Peter, an interesting article not only because it again gave our anti-religious friends the opportunity to use this forum as a psychotherapy couch, and us an insight into their state of mind that we should try to understand rather than patronise or condemn, because it is often us, or our Christian antecedents, who are the reason behind their need to use this couch.

I think you touched upon a problem that is not excatly easy even for the more sophisticated Christians, so it is understandable that you give the impression of sitting on the fences.

Louis Dupré, albeit a Catholic, had the following to say about the observation that “in many ways it seems easier to be religious in a general sort of way rather than believing according to the specifics of a particular historical faith”:

“That has indeed become a major problem for our contemporaries. I would attribute it in large part to an exclusive and mistaken literalism in our encounter with the sources of revelation. One of the more ominous signs of the spiritual impoverishment of our time is that believers have lost much of the sensitivity needed to perceive the symbolic within the literal. They tend to oppose one to the other: events and words are either symbolic or they are literal. But such a disjunction is fatal. The purely literal reading deprives the paradigmatic events of our faith of their enduring redemptive significance today and reduces an historical religion, such as ours is, to a mere memory. A purely symbolic reading weakens historical events and words to the point where they become simply occasions for creating new symbols for our own age. Many contemporaries caught between the horns of this false dilemma flee their historical faith to take refuge in some kind of abstract deism. But the historical need not be exclusive of the symbolic, and precisely thereby it attains contemporaneity for all times.” (http://www.crosscurrents.org/dupre.htmSPIRITUAL). Prehaps this is helpful.

George,
Your last paragraph was right on, I could not have expressed it better myself. I also liked what you said about being religious in general, our greatest enemy. I am amused that last month I posted what I thought was quite a good essay on Christian worship and Puritanism and it got only 5 comments. It seems like whenever I deal with the thing in itself, the actual practice of Christianity, no one is interested in taking me on. But when I tackle the so called big questions like the existence of God which are really apologetic pieces I get all this stuff in the comments section. Christianity is about the particular, that is when it is most offensive.

Peter Sellick

George says ..."One of the more ominous signs of the spiritual impoverishment of our time is that believers have lost much of the sensitivity needed to perceive the symbolic within the literal." I most humbly suggest those words describe the christians with their tunnel vision about spirituality. It meant that words like "meek" and "sin" have been taken in the vernacular.

The simplistic views of Christians is deminishing the capacity to enjoy the "Kingdom of God" - the here and now. The beauty of the now, the acceptance of all, not just the "saved". Who is tunnel-visioned?

George's words are right, the finger should have pointed back at the author.

"The contemporary critics of Christianity have one string to their bow...."

Would that be a use of metaphor I see before me?

Modern Christians too, should learn to identify the use of metaphor in ancient philosophical texts. The problem Christianity has created for itself - has been to take the bible more "literally" than everyone else - and its come back to bite.... very, very, hard.

Serves the self-rtighteous, power obssessed, hierarchies right. A universal law worth coming to understand.... eventually you get back what give.

Peter Sellick talks of noone taking him on about the "practice of Christianity".

Well, like all the others, Christianity is about limiting ones joy of life. It is about living with compromise now as there is a reward after death. The "Kingdom of God", right now, this very moment, has been corrupted by the misinterpretations of Jesus to mean the experience in the hole, after death.

Sure, Christian monks may not wear hair shirts nowadays and the common man the servitudes, but Christians still defer the full joy of living now as there is a reward after death. Their greatest fear overcome. They will drive their two tonne 4 Wheel Drives past orphanages to Sunday temple, of singing and chanting, to learn to live like Jesus. The practice of Christianity is a cult of limitation some believing the "heathens" are living a lesser life and must be converted to the "saved" so they too will be asleep to the moment of joy and love that is available.

But why do people avoid taking Sellick on the practice, because the foundation is so vulnerable. It doesnt exist EXCEPT in a book - a book which is cleaimed by the "saved" to be superior to the Torah and Koran. Why bother about the practice when the foundation is just paper. A simplistic, denatured view of the real wisdom of the ancients and the mystic that Jesus was is now the sacred book. Isnt it remarkable so much is kwown about his birth, nothing later and then a verbatum is known of what was said on the cross. Could it be, that Jesus was an Essene and leaked the Good News?

Love live and respect the oneness and live in the Kingdom of God. Its right here Peter, right now.

"Love live and respect the oneness and live in the Kingdom of God. Its right here Peter, right now."

Well said Remco, and when done in a 'spirit' of sharing, it really is heavenly. The lessons of Christ are easy to learn.. and they would be a lot easier without clergy interfering.

One of my favourite old English (or possibly even Glaswegian - I think there are sources for both) proverbs is "An ounce of mother's wit is worth a pound of clergy."

Anyone who cares to read a Gospel, would soon discover Jesus didn't have much time for clerics either - which is why they killed him. The irony is always lost on our dog-collared friends, but it provides me with an endless source of amusement.

You don't have to be "into" idolatory to learn and practice compassion. In my experience, it comes to the majority of people quite naturally.