We finished recording our fourth video tonight, a blues tune written by Maggie called,"Tough Love." Check it out on facebook, or youtube.
Last night I got home from playing a gig with maggie, and Owen, a sub for Michael, who is a very gifted upright bassist, and a drummer from Charleston named Randy. I played with him one time several years ago and he just gets better. It was a great night and we had a very attentive, enthusiastic crowd. Anyway, when I got home I decided to unwind by watching a Joseph Campbell documentary titled "The Heroes Journey." In it was one of the clearest statements about truth that I've ever heard, so I've transcribed it here.
"It is so simple to believe in God. God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought. Even the categories of being and nonbeing. Those are categories of thought. It's as simple as that. So, it depends on how much you want to think about it. Whether it's doing you any good; whether it's putting you in touch with the mystery that is the ground of your own being. If it isn't, well it's a lie. So, half of the people in the world are religious people who think that their metaphors are facts. Those are what we call theists. The other half are the people who know that the metaphors are not facts, and so they're lies. Those are the atheists."
It seems that we have to believe that the story actually happened, or it's not true. So we are forced to believe in something that is unbelievable in order to pursue our quest for God, or we give up and say it's all just a fairy tale. But what if it's as simple as God being so beyond our comprehension, that stories (metaphors) that show us truths about who He is, have to be used for us to begin to understand Him. Have you ever read a poem that you really couldn't explain to anyone, but you understood it in your soul? Or have you ever seen a movie, or heard a song that conveyed a truth, and not just a small thing , but something that changed your life? And then it dawned on you that it was a story that someone made up? Does that mean it's not true? As Bruce Cockburn said, "We are the insect life of paradise. Crawl across leaf or among towering blades of grass. Glimpse only sometimes the amazing breadth of heaven." We need to take God out of the box and let Him show us who He is.,
3 comments:
Hey Jeff,
I've been shying away from excessive theological thought lately--the kind that may be called Christian apologetics. I don't know if this sabbatical is a good idea or not. We shall see. But I've been thinking about the above ideas--about whether it is important to believe that something actually happened or not. If something is metaphorically true, does it matter how historically accurate it is?
I agree with what you say about letting God show us who he is. But this does not corroborate with what Campbell is saying about God being a metaphor for a mystery of what transcends all human thought. He is taking the human's comprehension or lack thereof as the starting place for describing God. That God is a mystery is an understatement. But, it seems that he's saying "God is everything that lies beyond our categories of thought." This is so vague as to be meaningless and unhelpful.
The little I know about Campbell is that he is very learned in trans-cultural metaphors and has noted the similarities and differences in peoples' religious and philosophical expressions of the character/concept/mythos of "God." These panoramic observations, when taken from a humanistic point of view, will lead you to believe that religion, civilization, art and philosophy, etc. are all an attempt by humans to capture a mystery which is otherwise ineffable and incomprehensible in it's essence. However, the overarching similarities can be taken as universal truths because they are well...universal. The source of these truths is the God metaphor or "the mystery that is the ground of your own being."
The religious or theistic point of view sees God as the source of what we know about him--God started this whole thing and God is going to finish it. in Judaism and Christianity God created the nation of Israel, God gave the Mosaic law, God inspired the scriptures, God begot his son through a virgin, God raised Jesus from the dead, etc. Our job as humans is partly to relate the facts that God revealed, and just as importantly, to remember them through the generations. The purpose of relating this information is to understand the spiritual truths of reality and to know God. If similarities between all religions can be observed across cultural and religious barriers then this only reaffirms that we have one God whose nature is observable in the created universe and in our own humanity.
In response to this, I hear Campbell saying, "Do whatever works for you. If believing in God's initiation gets you closer to God, then go for it. If you believe it was humans' interpretation of the mystery and disbelieve the facts, then that's great too." C.S. Lewis' response to this is "If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all." It doesn't do any good to say to a pregnant woman that she is about to bring a beautiful new human into the world unless you also tell her that it is going to come from a very small opening, that it will hurt, but that it has been done before and usually works. Sure, the most important thing is that a new human is coming into the world but it really helps a lot to have some concrete facts.
Perhaps one day the details of the crucifixion and resurrection won't be very important as they took place in space and time. As Jesus told the Sadduces "...in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven." But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We live in bodies, on a planet. We may look at God as a mystery, but like the music of a very good composer, it might be hard to understand, but it is intended to be understood.
Also, just a small thing, but Campbell uses a figure of speech to describe one half of the world being theists and the other half being atheists. I wonder if atheists have even had the luxury of existing until recently? I mean that atheism is a product of relatively modern ideas about humanism, scientific positivism and cultural relativism. I believe that the majority of humanity has been theistic. Also, Jesus was no dummy and he was a good theist and a Jew. I would never say, "well, if that worked for Jesus, that's great..." I don't think Jesus would agree with Campbell.
So you can see why I haven't responded in awhile--It takes the whole damn afternoon!
In Christ,
Michael
Hey Michael,
I do appreciate you spending the whole afternoon pondering these things. I do agree with most of what you said. Although I don't think Campbell's response would be, "if it works for you that's great." I think he would ask you what the death and resurrection of Christ means and then agree with you. Then he would show you the same thing in Native American mythology, in African mythology, in the old testament and several other places. He would explain that these stories teach us a fundamental truth about God. You would say that all these truths point toward Jesus Christ and he would say they all point toward our understanding of who God is. And you would say God is Jesus Christ and he would probably say he agreed with that. This is all just speculation. I don't know what either of you actually think, but I love the dialogue.
What I think is, mythology is trying to tell us something about who we are, about our relationships and, most importantly about God, but it does this with us knowing that it never really happened. This is what I love about the Upanishads. They are not literal and no one is trying to say they are. I read the scriptures the same way, except I understand we're dealing with history, so I have to make choices about what I think really happened, what is someone's own opinion or bias, and what is pure mythology. I do that through the filter of who I know God to be. This is why I first rejected a literal interpretation of the Bible. It didn't line up with who I've come to know God to be. Now if someone would ask me if it is a good thing to follow your own understanding, I would probably say no. But, I have studied the Bible for years. I've been to a 4 year college for it. I have spent most of my life in search of what Christ called the kingdom of heaven, which is what he sent the disciples out to preach, saying the kingdom of God is here. I have found only a small part of that in Christianity, and a part of it in religion and mythology. But I have found a great deal of it in my own personal contact with God who lives in me. Not only in me, but in you and in each other.
I greatly value the scriptures and those of other religions that I've read. I just don't need anyone to tell me what they mean anymore.
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