David Plotz has a new book out that is sort of an entertaining look at bible stories along with his own discovery of whatever spiritual awakenings that emerged during his year long quest to read the entire book from cover to cover: http://www.slate.com/id/2212616/. Great reading. At this point, if you have some fairly firm feelings regarding your own faith and don't wish to look at it in another light, I would ask you not to link to the article or read the rest of this post. And I say that with respect, admiration, and appreciation of those with a strong faith and comfortable with their own spiritual state. I'll wait a minute for you to leave the room. Gone? Okay.
Plotz, like a lot of people, can't make sense of God. I won't bore you with my own spiritual journey only to say that I do indeed consider it a journey and right now I'm sitting on the side of the road with all the other agnostic Catholics--I can't make sense of God either and after doing some study of the historical Jesus and what historians and theologians know of the time, I have a difficult time accepting my own faith. It's funny though; I still sometimes get choked up in mass and there's that god gene in me that some scientists and anthropologist types say we come hardwired with that wants to believe. There, I've gone ahead and bored you anyway. I think Plotz is on the same sort of path, only his is from a Jewish perspective. He values his culture and he wants to find a foothold but the more he reads and the more he learns the more slippery the path gets. It's really the same thing as that axiom that the older you get, the less you know. I recall distinctly in my thirties thinking that I KNEW the answers on most everything and was firm and damn unyielding in my beliefs. Hell, I can even recall in my forties casting dispersions on the limp wristed Euros for their abandonment of God after the Marne and the Somme and as William Holden's character said in "Bridge Over the River Kwai" after their "officers went over the top with nothing but a swagger stick." Now, you can throw me in the same room with all the other gray haired, turtle neck and Birkenstock wearing, give peace a chance Unitarians who don't believe in shit and have all the hideous mamby pamby frail outlook on life maxims to go with it. Yes, life can do that to you--get smacked across the face with enough crap and it can make you ponder questions about the nature of that cruel son of a bitch upstairs and his sick sense of humor. Ask the Jews about that. Still, a helluva lot of people hold onto their faith even harder after seeing their brethren barbecued so really that's no excuse. Sometimes, I wish I'd never opened that door to closer inspection and study. But, could be that's God talking to me--saying that he's given me some tools that may be different than the guy next to me and to use 'em. You would just wish every now and then that God would give you some damn instructions to go along with them--the ones I have are apparently in some obscure Balkan dialect. Next lecture we'll examine first century Jewish apocolypticists and the women who loved them. Until then, remember your Lenten observances. I'm applying for a dispensation for Friday, since I have to meet a client at Southside Barbecue in Elgin and there ain't a pope that's been born that will keep me off the brisket and hot gut during that little visit.
3 comments:
The writing of this blog is evidence itself that you have heard God's voice.
Mankind has wrestled with the need for independance versus the need for salvation since Adam and Eve.
I believe faith is journey, not a destination. We are called human beings instead of human doings for a reason.
I would respectfully disagree with you regarding the "salvation" part. Most ancient religions and certainly Judaism weren't concerned with the hereafter but with the here and now. In other words, how to appease God or the gods in their everyday lives and how to come to grips with their relationship with God. Certainly, the Talmud addresses how man has and can relate to the whims of God and it was only in later books like Daniel that some heavenly imagery begins to appear. That's later born out in Mark and then the apostolic writings of the Christian testament. Of course, that's greatly reflected in their times: there was a flurry of apocolyptic thinking going on during first and second century life in the levant. Lots of people thought they were living in the end times and that's a theme that is repeated throughout the Christian tracts, certainly in the synoptic gospels and Paul. John and later books change course and the church built itself on that theme. Anyway, what I'm really doing here is channeling Ehrman and others--this isn't anything radically new that I'm spewing--historical scholars have been on this track for some time. Mostly, I'm probably full of shit and you should just mark this as the current stop on my meandering faith journey.
You are using a narrow definition of salvation in your thinking.
Could God have prevented the holocaust? Sure. Could he eliminate world hunger? Sure. Cure cancer? Of course. But, how we would have him do it?
How about a plague? A flood? Or should he never have allowed Hitler to be born? How about Hitler's grandfather's grandfather?
My view of salvation very much includes the here and now.
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