A Spiritual Diablog

Judging Others’ Choices. Post #4

2005-10-26T20:33:00.000-04:00

If I were him, I would have acted differently. If I were her, I would never have chosen to do that.

This is the essential thought process by which we judge others.

Yet surely if you were him or her, then “you” would no longer be you. Unless you’re a member of the Holy Trinity, you don’t get to be more than one person at a time.

Because you assume that if you were in the other person’s place, you would act differently; or that you would never have gotten yourself into that position to begin with and, therefore, this other person must also have been able to act differently – well, we’re just not reasoning correctly when we think along such lines.

All we’re really saying is that we would never have done such-and-such under any circumstances. And we may not even really know that much.

We can’t plausibly make ourselves the measure of others.

Free Choice and Judgment. Post #3

2005-10-24T14:18:00.000-04:00

I appreciate the diversity of viewpoints and the thought that people put behind their comments to this blog. I started to write a reply to one of you in the comments section of my last post, and then realized that the comment and my reply is a post in itself. It summarizes a lot of what’s been said so far, and at the same time looks at how free choice bears on the issue of passing judgment. Lucy, along with a number of other commentators, favors the idea that when we do wrong, it’s primarily a matter of free choice rather than primarily a matter of limited moral knowledge or awareness.

Lucy: “Paul, I am not trying to pass judgement on anyone. God makes the ultimate judgement on each and every soul. Judge not lest ye be judged. You are talking about the grey area between good and bad choices, or that is what it seems to me. Maybe we just understand things differently.”

Paul: I’m saying that it’s impossible to prove that we do or do not have free moral choice (or free will in any other aspect of our lives.) I'm also acknowledging that most people who’ve posted comments, myself included, do feel that we have a measure of freedom in moral decision making. However, the prevailing view seems to recognize strong influences that bear on how we come to arrive at moral decisions, to the effect that our degree of choice is far from completely free. My personal view is that the degree appears highly limited.

If, instead of seeing moral choice as quite limited, we see it as perhaps not perfectly free, but nearly so, then this conduces to judging other persons, and not just their actions. We view them as doing evil not because “they know not what they do,” but because, although they have full moral awareness, they choose evil. This allows us to blame them deeply as persons – to judge them. At the same time, it allows us to see ourselves as highly virtuous free-choosers of the good. All this represents a big payoff for the ego.

So when, as in your previous comment, somebody says something like, "I know that there are some sicko's out there that are so weak that they can't make a good choice," it sounds highly judgmental. Like you say, you’re not passing ultimate judgment in the sense of deciding who’s going to heaven and hell. But when the Bible says to judge not, not to throw stones, etc., these lines aren’t meant to dissuade Christians from trying to wrestle Jesus Christ out of his throne on Judgment Day! That’d hafta be really hard!

I think the lines are telling us not to pass moral judgment on other persons; not to consider ourselves experts on their minds, their hearts, their souls, what they’ve been through in life – not only in the outer world, but also in the private world where they developed whatever sense they came to have of themselves in relation to others. Just because I wouldn’t or couldn’t have done what some other person did doesn’t give me insight that he or she freely chose it. We are not to consider ourselves the measure of others. Judge not.

Btw, I’m casting no stones in your direction, Lucy, and appreciate your comments and patience. And I only know something about ego because I have one…

Free Choice and Morality. Post #2

2005-10-20T20:26:00.000-04:00

Morality Demands Free Choice

Some of you believe that morality is possible only if we have complete freedom of choice. Examples:

Gangadhar: “Without free will, no opportunity for choices between right and wrong exist. Creatures without free will cannot have ethics because they have no choice.”

Kate: “As Gangadhar said, without some acknowledgement of… free will, how could there be any ethics?

"It would be crazy then, to hold anyone responsible for their good or bad acts. It would make no sense to have prisons, or the educational system for that matter. Everything would be relative. Why not still have slavery? Why shouldn't Hitler rule the world? I know I'm oversimplifying here, but do you see what I mean?

"I just can't accept that point of view. But I'm curious to know what you think about that aspect of personal responsibility.”

Morality Does Not Demand Free Choice

Here’s how morality is understood when the main factor behind how we behave is viewed as our degree of awareness of self in relation to God – or, conversely, our level of ignorance concerning this matter. (If you’re a Buddhist or have Buddhist leanings, feel free to substitute “enlightenment” for “awareness of self in relation to God.”)

In brief:

That which is moral or ethical is that which does good. That which is immoral or unethical is that which does harm.

The less ignorant we are, the more we do good. The more ignorant we are, the more we do harm.

I think that those who view free choice as the quintessence of morality must still have some experience of moral ignorance vs. moral awareness as leading them to do harm vs. good. All of us remember past occasions of having done wrong where we learned something from the experience and wouldn’t do it again because of what we learned.

Whichever theory is correct, or more correct – whether we do good/harm from out of enlightenment/ignorance or from out of free choice -- does not make the good that we do better or the harm that we do worse. Acting well from out of diminished ignorance is a good thing. Acting well from out of free choice is a good thing, if that’s how it works.

Problems with Morality as Free Choice

However, one problem with the idea that we make perfectly free moral choices is that it makes it easy for our egos to get involved. We may compare ourselves to others. It makes it easy to congratulate ourselves about how good we are, or to pass judgment against others (or ourselves). Because those who choose evil knowing perfectly well what they do must be evil indeed. We might even conclude that Jesus may not forgive those who choose evil knowing what they do.

Passing judgment against others as free choosers of evil makes it easy to demonize them and want to punish them. The criminal justice system is a good example. It’s founded on the idea of punishment. We have a prison system where prisoners are allowed to rape and stab other prisoners, but who cares? They’re getting what they deserve.

Criminal Justice

And what we get is a high rate of recidivism – criminals who exit the system more angry and hate-filled than before they entered it. Why? Because the idea of “teaching a lesson” to an adult in the sense of punishing him is, frankly, idiotic. It’s psychologically incorrect. Punishment may have some use in instilling a rudimentary conscience in a young child. But inmates aren’t young children who view their prison guards and wardens as parental figures whose values and mores they’re primed to internalize.

As a practical matter, what the criminal justice system ought to do is A) protect society from criminals by locking them up, and B) provide for a prison life that’s as sane and simple as possible. Let’s call it a monastic model rather than a punishment model. Instead of enraging the angry, why not give them a simple and structured life that provides opportunities for psychological, spiritual, and educational growth? Why not encourage those with the capacity to become better persons to do so?

As far as the factors we’d consider for judging and sentencing criminals goes, nothing would change. As a practical matter, whether we view free choice as illusion or reality, some criminals do, for example, “premeditate” more than others. Whether their premeditation was freely chosen or whether it was set in motion and absolutely determined by the forces that came into play at the first instant of creation – who cares?

What matters is that premeditation suggests that the criminal is a greater danger to society than someone who, for example, commits a “crime of passion.” Similarly, a serial killer poses a greater risk to society than someone who murders once in the course of a drunken brawl.

The concept of “responsibility” therefore remains a sound way to judge criminals. Not because we must believe that they are ultimately and fully responsible as free choosers of the harm they do, but because factors like forethought, mental competency, and age, are indicators of how great a propensity the criminal has to commit a criminal act again. “Responsible” now simply means “went through a conscious, reflective, and deliberative thought-process prior to commission of the crime.” That type of thought process is stable, likely to be repeated, and makes a person who thinks that way a greater danger to society regardless of whether we ever resolve the question of whether such conscious and deliberative types of thought processes are freely chosen.

Likewise, nothing changes in our view of harmful individuals, institutions, and practices such as evil dictators and slavery. We oppose them as much as ever. Nothing concerning our values and morals becomes more “relative.”

Free Choice:!!!!!!! Post #1

2005-10-17T11:19:00.000-04:00

Only since I’ve started blogging have I been aware of the special importance of free will to many Christians and Muslims, where it takes the form of “free choice” in matters pertaining to religion. It seems to me that free will is impossible to prove or disprove.

!!!!!!!! I can always claim that I was free to choose to refrain from adding those gratuitous exclamation points to the start of this sentence. In fact I have a strong feeling that I really could have refrained from doing so; or that I could have deleted them rather than chosen to post them. Yet how can I ever really know? I can never go back to that moment in time for a re-try in order to find out for sure...

Note that having a strong feeling that something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. When I was maybe six years old, I remember one time when we had spinach at dinner. I had the feeling that if I tried, I could lift the corner of the house. I watched a lot of Popeye. It didn’t work out.

When I’ve heard people discuss free will in a religious context, it’s usually been one or the other of two ideas.

1. Choosing Belief: It’s up to us whether to freely choose to accept, say, Jesus Christ as our personal savior; or, for example, Mohammed as Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as the divinely dictated last best Word of God to humankind. (Actually, these aren’t just examples. In fact, it’s Christians and Muslims, in particular, that I’ve heard use the idea of choice in this manner.)

2. Choosing the Good: God allows evil to exist - even though, being all-powerful, he doesn’t have to - because this is the only way that he was able to create real human beings. We would all be “zombies” or “automatons” if we weren’t free to choose between good and evil.

To me, each of these ideas has problems. Maybe we can save that for next post.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Belief

In my own spiritual life, the more consequential the matter, the less choice I’ve felt I’ve had. For example, in my teens through early twenties, I had trouble with the Christian beliefs I’d grown up with, and was in despair over this. I wanted to believe, but couldn’t. The beliefs didn’t make sense to me. And as far as people who claimed to know or have special insight that they were true – well, that didn’t make sense to me either. I’ll spare you the details, but in sum: in all honesty I wanted to believe, but couldn’t.

I wasn't "choosing" unbelief. I was dragged into it kicking and screaming. For me, the Catholic Church might as well have been saying, “2+2=5,” or, “Women are bald despite the appearance of having hair.”

Then, at age 23, I had an experience that was the major turning point of my life. It was diametrically opposed to the negative world view I’d developed. I couldn’t deny that it had happened. I found myself revising my perspective on life. Despair ended. Again, to whatever extent choice was involved, it sure wasn’t the prime mover.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Good v. Evil

As far as choosing good vs. evil goes, again, the major impetus behind my acts has never been a sense of free choice. Whenever I’ve been highly conscious that one way is better or right, and another way of proceeding is a way of doing harm or wrong, I’ve done the right thing. It’s been at times of ignorance and unconsciousness that I’ve been at my worst.

In other words, I can’t recall ever clearly recognizing a course of action as harmful to others and thus to myself, in at least a spiritual sense, then taking it anyway. Why would I do that?

So you could say that when it comes to matters of the spirit, I’ve been the opposite of a “free thinker” and “free chooser.” I’ve never been able to believe as I pleased, but only what has been compelling. I’ve never acted badly except when I really didn’t know what I was doing; didn’t fully understand or appreciate the implications.

Where I have the feeling of having the most choice is with the least significant things. What will I decide to have for lunch today, or which brand of light bulb will I pick out at the store? Will I use those exclamation points or not? It really feels like I could go either way on matters of small consequence – just flip a coin if I wanted to.

What’s It Been Like for You?

What’s it been like for you? Have you moved forward in spiritual and moral matters mainly by way of clear and conscious free choices?

If, say, you’re a Christian, did you inform yourself about religions like Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, so that you chose Christianity with full conscious deliberation, having weighed the alternatives? Or did you carefully examine criticisms of your beliefs, find your beliefs implausible, and then choose to believe them anyway, even though you think they’re probably not true? That would sound to me like a real choice, although I don’t understand how it could be done. On the other hand, if you hold your religious beliefs because they make a great deal of sense, then I don’t understand what role choice plays. We all believe things that make a lot of sense, and whether we wish to or not.

If you’re an atheist, do you ever recall saying to yourself: “Hmm… I could choose to believe in God and receive his divine love and eternal mercy, but I’d rather pass on that...” So whatever were you thinking?!? If you’re an agnostic, have you chosen to be undecided and confused? Why?

And when you were a kid, and, say, stole that candy, did you really know what you were doing? Are you still stealing candy? If not, why did you stop? Free choice, or better understanding?

The Profundity of The Captain and Taneal

2005-10-10T12:14:00.000-04:00

“Love – love will keep us together…” Okay, the Captain and Taneal may seem an odd choice to start this post, but it’s all Mbains’ fault. I consider him my “resident atheist” since he comments here occasionally; I’ve linked to his “Silly Humans” blog on my blogroll.

MB is innocent of having referred in any way to the dynamic singing duo. But he did start a train of thought that took me there...

In a comment to my 10/3 post, he picked up on my concluding line, “I have done nothing by myself – ever.” I’d given a couple examples of what I meant, including how looking up into the branches of a tree had occasioned a particular thought. MB emphasized that it was my mind that thunk the thought. And certainly I wouldn’t deny that my own cerebral cortex is the proximate cause of whatever I think.

Literally Whole

Nevertheless, it remains true that reality, whatever it is, functions as a whole - literally. For example, the pressure in the cells of our bodies exactly counteracts earth’s atmospheric pressure: get tossed into outer space without a pressurized suit or vehicle and you’d explode. The heavy elements in our bodies necessary to life were forged in the explosions of second generation stars as the universe unfolded. Anyone knowing a lot more about science than I do could provide a lot more examples.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James broadly defines religion as our attitude toward life as a whole. Life, reality, is in fact a whole. I think it’s a good definition.

Some believe reality is a whole with two basic parts: nature, on the one hand, and on the other, God conceived as existing in complete or partial distinction from nature. But it isn’t necessary to have this belief in order to experience, as well as understand, that reality is a whole. Being an atheist is no obstacle.

Experiencing Wholeness

Take love, for example. Love brings us together (hats off to Captain and Taneal…). Love is one way in which we can experience and increase the wholeness of life, and in particular, human life. Empathy, forgiveness, compassion (which, imo, are just variations on the love theme…) – experiencing these things doesn’t require religious beliefs.

Or take the oceanic feelings that occur for many of us in relation to nature. Alone under the sky, we can directly experience something of our personal relationship to the larger reality; sense the fact that we have no existence apart from it, regardless of whether we believe that this all-inclusive reality includes a more or less distinct entity or aspect that we call God or divine.

Or take the unitive states of consciousness that can be known through contemplative prayer or meditation, and that occur spontaneously in some lives. To read descriptions of these experiences by persons who have written about them, and the techniques outlined for entering into them, is to recognize that a single basic kind of experience occurs cross-culturally. This is off the top of my head, but if I recall correctly, there’s a book by an author named Walter Stacey or Stace that’s good on demonstrating this point. I think “mysticism” was in the title, which can be a problematic; this word sometimes refers to alternative belief systems and experiential claims that many people find questionable. But Stace – also James – focuses his discussion on a clearly identifiable form of “altered state of consciousness,” and one that can have far reaching consequences for how we lead our lives.

The Plan: The Land of Live. Post #1

2005-10-05T10:23:00.000-04:00

As we went from discussing gratitude to how prayer may or may not work, some of you touched on the subject of a divine plan – the idea that even the details of what happens here on earth and in the universe is the acting out of a preconceived scheme of things established ahead of time by God. This view is commonly held among many groups of Christians, and I believe Muslims and Jews as well. The concept of a preconceived plan also frequently enters into other religious belief systems in one form or another. Here, from what I’ve seen, it often involves “destiny” – for example, in ideas of karma, reincarnation, and past lives.

Those who speak of the existence of a plan always rely heavily on some hidden or unseen aspect of it. That’s the part that explains how situations and events in this world that appear chance, chaotic, or dynamic when we just look at them, are really aspects of a well constructed – well, “intelligent design,” I suppose.

I assume that in the West, divine plan thinking represents a particular understanding of scripture; one that has apparently become well established in many organized religions. Personally, there’s a lot I don’t understand about the idea of a plan. Here are a few things that come to mind:

Filling in the Blanks

Free will: If we can act on free will, this sounds like a major area in which God didn’t plan out details in a preconceived manner. So is the idea that God planned for “free will” as a general sort of item or box in his overall scheme of things, but then left the specific contents of that box blank, so to speak? Because if God planned each of our freely made decisions in advance, it’s hard to understand how they’d be free. Wouldn’t we be the dreaded “zombies” that it’s usually said we would have to be without free choice? I do kind of wonder about that too. I mean, since we all have free will (or, don’t – but either way, it’s the same for all of us), then isn’t it hard to know if we’d really act like zombies without it? Then again, maybe we’re acting like zombies now, and don’t have any non-zombie humans around for comparison purposes…

Anyway: If God’s plan provides for free will in general but leaves the particulars up to us, are there additional “general” components to the plan? For example, did God plan out in advance exactly which way every leaf would land on the ground every autumn – or do the trees, the sun, and the wind work that out? Did God plan out which twigs every bird would select every spring for their nests, or has he allowed that blank to be filled in by the birds?

The more “blanks” there are, the more reality looks to me like an actual and ongoing act of creation and not something that was mapped out and preconceived ahead of time. Anyone familiar with creativity knows that the dynamic processes involved are very different from what it’s like to use the mind with a cleverness and intelligence that decides beforehand what the finished product will look like. If God’s a planner, for me that’s quite a different statement from saying that God is a genuine Creator.

Knowing A Lot

Yet certainly there are advantages to believing in a plan and believing that you know a lot about its unseen details. You can explain anything. The hidden part of the plan serves as a balance sheet, an unseen ledger so that any contradictions, inconsistencies, injustices, or other forms of untidiness that we observe in reality as we know it now, are only apparent.

And no one can ever prove you wrong. You can’t “go there” with someone who questions your idea of the plan to “look” and see if it’s really true. No one can check up on the accuracy of your assertions.

To give a simplistic and silly example, and yet one that operates on plan-principles, I could tell you I know about the Land of Live. (Live is evil spelled backwards…) Any time something evil happens in the world as we know it now, something very lively and twice as nice happens there.

Still, we should never do things here on purpose that are evil. For if we choose evil just to make that burst of positive energy happen in the Land of Live, to make it twice as nice for us when we finally get there, well, I hate to tell you, but that’s the one time it doesn’t work. A neutralizing energy field from that kind of thinking always crosses over into the Land of Live, so that nothing happens any different there than would have happened otherwise.

Things Unseen

I believe in the reality of things unseen myself. In fact, I tend to believe reality is mostly unknown by us in its full sweep, compass, and power.

When people around the world offer their different explanations concerning how much they know about things unseen, and in so much detail – well, frankly, the more they say they know, and the more details they give, the less convincing it sounds to me.

Anyone know how the idea of a divine plan got started?

Pls. note: the "Changes" link has been updated to the topic of Gratitude...

Gratitude and Prayer. Post #3

2005-09-30T11:31:00.000-04:00

Many people feel grateful when they pray for something and believe that their prayers have been answered. Some questions:

Are all prayers equally spiritual, religious - or realistic?

Would you pray for:

A winning lottery ticket?
A new car?
A better paying job?
Finding Mister or Miss Right?
Good health?
Averting a hurricane?
Someone else’s soul?
Inner strength?
Victory in war?
World peace?
The long term survival of our species on this planet?

Thoughts

If you believe in the power of petitionary prayer (making specific requests of God), have you thought about how it works? In what manner do our prayers influence God’s decision? Or, if we don’t feel that we can influence God, and our bottom line is, “Thy will be done,” then why are we praying?

Sometimes good things happen that we didn’t pray for and may never even have anticipated. So when we do pray for something and get it, what makes us think that we received a special answer to our prayer – as opposed to another good thing just happening?

Do some people or groups of people have more prayer power than others? Do children or elderly people have more prayer power? If we’ve been especially good lately, does this increase the effectiveness of our prayers?

Usually what I hear is that people who believe in the power of prayer have the most prayer power; and that when people’s prayers don’t come true, it’s because they don’t believe sufficiently in the power of prayer. A couple thoughts:

Has anyone ever checked this out? It seems like it would be easy enough to have two groups of people, one skeptical about prayer and the other believing in it, each pray for the same thing to find out whether the believers got better results. Of course nowadays everyone doing a study seems to be a special interest group of one kind of another, so it might be hard to trust the results...

On the other hand, some people may object to even trying to test whether petitionary prayer works. Isn’t there a biblical verse about not “testing” God? Or perhaps the word is “tempting…? Either way, it’s hard to see how this word could have referred to applying the scientific method to prayer, since the Bible was written so long before science came along.

Problems

Even if we refrain from trying to test whether petitionary prayer really works, and just accept that it does, I still see a few potential problems with a scenario in which God respectively rewards and punishes believers and disbelievers for their belief or disbelief in the power of prayer by granting prayers only or primarily to believers.

First: Assuming God wants us to believe in the power of prayer, then granting prayers to those who already believe in it while not granting prayers to those who harbor doubts concerning its efficacy, seems an odd way for God to promote belief in prayer. I say “odd” rather than “mysterious” because although I, like many of us, find God mysterious, I also find that people often use the word mysterious to refer to things that are simply illogical or contradicted by experience. To me, mystery is very deep, and has to do with the nature of being itself – something entirely different than riddles, word play, or logical contradictions that are transparently products of the human mind.

Second: Consider the verse, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing.” Maybe this justifies why God doesn’t tend to grant prayers to those with little belief in prayer’s power? And yet everyone I’ve ever spoken to who’s convinced of the power of prayer believes in it precisely because they think they’ve seen it work…

Third: A scenario in which God respectively rewards and punishes believers/disbelievers in the power of prayer for their belief/disbelief would seem to presuppose that God feels that those who don’t believe in the power of petitionary prayer are doing something wrong or sinful by being as honest and conscientious as they can be about the matter. For some of us are incapable of “choosing” our beliefs. Whatever we may want to believe, we believe what appears to be true. The best that some of us could ever do in terms of affirming that we believe in the power of prayer would be to lie and tell others that we do, even though we would know that in fact we doubted. It is hard to – believe… that God would want us to lie, or would punish us for something that’s not a choice.

Gratitude, Legos, and the Divine Plan. Post #2

2005-09-28T10:42:00.000-04:00

Global Gratitude

Mau: “Everything we have is already a miracle.” Michael, similarly: “What we should be asking for is not more blessings, but to realize and be grateful for the blessings we have already received.”

La Coloratura: “When we {learn to} recognize {those things that we already} have more often than {those which we lack}, then we begin to experience real joy. And I think the more one takes time to be grateful, the more one will find that every day contains a myriad of opportunities to experience gratefulness. As an example, I can experience gratitude by marveling in the beauty and strength of my granite kitchen counter. Nothing more than that, and I am filled with a deeper sense of well-being and peace.”

I’ve also had a sense of joy and peace tinged with gratitude in relation to the simplest things: the sun on my back, the blue sky, how the air feels and smells. Being itself is a “given,” a surprise, nothing that we can personally account for or explain. So in this sense, it seems to me that life can have a feeling of being something like a “gift” regardless of our religious beliefs or lack thereof.

And I like Doshar’s, “Even the patience with which we face hardships is a blessing from God.” This again strikes me as pointing to something very basic: the strength and resilience by which so many of us are able to survive even terrible adversity. Here is something that we can find within ourselves which is again gift-like or given, something amazing and more than we can account for, whatever our beliefs or world view.

I find no conflict in feeling a global sense of joy, peace, and gratitude in relation to the elemental and basic things that inform and surround us, and that sustain all our lives. There is nothing here to me that seems contradictory or in need of explanation. For me, this includes SH’s gratitude in relation to all those who came before us. From basics like farming or the invention of written language, to the computer, the things we do and enjoy day to day were made possible by the prior creations, discoveries, and actions of others.

Being Particularly Grateful…

Now here’s where it gets tricky…

Some of us have much more to be grateful for than others in terms of the specific circumstances and events of our lives. The poor, the ill, victims of crime and war… Others of us watch it all on TV, troubled by whether we should take out a fifteen or thirty year mortgage. The contrasts in our varied… “fortunes?” – “blessings?” - are enormous.

Here are some explanations often given for the discrepancies. Some but not all are derived from your comments.

Explanations for Special Blessings

Good Things Happen to Good People; Bad Things… – This was the position of Job’s friends in the Book of Job. “He must be sinning in secret.” Even though Job outwardly appeared to be a good and faithful man, he must not be; otherwise God would bless rather than punish him. Here are three variations on this theme:

1. God had no special purpose in mind for, say, those other people who died in the crash that nearly killed me - or for anyone else whose life goes down in flames through no apparent fault of their own. Those other guys just aren’t quite as important in the divine plan as I am.

2. Sickness is necessarily a sign of spiritual or psychological unwellness.

3. Even if the person appears to be perfectly wonderful, they must have done terrible things in a past life if their present hardships are great. Justice prevails when we reap the consequences of things for which we have no memory. (Problems: Memory is the crux of identity. It’s what makes Alzheimer’s disease so dreaded. Most of us are clueless about having had any past lives. It’s hard for me to see any justice or even sense in receiving troubles or benefits for things that an “I” did of whom I have no recollection and yet was somehow purportedly “me.”)

God’s Mysterious Ways – Even when, say, an elementary school girl is raped and murdered, it’s part of the divine plan of an all-powerful, all-good Entity. Words like “senseless,” “meaningless,” “chaotic,” and even “random” or “chance,” actually have no meaning. Everything that happens is happening exactly according to God’s preconceived arrangement. Everything, and in every detail and particular, is always for the best. Whatever happens – that’s exactly what needs to happen and has to happen and how it needs to happen.

Caveats are usually tossed out at this point to show that human evil somehow isn’t God’s fault even when God is conceived of as all-powerful - and without any form of limitation or restriction on that power - as well as all-good.

Caveat One: Human evil isn’t God’s fault; it’s the fault of our sinful nature. Well then, our sinful nature and redemption… this is not part of God’s plan?? So... is there really a plan or not?

Caveat Two: God had to allow for evil in order to give us “free choice” otherwise we’d be zombies etc.

First, notice that any notion of “had to” is a limitation on God’s power. (Incidentally, that’s okay by me – and it’s also okay in “process theology.” The idea of God as all powerful doesn’t have to mean “able to do absolutely whatever he wants at every moment.”) Second, I don’t know for a fact that what makes us non-zombies after we’ve had coffee in the morning is the ability to choose. It might just be the coffee. Or maybe what makes us non-zombies is our sense of humor. If God had at least made a small minority of zombie-people, then we would have gotten to see what really makes a zombie a zombie; but this was left out of the plan. Third: an all powerful God who created the world ex-nilos surely could have allowed for choice and its assumed anti-zombie effects by making the world a place where we had free choice along a spectrum of options ranging from better to best. An all-powerful Master Planner could have omitted the evil Lego pieces, leaving us free to choose from among other colors.

Nothing Bad Happens - Every cloud is overflowing with silver linings. The “bad” things are really for the best because they make us stronger or provide us with valuable life lessons. Every murder, rape, torture and genocide that occurs is well worth it because the rest of us learn so much, even though this stuff has been going on since the dawn of civilization and we still haven’t learned, say, how to stop it.

What Do You Think?

You can probably tell that none of these explanations really works well for me. Is there some other explanation that I’ve missed? Or have I oversimplified – maybe one of the above explanations is really quite adequate if it were stated properly?

The Gratitude Attitude. Post #1

2005-09-26T08:23:00.000-04:00

Gratitude is often viewed as something basic to a religious or spiritual orientation toward life. The practice of praying before a meal in some families, Thanksgiving as a holiday in America… these are two common examples from my culture of giving thanks to God. (I must say, I’ve wondered how Native Americans feel about Thanksgiving as a holiday, but this would be a major digression…).

What are your thoughts about religious or spiritual gratitude – toward God, life, a “higher power” – however you conceive of it?

For example: Do you consider anything that occurs in your life and which brings you some benefit or fulfills some desire, a “blessing,” or something for which you “praise God?” If not, what distinctions do you make? Where do you draw the lines?

And in what terms do you understand those who are not similarly blessed, and those to whom terrible things happen?

Forgiveness: Final Remarks. Post #7

2005-09-22T15:07:00.000-04:00

Before moving on to the subject of gratitude, here’s a final post on forgiveness. It’s based on two comments that were made to the “forgiveness” section of the “Changes” link at the right. Looking at the two comments together, they make a distinction worth considering.

Clean Breaks vs. Entanglements

First, here’s an excerpt from Sirbarrett’s comment. His blog is called, Writings of Faith, http://sirbarrett.blogspot.com/.

“They told me they had forgiven me, but our relationship is ruined. Can forgiveness sometimes be incomplete? I have lost them. I wonder if the problem isn't so much the need for forgiveness, as remembering what it is that we need forgiveness for and changing that.”

Anonymous says, in part (btw, A has no blog, but way to go, A – good to have non-bloggers commenting to blogs too!): “…I live my life and let other people live theirs, and as long as they're not messing with me, I don't care what they do. If they mess with me, I'll let them know right up front and tell them to stop. If they don't stop, I walk and make sure they can't get near me again. It's protecting yourself. You have to protect yourself.”

Anonymous’ “live and let live” outlook, in the sense of completely breaking off contact with those who harm us, amounts to, “forget and move on" rather than “forgive.” I think this works well under two conditions:

1. If the harm done was not great and lasting, making it relatively easy to move on, since the anger isn't likely to linger over time to trouble us.

2. If we are willing and able to walk away from the person who wronged us.

Sirbarrett, however, points to another kind of situation, in which, after the wrongdoing occurs, we are either unwilling or unable to completely exclude the other person from our lives. This is often the case with family members. If a substantial wrong is committed, the relationship can be greatly altered for the worse – “ruined,” as Sirbarrett mentions.

Forgiveness and Salvaging Relationships

To me, Sirbarrett’s comment points to the fact that in this kind of situation, forgiveness may at best be part of the resolution, if resolution can occur at all. It is the deteriorated pattern of feeling, communication, and behavior that needs to change. Forgiveness could conceivably be an early step in making such changes; yet it may be that the act requiring forgiveness itself arose from out of an interpersonal pattern that was faulty in certain respects to begin with…

Forgiveness: Self-Forgiveness. Post #6

2005-09-02T11:05:00.000-04:00

Here and there throughout these posts on forgiveness, some of you have brought up the issue of self-forgiveness. I think I’m about to do my worst job ever with a topic. Hope I’ll be able to forgive myself afterwards…

I feel like my thoughts about this are superficial and maybe weird. How’s that for a start? You need to help me out on this one, or this post is going nowhere! But I’ll try, since a number of you brought it up.

Maybe I’ll just list out my own random thoughts and questions. I don’t know how else to begin.

Randomly Speaking…

Could it be that women usually feel more guilt than men, and so they have a stronger interest in self forgiveness? If that’s the case, it strikes me as ironic. I mean, what percent of the world’s violence, for example, is caused by women?

When it comes to specifically religious guilt, however, conservative Christian (Jewish? Islamic?) men as well as women seem to be equally affected. Certainly conservative Christian theology places heavy emphasis on the idea that all of us are “basically sinful,” so this may be why.

Personally, over the larger course of my life, guilt was a minor and almost non-existent theme. I honestly don’t feel “basically sinful.” (This could be my own “ignorance!”) But I’ve done little harm to others, I think some good, and although over the last twelve years there has been much discord in my life, the causes have been an undiagnosable progressive disease, and harm done to me by others. I did go through an angry stage, and still have some anger. But I know that anyone would have to grapple with these things under such circumstances. And although for a while some of the anger was directed at God, it isn’t anymore, hasn’t been for years, and I feel at peace with God. Part of this was seeing that I will remain on God’s side even if it seems that God is not on mine. A lot of good it does God, I guess, but that's how it is.

Personally Speaking…

There is one sense in which I do feel guilty, although everyone tells me it’s ridiculous. I even suppose that I recognize the irrationality myself. Still, I feel this quite deeply.

Despite my best efforts over a long period of time, I appear to be in the process of failing at what I thought, and what truly felt in every way to in fact be, my vocation. Despite having written a book that I’m well qualified to write, and which a wide variety of feedback indicates is a good book, and perhaps very good, it will almost certainly remain unpublished, or else published in such a limited way as to go essentially unread. The reasons are outside my control, having to do with how my work was first interrupted for a long period of time by health problems, and certain facts concerning the publishing industry that now make the quality of the work, especially in the area of nonfiction, of secondary and really relatively minor importance to publishers and agents. On top of this, I feel that I have failed my family. My disability makes me a heavy, long term burden.

So I feel pretty much like a total failure – like I failed God, failed my family, let everyone down. Guess I’m “letting it all hang out” here. But I don’t have a clear concept of self-forgiveness, so I’m just presenting these stray thoughts.

I do know that I’ve given my best, and so on one level, I am very much at peace. But on another level, I feel terrible. I don’t dwell on this feeling, and don’t want to give an exaggerated impression of how much of a problem it is for me. But in the background, it’s there.

Coherently Speaking…

Here’s a coherent thought: one aspect of self forgiveness might involve recognizing that we may judge ourselves far more harshly than we’d ever think of judging others. But I already noticed this, and it doesn’t change my feelings! So at least for me, it’s not the complete answer.

Hmm… just thinking as I write, maybe a dangerous practice… but I’m realizing that we may also expect and even demand things of ourselves that we would never demand from others. I expected to succeed. I demanded it of myself – despite the obvious fact that realizing or failing to realize a practical achievement depends not only on our own efforts, but also on events that impact us favorably or unfavorably.

I felt myself called. I knew that no matter what, I would follow, and have done so. But maybe somewhere along the line I turned my “no matter what” into, and no matter what, I will succeed. But this part really isn’t my call…

Forgiveness: What Is Sin? Post #5

2005-08-31T12:35:00.000-04:00

The last two posts received a number of comments with ideas on what’s involved with the process of coming to forgive someone. People may want to read each others' comments for this.

Although there are exceptions, and some of you have reservations, there was more agreement than I anticipated around the idea that wrongdoing may be more a matter of “not knowing what we do” than fully conscious choice.

Illustration: A way in which not knowing what we do may be understood is illustrated by this exchange between Crystal and I:

First, I suggested that it might be possible for a person to have rational clarity about the consequences of his or her actions, yet remain profoundly ignorant - of inner meanings, of spiritual consequences.

Crystal responded by amplifying further on the passage from scripture: "Yes, I think I see what you mean. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said 'they know not what they do' ... they knew they were executing someone, maybe even felt it was murder. But they probably discounted any spiritual consequences of that act. "

Explanation: This might fit nicely with Michael’s thought: "Going back to… this issue about sin, whether or not it is the 'conscious choice' or 'not knowing what we do…' {It could be} that sin isn't one or the other or even a mix of the two, but entirely both at the same time."

So at the level of rational understanding, offenders may be said to know the consequences of their actions, and in that sense they choose them. But on a deeper level, their awareness and their feeling for the consequentiality of their actions, both to themselves and others, may be quite limited - or even, and I think here of sociopaths, entirely absent. If, for example, one entirely or mostly lacks the knowledge and experience of compassion, and then murders someone pleading for his or her life, it seems to me that the sense in which the action is chosen is limited.

And to me, this point of view does make it easier to forgive.

Sin and Institutional Religion: The Church, as far as I’ve experienced it, traditionally takes the view that sin is tantamount to turning away from God with full and deliberate consciousness. In fact, I was personally warned not long ago by a conservative Christian, in a manner that he imagined was subtle, that I am going to hell unless I “choose” to parrot his line, “I accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.” It was clear that he just wanted me to repeat the words - he wasn't interested at all in discussing their meaning. I’ve also known some Muslims to similarly hint that not “choosing” to acknowledge Mohammed as the Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as God’s final revelation will has dire consequences.

And yet, “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do,” seems to me to offer us an alternative understanding of sin as deep ignorance, and one which is consistent at least with Christian scripture – I am less familiar with the Koran, so someone may be able to help us here.

As for me, I don’t believe in parroting lines for anyone. Even if I repeated a line to make someone happy, which I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t really agree unless I knew exactly what was meant by each word of the statement. And it isn't because I'm the "free-thinker" that my conservative Christian accuser thinks I am.

It's because truthfulness is basic to my approach to God. I obey that inclination. Call it part of my religion. As far as I know, I don’t choose this. It’s who I am. So if I’m wrong here, then I am deeply ignorant indeed.

Forgiveness: They Know Not What They Do. Post #4

2005-08-29T13:06:00.000-04:00

Kathy, posting to the Changes link, along with AsianSmiles in the comments section to the last post, brought up a couple of interesting points that happen to be closely related. I wondered if they might be useful in the struggle to become “free-gracers” – that is, people who are able to forgive any and all offenses, rather than judging individuals who have offended us on a case by case basis.

Kathy: Forgiveness" hmmm? Well, Jesus had the attitude that humans do not know what they do. We don't even know why we do the things we do...how can we understand why other people do the things they do (hurting people and themselves)?

AsianSmiles: When my dad died two years ago, I cried like a baby. There was no room for bad memories, his failures and his offenses. All I felt was the grief when I hugged his cold and lifeless body. There was no room for blame. All I felt was the loss of a father that will be buried in the ground and the loss of a chance to tell him that he did his best and “that’s all that matters to me.”

A Question: When people behave badly to us, do they choose to harm us with full appreciation and consciousness of what they are doing – its implications for themselves as well as us? Are people “basically sinful” in the sense that they choose wrongdoing with full and knowing consciousness?

Or might it be better to think of offenses given to us personally, and to conceive of sin generally, as a matter of people being flawed, ignorant, often deeply and seriously… And yet possibly this is the best they can do, at least at that point in their lives, and in relation to us.

So “sin,” rather than being construed as “conscious choice,” becomes, “not knowing what we do” – ignorance, or being unenlightened.

What do you think?

Forgiveness: Process & Strategy. Post #3

2005-08-26T11:45:00.000-04:00

Irina speaks of being in need of a “strategy” to forgive. Doshar speaks of how her lack of forgiveness of a certain person is like a “dark cloud” for her. She hopes to forgive one day even though it appears so impossible to her right now.

Tish G makes an interesting remark:

“I always think of forgiveness as process... as something that is ongoing the more we live our own lives and mature. Forgiveness is different at different times.

"It would be wonderful to be a Free-Gracer and have it actually work. More often than not, I hear people say they forgive someone--yet are doing so thru grit teeth. They are compelled to forgive by others, and follow the axiom of ‘act as if,’ hoping that if they follow the commands of others they will eventually ‘get it.’"

I agree with both her points. I’ve also known people who say they forgive, yet somehow give the impression they don't, at least not completely. At the same time, I think some people do really get there – at least with their own particular “cases.” As to "free-gracers," I’m not sure I’ve ever met anything more than aspiring ones.

A Success Story & Some Elements in the Process

Renee’s comment (Poems and Writings), for those who missed it, strikes me as an authentic account of someone who has been through the sort of process Tish mentions and came out of it really forgiving, and in cases where people committed what anyone would recognize as major transgressions against her. The process for Renee seemed to involve moving from a position where she’d come to see this as something she wanted to do, to finally really experiencing forgiveness at the level of her immediate feelings.

Elements in the process: Michael points to the passage of time. Certainly processing these things takes much time for most of us, so this is good to bear in mind. Eventually we may find that we can forgive people that we can’t now.

Lynne and Keshi point to acceptance and non judgment of the offender, and Emilyjane as having a genuine desire to forgive, as some specific elements that might be involved in this process. I'd add that maybe Tishs' "as if" - acting as if we forgive, although we don't yet - might be a stage along the way toward the real thing for some people.

A Time-Problem: Can Offenses and Forgiveness Occur Simultaneously?

Personally, I find time to be a big problem. The fact that everyday I live with added pain and accelerated physical deterioration that has been caused by others makes it hard for me to process things, hard to get them behind me. Also, there’s one person in my life, or who used to be, who could be very helpful in my circumstances but who isn’t. Whatever little contact we have shows that this individual remains unwilling or somehow unable to help when almost any person in his position would find it unthinkable not to help. So for me, I think I would pretty much have to become a “free-gracer” - not sure that I can ever resolve my own matters case by case.

A Real Free-Gracer?

The factors are so numerous; our specific situations so different. I wonder if there can be a single strategy.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist monk. Years ago I read his, The Miracle of Mindfulness, and was impressed with the simplicity and profundity of his writing. If there really are some “free-gracers” around, I think he may be one of them. I found the piece that follows on someone else’s blog - as indicated on the link below. I’ve italicized two lines that I think might possibly give a clue about “free gracing.”

Interrelationship

By Thich Nhat Hanh(1929 - )

You are me, and I am you.
Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.
I support you; you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.

Quoted from Dance of Love blog http://www.danceoflove.blogspot.com/

PS: The "Changes" link has further comments on forgiveness that people have recently added.

Forgiveness: “Case by Casers” and “Free Gracers.” Post #2

2005-08-24T10:38:00.000-04:00

I think I see an overall pattern to most of your comments. I’m just going to present the pattern here, without necessarily saying whose comments belong in what category. Most of you will “know who you are...”

The “Case by Casers”: Many of you seem to want to take a case by case approach to forgiving others. Whether you can forgive depends on certain variables. Major variables include how large the offense is; whether the offenses have ceased or are ongoing; and whether the transgressor repents. In some cases you can forgive; in others you can’t.

I’ll add that I think these variables affect everyone’s thinking in certain situations. For example, I can think of an occasion in my life where the individual apologized in such a sincere, meaningful way, and never again gave me the least offense, that my feelings were changed in an instant. I’m not even so sure you can call it forgiveness. The person had so clearly changed that to have clung to my anger would have been like trying to stay mad at a ghost.

The Free Gracers: Others of you seek a “unified field theory” – the Albert Einsteins of the forgiveness world! I’d like a UFT myself, but so far I’m no Einstein. In other words, free gracers want a way to forgive any and all transgressors.

Why? I think essentially because of something a number of you have pointed out or suggested: keeping those embers of blame or condemnation alive usually causes harm only to ourselves. It keeps us agitated, subtracting from our peace of mind. Unless we can forgive sins freely, then we ourselves are, so to speak, left at the mercy of those worst cases in which an individual has harmed us severely, has not changed his or her attitude, and apparently or in fact couldn’t care less about it. We remain in a state of turmoil. They get on with their lives.

Some of you have proposed some “free grace methods”: for example, not judging, and recognizing that we ourselves are flawed too, and have sometimes committed transgressions. But I know something in me wants to say: “But what that person did to me is much worse and less justified than anything I ever did to anyone else!” I keep going back to “case by case...”

So I guess I’d be interested if any of the free gracers have found a free grace method that not only sounds reasonable, but has really worked for you in situations of major transgression, and allowed you to feel – what? Love of the transgressor? Some simple lack of condemnation that’s emotionally neutral? What does it feel like?

Religion and Forgiveness: Two people brought the Bible into the discussion. As I find is often the case, you can find a basis in the Bible for more than one point of view.

Someone in the “Changes” section (btw, I changed the topic there to “forgiveness”) cited that verse about forgiving those who offend us “seventy times seven,” by which Jesus meant: forgive endlessly. Seems to make him a “free gracer.” On the other hand, someone else remarked that God requires us to repent before forgiving us for our sins. So God the Father is a case by caser but the Son is a free gracer? Gee, maybe God himself is having trouble with this one. If that's true, how on earth are we supposed to figure it out?? (You don't have to take me seriously on this last point, I'm mainly just trying to get myself off the hook...)

Forgiveness: Beginning with Anger. Post #1

2005-08-22T10:01:00.000-04:00

Back to business… another topic in religion and spirituality: forgiveness. I really have no idea where to begin. It isn’t something I gave much thought to over most of my life. The more I look at it, the bigger and more complicated it seems to become. I’ll start with the one thing that appears basic and obvious to me.

Anger: Whatever it is, forgiveness involves getting past anger. Not to forgive is to remain angry.

The anger we hang onto when we don’t forgive isn’t necessarily a red hot flame. It can be more like a pile of embers that we tend to now and then, and only in the back of our minds. Just a cold, faintly glowing anger that doesn’t die. In a word, bitterness. We may attend to it reflexively, not even noticing when we do so. We seem unable to help it. And of course, embers can turn into a raging fire under the right conditions.

The Limitations of your Moderator… I feel less equipped to guide discussion of this topic than any other that we’ve looked at or that’s likely to come up. I anticipate your comments will provide at least as much insight as anything I can offer. Briefly, here’s why.

Easy - Prior to losing my health, my life was easy. I didn’t have much of anything to forgive.

To elaborate a bit: I did have the same sorts of issues around forgiveness typical of many others who are fortunate enough to be leading comfortable lives in wealthy nations. A certain amount of “baggage” from my past. Certain relationships. Issues from time to time dealing with people at work. Under these conditions, I was eventually able to reach a point of thinking that I knew exactly what forgiveness was – or more precisely, why it isn’t even necessary.

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Patience has been one of my strengths. On top of this, in my late twenties I did some reading in Buddhism. To me, the great thing about Buddhism is that it doesn’t just say, “Be good.” It provides ideas and practices for how to go about becoming a better person. I practiced. I changed. More and more, I was able to come out from under the control of my past in areas that had been holding me back. I also found that in dealing with others, slights or insults to my emotions almost entirely stopped bothering me. Any sting was transient.

So the idea I formed of forgiveness was simple: “Love does not take offense” – from Corinthians I 13, I think. If you’re not offended to begin with, then forgiveness never needs to take place. I imagined I had nothing further to learn about the subject.

Rough – In reality, I was clueless about what it means to suffer a real offense, let alone an endless series of them. Then, at age 37, I began a process of learning that to develop a health problem in America that is very rare and difficult to diagnose or treat, is to find out that you don’t matter. Not to the health care system. Not to any number of specific identifiable persons and entities within that system.

When the consequence of this is increasingly severe and irreparable forms of damage to your body accompanied by mounting pain and functional limitations that you must live with for the rest of your life, day and night – well, these are not small offenses. If the details of what I have gone through and still go through today with our health care system were things that I, as a healthy person, learned were happening to a perfect stranger, I would be outraged.

Certain ways of coping with these matters eventually arrived for me that leave me at peace at what I would describe as my deepest level. Yet frankly I am sure that I haven’t “forgiven” the persons involved. It isn’t a word that I can honestly use. To me, it has overtones of warmth and reconciliation that I simply don’t feel, and that at least in some respects, will never exist. (The harm-doers here are doing nicely without my forgiveness. We’ve “lost touch.”) So at levels that are not as deep, but deep enough, the embers glow - although I know they won’t erupt in flames. “Been there, done that.” I will never fan the embers that way again.

Impossible?

Still, I have not discovered how to put the past completely behind me when past offenses – including recent ones -- not only live on, but continue multiplying inside my frail body. From my former HMO and from a number of doctors playing God, I have received gifts that go on giving.

My own experiences will not be the focus of these posts. I refer to them for this reason: as a group, people sitting at computers and posting comments on blogs are probably not especially likely to be suffering from terrible social injustices. Yet every day millions around the world, primarily in poor nations, suffer gross bodily harm or death through the deliberate actions or inactions of others; or they must witness those whom they love experience such things, as my family has had to do with me. It is a terribly destructive thing.

So I don’t want our discussion of forgiveness to turn entirely on the average experiences of people leading relatively privileged lives in wealthy nations. Not that these experiences don’t count or represent real injury. It’s all real. But I don’t want us glossing over what a truly rough world it is out there, and the difficulty – impossibility? – of forgiveness in some situations.

My Interview with The New Yorker

2005-08-19T11:13:00.000-04:00

Yes - it’s happened for me. The big time, high fives, eyes wide. After being interviewed some months ago by Famous Blogger Magazine and Conservatives Weakly, my phone rang last weekend – a surprise from the New Yorker’s new Editor-In-Chief, Mr. Newt York. York didn’t ask about my views on religion and spirituality. He simply wanted to get to know the face behind the mask, the mug behind the blog, the glove behind the dash. The new New Yorker, York explained, is going for a slicker image, and his team sees me as the cutting edge, the face of change, the… well, whatever the third one was. Oh! Yeah! The phone exchange!

Our phone exchange went like this:

Newt York: Mr. Martin, just a quick call to see if you’d like to come to our studios for an interview.

PM: It’s – up – to – you…

NY: No, really sir. It’s your call.

PM: You called me. Wait a minute… studios? I thought magazines had
“offices.”

NY: This is the big-time, big top, big tent. Interested, punk?

PM: Hey!

NY: Sorry sir, I forgot myself.

PM: If I come, will you publish one of my poems?

NY: We’ll think about it.

PM: Okay.

On to the interview itself. I have printed the text in full:

NY: Paul M. Martin, how is it that you have the sheer guts to face the blogging world without a moniker?

PM: I just use my regular reading glasses at the computer.

NY: I’m talkin’ nickname, handle, slang.

PM: Dang. You mean why don’t I use “Walrus Nose,” or “Shake-a-Puddin'?”

NY: Exactly.

PM: Because when I get to Charlie Rose’s show, I don’t want him introducing me that way.

NY: Intriguing… And why is it that you consistently choose to - defy all labels?

PM: Well, it’s just that nowadays they make the print small, so I mostly pop my microwaveables right in and don't mess with them. It's not so much a political statement.

NY: Speaking of politics - is there any statement that you would like to make now, in our forum?

PM: I would like to see this administration and Congress focus more on blogging.

NEW “Changes” Feature

2005-08-01T12:17:00.000-04:00

Someone asked what I’m doing with this new feature, which you can click on at the right of this blog's home page.

I don’t know! I’ll see how it goes...

I just have the idea that I’d like a place where people can simply tell and read each others’ stories relating to spiritual development, with little or no comment from me.

The topics will change from time to time.

What I’ve noticed so far is how easy it is to relate to the comments. To read them is often to find myself saying to myself: I’ve experienced my own version of that…

As to anything else I might do with the comments to Changes, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll feature one occasionally as a post.

No cash prizes, however…

Pre-Post PLUS: George Bush's Theology

2005-07-28T21:34:00.000-04:00

So many good but diverging comments!

Tomorrow I'm taking the easy way out. Whatever I post will be off-topic.

I'll pick back up on "What Really Matters?" next week...

And just now, July 31, I'm adding some more "off-topic," as long as this pre post has been getting comments:

George Bush's Theology

"This month, Professor Bruce Lincoln of the University of Chicago Divinity School examines the theology discernable in the statements and policies of President George W. Bush.

[T]hese texts convey a sophisticated theology of history that rests on five propositions: 1) God desires freedom for all humanity; 2) This desire manifests itself in history; 3) America is called by history (and thus, implicitly by God) to take action on behalf of this cause; 4) Insofar as America responds with courage and determination, God’s purpose is served and freedom’s advance is inevitable; 5) With the triumph of freedom, God’s will is accomplished and history comes to an end.

This is the fullest and most sophisticated theological position Mr. Bush has articulated in the course of his presidency. It follows several earlier systems, each of which had its own force, rationale, and moment. These include an Evangelical theology of “born again” conversion; a theology of American exceptionalism as grounded in the virtue of compassion; a Calvinist theology of vocation; and a Manichaean dualism of good and evil in conflict."

Bruce Lincoln, University of Chicago - from the Martin Marty Center Web site

A good dispassionate summary. I do wonder whether the professor isn't involuntarily giving GB some extra credit here - I mean, the idea that GB thought it all out so systematically, personally strikes me as questionable.

By way of an analogy which I hope is not too unflattering to our closest genetic cousins, Jane Goodall wrote sophisticated descriptions of chimpanzee behavior that went far beyond any work product the chimpanzees could have created themselves.

But yes, it does seem to me that this theology, which I'm not personally prepared to call "sophisticated," can be inferred from GW's assorted remarks.

Obstacles: Summary. Also: What Really Matters? Post #1

2005-07-27T09:30:00.000-04:00

Summary To-Date

We’ve had widespread agreement that egoism or selfishness is an obstacle to living and acting from out of our love, or better natures. And for at least some of us, death can be an obstacle. This can take the form of the idea of death – for example, when we view it as our complete annihilation. It can also take the form of the reality of death – for example, witnessing someone we love die young, or in an especially painful and difficult manner. Either way, our perception of life as meaningful and good can be undermined. Faith can challenged.

What can counter these obstacles? Two basic things have come up in comments: experiential processes of growth and development; and religious beliefs. Some of you emphasize one over the other. The beliefs are quite clear-cut. The processes, I think, are harder to articulate.

What Matters?

We could take a closer look at any of these subjects, but here I want to pause and ask a simple question. This might be because I’m so profound; or it might be because I need to keep this post short because I have so much to do this week.

In religious or spiritual terms, what really matters and why does it matter? What makes a person truly religious, or spiritual, or close to God? If you are an atheist or agnostic, what is it about our human natures that you think matters most, and why? I’m thinking, we could consider:

Our beliefs
Our experiences
Our actions

Or anything else that comes to mind…

Obstacles: Mr. Death’s Fraternal Twin. Post #6

2005-07-25T09:33:00.000-04:00

Annihilation’s Downside

After reading your amazing variety of comments, I realized that the only way I could make sense out of them was to figure Mr. Death has a brother. But before I get to that, I want to address something in the comments that I let pass:

Benjamin clearly identifies the problem that death poses for some of us: it looks like our annihilation. Just to cheer everyone up, I would add: and the annihilation of everything and everyone that we care about. That’s exactly what bothered me when I was young, and that particular word – “annihilation” – is exactly the word I used to describe what bothered me about death. Some of you, like Benjamin, although you can understand being disturbed by dying, which can hurt a lot, are left scratching your heads about what could really be so dreadful about the idea of being gone.

I can’t write very compellingly or feelingly in the space of a post about how death as annihilation can pose a problem. I'll try just hinting at it.

You push a child on a swing a couple times. It’s never enough. The child wants more pushes. And higher ones.

Hinduism’s summation of our real wants as “infinite joy, knowledge, and being” always resonated with me. We experience life, love it, and want more and greater. At times we may even seem to experience intimations of this. And I like the word “infinite” here, because it’s clear that what we desire isn’t something for shoring up our own egos, but something universal. (That's also what those intimations feel like.)

Death as annihilation would be the opposite of this. Even though you could never experience it, you can contemplate that this might be how it is. You can even conclude that this is almost certainly how it is, like I did in my teens and twenties, by following certain lines of evidence and repeating them to yourself over and over.

Suns burn out. The universe expands forever until they all wink out, or until the whole thing recollapses on itself according to the unknown variable of how much dark matter the universe contains. (It’s been a while and I’m too lazy to google, but I think that’s roughly the science, or at least as it stood when I was thinking about this stuff.) Either way, our species, the earth itself, everything we cherish most, just gets snuffed out. We’re born to lose it all.

You can look at that and say: life is meaningless, hopeless. This isn’t the kind of world I even like to think about inhabiting. It negates the best we have to give, the best we can be, and all that we can aspire to. This isn’t good enough. I want out.

Fraternal Death Twins: The Intellectual One, and the “Go-Getter”

Many of you provided personal illustrations of experiencing death. There were brief references to the instinctual adrenaline-rush of alarm that comes with dodging the proverbial bullet, or, say, a close call behind the wheel. Mostly, there were your experiences of the passing of loved ones, including the angry reaction to seeing family members afflicted by leukemia, grief at a father’s passing, and the sad yet peaceful witness of a grandfather passing in relative comfort after a full life.

I think anybody could identify with these stories. They are all about facing Death the Go-Getter, death the real thing. Meeting up with this guy, our reactions are pretty similar. Even those with firm beliefs about an afterlife are more grief stricken than jubilant upon a loved one’s death.

But where it comes to his twin, Intellectual Death, it’s another story. Here, faced with no loved one who apparently just turned into a corpse, it is our beliefs about what death represents that principally determine our reactions to it. And since our beliefs vary widely, so do our reactions.

Getting back to Go-Getter Death, I have the feeling that when he comes for us - when we ourselves teeter on the verge of corpsehood, as it were – then our actual experiences may again have more similarity and overlap than when we are just sitting around thinking about death. Of course it’s pretty hard to have this conversation with people on the verge, so it's not like I really know…

Hmm. “Corpsehood.” Not a word you hear much. I guess whereas our childhoods and adulthoods vary considerably, corpsehood stories would be boringly similar.

“I was interred at Forest Lawn. For a change, I lost everything except my hair…” And who needs to hear that. Except maybe dentists, because we might add, “Oh yes, and my fillings have survived nicely.”

Obstacles: What Kind of Guy Are You, Mr. Death? Post #4

2005-07-20T12:27:00.000-04:00

“I'm sorry for going off-topic... Nobody's said much about change. If we haven't really lived are we looking to change?” (Benjamin, comment to July 18th post.)

“Yup.” (Me, replying now.) Changing is what A First-Hand Faith is about, and topics from that manuscript have been serving as a kind of general guide for the topics on this blog. Change, or even transformation, is the overarching theme of the ms and therefore of the blog.

Death’s Darker Side

Overall comments to the July 18th post don’t go much further into the relationship between fear and egotism, which everybody seems to at least suspect is there. Instead, you’ve all been more focused on looking at A) what’s behind the fear of death, and B) what makes us unafraid or less afraid of death.

As far as what’s behind the fear goes, I’m going make use of Irina’s list, since it includes things that others mention as well – I’ve put those in italics – while offering additions. Irina is succinct, listing single words only, so I’ve referred to a similar list that was compiled by the more loquacious Julie Andrews having a bad day on The Sound of Music set:

“These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things”

Uncertainty: Death is a great unknown. Not something we’ve had practice with.

Pain: Irina doesn’t actually mention this one, but others do. People fear the pain involved in dying as well as the prospect of being dead.

Punishment: Those who believe in heaven and hell can naturally have some concerns about which way they might be headed…

Loss: This includes parting from loved ones, parting from everything known and familiar; parting from the earth itself.

Definitiveness: Death appears to be the end. Period. The transformation of personhood to nothingness. At the least, the end of life as we know it.

Death as Maybe Not Such a Bad Guy After All

Generalizing broadly, your ways of dealing with death seem to fall into three categories. Some of them are not mutually exclusive, and some of you look to me as though you embrace more than one.

Belief: Strong belief in heaven and God speaks directly to the fear of death. The stronger the conviction, the less the fear. So for some of us, this is a powerful and clear-cut solution. However, it's good to bear in mind Emilyjane’s, “Just because someone is at peace with the prospect of what they think happens after death doesn't mean they are right about what does.” Even the strongest conviction is still conviction, belief – and not, in other words, knowledge. Strong conviction still contains some element of doubt. Even when we think that the Bible or the Koran is God’s final revelation, this is something that we have been told and believe. We didn’t receive the revelation and write the scripture ourselves.

Experience: Many of you talk little or not at all about belief, and more about what sounds like an experiential process that occurred for you over time to make death less anxiety-provoking, and even something that can play a positive role for you. Honoring and incorporating our memories of deceased persons that we have loved into our own lives, and using death as a reminder to really live while we have the chance, are a couple specifics that have been mentioned. Emilyjane brought up meditation as having been helpful to her own process.

“No Fear Here”: (Goddess) Goddess qualifies her statement by saying she imagines that if she had children, parting from them would make death a very difficult thing. Mary Beth is clear that it’s dying – the blood, the gore, the sweat, the dehydration (not her exact words) - that bothers her. Death only enhances her appreciation of life. (I do wonder whether she would say that she’s always felt this way, or if it’s been the kind of process for her that others refer to?)

Grief, More Details, and the Love of Others

One mistake I made at the outset that I want to rectify: I should have referred to “disturbance” over death so as to include grief as well as fear. Don’t think it would have changed the general conversation much, but thought I should mention this.

The manner in which belief helps counter disturbance over death is plain to see. But I’d be interested if anyone has anything more to say about whatever experiential processes have helped them. I think we’ve only touched the edges here. For example, to say that the idea of death enhances appreciation for life is a little like saying, “So enjoy that walk down the gangplank!” I’ve noticed the enhanced appreciation effect too, and don’t discount it. But is it central?

One more thing I’d like to point out. We’ve been talking about disturbance over our own deaths. But death is also about the last thing that we want for anyone we love…

Tuesday, Off-Topic Totally

2005-07-19T17:36:00.000-04:00

Mark Twain on Congress

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.- What Is Man?

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.- Mark Twain, a Biography

All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.- Mark Twain's Autobiography; also in Mark Twain in Eruption

The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.- Mark Twain's Speeches, "The Weather"

...I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.- "Foster's Case", New York Tribune, 3/10/1873

http://www.twainquotes.com/Congress.html

Weekend Off-Topic, Totally

2005-07-16T15:47:00.000-04:00

These came in my email via my sister from who knows where, so everyone else may have seen this too. Anyway, I picked out the ones I liked best.

"Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house."--Rod Stewart

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base."--Dave Barry

"If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."--Johnny Carson

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."--Mark Twain

"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'"--Dave Barry

Obstacles: Opening Thoughts. Post #1

2005-07-13T11:41:00.000-04:00

Religion, and to a large extent philosophy, show a strong interest in distinguishing our better natures from our lesser natures: agape vs. sin; compassion vs. ignorance; truth vs. illusion. Actually, I’d imagine that our species must have had a keen interest in looking at this distinction long before the arrival of religion or philosophy, just so we wouldn’t exterminate ourselves ahead of time by continually banging large rocks over each others’ heads.

That Woman Here starts us off by referring to “pride” as the greatest obstacle to experiencing and acting on love. We could take pride as either a synonym for egoism, or for one of its many variations: vanity, contempt, conceit, and so forth. I’m thinking that “ego” might be the better general term, since ego sometimes takes forms that are disheartened rather than “prideful” or “puffed up” – jealousy, for example.

Irina: “Pride, fear and egoism ... These are obstacles which keep you from really loving.” Irina goes on to say that love, on the one hand, and fear/egoism on the other, are incompatible, so that you need to distinguish between them in the quality of your feelings toward others.

”I am proud, and egotistic and afraid. But when it comes to true friends or to my mother for example, all that goes away.”

Me too. It’s easiest for me to realize what love is in relation to family and friends, both in terms of experiencing the feeling, and in terms of being able to go off and look at that feeling to get an idea of what it is.

Question 1, Broader Front: What about trying to move beyond our fear and egoism on a broader front than just in relation to friends and family members - so that our better natures come into play more often, for example, with coworkers? Do we want privatization of our better nature plans - known as “compassionate conservatism” in political circles - or are we seeking universal coverage?

That Woman Here: “I think Irina pretty much summed things up. Pride and fear keep any thoughts of romantic love at a healthy (or is it unhealthy) distance for me.”

TWH has come in right after we’ve finished up with romance, so anyone wanting to look at that specific topic might want to look back at a couple of the later “What Love Is” posts where it’s discussed. Here I’ll just say that to me, there can be positive or negative reasons for staying away from romantic involvements, depending on what’s going on in our lives.

Question 2, Fear-Ego Connection: Irina and That Woman have both mentioned a connection between fear and ego. What’s the connection? (Additionally, there was this from Life of Bryan: “I also feel like there is a lot of fear in self-centeredness…”)

Grumblefish looks more closely at fear, speaking of it in terms of, “the fear of facing ourselves honestly," and the difficulty of doing this from out of fear of what we might see; and from fear of how disconcerting this could be.

I think this sort of fear poses a great obstacle for many of us. Because you can’t get past what you don’t look at…

Emily Jane: “For some people--I think I used to be one of them--not being self-centered enough was a problem. The Bible says, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ It doesn't say, ‘Love your neighbor more than yourself’."

Question 3, love of self/others: “Altruism” is a word I’ve never cared for, because for me, it connotes exactly the fallacy EJ points to: that loving others must come at our own expense. Any thoughts on this?

Benjamin, returning to the subject of fear: “Fear is my darkest cloud… And in searching for love, for I have been, it brings me up close to fear, which is my obstacle.”

Hmm… Benjamin is reminding me that although we’re focusing on obstacles to the expression and enactment of our love, we could also discuss obstacles to receiving love from others. But then B. turns back to thoughts on obstacles to acting from out of love:

”I think society, particularly the media, kind of suggests that we should restrict our love to a limited and safe number of people (family, romantic partner). I don't think this was the message of Jesus. I don't think it’s very helpful."

Life of Bryan picks up on this:

“To me, ‘losing’ yourself always seemed like taking yourself out of the number 1 spot in life's hierarchy. the need to focus on God/others first.

“I might be afraid that putting someone else first won't be fulfilling to my own needs… {but it always seems to prove otherwise,} like when you make a sacrifice for someone else, or go on a mission trip to somewhere that totally rocks your perspective on the world/life, or do Habitat for Humanity or whatever. But we're too caught up in our own… self-importance to hear God whispering in our ear.”

So Life of Bryan is talking about experiencing personal fulfillment from acting on love in relation to others. I’m thinking that he and Emilyjane might have two different departments of life in mind. Maybe EJ is thinking about interpersonal relationships that aren’t mutual enough – too one-way in terms of the giving/receiving. LB seems to be talking more about expressing love by way of the work we do, and how fulfilling this can be.

Question 4, Areas of Life: We’ve referred to love in interpersonal relationships, and love expressed by work that we do. Any special challenges/opportunities afforded by each?

We seem to have started out on the same general wavelength with this topic. These are some questions that your comments have brought to my mind.