Orthonomy, Doubt and Compassion

Post modernism is often thought of as a movement that has relativised truth. That truth is not as important as experience or, "what's true for you may not be true for me". Personally, I think this unfairly caricatures Post modernism. The reason this may seem to be the case for me and some of my PM friends is that above truth and indeed even what we experience is harmony. That includes the hamony between what one believes and what one experiences or how one lives. I think this is also called orthohomony (right harmony) as opposed to orthodoxy (right belief) or orthopraxis (right practice or action).

This has meant the rejection of "truths" handed down by religious leaders and other authority figures, where the authurity for that truth comes purely from the status of truth giver. It has also meant the rejection of "rituals or practices" handed down by religious leaders and other authority figures for the same reasons.

I don't think this post modern era is the rejection of truth rather it is the rejection of confidence. This rejection of confidence has lead to (for me & I suspect many others) an increase in doubt. Doubt being the gap between belief and experience. This is a problem for many churches who rely on all members agreeing on a set of beliefs or practices. For more evangelical churches who major on orthodoxy and tend to interpret experience through their belief system, and more mainline churches who major on orthopraxis. The doubtful person will interpret belief through their experience and experience through belief, importantly they must be in harmony with each other.

Post moderns are post confident because they have seen the damage done by the confidence where someone is sure that they are right and all others wrong. Examples include slavery, crusades, etc. These are almost always due to a blind confidence in what poeople believed or were doing. There was no doubt or questioning.

I'm wondering in fact doubt feeds compassion. The more confident and right someone is the less compassionate they seem to be. Could this be because they believe they understand a truth that explains why someone is suffering be that because of the individuals own actions or because some supernatural force has inflicted that on them. If you know that then others doesn't If you know why someone is suffering don't need to act. If you are doubtful confused and are not sure of the big story you are faced with just one suffering person and compelled to act. If you have a meta-narrative why then you are not compelled to act.

Apologies if these thoughts are a little rambled and unstructured. I kind of vomited the sentences out.

The First Alter Call

According to Jim Wallis the first alter call was done by Charles Finney. At this alter call people weren't praying the "sinners prayer" with at "trained counsellor", instead they were signing up for the anti slavery campaign. For Finney a commitment to Christ meant a commitment to ending the injustice in his day. More "old school" alter calls I say.

Bah Humbug

Christmas is rapidly approaching and i am feeling completely underwhelmed by it all. There are a couple of things that I have real trouble trying to shake off. The first is that Christmas is a celebration of the winter solstice which is why we have fake fruit (Christmas decorations) on fruitless trees and all those snow images which feels quite disconcerting when it's approaching 40 degrees outside. The second things is that the Bible and I suspect the early church didn't talk much about Christmas. Paul never mentions Xmas and only two of the gospel writers even talk about Jesus birth. Finally, aside from these two things, there is what Xmas is today, an orgy of indulgent consumption. It's a chance for our society to buy ourselves all those things we don't really need and, for people we don't know well, a chance to buy them something they don't even want. next year I'm putting my foot down and only accept receipts from charities as a Xmas gift. My first recommendation for any gift giving friend will be to go to Tear's Really useful gift catalog.

Why do you Connect with this Blog?

About 5 years ago I discovered that all the people I tended to connect with had one thing in common they were all on, had been on were supposed to be on antidepressant medication. So I'm wondering how many "A Churchless Faith" Blog readers do or don't fit into that category. Let me know - you can log in as anonymous to comment if you like.

Critical Child Rearing Mistake No. 6 - Food doesn't come from the Supermarket

With a now thriving veggie patch and fruit trees I thought it would be a great way to teach my daughter that food doesn't come from the supermarket.

Only problem is that I think that she now doesn't think twice about trying to eat anything in anyones backyard. A small price to pay for having a daughter who loves the taste of lettuce. Here's a picture of the whole veggie patch.

It's an improvement since last year.