So What?

This reminded me of one of my earlier posts. See my comment for the link to my earlier post.

http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/2010/01/more-amusings-from-munsons.html

Meanwhile in Welwyn

A Wild Goose chase to Welwyn Garden City on Wednesday. Travelled all the way from Sheffield to Welwyn via Kings Cross.  Upon arrival, in good time, found the meeting had been cancelled because of the weather.

Still, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures. 

 

Idolatry 24: The True Meaning of Christmas

There isn't one!  It is simply not possible to conceive of anything true emerging from the consumer culture dominated festival we call Christmas.  Consumerism has this fesitval so securely in its grip, anything emerging will be coloured by its message.

For Christians, it might be possible to spend some time in church, meditating on the crib.  But everything conspires to remind us of the sentimental nature of our consumer culture.  Even ancient carols seem sentimental in the grip of consumerism.  Look at the pretty baby in the crib and look here come wise men with presents, which reminds me ...

Christmas is a time of giving but at some point giving and purchasing took on the same meaning. 

So, do I mean these images are dead to us?  Perhaps.  But the images constructed of the nativity down the centuries have a certain power and maybe they can help us.  I finish with two possibilities.  Here's the first ...

This aria is what is known as an oxymoron.  So, why the trumpet fanfare?  Why the words 'Great Lord and strong king' sung to a baby born in poverty.  Are we meant to hear this with a stright face, to take it seriously?  Or is it an almighty cosmic joke?

Finally, a carol that is never sung because it is modern and not sentimental and beautiful although the tune is perhaps a disappointment.  Child of the Stable's Secret Birth  by Timothy Dudley-Smith .  (The first link takes you to the full lyrics.  It will also play you a dreadful tune which I wouldn't have chosen.  The best tune for congregational singing is Foye, Methodist Hymns and Psalms 124.  Foye is better than the tune you will hear but we're still waiting for someone to write something better.)

Here's just one verse which speaks to us through a depth of imagery . 

Infant hands in a mother's hand,

For none but Mary may understand

Whose are the hands and the fingers curled

But his who fashioned and made our world;

And through these hands in the hour of death

Nails shall strike to the wood beneath.

 

 

 

Idolatry 23: So What Can We Do?

In my last post , I suggested we are captured and held fast by our idols.  The way in which idols programme our activity is thorough and subtle.  A simple denial  that we believe in Father Christmas, or any other false god, is not good enough.  We are held captive as much by our denials as we are by our acquiescence.

In this post I will make two related suggestions.  They are not intended to be complete solutions to all the problems we face.  I believe they are fundamental to the success of any other solutions we pursue.

I referred some time ago to Socrates  famous words 'The unexamined life is not worth living'.  We are likely to be far more vulnerable to the ideologies, idols and false beliefs that assail us if we are not aware of them.  We are all prone to self-deception. 

The cat in the picture on the left is in serious trouble.  What it can see is an idol, something in its mind projected onto reality.  Of course, the cat is not as self-deceiving as the person who wrote the caption. 

We are taken in by the powers and principalities and then we will do anything we can to justify our actions using our professed beliefs as a lifeline.  So, a Christian will justify their consumption by reference to their faith whilst an atheist will do the same with reference to theirs.

We need to be aware of how we do this, when we do it and how we act.  And then?  And then, simply note it.  If we try to force change, we will resist ourselves and can even find ourselves behaving worse.  By simply being aware we will find in time our behaviour will change.

One temptation is to become censorious.  To take an extremist position, however right it might appear to be, is likely to be counter productive.  We have enough sanctimonious, prurient, self-serving moralists in the world.  Hating Father Christmas will simply push its negative effects to another extreme.  You will find creative ways of resisting simply by being aware.

The second thing to do is to listen.  God is silent.  Atheists make fun of Christians because we have an imaginary friend who speaks to us.  God does not speak to us.  God is profoundly and deeply silent.  Why? 

God is silent for the same reason the poor and the marginalised are silent.  Those of us who know so much will not allow either God or the poor to speak.  The point of listening is to hear the quieter voices, the solfter voices, the voices that are never heard.

I reckon Christians and atheists (and most other faiths) can do these two things together.  Tomorrow is something special for the Christians.  I will assail that question you've all been wating for me to approach: What is the true meaning of Christmas?  I'll deal with that in one short post, the last in the present sequence about idolatry.

Idolatry 22: Does Father Christmas Matter?

In this post I want to return to the figure of Father Christmas and to ask whether our idolatry matters. 

Who believes in Father Christmas?

Father Christmas is the god of consumerism.  This god is deeply rooted in Christian and pagan imagery.  Although it cut loose a long time ago, it still retains those associations, especially in the image of Santa Claus.

Not all people who believe in consumerism are obvious worshipers of this god.  People from non-Christian religious traditions, who don't celebrate Christmas, are probably not influenced so much.  Consumerism is an ideology which presumably influences a far wider group of people than Western Americans and Europeans.  However, this is the culture that has generated both consumerism and the image of Father Christmas and at some level image and practice reinforce each other.

My guess is the United States and UK are the most excessive users of the Father Christmas cult.  Other countries in Europe seem to be less excessive in their observance perhaps because in some countries traditional observances have withstood the consumerist onslaught better than Britain and America.

It is perhaps not too surprising that the last two states to be world powers, now in decline, feel the strongest need to have an annual season of excess. 

What drives the cult?

I have already pointed out it is the market.  A bad Christmas (by which they mean the weeks leading up to Christmas) can be very damaging for retailers and the economy.  When did we last have a bad Christmas? 

Very early on, we are told prospects are gloomy. Then, as Christmas approaches, at some point everything turns around.  At some point the magic of Father Christmas kicks in and everyone realises that (a) we might as well go into debt to have a good Christmas, and (b) if we don't get out there soon everything will be gone from the shops.

So, the economy gets an annual jump start and people are encouraged to continue spending whether or not they have money to spend for another year.

Does any of this matter?

As I write, the Copenhagen climate change talks are happening.  Where is the leadership?  I have never known any time when there has been a political will to reduce sales.  The idea we might have to reduce our consumption and make do with less is unthinkable. 

It is a disaster that this summit took place during the Christmas season.  There is no way the interests in consumerism are likely to loosen their grip on the world's resources at the best of times.  To choose the time of year when their spirituality is celebrated and strongest is a bad omen.

It seems we have created a world for ourselves we cannot escape from.  It is impossible to imagine a world with shortages.  (With the exception of course of much of the past and most of what we call the developing world.)

The waste, the pollution, the exploitation of the planet are all consequences of our inability to stop consuming.  We bolster this with whimsical stories and false bonhomie.  The problem is we do not know how to stop.

Idolatry 21: On the Advantages of Not Being Organised

In my last post , I suggested a materialist approach to the Christian faith; how we need to learn to read scripture and the world together, so that we can see the ways in which institutions dominate our consciousness through our uncritical acceptance of images or idols.

The problem atheists seem to have with religion is the wars it has fought and the evil it has done.  I can't help thinking that if atheists were organised they could show us how to run things properly.  I am quite sure the atheist no-church would never go to war, never torture, maim, unjustly imprison or dominate people who don't agree with them.

However, atheists are not organised and so we are invited to compare the atrocities and excesses of organised religion with the gentle benevolence of armchair critics. 

Let us remember times and places where atheists have been in charge.  The French Revolution, based upon the writings of Voltaire and others, shocked by the evils they saw God perpetrate through the Lisbon earthquake, led to the Reign of Terror.  Can we forget the excesses of the Soviet Gulag, China in Tibet or Pol Pot in Cambodia?  It seems being led by atheists is not always an entirely positive experience for those who disagree with them.

The point is all human institutions are potentially violent; it is institutions which cause the problem, whether or not they are religious.  This is why all religions can be accused of violence alongside atheist states.  So, why the sniping at religion?  There isn't shred of evidence that religions lead to more violence than non-religious organisations. 

I've never been sure whether Hitler was atheist or some sort of religious sectarian.  Let's assume his regime was atheist.  Now we have to face up to the collusion of the Protestant Churches in Germany and the Vatican.  This is well attested.  So, is the witness of the Confessing Church in Germany . 

Christian collusion with the Nazis was shameful and still is where Christians continue to pursue racism and oppress others.  But we need to ask ourselves what is the alternative?  If there is one thing we have learned from this survey of idolatry, I hope it is that people will believe almost everything.  Belief is something spiritual and almost always corrosive.

The mainstream churches all have disciplinary procedures for their ordained and lay members.  These provide a degree of accountability for their members, which would be missing if Christians simply believed and were not organised.  Discipline is a never ending task for the churches and doesn't always work; witness what has come to light about the Catholic Church in ireland recently.

But are we really saying that no accountability whatsoever is better than some accountability?  Of course, political authorities could send the police round but how soon before that seeped into totalitarianism? 

Atheists might be intelligent but in spreading their views they don't seem to think particularly strategically.  We all have to share our world with people who seem to us to act like idiots.  But most traditions have the means to restrain the worst excesses and should be encouraged to do so fairly.

So, my message to atheists is back off and credit religious people with some intelligence.  We're not all idiots just because you disagree with us.

Idolatry 20: Is the Universe Conscious?

How do you genuinely not know God?  The knack apparently is to set aside everything we know about God, except for God.  This is the teaching to be found in The Cloud of Unknowing , which is an example of the insights Christian mystics have made.  Here is a passage quoted in the Wikipedia article at the end of the above link.

Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love [...] and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God.

It might also be worth reading the following post in my other blog , which covers several others saying similar things.

We lack the language to express these things and even words we think of as certain can loop around with unexpected meanings.  Take the word materialism.  This can be used in two ways that are relevant to our interests.

It is used by atheists who believe the universe is made of matter, and spirit does not exist.  I have discussed this in my other blog, starting here .  Just one example of what I mean.  Belief in a material universe includes belief in nothing.  Is it possible to imagine nothing?  I don't mean the number zero, or what we say is in a box after we've emptied it but absolutely nothing.  Have a go, imagine it if you can.  There would be no space and no time.  Just about possible; the problem is we are conscious beings and our consciousness is always present.  What if there is no such thing as nothing?  What if there is always consciousness?  Atheists don't believe in God; why can't theists not believe in nothing?  Come on, there is no evidence whatsover for the existence of nothing, how could there be?  The materialist atheist has to concede ultimately there is no more a priori reason for the atheist position as there is for the theist.

The recent atheist campaigns have drawn Christians' attention to their a priori assumptions.  I welcome this and have claimed atheists are angels .  But is it not reasonable to ask atheists to do the same and re-examine theirs?

We all create our own realities.  Everything we perceive has been filtered by our senses and our brains.  We cannot conceive of nothing without using our conscious minds.  We cannot conceive of anything at all without our conscious minds.  We are saved from solipsism because at some point we encounter other minds.  We might fall in love with one or more of them or we might hate or fear them.  All this is in our minds.  Somehow, our institutions are created by our minds together and so we collectively create our institutions.

This is the other meaning of materialism.  It means to understand the spiritual entities described in our religious stories as creations of our collective consciousnesses.  We lose control because we cannot know all the contributions made by all who are involved.  All of this fully engages our attention from an early age, it is formed by the stories we are told, eg of Father Christmas. 

And God?  Somehow God is the reality beyond all this, a reality that enables us to see clearly.  Perhaps all things are held in God's consciousness.  We encounter God, on the interface between the material world and consciousness.  Consciousness is as fundamental as the material universe, it is only through consciousness we know the material world at all. 

Idolatry 19: Why Atheists are Not Very Good at Atheism

In my last post , I referred to a passage from Philippians.  Here it is in full:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.

And being found in  human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death

- even death on a cross.  (NRSV, Phil 2:5-8)

The Greek verb, translated as 'emptied' in the third line, kenosis is usually understood as self emptying.  We can see in this very early hymn the clarity with which people saw the incarnation.  It is an emptying of all power, and at each stage, more power is lost.

The question Christians should be posing to atheists is not whether they should believe God exists, but whether they are serious about the non-existence of God.

Christian mystics know that to find God, we have to lose God.  To rigorously discard every idol, every illusion we have about God, is extremely difficult.  Atheists seem to have an image of God based upon certain fundamentalist traditions.  This parallels very much the unnoticed assent we all make to consumerism by our supposed unbelief in Father Christmas.  Our denials count for nothing but self-deception unless we change the way we live to one not controlled by the ideology of consumerism.  So, if you have an idolatrous image of God, it matters little whether you believe in it or not. 

This false image of God, colours atheists' statements, so their attacks on liberal Christians sound very similar to fundamentalist attacks on liberal Christians.  Indeed, the first target of fundamentalists is always their co-religionists.  Their false God dominates their perceptions as much as it dominates the perceptions of atheists.  The issue is not about belief in God, it is about false images of God.

I do not count myself as a liberal theologian.  The problem is any Christian who is not fundamentalist is counted as liberal by both fundamentalists and atheists.  Neither will listen, both are convinced they are right and there is nothing further to be said on the matter.

It is not about picking a new image of God to not believe in.  It is about rejecting all images of God.  But to do this requires the path of the mystics.  Real atheism is a Christian activity.  It is not a matter for arrogance, it is hard work to genuinely not know God.  I will explain this further in my next post.

Idolatry 18: Christianity, an Atheist Faith?

Last time I mentioned Bertrand Russell's essay 'Why I am Not a Christian' and his claim that Christians must believe in God and immortality.  Today I will show it is not essential to believe in God if you are a Christian. 

First, to say all Christians must believe in God, ignores what is meant by 'believe in'.  Many Christians would argue they believe in God, in the sense that we believe in a friend upon whom we rely for something which is not in their own interest.  I see nothing wrong with this but would respectfully point out we have a perfectly good word for this, namely faith, and it is better to use it than 'believe in' which has too many ambiguities.  I should add that I know faith is more than this, but this definition will do for now.

Second, we need to be clear that if we mean by 'belief in God' that we believe God exists, then we have a problem.  What do we mean when we say God exists?  I believe Russell is perfectly right when he says there is no way of proving God's existence using reason.  The problem is we have a category error here.

If we imagine the set of all things that exist in the universe (leaving aside the possibility of other parallel universes - but do include everything they contain too if you must) then how can God be a member of that set?  God is not someone who exists like Gordon Brown exists.  If God were something in the universe God would by definition not be the creator of all things.

So, why are Christians not atheists?  Well, curiously it might be a very good idea for Christians to reclaim the name atheist.  The incarnation is mind boggling because Christians claim this inconceivable God, a God who is not something in the universe, became human.  If we believe God exists like everything else in the universe, the incarnation becomes far less of an impossibility.

The God in whom atheists allege Christians believe, is a false God.  It is a projection of self-interest by both atheists and some Christians.  For some Christians, their faith story is a journey into darkness as they lose the faith of their childhood and only in time find a way back, through a rejection of their false images of God.  They return at length to the old stories but this time understand them in a new light.  As you would expect some people get stuck in false consciousness but all at least set out on the journey and return as atheists, atheists who have faith in a God they know they cannot ever know.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
(TS Eliot Little Gidding)

The thing atheists miss is that Jesus was an atheist too.  On the cross tortured and killed for no other reason than that his tormentors had the power, abandoned by his friends, Jesus experienced, so we are told, atheism, the loss of God.  His early disciples tell how he gave up everything and became a human being, a slave and then was put to death on the cross (see Philippians 2).  At that moment he lost everything, including his faith.  That moment has sustained many Christians as they too weather loss of faith.

Idolatry 17: The Cross

Bertrand Russell in his famous essay, 'Why I am Not a Christian' contends there are two beliefs that are essential for those who call themselves Christian.  He does not appear to have asked the churches what they think constitute sufficient beliefs, which I would have thought to be a fairly minimal requirement.  He also does not seem to understand that belief and faith are not the same thing.  However, we will leave that thought to one side. 

Apparently Christians are supposed to believe in God and immortality.  I will leave these to my next post.  The second belief is 'Christ, if not divine, was at least the best and wisest of men'. 

First, throughout the essay Russell refers to Jesus as Christ.  Christ was not his name; during his lifetime he was known as Jesus of Nazareth.  Christ was an honorific title given to him by the early Christians.  He was a real person, in a real place at a real time.  This is called incarnation.  Christians believe that God lived as a real human being in a real time and place.

It seems incarnation has in the view of many, although not all, Christians removed the ban on graven images (or perhaps on all images as the Orthodox Churches would argue their icons are not graven). The logic of this is that if God were human we cannot be mistaken in visualising him as a human being.  This seems to help a lot of people, although it's not really my cup of tea.  Methodism uses such images rarely.

The problem for me is largely the way in which these images are presented.  Many seem to be sentimental depictions of an idealised man.  He is often seen with children or small animals as we are told he was gentle and mild and meek.  Worse he is too often a fair haired Caucasian man.  It is interesting that every culture seems to depict Jesus as one of their kind.  If you see these images together, it can be very powerful.  However, there is a tendency for the images from dominant cultures to predominate.

Russell spends a lot of time demonstrating Jesus (or Christ as he would have it) was not the best and wisest of men.  He overlooks one fact.  Jesus was murdered.  He was murdered by the political and religious authorities of his day.  Just like millions of people since have been murdered by political and religious authorities.  They have also been enslaved, exploited and generally suppressed and dominated.

Why don't fundamentalist Christians walk around their communities wearing not crosses, but images of lethal injections?  That is what the cross was, it was an instrument of judicial murder and torture.  Lots of people have difficulty believing God was murdered.  It is what Christians believe. 

Surely, no-one could turn the cross into an idol?  Of course they can.  It should be seen for what it is, it is a raw image, not something to make jewelery out of.  But it is also possible to take it too far in the other direction.

Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' was in my view a gross misrepresentation of the faith.  It turned a story about the struggle of people for liberation into a sentimental film of the horror genre.  The mixture of gratuitous horror and sentimental scenes of Jesus' nicer than nice friends was hardly edifying.

Worse was the film's misogyny.  Satan was played by a woman and certain scenes, eg where the two Marys wipe up Jesus' blood using towels provided by Pilate's wife for the purpose, were degrading. 

Throughout history people have dwelled upon the pain of Christ's suffering and less frequently on the injustice of his suffering.  This trend became sharper about 900 years ago when the idea that God killed Jesus through the atonement was first formulated.  And of course the idea that Jesus was murdered by the Jews has been an ineradicable stain on Christian history. 

The image of Jesus on the cross is an indictment of all concentrations of power in the hands of unaccountable authorities.  It seems this can be understood most easily by those who suffer at the hands of the powerful.  If we want to know God, this image is the one we need.  Not the image of God the killer of his son, but the image of God tortured and killed by unaccountable humans.