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Courtney 2011 February 12 |
Faith
As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. -- Genesis 8:22 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him. -- from Ecclesiastes 3, King Solomon "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." -- President Theodore Roosevelt's take on the same concept “Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.” -- from Eccesiastes 7 "There is one Truth, one Religion. It becomes many when it passes through human beings." - Gandhi I'm not a student of Ghandi and know little about him beyond this quote, but, surveying the religious landscape, this thought brings considerable order to the chaos. The chaos does not disprove faith, it merely proves diversity and the profound finiteness of the people. Below are some of the influences on my faith from left (top) to right (bottom). Thinking on how I might prioritize them from "most influential" to "least influential" I know it would be much more difficult. There is much from the left, right, and center here for those of you who see everything politically. I am able to contain the tension of open questions and can tolerate not having settled answers in hand by nightfall when necessary so I'm open to incorporating material from all over. Simplicity movement and New Roadmap Foundation. Life if too complicated. Our culture is wasteful. Neither are sustainable. These organizations, and local groups based on these principles, struggle upstream towards a better way. "Simplicity" has earned the nickname "Simplexity" meaning that it's actually pretty complicated. If you want to make your own soap and find ways to not use money for anything, Simplicity is the hobby for you, but I do, in fact, find it rather complicated. I read the New Roadmap books on Financial Integrity (see Your Money or Your Life) but found that they did not match my personality and situation, so I do other things now. Pasadena Covenant Church, and a news story about it. We have been modestly active there for twenty three years and raised our kids there. I play piano with the worship band that consists of (week to week) ten to fifteen excellent musicians including drummer and artist Joseph Stoddard, Will Salmon of Open Gate Theater, Debbie Childress, Dale Torstenbo, Carl Crooks, Susan Smith, Nancy Allen, William Myrvold, Dorothy Patzia, Roland Tabell, and several others under the leadership of worship leaders Tim Allen, Kyle Michaelson, and Daniel Huang. Personal Analysis of The Bible and the U.S. Constitution.  These are the two Bibles used: (right) NIV Pictorial Bible (Zondervan, presented to me by Viann 1984 October 15 for Bible Study Fellowship Leadership) used through 2007 February 26, (left) NIV Archaeological Study Bible (Zondervan, given to me for my 51st birthday by Viannah) used after 2007 February 26. The Bibles are on top of a tall stack of other stuff to do (2010 October 22). The dual screen view here is what I looked at most of the time when I was working on the Bible and Constitution survey. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return to it without watering the earth And making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it." -- Isaiah 55:8 - 11 From Arete' Vol. 22, No. 2, Fall 2001 (The University of Houston Honor's College alumni publication) An Early Afterlife "... a wise man in time of peace shall make the necessary preparations for war." --Horace Why don't we say good-bye right now Then we could just continue Linda Pastan Cited by Ted Estess in Be Well:from "The Soul of Wit,” a poem of
Wislawa Szymborska.
Nothing Twice Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and we leave without the chance to practice. Even if there is no one dumber, [even] if you are the planet’s biggest dunce, you can’t repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once. Proverbs 12:16 "A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult." The text of the short Film "Max" directed by Jim O'Keefe, produced by Dawn O'Keefe. Was shown at the Moondance International Film Festival circa 2004. Ephesians 4:32 "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." (This is what the Friesen children say when they are disrespectful of each other, rather than "I'm sorry". See Home Improvement Ministries. The Friesens direct the Family Camp where we attended in August 2000, 2003 and 2004.) And... Now that we've gone from Left to Right on the spectrum of faith, here's an attempt of my own concerning the misdirected tensions between Christian Fundamentalists and Darwinists: ===== There are really only Two Questions: 1. Why does anything bother to exist at all? Science can't touch this because science is based on making logical sense out of what is observed (to the point of understanding the natures of observation and logic themselves!). Science is constrained to having to say, "Well, here we are, what do we see?" and then work from that in a rationale, disprovable way. It must presume existence. There is plenty of good work to do there, but it can never answer the question. 2. Why does anything bother to live at all, chaos (and death) being the ultimate end of physics? While the fundamental direction of all existence is towards increasing entropy, that is, everything is seen to be moving towards more chaos until eventually everything is at some low-level thermal equilibrium, this being the very definition of time moving forward, why is it that some collections of matter get together and struggles mightily to "live" and move and organize themselves to the point of surviving and reproducing and of even being able to have and be interested in having this discussion? There really is no "proveability" on either side of the so-called creation/evolution debate thereby proving the axiom that the amount of heat in a debate is inversely proportional to the amount of actual information available. (Where there's a lot of heat, there's not much light.) None of us, or them, were here three or four billion years ago to observe what was happening (or seven thousand years either, for the young earth creationists). New lines of discovery or evidence in science can and will change all those dates or even the fundamental storyline of the science narrative and everyone will just revise their textbooks and start spouting the latest "absolute truth" with the same arrogance that they preach today's versions. The same thing happens in theology. People set up religious institutions and ways of thought based on selective readings and varied interpretations of the various sacred texts, and selective ignoring of other parts of those same texts, then work everybody up into a lather that they are right and all others are wrong. Everybody believes stuff. Everybody explains away stuff that is inconvenient to their beliefs. Reminds me of the long joke about the man who found another man about to jump off a bridge. Trying to stop him or at least stall for time, he asked questions to find out who he was. Discovering that he was Christian he asked, "Oh, what kind of Christian?" Protestant. "Oh, what kind of Protestant." And so on: Baptist .., American Baptist, Calvinist... By this point the jumper, having found a friend in Christ, someone with whom he had considerable common ground, was feeling better. Life was looking like it might be OK after all, maybe he would just go home rather than "end it all" then and there. The questioner then said, "Oh, what kind of Calvinist, three point or five point?" The jumper said, "Three point" at which point the (five point Calvinist) questioner exclaimed, "You heretic! Burn in Hell!" and pushed him off the bridge. The bottom line is that people choose to believe or disbelieve what they choose, and they use whatever tools or evidence (science, ancient texts, word of mouth, hunches, "ways of thinking", whatever) to support or refute whatever they want to support or refute. There is plenty of arrogance on all sides of these discussions, a sign of basic, inherent insecurity. People who had walked on the dry bottom of the Sea of Reeds with Moses to escape the pursuing Egyptians went on to spend many years in the desert saying, "I'm hungry, there is no God." They didn't even need (or have) science to support their innate rebellion. Science was invented as a way to better understand God and what he does. Some, of course, use it to rebel against God, others use it to believe. All tools of humanity, including institutionalized religion itself, are used in these conflicting ways as well. This is the nature of faith. Powerful as we like to think we are, no human, or group thereof, really has a clue what's really going on in our big four dimensional universe (or even if that's all there is; some of us suspect that it's not). Every living being, therefore, has faith. All faith contains some error, including the ones called science, atheism, and, yes, even Christianity. The last is self evident from the strife between and even within the various versions (see Joke above). Christianity may well be closer to the most important absolute truths than any of the others. That's what I think myself. But every one of us is required to stop reasoning at some point and take a "leap of faith." I vote for letting people choose their faith and respecting their choice. I vote for having the discussions and trying to persuade each other towards better ways, truer truths, and higher priorities. I vote for reality, to the extent that we can discover or have it revealed to us. I vote against arrogance. ===== Also, I've read and reviewed many books on this subject, and others. ===== Here's another discussion. An argument concerning the Nature of God is often made. In outline it goes like this: All monotheistic religions claim that God is good and omnipotent. If God is omnipotent, he could stop all war and suffering. If God has that ability and chooses not to excercise it, then God is not good. If God really is good but does not have that ability then he is not omnipotent. In either case why call this entity God? When I first encountered this argument, these were my rambling thoughts: This is the most succinct and clear statement of this fundamental philosophical problem that I have ever seen. Implicit in the paradox is a definition of "good." "Good" appears to mean: no suffering, no war, no death, in short, nothing that doesn't "work right" in any place or on any scale. In short, if I am uncomfortable about anything anywhere (all the way from the war in Iraq to can't get my car started) and God is omnipotent and good, he is obligated, by being good, to use his omnipotence to fix whatever it is and relieve my discomfort. Hmmmm. The religions with which I am familiar get around this by saying, "God is good." Whatever is good is God. Whatever is God is good. We, being young and imperfect mortals may not perfectly understand what "good" (that is, "God") really is. And in any case corporate good usually seems to outweigh personal good. I find this unsatisfying and diversionary but that is the argument. Governments too, come to think of it. This is the rationale given for Jury Duty and The Draft. The world is a dangerous place. We are not sovereign over the entire planet. Your government has the right (and the omnipotence...) to conscript you as needed to do whatever it thinks will protect what sovereignty it has. Indeed, checks and balances and safeguards notwithstanding, it can take your very life to that end or whatever end it deems suitable. Indeed, it does this every day to some citizens. But we are not trying to argue here that ours or any government is good or omnipotent. We are just using the government as an illustration that well meaning, rational attempts to make the sorry mess we find ourselves in better have problems. To reduce the problems to one simplistic example: If you think I am bad and it would be good if I were removed from the earth and I think you are bad and it would be good if you were removed from the earth, no omnipotent power can satisfy both of our notions of good to both of our satisfactions without removing both of us from the earth. Pretty soon nobody is here at all. Is that good? This is why Christianity says, in essence, "Just accept that you and everybody else and everything else is bad to some extent and just get on with it, trying your best with God's help not to make anything any worse. You will fail but all will be forgiven anyway if you keep admitting your mistakes." It does, in fact, seem that an omnipotent God might have to rule with a pretty light hand. And it does, in fact, seem that he doesn't conscript, but takes only volunteers. You can imagine how bad it could get under leadership like that. (In fact, you don't have to imagine it, "that bad" is the way it really is.) People, being fallible, would even corrupt the halls of religion and governance. But, the volunteers, fallible or not, would have integrity that you don't get with conscripts. Hmmmm. And then there's suffering. Is suffering by definition "bad?" There were (are) times when I was learning Morse Code or piano or calculus that I would certainly classify as "suffering" but there is no way to learn these skills and concepts otherwise, at least for me. We don't seem to live in The Matrix where somebody can just download whatever we need into us in a moment. If we did, would we value our skills as we do now? Would they be as important to us or our community? I have also endured suffering that had no other apparent good end than recovery from illness and renewed appreciation for health. Clearly, others suffer much more than I have but only in degree. If they lack some of the hopes that I enjoy, of a positive end to the suffering, this is a corruption and that is bad, but that doesn't make suffering categorically bad in itself. Much as I hate to admit it, I think what I'm saying here is, "It's not that simple." (Sorry, Occam.) As a churchgoer myself, I am well aware that a lot of what happens in organized religion has to do with power and coercion and political agendas and so forth. On the other hand, I firmly believe that there are better ways to live and worse ways to live and that the net effect of religion is to have more people live in better ways. I do not, therefore, agree with Elton John (and maybe the Beatles) that removal of all religion from the world would make it a perfect place. I don't agree with this because everybody has a religion, everybody explains the unexplainable and unobservable in some way, a way that was given to them with some restrictions or a way that they made up themselves. That is their religion and I don't think that removing all religions from the world except Elton John's religion would be ... for lack of a better word, "good." As you point out, religions do seem to have the concept of a higher power. This Higher Power is defined and conceived in many ways. Another thing I'm convinced of is that none of the images of the Higher Power promulgated by any religion are complete and most, if not all are even largely inaccurate. This doesn't prove that a Higher Power does not exist, however. We have to start somewhere in trying to observe the unobservable (or the not-yet observable). Hmmmm.. So, if God were omnipotent and benevolent, it seems to me that things in the world might well be pretty much the way we find them. There is good in the world, after all, though it's clearly not 100% good. The world does exist, after all. We are alive in it, at least for the moment.... ===== Or, conversely, think of it this way: from The Great Debaters 2007 Director: Denzel Washington Melvin B. Tolson: Who is the judge? Samantha, Henry, James, Hamilton: The judge is God. Melvin B. Tolson: Why is he God? Samantha, Henry, James, Hamilton: Because he decides who wins or loses. Not my opponent. Melvin B. Tolson: Who is your opponent? Samantha, Henry, James, Hamilton: He does not exist. Melvin B. Tolson: Why does he not exist? Samantha, Henry, James, Hamilton: Because he is a mere dissenting voice of the truth I speak! (c) Courtney Duncan, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011 |