Chew the Fat

We are the cause of the death of this planet.

In his 1993 groundbreaking book ‘The Ecology of Commerce’ Paul Hawken spends a chapter detailing how ‘Every natural system in the world today is in decline’ because of human ‘development’.

The chapter ‘the death of birth’ gives a brilliant snapshot on how the environment was at 1993. It was bad. But today it’s far worse.

There are many things that I find disturbing about the state of our planet, but one that I’ve been thinking on when reading this book is how we have individualized the problem and solution to appease our conscious.

We have been duped, either by ourselves or the structure, into thinking that we are to save this planet by recycling our rubbish, not using CFCs and leaving only foot prints. If we do this, then we are doing our part. If everybody does their part the world will be fine.

This is absurd and flawed. If we all recycle yet over consume the results will be the same, if we sponsor a child in Africa, corruption and poverty will not go unchanged.

The corporate sector will still have blatant disregard environmental degradation because there are the externalities of an organization whose only legal concern is the maximization of product with the least amount of resource and effort.

The problem is the context and the structure.

If we are to exist much longer, there must be a total system over haul. We are not gods, we are not rulers we can not continue to usurp this planet, we are part of it. We are not gods over it –we are subject to it. This western biblical ideology that we have dominion over the world is wrong and will lead to our demise.

The question is, how and what do we change to move us back into the ecosystem?

On The Hidden God is a dialogue written by Nicholas of Cusa (a cardinal in the 15th century) which draws into question a huge issue in orthodox Christianity.

Cusa reasons that no name can fully encompass God since God is absolutely infinite. Such reasoning, namely that we cannot fully know God, points a finger directly at two pillars that Christians stand on: firstly, that that the nature of God was revealed in the son of a carpenter in the first century; secondly, that God is a triune being.

The dialogue is rather brilliant and I'm left wondering: by formulating the trinity in the third century (it appears to have no historical reference before then), has Christianity broken the second commandment?

"You shall have no other gods besides Me...Do not make a sculpted image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above..."

It seems to me that one of the reasons that people do not delve into questioning is that it is a process of discovery which takes us into the unknown, something which our amydela does not like. It would have us stay in our comfort zone, where everything is familiar.

I grew up in the charismatic movement and divided my time (some Christians are good at dividing) between successfully scoring high fives for being the most spiritual man in the youth group and my less than successful attempt to score the pastor's daughter. In my bid to get the old "thumbs up" from the leadership, I quickly went along with the line that questioning was bad, bad, BAD, a tool used by the Evil Wolf to entice the flock away from the Good Shepherd. creation could not understand The Hand That Sculpted It. God worked in mysterious ways and that, young man, was that.

And so I merrily followed behind my mentor evangelist. I bashed people over the head with The Good Book (conveniently ignoring its inconsistencies and contradictions) and broke all the rules in Evangelism 101: I fell into conversations with those "avoid them at all costs, kid" question-asking-people.

I wrestled with those "avoid them, kid, they'll lead you astray" types, gaining the advantage, mounting, smacking them with the Trusty Word, desperate to win the ego battle. But eventually I had to submit. There were too many questions I couldn't worm my way out of.

Take the question of Heaven and Hell for example. It's somewhat picturesque: the Good Guy's up there, the Bad Guy's down there. It was easy to believe that Hell was separate from God. The whole Good Guy in the blue corner and the Bad Guy in the red corner worked well for a while. But there was one question that jumped out: the Three-In-One-Yet-Still-One is supposedly omnipresent; yet if the One-who-loves-us-so-much-that-he-let-his-only-son-die-to-save-us be everywhere, then does that mean He's in Hell? (By the way, there's no law under Christ but you must believe! if you don't want go to hell)

But, like a piece of cheap gum, it quickly lost its flavour and I spat the blasphemy out.

Besides, God works in mysterious ways, no?

Many folk don’t ask the right questions. There is a concern with looking at one particular scripture and asking what God is trying to say to them through it or how they can apply it to their life. This is fine, but often people have no idea about the bigger picture and the context of what they are reading. There appears to exist this idea that the bible simply fell from the sky and that everything inside is divine. There is no thought about how this text came to be before them and the waves of changes, culture and other circumstances that have distorted the initial message .

I thought I would put in this text to challenge this very idea.

This comes from ‘A History of the World’s Religions’ by D.S. Noss.

Sources

“The first Christian century has had more books written about it than any other comparable period in history. The chief sources bearing on its history are the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, and these –again we must make a comparative statement- have been more thoroughly searched by enquiring minds than any other books ever written. Historical criticism has been particularly busy with them during the last hundred years and has reached the verdict that in the New Testament the early Christian religion about Jesus has overlaid and modified the record of the religion of Jesus himself, that is, his own faith, but there is no unanimity about the degree of the modification. It is known that Jesus himself did not write down his teachings but relied upon his disciples to go about teaching what he taught. It is generally assumed by historians that after his death some of them did write down his sayings, with occasional notes of the historical setting, before they should be forgotten, and thus that a document, or a group of documents, came into being that scholars call “Q” (from the German word “Quelle”, or “source”). It is generally considered that “Q” was colored by the prepossessions of the early Christians and they added amplifications that went beyond his own words. It is probable that such a collection of sayings became a primary source material for the compliers Matthew and Luke. These compilers used a great deal of other material also, both oral and written; for example they drew much of their material from Mark, already existent (65-70 CE), and they made use of sources unique to each of them: “M” in the case of Matthew, and “L” in the case of Luke. The Gospel of John was not written until the end of the century and then largely from concern with the theological implications of Jesus’ life and death.

Through all of these records runs the often unforeseen division between what is from Jesus himself and what is from the Apostolic age. But when scholars are asked to separate the material that authentically reveals the historical Jesus from the material that reflects the growing Christology of the early Christians, they vary widely in their interpretations. At certain points, each student is thrown back, after careful study, upon personal judgment, or even intuitive feeling in deciding what is from the historical Jesus and what is from the early church –or, indeed, whether it is important, or even possible, to make such a distinction.

Because there is no source material from “objective observers,” every life of Jesus must be reconstructed from events as seen through a lens of faith, and, of course, modern interpretations look through lenses ground to their own value prescriptions.

Granting this, however, does not release conscientious scholars from the obligation to hold all views tentatively, as being open to change if a scholarly consensus concerning a particular saying or event calls for revision of previous opinions.”

I was going to write a little blurb about the relationship between church and state but after having a fun chat with Doug on the phone I thought it might be more interesting to look at something else. Many Christians walk around with that what would jesus do thing on their wrist. But I’m not sure of they really think about it. I think for a lot of them it should say something along the lines of “what would my church leadership do.” If we take into account every thing we have read about this fellow Jesus, from the bible or wherever, what would he be doing if he were here today? I know some may think this is a silly question to ask because the context of his life was so completely different to now, with the Roman occupation and so on. But perhaps we may think of the corporate occupation in our generation. The more I think about the absolutely revolutionary concepts, for his time, of this character, the more I feel that he would steering very clear of the modern church.

This story has often baffled me. Whether it is literal or metaphorical, there are obviously some things it wants to point us to. These may be silly questions but I think in some ways it could be seen as pointing towards negative character of God.
I wonder why knowledge of good and evil is a bad thing at all, is it not a good thing to be able to determine right from wrong?
Why is innocence of good and bad considered perfection?
Could it be that the whole bible story starts with the maligning our brain?
Also, -and now we are getting into a whole realm of debate on free will and predestination- why is this thing put there in the first place? Now I know that there is the pride aspect in there with the serpent telling the couple they could ‘become like god’
But, is wanting to become like God a bad thing?
I do not see how choosing knowledge is a sin; it is not in hatred but curiosity that separated us from God, and that doesn’t sit well with me.

I’ve been thinking on the whole idea of prayer, and what exactly is it supposed to do. I notice that a lot of people who pray, treat the thing like a candy dispenser and simply pray for what ever they want. When they don’t get their way they put it down to God the devil or not enough prayer. –very convenient-

I’ve heard ridicules stories, from people who are considered spiritual giants in our country, who always get a car park when ever they pray for it. I wonder if there were two people praying for one car park who would get? Would it be the one who has been praying longer or the one God likes the most?

It seems to me that a lot of these things are left to random chance. In the past we would pray and fast for days, upon the instruction of our leaders, for someone with cancer. They would die and it would be put down to Gods will. I’m sure during the debate on the Civil Union thousands of fundamental Christians prayed it wouldn’t go through. It did and they put it down to the devil and an immoral government. If the civil union did not go though, I’m sure that it would be put down to the prayers of the saints.

This begs this question, why should we bother to pray and does it make one iota of difference on the random state of the universe?

I know that there are different types of prayer, for this I’m talking more specifically about intercessory prayer than that of personal prayer or meditation.

This initial post is a bit of a test to see if everything is working on the site and a few comments on what I thought we could use the bloging phenomenon for.

I see this blog is a public sphere where anyone can come and discuss perspectives on faith, philosophy, politics and anything else that could help us continue to learn.

I hope this space will be a place where we can all share our journey with honesty and respect for each other and that the accumulated knowledge, backgrounds and perspectives of all of us will challenge us in our relationships with God and people.

For this to work we need to start with the premise that everyone’s, opinion no matter how diverse from our own, should be regarded rationally and with respect.
This is an open space so whoever wants to join and contribute can and nothing will be censored. I reckon the more the diversity the better. I am sure there will be big disagreements on issues and things could get heated, this is great it’s what we need. But lets try to keep personal attacks and abuse out of it.