CC42: Humility: Vice or Virtue?

Ah, the joys of humility, that most cherished of Christian virtues! O ye wondrous affliction, scourge of my heart, desiccator of my soul! How could I envision Original Sin without you, you who from ancient times have trampled all that is good and true and beautiful within me! You who are the very face of Christian orthodoxy! You who demands that I obey my earthly leaders! Fair Humility, you are an idol beyond compare!

Humility, your justness and righteousness have been proved again and again within orthodoxy's precincts. To you we owe a great debt, for you have protected the Church throughout the centuries from the evils of independent thought. Even more important, you have locked the door to Jesus' Kingdom of Heaven to ensure that people of true faith and good heart can't get in. Verily, you are one of the rocks upon which the orthodox Western Church stands.

Hear now a modern summary (written by this humble author) of the famed Rule of St. Benedict, first written in Latin in Italy in the early 6th century. (The reader is referred to the following text: Timothy Fry, ed., The Rule of St. Benedict in English (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982)).

Abbey of Monte Cassino, Italy, site of the early 6th century CE monastery founded by St. Benedict of Nursia. Monte Cassino was the first monastery founded by Benedict, author of the highly influential Rule of St. Benedict. The buildings were reconstructed after being largely destroyed in the WWII Battle of Monte Cassino. Photo credit: Monte Cassino – wide view by Pilecka – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

FIVE CORE CHRISTIAN VIRTUES IN THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT

For St. Benedict, author of The Rule, the most important Christian quality is to place the love of Christ before all else, a point he returns to several times in his book of instructions for beginners (for example,Chapter 4:1, 20; Chapter 72:11). Benedict takes a two-pronged approach – faith combined with good works – to this religious vocation (an approach which turns out to be particularly effective, too, if we are to consider the fact that his Rule is still used by many religious orders today). First, he creates guidelines that affect how the monks will think and feel about their relationships with themselves, each other, and God; in other words, he tries to fulfill the needs of faith. These are the instructions that pertain to renouncing the self and to humility, both great virtues in Benedict’s opinion. In order to follow Christ, monks must renounce themselves, taking no notice of anything good in themselves except to give the credit to God, not themselves (4:42). No one is to follow his own heart’s desire (3:8). Neither should monks expect to have free disposal even of their own bodies and wills (33:4; 58:25). Private ownership is a vice (Chapter 33), and, along a similar vein, a monk may not exchange letters, tokens, or gifts with anyone – or be found to be in possession of such items – without the abbot’s consent (Chapter 54). These rules, if followed, draw the monk’s thoughts and feelings away from anything that makes him distinct or different from his peers, and make it easier for him to practise humility. "Humility" is one of the core features of Benedict’s Rule. Chapter 7 outlines the 12 steps of humility, and many other chapters of the book exalt humility as well. A monk who ascends Benedict’s ladder of humility will find at the twelfth and highest stage an awareness that he is always guilty on account of his sins, and through this awareness of his true unworthiness, he will be able to receive cleansing of his vices and sins through the grace of the Holy Spirit (7:62-70). In this way, the monk will finally know the perfect love of God.

Second, Benedict creates a set of strict guidelines that governs what monks do, when they do it, and how they do it. In other words, he tells them exactly how to perform good works – how to act. Monks who agree to these rules, which can be thought of as the day-to-day tools and practical routines necessary to the vocation of loving Christ, will acquire the essential Christian virtues of obedience and self-discipline. Obedience to the abbot and the rule is profoundly important in imitation of obedience to Christ. Indeed, the abbot is believed to hold the place of Christ in the monastery (2:2) Moreover, obedience must not be blighted by the evil of grumbling (5:14; 34:6; 53:18) but must be given always with gentleness (Chapter 68) and purity of heart (20:3). Monks who take their final vows must promise three things: stability, fidelity to monastic life, and obedience (58:17). From that day forward, they are no longer free to leave the monastery (58:15), although they may be cast out or excommunicated after due process if they are sufficiently disobedient. It is therefore in the monks’ best interests to exercise self-discipline, which could perhaps be defined as being "not slothful, not unobservant, not negligent" (the vices that Benedict lists in his concluding chapter, 73:7). In Benedict’s monastic communities, this self-discipline meant more than just "a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love" (Prologue: 47). It meant remembering all the rules, and practising all the rules, even on rare occasions when monks were travelling or were working far away from the oratory; so, for instance, monks on a journey could not omit the prescribed hours (50:4), nor could monks sent on a day errand presume to eat outside the monastery on pain of excommunication (Chapter 51). Self-discipline may also have been helpful when it was time to get up in the middle of the night to celebrate the Divine Office! [from an unpublished paper by the author; italics added] 

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The apostle Paul would be proud of you, noble Humility. For you are the theological sleight of hand that keeps good, pious Christians in their place, doomed to feel unworthy, sinful, desperate to be saved, and constantly separated from God.

You are a proud and cruel goddess, Humility.

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them,' You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.' When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last" (Matthew 20:1-16). Photo credit JAT 2025.

 

CC25: How the Church Puts Free Will On a Very Short Leash

Not long ago, on Canada Day to be exact (July 1), I headed out from Toronto on the 401. It was early afternoon and the weather was good. For all intents and purposes, the trip should have been easy and stress-free. There were no construction sites (a miracle in itself) and there were no accident sites (thank goodness). The traffic should have flowed smoothly. But it didn't. If someone had been watching from a helicopter, they would have seen an accordion pattern on the highway: traffic speeding up and spreading out, then suddenly squeezing together into compressed knots as large groups of drivers hit the brakes at the same time.

Now, I'm a person who enjoys driving. I like to feel the sudden kick of acceleration when I hit the gas. I like to go down country roads just to see where they go. I like a road that demands you pay attention to what you're doing as you navigate tight curves and steep hills. So I find driving on the 401 kind of boring, to be honest. But I'm a careful driver, too, and I think it's asinine to tailgate. So when traffic is heavy, I usually stay in the right-hand lane, and I keep my distance from the vehicle in front of me. This way, I have choices open to me in the event of an emergency or unexpected problem. I have choices open to me because I have time and space. I have time to see a problem, assess a problem, react to a problem, and hopefully get my car (along with me and my passengers!) safely out of harm's way.

Many other drivers don't share this opinion about driving on the 401. They inexplicably believe that the laws of Newtonian physics don't apply to them, which, of course, gives them an excuse to join the large pack of vehicles spaced a mere 3 car lengths apart in the left-hand passing lane.

(When I took driving lessons many moons ago, the rule of thumb for determining a safe distance between cars was one car length per 10 miles/hour of speed -- in other words, six car lengths between you and the guy ahead of you if you were driving at 60 mph in dry weather. And this was the minimum recommendation!)

As reality would have it, the laws of inertia bow to no man.* This strikes home when the driver at the front of the left-hand string of traffic suddenly decides to hit his brakes. All the drivers following close behind him must hit their brakes, too. They have no other option, except, of course, to swerve onto the left-hand shoulder or smash into the neighbouring cars. A chain of red brake lights appears. This in turn causes the people in the right-hand to brake, and within moments everyone on this section of the 401 is travelling at a snail's pace. There's no external reason -- such as a lane closure -- for this slowdown. This kind of slowdown is entirely the result of the choices these drivers are making.

Although each of the drivers in the left-hand lane might like to blame somebody else for the slowdown, in fact each person who chose to travel at high speed with no safe buffer of time and space ahead of him is a co-creator of this mess. Each of these drivers has free will. Each one used his free will to make an initial choice (the choice to drive this way). No one forced these drivers to drive 3 car lengths apart. Each driver chose this action independently and autonomously of his neighbour (free will). Yet, in doing so, each driver independently and autonomously volunteered to give up -- surrender, eliminate, erase -- some of the choices open to him. Each person willingly decided to give up his time and space, the precious and irreducible time and space that would have preserved for him a wider range of options.

You could say -- without exaggeration -- that each driver used his free will to intentionally (if temporarily) relinquish his free will, and hand it over to the lead driver in the string. Why so? Because it's the lead driver who sets the speed and who chooses the time when everybody else will have to brake in unison. Once you agree to join his string, his pack of drivers, you don't get a say in these things.

The Church's teachings on free will remind me a lot of these traffic strings on the 401. In the orthodox Western church, theologians like to remind their faithful flock that God gives each person free will at birth. This doctrine of free will prevents people from falling into a tar pit of fatalism and despair, because people still have a glimmer of hope with regard to their own free will. Although the doctrines of original sin and grace dictate that they don't have a lot of free will, they know they still have the choice to pay attention and brake on time, and thereby prevent a major pile-up!

Of course, if they make a mistake, and misjudge the timing, and cause a major pile-up in the left-hand lane, they'll accused by the Church of a massive failure of piety. 

The Church, unfortunately, has long conspired to prevent Christians from learning about the existence of the right-hand lane -- the spiritual lane where people can more fully exercise their free will, the spiritual lane where there's no leader of the pack to restrict the traffic flow.** In fact, the orthodox Western Church is founded on the premise that you -- poor, weak, sin-ridden creature that you are -- need to be in the left land and want to be in the left lane because you're rushing as piously as possible toward the future goal of salvation. You're rushing anxiously with the rest of the flock, and you're following as closely as possible to the guy in front of you so you won't get lost. And you're grateful to the leader at the front of the pack -- oh, excuse me, I mean the flock -- because he's so wise and strong and so much better than you. You know you can place all your trust in him. You can trust him to know when to brake. And you're grateful when he decides to brake, because then you yourself have a rare opportunity to apply your free will and choose to brake! And what better way could there be to prove your love for God!

"For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me five more talents; see, I have made five more talents.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master replied, 'You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth'" (Matthew 25: 14-30).  In this parable, the only slave with the courage to tell the truth about the master is cruelly punished. As the honest slave learns, the path to knowing God is neither straight nor paved nor predictable. Photo credit JAT 2014.

What Jesus knew, and what Jesus taught, is that the road to God is neither straight nor level (Isaiah 40:3 notwithstanding). The right-hand spiritual path -- the path the Church doesn't want you to know about because it would lessen Church authority -- curves and climbs and enters the most unexpectedly beautiful landscapes. Sometimes you can't see a darned thing on the road because it's so foggy and misty. Then you have to slow down and try to listen to God's voice. And that's okay, because sometimes God's voice is very, very quiet, and very, very shy, and you'll miss it unless you tell yourself it's okay to listen to God's shy voice instead of the loud voice of the guy who's leading the long string of Church traffic.

You should be aware, though, that if you decide to pull into the right-hand lane you'll be considered a heretic. Or a Concinnate Christian. Or a person who trusts God. Or a follower of Jesus' message.

Free will is a pain in the ass, don't you think? 

* My apologies for exclusively using the male gender in these paragraphs. My intent is not to point fingers at male drivers, but simply to avoid the awkward use of he/she and his/her phrasing in my sentences. Next time I'll try to remember to use "she" as the gender in my example.

** In countries such as the United Kingdom, where the convention is to drive on the left and pass on the right, these references to "right-hand" and "left-hand" lanes would be reversed for the purposes of discussion. I'm not in any way endorsing the ancient and misguided view that lefties and left-handed things are somehow tainted or inferior to right-handed people or things.

CC24: The Emperor's New Clothes: Psychopathy in the Church

There's a fellow in my graduate theology program who is a constant reminder to me of how the orthodox Western church ended up preaching the doctrines of sin, salvation, sacraments, and separation from God (the four S's). If we were to put this fellow -- I'll call him Titus -- in a time machine, and send him back to Carthage in the early fifth century CE to argue with the famously tortured Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo, I'm not sure which of the two would prevail. That's because, in traditional parlance, "they're both cut from the same cloth." They share certain dysfunctional psychological traits along with certain coping mechanisms to compensate for their dysfunctional traits. They're also both deeply sincere in their beliefs. This is why both men cause so much suffering in the lives of others.

It's important to emphasize that the man I know, Titus, is absolutely convinced that he's been called to ministry by God. He's not a con man or a criminal with a conscious intent to harm others. In fact, if you asked him about his motives, he'd look you straight in the eye and tell you that he's a humble servant of God. He truly believes this.

But Titus has serious issues -- as in unresolved psychodynamic issues. He's a walking powder keg of narcissistic bullying, and he's utterly blind to this. (His classmates, who are the targets of his behaviour, see his issues quite clearly). So serious is his lack of empathy and his lack of respect for boundary issues that I suspect he suffers a great deal. I suspect he suffers inside his own head. He's tormented by his own "demons," and, like so many other people, he's looking for some form of relief from his inner despair. And who can blame him? It's not fun to feel like crap all the time.

Secular treatments have given him no long-term relief. So now he's looking to the Church -- traditionally, one of the great sanctuaries for narcissistic men (and narcissistic women). Here he can find a logical explanation for his suffering. Here he can be absolved of personal responsibility for the current state of his life. Here he can finally use his intellectual gifts, his musical gifts, and his badger-like tenacity in order to create something meaningful in his life. I'm not being facetious here -- Titus is a talented, well educated man.

I have no doubt that he's finding psychological comfort and relief in the teachings of men such as Paul the Apostle, Augustine of Hippo, and Martin Luther. That's because these famous theologians were also talented, well educated men who were suffering from the effects of their own unaddressed issues. They were not stupid, nor ill-informed, nor criminally minded. But they knew something was wrong, and they earnestly wanted to fix it. If they found themselves forced to alter everything Jesus once taught in order to fix it, then so be it. Once they'd found a theological solution that offered some relief for their personal feelings of emptiness, well, who can blame them for wanting to tout their solution to others? Who can blame them for intentionally supplanting Jesus' message of personality responsibility and forgiveness with a message of sin and salvation? It's a much easier "sell" than Jesus' message, and besides, each of these men had personally felt the relief that came with the "4-S package." So they weren't really lying -- they were just improving on Jesus' message.

 

Silenos was a figure from Greek Mythology. He was said to be a close companion of the Greek god Dionysos and was known for his drunkenness, one of the "sins" that human beings tend to blame on everyone but themselves until they find the courage to take responsibility for their own actions. Anyone who has succeeded in leashing an addiction to alcohol knows that this particular "sin" can be overcome with the right sort of help (which doesn't include being told you're a worthless, hopeless, "demon-possessed" wretch who has no control over your unloving choices because of Original Sin). This Roman marble after a Hellenistic work of the 3rd C BCE is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2019.

 
The problem is that this package of theological doctrines -- the 4-S package of sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation -- only offers psychological relief to a certain subsection of the population that's suffering from certain kinds of psychiatric dysfunction. It enables the narcissistic bullies to feel a lot better about themselves. But it doesn't do a damned thing for anybody else.

This notion will be extremely unpopular among devout Christians who cherish their traditional, orthodox beliefs about original sin, etc., etc., and this notion will be especially offensive to those who insist that Church doctrines are the handiwork of God instead of the handiwork of a few dysfunctional theologians. But there you have it -- the Church has codified within its body of sacred laws a self-correcting, virtually impregnable suit of body armour to protect the "rights" of a select group of self-entitled, selfish, controlling, abusive, HUMBLE (!!!!) servants of God.

How could such a self-serving system survive for so long if it wasn't God's true intention?

Well, that's an easy question to answer. Have you ever tried to live with a severe narcissist? Or work with a severe narcissist? Or live in a community (or even a country) ruled by a severe narcissist? Once a narcissist crosses the line into full-blown psychopathy (and this happens more often than good-hearted intellectuals want to admit), the rule of terror takes over. It's very hard to think straight, let alone challenge official doctrine, when you and your loved ones are being terrorized, abused, relentlessly persecuted, tortured, raped, imprisoned, and silenced in every way imaginable.

We've recently seen this kind of psychopathic behaviour emerge in group form in the European Holocaust, the Cambodian Holocaust, and the Rwandan Holocaust. These holocausts were all instituted by "revered leaders." The Church, I would argue, has had its own share of "revered leaders" who relentlessly preached holocausts (crusades) against "heretics" who rejected official church doctrine.

Am I saying that some of the Church's revered theologians and past leaders would match today's understanding of psychopathy?*

That's exactly what I'm saying.

* For more information, please see Robert D. Hare's Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York & London: The Guilford Press, 1993.)

 

CC23: Seeing God in Black and White: A Parable

Here is your class assignment for the day: using only two tubes of paint, one white and one black, you are to paint a full-colour picture of something beautiful. 

Lilies of the Field (c) Image*After

Get to work, everyone! Now! And don't complain to me that the assignment is unfair. If you're truly righteous, pious, and devout, God will show you how to paint a full-colour picture using only black and white paint. If you fail, well . . . if you fail, you obviously don't have enough faith in God. Don't blame me for your failure. I didn't make the rules. If you fail, it's your own fault (you poor sin-saturated thing, you).

Pray, people, pray! Pray with all your might! If you pray correctly, maybe God will grant you the grace of being able to paint pictures in glorious, divine colour. Prove to me that you have faith! Pick up your paintbrushes and paint! Anyone caught cheating by bringing in tubes of red, blue, or yellow paint will immediately be brought before the Inquisition. Possession of any paints except Lead White and Carbon Black will be considered a shameful act of hubris, because only God is allowed to have coloured paints. Those other tubes you've seen at the store are the work of the Devil.

That's right, class -- everyone down on their knees. That's better. And remember not to look up while you're painting. Don't look up at the trees or flowers or clouds or hills that you're trying to paint. Such viewing is an unpardonable sin. You will paint beautifully coloured images based solely on the black and white words I'm about to recite aloud to you. Are you ready, everyone? Good. Here we go. In the beginning was the Word . . . .

Ah. A question. What is your question, child? You want to know what the colour red is? Well, as all the great mystics have taught, you'll only be able to see the divine colour red once you've let go of all desire to know what red is. Once you no longer care what red is, perhaps God will open your eyes for you so you can see it. But until then, there's nothing you yourself can do. No one can learn how to see red, or be taught how to see red. To claim this would be the height of human pride and arrogance! Be grateful you can see black and white, child! Some people can't even see that.

If you tell me you can already see red and blue and yellow, it's proof that the Devil has captured your soul, you poor thing. Resist, resist! Pray harder. Ask for deliverance from the torment of False Colour. Ask that you may be given the divine gift of Church-Approved Sunglasses to block out those dangerous visions of colour. Life is much simpler in black and white. Everything is less confusing when I tell you what to do. Naturally, I always have your best interests at heart, you poor, weak, inferior creature, you.

I promise to look after you, as Christ looks after us all! It's the least I can do in this broken, corrupted, black and white world.

Well, the day is over, and I see that once again no one in my class has enough faith in God to produce a thing of explosive beauty from the paints I have humbly provided.

You in the back corner! Joshua, Yeshua, whatever your name is! You will be turned over to the Inquisition, and tried on charges of heresy for presuming to tell the class that all people can learn to see red lilies in the field if they listen to God with open hearts and not with closed minds!

As if God even wants to talk to regular people!

CC22: The Trinity: A Perfect Shell Game

If you've been reading my last few posts and you're now hopelessly confused, then I'd like to thank you -- it means you've been paying attention!

My last post (about the Law of Attraction) seems to contradict my earlier posts about prophecy and apocalypticism and the Church's claim that we can't change anything in our relationship with God because of original sin. But hey -- that's the great thing about orthodox Western Christian theology! It doesn't have to make sense! Mutually contradictory doctrines are more than welcome in the pulpit -- in fact, the more confusion, the better. That way, people in the congregation will always feel off balance and slightly stupid in comparison to the elevated seminarians who have humbly answered God's call to preach the Chalcedon Creed.

And such a joy it is to be able to preach the mystery of the Trinity and the whole homoousios (one substance) thing!* Of course it doesn't make any sense . . . but that's the beauty of it! Our inability to understand the Trinity reminds us constantly that we're weak and unworthy in comparison to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Obviously, if we weren't so weak and unworthy, we'd understand the whole thing better, more like those specially chosen priests and ministers who are higher than we are on the ladder of spiritual ascent. But, alas, ours is not to wonder why, as the old saying goes. Ours is to obey.

"Then Job answered the Lord: 'I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. "Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?" Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. "Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me." I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you'" (Job 42: 1-5). As Job finally comes to understand, it's always better to listen to what God has to say about God instead of what theologians say about God. If you want to know God, you need to look beyond the limited scope of church doctrines on the nature of God; you need to be willing to look at all of Creation. The carved items shown here are part of the Thomson Collection at the Ontario Gallery of Art, Toronto ON. Photo credit JAT 2018.

The Church says that God is One, but is also Three, and we must obey the Church's teachings on this matter. We must submit to a Trinitarian God. Even in the United Church of Canada, where a lot of people no longer feel comfortable with Trinitarian theology, General Council still requires that baptisms be carried out in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (all of whom are male).

It's a neat trick, this God-is-One-but-also-Three thing. It's a convenient way to play a shell game with the contradictory teachings in the Bible and in the Church's own body of doctrines. By insisting that God is of one substance but three different natures, the Church can preserve its traditional image of God as a transcendent, monotheistic, unemotional King and Judge, while at the same time keeping the idea of God as interventionist Spirit, and God as Suffering Son. But don't forget -- God is all these things at the same time, so you mustn't try to imagine that the Suffering Son is a different being or entity in comparison to the transcendent and unemotional King. And don't forget that although the Son conquered the devil and original sin while he was here, you're still suffering from the effects of the devil and original sin because, well, because, ummm, the End Times aren't here yet, so the promise of salvation hasn't been completely fulfilled yet. But don't worry too, too much, because even as we speak, God is stretching out his hand from the future End Times (where all things have already been fulfilled), and is reaching into the present time through the actions of the Spirit and the miracle of prolepsis to bring some of that fulfillment into your life today.

Like, huh?

I have a better idea, one that's much less complicated. Let's try Jesus' own teachings about God for a while, and see if we can do better in our ongoing efforts to forge a meaningful, sensible, joyous relationship with God the Father and God the Mother.

Jesus' own teachings can't be any worse than what we've got right now.


*If you want to read about the history of the debates that led to the christological and trinitarian doctrines still held by the church, a good introduction can be found in Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1984). An extremely thorough and erudite theological review of the relevant early doctrines is presented in Jon Sobrino, Christ the Liberator (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001).

CC12: Update on "the Sin Within"

Yesterday, the Globe and Mail published an AP story by Nicole Winfield (May 16, 2010, updated on May 17) entitled, "Thousands Flock to Vatican to Back Pope Over Abuse."

At the Vatican. Photo credit J MacDonald 2011.

 

According to the report, approximately 150,000 people showed up in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, May 16, in a spontaneous show of support for Pope Benedict XVI. Banners had been hung in the colonnade, including a banner that said, "Don't be afraid, Jesus won out over evil."

The article quotes the Pope as saying, "The true enemy to fear and to fight against is sin, the spiritual evil that unfortunately sometimes infects even members of the church." 

The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, was among the faithful in the Square. Alemanno told AP journalists that "we want to show our solidarity to the pope and transmit the message that single inidividuals make mistakes but institutions, faith and religion cannot be questioned."

Meanwhile, on the home front here in Canada, the Roman Catholic Primate of Canada, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, is in hot water because he was "simply stating church doctrine" when he told a reporter that it's always morally wrong for a woman to have an abortion, even in cases where the woman has been raped (Nelson Wyatt, "Statement From Catholic Cardinal About Abortion and Rape Causes Uproar," The Globe and Mail, May 18, 2010).

Notice here that church doctrines -- the formal belief statements touted by the church as "truth" -- are being placed on a pedestal. The doctrines themselves are sacred. Sacrosanct. Holy. They act as a divine shield against that horrible cosmic power called "sin" or "the Devil." Unfortunately, individual people sometimes get attacked by evil despite the protective power of these doctrines. Therefore, the faithful must redouble their efforts to obey the moral laws contained within the doctrines, says the Church. In other words, it's all right to challenge the actions of individual abusers, but it's not all right to challenge the doctrines that contribute to the creation of these abusers. Even when the doctrines violate all common sense and all common humanity, the doctrines are right and you are wrong.

These Christian leaders show us that they are cowards. They lack the courage to trust in God, they lack the courage to take responsibility for the historical errors of church doctrine, and they lack the courage to make meaningful changes.

I see no evidence in their teachings or in their behaviour that they actually believe in a loving God. However, I see plenty of evidence that they believe in a God who loves some children more than "he" loves others (i.e. election), who is too stupid and too weak to prevent cosmic sin from entering Creation, who thinks it's okay to hold a major grudge-fest for all eternity against one man and one woman who made a mistake (i.e. Adam and Eve), who is required to follow all the laws and doctrines that male church leaders have dictated to God over the centuries, who is going to have a really big yard sale one day in the future to clear out all the unwanted garbage (according to the church's teachings about Judgment Day, that garbage might be you!), and who is so touchy and narcissistic and sensitive to an attack on "his" sense of honour that he couldn't stand the thought of fixing the sinful world alone, and had to send in a pinch-hitter (Jesus) to save "Team Humanity" from that wily guy who's pitching for the other side.  

Does this sound like the kind of God you want to get close to? Because this is the God that fills the pages of orthodox Western Christian theology. This is the portrait of God that "cannot be questioned." This is the portrait of God that cowards like to hide behind.

Not every church leader is a coward, and not every Christian is a coward. These days, individuals from all religious traditions are challenging the teachings of their conservative leaders, and are asking daring questions about God. Some of these people are so distressed by the narcissistic intransigence of their own conservative religious leaders that they're leaving the church and seeking spiritual solace in other ways. 

Please ask all the questions you can. Only through our honest questions and honest answers can the church of the third millennium heal the sense of "brokenness" that many writers have described.

Please help find a way to invite God the Mother and God the Father into our hearts and our lives. Our beloved Mother and Father are nothing like the fickle, judgmental, authoritarian dude described above. Jesus knew this. I've had the privilege to come to know this. I invite you to know this, too. God loves all their children. 

Even you.

CC9: "The Sin Within"

Like many people, I've been following media reports about the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. 

At the Vatican. Photo credit J MacDonald 2011

 

On May 11, 2010, the Globe & Mail published a Reuter's story entitled "Pope Says 'Sin Within' Is Church's Greatest Threat." There are two parallel threads in this report. The first thread is the Pope's statement that "today we see in a truly terrifying way that the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from outside enemies but is born of sin with the Church." 

The second thread is encapsulated in this quote from the Pope: "We must admit that the Catholic faith . . . was often too individualistic. It too often left concrete things to the world and thought only of individual salvation and religious affairs without realising that there was a global responsibility (for economic decisions)." 

Ya think? 

Hmmm . . . maybe there's a connection between the second thread and the first one. Maybe -- just to go out on a limb here -- maybe the Vatican's own theological belief structure of sin and salvation is a major contributing factor to the abusive behaviour of some of its senior clergy. 

I really, really hope that when Benedict says "the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from outside enemies but is born of sin within the Church" that he isn't trying to imply that the true source of this "sin" is Satan, a.k.a. the Devil. It would be typical of orthodox Christian thinkers to try to pass the buck to the Devil. Christians have been pulling this stunt since the apostle Paul wrote his Letter to the Romans. (In Romans, Paul made "sin" a sort of cosmic force, and many other Christian authors followed Paul's lead.) Yet, before Paul, there was apocalyptic literature. Read that stuff (including some of the Dead Sea Scrolls) and you'll hear all kinds of paranoid speculation about the cosmic battle between Good and Evil. Long before that, Plato was scaring the crap out of people with his Evil World Soul doing battle with the Good World Soul (see Plato's Laws). Yup -- there's a time-honoured tradition amongst philosophers and theologians of blaming bad behaviour on the devil. (I'm old enough to remember comedian Flip Wilson's famous line, "The Devil Made Me Do It.")

Lest you think I'm being unfairly suspicious about the Pope's beliefs, the honest truth is that Original Sin and the Devil are still very much a part of official Roman Catholic doctrine. If influential senior clerics didn't still believe this stuff, they would take it off the books. 

It's too easy to blame bad choices on an imaginary Devil. We have enough difficulty trying to understand our relationship with God without making up stories about big bad scary evil beings. There are plenty of logical scientific explanations for abusive human behaviour -- particularly scientific observations related to brain physiology and mental illness. 

Occam's Razor: go with the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions. The simplest assumption in this instance is that the Roman Catholic church has not properly assessed its clerics for evidence of psychological dysfunction. No imaginary Devil is needed in order to explain the abusive behaviour of these men. It's just plain old fashioned brain chemistry. 

An even simpler assumption is to ask what happens to people's brain chemistry when they're told over and over, year after year, that human beings are a worthless, sin-ridden lot who may, if they're lucky, be blessed with the gift of salvation, but could just as easily end up in the eternal torments of hell. I'm thinkin' these teachings are probably as healthy for the brain as a dose of carbon monoxide. 

The reason carbon monoxide is so deadly is that it bonds like crazy glue to hemoglobin in the bloodstream, and hogs the sites where oxygen molecules are supposed to catch a ride to your body's cells and tissues. You end up asphyxiating invisibly from the inside out because you can't get enough oxygen into your brain, organs, etc. -- even though you may still look normal on the outside. 

If the church fills up people's brains with toxic "carbon monoxide" teachings, there's less and less room available for the life-giving "oxygen" of Jesus' teachings about divine love. 

It's well known that people who've been poisoned by heavy metals can show marked changes in behaviour. (The classic example is the Mad Hatter who, in former days, used mercury salts to craft gentlemen's hats, and gave himself mercury poisoning). 

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that some Roman Catholic clerics are behaving so badly. Many of them seem to be suffering from a case of self-induced "sin poisoning."

CC2: A Complaint About Orthodoxy: What Happened to the Redemption Theme?

If you've read my profile, you may have noticed I'm currently enrolled in graduate studies in the field of theology. This means I've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years learning the language of theological study. I want to say right here at the beginning of this blog that I've met many wonderful people in my graduate program, and I've learned a lot of things that would have been hard for me to learn on my own. I'm very grateful to the people who have helped me in my studies. 

I'm not a spring chicken, however, and I suppose it's fair to say that my personal index of suspicion is high with regard to theological claims. This is (I hope) a polite way of saying I've observed some major flaws in the church doctrines I've been studying. Those who know me from grad school will know that I'm not particularly shy about speaking up when I see inconsistencies and lapses in logic. (I recall one interesting class when I was the lone voice of dissent against Augustine's doctrine of original sin.) However, there seems to be a general, unspoken agreement, even at the university level in 2010, that theology students must not rock the doctrinal boat. I don't know about you, but I honestly don't know how the liberal Protestant church in Canada can survive if we're afraid to look unflinchingly at the history of our very complicated theology. 

So, like Luther posting his "95 Theses," I'm going to gradually post some observations about the differences between what Jesus seems to have said, and what the church said he said. (I think there's a big difference between the two.) 

To reassure you that I'm not just making things up to suit my own hermeneutical perspective, I'll try as much as possible to show references for my position. But you should probably know from the outset that, like all writers on the subject of theology, I have a strong personal position that influences my interpretation of developments in church doctrine. You might be able to guess what my position is if I tell you that my least favourite theologians are the apostle Paul, the early church theologian Tertullian, the highly influential Augustine of Hippo, and the early 12th century writer Anselm of Canterbury. I'm not too crazy about John Wesley, either. 

(I've read some primary source material from all these famous male theologians, which is how I know for sure I don't like their teachings.)  

"And as he reclined at dinner in Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were also reclining with Jesus and his disciples -- for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, 'Why does he eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' When Jesus heard this, he said to them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners'" (Mark 2:15-17). Photo credit JAT 2017.

Anyway, the first complaint I have is about redemption -- as in, what the heck happened to Jesus' message about redemption? 

Redemption, as anyone will know who has experienced this life-altering transformative shift, is not the same as salvation or atonement. I'm so darned tired of hearing about salvation, and its bizarre cousin prolepsis, and I am so eager to hear a United Church of Canada minister tackle redemption head-on. This would require a bold statement to the effect that redemption is an experience of ongoing, present-day relationship with God. But redemption is doctrinally awkward because it clashes with the teachings of Paul, Augustine, and other orthodox Christian teachers on the matter of salvation. 

What is redemption for me? It is the unstoppable tsunami of gratitude that overtakes your life when you finally, finally, let go of your pigheaded refusal to accept God's love and forgiveness, and you're at last able to trust yourself as a humble and worthy child of God, a child who is made in God's image. That's when the hard spiritual work begins. 

I say this, of course, from painful personal experience. In my younger days, I was nothing if not pigheaded. 

Another weird thing about redemption is that it seems to need the "yeast" of relationship with other people. Being with other people, sharing experiences with each other, growing deep roots of empathy -- all these seem essential to the experience of redemption. It seems pretty much impossible for people to find redemption on their own without humble mentorship and guidance. (The founders of the Twelve-Step Program understood this clearly.) 

What does redemption mean for you? Have you had a transformative spiritual experience that has forever altered your relationship with God in a positive way? Would you be willing to share this with a few friends you trust? 

At the moment, mainstream Protestant Christians are not very comfortable with such sharing, but it's very hard for anyone, even Christians who are "saved in Christ," to stumble down the path of redemption without a helping hand from their fellow human beings. I vote to restore redemption as a major spiritual pursuit for today's Protestant Christians. 

If the United Church doesn't want it, the Concinnates will take it! (I'll have more on this in a future post.)