I've watched fundamentalism turn otherwise normal functioning humans into hate filled mechanisms of destruction all my life. There are also a ton of equally crazed crackpots out there who believe with all their hearts that churches, particularly the Catholic Church, are about nothing but mind control and money. That the gods were an invention to kowtow the people, and religions--just a scheme to collect money from them in the process.
But then we have the atheists who seem to grasp both groups and their problems really well... at first. But a well oiled human will quickly see that the atheists have also committed brain felo-de-se on the way to the rally.
The thing none of our cerebrally unhinged groups can seem to comprehend is where the truth lies or how to get there. In all three cases it's literally like trying to communicate with a brick. Or a... well, a really dumb cat. If they were taking drugs I could take their drugs away. If they were the victims of brain frequency altering sound waves or optical sensory manipulation to achieve a hypnotic effect, I could close their eyes and stop up their ears or shut the machines down. But how do you wake people from a hypnotic trance which has been self induced and habitually maintained? After Pavlov's dog has already been drooling for a couple of decades, or since birth, can you ever stop him from doing so with each and every bell that rings?
This is why I can't agree with the Universalists. There are just a small handful of people walking the Earth who haven't flown into intellectual flypaper. Can a man be taught truth when his mind has been locked away, and only he holds the key?
I am reminded of CS Lewis' story about a bus ride through purgatory where those who were the farthest from Heaven were also the ones whose minds had been closed around both selfishness and self deception. Where Hitler for instance, and those like him, could be found far away on a distant star because their selfish nature kept pushing them further and further away from other humans and from the Creator of life. Fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists, and atheists are also wrapped up in a closed cocoon of thought where nothing can penetrate their trance. They all see a completely different version of the great dance of life, all with different figures stepping to different tunes, each of them out of key because they've fired the conductor.
I suspect all of mankind has wrestled with these same parasites of mind manipulation. What is it that keeps some from falling prey to them? It has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence; some of the finest minds, the most erudite thinkers, come under the spell of the perverted dance, and yet, some of the feeblest of intellects seem able to avoid the pitfalls as the fly evades the horse's tail. One thing is for sure; if the mind is to be able, it must first be free.
A good Christian must always be as skeptical of his bible as he is fond of it.
A good conspiracy theorist must be willing to test both sides of his theory with equal and complete impartiality.
A good atheist must be skeptical even of his own skepticism. (In other words, the only good atheist is an agnostic).
All honest men are capable of pleasing a God who is truth itself. But where is the honest man?
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Religion and the Govinda Principle
I read Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha not long ago. Don't get me wrong concerning what I'm about to say. I mentioned to someone just this past week that Hesse along with most of the ballyhooed novel writers of the 20th century such as Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Norman Mailer etc. were really a bunch of lightweights both in style and substance. Siddhartha isn't terrible or anything, although it is very sappy in some places, but when it comes right down to it, Hesse brings nothing new to the table that every writer of Hinduism and Buddhism hadn't already said. (By the way, have you ever noticed that Hindu writers almost never write without showing some Buddhist influence, but Buddhist writers seldom show any Hindu leanings?) There is, however, at least one passage in Siddhartha worth mentioning:
I won't go into all the places the book went wrong. Suffice to say that Chesterton has already outlined what's wrong with the philosophies of the east better than I could in his popular book, The Everlasting Man. My only concern is with the above quotation because, from it, we can easily deduce the ways in which so many spiritually minded people get hung-up.
The Govinda Principle says that people who seek too much will never find. This is of course true. Yes, "knock and the door will be opened", but once you're in the reception area you can, and should, quit knocking. You simply wait to be seated. And then you learn, but the lessons come a little at a time, and the more impatient you are, the slower the lessons come. So lesson number one means learning patience, and learning patience is what John of the Cross meant by "the dark night of the soul", although I don't think even he recognized it for what it truly was. The teacher leaves the classroom now and then for extended periods of time. Each time he does, the students get antsy. Antsy is best described as a nervous inability to relax. Now the students are free to come and go as they wish. The most antsy among them may even decide the teacher isn't coming back and will get up, go back through the front door, and look for another teacher. I'd like to say this represents the golden calf incident in Genesis, but if it does, it does so very poorly.
Other students will leave the classroom and head for the library thinking that the teacher expects them to learn on their own when he isn't around. They study all the world's great mystical texts and religious doctrines. Some, a little at a time, will find themselves enticed by the words in these books and may eventually go off to find other kinds of schools where the teachers are always around and always willing to fill their heads with nonsense... usually for a price.
Still other students will use the free time for play and nothing more. They go fishing, but not for men.
A few students will remain seated. They are extremely curious and yet very quiet, blanking their minds and senses, expecting to find their teacher in an astral world waiting for them with open arms to say, "Well done thou good and faithful students."
But there are still a couple of students left. They aren't seekers. They aren't antsy. They aren't even curious. For themselves they are content. Their only concern is for the people who haven't yet made it to the classroom at all. While the teacher is away they go out into the world, to its highways and byways, to care for the sick; clothe the naked; feed the hungry; build homes for the poor; and talk of their teacher. These are the students the teacher is most pleased with. In doing these things they learn the greatest lessons of all about God, their fellow man, and the meaning of life for the teacher whispers into the students' ears while they're working. It is in fact only during work that the great vistas of learning are opened to them. They never return to the great teacher's door because the world has become their classroom now, and the teacher goes where they go because he resides within each of them.
I'm not looking for fellow seekers. I'm not seeking anything except for like-minded people of the same Spirit to fellowship with and nothing more. This is what church is to me. Christ left no commands about organizing our thoughts into a religious system. If that's what he wanted then I believe he would have done it himself, and we'd still be in the classroom on the other side of that door closed away from the world. It appears that he belonged to no sects of Judaism. At least nothing is mentioned of him being a Pharisee, Sadducee, Samaritan etc. When he spoke to the crowds about ancient Jews he always addressed them as "your" forefathers, never "our" forefathers. It seems to me that he did this deliberately, perhaps to show us that he had no part in religion. In fact, he spent most of his time arguing against various teachings in all sects of Judaism. Maybe there's something to be learned from that. It could be that religion, like faith, is meant to be personal, and that each of us must truly work out his own salvation.
People are usually too impatient for that though. They want a systematic learning regiment with detailed class courses. They want a predictable teacher and a class motto/creed. Most important to them though is having a structured philosophical outline of the world and the God who governs it... even if they have to make it up themselves. And damned to hell be anyone who steps out of line with their manmade religion, for thus speaketh the church, and their authority is next only to God himself. Why? Because they say so. And only their system is the orthodox system. Why? Because they say so.
I pay no heed to church authority. I have no regard for biblical cannons. I take what I can and disregard the rest, especially anything that puts an evil face on a God of love whether in the bible or out. The bible is a great book collection, but in the end, it's still just a book collection. God never sanctioned it, never commanded its existence as a whole, and never even predicted it should ever come into being. Both the bible and organized religion are just an aid for the most part, good for fellowship and seeing what great men in ancient days who claimed to have known our savior had to say about him. But there's a point where these things can hurt instead of help. When the bible starts being a rule book sent by God (no matter what despicable things it may have to say about him in places here and there) to represent his very words and thoughts, then we do both the bible and God a disservice. And when we try to make religions and doctrines a means of salvation when churches are only supposed to be about fellowship, we do our fellows a disservice.
Seek, find, work, and fellowship--that's the path to God and no other.
"I am indeed old," said Govinda, "but I have never ceased seeking. I will never cease seeking. That seems to be my destiny. It seems to me that you also have sought. Will you talk to me a little about it, my friend?"
Siddhartha said:[sic] "What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find anything, ... Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."
I won't go into all the places the book went wrong. Suffice to say that Chesterton has already outlined what's wrong with the philosophies of the east better than I could in his popular book, The Everlasting Man. My only concern is with the above quotation because, from it, we can easily deduce the ways in which so many spiritually minded people get hung-up.
The Govinda Principle says that people who seek too much will never find. This is of course true. Yes, "knock and the door will be opened", but once you're in the reception area you can, and should, quit knocking. You simply wait to be seated. And then you learn, but the lessons come a little at a time, and the more impatient you are, the slower the lessons come. So lesson number one means learning patience, and learning patience is what John of the Cross meant by "the dark night of the soul", although I don't think even he recognized it for what it truly was. The teacher leaves the classroom now and then for extended periods of time. Each time he does, the students get antsy. Antsy is best described as a nervous inability to relax. Now the students are free to come and go as they wish. The most antsy among them may even decide the teacher isn't coming back and will get up, go back through the front door, and look for another teacher. I'd like to say this represents the golden calf incident in Genesis, but if it does, it does so very poorly.
Other students will leave the classroom and head for the library thinking that the teacher expects them to learn on their own when he isn't around. They study all the world's great mystical texts and religious doctrines. Some, a little at a time, will find themselves enticed by the words in these books and may eventually go off to find other kinds of schools where the teachers are always around and always willing to fill their heads with nonsense... usually for a price.
Still other students will use the free time for play and nothing more. They go fishing, but not for men.
A few students will remain seated. They are extremely curious and yet very quiet, blanking their minds and senses, expecting to find their teacher in an astral world waiting for them with open arms to say, "Well done thou good and faithful students."
But there are still a couple of students left. They aren't seekers. They aren't antsy. They aren't even curious. For themselves they are content. Their only concern is for the people who haven't yet made it to the classroom at all. While the teacher is away they go out into the world, to its highways and byways, to care for the sick; clothe the naked; feed the hungry; build homes for the poor; and talk of their teacher. These are the students the teacher is most pleased with. In doing these things they learn the greatest lessons of all about God, their fellow man, and the meaning of life for the teacher whispers into the students' ears while they're working. It is in fact only during work that the great vistas of learning are opened to them. They never return to the great teacher's door because the world has become their classroom now, and the teacher goes where they go because he resides within each of them.
I'm not looking for fellow seekers. I'm not seeking anything except for like-minded people of the same Spirit to fellowship with and nothing more. This is what church is to me. Christ left no commands about organizing our thoughts into a religious system. If that's what he wanted then I believe he would have done it himself, and we'd still be in the classroom on the other side of that door closed away from the world. It appears that he belonged to no sects of Judaism. At least nothing is mentioned of him being a Pharisee, Sadducee, Samaritan etc. When he spoke to the crowds about ancient Jews he always addressed them as "your" forefathers, never "our" forefathers. It seems to me that he did this deliberately, perhaps to show us that he had no part in religion. In fact, he spent most of his time arguing against various teachings in all sects of Judaism. Maybe there's something to be learned from that. It could be that religion, like faith, is meant to be personal, and that each of us must truly work out his own salvation.
People are usually too impatient for that though. They want a systematic learning regiment with detailed class courses. They want a predictable teacher and a class motto/creed. Most important to them though is having a structured philosophical outline of the world and the God who governs it... even if they have to make it up themselves. And damned to hell be anyone who steps out of line with their manmade religion, for thus speaketh the church, and their authority is next only to God himself. Why? Because they say so. And only their system is the orthodox system. Why? Because they say so.
I pay no heed to church authority. I have no regard for biblical cannons. I take what I can and disregard the rest, especially anything that puts an evil face on a God of love whether in the bible or out. The bible is a great book collection, but in the end, it's still just a book collection. God never sanctioned it, never commanded its existence as a whole, and never even predicted it should ever come into being. Both the bible and organized religion are just an aid for the most part, good for fellowship and seeing what great men in ancient days who claimed to have known our savior had to say about him. But there's a point where these things can hurt instead of help. When the bible starts being a rule book sent by God (no matter what despicable things it may have to say about him in places here and there) to represent his very words and thoughts, then we do both the bible and God a disservice. And when we try to make religions and doctrines a means of salvation when churches are only supposed to be about fellowship, we do our fellows a disservice.
Seek, find, work, and fellowship--that's the path to God and no other.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Sally Forth Oh Man Of Honorificabilitudinitatibus
I just wonder if it's as hard for other people as it has been for me when it comes to church-going. I grew-up in an Evangelical setting. By the time I was in my early 20s I knew I needed to get out, but for some reason I didn't completely break free until I was nearly 40. I think that I had never met anyone who attended a big mainstream church before, and my conception of them was that the congregations tended to just show up and go home--that there was no real sense of family or excitement about being in church. Actually I did know a couple of Catholic girls, and this is exactly what church was like for them.
Evangelical church services are like a big party. Everything is very festive and lively most of the time. And when they're somber, they're really somber. Evangelicals wear their emotions on their sleeves. They're very passionate in everything they do. They look forward to going to church. For most it's the highlight of their week. Many in fact go several times throughout the week. Besides Sunday morning services there are usually Sunday night services and one midweek. I would say that around 65% of all Evangelicals attend all those services and more besides. There's usually a youth night on Friday or Saturday. And then there are bible studies and home get-togethers. Some churches are also involved in a sports program such as a church softball league. And then there are often times the Evangelical version of the Boy Scouts called the Royal Rangers.
I think it's fair to say that, for Evangelicals, their whole world revolves around their church and church friends. I've always maintained that if you were to ask the first 10 Evangelicals you saw on the street who their best friend was, at least 8 of them would name someone from their church. Many in fact have no friends outside of their church whatsoever.
Evangelicals are extremely bible oriented. In fact many of them refer to their churches as "bible churches". I'm reminded of a passage in CS Lewis' novel, That Hideous Strength, where MacPhee is talking about how his uncle used to slap his big bible down on the table and say, "Show it to me in the world of God", whenever people came to him "blathering about religious experiences." Most Evangelicals are extremely well-versed in the bible and many have large portions of it memorized. And I've never seen an Evangelical (besides myself) that didn't believe in some form of biblical inerrancy. They just shrug off biblical difficulties and think that God will answer all their questions in Heaven. There's a certain absurdity that goes with that kind of reasoning (or lack thereof), and this is one of many reasons I felt a need to leave.
Leaving is easy; finding a direction in which to travel is hard. I feel torn between so many paths, and all of them wrong. There's the rub in all this. Not one of them feels right. Finding a church that doesn't have biblical infallibility in their doctrine begins and ends with the Episcopalians. That's fine, but many of them have gotten so liberal about their bible and religion that Christianity for them has become more an ideology of ethics than a religious belief system. When you start ordaining homosexual ministers to lead your flocks I think it's safe to say you're playing very fast with the rules. It makes me very uncomfortable being in such churches. This is definitely not something I desire in a place of worship, and it's one of the main reasons I've never officially joined them.
But where else to go? This is something true Christians (few and far between though they may be) ought to be in constant prayer about. There simply is no denomination that has its act together. Either they're bible worshipping, creed loving heretics, or they're sin infested dens of... well, you know. More often than not it seems that what we find behind Christian pulpits are people who want you subservient to their personal desires while pocketing your cash; or they're blathering some mystagogical idiocy like a Whirling Dervish with all the pretenses of losing the self on the outside, but with a narcissistic desire within for power and adoration.
I'm tired of being torn in-between. God needs someone to build him a true church. Not a house--a church. He won't do it for us. We'll have to work for it. But we need a leader to sally forth and take on the task. For once, wouldn't it be nice if it was someone who actually deserved to be in leadership? I haven't seen him yet, but I know he's out there. Say your prayers kids.
Evangelical church services are like a big party. Everything is very festive and lively most of the time. And when they're somber, they're really somber. Evangelicals wear their emotions on their sleeves. They're very passionate in everything they do. They look forward to going to church. For most it's the highlight of their week. Many in fact go several times throughout the week. Besides Sunday morning services there are usually Sunday night services and one midweek. I would say that around 65% of all Evangelicals attend all those services and more besides. There's usually a youth night on Friday or Saturday. And then there are bible studies and home get-togethers. Some churches are also involved in a sports program such as a church softball league. And then there are often times the Evangelical version of the Boy Scouts called the Royal Rangers.
I think it's fair to say that, for Evangelicals, their whole world revolves around their church and church friends. I've always maintained that if you were to ask the first 10 Evangelicals you saw on the street who their best friend was, at least 8 of them would name someone from their church. Many in fact have no friends outside of their church whatsoever.
Evangelicals are extremely bible oriented. In fact many of them refer to their churches as "bible churches". I'm reminded of a passage in CS Lewis' novel, That Hideous Strength, where MacPhee is talking about how his uncle used to slap his big bible down on the table and say, "Show it to me in the world of God", whenever people came to him "blathering about religious experiences." Most Evangelicals are extremely well-versed in the bible and many have large portions of it memorized. And I've never seen an Evangelical (besides myself) that didn't believe in some form of biblical inerrancy. They just shrug off biblical difficulties and think that God will answer all their questions in Heaven. There's a certain absurdity that goes with that kind of reasoning (or lack thereof), and this is one of many reasons I felt a need to leave.
Leaving is easy; finding a direction in which to travel is hard. I feel torn between so many paths, and all of them wrong. There's the rub in all this. Not one of them feels right. Finding a church that doesn't have biblical infallibility in their doctrine begins and ends with the Episcopalians. That's fine, but many of them have gotten so liberal about their bible and religion that Christianity for them has become more an ideology of ethics than a religious belief system. When you start ordaining homosexual ministers to lead your flocks I think it's safe to say you're playing very fast with the rules. It makes me very uncomfortable being in such churches. This is definitely not something I desire in a place of worship, and it's one of the main reasons I've never officially joined them.
But where else to go? This is something true Christians (few and far between though they may be) ought to be in constant prayer about. There simply is no denomination that has its act together. Either they're bible worshipping, creed loving heretics, or they're sin infested dens of... well, you know. More often than not it seems that what we find behind Christian pulpits are people who want you subservient to their personal desires while pocketing your cash; or they're blathering some mystagogical idiocy like a Whirling Dervish with all the pretenses of losing the self on the outside, but with a narcissistic desire within for power and adoration.
I'm tired of being torn in-between. God needs someone to build him a true church. Not a house--a church. He won't do it for us. We'll have to work for it. But we need a leader to sally forth and take on the task. For once, wouldn't it be nice if it was someone who actually deserved to be in leadership? I haven't seen him yet, but I know he's out there. Say your prayers kids.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
"The Offence" (Movie Review)
I've seen many movies that undertook the subject of evil. They come and they go year in and year out. Some do it reasonably well like Hitchcock's 1960 thriller, "Psycho", for instance. However, if anything, "Psycho" tried a little too hard to be frightening, so that, in the end we came away feeling that the subject was one of fear itself more than of the thing that made us fearful. Michael Powell also released "Peeping Tom" in 1960, a movie about a psychopathic photographer/cinematographer who kills women and films them as they're dying. "Peeping Tom" was certainly creepy and disturbing, but in all the wrong ways. The murderer was treated as a poor, misunderstood man whose upbringing molded him into the villain he became instead of recognizing and acknowledging the self-will that must always be involved in the transgressions of man. The treatment of evil in most other films is either too underplayed to make us think hard about what evil really is, or is a typical Saturday afternoon cinema thriller like "The Exorcist" and its myriad of clones which are generally steeped in outward physical manifestations that all too often seem more of an excuse for showing off their latest special effects arsenal than anything.
There are few films which try to show us that "subtle suggestion" that evil plays within all mankind, that essence of a presence which can be felt in your marrow trying to work its way to the outward physical universe as though it's in need of a host to do any real damage to the world. (I'll never forget reading Charles Williams' book "Witchcraft" and his line about how demons "pine for matter", something which still chills me). 1972 brought us, however, what may be the two most notable and praiseworthy treatments of that subtle suggestion of evil within. One was "The Other" about a young boy who seems truly tormented by his own psychopathic inner twin (actually he had a real life twin who had died and which his mind has turned into an inward dwelling entity of destruction).
"The Offence" is the other great film on the subject of evil from the same year. The offence mentioned in the title is that of child molestation. There is a molester loose who not only rapes little girls, he does his best to make it hurt, to make them feel some of his own anguish for childhood traumas inflicted on him early in life. But we'll find nothing of "Peeping Tom" and its misplaced sympathy for the villain. Sean Connery is a police officer/detective who, by God, will have none of that! However, the movie takes a very strange turn during the interrogation, and in the second half of the film we get a real honest to goodness glimpse of what God must have meant when he said to Cain just before he killed Abel, "...sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Let me also echo what many film critics have said before me: Anyone who claims Sean Connery can't act hasn't seen this film! He is nothing short of brilliant in this movie. Having said that however, Ian Bannen very nearly steals the show with his performance as the suspected villain. I can't recommend this one enough.
This can presently be seen for free at hulu.com if you live in the USA.
There are few films which try to show us that "subtle suggestion" that evil plays within all mankind, that essence of a presence which can be felt in your marrow trying to work its way to the outward physical universe as though it's in need of a host to do any real damage to the world. (I'll never forget reading Charles Williams' book "Witchcraft" and his line about how demons "pine for matter", something which still chills me). 1972 brought us, however, what may be the two most notable and praiseworthy treatments of that subtle suggestion of evil within. One was "The Other" about a young boy who seems truly tormented by his own psychopathic inner twin (actually he had a real life twin who had died and which his mind has turned into an inward dwelling entity of destruction).
"The Offence" is the other great film on the subject of evil from the same year. The offence mentioned in the title is that of child molestation. There is a molester loose who not only rapes little girls, he does his best to make it hurt, to make them feel some of his own anguish for childhood traumas inflicted on him early in life. But we'll find nothing of "Peeping Tom" and its misplaced sympathy for the villain. Sean Connery is a police officer/detective who, by God, will have none of that! However, the movie takes a very strange turn during the interrogation, and in the second half of the film we get a real honest to goodness glimpse of what God must have meant when he said to Cain just before he killed Abel, "...sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Let me also echo what many film critics have said before me: Anyone who claims Sean Connery can't act hasn't seen this film! He is nothing short of brilliant in this movie. Having said that however, Ian Bannen very nearly steals the show with his performance as the suspected villain. I can't recommend this one enough.
This can presently be seen for free at hulu.com if you live in the USA.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Slowing Down Drastically
From here on out I will only post an article once in a while instead of every Sunday. I've only got so much serious stuff to say. All I wanted to do was write a book, make a movie, and record a decent CD. I did all three (although I'm still not crazy about the music CD and would like to do an all acoustic one utilizing my live setup with my Boomerang looper). I also made what I think is a pretty good and useful website about George MacDonald in what free time I had. In short, I think I did everything the good Lord asked of me, so from here on out my posting articles will probably be much less often.
Also, for those who liked last Sunday's post where I went into Stephen Oppenheimer's Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, a good book that goes well with that is by geologist Robert M. Schoch called Voyages of the Pyramid Builders.
Also, for those who liked last Sunday's post where I went into Stephen Oppenheimer's Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, a good book that goes well with that is by geologist Robert M. Schoch called Voyages of the Pyramid Builders.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Religion of Adam
Something that has always fascinated me is the way everyone from historians to anthropologists scrutinize ancient peoples, especially as pertains to old tales and legends, and how they draw the conclusions they do. C. S. Lewis once made mention of how historians for many years believed the city-state of Troy to be nothing but a legend--that perhaps it was an invention to aid in the telling of Greek myths now lost to us. Almost nobody believed it to be an actual city. But there was one German archeologist who went against convention and determined to find what he believed to be a true city buried somewhere beneath the surface of earthen rubble. Of course we all know he succeeded, and you may visit the ruins of Troy today.
Something else that most people, even many Christian people, tend to think of as part of a creation myth is the Garden of Eden story. It may well be that the story is mythic in nature and was embellished upon to tell a moral fable of sorts, but that doesn't mean it can't be loosely based on a real place with real people somewhere.
For reasons that are unfathomable to me, historians like to point to ancient stories as having influenced one another simply because of their dating. We have numerous stories of flood accounts around the world that bear certain similarities, the oldest of which is probably the story of Gilgamesh in Sumer. Thus, we have copies of, and/or mentions of, the story in ancient commentaries as being very old--older than any other flood tale we can currently date. This means only three things to modern historians and the like:
1) The story of Gilgamesh is the oldest, so it must have been first.
2) This means that all other flood accounts are based on that of Gilgamesh, at least in some trickle down fashion, because of its antiquity.
3) Since all of the flood accounts have fantastical elements within them, all are relegated to mythic status.
Of course these are all erroneous conclusions and for obvious reasons. First, the story of Gilgamesh probably is the oldest written account of a flood narrative, but that does not mean it could not be based on much older oral legends, and in fact it probably is. Second, there have no doubt been a large number of massive floods throughout the world during the history of man. Some of these men must have seen these floods coming and road them out in a boat of some kind along with their families and at least some livestock. To think this has only happened once in the history of man is naïve. Third, many stories that have some fantastic elements in them have turned out still to be based on real people, places, or events in some way. Homer's fantastical accounts of things that took place in the very real city of Troy should be proof enough of this.
If we think hard about it, we can find certain correlations between several varieties of ancient legends which on the surface seem to have nothing in common at all. Plato's tale of Atlantis may have some correspondence with the Garden of Eden, and both may have a connection to the flood stories of Manu, Gilgamesh, and Noah. The connecting agent in all these stories is water.
I've always thought it probable that the account of Eden was based on a real place somewhere, but that the names of the rivers had been changed over the years and the story itself a fable to explain, if not the creation of the world, at least some great sweeping change that took place in history--a real paradigm shift, possibly just a metamorphosis of man's self awareness. Stephen Oppenheimer in his book, Eden in the East, leaves my own thinking in the dust. Oppenheimer is a geneticist originally from England who worked as a pediatrician for many years. He also happened to live in Southeast Asia for a long time. One thing he noticed while living there is that there are a great deal of stories in that area pertaining to a paradisiacal garden and a giant snake or dragon. (Most of you probably know about the correlation between the great snake tales and the stories of flying snake-shaped dragons in Asia). There are in fact more such tales to be found in Southeast Asia than anywhere else in the world. A good rule of thumb among historians is that, wherever you find the most of a certain kind of story, and in the most dialects, there's a good chance that this is where it originated.
I had intended to go through Oppenheimer's book in order to create a sort of synopsis, but to my surprise Wikipedia's (the encyclopedia we all like to make fun of) description is actually quite good, so I'm going to copy it here for you:
Let me sort of re-surmise things a bit if I can. Oppenheimer has given direct proof through genetic testing which shows Eurasians in general have ancient Asian origins. He also points to several linguists who believe that there was at one time a worldwide language from which all others descended because we can see shared traits for instance in the languages throughout Europe, India, and Asia. He shows how many of the traits we think of as pertaining to civilized man began to spring up in very odd and unconnected places during the same 3,000 year period all over the planet. And he details geological evidence showing where vast flooding appeared toward the end of the last Ice Age--flooding that forced people to flee their lands for new ones. One of the places that ancient texts point to as having been the place of a large, lost civilization is now buried off the southern coast of Southeast Asia and is known as Sundaland. We find pyramids and mounds on every continent except Australia and the Antarctic. Where did they originate, and why do we find this large dispersion of similar traits in the customs, architecture, and stories of people the world over during this period after the Ice Age? Oppenheimer believes that most of the marks of civilization began in Sundaland, and when the waters rose from the melting ice of the Ice Age, Sundaland became buried under the ocean off the coast of Cambodia/Vietnam. The people who lived there, according to Oppenheimer, were likely the cradle of civilized man, and when the people fled, they took their way of life with them the world over. Thus his views are decidedly diffusionistic.
Something else Oppenheimer points to is the story of creation at the beginning of Genesis where it talks a great deal about "water" and the separating of waters and dry land. The Babylonians tell us that the Sumerians before them came to the Mesopotamia by way of ships from a distant land. They were far advanced from anyone else before them. They irrigated, farmed, raised livestock, built the earliest pyramids/ziggurats, had great art compared to others around them, and even had the earliest known form of writing. Could they have come from Southeast Asia? Oppenheimer believes so. He suggests that we learn to view the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis as more of a re-creation story that is actually dealing with a group of people who are forced from their lands by massive floods and settle in the Mesopotamian Valley, and as the flood waters begin to recede we find the separating of waters and dry land. Thus, for our foreign travelers the world is made anew. When you think about it, after the settling of waters directly after the Ice Age when virtually every coastline on the planet changed, it must have been very much like a new world to the people who lived then. It really was a re-creation of sorts.
Unfortunately, we'll probably never know for sure what existed under the ocean waters of Southeast Asia. There are several rock formations that appear to have been pyramids at one time, but the erosion is so complete that we'll never know for sure if they were or not. There are excavations in remote areas of Cambodia that are already bringing to light civilizations that go back as far as 5,000 B.C., and they're only just beginning to do archeological work there. If this is where the Genesis creation story comes from, and if Sundaland was the land where pyramid building began, we have to wonder if pyramids were originally altars erected by early man. I use "early man" and "Adam" interchangeably. Could pyramids have played a part of the religious ceremonies carried out by Adam? One thing I always thought was strange is that the Jewish historian, Josephus, mentions that during his time there stood somewhere an obelisk that was made by Adam's son Seth. It was supposed to have had a lot of writing on it which he never described. Maybe he didn't tell us what it said because it was in such an old language that no one knew how to translate it. But it's hard to think of obelisks without thinking of pyramids as well. Based on what we know of ancient Egypt, the two just seem to go together. Well... who knows. It's interesting, that's for sure.
Here's a picture showing where the Mekong River splits into four separate waters before dumping into the South China Sea. This is the general area where I believe the Garden of Eden story originated from. Sundaland would be located underwater just off this entire southern coast. Also keep in mind that if people migrated from there to the Mesopotamia and became the nation of Sumer, these may well have been the ancestors of the Jews.
I hope this has been instructive, and if nothing else, maybe it will be food for thought.
Something else that most people, even many Christian people, tend to think of as part of a creation myth is the Garden of Eden story. It may well be that the story is mythic in nature and was embellished upon to tell a moral fable of sorts, but that doesn't mean it can't be loosely based on a real place with real people somewhere.
For reasons that are unfathomable to me, historians like to point to ancient stories as having influenced one another simply because of their dating. We have numerous stories of flood accounts around the world that bear certain similarities, the oldest of which is probably the story of Gilgamesh in Sumer. Thus, we have copies of, and/or mentions of, the story in ancient commentaries as being very old--older than any other flood tale we can currently date. This means only three things to modern historians and the like:
1) The story of Gilgamesh is the oldest, so it must have been first.
2) This means that all other flood accounts are based on that of Gilgamesh, at least in some trickle down fashion, because of its antiquity.
3) Since all of the flood accounts have fantastical elements within them, all are relegated to mythic status.
Of course these are all erroneous conclusions and for obvious reasons. First, the story of Gilgamesh probably is the oldest written account of a flood narrative, but that does not mean it could not be based on much older oral legends, and in fact it probably is. Second, there have no doubt been a large number of massive floods throughout the world during the history of man. Some of these men must have seen these floods coming and road them out in a boat of some kind along with their families and at least some livestock. To think this has only happened once in the history of man is naïve. Third, many stories that have some fantastic elements in them have turned out still to be based on real people, places, or events in some way. Homer's fantastical accounts of things that took place in the very real city of Troy should be proof enough of this.
If we think hard about it, we can find certain correlations between several varieties of ancient legends which on the surface seem to have nothing in common at all. Plato's tale of Atlantis may have some correspondence with the Garden of Eden, and both may have a connection to the flood stories of Manu, Gilgamesh, and Noah. The connecting agent in all these stories is water.
I've always thought it probable that the account of Eden was based on a real place somewhere, but that the names of the rivers had been changed over the years and the story itself a fable to explain, if not the creation of the world, at least some great sweeping change that took place in history--a real paradigm shift, possibly just a metamorphosis of man's self awareness. Stephen Oppenheimer in his book, Eden in the East, leaves my own thinking in the dust. Oppenheimer is a geneticist originally from England who worked as a pediatrician for many years. He also happened to live in Southeast Asia for a long time. One thing he noticed while living there is that there are a great deal of stories in that area pertaining to a paradisiacal garden and a giant snake or dragon. (Most of you probably know about the correlation between the great snake tales and the stories of flying snake-shaped dragons in Asia). There are in fact more such tales to be found in Southeast Asia than anywhere else in the world. A good rule of thumb among historians is that, wherever you find the most of a certain kind of story, and in the most dialects, there's a good chance that this is where it originated.
I had intended to go through Oppenheimer's book in order to create a sort of synopsis, but to my surprise Wikipedia's (the encyclopedia we all like to make fun of) description is actually quite good, so I'm going to copy it here for you:
In his book Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, published in 1998, Oppenheimer hypothesizes that Eurasians have southeast Asian origins, citing evidence from a variety of disciplines to make his case: geology, archaeology, genetics, linguistics, and folklore. Using geological evidence, he writes about the rise in ocean levels that accompanied the waning of the ice age—as much as 500 feet—during the period 14,000-7,000 years ago and says that this submerged the continental shelf off the coast of southeast Asia. He, and others, calls this submerged continent Sundaland and cites archaeological evidence for an original culture in this region. The rising ocean levels caused this culture to disperse, and Oppenheimer supports this idea with the above-mentioned evidence from genetics, linguistics, and folklore. He notes, for example, that those cultures in regions whose geology would have led to their being submerged have flood myths, whereas there are no flood myths in Africa, which because of its lack of a continental shelf, was relatively unaffected by the rising ocean level.
Let me sort of re-surmise things a bit if I can. Oppenheimer has given direct proof through genetic testing which shows Eurasians in general have ancient Asian origins. He also points to several linguists who believe that there was at one time a worldwide language from which all others descended because we can see shared traits for instance in the languages throughout Europe, India, and Asia. He shows how many of the traits we think of as pertaining to civilized man began to spring up in very odd and unconnected places during the same 3,000 year period all over the planet. And he details geological evidence showing where vast flooding appeared toward the end of the last Ice Age--flooding that forced people to flee their lands for new ones. One of the places that ancient texts point to as having been the place of a large, lost civilization is now buried off the southern coast of Southeast Asia and is known as Sundaland. We find pyramids and mounds on every continent except Australia and the Antarctic. Where did they originate, and why do we find this large dispersion of similar traits in the customs, architecture, and stories of people the world over during this period after the Ice Age? Oppenheimer believes that most of the marks of civilization began in Sundaland, and when the waters rose from the melting ice of the Ice Age, Sundaland became buried under the ocean off the coast of Cambodia/Vietnam. The people who lived there, according to Oppenheimer, were likely the cradle of civilized man, and when the people fled, they took their way of life with them the world over. Thus his views are decidedly diffusionistic.
Something else Oppenheimer points to is the story of creation at the beginning of Genesis where it talks a great deal about "water" and the separating of waters and dry land. The Babylonians tell us that the Sumerians before them came to the Mesopotamia by way of ships from a distant land. They were far advanced from anyone else before them. They irrigated, farmed, raised livestock, built the earliest pyramids/ziggurats, had great art compared to others around them, and even had the earliest known form of writing. Could they have come from Southeast Asia? Oppenheimer believes so. He suggests that we learn to view the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis as more of a re-creation story that is actually dealing with a group of people who are forced from their lands by massive floods and settle in the Mesopotamian Valley, and as the flood waters begin to recede we find the separating of waters and dry land. Thus, for our foreign travelers the world is made anew. When you think about it, after the settling of waters directly after the Ice Age when virtually every coastline on the planet changed, it must have been very much like a new world to the people who lived then. It really was a re-creation of sorts.
Unfortunately, we'll probably never know for sure what existed under the ocean waters of Southeast Asia. There are several rock formations that appear to have been pyramids at one time, but the erosion is so complete that we'll never know for sure if they were or not. There are excavations in remote areas of Cambodia that are already bringing to light civilizations that go back as far as 5,000 B.C., and they're only just beginning to do archeological work there. If this is where the Genesis creation story comes from, and if Sundaland was the land where pyramid building began, we have to wonder if pyramids were originally altars erected by early man. I use "early man" and "Adam" interchangeably. Could pyramids have played a part of the religious ceremonies carried out by Adam? One thing I always thought was strange is that the Jewish historian, Josephus, mentions that during his time there stood somewhere an obelisk that was made by Adam's son Seth. It was supposed to have had a lot of writing on it which he never described. Maybe he didn't tell us what it said because it was in such an old language that no one knew how to translate it. But it's hard to think of obelisks without thinking of pyramids as well. Based on what we know of ancient Egypt, the two just seem to go together. Well... who knows. It's interesting, that's for sure.
Here's a picture showing where the Mekong River splits into four separate waters before dumping into the South China Sea. This is the general area where I believe the Garden of Eden story originated from. Sundaland would be located underwater just off this entire southern coast. Also keep in mind that if people migrated from there to the Mesopotamia and became the nation of Sumer, these may well have been the ancestors of the Jews.
I hope this has been instructive, and if nothing else, maybe it will be food for thought.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saved (the Desire Behind Desire)
Next week I'll be posting my last article. It will be quite short and will include some thoughts about the religion of Adam. I'll also be giving some book recommendations.
Romans 2: 28-29, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.”
The Apostle Paul seems to state in several places that he believed in all of humanity having something along the lines of what the ancients called the "laws of nature". Some cultures call them "first precepts" or "the Tao" etc. It’s basically the notion of a universal conscience common to all men at all times everywhere throughout creation. For instance, as C. S. Lewis once said, no one has ever admired cowardice or selfishness. We're always amazed when we hear of somebody committing inhumane acts of extreme torture and the like, and say, "How could somebody do that to someone else?", as if they've done something that goes against nature itself--and they have. A materialist would like to think this proves there is no Tao, and men create their own conscience, but this is not so. These are men who have simply chosen not to follow their God given consciences. I had a friend many years ago whose cousin was jumped in a bar by some bikers; they held him down while one of them cut out one of his eyes with a pocketknife. They were following their own design of moral conscience while choosing to ignore the one God gave them at birth. I stated in a previous article that if you ignore your God given conscience it would begin to leave you, and eventually there would be hardly a trace of it left. Men can replace this conscience with one of their own making, and men that do this are capable of any detestable act that comes into their heads.
Another example of this Tao would be its presence in very young children who are molested. Almost every one of them will say on a witness stand that they knew/felt that what was being done to them was wrong even though they were too young to even know what sex was, but that didn't stop them from knowing a universal wrong when it was done to them.
Let's look at the following comment by Paul:
Romans 2:13-16 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
As for Paul's later reference in Romans to being "justified by faith", I don't see this as being a self-conflicting argument against his earlier statement about gentiles being saved by obeying the laws on their hearts, i.e.—conscience. I believe he reasons that the very fact that a man chooses to follow his God given conscience creates a turning point for him. That he has chosen God because God is a part of his conscience in some way.
Nobody can find friendship with God through obeying either the Deuteronomical laws or the laws of nature either one because nobody keeps them all the time. This is true. We all mess up now and then. Neither can anyone aspire to divine favor through faith alone. Paul also states that, even if we prophecy and have faith, we are worthless if we don't love others.
Nor do I think holy friendship is attainable through the magic invocation of names. No one gets points simply for saying they believe in Jesus. You might as well tell someone, "Say abracadabra and click your heels three times; there now, you get to go to heaven!" When Christ talked of separating the sheep from the goats, he was talking about people, all of whom, believed in him and weren't shy in saying his name. Those who were called the "goats" were called so because they didn't do, or didn't want to do, the good works they should have.
We can point to biblical passages that seem to contradict each other concerning the names/works/faith route to heaven all day. Therefore whatever brings us into the presence of Holiness must be something that concerns all of these things, but yet is something a little beyond them--something that is a bit of a mystery. Paul even spoke about "the mystery of faith". I don't pretend to know the mind of God, and I'm no mystic, but I think I may be able to shed a tiny bit of light on this mystery. Paul alludes to it when he speaks of the way the mind (or will of the body) wants to do one thing while the will (of his spirit) attains to something holier. CS Lewis said in The Weight of Glory that he believed the human conscience to be composed of both the Tao (something he likened to moral instincts) and the choices the mind makes between right and wrong where the Tao is unclear. I think Lewis is right. Paul separates the mind from the conscience in Titus 1:15 where he says "…both their minds and their consciences are corrupted", and I think he was right to completely separate the two here. The conscience for Paul seemed to hold a certain reverence. It was God himself, a glimmer of divine light, within mankind. It was like the first precept of all reason, because it was reason without cause. It was simply there, as a gift, just as the formulae of pi exists within all circles. We find that 3.14 keeps coming up in many geometrical measurements. It’s a sort of first precept of geometry, and it exists on its own whether we realize its existence or not. Yet Paul also talked of the conscience in other places where he admits that it's at least partially developed by our choices. So I tend to think he thought of the God given conscience as something like a big dam with Satan on the other side, where the biggest part of the structure was made by God, but where we have the ability to add to it and strengthen it, or to tear away at it until it comes tumbling down altogether. A man who has torn down that dam is the kind of man who can do unspeakable acts. The dam that would have kept the evil out of him is gone, and he's floating in the filth he let in.
Now this is a hard subject to grasp, and I believe that's why Paul thought of it as a mystery, but the body seems to have a mind of its own. It not only has physical desires but also mental desires that are not healthy. We all have thoughts that flood our heads now and then that we wish were not there, yet we find getting rid of them is not so easy as just wishing them to be gone. Yet we do wish them to be gone. How can it be that the minds of our bodies wish one thing, and yet we possess something behind that mind which would wish another thing altogether? It's as though we have a physical will and a spiritual will, and often they are at odds with one another. The closer we grow to Christ, the more at odds they will become. At this point you may think that winning this Olympics of wills is what sets good men apart from bad men, but you would be wrong. Here a third oddity comes into the fray that’s even more difficult to take in.
We may wish to be good and to follow our God-given consciences. Sometimes this involves heavy lifting (both physically and of the will). I may know through my conscience that God is telling me to do a certain good work, perhaps to cut my neighbors grass because they're sick in bed. However, what if cutting grass is my least favorite activity? For that matter, what if feeding the poor is one of my least favorite activities as well? Not only does my physical mind lack a desire to do a certain good work but even my spiritual mind seems to have no will do to the thing. Yet, I know it is a thing worth doing and a thing that will somehow do me good as well as those who are being done for. Therefore, I have a desire to desire that I would do these things. That is, I wish I would desire to do certain things that I have no desire to do--that they would become a part of my spiritual will. They may never be part of my physical will because it's always at odds with my spiritual will, but I at least wish that my spiritual will would be in step with the desires that the Tao is telling me are good and proper to have. I don't want to cut my neighbors grass, but I really wish I could make myself want to.
If we wish to have a desire to do good things, often that wish is fulfilled at some point. That wish can only be fulfilled by another kind of Will, one that is foreign to our own. Only God can convert our "desire to desire" into being a part of our own will. The bible says to love our enemies, but no one in the history of man ever wanted to love his enemies, and you can't make yourself want to. However, as long as you at least desire to want to then God will step in and convert that desire to a want to. (This is very hard to express verbally; I can only hope the reader will understand the mental imagery I am trying so hard, and yet so poorly, to convey). Before long you'll find that you really do want to love your enemies or cut your neighbors grass etc. It came by no power of your own, and it usually came after you gave up on it ever coming. One day you suddenly realize that you have a kind of love for people that you never had before, and this is what Paul meant by transforming our minds. It also happens to be what salvation (for lack of a better term) is. It's not the acts that we do, or the words we say, or opinions about God that we express. It’s the desire to desire goodness in all things. I know of no word or phrase for that desire behind desire, but the thing surely exists, and it’s the most important thing a man must take heed of within all of creation.
A man may choose to desire goodness in all things without ever having heard of Christ. He still chooses Christ, because Christ is the voice calling him to that desire behind desire. Or as Lewis once said, a man can be saved from drowning and never find out who it was that saved him. That's just my opinion, but it comes from something so deep within that it's without.
There's so very much more to this earthly existence than the tidbit I've tried to express here. There are things that Christ did and changed just by coming into the world that I haven't even begun to touch upon--things that changed all of humanity whether they realize it or not. For instance, people no longer build pyramids and mounds; no one builds them today at all. Worshipping in the high places is all but over for the most part. Magic, if it ever existed, no longer does. Mass human sacrifice is no longer a part of everyday culture throughout the world as it once was. The coming of Christ had a lot to do with that. There are ways in which Christ changed the world that even the bible itself doesn't go into. It doesn't matter if we know what all those changes are. We can still be grateful for them.
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