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Faiths
and Beliefs
a
column by Vern Barnet every Wednesday in
the FYI section of the Kansas City Star,
[printed
and Star web versions versions and versions here may vary]
copyright
The
Kansas City Star.
Perhaps with greater religious significance than “The Passion
of the Christ,” “Brokeback Mountain” opens here Friday.
Bear with me. From Mircea Eliade, the towering 20th Century
scholar in his field, these words are difficult but important: “The History
of Religions is not merely an historical discipline, as for example, are
archeology and numismatics. It is equally a total hermeneutics being called
to decipher and explicate every kind of encounter with the sacred, from
prehistory to our own day.”
I was his student, and I think I know what he meant, and
the scope of his claim.
Let’s begin with the term “sacred,” a term he hesitated
to define but seems to point to that on which our life depends, the source
of ultimate meaning, purpose and direction for us, a pattern for making
sense out of apparently disconnected events. The sacred is the bottom line
of all bottom lines. The sacred is contrasted with the profane, the trivial,
that which really doesn’t count in the final analysis.
Eliade thus argued that the sacred is the key to recognizing
and interpreting how persons and cultures identify what is important to
them, in our own time as well as the past.
Sexuality is often so powerful that its eruption can disturb
the social order. This is why religions have often placed limits on its
expression. Groups needing population growth, for example, have prohibited
masturbation, coitus interruptus and same-sex behavior. Cultures with different
needs have honored these very same ways of being sexual.
Our civilization has moved from defining marriage as primarily
concerned with property rights and arrangements between families to focus
instead on the affection between the partners. Reproduction was once the
main justification for sex in marriage, but now many people see marriage
as a means to personal fulfillment.
Can anyone reading Annie Proulx’s story, from which the
movie has been adapted, fail to perceive the fulfillment, the intensity
of the feeling cowboys Ennis and Jack have in each other? Each is to the
other what ultimately makes their life meaningful, sacred.
Their lives fall apart because they have tried to deny
the sacred energy between them, twisted by the homophobia preserved by
religious limits from another era which justifies perhaps even murder.
“The Passion of the Christ” told us little new about
the nature of the sacred; and I, like many, thought it trivialized, profaned,
the holy with its violence.
On the other hand, “Brokeback Mountain” is a parable not
just for gays but for our entire society about false and genuine relationships.
It asks specifically whether our culture will support the sacred in genuine
love or whether it will make demons out of men who find the sacred with
other men.
590 051221 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Call a Truce at Christmastime
A reader asks my opinion about the “War against Christmas.”
In brief, I see no attack on Christmas. Instead I see an uninformed attack
on the religious pluralism at the root of America’s greatness. Incipient
anti-Semitism is troubling, especially as Hanukkah approaches.
Some Christmas history. Mark, the oldest Gospel, includes
no story of the birth of Jesus, and neither does the best loved Gospel,
John. The stories in Matthew and Luke are strikingly different, though
each contains elements found in stories of other faiths.
Many modern scholars guess that Jesus was born in the
lambing season, perhaps February in Palestine, when shepherds would be
watching their sheep by night. But a Roman festival at the winter solstice,
Dec. 25 on the old calendar marking the birth of the sun, was adopted by
Christians as the religion spread through the empire. Lists of holy days
in early churches do not include Christmas, which was first recorded as
the Third Century began.
The Puritans who came to America eschewed Christmas;
the Pilgrims worked on Dec. 25, 1620. For a time, until 1681, celebrating
Christmas was a crime in Massachusetts.
As late as the mid-19th Century, Baptists, Methodists
and Presbyterians in New York refused to recognize Christmas with church
services.
The U.S. Constitution does not mention God or Christianity.
The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom. A treaty ratified by
the Senate June 10, 1797, states that, “the government of the United States
of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
Not until 1836 was Christmas made a holiday in the U.S.,
and that was just in Alabama. It became a federal holiday in 1870.
Some Orthodox Christians do not observe Christmas until
Jan. 6 or 7, and some Christians still refuse to observe it at all.
The modern popular observance of Christmas was influenced,
ironically, by a Unitarian, Charles Dickens, whose “Christmas Carol” focuses
not on theology but rather on the needs of the poor and the obligation
of the well-to-do to help. Most of today’s customs, such as the Christmas
tree, derive from pagan sources, and Thomas Nast’s and Clement Moore’s
Santa figures are more secular than sacred.
Holy days in any tradition deserve the respect from the
rest of us. Those who insist on “Merry Christmas” from store clerks instead
of “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” when the faiths of the partners
in the exchange may be unknown, display forgetfulness of the diversity
our nation embraces. To my mind, they would do better to complain about
the games and toys of violence given to celebrate the birth of the Prince
of Peace.
There is no plot to deprive Christians of Christmas. But
surely we can join together in the sentiment, “Peace, good will to all.”
589 051214 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Roots of unity grow out of respect
To show that interfaith activity is not a centralized effort but rather
widely disbursed, last week’s column began to name some of the folks and
organizations that bring into their work an awareness of the many religions
in our community. I’d like to list a few more today.
In government, Jackson County executive Katheryn Shields,
Raytown Mayor Sue Frank, Congressmen Dennis Moore (KS) and Emanuel Cleaver
II (MO), former Kansas Attorney General Bob Stephan, and Kansas Governor
Kathleen Sebelius have all found ways to celebrate our religious pluralism.
Two Johnson County churches are especially noteworthy.
The Church of the Resurrection’s series on world religions, with
local Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Jewish leaders, led to Pastor Adam Hamilton’s
new book on the subject. Village Presbyterian Church’s many forums have
contributed to our broadening horizon.
Downtown, Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral has hosted
city-wide interfaith events. In Independence, Andrew Bolton and others
have brought resources of the Community of Christ into interfaith dialogue.
Harold Johnson, Michael Stephens, Bob Hill, Ed Chasteen
and others have assisted various ministerial and other religious associations
and activities to embrace non-Christian faiths. Bob Meneilly,
an early proponent of interfaith bridge-building, created the MAINstream
Coalition whose clergy group works with issues transcending any particular
faith.
Harmony-NCCJ’s interfaith programs include an annual choral
concert, congregational partnerships and Anytown for young people. It also
makes available Donna Ziegenhorn’s “The Hindu and the Cowboy and Other
Kansas City Stories,” a play drawn from actual lives of people in our community.
Bill Neaves, a “born-again” Christian, head of the Stowers
Institute, unfailingly models respect for religious perspectives with which
he might personally disagree, an especially important ability in areas
where religion and politics overlap.
Myra Christopher of the Center for Practical Bioethics,
Steve Jeffers of the Shawnee Mission Medical Center and Joan Collison at
KU Medical Center are three among many bringing interfaith insights into
their fields.
Other organizations — the Greater Kansas City Coalition
for Worker Justice is an example — develop their membership and plan their
programming to be religiously inclusive.
Again, I’m out of space. So many more to be named. What
a great problem!
The American vision of religious pluralism expands as
we recognize that our differences can be blessings. Respect, not uniformity,
makes unity possible. Neighborliness, not conversion, may be the better
path to the divine.
588 051207 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Names show diversity is wide spread
Kansas City is blessed with folks who advance interfaith understanding.
This may not be part of their job description, but they understand our
sense of community benefits from strengthening the American tradition
of welcoming those of all religions.
In local government, Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes and
Mayor Pro Tem Alvin Brooks, in their personal lives as well as public leadership,
have repeatedly demonstrated the value of inclusion.
An early hero of mine is David Goldstein, now retired
from the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee. His
ability to build bridges with other minority groups as well as with
the larger community prepared the way for later successes. Alan Edelman,
with the Jewish Federation, is an extraordinary speaker whose devotion
to his own faith conveys a deep respect for others. Gayle Krigel’s skill
in promoting interfaith relationships through programs like Salaam Shalom,
is legendary.
Here are some distinguished Muslim leaders contributing
to interfaith activities. Rauf Mir has served the Interfaith Council since
its beginning. Ahmed El-Sharif organized the American Muslim Council chapter.
Shaheen and Iftekhar Ahmed created the Crescent Peace Society. Bilal Muhammed
leads Al-Inshirah Islamic Center.
If you want an inspiring program about a nationally-known
Muslim-Jewish friendship here, call on Mahnaz Shabbir and Sheila Sonnenschein.
Buddhist Chuck Stanford, Catholic George Noonan and Protestant
David Nelson are among members of the Interfaith Council whose leadership
has moved Kansas City forward.
[Harold Johnson, Michael Stevens, Bob Hill and others
have assisted various ministerial and other religious associations and
activities to embrace non-Christian faiths. Andrew Bolton and others have
brought resources of the Community of Christ into interfaith dialog.
[Bob Meneilly, an early proponent of interfaith understanding,
has more recently created the MAINstream Coalition whose clergy group
works with issues transcending any particular faith. Harmony-NCCJ’s interfaith
programs include an annual choral concert, congregational partnerships
and Anytown for young people.
[Bill Neaves, a born-again Christian, head of the Stowers
Institute, unfailingly models respect for religious perspectives with which
he might personally disagree, an especially important ability in areas
where religion and politics overlap.
Myra Christopher of the Center for Practical Bioethics
and Steve Jeffers of the Shawnee Mission Medical Center are two among many
bringing interfaith insights into their fields.]
I see I am out of space, and I have just begin to name
people and organizations to make the point that “interfaith” in Kansas
City is not centralized, but fortunately widely disbursed.
587 051130 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Heartland has it's interfaith in the right place
Here’s a question I’m frequently asked. “How is interfaith
activity in Kansas City different than elsewhere?” Here’s my four-part
answer.
* Relationships, not social service.— Unlike some cities
(Wichita is a good example), Kansas City has no powerful interfaith agency
providing social services. Instead, many groups, some secular, some religious,
offer various kinds of assistance, from food pantries to housing, from
legal services to job counseling. While different theologies are seldom
impediments to cooperation in serving the needy, no area-wide interfaith
institution has emerged to replace existing organizations already working
hard to relieve the suffering of others. “Interfaith” here means not so
much social service as relationships across faith lines.
* Dispersion, not centralization.— What has emerged in
Kansas City, especially since 9/11, is an understanding that many religions
are practiced here, and that our community is tempered by affirming our
kinship with one another. Civic leaders, groups of friends and many
programs in numerous organizations have leavened the Heartland. We understand
that business, government, education, medicine and social life need to
be informed by respect for religious diversity. Most of us still
don’t know much about faiths other than our own, and many of us are fairly
ignorant of our own faith, but we are learning from many sources. “Interfaith”
is not a one-stop operation.
* Lay leadership.— Kansas City interfaith activity is
energized largely by lay people, some of whom I’ll name next week. This
is true of the Interfaith Council, as well as other groups. Many interfaith
organizations elsewhere are run by clergy and funded by the groups they
represent. While such a system has financial advantages, it also leads
to the kind of religious politicking rarely found here.
* Research program. — Kansas City may be unique in advancing
a specific path for studying how the various faiths relate to each other
theologically, notably at the 2001 “Gifts of Pluralism” conference. Then
250 people from 15 religions signed a Declaration “to explore sacred directions
for troubled times.”
The Declaration identified three directions: environmental,
personal and social. From the primal religions, respect for nature was
uplifted. From Asian faiths, insights into personhood were identified.
From monotheistic traditions came wisdom about how society is best governed.
Following the conference, the Interfaith Council established
three task forces working for several years to research how to strengthen
these directions in every religious practice. If the Council, reorganized
this year, continues this study, its fruition may benefit not only the
Heartland but prove a model for interfaith efforts far and wide.
586 051123 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Give thanks for the grasp of the holy
Is it all in our genes? At William Jewell College Nov. 9 Harvard
sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, seemed to suggest that we will discover a biological
basis for everything. Perhaps even religion and ethics can ultimately be
reduced to the laws of physics. His passion to unify the sciences and humanities
led him to write his 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which
all of Jewell’s first year students read.
One of several panelists who had the joy of engaging him
on various questions, I found myself saying something I’d never quite thought
out before. Though our respectful disagreement was obvious, he complimented
me on it. I wonder what you, dear readers, who range from born-again Christians
to atheists, might think. Let me know.
Here’s the gist of my argument:
The study of religion may be informed by sociology, anthropology,
psychology and other disciplines, but it cannot be reduced to them because
the holy transcends or bursts out of the confines of any particular subject
area.
We may encounter the holy in a walk through the woods,
at a family reunion, in making love, in reading scripture, in hearing music,
in viewing a painting, in playing golf.
Wilson can say that bio-psychology can explain such experiences
of the holy by describing electro-chemical activity in the brain.
I reply that an explanation of an experience is not the experience, and
an experience of the holy is not the holy itself, which one can never fully
grasp.
Because the holy is ungraspable. We can’t grasp it; it
grasps us. We can name it but we can’t explain it, though it may move us
and even change the direction of our lives.
Why is this so? Consider the fact that the words “holy”
and “whole” are derived from a common root. This suggests that the “holy”
is the intimation of the whole, the way things fit and don’t fit.
We are embedded in the whole. We can never wholly see
that of which we are a part, any more than we can see our own eyes without
an external aid like a mirror. This is why we need the mirrors of other
religions to better understand our own. But there is no mirror to see the
whole of everything since it would have to be a part of the whole, too.
In any way we speak of the holy, words don’t join together easily.
I cannot think of any faith that does not at some point invoke mystery.
And even atheists cherish encounters with the awesome, that which cannot
be fully explained.
We can’t control the holy. We can’t buy it or sell it
prove it. We can only open ourselves to it. When we recognize the fragility
of our hopes, the uncertainties of our powers and the limits of our understanding,
we can welcome the holy by giving thanks.
585 051116 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Kansas City keeps the interfaith
“It was a magical afternoon, a Kansas City moment,” said Mahnaz
Shabbir, one of the organizers of last Thursday’s Table of Faiths luncheon.
I certainly felt that way, too, not because I was the
honoree enjoying the companionship of so many friends in one huge ballroom,
and not even because Mayor Kay Barnes spoke with power and eloquence and
balance about the horrors and hope of religion, but because the day was
evidence of what I have always said about Kansas City: there is no better
place for interfaith work to flourish.
When I founded the Interfaith Council here in 1989, people
asked, “Why didn’t you go to California or the East coast where religious
diversity is more evident and more accepted?”
I responded that we have a great diversity here that few
people know about, but all should. And that the Heartland is not as easily
jostled by fads and coast craziness, so a surer, if slower, process can
lead to a more secure interfaith community here.
Kansas City actually had examples of interfaith work for
decades before the Council was formed, but the emphasis was usually on
providing social service, rather than on understanding each faith, and
no organization was as radically inclusive as the Council.
In the mid 80s, folks from many faiths joined on the Sunday
before Thanksgiving to share a meal, as they and others will again this
year, to celebrate the American promise of religious liberty. From the
friendships these dinners developed, it was a short step to the creation
of the Council.
But even before the Council’s 2001 “Gifts of Pluralism”
conference, spread over parts of three days and attended by 250 people
from every tradition, I urged the Council to consider independence from
my own organization, CRES. This was arranged January 1 this year.
Again, a slow process resulted in last week’s secure result.
But the process itself contained the fortunate outcome.
As Mayor Barnes noted, when CBS in 2002 was searching
for the best response in America to the terrorist attacks the year before
for its half-hour religion special, it focused on Kansas City. Although
the Jackson County Diversity Task Force, which I chaired, found persistent
prejudice in the five-county area, we also found remarkable stories of
interfaith relationships.
While the theological character of the Council has never
been neglected, the energy of understanding comes from renouncing fear
and embracing friendship. In business, government, the arts, the
media, and educational, medical, religious and other civic institutions,
these Kansas City interfaith friendships have grown exponentially. I don’t
yet see a limit to this growth.
As I said Thursday, “Once upon a time interfaith
was an idea, then it became a Council, and now it is a community.” Is it
any surprise that I love this town?
584 051109 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Spreading St. Teresa's word is its own reward
St. Paul wrote, “Let your women keep silence in the churches”
(I Cor. 4:34), but few churches enforce this injunction. Some scholars
understand it as Paul’s attempt to appear respectable in the eyes of his
culture which devalued women. While a few religious groups still restrict
women from sacerdotal functions, a trend toward equality may continue.
But how could a woman with spiritual power express leadership
in former days?
Sr. Ruth Stuckel, C.S.J., associate professor at Avila
University, delivered an address at Oxford University this summer that
gives one answer to the question. She wrote about St. Teresa of Avila as
a “16th Century Feminist.”
Sr. Ruth, who taught at Avila for 35 years and recently
observed her 50th Golden Jubilee with the Sisters of St. Joseph, began
her address borrowing a four-part interpretation of the famous sculpture,
“The Ecstasy of St. Teresa” by Bernini, in Rome. Teresa’s beauty represents
her sainthood. Her posture suggests her writings. Her swirling nun’s robes
connote her work founding monasteries. And her bare foot portrays her as
a reformer, as the “discalced” Carmelite order did not wear shoes as a
way of living independently of benefactors.
Sr. Ruth wrote, “Women struggle to be recognized as human
beings, and to receive the respect due to them . . . . Equality of nature
(worth not sameness) and equal treatment in society are ideals that women
strive to make realities.
“Teresa of Avila . . . broke the mold for women then,
and has something to say to women (today). In her Autobiography, Teresa
demonstrates her independence from the male-dominated culture by entering
the Carmelite Order against her father’s wishes and trusting her experiences
of God against the advice of her ecclesial superiors.
“In The Interior Castle, Teresa articulates her teachings
on (mental, distinguished from prescribed) prayer. Fear of the Spanish
Inquisition could not deter her from expressing the truth.
“Finally, in The Foundations, Teresa shatters the images
of a contemplative nun through her courageous efforts in developing foundations
of the order throughout Spain.
“Unlike the women of her day, Teresa traveled extensively
without a male companion, managed money and negotiated property rights.
“Truly, Teresa was ahead of her time. Teresa of Avila
is a 16th century Feminist who can inspire, encourage, and teach women
of the 21st century how to stay in the struggle for equality in a patriarchal
society and church.”
It took a while, but in 1970 Pope Paul VI declared St.
Teresa a “doctor” of the church.
Since Oxford, Sr. Ruth has presented her paper at Avila
and St. Teresa’s Academy. Studying and sharing St. Teresa was especially
rewarding, Sr. Ruth says, because she enjoys helping others with their
faith development and St Teresa is such an engaging example.
"Avila University is named in honor of St. Teresa of Avila. Sister
Ruth’s research raises awareness of the importance of Teresa as a woman
leader who can serve as a model for today’s world."
Marie Joan Harris, CSJ, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
583 051102 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Some live moral lives without God
Over time, this column may do a fair job in promoting understanding
of various religions. But it has done a poor job — I’ll try to do better
— in explaining the spirituality of atheists, agnostics, and others who
identify with no faith but are thoughtful about their place in the universe
and their responsibilities as moral creatures.
I call them Freethinkers, a term that echoes with the
enormous contributions such folk have made to America, from the Deists
like Tom Paine who called the colonies to independence, to Carl Sagan,
whose PBS tours of the heavens were inspiring even without a God.
A Freethinker rejects religious authority and tradition
and insists life is better shaped by evidence and reason. A recent study
of the US and 17 other prosperous democracies argued that by many measures
the more “religious” the society, the more dysfunctional it is. This seems
to be true when evidence within the US is used to compare states on items
such as murders, divorce and teen pregnancy with certain measures of religiosity.
Most freethinkers in my experience do not make a public
fuss about their views. But film director and playwright Brian Flemming
passionately questions Christianity in his new movie, “The God Who Wasn’t
There.”
Using legitimate scholarly material, Flemming constructs
a case that the gap of several decades between the death of Jesus and the
first records about him undermines the accuracy of the stories.
Paul, who wrote the oldest texts included in the New Testament,
never met Jesus. Paul seems unaware of the gospel stories or the teachings
of Jesus. Paul’s epistles are energized by a conviction about the death
and resurrection of the Christ. Flemming argues that the Christ is simply
another version of Mithra, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz and other gods whose
resurrections were celebrated by their own cults.
One of the early church fathers, Justin Martyr, is quoted
saying that stories about Jesus are no different than what others believe
about “the sons of Jupiter.” A scholar interviewed on the film says that
of 22 characteristics of the typical hero story of the time, the story
of Jesus contains 19, compared to 22 for Oedipus, 20 for Theseus, 17 for
Hercules, 16 for Perseus and so forth.
Modern urban legends and fables throughout history provide
examples where fiction became regarded as fact, a process the movie suggests
occurred with Jesus.
Flemming will be at the Tivoli Tuesday at 7:30 pm
for a screening. I’ll be on the panel following, along with the Rev. Marcia
Fleischman, co-pastor of the Broadway Church, Robert N. Minor, KU Religion
Professor, and a Freethinker yet to be named.
I’ll share my complaints about the movie, but I do think
it raises good questions.
582 051026 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Pluralism a good approach to diversity
How should we regard religions other than our own? Evidence of
religious diversity is all around us. How do we respond to this reality?
Harvard’s Diana Eck, head of the Pluralism Project there,
offered three options at Village Presbyterian Church last week-end.
She asked us to imagine seeing a sincere person praying
at a Shinto shrine. Do we suppose our God is listening? If not, why not?
Does the maker of all things (John 1:3) accept prayers of adoration only
if the devotee belongs to one particular denomination or religion?
* The “exclusivists” say only one faith can be the path
to salvation; all other ways lead to perdition. An example. The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod suspended minister David Benke because he prayed
“in the precious name of Jesus” 12 days after 9/11 with Catholic, Jewish,
Muslim and Hindu leaders in Yankee Stadium. Authorities in his church said
Benke should not have dignified other faiths by sharing the “Prayer for
America” with them.
* The “inclusivists” say that their faith is large enough
to include all others. The Christian God, for example, saves well-intentioned
Buddhists even if they have never heard about Jesus because such a Buddhist
would certainly become Christian if given the opportunity.
Eck said the “melting pot” idea is a civil expression
of this perspective. People from everywhere are welcome to become Americans
so long as they shed the peculiarities of their appearance and customs
and adopt American ways. The “come and be just like us” invitation requires
assimilation and conformity. In religion, it erases differences in favor
of uniformity.
Eck called the melting pot “anti-democratic” in expecting
people to give up what they cherish in order to be accepted.
* The “pluralists” want neither to reject nor to assimilate
others; they want to encounter those of other faiths. The metaphor Eck
used works well in Kansas City: jazz. In order to improvise jazz well,
one plays one’s own distinctive part as one listens closely to the other
players. We can embellish the tune of religious liberty noted in the Constitution.
Eck, whose book A New Religious America argues that our
nation is the most religiously diverse place on the planet, recognized
the many issues that arise in a nation of many faiths, from the Air Force
chaplaincy scandals to the arguments over the posting of the Ten Commandments.
But she seemed optimistic about America’s future when
she cited progress in the relatively recent acceptance of Jews in the life
of Kansas City, in the once-prejudiced Ford Motor Company now having its
own interfaith council, and in the outpouring of support for Muslims who
had been attacked following 9/11.
In Eck’s view, the pluralist approach is the healthiest
way to respond to the fact of diversity.
581 051019 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
'Its turtles all the way down'
We know the chicken comes from the egg, and an egg from a chicken,
but where does it all start? And how will it end?
More broadly, did the universe have a beginning, and what
happens at the end of time?
Some Buddhists decline such questions and speak instead
about the “very no-beginning” and “the very no-ending” of the world. In
some ways their view may parallel the “Steady-State” cosmological theory,
popular with scientists in the 50s and 60s.
A much earlier story, perhaps inspired by a Hindu conception
of the incarnation of the god Vishnu as a cosmic tortoise, goes like this.
A scientist lectures on the design of the universe, and an old lady objects:
“The crust of earth we see really rests on the back of an enormous turtle.”
The scientist responds, “But what does the turtle rest on?” The lady answers,
“That turtle sits on an even larger turtle.” The scientist sees an opening
in the argument, and asks, “But what supports that turtle?” The lady replies,
“You think you have found a flaw in what I’m saying, don’t you? But the
answer is very clear. It’s turtles all the way down.”
Variations on this story, told by scientists, philosophers
and others, make it a fascinating urban legend, about which you can read
at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down.
An urban legend of another sort appears this Saturday
in Kansas City: John Dobson, 90 years old, an amateur astronomer, inventor
of a low-cost telescope mount named after him, and an advocate of the Steady-State
theory. Dobson spent 23 years studying in a Vedanta monastery until he
was ejected for sneaking out at night to view the stars and gained street
fame in founding the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. His ardent followers
admire him for teaching others how to make telescopes from scrap and for
democratizing astronomy.
Most cosmologists have abandoned the Steady-State theory
in favor of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang theory says that about 14 billion years ago
suddenly the universe exploded into being from a tiny, unimaginably dense
point. Some religious thinkers have seen this as scientific support for
the Bible. But other scientists theorize that before the Big Bang,
there was a Big Crunch, when the universe collapsed into that point. Perhaps,
they speculate, that the universe continues to oscillate between expansion
and contraction.
More recently, however, the discovery that the expansion
of the universe is accelerating has led to modified Steady-State theories
with multiple small big bangs. And string theory offers weird possibilities
of other universes along side our own.
Dobson presents his remarks, based on observation and
in faith, Saturday morning at Unity Temple on the Plaza, and Saturday evening
to the Astronomical Society of Kansas City at UMKC. For information, call
the Vedanta Society, (816) 444-8045.
580 051012 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Communities give us keys to the sacred
It's an affair of the heart. You meet these wonderful people,
full of compassion and doing good things. You want to know them and know
what energizes them, to understand the religious perspectives which give
their lives meaning.
That's how I fell in love with interfaith work. It’s by
knowing people and enjoying their company that our sense of community is
strengthened.
The wisdom of many traditions in our neighbors also provides
us with keys to open doors to the sacred, keys from others that may work
for us.
Here’s a superficial example. My own heritage is Christian,
and I thought I knew what church bells meant. Bells routinely say, “The
service is about to begin.” I had heard them at home; I heard the cathedral
bells in Europe. In fact, I had even rung the bell when I was a student.
It wasn’t until I saw a child swinging a rope with a striker
at the high end at a Shinto shine gong that the church bell took on deeper
meaning. I learned that the intent at the shine was to awaken kami, the
god, to attend to the devotee, and that paradoxically the act awakens the
devotee to the presence of the god. This key experience helped me understand
that the church bell does not merely call people to church, but also can
awaken the presence of the sacred in us; the bell is not just an external
ringing but also an internal resonance. It is not a Pavlovian bell compelling
us to go somewhere; it is rather an alarm clock awakening us from secular
slumber.
You may not have needed that particular key, but I did.
Behind the doors of our own faiths are obvious and sometimes profound truths
we forget or have yet to discover. Someone from another faith may hand
us a key.
Here are a few keys, A to Z. From the American Indian,
the key to solving our environmental problems— and energy issues in particular—may
be more in revering nature than in any technological fix. A Baha’i key
may be their architecture which models human kinship. Buddhist techniques
can free us from mistaking transitory things for the permanent.
Christianity reveals the redemptive power of vicarious
suffering. Hinduism’s myriad images of the divine may caution us about
worshipping anything finite. Islam’s weighing of individual and group interests
may restore us to better balance. The Jewish impulse, tikkun olam, repairing
of the world, reminds us the world is not the way God wants it to be and
offers transcendence through service.
Pagan practices show the power of natural ritual. The
Sikh is literally a “learner”; so should we all be. The Sufis remind us
that faith can be ecstatic. The Unitarian Universalist openness to new
ideas is a yeast for our culture. In Zoroastrianism we find ethical commitment
characterizes the cosmic drama in which we participate.
You know you are really neighbors when you exchange keys
to each other's homes.
579 051005 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Huston Smith still belongs to the world
His life has been the study of the world’s faiths. He practiced
many of them intensively for years at a time. He wrote the classic text
on world religions and a dozen other books. He is revered as “the dean
of world religions.” Beloved teacher Huston Smith, age 86, has every right
to declare his love for the tradition in which he lives and moves and has
his being.
His latest book, The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the
Great Tradition, does that.
Readers of this column may remember that last April I
accompanied Smith to the graveyard in Marshall, MO, where his parents,
missionaries to China, are buried. Smith was born and lived in China for
17 years, taught at Washington University in St. Louis before he went to
M.I.T, and now belongs to the world, even if the major section of the new
book concludes with a story of his flying to Kansas City.
I first encountered his The World’s Religions when I was
a student in 1965 and met Smith in 1969. Each time our paths have crossed,
my awe of him has grown. No one I ever have met deserves the label “gentleman”
more than Smith, and no one could better be called a Christian. My comments
about his new book, therefore, can hardly be presumed detached or objective.
His solution to the existence of evil in a world created
by a perfect God does not satisfy me, and I dislike his dependence on spiritual
hierarchy, but these are quibbles to show you my independent judgment.
The Introduction brings Smith’s warning about modernity,
detailed in his Why Religion Matters, into new power. Without mentioning
post-modernist thinkers, he agrees with them that “the myth of progress
(is) a cruel joke.” He names science, technology, business, government,
the media, education, art and even religion as “disastrous” enterprises.
But unlike post-modernists, Smith proclaims a transcendent
reality “drenched with meaning,” available in every tradition, though his
personal story is Christian.
Part 1 is a brilliant 15-point “grammar” for the spirit
that he says can be found in all faiths.
Parts 2 and 3 are rewritten from his chapter on Christianity
in The World’s Religions, but with fresh material and insights. For example,
in his elucidation of the atonement, Smith now invokes Abelard’s alternative
to the view that a vengeful God demanded a ransom in order to pardon sinners.
Smith also shows ways to resolve difficulties Christians have with scriptural
passages like Jesus’ command to hate one’s family.
And he shows how to appreciate texts suggesting
salvation is limited to Christians. Here is a hint: “though for Christians
God is defined by Jesus, he is not confined to Jesus.”
This is a chatty book, not academic. You could read it
in a single sitting, or several short ones, though you would want to pause
often as your soul is restored through the love in which this book is drenched.
578 050928 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Look at it this way (or four ways)
Today, a miscellany.
* The free “Sacred Space” exhibition in the lobby of the
Community of Christ Temple in Independence is remarkable for at least three
reasons.
First, it is a multifaith display.
Second, the eight works include three monotheistic traditions,
two from Asia, and three from indigenous peoples. Indigenous spirituality
is still often regarded as “primitive” in the pejorative sense of that
word. But the show here captures the sophistication our own culturally
limited eyes often fail to recognize.
Third, the “portals” — such as the mihrab from a mosque
and the ark of the covenant in a synagogue — open to depictions of the
endangered natural environment. While interfaith conferences on ecological
issues are important, art such as this with the accompanying explanations
may ultimately be more effective in exploring our understandings of the
holiness of nature.
* Visiting Minneapolis several months ago, I saw “Shortcut
to Nirvana,” a documentary about the Hindu Kumbh Mela, a mass religious
gathering in India every 12 years. Following the screening, I urged one
of the producers to bring it to Kansas City. The film is now at the Tivoli.
(See Robert Butler’s review in last Friday’s Star.)
Not only will you find an authentic curry of Indian religion
— a mixture of hoax and enlightenment, frustration and satisfaction — but
you’ll be given a mirror in which, if you use it, you can view the mess
that is American religion, from the televangelist who apparently has lost
his power or his will to steer hurricanes, to the New Age fakirs promising
shortcuts to world peace.
* Several years ago I spoke to a high school class and
mentioned the Exodus. Only one student had any idea what I was talking
about — one of countless cases of ignorance about the Bible particularly
and of religious illiteracy in general.
Part of the problem is that public schools have been poorly
equipped to teach about religion. Fear of teaching the bible as faith has
made teaching the bible as cultural artifact difficult. Now the Bible Literacy
Project has published a textbook, The Bible and Its Influence, which superbly
demonstrates the importance of knowing scripture in understanding our culture.
The book is not a sufficient aid in understanding the
bible, however. Better are textbooks like The New Testament: A Student’s
Introduction by Stephen L. Harris and The Old Testament: An Introduction
to the Hebrew Bible by Harris and Robert L. Platzner.
* But there are more religions in the USA than those based
on the Bible, as Diana Eck’s A New Religious America documents. Here the
play, “The Hindu and the Cowboy and Other Kansas City Stories,” displays
them in a schedule you can now find at http://www.kcharmony.org/Hinduandcowboy.htm.
577 050921 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Godly compassion can thrive in our secularist age
The age-old question, “Are people naturally good or evil?”
freshly appears when, following Hurricane Katrina, we see on the one hand
rape and other violence, and on the other, extraordinary generosity and
compassion.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, liberal theologians
argued that humans were born naturally good and that humanity was progressing
“onward and upward forever.” But as the century unfolded, the horrors of
two world wars, the Great Depression and economic exploitation were evidence
used by the “neo-orthodox” to emphasize the sinful nature of humanity.
Are people born to hurt one another? Is sin an innate
and inescapable fact or tendency? Here are some snapshots of the controversy.
The debate was famously framed when Pelagius (d. 418),
disgusted with the immorality he saw among conventional Christians of his
time, called on them, as we would say to day, “to clean up their act.”
His followers did not believe people were necessarily born sinful and therefore
had the capacity to reform, even to be perfect.
But Augustine (354-430) taught that people can do no good
except by the grace of God. Humans cannot redeem themselves.
Pelagius and his teachings were condemned as heretical
in 431 at the Council of Ephesus, establishing a conservative position.
Then in 1486 Pico della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Human
Dignity,” sometimes called the “Manifesto of the Renaissance,” elevated
the way people thought about their potentials and advanced a liberal viewpoint
in that remarkably empowered period in history.
Today these two theological perspectives underlie some
social opinions. For example, liberals tend to view prisons as an opportunity
for rehabilitation while conservatives often hope for little more than
punishment and gloomily cite recidivism statistics.
And now the theological debate is complicated by new understandings
of the role of the social environment. For example, some argue that when
Mayor Rudy Giuliani focused on presumably small things like reducing broken
windows, litter and graffiti in New York, a new attitude of respect was
created that caused the city’s dramatic drop in crime.
While the West has understood evil as disobedience to
God’s law, the East has usually found evil results from ignorance of the
way the universe works.
My own hunch runs like this. Our social, economic and
political order is generally wicked. And folks are often so discouraged
or self-centered that they will not work to improve it. Yet most people,
on a personal level, find ways to love and help others. Outpourings after
the tsunami and Katrina suggest that people must be basically good for
such strong compassion to survive and occasionally flourish even under
the brutality of our secularistic age.
NOTE:
The Hebrew tradition and particularly the Christian
versions of "original sin," focus on willfully disobeying God's commands.
In Asia, generally, the problem is not that people willfully disobey a
divine Ruler, but that they are ignorant of what will be most beneficial.
This is not a unique insight
of my own, but a pretty standard comparison general between the Biblical
tradition and the "Oriental" perspectives, although it certainly applies
to some ancient cultures like Ancient Egypt where morality was undersood
as cosmic prudence.
Disobedience implies
knowing what the law is. Ignorance is not knowing what the law is. The
former may presuppose inherent sinfulness; the latter may presuppose inherent
goodness, as in the Buddha-nature. Consequences follow both, but the assessment
for the cure is different. In the former, forgiveness; in the latter, enlightenment.
576 050914 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Theologian's thought embraces all of creation
I wanted to walk in his footsteps, and so ten years ago
I went to Kansas City’s Sister City, Seville, Spain, where he lived from
age 8 into his 30s, some 800 years ago. Especially I wanted to walk up
the old minaret once part of the mosque there. Almost every day I walk
to the County Club Plaza where I see a small copy of the minaret across
from Nichols Fountain.
Walking where Ibn Arabi walked was easy enough, but trying
to understand him is like wading through an entire ocean: his thought is
so deep, so treacherous, so life-giving. Unlike theologians who chart lines
between truth and error, his approach is all-embracing. Thus peace is reached
not by subduing one’s enemy but by drawing a larger circle including both
sides.
Grounded in the Qur’an, his love is without limits: “My
heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, an
abbey for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the pilgrim’s Ka’ba, the
tables of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an. I follow the religion of
Love: whatever way Love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith.”
He wrote some 700 books, one of which in a new edition
runs 17,000 pages. Another book, written after he saw a beautiful woman
in Mecca where he had gone on pilgrimage, described the spiritual path
in erotic terms. For this he was threatened by authorities. Although his
writings have been banned in Saudi Arabia, many Muslims have regarded him
as “the greatest shiekh.” Western scholars are now discovering him.
Like the Christian mystic and the Buddhist about which
I’ve written recently, Arabi discloses a universe through intimacy, then
union, then identity, with every creature, enriched by the experience of
separation.
This is implicit in a hadith (tradition) Arabi favored:
God said, “I was a hidden treasure, and I yearned to be known. So I created
creatures in order to be known by them.” The Creator and the creatures
need each other separate to fully realize themselves together. On the spiritual
path, the process of discovering God is discovering oneself.
Paradoxically one discovers oneself by abandoning the
illusion of the self so that one becomes empty as a mirror, reflecting
only God. Then God is able to behold himself—and become God—in such a degree
as the mirror is polished and free of dust.
Then there is no distance or difference between the perceiver
and the perceived, the subject and the object, the lover and the beloved,
God and the devotee. We become the eyes, ears, hands and feet of God.
When we are free of the dust of mistaking our temporary,
relative and separate forms as ultimate, then in love we can see each person
is also a mirror reflecting everyone else. Then we behold God. Love,
the yearning to know and be known in our fullness, unveils the hidden treasure.
Everywhere we walk, even in tragedy, we are in the heart of God.
575 050907 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Comfort the bereaved with listening, asking
The gulf disaster raises many religious questions. How can an all-loving,
all-knowing, all-powerful God permit such devastation? Why are clear religious
teachings against theft violated when opportunity permits? How effective
are our prayers for loved ones? If God cares for each person, is it selfish
to mourn the tragedy in our own nation more than those killed on the Baghdad
bridge, or the Iraq War, or the other horrors and miseries of the world?
It is better to honor such questions, rather than to feel
guilty for thinking them. After all, theologians and religious teachers
have wrestled them throughout the ages.
I have no answers to Katrina, but I do have a story.
Once, before the sacred scriptures of the Buddhist faith
appeared in the Japanese language, a devotee named Tetsugen decided he
would get them translated from the Chinese and have them published in Japan.
He knew that the process would involve considerable labor since the texts
would have to be carved on wood blocks, and he envisioned an edition of
several thousand copies for those who could read.
He went from town to town to collect money for his project.
A decade passed, and finally he had the funds to proceed.
But just then the river overflowed and created panic and
famine. So Tetsugen used the money to buy food for the people. In time
he began again to raise money for the publication of the holy sutras.
After many years, enough donations had again accumulated
to begin the project. But then an epidemic broke out. Medicines were expensive,
and death left many families destitute. So Tetsugen gave away all that
he had collected to help those in need. And when people recovered, he pursued
the project.
Finally his goal was realized, and the scriptures were
published in Japanese. But it is said that the first two editions, which
were never published, far surpass the third.
May I draw a moral from this tale?
Tetsugen placed immediate human needs over sacred texts.
And because he saw the needs and heard the cries, he brought more comfort
than an inspirational message for which the people were not yet ready.
When the corpse of one’s loved one was rotting, it was
not the time to talk about a grand tomorrow. When we prematurely responded
to those in extreme distress by saying things like “New Orleans will be
rebuilt better than ever, and America will be stronger through this ordeal,”
we distanced ourselves from the reality of the moment and from those engulfed
in it.
Better at such times than fancying an answer to “Why could
God let this happen?” is the comfort of letting the bereaved know you are
really listening and asking the same question.
574 050831 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
The Infinite has many aspects
So many readers commented on the column a couple weeks ago about the
Catholic mystic Nicholas of Cusa that I’d like to sketch two other writers
for you, a Buddhist today and a Muslim next month, whose thought parallels
Cusa.
We usually assume that the universe is a collection of
things separate and distinct from each other. For example, Jackson and
Johnson are separate counties. This is a useful legal fiction; yet it is
easily argued that they influence, and to an extent, create what each other
has become.
Similarly, we may think of ourselves as independent beings,
but who would we be without the genetic inheritance from our parents, without
nurturing we received or did not receive, without the society which provides
water and credit cards and cell phones? Would we be as we are without Columbus
and Martin Luther King Jr? Do we exist independent of the oxygen we breath?
Would we survive the extinction of the sun?
These mystics say we are embedded in the world to such
an extent that to think of anything as separate and distinct is illusory.
Even a pen implies the anatomy of the hand that writes with it, the Phoenicians
sometimes credited with inventing the alphabet, the geologic transformations
that turned living things into oil from which the pen’s plastic was derived,
and an economic system sophisticated enough to create, manufacture and
distribute the pen, not to mention the lawyers who find ways of being involved
in transactions all along the way!
The mystical sensibility is sometimes characterized as
“one-ness,” but that is just as misleading as the everyday notion of separateness.
The vision of these mystics is rather of mutual interrelatedness within
what Cusa called God or the Infinite, and what the Chinese Hua Yen Buddhist
master Fa Tsang (643-712) called the Void.
The Empress Wu Tse-T’ien asked Fa Tsang to explain the
doctrine of interpenetration and mutual containment of all things in the
Void. He built her a room with mirrors on all walls, the floor and the
ceiling. In it he placed a torch and an image of the Buddha.
Taking her inside, he called her attention to the countless
reflections, each image imparting the others. Producing from his robe a
crystal ball, Fa Tsang showed the Empress how the large mirrors and the
small ball mutually generate and contain images of each other. The infinite
number of images possible, simultaneously arising, was a metaphor for the
mutual creation and interdependence of all things in space and time.
Thus when we look at any other human being, we can imagine
that he or she has struggled, as we have, with finitude, knowing little,
desiring deeply, infinitely connected in ways we cannot imagine. We are
kin. And recognizing how limited he or she is, and ourselves, embedded
in a complicated network of circumstances, paradoxically opens the door
to the Infinite, one name for which is compassion.
573 050824 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Conquering genocide with community
The record of humanity’s violation of our own kind in the name of religion
or advancing civilization is not a happy theme. Especially difficult for
us to consider is the often-deliberate acts against American Indians that
some now call genocide. Many Indians were exterminated. Others, denied
use of their mother tongue, were converted into Christianity, as those
familiar with Johnson County, KS, history may recall.
Some estimate the Belgian genocide of the Congolese, continuing
into the 20th Century, involved upwards of 30 million victims. More recently,
we recoil at the killing fields of Cambodia, the massacres in Rwanda, the
“ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, the ongoing assault on Tibetans and their
culture by China and the present Darfur horrors.
But the term “genocide” was developed by a Jewish legal
scholar and we most often associate it with the Nazis. Estimates of their
crimes go as high as 11 million, including six million Jews. One third
of the Catholic priests in Poland were slaughtered, along with gypsies,
homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others.
What can be done to prevent such calamities in the future,
and to insure that our nation never succumbs to the temptation to marginalize,
then dehumanize and finally eliminate people of certain faiths or extractions?
Or more positively, how can we strengthen our own community by fostering
understanding among people of various faiths?
Country Club Christian Church is beginning a two-step
program. First, it aims to deepen the connection members have with one
another. Then it plans to reach out to the larger community.
The tool is reading books together and thereby “weave
people together with a common thread.” member Linda Nixon says. The congregation
begins with Mary Doria Russell’s new novel, A Thread of Grace, which
portrays interaction between people of different faiths during the Holocaust.
“By reading a book together and then discussing it in small groups, people
get to know each other and a synergy builds in the congregation.” says
senior minister Glen Miles. The study culminates with the author’s visit
to the church Sep. 15. “Not only do we look forward to building the community
within the church but we hope to reach out to the greater community,” says
event chair Melanie Thompson.
Then on Sep. 18, an interfaith panel explores “Resistance
and Religion.” And on Sep. 25, Fran Sternberg, daughter of Holocaust
survivors, presents “Interesting Times: A Family Trapped in History.”
Guests are welcome at all events.
Nixon says the church is also providing a learning program
for children using books with related materials.
For information, click on “Book by Book” on the church’s
web site, www.cccckc.org.
572 050817 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Mystic's vision unifies opposites
Religion, science and mathematics were unified in the vision of the
pre-Reformation mystic Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). He may be remembered
more in the history of science than in theology because of his unusual
views, though he served the Roman Catholic Church in many ways and in 1448
was made a cardinal.
Cusanus, as he is also called, envisioned a parliament
of the world’s religions, was sent by the pope to Constantinople to bring
the Western and Eastern churches together and was entrusted with correcting
church and monastic abuses in the Netherlands and Germany.
He developed calendar reform, discovered that a concave
lens could compensate for myopia, proposed a system of proportional balloting
and, before Copernicus was born, declared that the earth is not the center
of the universe, that it revolves around the sun and that stars are objects
like the sun.
I’d rank his De Docta Ignoratia, Of Learned Ignorance,
as one of the most profound works in the library of Christendom. In it
he says that our greatest wisdom is to recognize how little we know. Books
might contain information, but they are not the source of wisdom. Human
knowledge is really conjecture. More important than the abstractions of
theology are the experiences of the merchant.
But by love we can know the divine.
What is the divine? In one place in De Visione Dei, The
Vision of God, he describes God as neither Creator nor creation (and another
place, as both), but rather the “Nature of all natures.” Against his contemporaries,
Cusanus saw change and motion as the nature of perfection. Does this suggest
that God is a natural unfolding Process, as in the theology of Charles
Hartshorne today? Does he anticipate Paul Tillich’s understanding of God
not as a Supreme Being but as the “Ground of Being”?
Even more intriguing is his understanding of God as the
coincidence of opposites, which, in mathematical metaphor, he calls the
“Infinite,” where all things are reconciled. For example, a circle and
a straight line are opposites. But if the circle is expanded to infinity,
the circumference becomes just as flat as the line. God is a circle whose
center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.
While classical theology places God, ultimate reality,
at the top of the chart with creatures underneath, Cusanus rejects both
hierarchy and the idea that there is a center to the universe organizing
the rest. Rather the universe is organized in every individual which implicates
every other individual as they participate in God.
In the language of psychology, the paradox is that one
can love others best when one loves oneself. And loving self and others
coincides with loving God.
571 050810 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
How many gods? Take a breath, think
How many gods are there? Islam is unambiguous in its response: one.
Judaism’s shema, a confession of faith, proclaims there is one God for
Israel. Christianity’s trinity proclaims three persons in one God. Buddhists
have no need of a creator God, and the joke about Unitarians is that they
“believe in one God — at most.”
But what Westerners call Hinduism probably embraces more
ways of answering this question than any other tradition. It is said that
Hindus believe in 330 million gods, but there are many ways of counting.
The trimurti, sometimes misleadingly compared with the Christian trinity,
consists of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer.
Some gods take many forms. For example, the gods Krishna
and Rama—and some Hindus would add Buddha and Jesus—are some of the avatars
of Vishnu. It gets complicated pretty quickly because the Bhagavad Gita
appears to present Krishna as more than a manifestation of Vishnu.
Another Hindu way of looking at God is with the pair of
terms, Atman and Brahman. The former is usually understood as the divine
character within each person, and the latter is the cosmic Self. Spiritual
life moves toward realizing they are identical.
The Chandogya Upanishad, on one hand, presents God everywhere
present (Tat tvam asi— “That thou art”), but the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
denies that God can be identified with anything (Neti, neti—“not this,
not that”).
Confusing? Contradictory? Don’t worry about it. A famous
passage in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad may put you at ease. The sage Yajnavalkya
is asked, “How many gods are there?” He answers by calculating the gods
mentioned in the “Hymn to All the Gods,” 3306. His questioner responds,
“Yes, but just how many gods are there?” This time the answer is 33. The
repeated question results in the following responses; 6, then 3, then 2,
then 1 1/2.
This latest answer is sort of like saying that, on average,
there are 1.36 persons per car passing through the Grandview Triangle.
Hopefully no car contains exactly 1.36 persons. So what does this sacred
text mean, “1 1/2 gods”?
Perhaps it is saying that any attempt to name or define
or quantify the Infinite is, in a sense, silly, even if in some contexts
it might be useful, as knowing the average number of persons per car can
be helpful in traffic management.
But the text continues. The question is asked one more
time, “Just how many gods are there?’ This time the answer is, “One. .
. . Breath. . . . They call him Brahman, the Undefined.” So just when we
think the answer is one God, we are reminded that attempts to constrain
the Absolute in human language may be misleading, though carried forward
by respiration itself.
570 050803 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Confront evil actively and creatively
When Jesus said, “Do not resist an evil person,” what did
he mean?
Warren Carter raises the question in response to last
week’s column reporting on an essay by Jim Mathis of the Kansas City Christian
Businessmen’s Community. Carter is professor of New Testament at the Saint
Paul School of Theology here. He discusses this passage, Matt. 5:39, his
book Matthew and the Margins, pages 150-154.
In his email to me, Carter suggests the translation is
misleading. “To instruct people to not resist an evil doer – if that is
what Jesus is saying – makes little sense! And it would be quite
contrary to the biblical tradition. The tradition expects people in relation
to God to resist evil. What frequently differs in the biblical writings
are the means of resisting.”
He lists several options: violence, changing one’s ways,
“pronouncing judgment and consigning a person or situation to God’s judgment,”
retreat and “trusting God to intervene (e.g. Psalm 37).”
Carter continues, “Jesus is not teaching against this
tradition of resisting evil. Rather he is instructing on how to do
so in a context where its power is overwhelming and there are no legitimate
democratic means of protest. The verb translated “do not resist”
is commonly used in ancient literature to denote warfare and violent actions.”
Carter says Jesus is condemning the use of violence in resisting evil,
but not condemning resisting evil. “Hence Jesus’ negative command ought
to be translated, ‘Do not violently resist an evildoer.’”
When Carter looks at the next verses, he sees Jesus outlining
“active, non-violent, creative means” to resist evil: “turning the other
check, giving all one’s clothes, going two miles with the soldier’s pack.
These strange actions make sense in a context where oppressed people have
little power.” Walter Wink presents a similar perspective, detailed at
www.cres.org/wink.
Carter says the actions Jesus advises “are self-dignifying
means of protest that refuse intimidation, momentarily seize the initiative
from the oppressor and expose their excessive power.” Carter recommends
Weapons of the Weak and Domination and the Arts of Resistance by James
C. Scott for information about nonviolent protests among powerless groups.
Carter agrees with Mathis that Jesus endorses neither
“fight nor flight,” but rather a third way of engaging evil. Carter concludes
that this method “is not passive but comprises creative actions that express
dignity and refuse to escalate or normalize violence. Gandhi and King were
practitioners. Will it work in foreign policy? The question is difficult.
Vietnam and Iraq demonstrate graphically the ineffectiveness and unsustainability
of military violence. If there can be no peace without justice, a
commitment to engage evil creatively, actively, and nonviolently would
be worth the effort.”
569 050727 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Meet violence with nonviolence
Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, religions originating in India, are
among those with strong teachings against violence. The Jain faith is rigorous
in its application of ahimsa, doing no harm. The Buddha observed that “a
person finds no justice by carrying a dispute to violence.” The Hindu scriptures
counsel, “If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.
If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for
hatred.”
Gandhi condemned war not only because of those who perish
but also because it brutalizes the fighter. As his work proved, social
and political transformations can be led by ennobling non-violent
responses to oppression and injustice.
The great Chinese Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching, warns
that “even ornamental weapons are not a source of happiness, but of dread.”
The abhorrence of violence also characterized the early
Christian church which found the teachings of Jesus incompatible with war
and capital punishment.
A great many newsletters cross my desk, but none has surprised
me more than the July issue of “Common Grounds” from Homer’s Coffee House
in Overland Park, a ministry of the Kansas City Christian Businessmen’s
Community, www.homerscoffeehouse.com. Even more surprising is that Jim
Mathis, who wrote its “Fight or Flight or Something Better?” essay, told
me that he has received no flack from readers of the article.
After discussing the business practices of Neiman-Marcus,
a passage in Proverbs and the teachings of Jesus, Mathis wrote, “I often
wonder what would happen if a presidential candidate said that from now
on the United States would respond to the arrogant dictators of the world
with love and understanding. Or what if our military leaders would admit
that retaliation always leads to escalation. . . .
“But I really think Jesus was serious. He wasn’t just
joking when he said, ‘You have heard it said, “An eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth,” but I say to you, do not resist an evil person . .
. . Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’
“You might say, ‘Do that and people will walk all over
you,’ Maybe. You might also be perceived as a man or woman of God . . .
.”
Does Mathis’ citation of Jesus apply to the age of terrorism?
One can argue the early martyrs might have thought so. Does a bellicose
response decrease or increase the measure of danger and hate in the world?
Are the religious teachers of so many faiths foolish or wise?
Holland Cotter wrote in the New York Times last week,
“Standard Hindu and Buddhist accounts consider the present age, with its
belief in the virtue of greed and its blind faith in power through intimidation,
a disaster, corrupt beyond redemption.”
Jesus was crucified. Is the Christian hope “fight or flight
or something better?”
568 050720 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Looking at theology by accident
Several readers have suggested I erred June 1 in writing,
“Those few scientists who say that evolution is undirected, accidental
and purposeless are doing theology, not science. And those who find evidence
for intelligent design of the world are also doing theology, not science.
No scientific proof can be produced to support either interpretation of
the evidence.”
I think my critics are partly justified. My statement
was sloppy. I’ll try to clean it up.
Let’s look at the ideas of “accident” and “chance.” Some
people say, “Nothing is an accident; everything happens for a purpose.”
Yet they do not protest news reports of traffic accidents. Even though
we call them accidents, the insurance agencies and courts must sometimes
determine who “caused” the “accident.”
When we say, “I ran into So-and-so by chance,” we mean
we did not plan the meeting, but we do not deny that there are causes
or otherwise irrelevant intentions that led our paths to cross. Evolution
may be unplanned, but that does not mean that climate and food availability
play no role in shaping future species.
Often we use the words “accident” and “chance” to suggest
that we could not have predicted the event.
In this sense, evolution is accidental. No one is smart
enough to factor all the influences that will cause the next car accident
at Westport Road and Broadway, and no scientist has any way of calculating
what dogs will look like 100 million years from now, much what shape human
beings might exhibit, if we are around at all.
But in another sense, those with the mind-set that says
“nothing happens by chance” may say, “We don’t know the result, but God
does, and behind what appears to us to be random happenstance is a guiding
power.”
I think theologians are wrong to object when scientists,
using language in the ordinary sense within their discipline, say evolution
is random; and right to object when scientists import the ordinary sense
of “random” into theological discourse. And Intelligent Design folks are
wrong to inject theological language into the scientific study of the natural
world.
One of my philosophy professors claimed that most of the
problems of traditional philosophy — such as “Do we have free-will?” —
are based on stretching ordinary language describing discrete situations
to apply to the whole of existence. In his view, you cannot get from cars
crashing into each other at Westport and Broadway to whether the entire
universe is an accident or not.
I think that applies as well to theology, the study of
ultimate meaning.
Another error. Last week I confused some dates. “The Hindu
and the Cowboy” play is performance at Village Presbyterian Church on Oct.
28. The Nov. 5 performance is at the Community of Christ Temple.
567 050713 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Autumn's visitors will be as varied as fall colors
Again this fall Kansas City will be blessed with visits from distinguished
religious leaders. This “early warning” is to assist you, dear reader,
to get the dates on your calendar now, with details forthcoming. I also
want to alert others planning great speakers to avoid the kind of conflict
we had last year when Huston Smith and Matthew Fox were in town at the
same time.
To the delight of folks already talking about it, Huston
Smith returns Oct. 9 and 10. Sunday evening he speaks at Unity Village
and Monday evening at the Rime Buddhist Center. Smith will be touring to
promote his new book, The Soul of Christianity, due out in September. This
book is especially significant since Smith, best known for his The World’s
Religions, has spent most of his 85 years teaching about other faiths.
Now he focuses on his own. A life-long Methodist, and
son of Methodist missionaries to China, Smith cherishes his own congregation
in Berkeley where he now lives after teaching at M.I.T., Washington University
and other schools. Smith’s Christianity is neither “rigid fundamentalism”
nor “non-transcendent liberalism.” Whether you agree or not, the stories
he tells from his remarkable life charm and inspire. But I begin to sound
like his book agent; excuse me, but I revere the man.
John Esposito speaks the evening of Nov. 4 at the Community
of Christ Peace Colloquy on “The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?” He is
professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies,
Georgetown University. His book, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam,
is both simply written, accurate and frank. Because of the problems many
of us have in getting clear information about the enormously varied expressions
of Islam, he is a great choice to speak on the colloquy’s theme, “From
Fears to Friendships.”
Diana Eck, head of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University,
is another favorite. She appears at Village Presbyterian Church Oct. 21
and 22. Her 1988 speech at the first conference of the North American Interfaith
Network helped galvanize Kansas City attendees into creating the KC Interfaith
Council.
Her 2001 book, A New Religious America: How A “Christian
Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation, is full
of surprises, including the complete text of former Kansas Gov. Bill Graves’
1997 Ramadan Proclamation, the first such gubernatorial recognition in
the U.S. Eck is a gracious and eloquent speaker, and her research is always
up-to-the-minute.
The following week, Oct 28, the Johnson County church
will, like other organizations this fall in KCK, Independence, Midtown
and Raytown, present “The Hindu and the Cowboy and Other Kansas City Stories,”
a play created by Donna Ziegenhorn from interviews with 80 KC area residents
from every conceivable faith background.
566 050706 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Commandments are codes to live by
Last week the Supreme Court focused attention on the Ten
Commandments, or Decalogue, now revered by three religions, Judaism, Christianity
and Islam, although it had no particular significance in Christianity until
about 600 years ago.
The Decalogue represents a great moral advance over the
Code of Hammurabi, on which the Hebrew law code was modeled. Does this
transmission of law work for us today?
Hammurabi, a Babylonian king, lived about 3750 years ago.
A stela discovered about a hundred years ago, now in the Louvre, shows
the sun god Shamash commissioning Hammurabi’s law, as Moses received the
Decalogue from the god Yahweh. Tradition places this about 3300 years ago,
but some scholars think the Decalogue might be only 2750 years old.
Both codes insist that society must be governed by rules,
not whims. Perhaps the most famous influence of the earlier law code in
the Bible is the punishment system: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand
for hand, foot for foot” (Ex. 21:24), though the Hebrew system does not
apply the Hammurabi dictation mechanically.
Of the many advances in the Mosaic code is the treatment
of everyone equally under the law, where Hammurabi prescribes severe penalties
for harming someone in a higher class, and milder penalties for mistreating
someone in a lower class.
The Bible actually contains three sets of “Ten Commandments.”
The number “ten” does not appear with the set identified by tradition in
Ex 20 and Deut 5. But "ten" does appear with a list in Ex. 34, where one
of the commandments is not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk. The two
traditional versions consist of at least twelve, not ten, statements, numbered
to make ten in different ways by various authorities.
Today allegiance to the “Ten Commandments” may be
largely a hortatory or sentimental exercise because few people follow the
commandments as they were intended, with the prescribed punishments.
For example, the commandment to honor the sabbath forbids
all work and forbids engaging others to work. This would mean closing the
malls including the theaters, shutting the hospitals and police departments
and dispensing with most utilities including phone service. Our society
simply is not structured to apply the Mosaic law.
Another example: should a 5-year old girl molested by
her father be expected to honor him because the ancient code requires it?
And why is there no parallel commandment for parents to honor their children?
[A third case: the prohibition against graven and other
images might require the end of photography and TV as well as statues and
the way we make coins.
[A fourth example: While the Decalogue requires giving
primacy to one god, Yahweh, and does not deny the existence of other gods
(they were assumed), our government cannot compel belief in this or any
other deity.
Many other examples could be given of what appears defective
in the Decalogue from the perspective of modern society.]
While all faiths command respecting life, the truth, property
and sexuality, ancient ideas embedded in the Decalogue, how these ideas
might be applied today may require fresh, earnest and faithful thinking.
565 050629 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Acceptance can make a site sacred
SANLIURFA, Turkey — As I watch the women at the Mevlid
Halil Mosque, I think more of America than I do of Abraham, who is said
to have been born in the cave here into which I have just peered. (This
city is said to be the biblical Ur.)
This is a sacred pilgrimage site, and while the dress
of the men varies unremarkably, the women who come are also varied in their
dress; but that is remarkable.
In some Muslim countries the women would be uniformly
attired, for example, with a veil. But here, as throughout Turkey, Muslim
women choose their own way to express their understanding of modesty.
Except in the schools and government positions.
A Turkish friend tells me, “No one has the right to tell
a Muslim woman how to dress; and uncovered women, veiled women, women fully
covered are all welcome and respected here as equally devout Muslims. We
accept all.”
He is conscious of his own Ottoman heritage of extraordinary
tolerance. Instead of imposing a uniform legal system or set of customs
on the entire empire, the Ottomans generally respected the practices of
different religious and ethic groups, and allowed a measure of self-regulation.
Jews escaped Christian persecution by emigrating to Ottoman lands.
In my country, Muslims from all over the world, as well
as those Americans born into another faith who convert to Islam, also have
the freedom to dress as they wish — but more so.
But in Turkey, dating back to its formation as a modern
secular state, women were prohibited from wearing the headscarf if they
wished to attend school or work in a state institution. And men were not
allowed to wear the fez.
To some, secularism in Turkey seems like government hostility
to religion. In the US, secularism means religion is protected from government
control.
Of course we Americans have our problems negotiating “church
and state.” In disputes over issues like government grants to “faith-based”
organizations, some people think that religion and government are too friendly,
and others too distant. Sometimes officials, like Lt. Gen. William Boykin
a couple years ago, speak in sectarian ways with what seems to others the
force of government. But usually we get these problems cleaned up.
And just as some American Christians are overbearing,
not all American Muslims are tolerant. Earlier this year, a Muslim woman
called KCUR’s Walt Bodine show to complain that his Muslim woman guest
did not wear hijab and therefore could not be a real Muslim.
Here, near the Euphrates River, I think of the Missouri
River, and the interfaith observance I’m supposed to lead as part of the
KC Riverfest Independence Day week-end at Berkley Riverfront Park, and
I think — more than relics or attire, it may be the attitude of acceptance
that makes a site sacred.
564. 050622 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Give me oil and a genie in my lamp
BERGAMA, Turkey — The shopkeeper offers me chai, the customary
tea here, as I rest from exploring the ruins of Pergamon (or Pergamum)
high above this modern city.
Actually, my eye is resting on what looks like an antique
oil lamp, exactly the size and shape and age I fancy that brought adventure
to Aladdin. Among the many powers possessed by its genie was transporting
Aladdin as he wished. Should I buy this lamp, even if it comes with no
genie?
Yesterday it was Ephesus. Similar, both ancient
Pergamon and Ephesus flourished with their gods and gymnasiums and commerce
and theaters (10,000 seats at Pergamon, 25,000 at Ephesus). Their libraries
were surpassed only by the one in Alexandria. Both cities are addressed
by the last book in the Christian scriptures, Revelation.
But the two ancient cities are also different. Ephesus
lies on the sea and Pergamon scrapes the clouds, 1300 feet above the Caicus
river plain.
Ephesus was the greatest city of Asia at the time. Ephesus
is a huge site, and easy to imagine Paul spending two years here at the
beginning of his work advancing Christianity from this cosmopolitan center.
It was at the Ephesus theater that Paul, though not present, caused
quite a commotion, according to Acts 19. Paul wrote to the Corinthians
from Ephesus (I Cor 16:8).
The city’s patron deity was Artemis, called by Diana by
the Romans, but she was worshiped far beyond these precincts. Her temple
was the largest of all Greek temples, one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world. She was, after all, among other things, the goddess of wealth. Though
nowadays we enter no temple in her name, worshiping her has continued,
I think.
Pergamon was a cultural and political power for some seven
centuries.
One of its citizens, Galen, born about 130 years after
Christ, brought medical science to its apogee, and was especially known
for his ability to treat trauma (think gladiators). He build upon the work
of his predecessor, Hippocrates, who lived six centuries earlier, after
whom the famous medical oath is named, as well as his own research. Galen’s
influence persisted over a thousand years, perhaps in part because Christians
and Muslims liked his monotheism.
When he was 20, Galen studied about a mile away at a huge
medical complex. It was named the Asclepium, after the Greek god of healing.
Its waters for healing still trickle through the site.
These great cities are astonishing even in waste. Some
remains are visible; some persist in our culture. It is not difficult,
even without a genie’s help, to imagine these cities in their glory.
But I would need a genie to show me what might remain
the in rubble two thousand years hence of my beloved Kansas City.
Ah, the chai has been refreshing. Should I buy the lamp?
563. 050615 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Society's soul needs a call to prayer
KONYA, Turkey — I am sitting on a hill where the huge Alaadin
Mosque was begun about 1150, and I hear the adhan, the call to prayer,
from its minarets. I am told it is live, not recorded, and it reverberates
around the city where the amplified version comes from the many minarets
in the area. I time the echo as the muezzin pauses: 5 seconds.
The muezzin’s voice here is as pure as any I have heard
anywhere, a purity so powerful it compels attention. “God is the greatest”
is a common way of translating his first phrase; but even without knowing
the meaning of the chant, the sound lifts the hearer beyond the ordinary
to the realm of ultimacy.
It is a holy cry. The adhan is a routine that injects
the extraordinary into daily living. Tornado sirens alert us to danger,
and we think of what is really important to us, what we would save if disaster
would strike. The adhan also alerts us to think of what is important, but
the adhan announces opportunity, not disaster. It is an opportunity to
put our concerns in perspective: nothing can be placed on the same level
as God. Wealth, power, fame, pleasure — all must be subordinated to the
single Source of life.
The practice of prayer five times a day rehearses submission
to God’s rule, transcending the petty by becoming part of God’s plan. In
effect, the muezzin announces holy living.
The result is not just personal integrity but also social
harmony. A whole city hears this witness, as do other cities throughout
the Muslim world.
Paul visited this place, then known as Iconium. The mosque
uses Roman pillars from that time. Even earlier the Hittites, mentioned
in the Hebrew scriptures in stories from Abraham to Ezra, built here. The
mosque complex includes a room into which I peered a few moments ago, a
single room entombing the early sultans with utter simplicity. I am told
they eschewed personal aggrandizement to serve the people in submission
to God.
And the city is now famous for the shrine to Jalaladin
Rumi, the Thirteenth Century Sufi whose utter submission to God as love
may be one reason his poetry is popular in America today.
Also in this city is a dome with the names of Abraham, Moses,
Jesus and Muhammad inscribed, typical of the Muslim motif of integrating
the teachings of all known faiths into a universal sphere.
So I ask myself, with this history and expanse implied
in the ultimacy of the muezzin’s awesome call, what would such a cry be
like in Kansas City? The secularism of Turkey today allows the call, but
does not endorse it. I’m an American honoring the separation of church
and state, and a call beyond partisanship and special interests to a single
unifying vision seems elusive if not impossible. Yet is it not what the
soul in society yearns for?
562. 050608 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Bishop preaches against practice of polarization
Polarization is a “major disease” of today’s society
and even the church, says Bishop Raymond J. Boland, who retired last month
as head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. His address
to the graduates of Avila College May 14 focused on what he called this
“dirty 12-letter word.”
Boland defined polarization as “the division of our civil
society and our religious beliefs into two elements concentrated about
opposing extremes.” Polarization causes people to see things in black and
white terms, and those who disagree with one’s positions become “implacable
enemies.” He said that polarization “is undermining the integrity of both
our society and our church.”
Beginning “with the conviction that I am right and you
are wrong,” polarization escalates itself to the next level
which convinces one that one is always right and everybody else is always
wrong. “It brims over the top when the elimination of the other seems both
desirable and justifiable. It led Christ to the cross.”
Boland cited examples from history and “current headlines.”
Polarization “created the gulags and Belsens and the Katyn Woods of our
recent past. It gave birth to the Kamikaze pilot, the suicide bomber, the
assassin and the perpetrators of Sept. 11. It erects walls, some to keep
people in, others to keep people out; we might say prisons on a grand scale.”
With a special poignancy, Boland told of his standing
“before a 20-foot high wall crowned with spirals of barbed wire as it snaked
its way throughout the inner suburbs of Belfast in my native Ireland. The
sadness is that the people on both sides of that wall go to church every
Sunday and sing exuberantly of the glories of their Christianity: polarization
at its worst.”
He continued, “We have had Hardrian's Wall, the Great
Wall of China, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, and what have we learned?
Apparently not much. We are now building one in the Holy Land.”
While recognizing the need for a “a code of principles
by which to conduct one’s life,” Boland said polarization becomes a critical
issue “when it becomes frozen, immovable, arrogant and frequently irrational,”
equating “dialogged with weakness” and regarding “diversity as an affront.”
He warned against clothing polarization in “such rallying
cries as patriotism, orthodoxy, freedom and even ‘our God-given rights.’”
Boland has led Kansas City Catholics in developing relationships
with those with whom Catholics might disagree. In return, folks of other
faiths have enormous respect and gratitude for the Catholic witness in
the community. In avoiding polarization and promoting understanding, Boland
has the right to preach what he has practiced so well.
561. 050601 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Religion opens wormholes into sense of transcendence
Both supporters and opponents of intelligent design have severely criticized
my last two columns. On one hand they’ve called me “atheist” and, on the
other, “Thomist,” after the great medieval theologian. I’m trying to chart
a middle ground that respects everyone’s religious beliefs and the integrity
of science. The middle ground is such unfamiliar territory for some of
readers they think I have to be on one side or the other.
To summarize those two columns: Those few scientists who
say that evolution is undirected, accidental and purposeless are doing
theology, not science. And those who find evidence for intelligent design
of the world are also doing theology, not science. No scientific proof
can be produced to support either interpretation of the evidence. God may
or may not be guiding the process of “natural selection.” God may or may
not directly intervene in nature with special creation. Such matters are
for religion, not science, though science may inform the discussion.
This discussion arises in a society with little sense
of transcendence, of something greater than our limited selves. Instead
of transcendence, special interest groups and ideologies compete. Even
religious groups are sometimes so focused on their creeds, rules, mission,
and governance that they forget the Big Questions and focus instead on
details. Thus religion itself is secularized, reducing or breaking a sense
of transcendence.
At their best, religions are worm-holes into transcendence.
But the worm-holes are not alike. The Christian worm-hole, for example,
generally locates the transcendent beyond this flower or that business
transaction or the erotic arousal. The Christian worm-hole leads, ultimately
to the presence of God.
Zen Buddhism, on the other hand, offers a
worm-hole to no god, for no one has created the universe; it has always
been evolving. The Zen worm-hole leads us directly back to this flower
and that business transaction and the erotic arousal — but freed of the
ignorance, the preconceptions and the obsessions that ordinarily cloud
our ways of relating to them.
For many Christians, transcendence is away
from the ordinary; for the Zen Buddhists, it is within the ordinary. Both
are worm-holes of transcendence because they lead us to something beyond
ourselves, to understand ourselves as part of a larger pattern or process,
natural or supernatural, God or the Totality of Relationships or the Void.
Intelligent design could be an attempt to find a scientific
worm-hole to transcendence, to find cosmic meaning in the evidence, to
say the supernatural affects the natural. But there are other worm-holes
to transcendence, such as Egyptian and Indian creation stories which say
the world arose from divine desire, not intelligence.
Among the best worm-holes the faiths offer are compassion
and understanding. You can’t prove scientifically that life is worth living.
But such worm-holes to transcendence can.
560. 050525 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Answers within us explore faith and transcend science
Here’s a theological experiment you can do in your kitchen.
First some science. Bring water to boil and pour it into a container into
which you mix as much salt as will dissolve. Pour the solution into a clean
jar and suspend a thread into the water from a pencil resting on the rim.
Cover the mouth of the jar with paper and tape it shut. Let sit for 15
minutes, then swish. After 15 minutes more, repeat. Swish one last time
an hour later. Then for several days watch cubic crystals grow on the string.
Complete directions can be found at http://www.bizarrelabs.com/crys.htm.
You can observe that even inanimate matter like NaCl,
sodium chloride (salt), has what appears to be a self-organizing, self-replicating
property. Since it is nearly summer, it is pleasant to think about the
six-sided snowflake, shaped by the physical properties of the water molecule,
another self-organizing crystal. Even DNA, a basic material and set of
instructions for life, is crystal-like, and organizes itself and directs
the processes of growth.
So much for science. Now the theology. You have to look
not at the salt crystal, but within yourself.
Is God directing the salt to move toward the thread and
grow? Did God design H2O so that water crystals would be so beautiful and
varied? When researchers in 1953 threw some watery chemicals together and
passed electric charge through the mix and amino acids developed, was that
accidental or orchestrated by God? Is it chance that water is liquid in
exactly the tiny range (0-100° C), less than one millionth of the temperature
spectrum, that makes life as we know it possible?
We can agree on the data. But the answers you find within
yourself to these questions may not convince others. The inner answers
explore the realm of faith, not facts. They transcend science.
When those few irresponsible scientists say evolution
is accidental, undirected and purposeless, they are speaking theologically,
not scientifically. And when Intelligent Design folks look at the same
evidence and find it to be intelligently designed, they are not doing science;
they are doing theology. One reader sent me a theory of Stupid Design to
account for errors in human anatomy. Intelligent or stupid? It’s a theological,
not scientific, question.
To cut to the chase, as another reader wrote, the real
question is “whether life has meaning or not.”
I think the ID folks are saying something with their body
language liberals need to hear. They are saying that what they see as design
shows that the universe has purpose, life has meaning, there is something
beyond our ordinary pursuits, and we have a place in the plan. Our super-secularistic
society gives us few opportunities to discuss such large questions, so
they arise in strange places, perhaps even in kitchens. We’ll explore such
questions of transcendence next week.
559. 050518 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Evolution argument can't afford certainty
Using a No. 2 pencil, I filled in the
answer sheet for the standardized high school biology exam some 38 years
ago. But I put asterisks by my marks for the evolution questions and at
the bottom of the sheet wrote something like, “I am answering according
to the text book because I want a good grade, but I do not believe in evolution.
I believe the Bible rather than the godless scientists.” My teacher later
said I scored the highest in the city (Omaha).
I quit college in my sophomore year because I wanted to
spend a full semester researching how science and religion affect each
other. I learned that many scientists have been inspired by religious concerns,
and theologians have sometimes integrated developing scientific theories
into their work. I also learned that both science and religion are shaped
by the culture in which they grow, and that claims to objectivity are often
overdrawn. While stories and faith may be the usual way to communicate
religious truths, and math and facts may be better for science, the boundaries
between the two are sometimes fuzzy.
In my doctoral studies and ministerial career ever since,
I have continued to examine this topic.
I offer these autobiographical hints so you will not think
my conclusion is sudden or thoughtless. My conclusion is that absolute
certainty about such matters is premature.
That is why I suspect it is a mistake for some scientists
to claim that evolution is undirected, accidental and purposeless. No scientific
experiment can decide whether this is correct. The claim is theological,
not scientific.
Similarly I suspect it is an error for proponents of intelligent
design to claim their theory is scientific. The complexity of a cell or
the specialized function of a bacterium tail proves nothing that cannot
be accounted for by science. Intelligent design is theology again, not
science.
The ancient Greek stories of the gods in conflict with
each other arose from a world of caprice, not design. The gods’ whims resulted
in savage storms, changed the outcome of battles and explained stupid love
situations. In other traditions, the world is made by a half-witted god;
no intelligent being would design a world with earthquakes and droughts;
the creator is a bungler. Other faiths have no creator at all; the
world was not planned so much as it evolved.
The human appendix, the fragility of the spine, the presence
of the virus that causes the common cold, our susceptibility to cancer—these
are not obvious evidences for intelligent design. Some animals survive
by eating others ferociously, inflicting pain, tearing apart the body of
the victim. Perhaps it would have been more intelligent to design a universe
with necessary nutrients dissolved in accessible pond water.
Nonetheless, I think the intelligent design folks are
on to something critically important for faith that the evolutionists often
ignore, and I’ll write about that next week.
558. 050511 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
One view not enough in a diverse society
Several readers of last week’s column scoffed at the idea that
religious verity could be anything but absolute. Yet the Bible contains
passages suggesting that what is right in one situation or for one person
might be wrong otherwise.
A famous example from Ecclesiastes 3 says that “To everything
there is a season . . . a time to kill, a time to heal . . . a time to
mourn, a time to dance . . . a time to love, and a time to hate . . . .”
What is right in one circumstance is wrong in another.
Paul in Romans 14:14, expresses the notion of subjective
truth: “I am persuaded, as a Christian, that nothing is impure in itself;
only if a man considers a particular thing impure, then to him it is impure.”
I’ve previously noted the example of Jesus violating the
law of the sabbath when his disciples were hungry (Matthew 12:1-6, Mark
2:23-27; Luke 6:1-4).
In the Christian tradition, many have observed that the
Bible can be used to “prove” almost anything. The hundreds of Christian
denominations have in part arisen from folks who can’t agree on what the
Bible means.
While there may be absolute truths and objective moral
principals, the human problem is knowing when to apply which ones in actual
situations. For this reason, in the practical realm, I personally don’t
find the argument over whether truth is absolute or relative very helpful.
And since other faiths also offer varied perspectives, we might be chastened
into modesty about our own views.
However, for many folks, adhering to the principle of
absolute truth is so important that they seek to bring such truth into
public policy. An example is the work of the Rev. Jerry Johnson, pastor
of First Family Church in Overland Park. Johnston was identified as one
of the most important ministers in America today by Nick Haines, KCPT-TV’s
Executive Producer for Public Affairs/News, during a taping in cooperation
with Ingram’s Magazine of a roundtable discussion about science and religion.
The show, with a dozen politicians, ethicists, clergy and scientists interested
in stem-cell research, airs 7:30 pm this Friday.
Johnston and I sparred over whether the Bible declares
that abortion is the taking of a human life. Johnston cited no scripture;
I cited Exodus 21:22-23.
Theologians disagree when life as a person begins—conception,
implantation, viability, birth? Even within a tradition, views seem to
change. Guided by Aquinas, Catholics used to think a fetus did not become
a person until 40 days after conception; but since 1869 Catholics have
generally understood human life to begin at conception.
But for me the question before the roundtable and
before you, dear reader, is not who is right, but whether the view of any
particular faith about absolute truth should be enshrined in law governing
a pluralistic society.
557. 050504 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Questions of absolute and relative truth abound
Is religious truth absolute or relative?
To explore this question, we must use terms carefully.
Absolutism means that truth does not depend on time, place, or circumstance;
relativism says it does.
These terms should not be confused with another pair,
objective and subjective. We can fairly easily settle an argument about
whether the Royals won the World Series in 1985, but it is harder to decide
whether William Whitener’s “Haven,” performed this week by the KC Ballet,
is his best work. The Royals question is about an objective fact, settled
by consulting baseball records; the ballet question is subjective and to
some extent depends “on the eye of the beholder,” and for that reason may
be the more interesting and difficult question.
Almost 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Protagoras
advanced a philosophy of relativism when he said that “man is the measure
of all things,” meaning that standards are created by humans, not by gods.
But another Greek of the same era, Xenophanes, identified a problem with
relativism when he noticed that “Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed
and black; Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired.” If horses
could draw, their gods would look like horses.
Today’s Christian equivalent might be found in the disparity
between Warner Sallman’s traditional portrait of Jesus, sometimes criticized
as effeminate, and Stephen S. Sawyer’s pugilistic painting of Jesus “Undefeated.”
Which is the truer image of Christ? Absolutists might say that Christ is
beyond any human representation of him.
If there is absolute truth, can it be expressed without
being shaped by the language and culture which seeks to receive it? The
disputes and revisions in the creeds and liturgies over two thousand years
of Christendom display this difficulty.
Muslims who believe that God spoke in Arabic to deliver
the Qur’an recommend learning the language in order to most clearly hear
God’s voice. Buddhists and Taoists, on the other hand, say it is impossible
for any language to articulat e the absolute. The Hebrews were warned against
making images of God, and some Jews today will not even write the word;
instead they spell “G-d.” Some Sikhs say sat, truth, cannot be spoken but
can be experienced.
Perhaps there are two kinds of absolutists, those who
believe absolute truth is so great it cannot be spoken, and those who use
their conceptions of absolute truth in exercising power. Communists, Nazis,
terrorists, and leaders of cults like the Branch Davidians are willing
to die and cause others to die for their absolute truth.
Relativists, on the other hand, can be accused of starting
very few wars. They seem less likely to force their views on others, but
they may not sufficiently recognize the need in the human heart for transcendence.
Perhaps it is better to ask whether truth is absolute
or relative than to answer.
556. 050427 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Compassionate thread runs through Lotus Sutra
A great rain of flowers fell. From between his eyebrows a beam of light
shone forth, illuminating every corner of the entire cosmos. Kings, sages,
even gods assembled in wonder in his presence. One murmured, “What is the
meaning of these auspicious signs?” The answer came. “The Buddha is about
to teach the law of the universe.”
So begins the Lotus Sutra, a landmark in world religious
thought. “Sutra” derives from the Sanskrit for “thread,” related to our
word “suture.” Scores of Buddhist scriptures are called sutras because
they “thread” an idea through the writing, like some email clients.
And what an idea explodes in the Lotus Sutra! Where Buddhism
previously was a practice mainly for monks and nuns, now the Buddha revealed
salvation for everyone. Before, the Buddha was understood as a historical
figure. Now the Buddha became the essential grace of the universe itself,
an all-pervasive energy drawing us toward enlightenment. Before, the ideal
of the faith was an arhat, an individual who, by his own effort, freed
himself from the defilements of addictive behavior and afflictive emotions,
for his own benefit. Now the ideal was the bodhisattva, whose efforts seek
to relieve others of suffering even at the cost of remaining in the sphere
of suffering oneself.
These revolutionary notions created the newer form of
Buddhism, Mahayana, from the older branch, Theravada. The power of the
Lotus Sutra is commemorated by a stele (identified as 37-27) in the early
Buddhist sculpture gallery of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The entire
gallery displays the sudden blossoming of the Buddhist faith resulting
from this scripture.
Like Jesus, the Buddha of the Lotus Sutra conveys wisdom
through parables, one of which is a version of the Prodigal Son. Most of
these Buddhist parables seek to show why this new teaching was not uttered
by the historical Buddha. In The Lotus Sutra Prodigal Son, for example,
the story has an extended psychological account of the father working for
many years along side of the son who does not recognize him. When the son
at last is able to contemplate the truth about their relationship, it is
revealed to him, as finally the Buddha reveals the truth about his compassionate
relationship to all beings.
Perhaps the most famous parable is of the father returning
home to see his children in the window playing with toys unaware that they
are about to be engulfed in flames. The father’s efforts to explain the
danger are futile because the children do not know what fire is. So he
tells them he has better toys for them if they will only come outside.
All forgive the lie because lives are saved thereby. Similarly, the original
Buddhist teachings are enticements to escape the perils of existence, but
now the Buddha explained the true nature of existence: our salvation is
in saving others.
555. 050420 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Inside a large and holy circle with Huston Smith
MARSHALL, Mo.— I first met Huston Smith in 1969, and every
time since that I have been in his presence, I’ve felt something extraordinary.
But never so extraordinary as now, with Smith, 85, holding on to my arm
as he silently, eyes closed, honors his parents at their graves in the
cemetery here behind Smith Chapel Methodist Church.
Though Missourians can make a special claim, Smith, of
course, belongs to the world. He studied with teachers of the world’s great
religious traditions and became a great teacher himself. His 1958 book,
The World’s Religions, has sold millions of copies. In 1996, Public Television’s
Bill Moyers produced a 5-hour series on Smith’s life and the wisdom
Smith finds in the world’s faiths.
Although Smith was born in China to Methodist missionaries,
his Missouri connections are many, including graduating, like his father,
from Central Methodist College near here. One of his teachers was a protege
of one of my teachers, Henry Nelson Wieman, a naturalistic theist at the
University of Chicago. For his doctoral work, Smith went to Chicago and
studied with Wieman, as “an ardent a disciple as he ever had.
“I thought there was nothing better than Wieman’s theology.
Then I met Wieman’s daughter. She was better than Wieman’s theology.” She
and Smith married, and Smith’s own theology began to resonate more strongly
with the mystics.
In 1969 Smith returned to Chicago, back from Tibet with
documentary proof of what his M.I.T. colleagues said was impossible: monks
singly able to vocalize chants in three tones at the same time. Today Smith
said, “That is my one contribution to empirical studies,” ignoring the
multitude of scholarly and spiritual blessings he has given the world.
Raytown’s Harold Johnson, a retired Methodist minister
who served Smith Chapel 1963-66 and who arranged the drive from KCI for
Smith and invited me along, asked Smith about his current religious perspectives.
Smith talked about his long friendships with the Dalai Lama and other religious
figures. His children’s involvement in faiths from Judaism to American
Indian spirituality have made religious diversity a realm he has mastered
personally as well as academically.
But Smith remains a Methodist who does yoga as a Hindu
might, who prays five times a day as a Muslim might and practices other
traditions. Why? “These are my spiritual vitamins,” Smith says. Smith is
disturbed by homophobia in his and other churches, but his 16th book, due
in September, is called The Soul of Christianity: Reclaiming the Great
Tradition.
Earlier in the car Smith talked about the love and the
wit that draws circles ever wider to include everyone. Here at the graves,
at this moment in history, at this spot on the planet, I am in his vibrant
presence. It seems he touches the infinite. He draws a large and holy circle.
554. 050413 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Pope John Paul II moved beyond divisions
The Kansas City Interfaith Council is one of Pope John Paul II's children.
Here is how it happened.
In 1986, in the town where St. Francis was born, Assisi,
the pope gathered leaders of many of the world’s faiths to pray for peace.
To them he said, “Either we learn to walk together in peace and harmony,
or we drift apart and ruin ourselves and others.”
The meeting was controversial. Traditionalists warned
of syncretism, the heresy of blending the beliefs and practices of various
faiths together. The pope was criticized for recognizing pagans.
But the pope’s leadership inspired others. A year later,
a Buddhist leader organized an interfaith gathering at Mt. Hiei, Japan,
“in the spirit of Assisi.”
The next year, 1988, religious leaders pursuing interfaith
work on this continent planned “A North American Assisi.” As the pope selected
a location other than Rome for his gathering, so the planning committee,
on which I was privileged to serve, decided on a location less obvious
than Washington or New York or San Francisco. The October conference was
held in Wichita, which also has an accessible American Indian center.
Except for the host city, the largest delegation came
from the Kansas City area. They decided that the energy, enlightenment
and good will from the Wichita conference should be manifested in Kansas
City.
They joined with others whose friendships had developed from an annual
Thanksgiving Sunday interfaith ritual meal begun here in 1985 to give birth
to the Kansas City Interfaith Council in 1989, at the Overland Park Marriott
Hotel.
While all the faiths have worked well together, the Catholic
Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was especially deliberate in its fulfillment
of the interfaith directions of its own Millennium Report, evidence of
the impact of John Paul’s vision here.
The pope’s global outreach, including friendship with
the Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, unprecedented visits to a Jewish synagogue
and a Muslim mosque, his praise of Hinduism and his efforts to heal relations
with other branches of Christianity, including the 1054 breach with the
Orthodox, affirm not agreement but “partnership for the good of the human
family.” Our own local community, perhaps in adolescence, is now learning
such kinship beyond creed.
The biggest interfaith problem the next pope may face,
as we face here, is how religions in pluralistic societies can avoid
imposing their views on those of other faiths when convictions about issues
like stem cell research, war, capital punishment, contraception, abortion,
gambling, economic disparity and homosexuality have become entwined with
public policy. Local and global solutions to this problem may seem impossible,
but John Paul moved us ahead, beyond centuries-old enmities. His nurturing
can help us all grow up.
553. 050406THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Make Breakfast inclusive
Some years ago my respect for Jewish friends, and
my desire to express solidarity with them, led me to stop attending the
annual Overland Park Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast. But as a former resident
of Overland Park, I also developed great admiration for Mayor Ed Eilert.
So I thought this, his last year in office after serving 24 years so well,
I would attend the March 24 breakfast. And I was also curious to see if,
in the intervening years, the explicit and exclusive Christian setting
had been modified.
Of course there is nothing illegal about the Christian
Businessmen’s Committee inviting a mayor to such a prayer breakfast. People
have the right to exercise their faith and to freely assemble. But when
an event is held using the title of a government official whose photo is
on the printed program, I get queasy, as I wrote in this space Feb. 23.
As I entered, I did not see any signs saying “No Jews,
Muslims or Hindus allowed,” but the no-choice breakfast plate served
with bacon to each of the 600 of us left little doubt that the dietary
restrictions of some observing the practices of those faiths were unimportant
to the breakfast planners.
Homeowner association covenants restricting property purchase
by Jews and blacks can no longer be enforced, but I saw no person of color
present. If you were a white Christian, this may just have been the place
for you. But Overland Park encompasses people of many ethnic backgrounds
and religious traditions from A to Z, American Indian to Zoroastrian.
It is true that the breakfast program from beginning to
end was inspiring. The featured speaker had a powerful personal story to
tell about his Christian faith. His presentation ended with a strong invitation
to all of those present who had not already given their lives to Christ
to do so right then. While not all Christians are comfortable with an “altar
call,” no one would want to question the speakers’ sincerity and good will.
But our community has equally gripping stories of a Tibetan
monk in great peril who escaped Communist rule, of Jews who survived the
Holocaust, of a black man whose career was shaped in part by seeing as
a child a black man dragged behind a truck to his death because he asked
his boss not to “bother” his wife anymore, of a Muslim assaulted by prejudice—folks
of every faith with remarkable stories now contributing to our community.
This has been a difficult column for me to write because
so many of the people involved in that breakfast are my friends. But it
is my duty to ask, “What kind of city do you want? Do you want to model
bringing people together or, in a quasi-civic function, convey exclusivity?”
The person elected mayor overnight, or the Christian
Businessmen’s Committee, may want to rethink the custom of placing the
aura of office around an affair that leaves so many wonderful citizens
unable to share an annual breakfast together.
552. 050330 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Respect for others' needs is important
People have different religious views of the tragic
circumstances of the Terri Schiavo story. Those who say that all faiths
are basically the same are rebutted by equally sincere arguments about
life and death by the opposing parties.
Folks often forget religions can lead to very different
behaviors. In Islam, suicide is never justified. In Buddhism, certain situations
require it. In Catholic teaching, abortion is wrong; in some Jewish thought,
it is obligatory in some circumstances. While same-sex marriage was honored
as especially spiritual in some American Indian tribes, it is condemned
today by a number of Christian churches.
While neither of the following two ancient stories deals
with feeding tubes, they illustrate different kinds of faith experiences.
Just as the Shiavo case elicits different opinions, so how these stories
are evaluated depends on the person.
* The first story is told in Christian scriptures, Mark
5 and Luke 8. Jairus, the president of the synagogue, begged Jesus to go
to his house where his daughter was sick, dying. Before Jesus could get
there, someone from the home appeared with the news that the girl had died.
Jesus said, “Only show faith and she will be well again.” When Jesus entered
the home, people laughed at Jesus for saying she was not dead but only
sleeping. Jesus took her hand and said, “Get up, my child.” She arose.
* The second story is told in various Buddhist writings.
Kisa Gotami had one child. One day her boy suddenly appeared to be dead.
She could not believe this, and carried him in her arms wherever she went,
seeking medicine to make him well. People thought she was crazy with her
grief. Someone told her about the Buddha. When she found him, she asked
the Buddha to cure her son. The Buddha said, “Bring me a mustard seed from
a home where no one has ever lost a parent, a spouse, a friend, or a child.”
She went to the first house she saw and inquired for such
a seed. But she was told that death had visited that family. The same thing
happened at the next house, and the next. She went to the next village,
and the next, always with the same result. Finally she began to understand.
“How selfish I am in my grief; death is common to all humanity.” She buried
her son, returned to the Buddha and asked him to teach her.
The first story uplifts the possibility of miracle and
the hope many Christians have in personal resurrection. The second story
illustrates the Buddhist way of coming to terms with what is considered
the human condition of suffering.
Which story is more comforting depends on the needs of
the person involved. A respect for individual sensibilities in a tragic
situation will prevent us from assuming that what is helpful for us will
be helpful for others.
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