Archive for the 'christianity' Category

Misunderstanding Myth

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Ken
on April 20, 2008
in carl jung, christianity and myth
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It’s all the rage these days. Misunderstanding myth, that is. In the Was Jesus Wrong post at Chrisendom, the comment string contained a lot of misunderstanding of myth. Many believe that if the creation story in Genesis is wrong, then Christianity falls apart. And by wrong, they mean factually, scientifically wrong. If there was not a single, original man and woman (aka Adam and Eve) created some 6000 years ago — and most scientific evidence says there wasn’t — then how can Christianity be taken seriously? My answer is that these people totally misunderstand myth.

Here are some thoughts from Richard Heinberg’s Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age …

In most conversation, the word myth is interchangeable with lie. We speak of exposing myths, dispelling them, and laying them to rest. This equation of myth with fiction is not particularly new; indeed, it can be traced back at least as far as the sixth century B.C., when the earliest Greek philosophers undertook a critical evaluation of Homeric mythology.

Indeed, the early Greeks faced a dilemma not unlike our own. “[T]heir culture was suffused with rituals and stories of great antiquity, but the meaning behind those traditions had largely evaporated. How to make sens of them?” Sound familiar? It sounds like modern Christianity to me. Ritual and stories that hold no pertinent meaning for modern man and are clung to in desperation to retain the “true meaning” (whatever that means). Indeed, Heinberg says

Mythology is inseparable from religion, and so Western civilization’s changing attitudes toward the mysterious and universal sense of the sacred have also deeply affected both popular and scholarly ideas about the nature of myth.

There has been a long history of condescending attitudes towards myth and tribal peoples which culminated in the idea that all religion must be approached with a skeptical attitude and that trying to understand the philosophical meaning of a culture’s myths was useless. But “they had ignored or eliminated the vivifying principle in the object of their study—a principle that would be defined by the next generation of mythologists as the sense of the sacred.”

Recently, a new appreciation of myth has developed which sees them as “ways of conveying universal truths” and are, therefore, “profoundly meaningful.” The work of Carl Jung is especially relevant in this context. “For Jung, the characters and actions of myth are simply expressions of universal archetypes.”

The French philosopher René Guénon considered all traditions as “paths for the practical realization of innate spiritual principles in the lives of human beings” and warned that excessive materialism threatens to “destroy the West if it does not recover itself in time and if it does not consider seriously a ‘return to the source.’” Mircea Eliade took this thought even farther and “emphasized the primacy of the experience of the sacred in all traditions.” Jung, Guénon, Eliade and others have reacquainted us with the ancient idea that “every event was meaningful” and that “even the most mundane activities had an overarching significance and were performed … as part of a cosmic drama.”

Sacred is, I think, also misunderstood today. “To say that a thing or an act is sacred is to imply that it has relevance in a universal plane of values and ideals, and that it is therefore a point of contact between two worlds.” The ancients considered matter itself to be sacred and, to them, the sacred dimension was experienced reality and not just speculation.

As long as researchers denied its importance and based their explanations entirely in earthly terms, we were effectively denied the possibility of fully understanding or benefiting from myth. Worse, by discounting the sense of the sacred we disassociated ourselves from a universal, timeless dimension of significance whose point of access lies deep within the human psyche, where the individual and the collective, the ancient and the modern, merge indistinguishably.

So, back to myth … Jung and Joseph Campbell, in particular, tended to see myth “as allegories for inner processes of spiritual transformation—that is, as stories that are symbolically but never factually ‘true.’” Myths, then, serve to “connect two realities—the visible and the invisible, Earth and Heaven.” Others, such as Immanuel Velikovsky, argue that “myths may contain more than metaphorical content” and originated as descriptions of factual events but have been metamorphosed into mythical events and heroes.

In any case, the great problem with which we must deal is the “worldwide similarity of mythic themes.”

As Campbell and Eliade have shown, there is really only one story, translated in the traditions and circumstances of myriad peoples. It is the myth of a lost idyllic Time of Beginnings, and of a hero’s journey to restore the world to its pristine condition of paradisal splendor.”

How could this have happened? Heinberg says there are only two possibilities. Either the fundamental themes were distributed among the world’s peoples before they had migrated to their present location or “similar motifs … occurred independently to people already living far apart.”

Jung, I think, would agree with the latter and reason that it was due to the archetypal content of the myths which is, essentially, hardwired in our brains because of our humanity. And this is one of the primary reasons myth should be important to us, modern, people. If basically all cultures have the myth of a Paradise, or “Garden of Eden,” then it is part of our humanity and denying or excluding this part of ourselves—our human heritage—is dangerous. We lose touch with an important aspect that unites the physical with the spiritual.

So, whether or not Adam and Eve existed is not the correct question. The correct question is: what do we do with the myth? How do we integrate it—incorporate it—into our lives today? Those who say the Garden of Eden is useless child’s play and those who say it is only a factual, historical place are both missing the point and totally misunderstanding the purpose and power of myth. It is an essential and undeniable part of our psyche and so requires that it be recognized for what it is—a way to understand and convey universal truths.

Just because you’re hated doesn’t mean you’re right

Published
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Ken
on April 7, 2008
in christianity and fundamentalism
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Bobby Maddex at Sign of the Times is as mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. And he does make some valid points. He and “those … who champion moral absolutes, human dignity, the traditional family, and a transcendent reality” are held to a different standard and are not allowed to take cheap shots, distribute deceitful propaganda, and are very often criticized for their stance. So, it’s natural and reasonable they they should want to fight back and do unto others as gets done unto them.

And, for the record, I don’t agree with Dawkins and the neuvo atheists. Hell, I don’t even agree with the old atheists like Bertrand Russell. I think there is something — a LOT of somethings — beyond science. But I also don’t agree with Maddex. And I’ve written a bit about Russell so now it’s Maddex’s turn.

First of all, the use of righteous anger is VERY dangerous and hubristic. James 1:20 says: “For the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” To be truly righteous anger, you have to be truly right — don’t you? And it’s very easy to say and think that you are right but are you? Truly right? Calling your anger righteous just because you think God is on your side is tricky. A lot of people think God is on their side and so they all have the right to call their anger righteous.

Second is the old corollary to “they will know we are Christians by our love” which is “we will know we are Christians by their hate.” Listen. Just because you’re hated doesn’t mean God is on your side! Yes, Jesus said that those who follow him will be hated. But taking hate from the world as an “affirmation” that you are right is not the same thing. It’s kind of like: every human will die and, therefore, everything that dies is human. Wrong!

So, go ahead and parody, satirize, and poke fun at those who hold different viewpoints because they are doing it to you. I think this world would be a much, much, much better place if we could all laugh at each other and ourselves more often. And I do think that we all have the right to believe what we believe and everyone else just better “deal with it.” But, at the end of the day, we still have to live on the same tiny speck of dust as the other person. We still have to live next door to an atheist or an evangelical. We still have to elect a single president over both atheists and evangelicals. We still have to send our kids to school with atheists and evangelicals and figure out what they are going to be taught. We have to live our mundane lives between two diametrically opposed, antagonistic viewpoints and still get eight hours of sleep every night. Looking at it from this perspective, is the best answer the answer that both sides seem all too keen on? Is continued hostility and escalating aggression going to get us anywhere? Neither side is going to convince the other side it’s wrong no matter how many jib-jab-like parodies are produced. It’s not going to work, folks. So, let’s come up with an alternate solution, shall we?

Protection

Published
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Ken
on January 15, 2008
in christianity and jesus
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Massive Attack’s song Protection contains the following lyrics:

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

Lately, the image that is coming to mind when I hear these lyrics is Jesus on the cross and how he took the force of God’s “blow” and “protected” us.

Then I started thinking about “protection” and how the above seems to me to be a passive kind of protection. Passive with regard to the one being protected, that is. There is no notion of trying to change the one you are protecting. Even Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was made without the precondition that we change. It was made whether we change or not. This, to me, is loving protection.

Active modes of protection would be trying to remove the “force” so there is no “blow” or trying to remove the person so the “blow” doesn’t hit her. Both of these modes attempt to alter the circumstances and are unaccepting of the way things are and so are, in many cases, futile because things are what they are.

Later in the song are these words:

Now I can’t change the way you think
But I can put my arms around you
That’s just part of the deal
That’s the way I feel
I put my arms around you

Here, again is a passive, accepting of the circumstances attitude. I’m not trying to change you, I’m just loving you as you are. Synchronistically, I started writing this post yesterday and read a post on Find and Ye Shall Seek today which talks about Christians not showing passive acceptance towards sinners. It’s a real shame that some who profess Jesus as Lord are so oblivious to how much their actions are so unlike the actions of Jesus.

the Word finds expression in other traditions

Published
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Ken
on December 1, 2007
in christianity, jesus, quotes, religion and tolerance
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Found the following on Exploring Our Matrix and couldn’t agree more:

When we hear the words ascribed to Jesus in John’s Gospel, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me’, we do not hear them in a narrowly exclusive way. In John’s gospel, let us remember, the words of Jesus are the words of the Logos, not just of the individual human being, Jesus of Nazareth. That Word or Logos enlightens every one who comes into the world. Those of us who are Christians believe that we have heard it loud and clear in Jesus Christ and that we need not look beyond him. But we do not deny that the Word finds expression in other traditions, and, indeed, in the whole creation

— John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought

Going beyond words

Published
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Ken
on October 16, 2007
in biblical interpretation, christianity, god, judging others, mysticism, religious pluralism, theology, thomas merton and tolerance
. 0 Comments

One of my daughter’s favorite movies is The Incredibles. Since I work at home and watch her most of the time, it’s very convenient that I, too, enjoy this movie because we watch it over and over and over. I’ve started paying attention to some of the dialog and there are some very good lines. One is when Helen Parr, aka Elastigirl, visits Edna to see the new supersuits she made. Helen is unaware of everything which precipitated Edna’s making the suits and so is totally lost as Edna starts talking about them. Edna then says:

Yes, words are useless! Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble. Too much of it, darling. Too much. That is why I show you my work. That is why you are here.

Thomas Merton, talks about the same thing in Echoing Silence:

True communication on the deepest level is more than a simple sharing of ideas, of conceptual knowledge, or formulated truth. The kind of communication that is necessary on this deep level must also be “communion” beyond the level of words, a communion in authentic experience which is shared not only on a “preverbal” level but also on a “post-verbal” level.

The “preverbal” level is that of the unspoken and indefinable “preparation,” “the predisposition” of the mind and heart, necessary for all “monastic” experience whatever.

Now, perhaps I’m stretching the point, but I would consider some religious experiences — the Eucharist, for example — to be “monastic” experiences since these are reflective, contemplative, personal, yet shared and participatory. Merton continues (with emphasis added):

This demands among other things a “freedom from automatisms and routines,” and candid liberation from external social dictates, from conventions, limitations, and mechanisms which restrict understanding and inhibit experience of the new, the unexpected. The monk who is to communicate on the level that interests us here must be not merely a punctilious observer of external traditions, but a living example of traditional and interior realization. He must be wide open to life and to new experience because he has fully utilized his own tradition and gone beyond it. This will permit him to meet a [disciple] of another, apparently remote and alien tradition, and find a common ground of verbal understanding with him. The “post-verbal” level will then, at least ideally, be that on which they both meet beyond their own words and their own understanding in the silence of an ultimate experience which might conceivably not have occurred if they had not met and spoken. This I would call “communion.” I think it is something that the deepest ground of our being cries out for, and it is something for which a lifetime of striving would not be enough.

Language is limiting. Language is controlling. Edna was unable to describe to Helen the experience and wonder of making the supersuits because there was no common ground of understanding. Helen might as well have been talking a different language altogether. Her biases and assumptions did not allow her to understand. It didn’t fit into her mental model of the world. But that does not mean that Edna’s experiences were invalid or wrong or false. There was no language that could bridge the two world-views. But the experience itself could.

And this is exactly where the trouble lies in religions. Looking at the words, it may seem, for example, Islam and Christianity are mutually exclusive. And so we use these incompatible words as dividers between the two. We demand that they say the right words about their experiences of their God. That they describe their God with just the right adjectives — the same adjectives that we use to describe our God: “God cannot be God unless God is a Triune God, eternally existing in three persons …” Only then, is their experience of their God “correct.” Furthermore, if they don’t use the correct verbiage then they are heretics and eternally damned and sometimes worse.

But let’s take the very trite example of two people witnessing an event taking place in this physical world. You will get different stories, different explanations, different emphasis. In short, incompatible, mutually exclusive words. In fact, this very idea is often used to defend the Gospels. Just look at the resurrection story and see how many “different” accounts there are and how these “different” accounts for merged.

So, if we cannot agree on the words to describe an event in this physical world, how much less can we agree on the words to describe the ineffable, numinous experience of God?? And how can we hold others at fault for using their own words which make sense to them but not us? The key is to go beyond our own traditions and meet in non-verbal communion.

The work of the Holy Spirit

Published
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Ken
on September 25, 2007
in buddhism, christianity, d.t. suzuki, god, holy spirit, meister eckhart, mysticism and quotes
. 3 Comments

Found a quote from The Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus on The Fire and the Rose:

The Son is image of the Father, and image of the Son is the Spirit, through whom the Christ dwelling in man gives it to him to be to the image of God.

So, we can’t become the image of God without the Holy Spirit? But I thought we were created in the image of God. There’s no becoming involved.

Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 9:6: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

In Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, D.T. Suzuki writes:

Indeed, we are all apt to forget that every one of us is Buddha himself. In the Christian way of saying, this means that we are all made in the likeness of God, or in Eckhart’s words, that “God’s is-ness is my is-ness and neither more nor less.”

We already are the image of God so what does the Holy Spirit have to do? The Holy Spirit is the reminder of things we’ve forgotten because (again from Mysticism)

… the sense of opposites is dominating your consciousness. The idea of participation or empathy is an intellectual interpretation of the primary experience, while as far as the experience itself is concerned, there is no room for any sort of dichotomy. The intellect, however, obtrudes itself and breaks up the experience in order to make it amenable to intellectual treatment, which means a discrimination or bifurcation. The original feeling of identity is then lost and intellect is allowed to have its characteristic way of creaking up reality into pieces. Participation or empathy is the result of inellectualization.

. . .

It is our eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge which has resulted in our constant habit of intellectualizing. But we have never forgotten, mythologically speaking, the original abode of innocence: that is to say, even when we are given over to intellection and to the abstract way of thinking, we are always conscious, however dimly, of something left behind and not appearing on the chart of well-schematized analysis. This “something” is no other than the primary experience of reality in its suchness or is-ness …

The Holy Spirit does not enable us to become the image of God but, rather, is the constant reminder that we already are the image of God. If we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, then we can realize this a-rational identity. A-rational because it does not come from our intellect. We cannot think our way into the image of God. We must experience it in a raw, unprocessed manner.

WWJD … today?

Published
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Ken
on September 2, 2007
in christianity, environment, jesus and money
. 3 Comments

Over at The Fire and the Rose, D.W. Congdon has an excellent and provocative post. “What would Jesus drive? What would Jesus buy?” is the question. I fired off a comment that Jesus wouldn’t drive anything and a couple other people chimed in with agreement. But D.W. raised an excellent counter-point.

It seems to me that you (and other commentators thus far) are essentially saying that one cannot be a Christian in suburbia. And as much as I would like to say that Christians should not drive and should worship where they live, this is simply an impossibility on any kind of large scale.

. . .

But we live an hour away from the city, because of where I go to school. We have one car. I take the school shuttle so she can have the car. She drives an hour each way to her school. This is certainly not ideal, but it’s the best we can do. My wife, Amy, is working in the inner city, but in order to do this work, she needs a car to get there.

What would you say to her? Would you question whether she really needs a car? What do you have to say to the many Americans who actually do need cars to do things that are really worthwhile and need to be done?

The Christian ideal is to emulate Jesus. But the Jesus that is held up before us like the carrot on a stick is a first century Jesus. What are we supposed to do with that? Sure, the easy stuff is still easy — don’t kill, commit adultery, steal, blah, blah, blah. But Jesus doesn’t say anything about, for example, the environmental impact of our daily lives or the globalness of our culture and society. Sure the clothes we buy in WalMart that were made in China are cheaper for us. But what about the cost of transporting that shirt halfway around the world? Does that matter? Of course Jesus didn’t drive. He walked everywhere because his “parish” was small. (Or was his parish small because all he could do was walk?)

As D.W. asks, is it wrong to live in a place where you cannot commute to work by bus or bike or foot? If we all claim that Jesus would not drive, then what does that say about what we should be doing? There are people in the San Fransisco East Bay area who drive an hour or more each way to work. Some of them do this because they simply cannot afford to buy a house close to where they work. But what are they to do? There are not enough jobs in the area where they live.

The real question I’m asking is: “What would Jesus do … Today?” Answering what Jesus would have done 2000 years ago is a moot point. It doesn’t matter. The Old Testament Law is no longer “valid” for us today — we are not stoning homosexuals and adulterers. Things change. No matter how hard we try to keep things as they were, “as they were” was a change from what they were before that! Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek,” but what does that mean today? What does it mean to be meek today? Can you be both meek and a CEO, CFO, CIO, CTO, police officer, inner-city school teacher, politician, or mega-church pastor? I’ve posted on this before, but the early church sold all their property and gave to those in need. Why don’t we have to do this today if the early church is the gold standard? “Well, because things are different today,” you’ll no doubt say. “Exactly!” I’ll say. “Things are different but our Jesus hasn’t changed one iota. He’s still wearing sandals and walking everywhere with no money, home, car, savings account, IRA, or job.

How does this help me TODAY??

Ellul: gripping stuff … thank you, John H.

Published
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Ken
on August 24, 2007
in books, buddhism, christianity, jacques ellul, mysticism and zen
. 0 Comments

I’ve been lightly skimming (no offense intended ;-) ) the Confessing Evangelical’s posts on Ellul’s What I Believe. But I went back and looked more carefully at The Word That Grips Us and then at the list of Ellul’s other publications on Jesus Radicals. I just want to say a huge “thank you” to John for leading me to Ellul. It looks like fascinating stuff that’s right up my alley and I’m definitely going to read him. Well, I’m definitely going to put him on my stack of books to read. But up near the top! (I’m finding less and less time to read these days.)

Just a comment on The Word That Grips Us …

Ellul’s statement:

The revelation is not for me a matter of mystical contemplation. It is more like what many of us are familiar with; a word suddenly becomes so true to us that we can no longer doubt it.

We know well how astonishing this experience can be. I read in the Bible texts that I have read a hundred times, that I know by heart, that are part of my objective knowledge of the biblical God, and suddenly the word that I know so well intellectually takes on an unexpected significance, a blinding force that constrains me to accept it as truth, as a truth at once comprehensible, irrational, and rigorously certain.

seems to me to be precisely “mystical contemplation.” It immediately evoked images of Zen monks achieving a moment of satori or enlightenment as the master raises a finger or slaps across the face. The “contemplation” part was when Ellul read these passage “hundreds of times” and committed them to memory. And the revelation is when you suddenly see what you’ve been staring at. You see it in a totally different from; from a new angle; with “fresh eyes.” It’s been there the whole time but something in you has changed so that you really see.

Now, I don’t know Ellul and of course I can’t speak for him. If he does not consider this as “mystical contemplation” then it’s not. I just can’t help but notice the similarity.

Paradise (Never) Lost

Published
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Ken
on August 23, 2007
in buddhism, christianity, d.t. suzuki, god, jesus, meister eckhart and mysticism
. 0 Comments

In Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist D.T. Suzuki quotes Meister Eckhart …

I have read many writings both of heathen philosophers and sages, of the Old and New Testaments, and I have earnestly and will all diligence sought the best and the highest virtue whereby man may come most closely to God and wherein he may once more become like the original image as he was in God when there was yet no distinction between God and himself before God produced creatures. And having dived into the basis of things to the best of my ability I find that it is no other than absolute detachment from everything that is created. It was in this sense when our Lord said to Martha: “One thing is needed,” which is to say: He who would be untouched and pure needs just one thing, detachment. [emphasis mine]

This is quite interesting to me and very non-mainstream Christian. Eckhart is saying that man existed before God created anything. But man didn’t exist as man, man existed as an image in God and as an image that was not distinct from God. Does this mean that man was/is God?

What does “no distinction between God and himself” mean? The meaning that first comes to mind is that you can’t tell them apart. Does this mean than man is God? As an analogy, it is most likely possible to produce a counterfeit ten dollar bill that is indistinguishable from a real ten dollar bill. But what would that take? It would take the exact same ink, the exact same paper, an exact duplicate of the plates, and probably a couple other things. But if the “fake” bill uses the same ink and paper and identical plates, is it really fake? Isn’t it really only fake because it wasn’t printed in a sanctioned government mint (or wherever it is that money is printed)? And if this is the only difference, then isn’t it really a genuine bill; fake in name only? In other words, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …

Then I looked up the word “distinction.” The definition, of course, references “distinct” which has two definitions that seem relevant: 1. distinguished as not being the same; not identical; separate and 2. different in nature or quality; dissimilar. Following these definitions then, Eckhart is saying that man and God are the same, identical, not separate, not different, not dissimilar. This is quite a statement! It is so very reminiscent of the well-known Zen koan: What was your face before your parents were born? Answer that and you’ve discovered your Buddha-nature. Answer that and you’ve discovered God. Answer that and you’ve re-discovered your true, essential Self; the Self not tied to this earthly body, this creature made by God.

Eckhart is also implying that the act of creating man on the sixth day was the act that resulted in the separation (the distinction) between God and man. Being human is being separated from God. Or, more accurately, thinking of our Selves as human — being attached to our humanity, as as such, our separateness from other humans and from God — is being separated from God. Perhaps this is the real reason Jesus became human. We were so intent on pushing God “out there” and then trying to re-bridge the gap with religion but it wasn’t working. We had totally forgotten our origins, our face before our parents were born, our true nature as indistinct from God. Jesus’ humanity demonstrates our actual situation — God (or something indistinct from God) incarnate. That is what we are to emulate in Jesus — his God-nature.

Paradise was never lost because we can’t change what we are. Paradise only seems lost because all our attention is on our humanity. We’ve really just forgotten that we are already in paradise right now. And the solution, as Eckhart says, is “absolute detachment from everything that that is created.” Detachment from our humanity and from our society and our culture. This detachment is exactly what Jesus speaks of when he tells us to not worry and trust in him for everything. It’s what Paul talks about when he tells us to pray without ceasing. It’s having our focus on heaven and storing up riches where thieves do not break in and steal.

More on experience v. theology

Published
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Ken
on July 30, 2007
in buddhism, christianity, mysticism, quotes, theology, thomas merton and zen
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Thomas Merton, again, from Zen and the Birds of Appetite:

The best we can say is that in certain religions, Buddhism for instance, the philosophical or religious framework is of a kind that can more easily be discarded, because it has in itself a built-in “ejector,” so to speak, by which the meditator is at a certain point flung out from the conceptual apparatus into the Void. It is possible for a Zen Master to say nonchalantly to his disciple, “If you meet the Buddha, kill him!” But in Christian mysticism the question whether or not the mystic can get along without the human “form” (Gestalt) or the sacred Humanity of Christ is still hotly debated, with the majority opinion definitely maintaining the necessity for the Christ of faith to be present as ikon at the center of Christian contemplation. Here again, the question is confused by the failure to distinguish between the objective theology of Christian experience and the actual psychological facts of Christian mysticism in certain cases. And then one must ask, at what point do the abstract demands of theory take precedence over the psychological facts of experience? Or, to what extent does the theology of a theologian without experience claim to interpret correctly the “experienced theology” of the mystic who is perhaps not able to articulate the meaning of his experience in a satisfactory way?

Everyone espousing a particular theology needs to have a way to distinguish those who believe the same from those who don’t. For the mystic, there is a certain language that is shared which makes no sense to outsiders. For the “theologian without experience” the theology must take on a rigid belief system which must be intellectual since there is no experiential basis. This external theology then requires adherence to sacraments, creeds, and behaviors. This is precisely why mystics have been questionable, at best, and often outcasts. The two theologies have nothing in common and there is a one-way path of communication. The mystic can interpret the other theology in terms of her experiences and thereby gain from participating in the sacraments, creeds, and behaviors. But there is no such understanding going the other direction. The non-experiencing theologian cannot understand the mystic’s theology any more than he can understand a joke told in a foreign language. Therefore, he has no ruler by which to measure the mystical theology’s closeness to his own. The easiest thing to do is condemn her.

And a little later …

On the other hand, let us repeat that we must not neglect the great importance of experience in Christianity. But Christian experience always has a special modality, due to the fact that it is inseparable from the mystery of Christ and the collective life of the Church, the Body of Christ. To experience the mystery of Christ mystically or otherwise is always to transcend the merely individual psychological level and to “experience theologically with the Church” (sentire cum Ecclesia). In other words, this experience must always be in some way reducible to a theological form that can be shared by the rest of the Church or that shows that it is a sharing of what the rest of the Church experiences. There is therefore in the recording of Christian experiences a natural tendency to set them down in language and symbols that are easily accessible to other Christians. This may perhaps sometimes mean an unconscious translation of the inexpressible into familiar symbols that are always at hand ready for immediate use.

Two things for me here but the second will be the subject of its own post. First is the idea that since “experience must always be … reducible to a theological form that can be shared” then there is “a natural tendency to set them down in language and symbols that are easily accessible to other Christians.”

I agree that if you are going to share experience with everyone then it must be reduced down to something concrete that can be passed around. And this is somewhat of a problem for me because by solidifying an experience, you lose so much and gain so little because it’s impossible for someone to partake in your experience who has not had the same experience (or similar) herself. Just imagine trying to share the experience of the color red with someone who has been blind since birth.

But making it “easily accessible” is the real problem for me. If it’s easy then it’s not so precious. I’ve talked on this topic before but I’m coming to realize that this is one of the bigger “issues” I take with Evangelical and Fundamental Christianity. (I hesitate using such adjectives as I know there is a wide range of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists and what I’m saying does not apply to everyone. What I really mean to do is describe the type of Christianity/Christian I am referring to by my description. The old “if the shoe fits …” and it’s up to you to decide if I’m referring to you or not.) But back on point. “Easily accessible” requires a formula. It does not allow for differing experiences of the same thing where these experiences are not trivially reconciled. Everyone must follow the formula or risk being labeled as a heretic.

This leads to legalism and fanaticism, and lends itself extremely well to hypocrisy. As long as you appear to be following the formula, toeing the line, then you are in the right. If you deviate from the formula, it is obvious and are a prime candidate for rebuke or retaliation from those in the right. Worse still, those who only appear to be correct are the ones who most vehemently require absolute compliance from the rest of us for it somehow alleviates the self doubt they secretly harbor. It’s their shadow being projected on others.

It is in such a legalistic context that the sacred symbols of our experience of Christ become the battle grounds of theologians who cannot admit the validity of formulae different from their own. The precise meaning and interpretation of the sacraments, for example, overshadow the experience and actually insulate the Christian from the full experience of Christ. The focus is so strongly fixated on the external details that the experience itself is lost. Whether the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus or whether they represent the body and blood or whatever should be a distant second in importance to the experience itself of partaking in the death and resurrection of The Christ.

Furthermore, the “easily accessible” formula not only insulates but actually works to prevent the experience because the experiencer has outside constraints on how the experience is to be realized. What one does and how one thinks is dictated by the formula and so one is not free to experience the sacraments, for example, apart from the well-defined, specific, ritual set down by the theologians. It’s like painting by number where you are told exactly what color to use where. That’s not really painting at all. There’s no feeling in it. There’s no connection with the work. There’s no real experience of painting.

The second point is the “set them down in language and symbols” part. Merton has an excellent passage on how we use language which is germane to this point and will be posted later.