Searcing for God # 38

 Two continua, both conceptual and both irreducible to some numerical, quantifiable amount or degree, intersect, as implicitly and imperceptibly as odorless gas, in our daily perceptions, attitudes, and even our beliefs.

Those two continua are: the dynamic of ‘scarcity-plenty’ and the dynamic of ‘internal-external locus of control.

Carol Pearson posits that, for all previous archetypes, prior to magician, scarcity seems to be more impactful than plenty which emerges as dominant in our magician archetype. How does one begin to appreciate, to apprehend, and to recognize one’s own place on a scale for which there are so many variables, and from which so many implications arise, without our being conscious of the role that scarcity-plenty have played in those incidents? As it applies to much of our ‘learning’ about ourselves and our relationships, we see more clearly when looking back, on reflection. In the moment of whatever we are saying or doing, or thinking, we are usually fully occupied with and conscious of that ‘moment.’ The popular phrase, bandied about more every day, in public discourse, is that ‘hurt people hurt others,’ suffering people inflict pain on others,’…..and while it is true, perhaps the notion of scarcity might help to ‘flesh out’ those words ‘hurt’ and ‘suffering’.

We are all most intensely conscious if and when a death or a serious accident or incident impacts us directly, or even indirectly, through a loved one. That kind of ‘hurt’ or pain is front-of-mind. And others, if they know about the loss, can and will usually commiserate, empathize and sympathize with the person at such a moment.

What is most likely much less ‘conscious’ or in the light of day, of any of us, are some other kinds of scarcity with which we are very familiar, and from which, without anyone either consciously or unconsciously being either aware or even motivated to ‘create scarcity’ in our life, they are an intimate and inescapable part of our psychic narrative. Hillman reminds us that we are not constricted or imprisoned by our past; however, neither are we unmarked, unshaded, or completely free of psychic bruises. Relationships between parents that were even basically perfunctory and functional, focused on their attention to financial, hygienic, scheduled and dietary issues, with primary if not exclusive communication on those ‘subjects,’ are empty of communication on an affective, emotional and psychological level. That emotional desert is a metaphor of scarcity.

Even highly focused conversations on moral perfectionism can and do often impair a child’s sense of proportion as to what is important. Performative, is the current word that is applied to behaviour that stems from one’s need to appear proper, politically correct and strategically and tactically motivated, as opposed to ‘authentic’ and integrous. And, so we can easily see, on reflection, that depending on the intensity, the punishments and sanctions and rewards for being ‘good’ can reverberate inversely as compared with their desired intent. And that holds for all exercises of power with others. Too much need for control, is another face of ‘scarcity’ from the perspective (unconscious) of the child. Such a need is also an unconscious feature of the imposing and responsible parent.

Let’s look at another example, children’s scheduled activities, especially after-school: dancing, team sports, piano and art classes, any extra tutoring perceived as needed (whose need, the parent’s or the child’s?), church groups, scouting/guiding groups. Add to the regular schedule of rehearsals, practices, the need for preparations, the exhaustion from participation, the cumulative impact of a ‘parent’s perceived need for ‘parental success’  and the degree of energy and commitment from the parent to make these schedules work. What can appear as bounty and opportunity, can inversely morph almost without notice, into a scarcity of ‘free time’ and hence into a sense of a loss of freedom. That is a scarcity, especially among type A parents for which they rarely have to or do take responsibility. And the child is seriously and negatively impacted for decades after.

The opposite, refusing to consider after-school activities, is another example of scarcity of a different and more obvious ‘literal’ sort. Similarly, conversations in the home that insufferably and tediously repeat the ‘killing of an already dead horse’ of emotional smothering, or even intellectual ostentation, at the expense of the young mind and psyche, is a ‘scarcity’ in this case of ‘air to breath’ out from under the umbrella of sophistication and, dare I say, parental neurosis.

‘When is a child ‘ready’ for any topic, and for how much detail, and reflection on that subject’ is a question for which all proposed templates are inadequate. Every child and ever parent is so different and so intimately and inescapably and imperceptibly flowing in and with a changing river of perceptions, attitudes, events, thoughts, memories and convictions that, a high degree of both sensibility and intuition, confidence and a clear sense of purpose, can only guide each and every encounter and exchange with the child.

And this ‘scarcity-plenty’ continuum overlaps the other: interior and exterior locus of control. Indeed, the first could be so impactful on the second as to cause serious family disruptions in relationships, if it is not handled with care. An example comes from a child who ‘feels’ (perceives, believes) that s/he is being ‘imprisoned’ in whatever of the many ‘methods’ available to parents. Too much parental power, as opposed to a legitimate degree of sensitive and caring limits, can incubate resentment, even contempt and even withdrawal. Too little parental power, on the other hand, can and will leave a child not only ‘free’ but feeling (perceiving and experiencing a lack of interest, or a sense of ‘not being seen or known’ both of which are essentially a form of abandonment.

The business of ‘whether we begin to make decisions based more on ‘how others will perceive and treat us’ as compared with ‘our own’ interior thoughts, feelings motivations and attitudes is inescapably at play in each and every encounter, not only with our parents, but also in our public lives. And, it is an obvious and somewhat trite cliché, to posit that the kind of ‘scarcities’ and ‘plenties’ with which we are familiar will have an impact on both the speed and the depth at which we adopt the confidence, and the self-possession to know when our personal ‘choice’ needs to take preference over another’s choice for us.

These dynamics, while obviously inherent to parent-child relationships, as well as parent-parent, and child-child relationships, continue, in various forms throughout our lives.

And while all of this psycho-babble may be off-putting for many readers, in trying to shine a light on the dynamics, my purpose is to bring back into consciousness some of the abstractions with which our culture is saturated, without actually paying attention to whether or not we are really paying attention. Indeed abstractions like scarcity-plenty, are so bedevilled by financial statistics, consumer trends, employment data, income date, education attainment, numbers of ‘friends,’ and size of investment portfolios, that, in many cases, we have lost ‘sight’ (consciousness, significance, importance and relevance) of the ‘emotional, perceptual, attitudinal and conviction aspects of our relationship with both ourselves and our circles.

Poverty is much more than a food scarcity! It is a scarcity of what is possible, what is imaginable, what is permitted. Limits imposed, consciously and/or unconsciously, are still limits. And those limits are often a lifetime legacy from which millions never recover. Relationships plagued with any form of poverty are relationships that, with or without additional governments programs, are accessible to both observation and reflection, without the subjects of money, dollars, incomes, social status and political power even being inserted into the conversation.

Simlarly, when we are vaccinated with the serum of ‘people pleasing’ as a way to ‘fit into’ whatever culture, family, church, school, team, vocation, without adequate encouragement and enticement of ‘original perceptions and ideas’ even if those ideas are specious and impractical and redundant, and a challenge to the status quo, collectively, we are engaged in a process of ‘limiting our shared, as well as individual potential’. It is as if we believe that limiting our most basic natural resource, the imagination of each individual, we are benefiting from the order and good government and tradition that we have accomplished. OR, is it possibly some of that as well as limiting any potential criticism of the ‘status quo’ because we are so invested in its reputation and longevity, that our ego’s are entwined in that dynamic? Another imperceptible metaphor of scarcity, right before our eyes?

What does all this psycho-babble have to do with ‘searching for God’?

Well…..first and foremost, from a platonic perspective, truth and love and beauty are highly valued and respected ideals, in any culture or religion. And, in spite of an Anglican bishop cautioning me, ‘that people cannot stand too much reality,’ I have held and still hold a conviction, (is this part of my theology?) that any relationship with God implies, invites, encourages and inspires both the greatest degree of both truth and love to which I might aspire…both imaginatively and pragmatically.

It can easily be argued that my ‘scarcities’ both inform and impel my convictions…and if a theology has any merit, at least for this scribe, as part of my faith journey I must continue to ask questions of myself, of others’ thoughts and ideas, of situations outside of my circle, and of God as part of that searching pilgrimmage. Some theology posits that we are all innocent and abandoned in some way(s) in our early years, by our experiences. And whether that separation is both from our ‘inner psychic self’ as well as from others, or more of one than the other, the search to belong, to be accepted, tolerated and preferably loved, is embedded in our hard wiring.

Being loved is not merely a cliché for the popular love songs. Nor is it only the core of the jewellery and bridal and catering industries. Being loved, unconditionally, unreservedly, and loving both unconditionally and unreservedly, while both are beyond the literal, physical, empirical and demonstrable capacity of each human, the aspiration is universal.

And, if each of us has to wend our way through our own very personal swamps, forests, tidal waves, rejections and abandonments, the image of God’s unconditional love for all of humanity  can be most helpful, providing the spectre of a perfect light of a loving God is not imposed as a standard for each of us to attain, and be judged for falling short, each and every time we fail.

Finding truths buried in our unconscious, and behaviours and perceptions and attitudes for which we were ‘out of touch’ to put it mildly, can be (I contend IS! linked with a faith in a God whose love is mysterious, incomprehensible and ubiquitous. And our psychic health, however pursued and sought with the help of others on whose shoulders we are enabled to walk, seems to be an intimate aspect of our ‘living fully’ as we are taught, the ideal of God, in the first place.

Searching for God # 37

The church can be an institution that operates on a different premise and wave-length than those in hospitals, in courtrooms, classrooms, laboratories and banks. It is the difference in the premises and perceptions of what comprises both the reality in which we breathe the air, and drink the water and walk on the land, and look up into both the literal and the metaphoric ‘heavens’ that the search for God is based on and for which that search is still a singular and appropriate and challenging non-template to investigate. God’s truth may or may not align with the ‘truth’ of the objective scientist; and that is not a misalignment of either. (From the last post in this space)

The premise that our reason and cognition are our primary, or perhaps even our exclusive window, to the world, including to God, has some many obvious benefits, as well as a cluster of blind spots. Furthermore, to implicitly adopt the premise of the north American culture that extreme emotional ‘anything’ (loss, depression, anger, contempt, ecstasy, fantasizing, adulation, isolation, alienation, separation, catastrophizing, grief, ambition on steroids, greed, or narcissism….and the list continues) necessarily falls into two ‘buckets’ only: legal or medical, is another of the churchs’ bending to the conventions and dictates of normal society. (Psychiatric instances of sociopathology, or psychopathology, including sex offenders, and serial killers, serial sexual predators, and those proving incorrigible, intractable, must be sequestered into intense medical, psychiatric, and social-work treatment)

I read once that psychiatrists in Montreal who had come to the end of their professional limits with clients, could and would forward them to the clergy to continue their life path. While it may not be a demographic or sociological trend or even a dynamic the outcomes of which stories may not have yet been researched, in order to corroborate the effectiveness of such referrals, nevertheless there are some reasonable ‘ponderables’ in the paradigm.

And, in the ensuing section I am borrowing respectfully and rather heavily from James Hillman’s multiple works, starting with the notion that we have had decades of therapy and are no further ahead. While not denigrating nor dismissing therapy, Hillman suggests that ordinary men and women, with or without any specific clinical psychological or medical skills, have the capacity to listen, to be present, and to ‘show up’ with empathy and without judgement, for another, or others who are suffering any one or  more of those ‘in extremis’ moments, as he calls them. Citing psychology’s aim and purpose as ‘care of the soul’ and his differentiation of soul from spirit, (the former tends downward toward darkness, the latter upward toward light, in his proposition, without attempting either to denigrate the church or even to reform it (as he alleges was Jung’s goal), Hillman postulates an hypothesis that embraces a different lens on those ‘in extremis’ moments, the imagination, rather than a clinical diagnosis and pharmaceuticals. Indeed, he argues that, once a person is ‘labelled’ with a psychological diagnosis, s/he is both ‘sentenced’ to that ‘label’ for life, as well as potentially now free to escape from any responsibility to make changes in his or her life.

It is the objectification in the diagnosis, the label, all labels, which Hillman believes wounds the psyche, and he finds a myriad of instances in which, especially in a digital age, we have all been objectified, mainly for two primary purposes: national security and corporate profits. It might be relevant to insert here, that pastoral counseling, for its part, has inverted the ‘medical model’ and rather than look for the disease that requires treatment and fixing, it seeks to discern those attributes of one’s personality and character that ARE WORKING and to strengthen those, primarily through talk therapy, of which there are multiple approaches.

From a lifetime in Christian churches, I have learned that the notion of the soul has been considered identifiable with the individual and is in need of repentance, forgiveness and saving, a process known as soteriology. Inherent evil, as an inheritance from the Original Fall in the Garden of Eden, is the starting place. Those multiple judges of which Michel Foucault writes, could easily and feasibly be the birth-children of that original sin. Hillman’s psychological interpretation of the soul, as that element in our psyche (unconscious), with which each of us has to reckon, or wrestle or integrate into our consciousness, from his perspective, need not have to bear the presumptive moral and ethical diagnosis of evil, (irrespective of which of the venal or cardinal sins), and can be viewed as an integral and integral aspect of one’s way of seeing and perceiving the world. As a kind of ‘third’ eye’ neither fixated on ‘up’ nor fixated on ‘down’ the soul, in Hillman’s thinking, can take a position of neutrality between the dark voices and the light voices. And those voices, in Hillman’s lexicon, are considered archetypes, which, he views as repeating from earliest human history in mythology, in literature and in culture.

These voices, gods, goddesses, however, are not objects of worship, (as God is considered the object of worship); they are rather psychological memes or images which play themselves out in and through the lives of generations of humans following.

Mythology, as a window into the human psyche, however, is different from and also similar to the notion of all Christian myths. Even to utter those last two words simultaneously, for some, will be heretical. That perception and judgement stems from a notion that myth, by definition, has only its contemporary, cultural meaning: a lie. However, this simple concept is rarely if ever uttered, and even more rarely if ever discussed, within my eight decades of church affiliation. Especially among those whose interpretation of the Genesis Story is literally, historically and indisputable ‘true’ and factual’ and thereby beyond any other interpretation.

While there are other examples of ‘scripture being literal, historical, dogmatic fat and truth, among many, the concepts of poetry, visionary imagination.

From the website awakin.org, in a piece entitled, The Power of Myth, joseph Campbell is asked by Bill Moyers:

Why myths? Why should we care about myths? What do they have to do with my life?
Campbell: My first response would be, ‘Go on live your life, it’s a good life-you don’t need mythology.’….I don’t believe in being caught by (a subject) just because it is said to be important. I believe in being caught by it somehow or other. But you may find that, with a proper introduction, mythology will catch you. And so, what can it do for you if it does catch you?...

Greek and Latin and biblical literature used to be part of everyone’s education. Now when these were dropper, a whole tradition of Occidental mythological information was lost. It used to be that these stories were in the minds of people. When the story is in your mind, then you see its relevance to something happening in your own life. It gives you perspective on what’s happening to you. With the loss of that, we’ve really lost something because we don’t have a comparable literature to take its place. Thee bits of information form ancient times, which have to do with the themes that have supported human life, built civilizations, and former religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage, and if you don’t know what the guide-sins are along the way, you have to work it out yourself. But once this subject catches you, there is such a feeling from one or other of these traditions, of information of a deep, rich, life-vivifying sort that you don’t want to give it up.

From eustaciatan.com, in a piece by Eustacia entitled, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, we read:

As Campbell defines it, myths are ‘stories about the wisdom of life’ and without a powerful mythology, ‘society as provided them (children) no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, or the community’ resulting in a violent society where people don’t know how to grow up and behave as adults.

Here is another intersection of the tension between Genesis story as literal historical fact and Christian myth. And the question for anyone interested in investigating how to interpret and ‘view’ the story, is one that applies to much of Christian scripture. However, suffice it to say that, to consider the Genesis story a myth is not to denigrate its meaning, or its relevance in  our culture. Indeed, rather than ‘literal’ history, it takes on an even greater meaning and significance when considered from the perspective of the question ‘What is the writer trying to say about the creation story, and the story of the fall?’

What is the meaning of this apocryphal story, one which millions of young and old people have ‘adopted’ as significant, from the perspective of the tradition of the Christian faith. It the meaning confined to the God-creator, first human beings as God’s creation and the weakness of both Adam and Eve to the seduction of the snake? Or is it also possible, feasible and not a defiance against the Christian faith, to consider the story a matter of a repeating theme, (What is the origin of the universe? And what is the origin of mankind?) and the Old Testament scribes attempt to answer those questions, in a credible, yet also fantasy narrative of characters who are and always have been larger than ‘life’ proportions.

Myth, soul, psyche, the human life that seeks all of the guideposts, both physical and literal, as well as those generated by the human imagination, and the inescapable intersection of myth, literature, story, morality, and the meaning of both life and death. These are not questions or issues easily, readily or even capable of dichotomizing into neat little packages of truth or lie. An imagined ‘starting point’ is also contained in the story of the ‘big bang’ from astrophysics and astronomy, another  of the ‘perspectives’ roiling in and through both our minds and our imaginations, as well as in and through our curricular designs for both secular and religious education.

Can and does the church (specifically the Christian church) own the word ‘soul’ as its exclusive ‘target’ for salvation? And can such a targeted proposition, by itself, through allocation of private sin, and the spectre of the sacrifice of atonement and forgiveness from the Cross, explain and justify the church’s defined purpose and meaning for its existence? And does this ‘confluence of theological influences’ serve as the model for its own success? Is there room for a less literal, empirical and historical view of these stories that might have relevance for the faith?

What is the role of the imagination in our discernment of our identify, our motivation, our connection with the rest of the universe, including ancient history? Is myth a legitimate and credible link with our imaginative and well as our spiritual and psyche heritage? Are both myth and scripture part of the same historic, literary, mythological, philosophical and ethical and moral heritage we have inherited?

The church does not and should not fall victim to the seductive appeal of myth, nor should it turn a blind eye to questions that myth can unpack. Similarly, the church is not a psychological laboratory, nor a counselling centre; and yet, are there precepts, for example, from pastoral counselling, that might very well have an influence on the search for God of anyone whose life has been impacted by a serious psychic, social and perhaps domestic or financial tragedy?

Religion claims to wrestle with matters of life and death, their meaning and purpose; their universality and relationship with God. And, from the limited perspective of this scribe, I see no reason why borrowing concepts and notions of universal experience, and their various theoretical interpretations, are, specifically and generally highly relevant in any search for God.

It may not be a straight line of personal psychic and spiritual development for which we strive; indeed, it may not be even the spectre of a final vision of ‘completion’ and ‘ultimate salvation’ for which we belief a singe path exists for realization.

This search for God, as one has to presume, for any and all other searches for God, is not reducible to a template, to a single interpretation of a single set of narratives, or myths or psychic voices. And who can say if and when the voice of God is not whispering through the winds of the pine boughs, and or the smile on a child’s face, and or through the words of a profound and authentic thinker, and or in and through the melody and rhythm of a Beethoven Symphony?

Running through the various archetypes as outlined by Carol S. Pearson in The Hero Within, the innocent, the Orphan, the Wanderer, the Warrior, the Altruist and the Magician, are urges for clarity, as well as for ambiguity. And throughout, each of those archetypes struggles with the differences between ‘scarcity’ and ‘abundance’ as psychological lenses.

It seems that a search for God, passing through and back through each of those archetypes, encounters others on a similar pilgrimage, can be, is and will be impacted by other examples of those various archetypes, each of which have origins deep in our shared mythic legacy.

And any discussion of any of these issues is both highly unlikely to find tolerance, acceptance and especially prayerful and reflective resonance in any institution outside of a church, here thinking primarily of a Christian church.

Searching for God # 36

The word dichotomy is defined (from Oxford dictionaries) in this manner:

A division or contrast between two things that are, or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.  (Botany): repeated branching into two equal parts.

In these spaces, the word ‘separation’ has appeared multiple times: God from man, God from nature, man from nature, man from woman, reason from imagination, black from white, east from west, commerce from social programs, education from training, working from unemployed, medicine from theology, psychology from sociology, psychology from theology, philosophy from theology, psychology from philosophy, Roman Catholic from Muslim, Muslim from Protestant, Jewish from Muslim, Jewish from Roman Catholic, the list is effectively endless.

Does it feel somewhat akin to the descent down a rabbit hole? The comparisons, the differences, irrespective of how wide or narrow, how substantive or superficial, as a pattern or template, seem to comprise a lens through which we approximate what we call reality.

From brizomagazine.com, in a piece entitled, Thinking Beyond Dichotomies-The toxic Nature of Limitation, by Paola Cordovs Zelinski, February 2, 2020,  we read:

Ontological dualism…..is the belief that everything can be evenly and easily split into two categories. There is a way of doing things correctly, and there is also a way to approach them incorrectly. Certain things fit into the category of ‘good’; others fit into ‘bad’.

It was not until I came across Michel Foucault* that I ever thought about why these limits might be erroneous in the least. How can we really think ‘outside the box’ and grow as a society if we do not think outside of the limits we place on our ways of knowing? If everything exists on a spectrum, knowledge can hardly be growing and innovative but rather exists as a reiteration of the establishment of dichotomies that in turn create paradigms that hardly attempt to capture the complexities of the world around us…..Foucault, in his work, shows himself critical of the amount of control that can be exerted on individuals through this so called regime of truth, something which dichotomies form a large part of. The Cartesian approach, for example, fits into the Enlightenment paradigm (that arguably continues to exist today) and claims there to be dualism between the rational mind and the irrational body. The first thing to notice in this case is the blatant prioritizing of rationality and reason as ways of knowing, which in turn has largely undermined most other in the name of ‘progress.’….In turn this form of reasons has largely been used to back colonial paradigms that seek to support the concept of Western superiority and hegemony. Avid adherence to these has, as a result, constructed a highly unequal world that follow the power structures that have kept the Global North wealthy and the Global South submissive for centuries, and more importantly, keeping everyone accepting the status quo as something ‘normal.’…..Most of the dichotomous Enlightenment thought we follow in mainstream academia (that mainly comes from the Global North), exemplified in Descartes mind body problem is the creation of an ‘outside’ and an ‘inside’. Though during the 17^th century context this managed to demythologize the Christian orthodox conception of the body and allowed the study of anatomy to advance, its implications for the comprehensive study of mental health were not exactly at their prime. This oversimplified separation between the two has led to non-comprehensive  attitudes towards the significance of the mental health of varying individuals. Instead of comprehending the experience and make up of humans as interrelated, overtime, this approach has mislaid its subject matter and to an extent given up a sense of ‘moral responsibility toward the real health concerns of human beings…..

A key idea Foucault debates in the work of Descartes comes from the exclusion of the concept of madness in defining sanity or more specifically, reason. The idea of isolating those with mental illnesses by incarcerating them in places of confinement, for instance, creates the concept of the ‘other’ to those who are considered to not stray form the norm, and legitimizes certain false dichotomies that allows rejecting the people who do….

As we continue to function in the framework of the Enlightenment, we perpetuate a dichotomous mindset that is not only relevant but in many ways harmful as well. The incomprehensible outside remains a terror to people around the globe today, but as the world becomes increasingly globalized and the way in which we define dichotomies changes at a much higher frequency than they (The Enlightenment) ever did before, it becomes clear how much expanding our limitations is essential now more than ever.

 *From Stanford.edu:

(In) Foucault’s History of Madness in the Classical Age (1961)…formed from both Foucault’s extensive archival work and his critique of what he saw as the moral hypocrisy of modern psychiatry. (In it) he argued that what was presented as an objective, incontrovertible scientific discovery (that madness is mental illness) was in fact the product of eminently questionable social and ethical commitments.

And from the Foucault reader:

If you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal, then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing.

And this:

Schools serve the same social functions as prisons, and mental institutions-to define, classify, control, and regulate people.

And from his Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Prison:

The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social-worker-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it in his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements.

And from his History of Madness:

The language of psychiatry is a monologue of reason about madness.

If there is any truth and credibility, relevance and authenticity to this last statement, then, the church, having also succumbed to the definition of madness, through reason, as an integral part of its path ‘to conform’ with the secular, and  scientific and literal culture, manifestly qualifies.

People in church pews, at least in the dozen-plus in which I served as deacon and priest, could and would read and sing hymns replete with metaphors, similes, as well as some of the same kind and level of language in scripture, especially in the Psalms and in Revelation. Rarely, if ever, however, was there an acknowledgement of the purpose and meaning of the authors depending on the nature of the language being deployed. Literal truth, literal words spoken by Jesus from the Gospels, were considered, both implicitly and explicitly as ‘truth’ and their meaning also was literal, empirical and especially when they detailed a ‘directive’ (thou shalt) or a ‘prohibitive’ (thou shalt not).

Having been enmeshed in a western culture awash with dichotomies, for centuries, it is little wonder that the lingering dichotomous perception and punishments, both in law and in morality as sanctioned and enforced by the church, continue to plague our conventional ‘sense’ and attribution of ‘normality’ and by inference, as well as by overt authoritarian judgement, of madness.

What springs to mind is the current dichotomy of ‘voluntary’ patient in a psychiatric ward and ‘involuntary’ patient in that same ward. In the instance of the first designation, ‘voluntary,’ the patient retains his or her right to accept or deny any proposed prescriptions for treatment. In the latter category, the patient has given up that ‘right to refuse’ any prescribed treatment. And in the process of such a dynamic of oscillating ‘diagnosis’ (because, once it is inscribed on one’s medical record, it becomes a life-long diagnostic ‘sentence’ from which one never emerges), ‘ danger to him/herself or others’ becomes one of if not the prime criterion for the designation.

What does all of this have to do with the search for God?

Seeking to incarnate, emulate and model unconditional love, of God, as the church’s teaching aspires to inspire in its parishioners, one has to be so close to the conscious and unconscious of each person, including, especially as a shared obligation of all those making decisions within the ecclesial organization, of him or herself, in order to discern if and when one is making an abusive, illegitimate and unjust observation of another. The simple application of a black-and-white, thou shalt or thou shalt not, without a full investigation of the context, and the deep and shared reflection of those sharing responsibility, only through which a discernment of the most ‘charitable’ option might be made available, renders the church little more compassionate, more empathic, and more creative than all of those judges of which Foucault wrote.

Proclaiming signs on cathedral lawns ‘All are welcome” is analogous to the local athletic bar claiming the same ‘welcome’….and, ironically, the bar really does want the cash flow from as many patrons as it can ‘fit’ into its premises, under fire regulations. As for the church, however, test it out and you will quickly realize that, in far to many situations, ‘all’ effectively and truthfully and collectively refers to those the church ‘deems’ both tolerable and appropriate. And those in power who have either been given responsibility or have self-declare and assumed that ‘duty’ are very quick to ask questions about ‘your’ background, your professional status, your matrimonial and family relationships and without a word, will have inspected your attire and hygiene, whether consciously or unconsciously or both.

The church, all churches, have a unique ‘power’ over the people who have crossed the threshold of the front narthex, that porch that often greets one upon entry, before entering the sanctuary. And that power, carries liturgical and financial expectations, as well as conformity with the tenets of the ‘Creeds,’ repeated frequently in some churches, without the slightest nod to their intent and meaning, and whether or not ‘YOU’ can agree with even a portion of them. The other immeasurable social ‘norm’ is that, after a few weeks of attendance, some people will ‘warm’ up and begin to ask more detailed questions about background, and why you chose this congregation or this faith community.

And therein lies another of the significant and counter-intuitive traps in which churches invariably and perhaps also inevitably, become ensnared….recruitment…or as the churches like to name it, evangelizing, proselytizing, under the directive from Mark 16:15, (ESV) And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

The power to intimidate, to shame, to rescue, to promise an eternal life following repentance, forgiveness and salvation, and to ‘sell’ the virtues of any given faith community carry risks of abuse so prevalent and also so hidden, that, from my experience, refraining from the whole ‘selling’ thing seems to undercut the mega-churches especially those propagating the prosperity gospel, (God wants you to be rich!). Implicitly, also, the larger the size of the congregation, the greater the power of that ‘parish’ to attract new-comers. The Jews discourage evangelism, if not disclaim it, as a method of attractive new converts, even though they authentically welcome all who are interested in investigating the faith and its practices and expectations.

Our many dichotomies, based on a rational and literal, empirical perspective of both truth and the world, including our relationship with God, say more about our proclivity and or need for control….if we can name a notion, and define iigt as different from another concept, we appear to have some measure of both understanding and control of both notions….when, in fact, we might ask ourselves if we are thereby deluding, deceiving, and disabling ourselves.

The alchemist truly experiments with the co-mingling of elements, in a process beyond reason, and often even beyond imagination….especially as to the outcome. The retention and elevation of the ineffable, ephemeral mysterious and the wonder accompanying the mystery, including all of the questions, puzzles, conundrums and conflicts into which we are all so likely to become enmeshed, while not rejecting outright the rational or the scientific, the literal and the empirical, also need not, perhaps must not, relegate or negate the imagination and the beyond ‘reason’ from our search for and our unlimited horizon of hope for which God serves as symbol.

The church can be an institution that operates on a different premise and wave-length than those in hospitals, in courtrooms, classrooms, laboratories and banks. It is the difference in the premises and perceptions of what comprises both the reality in which we breathe the air, and drink the water and walk on the land, and look up into both the literal and the metaphoric ‘heavens’ that the search for God is based on and for which that search is still a singular and appropriate and challenging non-template to investigate. God’s truth may or may not align with the ‘truth’ of the objective scientist; and that is not a misalignment of either.

It is long past time for us to recognize that our ‘dichotomies’ and definitions are adequate in so far as they attempt to capture our sensate and cognate perceptions and reality. God stretches beyond all of our senses, and all of our cognitions, our perceptions and apperceptions….and serves as a limitless, boundless horizon for our finite existence. 

Searching for God # 35

 We say, ‘Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship. (from the last two posts)

Is a religion also a relationship? And why is that characterization of religion viewed with so much disdain, even contempt in some circles?

If both the notions of “God” and “love” are mercurial, multidimensional, ineffable, ephemeral and ultimately resistant to finite definitions and meanings then, the concept of relationship fits those criteria as well. After two thousand-plus years of religious faith (thinking in the Christian calendar), at the centre of which we have been bombarded with the God is love theme will a plethora of illustrations examples, tenets and guidance, and love is the sine qua non of all effective, mutual, respectful and sustainable human relationships, at least in the West, relationships, both of the intimate and loving kind as well as of the more functional kind, fall apart at an alarming rate.

Collectively, we pontificate about loving our neighbour, ‘as Christ loved us’ unconditionally, while at the same time, we engage in the most petty, personal, picayune and pedestrian of taking offence, competitive comparisons, jibes, put-downs, ridicules and satiric jests, much of it not in a spirit of ‘good humour’. There are both scriptural and secular sentences depicting the human heart as ‘evil’ and ‘full of hate’ and ‘vengeful’ and ‘seeking retribution.’ The Christian education programs to which I have had access stressed a general notion of universal human sin, the need for repentance and the potential of God’s forgiveness, on surrender to Jesus Christ as personal saviour. Rarely, if ever, have I been exposed to diligent and disciplined and rigorous attempts to unpack the human heart’s dark side,  except in and through the work of Carl Jung. The metaphysical and psychological notion of a Shadow, a dark side of both trauma and painful memory, buried in the unconscious, that irreverently and unexpectedly raises its ‘head’ when we least expect it. It could be in a moment of a word of phrase uttered in the ‘now’ that triggers a moment in our past, long forgotten, that suddenly finds an ‘opening’ into consciousness, with or without our conscious acquiescence, or even awareness.

While in private conversations, even with clergy, the thinking and writing of Jung is deployed, rarely, if ever have I found it emerging in formal homilies. Similarly, many universities have expunged Jung’s (along with  James Hillman’s) work from their curricula, partly because it smacks of ‘the non-empirical, the fastastical, the ghostly and the unpredictable. Jung’s  work is not exclusively contained in the boundaries of empirical science, empirical medicine, empirical sociology, empirical legal foundations. Indeed, it not only refuses to conform to those intellectual and cognitive boundaries; it attempts to shed a different perspective on what the world has tried to wrestle ‘to the ground’ as human sin or evil, from the beginning.

And in the resistance to cast an open eye into the realm and layers of a human underworld, after spending centuries pondering and praying about ‘avoiding the ravages of ‘Hell’, the Christian church(es) seem to prefer a personal, private and thereby confidential and secret ‘relationship’ with each person’s own transgressions. Ironically, while the ‘forgiveness of sin’ lies at the core of the penitential (confession), there is rarely any mention of the church’s institutional evil or sin, nor any reference to the church’s need for critical self-examination and reflection.

The metaphoric ‘evil’ heart, however, as well as our own inexplicable losing our way, or missing the mark, even when we know and feel and intuit that what we are/will do or have done, is indeed ‘off-base’ or despicably unkind, mean-spirited, vengeful, vindictive. And each of us ‘knows’ when we have crossed some momentarily unrecognized or unacknowledged line of morality, ethics, and relationship fracturing. In a parallel psychic balance, we also know when we have extended ourselves into the love of another, of a situation, or even of an enemy. Of course, loving our enemies, is a prominent, if rarely uttered, Christian aspiration.

And the question, ‘who is my enemy?’ lies at the heart of this injunction. Is he a personal ‘acquaintance’ or a family member, a neighbour, or a boss or professional whom I have hired and who has betrayed me?

The Tolstoy work, The Kingdom of God is Within You, takes a more universal, historical, and deeply theological view of the enemy. Those who use, depend on, rely on, violence, including those institutions designed specifically as protection against the violence of other are inimical to those who, whether through an aha metanoia moment of insight, or trauma-induced insight, have come to the moment and place and integrous consciousness enabling them to integrate  non-violent resistance to evil by force.

No human, if my reading of Tolstoy is credible, is fully capable of what he terms ‘divine love’ which extends equally and unequivocally to all persons. What we are capable of, if we are listening to the Russian bear, is to contemplate and to ruminate and to imagine how, when and where we might non-violently resist evil by force. Tolstoy makes much of the historic evidence that all institutions consider their own demise and the threats to that demise as ‘existential’ and are therefore more than ready and even energetic to seek their own violence, as ‘protection’ from the violence of others.

We are not enjoined to twist ourselves out of emotional and psychological shape in order to ‘love our enemies’ (purportedly those who impose their will in and through violence of various sorts and kinds), but rather to step back and recognize the violence that is being imposed, always illicitly, illegitimately and unjustly and that we have both the obligation and the capacity to resist in a non-violent manner.

Naturally, we all have the imagination and the intuition to ‘reach out to help another who is struggling and could use a helping hand. Just this morning, as I was dragging bags of leaves and twigs to a dumping station with my left hand, while leaning on my cane with my right hand,  a smiling face appeared at the hatch of my vehicle, and without even saying ‘hello’ asked, “Do you have any more bags I can help you with?”

Shocked, surprised and elated, I removed my glove, extended my hand, introduced myself as John and expressed my deep thanks. “I’m John too and I just thought you could use a hand, from John to John!” the other John rejoined, as we both parted in smiles. It is the extension of such a kindness and empathy and compassion universally to which the Sermon on the Mount points and aspires.

And yet, we live in a culture clinging to a very different kind of ethic and mind-set. It is the ethic and mind-set of power, sought after, pursued and attained through many means and manners, many of which are self-sabotaging as well as not only malodorous but malignant. The common enemy of all is the malignancy of violence, borrowing from the Russian shaman, and, from both observation and evidence, some of that violence, indeed much of it, has been and continues to be imposed by the church(es) themselves.

Threats of a life in hell, based on a life of sin and evil, as a method of waking up a dispirited man or woman, is indeed, a misapplication and a mis-interpretation of any Christian faith worthy of the name and the emulation.

A recent post by film actor Sandra Bullock caught my eye, made me pause to read and reflect and I would like to share it:

A lesson in grace from Sandra Bullock

There are moments when the urge to fight back feels impossible to resist.

When every insult, every cold look begs for revenge.

But I stop.

I look deeper—not just at what they did, but at who they are..

The tiredness in their eyes.

The weight they carry.

The silent battles they’ve already lost.

And  I realize—life has hit them hard enough.

Not even fight needs another fighter.

Some just need someone strong enough to walk away.

So no, I won’t strike back

Not because I’m weak—

But because I’m strong enough to protect my peace.

In the end, we don’t give what people deserve.

We give what we carry inside.

And I choose to carry light.

How we conceptualize, imagine, run from, hide from, compete in, embrace or even deny the potential of a relationship, with our family, with our friends, classmates, neighbours, colleagues and even with our God, nevertheless, relationships comprise the core of the energies in which we are engaged, whether we are conscious of that convergence of relationships.

To disdain a religion because it stresses ‘relationship’ is, frankly, to miss the point of the religion, any and all religions. Essentially both a bridge and a conveyor belt between one and another, a line of communication, and a mirror, an imagined face, or a recalled tone of voice, a moment when eyes met, or when someone noticed something “I” did, (all of us “I’s”), an image pictured from a writer or a teacher, or even an image of a relationship captured on film, in a television drama, across the aisle in a classroom….these moments are the grist of the loaf of individual relationships. Taken together, they comprise the ‘bakery’ of our own ovens and cooling bins, as if we were the bakers of our own life of relationships.

And to impose a set of demands, expectations and requirements, prior to any engagement or encounter, seems quite counter-intuitive to the potential of a healthy relationship evolving, at least among adults. Boundaries, preferences, ideals, aspirations, visions, all of them welcome, essential and mutually shared.

The ‘thou shalt not’s’ of religion, including the Christian faith, and the comparative ‘we are the one and only, or the best religion’….these are the disuaders, the mnon-starters, the precluders of potential…

Even the ‘heart of evil’ within, if indeed that must be a starting point, can and must be viewed as non-defining, and as open to transformation….and yet, transformation has so many healing and hopeful and attractive potentials….We are never going to eviscerate that ‘heart of evil’ (literally, metaphorically, ethically morally, spiritually, religiously or even imaginatively) and yet, it need not determine our image of ourself.

Image deo, is another of the aspirational blessings we have been gifted, created in the image of God, while neither a literal nor a dominating picture is either needed or implied. It is, as Tolstoy reminds, that inheritance that comes with the inheritance of the ‘shared common consciousness/unconsciousness’ of the brotherhood, the compassionate, empathic, and the universal gift of the human capacity to love, and to aspire to emulate, the divine and unconditional love of God for all of us.

When we are ‘relating’ to our own selves with kindness, care, compassion and care, it becomes more likely that we can envision extending such empathy and compassion to the other. However, so long as we are burdened with the image of ‘not OK’ in it psychic, moral, ethical and even relational dimensions, and especially if we might imagine that God ‘sees’ us as evil, we are blinded to a larger, life-giving and life-sustaining.

Phrases like “O my God!” uttered almost involuntarily at moments of extreme delight, insight, angst, loss or even despair are both natural and relevant. They serve to illustrate some form of intimate, private, confidential and deeply meaningful and moving ‘relationship’ with some force, energy, deity, of a beyond-reason, beyond nature kind whether that force is without or without or both. And that force, energy, deity knows or cares little about the denominational, or even the sectarian differences we pay so much attention to.

Searching for God # 34

 In  the same piece in anglicaninl.org, entitled, Why the Roman Catholic Church Is Rising in England-and What It Reveals About Faith in an Age of Uncertainty, April 17, 2025, also from The Anglican, by David Roseberry, April 15, 2025 we read:

Islam and Incognito Christianity

In our modern Western world, Christianity has long been personalized. It’s about me and Jesus. We say, ‘Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship. But is that really true? Is that all it is? Isn’t there a moral code that comes along with it? Didn’t Jesus teach something?

In any event, the rise of Islam in the UKus presents a stark contrast. Islam is clearly a religion-public, practiced, and patterned. You can see it in the dress, the prayer times, the dietary rules, the fasting seasons. And the result? People know who Muslims are and, for the most part, they know what Muslims believe. There’s no ambiguity.

Roman Catholicism reflects a similar structure. It offers a religion, not just a relationship. There are rhythms, holy days, moral expectations, and communal identity. It’s not something you keep hidden.

Meanwhile much of Anglicanism—especially true in American Episcopalianism- is what could be called incognito Christianity. It’s quiet, sometimes even shy, about its convictions. But in a world filled with loud convictions, that approach can feel uncertain.

People respect the visible. They trust what is practiced. As Muslims show a coherent, embodied faith, some Christians might be waking up to the belief that private belief alone isn’t enough. They want a faith that shapes life, not just inner thought……

So why is the Roman Catholic church rising in England while the Anglican church declines? Because Catholicism offers clarity in a confused age. It offers rootedness in a restless time. It offers a visible, practiced and morally serious faith in a culture increasingly adrift. And above all, it offers conviction—the kind that draws you in, even if you’re not sure you believe it yourself.

Oh, how I wish Anglicans would pay attention to this last point. We need to return to something sturdy, global and lasting. That used to be called The Anglian Communion. Now it is in tatters.

Memo to Mr. Roseberry:

Your provocative piece, ensconced in sociological data, as well as cultural aspirations (and alleged failures to meet them) challenges not only Anglicans, but all Christians who seek, not merely to compete in numbers, dollars and public opinion polls with other faiths, but also in terms of the potential of enhanced spiritual, moral, intellectual and philosophical and psychological life.

The ’personalized relationship with Jesus’ suffers from a literalism, and a kind of implicit barterism from which many Christian faiths suffer. The adage WWJT (or WWJD) emblazoned on t-shirts in the United States, in the 1990’s was a blatant examples of the kind of reductionism to which this paradigm falls victim. As if, to know precisely and accurately, self-righteously and historically and traditionally affirmed and confirmed the ‘mind of Jesus’ as the guiding beacon of moral, ethical, spiritual and holy light for humans were even feasible, imaginable. And as if such feasibility and imagination were to be without either spiritual hubris or theological apostasy.

Archbishops continually changing their minds, a church, first to permit contraception, and first to permit divorce and remarriage and then  even to contemplate equality of genders, and then the ordination of gays and lesbians, these are all rendered ‘skeptical’ and even almost ‘flakey’ in your assumption of the culture’s perception. There is nothing stable, study, dependable and reliable about changing one’s mind, especially when it comes to attempting to approximate and to represent God and Jesus Christ Resurrected.

We might all wish to be reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s quotes:

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

And also: He who has never hoped can never despair.

And: I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can.

Words ‘progress’ and ‘whole community’  jump out from these brief epithets.

What is the relationship between God/faith/church and ‘progress’? And what is the relationship between ‘whole community’ and God/faith/church?

There is a cogent, and compelling argument to be made that the Anglican church (at least in North America) has failed miserably to articulate a clear commitment to a theological ‘conviction’ in terms that the western culture can and will grasp not only intellectually, but also ethically and morally and liturgically and culturally. While there is conviction in and among participants within the deep and profound discussion, debate, discourse, and tensile interactions around all of the many questions to which the church ‘community’ has sought ‘answers’ or responses, bearing in mind, together, the theological principles and precepts of The Anglican faith, the public glams onto the headlines rendering the Anglican faith a kind of ‘pioneer’ or ‘voyageur’ or ‘discoverer’ or ‘adventurer’ in theological and ecclesial terms.

Some less skeptical or cynical critics could and have described the Anglican church, in this respect of confronting tough personal and societal questions, as being ‘hyperactive’ and perhaps even somewhat risk-taking, as opposed to those faith communities that prefer to maintain some of their established ‘convictions’. Cynics have taken over the field is depicting Anglicans as ‘flakey’ and ‘believing in nothing’ given that change, for them is incompatible with the Christian faith, as they perceive it and as they believe and practice it.

The convergence of corporate ‘model’ thinking, acting and especially of ‘branding’ brings into direct confluence the dominating energy in many church communities: the intersection of the faith ‘tenets and practices and beliefs’ with the secular culture. The sacred and the secular and the tension between, and how that tension is both perceived and incarnated, poses an active question for any God-seeking man, woman or child. The vernacular and the public discourse is replete with language and perceptions based on numbers, dollars, size, public image, public reputation and social credibility it ‘confers’ on those who choose to sit in the respective pews of the various churches. And in the vortex of that tension, questions about what comprises the ethic and moral expectations of individuals, given that the churches have staked out, for themselves and their adherents, the ‘good (and moral and ethical) life’.

In the West, capitalism dominates the political and cultural modus operandi, as well as the mind-set of individuals both with the corporate and the public domains. Individual successes and failures are hung both as trophies and as albatrosses on the necks of those who succeed and those who fail, respectively, even if without respect in the latter cases. Both the secular society and the faith community are complicit in this dynamic drama. Sin, itself, has been so privatized and personalized, almost as a ‘sustaining structural beam’ of both the culture and the cathedral.

As a direct and also an indirect concomitant of this privatization of both secular and social success/failure, the ‘whole community’ is implicitly offered and swims in waters infested with a kind of immunity, impunity and freedom from effective, shared and systematic critical scrutiny. For these last several months, on the American television networks, the personal private ‘sins’ of the occupant of the Oval Office have dominated the coverage, without effect and also without shame or guilt or contrition on the part of the despot, while the cultural health of the society has deteriorated to the point of being ‘on life support’ as many observers have unequivocally documented. p

It is as if the private and personal malfeasances of the chief executive have only been emboldened by the tidal wave of objective, factual and legal attack. The ‘straw-headed’ regal-imitating act of carrying a Bible for a photo-op to an Episcopalian church in Washington depicts the depths of the depravity, both of the culture and the religion that permitted it. (Of course, he had to walk along a public sidewalk, where  the church has no jurisdiction.)

Convictions, especially those founded on both the Hammurabi and the Decalogue Codes, have been with us for centuries. Stability and public order, are cornerstones of public trust and security. And just as the jurisprudence today leans on the precedents of past jurisprudence, it is not surprising that many would feel that  a similar template would/could/should apply to the religious institutions, if they are to retain public credibility.

Public secular laws, while historically and traditionally and culturally mounted on ‘perception edifices’ to which we have all been indoctrinated, have Christian Jewish and Muslim indebtedness. Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you  reverberates as a common and often echoed ethical, moral and religious ‘star’ to be both aspired toward and to hold as firm and consequential. There is a moral and shared dependency implicit in such a maxim. And yet, in a moment of crisis, when one’s unique vulnerability and even perhaps one’s perceptions and feelings of safety and security are in doubt, it is often beyond the reach of many to strive to incarnate that universal maxim. Indeed, which of the worlds faiths would be so bold as to claim that its history demonstrates a higher and more consistent adherence to the universally shared, and socially and politically even treasured aspiration?

Just as holding fast to a specific set of maxims, while perhaps a strong bonding ‘hold’ on those who choose to join, may or may not best offer opportunity to exemplify the ‘golden rule’.

Let’s take a look at abortion for a start. The expecting mother, delighted, along with her partner, that she is about to have a new baby, is told that her baby suffers from an incurable defect or illness and perhaps will not survive delivery, or beyond two or three months thereafter. The conviction that abortion is contrary to God’s gift of life and thereby is forbidden, leaves the mother no choice. Her despondency, despair and loss of both hope and the visions and dreams of that child’s growing into maturity are, like feathers in the breeze, escaping her’s and her family’s reach. Is the option, along with her doctor (and partner) of terminating the pregnancy, whether or not to carry the infant to term might impact the health and wellness of the mother, defying the ‘golden rule’? If you or I were party to such a situation, I can only hope that our faith would be engaged in opening us to the therapeutic option of an abortion, both to alleviate the suffering of the infant and the mother and family. And, is the concrete obligation of carrying that baby to term consistent with a perception of God whose narrative and precepts sing harmoniously and consistently of love of the most vulnerable?

Social prestige, secured under the rubric of a ‘branding conviction’ (think Lexus’ pursuit of perfection) is little more than a straw house of the Three Little Pigs. How could it represent an ineffable, ephemeral, unknowable force, presence, or deity with absolute clarity and certainty?  The very expectation of such a fixed ‘dogmatic’ prohibition represents one of the many moral and ethical prohibitions that have comprised the foundational attempt to serve, to worship, to hold in awe, and to envision and embody discipleship for and of God. And, we have to keep in both mind and perspective, that Jesus was himself a disturbing influence on what was then the establishment of his time and place. Conventional wisdom, traditional archetypes, expectations of the secular world were, in general and in specific, find wanting several times by Jesus. And for his ‘willing surrender to the violence of the conventional society,’ without having committed any wrong, even in his death he embodied the model of a sacrificial victim who opposed violence and death.

It is rather difficult to square the circle of ‘conformity to a specific ‘rule’ or prohibition to the man of Galilee, except to try to emulate, in Tolstoy’s great epic, his themes from the Sermon on the Mount.

Blessings on the humble, meek, mournful and merciful, instructions to love one’s enemies, forgive others and not seek revenge, with an emphasis on internal righteousness over external actions and the golden rule….both in specifics and in summation, seem to express both a state of mind and heart that is neither translatable nor containable within a specific dogmatic church prohibition. It is the prohibitions, specifically, that cause this scribe most theological difficulty. This template reminds one of the man who asked the Irishman for directions and was told: “First you do not go on that road!”

Religious rules have the advantage of clarity and conformity, with an implicit reward for their ‘keeping’ and practicing….and therein lies another objection. Any prescriptive relationship that even hints at some form of classical conditioning seems to be a reductionism of both God and the complexity of human nature a complexity of which any and all deities would be full aware.

Another objection to the ecclesial model of both theory and praxis of Christian theology is that the institutional ‘dictation’ of how to live, representing a complete and uncontested representation and emulation of the mind and will of God carries with it a degree of self-righteous pretension and hubris. Jews, for their part, are open about searching for the mind and intent of God in each situation, based on their reading and reflection of the Torah.

Objective truth, as contained within specific ‘dogmatic’ rules and teachings of prohibitions, while providing a ‘cover’ of some standard to which a faith community can adhere, brings with it the avoidance or denial or dismissal of subjective and imaginative truth.

Two of the most challenging and also rewarding concepts in human culture and individual human life are: God and love…and in the Christian lexicon, the phrase God is love comes from 1 John 4:8: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. As the essence of His being, not merely an emotion, love, again a (the?) most aspirational and hopeful and both sought after and desired, even necessary experience for all human beings, irrespective of one’s faith tradition or community.

Some would argue that a parent loves his/her children and thus the prohibitions of the parent are analogous to those of the church as the ‘bride of Christ’ with God  the Father of the people of his church. And in this light, one can envision some of the writings that have prompted the church’s adoption of prohibitions, some of which are also incorporated with the Decalogue itself. And the theological argument of the relevance and theological significance of Old to New Testament brings out another of the dichotomies with which the church has struggled. Man and nature, God and nature, the holy/sacred and the secular, the saved and the unsaved, the sinner and the repentant and forgiven one, the tension between ‘time looking forward in adoption to change’ and time ‘remaining firm in Christian principles’….and within and between any or all of these dichotomies, lies a river of energetic investigation, of personal reflection and of institutional opportunities to continue to seek God, the Holy, Jesus, and the matter of faith as it applies to each person’s pilgrimage.

The Anglican church, while a seeking institution for searchers, more than a champion of ritual and liturgy, without abandoning either of the latter, (although it may wish to separate crown from church) may have some time to reflect on its commitment to ‘pursue’ and ‘to seek and to hope to find’ the illusive ‘alchemy’ of glimpsing the radiance and relevance of God’s love, without apologizing for being only a branch (a denomination) rather than the original tree (Catholicism)….surely we have developed more religious, and spiritual maturity than is embodied in  that specious yet historical theological metaphor!

Enhanced human living and loving, of God and of each other, irrespective of the design of the sanctuary, or the prohibitions of the ecclesial dogma, remains a distant and as yet pastel and fleeting rainbow in the heavens of all faiths, including all of the Abrahamic faiths.

Shalom!

jta

Searching for God # 33

 In an op-ed in anglican.ink, dated April 17, 2025, entitled:

‘Why the Roman Catholic is Rising in England-and What It Reveals About Faith in an Age of Uncertainty’ we read:

(In a sub-head) Conviction is attractive. And strong convictions are strongly attractive…

In an age of moral confusion and cultural uncertainty people are drawn to those who actually believe what they say- and who live as if their core convictions are real and unshakeable. …This more than anything may explain the quiet shift now unfolding in England. For the first time in centuries, the Roman Catholic Church is England now surpasses the Church of England in active attendance. Among young people, Catholics outnumber Anglicans. In London, the shift is even more pronounced. The tide is turning-and it’s not turning toward trendy liturgies or progressive theology; it’s turning toward clarity, continuity, and conviction.

Every Anglican worldwide, and every Episcopalian in the U.S. knows that even after 500 years, the hierarchy of the church is still thinking through its theology. Its doctrine, famously, is up for a vote. That’s not a small thing.

Roman Catholicism is not democratic. It doesn’t ask the culture to weigh in on what it believes-it declares it. And in an age when society is debating everything-from truth to gender to morality- there is something profoundly reassuring about a church that does not budge.

Women priests? No

Abortion? Never

Gender fluidity: Not affirmed

However, the Anglican Church, even with its closely held principles, because of its penchant for shared governance and democracy and its allergy toward a Roman pope, always seems to be making up its mind.

Having spent well over three decades in the Anglican/Episcopal church, as adherent, member, Warden, seminarian, Deacon and Priest, after a two-decade career in education and journalism, I am somewhat familiar with the central issue as it is articulated in this op-ed, at least in Canada and the United States. No longer having any formal or informal ties to the ecclesiastical institution, I feel also free to ponder publicly on the implications of this demographic trend.

As one of what are considered ‘establishment’ churches in Canada, (along with the Roman Catholic), the Anglican church has, for over a century, been very cozy with political, economic, academic and corporate leadership. Indeed, funds from those specific sources have sustained the institution, both underwriting the operating budget as well as generating substantial trust accounts. Private schools for boy and girls, under the aegis, if not the formal umbrella of the church, have also catered to the children of both the exceptionally affluent as well as the nouveau-riche, and more recently to many children of Asian heritage. Daily chapel services, supplemented by weekly attendance in community cathedrals, were and are considered de rigueur for students and many faculty. Head masters and head mistresses generally ruled as benevolent rulers. A quasi-military regimen comprised the culture in most of those schools, at least in Canada. (I began my teaching career in one of those schools in Ontario). There rarely was any question or appeal of the ‘rule’ of the headmaster, given the assumed, assigned and conferred authority in the position. Of course, faculty and administration officials were engaged in discussions of policy and practices. The final word, however, remained with the ‘head’.

Catering to a plethora of linguistic, ethnic and religious heritages, the Anglican ‘faith’ was observed more in ritual and human relations than in dogmatic creeds or convictions, at least in daily parlance, discussion and informal debate. Pursuing the truth, with respect and dignity of all participants in most conflicts was a predictable, reliable and trust-worthy pattern for resolving disputes. There was, and likely still is, an ‘air’ of quiet, solemn and reserved decorum and attitudes among both students and staff. I really respected, and still do, that ‘cultural feature’ of those private schools, emblematic of and resonating with the tradition of the English public school.

Was the whole operation open to charges of snobbery? Absolutely. Whether in academics, athletics, or in career placements, these schools reeked of ‘elitism’ and ‘specialness’ especially when compared with the much more informal and unstructured public school system. Was there a kind of moral superiority? Not nccessarily; however, the matters of morality were often kept ‘in house’ as opposed to being aired, like ‘dirty linen’ in the public domain.

Fundraising, the driving engine of these schools, both in enrolment, as well as in scholarships, capital building programs, recruitment campaigns, and solicitation of esteemed board members, was never far from the consciousness of all members of the school community. “Civilizing finishing schools,” these institutions could and would be dubbed by many, including parents who subscribed to their elitism. Prayers from established ‘ecclesial prayer books,’ both traditional and more contemporary (“red” and “green”), were read a daily chapel services, along with the traditional scriptural readings designed by the church calendar. There was a ‘way of being’ Anglican, that, for someone like this scribe, offered relief from the bombastic, absolutist, convicted ‘fundamental’ ‘evangelical’ born-again’ theology of my youth.

Therein lies the convergence of how religion is practiced with the foundations on which such religion is believed to be traditionally, biblically and experientially supported and sustained. Chaplains, in these institutions from my limited experience, would be open to discussion of any biblical, or ethical or moral questions that were raised by either or both faculty or students. Never, however, was there evidence of proselytizing, converting, or even denigrating any because of their family’s faith tradition, if any.

Ungirding not only the praxis but the theology of any faith community, lies the conception of, through imagination, experience, reading and reflection one’s God, including one’s association with, understanding of, and application of both biblical narratives and principles. Whether specific classroom time was dedicated to scriptural and formal faith concepts varied from school to school.

Undoubtedly, in the residential schools, (the dark side of the private school façade of elitism) biblical studies were regimented whether those schools were operated by protestant or Roman Catholic educators. Scars, psychological, physical, cultural and sociological continue, decades after the schools closed, to plague students of the residential school system in both Canada and the United States, and both Roman Catholics and Anglicans/Episcopalians were engaged.

Any religion, applied with physical, emotional, psychological and cultural abuse, is not only abhorrent, and precisely counter to the intent and purpose of any faith worthy of the name. The very notion of ‘civilizing’ and ‘shaping the character’ of students lies at the core of both the private and the residential school systems. The difference lies at least partly in the tuition, boarding fees and financial contribution of all private school students and their families, (excepting those on full or partial scholarship), a source of funds absent from the residential schools.

Denigrating, bigotry, outright social ostracism seems to have characterized many of the experiences of indigenous students in the residential system, whereas, few, if any students in the private schools, were ever shown the contempt poured over the indigenous students.

The issue of faith conviction, espousing a set of doctrines, beliefs, and practices, including regular attendance, regular tithing, regular baptisms, confirmations, marriages and moats to cross in order to achieve a formal divorce, for example, are all benchmarks of the Roman Catholic church, most of which are more causally observed and required among Anglicans/Episcopalians. Even rules on marriage to those not of the Roman Catholic faith by Roman Catholic members in good standing, are (or at least were over the last two decades) more stringent that for those seeking to marry an Anglican/Episcopalian.

And yes, gay priests, as well as female clergy are not only ordained and practicing in the Anglican/Episcopal church, while the issue of formal celebration of LGBTQ marriages continues to stir considerable controversy. Therein lies one of the points of friction, not only between churches, but also among the culture generally, especially in the West.

Absolute opinions, as opposed to reflective exploration of options, seem to be serving as a magnet for those seeking some kind of ‘security’ in a world careening over multiple cliffs, economically, environmentally, politically, militarily, and especially culturally. James Hillman points to the dependence on literalism, empiricism as the primary mode of both perception and cognition; reality has to be based on what is literally, empirically proven, and even then, we are now living in a sea of ‘alternative facts’ (recalling those prophetic words of trump’s mouth-piece, Kellyanne Conway). Thinking constructs such as irony, metaphor, all based on one’s imagination, have fallen into public disrepute, almost as if they were ‘specious’ or irrelevant, in spite of the alternate view that we all deploy our imagination and our creativity each time we reflect on an experience, including whatever might be attempting to pass as a religious or spiritual experience.

Stories of biblical narratives, and those ‘precisely spoken words of Jesus’ although studied and somewhat ‘declassified’ as literally and empirically applicable to the mouth of Jesus, have become, for many metaphoric ‘bullets’ with which to attack any whose ‘faith’ seems questionable, and whose convictions seem wobbly at best.

Absolutism, as a kind of ‘rock of cognitive, ethical, moral and social determination of ‘right’ (and wrong), based on the belief that ‘we know without doubt or question the mind of God’ has become a magnet pole of Christian theology for many. And by that notion and conviction, the mind of God is ‘frozen’ in both time and eternity in a frame to which “I” (whoever I is) can demonstrate my allegiance and loyalty. Absolutism, in and of itself, becomes a metaphor for God’s will for human beings, who claim to have been ‘converted from sin unto eternal life’ as that portion of scripture holds. And therein lie two other of those cornerstones of Christian theology, the interpretation of both the Fall in the Garden, and then the key and path to forgiveness and the promise of eternal life in the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

 

Tow thousand years of writing, praying, debating and even excommunicating and military and political conflict have provided the curricular outline for the study of what purports to be the underpinnings of Christianity. Both the Roman Catholic and the Anglican/Episcopalian churches have self-proclaimed themselves as the ‘right and only Christian faith’ as their way to protect the institution from apostasy.

Institutions, by definition and both birth and development, have believed they had to set boundaries around whom to admit to their ‘inner sanctum’ as well as whom to exclude. And, as is true for most, if not all, humans, acceptance into the ‘inner-sanctum’ of whatever especially ostensibly sacred sanctuary, matters a great deal. Compliance and conformity to whatever the demands of the institution are the sine qua non to such ‘admission’ and ‘acceptance’ and ‘ordination’ as well as ‘blessing’ however such designations appeal and are applied.

Rewards and sanctions, too, are considered essential ‘instruments’ for administering and sustaining all institutions, especially given that religion has taken upon itself the role of defining a culture’s moral and ethical criteria. Again, for many of us, the notion of ‘fear’ as a core experience, irrespective of the name of nature of the ‘authority’ who/which has inculcated that experience, comprises an inescapable emotional and psychic ingredient as to what path seems to ‘fit’ and how rigorous is the requirement to ‘adhere’ to that path.

As one who has had to ‘dispel’ unwonted, externally-imposed illegitimate authority, much of it based on what seemed to have been a constricted and literal interpretation of the gospel, and who has also disavowed all images of a God who endorses the abuse of power in any and all its forms and applications, and who continues to operate under the minimal guidance of ‘question authority’ as an integral guiding principle of my theology, I seek the restraint of military, social, economic, political and academic conflict that abuses any and all parties. Truth, in so far as we can together begin to establish it, (with relevant and respectful participants), compassion, empathy and kind generosity (see that Sermon on the Mount again), seem to offer expression of a theology worthy of both a ‘believer’ and a God of Love.

As Tolstoy reminds, us, those concepts and notions seem to have been engraved within the heart and mind, the spirit and psyche and soul of each and every living and deceased person, whether recognized, acknowledged or applied. The pursuit of absolute ‘anything’ including a God suffering from any form of reduction, continues outside my search for a faith community…indeed perhaps even outside my search or expectation of a faith community….as William Blake held, ‘I am a searcher and not a joiner!’

And my search will no longer be either complicated nor confounded by nor ‘approved and affirmed’ by any ecclesial institution.