Searching for God # 119

Searching for God 119 

In the previous post, a brief outline of an encounter with one’s dark side and both the mystery and the ‘gift’ of that encounter was introduced. One of the questions, doubts, and even potentially significant risks is that in a culture where ‘doing’ and productivity, performance and ‘transparency and accountability are almost considered ‘sacred,’ many might actually consider the process of accessing the personal unconscious as another ‘task’ similar to all of the other tasks we list, organize, execute and evaluate. 

Nothing could be further from the reality of the experience of this imagined encounter! Neither can it be designed, planned or anticipated nor can it be avoided. It has a timing and an ‘eruption’ of its own....apparently depending on the psychic link between a buried trauma, tragedy or ‘in extremis’ moment and some word, image, musical note, or even a private reflection, another experience analogous to a dream. In a vague sense, it might be considered analogous to a transcendent moment when one might catch a glimpse of God. It cannot be confused with such a transcendent moment, while it also cannot be considered automatically ‘foreign’ or alien or outside such a moment. Perhaps, (and this is where the ‘scientists,’ and the empiricists, the literalists, and even the historians begin to squirm), it is inclusive of a world view that acknowledges that humans ‘have’ (contain, include, are psychically oriented to) both a consciousness and an unconscious. And not merely inclusive of, but actually dependent on that premise. 

 

The kind of intersection of these world views might be illustrated in a recent exchange this scribe had on the manager’s decision to insert a pitcher from the bullpen in the eighth inning who then ‘blew’ an existing lead and the team lost the game. I commented, based on the work of the previous reliever which was outstanding after only one inning of work, that the manager ‘should’ have sent him back instead of replacing him. An observer to my criticism of the reliever who ‘blew’ the lead, responded that, with a record of 14 previous low-run innings, the decision was appropriate, and I was being unfair in my assessment. I responded, ‘while your information gives your trust in that reliever, there are other views.’ And my view, based on multiple appearances of the ‘losing’ reliever and several appearances of the successful one-inning reliever, and my intuition, imagination and some kind of sixth sense, I would have left the first reliever in for the subject inning. My inference, and I acknowledge it as an inference, was based on something different from ‘recent factual data’ with which I had no disagreement. 

It is this ‘reliance’ on, or even when I am beginning to contend, is a dependence on the most recent, empirical statistical data, that imposes a societal, cultural and conventional lens that constricts our ‘perception’ of the different and larger or more ‘ephemeral’ and intuitive picture. I am not arguing that my preference for leaving the successful reliever in, instead of replacing him, was absolutely and only the correct decision. What I am trying to say is that a different perspective, one less dependent on ‘immediate empirical data’ might be both useful and appropriate. We all ‘see’ or perceive and apperceive, intuit and imagine simultaneously....and with all of that ‘gestalt of images’ converging into a ‘thought’ or a perception, we still know yet fail to take time to acknowledge that we see only a portion of the whole situation. These lines are not being scribbled by a neuroscientist; they are coming from a retired English instructor, journalist and clergy. 

Metaphor, simile, personification, myth and imagination/intuition are the core ingredients of my experience and my perception. And while all of those core features are open to and eager to embrace empirical data, I am not ever likely to stop at the learning of that data as a full exposure of the whole of any reality. Indeed, right or wrong, it is the ‘meaning’ and the discernment of empirical data that begins the process of ‘reflection, imagining, intuiting and even speculating. 

I recently encountered a rebuttal of the work of the Jesus Seminar written by a theologian of the Baptist faith. Given that the Jesus Seminar’s work was dedicated to attempting to discern whatever might be gleaned from the teachings, sayings, parables and actions of the Jesus of Nazareth (who was this Jesus of Nazareth?), prior to the crucifixion and resurrection, there was considered emotional energy to the rebuttal, based primarily on the superiority of what has come to us as dogma, creeds, perceptions and miracles recounted subsequent to the death of Jesus and whatever can be made of the subsequent ‘appearances’ following that death. There was never any intent of the Jesus Seminar to ‘disparage’ the faith of anyone, based on whatever they had been taught and believed. Scholarship of the depth and variety and range of these theologians, however, as a group attempting to seek a consensus as a decision-making working model, had never before been applied to the search for the Jesus of Nazareth. And, they were discovering to their own surprise, in many cases, that there are several discernable differences between what has come to be the Christian conventional belief and narrative structure and the evidence they found and contemplated and debated from many new and different sources. 

Some examples: the story of the immaculate conception is parallel to the Greek cultural pattern of elevating the birth of important figures as a way of underscoring their significance and the Seminar wonders if that is what happened to the birth stories of Jesus. 

Similarly, the appearances of ‘Jesus’ following the crucifixion, which itself seems to have considerable empirical, historical verification, are considered with skepticism given that they appear to be almost phantom-like, ghost-like and even perhaps misidentification. The actual physical raising of the body of Jesus, from a literal, empirical historical perspective, is, in their shared view, another of the accretions that came from his followers decades or even centuries after the events of 30 c.e. Seen, however, as a ‘metaphor of rebirth’ and ‘new life,’ such scholarly skepticism does not in any way revoke, overturn or even dispute the potential theological importance, given a metaphoric reading. 

The intersection of ‘holy writ’ considered as absolute literal, empirical, indisputable, factual and sacred word of God, with a view that attempts to discern from multiple serious academic disciplines based on their ‘digging’ into the physical, documents and timely cultural patterns recorded by such historians as Josephus and Tertullian, and those birth stories from Greek literature and culture continues today. 

Those claiming to hold the ‘correct’ and indisputably ‘holy’ version of the Christian theology are often, if not invariably, not open to the challenge provided by the Jesus Seminar. And the argument that much of that ‘established’ theology had a lot to do with the establishment, and the spiritual control of the institution of those churches which were attempting to ‘grow the movement.’ 

We can all agree that, in any human attempt to form a ‘group’ or a movement, it is important that certain acknowledged perceptions, attitudes and beliefs be consistent among the followers of that movement. Whether such perceptions, attitudes and beliefs, it turns out, may not be congruent with the actual words, sayings, proverbs and parables that have been attributed to the Jesus of Nazareth is a matter of considerable contention and the literal purists have the advantage of ‘centuries’ of conventional attitudes, perceptions, beliefs and dogma. That advantage, however, may not, itself, comport with the dynamic, and paradoxical and even rebellious notions that the Jesus Seminar, after careful study, attributed to the Jesus of Nazareth. 

The paradox in this space, today, is that I seem to be using scholarly research into the historical evidence of Jesus as a way of enriching the Christian faith, after having lauded, elevated and championed the virtues of the imagination, the intuition and the parallels between transcendent glimpses of God and similar transcendent glimpses of a previously hidden psychic reality in our personal and collective dark spaces. 

From another perspective, the scholarly research into the life and history of Jesus is also possible to be considered as foundational and amendmental and perhaps even contradicting to the kind of constricting morality that has encased the Christian faith for centuries, based on what followers of Jesus wanted us to ‘believe’ in order to establish the institution. Clearly, it is not an either-or, mutually exclusive proposition of intuition/imagination/unconscious/non-literal on the one hand versus the empirical/literal/historical/data-driven perceptions and apperceptions of reality. The issue from an epistemological, as well as a psychic, cultural, and religious/spiritual perspective is how to integrate, balance, and demonstrate the relative and relevant importance of both world views in all of our incomplete and both humble and proud shared universal human pursuit of a relationship with the reality of the ‘world’ and the reality of ‘God.’ 

And one of the tenets of such a pursuit has to be a starting place where we each acknowledge that our individual, as well as our cultural and especially our religious/spiritual/ethical/moral precepts are at best partial, open to review, open to question and open to honest and fearless discussion and debate. The high-handed self-righteous presumptions that have attended all religions is antithetical and irreconcilable with the best ‘angels’ and ‘intents’ of all of our religious faiths.