An Explanation Of Sorts

[poliphilo]

My posts are rarely exploratory. Usually I know the route I mean to take and where I hope to end up. Sometimes I'll happen upon an alternative path and- even more rarely- fetch up somewhere unexpected.  But I never find myself stopping short- out in open country as it were.

Except once or twice in the last few days. You know the posts I mean. They're all a bit gnomic. That's because I wasn't being quite honest, because I was editing too much out, because I was embarrassed to admit I didn't have a map.  They read like I'm laying down the law, but actually I'm asking questions. Real questions- ones I can't answer.

Here's where I'm at:
 
I was a priest. I gave it up. I'm not going back. I couldn't. I gave it up because I didn't believe- and that's still the case. Trouble is- over the past year or so- I've felt a Christian mindset creeping back up on me. I don't believe in the Christian God, I don't believe Jesus even ever existed, but I'm finding I totally believe in the Christian myth.  There never was a birth in a stable in Bethlehem- I'm almost certain of that- but the myth has me by the throat.  Myths are like poetry. They work in much the same way, by-passing the rational mind, by-passing explanation. I know Yeats's The Second Coming is a sublime poem and I know the Nativity is a sublime myth- but don't expect me to get to work on either with a scalpel because that's not how you treat the things you love.

So am I a Christian? I suppose it depends who's marking the papers. William Blake might accept me as one, but I don't think the Pope would. I am however, by the Church's own rules, still an Anglican priest. When I left (and whether I resigned or was sacked is a moot point) they may have put me on a black list somewhere, but they didn't defrock me- they didn't rescind my priesthood. I'm not in fact sure they could.

Just to complicate matters I am also a Pagan and a Witch.

Perhaps I don't need to make intellectual sense of all this. Perhaps...

And there I'm going to stop- still out in open country- with the Holy City of Sarras over the horizon and maybe not there at all.

I'll be away from LJ over Christmas. No reading, no writing. I think this could be a really good time to take a break.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not very knowledgeable about theology, but here are my thoughts: I tend to think of the bible along the lines of a translation of a translation of an interpretation and so on, going back 2000 years. This means it has been changed, reinterpreted and affected by many people along the way. And in any case it wasn't written by God directly.
I don't think one needs to belong to a particular church, other than the church of your own making. Each of the different Christian churches is an interpretation of the same basic ideas, so why not create your own personal church. You could make your own interpretation and do what you believe to be right.
As an example, do you really have to go to church every Sunday to be a good Christian, or believing God to be omnipotent could it be better to worship from your house every day? What makes the church building special after all? Perhaps it was blessed by a clergyman who was preaching for a living and adultering in his spare time. In 100 years it could be a block of apartments.
I guess my key point here, which really covers all religious groups of any faith, is that each group has its dogma, but it's basically an interpretation.

[(Anonymous)]

Meant to write my name after that post..
Tom F

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're right of course.

The Bible is a whole collection of texts of varying degrees of value, collected, edited and re-written over a period of something like 1000 years. Of course God didn't write any of it. He didn't even dictate it.

I've been making it up for myself for decades now. If I'm now relaxing into the arms of Mother Church it's partly because I'm exhausted. Let someone else do the thinking, I'm just happy to sit in the warm and mouth the familiar words of the liturgy. :)