Real thoughts that were supposed to be short but turns out I'm bad at short
From the liner notes of The Christian Agnostic, by Leslie Weatherhead:
Loving Christ and seeking to follow him with insight and understanding are more important than intellectual agreement with a theological system. For this reason, an honest "I don't know" is to be preferred to a blind recitation of old-fashioned expressions, creeds, and formularies that impugn the intellectual integrity of the thoughtful layman.
When I saw these words while browsing the religion section of the Allentown library, I thought to myself, I must pick this book up.
From the back cover of Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience, by Gus DiZerega:
...this wonderful book is a rich dialogue between the Pagan and the Christian approaches to the Sacred, pointing out, quite rightly I believe, that neither has the single correct approach to the divine, but that both can be, and are, legitimate expressions of that ever-present Spirit which is the fountain of all genuine devotion, release, harmony, and fulfillment.
I didn't pick this one up immediately, since I was browing a bookstore rather than a library, but after I'd paged through it a bit I decided that it would be worth reading, so I brought it home.
I liked both of these books quite a lot. I was a little skeptical of the Weatherhead book at first - towards the end of the preface, he begins talking about his "studies in psychical research." A little odd, I thought, and I very nearly closed the book then and there. But then I happened to glance at those two sentences above (that open the liner notes), and remembered why I'd picked it up, so I plowed ahead. In the end, I liked the book so much I dug myself up a copy for my own library, as Allentown eventually wanted theirs back. I don't agree with all that he said - particularly his views of the relation between man and nature - but there was enough good that it was easy for me to set aside the parts I didn't like.
I read both of these books at the same time, skipping around here and there and reading chapters out of order, but eventually making my way from beginning to end of each of them. I'm not going to talk a lot at the moment about what I liked in each, particularly since it's been a while since I've read them (though I will add a quick side note that, even though I still don't know that I buy into it, Weatherhead's discussion of psychical research doesn't sound at all ridiculous once you read it) and I'd prefer to go through them again to refresh my memory, especially since I've started half a dozen other books in the meantime.
Here, however, is the reason I wanted to post about these books. Because I read something in one book, DiZerega's first, I believe, that I then encountered in Whitehead's book, and when I did it made my eyes go wide and my spine go all shivery. Here's what I got.
DiZerega:
Christianity's message, I realized, focused on love and forgiveness, but not so much on God's forgiveness of us as on our own capacity to forgive one another. God's son had walked, taught, and healed among men and women, and had been cruelly murdered. Even so, God's love for humankind had not weakened. "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do," is perhaps the most famous account of Jesus' last words, words He had spoken while in agony on the cross. The entire Christian message seemed to be summed up in the insight that as God could forgive the murder of his innocent son, so we were called upon to forgive the wrongs done to us.
Whitehead:
Now what was the message [of Christ's death on the cross]? It was a revelation of God's reaction to human sin. To be hurt and hindered by it, but to go on loving, and go on loving, and go on loving, without reprisal or answering violence until men see what sin is and what sin does, and turn with loathing from that which has so grievously hurt the greatest Lover of the human soul.
From both sources, the declaration that God's love and forgiveness is not ours because of the Crucifixion, but in spite of it. These two people coming from very different backgrounds, different faith traditions, both coming to the same basic conclusion, is what struck me as positively amazing and delightful. I feel quite certain that if these two men had ever had the chance to meet, they would have liked each other very much.
Loving Christ and seeking to follow him with insight and understanding are more important than intellectual agreement with a theological system. For this reason, an honest "I don't know" is to be preferred to a blind recitation of old-fashioned expressions, creeds, and formularies that impugn the intellectual integrity of the thoughtful layman.
When I saw these words while browsing the religion section of the Allentown library, I thought to myself, I must pick this book up.
From the back cover of Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience, by Gus DiZerega:
...this wonderful book is a rich dialogue between the Pagan and the Christian approaches to the Sacred, pointing out, quite rightly I believe, that neither has the single correct approach to the divine, but that both can be, and are, legitimate expressions of that ever-present Spirit which is the fountain of all genuine devotion, release, harmony, and fulfillment.
I didn't pick this one up immediately, since I was browing a bookstore rather than a library, but after I'd paged through it a bit I decided that it would be worth reading, so I brought it home.
I liked both of these books quite a lot. I was a little skeptical of the Weatherhead book at first - towards the end of the preface, he begins talking about his "studies in psychical research." A little odd, I thought, and I very nearly closed the book then and there. But then I happened to glance at those two sentences above (that open the liner notes), and remembered why I'd picked it up, so I plowed ahead. In the end, I liked the book so much I dug myself up a copy for my own library, as Allentown eventually wanted theirs back. I don't agree with all that he said - particularly his views of the relation between man and nature - but there was enough good that it was easy for me to set aside the parts I didn't like.
I read both of these books at the same time, skipping around here and there and reading chapters out of order, but eventually making my way from beginning to end of each of them. I'm not going to talk a lot at the moment about what I liked in each, particularly since it's been a while since I've read them (though I will add a quick side note that, even though I still don't know that I buy into it, Weatherhead's discussion of psychical research doesn't sound at all ridiculous once you read it) and I'd prefer to go through them again to refresh my memory, especially since I've started half a dozen other books in the meantime.
Here, however, is the reason I wanted to post about these books. Because I read something in one book, DiZerega's first, I believe, that I then encountered in Whitehead's book, and when I did it made my eyes go wide and my spine go all shivery. Here's what I got.
DiZerega:
Christianity's message, I realized, focused on love and forgiveness, but not so much on God's forgiveness of us as on our own capacity to forgive one another. God's son had walked, taught, and healed among men and women, and had been cruelly murdered. Even so, God's love for humankind had not weakened. "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do," is perhaps the most famous account of Jesus' last words, words He had spoken while in agony on the cross. The entire Christian message seemed to be summed up in the insight that as God could forgive the murder of his innocent son, so we were called upon to forgive the wrongs done to us.
Whitehead:
Now what was the message [of Christ's death on the cross]? It was a revelation of God's reaction to human sin. To be hurt and hindered by it, but to go on loving, and go on loving, and go on loving, without reprisal or answering violence until men see what sin is and what sin does, and turn with loathing from that which has so grievously hurt the greatest Lover of the human soul.
From both sources, the declaration that God's love and forgiveness is not ours because of the Crucifixion, but in spite of it. These two people coming from very different backgrounds, different faith traditions, both coming to the same basic conclusion, is what struck me as positively amazing and delightful. I feel quite certain that if these two men had ever had the chance to meet, they would have liked each other very much.