Paul says in Philippians 2:12 to "...in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling". He also says in Galatians 1:9 "As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." So on the one hand he's asserting the primacy of his doctrines over against any competing ones while also saying on the other hand that faith can only be real if it's a personal struggle. So even Paul, as confident as he was that his teachings were correct, knew that clinging to him and hanging on his words was not enough. There is truth to be found in the Christian tradition, but the best the Church, or even scripture itself, can do is serve as a guide to help you find the truth inside your own heart. True spiritual experience can't be written about, or even spoken of. It can only be written and talked "around". The church can point you in the general direction, but ultimately your journey of faith must be completed alone, drawing near to the "thick darkness where God is" as the people stand afar off. (Exodus 20:21)
When religions are organized they become businesses, and their leaders are concerned with market share and other business priorities.
Lay people who are active in a religion are attracted to the lifestyle that community offers. Whether it is Buddhists trying to live by the "Eightfold Path", or Muslims active in community charity, or Jews supporting cultural events, or rural Christians trying to live a simple righteous life, it always seems like it's the common people who actually "get" the religion, in that they live it, while the senior clergy spend a lot of time admonishing and manipulating.
One of the oldest scams in the world is the middleman. You can't do legal work yourself, it's much too complicated, you need a lawyer. You can't do accounting, you need a CPA. You can't just start a business, you need a license. You can't do religion without clergy.
All of this serves to disempower us. And it is deliberate.
Yoshi, brother, enthusiastic kudos for today's post! I'll be sending on the link with my post on Wednesday. Awesome. (A word I abhor, actually, but once in a while I dust it off.)
The fact that you would say that God has gone away reveals the root of all the frustration you are writing about. Maybe "this frustration will last as long as Christians continue to understand Christianity as a religion whose purpose is to 'help,' as long as they continue to keep the 'utilitarian' self-consciousness" typical of the Western church. True Christianity has destroyed those "explanations" and "doctrines" of life and death. "The purpose of Christianity is not to help people, but to reveal the Truth." That Truth is that everything we see in the world is "a revelation of God, a sign of his *presence*, the joy of his coming, the call to communion with him, the hope for fulfillment in him. Since the day of Pentecost there is a seal, a ray, a sign of the Holy Spirit on everything for those who believe in Christ and know that he is the life of the world -- and that in him the world in its totality has become again a *liturgy*, a *communion*, an *ascension*. A Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, finds Christ and rejoices in him. And this joy *transforms* all his human plans and programs, decisions and actions, making all his mission the sacrament of the world's return to him who is the life of the world." (quotes and paraphrasing from Fr. Alexander Schmemman's "For the Life of the World") God has not gone away, he is closer than your own breath. He is all around you, everywhere.
As for the bits about God going away, I was/am referring to the fact that Christ did go away after his resurrection. Bodily, he is not here anymore, he left Earth and went to "prepare a place" for us, whatever that means.
As to your other point, if Christianity is not helpful then why are we bothering with it? I feels to me like your comment denied that help was a necessary aspect of the Christian faith but then re-asserted that it does indeed help us (by transforming us so that we have joy) without using that word, almost refuting your original point?
Thanks for this, Yoshi. As a pastor myself (and a former Catholic), I will say that I have been very wary of authority figures in the church, and have had more negative than positive experiences with them over the course of my life. That said, I do not take my position lightly.
Although I do wonder if what we’re currently living through is truly unique to the overarching pattern of history. Let’s take the church for example.
Each time there has been a reformation of sorts, it’s because people wake up to see that what began as a grassroots movement has become top-heavy, institutionalized, and is parasitizing itself.
I’m currently a Methodist, which began as a grassroots reformation of the Church of England when it was in this condition. However, over the course of a few centuries, we now have the United Methodist Church, which has become top-heavy and institutionalized with corrupted leadership. Only a bottom-up reclamation of its heart can reform it.
While the situation we find ourselves in is unique due to the global and rapidly-changing nature of technology, I can’t help but wonder if we haven’t been here before, just in different ways. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Jesus is introduced in each of the gospels as being the one who gives the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, hmm, I think there is something to that. Let’s go to him and try it out.
Yoshi, I'm so glad I didn't respond with my first impulse, yesterday, something along the lines of "Bah, humbug, back to you."
You started with, "he who increases knowledge, increases sorrow" and it seemed to me, ended up pretty much where you started.
But the reading journey was worth it because you're a terrific writer and every essay is still a tour de force. I always reread each one, several times.
This time, after rereading, I found a more helpful focus and coming to grips with reality as we know it, always a healthy and honest day's work.
You wrote:
"If you were actually aware of it… if you could actually even for a moment Know just how much You Did Not Know… you could never be certain of anything again. You’d just be lost. Drowning in chaos. Therefore, to keep from coming unmoored in this Sea of Unknowing, to try and tear a coherent story that we can tell ourselves about who we are and where we come from and what we’re doing here from that Morass of Confusion.
The sheep need Authority.
They need a person, or an institution, or a power, to come along and give them an “official” version of What Happened. Of What’s True. To set the record straight and lay down the facts. In the vast ocean of infinitely many things that one could choose to know, they need somebody to tell them what to focus on.
Ultimately, this is no different than saying that they need somebody to tell them what to believe.
That’s why religions happen. That’s why they’ll always happen. That’s why no amount of progress or scientific development or philosophical achievement will ever succeed in banishing the con-man in robes or the trinket seller with his totems or the crowds rushing hither and yon after this or that visionary who claims to have seen Mother Mary in the sky. Because fundamentally The World, The Cosmos… it is Unknowable.
Unknowable simply by virtue of being too complex..." End quote.
________________
All of that directly precedes your "map" of the Universe.
For simplicity's sake, our whole planet could be accurately represented in that map by a single cube of salt, so the sun would be the size of a grapefruit.
But to preserve the accuracy of the visual representation, the distance to Pluto would be a casual 10 minute, 600 meter walk.
The distance to the nearest star would be a 4,000 kilometer airplane flight and a voyage to the center of our Milky Way galaxy would require an incredibly tiny but super fast space ship capable of traveling the 25 million kilometer distance.
That same ship would have to travel 94 billion light years, 90 trillion km, almost 10 light years in the real universe, to reach the edge of the observable universe -- that is, the map representation of the observable universe in which the size of our whole planet was reduced to the size of a tiny grain of salt.
Not only don't we know what we don't know, we can't even visualize where we really exist.
No wonder the Father, the Creator of the Universe, had to send his Son down, down, down to us. That Son was of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit but beyond that, we have no words to begin to comprehend what's meant by, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
We can tease our tiny brains with glimpses of insights, that what we understand as the physical world has parallels in the subatomic universe and phenomena like quantum entanglement at a distance may mirror spiritual realities we won't know much about until we, ourselves, pass on, into timeless Eternity.
So, if you're looking for an "official version of What Happened and what does it all mean, I think you're just going to have to take a long look back to the beginning.
Don't know if you're formally Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox but maybe take a look backwards at when and where your own faith journey started and retrace some steps...
And if you're no longer at peace looking to "the West," maybe consider checking out experiences of church Fathers from the East.
Find your own mustard seed or grain of teff, as our Amharic brothers might want to say.
Thank you Mike, what nice compliments you had for me.
Um... as to the rest that you said... I feel like I don't need a shepherd anymore? Maybe that's hubris but I don't know, I've just been down that road enough times to not have an interest anymore. I've been protestant, catholic, and, for a time, heavily into eastern orthodoxy, and I must confess that I have found the same problems plaguing me in every tradition. For better or worse I've had to resolve them with God alone in my room in prayer and, as a result, don't really feel the need any longer to ask any human man or woman what I ought to do or believe. I don't begrudge those who do, it's just not where I'm at any longer.
Paul says in Philippians 2:12 to "...in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling". He also says in Galatians 1:9 "As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." So on the one hand he's asserting the primacy of his doctrines over against any competing ones while also saying on the other hand that faith can only be real if it's a personal struggle. So even Paul, as confident as he was that his teachings were correct, knew that clinging to him and hanging on his words was not enough. There is truth to be found in the Christian tradition, but the best the Church, or even scripture itself, can do is serve as a guide to help you find the truth inside your own heart. True spiritual experience can't be written about, or even spoken of. It can only be written and talked "around". The church can point you in the general direction, but ultimately your journey of faith must be completed alone, drawing near to the "thick darkness where God is" as the people stand afar off. (Exodus 20:21)
When religions are organized they become businesses, and their leaders are concerned with market share and other business priorities.
Lay people who are active in a religion are attracted to the lifestyle that community offers. Whether it is Buddhists trying to live by the "Eightfold Path", or Muslims active in community charity, or Jews supporting cultural events, or rural Christians trying to live a simple righteous life, it always seems like it's the common people who actually "get" the religion, in that they live it, while the senior clergy spend a lot of time admonishing and manipulating.
One of the oldest scams in the world is the middleman. You can't do legal work yourself, it's much too complicated, you need a lawyer. You can't do accounting, you need a CPA. You can't just start a business, you need a license. You can't do religion without clergy.
All of this serves to disempower us. And it is deliberate.
These texts of yours are minutes under icy cold waters of a wild river. A new vitality comes to me when I rise out.
Thank you
Yoshi, brother, enthusiastic kudos for today's post! I'll be sending on the link with my post on Wednesday. Awesome. (A word I abhor, actually, but once in a while I dust it off.)
The fact that you would say that God has gone away reveals the root of all the frustration you are writing about. Maybe "this frustration will last as long as Christians continue to understand Christianity as a religion whose purpose is to 'help,' as long as they continue to keep the 'utilitarian' self-consciousness" typical of the Western church. True Christianity has destroyed those "explanations" and "doctrines" of life and death. "The purpose of Christianity is not to help people, but to reveal the Truth." That Truth is that everything we see in the world is "a revelation of God, a sign of his *presence*, the joy of his coming, the call to communion with him, the hope for fulfillment in him. Since the day of Pentecost there is a seal, a ray, a sign of the Holy Spirit on everything for those who believe in Christ and know that he is the life of the world -- and that in him the world in its totality has become again a *liturgy*, a *communion*, an *ascension*. A Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, finds Christ and rejoices in him. And this joy *transforms* all his human plans and programs, decisions and actions, making all his mission the sacrament of the world's return to him who is the life of the world." (quotes and paraphrasing from Fr. Alexander Schmemman's "For the Life of the World") God has not gone away, he is closer than your own breath. He is all around you, everywhere.
Hi Leah,
As for the bits about God going away, I was/am referring to the fact that Christ did go away after his resurrection. Bodily, he is not here anymore, he left Earth and went to "prepare a place" for us, whatever that means.
As to your other point, if Christianity is not helpful then why are we bothering with it? I feels to me like your comment denied that help was a necessary aspect of the Christian faith but then re-asserted that it does indeed help us (by transforming us so that we have joy) without using that word, almost refuting your original point?
Thank you for your contributions here!
Thanks for this, Yoshi. As a pastor myself (and a former Catholic), I will say that I have been very wary of authority figures in the church, and have had more negative than positive experiences with them over the course of my life. That said, I do not take my position lightly.
Although I do wonder if what we’re currently living through is truly unique to the overarching pattern of history. Let’s take the church for example.
Each time there has been a reformation of sorts, it’s because people wake up to see that what began as a grassroots movement has become top-heavy, institutionalized, and is parasitizing itself.
I’m currently a Methodist, which began as a grassroots reformation of the Church of England when it was in this condition. However, over the course of a few centuries, we now have the United Methodist Church, which has become top-heavy and institutionalized with corrupted leadership. Only a bottom-up reclamation of its heart can reform it.
While the situation we find ourselves in is unique due to the global and rapidly-changing nature of technology, I can’t help but wonder if we haven’t been here before, just in different ways. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Jesus is introduced in each of the gospels as being the one who gives the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, hmm, I think there is something to that. Let’s go to him and try it out.
Yoshi, I'm so glad I didn't respond with my first impulse, yesterday, something along the lines of "Bah, humbug, back to you."
You started with, "he who increases knowledge, increases sorrow" and it seemed to me, ended up pretty much where you started.
But the reading journey was worth it because you're a terrific writer and every essay is still a tour de force. I always reread each one, several times.
This time, after rereading, I found a more helpful focus and coming to grips with reality as we know it, always a healthy and honest day's work.
You wrote:
"If you were actually aware of it… if you could actually even for a moment Know just how much You Did Not Know… you could never be certain of anything again. You’d just be lost. Drowning in chaos. Therefore, to keep from coming unmoored in this Sea of Unknowing, to try and tear a coherent story that we can tell ourselves about who we are and where we come from and what we’re doing here from that Morass of Confusion.
The sheep need Authority.
They need a person, or an institution, or a power, to come along and give them an “official” version of What Happened. Of What’s True. To set the record straight and lay down the facts. In the vast ocean of infinitely many things that one could choose to know, they need somebody to tell them what to focus on.
Ultimately, this is no different than saying that they need somebody to tell them what to believe.
That’s why religions happen. That’s why they’ll always happen. That’s why no amount of progress or scientific development or philosophical achievement will ever succeed in banishing the con-man in robes or the trinket seller with his totems or the crowds rushing hither and yon after this or that visionary who claims to have seen Mother Mary in the sky. Because fundamentally The World, The Cosmos… it is Unknowable.
Unknowable simply by virtue of being too complex..." End quote.
________________
All of that directly precedes your "map" of the Universe.
For simplicity's sake, our whole planet could be accurately represented in that map by a single cube of salt, so the sun would be the size of a grapefruit.
But to preserve the accuracy of the visual representation, the distance to Pluto would be a casual 10 minute, 600 meter walk.
The distance to the nearest star would be a 4,000 kilometer airplane flight and a voyage to the center of our Milky Way galaxy would require an incredibly tiny but super fast space ship capable of traveling the 25 million kilometer distance.
That same ship would have to travel 94 billion light years, 90 trillion km, almost 10 light years in the real universe, to reach the edge of the observable universe -- that is, the map representation of the observable universe in which the size of our whole planet was reduced to the size of a tiny grain of salt.
Not only don't we know what we don't know, we can't even visualize where we really exist.
No wonder the Father, the Creator of the Universe, had to send his Son down, down, down to us. That Son was of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit but beyond that, we have no words to begin to comprehend what's meant by, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
We can tease our tiny brains with glimpses of insights, that what we understand as the physical world has parallels in the subatomic universe and phenomena like quantum entanglement at a distance may mirror spiritual realities we won't know much about until we, ourselves, pass on, into timeless Eternity.
So, if you're looking for an "official version of What Happened and what does it all mean, I think you're just going to have to take a long look back to the beginning.
Don't know if you're formally Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox but maybe take a look backwards at when and where your own faith journey started and retrace some steps...
And if you're no longer at peace looking to "the West," maybe consider checking out experiences of church Fathers from the East.
Find your own mustard seed or grain of teff, as our Amharic brothers might want to say.
Thank you Mike, what nice compliments you had for me.
Um... as to the rest that you said... I feel like I don't need a shepherd anymore? Maybe that's hubris but I don't know, I've just been down that road enough times to not have an interest anymore. I've been protestant, catholic, and, for a time, heavily into eastern orthodoxy, and I must confess that I have found the same problems plaguing me in every tradition. For better or worse I've had to resolve them with God alone in my room in prayer and, as a result, don't really feel the need any longer to ask any human man or woman what I ought to do or believe. I don't begrudge those who do, it's just not where I'm at any longer.