Tag: injustice

WOMEN ASCENDING

According to the great theologian Paul Tillich

anxiety appears in three forms:

anxiety of death

anxiety of meaninglessness

anxiety of condemnation

another great theologian Karl Barth

wrote that God condemns no one to hell – 

we create our own hell –

thus in Church Dogmatics Barth radically departed

from John Calvin’s doctrine of double predestination –

God predestines some to heaven

and some to hell – what kind of God would do that?

so, Barth favored a simple predestination to heaven

however, people can create hells for other people –

going beyond Barth, higher education allowed women 

to create postcolonial/liberation/inculturated theologies –

the spread of women’s voices across the world

gave them the power to address unjust global structures

of finance and business

and to connect capitalism/colonialism/racism

the basic motivation in healthy Christianity 

is based in union with God –

from there the sacred water keeps flowing

and washes away all women’s sense 

of inferiority/unworthiness/low self-esteem

but women today can get caught up

in perfectionism – “having it all” – 

making unrealistic demands on themselves

the pursuit of excellence on the other hand 

allows women to take pleasure 

in striving to meet their own high standards

without castigating themselves 

they learned that loving themselves

means embracing their own

strengths and weaknesses

insights and stupidities

successes and failures

body and soul

badness and goodness

finiteness and infiniteness

so there is no longer any shame or self-condemnation.

SACRIFICE/LIBERATION/SALVATION

Contemporary theologians would do well

to free themselves from the “Hellenic complex” –

the integration of Greek categories of thought

into Christian theology – starting with Thomas Aquinas

and his merging of Aristotle into Judeo-Christian beliefs –

Popes John Paul II and Benedict thought Catholicism

should no longer be dominated by Aquinas

but they embraced no one else

 

they could have embraced Gustavo Gutierrez

who realized the new European theology he learned

could not deal with the structural injustices

of his South American continent

so he began interpreting the gospel in light of the poor

but “Saint Pope J.P. II” condemned this as Marxism

and so destroyed liberation theology

 

in spite of “Saint Pope J.P. II” liberation theology

became the key to black theology in North America –

the theology of liberation contained in the Bible –

the liberation of the Jewish slaves from Egypt –

parallels the liberation of black slaves in America –

Lincoln was Moses to the sharecroppers –

because the very essence of Jesus is freedom

Jesus became the model of liberation for blacks

 

understanding is the most powerful tool for “liberation”

which in Buddhism is “salvation from suffering”

so Buddhists talk about salvation by understanding

and the seed of understanding in everyone –

so similar in Christian or Buddhist terms –

is God/Jesus/Christ-Consciousness/Buddha-Mind –

Buddhist meditation involves deep insight

and creates understanding/love/salvation

 

love is both dependent and free at the same time –

it depends on objective values and creates new values:

joy/gratitude/self-sacrifice –

the bodhisattvas sacrificed entering into nirvana/heaven

until all sentient beings were liberated

 

similarly, Muslims sacrifice sex during the Great Fast/Ramadan:

“Do not lie with your wives during the day but cleave to the mosque –

(but during the night you can go into your wives and lie with them)” –

some sacrifice (but not too much) there. 😊

REDEEMING TECHNOLOGY

If we are going to save humanity from technology

we need to emphasize the human need for

love/friendship/meaning/freedom.

This is where religion can be extremely valuable –

in humanizing technology.

 

On the positive side of technology,

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest

envisioned technology gathering human energy

deepening love/global consciousness

and an awareness of ‘interbeing’ –

we are all part of an interweaving body

of life/love/motion we call the Uni-verse –

the One Cosmic Poem.

 

The problem with our contemporary world

is dissociating art/morals/technology

from each other and from religion:

not only pre-rational mythic spirituality

was rightly rejected

but also rational postmodern spirituality –

postmodern/liberal/intellectual humans

were left to answer the deepest question

“What is of ultimate concern?”

with only art/morals/technology

allowed to give an answer –

progressive religion was excluded from the debate.

 

In spite of this we have made moral progress –

we now recognize systems of injustice

rather than individuals cause immoral behaviour –

we have lifted the burden of responsibility off each person

and placed it squarely on the shoulders of corrupt systems

the individual is inevitably enmeshed in.

 

In any case, Truth cannot impose itself on our hearts

except by virtue of it being true.

Religions therefore must be free to speak their truth

without trying to coerce civil society.

 

Healthy spirituality could be an anchor for civilization

preventing it from being swept away by the current –

the overwhelming flood of technology.

3 Big Ideas for May 15, 2019

  1. Teilhard de Chardin was a Christian mystic who believed that love and energy are the foundation of the cosmos. This “love-energy” is the source of the universe’s intelligibility and therefore the basis of knowledge. This leads philosophy out of the impasse of making matter the basis of all empirical knowledge. Philosophers have traditionally made love secondary to knowledge – you have to first know something before you can love it. But for lovers of God like Teilhard, love is the source and goal of all knowledge.
  2. Christian martyrs were willing to die for their faith because they believed “all is one” – everything, including life and death, is under the care of God. Now we have arrived at a similar state by the reverse process: we no longer believe there is a God, all is passing away, and therefore all is meaningless. Without God, all is not one, it is zero. The martyr was willing to die for God, but would the secular non-believer be willing to die for zero? This is important when you are speaking truth to power and fighting injustice.
  3. Almost everything wrong with the world has to do with the way the “It” of institutions can be misaligned, out of control, and disconnect with the “I” and the “We.” The personal is destroyed by the impersonal when corporations, governments, and religious institutions become out of touch with the people they are meant to serve, and only serve themselves. The result is exploitation of others for money or sex, and rape of the planet’s resources on which we all depend. Unitive thinking, the idea that all is one, keeps the “It” of hierarchies connected to the common good, the “We.”