Statio Mentis

Morality is not hot. Infact, it has slipped to the box labeled “tabu-issues”. People don’t like to talk about morals and its easy to see why – whenever we talk about them, we subject ourselves to a playingfield, where we can be discovered wrongdoers. We rather not dwell in our mishaps. But this has polarized the field. The only time we engage in moral “discussion” is, when people shout moral codes from the safety of their personal bunkers. Afterall, its much easier to shout things and be done with it, than actually discuss about matters in some meaningful and rational way.

We need high-quality moral discussion.

There is a reason for the moral-discussion fading in the tabu-basket. (Please note, that I’m not trying to find “the one reason” for this, rather just find one insight for the matter.) Namely – spirituality has been detached from morality. This weren’t always the case. Spirituality and morals used to walk a very common path, until postmodernism started to fragment our religious package to different categories. The effect of this is, that we can do away with that pesky moral stuff, which we find so hard and problematic, while keeping the soothing spiritualism we so much like. Yoga is one great example of this – we get in shape, we feel some spiritual depth, but we don’t have to deal with any hard issues.

The alternative naturally, is to keep spirituality and morality attached. But its really not that easy. As years go by, we find ourselves in new situations, which constantly needs readjusting our stance. The ultimate core of morality doesn’t change. What was good 2000 years ago, is still good and likewise, what was bad then, is still bad. Deciphering manners from morals though, is the hard question. The former changes with us, the latter does not.

Christianity cannot live without morals. At it’s heart, it solves a very fundamental moral issue – our sinfulness. When we start to detach morality from spirituality, we undermine the very thing christianity stands on. Times are changing, and we constantly need to seek hard answers to our moral issues rising from the current situation. It may be heart wrenching and hard, but we simply cannot let the christian package fragment.

The alternative is to witness the destruction of christianity.

This is a post I have thought of posting for quite a while now, but every time a more acute matter has come or like a week ago I just didn’t feel I was up for it then. But I don’t want to postpone it over my vacation, when I’m writing my travelblog and not updating this one. It’s a thought that I have pondered for a while in my mind – How much do you need to know to believe? How much knowledge is required, so that one can say he/she belongs to a certain faith?

Let me open this a bit. Let’s say theres a guy, who says he is a christian, but does not belive Jesus is God. Naturally he cannot be a christian, even though he would declare so himself. Or let’s say there is a fellow who thinks muslims share the same God with christians, because both believe in a supreme creator who is the fulcrum of love. Or we could go further and just declare that every religion that has god in there is basically the same stuff, since they all belive in a mythical creator. God would be the “dude who’se behind this all” and religion would be the “stuff of that creator dude”. But this is somewhat problematic, since not all religions think the same about God beyond these most simplistic facts. The further you go along this path, the more knowledge you have to give up. To be able to take the latter stand, you have to say, that all exclusive world religions are basically wrong and your enlightened view is the right religion.

Clearly there has to be some facts behind the faith – at least when talking about any major religion.

Many evangelicals and pentecostals would easily say, that faith is not about knowledge, it’s about knowing God – in a personal relationship kinda way. But what if the believer says, that he knows the christian God, but then attributes different things to that particular God what christian doctrines state? Does “I believe” suffice, if the doctrines are wrong? It’s a relevant question these days, when people tend to mix their own religions from their own preferences. It would seem, that we do need to know some things about our faith and God to actually believe, but how much is enough? I mean surely it doesn’t suffice to know Jesus is the answer when you don’t know the question – there simply is no one answer to life, the universe and everything.

This all twines with another question – what CAN we know? Now lets assume that whatever sources of knowledge a given religion has are legitimate sources of information (like Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon). But what about the stuff those sources do not talk about? For example, in the case of christianity this has not stopped the theologians. Naturally there are some things we can just logically conclude from the material we have. But then there is the nasty stuff doctrine wars are made of.

My “favorite” one of these is the doctines about the holy communion. Based on Bible we can know, that Jesus wanted us to excersise it and we roughly know how He wanted us to do it. But based on the christian sources other than some theological discussions, we do not know what really happens there. To me that would be enough and let it be a mystery. But no, different denominations have warred against each other on what mechanics actually are present in that action and what’s the role of God in all that. This has gone so far, that we cannot officially enjoy the holy communion together with different denominations – which is rediculous, since the whole problem underneath is an artificial construct. But at the same time, to fully appreciate the thing, we should agree on some points what we are doing. Just eating stuff n’ drinking yo doesn’t cut it. But how much is enough? Same problems arise when thinking the essence of God and many other things. How much we NEED to know, how much we CAN know?

At least it is obvious, that when the knowledge is thin, all sorts of goofy misbeliefs run rampant. I have seen so many by-products of poor theology, that it’s not even funny. So I would say we need to strive for better knowledge if we are to stand firm in our faith. But there comes a point when all that stuff is not advancing our state anymore, and just reduces to plain scholastic bickering. At the very least we should stop building walls based on things we cannot know.

Sheer knowledge won’t make anyone a believer, and sheer believing is not possible without some knowledge. In the end the issue is probably not that there are the lines between different knowledge states in faith, but rather the discussion rages on where along the line to put those.

Just tonight I watched the euro-election results with my friends from the tv. There was this one populist guy, who got an enormous amount of votes. One striking thing about his performance in tv (and everywhere else for that matter, for he is a good speaker), is that he is very confident and he dares to be right. (whether or not that really is the case in truth) Altough i would never vote for him, he has this one thing many of us have lost – he dares to be right.

Seems our society and our beliefs have stumbled on a relativistic wave and cannot get out. Even the church is right along there, churning out statements, which end up moving nobody. We hear these speeches about soft values and all those nice things, but its really too nice to have any effect. To get soft values into people you need to press hard to be right.

And this is all quite understandable, since we don’t live in a well integrated standard culture anymore. We need to understand other cultures and values aswell, and in doing so we tend to put all those different cultures in the same category and study them. It affects our belief-systems too, as we begin to compare our thoughts with the other competing thoughts and end up having some sort of a “live and let live” attitude on every religious thought. Which is all fine and all, but as the end result, we tend to lose our right to be right somewhere along the lines.

But whoever said, that every culture, value or religion should be valued the same?

Those would be the ones, that extend “the humanity” to every value they we people spawn. Now I am not advocating any hostility nor any sort bad-whatever to any culture or people. I am merely stating, that our philosophical and our religious thoughts themselves do not have the same existential value than we do as people. Naturally we need to have the freedom of thought and speech, but that is a different issue. We should not think, that just because some thought or habit IS, it should be valued the same that everything else in the same category. Not every thought is as smart as the other, nor is every habit. I do not think, that a culture for example, is an absolute value in itself. They come and go. They are important, but not something we should never let go. Besides, cultures change all the time, so it would be a null point to actually try to pinpoint the actual point in time which should be preserved. (The Amish have tried that)

Obviously just mocking everything else is bad aswell, we cannot afford to stick our head to the sand and pretend everybody else with different thoughts are idiots (the religious right in the states have tried that) or not sincere enough. We should always try to understand other cultures and religions as well as we can – and honestly. But we should never lose our right to be right in the process. Christianity for example is an exlusive religion that holds some deep thoughts about what is the truth and what is right. It closes out other thoughts and religions and says people that think otherwise are wrong. Those truths are not there to be “maybe but maybe”. They are what they are, because God said so. The day we lose that thought, we lose the core of our belief. To someone, who do not belief the christian way that may sound harsh and blatant. But all the better, get your own beliefs ready and lets discuss them in an open way!

So whatever you believe, debate on what is right and dare to stand behind your beliefs. Do it open mindedly, but firmly.

Dare to be right.

After being in the movies once again (yeah, the second time I watched Star Trek…) I started to think about how we narrate our own lives and to what stories we attach ourselves and which stories identify our life. Especially I started to ponder the scale of those stories and christians. You see, christians naturally attach themselves with the christian story, but the active scope of that story varies greatly.

Some christians station themselves high up in the grand scheme and ponder about the great works of God and how He is going to end this all and how we live in the end times and all that. They see the signs of God in every major disaster and say to themselves: “oh, how the world is still not believing, how wreched the world is.” They pray for nations, politics and big miracles. I call them “movie christians” since their view of christianity and the world is rather blockbuster-like. That view holds some great tension, an all knowing storyteller (the viewer) and everything is big!

The other view is of course the smaller view. Some christians station themselves lower, and are more like the “faithful gardener” -type. They don’t dwell in the grand scheme that much at all, but rather they live their lives quite in a small way, in the moment. Unlike the movie christians, which send christian rays everywhere signing their christianity, you cannot neccessarily tell, that these faithful gardeners are christians until you talk with them for quite a while. Their story of christianity is comprised of smaller encounters with God and people.

Now these stories are not mutually exclusive, and most christians have it both ways. But we tend to lean on the other and use it when the situation gets dire. Nor are either views inherently bad or good – or at least both views have their problems. But they do tend to change the way we view things and how we perceive this whole faith-thing -and how others perceive christianity and God through christians.

If you are a christian, which one are you?