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May 18, 2008
Extra Baggage and the Enjoyment of the Trip
I'm a little late to the current mêlée about God, spirituality and other loosely defined, undefined or undefinable things. And I don't plan to take up all the issues here but one thing that James wrote yesterday at Exploring Our Matrix did pique my abnormal interest.
On the other hand, part of the issue is that I have no interest in defending any particular doctrines about God, and so my "views" seem hard to pin down, because I hold them so loosely. I realized long ago that the life-changing experience I had when I cried out to God in surrender and felt a sense of peace wash over me does not prove that a tomb was empty 2,000 or so years ago, or that God is 3-in-one, or any other such claims. What seems to confuse some people is that I still can find Trinitarian language helpful and inspiring and meaningful, not as a statement about what God is "really like" (as though I had a means to study that scientifically or objectively), but as an image of how this God that we speak of only in inadequate symbols and metaphors can be eternal love (since love requires more than one person).
I'm never completely sure how to cash out such statements and the parenthetical statement at the end of this paragraph really baffles me. Such statements are "loose" enough to lend themselves to a wide range of understandings and therefore one is always in danger of addressing a straw man. But the words "helpful and inspiring and meaningful," when used to explain Trinitarian language appear to me to indicate that James is carrying around a lot of extra baggage that may well be preventing him from fully enjoying the trip.
When I was in seminary, I read Tillich and company and I took classes from theologians John Cobb and Jack Verheyden and the New Testament scholar Hans Dieter Betz, himself a theologian. During that time, I came to an understanding of one important point. A religious experience is any experience that a person explains or understands in the special language of some cult and nothing more or less. Now these distinguished theologians didn't teach me this, at least not directly. In so far as they knew my views, they thought them misguided. To some my statement about religious experience may seem rather dogmatic. But it is a learned lesson that at the time went against my own personal commitments and feelings. I learned this lesson from four converging thought processes: reflection on 1) the contortions that theologians needed to go through to explain otherwise quite normal events; 2) comparative religions; 3) the role of parsimony in forming useful explanations; and 4) the importance of acknowledged ignorance.
If it's all that hard to explain how God is in a devastating earthquake or typhoon, the seemingly simple explanations of love, joy and peace must also be burdened in layer after layer of complexity. In fact, there are so many layers of complexity, some would call it subtlety, in modern theological discussion that one barely sees that the center may well be hollow rather than hallow.
Now this may seem trite, but I think it important. People who use cultic language to describe or understand their otherwise quite normal and common experiences almost inevitably use the language of the cult with which they most closely identify. The exception is when they are under the influence of missionaries from another cult. This is one manifestation of the problem of many cults, a subset of the problem of many gods.
More and more I have come to see all those "symbols and metaphors" of religion, any religion and all religions, as extra baggage that severely limits the enjoyment of the trip. While I celebrate the great monuments to religious belief and the great art and literature that it has inspired, I see them as wonderful human achievements. Are there things that I don't understand? More than I wish to acknowledge. Are there events in my life that I can't understand? Sure, quite a few of them. Are there things that I think no one will ever understand? I'm sure there are, perhaps many of them. But I prefer to stand before these mysteries knowing that much is understandable without the extra baggage of religion and that what is not understandable is not made understandable by that extra baggage. On the one hand, every issue where testing is possible, the continued use or fresh introduction of the language of religion makes helpful and, yes, inspiring and meaningful explanations less parsimonious. I see no reason to believe that that wouldn't hold for the all other issues as well. On the other hand, acknowledged ignorance is always useful in furthering understanding.
Posted by Duane Smith at May 18, 2008 6:28 PM | Read more on Religion |
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Comments
"one barely sees that the center may well be hollow rather than hallow"
I like that, Duane.
Posted by: Aydin at May 19, 2008 2:46 PM
This is an interesting post. Thanks. As I think about it, the fascinating memoir by Bela Zsolt (Nine Suitcases, Schocken Books, 2004) comes traveling back along the tracks of my brain. Zsolt and his wife had left Budapest and had a chance to escape and never return. But return they did because his wife had nine suitcases, and nine were not allowed on the train that they needed to take. After returning Zsolt soon found himself in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. While in the camp he thought about escape and said: "I swear I'll never have a home again as long as I live, and I'll only have one suit, which I'll wear till it falls off me in tatters. ... Nor will I ever again have a suitcase, not one, not nine --I'll put my toothbrush, my toothpaste, my soap and my comb in my pocket and change my underclothes in a department store, simply leaving the dirty ones behind [p 140]." After the war, with most of their family gone, Zsolt founded a weekly journal (Haladas). He died in Budapest 6 February 1949, at the age of 54. His wife had committed suicide in 1948 after publishing the diary of her dead daughter, which had been preserved by the family's loyal Hungarian cook (The Diary of Eva Heyman) [p viii]." With extra baggage they could not catch the train to freedom.
Posted by: Loren Fisher at May 19, 2008 4:35 PM
Nice post, Duane. Well said. I'm still confused / amused by people who remain enmeshed in very complicated theological and philosophical discussions and explanations of things that are rather simple.
Posted by: Alan Lenzi at May 19, 2008 9:28 PM
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