Searching for God # 82

 In the last post, a montage of scenarios, from real life, scratched the surface displaying some of the resistances to ‘politics’ and social diagnoses that breached political politeness within the church ethos. And while most parishioners are not comfortable with acknowledging and identifying their ‘faith’ with their ‘politics’ and also while the church itself proclaims it is ‘above’ politics, in the specific and narrow sense of being non-partisan and non-ideological, nevertheless, whatever messages the church attempts to embody and to deliver have, if we are being totally honest, a political import.

Even the platinum concept of ‘agape’ the word from the New Testament to describe God’s love (John 3:16) and the love Christians are exhorted to emulate, approximates the concept of altruism, unconditional, sacrificial, brotherly and universal love. Political rhetoric, on the other hand, is saturated with policies that are designed, crafted and implemented to ‘protect, serve and preserve’ the people. And public service is depicted as a sacrificial act, along with military service, again to ‘protect, serve and preserve’ the people.

The political side of this dichotomy is envisioned, however, as ‘people as a collective’ a society, and population, and in recent times, a gestalt of demographics. The religious, ecclesial side of the dichotomy, on the other hand, is envisioned from the perspective of ‘people’ as individual man, woman and child. Individual epiphanies or conversions to the Christian faith, along with letters from individuals (think Paul) to congregations, along with the several biographies of Jesus, including his Death and Resurrection, comprise the bulk of scripture in support of the Christian faith and theology. And salvation of individuals from their personal ‘sin’ (the state in which they are born) predominates over the salvation of the whole world.

If, as we have been considering, the Christian faith can, or will, give consideration to both personal/individual salvation and ‘whole world’ salvation, (clearly they are not and ought not to be considered mutually exclusive), then and only then can or will anything resembling Liberation Theology be permitted into the vision. And given that the political vernacular, especially the obsession with ‘ideology’ and ‘identity’ two concepts that both serve as reductions of each person, Liberation Theology (used here as a starting point, not as an ‘end goal or result) has to contend with the amelioration of the influence of both, ideology and identity, as determinants of a person’s psyche and/or soul.

It is from the outside, outside each and every individual, that these terms are deployed, and never from the perspective of the individual human. Similarly, it is from the outside that even religious terms like ‘saved’ or ‘unsaved’ are deployed, primarily by those seeking either to justify their own salvation or demean the ‘incomplete’ state of their colleagues or both. Similarly, terms that describe one’s preference for a kind of liturgy, ‘high church’ or ‘low church’ or ‘red book’ or ‘green book’ or even Protestant or Roman Catholic, Pentecostal or Baptist, while depicting a group, are titles to creeds and attitudes, perception and even beliefs that can never encompass or deliver on the inner nature of one’s psyche or soul.

And while there is a degree of ‘affiliation’ and ‘belonging’ to those who choose to remain loyal to their respective ‘grouping’ there is and always will be a dividing line between any ‘group expectation’ and ‘belief’ and a person’s inner life, psyche and soul. The incompatibility of the inner, unconscious life, with any attempt to ‘group’ a religious experience is neither a flaw in the individual nor in the group ‘identification.’ Indeed, the attempt to fence in the inner, unconscious life, into any corral of a faith denomination, or sect is fraught with indeterminacy.

Thank God!

And the beginning of the focus on the inner, unconscious, hidden psyche/soul, which could and might be the focus of any attempt to mount a learning curve that actually listened to, drew from the unconscious into the conscious, respected and acknowledged that radioactive ‘gold’ of the unconscious as intimately significant and essential to the full religious and faith experience, has a potential of unlocking so many layers of potential insight, and ‘full liberation’ of men, women and children.

And this form of liberation is and can never be connected to, related to or measured by any GNP, GDP, ideology, or sexual or ethnic identity, or also any membership card or history of loyalty to a faith community. Church attendance, dollars collected, size of building, magnitude of pipe organ, number and range of artistic stained-glass windows, and the cognitive and intellectual might of any clergy, while interesting and even profound in some instances, can and never will capture the unconscious even of those clergy attempting to share their inner life.

We have to listen to the specific narratives of each and every individual, not from the perspective of attempting to pigeon-hole their ‘personality’ or their expectations into a menu or a template for the purposes of the institution’s glory and success. We must not categorize individuals, either, by their ‘talents’ or ‘gifts’ (from God that then can be deployed as gifts to God in the liturgy), again for the purpose of the institutional artistic, performance reputation and magnetizing new recruits. No one can be the means to another’s end! reminds Kant, not that we do not ‘use’ individuals for purposes that are not their’s but that such an approach is not exclusive. Given the preponderance of ‘function’ utility’ and ‘task’ in our culture, primarily for profit, either directly or indirectly, returning to Kant’s moral imperative will necessitate a deep and profound shift in our personal and collegial expectations. Indeed, one’s identity is also often reduced to one’s career, vocation, profession or enterprise.

Essentially attempting to eliminate, to the degree possible, the various forms of objectification of each other, and especially of ourselves, will do much to aid in the refocusing of our psyche/soul on matters that, themselves, are not reducible to the literal, the empirical, the scientific. Just as God is non-compliant to being a being reduced to a means to our end, as envisioned in the prayers of barter that humans continue to offer, and as we are also more than another’s means, so too are we not reducible to any one or even a collection of epithets, externally applied ‘nouns, adjectives or diagnoses.

These meanderings bring into focus the question of what is humanism and what is humanity?

Britsnnica.com says this about humanism:

A system of education and mode of inquiry that originated in northern Italy during the 13^th and 14^th centuries and later spread through continental Europe and England. The term is alternatively applied to a variety of Western beliefs, methods and philosophies that place central emphasis on the human realm.

Britannica.com says this about humanity:

The quality or state of being human; the quality or state of being kind to other people or to animals. The plural, humanities: areas of study (such as history, language, and literature) that relate to human life and ideas.

Everything we inject into these spaces is obviously ‘about’ humans;  however, it is not intended as a system of education. We are not engaged in the process of reducing the individual psyche/soul to being addressed or even accessed in and through a process of humanism.

And here is a distilled statement in the definition of theology, from Britannica.com:

In spite of all the contradictions and nuances that were to emerge in the  understanding of this concept in various Christian confessions and schools of thought, a formal criterion remains constant: theology is the attempt of adherents of a faith to represent their statements of belief consistently, to explicate them out of the basis (or fundamentals) of their faith, and to assign to such statements their  specific place within the context of all other worldly relations (e.g., nature and history) and spiritual processes (e.g. reason and logic)….to which we might legitimately insert, ‘the imagination.’

How can one conceive of the interjection, purpose, impact and envisioned goal of the human imagination into the process of searching for God?

Without have the benefit of the past half-century, in a Lenten study session, to which I was invited to propose an answer to the question, ‘Is the Christian faith relevant?’ I attempted to make the case that the faith remained relevant, although the process, the delivery, the liturgy needed to change. My proferred suggestion: shift from a lecture modality to a seminar modality. That naïve and green-broke utterance came from one who had experienced abuse of God, theology and even scripture from the pulpit of a mainline Presbyterian church…without the opportunity to challenge such bigotry, and hypocrisy.

Nearly 60 years on, after actually attending, and also preparing and delivering hundreds of homilies, based on the specific Biblical readings for the Sunday in question (the lectionary), I can say that I have learned more about God from those in the pews than they ever did from my side of the pulpit. Moments of clarity, insight, mask-removal, acknowledgements of hurting others, quiet whispers of ‘how I can do better,’ visions of how things might be ‘better’ and more hopeful….these are all inherent to conversations everywhere, among those with degrees and equally among those without formal training. And these ‘aha’ moments were not restricted to, and certainly not exclusive to therapy.

Moments of being seen and known, between individuals who have established trust, confidence and safety and security between and among them, irrespective of the colour of skin, the ethnic heritage, the language differences, the faith tradition, or even the age or gender or vocation or education…..indeed such ‘labels’ were and will continue to remain inconspicuous, irrelevant and non-starters among such places between the I of one and the Thou of another.

Of course, in order for such a ‘place’ (space, mood, ethos, reverence, and trust) to be created, considered psychically, and mutually shared in full and voluntary commitment, recognition of the dependence we all share on the objective characterizations of God, each other, our family members and ourselves. After recognition, the shift to getting down to narrative detailing of personal, significant, memorable moments in each person’s life, without any judgements, might be feasible.

The opportunity to share such moments, in a safe circle, is a first step in levelling the playing field between and among the circle members. (This is not intended as a replica of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, although the confidentiality of those meetings is a presumed and agreed and committed requisite.) Parallels, from other personal stories, including the pains and the dreams and the demons we have all encountered, offer a context of mutuality, equality and deep and profound respect and dignity to each person. If and when such respect and dignity is broken, the opportunity for the circle to reckon with how such a breach occurred, and the options of beginning the healing are immediate, including the resort to prayer, to access the words of reconciliation from any number of sources, and the opportunity for everyone present to begin to ‘see things’ including themselves and others in a new and supportive even challenging light.

Rather than deconstructing public institutions, political ideologies, national hubris, or geopolitical competitions, for the benefit of the powerful, such base communities as these words are beginning to envision, (literally beginning….and seeking any input from readers who wish to contribute) the purpose of personal, safe and trusting encounters under God, in a safe circle is, different from the purpose of sobriety among AA members. The purpose is to come closer to the truth, the unconditional love, and the forgiveness of respected others, and through such a process to glimpse first, the previous blindness we have all been operating under.

And then to begin to dream, envision, and to stretch to reach out to that Blakean vision, ‘to see the universe in a grain of sand’ in the metaphorically sustained manner of the poet.

Blake’s  adopted Christian mantle is not that of the evangelist but the prophet. His is a prophetic universe where apocalypse always beckons, precisely because the conventional world—what Blake spat out as the Ratio—works very hard to convince us that our present state of civilization is axiomatically preferable to our natural state…..Blake saw a close relation between the words ‘revelation’ and ‘revolution.’ To be serious about Christianity meant for Blake that you were suspicious of any and all authority. Those authorities not incidentally included the Church, or what Blake termed, with decided disparagement, ‘religion’…..Blake wanted to stir things up because he thought the Christian revelation was meant to stir things up. Thie first step in doing so (after reading Blake from stem to stern) was to liberate Imagination from the shackles of Reason.                                   (from divinity.uchicage.edu, from a piece by  Richard A Rosengarten, entitled,  The Christian Who Was a Church of One, February 17, 2022)

The paradox of Blake’s ‘church of one’ invoked in a piece endeavoring to advocate for circles of faith is not incidental to this piece. It is the deeply embedded paradoxical that seems to be inherent to the story of the Christian faith, historically, scripturally and prophetically….just another of the paths away from the literal, the empirical and the scientific and towards an application of Blake’s imagination in our shared search for God.