little_sister

people have a tendency to get Christianity and Churchianity mixed up, especially the judgmental Christian sect...

Me thinks spirituality is much more important than the particular brand of spiritual doctrine people adopt....

I started to respond to your journal entry but then I kept on typing loads and loads of stuff and went off on a tangent so I've decided to just give up and go with the whole tangent thing. In summary I pretty much agree with what you are saying.

I think that all religions are true. Ok this sounds stupid at a first glance because the different religions contradict each other and hence cannot all be true. So what am I trying to say?

I think that different people have experienced the divine at different times in ways, which were comprehendible in terms to their culture at that time. Some of these people had little impact because everyone ignored them but some of these people had a sympathetic audience and they got together a bit of a following and ended up founding a religion. Hence, religions are born out of the interplay between personal human insight into the divine and the human condition and communicated in terms of the cultural symbols available at the time. Because of this I think that every religion consists of a culturally biased packaging within which there are grains of truth.

If you consider the bible, clearly it is not reliable as a source of historical information (it's a collection of folks tales not a work of history) but it is interesting to read from the human perspective because the stories within do deal with the human condition; with some of the universal problem and questions, which face us all.

To take one example, the bible portrays Jesus as saying that death comes without warning like a thief in the night. I personally don't care whether Jesus actually said those words or whether they were the fabrication of who ever it was that wrote that particular bit of the bible. The really interesting thing about the quote is that if you take it out of the bible, out of its Christian context, it is still relevant to our lives. The fact is that no matter what we do, death will come for us and no one gets to know the date in advance. I think that this is the test of any piece of religious scripture or religious doctrine - can you take it away from its context and still find that it is relevant to the human condition.

There are many other little things like that in the bible. The book of Ecclesiastes contains some interesting musings on the meaning of life. The narrator (who is meant to be King Solomon) tells us that he has tried everything; wealth, pleasure, the pursuit of knowledge and that everything is futile. The bleak, nihilistic message of the book is still relevant today even if you are an atheist!

I think that similar grains of truth can be distilled from all of the religions of the world. I don't think that you have to subscribe to those religions in order to be able to appreciate those little grains of truth.

I think that religious fundamentalists (whether Christian, Islamic or even Pagan) are missing out because they limit their perspective to that of one religion, because they refuse to read the sacred writings of other faiths.

Also, yes, I think it is possible to be spiritual without being religious. Heck, some forms of Buddhism are practically atheistic!!! Conversely, I think that it is possible to be religious without being spiritual - think of all of those televangelists; oh yeah, touch the screen baby, give us your cash and Jesus will love you, Jesus loves me and he gave me a big house and a flash car (talk about parallels with the Medieval European Church and its habit of selling indulgences).

Here are some thoughts about Good and Evil and the origins of Satan. Unfortunately it gets a bit waffly but I hope you find it interesting anyway.

Good and Evil haven't always been conceived in dualistic terms.

In the Bahai Faith today Good and Evil is conceived in monistic terms. Evil is seen not as a force in itself but simply as the absence of Good much in the same way that darkness is simply the absence of light.

The early Persians held this point of view but they gradually evolved a more dualistic point of view conceiving of Good and Evil as two pretty evenly matched, warring forces. Persian dualism subsequently influenced Judaism. Christianity took up the concept of dualism with a vengeance while simultaneously maintaining a belief in an omnipotent God. Hence, in Christian theology there are two opposing forces; the forces of Good, led by God and the forces of Evil led by Satan. Because God is viewed as omnipotent, Satan doomed to lose in the last battle.

Satan himself is an interesting character and our modern conception of Satan doesn't have much basis in Old Testament scripture.

In the Old Testament, in the Book of Job, Satan is a member of the heavenly host whose function is to keep an eye on humanity and test them to make sure they are loyal to god. The first part of the Book of Job illustrates Satan's relationship to God. Satan requires God's permission to put Job to the test (Satan puts him to the test by first of all taking away all of his wealth and killing his children and then, when this does not cause Job to lose faith in God, Satan obtains God's permission to test Job further by afflicting him with running sores). Satan cannot act independently from God's will.

Satan doesn't get much mention in the Old Testament. Modern Christian's identify the Serpent in the Garden of Eden with Satan. Modern Biblical translations often translate the Serpent as, "the Serpent, that Satan of old". This is not what the text says; the text does not identify the Serpent with Satan. The Serpent is some other creature or spirit and arguably the Serpent was worshipped as a competing god by the ancient Jews.

The ancient Jews were not as monotheistic as some would have us believe. If you read the Old Testament there are numerous references to the fact that the people of Israel worshipped other Gods. The authors of the Bible are generally critical of this 'idolatory' but that doesn't change the fact that the majority of ancient Jews didn't see Yahweh as the one and only - the move towards monotheism came with the post-Exilic Reformers.

Note on the Exile: The Babylonians invaded Judah (the southern half of Israel; the Northern half, which, confusingly, was itself called 'Israel', had previously been conquered by the Assyrians), destroyed the Temple of Solomon and dragged the Jews off into Exile in Babylon but later when the Persians conquered the Babylonians, they allowed the Jews to return to Judah and to rebuild the temple (this second temple was destroyed hundreds of years later by the Romans when putting down a Jewish rebellion around AD 70 and now all that remains is the Western or Wailing Wall). The Exile had a big impact on Jewish consciousness and theology and fueled a religious reactionary movement.

In the Book of Genesis, we learn that "the sons of God" came down to earth and taught men forbidden arts and crafts and had intercourse with "the daughters of men" to create a race of giants "the Nephilim" who had lots of wars and apparently prompted God to cleanse the earth by means of the Flood (see Genesis Chapter 6 onwards for the story of the Nephilim and of Noah & his rather implausible Ark). By the time of the intertestamental period (ie the period between the Old and New Testaments in which many books were written which mostly didn't make it into the biblical canon) this story was expanded to give the concept of Fallen Angels as told in the apocryphal Book of Enoch.

The Middle Eastern etc gods which competed with Yahweh came to be demonized by those who wanted a monotheistic Israel and in turn these 'demons' were further reinterpreted by Christian mythologisers as Fallen Angels (or their offspring) so that some of them, such as the Serpent in the Garden of Eden and Baalzebub (a Canaanite deity) came to be identified with Satan as the arch-enemy of God while the others were transformed into the armies of Satan. These once revered gods and goddesses were conscripted into Satanic cohorts and battalions doomed by their wicked nature to fight a losing battle against God.

When Christianity came to Europe, the Church tried to convert the various pagans tribes to Christianity by building Churches on the sites of sacred pagans shrines, by identifying Pagan deities with Christian saints (much in the way that, earlier in history, the conquering Romans had identified the Celtic etc deities with Roman ones) by setting the dates of Christian festivals, such as Easter and Christmas, to coincide with the dates of pagan festivals and by incorporating pagan symbolism into the architecture of Christian Churches (carving of the Green Man etc).

In time the Church became a vast political power structure spreading throughout Europe, often competing with the political power of local kings. However, the more powerful the Church became, the more it felt power slipping through its fingers as it strove to control the hearts and minds of people throughout a vast territory.

The problem of heresy just kept on rearing its ugly head. No matter what the Pope decreed, at a local level there were always priests, scholars or even charismatic common folks who held to their own views. In time some of the heretical movements, such as the Cathars, got so large that they constituted an alternative Christian Church in themselves. Particularly worrying about the groups such as the Cathars was that they often were seen by the common people as more pious and true to Christ's message than the Church. This is because groups like the Cathars tended to eschew material wealth and their priests often kept their vows of celibacy (unlike the priests of the Chruch). Decisive action was required and in the 12th Century the Inquisition was formed to combat these heresies. The Cathars and other heretics were rooted out and put to death. One incident from this period is particularly noteworthy. During the persecution of the Cathar town of Beziers, the soldiers were under the command of Abbot Amaud-Amaury. When the Abbot was asked how one could tell the true believers from the heretics, he is reputed to have replied, "Kill them all and God will recognize his own".

The Inquisition didn't stop with the Cathars. Although it was originally created in order to combat Christian heretics, the Inquisition is best known today for its subsequent work combating European Witchcraft. It was during the medieval persecution of Witches by the inquisitors that the concept of Satan was further developed. Just as in post-Exilic Judaism and early Christianity, the pagans gods and goddesses of the Middle were recast as demons, so also during the medieval witch persecutions, the pagan deities of Europe came to be seen as demonic. Witchcraft was seen as a secret Satanic cult existing as an underground movement intent on subverting society (today some Fundamentalist Christians still believe in the existence of a worldwide conspiracy of Satanic Witches). The male fertility gods of Europe were identified with Satan. Because an awful lot of male pagan deities in Europe were half man and either half goat or half stag, the iconography of Satan was transformed to resemble the Horned God.

Satan was a Judeo-Christian creation and was projected by the Christian Church into the mythology of European Witchcraft because of their own paranoia.

Well, that's all for now. Byeeeee.

I should read that. I read White Oleander (liked the book much better than the movie, as a side note), but I haven't read that one. This is a beautifully written journal entry.

About the pix . . . No, those definitely aren't from a camera phone. That would be awesome, though! I've got a little Canon point-and-shoot that's gone through a few rough bumps but still works alright. I'd really like to get a nice camera sometime, though.

So far I have only read The Handmaids Tale. I greatly enjoyed the dystopian theme.

Have you ever read Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban? If not I highly recommend it.