Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Christmas and The Crucified God


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This is my annual Christmas article. I will post on Friday but not Monday. I'll probably take off next Wednesday too. So I wish every a Mary Christmas!


The Christian part of Christmas, that's the nativity scene with no trees or elves. That's the part you go to chruch to talk about. Show some mangers and some wise men and play the drummer boy song (eeeeee can't stand that son, p-rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum...enough already!) and you've done your bit for Christmas. I actually love Christmas, I like the manger and the baby and all that. Yet that is not what it's about. The entrance of Christ into the world in a lowly birth, worshiped by wise mean and heralded by angles and a star, those are nice folk tale elements. That masks what it's all about in guise of cute fluffy heart warming imagery. Christmas is about the birth of Christ, God come in the flesh, and that signals to us the death of Christ; its meaning, it's end, it's un-final end and new beginner. The birth heralds more of the positive side of Jesus time in the flesh, his career, his mission, the promise and the possibilities. After all they angels said "peace on earth, good will toward men." How does that connect to a kid born in a manger?
,,,,,,,Even with the positive possibilities of peace the birth hearlds the death and since we are compelled to think of both they both remind us of the meaning of Christ's mission and the reason for his coming. I used to read a book every Christmas, the same book. It was one of my all time favorite books; The Crucified God, by Jurgen Moltmann. The subtitle is very important: The Cross of Christ as the foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. That book seemed to most adequately sum up what the incarnation is about. I haven't read it in many years, lost in the moving, the many moves I've had to make.
.......Motlmann was from the 60's to the 90's and maybe even up to the present was the greatest living Protestant theologian. He was best known for this book and his Theology of Hope. both of which served to dramatize and legitimize the theology of liberation and the struggles of Latin America. Moltmann's book is actually an argument for placing Paxis on the front burner of theology and leaving the dray musty doctrinal stuff on the back burner. Praxis is the idea of reflection upon material need, how to apply the lessons of theology in a practical way to people's needs.
.......To get to the core of the book and it's relation to Christmas, the argument goes like this: So what if Jesus was crucified? what's the big deal? There are much worse ways to suffer. Crucifixion is bad but it is far from the worst thing that can happen to you. So why was it a sacrifice, I mean after all he is God, what would it matter to him if he dies? And he got to come back."
.......First, most Christians try to answer this out of a need for piety. They do not give a theological answer, they give a pious one. The pious answer can't be undestood by modern people, they lack pious feelings, so it just makes it worse. The pious answer of course is to try and mount up the pain and make it seem so very much worse. O. Jesus suffered in hell and he suffers every minute and he's still suffering and he felt all the agony in the world. Of course it doesn't' really say that anywhere in the Bible. While I think this is true, and while my pious side feels the proper sense of devotion and gratitude to our savior for his work, we can't use this to answer the question because modern impiety can't understand the answer. They just hear us reiterating their hidden primes.
.......The other Christian answers are Propitiatory atonement, Substitutionary, or Moral government. These are the tree major ways of looking at the atonement. Propitiation means to turn away anger. This answer is also incomprehensible to moderns. God is so very angry with us that he can't stand the sight of us, he has to stick Jesus between himself and us so he will see Jesus and turn away his anger. This just makes God seem like a red faced historical parent who couldn't comprehend the consequences of his creation when he decided to make it. Substitutionary atonement says that Jesus took our place, he received the penalty our sins deserved. This comes in two verities. One is financial transaction, Jesus paid the debt. the other is closer to moral government, Jesus was executed because he stepped in and took the place of the guilty party. Both of these are also problematic, because they really allow the guilty to get off Scott free and persecute an innocent person. Again modern people can't understand this kind of thinking; you could not go down to the jail and talk them into letting you take another prisoners place. We can harp on how this is a grace so fine we can't undersigned it in the natural mind, and relapse into piety again singing the praises to God for doing this wonderful act, but it wont answer the atheists questions.
.......I realize that the view I hold to is a little known minority view. I know I'm bucking the mainstream. But I think it makes a lot more sense and  actually explains why there was an atonement. Before getting into it, however, I want to comment upon the atheist hidden premise. The explicit premise of the atheist argument is that atonement works by Jesus suffering a whole lot. If Jesus suffers enough then restitution is made. But wait, restitution for what? For our sins? Then why should Jesus suffer more than we do or more than our victims do? Why do atheists seem to think,  that Jesus must suffer more than anyone ever has for the atonement to work? It's because the hidden premise is that God is guilty and the atonement is the time God pays for his own mistakes. Jesus has to suffer more than anyone to make up for what God has done, inconveniencing us by creating us. The sickness of the modern mind can scarcely comprehend Christian theology now. I wonder if it isn't too late and we are just past the day when people in the West can really be saved?
.......I mean consider the idea that usually acompanies this argument: well he is God after all, a little torutre death cant' hurt him. In the old days, when we had a culture that ran on Christian memories, people said how great that God would do this for us when he didn't have to! Now the argument is "Of course he had to, it's the least he can do, after all I didn't asked to be born, so I'm entitled to whatever goodies can get in compensation." That's why I think the hidden premise is to blame God; its as though they are saying God has to suffer more than anyone to make up for the suffering he caused as creator. This sort of attitude marks the disease of the modern mind.

In any case, my view is the Participatory atonement. It was embraced by several church fathers and modern theologians supporting it are mentioned below:

I.The Atonement: God's Solidarity With Humanity.

........A. The inadquacy of Financial Transactions


Many ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of Jesus' death on the cross as analogous to a financial transaction. Usually this idea goes something like this: we are in hock to the devil because we sinned. God pays the debt we owe by sending Jesus to die for us, and that pays off the devil. The problem with this view is the Bible never says we owe the devil anything. We owe God. The financial transaction model is inadequate. Matters of the soul are much more important than any monetary arrangement and business transactions and banking do not do justice to the import of the issue. Moreover, there is a more sophisticated model; that of the sacrament for sin. In this model Jesus is like a sacrificial lamb who is murdered in our place. This model is also inadequate because it is based on a primitive notion of sacrifice. The one making the sacrifice pays over something valuable to him to appease an angry God. In this case God is paying himself. This view is also called the "propitiation view" becuase it is based upon propitiation, which means to turn away wrath. The more meaningful notion is that of Solidarity. The Solidarity or "participatory" view says that Jesus entered human history to participate in our lot as finiate humans, and he dide as a means of identifying with us. We are under the law of sin and death, we are under curse of the law (we sin, we die, we are not capable in our own human strength of being good enough to merit salvation). IN taking on the penalty of sin (while remaining sinless) Jesus died in our stead; not in the manner of a premature animal sacrafice (that is just a metaphor) but as one of us, so that through identification with us, we might identify with him and therefore, partake of his newness of life.

.......B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity

In the book of Hebrews it says "in former times God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken more perfectly through his son." Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to humanity. The prophets were speaking for God, but their words were limited in how much they could tell us about God. Jesus was God in the flesh and as such, we can see clearly by his character, his actions, and his teachings what God wants of us and how much God cares about us. God is for humanity, God is on our side! The greatest sign of God's support of our cause as needy humans is Jesus death on the cross, a death in solidarity with us as victims of our own sinful hearts and societies. Thus we can see the lengths God is will to go to to point us toward himself. There are many verses in the Bible that seem to contradict this view. These are the verses which seem to say that Atonement is propitiatory.

.......C. Death in Solidarity with Victims..............1) Support from Modern Theologians

.......Three Major Modern Theologians support the solidarity notion of atonement: Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), Matthew L. Lamb (Solidarity With Victims), and D.E.H. Whiteley (The Theology of St. Paul).In the 1980s Moltmann (German Calvinist) was called the greatest living protestant theologian, and made his name in laying the groundwork for what became liberation theology. Lamb (Catholic Priest) was big name in political theology, and Whiteley (scholar at Oxford) was a major Pauline scholar in the 1960s.In his work The Crucified God Moltmann interprits the cry of Jesus on the cross, "my God my God why have you forsaken me" as a statement of solidarity, placing him in identification with all who feel abandoned by God.Whiteley: "If St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement] it is best described as one of salvation through participation [the 'solidarity' view]: Christ shared all of our experience, sin alone excepted, including death in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life...Paul does not hold a theory of substitution..." (The Theology of St. Paul, 130)An example of one of the great classical theologians of the early chruch who held to a similar view is St. Irenaeus (according to Whiteley, 133).

..............2) Scrtiptural


...all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore burried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certanly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Chrsit Jesus.(Romans 6:1-5)

.......In Short, if we have united ourselves to Christ, entered his death and been raised to life, we participate in his death and resurrection through our act of solidarity, united with Christ in his death, than it stands tto reason that his death is an act of solidarity with us, that he expresses his solidarity with humanity in his death.
.......This is why Jesus cries out on the cross "why have you forsaken me?" According to Moltmann this is an expression of Solidarity with all who feel abandoned by God.Jesus death in solidarity creates the grounds for forgiveness, since it is through his death that we express our solidarity, and through that, share in his life in union with Christ. Many verses seem to suggest a propitiatory view. But these are actually speaking of the affects of the solidarity. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if when we were considered God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! What appears to be saying that the shedding of blood is what creates forgiveness is actually saying that the death in solidarity creates the grounds for reconciliation. IT says we were enemies then we were reconciled to him through the death, his expression of solidarity changes the ground, when we express our solidarity and enter into the death we are giving up to God, we move from enemy to friend, and in that sense the shedding of blood, the death in solidarity, creates the conditions through which we can be and are forgiven. He goes on to talk about sharing in his life, which is participation, solidarity, unity.

.......D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.

.......Jurgen Moltmann's notion of Solidarity (see The Crucified God) is based upon the notion of Political solidarity. Christ died in Solidarity with victims. He took upon himself a political death by purposely angering the powers of the day. Thus in his death he identifies with victims of oppression. But we are all victims of oppression. Sin has a social dimension, the injustice we experience as the hands of society and social and governmental institutions is primarily and at a very basic level the result of the social aspects of sin. Power, and political machinations begin in the sinful heart, the ego, the desire for power, and they manifest themselves through institutions built by the will to power over the other. But in a more fundamental sense we are all victims of our own sinful natures. We scheme against others on some level to build ourselves up and secure our conditions in life. IN this sense we cannot help but do injustice to others. In return injustice is done to us.Jesus died in solidarity with us, he underwent the ultimate consequences of living in a sinful world, in order to demonstrate the depths of God's love and God's desire to save us. Take an analogy from political organizing. IN Central America governments often send "death squads" to murder labor unionists and political dissenter. IN Guatemala there were some American organizations which organized for college students to go to Guatemala and escort the leaders of dissenting groups so that they would not be murdered.
.......The logic was that the death squads wouldn't hurt an American Student because it would bring bad press and shut off U.S. government funds to their military. As disturbing as these political implications are, let's stay focused on the Gospel. Jesus is like those students, and like some of them, he was actually killed. But unlike them he went out of his way to be killed, to be victimized by the the rage of the sinful and power seeking so that he could illustrate to us the desire of God; that God is on our side, God is on the side of the poor, the victimized, the marginalized, and the lost. Jesus said "a physician is not sent to the well but to the sick."The key to salvation is to accept God's statement of solidarity, to express our solidarity with God by placing ourselves into the death of Christ (by identification with it, by trust in it's efficacy for our salvation).

.......E. Atonement is a Primitive Concept?

.......This charge is made quite often by internet-skeptics, especially Jewish anti-missionaries who confuse the concept with the notion of Human sacrifice. But the charge rests on the idea that sacrifice itself is a prematurity notion. If one commits a crime, someone else should not pay for it. This attack can be put forward in many forms but the basic notion revolves around the idea that one person dying for the sins of another, taking the penalty or sacrificing to remove the guilt of another is a premature concept. None of this applies with the Participatory view of the atonement (solidarity) since the workings of Christ's death, the manner in which it secures salvation, is neither through turning away of wrath nor taking upon himself others sins, but the creation of the grounds through which one declares one's own solidarity with God and the grounds through which God accepts that solidarity and extends his own; the identification of God himself with the needs and cry of his own creation.

The Blogging Parson
Moltmann's theodicy is the great strength of this work, in that it directly engages the protest atheism of the mid twentieth century without negating the powerful emotional impact of its claims. We are returned to the cross as the heart of the Christian message repeatedly - it is no accident that Luther features so strongly and so positively in these pages. Further, the rigour of his penetrating search for the implications of the cross for God himself has led him rightly to the trinity, and stands as a rebuke to the western tradition for neglecting this understanding of God for so long. The atonement is necessarily a trinitarian event/process. The sense of God identifying with human beings in Christ is also very strong. Moltmann develops a theology of the atonement with a cosmic scope, and does not fall into the trap of individualising the work of the cross.

Moltmann's work turns out to develop a "Trinitarian history of God." This works through a dialectic through which God rejects the Son, then accepts the son, then raises the son to a hope and a future in which we can participate. This also raises a dialectical relation between God and man because the son becomes part of humanity then humanity becomes part of the son through adoption to sonship and participation in the future. Christ particpates in our life and We in his. That's quite a philosophical turn on for a German.

Blogging Parson again:
We might complain that Moltmann's doctrine of God suffers from an overdose of Hegelianism, by presenting the history of the world as God's history, the process by which he realizes himself. By rejecting impassiblity and divine aseity, does he allow a compromise of God's freedom? This having been said, is God still as impersonal as he ever was under the scholastics? Further, the God presented here seems almost dependent on, or at least intrinsically tied to, the world. His is a vulnerable God. Moltmann's trinitarian reflection leaves him open to the charge of tritheism - however, he more than responds to such a charge in The Trinity and the Kingdom of God; and he is recapturing a biblical emphasis, after all.
While the cosmic vision of Moltmann's theologia crucis is admirable, it says almost nothing about individual salvation - in fact, it almost non-soteriological. He describes God's judgement in the terms of the "giving up" of human beings to their godlessness, as in Rom 1 (p.242). The atonement is achieved not by any substitutionary work of Christ but by his identifying with human beings in their lostness, by solidarity with them. In the end, his panentheism leads him to a universalist model; and the preaching of the cross becomes a following of God's example in identifying with the lost and godforsaken.
This last criticism I think is valid on the surface. Mostlamann doesn't spend a lot of time focusing on individual piety I think the implications for the individual are obvious and it's up to the individual to step into a relationship with God. For me I find Chrsitman can be a great way to do what but only if you overlook the commercial crap and read a book like the Crucified God..



Online copy of Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann


















11 comments:

tinythinker said...

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.

(As my comment is longer than Blogger prefers, it is broken into smaller parts.)

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.

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.

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.

tinythinker said...

2. God 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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

tinythinker said...

3. The Incarnation 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

tinythinker said...

4. The Passion, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

tinythinker said...

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.

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.

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).

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.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

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.


"Christmas and The Crucified God"
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Blogger Dave said...

"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."

that's ok I'm glad to hear them anyway. they don't have to be in line with some theologian to be good.


"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.

(As my comment is longer than Blogger prefers, it is broken into smaller parts.)

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.

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.

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) said...

I am going to consiser the things you say and answer. It could take a couple of days.

tinythinker said...

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.

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.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

I'm not going to analyze them or debate I am just going to see where the Spirits lead me when I read them.

you have to be honest to what you feel. I am sure you are being so. So that's cool.

tinythinker said...

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.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

that's cool