Some people in suits and sunday clothes were walking around my neighborhood. Either political or proselytizers. I started thinking about the nature of God and all religions. William Blake's old poem, "All Religions Are One" is actually very true. In case anyone stumbling upon this blog hasn't noticed, I'm not much of a deist, and I think you'll find that most deist were left alone too often as children.
Moving along to my point about William Blake. The bible says we are created in God's image and I believe that there is an element of the divine in all creation. We are made in His image, but we are also born in sin, which means that we are not perfect and never will be, but only through our belief and faith in the divine, can we experience God. In other words we are finite beings, with infinite aspirations and the bible offers us some methodology for covering that gap. A big part of the original message is that God lives within us, not completely of course, but in some mysterious way our finite forms cannot completely comprehend. The divine spark, so to speak. The finite part, the imperfect part, or the "born in sin" part, however you might choose to view the issue, merely states that we are all different. We all experience God in our own unique way. Does that mean we need a seperate religion for each one of us? No, but it does help to explain the many faces of God, as if each culture has its own God, or correctly stated. Each culture reflects the same God in different ways, hence Blake's statement "that all religions are one."
Working my way through this you can see the seduction that Satan places in the path of this realization and the daily practice that follows. The Catholic church has placed doctrine before the Bible, in effect defining for a Catholic what it means to be Christian. The church in effect is spoon feeding doctrine in the mass and the profession of faith. There connection with God is through the church, and not so much directly with God. I can understand much of this when for centuries, the masses were more often than not, illiterate and needed to be told, or shown in pictures through artwork and the beautiful churches what the nature of God is. The direct path to God was taken away, which was a shame. The protestants brought this back, as did some Catholics in the form of the mystics like St. John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila who both practiced a form of meditation that brought them to a transcendent experience with God. A direct experience perhaps. The pitfalls of removing the Church as the middle man in connection with God arise from human weakness. People who realize that issues of faith and moral authority comes from within, can confuse that message to serve their own selfish needs and pathology. Christian Science is an example of the hubris that can occur when Satan bends the ear of someone who has based their faith on reaction and pathology rather than an honest search for God. While it is true that organized religion is not necessary to be good Christian, the revolt against the abuses in the Catholic Church and corrupt protestant counterparts show how the reaction can be as wrong as the initial corruption. We are born imperfect, but we are born in the image of God, a paradox that cannot be solved by claiming we are God's perfect children. This perfection is not found in this life and any aspiration to be perfect is the Devil's own doing to draw us away from the message of Christ. It is a tough balance to maintain. Another ramble but I'll clean it up to make sense later.
This blog has become something of an exercise to clean up isssues in my own head and to just get my words going. I had a suspicion the other day that being a successful writer requires a certain level of self-confidence in the merit of your own work that could border on arrogance. Airline pilots come off this way, but they need to have a certain level of confidence to do their job. Women may not understand this, but some will see that the pilot needs to believe in himself, and it is difficult to believe in yourself only when flying a plan, and then to become a humble monk when the plane is parked. That level of confidence can easily infect the rest of the pilot's day, and the rest of his life. The balance. Ultimately there is nothing to balance. Not better than, but my best is damn good, something of a lead by example greatness to it. I never had the need to be arrogant but I despised those who were because I could never rid myself of their subterfuge when in the same room with them. Refusing to be anything that might be arrogant, I sold myself short too often. Let's just let it be called arrogance, even though I know that it isn't and write some more with the honest belief in how good it is. Talk about blowing our the carbs every once in a while.
Moving along to my point about William Blake. The bible says we are created in God's image and I believe that there is an element of the divine in all creation. We are made in His image, but we are also born in sin, which means that we are not perfect and never will be, but only through our belief and faith in the divine, can we experience God. In other words we are finite beings, with infinite aspirations and the bible offers us some methodology for covering that gap. A big part of the original message is that God lives within us, not completely of course, but in some mysterious way our finite forms cannot completely comprehend. The divine spark, so to speak. The finite part, the imperfect part, or the "born in sin" part, however you might choose to view the issue, merely states that we are all different. We all experience God in our own unique way. Does that mean we need a seperate religion for each one of us? No, but it does help to explain the many faces of God, as if each culture has its own God, or correctly stated. Each culture reflects the same God in different ways, hence Blake's statement "that all religions are one."
Working my way through this you can see the seduction that Satan places in the path of this realization and the daily practice that follows. The Catholic church has placed doctrine before the Bible, in effect defining for a Catholic what it means to be Christian. The church in effect is spoon feeding doctrine in the mass and the profession of faith. There connection with God is through the church, and not so much directly with God. I can understand much of this when for centuries, the masses were more often than not, illiterate and needed to be told, or shown in pictures through artwork and the beautiful churches what the nature of God is. The direct path to God was taken away, which was a shame. The protestants brought this back, as did some Catholics in the form of the mystics like St. John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila who both practiced a form of meditation that brought them to a transcendent experience with God. A direct experience perhaps. The pitfalls of removing the Church as the middle man in connection with God arise from human weakness. People who realize that issues of faith and moral authority comes from within, can confuse that message to serve their own selfish needs and pathology. Christian Science is an example of the hubris that can occur when Satan bends the ear of someone who has based their faith on reaction and pathology rather than an honest search for God. While it is true that organized religion is not necessary to be good Christian, the revolt against the abuses in the Catholic Church and corrupt protestant counterparts show how the reaction can be as wrong as the initial corruption. We are born imperfect, but we are born in the image of God, a paradox that cannot be solved by claiming we are God's perfect children. This perfection is not found in this life and any aspiration to be perfect is the Devil's own doing to draw us away from the message of Christ. It is a tough balance to maintain. Another ramble but I'll clean it up to make sense later.
This blog has become something of an exercise to clean up isssues in my own head and to just get my words going. I had a suspicion the other day that being a successful writer requires a certain level of self-confidence in the merit of your own work that could border on arrogance. Airline pilots come off this way, but they need to have a certain level of confidence to do their job. Women may not understand this, but some will see that the pilot needs to believe in himself, and it is difficult to believe in yourself only when flying a plan, and then to become a humble monk when the plane is parked. That level of confidence can easily infect the rest of the pilot's day, and the rest of his life. The balance. Ultimately there is nothing to balance. Not better than, but my best is damn good, something of a lead by example greatness to it. I never had the need to be arrogant but I despised those who were because I could never rid myself of their subterfuge when in the same room with them. Refusing to be anything that might be arrogant, I sold myself short too often. Let's just let it be called arrogance, even though I know that it isn't and write some more with the honest belief in how good it is. Talk about blowing our the carbs every once in a while.
