Collective Sin

Right now my wife is watching a TV documentary about Auschwitz and it's got me thinking about collective sin, as opposed to individual sin. It's certainly right and proper to bring individuals involved in things like Auschwitz to justice but I can't help but think that this does not address the collective sin. To me it is quite conceivable that if Nazi Germany had set it's conquering sites lower that they may have taken over just a chunk of Europe and then continued to be as evil as they were and this evil could conceivably outlasted Hitler. We tend to remember evil empires or acts purely by the people. In Nazi Germany it's Hitler and those working at Auschwitz etc..., in Islamic fundamentalism it's Osama Bin Laden, in Australia it's the police officers who took children away from their indigenous parents and the church institutions who housed them. But it is more than just these people.

These people are just the focal point of a whole culture in motion, a whole culture were almost everyone in that culture is not necessarily guilty of the associated crimes in a legal sense, as they are not directly involved in committing the crimes themselves, they are often just glad that someone else is doing the dirty work for them. Or, perhaps just not brave enough to ask at what cost is there society functioning in the way it is. I am sure many of these people would not have felt responsible for the horrors that were happening around them but perhaps they should have. I worry that they did not feel personally responsible in the same way that I don't feel personally responsible for global warming, third world poverty and the state of indigenous Australia, to name but a few.

Perhaps as Xns we have to often framed sin in terms of personal sin. It is much easier to deal with, one person in complete control of their own actions with complete ability to admit fault and seek reconciliation. Collective sin is something we rarely talk about but need to. Primarily so that we can have a Xn response. If we got this sorted perhaps we'd be leaders in areas of social justice and the environment, rather than just things like sexual ethics (which is primarily treated as an individual sin).

Dicky Dawkins gives me a new metaphor for God

For a while now I've been trying to reconfigure the mental picture I have a of God. Over the past 25 years (since I was a child) I have slowly been moving away from the grandfather in the in the sky image through more and more metaphors to well I'm not sure exactly where. There are probably a range of metaphors to describe my image of God but at the moment I'm finding it hard find any. So it was perhaps a little ironic that one it was something that Richard Dawkins said on a Point of Inquiry interview that rang resonated with me. He described the spiritual or God beliefs of some scientists as a "vast cosmic intelligence at the basis of the whole of the universe" or "a deep spirit at the base of the universe". This, obviously are not his beliefs but for some reason they really resonated with me. I think these ideas might be closer to Paul Tillich's "Ground of Being" or Diarmuid O Murchu's "Relational Matrix", but since I don't really know much about either it might be time to do some investigating.

Mass Confession

This week I got to witness an "Alter Call" of sorts at a pentecostal Assemblies of God church. People were invited down the front to rededicate there lives to God. It was a display of mass public confession where people who were seeking forgiveness or reconciliation with God did so in front of each other. This kind of public confession is something that I tend to associate with a more ancient Catholic form of worship. But the Pentecostal and Catholic churches may not be as different as they may seem. I remember an Anglican bishop once telling me that when a pentecostal pastor told him that their services where different each week unlike the formulaic Anglican services, yet after attending just a few pentacostal services he was able predict exactly the formula or routine of each service.

I got the feeling from the service I attended that this week was probably the same format as last week and will probably be the same next week. that is, a few songs (played for about 45 mins) an offertory talk, the offertory, the message and then a few songs to finish. What is more the ritual routine seemed an important part of the experience. The repeated choruses containing familiar platitudes were like and ancient mantra. The idea of an offertory sermon before the main sermon felt like a call to purchase 16th century indulgences. The sermon was a devotional interpretation of scripture rather than exegetical, ignoring context and original meaning of the passage. The speaker then mostly talked about something which was more related to the theme for the month than the actual passage. Again this was reminiscent of what preaching, at it's worst, could be like to an audience of illiterate trusting masses unable to read the Bible in their own language.

So why is it that conservative Catholic and Pentecostal churches often have similar moral stances on issues? Perhaps, because they are not as different as they might appear at first glance.

Sick of those Sappy email fwds?

If you're any thing like me there is nothing worse than getting one of those painfully sentimental email forwards about how we can overcome any obstacle by just believing ourselves, or some similar similar over simplistic statement that you know is just not going to work for a third world grandmother in a refugee camp looking after her aids orphaned grandchildren. So it was nice to receive this the other day.

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"True" Friendship None of that Sissy Crap

Are you tired of those sissy "friendship" poems that always sound good, But never actually come close to reality?

Well, here is a series of promises that actually speak of true friendship. You will see no cutesy little smiley faces on this card - Just the stone cold truth of our great friendship.

1. When you are sad -- I will help you get drunk and plot revenge against the f***ing bastard who made you sad.
2. When you are blue -- I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.
3. When you smile -- I will know you got laid.
4. When you are scared -- I will take the piss out of you about it, every chance I get.
5. When you are worried -- I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whinging.
6. When you are confused -- I will use little words.
7. When you are sick -- Stay away from me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have.
8. When you fall -- I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.
9. This is my oath.... I pledge it to the end. "Why?" you may ask; "because you are my friend".
Friendship is like peeing your pants, everyone can see it, but only you can feel the true warmth.

Send this to 10 of your closest friends,

Then get depressed because you can only think of 4.

Birthday Crash

Today is my birthday and what better way to celebrate than to have my car written off. Someone decided to pull out in front of me without looking. I managed to miss him and an oncoming telegraph pole. However, I busted three wheels and damaged the front and rear left corners of my car and because the car isn't worth that much it's probably a write off. Grrr Arrgh. Below is an exact, to scale recreation of the accident.

Zen and the Art of long distance travel

Last week I spent over 18 hours sitting in a car traveling to towns in Western Australia. Much of that time I spent listening to Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance. Twice I have tried reading the book and both times I stopped reading before I had finished. Which I believe is not uncommon. Twice I have had complete strangers come up to me while I have been reading the book in public warning me not stop reading before the end of the book as they had done and to tell me how great the book was. So the long traveling seemed the perfect opportunity to listen to the recorded version and finally get to the end.

It was quite stunning to look at the vast West Australian outback whilst hearing descriptions of the American country. Pirsig Author of Zen... talks a lot about "quality" and the "classic" and "romantic" (or square and hip) split in ways of viewing the world. As I listened I could not help but see parallels between this and God and the scientific and spiritual ways of viewing the world. Pirsig asserts that quality is not definable and therefore not measurable or quantifiable in a classic or scientific sense, that is you cannot be objective about quality. Yet quality is not entirely subjective either. For example a majority of people will usually be able to distinguish between a quality song and a bad song or just a random group of noises. The same is true for all of the arts and much of human emotion. His whole argument takes 6hrs to listen to (and that’s abridged I think) so this quick summary does not to do it justice. None the less the analogy between God and quality was fascinating.

To concede that God like quality cannot be proven scientifically is perhaps obvious but the next parallel concession is that we cannot then confidently say that God possesses one or another characteristic, no matter how confident we may feel. This just like when we talk about a quality piece of art. I often feel that define particular characteristics of God and make doctrines and creeds around that we end up with a God akin to a piece of disposable pop music, guaranteed to be somewhat pleasant but really of little quality. I prefer to think of God as akin to a musical masterpiece (a song of great quality) and it is hard to define what makes it beautiful. With art and music the more we define what characteristics makes some form of art beautiful the more we limit it and limit the potential of the artists.

I’m not sure what this thinking means exactly or where it might lead. Like many of my ideas it’s something I’ll just try on for a while and see how it sits. Having recently sat with a group of people who where very confident in saying what God's opinion and desires were in some complex ethical situations (God's thought's on the matter often seemed to be very simple, black and white and a bit harsh and judgmental). This has made me all the more wary of trying to define God. I quite like what Jack Spong said about this matter. "A human cannot describe what god is like anymore than a horse can describe what a human is like." (or something like that)

To try and describe the experience of God is one thing. Establishing our own creeds and doctrines is where things can get shaky and is the breeding ground for religious fighting and fundamentalism. Can I be confident about God without pigeon holing God? I don't know. I'll try it own for a while and see how it feels.

Spong 101

It can be hard to get a handle on who exactly John Shelby Spong is and what he believes. There is certainly lots of hysteria around what he believes and a lot of misunderstanding. If your both confused and curious Richard Fidler recently interviewed John Spong for about 50 minutes on Brisbane ABC radio. It's a good intro for anyone who doesn't know much about him and what he believes. Fidler's lack of a theological agenda and lack of detailed knowledge means that he is an impartial and starts with some of the basic questions about his beliefs and history. If you were ever a Doug Anthony All Stars fan you might find it hard to take Richard Fidler seriously if you remember him singing songs like this (link contains rude words and descriptions of unpleasantness).

The Last Kiss

Last weekend I saw the film The Last Kiss. Exceeding my expectations, it's a great follow up for Zach Braff to the brilliant and understated Garden State. I tackles issues of love and fidelity in a unique mature way exhemplified for me by this quote from the Father in law in the film.

Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing. What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you say you love, that's what matters. It's the only thing that counts.

Why believe and why I don't mind being confused.

Last month I was interviewed on a podcast by Cameron Reilly as a follow up to my What would it take for me to become an Atheist? post. It was a strange experience if only because I felt a bit like Cameron tried to do a bit of a "debunk the Xn" on me, whether he was aiming to do this or not I'm not sure. I think I was kind of hoping to talk more about the things we had in common rather than our differences. None the less it was weird to both walk away from the experience feeling like I had been "Beaten by the arguments" but yet not convinced to give up what I believe. I truly disconcerting place to be in. None the less if only for my own sake I did say I'd post on some of the issues raised that I felt I didn't answer very well (which was pretty much most of the issues)

Cameron started by asking me about the Egyptian God Horus and the similarities with Jesus as outlined in the film Zeitgeist which at the time I hadn't seen and now I have.

Part one of Zeitgeist looks very much like a "loose change" for Christians (loose change being a 911 conspiracy movie), part two is 911 conspiracy and almost a complete knock off of "loose change" which for me doesn't do very much for the films credibility. There were obvious mistakes of the film like the implication that early Xns believed Jesus was born on the 25th (the gospels make Jesus birth look like summer (which is the time time shepherds watched there flocks) and that there were three kings rather than just three gifts. It also implied that the gnostic tradition was the was the earliest Xn tradition who the catholic church who got rid of and then emphasised the historicity of Jesus. For me one of the biggest unanswered questions was why would a Jewish sect who's big story is their escape from Egypt appropriate an Egyptian God. I'm sure that any two people who want to debate this movie can out google themselves to their hearts content and their is plenty of pages supporting both sides.

All of that aside I'm happy to bet that the Jesus Project recently featured on Point of Inquiry does not come to the same conclusion as this documentary. If they do then it's time for me to seriously examine what I believe about Jesus.

After this we got into some deeper how can you believe in Jesus / God questions. I really tried to answer some of these questions way to quickly and most of them I should have said "I'll have to think about that" but I didn't.

The big thrust was why do I believe in God and why the Xn God. The short, not thought up on the spot, answer is that I just have an innate sense that there is something bigger than myself, something transcendent, something other in life. In part this inspired by the incredible beauty and brokenness that I see all around me and the incredible unreached potential of humanity on an individual and collective level. Jesus just happens to be the best representation of that innate sense of what this transcendent thing is.

One of the questions I wasn't sure how to answer at the time was why don't I pray to other gods. This is something I have never tried and probably never will partly because of my belief that all religions and denominations are trying to understand the transcendent in life. They are trying to understand what God is like and what that means to us. Which is why we can learn from each other. I'm not going to go through and test each religion because I do not hold the belief that I (or Xy) is right and everyone else is wrong. I believe that Xy as I understand it at the moment makes sense of my world as I experience it. As I continue to wrestle my ideas will continue to change, whether this causes me to wave outside of Xn orthodoxy or even theistic orthodoxy I don't know. I'm certainly not going to look down upon anyone just because they have a different view than me. These are precisely the people I can learn from.

As much as it may look like, from the above few paragraphs, that I'm not moved by the arguments of atheists and other secular humanists the truth is I am. It would be easy if I wasn't but I am. Unfortunately I often find my self in a space of doubt or confusion rather than a space of confidence either way. CS Lewis famously once said that Jesus was either a "Liar, Lunatic or Lord", and perhaps the same can be said of me or any other Xn. As I continue to wrestle with what I believe. I sometimes worry that I am more likely to booked into a mental asylum than to become an atheist. Dawkins or Harris said something along the lines of if someone said they spoke to an invisible being we'd put them in a mental asylum. Sometimes I wonder if that's where I belong. But it's not all preparing for the padded cells, one of the glorious things about confusion and faith and a lack of confidence is that this produces (in me any way) more love for others. To be a confident atheist i would tend to a destructive nihilism. To be a confident Xn I would tend towards self righteous arrogance and intolerance.

Thank you God for Confusion.