This blog is an exploration into the question of what makes traditional Christianity unappealing to a great many people who turn to alternative models of spirituality to nourish and support their personal growth. Such a vast subject cannot be dealt with in a simple blog but some major issues are introduced and considered within their historic context.
In a geocentric universe ‘God’s in His heaven’ and ‘all’s right with the world’; the world of gods and ‘men’ is intimately related; in New Testament times it was a fairly recent switch from their god to God. The God of the Hebrews was for centuries recognised as their particular divinity in a world culture where there were ‘gods many, and lords many’ and each town or country had their own, or several, for different purposes. In New Testament times the exclusivity of the Jewish god-concept was a bane to their pagan neighbours. The emperor if not a god while living, was looking to become one once dead.
The sun, moon and stars were in the heavens for the sole benefit of humankind and at the end of the land there was an infinity of sea. In such a neat and contained universe it was easy to imagine the majesty of God extending to an intimate caring for each individual soul, to understand their desires and to observe and abhor or punish their every sin. He always knew what was going on and took a personal hand in directing the course of history. If His nation suffered it was because of their disobedience and if they thrived it was His blessing on them for their devotion. Good and bad; right and wrong; black and white were quite distinct categories with not much room for various shades of grey.
We cannot go there. It is impossible for us fully to immerse ourselves in such a world view. With the best of intentions, we can think about it, try to imagine it but actually for it to be our reality is not possible. This is the world view that determined the language of the New Testament and the creeds of Christendom and is still the language of religion today. This is one reason why it is such a problem for people to be even interested in the faith; there are so many linguistic and intellectual hoops one has to jump through to make any sense of it; it is all too hard. To accept the articles of faith as stated, for many people is an absurdity too far. Virgin Birth? Choirs of angels lighting up the sky? Poverty is a virtue? Just a few things off the top of my head that make people wince.
This explains I think, why people like Stephen Fry or Richard Dawkins etc. are so critical of Christianity. It is why it proves difficult to refute them to any conclusive extent because the gymnastic feat of bridging two vastly different world views is all too hard and maybe it seems like there is more to lose than to gain by attempting it. Christians both believe and do not believe what the words say, and I don’t mean in their variety of churches. I mean in any given Christian church or person there are bits confined to the too hard basket or simply ignored as a problem, then again, for the initiates there’s no problem, they have mastered the gymnastics.
In all of this I am not being judgmental about the church I am wanting to point out how difficult it is to bridge the cosmological/language barrier. Just changing the actual words doesn’t do it because the beliefs out of which that language rises are fundamentally different. Let me try an example. Every word and every idea in the New Testament, that is designed to encourage faith, is based in two beliefs, the first being that Jesus was raised from the dead. What you say about someone’s life before they rose from the dead, when they were resurrected cannot be the same as you would say about them if they had merely died. The fact of the Resurrection coloured everything that was said about Jesus in the Gospel.
I need to say very clearly that I am not doubting the Resurrection, what I am raising thoughts about is that the way in which it was understood then is very different from any interpretation we make of it today. A good example is the descriptions of Jesus eating with His disciples post-Resurrection, this was a way of convincing the original audience of the absolute reality of His Resurrection. For many people it has just the opposite effect. Believing in His appearances after death is not a hurdle, but that He needed to nourish His Resurrected body as though physical is a jump too far.
The second belief that coloured the reporting was that Jesus was going to come again in glory, very soon. Creation as they knew it was coming to an end and a New Order, with Christ at its head, would be installed. Given their interpretation of the ‘shape’ of the universe this was quite do-able for an Almighty God. The New Creation was open to all people, not just the Jews (which was a bit of a shock for some of them) and that was why Paul was dashing around furiously trying to convert everyone because he wanted them all to have entry into this great glory, and the entry ticket was belief in the Resurrection of Christ.
Within orthodoxy we are confined to language of another aeon. This goes for every aspect of the faith. Think about the concept of sin. In a geocentric universe the idea of God being privy to all and every misdemeanour is not too far a stretch to imagine. In a heliocentric universe such domesticity does not work. That is not to say my misdemeanours do not matter but they are contextualized differently. Furthermore, and more importantly, the easy divide between right and wrong that once worked for humanity is no longer a viable means of determining. Our understanding of what it means to be human, how our responses, emotions and therefore behaviour are modelled in our earliest months; how our sexuality is determined by something far more complicated than conscious choice, and so one could go on, these undeniable facts of the human situation severely undercut the simple division of right and wrong behaviour.
You can see the problem writ large in some cases where teaching and practice come into conflict and are inconsistent. For example, the teachings regarding adultery and divorce are quite clear and specific in the Gospel but they have been moved aside under the pressures of modern living. The prohibition against same sex marriage doesn’t get a mention in the bible ‘cos it had never been thought of (presumably). There are some very unclear words about ‘unnatural practices’ which are forbidden, but it is all incidental and very cloudy. Nevertheless, the attitude to same sex relationships has been punitive in the extreme, condemned and criminalized as adultery never has been. Only now is a more enlightened attitude beginning to be shown in some parts of the church. This seeming double standard underscores the problem that we do not any longer have the ability nor the desire for simple categorization of sins.
While one can set it out boldly in such life changing situations it is an ongoing problem in everyday life also, and not for Christians only. Our understanding of right and wrong is so confused by our cultural standards as well as our upbringing that we hardly know where to start in unravelling them. That is a task either for experts or, more likely, for self-responsible adults within their own hearts, not for me in this paper. I am attempting an altogether more defined task, to play around with ideas of God, religion and sin; because when we see how the ancient universe functioned in the minds of the people and how our current scientific investigation deflects our assent to the biblical language we have a very knotty problem, worthy of serious attention.
The church is caught in the bind of needing to be true to its formation and its traditions but has not yet found the way to translate them in ways that both honour the past and communicate in the present. The problem may be solved at the level of theological discourse, but, as is so often is the case with academic discourse, it doesn’t filter down to the language of everyday life.
The language of everyday has taken a new tack in recent years for talk about Omnipotence, it is simply referred to as ‘the Universe’. The late Bob Proctor pointed out once, that when scientists talk about energy and when theologians talk about God, they use the same descriptors. Maybe that validates the current fashion for talking about the Universe rather than God as the Source of all. God is such a loaded concept. As I pointed out some years ago the only answer to the question Do you believe in God? is, ”Well, that depends what you mean by God”. What the question means in the mind of the questioner may be so far removed from what I am prepared to assent to, an affirmative answer would be substantially untrue and could mark me out as ‘one of us’ when I’m definitely not!
The only parameters for the Universe are scientific which no-one understands anyway so the concept is fluid and free from doctrinal restrictions. It is both more and less personal and leaves the responsibility for life, where it belongs, with the individual and it works for loads of people. (The ramifications of that are material for another paper, not this one)! The basis for the belief in the Universe as the Benign Source is in quantum physics of which it is said by those who know, that if you say you understand it you are wrong. That smacks of Ultimate Mystery so we are back to God language.
God as God seems entirely irrelevant to real life. The Universe, however is a very different thing. For a start, the Universe loves you and wants you to be abundant and happy. God loves you and wants you to be abundant and happy, according to orthodoxy but that love has been overlaid with so many conditions it is not as reliable as the love of your average human parent. (Hardly God’s fault, one might say!) Given the accent on sin that colours much Christian discourse one could be forgiven for thinking God is a very punitive deity needing much placating.
One of the happiest differences between God and the Universe is that the latter likes women and wants them to have full, enjoyable lives even if they are mothers, whereas the God of the church has, from earliest times, been promoted as expecting every virtue and self-giving from women for whom to think of their own needs was sin and selfishness. (Again, you can’t really blame God.) I haven’t discovered the Universe’s attitude to sin, it doesn’t seem to have been mentioned, perhaps it is tucked away, in different words, in the self-responsibility package. In practical terms, I think this is one of the most pertinent differences between the archaic language of religion and the language of a scientific age.
Another area of Christian practice which has come into the limelight under the impact of quantum physics though, of course, the language has changed, is that of prayer, in particular intercessory prayer, (prayer for others). The unaccountable ways in which energy behaves has caused serious research into prayer and healing and especially distance healing. Instead of healing ’miracles’ being woo-woo or ‘originally misdiagnosed’ they are now a respectable area of research and are talked about in high class academic circles even as, like so much else of that sort, the discussion hasn’t ‘hit the streets’.
This is another field where devotees of the Universe as the Source of all things have taken up the reality and re-named it for practical use. Saying “I will pray for you” is language used easily only among those of a shared religious sensibility; but it is alright to say to anyone, “I will be thinking of you and sending lots of loving energy”. “That which we call a rose…..”
Most recently I have come across a further field of research called ‘emotional contagion’ which sounds dire but is quite the opposite! An example will make the point. People all over the world meditating are affecting the global state, the more people do it the more people ‘catch on’ and so it spreads. Whenever you are thinking ‘prayerfully’ about someone or something and you recollect that there are millions meditating too you are part of something that is so much bigger and greater than you. You get why they say ‘contagion’? Science has proved that flu bugs are not the only form of contagion
Love and a desire for the well-being of all is contagious!!!
Somehow love is at the core of it all whatever kind of universe one posits. It is almost as though, through the explorations of the quantum world science is affirming all that is best and enduring about Christian teaching and dumping that which is time-conditioned and fitted only for an age long gone. Paring away the pre-scientific world view and the accretions of church culture that it produced, the God of Jesus and St. Paul is as comprehensive and appealing as is ‘the Universe’. They are recognizably the same Reality, both mysterious, beyond ultimate understanding, with the motivating Force being a kind of love that surpasses our comprehension but not our experience.