A favorite quote from “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott
“…my priest friend Tom […] said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
A favorite quote from “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott
“…my priest friend Tom […] said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
I find it so interesting that is how I view most religion.
So many things man has created has brought nothing but misery and sorrow that at times my heart gets so heavy I feel like it is full of tears that are yet to be shed and it's sinking from the weight of it.
But then I step back and look at the people in my life and realize that there are good people out there and there is hope.
One of the things I love about the Old Testament is that it is a very well-preserved document that goes all the way back to early tribal mythologies of the origin of the world, and documents much of the transition from band hunter-gatherers, through pastoralists, through agriculturalists, through kingdom and empire building.
There was a book by Reay Tannahill, years ago, titled Sex In History. It was a fascinating read, but the overall impression I gained from reading it is that traditional American views on sex are historically-atypical and grotesque perversions of the rather more commonsense views and practices of sex throughout history -- and most startling of all is our complete ignorance of how unnatural and perverse our views are.
It's much the same with religion. The chief clue, in my mind, is in the Roman Latin word for religion, religio, which derives from the root we use as ligament, and could (in my mind, at least) be viewed as "re-binding."
Consider: among band hunter/gatherers, the band is the family. Simple. Intimate. Co-dependent for survival. There are origin stories that vary from band to band, but are passed down in a context of simple survival needs. There rules that vary for trading men and women to other bands, to prevent inbreeding, ranging from trade to warfare. This model moves fairly well into pastoral societies, which herd, but are generally migratory. But as soon as you form an agricultural society, you are stuck in one place. You have to become more militant to defend the land, and then you end up attracting other bands and tribes that are starving because they have become too populous and have stripped Eden of its treasures, so you either have to kill them, drive them away, or appropriate them into your culture. Only the latter is stable. You have to re-bind them under a common origin story.
Re-read the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) in this light: Cain and Abel, the farmer and the hunter, where the farmer slew the hunter and was then expelled from Eden to till the soil. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and their interaction with, and assimilation under, the great agricultural civilization of Egypt. Their independence under Moses, the conquest of Canaan, and eventual creation of an Israelite Kingdom. It's all there.
Villages give way to city-states, which give way to kingdoms, which give way to empires, which give way to nation-states. Every increase in scope requires a new organizational structure, and a new re-binding under some kind of common origin story.
Catholic (universal) Christianity was the great binding story of the late Roman Empire, and as that empire split between East and West in decades after Constantine, the Catholic story broke into the Roman and Orthodox varieties. The Roman Church church grew deeply corrupt as the remains of the Western Empire fell and then rebuilt, and was challenged repeatedly by "heresies" -- many (all?) of which were reform efforts targeting the overt corruption of the Church. The Protestant Heresy successfully broke off in the 16th and 17th centuries, and created an entirely new model of belonging, with allegiance to "individual conscience" carrying an equal stature to the Word of God and the Authority of the Church, enabling the creation of an increasingly technological/economic/secular society.
The United States -- post-1776 -- was one of those secular societies, and one of the first European societies (I believe) to prohibit religion as a basis for governance. It was aided in this by the utterly fragmentary nature of Protestantism, owing to its elevation of individual conscience. In the US, diverse religions sprang up like weeds: Mormonism; Christian Science; Theosophy; Fundamentalism(s). None recognized any contrary religious authority. None had secular authority to force acceptance of its own religious authority.
So what did the US do to re-bind its individual elements, and tribes, and religions? I think it's this word, "Liberty," which only has meaning in the context of its antonym, "Tyranny."
"Tyranny" was the iron hand of the Roman Empire. It was the brutal corruption of the Roman Church. It was the petty squabbles of all the European Monarchs, and most notably, the Damned British Empire. When the Leninists decided to create a worker's paradise based on a totalitarian model, it was the Damned Communists. And then, of course, the Damned Nazis.
Since 1991, when the Damned Soviet Union fell, what Tyranny are we fighting? What binds us as a people? What ARE we, in the absences of either a coherent religion, or a nation seeking Liberty in the face of Tyranny?
I think what is happening right now is EXTREMELY deep.
Like the search for a theme that connects. It may be that we are in the throughs of defining what connects us in this individualistic, you make it yourself, I am not my neighbors keeper secular society.
A favorite quote from “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott
“…my priest friend Tom […] said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
Wow.
I find it so interesting that is how I view most religion.
So many things man has created has brought nothing but misery and sorrow that at times my heart gets so heavy I feel like it is full of tears that are yet to be shed and it's sinking from the weight of it.
But then I step back and look at the people in my life and realize that there are good people out there and there is hope.
All too many wars have been fought over religion! What happened to ‘Thous shall not kill!’ Or ‘Love thy neighbor…’!
Love that book and the quote!
Yes! Jan…read long ago. An admired writer. ❤️🤍💙
One of the things I love about the Old Testament is that it is a very well-preserved document that goes all the way back to early tribal mythologies of the origin of the world, and documents much of the transition from band hunter-gatherers, through pastoralists, through agriculturalists, through kingdom and empire building.
There was a book by Reay Tannahill, years ago, titled Sex In History. It was a fascinating read, but the overall impression I gained from reading it is that traditional American views on sex are historically-atypical and grotesque perversions of the rather more commonsense views and practices of sex throughout history -- and most startling of all is our complete ignorance of how unnatural and perverse our views are.
It's much the same with religion. The chief clue, in my mind, is in the Roman Latin word for religion, religio, which derives from the root we use as ligament, and could (in my mind, at least) be viewed as "re-binding."
Consider: among band hunter/gatherers, the band is the family. Simple. Intimate. Co-dependent for survival. There are origin stories that vary from band to band, but are passed down in a context of simple survival needs. There rules that vary for trading men and women to other bands, to prevent inbreeding, ranging from trade to warfare. This model moves fairly well into pastoral societies, which herd, but are generally migratory. But as soon as you form an agricultural society, you are stuck in one place. You have to become more militant to defend the land, and then you end up attracting other bands and tribes that are starving because they have become too populous and have stripped Eden of its treasures, so you either have to kill them, drive them away, or appropriate them into your culture. Only the latter is stable. You have to re-bind them under a common origin story.
Re-read the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) in this light: Cain and Abel, the farmer and the hunter, where the farmer slew the hunter and was then expelled from Eden to till the soil. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and their interaction with, and assimilation under, the great agricultural civilization of Egypt. Their independence under Moses, the conquest of Canaan, and eventual creation of an Israelite Kingdom. It's all there.
Villages give way to city-states, which give way to kingdoms, which give way to empires, which give way to nation-states. Every increase in scope requires a new organizational structure, and a new re-binding under some kind of common origin story.
Catholic (universal) Christianity was the great binding story of the late Roman Empire, and as that empire split between East and West in decades after Constantine, the Catholic story broke into the Roman and Orthodox varieties. The Roman Church church grew deeply corrupt as the remains of the Western Empire fell and then rebuilt, and was challenged repeatedly by "heresies" -- many (all?) of which were reform efforts targeting the overt corruption of the Church. The Protestant Heresy successfully broke off in the 16th and 17th centuries, and created an entirely new model of belonging, with allegiance to "individual conscience" carrying an equal stature to the Word of God and the Authority of the Church, enabling the creation of an increasingly technological/economic/secular society.
The United States -- post-1776 -- was one of those secular societies, and one of the first European societies (I believe) to prohibit religion as a basis for governance. It was aided in this by the utterly fragmentary nature of Protestantism, owing to its elevation of individual conscience. In the US, diverse religions sprang up like weeds: Mormonism; Christian Science; Theosophy; Fundamentalism(s). None recognized any contrary religious authority. None had secular authority to force acceptance of its own religious authority.
So what did the US do to re-bind its individual elements, and tribes, and religions? I think it's this word, "Liberty," which only has meaning in the context of its antonym, "Tyranny."
"Tyranny" was the iron hand of the Roman Empire. It was the brutal corruption of the Roman Church. It was the petty squabbles of all the European Monarchs, and most notably, the Damned British Empire. When the Leninists decided to create a worker's paradise based on a totalitarian model, it was the Damned Communists. And then, of course, the Damned Nazis.
Since 1991, when the Damned Soviet Union fell, what Tyranny are we fighting? What binds us as a people? What ARE we, in the absences of either a coherent religion, or a nation seeking Liberty in the face of Tyranny?
I think what is happening right now is EXTREMELY deep.
Like the search for a theme that connects. It may be that we are in the throughs of defining what connects us in this individualistic, you make it yourself, I am not my neighbors keeper secular society.
What wills bind us in the face of Tyranny might be a wish for freedom from the tyranny of the tech revolution and its surveillance capitalism.
Yes, indeed. I must share this as a reminders to myself about my own penchant for conviction of the crime of equating my opinion for truth.