There are some lines I love of the 20th Century German theologian and political martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They emerged in the clarity, and self-awareness, that arise on the edges of survival:
"Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life ... One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies."
He could be describing Christian voices in American media and politics of the last 30 years, of course. But those voices, however culpable for the damage they wrought, have not been alone in their shrillness. They've squeezed themselves into given forms of posturing in order to be heard. Even the most erudite secular American commentators condescend, prattle, and speak beside the point.
The truth is, we've forgotten critical aspects of human communication that need a place as we deliberate the open questions and bitter chasms the 21st Century is presenting. Listening is chief among these -- dwelling with questions rather than wielding competing answers like blunt instruments. We have no shared habits of pondering complexity, which in the first place would mean an acknowledgement of more than two sides to any issue. We don't know how, in our public spaces, to seek to understand the point of view of another as a way to engage it more meaningfully. Listening is not about silence, or passivity. It is the only way to inform and deepen our answers while formulating better questions of ourselves and others.
Hard, evocative, human questions have been one great yield of a series of conversations I've conducted for the past six months -- starting in the election season of 2010 and with a heightened sense of urgency after Tucson. The poet Elizabeth Alexander voices a question that is at once gentler and more exacting than who is right and who is wrong: "Are we not of interest to each other?" The pro-choice champion Frances Kissling says she has learned to ask, "What can I see that is good in the position of the other? And what troubles me in my own position?" The Evangelical educator Richard Mouw challenges himself and others to name "what it is about people like me that scares you so much. And what is it about what you are advocating that worries me so much about the future of our culture and the world in which my grandchildren are being raised?" The naturalist Terry Tempest Williams wonders, "Where does voice come from? How do we keep it? How do we use it?" The civil rights veteran Vincent Harding challenges, "Is America possible?"
To be clear, I have no patience with questioning for questioning's sake -- as a dead end, feel good exercises in mere tolerance. I approach questioning and listening as tools for starting new conversations, for reframing and transcending dead-end debates. And the point of speaking and listening differently is to live differently -- toward some kind of shared sense of reality if not, any time soon, a shared set of answers on the vast divisions before us now.
Listen, and join in the Civil Conversations Project, at OnBeing.org.
Active Listening - Communication Skills Training from MindTools.com
Krista Tippett on Being: meaning, religion, ethics, and ideas on ...
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
For instance, why aren't laws written that require a vasectomy penalty for men that impregnate women and then abandon all support for the mother and the child? That alone could prevent countless abortions across America and countless abandonment and abuse crimes across America as well. Plus, it is a fair penalty that even protects the perpetrator from future child-support payments that would be a consequence for such irresponsible and criminal behavior.
Seriously, I often wonder why lawmakers don't go after the perpetrator's of abuse and abandonment toward women and their children and end their ability to get more women pregnant? The penalty should fit the crime and if this was a society where women truly had equal rights then there would also be equal penalties for crimes against women rather than the current system where men F*@% women and abandon their children with impunity.
Oppression against women is built into our instituions and stands side by side with institutionalized racism. The sad truth is that a vasectomy penalty for men who repeatedly force themselves on women and abandon their children to abject poverty is a law that will never be written in a patriarchal society. Yet women will forever be forced to endure humiliation, by law, when they seek reproductive medical care. Go figure.
How does one preserve a born woman's human right to control her own body at the same time one insists on the unborn's right to live?
This is my only issue. If I can get around this, I'm there. But I don't believe in removing one human right in the hopes of preserving another. So, I'll need the idea that preserves both.
What about Christian televangelists telling people they should be sending part of their unemployment checks to them? What about Christian activists pushing legislation (successfully so far) to call murder of abortion doctors "justifiable homicide"? What about a Christian President who goes to war, killing 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,000+ US soldiers, because "God told him to"?
If that is your only issue, you bar is pretty low.
Kicking Christians out of the Pro-Choice argument is just a pebble. China is also Anti-Choice, though in their case forcing women to have abortions, and it is not a Christian issue there. There are many other examples. Pro-Choice is an issue of men telling women what to do with their bodies, whether they wanted to put it into a dialectic reasoning, Christian reasoning, whatever. Those are all just excuses.
The question really is, where is the afterlife really? Where will be God letting you live when you're not dead anymore? What will I do there?
What is the use of me or anyone in heaven?
Jeremiah 17:5 "Curse is the man who trusts in human beings". Men's own arbitrary ideas, that do so for their own self interest only $$. One thinks they can build the economy on materialism of products, think that is the way to build a Nations prosperity have been greatly and falsely deceived, you think?
In some ways God was created in the image of man.
In other ways, Man was created in the image of what can be called "God".
Jeremiah 17-5 Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings.
That is where our public officials, celebrities and even church leaders have failed us.
"Only in the name of defending Virtue, can one justify the killing of so many innocents."
----History professor speaking about the history of religious wars.
The danger of religion---especially fundamentalist religion---is that it can wind up being drained of its spiritual foundation, and all you are left with is empty, braying religiosity.
A religiosity that FEELS no real compassion or sense of connection with other human beings beyond those most superficial in nature. Resulting in someone who is utterly dangerous. Becuause he feels he is armed with Absolute Truth...and therefore cannot possibly be wrong. Because he feels that what he does in In God's Name...and therefore anything he does is justifiable.
In short, you have all the components required for the perpetration of great evil. In fact the worst kind of evil.
Self-righteous evil.
"The vast majority of history's great atrocities were committed by people who were absolutely, postively convinced that they were right."
---Scott Peck.
Religion is nothing but an attempt to organize, and COMMUNICATE the spiritual realization (experience) of a single human being. Whether it be Jesus of Nazareth. Muhammed. The Buddha. The prophets of the Jewish tradition...or the avatars and sadhus of the Hindu tradition.
Trying to communicate an experience to someone who has never had that experience is like trying to tell someone who has never drank wine or coffee what those beverages taste like. To someone who has drank them before...and you have a shared frame of reference...it is relatively easy.
....to someone who has not...it is nearly impossible.
Which is why so much of spiritual/religious language is either mythic, symbolic or use parables and analogies. In an effort to try to analogize an experience that someone has NOT had, to one that they HAVE had.
People who are evolved spiritually understand this...and almost NEVER interpret any spiritual writing literally. The problem that religion faces is that many of its clergy and officials...while devoutly religious...are not particuarly evolved themselves, spiritually. So they are in no position to interpret the parables, symbolic language and mythic imagery to their "flocks". It is a case of the blind leading the blind...
It is like I give you a box of cereal(religion) ...and the food inside of it is quite nourishing(spirituality). While the writing on the box helps you to figure out how to get to the food inside the box.
But over time, people lose track of the fact the fact that there was ever food inside the box...and people instead start focusing on the box itself...and who's LOOKING at the box the right way.
Or who's HOLDING the box the right way...or the sinfulness of changing any of the pictures or the writing on the box.
In short...you get fundamentalism ONLY after all that is truly SPIRITUAL has been lost from a religion. Gone are humility, compassion, and a personal sense of connection to All That Is...and everyone you meet...
..and all that is left is an Fear-and-Ego driven sense of self-righteousness. A My-Ends-Justify-Whatever-Means-I-Choose brand of tragic hubris.
Fundamentalism is not the same as Religion. It is a toxic waste-product of despoiled Spirituality, by way of Religion.
this idea that materialists follow the scientific method is in error.
paradigms overwhelm the true nature of the scientific method. one must be willing to follow the evidence whereever it takes them.
neither the religious or the materialist follow the data or even do the investigation outside their established beliefs. I have proved this time and time again with both.
this is why I state they are on the same coin, call it paradigm paralysis, unawareness or whatever but it is powerful. and being smart does not effect their ability to see outside their existing paradigm hidden from their view.
recently a church sang a song the wrath of god was satisfied on the cross and the sermon was on the unconditional love of god. that service does not pass the simplist of logic test but no one in that church has a problem with it. that church is attended by college professors, teachers, business professionals, etc.
atheists are made not born with that kind of teachings.
Ency Dictionary. States clearly the- Sabbath Day is Sat. So why are we going to church on a day God has not ask for? Pleasing mans traditions are not pleasing God's is it? I love all. Teach the Ten Commandments. And should we not instead observe the Holy feast days of God instead. Which Easter and Christmas are neither them?
Materialism is not born out of adherence to the Scientific Method. All the Scientific Method does is formalize the process of LEARNING through observation and deductive reasoning.
Materialism is, in fact, a PHILOSOPHICAL position that is based upon a set of fundamentally UNPROVABLE set of ASSUMPTIONS about the nature of Reality.
Which is why the fights between religious fundamentalists and rational materialists are so bitter...and so pointless.
Family squabbles usually are that way.