Simple faith isn't simple for me. I almost envy the people in my sister's church who accept the Bible without reservation. It is a child's faith, a faith that didn't go to college and have to go though the long period of doubt and questioning that I did. There was a time when I believed unquestionably, a blissful time of pre-critical naiveté. I think that now I am in a wonderful place of post-critical naivete. That is, I see the truth in it.. It is a document of amazing importance. It is the foundational literature of our culture. The old testament in particular was written by herders wandering in the desert. It is amazing. It is not unlike Shakespeare's histories, part myth, part history. I know that much of it is true, but not all is fact and that is a good thing. It doesn't have to be fact, it is parable, it is metaphor and as such it is beautiful. It was written in the language of poetry, of myth. Christ's importance to me is not that he is the son of God, it is that he taught us that we all were the sons and daughters of the same God. He tried to unite petty, waring tribes. It is ironic that it still isn't done and the battle is mainly in the place where Christ lived and did his work. I think we err horribly when we try to make the bible FACT, using the language of logos for a document written in the language of mytos. It would be like trying to say that a poem like TS Elliot"s Love Song of J Alfred Purfrock was fact. You sort of miss the point if you do.
Labels: Simple faith
posted by Anne Coe | 6:15 PM
3 Comments:
Many of the people in my church do have college degrees; several even have doctoral degrees. So, either they did not find college to be a doubt-raising series of events or else they returned to religion. There are probably many possibilities between these two, but the bottom line is that I think they just set aside their doubts and do not take them out, like a jeweled necklace, to hold in the sun and watch the rainbows dance on the walls. They focus on jewels of ancient wisdom, gems that they feel have a higher value.
The issue to me is not the literal interpretation of the Bible, although I do recognize that this is a root of great animosity.
The issue that I see as important is how the church moves into a new age that has been (partially) revealed by science. Much of the talk around church is how we should not cling to traditions, as they can become a place and form of bondage. But, the problem is that the church is based on traditions and as we found out when the Catholic Church tried to abruptly change, modernize, much of it began to fall apart. We are too foolish, too simple, too naive -- despite our college education, despite all our theories and data -- to know which traditions are the important ones to keep and which can be ones we let go. The Hopi have a word for the traditions that are sacred and the ones that are temporary and can be let go. Perhaps we should study the ones they let go and the ones the keep.
Then, the question becomes, how tightly do you hold the sacred traditions? Time and generations will modify meanings, rituals, ceremonies, structures. I know that with sacred stories, across cultures, the stories need to be told exactly as they were -- no words can be changed. Slowly the words turn into obscure, albeit possibly beautiful text. What then happens is that they must be interpreted for us. The interpretation can change the meaning, etc. I always thought that telling a story, with complex characters and context, cause and effect, we can teach and not run the same risk of the meaning being changed.
I guess that is what I was getting at: one can have a belief in the truth of a sacred test but read it as poetry, to be thought about and studied.
sacred test? I have never taken a sacred test, although pilgrims' progress would lead one to believe that all of life is a sacred test.
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