Trev commented on worship music in response to Jon's post on exotheism. I'll add something tangential here.
How much of worship music ends up being an emotional high seeking to fill an emotional void, I don't really know anymore. Sometimes jumping on that boat is a fun ride, sometimes it ends up falling flat. Something about those three-chord songs with fourteen words.
Background to the comment: People (maybe it was at stupidchurchpeople.com) have talked about that sort of emotional manipulation being so easy in kids, with all the insecurity that naturally goes with being a kid - of course there's a void there. And they promise that Jesus will fill the void. My suspicion is that everybody's still got the same void, to some extent, in some way.
Background 2: I hung out with Pentecostal people in college, played guitar/bass on the worship team, got saved (yes, I was raised Catholic), was on fire for Jesus, was on the leadership team, listened obsessively to Christian music, the whole nine yards.
Other comment: I also feel that God-as-separate is an integral part of Christian teaching. (I want to acknowledge that I'm addressing my impression, not whether it is deliberate or whether it is technically part of church belief or whether it's historically integral.) Also, there's a perception that being theologically educated makes one closer to God, or able to be closer to God, than those not theologically educated. That perception stands on the assumption that knowing about what people say about God is as good as knowing God himself. But that's part of a bigger trend.
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I believe it to be very dangerous to incorporate an unexplainable entity as 'God' into our daily lifes. Why should we be guided by something that normally we should we fear? As far as christian literature (bible, clerical texts, songs, ...) is concerned, the one thing I've learned from them is that God is forgiving towards those following his path (who can live like Jezus? Really ... ?) but menacing towards those who oppose him (if correctly understood: those not living like Jezus = you & me!).
If the equation correctly made: I should embrace my life by a higher power that actually "hates" me and wants to punish me? Hmm ...
Constantine convened the Council of Nicea for more than one purpose. The purpose you read about is the unification of diverse Christian factions and beliefs into an orthodoxy. From that meeting sprang the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. The ulterior purpose was to put God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in Heaven and Heaven as far away from normal everyday human existence as possible. Constantine didn't want the Church, or God or Jesus interfering with his rule politically, so he got the council to distance human affairs from spiritual affairs. The bishops wanted their beliefs upheld in order to marginalize the gnostics. Early Christianity was quite diverse and dividing them into Orthodox and Gnostics is an oversimplication, but you can see that the Orthodox faction won early on. All of this can be seen as men interpreting spiritual truth that they do not understand and warping it into a religion for their own ends. Maybe it was inevitable that it happened this way. Perhaps it could only have happened as it did. What seems bad may have been the greater good, because the Church preserved a lot of knowledge that otherwise would have been lost. But people are always doing that. They have a dream, a belief, or a revelation, or epiphany and then they try to make sense out of it. Sometimes the experience is far greater than the analysis or explanation of it.Sometimes people complicate and hide in plain sight what is the simplest and easiest explanation for what they see or experience. How else to make something that everyone has access to accessible to a select, chosen, privileged few. This is one way people attain power. They make the other people think they are powerless, when the opposite is the case. As far as emotions and such. Emotions will ripple through a crowd faster than mere thought. All it takes is the right word or action and the crowd is uplifted in joy or descends into mindlessness. Emotions connect us whether we wish to acknowledge that or not. One could say that it's part of our evolution. After all, lookouts uttering a warning will cause the group to flee in panic from the predator or attack the predator should they be thinking social animals like us. The latter argument is an oversimplication, but it's accurate in it's own right. It may not completely describe the feeling of fellowship people have when they come together, but it may help people understand a little of why they do what they do.
As far as Bert's comment: The "God" he's talking about is the Old Testament God which is a God of the Mind, a God of a War Mythology. The God of the New Testament is a God of Love. Jesus and his wisdom have much in common with Buddha and his teachings. How else to explain the execution of a philosopher whose teachings undermined the Roman and Jewish States. Remember that there was no separation of church and state at this time. The Roman Emperor was a god. Romans didn't kill philosophers unless their teachings were seen as a threat.
Wow, Julie, you get comments that are longer than your original post! :-)
Funny, I can sing the hymns at a Methodist church because it's possible to interpret them with a Christian mysticism slant. But I can't sing the hymns at a Unitarian Universalist church because they're so entirely literal and not open to interpretation. The ones at the UU church actually feel more like propaganda.
Anyway, I thought JB Moore's comment about evolution was right on. And it reminded me: I'm reading a book that you might like. It was in the New Books section at the library, copyright April 2007. "Evolution for Everyone - How Darwin's Theory Can Change The Way We Look At Our Lives" by David Sloan Wilson.
The book compares findings in science, regarding evolution, with human behavior. This was never done much at all until recently; we have such resistence to thinking of our specific behaviors in evolutionary terms and want to think our species is special and somehow separate. But over and over again the book has startled me, and it has certainly given me new ways of looking at people in the mall or thinking about the fundamentalist friend who just forwarded that obnoxious political email rant. :-)
I'm on chapter 20, halfway through the book (short chapters), and feel like I've gotten quite an education.
Julie:
First off, let me say that I absolutely loathe so-called "praise and worship" music, with its insipid lyrics, simplistic and unoriginal stylings, and trite theology. I think that when we sing such stuff, we fail in our first duty of worship, which is to offer God our best.
However, having said that, I do think it entirely possible that such music is indeed the best that some people have to offer. This kind of music is appropriate for young children; the trouble is when our churches fail utterly to take adults beyond a childish (not childlike!) faith...in other words, to move from exotheism to esotheism.
As far as God being separate...yes, that's an integral part of Christian teaching. But so is God as not-separate. Again, the trouble is that, developmentally, most people never get there! I was in my mid-twenties before I found out about this aspect of Christianity. However, a lot of people just miss it altogether, and so they go looking in Eastern religions for what really has been a part of Christianity all along. Not saying those teachings aren't a part of Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., as well...however, my understanding is that in Asia, among most people, those religions are just as exotheistic as Christianity is here; it's not as if Asia is a raving hotbed of enlightenment and nonduality while those of us over here sit around singing praise choruses all day! ALL religions have the responsibility of moving their adherents developmentally toward God; all of them have basically neglected this responsibility.
I don't actually buy the "Old Testament God = EVIL, New Testament God = GOOD" argument, either. For one, that was a heresy called Marcionism which was refuted early on in the church's life. For another, it just seems incredibly insulting to Judaism, doesn't it? ("Sorry, your God is actually vicious and tribal and basically evil!") As a Christian, I do think the NT illumines the OT in some important ways, and I think the writers of the NT were developmentally farther along in certain aspects of their understanding of God--but those aspects are entirely due to their grounding in Judaism! Compare ancient Judaism to other religions of its day and you'll see how amazingly, revolutionarily progressive it was for its time, both in its understanding of God and (consequently) its understanding of human rights.
Well, this comment is getting long, too. I'd wanted to mention Constantine, but for now all I can say is that the human desire for power has something to do with it, but not all.
Thanks for a wonderful post!
Joseph Campbell noted that the OT God was rooted in a warrior mythos (it wasn't labeled evil). The Hebrews were nomadic tribesmen and they attacked cities where people had settled the land before them. That's in the OT. Also, in the OT, God does want to be feared in some passages. I'm not saying that Judaism and its understanding of God hasn't evolved as Christianity and other religions, it has. The Judaism of today is not the Judaism of 2,000 years ago.
With almost all religions, their beliefs are usually not to be questioned. Douglas Adams pointed out that beliefs are just ideas and should be tested via scientific method and not held above scrutiny. Even Buddhism which is one of the most peaceful and enlightened teachings has been warped by the mind. For one, Buddha has been elevated to a deity. For another, there's the belief that it takes lifetimes to attain nirvana. In spite of that, Buddhists are generally happier than most because Buddhism encourages them to question their actions, thoughts and motives and to treat others with compassion. What you take as people's misguided attempts to seek God through Eastern spirituality is a judgement. People are only seeking solace or happiness. If contemporary religion isn't serving their needs, they are free to discover and choose another belief system. That's the way it works in a marketplace of ideas. If conventional Christianity fails to meet those needs such that people leave, then whose fault is that? Society has changed in 2,000 years. There are no slaves, women have a great measure of equality everywhere except in the Church. The earliest manuscripts actually have a woman apostle, but she was written out of later manuscripts.
For a long time, Christianity was ahead of society in terms of its humanity but society has surpassed Christianity in some areas. Now it's time for Christianity to catch up. A minister I think highly of told me that years ago when I lived in LA.
Whoa! I'm glad to have sparked so much commentary; it'll take awhile to digest.
For the moment, Andrew, I want to add a comment in response to a fraction of yours. I like to distinguish Catholic 'religion' (well, Christian 'religion') from Christian/Catholic 'spirituality'. Larry mentioned it awhile back as logos and mythos. The comment in my post refers definitely to religious teaching - I'll refrain from commenting at length on spirituality. My gripe isn't against the spirituality part (as I know it), to be sure!
I'm glad this post has spurred so much thought; it'll take me awhile to digest and respond to all of this.
It's pertinent to note that I distinguish religion from spirituality, meant similarly to Larry's distinction of logos and mythos My comment pertains definitely to the teaching of religion. Maybe I'll write a contrasting post on spirituality.
JB:
Just to clarify, in my comment I never judged anyone's attempts to seek meaning, truth, etc. in Eastern traditions as "misguided." I have simply come, through study and spiritual practice, to believe that the Christian mystical/esoteric tradition also offers a path to the Divine, a very beautiful and legitimate one, and I think it's a shame that "Christianity" is so often simply equated with "exoteric Christianity," while a mystical understanding of Christianity as a spiritual path is somehow seen as not really Christianity!
And I agree with you wholeheartedly that the church has some catching up to do in regard to such things as recognizing the full equality of women and men--some denominations more than others, true, but it's basically the case across the board, unfortunately. However, it is also my understanding that some kinds of Buddhism are also this way, not to mention quite homophobic, as again a lot of Christian denominations are! And yet, at least in the circles where I move, people are much more likely to use the word "Christianity" when they mean "the worst elements of Christianity" and likewise "Buddhism" for "the best and most enlightened aspects of Buddhism."
Certainly, too, people are free to choose any path that suits them--and indeed they should, especially when the alternative is stagnating in a religion that no longer holds any meaning for them. Again, I simply think that, regardless of whose "fault" it is, too often the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater where Christianity is concerned.
Julie:
Will you say more about the distinction you make between religion and spirituality? On the surface I think I know what you mean, but then I start to wonder to what extend you can't have one without the other. Or are "religion" and "spirituality" essentially synonyms for "exotericism" and "esotericism"?
First you have spiritual truth and quite possibly the mystic as well, but sometimes I believe that what people refer to as mystical is simply that for which all words fall short and it has to be experienced to be understood. Religion as I am using it in this context is simply the incorporation of spiritual truth into a set of canon, tradition and dogma for the purposes of men and society. As my Uncle explained it simply and succinctly, you have a spiritual master who speaks wisdom, then he or she dies. The oral stories and parables are written down which removes some of their intended effect which is to awaken people. Then others come along who don't understand the stories fully, and in their attempts to comprehend and make sense of them, they alter or corrupt their meaning to an extent and turn them into the basis of a religion. All spiritual masters are the same master. They seek to empower people to their fullest potential without generally seeking political or financial power themselves. But the institutions that arise after they are gone are the opposite. Maybe they have to be since they are of this world. However, there were no early churches in Early Christianity. People met in houses, typically the wealthier members since they had more space. There were spiritual leaders, but everyone had a say it seemed and women were held in high regard. Then you start to see Christianity accommodate Roman society as the wealthy Roman women and their families adopted it in their households. Suddenly, slaves were admonished to obey their masters and wives their husbands. Never mind that the emperors saw Christianity differently and sought to stomp it out until Constantine embraced it possibly because of his Mother. You see this give and take as Christianity evolves from a form of Judaism to a Gentile religion in the Book of Acts and some of Paul's epistles. I don't really care what you label it or how you label it. When I speak of spiritual truth or spirituality, I am referring to the core truths embodied in just about every major religion that each religion was spawned from. They almost all have them in common because they are all based on human experiences. They are separate from the rituals and traditions that for the most part are elaborate trappings one could say are smoke and mirrors. Jesus and the Buddha gave sermons to people telling them the truth. They spoke simply and to the point, and it was almost intimate in a way (I lack words to describe what I am trying to convey.). How is that different from what people experience now in a church, mosque, or synagogue? I mean sometimes it happens. Sometimes the sermon hits home and you are enlightened, but often, it falls flat.
Oops. Got carried away and wrote way, WAY, too much on the last comment. Apologies to all, especially Jules since this is her blog.
Oh crud, I double commented to myself. Sorry about that.
This number of comments in one day is certainly a record for me, and I'm glad to see so much conversation! Please excuse me, again, while I take my time digesting and responding. (John, if you could please separate your thoughts into distinct paragraphs, that would help with the reading...)
Andrew, your words (in your first paragraph to JB) could have been mine. No need to write about spirituality; you've covered it.
I'd accept exotericism and esotericism for mythos/spirituality and logos/religion.
But are both really needed? Really? (Hold your response... I'll start a new post for that one.)
Julie, it's time to give you something you richly deserve: the Open Mind Blogger Award. If you haven't already, you can read a little about it on my blog or Darrell's, then visit http://politicsandreligion.wordpress.com/open-mind-award/ to pick up your award.
Thanks for your consistent ethic of civility, reason, insight, and patience.
Bert; while I believe the true God (which I don't normally refer to as such) is truly inexplicable, humans have constructed a god (which I normally capitalize but will leave lower-case in this comment for clarity) that is very easily explained. The whole thing's really a mess. The theology of punishment, as I understand it, is that it's really quite objective, like grading a drafting exercise; it is what it is - your actions are what they are, and god doesn't mete out punishment, he's stuck with his own system. What kind of higher being is subject to his own rules, I don't know.
You've hit the extreme on your comments, but I have gotten the same impressions at times. Thank you for your comment!
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