Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect

…because it holds no attraction?

Surely not for me. But I imagine for those who would welcome it for the opportunity to do for some real good, that inclination would rarely align with a willingness to do “whatever it takes”. That sort of conflict would probably only very rarely win out at the pig trough of politics.

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@Kendel, looks like I have some more Taylor to quote, chapter and verse as it were. From the first chapter p 22, talking about what her students in world religions class will really be working on in the class.

Some may call it “ultimate reality” instead, but their questions will be the same. What is true and what is not? How did they come to believe what they believe? If the bottom falls out, how far will they fall? If there is only one God, why are there so many religions?

What I know and most of them do not yet is that even people who belong to the same religion do not agree about what they mean when they say “God”. Some mean a loving daddy, while others mean a cosmic judge. Some see Jesus on a cross and some see him on a white horse with a sharp sword in each hand. Some frankly admit they do not know what they mean, though they know they ought to - though they have prayed hard for some clear word from above on those nights when the sound of their own heart scares them to death.

In chapter two, p29 where she quotes Huston Smith, I learned I may be dispositionally a particular kind* of Hindu when it comes to the divine.

Hinduism is the great psychologist of the religions, he wrote. It knows that people are different and offers them different paths to union with the divine. Some choose a scholarly path and others a path of service. Some choose a path of meditation and others a path of devotion. Some devote themselves to Vishnu and some to the Divine Mother. Some shun the worship of deities altogether, striving to realize God in themselves with no decoys.* …

Yet this was precisely the problem for some Christians I knew - not just the part about realizing God in the self, but also the part about endorsing more than one way to God.

That gives me some insight into why I and my approach I describe rubs so many the wrong way. Hopefully some will find some use for the dissonance that causes. Really all should feel vindicated to follow their own way, though realizing that indicts me too for all the times I’ve opined here about what a shame it is that only those educated at a seminary seem to really tap into what is best in their religion. Maybe the Hindus have it right. Evolutionarily, since culture is its primary vessel for us now, it would probably be most advantageous to live in a community with diverse dispositions even with the challenges that entails for cohesion.

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Krishna was not who gave Maggie, Rich Stearns and George Müller clear-cut and objective connected dots of evidence.

If it helps set your mind at ease, Dale, Taylor doesn’t try to deny, or cover over the fact that different religions can and do make incompatible claims … I.e. There are some claims you would not be able to accept without rejecting something claimed in the other religion. She isn’t denying that such things still exist.

What she challenges is the notion that everything from some other religion must be against or in tension with Christianity. The unfortunate mental model that “one religion’s gain” must equal “the other religion’s loss” contributes to a lot of unecessarily elevated blood pressure on the part of Christians.

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I guess I’m still reacting…

Exactly how many real gods can we expect to find and how many of which we might “just happen to count on” be trustworthy?

Even here on this “clearest of issues” for the Christian, there is more complication than you are characteristically willing to admit (even setting aside the suspicion that outsiders have of the trinity being our way of sneaking three Gods in as one - to which Christians will impatiently reply with their historically hammered out - now stock responses) - but that aside: so we are to have one and only one God. Very good. Hindus in some sense can also be said to be monotheistic in that above their millions of gods, they too - have a highest God. We then carefully do not bestow that same label on anything or anyone else - but we get around it by having myriads of angels. Or saints. Protestants might not directly pray to any of these other beings, but they would have their own languages of veneration. An outside appraiser might rightfully be forgiven for seeing something of a mess if she was tasked with determining who the real monotheists are, outwardly claimed labels aside.

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I am talking about the personal God for whom we have objective evidence as opposed to being denialist about it.


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I’m wondering if prayer is not more the attitude than it is the words.

Thanks for sharing these quotes. I don’t know that I can say anything very intellegent in response, but I’ll try to engage at least a little (between making and eating banana splits to sweeten the return to school after break, and playing with the cat, who seems desperate for some fun).
Outside of the context of the book (since I haven’t read any more of it than these quotes), Taylor’s comments about various understandings of God is telling and challenging. Christians and Jews believe humanity has been given special revelation from God about God, which we could gain on our own. We are commanded in those texts to “Know the Lord,” and we are given a great deal of information about him. For those who accept this revelation, it is our duty to conform our understanding to what we learn from this revelation. We don’t get to get to pick what we like best. And there are parts we wish were otherwise. If we are serious about belief, faith, in this God, we are forced to change; we believe we are changed not only by our human efforts, but by the work of God upon us. So there ought to be a good deal of humility about what we are doing, whom we worship, our understanding of that one, and our minuteness in comparison to this God. Although there often is not.

Regarding your comments on Hinduism, I think they make sense. If one is looking from the outside of all faiths, the one that offers the most options probably would seem most appealing; there is nearly always something that seems to “fit.”

I’m curious what Taylor means about “God in the self” precisely. Honestly, reading this from a Christian rubs me the wrong way, far more than hearing it from a non-Christian. God’s utter otherness and separateness from everything else is a foundational Christian understanding, at least in orthodoxy. It’s the kind of thing I was pointing to in the first part of this reply. Christians don’t get to define our God for ourselves, much less define ourselves as God or in relation to God. And we believe that God, someone other than ourselves, acts upon us in various ways. Maybe I’ve misunderstood her.

I appreciate your insights about dissonance and also evolution. I’m not sure I see the possibility of cohesive communities with diverse dispositions. Humans demonstrate constantly our inability to behave rationally for the sake of our species’ survival. Sigh. Additionally, as Mervin points out later, there are all sorts of conflicting interests in religions, which lead to far more than theological disagreements. (I think Stephen Carter covers this a bit in “The Culture of Disbelief”, which I read maybe 25 years ago).

I need to take a look at Taylor’s book sometime. In a very different vein, I found Richard Twiss’s book “One Church, Many Tribes” perhaps similarly enlightening, but within a Christian context. He was a Native America Christian, who was trying to figure out what that even meant in the context of late 20th century America.

I hope SOMETHING here made some kind of sense. You regularly put so much work into your replies that come out of serious reading and thought. From me, you are often stuck with poorly edited, fractured bits that are cobbled together throughout the day.

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I find this quote from Irving utterly condemning. Christian practice does not come easy to me. It is often a burden, a weariness. I am burdened and weary. My spirit often doesn’t rejoice in it. Yet God takes what terrible bits and pieces I offer so poorly and does His work with them and on me. I can live with such sanctification in light of eternal hope.

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Yes, it is a sure hope, not a just a maybe. (I sent you a PM.)

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What I see as positive about that is that, as a community, you have a common book of source stories whose meaning you can debate. What I find disappointing is that so many think these distill into a pile of settled facts which almost make their narrative origins irrelevant. If one must pledge their allegiance to this dead pile of facts rather than to the truth those stories speak to themselves directly I think something important is lost.

If all I had to go on was some information about a person, I’m not sure I could claim to know them. There is a lot missing if we never stand before them and make eye contact. So long as have no direct experience all we can do is construct an understanding which we can debate.

But are we permitted to note on which points we are convinced and which seem doubtful? If I am required to accept whole cloth someone else’s understanding, how can it ever become my own?

It seems to me there are reasons to believe there is something more going on in our lives which may be attributed to a deity but I don’t believe any pile of facts constitutes such a reason. I come to this as someone curious about why God belief has been so central to so many human beings and probably for as long as we’ve been recognizably human. My hunch is that it has had a key role in our having become as we are. But I don’t believe there is any external agency with a preconceived plan guiding and shaping it all. There may be but that seems unlikely to me.

Agreed. I see no path to certainty and based on the demeanor of those who claim to have it I would be leery of pursuing certainty as a goal - in this area. We are too close to it be objective. Why not admit the necessity of proceeding subjectively? After all we are subjects. That needn’t mean anything goes. Not every poem, song, novel or piece of art is of equal value. I think we have an innate capacity to recognize what is better even in subjective realms. However I don’t think we improve that capacity by trying to objectify the process.

So am I and neither am sure of what Hindus mean by that. I wouldn’t use the phrase “God in the self” but reflecting on how we are in our self has convinced me that there is more within which makes the way we are possible. I wouldn’t call it “God” but there does seem to be something more onboard each one of us which makes it possible for us to recognize subjective quality when we perceive it. But It isn’t something we can boil down into words to a procedure. It simply is what it is, like God except without the baggage.

No one does and yet we need some way to make sense of the central role it plays in our lives. Do you find the authority of the church sufficient for that? I find I need more direct involvement than that.

And now I feel exactly the same way. We’re not on objective ground. The subject matter doesn’t permit it. So clarity is pretty hard to come by and agreement even more so. But yes made lots sense.

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If someone were given a snapshot – literal knowable attributes of someone else, that is real knowledge. That of course does not constitute knowing them personally. We have that about God, but he is also personally knowable and lovable through his direct interactions in his children’s lives, but childlike trust and ingenuousness is required.

There is direct experience available, constituting “I” contact, though. For some, putting their faith in him starts with believing the truth revealed in the Bible and the testimony – the honest factual reports, present day or past – of others, some of whom they may even know personally, like parents, friends or relatives. This in turn leads to the experience of his recognizable presence in their hearts and minds, changing their heart’s desires, goals and worldview. Others have more radical and externally observable objective experiences. I certainly don’t want to impugn the reality of inward experiences, such as Sy Garte’s. C.S. Lewis’ conversion experience comes to mind, too. (I wish I had a collection of the accounts of both kinds. I needn’t mention Maggie for you, of course, but I will for the sake of the unimaginably few who see this who aren’t aware of her account. :wink:) We could discuss whether or not the adjective empirical applies to the external evidence, though, couldn’t we, T. @T_aquaticus :wink: Sometimes in a Christian’s experience they are given objective evidence they don’t want, not to convince them of God’s reality, but to “direct their steps”,* like Rich Stearns. (The sequence of God’s providential interventions in my med school experience included some like that. Maybe I should include my nephrectomy, too.)

Since we have knowledge of his beauty in creation demonstrating his artistry and imagination, and knowledge of his cool providential interventions in the lives of his children demonstrating his sovereignty and power over time and place, who would not want to know him personally?! (Not to mention that is unwise in the extreme.)
 


*Multiple references apply.

We are and it does.

Mostly agreed there - and rather well-stated, though the targets of that criticism would very much see the narrative as relevant; they just see the “pile of settled facts” as being a necessary prerequisite necessary to “bestow credance upon” any forthcoming narrative. They are wrong to do this in such universal terms, to be sure; but they do it nonetheless. There are points where historicity is necessary to validate the message, but to make that modern reactionism the gatekeeper of all biblical scholarship - all understanding of narrative - that has lead to much fundamentalist mischief and mishandling of the sacred word.

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Just the other day I read, surely from Holy Envy but I’m not sure, words to this effect:

Treat other people’s religion with the same respect you’d have them treat yours.

Many - though certainly not all- Christians fail at this application of the golden rule. That may well be true of much of the rest of the population as well, both the religious and nons. But not every religion worships a jealous God whose adherents take offense at every perceived slight of their deity. From my online experience fundamentalist atheists and Christians fail the most egregiously, with a slight edge to the atheists. Though they don’t have a deity in that fight, many are every bit as defensive of their religious status as Christians are for their God’s feelings, and probably more so.

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This could be interesting to consider for other issues too that aren’t religious. For example, what would it mean to treat a flat-earther’s views with the same respect with which I want my “round-earth” view to be treated? Can a view simply be declared wrong, incoherent, illogical, etc. without that being taken as “disrespect”?

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Great point–or with Covid. We can disagree with conspiracy theorists respectfully, without agreeing with them.

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I suppose someone who truly believes the earth is flat shouldn’t be ridiculed. The same goes for vaccine deniers. You would think a flat earthier could be shown evidence to correct his mistaken belief. To convince a vaccine denier it might require more education and that requires some willingness and even effort.

I guess the question becomes why do we want to ridicule anyone? For me it is when someone seems insincere in saying obtuse things that I’m more likely to “go low”.

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