Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Wednesday, August 07, 2002 A Tale of Two Types The atheist and the religious ideologue are sides of a single coin. I have had some recent exchanges with a few self-professed orthodox Catholics and have noticed a disturbing similarity among them. The atheist is a narcissist who exalts his own reason and being over that of anything else. He needs no other guidance than his own intellect. He is the measure of all things. That his premise is inherently flawed is of no concern to him since he refuses to acknowledge logic when it doesn't suit his pre-determinations and egotism. The ideologue (this can apply to many kinds of 'true' believers, but I mean Catholic orthodox ones in the essay, for the most part) is the reverse in that he denigrates his own reason and intellect except insofar as he may exploit it to defend the ideology. He believes he is the measure of little or nothing - a group, the Church is. His premise is also inherently flawed because his proof is a Just So story, an argument from authority and self-serving. What both types demonstrate is a rigid and obsessive adherence to doctrine, and an incapacity to examine reality from other perspectives, nor an ability to accept the experience of others when it either contradicts their own, or undermines their doctrines. The Catholic ideologue can't really quite believe that other Christians actually are Christian in any complete sense of the word. Others Christians are necessarily deficient in understanding because they are outside of Rome and the Magisterium - automatically suspect in every respect. They can't possibly know God's will as completely as the Roman since it is a theologically determined impossibility. Death comes for the Archbishop I don't know how an atheist faces death. Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer, says that when the airplane he was on suffered serious trouble, and it and he appeared doomed, that he didn't waste a second on prayer to a fictional being, but wrote a note to his family. So I must take it as a possibility that the atheist's lack of concern for an afterlife, judgment, or continuation may hold constant even at the point of death. A Catholic ideologue, though, often faces death in fear and terror. The remorse of imperfection and spiritual failure to 'know" God causes many to lose heart when the death they face is prolonged through suffering. The Christian who knows God the least is the most likely to feel betrayed by him. St. Francis' death was one of the most miserable of any, and his suffering deeply depressed him. I knew a priest who was as orthodox as they get, absolute in his doctrine, and severe in his insistence who died in utter terror of God. Anyone could see (if they looked) that he had no personal knowledge or experience of God's love. He was like a child in panic when death confronted him. Yet, this man was deeply respected by many as a bulwark of faith. He had much belief, but he had no faith. Mother Theresa is widely praised as a saint for her faith and works. I, too, deeply admire her work and compassion. It has not been widely reported that she was often depressed and doubted in God's being because her loneliness was great, her prayers unfulfilled and exceedingly dry, an agony to perform, her life unconsoled by his sweet touches and grace. She believed, but more in the manner of the 22nd Psalm - "why have you forsaken me!" But you wouldn't have found a more staunch believer in the Magisterium, the Pope, and Mary. Despair in the face of death or in the lack of feeling loved, is not confined to ideologues, of course. One of my points is that it is no fortress against it. Despair is the faith killer There is despair in the atheist and the ideologue, though. The atheist despairs of any ultimate Goodness, Beauty, Peace, and Love. The religious ideologues despairs of being Jesus, of discovering Jesus free from ideas, of engaging in original thought. He thinks it is humility to diminish faith in his own intelligence and exalt that of others (a body and tradition of received opinion and doctrines), when it is a form of hopelessness. The atheist and the ideologue always talk and distract themselves far more than they care to experience or contemplate anything of the Other. Their position is always defensive, emotional, and alarmed. If they are not making ad hominem attacks, they always complain of being misunderstood, their reasoning distorted; which they use as an excuse to flee from discourse rather than seek clarification and understanding. Dialogue is impossible for them because it requires they see what another sees, understand what another knows, seek communion rather than exclusion. One of the things they love to say is: "I don't have time for this." Of course, they do, but that would mean they might have to think through what they actually say, as opposed to what they think they have said or proven. Another Way of Faith Interestingly enough, the most open and intelligent group of people I have ever met, read, or talked to are people of the Contemplative community. The people who have the most direct experience of God manifesting himself in their lives, and those who pursue prayer with great devotion and result are contemplatives, and they are the least upset by inquiry and careful examinations of faith, belief, experience. They are more aware of the trust that God has put in them to arrive at his will and nature than the less experienced who are afraid of disappointing God, or scrutinizing him too closely; like children who fear rejection by their parents and thus strive to be extra careful and are timid as a result. Many are afraid that their faith is tenuous and that they can lose their salvation through some error of thought or action. It is a terrifying thing to be certain of heaven and hell, but uncertain as which you shall be assigned since you may fall right up to the last moment of life (with no absolution available). But we should realize from divinity that fear is useless, what is needed is trust; and that perfect love drives out all fear. P.S. A site for and by contemplatives: Inner Explorations also: The World Community for Christian Meditation The same site "IE", but stories of contemplatives. They used to have a newsletter which may still be somewhere on the site. Father Thomas Keating has a group for Contemplatives worldwide of many faiths. Google for it. Contemplative Outreach is here. The book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki is a fine example of a description of the childlikeness required to follow God and gain insight through prayer. Essential Christian Spirituality here has many good things to relate also. posted by Mark Butterworth | 8:45 PM | Tuesday, August 06, 2002 Slaves to the system Most conservatives no longer seem to notice, nor liberals either, that a single income used to support a family (even large ones) in this country. Liberals, of course, see women leaving home to work as an example of the beautiful liberation they have gained for them. Conservatives tend to see it as market forces at work, and selfishness at play - families seek a second income so they can afford lots of nice things. It has simply become a fact of life which no one seems to question much anymore - women working while having children. In most cases, it's because people have to work unless they have extra income from elsewhere. When women are taken out of the home by necessity, so many more bad things happen than good to a society. Recently, I was reading how the last surge in productivity from Americans had been squeezed to the last drop. The increase from the integration of computers into business and other means of increase had reached their limit. People were putting in as much time at work as was humanely (productively) possible. But they're not getting paid for it, and they're not likely to get paid more if production rates stabilize. What's left? We put our women to work, we work harder and longer than any other people on earth, and incomes can expect to decline over time against even low inflation. Even our young people go to work more often for more hours for income to meet their desires. Ever since I can recall, America has always run huge trade deficits. I've never quite figured out where the money came from to create more wealth when trade was imbalanced. But I know very little about economics - I expect it to make sense. There is no question that America is the most creative and innovative culture in history, and our science is not likely to suffer anytime soon from exhaustion or disinterest. Same with entrepreneurship, but one wonders how long such nose to the grindstone, work like a slave attitudes can survive. posted by Mark Butterworth | 12:16 AM | Monday, August 05, 2002 Self-anointed Gods The Christian ideologue is as intellectually incapable of rational argument and the application of logic as an atheist is. The atheist denies he ever makes a contradiction of terms which leads to absurdity. By denying God, the atheist asserts an omniscience of his own which makes him God. The Christian ideologue by having no other defense than an Argument from Authority to justify all his dogmas, doctrines, and creeds insists on an equally absurd position that is circular. The Christian ideologue determines ownership of God and Truth by assertion - a peculiarly odd condition of claiming to know God to the extent that one (or a body) must be God. ********* I used to wonder if I was out of line or off the beam as I began to deviate from Catholic orthodoxy. When a great tradition throws its weight around, a single person feels pretty small and put to task. After all, it is much more likely that one person is wrong than 2000 years of intelligent, inspired, and sincere people arrayed against him. But then I began to argue and reason with some of our modern orthodox defenders on the web and elsewhere. When called to justify with reason and logic their Arguments from Authority (the great, I Said So), they invariably failed. They would try to invent whole new categories of 'faith', 'knowing', and 'belief'. Which meant shifting the claim of objective authority from the church to themselves as arbiters of the True, the Inspired, the Infallible. It is sort of like saying, "God has given me faith to trust in what the Church says about itself." "You know this faith comes from God because....?" "I feel it to be true. I feel it has to be so, and thus I order my mind and opinions in accordance with this feeling." "Is it possible you could misinterpret this feeling you have?" "Not a chance." "Then your feelings are infallible and the judgments you form from them?" "Of course not. The Church tells me I am right in my feeling and judgment." "Is it possible that the Church could be wrong?" "No." "How do you know?" "Because the Church says it can't be wrong." "And you know this to be true because...?" "That's what I think." "Your thinking which is derived from...?" "Yes, my feelings, of course!" And round and round we go in the absurd motion of the church chasing its own tail like a dog. This kind of thinking is ideological, lacking examination and reality testing. It is emotional and infantile thinking, but as such the most prevalent on earth among humans. It is not the kind of thinking that Faith teaches, but that which Fear inhabits. Love does not explain The nature of Faith, the desire to make one's thoughts, feelings, mind and will correspond to God, is a process. The church attempts to stand above this process and say, there is nothing about Faith which we do not understand (and thus act as perfect guide), or will not through development. The church on the one hand identifies itself as part of a process, while on the other insisting all its knowledge is adequate. Whatever the Church understands, it fails to understand that it knows too much about God. It says too many things, assumes too many principles on the basis of flimsy premises, and takes votes on reality rather than testing reality. To anyone of rational disposition and skeptical nature, such posturing can only be judged as ridiculous and absurd. The ideologue believer, though, attempts to mollify his sense of despair at being derided as a fool, by insisting that his 'faith' and knowledge transcends ordinary reason and logic; that his fantasia is a superior form of mental activity - its proof being in its ecstasy, feeling, intensity, emotion, and relief it brings. The ideologue always fumes, though, because others don't understand him, and he can't explain it to them so they will. He gets angry, curses, and condemns people to hell. (Jesus does a bit of this in Matthew and elsewhere, which always sets disinterested readers teeth on edge when they encounter such passages which seem so uncharacteristic of him.) The ideologue can never prove his ideology which will always be a source of disappointment, and thus makes him dangerous and revenge seeking when given power. The man of real Faith can never adequately prove his experiences of Truth, either; but then, he doesn't care so much if he does or not since Faith is its own reward (to alter an old adage), and needs no chorus of believers to console and comfort him. If all you have is Love, and no one else wants it from you, you don't stop having Love. But if what you have is merely belief, and you need others to agree with you, then you don't really have anything. Jesus died alone. No one understood him. But he did not die in despair. In pain, in agony - yes, but not in despair. He was not afraid. He was certain. Lonely, but not without hope. A Footnote The ideologue complains that critics merely set up straw men and knock them down. But the natural reply is for them to put up or shut up. Set up their own impregnable defenses and see if they can withstand the force of reason and logic. But they never do. They always attempt to rely on the great, I Said So. If they are honest enough to recognize the absurd circularity of it, they run from the battle, claiming victory as they depart rather than admit their position is untenable. posted by Mark Butterworth | 10:07 PM | Blame Game Michael Novak is still trying to blame the priest sex scandals on the 60's and liberal bishops in his review of a book by JPII hagiographer, George Weigel. Somehow the fact that plenty of doctrinaire priests have been naughty, and that plenty of bad things occurred before the 60's here and in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere is a matter of no never mind. There's no fault attached to the Vatican either. Apparently its nuncios around the world didn't keep the Curia informed. No, the fault is America and 60's permissive culture. What a load of tripe! Gone unmentioned is the fact that probably even more sex abuse scandals involved girls and women which have been unreported and swept aside even now. What a den of vipers, and what a pack of lap dogs barking for them. posted by Mark Butterworth | 7:25 AM | Friday, August 02, 2002 Leon Podles at Touchstone (scroll down) makes some interesting observations about the Bishops' Charter and what's not likely to come of it, concluding: Is clericalism such a mind-set in the church that no offense by a priest against laymen is serious? I remember from medieval history class that the first sentence of the bull Clerici laicos was something like: Clerics and laity always hate each other. Do the clergy still see the laity (or at least the laity that protests clerical malfeasance) as the enemy? If so, the procedures set forth at Dallas will do no good. Human beings who are intelligent, prudent, alert to dangers, and of good will are the key and missing foundation for a church that is not the prey of pedophiles and con men. Clerics and laity always hate each other? Who says the Church isn't as realistic as Machiavelli when it comes to human relations? Sadly, this is really quite true in so many respects. Priests have to deal with enormous numbers of childish, emotional, stubborn, and mean people everyday who make demands that would make Jesus flee from any large parish rectory proclaiming - Generation of vipers! But the laity has to put up with indifferent, autocratic priests (and add every negative adjective you like in spades). The people have no real say in anything which only breeds resentment and anger. But isn't it remarkable that the Church would actually admit to this reality without seeming shame? There's an honesty in that which is sorely lacking today as all centers of power learn to play at PR to obscure reality. posted by Mark Butterworth | 11:44 PM | What good is Congress? My mind's a blank as I keep trying to come up with something that Congress has done in the last decade that has actually been good for America in general. The tax cut was good (but not enough), but after that I can't think of a thing. There must be something, some dam, some highway, some new park, some new judge appointed who respects property rights and life, but I'm darned if anything comes to mind. Help me out, people. Congress must have passed some law some time recently which was useful or moral or effective. No? posted by Mark Butterworth | 9:38 AM | Realism at its best! John Derbyshire at NRO has the column I was going to write but he did it much better. His pessimism is perfect and more than likely to be the case like the Peter Finch character in the ovie, Network, the mad prophet of the airwaves. Derb claims: "Only Anglo-Saxon countries can do democracy. The natural state of human society is despotism. If you tally up all the human lives that have ever been lived on this planet under organized systems of government, no more than five per cent were lived under consensual systems. Even to get up to five per cent, you have to include places like ancient Athens and Tudor England, which wouldn't pass muster as "democratic" by modern standards. In the last couple of centuries, practically all consensual systems have been Anglo-Saxon. Other cultures can fake it for a few decades, as France, Germany, and Japan are currently doing, but their hearts aren't really in it and they will swoon gratefully into the arms of a fascist dictator when one comes along. As a corollary of this..." There's so much more. It will not amuse but it will confirm what you already sense. posted by Mark Butterworth | 9:11 AM | The Power of Belief Minute Particulars has a blog about Peggy Noonan seeing the pope the other day contrasted to when she saw him two years ago. She writes: "When you see the pope something happens. You expect to be moved but it's bigger than that and more surprising. It feels like a gaiety brought by goodness. It feels like a bubbling up. I think some people feel humbled by some unseen gravity and others lifted by some unknown lightness. " As I said a few days ago, if he were some fellow sitting in a corner in a nursing home, or on a park bench, no one would pay him any mind, but it is rather marvelous how people can take on such a greater persona by means of an office, title, position, and lever of not only power, but representation. The pope represents or embodies in himself a kind of ideal - the concept of the Holy Man - the one who is better than all others. In the Catholic case - Jesus on Earth. This is powerful and heady stuff as Peggy found out. The sense of such a presence of authority can make men tremble. Which is why it is all the more important to speak the truth to Power. The insignificant critic before the powerful can take on two meanings - one of defiance to legitimate authority (such as a Christian not trembling before God, but being impudent and rebellious to divinity); or one that denies difference between one human and another in their equality of being before God. An ordinary Jew snared to appear before the High Priest and the Sanhedrin has much reason to fear and tremble. How great their might, how puny the poor man's rights and dignity. But we like to imagine Jesus as unfearing and disdainful as possible for a son of man before the Court and Pilate. Humble before God, defiant, indignant, and assertive before the judgments of men. The desire to invest in other humans an aura of greatness is meaningful. I would that people felt more that way towards God than to any man on earth, though. Furthermore I have always been struck by what a nobody Jesus was. People saw and heard him, some may have been healed by him. Nobody ever heard anyone express what he did about God. His insights are unparalled in human history, his poetry unmatched, his intellect keener, more precise, more understanding than anyone's ever; and his compassion and power to forgive, more absolute. His voice and his touch healed - and yet he was a nobody. People took him up and put him down as they pleased. If he wandered the streets of Jerusalem, he did so as another peasant/workman. As he wandered the countryside, he was just another field hand or shepherd passed on the road. Yet, the pope (or a president, or a general, or a rock star) rides down the road and people swoon. Human judgments are peculiar and fickle. The people have no notion whether their neighbor is a saint or not, but they see the pope and it's as if the heavens have opened. I suppose I might feel differently if this was John 23rd instead of JPII whom I've never warmed up to no matter how hard I've tried. The funny thing is thatr I wouldn't care that John 23rd was the pope. It was the man and the communion of love he was that mattered. If you had met him as a guy at the beach, you would have felt the same way about him. With JPII, all I see is an ideologue who likes show biz and can't bear to get off stage. If you'd met him at a cocktail party when he was younger you might have said, well, he's a hot dog and a comer, isn't he? That's unfair, I know, but people used to turn out for Pope Paul IV, too, in massive numbers expressing the deepest, most sincere piety, and now nobody gives him a second thought. His personality is lost. This present pope's personality will quickly fade, but John 23rd's will never be forgotten - he was such a pure lover and child of joy. Oh, we'll still talk about JPII's reign because it was so long, so autocratic, repressive, and unresponsive. We'll talk about the secrecy of the Vatican and its nefarious, labyrinthine ways, but we won't talk about JPII as a pillar of warmth and love, but a rather cold-blooded, pseudo-intellectual with pretensions of art. But Jesus, what a nobody he was! If you'd met him on the road sitting in the shade from the midday heat, you could've talked about the weather and come away from the encounter full of wonder and curiosity. People often talk about his charisma, but he couldn't have been that magnetic a figure. John the Baptist was much more popular and known, and other pseudo-prophets commanded larger groups before and after his life before the Romans crushed them. No, Jesus didn't necessarily make all that great an impression on people, but had a way of getting under some folks' skin as they got to know him. Yeah, I guess he might have had some triumphant days with crowds crying out, Blessed is the woman and the breasts that gave you suck; but I tend to think the gospels do quite a bit of exaggeration to make Jesus look more important in this time than he was. He basically was a nobody and he died a nobody. And today? He's pretty much persona non grata. An unwelcome fellow both in and out of the church. posted by Mark Butterworth | 8:49 AM | Thursday, August 01, 2002 Ideology vs. Faith One of the great problems now with Christianity in the West is that unbelievers often encounter it as a gruesome ideology rather than as a beautiful way of life; and they see too many people who often adopt the ideology, but not the way of life. And what they hear coming out of the Church is ideology, not revelation, and not a beautiful invitation to faith, beauty, and love. Someone once said that God leads people into the Church in ways the Church does not approve of, which is pretty much true in my case. (I shall probably have more to say about this another time.) posted by Mark Butterworth | 11:54 AM | Not Who but How in death It appears from the coronor's report in Las Vegas that John Entwhistle (sp?) of the Who died with cocaine in his body which may have led to his death of heart failure (or certainly added a strain to his condition at the time). That makes his death more than sad (certainly not tragic); it makes it pathetic. I can't imagine having to go to God intoxicated - my last earthly act one of despair and seeking synthetic ecstasy. It reminded me of a friend of mine who died a few years ago while drunk. (I first wrote dead drunk, but that would be redundant in this case, wouldn't it?) I remember a talk we had when he was on the wagon and trying to stay sober. He mentioned how Paul had said no drunkard could enter the kingdom of heaven. He took that to heart and it scared him, but despair eventually got the better of him. He took to drinking again (which severed our acquiantance since he was a mean drunk and no one to be around). I thought about how strange the transition it must have been to be in a drunken, stuporous sleep and then gradually (or abruptly, I don't know) waking up dead, so to speak, with his last living moments still fresh to him and all the shame he must have known; and perhaps, fear he may have felt. When I had my heart attack and was close to death, I was very glad that I had no fear of death, no guilty conscience to be ashamed of, and was certain in my faith of God's eternal life and goodness. My objection at the time was with the excruciating pain, and the notion that it was too soon for me to leave my family. But I had no fear of dying, and I think that is a remarkable thing to discover. We don't often get to react to our own deaths and recover from the brink. It can even be said to have been a blessing. posted by Mark Butterworth | 11:05 AM | |
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