[Dialogue] 8/29/19, Progressing Spirit: Mark Sandlin: Rugged Individuality and the Hermeneutic of Love; Spong revisited Matthew Fox event
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Aug 29 07:44:34 PDT 2019
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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1508517611 #yiv1508517611templateBody .yiv1508517611mcnTextContent, #yiv1508517611 #yiv1508517611templateBody .yiv1508517611mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1508517611 #yiv1508517611templateFooter .yiv1508517611mcnTextContent, #yiv1508517611 #yiv1508517611templateFooter .yiv1508517611mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } Healthy spiritualism recognizes the connectedness of us all
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Rugged Individuality and
the Hermeneutic of Love
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| Essay by Rev. Mark Sandlin
August 29, 2019It seems to me that people who have a well developed and healthy spirituality will resist the concept of tribalism. While it is true that tribalism was once an evolutionary necessity for survival, I have to believe that in modern times we should recognize that it is actually quite ridiculous as it is so rooted rooted in the illusion that some people are more valuable than others.
I guess that's more than ridiculous, it is down right dangerous.
It's not just dangerous, it is unnecessarily dangerous. You see, the origins of tribalism (and likewise the very closely related nationalism) are very real, and there was certainly a time when it was very necessary; but in the modern world belonging to a tribe is no longer an essential life ingredient for staying alive. As a matter of fact, in modern times, tribalism\nationalism frequently have the opposite impact on life. From gangs to hate crimes and even including politically motivated anti-Muslim movements, tribalism and nationalism are costing the world lives.
In my understanding of spirituality, there are few things (if any) more sacred than life itself.
Healthy spiritualism recognizes the connectedness of us all and it frequently comes with a set of standards, a set of measurements, by which we can assess if we are treating the world and others in a way that fully recognizes their value and our mutual connectedness in life.
The good news is, with the appropriate education, awareness, and tools, we are all more than capable of eliminating negative tribalism\nationalism identities in our lives and moving to what is a healthier modern outlook – a more global identity.
One of the things that can help us in trying to nurture a more global identity is a hermeneutic of love.
Now, if the concept of a “hermeneutic of love” seems a blurry to you, don't worry, we will get to that. First, however, let's do a bit of sociological reflection on the society we live in.
In many ways, the United States was founded on rugged individualism. One of the leading 19th century political scientist and historians, particularly when it comes to democracy in America, was a gentleman by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville. One of his primary observations of America was the primacy of rugged individualism within our culture. He believed this individualism was both the U.S.'s greatest strength, as well as its greatest weakness. It was his belief that this rugged individualism would ultimately be the undoing of our culture and society, as well as our experiment in democratic governance.
Reading modern headlines, I can't help but wonder if he might just be exactly correct. Just one example would be Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration’s acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who reworded the Emma Lazarus poem “The New Colossus,” saying: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.” His loveless rewording plants its feet solidly in the concept of rugged individualism, and intentionally distances itself from the original spirit of the poem which pointed to our collective responsibility toward caring for each other, particularly those who struggle.
Ultimately, society is made up of multiple communities. Communities aren't unlike tribes. They are a group of people who form a bond around a central idea. There was a time when that idea might have been simply to stay alive. Now that idea might be something as simple as believing a particular area is one of the best to live in. There are, of course, typically multiple ideas within any community which the the collective bond is formed around.
The point I'm getting to is that for most of humanity's long history, we have been a people of community. We not only are pulled towards it as a people, but we have a tendency to thrive in healthy communities. That is why I brought up America's malady of rugged individualism. It would seem that as a society, we are becoming increasing adverse to the idea of needing to be a part of a healthy community.
When Hillary Clinton released her book, It Takes a Village, she actually became a bit of a target for late night comedians, politicians, and pundits who made fun of the perspective suggested by the book's title. You also may remember that Barack Obama's suggestion that there are no self-made businesses or leaders did not go over very well and he was attacked for not valuing the individualistic nature of American capitalism.
Just from those examples you can begin to see that as a society those of us in the U.S. tend not to like hearing that we need the help and support of others in order to be successful. It would seem that we want to believe that we can solve our own problems without the assistance of others.
The rugged individualism that the nation was partly founded upon has come head to head with the long-time reality that humans are drawn to and need community.
The thing is, for a community to to be healthy, it needs compassion. If you wish for your community to be cohesive and durable, it frequently requires an awareness and placing of the needs and concerns of others ahead of our own. And I'm here to tell you, compassion is hard work, to some degree it requires the sacrifice of an individual’s wants and desires. Few of us revel in giving those up.
Of course, the problem then is that the rugged individualism so prevalent in our society runs counter to the compassion needed for a cohesive and durable community. As I just mentioned, it seems like we “tend not to like hearing that we need the help and support of others in order to be successful. It would seem that we want to believe that we can solve our own problems without the assistance of others.” To continue that thought, we also seem to have reversed that way of thinking so far that many of us expect others to also not want help from other people – even when they are struggling. I've even heard those who do ask for help being called “un-American.” Can you believe that? Sadly, so can I.
Not only that, but those who do expect for people in difficult places to stop asking for “handouts” tend to do so without regard to the systemic issues that can make it a nearly impossible task to do.
That kind of rugged individualism lays a fertile foundation for the growth of narcissism. Such an approach to life and community feeds the growing phenomenon of “us against them,” and increases the sense of isolation that many people experience today.
Whether the issue is health care, gun ownership, taxes, religious beliefs, military tactics, or changing cultural values, our growing narcissism and rugged individualism are ripping our society apart. That kind of narcissism feeds an anger and sense of disenfranchisement among many of us, and in turn, it allows compassion to be painted as an act of weakness – the opposite of rugged individualism. The reality is that communities can still be healthy even with the presence of rugged individualism. The problem is that the only way that can happen is with the presence of compassion.
Without compassion, without the recognition of other people's basic human rights and dignity, you get folks who will fight to protect what they perceive to be their own personal rights, without any regard to the impact, the cost, that doing so will have on others. That? That is a formula for anarchy.
What we need is to develop a hermeneutic of love. In her book entitled Borne Forward Ceaselessly Into Love: A Theory of the Hermeneutics of Love Exemplified by Martin Luther King Jr., Jennifer Selig uses the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to show what a hermeneutic of love looks like in practice and to describe the theory of a hermeneutic of love. This is her loose definition of a hermeneutic of love, “a way of interpreting experiences and people… with love, through love, and for love.” She goes on to talk about how King interprets with, through, and for love utilizing the definition of agape love as used by the Greeks. King actually talked about that form of love in his sermon entitled “Loving Your Enemies.”
He said: “The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape. And agape is more than eros; agape is more than philia; agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him, because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen.”
The reality is God doesn't need to be in the picture to make it work. As one of my friend's bumpersticker says, “People can be good without God.” Agape love can be entirely about a humanistic outlook on life. A valuing of all people, a recognition of the need for basic human dignity and rights.
A hermeneutic of love, understanding what you experience in life through the constant filter of agape love, may seem like an overly-simplistic, pie in the sky idea, but I'm here to tell you, there is nothing simple about it. It takes hard work, dedication, and constant vigilance, but I hope that our earlier consideration of the difficulty of having only rugged individualism within communities points to why it is so important that we try.
The good news is that practicing a hermeneutic of love necessarily open us up to having a more global identity as we recognize the basic human dignity and rights of people around the world.
And if there's one thing the world needs right now – well, in my opinion – it's exactly that.
~ Rev. Mark Sandlin
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By Leyton
I was wondering what the Progressive Christian attitude to the spiritual/philosophical text “A Course in Miracles” is?
A: By Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
Dear Leyton,Thank you for your question. Just a few weeks ago I was lecturing at the Aspen Chapel in Aspen, Colorado where they are celebrating their 50th anniversary and this exact question arose. I am happy to address it, but I don’t pretend to speak in the name of all “progressive Christians.”
I recognize A Course of Miracles (COM) as very much a mystical work.
Ted Roszak said that “the Enlightenment held mysticism up for ridicule as the worst offense against science and reason.” So that is the first thing I would say about COM—that for a religious era that is famished for mysticism, because modern consciousness killed it and modern seminaries (both Jewish and Christian) ignored it, the Course of Miracles has provided real nourishment for many.
The killing of the mystical has no small part to play in the cosmic loneliness of our culture, the insipidness of contemporary religion, and the destruction of the planet. For without the Via Positiva of the mystics we will not save the planet.
SO, the course of Miracles has touched and awakened many people to that missing mystical dimension of our souls and consciousness. That is its plus.
HOWEVER, mysticism is meant to lead to justice-making. Otherwise, it is just another idol on our growing piles of idols in our time where race, nation, militarism, patriarchy, consumerism, ecocide, homophobia, extractive and consumer capitalism reign. Authentic mysticism (love) is meant to feed prophetic action (prophecy and justice-making).
The prophet is the “mystic in action” and we must ask if the COM leads to prophetic action and justice-making and dethroning of idols. (Just as we must ask that of any spiritual experience.)
My observation suggests that the COM does not deal well with anger or moral outrage or the shadow; therefore it cannot deal well with justice making. Being spiritual does not mean ignoring anger. Non-violent movements do not ignore anger but convert it to something healthy. Thomas Aquinas says that “nothing great happens without anger” and that virtue is to be found in our passions not in spite of them. To suppress anger feeds the status quo and sucks the energy out of people rendering them depressed and passive couch potatoes instead of engaged adult citizens.
There is a danger in COM of undervaluing the reality of evil—a kind of Cosmic Christ without the wounds, all light. I see that as its weakness. Our third chakra is where we feel kicked in the gut from injustice and where compassion is first awakened (the Greek word for “compassion” in the gospels used often of Jesus means literally, ‘his bowels turned over.’) Jesus tapped into his moral outrage, the turning over of the merchant tables in the Temple is one example, as are many verbal confrontations he delivered against religious pooh-bahs whom he called “hypocrites, whitened sepulchers” and more.
I met recently a COM devotee who said Buddhists and Christians are wrong to talk about “redemptive suffering”, and she is living her life as if there is no suffering. Yikes! Really? How fully does one have to withdraw from reality to do that? To me it seems more wise to say with the Buddhists that “all beings suffer”, and with a healthy interpretation of the cross, that Jesus and innocents suffer. What is compassion about if not to recognize suffering and try to relieve it? Or, as Gandhi said, if you are to be a leader “prepare yourself for mountains of suffering.”
When push comes to shove, therefore, I prefer Jesus, Gandhi and the Buddha to COM.
~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
Read and share online here
About the Author
You can find Matthew Fox in Daily Meditations With Matthew Fox, where he offers meditations like these for Free and is currently treating the topic of developing our mystical and prophetic consciousness. |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the Bible, Part IV
The Story of the Yahwist Document
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
April 9, 2008Thus far in this series on the origins of the Bible, my efforts have been directed toward how the Torah, which contains the oldest material found in the Bible, came into being. The Torah, also called “The Law” and “The Books of Moses,” is the Jewish name for the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Their creation in the world of literature did not happen the way many people today seem to think. No one, including Moses, simply sat down and started writing. In fact, the Torah was written over a period of about 500 years by a series of authors. Many of the stories told in this part of the Bible were a combination of myths, folk tales and political propaganda with only the slightest bit, if any, of actual historical memory. The opening biblical stories from Adam and Eve through the flood have absolutely no connection with history, despite the fact that some of the world’s more foolish people still try to locate the Noah’s ark on Mt Ararat. The first shred of history appears in the Abraham story and it is slight indeed. If a person named Abraham lived at all it would have been about 900 years or 45 generations prior to the writing of the Abraham story in the book of Genesis. Moses, the greatest hero in the Jewish story, lived about 300 years or 15 generations before the Moses narratives in were written in Exodus and as many as 700 years before the Moses stories that appear in Deuteronomy.
This means that most of these biblical accounts are not history at all, at least not in any technical sense, but are rather interpretive folk lore. That needs to be said again and again. Even after constant repetition it is hard to make this truth heard, since most people have grown up in the power of 2000 years of literalizations that continues to affect our reasoning today.
In this column, I want to trace in more detail the beginning of what is called “The Yahwist Document” that scholars today designate as the oldest part of the Torah and thus the oldest part of the biblical story. Writing history, which is what the Torah purported to be, is an activity that normally starts only when a nation has become established and secure enough to begin to look at itself with some objectivity. While the Jews were fleeing Egypt, journeying through the wilderness, or invading and conquering the land of the Canaanites, there was little time or interest in transforming its experienced history into a written narrative. It is also important to note that in the ancient world, one who could write was first of all rare, a skill possessed in the tenth century BCE in the Middle East by less than one tenth of one percent of the entire population. Thus the one who wrote this first part of the Torah can be accurately presumed to have been high in either government or ecclesiastical circles. Writing also required considerable wealth, or at least access to wealth, since both parchment and ink were very expensive. We can assume, therefore, that both education and wealth were the marks of this original author of biblical material. Inevitably, such a person would reflect the attitudes and biases of the ruling classes which he represented. I use the word “he” not to be insensitive, but to recognize the fact that in this period of history the privileges of education and status had simply not yet been conferred upon women.
The Yahwist Document got its name from the fact that this narrative referred to God by the name Yahweh (YHWH), the name it claimed had been revealed to Moses at the “burning bush.” Those letters in Hebrew were in some way identified with the verb “to be” and it was translated in the book of Exodus to mean, “I am that I am.” Since the verb “to be” is the foundation verb of any language, it seemed to be a fitting name for the deity who was regarded as the foundation of the tribe’s identity. When this strand of material is lifted out of the Torah and separated from the later strands, its historical setting becomes immediately visible. The Jewish nation has been established. Saul, the first king, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, had been unable to secure his throne.
The narrative describes Saul as a melancholy, depressed man, who could not unite the various tribes of Israel. When all of Saul’s sons, save for a crippled child, were killed along with the King in a battle against the Philistines at Mt. Giboa, his throne was claimed by his military captain, a man named David. It is David who is the clear hero of this Yahwist writer. David was portrayed as chosen by God and anointed by the prophet Samuel to be king of the Jews at a very early age, indeed while still a shepherd boy keeping the flocks of his father Jesse. Heroictales had obviously gathered around him in the memory of the people as tends to happen to a popular leader. It was said of the young David that he had killed a lion, a bear and finally that he had killed Goliath, a Philistine. When David moved to claim the throne for himself, the Yahwist writer suggests that he immediately instituted a series of political moves to solidify that claim and to win popular support. He ordered a national time for mourning the deaths of King Saul and his sons, punished anyone who appeared to take pleasure in Saul’s demise and made plans to conquer the city of the Jebusites, called Jerusalem, to make it his new capital. If he was going to unite the disparate tribes of Israel into a single political entity he needed a neutral city as a symbol of that new unity into which he intended to call the people of his nation. These tactics appeared to work.
With his power at home firmly established, David began to expand his realm with a series of military victories. In the final test for a monarch, David completed a forty year reign and then was able to pass his throne on to his son Solomon, thus establishing the continuity of his nation in a continuing royal family. Among his last acts according to this narrative was to delegate to his son Solomon the task of building the Temple in Jerusalem, which would make that city not just the political, but also the spiritual capital of the Jewish people. With these three institutions now established, the throne of David, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon that was finished in the first decade of King Solomon’s rule, the time was right for someone to set this nation into the stream of history by telling their national story. That was the setting in which a court historian, perhaps a member of the royal family, perhaps a priest associated with the Temple, or perhaps someone who was both, was commissioned, probably by the king, to write the history of this Hebrew nation. This is how the first strand of that material, which would later be called “Sacred Scripture,” came into being.
The date was some time around the year 950 BCE. Solomon had been on the throne for about a decade. The Jewish people had become wealthy because tribute money from David’s conquests was now flowing into Jerusalem. This part of the Middle East was at peace. The Temple, thought to be God’s earthly dwelling place, was complete and the life of the nation was widely believed to be resting safely in the arms of its two protectors, God and the King. This was the time to write the story of their origins. So the work of the Yahwist writer was begun.
When his story was complete, the image of Israel as God’s chosen people was secure. It was buttressed by the claims made in this narrative. They were basically three: God had chosen the House of David, and thus the tribe of Judah, to rule over the chosen people, the will of God was expressed through the Temple in which God lived as a protective presence, and the high priest specifically and the Temple priesthood in general were alone designated to order the religious life of the nation as the sign of God’s continuous blessing. As soon as this narrative was complete, it began to be read as part of the liturgy of the people gathered in the Temple for worship, as is the destiny of all sacred scripture.
In that process this narrative with its power claims achieved the status of being “God’s revealed truth.” This idea was certainly encouraged by the priesthood, who were well served as the aura of sanctity began to grow around these words. It also served the interests of the royal family since what came to be called “God’s Word” affirmed their divine right to rule.
The role of Jerusalem in the national life of the Jews as a symbol of the people’s unity was established. In this manner the vested interests of each of Jerusalem’s power centers were solidified. The Jewish people, so recently a loose knit confederation ruled by local judges and worshiping at shrines located in Hebron, Beersheba and Bethel, now found unity in a new federation that was being imposed on them as nothing less than an expression of the will of God.
In a world in which there was no division between Church and State (i.e. religion and politics), this first text to become part of the scriptures of the people was in fact a very political document. By tracing the Jewish story from creation to the call of Abraham, this narrative had gone from the universal beginning of human history to the dawn of their own national history. By relating the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph this narrative established, as both legitimate and moral, the Jewish claim to the land that they had in fact conquered. By incorporating the ancient shrines of Hebron, Beersheba and Bethel into their story they identified the religious traditions of the past with a new center in Jerusalem, which was their ultimate and grander successor. By telling the story of the noble history of the Jews prior to falling into slavery in Egypt, this narrative rebuilt their national reputation. It was political propaganda at its best, a powerful and effective attempt to define what it meant to be a Jew, a member of the “Chosen People.”
What would happen, however, if and when the Jewish nation was ever to be divided in civil war? Such a rebellion would have to be against the scriptures as well as against the Temple and the King. That was destined to occur sometime after 920 and the death of Solomon. That was when the second strand of material that composes the Torah today came into being. To that story, I will turn when this series continues.~ John Shelby Spong |
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