Without a Paddle

Obsessions. I’ve been watching too many documentaries. A lot of religious stuff; my obsession. It’s what you get for being a preacher. How does one get to be a preacher, you might ask? It’s a calling. You don’t get to be anything; you’re what you’re called to be.

Who does the calling? That’s open to conjecture.

Let me define religion: a myth-based system through which one interprets one’s existence/experiences. Religions do many different things, but that’s the core of what they are; everything hinges around that, the myth system. This is true of all religions; it’s what defines them. It’s not to be confused with the religion invoked when asked, “What do you believe?” That’s another use of the word, related but not identical. If one practices a religion, i.e. believes in that religion, it means they use the precepts of that religion to make sense of their experiences.

My observation is that the world divides over the definition of “religion.” The fight is over whether or not they are myth systems. If one is a believer, one has to admit to the possibility that at least one religion could not be a myth system: theirs.

Yet, all religions, by their nature, are myth systems; they cannot not be. What is not understood here is that the origins of a myth system have no bearing on the functioning of the system. There can be no true or accurate beginning of a myth system, even if it’s history is well documented. The origins have nothing to do with the effect of a myth or how it functions as an organizational apparatus. Hence, the search for the “historical Jesus” is  a Sisyphussian battle, one that can never be won. It’s an entire industry built around searching for an chimera. (And they take it and themselves so seriously. On the other hand, it’s always fun to see the Emperor naked.)

What I find fascinating is that the trapped have no idea they are trapped. It’s the Stockholm syndrome writ large, one comes to agree with one’s captors. Think of the slaves. No, not the Christian slaves, the black ones, the guys from Africa. They were more than happy to adopt the faith of their oppressors. Glory hallelujah! Have to this day. Once you’re inside a faith, you can’t see out. Which is only reasonable because, if you could see out, you might lose your faith, and then where would you be? Yes, and without a paddle.

What if one’s faith is in a vague, holy spirit that permeates the Universe with, with, with… whatever? What if? So…, what if? How about, “Don’t you believe in something bigger than you? Bigger than us?”

Are those beliefs or are they a reason to wear flowers in one’s and burn incense? Maybe take a sweat with some Native Americans; boy, do they have a myth system. There is another abiding quest: to make the vision of god so sophisticated that it can’t be disputed. The ages have been filled with ever more sophisticated reasoning as to what god could be like; only those doing the more and more clever reasoning, evidently, don’t understand that the increasing sophistication of a myth doesn’t make it less of a myth. Myths are like pregnancies: they either are or they aren’t myths. There’s no such a thing as a three-month myth or a third-term myth; a myth is a myth, they’re sort of clean that way.

What have I learned from those documentaries? That we’re never going to dent a believer. They either have to have their own catharsis or die of old age or from falling off the edge of the Earth. It could happen, you know.

The Mullah Protection Racket

One has to admire the mullah protection racket: say anything against the Big Mullah and we kill you. Now there’s a secure religion, one confident in itself. Is it just me or do the muzzle-mouths have a particularly weak self-image? It seems the whole religion is built around the fear of being known as gay. As if the whole Muslim world turns around its inability to handle sex. Does it have something to do with the desert air? What’s wrong with Arab guys that they should feel themselves A) inadequate, and B) uncontrollable? I don’t know that I’d want to admit that to the world, much less advertise it.

I don’t want to castigate the entire Muslim world for being namby-waists and fop-dolls, but those little guys running around in their nightgowns and Balishnikovs could stand a shipment of flashlights because they aren’t too bright. They’re giving a bad name to troglodytes.

Nonetheless, the current attack on the US embassy in Lybia which killed the ambassador and three other people, illustrates how far we are from addressing the problem. Ostensibly, the attack was reprisal for something derogatory said about Mohammed, not the boxer, the prophet. The response, as I hear it, falls into two camps: A) you gotta be careful tip-toeing around those Moslems, because they’re touchy; and B) those weren’t real Muslims, real Muslims don’t kill for that reason. As to “A,” it’s true, ya gotta be careful around them, they’re uncontrollable, they’ve already told you that. Whether or not that’s reasonable is an entirely separate question, but there’s no doubt they’re a weird bunch.

But “B”? Naw, I’m not buying B. They were real Muslims. Just like the Christians who kill abortion doctors; they’re real Christians, too. Definitely one of the hardest concepts to get through a Christian’s head is that there is no such thing as an unreal Christian. Can’t be. Religions are made up institutions; one can’t have an unreal vision of what they are. Everyone gets to make up their own version and they are all equally Christian. Being Christian is a self-definition. If you say you’re one, you’re one. End of argument. Likewise with Muslims; you say you’re one, you’re one. End of argument.

The problem is that as a society we have yet to confront what it means to still have a majority of our population believing in fantasies. From a psychological standpoint, this is not good. Mother Terresa notwithstanding, not being able to separate reality from fantasy in an adult population portends trouble. Until we can understand the dangers which religions present us, we’ll never get a handle on controlling them. We’ll always be at the mercy of fanatics who are “touchy.”

Can Religion Be Saved?

Stolen Aart

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?

We have to help them, our Christian brothers and sisters, we really do. They are in a precarious position. Their world is crumbling around them. Heathens are loose upon the fields. The End of Days is surely near.

Or not.

It’s not just Christianity, of course, the Enlightenment takes its aim at everyone. Science has fierce partisans and factions, but it has no sects. (About cults, we’re not so sure.) But my personal world is curiously devoid of Muslims, Jains, or Hindus and is mainly peppered with a few Jews and a slew of New Agers. My knowledge of religion is fairly restricted to Christianity, American style, and people who believe in homeopathy and aroma therapy. Those are the people I’d most like to help, but everyone else could use it, as well.

That being said, I have absolutely no idea how to go about helping them. The Christians. As the first rule of psychology has it (or possibly it’s the twelfth), one has to recognize the need for help before one is able to accept it. My read is that Christians, because of their continuing numerical dominance, aren’t yet aware they’re losing the fight for the heart and soul of the future. They’re still in the stage of denial.

So, what to do?

How about if we begin by removing religion from the political arena? Wouldn’t that be nice? Could we have freedom, not just of religion, but from religion? Wouldn’t that be nice? Is there any way for Christians to understand that there are ten thousand religions in the world; and that, if we base our morality on “God says so,” we’ll never come to any agreements? Wouldn’t that be nice?

What would happen if one Sunday morning every pastor in the land went before her or his congregation and said, “We are not a Christian nation, we are a nation of all faiths or lack thereof; we must learn to be Christians in a pluralistic world”? What if all the pastors told the truth?

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Well, you can see where that would lead: fornication and drug use, gluttony and sloth. The Four Horsemen would terrorize the nation. Communism!

No, the Christian community is not about to talk compromise. They’re in it for the long haul. They started out in little cells in the catacombs and they’re willing to retreat there if they have to. They’ll reluctantly talk to the Jews, they wouldn’t think of talking to a Muslim, and they have no idea what language the rest of the world speaks. That their world continues to fade, that peace, rationalism, acceptance, and atheism continue to grow, has yet to sink in. That their fate was sealed by the inevitable evolution of consciousness, passes their consciousness by. Helping them over that hump is going to be a big hurdle. It’s like trying to talk to a Cajun gone mad with a shotgun in his hand. You best be careful. Real careful.

But we gotta do it; it’s our duty. It’s the rational thing to do. It’s no point getting mad at them, and ridicule doesn’t help, at all. We have to find a way to open the dialogue. They aren’t going to do it; they have no cause to. They still think they have a chance at winning. It’s our job to save them from as much damage as possible, to find a way to let them down easy.

How about “Take a Christian to Lunch Day”? You don’t even have to worry about mixing milk with meat with Christians, they can eat anything. And drink, too. Don’t forget Jesus and the wine trick. You just can’t smoke with them; that’s with the Saracens.

Maybe we should start with comparative religion classes in the public schools. Teach religion as part of folk arts where it truly belongs. Heck, that could start in kindergarten. By high school, kids could be studying the role of religions in society and history. They could study the varieties of myths that underlie religions. Once we had a public educated about religions, then, maybe, we could have a national dialogue about the rightful place of religion, folk beliefs, and traditional cultures in our society. We, certainly, don’t want to lose the rich heritage of how the peoples of the world solved the mysteries of leaving the dream time. These beliefs, these longings, go back to before people were people; it would be a shame to dismiss them simply because of their naiveté. Losing them, we would lose the beauty of their allegory; we would lose the nuance of their experience.

We must save these religions, now, before they’re swamped by the flutter of tomorrow. Before they’re lost in the flight of new wings. Like folk music or quilt patterns, the varieties of religious experience must be preserved lest we forget one day that people once talked in tongues. Or fed the hungry. Or wore white robes with pointed hoods. It’s now that we should start talking with the preachers and priests who remain about what and how best to preserve their memory on the landscape of the stars. We should start now, while they still feel their power. Soon, it will be too late. Soon, the sweat and fog of panic will cloud their minds. We should start assuring them now that we will always love them, they will always find a place in our hearts and our community. We will remember them. We will not forget.