Tapping into the divine on your own: A response to Frankie.
Regardless of whether or not you believe that Nietzsche's charge of ressentiment against Christianity is true or not (he says that the values of life were reversed by weak people who couldn't be strong and good and that they turned it into a religion), you should be wary of what some Christians try to say to non-Christians, since the feeling one gets at times wherein one wants to be a part of a group can be very strong, and since evangelists play on this all the time.
I think that religion is an inherently personal phenomena. Is the goal of religion to feel like you are a part of a community of faith, or a part of the divine? Does a church make you a Christian; and does being a Christian make you religious; and does being religious make you good; and is being good the goal of human life?
My mother had a wise point last week. She said that she walked out of the hospital in Baltimore from a diabetes check-up, and the sun was shining over a warm afternoon in the middle of winter. She said that if you can't feel "g[G]od then, when can you?" I think that connection with the divine is personal in this way. If the sun on your face or birds singing outside of your window don't connect you with something bigger than yourself (and I personally prefer not to say "God," since that has ramifications that I am not comfortable with, given the disparity between my own beliefs about the world and human life and the beliefs of those who "believe in God"), then what will?
I believe that some people cannot get this feeling on their own. Either they are not very smart, not very reflective, not very observant or just plain weak (I don't know, though I suspect it is the middle two). But some people need church and organized religion in order to feel connected with the divine, if they desire such a connection.
But there are others who are able to connect directly with the divine, without a priest, church or faith to come between them and interpret it for them and tell them all kinds of cognitive things about what their God wants them to do. There are people who can connect with the divine (or cosmos, or whole universe, or whatever you want to call it) on their own.
Problems such as the churches here in the Heartland buying tickets to Mr. Gibson's film for non-believers (to save them) arise when narrow-minded believers (which is not to say all believers) assume that we all need churches to interpret the divine for us. They assume that there is a language of the divine that only people in robes can understand and translate for the masses. And they assume that we are all part of the masses.
I would try to accept the fact that not everyone needs a church to be "religious" and that there are those of us who lead meaningful, fulfilling and ethical lives without the help of a church. I agree with Max Scheler, that western thought places far too much weight on our cognitive abilities. Perhaps if you find "doors of perception" which are not rational, you might find your god or spirit or One or whatever you want to call she/he/it. Take a notebook (to record your experiences) and sit outside with some tea or coffee; smell the air; look into the sky; run your hands in the cool water of a stream and over the rough skin of a maple tree; watch how the squirrel knows how to climb and find food and survive the winter; let bugs crawl over your feet as it you were a part of it all. You'll feel what church is meant to connect you with, I am certain of it.
I think that religion is an inherently personal phenomena. Is the goal of religion to feel like you are a part of a community of faith, or a part of the divine? Does a church make you a Christian; and does being a Christian make you religious; and does being religious make you good; and is being good the goal of human life?
My mother had a wise point last week. She said that she walked out of the hospital in Baltimore from a diabetes check-up, and the sun was shining over a warm afternoon in the middle of winter. She said that if you can't feel "g[G]od then, when can you?" I think that connection with the divine is personal in this way. If the sun on your face or birds singing outside of your window don't connect you with something bigger than yourself (and I personally prefer not to say "God," since that has ramifications that I am not comfortable with, given the disparity between my own beliefs about the world and human life and the beliefs of those who "believe in God"), then what will?
I believe that some people cannot get this feeling on their own. Either they are not very smart, not very reflective, not very observant or just plain weak (I don't know, though I suspect it is the middle two). But some people need church and organized religion in order to feel connected with the divine, if they desire such a connection.
But there are others who are able to connect directly with the divine, without a priest, church or faith to come between them and interpret it for them and tell them all kinds of cognitive things about what their God wants them to do. There are people who can connect with the divine (or cosmos, or whole universe, or whatever you want to call it) on their own.
Problems such as the churches here in the Heartland buying tickets to Mr. Gibson's film for non-believers (to save them) arise when narrow-minded believers (which is not to say all believers) assume that we all need churches to interpret the divine for us. They assume that there is a language of the divine that only people in robes can understand and translate for the masses. And they assume that we are all part of the masses.
I would try to accept the fact that not everyone needs a church to be "religious" and that there are those of us who lead meaningful, fulfilling and ethical lives without the help of a church. I agree with Max Scheler, that western thought places far too much weight on our cognitive abilities. Perhaps if you find "doors of perception" which are not rational, you might find your god or spirit or One or whatever you want to call she/he/it. Take a notebook (to record your experiences) and sit outside with some tea or coffee; smell the air; look into the sky; run your hands in the cool water of a stream and over the rough skin of a maple tree; watch how the squirrel knows how to climb and find food and survive the winter; let bugs crawl over your feet as it you were a part of it all. You'll feel what church is meant to connect you with, I am certain of it.
put here by Pragmatik at 11:14 AM
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