Good News Week - Religion Awards

The folks from Good News Week are pretty well known for their low tolerance of religion in most of its forms. This week on their website, they've dedicated their 2009 awards section to religion and there are four candidates (from the Pope to an Islamic magazine) copping their ire here this week. Click here to take a look (then just scroll down a little bit)...

These guys think religion is silly and have picked a few good examples here to back up their case - as most people who don't like religion tend to do. For those of us who are spiritual and religious, we need to do our best not to give people so much ammunition to back up their case. We need to stop being silly because of our religion! Anyway...

I'm reminded that Jesus also thought that a lot of religion was silly or that any kind of religion could make you silly if you let it. When he told the story about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), he cast the first two characters as religious people who, upon seeing a wounded man lying beaten, robbed and dying at the side of the road, walked on passed because they had important religious things to do. They missed what a lot of normal (meaning "not religious") people would not have missed - that this person was hurt and in danger, and in need of help. Religion can make people silly. It can make them not see what is obviously going on around them and miss out on doing something important that could really make a difference.

Richard Dawkins - the world's most famous atheist - has often quoted Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who said, "With or without [religion] you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion." This is a pretty stinging criticism of religion, but one that is not too difficult to find many cases that back it up.

We need to come back to what the Bible says about worthwhile religion; that, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27). I think that this kind of religion is not only the kind that God would find "pure and faultless", but that others would find hard to fault and poke fun at as well. Let's make sure we keep "the main thing, the main thing" here.

Let's see people make fun of that...

Shalom...

A Message from God ???

The Weekend Australian ran an article on Saturday called "A Message from God". This title referred to the reflections of a Muslim man in the city of Padang on the island of Sumatra, where many have just died from an earthquake.

The man, Hajji, said, "We are being punished for not being devout enough." In his mind, the earthquake that killed so many people was God's will; that God made it happen to punish people for not being committed enough to him. It might sound a bit crazy to our modern, Western minds, but many cultures see deeper meanings in natural disasters and other natural phenomena, and these are often connected to the will of God or the gods.

We also shouldn't forget, that in our own Christian history and stories, there are precedents for God being behind natural disasters like the big flood (Genesis 6 - 9) and behind political disasters like the expansion of the Assyrian empire (Isaiah 7:18-25). We also read of God "hardening the heart of Pharaoh" (Exodus 6:6) so that this people could be freed from Egyptian slavery. The Christian scriptures put God in the place of rightful judge and the bringer of ultimate judgement. As as result of these actions, many people suffered and died.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't actually think that God sent the earthquake to Sumatra to get the attention of the people there. It is probably my own modern mindset, but I still lean towards the idea that the earthquake was caused by the shifting of tectonic plates in what is well known to be a global earthquake "hotspot", and unfortunately, a whole lot of people live there and got in the way of this natural process. Tragic, but not perhaps, cosmic in scope...

What this article reminded me of though, was the idea of God as judge. It is not a popular idea and not one that I feel totally comfortable about even as I write this post. But the idea is clearly there in the Christian scriptures and if you're into the Christian scene, then it is an idea that is hard to ignore, if not impossible to ignore. Interestingly enough, in all the Biblical cases of judgement that I mentioned before, God gives a long lead-in time of warning, and many opportunites to avoid what might be to come. Noah preaches for decades, the prophets come to the Jewish people to call them to repentance, and even Pharaoh and the Egyptians get Moses and Aaaron warning them on number of occasions of what they could do differently to avoid the coming judgement.

These poor people in Sumatra didn't get these kinds of warnings from God prior to the earthquake. I think we can safely say that, as God's M.O.(police jargon for "mode of operation") was not used, that these people were not being judged by God.

The Bible talks about God as judge, but also as the one who is slow to anger and judge; the one who loves to forgive; the one who warns and shows the way back to right living; and the one who ultimately sacrifices himself and takes the judgement on himself for anyone who wants to commit themselves to him and to the good life he wants for all people. In some ways, I'm glad that there is a judge, and that judgement of the world is in God's hands. As I look around and see some of terrible things that go on, I really want to know that at some stage, justice will really be done, by someone who really knows what they're doing.

Shalom...

U2: Faith in the Ear of the Hearer

Here is an article that appeared on the www.@U2.com website. I love this band - not only are they the best and most innovative rock band in the world, but they are chock full of substance. An incredible and rare mix in the rock 'n roll world and in the world in general, if you ask me...

Thanks to Francis for passing this article on to me.

Shalom...

"Want of Spirit"

The Weekend Australian, ran an article (a few weeks ago) entitled, "Want of Spirit" by Christopher Allen. In it, he criticised the direction and standard of The Blake Prize, which is an art competition designed to encourage contemporary artists, of different styles and religious allegieance, to explore the spiritual in art; to create significant works of art with religious content; and to stimulate the interaction of ideas and spiritual thought in contemporary Australian art.

Allen described the current Blake Prize interpretation of religion and spirituality as "incoherent" , "spineless", and "flacidly inclusive". He criticisesd the leadership of the prize, accusing them of having "no sense of direction, no intellectual or spiritual character". His main beef seems to be that the Blake Prize has become so inclusive and committed to diversity, that the essential meaning of religion and spirituality has been lost in the competition. He argued that religion and spirituality of any substance is that which can be seen in the shared meanings and practices of communities, rather than those of private and personal beliefs held by individuals. He said that what is called "spirituality" today, is often a vague feeling of transcendence that doesn't require anyone to give up their fundamental narcissism. He believes that every view of religion, except the deep, essential one, is expressed in the Prize.

Now, I don't know anything about The Blake Prize and can't really comment on Allen's criticisms of it or its leadership. But I can connect with his feelings of frustration around how too much of a commitment to diversity and inclusion can lead us to a "flacid" and essentially meaningless picture of spirituality and life in general. We have become afraid to engage honestly with each other around our different ideas and conceptions on religion and spirituality, often pretending that we all believe the same things, simply packaged differently. But I don't think that this is the case. I think that people believe different things about their spirituality and religion and that these things should be talked about respectfully and robustly in all sorts of public and private arenas. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Athiests etc, should all be able to say, "Sure, there are some things that we might agree on, but there are also these other things that we don't agree on. Lets talk about it all and try to still be friends at the end of the discussion."

I read a book from Vinoth Ramachandra called "Faiths in Conflict", and in it he said that people should be able to have the kind of honest and robust conversations with each other that might genuinely lead to the "conversion" of the other to the alternate point of view. I think that this kind of spiritual engagement and discussion has the potential to lead our societies and communities into a richer, more colourful cultural life, than the potentially bland alternative we might currently be heading toward.

Shalom...