Category: Culture

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Religion

Belief and Acceptance

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Years ago when I first started college, I was very good friends with an ex-navy person who went by the nickname of DiDi. At the time I met her she was married to a good ole Yakima boy, but she ended up divorcing him within a few months. One factor in this divorce was that DiDi was beginning to explore the roots of her own Jewish heritage and this just didn’t find compatibility among the farmers in the area.

DiDi and I did everything together and we were trouble from the get go. We worked in the same school department – I helped her get the job as a matter of fact. We attended many of the same classes (including the sociology class given by a professor whom I eventually dated but did not marry, as he’d been married six times before, and I’m not good in a crowd).

During that time the multipart movie Holocaust was on TV, and Yakima Valley CC organized a class to go with the showing; there would be sessions during the day to discuss the issues brought up in the segment the night before, and a four hour viewing of films taken by German and American military both during and after the war. Both DiDi and I signed up for it – her because of her blossoming interest in Judaism, me because of my interest in history.

DiDi was a woman who embraced life wholly and that includes emotions, though she was the most sunny tempered woman I knew. By the time we arrived for the Saturday film showing, though, she was subdued, both by the discussions during class and the movie itself. As we sat down in the auditorium, the teacher warned us that the films were about to see were highly graphic in nature, and if we wanted to forgo them, we could and no harm to the grade. DiDi and I stayed.

The films the teacher showed were shocking, disturbing, and overwhelming. It defied understanding that any human could perform such atrocities on another human, no matter how evil they were – much less the numbers of people involved in perpetuating the Holocaust. As the film progressed, people began to leave, most shaken, and more than a few visibly sick. During a break in the film, I took DiDi outside where she completely broke down, sobbing from her heart in such a manner that my own heart beat in time to hear the grief. However, she was not an ex-navy person for naught and we returned and finished those films.

That incident was the catalyst for DiDi deciding to follow her mother’s religion and return to Judaism, having been brought up protestant by her father’s family. We made a trip to Seattle so that she could talk to a Rabbi, but when we got there, the Rabbi greeted us courteously but not enthusiastically and said, firmly, that I may wait outside for my friend. Later I found out that Rabbis were being inundated with people interested in converting to Judaism after watching the Holocaust.

I was reminded of this time from my past when I read David Weinberger’s statement about members of most Jewish faiths have little interest in converting people to Judaism. David wrote:

But I think there is a problem with Shelley’s formulation that “you still have to believe your own truth is the Truth.” While you can certainly find strains of universalism in orthodox Judaism  “Our view of God is the only true view of God ” there is also a strong sense that because God reveals Himself in history, He reveals Himself in the different ways that make sense to different peoples. That’s why Jews only rarely in history have tried to convert others, and far more commonly discourage conversions. That’s why Jews don’t expect anyone else to keep kosher; God didn’t reveal Himself to others through that particular law. Furthermore, God reveals Himself to Jews by giving us a book of laws that literally makes no sense unless and until it is interpreted by humans who converse and argue for millennia; thus the “my truth is The Truth” doesn’t hold quite so cleanly for Jews.

My understanding is that Jews work out this morass of contradictions basically by saying “We’ve got our revelation. You go worry about yours. Oh, and you can stop trying to convert us already.”

David was responding to my statement, If you believe in God in a certain way, no matter how much you respect that others may not agree, you still have to believe your own truth is the Truth..

I am not surprised by what David says, as none of the Jewish people I’ve met have been even remotely interested in converting me to Judaism. However, in my opinion, there’s a vast difference between wanting to convert someone to a specific belief, and internalizing the Truth of that belief for yourself. I’ve known hundreds of deeply religious people who have never once tried to get me to come to their services, but I’ve never met a person who has said, “I’m Christian, but I can support that there are multiple gods”; or “I’m only Jewish for the holidays”; or even, “I’m atheist, but I’m willing to concede there may be a God.” We can only go so far when attempting to understand each other’s Truth. Like Schroedinger’s cat, internalized belief – that Truth I persist, with a big capital ‘T’, causing some to wince at the absolute nature of the word – alters when pulled out of the black box of our minds. Or souls.

I can be appalled or horrified by the films I saw from the Holocaust, and I can be determined to prevent such acts from ever happening again; but I can never fully appreciate how deeply the impact this event has on Jewish people, such as my friend DiDi. My empathy can not overcome my not being Jewish.

We can reach out to each other intellectually, we can cross cultures, learn each others languages, and visit each others nations, but when it comes to spirituality, we each have our own spiritual beliefs. The most we can hope for from those who don’t share our beliefs, is that we agree to cordially and respectfully disagree on form, knowing that the capability of belief is something we all can share. We must accept our differences.

I think this is the essence of what AKMA is saying with the following:

For instance, I can’t by any means rule out the possibility that the God whose grace extends far beyond my capacity to imagine it would work with Shinto believers in a way that draws them to the Truth. I can’t affirm that, though, because first, I have no way of knowing that, and second, that’s unlikely to be the way a Shinto believer thinks about the truth, and I can’t claim to override someone else’s self-understanding. I certainly have put a lot of time and energy into explaining why a Shinto understanding of my theology misses some important points; I fully expect that any account I gave of a Shinto theology would be likewise deficient, so I’d rather not pretend to know something I don’t.

In other words, why is it better to hold to a Shinto theology of ‘gods on a shelf’ than to a Christian theology of one God—if you’re not already a Shinto? Or, in another way of posing the riddle, we could juxtapose the questions, ‘How can I profess faith in a particular vision of the Truth without deprecating other visions of truth?’ and ‘How can you appreciate mutually contradictory visions of the truth without deprecating particular visions?’ Our answer here is not that anyone ought to grab onto one of these over against the other, but that the business of resolving such contradictions gets us onto the dangerous terrain of coercing consciences…

The danger associated with spiritual belief is not that there are differences among people; it’s that some people see differences as a threat, one that must be eliminated: through law or segregation, by forced conversion, or with war.

Categories
Religion

On religion

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I had mentioned yesterday that I would continue the discussion of religion. However, as with an end to entries on comment/email spammers, this will be my last entry on this topic because I am not the philosopher to enter these debates, and couldn’t do the topic justice.

I remembered this at the same time that I remembered that AKMA holds a PhD in theology/philosophy, and David Weinberger has a PhD in philosophy, and I’m just a computer hacker who takes photos and writes a bit, and is in way over my head.

Besides, there must be a trail somewhere calling my name.

Categories
Religion

On Belief

Both David Weinberger and AKMA wrote thoughtful responses to what is becoming a delicate and I think extremely interesting debate about religion, belief, and acceptance. Not an easy subject, and one must keep in mind that ‘ware, there be cacti here.

I want to respond but I am off and away to drink the funny milk shake and glow in the dark. More later, but in the meantime, read David and AKMA.

Categories
Diversity

Forgive them, they know what they do

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

AKMA wrote a response to my recent Shinto Commandments, in addition to Joi Ito’s writing, and Jonathon Delacour’s commentary on what we discussed.

AKMA is a Minister and a Professor of Theology. More than that, he is a Christian. He wrote:

Among the things I stand for is the premise that the God about whom Scripture and the saints have taught me is God, not in a perspectival or contingent way, but in a thorough, undeniable, absolute way. Not ‘among other gods,’ though I see the interest and functionality of a polytheistic world. I just don’t inhabit a world like that, and it would be false politeness for me to pretend otherwise. That doesn’t mean I want to stamp out other people’s ways of believing, or legislate against them, or get into condescending arguments with them; it just means that so far as it’s given me to know things, I know the God of Abraham to be God in a unique way.

AKMA could not write anything else, not without bringing into question his own beliefs and the Truth behind them, as he knows it. Belief is an all or nothing proposition – if you believe in God in a certain way, no matter how much you respect that others may not agree, you still have to believe your own truth is the Truth. You internalize as fact that there is only one God, and for AKMA, this is the Christian God.

I can understand this. To me, the key difference between AKMA and the “There is only one God and my God is the only right God” that Joi discussed is that AKMA does not insist others believe as he does. He respects each of our right to develop our own Truth, even if it doesn’t agree with his. My interpretation of his writing is that he doesn’t need others to believe as he does to bolster his own sense of what’s Truth. We don’t have to share beliefs to talk, or to co-exist.

At an intellectual level, I can identify with this, but I can also see a breakdown at a more emotional level – if our belief is Truth, then our belief is also Right, and that means all other beliefs are Wrong. Therein likes the conundrum: belief is both an intellectual and an emotional investment; once conversation, or other action, leaves an intellectual plane for an emotional one, a fundamental sense of rightness about one’s beliefs and sense of God or Gods are very much a part of the equation.

In AKMA’s comments, Jonathon acknowledges an individual’s sense of religous Truth, but he also sees the conundrum:

If the God of Abraham is God in a unique way, how are we to regard the other Gods that are worshipped by billions of non-Christians? If the Christian God is God in “a thorough, undeniable, absolute way”, does it follow that these other Gods are partial, questionable, and relative?

Clearly this cannot be resolved by suggesting that all religions share an underlying belief in the same God (or all paths lead to the same destination) since I suspect this propostion would please hardly anyone – apart from myself and a few others.

AKMA wrote something further in his essay, which I think goes to the heart of discussions of this nature, not only online but elsewhere. He wrote:

First, let me note that I am who you’re talking about. I may not agree with everyone to whom you’re referring — surely, surely, surely not with Roy Moore — but I want to make the discussion personal, so that people don’t feel as though they’re deriding an abstract, absent buffoonish blob. In that blob, you’ll find me, doing what I can, standing up as best I can for that which is true.
…
I respect, admire, and learn from much that some non-Christian traditions manifest and teach. I have no interest in making other people accede to my faith if they don’t acknowledge its truth. That’d amount to more of the haranguing, bullying, arm-twisting, behavior of which the world has seen more than enough. Nor do I write this in order to extract apologies from people who may think they’ve offended me (anyone who’d care enough to worry is someone I already like enough to expect they meant no offense, so there’s no need, honest). I write this because sometimes it seems as though anyone who holds a position such as mine can safely be dismissed as an arrogant, intolerant imperialist; and I hoped to make sure that someone who wanted to hold to that assessment knew to include me therein.

(emphasis mine)

Jonathon responded with Although my natural inclination is to apologize for any offense I’ve given you, I’d rather trust that I fall into the category of those whom you already like enough to realize that no offense was intended. Unlike Jonathon, my first reaction was not to apologize when I read the highlighted sentence. But I was confused by it.

Was the very fact that I did not feel worried enough of what I wrote to think of apologizing to AKMA mean that I’m not the type of person that AKMA would like anyway? Intellectually, I read this as nothing more than AKMA’s assurance that he wasn’t personally offended by anything we wrote, and that wasn’t the reason for his own essay. Emotionally, though, my interpretation gets a bit murkier.

Consider the original circumstances: I did not see my writing in the original essay as a condemnation of Christians, generally, or AKMA specifically. I am writing Truth and to me this Truth is that regardless of any person’s belief, there must be separation of Church and State in this country. I also wrote that if this separation is enforced in Alabama, then it must be enforced universally and consistently across the country; otherwise the act is hypocritical. If I condemned anything, it was this hypocrisy, and Moore’s own religious bigotry, which he tried to enforce using his secular position.

Reading Joi’s and Jonathon’s essays, and comments with each, I could see no overall condemnation of Christianity, but I’m not sensitive to this as an issue. To me criticism of religious fundamentalism is not the same as criticism of religion – but again, who am I to judge?

I can understand AKMA’s interest in putting a face to Christianity in these discussions. However, as we’ve seen in the past, it is the very act of stripping away the abstract, of making these discussions personal, that tips them over the side of the intellectual plane, where conversation can occur, and into the emotional one where Right and Wrong hold sway.

I will think on this discussion the next time I write about religion, and I will be writing about religion again because it’s becoming more and more core to our politics in this country and the world. As someone who cherishes AKMA and calls him “friend”, I will reflect on AKMA being Christian and what he wrote this weekend. However, as a writer my reflection will be momentary, an imperceptible pause in my writing, because my belief, my Truth if you will, allows me no more than that.

Categories
Diversity

Shinto Commandments?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Long day and I’m working on some things that will take me away from the weblog until next week. Not the least of which is wanting to attend the Japanese Festival at the Botanical Gardens this weekend, thanks to the tip from Jack Such in my comments.

I didn’t know about the Festival but after Jack’s comment, I checked the schedule and there are some fascinating events planned. With the weather improving, I should be able to attend several, either Sunday or Monday, or even both if I can be productive tomorrow and Saturday.

Among the sessions is one titled “Zen”, which I’m assuming is a discussion of Zen Buddhism. I don’t want to guess further than that, because I know little about Japan and each time I make what I think is an accurate statement, I’m almost always proved wrong; so, less said the better. Perhaps next week, I’ll be a little more knowledgeable. If nothing else, sounds like a terrific opportunity for some photos.

I plan on attending the Zen session, as well as the cooking and Bonsai demonstrations, the dances, the traditional tea ceremony, Hinode Taiko (drums), martial arts and theater. I’ll pass on the Karaoke, though. In the evening the Festival is showing Anime films, in addition to providing candlelight walks through the extensive gardens. Doesn’t that sound lovely for a warm summer evening?

Speaking of Zen and Japanese religions, Joi Ito writes on being Shinto, especially in regards to the recent fiasco here in the States about a certain huge cement granite statue of the Ten Commandments in a certain court house in Alabama. (Why do these things always happen in Alabama?)

Frank Boosman also comments on the problem with the “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me” commandment.

Like I keep saying, all of you “I only have one God, and my God is the best” people seem to be a bit insecure about your God. As Christopher Hitchens says, “The first four of the commandments have little to do with either law or morality, and the first three suggest a terrific insecurity on the part of the person supposedly issuing them.”

As we Shintos like to say, you can put your god over there next to our other gods. While you’re at it, why don’t you get of your high horse and quit defining Good and Evil as Us and Them.

Not everyone agrees with Joi, as you can see from his comments. In particular, Charlie Whipple wrote, …If ever anyone defined things in terms of “us and them,” it’s the Japanese.

Move carefully around this issue – as you write visualize your words as walking about, bare ass naked, among opinions prickly as cactus and crowded very, very close. This goes beyond separation of church and state in our country and goes into the culture of religion, of nationalities, as much as the belief of religion. Race, culture, nationality, and religion, all rolled up into one issue.

This will not surprise you, and it’s lowering to me to present such an uncomplex persona, but I must place myself in the camp of those who found the statue to be appalling, not the least of which was Judge Moore’s own admitted bigotry against other religions; explicitly apparent when asked about displaying a statue of the Koran:

Asked on CNN whether he would support an Islamic monument to the Koran in the rotunda of the federal building, Moore replied, “This nation was founded upon the laws of God, not upon the Koran. That’s clear in the Declaration [of Independence], so it wouldn’t fit history and it wouldn’t fit law.”

Freedom of religion aside, Judge Moore seems to have at best a confused notion of law, at worst a completely missing notion of law, and on what principles our laws are based. Islam Judaism, and Christianity all share the same roots, and even much of the same history, and yes, even moral code. And I believe our legal system was not based on the Ten Commandments, and not on Christianity, either.

There is a point missed in all of this fuss about Judge Moore that goes beyond this basically uninteresting man, and the point is hypocrisy. It is hypocritical to prevent Moore from having that really ugly piece of cement granite (I mean, couldn’t they do a better job of the statue?) in the court house when ministers are asked to open sessions of Congress with a prayer, our coins have “In God we Trust”, we swear on the bible in court, we legislate against gay rights, and the Supreme Court opens with “God save the United States and this Honorable Court”.

All in all, I like Joi’s Shinto beliefs, with the concept of there being room for all gods. Yeah, hard to fight about that one.