About three years ago, I had a very bad church experience. It colored how I thought about church for a long time after – that it was corrupt and imperfect, an entity that detracts from a person’s thriving spiritual life. However, I realized the other day that I have completely recovered from my anger towards all churches.
What was the thing that helped me?
Johnny had a great post over at TheFireSermon regarding how we should approach the big philosophical questions. In a book he sites, there are two general kinds of approaches, both relating to a person’s temperament: tender minded and tough minded.
Those who are tender minded are, Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-Willist, Monistic, Dogmatical. The tough minded are, Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Skeptical.
To me this is a great direction, and my interest would be to further break down the sources of a person’s temperament. Where does it come from? How is it formed?
I finally got around to doing some diagrams about how I see my inner self (the spiritual person) and its different parts. I have written extensively about this in previous posts, but since I am a designer more than I am a philosopher or psychologist (I studied all three in college), I wanted to draw it out in a diagram. So the inner self, in its most basic form, seems to be composed of 3 elements – my heart (the real me) and my two influences, my self-destructive nature (selfish nature) and my conscience (my self-preserving nature). Below shows a diagram of each.This is a study that is very important to me, and is one of the main reasons why I started the weblog (among others). For my working theory is if I can understand the inner self (starting with me as the primary subject), its components and their makeup and interactions, I will better understand the reality of further circles of influences (personal relationships -> community -> society -> time period -> existence) But it all starts with how a single person works, on the inside. Below is the diagram that represents basically the entirety of all the philosophy, psychology, and spiritual reading and thinking I’ve done on the spiritual human being in the past 20 years.
At first glance, you might see this and immediately think of the iconic demon and angel sitting on a person’s shoulder whispering in their ear, but bear with me! There’s a lot more to this diagram and the thinking that goes behind it.
Bored in Vernal posted a great question in response to the Risk and Proof post: Is a person who has had a religious experience with a God in one tradition justified in looking into other religions… here’s my best crack at an answer that is more exploring the issue than actually answering it 🙂
What was the motivation for pursing another? If a person had real communication with a God from one faith tradition, why leave (or wander)? First of all, it might be easy to leave or look around because the God of one seems to be a similar God in another (such as is the case with Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Mormonism, and Islam) – Every one of those faiths seem to believe in the same God of the Bible, but differ radically in the details. But even if the leaving is easy and would not be considered “adultery” in the OT sense, why leave or look elsewhere?
I guess there is a sense of studying other religions just to understand them while still believing in your current one, and this can’t be wrong, but what if one were actually trying to find truth in them. Even in this sense, it seems to me that there are certain truths found in most religions – such as certain virtues of martial fidelity, the view of life as sacred, not to steal or testify falsely in trial, etc. So in other religious that have a different God-like entity entirely – such as Buddhism or Hinduism in contrast to Judeo-Christian religions, some things are still the same.
*faith-based discussion removed on Oct.17th*
I recently listened to a song by Sarah McLachlan called “Dear God”, and I must admit, I was really confused. Can someone explain this to me? Anyway, here are the lyrics:
Dear god,
Hope you got the letter,
And I pray you can make it better down here.
I don’t mean a big reduction in the price of beer,
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet,
cause they don’t get enough to eatFrom god,
I cant believe in you.Dear god,
Sorry to disturb you,
But I feel that I should be heard loud and clear.
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears,
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street,
cause they cant make opinions meet,
About god,
I cant believe in you.Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!Dear god,
Don’t know if you noticed,
But your name is on a lot of quotes in this book.
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
And all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it ain’t and so do you,
Dear god,
I cant believe in,
I don’t believe in,I wont believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners,
No devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
You’re always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And its the same the whole world round.
The hurt I see helps to compound,
That the father, son and holy ghost,
Is just somebody’s unholy hoax,
And if you’re up there you’ll perceive,
That my hearts here upon my sleeve.
If there’s one thing I don’t believe in…Its you,
Dear god.
So what am I confused by? Well, the song, on the surface at least, is about a beef the singer has with God. So far, that makes sense, but the confusing part here is that she doesn’t believe in God. By the song’s bitter and angry tone, it obviously isn’t a parody about the ironic nature of an imaginary loving God in an awful world, nor is it just an intellectual look at the ironies of a non-existent God, it is an angry song about an imaginary God. That’s what confuses me. Why is anyone angry at a God who doesn’t exist? I must admit that I am not too good with understanding poetry or song lyrics and must turn to others who know better than I to understand, so I am hoping someone will help me here.
I’ve been thinking about the players of my inner life for days now. I’ve been trying to figure them out and what role they play. The self-destructive nature, my spirit, my self-preserving nature, the conscience, the will, etc. There are so many pieces, and I might be missing some, but I want to at least try to make sense of it all. For today, I want to settle on one piece — the self-preserving nature. So far I have determined there is a self-destructive one, so I believe it is reasonable to assume that we also have a self-preserving one, or else we would have died out as a species a long time ago.
In previous posts, I’ve been talking a lot about what I call my selfish nature. I describe this nature as a force inside myself that is decidedly against my spiritual well being and the good of others. However, I was thinking that to describe this nature as selfish or self-centered is not quite accurate. What activities are self-centered or selfish? I have always associated selfishness as being a bad thing, but being self-centered is good in a sense. If I’m hungry, I take care of myself and eat. If I’m tired, I sleep. If I am cold, I get a jacket. If I’m exhausted, I take a break. So far, these things are good.
As I mentioned earlier in my previous post, the active study of the spritual life in a philosophic manner has many traps and dangers. So what am I to do?
Many of my friends who I admire greatly see this failing in people like myself and simply veer towards anti-intellectualism in spiritual matters. They don’t respect the scholarly community, and mainly get their input of spiritual truth from pastors. Adopt a simple faith they say. Just believe what the pastor says to believe. I understand their reasoning – people who doubt, question things, or think deeply about spiritual issues can often have less then perfect motivations that will lead them into spiritual danger, but I’ve been given a brain to think with, so I’m going to use it. I’m keenly aware of the dangers (see my last post). Willful ignorance does nothing to improve my life. Why turn the direction of my spiritual life over to others to control? Of all things in life, should this not be entirely my responsibility?
The answer may reside in my understanding of the purpose of philosophy. Here are some thoughts on that subject, some from Epictetus, some from James, and some from myself. Note: beware of that last group… 🙂
When searching for truth, like any other endeavor, you need a good tool. I’ll use an analogy of removing a tree for this. Philosophy is my tool to discover spiritual truth like a chainsaw is my tool for cutting down a tree. Philosophy, like a chainsaw, can be quite dangerous to me if I don’t use it properly. It’s good to understand the dangerous of this tool before jumping up and using it. Why? Becuase if I don’t pay attention to its use, and understand its inherient dangers, I can seriously injure myself. This is not to say that philosophy itself is dangerous any more than a chainsaw sitting on the ground is. It has potential danger, but it requires kinetic energy (me) to interact with it for it to become dangerous.