My brother told me a few months ago that his main memory at home was when I was in high school, during the summers after work, he remembers waking up in the middle of the night seeing the desk light on with me reading and studying the Bible for 2 or 3 hours every night.
After 4.5 years in college, I earned a bachelor of arts degree in Religion, Greek, and Bible. I took four years of Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and a year of Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament, at the seminary. I wanted to be a youth pastor or a Bible translator.
THEOLOGY: A HUMAN CONSTRUCT
Even though I firmly understood what language is and its limitations, I still clung to my desire to be a religious person. What we cling to is usually part of our conditioning. And our conditioning is often sustained by invisibility or lack of consciousness of that very conditioning along with the extent and depth it has taken root, embedding itself in our lives. So even though I knew these things about words and thoughts, projections and images, language and stories, I kept clinging to my image of myself being a religious person for many many years. I wanted to "know". I wanted certainty even though I knew all of life is uncertain. I wanted security even though I knew that all of life is not secure. I wanted to be able to be a teacher of truth. I wanted meaning. I wanted purpose. My religious conditioning granted me all of these things. Why would I let go of all that I want, especially when I anchored it in my identity and purpose? It took years and years of looking deeper, going deeper, into both life and into myself, before I started to see this illusion that I was gripping. I subconsciously thought that if I could hold on hard enough and long enough, these things would become true.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
It was magical thinking.
If I could hold on tight enough,
then what I was told would become true...
A book would become holy, inspired, inerrant.
Answers would become absolute.
The future would become secure.
The afterlife would become knowable and desirable.
The afterlife would become knowable and desirable.
I could be a prophet of truth in an age where Christianity
had lost every shred of integrity, dignity, and decency.
I could stand proud on the truth.I could claim a personal god and savior.
I could use these claims to guide all of my life.
For 50 years, I clung and claimed.
But the cognitive dissonance...
But the sheer exhaustion of convincing myself
so that I could convince others...
World weary but finally free.
THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE
Words are the substance of the stories in our heads that are constantly trying to make sense out of life. Philosophically they give life meaning, pragmatically they make life work, they keep us going. Language itself is the reason that theology can only be a human construct. Again, because words are only signs and symbols that point to reality, they can never be the reality itself. That's the reality of the world we live in. Because our thoughts are words, it is impossible to contain anything like God that is infinite, limitless and boundless, in the thoughts in our head or in the words in a book. When we do, we end up with an anthropomorphic god that is of necessity created in our image. That's our only option. We project what we can understand onto something that we can’t understand and then call it god, and call it good; end of the matter; because we have labeled it. Even according to the Bible, that is idolatry. We end up stuck in our own anthropomorphic ideations full of personifications and projections because we want, we crave “certainty”; which is really what we worship. We have to understand; and therefore we create that which we can understand to define what is really unknowable, limitless, boundless mystery (“uncertainty”).
Even great faith leaders recognized this and expressed this frustration:
St. Augustine (354 - 430 AD) has this to say:
“What then, brethren, shall we say of God?
For if thou hast been able to understand what thou wouldest say, it is not God.
If thou hast been able to comprehend it, thou hast comprehended something else instead of God.
If thou hast been able to comprehend him as thou thinkest, by so thinking thou hast deceived thyself.
This then is not God, if thou hast comprehended it; but if this be God, thou has not comprehended it.”
"And why,"asks Meister Eckhart, "why do to prate of God? Whatever you say of God is untrue."
And Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968) has this to say:
And Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968) has this to say:
"God" is far beyond any pronoun such as "he" or"she".
“If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is,
then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness.
Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.”
(Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, p. 131)
IMAGES AND PROJECTIONS
"Can we not look at the truth without creating ideas? It is almost instinctive with most of us when something true is put before us to create immediately an idea about it. And I think if we can understand why we do this so instinctively, almost unconsciously, then perhaps we shall understand if it is possible to be free from effort."
- Krishnamurti, On Truth
"The mind is the product of the past, it is the result of yesterday, and can such a mind be open to the unknown? It can only project an image, but that projection is not real; so your god is not God—it is an image of your own making, an image of your own gratification. There can be reality only when the mind understands the total process of itself and comes to an end. When the mind is completely empty—only then is it capable of receiving the unknown. The mind is not purged until it understands the content of relationship—its relationship with property, with people—until it has established the right relationship with everything. Until it understands the whole process of conflict in relationship, the mind cannot be free. Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still—only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being." (Jiddu Krishnamurti)
Also see, Theological Noncognitivism
or Ignosticism
Joseph Campbell: "'God' it's an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known. But the transcendent is unknowable and unknown. God is transcendent, finally, of anything like the name 'God'. God is beyond names and forms. Meister Eckhart said that the ultimate and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God, leaving your notion of God for an experience of that which transcends all notions."
then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness.
Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.”
(Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, p. 131)
This "darkness" and this "silence" that Merton talks about must be free from human images and mental constructs, ideas and projections. Labels, names, words are all as limiting as language and thoughts; all bound up with images and stories in our heads. This is also what Krishnamurti refers to in Freedom from the Known as an "image of your own making." (see quote below)
Not only, even according to the Bible, is this idolatry, but I see any use of language that names, labels, and defines that which cannot be defined, the unknown, as a form of profanity. Our language has become a language of exclusion (mine is real, not yours; I'm right, you're wrong) or profanity by taking the sacred (the unknowable, the boundless, the limitless, the eternal, the timeless... the truth) and reducing it to words; which are labels; a lazy man's way of expressing himself. This is no different that using curse words to express oneself rather than expressing one's feelings and working with the real issues; or using pejorative, prejudicial words to describe whole groups of people that one may not like; defining, defacing, and containing, them so that we can disregard them. This is profanity.
I have chosen to use a Language of Peace and Inclusion, Integrity and Integration (both personal and social), sacred rather than the ordinary (profane) language of divisiveness and exclusion that we hear so often in both political and religious discourse and rhetoric.
IMAGES AND PROJECTIONS
- Krishnamurti, On Truth
"If we indulge the human propensity to understate, exaggerate, and alter facts for whatever comfort or false security a lie might accord us, we forfeit our capacity to see reality clearly, and see only a world of our own invention."
—Lin Jensen, "Right Lying"
Concept of God
We believe in our concept of God, the God we understand from our perspective, the God we have created in our own image. The God we have conceptualized and theologized. Our conditioning, our organizing dramas, myths, and stories shape our conceptions of God. There was a time that we as humans believed in Mother Earth, Zeus, Apollo, Ares, Mars, Venus, Pluto, etc. These are images or stories in our heads; attempts to explain the
unexplainable, to define the undefinable, to limit the limitless, to bind the boundless, to contain the uncontainable, to obtain the unobtainable.
"A personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears, and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them." (Karen Armstrong, A History of God)
Our words, our thoughts, our perceptions, our concepts make a difference; and they create our reality. I can no longer create god in my image.
"A personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears, and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them." (Karen Armstrong, A History of God)
Our words, our thoughts, our perceptions, our concepts make a difference; and they create our reality. I can no longer create god in my image.
Here is an example of creating gods in our image. It made a huge difference in societies when our gods shifted from the ancient female mother goddesses to the male warrior gods.
Goddess to God
The mother god (female) creates a very different culture from the warrior god (male).
The image of god as a FEMALE mother god:- We are birthed from our ground of being.
- Nature nurtures our being. We are one with the earth and dependent upon her to sustain our lives.
- Shared basic assumption: Unity. We are all one.
The image of god as a MALE warrior god:
- We are separate from our ground of being in the same way that the male child has to be separated by ritual from dependence on mother to become a real man; hunter and provider.
- Nature is dominated by our existence. Nature exists for our use and abuse.
- Shared basic assumption: Duality. Light and dark. Friend and Foe. Predator and victim. Right and wrong. Male and female. Power and oppression.
- "The almighty’s genderless. The Lakota refer to our Creator as Wakan Tanka — “the Great Mystery.” Because only a misogynistic, male centric religion assigns a gender to their “god.” (@lakotaman1)
Our basic concepts and perceptions, projections and images of our gods and goddesses unfold from the culture within which we live and our beliefs by which we live.
Another way to see it is that the basic concept of our selves unfold to create the world:
"Loving people live in a loving world.
Hostile people live in a hostile world.
Same world." (Wayne Dyer)
"Thought creates the world then says, 'I didn't do it!'" (David Bohm, Physicist)
This also applies to our thinking about ourselves:
"In order to observe the movement of your own mind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees and disagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following with an intention to understand - a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more than we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees. When we condemn or justify we cannot see clearly, nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is, we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves. Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are." (Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, the book is available free on the internet)
This also applies to our thinking about ourselves:
"In order to observe the movement of your own mind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees and disagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following with an intention to understand - a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more than we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees. When we condemn or justify we cannot see clearly, nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is, we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves. Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are." (Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, the book is available free on the internet)
STILLNESS gives sight and insight to see beyond and beneath the surface to the Source.
STILLNESS reveals to us that the space between us, connecting all things, is not empty but rather full and bursting with abundance.
STILLNESS is our connection to this abundance.
STILLNESS reveals to us that the space between us, connecting all things, is not empty but rather full and bursting with abundance.
STILLNESS is our connection to this abundance.
"How often it is difficult for most of us to give solitude any sort of priority in the kind of life that we live today. How we avoid it; how we are frightened of being alone; how easy it is never to let it happen; there is always something or someone to fill the void, even if it is no more than turning to the radio for company. I guess that it is a question of inner conviction as well as external pressure. The world simply does not understand this need to be alone." Esther de Waal
Source: Living With Contradiction
So that we can learn to see beyond and beneath the surface to the Source...
I propose that most of religion is described below quite accurately. At least it was for me for most of my life.
A Marvelous Escape
What is the impetus behind the search for God, and is that search real? For most of us, it is an escape from actuality. So, we must be very clear in ourselves whether this search after God is an escape, or whether it is a search for truth in everything -truth in our relationships, truth in the value of things, truth in ideas. If we are seeking God merely because we are tired of this world and its miseries, then it is an escape. Then we create God, and therefore it is not God. The God of the temples, of the books, is not God, obviously-it is a marvelous escape. But if we try to find the truth, not in one exclusive set of actions, but in all our actions, ideas, and relationships, if we seek the right evaluation of food, clothing, and shelter, then because our minds are capable of clarity and understanding, when we seek reality we shall find it. It will not then be an escape. But if we are confused with regard to the things of the world -food, clothing, shelter, relationship, and ideas-how can we find reality? We can only invent reality. So, God, truth, or reality, is not to be known by a mind that is confused, conditioned, limited. How can such a mind think of reality or God? It has first to decondition itself.It has to free itself from its own limitations, and only then can it know what God is, obviously not before. Reality is the unknown, and that which is known is not the real. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
Also see, Theological Noncognitivism
or Ignosticism
Why we make gods
Why we made God in our own image
By Rachel Newcomb
Science and religion: God didn't make man; man made gods - Los Angeles Times
Why Do People Believe in God?
The evolution of religious belief - Psychology Today
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