Liquid Dogma
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
In the beginning, there was an intense light covering all of creation. All beings were immensely happy because the light was very warm and very beautiful. But there came a man who grew jealous of the power of the light. He sought to place the light in a large black box. But the light was too strong and too powerful to be contained. Once word of his deed spread, other men of similar interest sought their own piece of the light and, in the end, succeeded.
The light had vanished into the black boxes, which were now as numerous as the men on earth desiring power. The men bickered back and forth while the creatures of the earth wept and wept, for darkness now spread where once there was light. "We are cold," they said. "We forget the beauty of the light. Show it to us." But the men would not relent. The people were overwhelmed with sadness, so they followed the men around, begging to see the light in the box. Some chose a man with one box and others chose a man with another box. But the men would never show the light.
Less and less was spoken of the light. There were the old stories, spread by men of questionable memory from the very long ago and they maintained that there was, indeed, a beautiful light in each of the boxes, divided amongst them. But no one believed the old tales. Stories of the light began to be replaced with stories of a magnificent lamp or a sparkling pile of gold. But, truly, no one knew what the boxes contained. And, in fact, the people began to adorn the boxes themselves and the boxes became the source of the legend.
"At least I can see the box!" said one adherent. "The box brings me peace. Does it matter what is in the box?" said another. "There was never anything in the box," claimed a third, " the box revealed itself to us to show us the squareness and blackness of life."
And the men grew rich and powerful and less cautious than they had once been, due mainly to the wars they created between themselves, arguing the merits of their own box over the boxes of their neighbors. "My box is bigger and blacker than yours!" one would claim and the other would retort: "Well, my box is older and more distinguished than yours!" and this kind of argument went on and on. And with increasing violence. One especially powerful man would come along and force the people of one box to come follow his box. If they would not, he would have them killed. There was much sadness in the world.
But occasionally, a man who would be willing to undergo a great ordeal would travel to one of the boxes and sneak a look inside. There were few of these men and they were mostly dismissed as fools. But, more commonly, they were grossly misunderstood, for though they brought news of the light inside the box, the people had long since forgotten that there WAS light inside the box. So their stories of light became stories to explain a particular box in a particular place at a particular time. And the light remained hidden and divided.
A man who had lost his inner peace set out one day on a walk, thinking that perhaps he could meditate and once again find the peace that had defined his life long ago. Each day he took the same walk up the same path. Each day it took him the same amount of time to complete the walk.
As time passed, he began to understand his body again. With this understanding, he began to relax the posture that knotted him up and began to stride with the stature of a man at peace at all times, in all things. His body changed and he began to notice that he looked better and healthier. People who noticed him along the way commented on how good he looked. People who he was attracted to began to suggest that the attraction was mutual. All because of the daily walks he took.
Whereas once he had noticed the freshness of the air and beauty of the walk he took, more and more he began to be concerned with the shape and structure of his body. He began to walk at times that he knew people would notice and praise him for the daily ritual he performed. He began to grow bored of the ritual and increased his pace again and again and again until his walk grew into a sprint -- up and down and around the course of his path, endless laps.
And then he noticed that his body began to lose the shape it had once had. Oh, the outer shape of the body was as lean and muscular as ever and as attractive to others as ever. But his body was more knotted now than ever. And what's more, he felt less at peace than he had before he began the walks. He pushed himself harder and faster and made his body leaner and stronger, but to no avail. It would not help his aching body or his restless mind. In fact, the aching and the restlessness grew.
So he gave up. "No more walks for me -- they made everything worse," he said. And he vowed to do the opposite of what he had been doing -- he would rest and he would lay about and he would take his body out of the shape it had been in. The consequences were of no import to him. But this made him back into the man he had been when he started this quest. And he wept. Because it seemed as if there was nothing he could do. There seemed to be no peace to be found in the world.
And then one day he took a walk. And he felt his peace returning and he felt his body grow stronger. And he realized that it was not the walk that had led him astray. It was himself.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Well put, my friend. In spite of my barrage of dogma-based arguments, it is the pure simplicity of life and the wonder and beauty I see all around that is what I relate to god. It is the fact that my friends and family love me even when I am lost. It is kindness that comes out of nowhere. It is the knowledge that life will be beautiful because it can be, even when life seems unalterably lost. The story of Abraham is a beautiful illustration of this. Life can be created where there is none. Men can be made whole when they have felt broken. All that is necessary is love.
It is when I am with those I love that I see god.
It is when I am wandering in a world removed from man that I understand god.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
I saw this and it made me laugh. It was the desktop image on a friend’s laptop. He comes from Texas, from a protestant “christian” family, and cites this ubringing as the source of his now disdainful attitude towards any and all religion.
I was especially interested because I think the cartoon captures the heart of the common stereotype of religion: that it is all just a collection of dogmas, that a person has to take on nothing but ‘blind faith’. If this is the case, than I would surely agree that it has the potential to trash a person’s mind and prevent them from doing any real thinking on their own.
I have met people who would surely be good evidence for this argument, who engage in religion not really knowing why, other than it was force-fed to them for long enough that it became routine and doesn’t deserve questions.
But I have also met plenty of ‘atheists’ who have their own set of beliefs, often dogmatic in nature from some source they see as an authority, many of which take these beliefs without really questioning anything. This is an excellent example of people’s ability to stop questioning as soon as they associate with a group with authority and dogma.
In my experience, there are two types of religious people. There are those that explain their religion in terms of their life experience. Then there are those who resort to ipse dixit arguments like “because the bible says so”. I don’t have a good sense of what percentage of all ‘religious’ people fall into these two categories, but I have the sense that more qualify as the latter. And this is sad, because I think that kind of thinking is exactly what leads to the stereotypes that drive cartoons like this.
It’s always interesting to hear someone explain how they know God exists. Many put forth heavy, abstract ideas. Then there are those who speak in simple terms about what they themselves have seen. Abraham would be an example of this. As an old man he had essentially nothing that could make a man feel like a man in those days. He had no offspring, no land, a barren wife, etc. Since all we care about these days is money, I suppose the modern equivalent would be a man with dreams of millions being evicted from his trailer. Times were hard. Then God told him to move, and promised him children more numerous than the stars. If course, with a barren wife this was nothing short of impossible. But as Abraham learned, God at it’s most elemental level does one thing: It creates life where there was none before. If Abraham were here to be asked how he knows that God exists, I don’t think we’d get some sermon on the bible, nor would we hear some abstract, metaphysical explanation of the guy in the sky, but rather a simple explanation that he saw the impossible happen – with his own eyes.
Now, I suppose it could be said that one who experiences won’t necessarily have a better understanding than one who studies and knows. That’s what the seminaries are about, right? But, in my experience, when it comes to converting a persons heart, I find that all the knowledge in the world doesn’t help nearly as much as a tiny bit of experience, especially if that experience involves suffering. But this is a rant for another time.
