Searching for God # 152

 In the past post, a prescient quote from Tolstoy about religion pointed to his perception of what religion is: the theory of the practice of the future and not of the past. A few paragraphs on, Tolstoy details three ‘philosophies of life’. 

These philosophies of life are three in number, and only three, not because we have arbitrarily brought the various theories of life together under these three heads, but because all men’s actions are always based on one of these three views of life—because we cannot view life otherwise than in these three ways. These three views of life are as follows: first, embracing the individual, or the animal view of life; second, embracing the society, or the pagan view of life; third, embracing the whole world, or the divine view of life. 

In the first theory of life a man’s life is limited to his one individuality; the aim of life is the satisfaction of the will of this individuality. In the second theory of life a man’s life is limited not to his own individuality but to certain societies and classes of individuals: to the tribe, the family, the clan, the nation; the aim of life is limited to the satisfaction of the will of those associations of individuals. In the third theory of life a man’s life is limited not to societies and classes of individuals, but extends to the principle and source of life—to God. These three conceptions of life form the foundation of all the religions that exist or have existed....The man who holds the divine theory of life recognizes not his own individuality; and not the societies of individualities (in the family, the clan, the nation, the tribe or the government), but in the eternal undying source of life-in God; and to fulfil the will of God he is ready to sacrifice his individual and family and social welfare. The motor power of his life is love. And his religion is the worship in deed and in truth of the principle of the whole-God. The whole historic existence of mankind is nothing else than the gradual transition from the personal animal conception of life to the social conception of life, and from the social conception of life to the divine conception of life. (Tolstoy the Kingdom of God in Within You, p. 89-90) 

The churches’ history of attempting to ‘correct’ the sin of both individuals and of societies has been promulgated by theologians of considerable repute.  Aquinas, Augustine, and Calvin, famously on the need to correct the sin of the individual, while Niebuhr, Gutierrez and Rauschenbusch focused on the sins of societies. Indeed, the question of the relationship of the individual to the society has been central to the law, the pursuit of social ‘order’ and even the psychology of individual ‘normalcy’. Attempting to ‘fix’ what is perceived, conceived and then believed to be ‘wrong’ or ‘in error’ or eventually both abnormal and/or criminal has been the shared (dare I say collusive?) pursuit of both established churches and governments. We have conceived, engendered, fostered, nurtured, invested in, profited from, engaged in, trained for... industries, organizational structures (schools churches, social service agencies), corporations, academies, all of which are intended to ‘intervene’ to remediate, correct, dissuade, sanction, punish, and even remove whatever behaviour, motive, organ or blight that might be impeding either the individual or the organization or even the culture. In such a protracted and embedded process, we have effectively embedded both a hierarchy of persons, a hierarchy of ‘values’ and behaviours, a hierarchy of religions, a hierarchy of perceived ‘intelligences’ and also a hierarchy of pecuniary wealth. Foundational to those hierarchies is the universal proclivity to ‘judge,’ to ‘compete,’ to ‘disdain,’ to ‘show up,’ to ‘expose,’ to ‘belittle,’ and even to ‘dismiss’....any other than our own ‘kind.’ In some cultures, the individual is paramount (think U.S.A.) while in others, the ‘community’ or the ‘society’ is considered paramount (think China, Russia). In all cultures some various forms, iterations including sanctuaries, synagogues, mosques, cathedrals, ashrams,  retreat centres, aspiring to incarnate a particular religion have co-existed within the socio-economic-political culture. The tribe, the clan, the village, the town, and then over time, the urban metropolis, really a collage of mini-clans and tribe and villages, have each evolved while in a parallel application of similar conceptions, the nation state has taken on considerable organizational, legal, geopolitical and especially military and economic significance. 

Identity vocabulary, attitudes, perceptions and ‘values’ have competed for public respect, dignity, honour and tolerance. Gender, ethnicity, race, and even religion have become ‘defining’ as lenses in and through which we ‘perceived,’ associated with,’ ‘rejected,’ ‘agreed to employ/deploy/reject/isolate ‘the other’ from schools, from workplaces, from rental buildings, from neighbourhoods, even from professions. Perceived, acknowledged and reinforced ‘differences’ have subsumed, obliterated, and even swamped all conventional, cultural and universal humanity. Wars, national boundaries, cultural expulsions, exclusions, insurrections, exploitations overfill the history books over centuries, effectively making conflict based on various ideations of identity both nearly sacred and worthy of the total life commitments of the various youth from each identity. “Giving the ultimate sacrifice’ (dying in the cause of war for one’s country) has become one of the highest forms of ‘tribute’ paid to military veterans who have lost their lives in combat. 

Simultaneously, the popular culture, identifying a burgeoning profit-making opportunity, dances, to, swims in, parties to and consumes billions of dollars of what are popularly termed ‘love songs.’ Romanticizing personal, intimate, loving relationships, as underscored by some religious teaching about ‘sustaining the faith,’ and/or populating the next generations, attempting to sacralize the family as the cornerstone of social cohesion, stability and personal comfort and indoctrination all have converged in putting intense pressure on those relationships. Expectations, both on the individual, and on the relationships, have blown past the human capacity to deliver, to understand, to model and to support those heightened, and both culturally and religiously endorsed, aspirations and achievements. 

Churches, as those entities that have attempted to live ‘very close’ to the lives of their adherents and parishioners, have attempted to walk (pastorally) in grief, in life celebrations like baptism, confirmation, marriage, and death, and more recently in divorce, separation, and the emerging and still tense relationships between and among various sexual orientations. The multiple, complex and emotionally arresting and often transformative events in a human’s life have had to be explained, contextualized, connected to and integrated into some kind of world view that often, if not nearly always, includes some iteration of God. Adjusting to, recovering from, inevitable, inexplicable tragedies, comprehending and adjusting (for example to marriage), and providing rituals to commemorate, memorialize, celebrate (or grieve) highly significant moments have both offered to, and often failed to, comfort those in distress and to join and enhance the celebrations of others. 

And all of this unique, special, deeply embedded set of expectations and interventions in the world views, the local rituals and traditions, of young, middle-aged and the elderly have both separately and collectively comprised the ‘collective conscious’ and the collective unconscious of millions. 

Within many ‘church’ communities, there has been for many years, an attempt to bring the world’s pain into the consciousness of the local parish. Similarly, non-profits agencies have evolved dedicated to the various, open, bleeding sores and wounds that have been exposed in the most distant, desperate and impoverished communities on the planet. Missionaries, too, have been dispatched to support those in need, sponsored by church communities to reach out from pragmatic, as well as idealistic, compassionate and even empathic motives, congruent with the theology being attempted in those individual sanctuaries. My experience, without being mean, is that many of these ‘outreach’ projects (including welcoming refugees, immigrants, asylum-seekers and IDP’s) has been imbued with a degree of patronizing, condescension and ‘pity’. Once again, the deeply embedded ‘hierarchy’ of ‘superior/inferior,’ even if unconsciously, rears its ugly head. 

So, and here is the most difficult ‘mountain’ to climb, for those of us raised in a local community, proud of our home-town, our state or province and our nation.....how do we open the portals of our minds, heart, consciousness to embrace the equality, the humanity, the shared spirituality, and the basic needs and expectations of millions whom we conventionally, almost casually and certainly unconsciously considered “foreign” and “different” and “dangerous” and “lower” than we are? 

Let’s start with openly, courageously and collectively burying the cliche “pick yourself up by tour bootstraps” if you want to make it in today’s world. It is replete with all of the barnacles of racism, privilege, superiority/inferiority, neurosis and NIMBY that rears its ugly head with each and every zoning application for land use in our towns and cities. 

Another Canadian modest proposal would be for one of (or more than one) our national broadcasters to embed both reporters and newsrooms where the stories of the most desperate among us attempt to survive. While some of these are formally ‘war’ zones’ which we often agree to cover, many fall outside those news definitions into prolonged plagues, starvations, tribal wars, government coups, and the blatant over-powering interventions of rich nations who seek both political and economic domination of weak, gullible and desperate people, 

Existing news outlets which might shy away from the cost of foreign correspondents, might contract with internationally reputed mews organs such as The Guardian, to reprint an increased number of international reports on human desperation, including the backstories of how they came to be, as a way of opening the eyes of primarily parochial, provincial and highly comfortable communities. 

Schools, service clubs, churches, and even towns adopting ‘partners’ of their model in distant and impoverished regions of the globe would raise the level of the flow of information and consciousness of the wider world, 

Enhanced national participation and funding of the United Nations, including its various agencies by corporations, as well as nations would be a benefit to the whole world, not only from an orientation and education perspective but more importantly from a ‘receptivity’ and integration perspective 

Bridging the third level of existence, as Tolstoy depicts it, is a personal, familial, school, church, college, university, media, and government ‘aspiration’ the pursuit of which can and will only enhance the live of all humanity including those struggling to survive and more importantly those of us smugly and in a dilettantish off-hand manner, barely paying lip-service to international issues, stories and the people driving them....And whatever conception, perception and vision of God each of us holds will ‘smile’ at the munificience of the transformation of those struggling to ‘see’ a wider world.