Judaism @ MindSay

There is a growing movement of non-believers in the world who want to see religion meet it's downfall.  Now, they're not going to bomb churches or protest outside churches in Guy Fawkes masks.....oh wait.....well they're not going to bomb churches anyway.

Most of these people have a live and let live policy as well.  They really don't care what someone believes, just as long as that person doesn't try to force their beliefs (whether it be through direct force or via laws or lobbying) on everyone else.  They all share a fundamental belief that religion causes harm to society.  Looking at the history of religion, they have a point.

Obviously, some religions are much more of a threat to civilization than others.  It seems that every faith goes through it's "wild" phase, where it becomes ruthless, brutal.  Judaism actually chronicled this period in their holy book, where they engaged in a deadly ethnic cleansing campaign against the people living in Canaan because God supposedly "gave" them that land.  It makes me wonder, wouldn't it have been easier for God just to make all those people disappear?  It seems kind of pointless for an all-powerful universe creator to rely on a former slave army to destroy cities one-by-one.  At any rate, running into a Jew back then would have been pretty scary.  However, nowadays Judaism is relatively peaceful.  There's a few militant sects, but nothing out of the ordinary for any other religion.  There are even militant sects of Buddhism.

Then we have Christianity, an offshoot of Judaism.  For the first few hundred years, they were pretty peaceful, and there were a lot of martyrs...then they became the ones in charge.  The middle ages saw a reign of Christian terror filled with Inquisitions and Crusades.  Now, the church has calmed down quite a bit, and fits in pretty good with the modern world.

Right on cue, Islam seems to be going through it's rough phase, and as religions go is probably the most threatening to world peace as a whole.  More violent acts are done in the name of Islam every year than those done for all other religions combined.  There is also an unwillingness among the majority of so-called "moderate" muslims to condemn this violence.  Will Islam "mellow out" if given enough time?  Or will the availability of weapons of mass destruction to such an unstable and violent belief system spell the end for us all?  Only time will tell.

It's understandable to see religion as a threat to peace, but I think those who would see the end of all religion make one mistake: they lump all religions as the same thing, and they're not.  People in Israel don't go to bed at night worrying about those Amish suicide bombers.  Religion comes in all shapes and colors, some of which are completely benign, doing absolutely no harm to society.  Many religions practice good things.  Charities for example are often run by churches.  It's incredibly closed-minded to pronounce a blanket condemnation on all religion.

The real and true threat to any civilized society is absolute thinking.  In other words, the threat is seeing everything on "black" or "white" terms.  Nothing is "absolutely" good or evil, and thinking along those "you're either with us or against us" lines can cause a lot of problems.  It got us into this disastrous war with Iraq, among other things.  Certainly religion can play a part in encouraging this behavior, but it's not unique to any one philosophy.  It's dangerous no matter which God one believes or doesn't believe in.  By putting blanket condemnations on things you don't like, you marginalize them.  Proclaiming something "good" or "evil" stops one from truly evaluating it.  Not even Adolf Hitler was completely evil.

This group of non theists also makes this mistake.  People like Dawkins and Hitchens marginalize religion and give it no redeeming value whatsoever.  I may agree with them on their stance that there (probably) is no God or Gods, but I don't think you can just marginalize the faith of billions away like that.  That line of thinking is just as dangerous as that of the rabid evangelical or the Muslim suicide bomber.  The conflict comes when people come together and have wildly different ideas about good and evil.  The smaller this world gets, the less isolate we become, the more and more we'll have to abandon that kind of thinking, or I fear it could be the end of this civilization.

Okay, all. I'm sleepy and exhausted and will be getting to bed really soon. I'll post more tomorrow. Promise.

But before I do: Tonight began the Jewish holiday of Purim, a day which chronicles the events as written in the Biblical Book (Scroll) of Esther The synopsis: About 2500 years ago the Persian King Achashverosh, overcome with impulse, drunkenness and horniness, banished his queen (Vashti) for not participating in Half-Nekkid Thursday in front of his friends. He produces a reality show to find the most beautiful woman in the land to be his new queen -- and it turns out to be a Jewish chick named Esther. Her uncle, a bloke called Mordechai, tells her to keep the Jewish thing a secret. Meanwhile, The King's #2 guy is a pompous ass called "Haman." He has a run-in with Mordechai one day and, because Mordechai refuses to bow down to him, he sets a decree to kill all the Jews on, drawn by lottery, the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (today). There's more of a story to it, but the climax is that Esther reveals her true identity to the king and pleads to spare the life of the Jews, and Haman and his family were hung on a tree instead.

So -- as you can surmise it's a great holiday for the kiddies.

It's as close as one can get to a Jewish Halloween: kids (and adults) dress up in costumes. I'll post pictures of myself and the kid in our homemade costumes. His was far better than mine: he was Buzz Lightyear in a costume designed and sewn by the lovely socKs. I was the "Can you hear me now? Good!"guy from the Verizon wireless commercials.

It's also a holiday where it's traditional to get extremely drunk -- prescribed to the extent that one not be able to distinguish good from evil (more literally, distinguish between the evil Haman and the hero, Mordechai). I'm zonked after ... oh, zero to drink this evening. I'm getting old...

Two videos if you're interested -- both are raps. The first one was animated by Ben Baruch, who created the Shabot6000 online cartoon. Great stuff. the second one is new this year and... just make sure to watch the first one, k?

1
For most of my life I found it hard to relate to some of the more “religious” people and also, it seemed, they to me. For them, it was not nearly enough that I thought that their Jesus, if he'd ever really existed, had had some good ideas; nor was it nearly enough that I thought peace and love the two great virtues of life and the two which their Jesus seemed bravely to teach; and not nearly enough that I had tried myself—though I'd failed—to be a nonviolent and loving man; and not nearly enough that I thought their Jesus, as he was portrayed in their “holy” book, a good and courageous man truly and sincerely interested in helping and serving the needy and the poor.

2
No, some of these “religious” people seemed to want me to "believe" or to believe "in" Jesus (a distinction I never quite understood), and neither option was a habit of mind I thought conducive to social harmony and world peace or, without better evidence and more rational argument, compatible with good sense. Though they told me their Jesus was not dead but “living” and even “present” and some, even, that they themselves had a “personal relationship” with Jesus, they obviously used these words—“living,” “alive,” “present,” “personal relationship”—in senses much different from the common, everyday meanings of these words.

3
If I suggested that they perhaps meant "living" and "present" not in a physical but only in a spiritual sense, they demurred. No, they insisted, they meant that their Jesus was both spiritually and physically "alive" and "present." But Jesus, it was clear, did not “live” as these advocates for “belief” now “lived,” for example, nor was Jesus now ever “present” in the same way they themselves were “present.” I could not shake the hand of Jesus as I could shake theirs, nor could I give him a hug as I could hug these Christians who were undeniably “alive,” “living,” and “present.” I did have with them what we could agree was a “personal relationship,” and it was obvious that their “personal relationship” with Jesus was of a much different kind.

4
A few of these people even considered it a part of their “mission,” or so they called it, to persuade me and others to "believe" or to believe "in" this Jesus. But "believing" and “belief” were just not the same type of mental activity for me as it was for these "believers." I had few if any "beliefs" on the big issues of life—where life, earth, and the universe had all come from, for example, or where it was all going, or where and how it would all end, or what we were supposed to do, how we were supposed to live, while we wandered in the mystery and infinity of the universe. Me, I wasn't sure. These big mysteries tended to make me cautious.

5
I was not afraid to live or to die, though of course like everyone else I hoped not to suffer and linger in terrible pain or to become in my infirmity too great a burden on others. No, on the big mysteries of life, on the big questions of existence, there was little if anything I felt I knew for certain. Where others said they had "faith" and "belief" unsupported by evidence or logic, I had only hopes, curiosity, and questions. The very few "beliefs" I did have I considered very tentative indeed, so tentative they were hardly real "beliefs" at all. I held them lightly, warily, and, as I had been taught by all of my best teachers in school, I worked hard to maintain an open mind.

6
If I myself had any “mission” at all, and normally I would say that I did not, I supposed it was no more than to foster in world society this attitude—to open my mind, to be patient, to listen, to study, to think, to be peaceable and kind. I had come to see religious “beliefs” not as aids but as obstacles to justice and peace, just as I had come to see “god” not as an ultimate answer but as a question. Ultimate answers, I thought I'd learned, closed minds; questions opened them.

7
If persuasive evidence should appear, I would surrender an earlier “belief” readily, try to make myself comfortable with my not knowing, try to integrate any new data, any new argument, into my understanding, and then reformulate my opinion of the whole matter. I was a reader, a writer. My habit of mind was patient, deliberate. If any assertion did not make sense to me, then I withheld my assent to the proposition and I asked any questions that seemed likely to aid me in determining its credibility. In this endeavor I was a hard man to hurry, or so I had been told, and I was innately curious, inquisitive, and relatively fearless in study and inquiry.

8
I seemed to be surrounded by institutions, organizations, and individuals exhorting me to buy this, to buy that, to believe this, to believe that, to do this, to do that, to agree to this, to agree to that, and this welter of competing claims, temptations, and appeals only made me even more careful and more skeptical and even slower finally, if ever, to decide. The more their zeal, the more that others attempted to persuade me of the urgency of their pleas and of the urgency of my assent, the more suspicious to me seemed both appeal and appellant.

9
To me "belief" was one possible consequence, though not necessarily so, of my personal experience, my education, learning, knowledge, evidence, and reason. A “belief” was not something I could imagine myself ever embracing as a result of dread or fear inspired by warning or exhortation: “Believe or else!” Perhaps I was just not smart enough to grasp the concept. Some Christians suggested that I repeat after them: “I accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior!” They advised me to express my belief in this way almost as if these words or others like them were magic words, incantations, invocations: “Jesus is God!”

10
Some suggested that I kneel, fold my hands in “prayer,” and invite their Jesus into my heart. Others asked me to recite aloud esoteric, complex creeds, replete with capital letters, in unison with other "believers" in religious assembly: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord.” But repeating someone else’s words made me feel uncomfortable. I felt like a plagiarist, a cheater, inauthentic, in some way less than genuine; and then, too, some of their words sounded foreign to my ears.

11
What was a “lord,” for example? That wasn’t a word I’d ever used before. Was a “lord” an aristocrat, a noble, a slave master, a commander, or what? Plus I had never met this man Jesus. It didn’t seem wise to say that I would accept this mysterious stranger as my “lord.” To what, exactly, was I promising and agreeing? About this there seemed even among the Christians themselves significant differences of opinion, and yet, despite the lack of anything even remotely approaching consensus let alone unanimity, one Christian would declare himself or herself certain and sure of the “true” meaning of the vow and of the "belief"—as would the next Christian, equally certain and sure, though he or she held a contradictory opinion.

12
Strangely, their own differences of opinion did not inspire in these “believers” the same doubts and questions and intellectual humility that diversity of opinion seemed habitually to inspire in me. Who spoke for this Jesus and by whose authority? Jesus himself had never spoken personally to me nor, so far as I could tell, had he spoken personally to these “believers” who exhorted me to “believe.” Yet some of these “believers” insisted nevertheless that they had a "personal" relationship with their "lord" and that they “knew” their interpretations of “belief” and of “gospel” were correct, and many claimed to have not even a single doubt that this was so.

13
Their references to Jesus, however, remained for me not much different from references to Napoleon or to Julius Caesar, and neither the passionate speeches nor the behavior of those inviting me, urging me, or exhorting me to "believe" appeared indicative of any human conduct I myself wanted to emulate. Indeed, when these advocates of “belief” insisted upon the exclusivity of their “belief” and called it the “only” true way, they too often sounded patronizing, condescending, smug, even intolerant; and these attitudes only reminded me of the terrible crimes in the past that other people with a similar “belief” had perpetrated upon victims they considered "heretics," “unbelievers,” “nonbelievers,” and "infidels" and, yes, even upon people, like me, who had merely expressed what I considered quite moderate and eminently reasonable reservations and doubts about the extravagant claims made for this apparently powerless and invisible "lord," “savior,” and “god.”

14
Their word “savior” felt the same. From what, exactly, would this “lord” Jesus supposedly “save” me? Though there were suffering people I wished I could save or protect from harm, from crime, deprivation, and war, at this time I felt healthy, happy, productive, fulfilled, loving, and loved, and in no need of "saving." Could this Jesus "save," I wondered, the famished, the starving, the injured, the sick, the sad, and the dying that I watched on television? Since Jesus did not, it appeared that Jesus could not. So far, the magic words—“belief,” “lord,” “god,” and “savior”—seemed to lack sufficient power to arrest the terrible human suffering in the world.

15
Why had this "lord" and “savior” not exercised his magic power, I wondered, to stop, as I'd read in the newspaper, the grandfather's pet raccoon from eating the nose and lips of his infant granddaughter as she lay helpless in her crib? Having both the knowledge of such horror and the power to stop it, why had this “lord” Jesus not done so? Though my Christian friends tried their best to explain the omission to me, their explanations were quite complex and required my understanding of even more Christian terminology and dogma and, despite my honest efforts to follow their theological arguments, after all was said and done their answers appeared to me little more than empty rationalizations of the behavior of their “all-knowing” and “all-powerful” lord, god, and “savior.” Just like me, it seemed clear, the “believers” really didn’t know the answer to my question.

16
Some of the Christians who spoke to me of their “belief” said they were now "saved" from "sin," and they insisted that from "sin" I also needed "saving," but the word "sin" was yet another word I had difficulty understanding. To my queries, some Christians responded with still other words and concepts I could not understand—a "fall," they said, an "original” sin committed by some other person who lived and died thousands of years before I existed, and a "depravity" which they said was the given condition of all human beings simply by reason of their birth on earth. Alas, I understood nothing of all this and, instead of persuading me, their tales of an ancient, perfect garden and of a talking snake or serpent only increased my skepticism.

17
I needed to "confess" my "sin," my "depravity," to the "lord," the Christians told me, and to ask my "savior" for his "forgiveness," as these Christians said they themselves had done, but so far as I knew I had done no wrong whatsoever to this mysterious man Jesus. He had lived, after all, two thousand years before I was even born, and, despite all of this “sin,” “depravity,” and “confession” the Christians told me about, these Christians all appeared to me to be ordinary human beings pretty much the same as I.

18
The ideological baggage that their "belief" seemed to require of "believers" was more than I cared to lug along with me on my brief journey among the stars. Some of the Christians packed their "holy" books, their bibles, and concordances to accompany them when they traveled both here on earth and on the fathomless, vast ocean of mind. I had only the simple remark of my Aunt Rosalie, "My religion is be kind and my church is whoever I'm with." I preferred traveling light.

19
As I aged and matured, remorse and regret seemed to become increasingly more natural to me. I learned to recognize sooner my failures. I more readily acknowledged my many mistakes, and I tried as best I could to be quick to apologize for my own wrongs and to be equally quick to forgive others for theirs. It was difficult for me to see much value in dragging some mysterious "lord," “god,” and "savior" into this elementary process. Both the Christians and the non-Christian "followers of Christ," those who said they had no religion but rather a "personal relationship" with their "lord" and "savior," seemed to me no happier than I, no more free of sadness and suffering than I. Indeed, many seemed much less so.

20
Some of these “believers,” in fact, who explained that they had "confessed" their "sins" to the "lord" and claimed they had been "forgiven" and "saved" by their “lord” and “god” and been "reborn" seemed still tormented by their failures to please and to satisfy their "savior" and "lord," and some spent hours in what they called "prayer," a mental activity which resembled ordinary thanking and wishing and hoping, or so I guessed from their descriptions of "prayer." Some Christians did, it seemed, invest their "praying" with more intensity than in a child's everyday wishing upon a star, but they were unable to point to any better results.

21
At the urging of some Christians (and also some of the non-Christian followers of Jesus) I read the Bible. Some of these missionaries had traveled to other continents to distribute copies of this “holy” book to “unbelievers” and to people who followed the teachings of other “gods” and sages. Later, after I had read the Jewish scriptures, to which Christians applied the ethnocentric and pejorative label “old,” and also the Christian scriptures, the “new,” I was skeptical of this practice, since the “god” or “lord” of the “old” text was not merely hostile but homicidal toward peoples other than those this “lord” considered “his” own “chosen” favorite people to whom he had, strangely, "promised" lands upon which others already lived.

22
Disseminating this book and calling it “holy” would hardly seem a friendly, neighborly gesture, I thought, to the many descendants of the unfortunate ethnic peoples this “lord” and “god” had tortured and murdered by the tens of thousands in the stories collected in this “holy” book. Indeed, to promulgate such a literature seemed certain to offend; yet the believers “in” Jesus seemed oblivious to the possibility of such an offense, just as they had been oblivious, it seemed, to the arrogance and condescension inherent in calling the “holy” book of Judaism an “old” testament and their own better, improved supplement to it a “new” testament. Or perhaps, as I could not help but suspect, some did understand these insults, slights, and offenses and just simply didn’t care.

23
In the book about Jesus, I was eager to read what this man himself had written about his being a “god” but, as it turned out, Jesus himself never wrote anything, I learned, and the stories of his life and teachings were recorded by only four followers who actually knew him personally in life. Nor, according to these four biographers of their “lord,” had Jesus ever just flat come out and said, “I am god.” When, puzzled, I mentioned this omission to some of the “believers” who had urged me to read these stories of his life and teachings, they offered elaborate interpretations and explanations of other passages in the text, other remarks their “lord” was reported to have said, that in my Christian friends’ opinion were “almost” the “same” thing as his actually saying in exactly so many words that he was “god.”

24
But I must confess that these interpretations were to me somewhat disappointing given the indubitable certitude with which my friends had made the claims of divinity for their “lord” and “savior.” According to at least one of his contemporary biographers, Jesus did say, “I am the way.” To my reading and understanding, it seemed that Jesus meant by this that "the way" to fulfillment and happiness is through human conduct like the example of Jesus himself, through nonviolence, honesty, generosity, kindness, selflessness, and love, advice with which I had always heartily concurred. Thus Jesus "returned" in the flesh every time someone responded to violence with nonviolence, to revenge with forgiveness, to lies with honesty, to ego with humility, to anger and hatred with love, I suggested to my Christian acquaintances.

25
But they were impatient with this opinion and, like the doubting Thomas in the story they had asked me to read, they insisted upon the eventual material and physical reappearance of their invisible “lord.” This would certainly be a miracle, I conceded, and if it were ever really to happen, which, to be entirely honest, I felt obliged to confess I doubted, well, then the sooner the better, I added. Still, it did not seem wise for either the “believers” or the doubters to hold their breaths until this miracle transpired, as it had been already quite some time since the death of this “god,” since the miraculous resurrection reported by his biographers, and since his equally mysterious passing, ascension, and disappearance, a 2000-year absence.

26
Though some of my Christian friends thought the inevitability of his promised “second coming” should inspire fear in unbelievers, agnostics, and skeptics, it did not inspire fear in me. Why, I wondered, would anyone fear perfect justice? Little did I understand. My reluctance to “believe” that such an event would occur, I learned from the “believers,” evidently insured that after death I would be tortured and tormented forever in a place called Hell or, some Christians suggested, at the very least I would be condemned to an eternal lonely posthumous consciousness ever devoid of the presence of the one true "god."

27
I tried to explain to them that I felt I was already in the presence of “god” here on earth at the present time, among my family and friends, loving and loved, engaged in the noble endeavor to foster peace and harmony, thrilled by the countless horrors and delights of nature and the universe; but, despite my protests, Christian acquaintances labeled such statements of mine "delusions" and pitied me, or they dismissed them outright as bald-faced lies.

28
My reluctance to accede to declarations of the divinity of Jesus, first, because I had never met the man and, second, because I did not really understand what the word "god" really meant, seemed enough for some Christians to conclude that unless before death I changed my mind I was “damned.” Many well-intentioned “believers” cited the multiple choice test—Jesus is either a “god,” a lunatic, or a liar—proposed by C.S. Lewis, but it seemed to me that Lewis, another man I did not know, offered too few options. To my academic mind it appeared that Jesus, in his own historical time, had been unaware of his global particularity. He’d had no knowledge, it appeared, of the world philosophers and sages of other cultures and peoples who had lived before him nor of kind, wise contemporaries who lived in other parts of the world.

29
Jesus knew, it seemed obvious from the synoptic “gospels,” only the traditions and histories of his own religion, region, and culture. To me it seemed strange that an omniscient "god" would not know of Buddha or Purna or Mahavira or Lao Tsu or Confucius or Socrates or Plato. But neither did I object to the suggestions of his advocates that Jesus was a child of a "god," the son of a "god," or even an "only" son of "the only" god. Indeed, I liked the idea that all life contained within it a spark of “god,” the reality of “god.” I liked the idea that all who lived were children of “god.” If the “believers” demanded that Jesus were the “only” child of god, well, I didn’t mind, I told them, since if any human deserved to be called a “god” their Jesus probably did. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he is reported to have said, “for they shall be called children of god.”

30
If the incredible stories about Jesus were true even in part, it seemed he had been a brave, nonviolent, and—though not so forgiving as I would have wished—a forgiving man. As for what a “god” really is, though, and how “god” might be defined, I remained still uncertain and, when my Christian friends began by attributing, first, omniscience and, then, omnipotence to “god” and therefore also to Jesus, we had come full circle, alas, and we were right back where we had started. If their “god” knew of the baby and of the raccoon and had possessed the power to save the baby from the horror, why had their “god” not done so?

31
If, as Christians claimed, their “god” saw all the horrors of human suffering in the world and heard all the prayers of its blameless victims, many of them innocent of any serious wrongdoing, and could return to make things right and indeed planned one day to return to make things right, then their “god” seemed incredibly stoic to have done nothing for 2000 years. I thought of the man who was arrested for roasting his toddler daughter in his kitchen oven because she wet her pants. He confessed. "Please, Daddy, let me out," he said his daughter pled with him. "Please. let me out, please, Daddy." Her father did not let her out. Nor did “god” nor did Jesus. Among the "believers," I gave up trying to stifle my sarcasm. Just keep pleading, little girl, I said, just keep praying. Your "daddy" hears you.

32
It was equally unclear in the stories of Jesus what “god” expected of his "believers." In one speech he emphasized "belief" or "faith"; in another he emphasized deeds, practice; in another, charity; in another nonviolence; in another, tolerance; and so on. His essential nature remained also in dispute. To the Jews, Jesus was a rabbi, a prophet, a teacher. To the Christians, Jesus was a “god,” a child of “god,” the son of a “god,” or, with a capital letter, God. To the Moslems, Jesus was a prophet of “god,” a messenger of “god.” To the agnostics, Jesus was in most though not all respects a wise man, a good man, a good teacher. Should people engage in war over these semantic distinctions, I wondered, or even in contentious disputes?

33
Should one faction predict torture in Hell for the members of other, dissenting factions? None of the four groups totally disavowed his teachings about how to live in this world—nonviolence, honesty, compassion, mercy, kindness, love. What, I wondered, was the quarrel really about? Should people fight over who agrees with Jesus most? Over who praises him most? “He’s a teacher!” “No, he’s a prophet!” “No, he’s a god!” “No, he’s God!” It saddened me and amused me to see disciples of Jesus waving the flag of "the christ," just as the ancient Jews had waved the flag of "the lord," and denigrating other systems of "belief," other "gods," other peoples, and pronouncing them inferior to their own, and then the Moslems, likewise, marching to protest what they considered Christian idolatry. “One god, not three!”

34
In them all I seemed to observe the same kind of pride, the same kind of arrogance, the same condescension, the same contempt. Were the world to end today, five billion people, according to the most popular Christian and Moslem “beliefs,” would be and should be condemned to Hell for their lack of the “right” beliefs, and billions and billions more sad souls already dead likewise condemned to Hell, though most were uneducated, poor, confused earthlings just struggling to survive and to raise their children and grandchildren as best they knew how. Now on the day of judgment, according to dogmas of the “believers,” these beings would be tortured in Hell and suffer excruciating pain for all eternity—and for what?

35
For having the wrong thoughts, the wrong doubts, the "wrong" belief, "believers" told me; and those with the "right" belief, the "right" thoughts, would be happy forever in "heaven" knowing of the eternal torment of the billions in Hell. Or, if those in heaven did not know of this terrible suffering of others, would, could, such ignorance constitute the promised bliss? To be ignorant of billions tortured in Hell? This was the vision of the "divine" Jesus? This was the reality of a "god"? This was “perfect” justice? Alas, I could not make sense of such a religion. Nor could I do as my Christian friends advised and simply surrender the effort to make sense of it all, abandon logic and reason, and just embrace the absurdity of their "organized" religion and "believe."

36
No, I thought not and, like many other people who think, if I were to find myself in such a heaven I hoped I would demand of "god" my release from this prison of bliss so that I might descend into Hell in order to try in some way to alleviate the suffering of those so unjustly tortured and punished for their mental crimes, for their thought crimes, for their all-too-human delusion, confusion, and doubt. This was why the "lord" Jesus, according to Christians, had come to earth in the first place, and it was why Buddhists saw Jesus in this incarnation as a "bodhisattva" who accepted his own suffering in order to free and to save all beings.

37
Jesus reformed the cruel, narrow, legalistic church of Judaism of his time and he was labeled a heretic for doing so. Though I could not believe in the power of “prayer,” I did “pray” in my own way that contemporary Jewish, Christian, and Moslem heretics and reformers might do the same for their churches and for the “believers” of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that were the most narrow, legalistic, and cruel in my own time. So long as beings still suffered on earth or in Hell, I told my “believing” friends and acquaintances, I would decline my ticket to any happy heaven, though they smirked at the naiveté of my imagining there to be any chance such an invitation from their "god" and "savior" might be proffered.

38
Nor, after days of reflection and contemplation, could I believe that the "holy" books I had been asked to read were the "word of god" or the "absolute" truth. In my reading of them I had been alternately entertained, instructed, horrified, and bored. In the stories and songs collected therein I had discovered—from "god," from "prophets" of "god," and from the "son" of "god"—counsel I considered very good, good, okay, not bad, bad, very bad, and appalling. The "bible" and the "gospel," I concluded in my typically slow, deliberate, academic way were not the history of “god” but only the incomplete and partial history of humankind's eternally evolving understanding of what the concept of "god" means and of the meaning of "god."

39
Could written language perhaps limit understanding? Was there a reason, perhaps, that Jesus himself never wrote anything down? The myth of Eden, Adam, Eve, Satan, and the talking snake and the myth of Noah, the Ark, the animals, and the Flood seemed to me not history but allegory and poetry. Such myths, read symbolically, could be understood as insights into the human condition. If I read these myths and songs in this way and discovered allegorical and poetic insight and truth in them, was I saying that I “believed” them or that I did not “believe” them? It depended, I found out, on whom I asked. I used my mind when I read, just as all readers did, and I used my reason to decide what was credible and true and what was incredible and false, just as all readers did. I knew no other way to read and to think.

40
I did believe that the myths, legends, stories, poems, songs, histories, and chronicles that made up the bible and gospel were written and collected by well-intentioned men acting honestly and sincerely. In places, I appreciated their efforts and insights and, in other places, I deplored their ignorance, arrogance, intolerance, cruelty, and bias and I pitied them. The “bibles” of Jews, Christians, and Moslems were human documents, I decided. It appeared quite clear to me from my reading that “gods”—and I was still unsure of what "gods" were—did not write books, though “gods” did, it seem, speak to some men, if I chose to believe the men who said so, and “gods” apparently had also requested of such men that they write down the words of these “gods.”

41
But though I myself had experienced "god," no "god" had ever spoken words to me. As for the words of "god" that other men recorded, I chose to “believe” some parts of the “divine” and “holy” text and to disbelieve some other parts. All readers did exactly the same. How did we decide? We all decided in the same way—by using our minds. Did I think that Jesus offered good advice about life? Yes, with the one exception of condemnation and Hell. Did I think the "lord" that condemned, in the Jewish scriptures, a man to death by stoning for gathering wood on the Sabbath was the true "god"? Certainly not. Did I think the "lord" that "promised" a land to a "chosen" people was the true "god"? No, certainly not. Such obvious ethnocentric bias appeared to my academic mind far beneath any "god" that I could imagine.

42
The collection of books others called the "bible" did seem to me a sincere effort to try to understand what the word "god" means. But for many like me the meaning of "god" had grown, evolved, and expanded so that we could recognize the ethnocentrism and bias of ancient efforts to compose portraits of “god.” The jealous, envious, vain, angry, homicidal, genocidal "lord" of the Hebrew scriptures seemed clearly the human projection of "his" "believers," nearly all of them men, and obviously not an all-knowing, all-powerful deity. No thinking person like me could believe the agent of such unjust, vindictive acts was a true “god.”

43
When Jesus said, "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves," I considered this good advice. When the "lord" said to the parents of a drunken son, "Stone him to death," I considered this advice criminal and unworthy of a good man, let alone a "god." I could not believe "in" a "god" who punished by torture and death thousands of people for no other reason than their thought crimes. I certainly would not "worship" such a "god." Almost no one in the United States believed human beings should be tortured or destroyed for what they thought. Yet some people "worshiped" a "god" who, according to “holy” books, had done so over and over again. It made no logical sense, of course, but that was what happened to the human mind, it seemed, when so-called "truths" of “god” were poured into it from birth and infancy onward.

44
My students and I had been studying these questions for six weeks and our discussions were fresh in my mind. I used my mind and reason and common sense when I read all the "holy" books, the Torah, the Gospel, the Epistles, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Diamond Sutra, the Book of Mormon, the Odyssey, the Iliad, and so on. I tested what I read against my personal experience. I considered what others said, what others wrote, what others thought. I read, I thought, I compared, I learned.

45
Stone a man to death for disobeying his parents in order to show other people what is right? Hmm, no, I thought not. God and "his people"? Hmm, well, and who then were all those other people not "his"? Obstacles in the way of "his people," the story went, so “god” destroyed them. Hmm, well, no, I thought not. When I expressed such opinions, Christian friends accused me of being angry with “god.” But this was not so. I was not angry at “god” nor even annoyed with “god.” I found the chroniclers and interpreters of “god” amusing, especially when they reiterated the doctrines and dogmas of their indoctrination. Those who claimed that the whole "bible" was true and the word of "god," it seemed obvious, were just repeating something a parent or minister had told them. No “god” had told them this, no “god” had spoken to them.

46
Their "righteousness" and certitude had little, really, to do with “god.” The "believers" were just as empty-handed as I and, though they cited text from the "holy" books they'd read and judged me and called me names and shouted and swore and prayed and sang in their assemblies of like-minded "believers," their pride and their sanctimonious declarations of their "faith" and "belief" did not move me. I'd read the same books they had read, I'd thought just as hard as they, and I'd come to a different conclusion.

47
God, it seemed to me, revealed “god” in many ways. Books were one facet of “god,” nature another, good people another, kind people another, death another, art another, blogging another. The facets of “god” seemed infinite. What Christians called the “old” testimony seemed to me at times hilarious, a comedy of shallow human stupidity and cruelty, much of it falsely attributed to “god.” Yet hilarity and absurdity and laughter were also facets of “god.” The sunshine glinting through my window as I wrote—still another facet of “god.”

 

 

i want to write about yesterday's therapy session but I may not have the words to fully convey what happened. We were talking about my impatience sometimes and how I can get so tired of waiting that I feel  like a toddler who is screaming I want it I want I want it. And I want it now. And how awful that feels. And that I do have times and have had times when I felt a sense of inner contentment and wonder. So she asked me to close my eyes and go to that place or time when io was a little girl and fully content. What was I doing? Who was I with?

 

And it all came to clearly. I was about 5-7 years old. In the large fields at the end of the street that had not been developed into housing yet- I called it cowboy heaven and I would go there to look for the ghost of dead cowboys. And it was always wonderful. High grass and the sound of wind and the light catching every dust particle. And sometimes I would hang upside down for a long time and watch the world from this vantage point and wonder what it might feel like to walk on the clouds. And as I described all this I began to cry.

 

After I had finished talking about it and why I loved that place and time. I asked Lauranell  why it should make me cry and she gently suggested that I don’t let that part of me get accessed as much as she should, that she has so much goodness and spontaneity and wisdom in her and she gets pushed aside.

 

And later of course I understood- especially in Alabama why I locked her away. She couldn’t get me licensed and build a private practice and make a mark in a social setting that was alien to me. And she was way to spontaneous and flakey to be revealed to the uptight socially concerned southerners.

 

And now in Portland she is coming out again. Wearing the colorful funky clothes she loves and letting her hair go wild and laughing and playing with kids, and digging in the dirt and sweating and not caring if she is smudged or dirty because fun is messy and who cares what others think? She is hurting no one.

 

When I went to the JCC- how did that little girl know to ask me what my pretend name is? She saw the aura. The way only young children and animals see the truth. And she knew and so… my homework from my earth goddess therapist of compassion is to work on integrating that little girl back into my life- she was in my life in Colorado and got sequestered in Alabama…. But I need her. She is a passion and a contentment all at once and some of the best of me resides in her aspects. And no I don’t have a dissociative disorder. I am speaking very loosely and goosey. Do dear friends. Relax, I am okay. More than.

I just completed a pretty amazing book: The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs.

A bit of background:  Jacobs's previous book (which I haven't read yet) chronicled his experience reading the entire Encyclopedia Britainica from A to Z. He has a unique, creative, witty writing style (he writes for Esquire as his day job), and he decided to up the ante a bit with this one:  Not only did he decide to read the Bible cover-to-cover, but he also made a commitment to spend an entire year following every single commandment written within.  Jacobs is a secular Jew, (one of the clever lines has him defining himself as "a Jew, but in the same way that the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant), but he decides to explore and follow the rules laid out in both the Old and New Testaments.

He spends a lot of time talking about his beard.  Normally a clean-shaven guy, he follows the prohibition against cutting one's beard (Leviticus 19:27). So he lets it grow. And grow. He lives and works in New York City where you can see this type of thing quite a bit, but towards the end of his year he notices that even for Big Apple standards he's looking quite weird. The beard was the most profound physical appearance change for him, but it wasn't the only one -- he wasn't cutting the corners of the hair from his temples (ibid) and started wearing white clothes (Ecclesiastes 9:8) which were not made of a two-fiber blend (Deuteronomy 22:11).

But his actions changed as well.  Certain ones had to do with the way he handled his finances. Or the way he interacted with his wife and two-year old son.  He decided early on that he wouldn't follow commandments which were illegal, such as animal sacrifice. But he tried to follow the rest to the letter of the law as much as possible -- which became a bit surreal and funny when he came to ones such as stoning adulterers. (There's an excerpt available online at http://www.ajjacobs.com/books/yolb.asp?id=excerpt which discusses this.)  But he's doing the best he can to live his life as regularly as possible while adhering to these guidelines. After all -- a good number of folks on the planet do it.  The difference: he's not looking at the source from a Canonical point of view. He's a self-described agnostic looking for meaning within the passages.

Which becomes quite difficult when he tries praying.  It's something he had never done before. He starts with certain prescribed texts and lets it become habitual. Eventually, he finds comfort in the notion of praying: he doesn't acknowledge it as to a specific deity, but he enjoys the reflection.

I mentioned this book to someone at work -- especially the notion that an agnostic would go about this experiment. Her first question to me: "Is he mocking the Bible and its followers?"  I don't think he is. In fact, he treats the text with a great deal of respect. He talks with many, many different followers of Judaism and Christianity (as well as some other smaller offshoots such as Karaites and Samaritans), some of whom consist of his advisory board as he takes this journey. He explores the way certain religious groups revere and interpret the Bible -- from dancing in an ultra-Orthodox Chassidic festival in New York celebration to being part of a church service ministered by a snake handler in Tennessee. He hangs out with an Amish family and sits in with a group of gay Evangelicals.

One of his themes is that the followers of the Bible -- even the ones whom we would describe as the most Fundamentalist -- do their share of picking, choosing and interpreting from the written text on some level. If anything, this book made me more aware of the vast spectrum of people who follow the Bible on some level and use it as a means to shape the way they live their lives. People can (and do) use passages in the Bible to substantiate both pro-life and pro-choice stances, for example.  And they'll be arguing about it for a long time.

It also made me far more aware of certain tenets of Christianity as followed by those across the board.  It's been a long time since I've read a sizable chunk of the New Testament, and those were just the Gospels. I'm thinking about reviewing them again -- as well as the other books as well -- rather than taking a look at specific verses out of context. (Come to think of it -- I really should do the same with the Qur'an as well.)

This was a great read, I highly recommend it. There were parts which made me feel defensive about the way I live my life -- perhaps it's a good thing. It's a good balance between cutesy/entertaining and deep/thought-provoking.

Has anyone else read it?