Brian’s Reflection: Friday, June 12, 2009

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere
special constable's handbook, an opium dose
for keeping beasts of burden patient while
they are overloaded.

- Charles Kingsley, English Anglican priest, teacher, writer,
born on this date, 1819


What is the point that I want to make here? Do you recall the term “whited sepulchures”? Jesus used it of the Pharisees. And of course, I am thinking about all the various dimensions of what I would call “Puritan” religion – cautioning that the adjective does not just apply to Protestant religion. The Roman Catholic Church falls into the category, in spades – as well as many other right-wing falsely-Christian manifestation.

I long ago rejected any version of Christianity which smacked of “an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded”. There is, in my view, only one reason for embracing any religious tradition, especially any version of the Gospel of the Christ: – that it unburden people, that it awaken people to the glorious possibilities of being human, that it aid one to reject any oppression of the human spirit to rise to the majesty and Freedom of Love.

For me, the bottom line is this: there are (a) people who use the Bible to control and dominate people and entrench old beliefs, and (b) people who use the Bible to free and support people and lead them to the embracing of ever-revealed new learnings of the glorious blossoming of new Life and Truth.

You know where I stand.

Brian+