tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post8241876137220809456..comments2024-03-28T15:31:02.860-07:00Comments on Metacrock's Blog: Christmas and The Crucified GodJoseph Hinman (Metacrock)http://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-23799306431625528912012-12-20T12:14:44.110-08:002012-12-20T12:14:44.110-08:00that's coolthat's coolJoseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-27527950454054972592012-12-20T10:08:24.927-08:002012-12-20T10:08:24.927-08:00I was just mentioning about the debating thing in ...I was just mentioning about the debating thing in case some other reader wasn't happy with what I wrote. That's OK if they aren't, I just don't have the time or energy to argue about what they might not like.tinythinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17137637122776756669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-55941076034330906062012-12-20T07:54:59.189-08:002012-12-20T07:54:59.189-08:00I'm not going to analyze them or debate I am j...I'm not going to analyze them or debate I am just going to see where the Spirits lead me when I read them.<br /><br />you have to be honest to what you feel. I am sure you are being so. So that's cool.Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-57917246298614968362012-12-19T17:31:45.836-08:002012-12-19T17:31:45.836-08:00Well, like I said, these are examples of what I mi...Well, like I said, these are examples of what I might be writing later. And people are free to comment, of course. But I personally am not looking to try to analyze and debate any of those ideas. They're just an example, as I indicated, of how I would approach such topics if I had a reason to take Christianity seriously. But honestly, I still don't. What I wrote can be added to what I've written at my blog, and it all adds up to something, but it still is just a collection of theoretical ideas as opposed to something felt or moving, and there is still quite a bit that isn't covered by them.<br /><br />And, also, I think that while there are element of the Christian tradition that would resonate with or at least be sympathetic to what I wrote, in general it just doesn't fit, even among the more progress aspects of the catholic communions (Roman, Anglican, Orthodox, etc). So, even if I had some conscious awareness of spirit and identified it in some way with the Judeo-Christian belief system, I would still feel out of place. Given that my views on proper Christian identity are anathema to individualized, idiosyncratic, and isolated practice (the latter with an exception for deeply experience hermit monks, who still go to churches for service, btw), it still wouldn't work out. But maybe this will help someone else who isn't so incompatible with Christianity.tinythinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17137637122776756669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-23523250073277189002012-12-19T16:43:11.135-08:002012-12-19T16:43:11.135-08:00I am going to consiser the things you say and answ...I am going to consiser the things you say and answer. It could take a couple of days.Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-18352563408808549722012-12-19T16:42:35.560-08:002012-12-19T16:42:35.560-08:00wow that really got you going some how Dave. I'...wow that really got you going some how Dave. I'm horned glad to hear form you. I don't know if I'll be able to respond to all of it but I'll try. I would like to publish it all a guest piece.<br /><br /><br />"Christmas and The Crucified God"<br />5 Comments - Show Original Post Collapse comments<br />1 – 5 of 5<br /><br />Blogger Dave said...<br /><br /> "I am not sure if there are any philosophers, theologians, or doctrinal traditions that would resonate with them, but here are some views I found interesting or developed when I was pondering Christianity over the past few years."<br /><br /><b>that's ok I'm glad to hear them anyway. they don't have to be in line with some theologian to be good.</b> <br /><br /><br />"I don't present them as something to argue about or debate over, though readers can do as they wish. Just posting them for reflection. They represent what might go into my second book if I ever bother to finish writing my first one.<br /><br /> (As my comment is longer than Blogger prefers, it is broken into smaller parts.)<br /><br /> 1. Sin is a human concept to describe a habituated and limiting way of existing in terms of the psycho-social and physical identification with the "self". It is a failure to appreciate that this self, and that the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of self are inadequate, thus our lives "miss the mark" and we are unable to live to the fullest.<br /><br /> This presents an existential dilemma of the nature and meaning of life, and as a spiritual question tries to answer by pointing to that which includes but is greater than these secular elements. This is a view of spirit as that which is true life, which then spills over into the dimensions of matter and energy creating limited reflecting and eventually becoming aware of its deeper nature. In current parlance, this deeper nature or spirit is often discussed in terms of consciousness and quantum mechanics, but that's just the language people are using that seems timely and relevant.<br /><br /> In this sense, sin only exists when there is a capacity of organic life forms to reflect upon and realize something deeper about their natures, but even here the term sin can be over-used. The term has acquired the implication of being willfully cruel or petty, but it can just as easily refer to the self-delusion that one is actually kind and generous when in fact these unexamined feelings and motives are still rooted in selfishness.Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-25622647354210150762012-12-19T09:03:41.866-08:002012-12-19T09:03:41.866-08:00As for other events and their implied meanings in ...As for other events and their implied meanings in this scheme, here is a small sample. The birth of Jesus, that is, Emmanuel, or God-with-us, it itself telling us all we need to know if we are spiritually adept. We are a part of God, we are holy, we are a part of God that can consciously act in the world, we are like his children. As Br. John Martin Sahajananda, the Virgin Mary represents being open and humble, without presumption or expectation, or as another religious tradition might put it, her heart was like "beginner's mind". It is in this state that awareness of the divine is born in us and can manifest in the world.<br /><br />A second brief sample, this time for the Crucifixion, suggests that we must be willing to have everything stripped away--our physical, psychological, and social selves, and then the curtain in the temple, i.e. our limited perspective, that separates us from a direct awareness of God is torn in twain. <br /><br />As for the message the Crucifixion and subsequent events offer about a human perspective on God's nature, this is how God deals with human evil. By absorbing it into himself, then transforming it into something new. To use Buddhist metaphors again, the lotus blooms in the mud, poison is transformed into medicine, and bits of rubble are turned to gold. If you don't recognize this from the Gospels, think about Jesus comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to a weed (mustard), or to leavened (i.e. impure) bread, or the reference to older Hebrew scriptures about the stone rejected by the builders becoming the cornerstone of the temple in the city of God (a.k.a. Zion).<br /><br />In other words, the Crucifixion wasn't necessary, merely inevitable. And note that even someone who rejects the idea of older Hebrew scripture predicting the concrete historical person of Jesus, and even someone who denies the reality of such a person, could still learn something and find some kind of wisdom in the Gospels. And for those who do accept one or both of those propositions, this gives them more to think about throughout the liturgical year of the Church, but especially during Advent/Christmastide and Lent/Easter-tide.tinythinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17137637122776756669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-32858623247745099442012-12-19T09:03:27.221-08:002012-12-19T09:03:27.221-08:004. The Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension take t...4. The <b>Passion</b>, Resurrection, and Ascension take the expectations and understanding of God from these people and make a statement that has shaken history. Their communities had many differences, which is obvious from the letters of Paul and the Apostles as well as from non-canonical texts. Joe Hinman has laid out how here some of these differences came to be crystallized in his review of different conceptions of the Crucifixion. <br /><br />Given the brief sketch I've provided, a different approach to the Incarnation (including the Crucifixion and subsequent events) emerges. It isn't wholly unorthodox, it just re-arranges some of the pieces in a way that isn't discussed. Again, it may be that, oh, Saint So-and-So wrote about this in the 5th Century, or the obscure theologian from some defunct state now subsumed into a modern European nation write about in the 1500s, but if so, I plead ignorance. I don't write this as a proclamation of fact or what I believe, but what I might find more credible if I were trying to take Christianity seriously.<br /><br />The Incarnation itself, as an icon within an icon (the Gospel), represents the fact that we are part of the stream of God. It takes all of the differing views and voices claiming to represent God in the older Hebrew scriptures and presents a unifying vision of God as peaceful, merciful, and loving above all else. The Gospel writers and the writers of the letter of Paul and the Apostles then try to reconcile this with the side of the tradition calling for justice and judgement, but they stress that mercy and love trump all else.<br /><br />The Incarnation/Gospel icons represent a chance to right all of the wrongs that had happened in the earlier Hebrew scriptures in addition to clarifying/re-defining them. They try to change the mindset that God is a temperamental curmudgeon who is cut off from humanity in some far-away world of inaccessible perfection. In doing so, they have to deal with the mindset of sin as a physically-induced moral imperfection, and the idea that ordinary people are just not good enough for God without elaborate rituals.<br /><br />In a sense, then, conceptions of atonement may have been necessary for those who couldn't have conceived of themselves as being part of the divine any other way. This was mixed up with various ideas about salvation, and the result is well-known to those familiar with Christianity. In a way, the Incarnation/Gospel were a call for a spiritual renewal in Judaism.<br /><br />tinythinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17137637122776756669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-81914229639760739752012-12-19T09:02:30.223-08:002012-12-19T09:02:30.223-08:003. The Incarnation and the Gospels concerning this...3. The <b>Incarnation</b> and the Gospels concerning this event are icons, representations of something that is beyond the conventional boundaries of secular knowledge. To reduce them to nothing more than myth and metaphor or to obsess over their historicity is to lose an essential aspect of their truth as a co-joining of mystery and lived reality.<br /><br />The Incarnation as Christ in the person of Jesus is a reflection of thousands of years of Jewish oral tradition. The standard line is that all of the references in the Psalms, Isaiah, and the like were cases of fortune-telling, of seeing or predicting the concrete future of a historical flesh and blood individual. Whether or not one accepts that, there is something more to all of this that is frequently neglected.<br /><br />Whether you accept or reject such claims, it is clear to those professional historians that the Gospel writers took liberties with the different stories of Christ based on their own expectations and assumptions as well as those of their audiences, trying to paint a picture that would be meaningful and acceptable to their own communities. Even if one rejects the foresight claims of the prophets, prophetic vision is more than just seeing a concrete future.<br /><br />As icons, or artistic signs, the Gospels and the Christ they portray reflect the traditional and evolving view of God based on Hebrew scripture and tradition. Jesus becomes a distillation of the core elements of this tradition, subsuming the suffering servant of Isaiah, embodying the faithful but crushed poor of the Psalms, reflecting the redemption of another icon--namely Adam, and so forth. <br /><br />Again, people can argue over how much of the life or sayings of Jesus are likely to be historically accurate just as they can argue about the prefiguring of Christ in older Hebrew scripture. But the Incarnation as represented in the Gospels tells us a great deal about how a particular sect of Judaism experienced God -- as a loving Father, as a source of the miracle of joy, as a solemn mystery moving within and beyond the material world.<br />tinythinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17137637122776756669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-56998041314458954162012-12-19T09:02:10.442-08:002012-12-19T09:02:10.442-08:002. God is the source, substance, and ground of thi...2. <b>God</b> is the source, substance, and ground of this "spirit" which then manifests as what is classically conceived of as material creation. In a nod to Taoism as well as Buddhist contemplatives and Christian mystics, just because God is in that sense omnipresent and omnipotent doesn't mean that God's will, to use a clumsy term, is immediately and fully manifested from our perspective. <br /><br />That is, it seems practically impossible for humans to conceive or discuss any aspect of God which might include a personal aspect without immediately anthropomorphizing it, or making it human. This is perhaps because we tend to equate "person" and "human". So we conceive of God as acting within a framework of reference such as our conventional notions of time. God decided it was Its will to cure Frank of cancer at 8:01AM, so therefore at 8:01AM on the dot Frank was cured.<br /><br />This, frankly speaking, is absurd. Better to think of God as spring that flows into and manifests as our reality. This flow has a direction and it is ultimately irresistible. That doesn't mean it is an overwhelming flood that cannot be resisted. There are eddies and pools as well. <br /><br />Moreover, advanced sentient and self-reflective beings would have some degree of agency, or power to decide whether or not to go with this flow or to try to resist it. This resistance doesn't have to be framed in a traditional religious context either. But while we can choose to help hasten the manifestation of God's will (again, I loath that term) or resist it, eventually it will move forward, inexhorable and unrelenting.<br /><br />This capacity to advance or attempt to thwart God's will, or if we prefer, the flow of existence, is related to our being a part of it that can sense being such a part on some level and thus direct its own course. We may also try to judge the particular part of the stream in which we flow as good or bad. But ultimately as aspects of this flow with agency, we create our own good and evil. Not just our conceptions of such, but the manifestations thereof. We are conduits of God's power, for better or worse (check out the stories of the judges and prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, for example, and how Sampson used his to satisfy his vanity--this isn't just a notion that comes out of nowhere).tinythinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17137637122776756669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11516215.post-9742317871869498042012-12-19T09:00:41.570-08:002012-12-19T09:00:41.570-08:00I am not sure if there are any philosophers, theol...I am not sure if there are any philosophers, theologians, or doctrinal traditions that would resonate with them, but here are some views I found interesting or developed when I was pondering Christianity over the past few years. I don't present them as something to argue about or debate over, though readers can do as they wish. Just posting them for reflection. They represent what might go into my second book if I ever bother to finish writing my first one.<br /><br />(As my comment is longer than Blogger prefers, it is broken into smaller parts.)<br /><br />1. <b>Sin</b> is a human concept to describe a habituated and limiting way of existing in terms of the psycho-social and physical identification with the "self". It is a failure to appreciate that this self, and that the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of self are inadequate, thus our lives "miss the mark" and we are unable to live to the fullest. <br /><br />This presents an existential dilemma of the nature and meaning of life, and as a spiritual question tries to answer by pointing to that which includes but is greater than these secular elements. This is a view of spirit as that which is true life, which then spills over into the dimensions of matter and energy creating limited reflecting and eventually becoming aware of its deeper nature. In current parlance, this deeper nature or spirit is often discussed in terms of consciousness and quantum mechanics, but that's just the language people are using that seems timely and relevant.<br /><br />In this sense, sin only exists when there is a capacity of organic life forms to reflect upon and realize something deeper about their natures, but even here the term sin can be over-used. The term has acquired the implication of being willfully cruel or petty, but it can just as easily refer to the self-delusion that one is actually kind and generous when in fact these unexamined feelings and motives are still rooted in selfishness.tinythinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17137637122776756669noreply@blogger.com