After coming into contact with a religious man
I always feel I must wash my hands.
Friedrich Nietzsche,
philosopher, theologian;
He was born on this day, 1844, at Röcken,
Saxony, Germany
Have
you ever read anything by the Canadian writer Louise Penny? Do! I think most of
you will love her writing. She writes “murder mysteries” … but that’s just the
“pretext”. What she writes about is the complex business of human brings and
our foibles and our avoidance of the truth and our inner confusions. I think
you’d really get into her books. When I awake in the middle of the night, I
know the goddess of murder mystery has awakened me to turn on my iPad and
continue reading!
If you
are a Christian, you might remember Pontius Pilate washing his hands before
sentencing Jesus to death. Absolving himself of responsibility. Having to deal
with the politics of his position. This points to the difference between
faith/belief and the constructed systems in which we participate which guide us
on the path of faith/belief. Christianity is about Love and about the divine
nature in each of us. Judaism is about relationship with the God of Covenant,
and about Justice. Buddhism is about Compassion. Taoism is about experienced
Wisdom. Islam is about the revelation of the Prophet. But then there’s the
Church, and the Synagogue, and the Sangha, and the Mosque, and the various
cultural and political communities in which these faiths exist. And there’s the
“problem”. Human Beings and human institutions.
Revolutions
have erupted when the gap between faith and “religion” grows too great.
Blessedly, we are at such a point right now … I hope.
“Religion”
… those rules and regulations and rituals devised by religionists … is a human creation. And the construction of religion
is always subject to human fear, longing for power, sin (failure of love),
greed, venality, pride, self-hatred, ignorance … out of which come exclusion,
intolerance, arrogance, contempt. All of which lead to division and to a denial
and abandonment of most of the core principles taught by the Founders.
Today,
in the light of Neitzsche’s comment, I’m pondering whether I am a faithful servant
of “God” … of the core sublime goal of being a human being, or of “religion” …
of the temptations to make an idol of Religion. I’m driven even more into such
a meditation by an ordained pastor who attends our church and who announced
that, after reading Neitzsche, that he would no longer have anything to do with
“organized religion”. I’ve walked that road the last few years. I’m sympathetic
… especially in the light of the right-wing fundamentalist Christianity and
other religion that is so prevalent in American society these days.
I feel
like Neitzsche these days. Feeling soiled with so much of religion.
I think
it’s a godly, sacred, life-giving thing to feel.
Brian+
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