Ever so often (actually, much more often than I'm really comfortable with), I start a long and convoluted circle of thought about my faith. It starts out as a simple question what I actually believe. Then it gets a little deeper and into the less easily-answered questions about why I believe those things and what the rest of the world believes. Before I know it, I'm in up to my ear lobes in the mirey ponderances about the nature of faith itself in relation to my experience. And it gets very confusing, yet always draws me back ultimately to the very first question, and maybe this is why I start over and over again. It goes something like this:
"Okay, so why do I believe Christianity is all that, anyway?" (This leads to some preliminary and sometimes vague rumination on historicity, bibliographical evidence, the nature of man, et cetera. Okay, deeper we go now...)
"So what about Islam? Judaism? Hinduism? Taoism? Agnosticism? Aren't there some great Muslim apologists with air-tight cases for their faith?" (This gets more difficult to answer in my own headspace, but I can still track with some basic facts of history to provide some insight on the origins and underpinnings of these other religions. On to the murkies...)
"In my own experience, what has flavored my view of religion and of the nature of God?" (This is where I get hopelessly muddled in how my culture, my emotional wounds, my exposure to media, my geographical locale, my relationships, my education, my philosophical leanings, even the food I eat has influenced how I view faith and my relationship to God. At this point, I generally throw my intellectual hands up in dispair and figure that it's all impossible to parse out.)
And then I'm back at square one the next time, determined to someday complete (or break) that circle and get to the inside of what drives and informs this sometimes misunderstood faith of mine.
Was religion meant to be this hard-thought upon?
--Teri.
10 comments:
Was religion meant to be this hard-thought upon? Yes. Try to answer a question for me.
Is there one statement about religion that you believe is 100% true for everyone?
--M Bozeman
Yeah, it's a few lines from one of my favorite songs:
"There's a hole in the middle of the prettiest life;
So the lawyers and the prophets say.
Not your father nor your mother nor your lover's gonna ever make it go away.
Now there's too much darkness in an endless night
To be ashamed of the way we feel;
Let's be kind to each other--
Not forever, but for real."
Well, okay, there are a lot more than that, but that's a good place to start, don't you think? The hole?
I like your answer.
If I try to look at the subject of Religion without my biases and try to understand Religion through the perspectives of others, it seems to me that to the “true” believer Religion is the only absolute within human understanding other than mathematics. There are no “except after C” or “sometime Y” rules.
Religion is about Perfection, Truth, absolutes. I understand what you mean by your post.
Can everyone be right? No. But you (we) now have one place to start. This is the beginning. One truth that applies to everyone.
-- M Bozeman
My answer to the question is that everyone needs something to believe in.
Starting Point.
I believe that all lasting philosophies, political movements, and even great works of literature own their success to a strong foundation; their Starting Point.
Rene Descartes did not say “I think therefore I am” to be witty or funny. It is the starting point of his philosophy. Similarly, when one is involved in conflict negotiations the question is “Can we at least agree ____ (fill in the blank).”
Example: I believe that Martin Luther King Jr. use of the phrase “All men are created equal” from the Declaration of Independence was the central concept that finally moved the debate forward.
Can we at least agree that there is a hole in the center of each of us?
--M Bozeman
Okay, so I'm tracking so far with the hole, the starting point, and I wonder where the next footfall lands? Do we look to science or apologetics to start to narrow the field a little bit for us and help us figure out Who is supposed to be filling that hole?
--Teri.
I have been trying to get out of the convoluted circle you mentioned in your first posting also and it has led me down this path. Science and apologetics have starting points separate from the idea of the hole. So these could provide us with a short cut on the journey however I fear that we might take something out of context or search for something to back our claim which was not really meant for that purpose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisegesis
The Next Footfall – So do we continue down our own path which may lead to a dead end and will definitely take much longer than one with a guide or follow a worn path?
--M Bozeman
I'm still thinking on this one. Hmmm...
--Teri.
If we look at everything through the lens of science would human existence be reduced to the pursuit of pleasure?
-- MBozeman
You know, to back up the truck a little bit on my original thought, I think that there are a great many people who wouldn't agree that there's a hole to begin with. Those people believe, I would think, in the inherent goodness of mankind, or at least the inherent neutrality, and so probably wouldn't go with the idea there's something wrong with us at a core level. Dang it.
Maybe you're right about science--maybe gravity is the starting point. Maybe the irrevocable laws of that govern the universe are the starting point. This presupposes, of course, that the debate over universal truth regarding religion can be carried over to the realm of science, but I'm pretty comfortable with that myself, believing, as I'm pretty certain I do, that science and religion are not only compatible, but inseparable.
--Teri.
Arrgghhh...I just got around to reading the Wiki article on eisegesis, and I'm frustrated by that. I guess my entire original post centers around my futile attempts to eliminate eisegesis in my own thinking, and realizing that I'm hopelessly mired in my own perspective and can't get out of it enough to have a look at it from God's perspective.
This blows the top off the volcano of what I thought God's grace encompassed. How silly we humans must look to a God who stares down at our cemented feet, griping that everyone else is so stuck in their ways, and how nice He must be to put up with all of our malarkey.
--Teri.
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