The Morning Service

[poliphilo]

Sunday mornings we usually catch the end of the church service on Radio 4 while we make breakfast. The preacher (whoever it is) rarely makes any concession to the fact that he's working in an intimate medium, but soars and trembles and booms. It gets my goat.

Today the guy was rhapsodising about the vision of paradise at the end of the Book of Revelations. Yes, yes, yes- it's very beautiful, but the Book of Revelations is all about God and his angels killing people. It's the most bloody-minded, fanatical, genocidal book in the Bible- the first century equivalent of an Al Quaeda website. Taking the pretty bits out of context is- well- like discussing Hitler soley in terms of autobahns and his patronage of Albert Speer.

I've been reading stuff recently where Muslims are urged to face up to the violent passages in the Koran, to acknowledge (presumably with tears of penitence) that their religion isn't all pink cotton-candy. Fine- yes please- the sooner the better.

But the Koran isn't the only Holy Book to trip out on fantasies of murder.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I know almost nothing about the Book of Revelations.

I was watching a TV preacher this morning--he's on every Sunday between six and seven, and he told his congregation that they should read the Bible but should be very careful of commentaries.

"I know how to eat hay and spit out the sticks," he said, "but even I don't want to read something that would breed doubt in me."

"Amen," said the congregation.

He also told them that they had this one shot to get to Heaven, and if they went to Hell it was their own fault, because they knew what to do if they read the Bible.

He said "Scholars and educated people say the Bible is allegory and myth--that means stories--and I don't totally disagree with them. Now, wait--I mean that there are ways you can see the Bible's truths as stories about your own life. I do that all the time.

"But I also talk to God. He says to me, 'Don't do that,' and I say, 'But I've been doing that for years!' and He says, 'You weren't ready to listen.' And sometimes He'll say, 'Don't wear that!' and I'll say, 'But I've been wearing this for years!' and He'll say, 'And I didn't like it for years.'"

So God is concerned about the preacher's wardrobe, too!

I was feeling smug and contemptuous (my own sin, yep) and then the recorded local program went to the inevitable pressure to get money and sell tapes, and then there was a notice on the screen that the preacher and his wife were mourning the loss of their son, who had died in May at the age of 17. They would, the notice continued, see him again in Heaven.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Your man is preaching ignorance as a virtue.

I remember how my bishop- a thoroughly nice chap, and someone whose memory I still honour- said much the same thing. We were discussing radical theology and he said, "I never read that stuff. I'm afraid of what it might do to my faith."

I wonder what iten of the preacher's wardrobe God objected to. Was his shirt too loud?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Probably shorts that showed his knobby evil knees.

I remember (I probably told you this already, sorry in advance) talking to a woman at church, wanting to discuss Spong with her, and she actually held her hand up in front of me like a traffic cop and said "Stop! I don't want to even think about Spong! My son is very ill and I can't let my faith be shaken right now!"

I felt awful and terribly embarrassed--as if speaking outside the official doctrine is a gaffe but more: sadistic.

But the truth is if we can't dare look, then it is already too late.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No you hadn't told me that.

Her response was pure superstition. As if she believed that God would kill her son if she entertained the least doubt.

Why do believers have such low moral expectations of God? They tiptoe around him as though he were an erratic, unpredictable, paranoid autocrat- like Caligula or Saddam Hussein

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

What I can't figure out is how one can possibly claim to love such a capricious and sadistic being? Such a mean old man...

How has it come to this, I wonder? Maybe the more we fear, the more we feel protected--like the Stockholm syndrome with kidnap victims.

If any of us truly believed we could by wrong choices go to Hell and be punished FOREVER (the horror of this is simply beyond thought), we would never have children, lest we subject them to such a monstrous possibility.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We have created God in the image of human authority. He has the power of life and death and is beyond criticism. I would like to affirm that we have outgrown this kind of relationship with our Big Men, but I see how people line up behind George Bush- simply because he's the Top Dog- and I doubt whether we have.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

And in fact I am driven to ferret out whatever I can, and how can this be anything other than a gift, to be given a mind and then be able to use it?

How ridiculous, to be afraid of this most interesting question: why and who are we? What is this all about?

It's the core question of my life. How can I not search for answers wherever that takes me?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

Like you I want to understand as much as I can. If religious dogmas get in the way then too bad for religious dogma

I speak as though I had always been gung-ho about this, but I used to be a very timid believer- very much afraid of the Big Chap in the sky (Old Nobodaddy, as William Blake called him.)

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Old Nobodaddy, as William Blake called him.)

I love it.

I've lost a lot over the years--my sense of the Creed, sentence after sentence, gone. And I know for certain that all my wondering and questions have led me only to realize that none of us knows anything, we can only intuit. Because there is silence.

I've gotten angry at that silence, because it seems so tantalizing, and for what?

But the silence may not be "to teach us lessons," but a simple result of our being incapable in our present form to comprehend.

Kate and I were talking about Jasper, how good he is (a dog saint, I suppose) and then she said she had heard that "animals have group souls only" and so they won't go to Heaven.

"Who knows that?" I said. "Somebody just thought that up!"

"Heaven wouldn't be the same without Jasper," she said, and I had this sudden startled thought about our concept of heaven in the first place--people and dogs walking around.

We don't know anything. It's scary how little we know after all these years of thinking about it.

I find myself drawn to the mystics, because they get a sense of things, but I am repelled by the rule-makers and the pontificators who offer us nonsensical frameworks ("group souls for dogs") as the Truth.

One can, I guess, only get a glimpse of Heaven peripherally, and it's just a glimpse, and maybe not Heaven at all.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

But it is still too beautiful...I hope if I ever get there my cats will be there!

What kind of faith cannot recover from a moment of doubt?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

What kind of faith cannot recover from a moment of doubt?

That's not faith, is it? It's a house of cards. Pull out one and it's over.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Perfectly put. My Father (a vicar) believes that faith cannot survive without doubt, they are compliments to each other and strenghen.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've stopped being angry. I've settled for patience.

I reckon the human race is still at a very primitive stage in its development. Our civilisation can be measured in thousands of years- and that's nothing. I think we have millions of years of evolution ahead of us.

And perhaps at some stage in the future we- or whatever evolves from us- will be clever enough to work it all out.

I'm not bothered about heaven. I don't want heaven. I want to UNDERSTAND.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I agree with you 98%.

I do want heaven. I want to take a tour.

I've got this problem with the heaven thing...

[jubal51394.livejournal.com]

I look around me. I see in nature that God(whateverthatis) recycles everything. My garden, for instance, is a study in birth, death, decay and rebirth. I cannot fathom why God would have this one exception, a great storage warehouse in the sky for souls... only human souls? What exactly is a soul, anyway? Anybody out there got a soul detector?

And anyone who's ever loved a pet knows they have a personality... and a soul. I don't need scripture or dogma to tell me this. When I awake feeling crummy, Madog, she nestles up beside me and licks my face. She knows how I feel when even my husband can't tell.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think heaven is a a permanent space or place. I think it's a state of mind. And in no way permanent. I agree with jubal51394 that everything is in a state of flux. And a good thing too. The idea of being in a place where nothing changes, where there can be no new discoveries etc etc is terrifying.

I'm too easily bored for the traditional heaven to have any charms for me.