What it is or isn't to call yourself a Christian

For me, the basis of religious truth is individual, so what we call the conscience has to be the arbitor for all of us of what we feel to be true. We might start from any spiritual experiences we have had, refined by our life experience, plus however much attention we may choose to pay to what others show us, either by word or by example.

When we have formulated some kind of position for ourselves, we may or may not choose to give it a label, based on whether it approximates to any pre-existing body of religious belief.

And this is where the generalisations end because, when it comes to me, the labelling problem is further complicated by all those who have gone before me, and chosen to call themselves, for example, Christians.

By instinct, as I said, the conscience feels paramount to me, but there is something of the pedant in me which says that, if you're going to apply a label to your beliefs, then it has to have clear meaning or it's pointless. While it is instinct which draws me to the Quakers because of their openness, their approach to the individual nature of the "light" (spirituality) in everyone, and their "love in action", the pedant in me won't let me get away with calling myself a Christian, just because it would be so simple if I did.

To give Christianity any meaning as a label, I think there are some core things you have to believe. Maybe you can get away without some of the theological "must haves" of the major christian churches - Trinity, Atonement, or even Resurrection, taking them as metaphors. Many would have already disqualified me if I don't find those things to "feel true" to me. But, surely the key thing to Christianity has to be Christ himself. He has to be part of it, and he has to be an expression of God in human form. And that's the final sticking point for me.

As I said at the outset, it starts from any spiritual experiences we may have had. Many experience Christ in various ways, often as a real presence, maybe only once, but enough to convince them that he is their saviour and redeemer.
The spiritual experiences I have so far had are much more general; a sense of God, not as a person, but as an infinite, unconditionally loving entity. A vast sense of peace and that, ultimately, everything will be worked out for the best.
A monumental piece of wishful thinking? Possibly; but we have to go on what we feel to be true, and this isn't something of which I managed to convince myself, it's something that came to me and has stayed with me ever since.

So, if Christ is revealed to me, there will be no argument from me, just as I don't argue with Christians who have had such experiences, which are equally as valid as my own. But there has to be some clarity about this labelling business, if only in deference to all the men and women who have gone to their deaths professing Christ as the true lord ETC. To call myself a Christian in such company would be a massive insult to their memory in my opinion.

Let me know what you think.

Discovering and stating the obvious.

I've been preoccupied of late with the uselessness and negative results of polarised discussions.

This morning, I heard a radio feature here in the UK dealing with the US "Human Terrane" program in Iraq and Afghanistan. This recruits social scientists, anthropologists particularly, to advise the military in how best to deal with a civil population with very different cultural perspectives from the coalition forces.

This has generated a good deal of heat, not least within the academic community.

One very simple fact emerged for me. This program is attacked and defended equally genuinely.

I happen to think that it's impossible for governments to exclude their self-interest from any enterprise. If they have the power to impose their will, or seek to impose it, this conduct will be labelled "imperialist", probably with some justification.

Whether we agree with this or not, it does us no good to ignore the fact that many people involved in this are doing so because they "Want to make a bad situation better".

Unless we're prepared to take on a whole range of motivations when embarking on a discussion of issues like foreign involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan, we will be seeking only to advance a narrow prejudiced view of how the world turns.

If people wish to indulge in this as a passtime, either to sharpen up their debating skills, or to get some personal psycho-therapy, then that's fine, as long as they don't think they're going to contribute anything to their own or anyone else's understanding.

I won't be responding to comments until Tuesday week, since I'm going to be away enjoying myself, but please comment if you feel the need, and I'll respond later.


Reg

The End of Barbarism

I think this article at Progression of Faith is at least one good answer to how Christianity can once again address society in a thoughtful and meaningful way and simultaneously divest itself of the one thing in Christian theology that does not resonate with reasoned and intelligent folk everywhere. If it is true at all, isn't it best to re-work the Gospel toward a higher vision for society, beginning with the doctrine of "atonement," and prevent religion from bringing society down to its lowest common denominator: violence? What do you think?

Welcome new contributor

The author of at least 3 interesting blogs, including the one which got my interest in spirituality seriously rekindled:
http://mysteryofiniquity.wordpress.com
is now a contributor to this blog.
I don't suppose for a moment she'll have much time to contribute, but since she was gracious enough to make me a contributor on MOI, the least I could do was reciprocate.

Welcome.


Reg

Opinion, Belief, and Truth

In this article, Roger Scruton investigates "irony and forgiveness" in the context of how the West can confront the terrorist mind set, be it Islamist fundamentalist or otherwise.

I'll almost certainly be coming back to this article in the future, because it was positive, while provoking me to question some of my assumptions, which is why I bother to read this kind of stuff at all.

In the tangential spirit of this blog however, it also provoked in me a few other thoughts. For example, how do we view our own opinions and those of others?

Scruton imbues irony with the attribute of allowing us to perceive ourselves as "other", so that the possessor of that sense can appreciate how he/she appears to others, rather than simply viewing others from his/her own viewpoint.

We all notice very easily that other people's opinions are a result as much of their experience as their accumulated knowledge.

In theory, we know that this must also be true for us, but somehow, we, or certainly I, may find it difficult to view our own opinions as equally subjective when it comes to discussion with others.

I have tended to regard my opinions as central to who I am, when really they are just a projection of the temporary me - how I an today. These are the external trappings of me, as much as are the coping strategies I have adopted in the past to cope with adverse circumstances.

I think Scruton's perception of irony is valuable, in that it shows me that I need to become more detached from these external trappings - opinions which should be ephemeral in the face of new knowledge and experience, or coping strategies which may have passed beyond use if those adverse circumstances change.

Subjective as these things are, we cannot be sure that what we believe is true, we should not need it to be true for questionable emotional reasons, and the need to establish truth, righteousness ETC, can only militate against ire-free discussion, and a constructive exchange of information and varied life experience.

Reg

"Economic growth": Is it me?

I was just listening to a radio program here in the UK "The moral maze", in which the relationship between national wealth and equality or inequality was discussed.

Naturally, in the course of this, the issue of economic growth as the engine of wealth, and its sustainability, came up.

So far so good. My problem is that people use this term "economic growth" with no apparent reference to what is being produced. It's just "more", never "more what?"

Our current pattern of growth in the affluent industrial societies seems to me to be built on filling demand for something useful, or at least desirable, bringing out ever better versions of it, persuading people they'd be so much happier if they had more than one, and then expanding the pool of potential consumers by lending money to those who wouldn't normally be able to afford this object (good) or service.

For some years now, I've been bleating about how we should surely be able to put all this productive capacity to better and more humane use by manufacturing and growing stuff the rest of the under-provided under-fed world could use, rather than just a small and favoured portion of it, while still providing employment in the industrialised countries.

This could be roundly dismissed as idealistic hogwash in the face of an economic model that did at least work, and was based on tried and tested financial principles.

But, in the light of the catastrohic failure of this much-vaunted financial regime, if my hogwash doesn't work, there seems little doubt in my mind that traditional free market capitalism has also failed. The idea that exponential growth could somehow magically continue to expand was built on an ever growing mountain of debt, and money that didn't really exist. We've even largely given up making things here in the UK, in favour of providing all kinds of mysterious financial services that generate money, apparently out of thin air.
Forgive my limited understanding of all this, but the point is that, if the idealists have a problem, maybe the self-proclaimed realists do as well.

So does this provide us with a rare opportunity to take stock? Should we not be thinking about, not just how to produce more, but thinking about what we actually produce, and what use it actually is beyond just making stuff for the sake of creating a job for someone, profit for a corporation, and using up resources to end up in a land fill somewhere?

Is it really beyond the wit of humanity to restructure our manufacturing base to more useful and humane ends? What if the days of growth for growth's sake are numbered. Addressing the whole world instead of part of it may not make so much money for any of us. Maybe we'll all have to reappraise our attachment to affluence. But perhaps it would at least provide sustainable employment to some purpose, and people of good conscience might feel more connected to creation, and less alienated by vast accretions of pointless stuff.


Reg

Love and the Divine (2)

I was talking about a sense of "unconditional love" yesterday. In thinking about how I or others might experience this, I must confront the nature of the religious experience, and other similar experience in my life.

I have always set great store by the rational as the only chance we have of any quantifiable assessment of anything. Accordingly, like my father, I have been attracted to belief systems like Spiritualism, precisely because they offered something observable, where others simply offered theoretical constructs which, if you had no "Road To Damascus" episode of your own by way of coroboration, would either ring true or not.
Until the recent resurgence of my own interest in this area, I had put my general God experiences on the back burner, and I would talk of having no religious faith, while rather envying the certainties of those who do, not because they were necessarily true, but because of how good it must feel to be certain about something.
However, thinking about it, it's clear that I do have some certainties of my own, although they are a very long way from the user's manual which some brandish in the face of those who don't share their certainties. My point being?
My point being that these "certainties" of mine are not coming to me via my old friend rationality; they are coming to me via the mysterious input of spirit/emotion, depending on your viewpoint. I now have to face the fact that I am probably more certain of these convictions than I am of my rational conclusions and opinions. These latter are, and I think should be, fairly plastic, depending as they do on my own ability to substantiate them. To me, an opinion is only as good as my ability to justify it. In the rational realm, if I don't know why I believe something to be true, then there's nothing to discuss. So, personally, my opinions are, or should be, subject to change based on the daily accretion of experience and information.
But that Divine stuff is a whole other thing. I know it's true for me simply because it is, I feel it to be so. Many have gone to their death for the sake of a conviction which they could never prove by logical argument. So I have to face the fact that my faith, vague generalised thing that it is, is a new kind of certainty for me. In fact, it's the only kind of certainty for me because the rational world is subject to continuous revision. Tomorrow, some physicist might prove that everything we have believed about mass and energy is plain wrong, or at best a massive over-simplification. But that would do nothing to change my recollection of the real presence of limitless love which hit me in the chest while walking in the Malvern Hills, or during a school church service.

Coming back, eventually, to unconditional love, I find myself viewing it differently when thinking about it via what passes for my rationality, as opposed to feeling it.

In rational mode, unconditional love may make me start worrying about my unworthiness of it; or I might start thinking of the dangers of people believing they are loved as of right, making any conduct acceptable.
But unconditional love as I experience it is a thing of pure joy, which comes with no such worries attached. It simply exists, both as the Divine, and as an echo of that divinity for those of us who are lucky enough to find flashes of it in our lives through our human interactions, both as giver and receiver.

If that's a dichotomy, I just have to live with it, because the world is a place in which, improbable as it sounds, love exists, I am loved, and I am capable of expressing love, however imperfectly. On the occasions when I can do that, I feel most in tune with those numinous episodes; most aware that, whatever the ultimate truth is, it couldn't be better. In the face of that, the rational will simply have to learn to sit at the back and keep quiet occasionally.


Reg