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So, last night I realised I haven’t thought seriously about spirituality in a while. I am the kind of person who likes to occasionally re-examine the ways I think about things and analyse why I think in that way. Naturally I then spent seven hours thinking about religion and my personal relationship with it.
I don’t think I’ll ever believe in a god. I like having solid evidence. I was brought up without a god, and taught that believing in a god was just blindly following indoctrination. It didn’t help that a lot of people I knew were just blindly following indoctrination. I knew a girl in real life who believed in God so deeply she’d do anything her Church told her without question or analysis, even if it went against her god’s apparent compassion. She outwardly refused to develop a sense of morality other than what was already provided. According to her, God demanded unquestioning and unthinking obedience. (Coincidentally, so did her very religious parents.) I found, and still find, the idea of this repellent. It must be an incredibly insecure god who can’t even handle his followers taking a moment to really consider their beliefs and why they hold them. In a way though I can believe gods exist, in the same way France exists. There’s no platonic ideal of France. Soil from one side of the Pyrenees border is no more inherently French than soil from the other. France is a social construct. But France exists in people who believe they are subjects of France, and in treaties and constitutions, and borders that enforce the construct onto the real world. To me, gods are manifested in how humans make them manifest. Recently, I’ve been studying the scraps left of Mycenaean religion, 3200 years ago. It doesn’t matter that those gods probably didn’t exist as supernatural entities, or that anyone who believed in them as such died millenia ago. They still left an impact on the world through their believers. So they existed. I knew a girl on the internet once, about five or six years ago, who was an atheist. Then about a year later, she found what she called G-d, in how beautiful she thought the sound of Hebrew was, and in the echoes of history that resonated in her bones, and in the love, joy and comfort she found in Judaism. I watched her post through the year-long process of conversion. She disagreed with the holy books sometimes. She talked a lot about arguing with G-d, and about analysing the scripture, debating and disputing how much the imperfect hand of ancient man distorted the words of a perfect and all-loving G-d (actually, I’m not sure how much she believed in a supernatural entity called G-d, or how much G-d was a manifestation of compassion in the world). To her, it wasn’t that these things weren’t sacred enough to go unquestioned - they were too sacred to not be questioned. And so she questioned, and she found that this G-d was always her answer. I read something once about how unconditional love is overrated. A puppy will love its owner unconditionally because the puppy is biologically predisposed to love whoever it sees as its caregiver. It will keep loving even if it is kicked and starved and thrown out, because it has no other choice. Conditional love requires the person loving to have standards, and to have made the choice to love, and to have the ability to question their own choices. I hadn’t connected this to religion before, but it makes sense to connect it, I think. A god who wants conditional love seems better to me than a god who wants unconditional love. If I believed in a god it would be a god like this. I didn’t realise until reflecting on it now, but I have unconsciously tried to carry the idea of ‘too sacred to not be questioned’ with me, and I guess that’s why I just spent so long questioning myself. I don’t think I’ve come up with any new answers, just put into words the answers I’ve always had, and so I feel like I understand myself and my own relationship with spirituality and morality better than I did yesterday. I am putting this down in words partly to articulate and better understand my own beliefs, but I’m also going to post this just in case it encourages someone else to question themselves a bit, whether on their religious beliefs, political beliefs, or really anything subjective. It is partly due to people who simply believe and do not actually think that I gained a dislike for religion - it is partly due to seeing people (like Seraph!) put thought into religion that made me regain respect for it.
The following is a modification of a talk I made in 2012. The passage is Luke 22, 7 -19.
Today is Armistice Day and also Rememberance Sunday and, as such, I want to think a little about remembering and, in particular, about remembering big, world-changing events. We all have big events in our lives that we want to commit to memory, whether by ensuring that we have a whole library of photographs, by keeping a diary or by holding onto mementos or keepsakes. Some of these events we even celebrate and remember regularly, like birthdays and anniversaries. We’re all impacted by events in history as well and, for many of us, there are particular events that we take the time to reflect upon and commemorate whenever their anniversaries come around. This year, of course, today marks the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the armistice which ended World War One and on Armistice Day we remember not only that important event, but all those who died leading up to it and all others who have died through conflict across the globe. It is a solemn and sombre kind of remembering and, particularly in a significant year like this, it can weigh heavily upon us if we left it. I’ve experienced something like it before. 2012 was always going to be a year that seemed centred on one event, a deep, emotional link to the past. On the 15th April 2012, it was the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by that ship: a work of supreme Edwardian elegance, an engineering triumph, a terrible, unexpected disaster and a silent grave in the cold depths of the Atlantic. I have no particular connection to the ship. None of my relatives were passengers on her that I know of, nor did they serve on board or help to build her. She sank 71 years before I was born. My only connections, as I see it, are that I was born in Birkenhead, on the other side of the Mersey from where she was conceived in the offices of the White Star Line, and I grew up in the small coastal town of Donaghadee in Northern Ireland, around the corner from Belfast Lough where she was born and first set sail with hundreds watching her. They would have been able to see her from Donaghadee harbour, I imagine, waving and cheering in their best clothes. Despite this, I was haunted that weekend, six years ago. The wreck of the Titanic seemed to call to me, to burden me with its immense weight, with its one thousand, five hundred and fourteen lost souls. It felt real to me in a very unnatural way and it was actually difficult for me to focus on much else. I found it strange at the time, having, in a macabre sort of way, looked forward to the anniversary. In the end, I was glad to see it finally pass, without ever knowing why I felt anything for it at all. Which brings me to another anniversary of sorts that month. The week before it had been Easter. I was privileged enough to have been part of the Aberdeen Passion - a dramatic retelling of the Easter story performed before a collective audience of over two thousand people - and so, for once, I felt very strongly connected to the whole event, having, or so it seemed, relived the final days of Jesus’ life several times that weekend, albeit from the rather inauspicious role of a Pharisee. In the midst of all the emotions we experienced that weekend, excitement and nervousness, sorrow and joy, I couldn’t help but wonder why I didn’t feel like that all the time. It highlighted for me how distant I can feel from the Easter story at other times, or even at other Easters. After the Titanic commemoration I found myself wondering, why do I feel connected to a ship wreck that has nothing to do with me and yet can feel distant when reflecting on the core history of my faith? Why are we so moved on Armistice day and yet can so often feel unmoved on Good Friday? I thought about it a lot and in doing so realised something quite precious. I was brought back to thinking about a different night to remember, the night of Maundy Thursday, before Jesus was arrested. The night of the last supper. During the course of that meal Jesus did something very important for people like me, those prone to forgetting the wonderful things he has done. He instituted a sacrament - a visible symbol of God’s invisible grace - in which we are reminded of all that he has done for us. He didn’t just give us a religious ritual to perform, or a trial to pass, however. No. He gave us a meal: a meal to share with friends. Jesus has always known the full depth of human weakness. He knew that we were lost to sin and deserving of punishment, so he came to Earth to take that punishment in our place. He knew that we would struggle to repent of our sins, even in light of what he had done, so before he started his ministry he who was without sin was baptised in the river Jordan and repented for us. And he knew that despite all of that, we would forget and we would let the enemy distract us with other fixations and ideas, so he gave us a simple, joyful thing to do, sharing a meal with our friends, to make sure we would always remember the path to our salvation. What a kind, what a gracious God we have! God is a God who remembers. That much is clear to anyone who reads the Bible, especially the Old Testament. His people cry out to him again and again, ‘Remember us, oh Lord!’ and he does, faithfully. And he commands us to remember, over and over again: to remember the things he has done for us and the commands he has given. Remembering, it seems is an integral part of both who God is and what we are called to do as Christians, living our lives following his pattern. But in the eucharist, the communion meal, the bread and the wine - Jesus body and blood - it seems to me that, once again, God is doing something for us because we’re no good at it. He is remembering for us. On this weekend, when remembering seems so important and we can so easily fixate upon all the evil of the world, it is a comfort to me to know that God remembers me in my weakness and to remember, myself, the God who does and has done all things for us, so all we need to do is walk with Him. I still don’t know why the Titanic calls to me so much. There are lots of reasons, I suppose, the glamour of the ship, the portentous period in history, the tales of heroism and cowardice… I don’t know. In the end it’s just one instance in history. One disaster. And I don’t know why Easter and the event it celebrates is sometimes more distant to me than that, an event confined to the pages of the Bible, even though it’s an event which rewrote the universe and transforms the lives of those that follow Jesus forever. But I know that God will keep reminding me, calling me back to him again and again as I partake of the bread and wine, and for that I am grateful. What does it say to you? Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
Mark 13:1-8 Wrote:13:1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" When I first became a Christian, age eleven, I used to get very worked up over the apocalyptic stuff. I would obsess a little over Revelation and bought into all sorts of theories about the Gulf War and the European Union and the Antichrist and the End of the World. I thought it was really important and I used to try to convince non-Christian friends and peers about it. What I received in return was ridicule and though that was ultimately unkind, it was not wholly undeserved. In today’s passage, Jesus is trying to prevent just such speculation. Whilst, ironically, this is one of the passages sometimes used to justify speculation and even hysteria over real-world events and what they might mean eschatologically (‘to do with the end times’ - if you aren’t familiar with that word, as my former minister would say, that just means you’re normal). People often read it as Jesus being asked for the signs of the end times and then giving a convenient list of just those signs in reply, but that’s not what he’s doing at all. What Jesus is actually saying is quite clear if you read it carefully. He says that there will be those who try to lead you astray, cult leaders, false teachers, perhaps even those with just a few crazy ideas who fixate on them to the detriment of the rest of their faith. He says that there will be wars, but that we aren’t to be alarmed by them or become hysterical, or over-theorise. He says that there will be natural disasters. He is, in fact, listing the unexceptional horrors of history, the things that, however momentous and terrible they seem, happen any and will go on happening, but, he says, ‘the end is still to come’. Whilst he doesn’t come out and say it outright, his reply is basically, ‘There’s going to be all sorts of crazy stuff happening, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.’ There’s a fair bit to take in from this, I think and it’s worth spending some time reflecting on what that might mean for the world, for your country, for your family and even yourself. For me, I find it shocking - the world is a mess! - but also comforting - God knows it’s a mess and wants to prepare us for it, but there will come a time when it all ends. Instead of obsessing over whether Brexit is an escape from the Antichrist that is the EU (one young man essentially preached a sermon on this at my old church…), or if this or that natural disaster is the herald of even greater calamity, we’re to live in the present moment - expectant of Christ’s return, yes, but prepared for it by focussing on serving him now, by living out his Gospel, by looking after the poor, the widow and the foreigner, by demonstrating his love in everything we do. I look back on my teenage obsession with apocalypse with a degree of shame. I was so focused on the end of the grand narrative of Christianity (the nature of which is actually hotly debated anyway), that I wasn’t really focused on how I should be growing as a Christian there and then. With working through the difficulties of an anxiety disorder this year, I’ve learned a lot about the importance of living in the moment and this passage is a reminder of how well that translates into Christianity and into how God wants us to live for him. I’ll be the first to admit that I still have a lot to learn, but I’m willing to be present for God to teach me. Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
I'm sure you have, but did you watch the "Left Behind" series? Watching that is about as deep as I got into the end of the world stuff.
"...if you're normal, the crowd will accept you. But if you're deranged, the crowd will make you their leader." - Christopher Titus
Deranged in NS since 2011 One and ONLY minion of LadyRebels The OUTRAGEOUS CRAZY other half of LadyElysium (11-20-2018, 10:25 AM)Rebeltopia Wrote: I'm sure you have, but did you watch the "Left Behind" series? Watching that is about as deep as I got into the end of the world stuff.I didn't watch it, save half paying attention to the first first film, but I read quite a lot of the books. They were addictive. They also completely missed the point of Revelation. Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
Its "Hollywood"... Do you expect any less of them?
 I was never a reader, so the books passed me by.Thinking about this this morning, I do remember having some sort of "OMG! THIS IS IT!" moment about 2 or 2 1/2 years ago... I wrote about it, but Im not sure if I published it (facebook or journal) or if it somehow got deleted, but it was about a certain political candidate, and running for a very prestigious position, and how it eerily reminded me of the goings on in the beginning of the Left Behind series...
"...if you're normal, the crowd will accept you. But if you're deranged, the crowd will make you their leader." - Christopher Titus
Deranged in NS since 2011 One and ONLY minion of LadyRebels The OUTRAGEOUS CRAZY other half of LadyElysium (11-20-2018, 11:59 AM)Rebeltopia Wrote: Its "Hollywood"... Do you expect any less of them?It wasn't because it was Hollywood, it was because it was an overly literal interpretation of coded imagery about the persecuted church in the first century. Although I'm sure the films added a bit of Hollywood "sparkle" to that... :p Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
HOW TO FIND THE YEAR FOR THE START OF WORLD WAR I USING THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
IN 5 EASY (?) STEPS (NO, BUT REALLY, THIS IS NOT SPECULATION)
I’m going to preface this comment with the statement that I am not here to disprove the existence of a higher spiritual entity like God attacks religion. However, There are mistakes in TS3’s post above. For example (-607)+2520-1 does not equal 1914, but in fact points to 1912, a full 2 years before the First World War.
(11-25-2018, 09:31 AM)The Solar System Scope Wrote: Given that most sources disagree with your date for the fall of Jerusalem, I think you're stretching things rather a lot to say that this is not speculation. I would recommend that we refrain from such speculation in this thread as it tends not to be productive. I'll post my reflection for the day later this evening. Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
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