| Letter 57
The Healing Process and Sacred Texts
1.
We keep coming back to the sacred texts. En archei en ho logos. (John
1:1) "In the beginning was the word." When we become alcoholics
or drug addicts, in the face of death, to sanctify marriage vows, to provide
moral guidance for our children, to give power to political rhetoric, to
ask for a handout on the street when we find ourselves among life's losers,
we turn to Higher Powers inscribed in ancient phrases. ...en auto zen
en, kai he zoe en to phos ton anthropon. "In Him [i.e. in the word]
was life, and the life was the light of men." (John 1:4)
2.
The ideal of the modern world can be summarized in one word, Kant's word,
Mundigkeit. (Immanuel Kant, Was Ist Aufklarung?, page 1) it
is usually translated "maturity." "Maturity" is Kant's
answer to the question "What is enlightenment?" He plays on the
connection of Mundigkeit with Mund, "mouth." To
be mature is to own my own mouth, to speak my own voice, to obey only that
law which I as a rational being give myself.
Jesus had a different ideal: "Unless you are converted and become as
little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."
(Matthew 18:3) "If anyone loves Me, he will keep my word; and
my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with
him." (John 14:23)
3.
Whose ideal --Kant's or Jesus's-- is more realistic? Which is more scientific?
Which idea accords better with human nature as it has developed biologically
and historically? Which offers more hope for a sustainable future for homo
sapiens and the other species for which this planet is home? To ask these
questions is to answer them.
4.
For the problems of the suffering masses of the world, of the poor, of the
lonely, of the confused, of the sick, of the millions trying to get enough
money to live, I do not propose an exotic solution. On the contrary, what
I propose is to work towards making it possible for everyone to live a normal
life.
5.
When I was in elementary school in Pasadena, it was normal among the kids
I knew to go to church. The Catholic kids went to catechism, the Methodists
to Sunday School, the Nazarenes to gospel music concerts. The Nazarenes
had the most fun at church, but Catholicism had its privileges. In the summer
Catholic kids would get church over with by going to the 7 a.m. mass, and
then spend the rest of Sunday at the swimming pool.
6.
What is a normal life? Pancakes and coffee in the morning. A goodbye kiss
going out the door. A safe ride to work. Many useful years of service to
others in a job that pays enough to live on. A happy home and family. God
in your heart. Someone to cry at your funeral. A decent burial.
7.
Clarity and truth are not always friends. When I simplify for the sake of
clarity, I hope the that resulting falsity will be corrected elsewhere.
8.
"God in your heart." In the 1920's there were logical positivists
who made it their business not to understand what such phrases meant, and
to convince those who thought that they understood them that they really
did not and could not, because (according to the logical positivists) statements
about God claim to be true a priori but only formal logic and mathematics
are really true a priori. The logical positivists were answered at the time
by Owen Barfield, who pointed out that if there is no poetic language, then
there is no language at all. (Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction reprinted by
Wesleyan University Press, 1987)
I hope that by now all mystical attitudes toward formal logic and mathematics
have been dispelled, so that nobody cares anymore what may or may not be
true a priori, and we can get on with realistic questions about the roles
that religions and religious ways of talking play in life.
9.
In later life I traveled and saw many religions even stranger, from my point
of view, than the "holy rollers" us kids used to ridicule at Oak
Knoll School in Pasadena. There are children who go to mosques. They consider
that normal.
10.
"The child takes in his world as if it were food. And his world nourishes
or starves him. Nothing escapes his thirst. Secrets are impossible. He identifies
with his surroundings and they live within him unconsciously; it is perhaps
for this reason that the small child has been characterized as naturally
religious."
-Mary Caroline Richards, Centering
(Wesleyan University Press, 1989. p. 102)
(First published in 1964. In the introduction to this reprint, the author
says that she would not now use the masculine pronoun to designate persons
of both sexes.)
11.
Am I saying that region is only for children? Let the one who is no longer
a child at heart cast the first stone.
12.
In re pancakes and coffee:
There are people who have tortillas and beans for breakfast; or eggs with
grilled tomato; millions take tea and a piece of bread without butter. Some
eat fried bananas. Plantains. Or rice. So how do I mean that it is normal
to breakfast on pancakes and coffee? Do I mean that all people need food?
Not exactly. No one can eat food. If you do not believe me, ask your waitress
or your waiter, or your grocer, for "food." You will not be able
to eat what you get.
13.
As a matter of nutritional fact, pancakes and coffee have some drawbacks:
cholesterol, caffeine, and (in the syrup) sugar.
I could say something similar about many of the customs of my culture. It
is our way, but it is not the best way. It is normal, but there could be
a better normality. However, we do need some normality. We can do without
any particular cultural structure, but we cannot do without cultural structure.
Anomie (normlessness) is worse than cholesterol, worse than caffeine,
worse than sugar. (cf. Emile Durkheim, Suicide)
14.
According to the story told by Max Weber, the principle of modernity is
rationality. (Max Weber, Economy and Society) The principle of traditional
societies is custom. That is what Weber says about the discourse and practice
of traditional peoples; what they say about what Weber calls their "customs"
is their story.
15.
Temples which were an integral part of the ways of life of early peoples
are dismantled, and pieces are moved to cities where multinational corporations
and banks have their headquarters, where they are put in museums and called
"art." I am beginning to think that "art" is an ethnocentric
concept proper to a culture that is not sustainable.
16.
It is sometimes lamented that while tribal peoples, for example the Hopis,
have sacred stories which weave meaning into their lives, we moderns have
none. But we do. Modernity comes from Europe, and Europe early on adopted
certain sacred stories from the Eastern Mediterranean. It is not that we
do not have sacred texts; it is that the ones we have, we do not trust.
17.
She came back to campus to see me, having left college the year before and
devoted herself to following rock concerts around the country, and as she
stood unkempt under a tree, looking at me out of her big eyes prematurely
deep in their sockets because of too many drug trips, I knew that she wanted
my approval. Her parents did not understand, but --she hoped-- I would.
I wanted to tell her that her life lacked limits, that absolute freedom
was absolute nonsense. However, I did not believe that the particular part
of our cultural heritage which she had internalized would provide me with
any basis of support for the message I wanted to communicate. Perhaps a
gentle hug would have been the right gesture. Anyway, as it turned out,
I did not know what to do or say, and I ... failed.
18.
If I were a prophet I would say, "I speak from the depths and those
who know the depths will hear me. This is the truth: you will not save yourself.
Only a higher Power will save you."
But I am not a prophet. My words have no authority. Much of John
is devoted to showing that Jesus's words did have authority. "The words
I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells
in me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father
is in me, or believe me for the sake of the works themselves." (John
14:10-11.)
19.
(The word translated here as "believe" is pisteuete, a
form of the verb pisteuo. I wish King James' translators had not
seen fit to use the word "believe" so often, because the English
word "believe" tends to dryness; it tends to let the blood of
personal relationships trickle away. Instead of "Believe Me,"
King James' translators could have rendered Jesus's words into English as
"Trust Me," "Have faith in Me," or "Rely on Me."
[See Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek Lexicon Oxford, 1968.
p. 641]
20.
I have learned something from my addiction. Only a trusting personal relationship
can overpower my vice. If religion can save me, it is because I have a trusting
personal relationship with Mary and with Jesus.
21.
Kai ho logos sarx egeneto. . . "And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us." (John 1:14) The Word, according to John,
illuminates and guides. It is life and light; light, in turn, is clean and
true, while darkness is associated with sin and falsity. It was a complete
cultural structure which became a set of ideals shown in the flesh of a
Person.
22.
If my choices were limited to three--free market economy, planned economy,
or mixed economy--I would not hesitate to chose the third. For two reasons:
(1) Bureaucracy works best where people complain about bureaucracy, where
there is an alternative to bureaucracy, where bureaucrats must give justifications
for what they do. (2) Capitalism works best where people complain about
capitalism, where there is an alternative to capitalism, and where capitalists
must give justifications for what they do. These two reasons presuppose
something more fundamental underlying them: that the community shares stories
which give strength to the normative discourse used for making complaints
and giving justifications.
23.
When the economy fails, and the government is bankrupt, where will the people
turn? To families.... To churches....
24.
Here and now: we serve God by washing the dishes. Non-economic labor. Use
value.
25.
I use the King James translations not to be faithful to the Greek but to
be faithful to English, because they have over the centuries become irreplaceable
components of the power of the English language; I use them even though
I know that newer translations are more accurate, even though I do not approve
of the King's translators' choice of "righteousness" for dikaiosyne
--a choice which mutes the Bible's demands for justice, even though the
Catholic Church never approved the King James' translations.
26.
The healing waters: Water cleans; it is purification. In dry countries like
the Holy Lands, water is life. For thirsty people water is joy. If the earth
or the throat is parched enough, then the gray dull need for water colors
every relationship, and the coming of the rain or the arrival at the oasis
is conversion.
27.
John the Baptist baptized with water. Jesus turned water into wine. He said
that unless one is born of water and the Spirit one cannot enter the kingdom
of God. Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink of water, and offered
her living water. He walked on water. He said that whoever trusted in Him
would never thirst. And here is a water-story from Pilgrim's Progress: an
old lady was dusting, but the more she dusted the more the dust flew, until
she sprinkled a little water on the dust and swept it out.
These stories have touched many lives for many years. What they have done,
their work, is far more extensive and varied than anything I could possibly
comprehend.
28.
(Philosophers and theologians have sometimes said that water was a physical
reality standing for a spiritual reality. When they could no longer make
sense of their idea of spiritual reality, they could only conclude that
the New Testament writers were mistaken because there was nothing
for water to stand for.)
29.
The sacred texts heal by what they do. So does water. The action of the
word is not generically different from the action of water.
30.
Although I believe that on the whole my tradition wiser than I am, I find
that I cannot achieve wholeness simply by surrendering my will and judgment
to collective wisdom. The Good Book says, for example, "the light of
men." What about women? I could go back to the Greek and say that the
proper contrast of anthropon is with the Gods, not with women, so that the
translators should have written, "...the life was the light of mortals."
But there is a limit to excuses. In the end I have to say that my relationship
to the sacred text is like that of two broken people to each other. We both
need to be healed.
31.
Am I acting like an "enabler" (to borrow a term from family systems
theory) for John the Evangelist, covering for him by saying "No problem
here!" when really the texts he composed on the Isle of Patmos are
too patriarchal, too committed to spirit-body dualism, too disdainful of
"the world," too idealistic. Perhaps so. If I am, then my motive
is the same as that of most enablers: to keep the family together.
32.
Pursuing the family analogy: suppose we decide to divorce John. After our
divorce we would be atheists, or if not atheists then "Hebrew Christians,"
whose gospels would be the three synoptic ones, and who would systematically
exclude "Greek" elements from the epistles or wherever they might
appear. We would disown Augustine and Aquinas. I doubt that anyone knows
how many words, concepts, and nuances would have to be expunged from English
and other modern languages in order fully to eliminate the direct and indirect
influence of the theology of the indwelling word of the Father, abiding
as a principle of love in the soul, which is found in John's Gospel
and First Epistle.
33.
The indwelling word of the Father: "The multitude of men and women
choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and
tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved --by virtue of the inherited
symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace yielding sacraments
given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through the millenniums."
--Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University
Press, 1949. p. 23.
34.
Fatherhood is obviously an issue for a text where the word Patros is found
on every page. Nobody wants to defend the absence in John of sufficient
feminine divinity, but whether the presence of Patros is defensible is still
controversial. In these times when some feminist critiques have made us
question whether any culture could possibly define useful roles for persons
whose biological endowments include male hormones and musculature, I rely
on "being a good father" as one of the praiseworthy male ideals.
I am in favor of motherhood too.
35.
If trusting personal relationships could be based on the certitude that
there would be no betrayal, then trust would not require forgiveness. Knowledge
could replace religion.
36.
The forgiving of the text: Has the Bible lied to us? Have the Torah,
the Koran, the Gita, the Sutras, the Upanishads,
the Analects, the Zendavesta, lied to them? Not intentionally,
perhaps, but the Bible, at least, admits that it does not tell us
the whole truth. (John 16:12) Those among us who would be capable
of taking back a lover who had lied to us would perhaps also be capable
of becoming Christians.
37.
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth
is not in us." 1 John 1:8. John wisely used the first person
plural, including himself, the writer of the text, among the sinners.
38.
The disciple Peter, whom certain traditional interpretations of scripture
designate as the rock upon which Christ's church was founded, was a liar
(John 18:17, 25, 27), a batterer (John 18:10), and a hypocrite
(John 13:37). I suppose that the reason why I mention this is to
use the image of Peter to make the point that the healing process does not
require a perfect church any more than it requires a perfect text.
39.
John had the foresight both to define God as love (1 John 4:8) and
to quote Jesus defining God as Spirit (John 4:24) and also promising
to send the Spirit of the Truth (John 14:16-17). "I still have
many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He,
the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for he
will not speak of his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak;
and He will tell you things to come." (John 16:12-13) Was the
equality of women one of the truths we could not bear then? Can we bear
it now?
40.
If someone were to say, "Say whatever you wish about economics, as
long as you do not mention religion," it could be used as an example
of what Sigmund Freud called "resistance." The most important
thought is the one the patient does not want to think.
41.
"When I think of economics," she said, "I think of numbers.
When I think of the Bible I think of images - Joseph wearing his
coat of many colors, the man who built the house upon a rock, the cross,
the lilies in the fields, the cup running over, the Samaritan setting the
wounded man on his own breast and bringing him to an inn, the daily bread,
the light shining in the darkness...."
42.
I oppose free trade for a reason more fundamental than those usually discussed.
Because intense international economic competition reduces the scope for
ethical decisions when the actions ethics prescribes deviate from those
prescribed by economic rationality. The numbers tend to dominate the words
and the images.
43.
It was not really very many years ago - about three hundred more or less--when
economics replaced theology as the ideological medium of political conflict.
It happened about the time of the end of the thirty-year-long wars of religion;
and about the time of the beginning of a series of wars in which England,
the cradle of economic ideology, fought Spain, Holland, and France for unabashedly
commercial reasons. It happened about the time of the last of the religiously-inspired
peasant revolts, and about the time when socialist ideologies began to claim
the authority of scientific economics. Now, three hundred years later, the
credibility of economics as a social science independent of history and
the other social sciences is shaken, and we may be at another ideological
turning point. I think that the direction ideology will turn will be toward
a more comprehensive and more philosophical social science which appreciates
the spiritual life, i.e. that life which transforms the will.
44.
The sacred texts serve social cohesion in ways that economics cannot. Our
economic problems have no economic solutions; they have no numerical solutions;
they have no solutions within the limits of a logos limited to the rational
calculation of self-interest. It really does not help to expand economics
to include social choice theories which rationally calculate the public
interest, unless there is also a public spirit which makes people care about
the public interest.
45.
Religion is part of a normal life. It is also part of the process of creating
enough good will to make it possible to reorganize society economically
(Here I want to say "ecologically" in place of "economically")
in order to make it possible for everyone to live a normal life.
46.
La buena voluntad no sobra nunca. "There is never a surplus of good
will."
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