I haven't had time to watch Lilies of the Field yet, (though it IS on my calendar to sit down and enjoy it before the end of the week). In the meantime, part of my routine here in Atlanta is to get outside before dawn every morning and walk an hour or two before the heat becomes totally debilitating. Sometimes as I walk, I muse, and what has been surfacing the past several mornings is a question my Christian mentor asked me a couple of years ago. "What is your theology? Or what would it be if someone asked you?" I did not give much thought to this question when it was first asked other than to note that it was indeed an intriguing question! Over time, the question lost its immediacy and moved into the background of consciousness as I attended to the demands of the flowing here and now. Now, having built some free time into my days, it has come forward once more - and I find myself heading down a sidetrack of "What is my problem with Christianity as it is taught or preached?" "What is this mild sense of resentment I feel when staying with what I usually gloss over?" And the big one, "If I believe in the "truth" of the Game of One and Two (and 3 and 4 and...), as I do, then what is this resistance?"
Let me take a small aside here to talk about the word belief as I have come to understand its dual meanings. One way to believe is the way that results when we gather knowledge in academic form. So for example, I can read about, see movies about, trace along a globe or map, the Amazon River. I then can believe that such a river exists and that it has the properties books, movies, pictures and maps have told me it has. This is one kind of belief. Then there is the belief based on floating down the Amazon River itself. Hearing all the sounds, smelling all the smells, tasting the water that makes up the river, feeling the warmth or relative coolness of this water against one's skin depending on the time of day, and so on. This is a different kind of belief which unfortunately can only be depicted in the first kind of belief I spoke about here if one tries to share their experience of the Amazon with another who has never been in the vicinity of this mighty river. So the reason my big question is about the "Game of One and Two" is because this belief in the game sources from the second kind of believing for me. Now - I am done with the aside.
As I examine this "conflict" within, memories arise of moments of what must have been some import as they managed to make it out of short term memory into longterm memory. Here are a few of them.
1) There was a day, when after we got home from church, I asked my parents if it was true that animals had no souls as I had been told in Sunday School. They affirmed what the teacher had said. I then asked if that meant that there were no animals in heaven and they affirmed once more the validity of my teacher's statement and everything within me rebelled. THIS was just wrong.......and if there were no animals in heaven then I wasn't going to go either!
2) Then there was the morning when after I had been allowed to attend big people's church and listen to the sermon, we came out onto the church steps and my parents chatted with other people. I wandered around and ended up hearing fragments of many of the grown-ups' conversations and became very disturbed as I heard them gossip among themselves in what seemed to me, a mean way about others. When I asked my Dad, he actually gave a pretty good answer when he said something along the lines of, "Church is for sinners, not saints".
3) Then there was the day when my materialistic little mind recognized the conundrum of, "If God made the world, what did he make it out of?" The only answer I could come up with, was himself, and therefore we were the same. Everything, including us were God somehow. That one got me into a lot of arguments.
4) Presbyterians believe in Calvinistic Predestination which very simplistically says that one is already "saved" or "damned" before they are born. I began to question this as I became more and more aware of the many "graces" in my life I had not earned. For example, early on I realized that it was none of my doing that I had been born into a relatively wealthy family and wanted for nothing, and that this wealth allowed me all kinds of privilege which gave me unfair advantage in any kind of competition for place or status, (in the society I was living in). I noticed that I spoke perfect English and never had to take grammar units in school because I always knew the proper usage of words, BECAUSE I had learned it by osmosis by people who spoke perfect English. This gave me "unfair" advantage over those who had NOT been born into such circumstances. I had a good figure, physical grace, a better than average mind and a pleasing face through no merit of mine.....and so on. This just couldn't be - that salvation and damnation had nothing to do with the individual and accompanied the indignation I felt when confronted with the notion that anyone who did not accept Jesus as their savior was damned, (my Catholic neighborhood girlfriends and I had many a heated discussion on this topic as they were enamored with saving little heathen babies :) I mean, how can one be damned for not accepting someone they had never heard of!!!!! : D The end result was that by the time I hit 13, I fully rejected any God who would stack the deck like this.
Neti, neti, neti. Not this, not this, not this. God was not this, and if he/she/it was, then I rejected this God. How can one love such a despot? Yet, even then, I knew somehow, that this "concept" was not "God" I knew this but felt great conflict/anxiety because I was being told it was true by my elders and other authorities, and that I must believe. Hmmmm....... maybe this is why I turned left and departed from the whole field?
Let me take a small aside here to talk about the word belief as I have come to understand its dual meanings. One way to believe is the way that results when we gather knowledge in academic form. So for example, I can read about, see movies about, trace along a globe or map, the Amazon River. I then can believe that such a river exists and that it has the properties books, movies, pictures and maps have told me it has. This is one kind of belief. Then there is the belief based on floating down the Amazon River itself. Hearing all the sounds, smelling all the smells, tasting the water that makes up the river, feeling the warmth or relative coolness of this water against one's skin depending on the time of day, and so on. This is a different kind of belief which unfortunately can only be depicted in the first kind of belief I spoke about here if one tries to share their experience of the Amazon with another who has never been in the vicinity of this mighty river. So the reason my big question is about the "Game of One and Two" is because this belief in the game sources from the second kind of believing for me. Now - I am done with the aside.
As I examine this "conflict" within, memories arise of moments of what must have been some import as they managed to make it out of short term memory into longterm memory. Here are a few of them.
1) There was a day, when after we got home from church, I asked my parents if it was true that animals had no souls as I had been told in Sunday School. They affirmed what the teacher had said. I then asked if that meant that there were no animals in heaven and they affirmed once more the validity of my teacher's statement and everything within me rebelled. THIS was just wrong.......and if there were no animals in heaven then I wasn't going to go either!
2) Then there was the morning when after I had been allowed to attend big people's church and listen to the sermon, we came out onto the church steps and my parents chatted with other people. I wandered around and ended up hearing fragments of many of the grown-ups' conversations and became very disturbed as I heard them gossip among themselves in what seemed to me, a mean way about others. When I asked my Dad, he actually gave a pretty good answer when he said something along the lines of, "Church is for sinners, not saints".
3) Then there was the day when my materialistic little mind recognized the conundrum of, "If God made the world, what did he make it out of?" The only answer I could come up with, was himself, and therefore we were the same. Everything, including us were God somehow. That one got me into a lot of arguments.
4) Presbyterians believe in Calvinistic Predestination which very simplistically says that one is already "saved" or "damned" before they are born. I began to question this as I became more and more aware of the many "graces" in my life I had not earned. For example, early on I realized that it was none of my doing that I had been born into a relatively wealthy family and wanted for nothing, and that this wealth allowed me all kinds of privilege which gave me unfair advantage in any kind of competition for place or status, (in the society I was living in). I noticed that I spoke perfect English and never had to take grammar units in school because I always knew the proper usage of words, BECAUSE I had learned it by osmosis by people who spoke perfect English. This gave me "unfair" advantage over those who had NOT been born into such circumstances. I had a good figure, physical grace, a better than average mind and a pleasing face through no merit of mine.....and so on. This just couldn't be - that salvation and damnation had nothing to do with the individual and accompanied the indignation I felt when confronted with the notion that anyone who did not accept Jesus as their savior was damned, (my Catholic neighborhood girlfriends and I had many a heated discussion on this topic as they were enamored with saving little heathen babies :) I mean, how can one be damned for not accepting someone they had never heard of!!!!! : D The end result was that by the time I hit 13, I fully rejected any God who would stack the deck like this.
Neti, neti, neti. Not this, not this, not this. God was not this, and if he/she/it was, then I rejected this God. How can one love such a despot? Yet, even then, I knew somehow, that this "concept" was not "God" I knew this but felt great conflict/anxiety because I was being told it was true by my elders and other authorities, and that I must believe. Hmmmm....... maybe this is why I turned left and departed from the whole field?
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