Posted by jonvon on November 19, 2001 at 00:24:56:
In Reply to: Re: brain-checking as evolution posted by John on November 18, 2001 at 16:13:51:
: I think we are looking at the same thing and saying the same thing in different ways.
i think so too.
: To you it is just as hokey, but that's okay because people can grow out of it. To me, while they may grow out of it, I see no reason to start with incorrectness as a foundation and then have to undo it as a growth experience.
i am kind of saying that a person has to work with what they have. it may be that in your view a certain teaching or set of rules or whatever is a bad foundation. it might just be that, but i'm not personally going to make a blanket judgment. i'll pick out certain things here and there and say i've got a problem with this particular thought or school of thought or teaching. personally i don't really have huge problems with the catholics in particular because many of the things i deem incorrect seem to be so silly it isn't even worth discussing, like for instance the notion that mary had to have had no sin in her life in order to bear the christ. to me this misses the entire point of what christ was here to do and even who and what the christ was. well (in my view) there are a few other big things wrong with this notion but for me it isn't even up for debate, its just plain nutty. the things that drive ME crazy seem to more often be perpetrated by protestants. like sermons that are filled with cliches strung together in nonsensical order. its like watching a chain smoker go through a carton of ciggarettes; each one is killng the poor wretch smoking them. even worse the second hand smoke is pretty deadly as well (maybe its worse?). its like watching slow suicide. boy am i wandering... but this pisses me off more than the catholic stuff because the catholic stuff never really touched me where i live, whereas lame nonsensical cliche sermons DID.
ANeeway, for the guy hanging out in a church where either kind of foolishness is being handed out, he's got basically one central thing to wrestle with, and that is, "how am i going to go about being devoted to god". maybe one guy is saying hail marys, the other guy is preaching brimstone on street corners or handling snakes, maybe they are both participating in some things that are kinda wacky, but still at least they are DOING something. they are moving forward. here you might say that they might be moving foward into deeper crapola but this is where i refuse to comment, i just don't want to judge another persons heart, especially when making generalizations. they can't help it that they started out in a place where someone handed them a serpent when they asked for bread. thank goodness, the central thing is still there (i'll assume for arguments sake), god is worshipped, however imperfectly. as you said earlier, we are all flying cardboard boxes to the moon. (did i mention i really dug that?)
ok, so YOU seem to be stating this from the viewpoint of the church, perhaps as an "elder" or something. from the standpoint of "lets have a church and lets do good things for people and have teaching and whatnot", ok i TOTALLY agree, lets start with and end with the best stuff we have. maybe we can have 101 christianity for people learning how to add and subtract, and maybe we can have rocket science training for people who have moved past matrix algebra and engineering calculus. you know that people doing basic math won't even begin to know what the questions are going to be when they get into rocket science class, except, "hey i'd like to go to the moon sometime, how do i do that?"... i'm not suggesting i'd like to participate in fomenting useless ideas on unsupecting parishioners.
i am more coming from the standpoint of the person in the pew, which is the relevant thing for me to talk about since i can't see myself in the pulpit. i can't even begin to imagine (personally) taking responsibility for anyone else's life or spiritual health. i mean, if someone wants to ask me a question about something i'll be glad to answer it as best i know how. (oops i'm digressing again.)
ok, so catholic guy or protestant guy both have their problems, and if we want to make generalizations we can say that catholic guy probably has some fallacies that are included in "Set A" handed to him as additions to, distractions from, or rules of thumb for a true faith. the protestant guy might have "Set B". maybe some of those fallacies might even be half truths, like free will exists and fate/divine purpose does not, or the other way around. or in the case of a rule of thumb it might be something that a person genuinely needs until later on they can see the real issues in the apparent difficulty that led to the instantiation of the rule of thumb in the first place. to me this is a big part of the generic path to enlightment. whatever the case, god can still move in all of these things. i remember praying the rosary and really having an experience with god that was very good; it definitely led to deeper experiences. i can also remember doing all KINDS of crazy stuff as a "non-denominational" person (none of which i feel like fessing up to at the moment) which ALSO led to deeper experiences. there is an awful lot of water under the bridge for me that i'll probably never wade in again, but god was there in all of it and i really don't regret very much. ok, i regret reading frank peretti. but other than that i'm prob'ly good.
: I used to think that it was relatively okay to throw people a bone so to speak. Give them an easy answer that would suffice for now until they were grown enough in the faith to understand the deeper principle at work. Therefore if someone asks a question like the one that started this thread it would be fine to give them the verses and say, "that's the answer." But then I realized that people tend often to NOT grow out of the mush. It's too easy to stay dependent on the easy answers.
this is where we kind of fundamentally depart (in a way) because i just don't think about whether someone else is dependant on rules of thumb rather than what i understand to be deeper truth or if someone else isn't willing to grow past something or isn't trying hard enough or whatever.
1. i really just don't care. the exigencies of my own life force a kind of congenital myopia on me in this i think, which is just a fancy way of saying i really don't give a crap because i'm too self-absorbed.
2. i don't care about it also because i don't want to judge anyone else. this kind of thinking smacks a bit to me of the groupthink thing i mentioned somewhere on the board recently. "i have received this revelation and you will be better off if you know it too". this MIGHT be true, but then again it might not. check your heart before cramming something down someone elses throat. i mean this in a general sense, not to you personally. really i say this out of experience in a confessional sense, i've BEEN the guy doing the cramming. i don't want to do it anymore. i want to give respect to everyone as much as i can regardless of who they are or where they are coming from.
3. i think that even though we think we have evolved, really we just have a prettier, slightly more well constructed (perhaps) cardboard box. the ideas and ideals i cling to today might be erased and replaced 10 years from now. some people might say i have gone a little kooky. certainly some of my old catholic friends might say i'm nutty as an almond, and some of my friends from the non-denominational circles i ran in might say i'm not even freaking saved anymore. you might say the same of me a decade from now (though i doubt it) but who knows? maybe i WILL lose it...
: Secondly, as a philosophical point the answers are not right! The truth is that God doesn't care so much what we do as the devotion of our heart.
these two statements seem contraposed to me. who cares if the answers are right as long as your heart is in the right place? eventually if you are trying you will find better resolutions to your problems, whatever they might be. or if you don't that is ok, god's grace is there anyway. just seek god, lean not on your own understanding, he will direct your path and so on.
i think what i am trying to get at as far as human understanding goes is the whole thing about thesis/antithesis. you start with a thesis and after a few martyrs have had their heads chopped off or a few witches have been burned at the stake the thesis becomes accepted truth. a subculture forms around it and eventually codifies it and proclaims it canon. then an anti-thesis arises supplanting the thesis. proponents of the anti-thesis are proclaimed antichrists and so forth, some head chopping or witch burning ensues, but eventually mainstream culture recognizes the anti-thesis as being better than the original, the new model seems truer to reality. anti-thesis becomes thesis. the original group becomes an even smaller subculture and becomes real nasty and weird, a sorry historical relic. then the same thing happens all over again, endlessly repeating. i think the same is true in our lives as well. but the cool thing is that there is always a kernel of truth in each thesis. the new thesis always builds upon that truth with a higher viewpoint and simultaneously tears down the fallacies that grew up around the original truth. or a totally valid opposite viewpoint that represents the other magnetic pole of that same truth comes into fashion and perhaps both truths are eventually seen as the opposing poles of one unified truth (insert your own example here). so there is hope in it all because we are slowly growing in understanding.
: To make people think that there is a standard of behavior required of them by God may make it easier for us to create a presentable "Christian" but it bypasses the whole mystery of grace that is so beautiful.
i like this, it cuts to the heart of a lot of stuff i finally reacted against before finding The Refuge.
: So now I think it is better to force them from the very beginning to abandon their preconceptions, abandon the brain-washing of culture and church and learn to seek God truly from the start.
this is great. this is ambitious. perhaps this is what you are called to do. i'm not going to tell you it can't be done. go for it if this is what you are called to!
: Of course I have also learned that many, if not most, people will give up on this and just go elsewhere to find what they need.
if you are going to do something (and i'm not suggesting you should or you even want to but if you do that is very cool) you are going to have to be less cynical about people. love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. it at least helps if you believe in the sanctity of the fallow ground of the human heart, if you can see the kingdom of god as the mustard seed that eventually grows into a large tree. without hope you are left only with existential duty and possibly a deep despair.
: I went through this thing for several years at Crossover with Steve. He would preach an excellent accurate sermon that so totally challenged people that they couldn't sleep for trying to reconcile the new ideas that screamed true with the old "way things worked", the result was often that they just left and went to a church where the sermon was easier to swallow. So then should we have dumbed down the sermon and just made it easy for the new Christians to stay with us in the hopes that later we could finally get to the good stuff? Or should we have continued in the things that we knew were on our hearts even though the results were not apparent.
: I say the latter. And that's what we did. And I think it was the better way. Of course there may be a place for those who do not want to push the envelope so much. I said before that these opposites were the beauty of our God. But for me at least I know that I was revolutionized in my faith by God through someone who wasn't afraid to push the envelope and even outright defy that the envelope was valid.
me too.
: It spoke to my deepest soul and I knew it was what i needed. I think there are others like me who need to hear the radical faith. They need to know that God is as freaky as they are (you know what I mean, that their thoughts which make them labeled as freaks are valid and God understands them) These people know a crock of (insert favorite word for vile matter) when they see it, and they don't get the button-downed pew-riding set that likes it laid out pat. So I think that those who can truly follow their faith and God's leading and remain in that more conservative vain face one set of challenges... But that isn't me. I guess I just restated my whole thing about not being able to accept the Catholic church, while respecting it.
: But then I can counter that by saying that originally we were focusing on those who check their brains trather than learn to love a living God.
i say that these two states of mind or heart or attitude aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. it is about motives, which we cannot see. this is ultimately the realm of god alone. as an aside i wouldn't recommend that anyone check their brain although there is a time to put our own understanding aside and rely on an unexplainable god.
: And in that case there is no possibility that it is good. Now as for whether all who study catechism and such are brain-checked... I think we agree this isn't the case.
: Wow, I could go on back and forth with myself all night. But I think I'll just wait for you to read this.