Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Simul­ta­ne­ous Con­trasts, Sun and Moon, by Robert Delauney. 1913

Hav­ing just fin­ished another Bart Ehrman book, Jesus, Inter­rupted, I can’t help but pon­der the human need to remain in the dis­tant past. The human need to remake that past to fit the present. Square pegs and all of that. The round hole of now. The mis­er­ably archaic square peg of then. This need is both puz­zling and under­stand­able, given how dif­fi­cult and com­plex life is in the present, in our mod­ern world. Under­stand­able, in that because of those dif­fi­cul­ties and com­plex­i­ties, peo­ple want to hold on to (their per­cep­tion of) sim­pler times, more basic con­struc­tions and instruc­tions, a binary sys­tem or two or three. Puz­zling because of the incom­men­su­ra­bil­ity of that sim­pler time and those binary sys­tems with today’s mul­ti­plic­i­ties. Yes, ancient ways can bring us calm and a sense of foun­da­tional relief. But effec­tively and prag­mat­i­cally speak­ing, they pro­vide zero clues when it comes to mak­ing our way through this maze of the modern.

But the big­ger sur­prise for me has always been this. Why choose a reli­gion so steeped in nar­row selec­tiv­ity, obvi­ous dis­crim­i­na­tion and exclu­siv­ity, tai­lored for a new élite? The Cho­sen. The Elect. Espe­cially when this goes against so many of the actual words of its name­sake. The world is so small today. Bil­lions of peo­ple don’t hold to the beliefs we do. We know this now. We see this every day. There are no more excuses. No islands any­more. Why pick any reli­gion (or inter­pre­ta­tion of that reli­gion) that is closed off to so much of the world? Why choose any belief sys­tem that relies so heav­ily on the cho­sen and the damned?

To me, reli­gion is vir­tu­ally worth­less if it does not pro­mote peace, har­mony, love and bet­ter under­stand­ing across the globe. Now. Here. If it is cen­tered on the sin­gle one, on the per­sonal, on the individual’s per­sonal sal­va­tion, it does the world no good. Here. Now. If it is cen­tered on an after-​​life for that sin­gle indi­vid­ual, an after-​​life that non-​​believers can never share, it does less than no good. It does actual harm. It sep­a­rates and seg­re­gates us and walls us off from one another, lit­er­ally and metaphor­i­cally. As I men­tioned briefly in my post, The Seeds of Labor, we haven’t yet cre­ated the political/​economic sys­tem that reduces the ver­ti­cal. We haven’t cre­ated a sys­tem yet that reduces hier­ar­chies and pro­motes hor­i­zon­tal play and exchange. That is true when it comes to orga­nized reli­gion as well. Though some East­ern reli­gions such as Bud­dhism and Tao­ism come close. They come closer …

Erhman’s book is good, though too 101 for me. He does not go into enough details or depth, but does pro­voke thought. My thoughts keep com­ing back to this. What is the pur­pose of orga­nized reli­gion? Do West­ern, monothe­is­tic reli­gions pro­mote greater hor­i­zon­tal exchange between human beings? Do they pro­mote peace and har­mony and love (thy neigh­bor)? What are the tenets within those orga­nized reli­gions that actu­ally do the oppo­site and why?

I am fas­ci­nated by the idea of the holy. I have always been thus. Fas­ci­nated by the numi­nous, the mys­te­ri­ous, the sur­real. That which glows with­out light and with­holds mean­ing until. Temps us to keep search­ing for it. But the sacred and the holy involve crit­i­cal think­ing as well. To dis­cover them involves con­cen­tra­tion and the will­ing­ness to throw off ancient stric­tures, dogma, ortho­dox­ies. We can not get there if we just receive hand-​​me-​​downs. We can not really see through the veil if we aren’t will­ing to go fur­ther than any book ever writ­ten. The para­dox of belief is just that. There is no rest­ing place on the way, on the road to find out.

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