because the Christianity that is most widely-practiced and mostly widely-publicized is the brand of Christianity that smacks of religious fundamentalism and adheres to the impossible agenda of Biblical inerrancy.
(BTW, the kind of Christianity I grew up with? The well-educated, accepting, loving kind. It was only when I got into my teens and older that the crazy showed up and wanted me to join THEIR church. Yanno, the RIGHT one. Didn't then. Won't now. Got my God already, see? WAAAAA - *slaps self*)
This is so important, I can't tell you. We do exist. We just don't run for office, build huge edifices that turn equally large profits (and require credit checks if you want in), scream in your face and condemn you if you make our status quo uncomfortable.
...In fact, most major religions encourage exactly that. I find I am in a constant swoon of giddy amazement at this universal phenomenon, the fabulous, hubris-loaded idea that God is not actually an unfathomable river of cosmic energy to be supped from like liquid light, while you still take complete responsibility for your own life and choices. Nor is God simply the idea of universal love and compassion, coursing through all things at all times everywhere. How silly to think.
No, God is, apparently, actually far more like some sort of heavyset, hectoring grandmother who reads your email and pokes through your underwear drawer and hates your girlfriend and is, for the most part, very, very disappointed in you. Great!
Really, it almost does not matter in which God you believe, what sect or major denomination. Nearly all are of the same idea, offer up the same unquestionable truth: Of course God cares what you do, who you screw, upon which sliver of dust-choked holy land you live, how high you raise your flag and which statue you kneel before. This is the greatest wonder of all: In the impossible vastness of time and space, God cares most desperately, most fanatically about this particular swirling blue dot of inconsequential dust we call home. Hey, we invented God, right? We can do with Him whatever we want.
We know this not to be the case. You ask God for wisdom, patience...and my favorite - "Here, I haven't got a CLUE how this is going to work out and I gotta sleep. You take it for the night."
I always take it back up in the morning, and take it on faith everything will go how it must. I'm still here, aren't I? No, God did not give me a Mercedes-Benz. I'm good.
These days, I see a lot of people just throw their figurative hands in the air and give it all up. NOTHING makes more sense than NOTHING - this is all a bunch of bull!
Except I keep getting visited. *shuffles* Um, well. Nothing doesn't exactly work, either.
We didn't invent God - we just tried to write the documentation, with mixed results. Buddhism is very useful in conjunction with Christianity (yes, they DO cohabitate VERY well) - they share the concept of divest, divest, divest - to a point. Strip the bullshit away and get down to the heart of things. Today's burnt toast will be a faint memory and then be gone before you know it - so why not drop it now? What lasts? What will remain constant? (The Buddhists will tell you nothing...the Christians will say you - well, your spiritual you at least, call it what you will. SOUL.) So take the 'documentation' for what it is - consider the source - and move on.
Want to know what that looks like? Just change a few words...and this fits nicely. OMG TEY AIN'T - nevermind. It's valid.
Scary? Oh, get over it. PSSST - lemme tell you a secret. You know all those prayers?
They're all going to the same place. The documentation is only as good as the very fallible people who tried to get it down.
Religious wounding takes place at an intersection. It takes place at the intersection of faulty religious teaching and incipient human unfolding. At every stage and juncture of life, we humans are in the process of unfolding. And if we're truly alive, then there is always some new part of us longing for expression. When that tender new growth collides with faulty religious teaching, and when that new growth is therefore destroyed or squelched or snuffed out or damaged or broken, a wound is often the result. And that wound can be very deep and burdensome and even paralyzing. All we really want as we unfold is for those around us to nurture our growth and to love us and hold us. So when religious teaching thwarts growth instead of promoting it, when it steps on human blooming instead of tenderly nurturing it, it is traumatic and injurious to people. Now, time today does not permit that I treat the topic of religious wounding with sufficient breadth and depth. I'll be taking it up in some detail in future blogs.
Oh, I'm looking forward to it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-30 06:47 pm (UTC)Umm... y'know... it COULD be said that your soul does not remain constant either... otherwise, what you have lived is something stagnant and unlearning.
Even in Christianity, there is learning involved... or there ought to be... from my POV.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-30 06:59 pm (UTC)This is a big part of why I left church. The folks who were strongest and most confident in their faith were the ones who didn't much care for them uppity wimmins an' gays an' brown folks, while the well-educated, accepting church I grew up in was only accepting as long as you carried a $300 handbag. I just couldn't deal with either camp anymore.
It didn't destroy my belief in a higher power, but it did push me away from the trappings surrounding that belief.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-30 07:22 pm (UTC)Of course, I'd grown up with Buddhist doctrine, where the material world is basically a game with infinite continues until you attained Nirvana.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-30 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-30 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 12:22 am (UTC)Their students, on the other hand...
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 04:34 am (UTC)I very much like that description, "river of comic energy". That makes sense to me.
I wish I coudl be more charitable about those painfully pinched-looking folks who need the defense of a Bible that is infallible and arguments which allow them to be spiteful, hateful, and murderous to their fellow man with the approval of their own hierarchy. I do understand they are struggling with painful limitations and wounds from their own history of hateful religious teachings. If you poke them, you learn they are terribly fearful of the least little things jumping at them outta the metaphorical bushes, and they really seem to think Satan is much stronger in their lives than their much-ballyhooed old white guy in a sheet. But it's easy for me, in my privilege to be patronizing, too. It's easy for me, as a person who tolerates the very limiting style of our current educational straitjackets, to "know better", to have gone to classes, to have been rewarded for doing well at it.
Not everybody's that lucky.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 11:39 pm (UTC)