Dear Sam,
Thank God! I still have a posting from you that is waiting for a
reply, so I have some breathing time between my discussions with
Platt and Rog... :-)
You wrote 31/10 12:32 -0000 in response to "my criticism on a
tradition employing priests to interpret God's will, thereby
disempowering the other believers":
"Do you believe that primary school teachers disempower their
students? Secondary school teachers? University teachers? At
which point does a teacher become something disempowering? (I
would say: when the teacher doesn't realize that he or she
doesn't have anything further to teach, and becomes a static
block). Or are you saying that all religious teaching is
illegitimate, with the corollary that we all (should?) start from
the same place? Do books count as teaching, or just living human
beings? Does the Bible disempower all the people that read it?
Surely it's not the role that is at fault, but the capacity or
incapacity of the person performing the role."
Yes, I do think it is these roles that are at fault (to an
extent) in that they maintain and reproduce static patterns of
value. Anything static is immoral from a Dynamic point of view,
but on the other hand we do need both static patterns of value
and Dynamic Quality for evolution and giving Meaning to our
lives.
I would can go further and say that religious traditions, systems
of education and books (taken as patterns of value) differ from
each other in the amount of freedom they leave for the Dynamic.
(And any church having "doctrines" is at the static side of the
spectrum.) Any pattern has exceptions (otherwise it would be a
logical necessity and it would not be experienced as a pattern).
Patterns that appear to be more static than fits their level,
impede the development of new, more complex, patterns from these
exceptions. E.g. intellectual patterns that appear to be as
static as a social pattern, containing "systems of ideas"
pretending to be "law" or "doctrine", impede the development of
higher quality intellectual patterns.
But then again I agree with your "ladder" metaphor: within limits
a spectrum of patterns of value (with both lower and higher
"rungs") is necessary. Until everyone has reached the higher
rungs, the lower rungs are still valuable for the "migration
towards Dynamic Quality". (And when the last ones have reached
the higher rungs, new even higher rungs will have been added.)
You evaded my question "Using the ladder metaphor: at what
relative rungs would you position Anglicanism and Quakerism...?"
with "Isn't that a contender for loaded question of the year?
;-)
In any case, who says we're on the same ladder - or need to be?".
I do experience us to be on the same ladder. (My religious
experience even suggests that everyone and everything is
connected, which leads me to believe that everyone and everything
is on the same evolutionary ladder. As I explained 20/6 10:29
+0200, my favorite description of God is 'that which connects
everyone and everything'.) I just ask you to be explicit about
your values.
By the way, my father is a retired minister in the Reformed
Churches (and I was raised thus, too). We find it difficult to
find any difference of opinion regarding religion and its
applications to society. Still he remains a member of his church
(even letting himself be hired as a minister at times) and I of
mine. He might as well have become a Quaker, too, had it not been
for the religious needs of his flock and his social environment.
I wrote "Religion is not the static patterns associated with it."
Religion is for me "re-ligare", re-connecting humanity with each
other and with creation as whole, with its Source, with Dynamic
Quality. (Was its 17th century meaning different?)
Valuing "mainstream" and "conventional thinking" versus being
prejudiced in favor of any reasonable alternative, priest versus
prophet, church versus religion, static versus Dynamic ... You
see the pattern?
Still everyone needs both.
Probably my being more unconventional than you in one aspect of
my personality and life means that other parts are more
conventional. I lead a rather conventional, middle-class life
with a wife and two little children, an accountancy job, an own
house, a TV etc. Almost the only unconventional ideas that have
made it into my lifestyle are vegetarianism and the lack of a car
(even of a driving license).
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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