usa, history, art, cultureThis came to be via David James Duncan, author of “The River Why” and “The Brothers K”, two bestsellers the include references to the oneness of the universe, but are definitely not religious. He has received criticism from both theists and atheists. To quote from his book “God, Laughs and Plays”,
“If Americans of European descent are to understand and honor the legacy of Celtic, European, Middle Eastern, and other Christian traditions and pass our literature, music, art, monasticism, and mysticism on intact, the right-wing hijacking of Christianity must be defined as the reductionist rip-off that it is. To allow televangelists or pulpit neocons to claim exclusive ownership of Jesus is to hand that incomparable lover of enemies, prostitutes, foreigners, children, and fishermen over to those who evince no such love.”
So, the question is, is this rubbish or not? Before exploring Christianity directly, I frequently came across Biblical references in other texts and couldn’t fully understand them. So I can see that side of it.
David James Duncan and I would agree that there is, so if your answer is that there isn’t, please provide some reasoning for it. To add a little clarification, answers should be referring to the actual content in holy writings, and not simply allusions to content, and whether its meaning is relevant and endangered by the fringe or phantasmagorical influences of religious sideshows.
Opinions of the Bible as a piece of literature, or fixture in literature, are not pertinent. I’m assuming that is indicated by its use in literature by Steinbeck, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, George Bernard Shaw, Toni Morrison, James Joyce, John Milton, John Bunyan and many others, and the common phrases in use such as “milk and honey”, “an eye for an eye”, “right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing”, “Promised Land” and many others. If you are making a case against, please include some sort of reference to those uses.
Relatively recent discoveries of the Christian Gnostic Gospels, as opposed to the four traditional ones, has highlighted how much Christianity has been changed over time by it’s influential leaders. Some would view this as a perversion of a faith that should have been much closer to pacifistic Buddhism. This seems to be a theme extended to Islam as well- as the initial religion changed greatly a scant hundred years after the proposed death of Muhammad. So while it is good that these words “stuck” around for the unbiased mind to contemplate, one has to wonder whether the trends towards intolerance will continued to be fueled by distortions of them.
Let’s consider the opposite: suppose I were to read Mein Kampf solely as a means to understand and further studies on psychopathic individuals. While the initial words are undeniably evil- this use of them may be construed as a helpful one for humanity. In this case, while these words probably should have been destroyed, perhaps because of them I will develop a tool for properly diagnosing extreme psychosis in children that will then lead to the prevention of such an individual ever coming to power again. So it is the intentions of the man that give the moral value to the words he is using. As such, unless we can judge the intentions of future men we cannot make a rational determination as to if certain words should be handed down to them.
So I guess it boils down to pessimism or optimism about the human race as a whole. If we believe that we will become more prone to violence and intolerance- then no- lets just destroy everything and hope we’ve taken enough fuel away from the fire that could consume humanity. I choose to personally hope this is not so- and that we will become more enlightened- and words will be taken for what they truly are: the recorded thoughts of others.
And I agree with the quote- the first step is to remove the sole authority over the words from the hands of the men who distort them.
But, will the current interpretations of the Bible […] harm the ability of future generations to understand those references?
Well, the whole history is a process of preserving, interpreting and manipulating texts. If there is no new influence on texts, we would stand still. But it’s not possible to keep everything as it is.
The underlying question is if there is anything there worth preserving.
Put it into a library, conserve it, make high resolution pictures. In a million years - maybe nobody is interested any more. But shall we conserve everything?
You can only conserve a lot of material if you have an increasing amount of people, to make more and more of them experts for historic cultures. A shriveling population could conserve books, stones and databases, but if nobody studies this material, the meaning might get lost.
But is it a loss? Do you feel something missing? Thousands of religions vanished with very few leftovers. Christianity will vanish too - let it happen. It’s not 100 years since the german christians murdered the european jews and other peoples, races, homosexuals and even sick people. “God with us”. Todays christians understand the bible in total opposite direction, but in a few years, they will again believe what is up to date.
There is no true root of christianity - it’s root was the jewish religion which has it own roots, and it was influenced by the romans, by european cultures (think: Christmas tree, snow, rudolf, easter eggs, …) and nowadays more modern influences.
What do you want to conserve for whom? Do you need to conserve it in christianity?
I think we need human rights and civil rights plus social solidarity. That’s enough to care about.
The underlying question is if there is anything there worth preserving.
The underlying idea of preserving something is the idea of a creator, who made a garden eden, which should be preserved and changes are taboo, because what he did was alright, no doubt allowed.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.