I'm not good at making complicated things simple to explain. Rather, I'm much better at making simple things complicated to explain. Perhaps this is why I'm arguably a better poet than a philosopher, or a better philosopher than a poet. As I have so far failed to explain, this post may be somewhat confusing -- but if you could bear with me for a few moments, I promise that it will make sense!
In the Gospels of the Bible, Pontius Pilate asked an eternal question to Jesus: "What is truth?" This is the very question I am confronting today.
A professor of mine once asserted that all philosophical and religious discussions are like the artwork of the sculptor Alexander Calder. I realize you may not be familiar with this artist, so here's an example or two of his work -- which I hope you will examine closely, for within the nature of his art lies a key point about the nature of truth.
To claim that something is true is an action of the human observer, requiring the use of the human mind and the use of communication. In this way, the act of defining truth depends on the person who gives you their own definition of truth. Every truth claim depends on a variety of assumptions and preexisting beliefs. In an Alexander Calder sculpture, each piece in the sculpture is connected to the piece before it - each piece of the artwork is dependent on the other pieces which it rests upon. So, truth is like a sculpture which contains an entire chain of pieces -- with all of the pieces depending on the piece attached to them to maintain their form.
Because the human interpretation of truth depends upon other conditions, it is difficult to state with certainty what is true. This problem may seem obvious, but the problem has quite a few ramifications for ideas in philosophy and religion which may not be so obvious at first.
In the past, when I attended a discussion group with a friend of mine and his pastor, I gained the opportunity to hear their perspectives on Christianity. Both of them are evangelical Christians, and while they don't speak for all evangelical Christians, they do seem to represent some widespread views. When we were discussing the resurrection of Jesus, the pastor kept pressing me as to why I did not accept the truth of Jesus's resurrection.
The truth? I do accept the truth of Jesus's resurrection...in one sense. I accept that the story is relevant, that the story has positive and inspiring qualities, that the story helps people live a better life. I do not believe the account of the resurrection of Jesus is literally true. That I do not literally accept the resurrection story of Jesus bothered my friend's pastor to no small end. The pastor kept trying and trying to goad me to accept the absolute, literal truth of this event, for which I believe there is no definitive evidence.
And then...I start to wonder why I want evidence for the story of the resurrection of Jesus. When I was talking to my girlfriend (who is a more liberal Christian) about my conversations with my evangelical friend, she asked me why I wanted evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. She stumped me.
After talking for far too long (to avoid my consternation), I realized that I didn't really need any evidence for the resurrection of Jesus...in a sense. I told my girlfriend that I asked for evidence of Jesus's resurrection because my friend and his pastor sought to convince me of the "Capital T" Truth of the resurrection. What's the difference between "Capital T" Truth and other truth? "Capital T" Truth is empirical, requires evidence, and is absolute and rational. There are other truths which are symbolic, mystical, and full of mystery...full of, faith.
I'm not against mystery. As Carl Sagan said, when I contemplate that I am a conscious being, living in a Universe so vast and so sparsely populated (as far as we can tell) with beings like us, beings that are self-aware, I feel an ecstasy and a sense of wonder akin to religious feelings. I do not deny these feelings, as so many religious people I know may assume - as I am asked how I can witness the beauty of our world and not believe there is something more there. On the contrary, I do feel that there is something more there, but I don't call that something "God". What tickles me, though, is whether these feelings are really truth? And why should I believe certain feelings and not others?
Why should I follow one religious path or another? Why should I put one label on my feelings of awe and mystery and not another label? On the basis of feeling, most of the world's religions appear roughly indistinguishable to me - not equivalent, but indistinguishable. I'm not naive enough to paper over the vast differences between religious traditions. What bothers me is how I am supposed to know which one is for me, if any of them are for me - and do I trust my feelings enough to leave them in charge of my choice?
My evangelical friends try to tell me that their god is the author of "Capital T" Truth, that his son Jesus died for my sins - and that there is "Capital T" Truth-friendly evidence which can demonstrate this to my satisfaction - or so they claim. Really, to believe their claim I have to first accept the validity of the Gospel writings, and the letters of Paul, and the Old Testament, and...eventually, it just turns out to be another Alexander Calder special. There are so many claims I have to accept before I can accept the last claim I've heard that I can never sufficiently unravel the truth.
Where does all of this speculation leave me? It leaves me where I started, asking "what is truth?", just as Pilate must have asked all those years ago. I still do not accept any one religion as my own, because I am fine with my secular morality and secular mystery. If someone wants to convince me to join another religion, they'll have to wait. I have my own feelings and my own mind to sort through first. I'm going to try to discern the truth as well as I can, and if religion seems to hinder that search for truth, then I will proceed without it. I'm not convinced that any religion has the "Capital T" Truth, and if I don't need that kind of truth, then I'm not convinced that I need religion, either. Why put a label on something that belongs to all of us?
I've stuck with one kind of faith or another plenty of times, but I can't say that it's the world's only truth, and I'm not even sure that it's true at all. It's just what I have...or don't have. Faith is like life: it will find a way to thrive even in the darkest, harshest, or most obscure places. You can call it all sorts of things depending on where you find it, but it's really the same thing. Despite all the superficial differences and confusing trappings, truth (based on faith) is the same everywhere - it just appears in a surprising number of ways. It's not relative, either - it's just really complicated and hopelessly messy. There may be greater and lesser truths, more closely or loosely matching your assumptions, even if there's no one "Capital T" Truth - and some assumptions are so monumental and so broad that, in practice, they are almost the same thing as what we would call "objectivity".
As I said at the beginning, I have a knack for making the simple to be hard, and the hard to be simple. For those who are wondering what the most direct point of this may be, I say this: because truth can only be assessed according to your own perspective, it is the duty of every person to investigate what is true. If each individual pursues truth as well as he or she can, we may never have the "Capital T" Truth many of us seek, but we will have more truth than we have ever had before, and that truth will set us free -- as Jesus could have said to Pilate.
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Is Evolution Consistent with God's Love? (Part One)
Both Christian fundamentalists and ardent atheist popularizers assert that evolution and religious faith are incompatible. Both forces assert that an individual cannot accept a full understanding of the theory of evolution by natural selection and accept the truth of Christianity.
When I was in high school, two friends of mine kept asking me how I reconciled evolution and God. I was a liberal Protestant, and they were vocal atheists. I swore up and down that their critiques unfairly represented my idea of God.
My friends would repeatedly ask me other things such as "how can you be a Christian if the Bible hates gay people?" or "how can you be friends with us if the Bible tells you not to mix with nonbelievers?". I kept telling my friends that the Christianity I affirmed was all about the love of God - with all other principles below it. The love of Jesus came to replace the focus of the Old Testament, which was solely on God's laws, instead of God's love.
I believed that loving people without regard for their sexuality expressed God's love. I believed that befriending people without regard for their religious ideas expressed God's love. I also believed that God used evolution to create the world, which He loves.
I still believe that an intelligent and perceptive reader of the Bible is under no obligation to accept that God could not have created the world through evolution. The stories in Genesis, properly understood, are literary narratives, not literal accounts. The interpretation of the creation stories Genesis has never prevented me from reconciling Christianity and evolution.
What has prevented me from reconciling Christianity and evolution is God's love, the same thing which allowed me to say I believed I could love people without regard for their sexuality or religion. I do believe that the Christian God could have created the world through evolution - I do not believe that a loving God could have. This is the biggest question for me on the subject of evolution and Christianity: is a Christian God, who creates our world through evolution, a loving God?
When I was in high school, two friends of mine kept asking me how I reconciled evolution and God. I was a liberal Protestant, and they were vocal atheists. I swore up and down that their critiques unfairly represented my idea of God.
My friends would repeatedly ask me other things such as "how can you be a Christian if the Bible hates gay people?" or "how can you be friends with us if the Bible tells you not to mix with nonbelievers?". I kept telling my friends that the Christianity I affirmed was all about the love of God - with all other principles below it. The love of Jesus came to replace the focus of the Old Testament, which was solely on God's laws, instead of God's love.
I believed that loving people without regard for their sexuality expressed God's love. I believed that befriending people without regard for their religious ideas expressed God's love. I also believed that God used evolution to create the world, which He loves.
I still believe that an intelligent and perceptive reader of the Bible is under no obligation to accept that God could not have created the world through evolution. The stories in Genesis, properly understood, are literary narratives, not literal accounts. The interpretation of the creation stories Genesis has never prevented me from reconciling Christianity and evolution.
What has prevented me from reconciling Christianity and evolution is God's love, the same thing which allowed me to say I believed I could love people without regard for their sexuality or religion. I do believe that the Christian God could have created the world through evolution - I do not believe that a loving God could have. This is the biggest question for me on the subject of evolution and Christianity: is a Christian God, who creates our world through evolution, a loving God?
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The Salvation of Mystery
The other day, I finally realized what post-modernism signifies. Post-modernism introduces an ambiguity, an uncertainty, a series of paradoxes into the understanding of everyday language and experience. I have witnessed a profound distaste for this probing and inquisitiveness, and I have directly shared this hesitation.
For a long time, I have viewed forms of post-modernism as empty, meaningless, and unnecessarily skeptical. To ask things like, 'what is the meaning of truth', 'who is the Other', and 'who are the People in "We the People"'? What's the point?
This rogue questioning seems to be a silly exercise - it ignores finding a solution to problems such as violence and poverty in favor of analyzing how we discuss problems such as violence and poverty.
Besides, isn't focusing on the problems themselves enough? The human race does, after all, have a great expertise for solving problems. Humanity has exercised a tremendous capacity for knowledge and discovery. Should I reject or cast doubt upon the workings of science and technology which have brought such monumental greatness and convenience into my life?
I am disturbed by the urgings of post-modernism, but I have realized something: I need this disturbance in my life -- and I have not yet begun to be disturbed enough.
"I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword." - Jesus, Matthew 10:34
Today, societies have unprecedented access to knowledge of the external world around us. From the smallest imaginable wonders reached through nanotechnology to the eerily beautiful images shown from the largest echoes of space by the Hubble Telescope, humanity has a more significant grasp on reality than ever before.
Or so we think...and so we tell ourselves.
I have started to embrace post-modernism because it demands that we re-ask these questions of ourselves. So let me ask you again, not what kind of grasp you have on reality, but what kind of grasp reality has on you?
Said another way: Do you have an internal knowledge of yourself which equals your knowledge of the external world?
"What is truth?" - Pontius Pilate, John 18:38
Many post-modernists have expressed skepticism about the existence of a universal and absolute truth. Many religious people have expressed strong dismay about post-modernism because of this skepticism. Religious figures have reasoned that any skepticism about a universal truth would naturally extend to skepticism about the truth of religion, which is often claimed to be absolute and universal in nature.
I believe this skepticism of skepticism is unwarranted. (Skepticism of skepticism? Isn't that just the kind of unnecessarily complicated phrase a true post-modernist would use? What is it about post-modernism which erodes the use of language? What better evidence that what questions does in fact erode!)
The skepticism (from religious people) of the skepticism (of post-modernists) is not warranted because both religion and post-modernism share some of their most important values and perspectives on the world.
Mystery Enters the World
I'm not a Christian. But I am willing to accept that a fellow named Jesus very likely existed at some point, and could have done many of the things described in the Bible.
In the Gospels, Jesus vigorously questions the religious authorities of his day. The Pharisees constantly attempt to pin Jesus down on legalities to destroy his credibility.
Jesus denied that the prominent religious figures of his day had a monopoly on universal and absolute truth. He did not come to ease their understanding - he did not come to reassure their prejudices - he did not come to bring peace, but to bring a sword, and he did not come to bring simplicity, but to bring mystery.
Both religion and post-modernism introduce a mystery and an uncertainty into our mundane, everyday world which forces individuals to confront the structure and meaning of their inner-most, firmly-held beliefs and attitudes.
Both religion and post-modernism can lead the pilgrim into a voyage of re-examination, from which emerges a new life full of vitality and hope.
Mystery's Final Ascension
Where is the hope from mystery? Where is the light in this darkness?
The answer is the power of human imagination. Both religion and post-modernism imagine new meanings and new interpretations of life - both envision new alternatives to choose, and actively confront humanity with those choices.
Both religion and post-modernism resurrect what they divide: beneath the multiplicity and diversity of meanings lies a common connection. As words and concepts used to segment and oppose human beings are undermined, a new possibility of existence is realized.
No more Jew and Gentile, no more man and woman...
No more I and Other, no more black and white...
Both post-modernism and religion can free individuals from oppression and encourage them to see beyond the superficial differences which all too often consume humanity, to see new conditions of human life, where all individuals are free to pursue their creative potential as human beings.
Both Jesus Christ and Friedrich Nietzsche can tell you that underneath truth, there is life.
For a long time, I have viewed forms of post-modernism as empty, meaningless, and unnecessarily skeptical. To ask things like, 'what is the meaning of truth', 'who is the Other', and 'who are the People in "We the People"'? What's the point?
This rogue questioning seems to be a silly exercise - it ignores finding a solution to problems such as violence and poverty in favor of analyzing how we discuss problems such as violence and poverty.
Besides, isn't focusing on the problems themselves enough? The human race does, after all, have a great expertise for solving problems. Humanity has exercised a tremendous capacity for knowledge and discovery. Should I reject or cast doubt upon the workings of science and technology which have brought such monumental greatness and convenience into my life?
I am disturbed by the urgings of post-modernism, but I have realized something: I need this disturbance in my life -- and I have not yet begun to be disturbed enough.
"I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword." - Jesus, Matthew 10:34
Today, societies have unprecedented access to knowledge of the external world around us. From the smallest imaginable wonders reached through nanotechnology to the eerily beautiful images shown from the largest echoes of space by the Hubble Telescope, humanity has a more significant grasp on reality than ever before.
Or so we think...and so we tell ourselves.
I have started to embrace post-modernism because it demands that we re-ask these questions of ourselves. So let me ask you again, not what kind of grasp you have on reality, but what kind of grasp reality has on you?
Said another way: Do you have an internal knowledge of yourself which equals your knowledge of the external world?
"What is truth?" - Pontius Pilate, John 18:38
Many post-modernists have expressed skepticism about the existence of a universal and absolute truth. Many religious people have expressed strong dismay about post-modernism because of this skepticism. Religious figures have reasoned that any skepticism about a universal truth would naturally extend to skepticism about the truth of religion, which is often claimed to be absolute and universal in nature.
I believe this skepticism of skepticism is unwarranted. (Skepticism of skepticism? Isn't that just the kind of unnecessarily complicated phrase a true post-modernist would use? What is it about post-modernism which erodes the use of language? What better evidence that what questions does in fact erode!)
The skepticism (from religious people) of the skepticism (of post-modernists) is not warranted because both religion and post-modernism share some of their most important values and perspectives on the world.
Mystery Enters the World
I'm not a Christian. But I am willing to accept that a fellow named Jesus very likely existed at some point, and could have done many of the things described in the Bible.
In the Gospels, Jesus vigorously questions the religious authorities of his day. The Pharisees constantly attempt to pin Jesus down on legalities to destroy his credibility.
Jesus denied that the prominent religious figures of his day had a monopoly on universal and absolute truth. He did not come to ease their understanding - he did not come to reassure their prejudices - he did not come to bring peace, but to bring a sword, and he did not come to bring simplicity, but to bring mystery.
Both religion and post-modernism introduce a mystery and an uncertainty into our mundane, everyday world which forces individuals to confront the structure and meaning of their inner-most, firmly-held beliefs and attitudes.
Both religion and post-modernism can lead the pilgrim into a voyage of re-examination, from which emerges a new life full of vitality and hope.
Mystery's Final Ascension
Where is the hope from mystery? Where is the light in this darkness?
The answer is the power of human imagination. Both religion and post-modernism imagine new meanings and new interpretations of life - both envision new alternatives to choose, and actively confront humanity with those choices.
Both religion and post-modernism resurrect what they divide: beneath the multiplicity and diversity of meanings lies a common connection. As words and concepts used to segment and oppose human beings are undermined, a new possibility of existence is realized.
No more Jew and Gentile, no more man and woman...
No more I and Other, no more black and white...
Both post-modernism and religion can free individuals from oppression and encourage them to see beyond the superficial differences which all too often consume humanity, to see new conditions of human life, where all individuals are free to pursue their creative potential as human beings.
Both Jesus Christ and Friedrich Nietzsche can tell you that underneath truth, there is life.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Wish to Live
What are the highest values in life? What ideas provide guidance for the best possible living? What is the inspiration which accords the best template for living, for fully realizing our potential as human beings?
Friedrich Nietzsche mentions the "will to power" as a force which has "succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life". Is this "will to power", though, merely a description of how the world works, of how life exists, or is it also a normative statement (an outline of how life should be lived)? Should we live only according to our instincts? Does living against the pattern of our instincts hopelessly obscure and defeat life itself? Or, rather, does life only begin to soar once it transcends our basic instincts for higher goals?
Which parts of the "will to power" should be embraced by society? Nietzsche repeatedly asserts that those conditions which enable life to flourish should be promoted. But what does it mean for life to flourish? Does life flourish when it is restrained, or when it is constricted; does life flourish only when it is maintained and managed, or only when it is free and independent? What does it mean to preserve and enhance life? And what kinds of life does Nietzsche value?
Nietzsche objects to those who place more emphasis on suffering in this life, in exchange for a better future life, than on experiencing life in the present world. But for many people, the experience of life essentially contains suffering - and suffering really can be described as the origin of life. Perhaps suffering is the main mode of life, after all: not the "will to power", but the "will to suffer" predominates, or perhaps the "will to power" is also a "will to suffer". Lastly, perhaps Nietzsche is not really against an acknowledgment of suffering, but merely disagrees as to what manner people should direct their suffering.
A preacher here on campus has suggested that God created the world in an act of love as suffering. I have heard it said, "to love someone truly, you must allow them to have the chance to make you suffer".
Did God create the world in an act of love as suffering? Even if there is no God, is this the essential state of our world as it exists now? Does all the world in the world owe its existence to some form of suffering?
And who would punish a lover for one's own love, if there is a God who has created such a world? Jesus in the Gospels tells the parable of the prodigal son. The father allows the son to experience life on his own terms, and allows the son to suffer the consequences of his actions. Would a loving God allow us to suffer merely as a consequence of Its actions, merely because a world was created wherein we humans were given this life which has built itself upon our suffering?
To love is in part to suffer. And suffer I do, as we all do...adrenaline, oxytocin, estrogen...coursing through the channels of my soul, of every "soul". Chemicals corrode my soul, yet they restore my body. My body atones for my soul. These hapless emotions, what poor excuse of a being am I? Too far gone in this world. Too near-sighted for the things to come. Not spiritual enough. Too human.
That lustful glance is the adultery of my spirit. But not to glance is the adultery of my body. To glance, to live: to commit adultery of the mind, or the heart? I have been ripped to shreds and torn apart, glued together again, haphazardly...this is the way life has developed over billions of years, ripping and tearing itself apart, to time and time again, build things that are newer and stranger, odd and more odd are these evolved creatures, these "thinking things" that are called human beings. This is the worst and the best that I am. I give my love, I give my pain, and I give my innocence...all in the name of life.
This is what God gave me, if it was indeed a divine gift...my own freedom, my own shame; my own love, my own suffering. All that and less: some of the things He gave me I'm apparently supposed to disown. In the name of a Higher Life. In the name of a Higher Love, and a Higher Truth.
Pilot washed his hands before he condemned Jesus. Did God wash His mind in the hormones of our psyches before condemning us?
If God exists, then God should commend evil instead of condemning it, for this evil has propelled us to life. We love ourselves. We love our family. We love our tribe, our sect, our friends. This is evil, since we love them for their suffering, because only that has brought us into this world and continually sustains us. Perhaps someday, when we remember the suffering that endures and surrounds us, the suffering that has created life in all its stark beauty and terror, then we will love our neighbor as ourselves, most of all because they suffer as we suffer.
Friedrich Nietzsche mentions the "will to power" as a force which has "succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life". Is this "will to power", though, merely a description of how the world works, of how life exists, or is it also a normative statement (an outline of how life should be lived)? Should we live only according to our instincts? Does living against the pattern of our instincts hopelessly obscure and defeat life itself? Or, rather, does life only begin to soar once it transcends our basic instincts for higher goals?
Which parts of the "will to power" should be embraced by society? Nietzsche repeatedly asserts that those conditions which enable life to flourish should be promoted. But what does it mean for life to flourish? Does life flourish when it is restrained, or when it is constricted; does life flourish only when it is maintained and managed, or only when it is free and independent? What does it mean to preserve and enhance life? And what kinds of life does Nietzsche value?
Nietzsche objects to those who place more emphasis on suffering in this life, in exchange for a better future life, than on experiencing life in the present world. But for many people, the experience of life essentially contains suffering - and suffering really can be described as the origin of life. Perhaps suffering is the main mode of life, after all: not the "will to power", but the "will to suffer" predominates, or perhaps the "will to power" is also a "will to suffer". Lastly, perhaps Nietzsche is not really against an acknowledgment of suffering, but merely disagrees as to what manner people should direct their suffering.
A preacher here on campus has suggested that God created the world in an act of love as suffering. I have heard it said, "to love someone truly, you must allow them to have the chance to make you suffer".
Did God create the world in an act of love as suffering? Even if there is no God, is this the essential state of our world as it exists now? Does all the world in the world owe its existence to some form of suffering?
And who would punish a lover for one's own love, if there is a God who has created such a world? Jesus in the Gospels tells the parable of the prodigal son. The father allows the son to experience life on his own terms, and allows the son to suffer the consequences of his actions. Would a loving God allow us to suffer merely as a consequence of Its actions, merely because a world was created wherein we humans were given this life which has built itself upon our suffering?
To love is in part to suffer. And suffer I do, as we all do...adrenaline, oxytocin, estrogen...coursing through the channels of my soul, of every "soul". Chemicals corrode my soul, yet they restore my body. My body atones for my soul. These hapless emotions, what poor excuse of a being am I? Too far gone in this world. Too near-sighted for the things to come. Not spiritual enough. Too human.
That lustful glance is the adultery of my spirit. But not to glance is the adultery of my body. To glance, to live: to commit adultery of the mind, or the heart? I have been ripped to shreds and torn apart, glued together again, haphazardly...this is the way life has developed over billions of years, ripping and tearing itself apart, to time and time again, build things that are newer and stranger, odd and more odd are these evolved creatures, these "thinking things" that are called human beings. This is the worst and the best that I am. I give my love, I give my pain, and I give my innocence...all in the name of life.
This is what God gave me, if it was indeed a divine gift...my own freedom, my own shame; my own love, my own suffering. All that and less: some of the things He gave me I'm apparently supposed to disown. In the name of a Higher Life. In the name of a Higher Love, and a Higher Truth.
Pilot washed his hands before he condemned Jesus. Did God wash His mind in the hormones of our psyches before condemning us?
If God exists, then God should commend evil instead of condemning it, for this evil has propelled us to life. We love ourselves. We love our family. We love our tribe, our sect, our friends. This is evil, since we love them for their suffering, because only that has brought us into this world and continually sustains us. Perhaps someday, when we remember the suffering that endures and surrounds us, the suffering that has created life in all its stark beauty and terror, then we will love our neighbor as ourselves, most of all because they suffer as we suffer.
Friday, February 4, 2011
My Doubt, My Threat, My Appetite
The band Jimmy Eat World wrote a song that I'm in love with: "My Best Theory", from their album "Invented". A brief snippet of the song goes:
"My doubt seems fine/
My true desire/
My threat/
My appetite"
Outstanding lyrics.
Doubt is many things. It is my annihilation. It is my preservation.
Doubt erodes, a steady stream of questioning which removes the face of well-worn notions, and it sculpts a new impression in old surfaces.
Doubt in its own nature embodies the biggest and most substantial conflict we know of: the chasm between permanence and stability, and change and chaos.
Every human being is a product of change. We originate as embryos, progressing through many stages, until a fully-grown adult form is realized. Each facet of our physical body is in flux: a multitude of cells appear and die each day within our body. Each facet of our consciousness and personality changes, too: throughout our interactions with other humans, we are molded and crafted in accordance with our fellow human beings. Their being is ours.
We depend on change to sustain us. If the seeds for our crops remain seeds, then we die. If the water which feeds many of our reservoirs remains snow or ice, then we die. If the rain which waters the crops remains water vapor in the sky, then we die.
Is it really true that we look for things to stay the same? We are surely blind to the immense changes which surround us in their exquisite insignificance.
We owe everything we have to change, but we seek to ground our lives in eternal truths. To doubt these truths, to chip away at them, is a betrayal of the truths towards which we aim. Our lives are bigger than this trivial nonsense. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter", such great religious authorities as Yoda from Star Wars inform us.
Yet what exactly are we considering when we ponder these eternal truths? Our messages and teachings come to us from specific historical eras, and specific cultural contexts. Is it really appropriate to allow the message of Jesus, for example, to remain stale for two thousand years, when he castigated the religious leaders of his day for allowing the laws to become stale within their own hearts?
We humans express our knowledge and our truth through what we actively partake. We partake the body and the blood of truth, when we speak its voice for our times, when we allow our own doubts to refine and distill our beliefs and our values.
Doubt threatens to undo everything, but doubt also allows us to remember everything. Doubt allows us to exercise our faith, to propel ourselves upward, to participate again in the sacred enterprise - we are captivated by it and refreshed by it. We remember. We remember both why we believe now, and why we believed in the first place.
Certainty cannot exist without doubt, nor without change: for if we do not doubt, if we do not risk the possibility of change, then we forget why we are certain in the first place. When we forget to doubt, then we lose ourselves entirely. Our own desire for certainty enables change to erase ourselves: we become clean on the outside, but rotten within. Oh, you hypocrites, you brood of vipers...
"My doubt seems fine/
My true desire/
My threat/
My appetite"
Outstanding lyrics.
Doubt is many things. It is my annihilation. It is my preservation.
Doubt erodes, a steady stream of questioning which removes the face of well-worn notions, and it sculpts a new impression in old surfaces.
Doubt in its own nature embodies the biggest and most substantial conflict we know of: the chasm between permanence and stability, and change and chaos.
Every human being is a product of change. We originate as embryos, progressing through many stages, until a fully-grown adult form is realized. Each facet of our physical body is in flux: a multitude of cells appear and die each day within our body. Each facet of our consciousness and personality changes, too: throughout our interactions with other humans, we are molded and crafted in accordance with our fellow human beings. Their being is ours.
We depend on change to sustain us. If the seeds for our crops remain seeds, then we die. If the water which feeds many of our reservoirs remains snow or ice, then we die. If the rain which waters the crops remains water vapor in the sky, then we die.
Is it really true that we look for things to stay the same? We are surely blind to the immense changes which surround us in their exquisite insignificance.
We owe everything we have to change, but we seek to ground our lives in eternal truths. To doubt these truths, to chip away at them, is a betrayal of the truths towards which we aim. Our lives are bigger than this trivial nonsense. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter", such great religious authorities as Yoda from Star Wars inform us.
Yet what exactly are we considering when we ponder these eternal truths? Our messages and teachings come to us from specific historical eras, and specific cultural contexts. Is it really appropriate to allow the message of Jesus, for example, to remain stale for two thousand years, when he castigated the religious leaders of his day for allowing the laws to become stale within their own hearts?
We humans express our knowledge and our truth through what we actively partake. We partake the body and the blood of truth, when we speak its voice for our times, when we allow our own doubts to refine and distill our beliefs and our values.
Doubt threatens to undo everything, but doubt also allows us to remember everything. Doubt allows us to exercise our faith, to propel ourselves upward, to participate again in the sacred enterprise - we are captivated by it and refreshed by it. We remember. We remember both why we believe now, and why we believed in the first place.
Certainty cannot exist without doubt, nor without change: for if we do not doubt, if we do not risk the possibility of change, then we forget why we are certain in the first place. When we forget to doubt, then we lose ourselves entirely. Our own desire for certainty enables change to erase ourselves: we become clean on the outside, but rotten within. Oh, you hypocrites, you brood of vipers...
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