I thought this sentence from the second letter of Peter used as the second reading was very interesting:
Beloved: We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.That is a very strong claim. Obviously, no one has to believe it. I do.
But whether we choose to believe it or not, that sentence puts the claims of Christianity into an entirely different basket than any other religion.
And it does so to the point that, as the late Father Neuhaus used to say, it becomes reasonable to argue that Christianity is not a religion at all.
I agree, a strong case can be made that Jesus never intended to start a new religion, which gains more and more credibility in my mind every time I pick up the newspaper. To follow Jesus is to adopt a way of life, its not an institution. A former classmate of mine, Becky Garrison, just published a new book called "Jesus Died for This?" I haven't read it yet, its satire but from the early reviews I've read she makes some good points.
ReplyDeletethere is a part in the beginning of Ratzinger's book "Introduction to Christianity" where he talks about how different kinds of religions have different focuses. Judaism identifies itself as law, Roman religion was mainly ritualistic with belief not being as important, and Christianity identifies itself strongly with "belief," as in the creed. This really fascinated me because I often find the categories people use to talk about religion to be strange and inaccurate, and this was a different way to look at it. In my opinion, religious conviction is not clearly different from political belief or broader metaphysical beliefs, whether they're expressed or just assumed. Still, I find that whenever people try to define religion, they have to resort to unusably broad definitions.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think that might be in order to encompass the different notions people have about what religion means to them. Based on my reading of the Gospels Christianity is more about doing and acting rather than believing. If you take the parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, the often overlooked point is that the Samaritan was considered unclean and not worthy of entering the Temple. Yet when asked, Jesus said he would go to Heaven nonetheless because of his actions toward the traveler who had fallen on hard times. That says to me that actions are more important than belief. Even the Beatitudes all about people who are doing or experiencing something--suffering--not about believing.
ReplyDeleteI like Ratzinger's way of looking at it.
ReplyDeleteOne interesting thing about the ritualistic aspect he identifies in Roman religion is that it retains so much power. And we see a lot of that about as we see people adopting religions that have been invented out of whole cloth (such as Wicca), or trivialized foreign rituals such as what passes for yoga and Zen Buddhism) and what are little more than silly superstitions with exotic provenance (such as Feng Shui).
What all of these adaptions have in common is a desire to have the "meaning" that comes from ritual with little or no moral commitment.
The Good Samaritan parable is, of course, an incredible gift. I often wonder how we might update it so as to put someone whom our modern elites would declare anathema in the place of the Samaritan. How many right-thinking good people would, for example, stoop to help Conrad Black, Jimmy Swaggart, Lindsay Lohan, Martha Stewart or Dick Cheney?
I think most or all of the people I know would stoop to help any of them, yet some would be excluded from the Temple.
ReplyDelete"What all of these adaptions have in common is a desire to have the "meaning" that comes from ritual with little or no moral commitment."
ReplyDeleteI think the same can be said of any fundamentalist Christian religion or even some brands of Catholicism as well. The committment is to the ritual or the belief system, even if--or maybe because--it results in rejecting or excluding others from the ritual unless they believe X Y & Z, which seems to me a contradiction in what Jesus said. Islamic fundamentalism is the same or worse, but I don't know much about it other than what I have read in the papers or seen on TV.
The Roman rituals were, I think, less spiritually meaningful and more practical. Before building a house you would have to pray to all the spirits and deities involved in the location, the materials, the actions, etc. And the rituals followed all these legalistic formulas: "I, or someone I have appointed," or "Provided that this ritual is correctly performed,..."
ReplyDeleteDo you know how many guys I see at the gym make the sign of the Cross before they attempt to lift 300 lbs? And doesn't Notre Dame start every football game with a Hail Mary in the locker room, isn't that where the "Hail Mary pass" came from?
ReplyDeleteOK, I was more responding to Jules than to Bob. I don't disagree that much of popular religiosity is semi-(or mostly-)superstitious.
ReplyDeleteOk I understand now, but you get my point.
ReplyDelete