Does Doctrine Determine Belief?
On road trips I usually drive, and Ladan often reads aloud from the latest issue of Time magazine, which she subscribes to. Today we were driving to LA - we're still trying to rescue this Nicaragua trip by showing up on the consulate's doorstep Monday morning - and she read me an article called "In Touch With Jesus." The sub-title was "Sugar-coated, MTV-style youth ministry is so over. Bible-based worship is packing teens in pews now."
Barely a week before his downfall, this quote caught my attention:
Barely a week before his downfall, this quote caught my attention:
"Some experts point out that young people typically drift from organized religion in early adulthood, but others say the high attrition is a sign that churches need to change the way they try to engage the next generation of the faithful. 'This dip should serve as an exhortation for everyone to be about the business of discipleship, missions and a higher calling than popcorn-and-peanuts youth culture,' says Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. [Take that statement with a grain of salt, as apparently being about the business of discipleship involves leading a secret life of gay sex trysts and occasionally buying meth.] Scholars who have looked at young Christians say their spiritual drift is in part the result of a lack of knowledge about their faith. 'The vast majority of teens who call themselves Christians haven't been well educated in religious doctrine and therefore don't really know what they believe,' says Christian Smith, a University of Notre Dame sociologist and the author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers."Did he really just say that? I read that as, these kids haven't been brainwashed sufficiently, so they don't know how to define what they believe. WTF? Are you kidding me? Isn't that completely backward? Shouldn't you decide what you believe first, and then see how that fits into a religious framework? Your beliefs should determine what religious doctrine you accept; doctrine should not determine what you believe. Kids who don't know what makes a Christian should be urged to not call themselves Christian until they do know and then only if they agree with the beliefs; they should not be told what they believe. Telling people what they believe is mind control, plain and simple.
posted by GregP at 9:50 PM
6 Comments:
Greg, I believe you have completely misunderstood what the sociologist was trying to say:
"The vast majority of teens who call themselves Christians haven't been well educated in religious doctrine and therefore don't really know what they believe."
This is not doctrine vs. belief, this is education, analysis, study, contemplation and practice vs. wholesale, uninformed acceptance.
Your comment: "I read that as, these kids haven't been brainwashed sufficiently, so they don't know how to define what they believe."
I read the sociologist's statement as "these kids have not studied enough, do not understand basic theology, philosophy, and nor do they know the full context of that which they are purporting to believe."
Your comment: "Shouldn't you decide what you believe first, and then see how that fits into a religious framework?"
That sounds completely naive to me. To me this means "As an uninformed, uneducated Seeker of Truth, I decide now, before my journey on the path even begins, on what to believe and what not to believe."
Belief is not the destination. So choosing it ahead of time doesn't make any sense. Belief is not an artifice that can be constructed, so it makes no sense to attempt to build it. Belief arises organically through the process of applying ourselves to a path of discipline, moral ethics (i.e., consistency of action), continued exploration, continued study, and growing realization. As these impact our life (in this context, "impact" should connote in your mind "asteroid impacting the Earth"), our life is changed in unimaginable, unanticipated ways. We become amazed by the tools of our path. We begin to realize that we could never live with out these tools, without the teachers who have given us these tools, without the teachers themselves, and that the ultimate goal of the path we are on is more important than anything else in our life. When thinking of the loss of these things, tears will come to our eyes. When thinking of the presence of these things in our life, tears will come to our eyes.
That, my friend, is belief.
We do not and cannot choose this. We nurture a life wherein belief arises. We begin to encounter it. If accepted when encountered, life is transformed. At this point, belief provides the energy and resources with which difficult or (previously) impossible tasks are now something we can engage in and complete.
How can we have this if we haven't studied? How can we have this if we haven't grown? How can we have this when that in which we purport to believe does not affect our daily lives, does not change our habitual actions, does not provide the continual motivation for continued progress on the path?
I'm gonna have to agree with Duncan. Maybe you should work on discovering the true meaning of the quotes you grab before forcing them into your belief system. :)
This also sounds Fox Newsy to me.
I'm not averse to recognizing a mistake in interpretation on my part. In this case, I suppose you're right about this quote.
And I like the way you describe the path, and belief, and the way it should develop. I really do. I'd love to have a similar encounter in my own life.
Perhaps I should have thought more before jumping to conclusions; in retrospect my suggestion that belief should come before learning doctrine doesn't make much sense.
However, what I still don't understand is this:
If religion is taught, and beliefs are taught (for Christians, that Jesus was God's son, died for our sins, etc.), then how can these beliefs be held to be true expressions of a person's own thoughts? They would never have encountered these concepts had they not been taught.
I guess fundementaly my issue is that I disagree with religious icons in general. I'm all for learning and believing in a way of life, a theory of how humans interact and how we should treat each other; but when these things are also tied up with so much extraneous belief (whether it be Christianity's Jesus or Islam's Muhammed, or whatever), I just don't get it.
I'd like to believe that any person of adequate competence and motivation could discover "the path" on their own, without their hand being held the whole way. Formal religious doctrine, to me, seems to be so much extra baggage that is unnecessary and even distracting to the central message of how to move along the path.
"I guess fundamentally my issue is that I disagree with religious icons in general... but when these things are also tied up with so much extraneous belief... I just don't get it.
"I'd like to believe that any person of adequate competence and motivation could discover "the path" on their own, without their hand being held the whole way..."
I'll address my views of these key points you mention here. In my own particular...
LANCELOT: No, no, sweet Concorde! Stay here! I will send help as soon as I have accomplished a daring and heroic rescue in my own particular... [sigh]
CONCORDE: Idiom, sir?
LANCELOT: Idiom!
First, let's set up some questions:
1) how many people, laying on their death beds after years of intermittent searching, finally "get it" (i.e., life, the universe, and everything)?
2) how many people that think they get it, actually do?
3) how many people become enlightened (and I don't mean anything short of becoming a Buddha or a Christ) in their lives?
4) Of those that DO attain complete enlightenment, how many did it 100% on their own? From what history records, that's a fairly rare occurance.
Now, on with my example: mathematics.
You're in a classroom of pre-schoolers. You want to convey to them the power of Stokes' Theorum. What do you do? Talk about differentiable manifolds? Vector calculus? No, you can't use any abstractions. You're gonna have to share the wonder of it by using a concrete example. You're gonna bring a shallow dish into class, add glitter to the water, and have all the kids spin tops with little paddles on them. Once everyone has noticed the pretty glitter moving in an outline around the boundary of the group of tops, your going to say "Hey, wow! Look at that! All the little spinning tops make the water move around the outside!" And that's pretty much as far as you can take it. If you've done a good job, you will have imparted a sense of excitement in the little ones about how the small contributes to the large. You would have shared Green's theorem with them (three dimensions might be a bit much).
With a classroom full of motivated middle school science students, you could extend this to three dimensions and discuss the generalities of electricity and magnetism (specifically, induction). I guess in the US, this would be high school students. But again, you won't be teaching them differential geometry. If you're good at what you do, you will have instilled in these students the beauty of reality as created by virtual photons.
In high school or college, you will have shared with the students the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and then later Green's Theorem. And then Stokes' Theorem. These are powerful concepts with amazing implications. Working with the examples of usage, one can be deeply moved by the beauty of this universe and how its pieces and parts work together.
But what is the engineer, the physics PhD. or mathematician that doesn't see this beauty? The preschooler who experienced a moment of bliss while watching the little glitter move to form the larger stream of glitter has every advantage, every enviable position over the glad-less savant.
Our knowledge, our technology... our *intellects* are simply tools. If these tools do not assist us in connecting with joy and enthusiasm for life, with discovery, with growth and movement, then what use are they? Without that, we are mechanical men and women in a play of shadows and meaninglessness.
The student of life for whom an icon connects them with a path of joy, which lets them follow their bliss (not in the hedonist sense, but in the sense of Joseph Campbell), that person is following a path the benefits of which cannot be denied. To criticize the joy-induced preschooler who does not know advanced mathematics is absurd; to praise the engineer's knowledge while she has lost the wonder of the world is equally absurd. We cannot know what stirs the very soul of another individual -- whether they follow a complicated, confusing path or a simple, straight-forward one. But what an arrogant position, to pass judgment on someone because we deem their pursuit and their results of little significance, or illogical, or "wrong."
But -- what of the student who *has* maintained that joy of wonder? What of the driving curiosity to delve deeper and deeper? To penetrate the mysteries? To swim in the beauty of infinity? There are those that maintain such a connection in their studies and as professors. Yet what mathematician has discovered Stokes' Theorem without a teacher? Or after only one year of study in mathematics? Or never having read anything at all? I believe there are rare souls who can and have done such things, but they are precious gems, not like us mere mortals.
And here the analogy breaks down: in general, any gains made in the pursuit of intellectual excellence are gains only applicable where the tool that is the intellect has use and purpose. What about the pursuit of unconditional love? Altruistic kindness? Perfect compassion? All the degrees in the world, all the brains in our skulls won't help us. The tools which function primarily in a specific problem domain very often do not convey their powers to a completely different domain. Sure, a shovel can slice butter and a knife can dig a pit, but think of the mess and the tedium! New muscles, new tools are required.
To think that we can apply our intellects to the problem of fully and equitably assessing another's path seems to me beyond credibility. Pretending that our intellect is the path, is like worshiping a shovel. Or like pretending to be a mathematician because we "really like" numbers, though we don't know how to add. A spiritual path that is not taken as seriously as a mathematics in the disciplines mentioned above, is not a path at all, but mere dilettantism. No lasting joy, or understanding, or compassion will arise from such pursuits; only distraction, temporary assuaging of fears, and/or something to feed our egos.
It is absurd to hate a religion or a belief. It is absurd to hate others because of their beliefs. Or to disrespect them because of those beliefs. We do not have their minds, nor their hearts, nor their experiences; we not only have no right to judge another's life in this way, we don't even have the information necessary to do so. What we may see as "blind acceptance" or "wandering in the dark" may be just what that person needs. While we look at that person, passing our judgments, they may very well be experiencing their own particular joy. There's no way to tell.
And now, we can apply Stokes' Theorem to ourselves, our own minds: if it is absurd to hate a belief (the surface, covering the whole), then what is it (the small, interior forces) we are really hating? Examine that vector field. I did this with a friend of mine who used to be Catholic. She *hated* the Church for a long time. When I probed, we discovered all sorts of contributing factors; some with her experiences in school; others with ignorant people making baseless, hateful claims; and still other interactions with family members. In the end, there was no hate of church, nor even a hate of individual people. There was, however, a sense of betrayal and disappointment... of having something precious ripped away by ignorance or fear.
We should support belief, as (in general) it encourages us to become something so much greater than ourselves. We should not lay the crimes of humanity at the feet of religion or belief or faith. The responsibility for those crimes needs to be put where it belongs: the agendas of people using religion as an easy excuse, a way to manipulate people, and gain power. The ugliness that is our potential to do harm to others is solely responsible for this.
Believe in the Great Pumpkin, and enjoy the benefits. This is not a statement of mockery, but an example of the power of belief. If you believe that your pumpkin patch really is sincere, that you really will receive gifts for your faithfulness and adherence to a moral ethic, then you will!
Every religious tradition has it's "advanced mathematics", and many believe this is what mysticism is (well-defined, spiritual methods). For those of us that don't "get it" in preschool, the mysticism can be *very* useful. What's more, as a student of a religion's mystic tradition, we don't just jump in to the deep stuff. We work with glitter and spinning tops. After a long regimen of study, practice, meditation, prayer, etc., we "graduate" and work with greater levels of abstraction and generality. What sense does it make to criticize the preschooler or the preschool teacher for teaching that Stokes' Theorem is a tub of water and spinning tops?
Many forms of mysticism teach that our happiness (or lack thereof) is a matter of perception. The trick being not to fool ourselves into thinking that things are better than what they are, but rather to engage in a way of life that allows us to genuinely achieve "pure perception" ... at which point we will see all things as the gifts of the Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown will never miss the football again.
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Jesus christ almighty Duncan!! Don't you have some code to write??
Just let me know when the book comes out. Then I'll buy it and not read it like usual.
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