“Have you ever noticed how so often when we try to reconstruct the causes which lead up to the actions of men and women, how with a sort of astonishment we find ourselves now and then reduced to the belief, the only possible belief, that they stemmed from some of the old virtues? the thief who steals not for grief but for love, the murderer who kills not out of lust but pity?” — William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
“Doctor Parcival began to plead with George Willard. ‘You must pay attention to me,’ he urged. ‘If something happens perhaps you will be able to write the book that I may never get written. The idea is very simple, so simple that if you are not careful you will forget it. It is this—that everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. That’s what I want to say. Don’t you forget that. Whatever happens, don’t you dare let yourself forget.’” — Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
So, I was thinking about God and Christianity, and here’s the thing:
I don’t believe there’s evidence for a conscious being named “God,” or that Jesus really rose from the dead. But I think there might be a helpful metaphor here, maybe, that could build a bridge between my own position and that of many Christians.
I have all these ideals, like love, harmony, joy, healing, etc. These are ideals that are complicated, and they may not be fully realized in my lifetime or anyone’s, but working towards them means something beautiful to me, y’know? Not in a wooden, steel-cut, “this is what they are, and they’re good things regardless of the evidence” kind of way, but in the sense that they are ideals that are adjusted based on evidence.
And then there’s the other thing. Society does all kinds of deeply damaging things to us. Jesus in the Bible was crucified for the sins of the world, and Sherwood Anderson once said, “Everyone in the world is Christ, and we are all crucified.” What if what that means is that all of us are condemned — not by God, but by other people and manmade standards? I’ve never met a person who wasn’t misunderstood, and I’ve never been perfectly understood, but I have the sense that if I were really able to understand someone, these misconceptions might be washed away, in a way. The action is still there, and it sometimes does harm that must be remedied — don’t get me wrong — but maybe we’re all innocent and life and biology make us look kinda fucked up to other people, so that these other people feel they have to “crucify” us because of their perception of what we do and think even though, again, we’re innocent. We’re innocent as the mythological Christ, but the way society sees us makes us look guilty (and feel guilty when we internalize it), and if the production of that guilt is what “crucifies” us, and if the production of that guilt could be labeled “sin,” then, in that sense, if you think about it, we’re all Christ, and we’re all dying for the sins of the world.
And yet, there are these ideals that we believe in, that this innocence is somehow connected to if we could understand the innocence. Like, our innocence could be metaphorically labeled “Christ”, and seen as kind of the “son” of those ideals. I don’t think those ideals are embodied in and of themselves, but if they were…that might be God. But at the same time, they are embodied in the sense that we hold them and believe in them, in a sense, and our collective desires breath life into the ideals, creating something that, perhaps, some might call “God.”
And maybe “heaven” and “hell” are states on earth. Like, we can try to understand people and adjust our ideals to fit them, thus deconstructing constructions of guilt, in a way, and allowing them to be understood in a way that gives them access to association with these ideals and is like a heaven. Or, we can reject this understanding of other people, underline how far they are from our ideals, flaunt how they don’t measure up and burden them with guilt, causing them to suffer from a hell of our own making.
Or that’s one way of looking at it, maybe. I don’t endorse Christianity, obviously (check out some of my earlier blogs). The concept of us BEING sinful instead of being PERCIEVED as sinful is extremely problematic to me. But maybe what I stated is an accurate translation of where I’m coming from now. Hmmmm…….
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJHTZ7GWL4o[/youtube]
“What you are, basically, is the fabric and structure of existence itself. Only, there’s a conspiracy that you must not let on about it. Because everybody is. And if one person realizes it, the other is a bit offended. They say, ‘Well, how come you’re so great?’ So to everybody, therefore, who gets an intimation of who they really are — in Christian civilization, people say, ‘Who the hell do you think you are? Are you Jesus Christ?’ Well, you could say that Jesus Christ thought he was Jesus Christ and everybody put him down for it and that’s what you’re doing to me. There is, as it were, a recess in the soul, in the psyche, where everybody knows, perfectly well, that you are not just this irresponsible little mouse that’s been chucked down into this world, but that you are really doing this work, you’re running it. And you can’t admit it just in the same way that you can’t admit that you’re responsible for the way your own heart beats. You say, ‘Oh, that’s not my doing. I have no control over my heart.’ Do you have any control over being conscious? Do you know how you will?” — Alan Watts