Monday, May 08, 2006
Been thinkin' about religion again
When in our lives do we let religion take over who we are? When do we surrender our right and our ability to reason? This kind of thing really troubles me.
To get this going, let me pick one single example: the Catholic Church wants to tell me what I can do and what I cannot do regarding procreation. It says that barrier contraception is bad and evil and sinful. And yet, it gives a couple control on when a new life is brought into the world. Does a couple who want to have their rightful say about the creation of new human life steal this privileged power from the Creator and make it their own? Does this presumption equate to the pride and the arrogance of the fallen angels? I think not. Having a direct say in when we grow or don't grow our families is an exercise of free-will and one which allows us to determine how much we can extend ourselves and our abilities in tending for a new person. It allows us also to make sure that we won't have more children than we will be able to care for and to provide for. I don't see the point in giving up our gifts of free-will and of thinking to run the risk of allowing another life to come into being when it has so many odds stacked up against it from the start. What is the point in setting this new life up for a harsh upbringing lacking the love, the attention, and, why not say it, the resources needed for growing up into a healthy, well-rounded individual?
Scripture, that is, the canonical Catholic Bible is not clear or unambiguous or devoid of contradictions. Even if we assume that the books therein were written with divine inspiration, they were transcribed onto paper (papyrus?) by people. And people are fallible; they are noisy channels that can introduce distortion and compromise the content of the message. I think it is our duty to put scripture through the test of reason, because only what survives that confrontation will constitute points that we can believe in and live by.
We may spend years reading it and come up with biased interpretations of texts that already contain biases in themselves. Consequently, it bothers me that a group then goes and decides for the whole herd what the scripture means, and that becomes theology and dogma with which we all must agree. That interpretation becomes a ruling, a doctrine that gains the status of self-evident and unquestionable truth which must be followed by all. Follow it not and thou art full of sin.
Personally, the clearest message I find in scripture, in its purest form, is the guiding light that I need to solve my dilemmas: love your neighbor as you love yourself. It estaliblishes a struggle that we can engage in with our innner selves to become better people who can live in harmony. I would like to explore this precept with Augustinian clarity to cathegorically show how much good can come from it, but I lack the required qualifications in philosophy. The feeling I have though is that this is the most worthwhile message from scripture and that if we could base all our actions on it, no mistakes would ever arise.
It saddens me that so much energy is wasted into discussions of doctrine, form, and ritual. The Church worries about people using condoms, reading Harry Potter, or watching The Da Vinci Code (IT'S NOT A CODE, IT'S AN ANAGRAM!!!) , but how much do we invest in keeping the core of our faith alive? Wish that another St. Francis would rise up help us find our way back toward the path of the real message. Something along the lines of living Christianity in its most beautiful and pure essence of love, tolerance, and universal harmony.
To get this going, let me pick one single example: the Catholic Church wants to tell me what I can do and what I cannot do regarding procreation. It says that barrier contraception is bad and evil and sinful. And yet, it gives a couple control on when a new life is brought into the world. Does a couple who want to have their rightful say about the creation of new human life steal this privileged power from the Creator and make it their own? Does this presumption equate to the pride and the arrogance of the fallen angels? I think not. Having a direct say in when we grow or don't grow our families is an exercise of free-will and one which allows us to determine how much we can extend ourselves and our abilities in tending for a new person. It allows us also to make sure that we won't have more children than we will be able to care for and to provide for. I don't see the point in giving up our gifts of free-will and of thinking to run the risk of allowing another life to come into being when it has so many odds stacked up against it from the start. What is the point in setting this new life up for a harsh upbringing lacking the love, the attention, and, why not say it, the resources needed for growing up into a healthy, well-rounded individual?
Scripture, that is, the canonical Catholic Bible is not clear or unambiguous or devoid of contradictions. Even if we assume that the books therein were written with divine inspiration, they were transcribed onto paper (papyrus?) by people. And people are fallible; they are noisy channels that can introduce distortion and compromise the content of the message. I think it is our duty to put scripture through the test of reason, because only what survives that confrontation will constitute points that we can believe in and live by.
We may spend years reading it and come up with biased interpretations of texts that already contain biases in themselves. Consequently, it bothers me that a group then goes and decides for the whole herd what the scripture means, and that becomes theology and dogma with which we all must agree. That interpretation becomes a ruling, a doctrine that gains the status of self-evident and unquestionable truth which must be followed by all. Follow it not and thou art full of sin.
Personally, the clearest message I find in scripture, in its purest form, is the guiding light that I need to solve my dilemmas: love your neighbor as you love yourself. It estaliblishes a struggle that we can engage in with our innner selves to become better people who can live in harmony. I would like to explore this precept with Augustinian clarity to cathegorically show how much good can come from it, but I lack the required qualifications in philosophy. The feeling I have though is that this is the most worthwhile message from scripture and that if we could base all our actions on it, no mistakes would ever arise.
It saddens me that so much energy is wasted into discussions of doctrine, form, and ritual. The Church worries about people using condoms, reading Harry Potter, or watching The Da Vinci Code (IT'S NOT A CODE, IT'S AN ANAGRAM!!!) , but how much do we invest in keeping the core of our faith alive? Wish that another St. Francis would rise up help us find our way back toward the path of the real message. Something along the lines of living Christianity in its most beautiful and pure essence of love, tolerance, and universal harmony.
# posted by Luiz Felipe Perrone : Monday, May 08, 2006
