Friday, April 23, 2021

Pickers & Mixers

Experience is the worst teacher. It gives the test before giving the lesson.” — unknown

I came across the above study that shows the vast majority of Americans hold a syncretic worldview. I do have issues with this study, specifically as to how people were categorized and the bias of the source, but regardless let's go on the assumption (which I see very much anecdotally) that most people create their own worldview by pulling from various sources as well as being indoctrinated by the culture at large. Most of us who are spiritually and intellectually plugged-in are going to have syncretic tendencies anyways since we have been exposed to so much. We can't undo that. But perhaps we can decide to lean in to where Truth best reveals itself.

Maybe that's why Valentin Tomberg's Meditations of the Tarot was such an influential book for me. Tomberg was exposed to a lot of New Thought ideas, being a student of Rudolf Steiner, and having exposure to the Eastern religions and various esoteric and gnostic systems. But in the end, he chose the Catholic Church. 

How anachronistic of him! 

He could have kept his connection to the sacred without the institutional doctrine and demands of the Church. But I think in the end, he saw that New Thought ideas had its own cosmological dogma, high priests, and gatekeepers. Moreover, all his experiences confirmed for him that “the Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, a depository of Christian spiritual truth, and the more one advances on the way of free research for this truth, the more one approaches the Church. Sooner or later one inevitably experiences that spiritual reality corresponds—with an astonishing exactitude—to what the Church teaches” (Tomberg). Whether this was the cart leading the horse, he probably saw that Steiner's as well as other attempts to update the “spiritual science” was a futile in the arc of eternity. It became too abstract where the Church centered itself around a Person. 

It is easy when you reduce God to a spiritual science, people can begin to believe they are the source of their own divinity or if they believe in “God”, He has been reduced to a silent partner or a deist/pantheist God either removed from the natural world or just equal to it.

Most people aren't free thinking or intuitive enough to be syncretists. Today's culture at large often seems rudderless, selfish, and emotionally-centered, prioritizing a life of comfort and convenience. Thinking for oneself requires a lot of hard work and time. It can be decentering and uncomfortable. And it is unlikely most will be able to push themselves to create the proper conditions for spiritual growth on their own. (This is true for the religious as well as the just spiritual.)

Tracey Rowland makes an astute point in her book on theology, that when even adherents to Catholicism try to pick and mix different aspects of doctrine, it creates a “disintegrative pluralism” that can lead to disunity within oneself  and eventually the institution itself.

“Disintegrative pluralism occurs when people get so hooked on one part of the Christian kerygma that they begin to lose a panoramic vision. What should be a symphonic harmony is reduced to something quite discordant because one note or melody is drowning everything else. Typically some principle or doctrine is taken out of its rightful position and exaggerated or some fashionable concept becomes a hermeneutic through which every other part of Christian teaching must pass or else be sidelined. To put this principle another way, Catholic theology is renowned for its capacity to cope with mystery and with paradox and for its similarity to Gothic architecture. Just as every small piece of a Gothic cathedral has a role to play in maintaining the balance of the opposing structural tensions, so too, in Catholic theology, there is always a delicate balance between apparently antithetical ‘truths’ held in tension. When this tension is lost, when one single buttress is made to bear all the weight, because this particular buttress has become a fashionable subject of reflection, then all possibility of transcendence is lost and one is left with something quite defective, destined to collapse.”

Simone Weil said, “Each religion is alone true, that is to say, that at the moment we are thinking of it we must bring as much attention to bear on it as if there were nothing else ... A 'synthesis' of religion implies a lower quality of attention.” We are better off to go deep than wide. And as syncretists, it is too tempting to not purify the elements that need to be repudiated, especially when bucking against the culture at large. It is too easy to want to integrate everything in the milieu. But even then, we need to be able to see our loves rightly ordered. For even the Catholic Church tries to live up to its name (catholic meaning all embracing) by not excluding anything, even Hell, but remaining consistent by putting things in their proper order. All in all, this does not deny the immediate presence of God in all things.

If most of us are bound to be religious syncretists going forward, then God help us. Because there is probably no way we are going to be able to this rightly on our own.

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Niceness or God?

I've seen this period of pandemic cloistering challenge many relationships. I've witnessed break-ups and strains and those attempting to mend some old wounds, but it appears we are being prodded to operate on another plane than mundane existence. In my case (albeit a natural introvert), I've seen my outer world get a tad smaller while my inner world gets tossed around and stretched. Is this a good thing? Sure, why not. We are all discombobulating our comfort zones for a greater harmony. And in this harmony, we can occupy a higher moral space.

C. S. Lewis said,

“Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. You may have noticed that modern people are nearly always thinking about the first thing and forgetting the other two.”

Perhaps during this time we are being nudged to sort ourselves out with “the other two.” I once had a date where the person said there is no need for religion, we just have to be nice to each other. If we settle for a therapeutic harmony of be nice-happy-content with others, then we will limit our gifts and moral aspirations to this world only. 

In truth, most of us are just being Dick's...

“As long as Dick does not turn to God, he thinks his niceness is his own, and just as long as he thinks that, it is not his own. It is when Dick realises that his niceness is not his own but a gift from God, and when he offers it back to God—it is just then that it begins to be really his own. For now Dick is beginning to take a share in his own creation. The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose” (Lewis).

Without the transcendent, people become self-satisfied with their character. They want the heights of good experiences without the length of moral demands. But how will our experiences add up if they ultimately come to an end? They want the beauty of diverse tolerance without the rigor of unified principles. But who is more tolerant than the devil himself? 

We can't just be nicely swimming in the currents, without having any rocks to stand on. So our challenge is to find our rock. Some may believe all that is solid melts into air anyway so what is the point. But you can't even have air without an atmosphere that holds it all together!

As William Stoddard says: “People find themselves drowning in a sea of accidents; they do not know how to reach the one substance which alone is truth.” But there is a way to reach Truth. In one's life, solid ground can be found in the inner silence of sacredness, and the outer Tradition of cultural and religious wisdom. In the wisdom traditions, “these two components are always present: theodicy and soteriology; doctrine and method; theory and practice; dogma and sacrament; unity and union.”

We need to understand our relationship to God, and how to liberate ourselves to be closer to Him and His creation. Being nice just won't cut it. In fact, we may need to cut through it to see the Truth. 

“A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world—and might even be more difficult to save” (Lewis).