It's that time again...
It's time for a big ol' rant.
And this time, the topic of choice is: Religion!
Oh yes. You may send all the hate mail you wish. I'm sure there are very few people who are going to be left not pissed off. (Actually, that’s not true. Most of my friends are pretty freaking cool, and I rarely get trolls. I can name about five who I think might get a bit huffy, but they’ll cope eventually). Still…
So my favorite modern artist, Ursula Vernon (modern is lowercase because her art isn't "modern," per se, she's just painting and eating and breathing in the here and now, so she's "modern"-and I’m in love with her use of texture, if you must know, and I’m totally stealing her use of footnotes in ranty blogs, because I want to), posted a grand old rant about religion after some Earnest Young Pagans (Her term, I love it, and will be adopting it and several spin-offs such as EYA-earnest young atheist-and EYC-earnest young Christian-in my daily life) bitched at her about some paintings she did poking mild fun at Catholic Saints (one of them referred to a pagan emperor and the EYPs in question have, like most EY anythings, a crap sense of history and a chip on their shoulder, and bitched loudly--the rant is grand if you want to read all about it). And while Vernon's sensibility is very like mine (I never did the pagan phase, but I did angry, young and stupid very well anyways) and I enjoyed the whole rant rather much, the replies...oh, the replies.
There are a few things that really, really get my hackles up when it comes to religion, and they're almost always about labels. I am not opposed to religion, in almost all of its forms, though I will acknowledge the wincing feeling I get in my stomach whenever anybody introduces themselves with their belief system (Yes, anyone. If you tell me "I'm Christian!" or "I'm Pagan!" or "I'm Atheist!" without solicitation, I'm going to vomit a little in my mouth and then pray that you aren't one of those Christians or Pagans or Atheists, even though 90% of the time, you are. I love the 10% very dearly, and I even have a few friends in the 90% that I’ve accepted because they are otherwise cool and lord knows everybody’s got flaws, but it's usually pretty ugly--and while we're on the subject, yes, Atheists. Guys, I know, it’s tough to wrap your brain around, but 0 is a number. A very different number, that does all sorts of weird things when you multiply with it or try to divide by it, but still a number nevertheless. If you are actually an Atheist (and not an Agnostic-yes, that’s right duckies, those who do not believe either way have their own specific term! Use it in a sentence, you might get extra points! Apologies to those that know the difference…I’m really writing this in my head to a whole lot of people I once took a “Philosophy of Religion” class with*), you believe that God does not exist. And while this is just as valid a belief as any other, it is still just a belief. Science hasn't proven god’s non-existence any more than it has proven god’s existence, and frankly, it’s awfully nice that way. So while you are not members of a "religion" per se, you are still subscribers to a very specific belief, and, like any belief, it has its fundamentalists. But I'm diverging, so /atheists rant).
In any case, I believe, very firmly (and yes, I see the irony) that all religion and almost all beliefs, like just about anything in this world, can function both beautifully, or very, very badly (See, for example, the difference between John Travolta and Tom Cruise when it comes to Scientology--in one case, we have a very cool man who lives a generally good life and loves what he does and has a system of belief that helps him live that life. On the other, we have scary, anti-drug, foaming at the mouth monkey jumping on Oprah's couch-and I know, I’m generalizing about these two and others will disagree on how they really are, but still-the point is clear, yes?) I also believe, very firmly, that if what you believe in works for you and makes your life better, then good on you. You could believe the sky is green and if it helped you be successful and loving and good to your fellow man and whatever else, I’d be happy for you.
But the labels.
Vernon’s post got loads of responses from “like minded individuals” who disliked fundamentalists of all sorts, and that was great. And there were a lot of people talking about religion who have made their own way and are very happy with their beliefs and who are, by and large, really good people who I support…almost.
It’s the “I’m a [Protestant][Buddhist][Neo-pagan][Catholic][Jew][Carrot][insert anything else you can come up with here]!” that just pisses me the fuck off.
No. You’re not.
I’m going to diverge again, for a moment here, to tell an anecdote about the Bible. I’ll be picking on Christians this time around, and for a few simple reasons: it’s the best example I’ve got about dominant Western mindsets confusing things; the people who I will be picking on in the main point of this rant have a tendency to be either anti-Christian, or Christian-reactionary, and so I want to deal the love both ways; and finally, well, I like this piece of Biblical literary trivia, and I don’t get to talk about it nearly enough (Johnny, and others close to me, might well disagree, having heard about it ad nauseum, but I find it fun, so eat me).
So, Psalm 73. Specifically, verse 25. If you open up your Bible, you’ll probably find a number of things. The one I happen to have on me today, the NAB, happens to read “Whom else have I in the heavens? None beside you delights me on earth.” Yours, should you have one, probably says something that is slightly different, but in the same jist (The NRSV does something funny with line breaks, if I recall, to switch things around, but my copy is unfortunately in storage with a bunch of other things I wish I had around in Georgia). But, with little doubt, I can pretty well guarantee that whatever yours says, it does not say what the line in the original Hebrew says. Because what the original Hebrew best translates into goes something like this: “What need have I for a god in heaven? I have you here beside me on earth.”
That’s right. It says, “I don’t need any god in heaven, because I have [god] here on earth.” Rather strongly implying that G-d isn’t in heaven. Woah, right?
Awfully easy to see why theologians freak their shit out at that line, and why translators wring their hands and then add a whole bunch of extra words to try to make the line work within the religious ideas required.
“But obviously,” I hear about seven Christian pastors I know protest, “that’s not consistent with anything else, so obviously, the translation must be complex, and the line as you understand it doesn’t really mean to say that.”
Except that’s very untrue. It is very consistent with the Old Testament.
You see, the Ancient Hebrews at the time the Old Testament was written, as evidenced by both their writing and by their language itself, had no concept of “existence.” At least, not in the Western sense of the word. We’ll explain through the language, because it’s the easiest way: Ancient Hebrew has no verbs of being.
I know, it’s as weird as the idea that there were civilizations that didn’t know there was a number 0. Hard to wrap your brain around. But nevertheless true. In the Ancient Hebrew sense of the world, things didn’t just “exist.” Rather, they did or did not. Most of the adjectives we use to describe something weren’t adjectives in Hebrew-they were verbs. You weren’t beautiful, you “beautyed” (my favorite). Things acted, and it was this understanding that made the G-d** of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob different, special. G-d was not a god in heaven, either watching down or ignoring-G-d was a god here, now, acting. That beautifully famous “name” of G-d, “I am that I am,” is one of the biggest mistranslations in the whole Bible. In that story, Moses (like Jacob before him) is trying to trick G-d. He knows, like all superstitious people of his time, that to have the name of something, a god most of all, is to have power over it. He is asking for the name of G-d so that he can then invoke god, summon god, rule god, just like any other “god” of the time. G-d turns him down, and Moses says, slyly “But how will I tell them who you are if I do not know your name?”
And here, the G-d of Abraham makes one of my absolute favorite smart ass remarks in the whole Bible. While it is nearly impossible to translate the line into English without verbs of being (our language is dependent on them to an extreme-just try to talk without them sometime, and you’ll see what I mean), a better translation, one that incorporates the idea of the line, is “I am the one standing beside you.” In other words: “You won’t need to give them my name, jackass, because I’ll be there with you and you can point me out and they’ll get the damn point.” And this is so clever and so funny and so absolutely within the notion of god as the Hebrews saw it that they used it for a name.
Then, not long after everything gets written, the Greeks come along and conquer everything, and things shift. The Hebrews, with their lack of concept of being, and the Greeks, with their super-elaborate philosophical notion of “being” collide and everything begins to change. Once an idea enters a culture, it’s going to stick around somehow, and Hebrew starts developing verbs of being (though many adjectives still stay verbs-beautiful is my absolute favorite of those), and the idea of god gets wrapped up with the Greek concept of god and then Rome and then Christianity come along and history as most people know it happens and, in the end, we get the “god” we have today, which is an amalgamation and a progression of everything.
But then passages like Psalm 73, verse 25 still exist. And because our understanding of what a “god” is and what “being” is and everything else has moved so far beyond the original idea, we just get confused by them. We think we have the same God, because in most ways “god” hasn’t changed-the whole acting, loving, beautying thing-but rather, our fundamental understanding of reality is different, and that makes god different, as much as it seems the same.
And so we gloss the passages over and mistranslate them and go on our merry way.
And you know what? That’s ok. Because reality, like most modern Western people know it, works pretty well. And G-d, as Christians know God, helps an awful lot of people live decent lives. It really only gets ugly when people get their backs up and start talking absolutes and think that if something doesn’t make sense to them or doesn’t work in their world view it must be wrong or missed or needs to be destroyed. And while I’m going to get really pissed off every time I listen to an educated pastor or priest talk about this passage like it’s the word as it was written, I’m not particularly upset that the world has moved beyond this passage. It makes things interesting.
So, back to the original point. (I know, it’s been forever. If you’ve read this far, I’m impressed, but I’m really doing this to get it out of my head, so I don’t really mind that most won’t.)
The whole “I’m a [Protestant][Buddhist][Neo-pagan][Catholic][Jew][Carrot][insert anything else you can come up with here]!” thing.
A lot of Americans, most decently educated people who want to be open and loving and good, have gotten into the habit of borrowing bits and pieces of all sorts of things in order to create their own spiritual lives. And that, the act of doing that, is awesome. I fully support people forging their own ways, finding things that suit them, and living happy, fulfilled lives.
But, for the love of everything (and anything), that is holy: STOP CALLING YOURSELVES THE COLLECTION OF EVERYTHING YOU’VE BORROWED FROM.
Because the truth is, you’re none of those things, anymore than the G-d talked about in Psalm 73:25 is the exact G-d Christians worship today. And that’s ok.
The easy example is all the “Christian Buddhists” out there. Guess what, folks, you can’t be. Because, you see, while the divinities of both have a great number of beautiful similarities, the teachings of their great prophets/the divinity itself can be easily compared, the directives for how one should live life can be very similar, and the rituals of both can be physically practiced by a single individual, the underlying concepts of reality in each of those religions, most obviously in regards to history and its progression, are diametrically opposed, i.e. one believes in a progression of time and one does not (sort of, on both those counts. I’m simplifying, because this is already too long). “God” might look similar in many ways in both, but reality and existence doesn’t, and that is part of understanding the religion too.
Where it pisses me off (I think-I’ve considered my feelings a great deal and this seems to be the sticking point for me), is that most of the people who use those labels are Westerners, born into the Western understanding of the world, and they don’t even get the fact that they’ve only been able to “mesh” the religions because they’re so sunk into their Western worldview that it doesn’t even occur to them that there are other questions to ask beside “What does god look like?” (That question is a profound one, I grant, if taken metaphorically in depth and detail, but I’m hoping you get that I’m suggesting it as asked somewhat superficially…argh. It’s all complex). Inevitably, when said people continue talking, it comes out that they’re mostly Westernized theists with a slightly anti-Christian twist who really like meditation, or think Ganesh rocks, or believe in the rumors about the crystal skulls.
And, of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Westernized theists with a slightly anti-Christian twist who really like meditation, or think Ganesh rocks, or believe in the rumors about the crystal skulls (ok, maybe that last one goes a little far for me, but still, if it makes you a good person, I support you). They just aren’t Buddists. Or Christians. Or Jews. Or Muslims. Or Hindus. Or Carrots, for that matter***.
And by calling themselves those things, on some level they minimize those religions into the things that they have borrowed. A Catholic isn’t just someone who prays the rosary. A Jew doesn’t just keep Kosher. A Buddhist is more complex than just meditation or an understanding of interconnectivity. And even if your understanding/belief runs deeper than those obvious practices, chances are you’re still neglecting a big part of the picture.
Psalm 73, verse 25 has a beautiful thing to say about a possible nature of God that is wholly diminished by meshing it into our worldview. And that doesn’t make our worldview bad, or wrong. It’s just that, by insisting that everything fits together, we tend to set ourselves up to ignore/diminish what doesn’t fit. With a big enough hammer you can make that square peg fit in that round hole-you’re just gonna break off all the corners and end up with something quite different in the end. The modern meshing of religion, just like any sort of homogenization, tends to rely on that method, and we’re really losing some things in the process. And most of us don’t even know it.
And it makes me sad, and pissy. And ranty.
Yeah. Huston Smith can kiss my ass****.
*One member of this class, a very EYA, used to rant on and on about how Occam’s Razor was proof that God didn’t exist. Aside from noting, quietly, once that Occam’s Razor was an idea about knowledge, not a scientific proof, I never had the heart to tell her-that girl and I got into enough screaming matches in that class as it was-that Occam was a monk and the razor was originally put forth as a proof of God’s existence (what is simpler: that a million miniscule coincidences miraculously happened to occur at just the right time and place to result in existence as we know it, or that someone designed the whole thing? See, the thing that is simpler is really quite dependant on the way you phrase the initial question. Occam’s Razor kinda sucks).
**I do weird things with this word. I do not generally spell god G-d, as I believe it is a title, not a name. When I use “God” or “god” I usually mean it in that sense, as a generic title for a divinity I don’t have any hope of defining. I also use “god” as a non-gendered pronoun, for lack of having a better one, when referring to all. When I am specifically using the word as a title for the Hebrew divinity, I am opting to use G-d simply because I have a large number of people in my life who do and I respect their desire to avoid misusing the word. I also screw this up constantly, and am totally inconsistent. Good luck.
*** When I was very little, someone used the term “Human Vegetable” around me, and I didn’t understand, but decided, for some reason, that I would be curious to know just what it was like to be a carrot. My freshman year of high school a large number of people started calling me “Carrot,” which, because I am not a redhead, confused the piss out of a lot of people. That group and I are long parted, but it still makes me giggle sometimes, and I am still wholly curious.
****Not really. I like Huston Smith-he’s a good man, and he used to teach at my undergrad. I just disagree with a lot of what he has to say, not for the desire (peace and understanding) but for the practice (“We’re all the same! See!”-no we’re not. We’re very different, and that's the freaking cool part.)
And this time, the topic of choice is: Religion!
Oh yes. You may send all the hate mail you wish. I'm sure there are very few people who are going to be left not pissed off. (Actually, that’s not true. Most of my friends are pretty freaking cool, and I rarely get trolls. I can name about five who I think might get a bit huffy, but they’ll cope eventually). Still…
So my favorite modern artist, Ursula Vernon (modern is lowercase because her art isn't "modern," per se, she's just painting and eating and breathing in the here and now, so she's "modern"-and I’m in love with her use of texture, if you must know, and I’m totally stealing her use of footnotes in ranty blogs, because I want to), posted a grand old rant about religion after some Earnest Young Pagans (Her term, I love it, and will be adopting it and several spin-offs such as EYA-earnest young atheist-and EYC-earnest young Christian-in my daily life) bitched at her about some paintings she did poking mild fun at Catholic Saints (one of them referred to a pagan emperor and the EYPs in question have, like most EY anythings, a crap sense of history and a chip on their shoulder, and bitched loudly--the rant is grand if you want to read all about it). And while Vernon's sensibility is very like mine (I never did the pagan phase, but I did angry, young and stupid very well anyways) and I enjoyed the whole rant rather much, the replies...oh, the replies.
There are a few things that really, really get my hackles up when it comes to religion, and they're almost always about labels. I am not opposed to religion, in almost all of its forms, though I will acknowledge the wincing feeling I get in my stomach whenever anybody introduces themselves with their belief system (Yes, anyone. If you tell me "I'm Christian!" or "I'm Pagan!" or "I'm Atheist!" without solicitation, I'm going to vomit a little in my mouth and then pray that you aren't one of those Christians or Pagans or Atheists, even though 90% of the time, you are. I love the 10% very dearly, and I even have a few friends in the 90% that I’ve accepted because they are otherwise cool and lord knows everybody’s got flaws, but it's usually pretty ugly--and while we're on the subject, yes, Atheists. Guys, I know, it’s tough to wrap your brain around, but 0 is a number. A very different number, that does all sorts of weird things when you multiply with it or try to divide by it, but still a number nevertheless. If you are actually an Atheist (and not an Agnostic-yes, that’s right duckies, those who do not believe either way have their own specific term! Use it in a sentence, you might get extra points! Apologies to those that know the difference…I’m really writing this in my head to a whole lot of people I once took a “Philosophy of Religion” class with*), you believe that God does not exist. And while this is just as valid a belief as any other, it is still just a belief. Science hasn't proven god’s non-existence any more than it has proven god’s existence, and frankly, it’s awfully nice that way. So while you are not members of a "religion" per se, you are still subscribers to a very specific belief, and, like any belief, it has its fundamentalists. But I'm diverging, so /atheists rant).
In any case, I believe, very firmly (and yes, I see the irony) that all religion and almost all beliefs, like just about anything in this world, can function both beautifully, or very, very badly (See, for example, the difference between John Travolta and Tom Cruise when it comes to Scientology--in one case, we have a very cool man who lives a generally good life and loves what he does and has a system of belief that helps him live that life. On the other, we have scary, anti-drug, foaming at the mouth monkey jumping on Oprah's couch-and I know, I’m generalizing about these two and others will disagree on how they really are, but still-the point is clear, yes?) I also believe, very firmly, that if what you believe in works for you and makes your life better, then good on you. You could believe the sky is green and if it helped you be successful and loving and good to your fellow man and whatever else, I’d be happy for you.
But the labels.
Vernon’s post got loads of responses from “like minded individuals” who disliked fundamentalists of all sorts, and that was great. And there were a lot of people talking about religion who have made their own way and are very happy with their beliefs and who are, by and large, really good people who I support…almost.
It’s the “I’m a [Protestant][Buddhist][Neo-pagan][Catholic][Jew][Carrot][insert anything else you can come up with here]!” that just pisses me the fuck off.
No. You’re not.
I’m going to diverge again, for a moment here, to tell an anecdote about the Bible. I’ll be picking on Christians this time around, and for a few simple reasons: it’s the best example I’ve got about dominant Western mindsets confusing things; the people who I will be picking on in the main point of this rant have a tendency to be either anti-Christian, or Christian-reactionary, and so I want to deal the love both ways; and finally, well, I like this piece of Biblical literary trivia, and I don’t get to talk about it nearly enough (Johnny, and others close to me, might well disagree, having heard about it ad nauseum, but I find it fun, so eat me).
So, Psalm 73. Specifically, verse 25. If you open up your Bible, you’ll probably find a number of things. The one I happen to have on me today, the NAB, happens to read “Whom else have I in the heavens? None beside you delights me on earth.” Yours, should you have one, probably says something that is slightly different, but in the same jist (The NRSV does something funny with line breaks, if I recall, to switch things around, but my copy is unfortunately in storage with a bunch of other things I wish I had around in Georgia). But, with little doubt, I can pretty well guarantee that whatever yours says, it does not say what the line in the original Hebrew says. Because what the original Hebrew best translates into goes something like this: “What need have I for a god in heaven? I have you here beside me on earth.”
That’s right. It says, “I don’t need any god in heaven, because I have [god] here on earth.” Rather strongly implying that G-d isn’t in heaven. Woah, right?
Awfully easy to see why theologians freak their shit out at that line, and why translators wring their hands and then add a whole bunch of extra words to try to make the line work within the religious ideas required.
“But obviously,” I hear about seven Christian pastors I know protest, “that’s not consistent with anything else, so obviously, the translation must be complex, and the line as you understand it doesn’t really mean to say that.”
Except that’s very untrue. It is very consistent with the Old Testament.
You see, the Ancient Hebrews at the time the Old Testament was written, as evidenced by both their writing and by their language itself, had no concept of “existence.” At least, not in the Western sense of the word. We’ll explain through the language, because it’s the easiest way: Ancient Hebrew has no verbs of being.
I know, it’s as weird as the idea that there were civilizations that didn’t know there was a number 0. Hard to wrap your brain around. But nevertheless true. In the Ancient Hebrew sense of the world, things didn’t just “exist.” Rather, they did or did not. Most of the adjectives we use to describe something weren’t adjectives in Hebrew-they were verbs. You weren’t beautiful, you “beautyed” (my favorite). Things acted, and it was this understanding that made the G-d** of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob different, special. G-d was not a god in heaven, either watching down or ignoring-G-d was a god here, now, acting. That beautifully famous “name” of G-d, “I am that I am,” is one of the biggest mistranslations in the whole Bible. In that story, Moses (like Jacob before him) is trying to trick G-d. He knows, like all superstitious people of his time, that to have the name of something, a god most of all, is to have power over it. He is asking for the name of G-d so that he can then invoke god, summon god, rule god, just like any other “god” of the time. G-d turns him down, and Moses says, slyly “But how will I tell them who you are if I do not know your name?”
And here, the G-d of Abraham makes one of my absolute favorite smart ass remarks in the whole Bible. While it is nearly impossible to translate the line into English without verbs of being (our language is dependent on them to an extreme-just try to talk without them sometime, and you’ll see what I mean), a better translation, one that incorporates the idea of the line, is “I am the one standing beside you.” In other words: “You won’t need to give them my name, jackass, because I’ll be there with you and you can point me out and they’ll get the damn point.” And this is so clever and so funny and so absolutely within the notion of god as the Hebrews saw it that they used it for a name.
Then, not long after everything gets written, the Greeks come along and conquer everything, and things shift. The Hebrews, with their lack of concept of being, and the Greeks, with their super-elaborate philosophical notion of “being” collide and everything begins to change. Once an idea enters a culture, it’s going to stick around somehow, and Hebrew starts developing verbs of being (though many adjectives still stay verbs-beautiful is my absolute favorite of those), and the idea of god gets wrapped up with the Greek concept of god and then Rome and then Christianity come along and history as most people know it happens and, in the end, we get the “god” we have today, which is an amalgamation and a progression of everything.
But then passages like Psalm 73, verse 25 still exist. And because our understanding of what a “god” is and what “being” is and everything else has moved so far beyond the original idea, we just get confused by them. We think we have the same God, because in most ways “god” hasn’t changed-the whole acting, loving, beautying thing-but rather, our fundamental understanding of reality is different, and that makes god different, as much as it seems the same.
And so we gloss the passages over and mistranslate them and go on our merry way.
And you know what? That’s ok. Because reality, like most modern Western people know it, works pretty well. And G-d, as Christians know God, helps an awful lot of people live decent lives. It really only gets ugly when people get their backs up and start talking absolutes and think that if something doesn’t make sense to them or doesn’t work in their world view it must be wrong or missed or needs to be destroyed. And while I’m going to get really pissed off every time I listen to an educated pastor or priest talk about this passage like it’s the word as it was written, I’m not particularly upset that the world has moved beyond this passage. It makes things interesting.
So, back to the original point. (I know, it’s been forever. If you’ve read this far, I’m impressed, but I’m really doing this to get it out of my head, so I don’t really mind that most won’t.)
The whole “I’m a [Protestant][Buddhist][Neo-pagan][Catholic][Jew][Carrot][insert anything else you can come up with here]!” thing.
A lot of Americans, most decently educated people who want to be open and loving and good, have gotten into the habit of borrowing bits and pieces of all sorts of things in order to create their own spiritual lives. And that, the act of doing that, is awesome. I fully support people forging their own ways, finding things that suit them, and living happy, fulfilled lives.
But, for the love of everything (and anything), that is holy: STOP CALLING YOURSELVES THE COLLECTION OF EVERYTHING YOU’VE BORROWED FROM.
Because the truth is, you’re none of those things, anymore than the G-d talked about in Psalm 73:25 is the exact G-d Christians worship today. And that’s ok.
The easy example is all the “Christian Buddhists” out there. Guess what, folks, you can’t be. Because, you see, while the divinities of both have a great number of beautiful similarities, the teachings of their great prophets/the divinity itself can be easily compared, the directives for how one should live life can be very similar, and the rituals of both can be physically practiced by a single individual, the underlying concepts of reality in each of those religions, most obviously in regards to history and its progression, are diametrically opposed, i.e. one believes in a progression of time and one does not (sort of, on both those counts. I’m simplifying, because this is already too long). “God” might look similar in many ways in both, but reality and existence doesn’t, and that is part of understanding the religion too.
Where it pisses me off (I think-I’ve considered my feelings a great deal and this seems to be the sticking point for me), is that most of the people who use those labels are Westerners, born into the Western understanding of the world, and they don’t even get the fact that they’ve only been able to “mesh” the religions because they’re so sunk into their Western worldview that it doesn’t even occur to them that there are other questions to ask beside “What does god look like?” (That question is a profound one, I grant, if taken metaphorically in depth and detail, but I’m hoping you get that I’m suggesting it as asked somewhat superficially…argh. It’s all complex). Inevitably, when said people continue talking, it comes out that they’re mostly Westernized theists with a slightly anti-Christian twist who really like meditation, or think Ganesh rocks, or believe in the rumors about the crystal skulls.
And, of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Westernized theists with a slightly anti-Christian twist who really like meditation, or think Ganesh rocks, or believe in the rumors about the crystal skulls (ok, maybe that last one goes a little far for me, but still, if it makes you a good person, I support you). They just aren’t Buddists. Or Christians. Or Jews. Or Muslims. Or Hindus. Or Carrots, for that matter***.
And by calling themselves those things, on some level they minimize those religions into the things that they have borrowed. A Catholic isn’t just someone who prays the rosary. A Jew doesn’t just keep Kosher. A Buddhist is more complex than just meditation or an understanding of interconnectivity. And even if your understanding/belief runs deeper than those obvious practices, chances are you’re still neglecting a big part of the picture.
Psalm 73, verse 25 has a beautiful thing to say about a possible nature of God that is wholly diminished by meshing it into our worldview. And that doesn’t make our worldview bad, or wrong. It’s just that, by insisting that everything fits together, we tend to set ourselves up to ignore/diminish what doesn’t fit. With a big enough hammer you can make that square peg fit in that round hole-you’re just gonna break off all the corners and end up with something quite different in the end. The modern meshing of religion, just like any sort of homogenization, tends to rely on that method, and we’re really losing some things in the process. And most of us don’t even know it.
And it makes me sad, and pissy. And ranty.
Yeah. Huston Smith can kiss my ass****.
*One member of this class, a very EYA, used to rant on and on about how Occam’s Razor was proof that God didn’t exist. Aside from noting, quietly, once that Occam’s Razor was an idea about knowledge, not a scientific proof, I never had the heart to tell her-that girl and I got into enough screaming matches in that class as it was-that Occam was a monk and the razor was originally put forth as a proof of God’s existence (what is simpler: that a million miniscule coincidences miraculously happened to occur at just the right time and place to result in existence as we know it, or that someone designed the whole thing? See, the thing that is simpler is really quite dependant on the way you phrase the initial question. Occam’s Razor kinda sucks).
**I do weird things with this word. I do not generally spell god G-d, as I believe it is a title, not a name. When I use “God” or “god” I usually mean it in that sense, as a generic title for a divinity I don’t have any hope of defining. I also use “god” as a non-gendered pronoun, for lack of having a better one, when referring to all. When I am specifically using the word as a title for the Hebrew divinity, I am opting to use G-d simply because I have a large number of people in my life who do and I respect their desire to avoid misusing the word. I also screw this up constantly, and am totally inconsistent. Good luck.
*** When I was very little, someone used the term “Human Vegetable” around me, and I didn’t understand, but decided, for some reason, that I would be curious to know just what it was like to be a carrot. My freshman year of high school a large number of people started calling me “Carrot,” which, because I am not a redhead, confused the piss out of a lot of people. That group and I are long parted, but it still makes me giggle sometimes, and I am still wholly curious.
****Not really. I like Huston Smith-he’s a good man, and he used to teach at my undergrad. I just disagree with a lot of what he has to say, not for the desire (peace and understanding) but for the practice (“We’re all the same! See!”-no we’re not. We’re very different, and that's the freaking cool part.)