Part 1 - Lost in Translation
One of the most insidious tactics of the American church money-machine is to inflict modern vernacular upon ancient texts via "new translations".
Idioms, gender-neutral pronouns, definition-inserted-in-place-of-term...these are forcibly inserted in a seeming attempt to make overquoted Bible verses feel less overquoted, and more relatable or relevant to an audience which has heard them all before.
But this is not only semantically dishonest, it removes, or attempts to remove, the cultural context of the writing and skew its literary context.
The various texts chosen to be included in the Bible each have a rhythm to them, especially the more poetic works.
The word choice in these only seems trite to modern American audiences because most Americans were raised in or around a church, especially in the Bible Belt, and most mainline denominations defend their doctrines and dogma with a relatively small number of Bible verses to serve as "spiritual pillars".
This small group of verses are thrown around again and again in sermons and Bible studies across the country, to the point that elder church members treat them like mantras of the good ol' days, and younger church members get sick of hearing them (and generally yearn for leaders and teachers to convey spiritual concepts in their own words instead).
Thus, we see attempts by Bible publishers and church leaders to modernize the ancient words, but in so doing remove the sense that they are in fact ancient.
This attempt at modernization, by removing the cultural context of the texts, blurs the Old Testament's progressive discovery of God's character by the ancient Hebrews, and dumbs down the radical nature of the New Testament's "HERE HE IS" message.
Ironically, instead of being perceived as an overquoted authority, this tactic makes the Bible seem petulant and pedantic, subject to the whims of fickle vernacular rather than being the rock-steady divine Word which fundamentalists proclaim it to be.
Part 2 - Lost in Interpretation
Any Bible verse which seems cut-and-dry in favor of a fundamentalist position must, like any single line of text used to support any opinion, be delved into much deeper than "face-value".
Its cultural, historical, and literary context must be thrown open like the doors of an ancient ruin to discern whether ancient, tribal Hebrews with no concept of astronomy or biology or psychology REALLY meant that disrespectful children should be executed.
...and then decide if we REALLY want to emulate them if they REALLY believed that.
Of course, the very practice of reinforcing our dogma with handpicked lines of text without any cultural understanding was not the practice when the texts selected for including in the Bible were written...but don't tell the fundies that.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Reading the Bible Backwards
So much of our current mode of thought is the result of a combination of Greco-Roman philosophy and Enlightenment philosophy/theology.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either, and each generation is naturally the rhetorical, intellectual, and spiritual offspring of its forbears.
But it becomes an issue when we apply our modern sensibilities on ancient texts.
Many of our "traditional" doctrines are not the result of some great movement of the Spirit, but the application of Plato, Aristotle, or John Edwards to texts which predate them.
For example, the traditional doctrine of "The Fall" is basically Plato's descent into the cave of illusion.
The original tellers of the story (remember, it was passed down orally for generations) did not think in terms of perfect "forms," or more precisely, changeless states.
Especially since most of the first four chapters of Genesis were originally POEMS, meant to reflect on higher truths in figurative language rather than portray hard facts of reality.
Another negative effect of this application is that we tend to read the Bible backwards, for example reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, instead of forwards with the contexts of the individual writers in mind.
We fail to understand the cultural context in which each book of the Old Testament (or in the case of Genesis, in which each section of each book) was created, because we operate under the flawed unconscious assumption that the Bible is essentially a legal constitution.
We assume cohesiveness and continuity from cover to cover because our current philosophical context demands such, even though a basic reading of each book demonstrates a vast variety of literary, cultural, and historical contexts across the anthology.
Up to and including many contradictions, internally and with our present spirituality.
But the storytellers and writers whose works are included in the current canon obviously did not think of themselves as "Biblical authors", and the historically earlier authors had no notion of the historically later authors' existence or ideas or cultural context.
Thus if we are truly to apply our present standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants philosophical methods, we must abandon the legal-constitution assumption which has driven so much of the church's methodology for generations, and re-examine the Bible as a cultural exploration of an evolving understanding of God.
Too many people have been driven away by the church's iron-fisted approach to "divine inspiration" (to say nothing of "inerrancy") for us to continue to pound the pulpit with unrelenting tradition which fears doubt and curiosity and basic questions from anyone, especially those already in its grip.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either, and each generation is naturally the rhetorical, intellectual, and spiritual offspring of its forbears.
But it becomes an issue when we apply our modern sensibilities on ancient texts.
Many of our "traditional" doctrines are not the result of some great movement of the Spirit, but the application of Plato, Aristotle, or John Edwards to texts which predate them.
For example, the traditional doctrine of "The Fall" is basically Plato's descent into the cave of illusion.
The original tellers of the story (remember, it was passed down orally for generations) did not think in terms of perfect "forms," or more precisely, changeless states.
Especially since most of the first four chapters of Genesis were originally POEMS, meant to reflect on higher truths in figurative language rather than portray hard facts of reality.
Another negative effect of this application is that we tend to read the Bible backwards, for example reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, instead of forwards with the contexts of the individual writers in mind.
We fail to understand the cultural context in which each book of the Old Testament (or in the case of Genesis, in which each section of each book) was created, because we operate under the flawed unconscious assumption that the Bible is essentially a legal constitution.
We assume cohesiveness and continuity from cover to cover because our current philosophical context demands such, even though a basic reading of each book demonstrates a vast variety of literary, cultural, and historical contexts across the anthology.
Up to and including many contradictions, internally and with our present spirituality.
But the storytellers and writers whose works are included in the current canon obviously did not think of themselves as "Biblical authors", and the historically earlier authors had no notion of the historically later authors' existence or ideas or cultural context.
Thus if we are truly to apply our present standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants philosophical methods, we must abandon the legal-constitution assumption which has driven so much of the church's methodology for generations, and re-examine the Bible as a cultural exploration of an evolving understanding of God.
Too many people have been driven away by the church's iron-fisted approach to "divine inspiration" (to say nothing of "inerrancy") for us to continue to pound the pulpit with unrelenting tradition which fears doubt and curiosity and basic questions from anyone, especially those already in its grip.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Sermons and Shepherds
The older and/or more informed I become, the more trouble I have with the idea of the "sermon".
I understand and embrace the "worship" portion of church services, because it brings the congregation together in a communal experience of emotion and music.
But then instead of sending us on our way at the peak of that communal experience, we're jarred out of it to be lectured at as individuals for the remainder of the service (in some cases taking up half or 3/4 of the total service time).
This would be fine on its own, if structured like a college class, which focused only on the individual intellect, at a separate time and/or place from communal worship.
But jarring us out of our communal emotional experience just to be talked at, and then sending us out after THAT, makes the joys of the communal experience seem wasted and trod under.
Especially since a sermon, unlike a college lecture, doesn't even allow anyone being lectured to to raise a hand and ask questions.
A sermon is the antithesis of a conversation, and too many pastors use the captivity of their audiences to spew some truly awful drivel.
What confuses me is that most churches HAVE a separate activity to invoke the individual intellect.
It usually happens pre-service in Sunday School classes, or throughout the week in small-group Bible studies or discussion groups.
Why can't that be enough?
Why do we still need the authority figure from on high passing supposedly-irrefutable wisdom down to us lowly sheep?
Especially in our current age of unlimited information.
We should be having the best conversations about God and spirituality in the history of humanity!
Not sitting quietly and pretending to listen to someone else talk at us while drawing or playing on our phones.
Just a thought.
On an unrelated note, having left the image of the "good shepherd" at least a couple centuries behind us in the developed world, we need a new metaphor for God and really really REALLY need a new metaphor for Jesus.
But having made the mistake of literalizing our metaphors about a thousand years ago, and at some point between then and now turned that mistake into a multibillion-dollar business and lobbying empire, I doubt any new metaphors would really take.
It's a mark of how weak metaphor and symbolism are in our current American culture that churches STILL feel the need to explain the imagery of the baptism EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. IT. HAPPENS.
Explanations of imagery are what anthropologists do when examining another culture.
Those WITHIN the culture don't ever need an explanation because everyone knows the ritual's purpose.
But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, given that we have taken imagery, symbolism, and metaphor which are supposed to fill a niche in the human psyche, and transformed them quite against all sense into "inerrant Word of God", and given them the same level of gravitas we give plain facts.
This move to make literal what should have remained figurative has naturally and tragically caused an intellectual backlash against any and all imagery ever associated with religion.
Too many have thrown out baby and bathwater, assuming that spiritual matters which psychologists have found we NEED to remain SANE and remain coherent as a society, are not only unnecessary, but are either a plague to be cured or the quaint/barbaric practices of a less-enlightened age to be outgrown on our way to utopia.
Instead of each society subscribing to its own rites and rituals and STORIES to fill the niche in their collective psyche, somewhere along the way a few of them became convinced that their stories were the only "real" ones, their deity/ies the only "real" ones.
Even though their fathers and grandfathers had never stopped to decry anyone else's stories unless at war, usually over something actually-real like food or land or resources, and that defamation was mostly a formality.
Societies such as the Greeks and Egyptians and African tribes and Native Americans were content with an unspoken, "It's real to use in our circumstances," and content (or rather, constrained by a harsh life and low life-expectancy) with letting others worship who, what, and how they would.
From a certain perspective, we in the infinitely-connected-to-infinite-information seem less able to deal with the part of our psyche which needs spirituality for communal bonding and communal action than our barbaric ancestors.
We know more about the universe and the human body and the human psyche than any generation before us, but having turned their metaphors into "facts," and caused the backlash which resulted when reason was attacked by irrationality, we seem unable to truly recover.
We are thus compartmentalized by our more recent ancestors' mistakes, with too many elders clinging to that mistake as if by divine command, and too many youngers abandoning spirituality wholesale because some are willing to kill to defend the mistake.
There doesn't seem to be any solution to our fragmented state.
Having shed the rituals and rites of our ancestors, which helped us process the greater truths of the universe, in the fight against the literalization of metaphor, we find ourselves naked before the terrifying cosmos, unable to go back into our shell and unable to truly strike out on our own.
We shed the rites and rituals, but we could not change the fundamental nature of our psyche, and thus we lack one of the first tools for comprehending the universe which our distant ancestors developed in the darkness of pre-history.
Time will tell if we have truly taken ourselves out of the evolutionary pool, or if this is simply the next evolutionary hurdle we must overcome.
I understand and embrace the "worship" portion of church services, because it brings the congregation together in a communal experience of emotion and music.
But then instead of sending us on our way at the peak of that communal experience, we're jarred out of it to be lectured at as individuals for the remainder of the service (in some cases taking up half or 3/4 of the total service time).
This would be fine on its own, if structured like a college class, which focused only on the individual intellect, at a separate time and/or place from communal worship.
But jarring us out of our communal emotional experience just to be talked at, and then sending us out after THAT, makes the joys of the communal experience seem wasted and trod under.
Especially since a sermon, unlike a college lecture, doesn't even allow anyone being lectured to to raise a hand and ask questions.
A sermon is the antithesis of a conversation, and too many pastors use the captivity of their audiences to spew some truly awful drivel.
What confuses me is that most churches HAVE a separate activity to invoke the individual intellect.
It usually happens pre-service in Sunday School classes, or throughout the week in small-group Bible studies or discussion groups.
Why can't that be enough?
Why do we still need the authority figure from on high passing supposedly-irrefutable wisdom down to us lowly sheep?
Especially in our current age of unlimited information.
We should be having the best conversations about God and spirituality in the history of humanity!
Not sitting quietly and pretending to listen to someone else talk at us while drawing or playing on our phones.
Just a thought.
On an unrelated note, having left the image of the "good shepherd" at least a couple centuries behind us in the developed world, we need a new metaphor for God and really really REALLY need a new metaphor for Jesus.
But having made the mistake of literalizing our metaphors about a thousand years ago, and at some point between then and now turned that mistake into a multibillion-dollar business and lobbying empire, I doubt any new metaphors would really take.
It's a mark of how weak metaphor and symbolism are in our current American culture that churches STILL feel the need to explain the imagery of the baptism EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. IT. HAPPENS.
Explanations of imagery are what anthropologists do when examining another culture.
Those WITHIN the culture don't ever need an explanation because everyone knows the ritual's purpose.
But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, given that we have taken imagery, symbolism, and metaphor which are supposed to fill a niche in the human psyche, and transformed them quite against all sense into "inerrant Word of God", and given them the same level of gravitas we give plain facts.
This move to make literal what should have remained figurative has naturally and tragically caused an intellectual backlash against any and all imagery ever associated with religion.
Too many have thrown out baby and bathwater, assuming that spiritual matters which psychologists have found we NEED to remain SANE and remain coherent as a society, are not only unnecessary, but are either a plague to be cured or the quaint/barbaric practices of a less-enlightened age to be outgrown on our way to utopia.
Instead of each society subscribing to its own rites and rituals and STORIES to fill the niche in their collective psyche, somewhere along the way a few of them became convinced that their stories were the only "real" ones, their deity/ies the only "real" ones.
Even though their fathers and grandfathers had never stopped to decry anyone else's stories unless at war, usually over something actually-real like food or land or resources, and that defamation was mostly a formality.
Societies such as the Greeks and Egyptians and African tribes and Native Americans were content with an unspoken, "It's real to use in our circumstances," and content (or rather, constrained by a harsh life and low life-expectancy) with letting others worship who, what, and how they would.
From a certain perspective, we in the infinitely-connected-to-infinite-information seem less able to deal with the part of our psyche which needs spirituality for communal bonding and communal action than our barbaric ancestors.
We know more about the universe and the human body and the human psyche than any generation before us, but having turned their metaphors into "facts," and caused the backlash which resulted when reason was attacked by irrationality, we seem unable to truly recover.
We are thus compartmentalized by our more recent ancestors' mistakes, with too many elders clinging to that mistake as if by divine command, and too many youngers abandoning spirituality wholesale because some are willing to kill to defend the mistake.
There doesn't seem to be any solution to our fragmented state.
Having shed the rituals and rites of our ancestors, which helped us process the greater truths of the universe, in the fight against the literalization of metaphor, we find ourselves naked before the terrifying cosmos, unable to go back into our shell and unable to truly strike out on our own.
We shed the rites and rituals, but we could not change the fundamental nature of our psyche, and thus we lack one of the first tools for comprehending the universe which our distant ancestors developed in the darkness of pre-history.
Time will tell if we have truly taken ourselves out of the evolutionary pool, or if this is simply the next evolutionary hurdle we must overcome.
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