What About God?

A comment (for which, thanks) on my last blog On Becoming a Person queries my views on religion and God.

I wondered there whether my teenage developing views were rational or a reaction against the fundamentalist regime of my upbringing. That certainly made me a critic of detail, since religious belief (across the religions) requires belief in miracles, magic, and the irrational generally. In the Old Testament, the sun stood still to give Joshua military victory, Lot's wife becomes a pillar of salt, the waters of the Red Sea pile up. The New Testament presents us with a virgin birth, a physical ascention to heaven, and numerous medical miracles. None of these is a problem if we can read them as folklore.

Today we have a vociferous evangelical atheist movement pursuing the demolition of myth and folklore, and denying the relevance of a concept of God. Religions need to respond by redefining themselves after such demythologising, so that belief in God does not ride on the irrational. Rudolph Bultmann applied demythologisation to the life of Jesus. Paul Tillich appealed to depth psychology to find God in (or as) the depth of personal being. This is not unlike philosophical Hinduism.The collection of articles by active Christians, called The Myth of God Incarnate was an unexpected but understandable best seller. That the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, are problematic historical documents is saying no more than that we should approach them as critically as we do Josephus, Tacitus or Suetonius. That the books were written to have an authoritative use should put us on our guard more, for that makes them socio-political propaganda, documents for contemporary people to accept without question and act on, and if required give up their lives for. All people in power try to write (and rewrite) history and it was no different in the early church. The Old Testament consists of foundation books for the origins of Judaism, written to promote the interests of a particular power group. Some off-text sections have survived which makes the archaeology of the text particularly interesting.

Religions mostly base themselves on stories of one or more deities. Theravada Buddhism alone presents their founder as human and not divine, which did not translate to Tibet, China and Japan, where deities abound in Mahayana Buddhism. People then as now varied from concrete/pictorial to philosophical. The common folk needed pictures, whether in words or icons; the more thoughtful could see beyond them to deeper principles. It is what God means in these deeper principles that concern us here.

God is pictured (described through a picture) even in the Hebrew Bible where creating images of God was forbidden. 'He' walked in the garden, was a shepherd and king, and so on. I describe this process in some detail in the chapter on symbolism in my Creating the Old Testament (1989). A picture can be demythologised. God is not really a shepherd but an aspect of care and protection is shepherd-like (the argument would go). Of course the same God who protects also destroys when in a different mood. The prophet Jeremiah focused on political disaster as a divine punishment for sin.  Hindu deities are iconic (presented in the form of icons or images). Saraswati goddess of wisdom is a lady, dressed in white, crowned, with a Sitar, rosary and book. I asked children what wisdom is, and one said, "a wise person is someone who knows a lot about a lot of thiongs, but is humble and not proud and uses what they know to help others". So this is what Saraswati means. This deep inner wisdom is part of what we mean by God. This is one of many images of God that Hindus use and all can be deconstructed similarly. Ganesh, with elephant head, is the remover of obstacles: what better than an elephant to knock a wall down; but Ganesh has an untied bond (meaning to remove inhibition), a cake (meaning to maintain strength), a goad (meaning to make maximum effort) and a broken tusk (meaning to take risks). Obstacles are only overcome thus, with inner strength and conviction. Inside each of us is a reservoir of inner strength, which we need to learn to draw on. God therefore refers to these inner strengths. But again, what is created comes from the destruction of what went before. Siva is creator, but also destroyer, reminding people of the procdess of change and entropy.

Religion can make us either dependent or independent. Fatalism is to say that God has it all planned and we can do nothing. If we do nothing, disaster will happen and we will say it is God's will. Blaming God for disaster is as old as religion. Praying for help might unlock inner strengths that will succeed.

Prayer is another interesting topic. In a sense, we pray within ourselves to no external person; but the inner dialogue may be helpful. By externalising the vision (that is, thinking of an objective God) we might focus ourselves to succeed instead of fail. We all need an inner reflexive dialogue to clarify our thoughts and motivations. Contemplation is a monologue, but prayer is a dialogue. Artificial maybe, but effective. Prayer is an internal discipline which is more helpful than unhelpful.

If I think about ethics, I can visualise the apogy of ethics: perfect, positive communitarian behaviour. This is part of the conceptual cluster I call God. Similarly with justice, there is a core concept of perfect justice. And virtue, and goodness, and altruism, and fidelity, and empowerment. All these give God substance, and I cherish them, the highest of all positive values.

On Becoming a Person

Carl R Rogers, in On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy, poses two challenging questions: how have I come to think the thoughts I do? and How have I come to be the person I am? From that, he leads into a descriptive autobiography, but I will try to be more focused.

Day 1.
I have studied religion in various forms most of my life - indeed it was my first specialism. Brought up in evangelical certainties, my father taught me to question and not be afraid of standing out against the crowd. The religious community, the Brethren, were repressive in the sense that I was hauled over the coals from time to time for asking the wrong questions - for example about women's role in worship, about literal inspiration. Looking back, I was nicely hounded, but learnt to cope with it.  Believing or thinking something just because everyone else does is a form of intellectual idleness. I lost detailed dogmatic beliefs as soon as I started studying. My Professor at University, FF Bruce, was also from the Brethren, but I was relieved to find that his mind was very open. Other University teachers had a range of beliefs - Sam Brandon, about Jesus being an active Zealot, John Allegro about sacred mushrooms, James Barr about the wickedness of fundamentalism. I study religion as an outsider, interested in the power of metaphor, why people express themselves in such self-deceiving ways when taking metaphor literally, but also not blind to personality gains that this provides for them. Having a conscience, for whatever reason, is socially very helpful.

Having a conscience brings me to my interest in justice, good works, and being a helpful citizen. Being helpful to others is a bit of an obsession without which my life would be simpler. Intellectually, I ask questions about social justice, implicit corruption to achieve benefit, and the unfairness of life generally. Those that achieve wealth, fame and fortune seems to do so for the wrong reasons in a society in which something deep down is rotten, where self, greed, ambition and power are drivers esteemed by gatekeepers. My politics are therefore left of centre, although I do not feel or give loyalty to political parties.

As to what sort of person I am, I leave to others ultimately. I love my own company, but also treasure the company of people I care about. I try to empower rather than disempower, give credit where credit is due, and take blame if blame is due. This is what I think I do - others may see me differently. I write with others for practical purposes, and learn much from others - but I prefer to write by myself. I also enjoy physical exercise - I could have had a career in athletics and sport generally, and now, once gardening find it hard to stop. I find pointless exercise irritating - and would much rather fit exercise into my everyday life and tasks. Although I like music, it is not important to me and a silent desert island holds no fears. Wall to wall potted music in shops drives me to distraction. I probably don't move to music either - since it has never been tested, I don't know.

Equally I don't need conversation, though enjoy it when the time is right. I communicate in writing, which means utterances are considered rather than spontaneous. Friends will probably say that this is not true, and they may be right, I may understand myself wrongly. I am probably intolerably self confident, but this hides a certain self-consciousness. Probably no one gets crosser at me than myself, and I have no illusions about my faults and failings.

If I were to write my own obituary, what would I say? Someone who has dabbled in a lot but not become known for any one field of endeavour? But I don't see breadth as a disadvantage or a failing. Someone who constantly swims against the tide? Again, not in my book a failing. I hope I am remembered as someone who has touched many people's lives in positive ways and who has not hurt too many - I wonder.

Day 2.

"First-person research/practice skills and methods address the ability of the researcher to foster an inquiring approach to his or her own life, to act awarely and choicefully, and to assess effects on the outside world while acting."  

Reason PB and Torbert, W  'The action turn: a further look at the scientific merits of action research, Concepts and Transformations, 6(1):1-37, 2001:23

I am not really comfortable talking about myself. Do I think the thoughts I do as a reaction against upbringing, or do I have the freedom to think freely because I have escaped from the restrictions instilled through childhood? Is it common or rare for a person to break loose from nurture? It is sometimes said that loss of belief creates a hole that needs to be filled. In my case belief was never deep rooted, and through schooling was not something I could explain to others. Finding that it had no substance when examined was perhaps inevitable, though I note that others do not find it so, or at least take longer to find dogma wanting. So there never was a void to be filled; secular ethical standards and aspirations remained as a demythologised core reality. This is acting choicefully. The Buddhist notion of right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, contemplation (the Noble Eightfold Path) is a powerful menu for personal development and integrity. Whatever we think and do, there are right choices and wrong choices. Wrong choices lead to bad faith, which has consequences (karma) and when accumulated globally adds up to dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. Buddha's vision was that unsatisfactoriness is the result of wrong thinking, so instead of complaining about life and the world, we simply get on with putting our heads right. I am not a Buddhist, but this speaks to me.

Much of my work is in educational research. I have said in the past (and not so past) that many schools are not fit for purpose. Their purpose should be education, which means learning, participation, motivation, and intellectual excitement. My own schooling did not offer me that; nor did the first two secondary schools of my teaching career in the 1970s. They were about control. In teacher training, my experience of primary schools was better, with better relationships and more freedom - sometimes. But often unchallenging. The excitement of learning from experience was well articulated by John Dewey and served primary education well until the National Curriculum replaced education with assessment, but that is another story. There is much to improve, especially in the relationship between teachers and pupils, who really should be partners learning together.

I am not a great fan of fiction, though I have read professionally a great deal of fiction for children, and write some occasionally. There seems to be a modern fetish for magic, ghosts, wizards, and horrific monsters in children's literature and anything other seems hopelessly old fashioned. Why this obsession for the supernatural, and what will this do to children's thinking? Children are confused about the nature of reality, and I am always surprised at how long belief in Father Christmas persists as one who rumbled the great man when I was 3. Should we be teaching them about battles in parallel worlds, or worlds through wardrobes, of a magic hidden world alongside our own? Or can the word 'pretend' help their development? Anything non-rational is pretend - magic, father Christmas, God, monsters, heaven, hell, paradise. That would reduce nightmares anyway. Perhaps I will write a children's book called Let's Pretend and throttle all these monsters (the myths, not the children).

Day 3.
I am a human. Am I not therefore self-centred, self-serving,  and self-aggrandising? Is not self-esteem my ambition? and self-reward?  Do we have any ways of handling self so that community takes over from greed, and altruism from power? Or are humans bound to be what humans are - an ultra-aggressive animal capable of killing without compassion or conscience? Aggressors create victims, so this too is a natural human state, visible in anxiety and depression. Rogers first defined 'person-centred counselling', though he didn't invent it. This has to allow for the dark as well as the light. The dark pulls more powerfully than the light. Anger, despair, hostility, prejudice can simply take over. But we are thinking beings and can challenge the dark, and find a way back to the light. With help.

Ancestry

Since the last post, we have toured west Scotland around Mull and Skye. This leads me to reflect on ancestry. My mother's family from Nottinghamshire mining stock I will write about later. My father came to England from Dublin in 1936 and joined the RAF. Of the Protestant persuasion, his parents came originally from Scotland. Any connections between the name Bigger and the town of Biggar in Scotland I doubt, having visited Biggar last year and talked with a local historian. But he certainly came from the Glasgow area. There were several Biggers in Ireland, including a medical family, Sir Hugh  Bigger as Officer of Health for Dublin early in the 20th century, and Prof. Joseph Warwick Bigger who wrote the first Bigger's Handbook of Bacteriology, the standard text throughout the 20th century, Man Against Microbe in the 1930s, and reports such as that into diseases in Jordon just before world war 2. An Irish MP called Bigger was active in the call for home rule in the late Victorian age. Francis Joseph Bigger was a local historian and author in Northern Ireland.

My particular interest is in my father's mother, grandma Macmillan, who died probably around 1917 having born 13 children, 12 of which survived childhood. She either came from Canada, or Scotland via Canada to meet grandfather and settle in Dublin. I discovered Macmillans in Arran (the publisher and prime minister's family) but the more regular ones were in the west near Fort William. In many cases, 'were' is the right word. The Macmillans were harassed by their landlords, the Camerons in the period of Highland Clearances. Many Macmillans were cleared off lands their families had worked for centuries. Landowners in Scotland had a legal but not moral claim for land ownership, as royalty gifted lands to supporters, turning the traditional population into tenants who could be turfed out without redress. Many historic land claims today in the Highlands are based on the same inequity. By 1800 the Cameron laird thought himself as a landlord rather than a chief, and wished to create a stately home and estate, requiring him to raise funds, including rents, and clearing away unprofitable crofts and villages. In 1802, with evictions beginning, Archibald and Allan Macmillan left the Lochaber district with 450 people to make new lives, sailing in three ships, Jane, Helen and Friends. Where they settled became Glengarry County. (My thanks to James Hunter, A Dance Called America: the Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada,  1994).
My grandmother was somehow related to the Canadian Macmillans, meeting and marrying grandfather sometime in the 1880s.

In Fort William, I looked at the statue of the Cameron chief two generations later without celebration.

Jimmy Reid

Today was the funeral of Jimmy Reid, leader of the work-in on the Clyde in 1971. He was a great believer in human potential, arguing that the inequalities of society would ensure that such potential is not realised. He fought to save the Clyde shipbuilders. Here is the rat-race speech.

"Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?".

The Bible, a Troubling Text

SUGIRTHARAJAH, R.S., Troublesome Texts: The Bible in Colonial and Contemporary Culture (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008).

The Bible IS a troublesome text. Its interpretation has been over the centuries the cause of major conflict. It has been used to promote slavery and patriarchalism. It has been the cutural symbol of empire, the basis of education systems in non-Christian developing regions. From it identity is claimed, and land disputes are fomented. Missionaries, by translating God as Ancestor, replaced tribal histories with an over-arching Biblicist ‘history’ in which Adam and Abraham are common ancestors, so biblical violence becomes an acceptable political model, and patriarchy-with-polygamy a legitimate social means of repressing women.

    This thought-provoking collection of conference papers asks uncomfortable questions about Biblical hermeneutics. In ‘Gautama and the Galilean’, Sugirtharajah uses his Sri Lankan background to explore how and why Victorian theologians constructed lives of Buddha and Jesus, revealing rampant racism. There is however another side to this: enough ‘Orientalists’ took the task seriously enough to contribute to the preservation of texts which has turned Buddhism from a local cult to a respected global world religion.
Buddhism was encountered as an indigenous religion separately in Nepal and in Sri Lanka, and gradually the similarities and differences between the two observed and the conclusion reached that these were two traditions of a single religion, which came to be named Hinayana (lesser vehicle) and Mahayana (greater vehicle). Hinayana (also referred to as Theravada) was regarded as purer than Mahayana, which was considered syncretistic with local pagan deities and spirits. Today, Mahayana belief and ritual would be treated philosophically and symbolically. The Dalai Lama (leader of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism) is globally known and respected for his spiritual wisdom. Sugirtharajah notes that the reason for the study of Buddhism was to discredit it, and finds many quotations to support this. There is another side to the story and academic study of Pali texts began, albeit slowly. Lives of Jesus have abounded over the past two centuries, are mostly devotional in intent (some thrive on being controversial), and tell us more about the writer than about the historical Jesus. My view is that even the canonical gospels are fictional hagiography which owe more to the need to demonstrate fulfilment of scripture than to historical recollections. Unfortunately, fewer sayings of Jesus have survived than words of the Buddha.
Chapter 2 is on ‘Subjecting the Johannine Letters to Postcolonial Criticism’, concluding that the letters have a dogmatic, imperialistic tone demanding compliance, but that the new message being promulgated owes some informal debt to Buddhism. To ‘walk in the truth’ and ‘walk in love’ is likened to the Buddhism requirement to ‘walk by dhamma’, a praxis-centred practical religion by which ‘everyone who does justice is born again’ and ‘everyone who loves is born of God’ (3 Jn 4, 2 Jn 4-6, I Jn 2.29, 1 Jn 4.7). For the writer, actions not words indicate a person’s faith, salvation by works contrasting with Paul’s salvation by faith and God’s grace. Unfortunately, this worthy ideal is presented as a demand to be obeyed and not an aspiration to be taken to heart. Chapter 3 focuses on the Sermon on the Mount read in India as a basis for ethical spirituality, for example by Gandhi and Roy. He notes that after independence it was replaced by Leviticus 19-26, a ‘roadmap’ for state building, John’s Gospel (mystical), liberation theology and identity hermeneutics. Chapter 4 looks toward next steps: these are for interpreters to explore power-knowledge relevantly. It challenges the dominant hermeneutic by demanding emphases are shifted and silences are vocalised. Chapter 5 explores ideas of God after the tsunami of boxing day 2004, where images of all-powerful and compassionate deity is exploded. Chapter 6 focuses on the link between Bible interpretation and conflict, even violent conflict. Those who study and interpret the Bible from outside the powered elite risk scorn and gagging, even lynching. For Sri Lanka, this is a call for open and honest multi-faith dialogue. Chapter 7 looks at the Bible industry as a form of cultural imperialism, for repression towards a dominant view instead of being a sea of challenging and exploratory stories. Chapter 8, ‘Future Imperfect” calls for attitudes of exclusivity towards the Bible as word of God is replaced by a recognition that the Bible itself was (and is) a site of ideological battle, and has to sit beside the scriptures of other faiths as together charting the spiritual questings of humankind. Chapter 9 ends the compilation autobiographically of the writer’s journey and motivation, calling for creative and imaginative scholarship.

Take Five

Five recent posts in my blog, about literature relating directly to the second world war, as a taster ... enjoy  http://1930-1960.blogspot.com

1. Flying Officer X (HE Bates) - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/08/flying-officer-x.html
2. Josephine Blackstock- http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2009/11/malta-and-greece-josephine-blackstock.html
3. John Pudney - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2009/09/john-pudney-war-poet.html
4. Major Charles Gilson - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/07/major-charles-gilson-1878-1943.html
5. Jack Heming and Eileen Marsh - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/07/heming-and-marsh-again.html

Critical Religious Education.

It seems to me that the issue of religious education rather than religious instruction has never been resolved. Ninian Smart's team in Scool Council Working Paper 36 talked of critical study of religion alongside phenomenology and I think he paired these correctly. We have developed phenomenological awareness of believers' points of view, trying to see the religion through the eyes of the worshipper; but we have not cracked the issue of criticality. Examples of religious education syllabuses remind me of Sunday School. They take for granted that Jesus was/is God (I don't), that the Gospels are accurate biography (I don't), that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven (I don't), that we go to heaven on death (I don't) and that belief is more positive than disbelief/scepticism (again, I don't). I am not a Christian, but Christians vary considerably on their understanding of this particular list. RE should not oversimplify, or claim certainties that have to be overturned later.

Criticality suggests that religious education asks about what Christians mean when they call Jesus divine, whether this is rational and coherent, and what its implications are for personal understanding and social practice. Why do people believe what they believe? Why do they find argument difficult? We should make no assumptions that this is a right belief, just that it is a belief. Over history, Christian practices/beliefs have had good consequences and bad. Oxfam and the inquisition. Religious exclusivity/inclusivity is a pertinent topic for school. Diversity is important. Topic study could include population control and birth control. Christians have views on the environment, some of which campaign against sustainability, a world created for humans to use as the dominant species. Where religious be;ief is irrational or non-rational, it should be discussed. Children and young people need to understand the nature of religious belief in all its diversity, whether it is a belief they are inside of, or exterior to. They need to see the positive as well as the negative, and conversely the negative as well as the positive. RE has mainly stressed the positive, whilst the media emphasise negatives. Atheism is a strident point of view (pov) at the moment, and pupils need to know where this is coming from.

John Dewey emphasised the importance of experience and multiple perspective, building up knowledge from personal experiences. If we add up personal experiences of suffering, bullying, fear, family, affection etc, it adds up to a balanced view of life and of moral responsibilities, but not particularly of religion or Christianity. What extra does the myths and rituals of religion add? And why the need to accept them literally?

Non-literal interpretation of metaphorical language is a step forward - is there something in Paul Tillich's theology of depth which language is struggling to illustrate facets of? Or is doctrine a socially repressive instrument to prevent thinking? I argued this in some detail in Creating the Old Testament. If we look for figurative meaning, we escape from naivity.

From this you will see that my vision of what RE ought to be doing is not what it is doing. Nor do I have any confidence that current staffing/training could provide a workforce to could teach this curriculum. A movement stressing thinking skills in RE could be a way forward.