thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-11, TonyLB wrote:
Hiya Sydney! Quite a project you've volunteered yourself for. I'm a big fan of theology, in my own loving, often irreverent, "let's rassle" sorta way. I've got no end of respect for your beliefs, and you've clearly thought about them a heck of a lot more than I have, and therefore I will now compel you to explain and defend them so that I can scam the answers from your homework for my own benefit. Here goes!
I look at Christianity and I say "Man, that is one fine religion, but people sure do get focussed on the supernatural mysteries." Vincent asked "Why do you ask me to believe in such, bluntly, wacky stuff?" and you've answered "Well, it may not be as wacky as all that." That's cool. The evidentiary debate isn't what I'm particularly interested in. Whether or not it really happened, what's the motivation to believe in it? Why not just say "Jesus was this really incredible guy ... a human guy who did miraculous things in a way that you or I could and should aspire to."
As you've pointed out, the miracles are ... not huge. There's not a one that I couldn't point at and say "Hey, this is just an author holding an allegorical magnifying glass up to the kind of minor miracles we achieve by being really good people and caring for each other. Stripping away the supernatural trappings, this is the kind of thing I should be doing."
I am more moved by the mundane, human, non-allegorized versions of these miracles than by the supernatural light-shows. I am moved by the Jesus who talked to a woman who couldn't see her path, and when she could see again told her "Hey, that wasn't me ... I was just listening. Through your faith you have found the way." I am hugely more moved by the image of Jesus on the cross, dying ... really, for-keeps, dying, all because he did the right thing ... and in that moment still confident that everything he did had meaning, that the world was a good place nonetheless, that the mission was never about just him.
I can care about that guy in a way I can't care about the living incarnation of divine creative power. I look at the actual gospels, and I get, between the lines in the intricate little fillips of phrasing (comparing many translations, because my greek and aramaic aren't all they should be) the impressions of a real person. A person with a wierd, quirky sense of humor, a vast patience but a nasty temper, and a wicked little streak of conscious irony. Jesus gets pissed off. Jesus makes jokes. He sounds like one of the genuinely good guys. I feel like, person to person, I owe something to his memory.
When I set aside the notion that he's off-limits, that he's God and I'm just human and there can never be any comparison between us ... I look at it and say "Yeah, that kind of potential is in all of us. I dunno where it comes from, but it's there. I'd better get off my ass." A hard-headed look at the gospels as a poetic embellishment of non-supernatural miracles makes me want to achieve miracles myself.
By contrast, it seems to me that the supernatural trappings are largely there to tell people that they can't do that and shouldn't worry about it. Centuries of accumulated mysticism that boil down to "Don't try this at home!" That worries me deeply. And, moreover, it seems so unnecessary. Why not try it at home? It might work! I genuinely don't get the fixation on the supernatural. Whatever actually happened back then, today you've got a story that can be read either in a way that encourages you to take chances, make yourself vulnerable, and maybe change the world or in a way that tells you to keep your head down and wait for the cosmic cavalry. I've never heard an explanation that convinced me of the value of clinging to the latter, disempowering message.
If you've got an explanation, I'd really value it. I rate the odds that you'll convince me, personally, to change how I think at somewhere around zero, but the odds that I'll learn to better understand people of differing beliefs are much better, and I'm eager for that opportunity.
