Michael Prescott's Blog

Early on the first day of the week ...

Since we're coming up on Easter Sunday, I thought I would point out that the story of Jesus' resurrection is one of the loveliest stories in all of literature. It appears in different versions in all four canonical Gospels, but I think I like the version in the Gospel of John the best. Here it is, in the translation known as the New International Version, courtesy of Bible Gateway.

¹ Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

 ³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

 ¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

 ¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

   “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

 ¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

   Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

 ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

   She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

 ¹⁷ Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

 ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

 There are variations among the four Gospels, as is typical when dealing with an oral tradition that has been passed down through different communities. In my opinion, it would be groundless to assume that any version–or some composite version–represents the factual, literal truth. Undoubtedly all four versions benefited from a great deal of embellishment and symbolism. But do they speak to an actual underlying event?

It is at least arguable that they do. For one thing, it is difficult to explain the rapid growth of the Christian cult in the absence of a triumphant reappearance of Jesus after his crucifixion. In those days it was not unusual for someone to proclaim himself the Messiah, but if he was arrested and killed by the Romans, his claims were dismissed, and he was subsequently regarded as a false prophet; his disillusioned followers dispersed, and he was largely forgotten. Indeed, one of the so-called Messiahs of the period is known to us today only by the sobriquet “the Egyptian,” his real name having been lost to history.

Something must have happened to turn the earliest Christian disciples from utter despair and disenchantment to hope and newfound religious fervor. Many of them were willing to die for their cause, and some of them did die in awful ways. It's unlikely they would have thrown their lives away for someone whose earthly crusade had ended in unambiguous failure. They certainly acted as if there had been some postmortem reappearance of their leader, and this was the core of the message they preached at their own risk.

Since I have no problem with the idea of postmortem appearances in general, and since some of the appearances described in the Gospels are consistent with reports of apparitions in more recent times (such apparitions often being surprisingly lifelike and tangible, albeit with the ability to appear and vanish at will, pass through walls, etc., just as Jesus was said to do), I'm inclined to think that the apostles really were reunited with Jesus not long after his death on the cross. Whether or not he was physically resurrected is, I think, somewhat irrelevant, since an apparition can seem convincingly physical and real, and can even be touched or embraced.

Another argument, which is often advanced by Christian apologists, is that if the story of the empty tomb had been entirely invented, it would not have depended on the testimony of women–one woman, Mary Magdalene, in John's version, and two or more women in the other versions. Women were not considered reliable witnesses in the ancient world, and according to what I've read, their testimony was not accepted in court. If someone wanted to make up a story out of whole cloth, he probably would have provided more respectable and authoritative eyewitnesses, especially considering that Mary Magdalene apparently had a checkered past as a victim of demonic possession, or what we would call mental illness, before being healed by Jesus. Who would choose someone with that background as the cornerstone of their story? Perhaps there was some subtle symbolic reason for the choice, but to me it seems more likely that she and the other women were mentioned because there were authoritative traditions that one or more women were indeed the first witnesses.

Finally, I can't help but mention the always controversial Shroud of Turin, purportedly the burial cloth in which Jesus' body was wrapped prior to burial in the tomb. In the 1980s, carbon dating of a few pieces of the cloth established that it originated in the Middle Ages, but this did not settle the matter, because later investigation showed that the corner of the cloth from which all the samples were taken was a patch, not part of the original. The patch is presumably newer than the original, but how much newer? Could the original, which includes the mysterious photonegative image of a crucified and scourged man, actually date back to A.D. 30? We'll probably never know, but even today no one has succeeded in precisely reproducing the subtle image on the cloth, though many people have tried and at least one has come pretty close.

Could the Shroud actually be the burial cloth in question, and could this haunting image have been impressed on it during a supernatural dematerialization of the physical body? I'm certainly not insisting on it, but I wouldn't rule it out.

negative image of the Shroud of Turin

But these factual and historical issues are, in a sense, beside the point. As Aristotle put it, “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” What makes the Easter story great is not its factual accuracy, which can be endlessly disputed, but its enduring emotional resonance. Its truth is not literal, but allegorical; not a matter of objective facts but of subjective interpretation and meaning. 

Even if we were to assume that the story of the first Easter is entirely fictional, it would still remain one of the sweetest and most poetic stories ever told. In a few simple words, with a bare minimum of description and characterization, the basic tale still has the power to stir the imagination and to summon feelings of renewal and hope. And in the end, that's what the Easter season is about.

Mirabile dictu!

Roger Knights sent me this quote from G.K. Chesterton's 1908 book Orthodoxy (full text here and here). There's a lot to like in it, though I have one or two caveats.

Here it is:

But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. 

Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them rightly or wrongly because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them rightly or wrongly because they have a doctrine against them.

 

The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination, not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for scientific conditions in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living, it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love.

 

It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough, or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.

 

I conclude that miracles do happen. I am forced to it by a conspiracy of facts the fact that the men who encounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers, but fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious; the fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic incidents, but are not spiritualists; the fact that science itself admits such things more and more every day

 

The sceptic always takes one of the two positions: either an ordinary man need not be believed or an extraordinary event must not be believed. For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds of swindling mediums or trick miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England--if anything it proves its existence. 

Caveats: 

It's not always the case that "the disbelievers in miracles deny them ... because they have a doctrine against them." Sometimes they deny miracles because they have found actual evidence of fraud, or have reasonable grounds for suspecting fraud. For instance, James Randi famously exposed the "miracles" of faith healer Peter Popoff as fraudulent by recording secret radio communications sent to him by his wife. 

And while it's true that "the believers in miracles accept them ... because they have evidence for them," it's also true that the believers have a doctrine that makes them more inclined to accept evidence that others might reject or doubt.

Overall, however, I'm pleasantly surprised that Chesterton was so open to the phenomena of spiritualism. In this he differs from C.S. Lewis, another famed Christian apologeticist, who dismissed spiritualism as mostly empty blather. 

===

P.S. Late in life, Lewis may have changed his mind a bit. Look at Dave Armstrong's first comment on this page for an excerpt from Lewis's A Grief Observed, in which Lewis recounts a spectral visitation by his late wife. Two reported ADCs from Lewis himself are also mentioned. 

Bones

Interesting news: the skeletal remains of the Apostle Paul may have been found in a tomb beneath the Basilica of St. Paul. Oral tradition had named this church as the site of Paul's tomb; now carbon dating has confirmed that the bones are from the appropriate time period.

A.N. Wilson's article (linked above) is a bit melodramatic and relies heavily on the chronology of Acts to reconstruct Paul's life. I tend to agree with Garry Wills that Acts is not a very reliable guide, and that Paul's letters, considered apart from Acts, tell a somewhat different story.

The discovery lends credence to the tradition that Paul was martyred in Rome during the anti-Christian backlash following the great fire that destroyed most of the city. The emperor Nero blamed Christians in order to counter rumors that he'd started the fire himself.

Incidentally, this event is the origin of the expression, "Nero fiddled while Rome burned." Nero fancied himself a great actor, singer, and master of a stringed instrument called a cithara. Though it is doubtful that he actually played the cithara while the city burned, people did resent his obsession with entering theatrical competitions instead of attending to his job.

Back to the article: Another point of interest is the possibility that a fresco found on the walls of the catacombs may be an accurate likeness of Paul. The linked article has a couple of photos of this fresco, which seems to be in good condition. (Note that the first photo does not show the fresco in question; it is seen in the two that follow.)

Why so mysterious?

I've been reading more about the Gnostics, still trying to fathom why they are held in such high regard by many people today. And I'll admit that parts of the Gnostic philosophy are appealing. For instance, there's the idea that each of us (or at least those of us who have the potential for enlightenment) carries a spark of divinity, which can be accessed through disciplined inner seeking.  

But mixed in with ideas like this, there's an awful lot of convoluted mythological symbolism, which strikes me as willfully obscurantist. Here's a sampling, from an online essay about the theology of the Christian Gnostic figure Valentinus:

Inspired by the Father, the androgynous Son then began a process of making manifest the energies immanent within his personality. To this end, he emanated four more Aeons (i.e. two more male-female pairs). The first pair consisted of Word (male) and Life (female).... The second pair consisted of Humanity (male) and Church (female)....

The original Four and these four secondary Aeons are sometimes collectively referred to as the "original Eight". The Eight are the "root and substance of all things".... The Eight are complete in themselves - a fullness within the Fullness....

Subsequently, eighteen [sic] less important Aeons were brought forth, ten from Word and Life and twelve from Humanity and Church. They represent a further unfolding and manifestation of characteristics immanent within the Son....

Altogether there are thirty Aeons or divine attributes divided into three groups: Eight, Ten and Twelve. 

One Gnostic teacher, Marcus, wasn't content with only thirty Aeons, as we learn later in the same essay.

According to Marcus, each of the thirty Aeons contain further Aeons and each of these further Aeons contain further Aeons to form an infinite number of Aeons. To illustrate this he makes use of the metaphor of the Aeons as letters of the Name. The Name consists of "thirty letters, while each of these letters, again, contains other letters in itself, by means of which the name of the letter is expressed. And thus, again, others are named by other letters, and others still by others, so that the multitude of letters swells out into infinitude" (Against Heresies 1:14:2).

I don't know about you, but to me this seems like a needlessly elaborate scheme, somewhat on par with the complicated musings of medieval numerologists and alchemists.

There's a sort of mind that takes delight in arcane complexity for its own sake. I think Gnosticism was, in part, the product of such minds. 

Similarly elaborate, but with a more readily interpreted symbolic subtext, is the Christian Gnostic myth (per the Valentinians) of how the material world came into existence:

All of the Aeons longed to know the one from whom they came forth....

[T]he longing to know the Father passed to Wisdom, the youngest of the Twelve. On behalf of the whole Fullness, she took up the quest to know the supreme Parent. However, she attempted to know God without the mediation of the Son, something that is impossible. As a result of this defective way of thinking, she became separated from her consort and fell into a state of error and suffering... 

In her distress, she repented and began to plead for help. The other Aeons were also distressed and joined her petition... By means of a second boundary or Limit, she was divided into a higher and lower self. Her lower self ... along with the suffering were excluded from the Fullness. The higher Wisdom was strengthened and returned to her consort convinced that God is unknowable.... 

The net result of this process is that the lower Wisdom ... was trapped outside the Fullness in a lower realm of ignorance and suffering.

Here we have a myth that helps to dramatize the duality of the world - the split between spiritual wisdom and the "ignorance" of the material world. It seems to me that the point could have been made more succinctly, but at least this material does have something to say to us. I'm not sure that the account of the eight, ten, twelve, or infinite number of Aeons conveys much besides mystification.

Basically, the Gnostics seem to have been obsessed with the idea that while we live out our physical lives, we are typically cut off from higher spiritual insights. They seem to have been baffled and irritated by this fact, and to have felt the need to work out extremely complex mythological and symbolic narratives to explain it.

For me personally, I don't quite see what the big deal is. I wouldn't expect corporeal creatures on the physical plane to have a clear grasp of higher metaphysical mysteries. It seems to me that a certain blindness in this regard is exactly what one would expect. If an explanation is needed, the simplest one is that the physical brain can only handle a relatively small amount of information at a time, so most of the information (or wisdom) available in the spirit realms has to be filtered out, and is accessible only in flashes of insight when the brain's ordinary defenses are down. This strikes me as both easier to understand and more intellectually satisfying than mythopoeic narratives about the trials and tribulations of the Aeons.

If any modern-day Gnostics are reading this, can you explain to me what this worldview offers you? I'm still not getting it.

Those darn Gnostics

Many spiritual seekers today seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for Gnosticism, an ancient religious movement that, until recently, had mostly died out. In part, I think, their affection for the Gnostics is based on the fact that traditional Christianity strongly opposed the Gnostic movement, branding it a heresy. Anything opposed by the hidebound, patriarchal church must be pretty cool - or so the thinking goes.

There's also the appeal of subscribing to a body of "secret," "hidden" wisdom that is revealed only to a few select adepts. People have always enjoyed being in on a secret that is withheld from the rest of mankind. The huge sales figures of Dan Brown's mediocre thriller The Da Vinci Code are best explained by this phenomenon; people thought they were getting inside information. 

The trouble is, when you really look at Gnosticism, it isn't all that appealing. In fact, it's rather disagreeable, at least to me. 

Consider this brief summary presented by N.T. Wright in his recent book Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, about the newly discovered "Gospel of Judas." To set the Judas Gospel in context, Wright presents the essentials of Gnostic Christian thought. (It is true that Wright is no fan of the Gnostics, but as best I can tell, his summary is accurate; it dovetails with what I know of the movement from my own reading, notably Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Paul.)

Wright tells us:

The most striking feature of Gnosticism, marking it out against the main line of Jewish and early Christian thought, is a deep and dark dualism. The present world of space, time and matter is an inexorably bad place, not only a place where wickedness flourishes unchecked but a place which, had it not been for an evil god going ahead and creating it, would not have existed at all....

The world as we know it was made by a bad, stupid and perhaps capricious god. There is another divine being, a pure, wise and true divinity who is quite different from this creator god.... For Gnosticism, the god who made the world, along with various other intermediate beings who may have had a hand in the project at some stage, is at the least misguided or foolish, and at worst downright malevolent.

The main aim of any right-thinking human being, therefore, will be to escape the wicked world, and the outward [form of] human existence, altogether....

The way to this "salvation" is precisely through knowledge, gnosis.... [T]his special gnosis is arrived at through attaining knowledge about the true god, about the origin of the wicked world, and not least about one's own true identity.  And this "knowledge" can come only if someone "reveals" it.  [pp. 31-33]

Gnosticism, in brief, is a worldview that disparages all things material, including the human body, and seeks to lose itself in the revelations of specially appointed teachers, whose insights are to be withheld from the common herd. It is essentially an elitist philosophy, setting off the select few (called "pneumatics" in the Gnostic literature) from the mass of mankind, who are merely "sarkic," i.e., fleshly. (The "psychics," meaning people with some limited spiritual insight, occupy a middle tier in the hierarchy.)

Add to this the fact that Gnosticism offers a remarkably convoluted, rococo mythological scheme (or series of schemes), presented in coded language that is all but impenetrable to outsiders, and you have all the makings of a strange cultlike movement that proved to be a cultural dead end.

It is true that some modern thinkers, like Jung, have found deep psychological insights embedded in Gnostic writings. Possibly, if interpreted in this way, the Gnostics' teachings can have value. But when taken as a metaphysical (not psychological) system, Gnosticism strikes me as both mean-spirited and intellectually barren.

Yet nowadays it is making a comeback. Are its enthusiasts missing something ... or am I? 

Follow-up

My post on "Traditional Christianity's Insuperable Problem" has generated a lot of discussion. While all the comments were interesting and provocative, I especially wanted to highlight a few that put a different spin on the interpretation of the verse in question.

Art wrote:

I always think of it as meaning "My teachings are the way, the truth, and the life: no one can really understand God except if it's similar to what I've taught; no one comes to know and understand God unless it's similar to what I've taught." 

MarkL:

I just read John 14.6. Where does it say that YOU have to know Jesus? Or believe that he is God? That is pure egotism on your part. Jesus just says "the only way to God is through me." So? The pilot of an airplane can legitimately say that the only way you'll get to your destination is through him, but that doesn't mean that you have to believe in the pilot's ability to fly the plane. It is only necessary that the pilot fly the plane because he believes that you need him.

Patrick:

Jesus' words could be interpreted as follows:

people experience The Father *because* of Jesus, regardless of whether they "know Jesus" in this life or the next (there is no reason to restrict "salvation" to earthly life)

or

people experience The Father by following Jesus' principles (i.e. loving their neighbors as themselves).

Although I don't think the verse traditionally has been interpreted in these ways, I agree that any of these interpretations can make sense of it and that one or more of them may be close to what Jesus actually meant (assuming he ever said it in the first place, and that it isn't simply a personal statement on the part of the author of John's Gospel).

Traditional Christianity's insuperable problem

Since my last post dealt with the teachings of Jesus, I thought I'd follow up by discussing what is, for me, the biggest problem with the standard interpretation of Christianity. (At least, this interpretation has historically been standard, though as readers have noted in the comments thread, there have been doctrinal changes in some churches in recent years.)

The problem is summed up by John 14:6, one of the most famous passages in the New Testament:

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me."  (New American Standard translation)

As interpreted by most conventional authorities, the meaning is quite simple. If you haven't accepted Jesus, salvation is not yours. The gates of heaven are shut to you. You are bound for hell or, maybe, purgatory. Case closed.

Now, it's pretty obvious that nothing could be more unfair than this dictate. To see why, let's take the case of White Feather, a Native American whom I just made up.

White Feather lived in what is now Colorado, sometime around 1000 A.D., long before the coming of European settlers to North America. He lived a good life. He was kind to his wife and children, brave in defending his home, hard-working and honest. He sought higher spiritual truths, discussing the mysteries of life with tribal elders and medicine men. He always did what he thought was right, even at the cost of his own comfort or convenience.

But of course he never accepted Jesus. How could he? He never heard of Jesus. The name was never so much as whispered to him. He worshiped the spirits of his tribe, the only deities he knew.

What happened to good old White Feather when he died? Well, if John 14:6 is taken literally, he certainly didn't go to heaven. He couldn't come to the Father through the Son, because the Son was entirely unknown to him.

The best White Feather could hope for was an eternity in purgatory - that is, limbo. Through absolutely no fault of his own, but something more in the nature of a cosmic bureaucratic oversight, this very good man is eternally denied the happiness granted to even rather ordinary Christians.

I think that even our normal human sense of fairness rebels at this outcome, and we ought to assume that God's sense of fairness is infinitely more refined than our own. How, then, can God stand for such a state of affairs?

Well, we're told, God works in mysterious ways and ours is not to question, only to believe. But this is hardly a satisfactory answer, and I doubt it would be any more satisfactory to White Feather, currently cooling his heels in purgatory (or being pitchforked eternally in the nether regions - and we all know how painful a pitchfork in the nether regions can be).

Generations of Christian missionaries have gone out into the world to save other White Feathers from this purported fate. In their zeal to see that the "heathens" and "pagans" escape perdition, they have trampled over native cultures and, in some cases (though not all), cooperated with those Europeans who were enslaving and exploiting the natives. And why? Because of John 14:6 - "No one comes to the Father but through Me."

A tenet so grossly unfair, which has had such historically tragic consequences, constitutes - to me - an insuperable objection to traditional Christianity.  I can't see how anyone would feel that God's treatment of White Feather was morally acceptable.

Now, there are ways around this problem, but they involve departing from the historical orthodoxy. One way is simply to deny that Jesus ever said the words attributed to him in John 14:6. This is not too hard a position to maintain. The Gospel of John is generally thought to be have been written later than the three synoptic gospels, and to be less historically reliable. (This is not to say that the synoptic gospels are generally reliable either; that's a separate question.) Much of John consists of long monologues delivered by Jesus to his disciples, which appear to be John's own musings on the deeper meaning of Jesus' ministry - John's thoughts, not Jesus'. Also, I would personally prefer to believe that the real Jesus did not castigate his fellow Jews as sons of the devil, as John's Jesus does in a notorious passage (John 8:44) that has inspired much anti-Semitism.

It is quite possible, then - and I think very likely - that John 14:6 is the author's invention, meant to express his personal understanding of Jesus' mission and importance, rather than something Jesus said himself.

Even if one rejects this argument, there is a way of interpreting the passage in a more tolerant light. The interpretation is that here Jesus was speaking not as himself but as the voice of Cosmic Consciousness, in which case the meaning would be: "Cosmic Consciousness is the way, the truth, and the light; no one comes to the Godhead except through Cosmic Consciousness." This may in fact have been what John (or Jesus) was trying to get at with those words. John is the most mystical of the four canonical gospel authors, the one who starts his story, "In the beginning was the Word ..." It would be quite like him to see Jesus as mainly an incarnation of, and spokesman for, Cosmic Consciousness.

If this interpretation is correct, then the problem disappears. There is nothing to prevent White Feather or anyone else from experiencing Cosmic Consciousness at some point in his (premortem or postmortem) existence. The road to God - and heaven - is then open to anyone whose mind has expanded sufficiently to "see the light" ... not the light of Jesus specifically, but of Cosmic Consciousness, regardless of its cultural trappings.

But while this interpretation rescues John 14:6 from the charge of monstrous unfairness, it also takes us somewhat afield from traditional Christianity, which insisted and, in large part, continues to insist that Jesus really said it and meant it quite literally: Either you accept him personally or you'll be cast into the outer darkness.

As long as much of Christianity continues to endorse this reading, it will face resistance from those of us who think the White Feathers of the world deserve better. 

(Post updated and retitled on December 20 to reflect some concerns raised in the thread.)

Relativity

Marcel Cairo has put up a thoughtful piece on the newly discovered Albert Einstein letter in which the great physicist dismisses belief in God as a childish superstition.

I agree with Marcel that Einstein's view should come as no surprise, given his previously known statements on the subject.

I might add that Einstein seems to have doubted the existence of an individual soul also, opting instead for a sense of mystical oneness with all creation, as exemplified in this famous quote:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

How not to do religion

By now the whole world, or at least that part of it concerned with US politics, knows that for two decades Barack Obama has been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has delivered a number of stem-winding sermons on the issues of the day. Among many other things, Wright has claimed that the CIA invented the HIV virus; he has expressed satisfaction in the 9/11 attacks; and he has declared that instead of blessing our country, we ought to say, "God damn America."

Put on the defensive by these revelations, Obama has argued that Wright is like a crazy old uncle tolerated for his eccentricities. This analogy falls short for two reasons. First, we tolerate crazy relatives because we have no choice. We don't get to pick our relatives. We do, however, get to pick our pastor. Obama could have left his church at any time. If he has remained in the congregation for nearly 20 years, it's because he felt comfortable there and liked what he heard.

Second, Wright is not a crazy old eccentric. He is an important figure in a nationwide movement called black liberation theology. Trinity United Church is considered one of black liberation theology's prime clearinghouses. That's why Wright's sermons have been recorded and disseminated on videotape, and are now showing up on YouTube. He is a leader in a movement, and by the standards of that movement he is not eccentric, not an outlier, not a crazy old uncle at all.

What is black liberation theology? As best I can judge, it is a black supremacist movement brewed up in the racial cauldron of the 1960s. One of its leading lights and formative intellectuals is James Hal Cone, whom Wright has cited as an inspiration. Cone, in turn, has praised Trinity United Church as embodying his theological ideas.

Here are some of Cone's reflections on the liberation movement he helped to found:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

There is no use for a God who loves white oppressors the same as oppressed blacks. We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile.

Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man "the devil."

Now, I understand that it may be unseemly for someone outside this church to criticize its theology. And I know that African-Americans have been subjected to indignities, abuses, and victimization unlike those perpetrated on any other ethnic or racial group in US history. Only black Americans were slaves, bought and sold as chattel. The lynchings and cross burnings, the Jim Crow laws and whites-only restrooms, are a shameful part of this country's past. Although things are much better today, some racist attitudes unquestionably persist and continue to hold back the progress of the black community.

All that being said, however, there are ways of dealing with this history and moving forward, and the sentiments expressed in the quotes given above are not the way.

Religion at its best encourages us to rise above the ego-driven concerns that ordinarily rule our lives. It urges us to let go of grievances instead of bearing grudges, to love rather than hate, to eschew revenge and retribution in favor of forgiveness and compassion. Where the ego says, "I will never forget and never forgive," and jealously nurses its rage, true religion says, "We are all one, I am thou, and in hating or hurting you I only injure myself."

But religion at its best is rarer than it should be. Too often, religion devolves into yet another vehicle of ego-gratification, with the resentments and grievances so precious to the ego given new and larger life in the person of an angry, vindictive, and viciously partisan God. Then we have the spectacle of religious extremists calling down death and hellfire on anyone they define as the enemy. God becomes only a projection of the narrow parochial interests and fears of a particular community, the ego writ large, a bully in the clouds, a tyrant on a heavenly throne shoveling sinners into the furnaces of hell for the amusement of the remnant who are saved.

When religion becomes just another revenge fantasy for the (individual or collective) the ego, it is religion gone bad. And I believe black liberation theology fits this bill.

Look again at the quotes from Cone. If they are indeed an accurate reflection of black liberation theology's principal tenets, then it is hard to see how that movement could be spiritually elevating. Instead of uniting, it divides; instead of forgiving, it accuses and blames; instead of subordinating the ego to higher spiritual impulses, it does the opposite -- explicitly stating that if God is not in line with the ego's agenda, then the ego will have to "kill" God.

This is an inversion of religion in its proper sense. This kind of religion does not inspire or uplift.

Obama has based his campaign on transcendent themes and a message of hope and healing. His 17-year association with a church whose message is altogether different calls into question the whole rationale for his candidacy. The damage to his prospects is, I think, irreparable.

It turns out that Obama was right. Words do matter. Including the words spoken from the pulpit of Trinity United Church.

For further reading:

Wikipedia on black liberation theology

Wikipedia on James Hal Cone

"The peculiar theology of black liberation," by Spengler (Asia Times)

"The insanity of 'black liberation theology'," by Rod Dreher

'Africentric Church,' in The Christian Century

Last rites

Here's something a friend of mine sent me, concerning a Buddhist ceremony for her late mother-in-law, Jane. (Names have been changed for privacy.)

I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but I was very impressed yesterday evening when the Buddhist monks came. There were two of them, and one was clearly the accomplished famous monk.  Of course Jim, Gary and I made many jokes about the monk coming – Monks R Us, we might need a back-up monk, are there monks on the bench?  But this was really good.  There were about fifteen of us in Susan’s living room.  One wall is all glass, and she has a huge mirror that reflects the outdoor garden.  We were sitting on the couch where I could look straight into the mirror and it was incredibly beautiful, because the late afternoon light backlit some fan palms so they were bright green, against a background of blue-green-gray oleander that moved wildly in the wind.  It was gorgeous. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, except to look at the monk in his dark red robe.  And the monk explained what he was doing. He was matter-of-fact and made a lot of sense, talking about how life was only completed by death, and this is not a sad thing.  He had a way about him that made me feel Jane really was going on up the path to enlightenment. The monk wasn’t trying to convince anyone. It just was. There was no self-consciousness in any way – he wasn’t the arrogant Top Monk, and he wasn’t plaintive.  I was moved by his presence.  We were to give her her favorite foods by throwing them into the fire, as well as water and tea.  He told us Jane was present and her consciousness was there, but in a different way. She lay on a gurney and had been dressed in a beautiful midnight-blue tunic, she looked like a monk herself.  He said that he hoped everyone would let her go on her path and not try to keep her from it, that this was a part of life.  He embodied acceptance of the way things were, and acceptance of what could be done to help Jane on her journey.  He helped her reach up to a higher consciousness.  I was deeply moved. 

If you ever get a chance to participate in a ceremony like this, it’s worthwhile.  Especially since you are interested in death and the afterlife.  The chanting can be a bit onerous, but I left thinking I don’t know everything.