My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Karen Armstrong attempts to take us through the story of how myth has evolved in human history, affected its progress, how the contemporary society deals with it and the future direction it might or should take. For such a vast scope, a book that is less than 200 pages was bound to end up with a sketch that is barely an outline, let alone a complete history.

For a student of myth, this cannot even serve as an introduction to the scope and breadth of the study of mythologies, but for the casual reader, it can provide some interesting tea-time conversation at best.

To cut a short story shorter, here is A Shorter History of Myth:

The Paleolithic Period: The Mythology of the Hunters (c. 20000 to 8000 BCE)

We are meaning-seeking creatures. From our earliest awakenings of consciousness, we started to ascribe meanings and stories to things we found among and around us. The traditions of myth started in tis earliest phase of human history. As hunter-gatherers, Armstrong contends that human’s being the only creatures conscious of their acts had a deep apprehension, a guilt, about killing other creatures for their own sustenance. So they built up stories to explain this and developed a cult of sacrifice to give the act of killing a symbolic significance of supplication and respect.

In this society, the males probably dominated and the mythology reflects this male domination. Most of these primitive gods were male. Everything that was wondrous and unexplainable were made the stuff of myth, The gods were the architects of the world and everything was orchestrated by them. The sky and the rains and thunder and fire were the great mysteries and these formed the earliest myths, the earliest gods.

The Neolithic Period: The Mythology of the Farmers (c. 8000 to 4000 BCE)

Then we invented farming. As our way of life changed, our myths too began to change. The cyclic nature of seasons and rain became more important than abstract entities life the sky and planets. The old gods were either forgotten or changed into agricultural deities. The greatest mystery now was this wonder – that earth can renew itself and bring out food for their sustenance. The seed they sow was converted as if in a womb. The Myth of the Earth-Goddess started to grow. Of a sustaining goddess that demands great sacrifice. The act of sex began to have symbolic meaning, human copulation aiding and abetting in earth’s fertility. With fertility cults and the personal gods who bring rain and floods and with a mother goddess that responded to care, the world was a very personal interaction with these mythical beings.

The Early Civilisations (c. 4000 to 800 BCE)

Soon agriculture gave way to city building and more organized ways of life. Men started to have more control over their lives. Irrigation and organized agriculture brought more and more of the mysteries of nature under man’s control. THe myths about the fertility gods too now started to sound remote. Myths that do not touch our everyday lives tend to die out, ignored.

But as the myths and the gods started becoming more and more distant, humans felt a deep spiritual anguish that was soon to culminate in the greatest spiritual revolution that man has ever seen.

The Axial Age (c. 800 to 200 BCE)

The axial age is called so because it was a pivotal time in which the greatest philosophies of the ancient age, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Confucianism, Jainism etc all arose in the same time.

It was a response to the great spiritual chasm that man was feeling as we separated from nature. We still needed an understanding of our significance in the world. A reason for living. As city life progressed. we developed myths about gods who lived in cities like ours with divine order – a utopia in the havens. We dreamed of recreating such order here in the world.

The axial leaders turned the focus away from gods and heavens and asked men and women to focus on their own lives, thoughts and action. They told that we are responsible for our own actions and no gods guide out fates. They wanted to recreate a heavenly order on the human sphere and focused on strict codes of living, rituals and mores and codes of conduct. These were the first stirring of organized religion and myths started the conversion to religion.

The Post-Axial Period (c. 200 BCE to c. 1500 CE)

Men started codifying the laws of religions and laws of life and converted myths into beliefs. they turned from symbols giving us guidance on how to live to concrete facts and gods that tell us how to live in exact terms. We converted historical figures like Jesus into archetypal myths and imbued them with divine characteristics and tried to come to terms with the lack of guidance.

This was also the time when the early Greeks started their exploration of Logos or logic. They encouraged us to reject the unverifiable and the intuitive and to choose Logos over Mythos, leading humankind inevitably on to the next major change in human history

The Modern Age (c. 1500 to 2000)

Logos finally won over Mythos and we used our logic and our understanding to gain unprecedented control over our environment and our own lives. But while we progressed materially, we seem to have regressed spiritually. the respect and reverence for nature, to our fellow creatures and to each other turned into an attitude of exploitation and self-serving that led to great catastrophes like the world wars and mass massacres. We now are gradually realizing that perhaps we need to get back to the myths and the old stories to help us make sense of our lives and to get back an appreciation of nature and of life, to learn to live together without destroying each other and our planet.

For that we need to let Mythos come back from the corner it was beaten into by our all-pervading Logos.

The real message of the book comes out in this section. It deals with the modern societies obsession with Logos over Mythos and its rejection of these fundamentally psychological coping mechanisms that are myths, the primal stories that give us a sense of place in this otherwise meaningless existence. Apparently that is one of the fundamental requirements of the human condition.

This last section of the book is about how myth survives in today’s world. Armstrong says that it is now the duty of the artists and the writers to carry on the tradition of mythology, which is he only tool we mankind has ever developed that helps us cope with ourselves. She also goes into great detail to give examples of modern works that are built on myths such as Ulysses and The Waste Land.

“We have seen that a myth could never be approached in a purely profane setting. It was only comprehensible in a liturgical context that set it apart from everyday life; it must be experienced as part of a process of personal transformation. None of this, surely, applies to the novel, which can be read anywhere at all without ritual trappings, and must, if it is any good, eschew the overtly didactic. Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not real and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book aside. It is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathize with other lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to feel with others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative. If we allow it to do so, it can change us forever.”

The agenda at this point becomes very clear and the book’s denouement is clearly an invocation towards asking novelists to take up old myths and use them and reexamine them; this of course leads smoothly on to the fact that the book is an introduction to the Canongate Myth Series, which has commissioned a series of works from authors such as Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman and Victor Pelevin, each of which is designed to be a modern version of an ancient myth. I have to admit that this was my original motivation to pick up the book as I really wanted to read The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

Karen Armstrong does give a clear and well reasoned argument for the need for Myth in our daily life and in our art but does not really do justice to the title of the book.

View all my reviews

Related articles

• Understanding Word Use and How Science relates to Myth and Religion, by Rua Lupa (humanisticpaganism.com)
• “Standing in the Gap of God” – The Cutting Room Floor (duanetoops.wordpress.com)
• African Idea of the Universe (tsekumah.wordpress.com)
• What atheists can learn from religion (cnn.com)
• The Mythical Mode of Imagination (tasteofwonderland.wordpress.com)
• Top world-religions author comes to Vancouver, fighting for compassion (blogs.vancouversun.com)
• Karen Armstrong wants us all to love Islam (lordgriggs1947.wordpress.com)

Hebrews was written at time of great religious tumult during the first century CE  (estimated around 60 CE) when Jews were looking for new ways and symbols with which to connect with God. Karen Armstrong shares in her commentary, “The Author of The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to The Hebrews was writing at another pivotal moment in religious history, when the traditional symbols of the divine in Judaism — the Law of Moses, the Jerusalem Temple, and the old covenant between God and the people of Israel — became increasingly unsatisfactory to a significant number of Jews who were also struggling to find new ways of being religious (p. 6).” This had been occurring shortly before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE by the Romans.

We learned more about our own Christian tradition which centers around the new covenant with Jesus, the messiah, who is central to Christians’ personal connection to God. This was a novel concept at that time in history. Previously, Jews had abided by Jewish Law and performed rituals and sacrifices. Their worship was focused on The Temple, which was how they experienced God. Their experience was not direct, it was not individualized or personal. It required following a set liturgy or formula which no longer felt spiritual or meaningful to these Jewish Christians.

Just as these Jewish Christians were looking for religious symbols and practices that carried new meaning, we in modern times face those same choices and dilemmas in making our faith personal and meaningful. Jesus’ sacrifice,  the “new covenant,” was designed to bring believers into direct communion with God through direct experience. Hebrews’ author declares “the figure of Christ had become the new symbol that brought humanity to the divine…a ‘copy’ of God in human form…  (p. 9).”  Jesus’ humanity makes God easier to relate to, to understand, and to try to emulate. Because he understands the struggle it is to be human, we are able to stand more fully in relationship with the sacred in this metaphorical heaven on earth.

“God has spoken in the past and is still speaking today. It’s always today. The fact that Jesus became like us, suffering and dying like we will, has freed us from the fear of death. Unlike the priests of that time, that could only cleanse the outside, Jesus has cleansed the inner conscience,” explains Jimmy. No longer was atonement for sin a barrier to connecting to  God, giving each of us the ability to grow, become more compassionate and loving, and transform our interior lives. It is our challenge to become more aware of the divine’s presence and to experience this sacred connection in our lives.

Source: Armstrong, Karen. (1999.) “Introduction.” The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews. Canongate Books Ltd: Edinburgh, UK.

“It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Ms. Happe is talking about the incessant adoption of technology  in the hope that this adoption with set us apart and ahead…which is the topic of her keynote: Are you getting ahead…or are you the Red Queen? If frantic, reactive, and lack of progress with regard to social initiatives are symbols of the coat of arms for the Queen, my environment is certainly part of her fiefdom.

Ms. Happe posits that people have become the weakest link in our organizations now that technology is cheap, plentiful, and substantially deployed throughout most organizations. With this shift in thinking comes a need to optimize the performance of humans, which by the discussion seems a monumental task given Happe’s belief that organizations and people just can’t change and adapt quickly enough to utilize all the technology provided by Enterprise 2.0. Unfortunately, I tend to agree with Ms. Happe as it’s all I can do to stay on top of my iTunes library let alone keep pace with every technology that makes up Web and Enterprise 2.0. Well, it’s not really that bad for me, but it is a full-time job.

The video is worth a look, but as a speaker Ms. Happe seems unsure of herself and seems lacks a certain passion, but I must confess I’ve only viewed this one talk by Ms. Happe. At times during the video , I felt like drifting off to use some of that marvelous Web 2.0 technology. She’s definitely no Karen Armstrong,but she gets her point across well enough.

This morning my husband sent me an email directing me to this site. I was inspired and touched by the content and want to share it with many. If religion has a purpose, this is the one. It would be wonderful if those influenced by religion would honor the compassion that is inherent to their being instead of thinking that their religion inspired them to be loving and compassionate. Let me know what you think.

Dear TEDizens,

We urge you to take a moment to watch a short video that went live on the web today. Beautifully filmed and edited by TEDster Jesse Dylan and his team at Form TV, it might just be the most inspiring thing you see this week.

That video, and this website mark the launch of an inspiring global endeavor to celebrate compassion and to promote a new collaboration between the world’s religions. What we’re doing, starting today, is to begin writing the Charter for Compassion that Karen Armstrong called for earlier this year when she made her TED Prize wish. And the exhilarating twist here is that the writing won’t be done behind closed doors. It will be done by you… and perhaps millions of others around the world. Because we’re using special collaborative web tools created by the geniuses at Kluster to enable this be truly a charter “created by the world for the world”.

Later this week millions of Muslims, Christians, and Jews will be sent an email inviting them to come to the site and offer their choice of words, in their own language, to help create a charter capable of inspiring the world to focus on what the great religions share, as opposed to what divides them. Already people are responding to this amazing idea with passion and excitement. The goal is to obtain all input from global participants within the next four weeks, select the best contributions with the help of a council of religious “sages”, and conduct a major launch of the finished document in 2009.

We’d love you, the TED community, who saw the birth of this idea in March, to be among the first to contribute.

The two things you can do to help now:

1. Help us write the Charter! The first writing phase begins now with the Preamble, a concise explanation of why the Charter is necessary and urgent.

2. Send out the ask to everyone in your network. We want this to be a truly global and diverse document that represents all of our voices.

A very exciting day for the TED Prize. We are honored to have you on this journey with us.

Thank you to all of you who have helped get us this far! And a special thank you to Kluster who have put so much into building this site.

Very best wishes,

Chris Anderson

TED Curator

Amy Novogratz

TED Prize Director

Background:

At TED2008 in March of this year, TED Prize winner Karen Armstrong was granted a wish to change the world. This is what she asked for:

“I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, crafted by a group of leading inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principles of universal justice and respect.”

Since then support for idea has built among numerous religious groups, spiritual leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, and Britain’s first female Rabbi Julia Neuberger have joined a special Council to oversee the Charter, and Kluster, a collaborative decision making platform, has built a groundbreaking site that will allow anyone to contribute to the Charter.

www.CharterforCompassion.org

I strongly recommend you read it. I particularly liked these quotes from Karen Armstrong (whom I have previously posted about) in her 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life: 

In Buddhism, compassion (karuna) is defined as a determination to liberate others from their grief, something that is impossible if we do not admit to our own unhappiness and misery…It is, of course, important to encourage the positive, but it is also crucial sometimes to allow ourselves to mourn…Today there is often a degree of heartlessness in our determined good cheer, because if we simply tell people to be ‘positive’ when they speak to us of their sorrow, we may leave them feeling misunderstood and isolated in their distress.  Somebody once told me that when she had cancer, the hardest thing of all was her friends’ relentless insistence that she adopt a positive attitude; they refused to let her discuss her fears – probably because they were frightened by her disease and found it an uncomfortable reminder of their own mortality… 

…make a conscious effort to look back on the events that have caused you distress in the past…Make a deliberate effort to inhabit those moments fully and send a message of encouragement and sympathy to your former self.  The object of this exercise is not to leave you wallowing in self-pity.  The vivid memory of painful times past is a reservoir on which you can draw when you try to live according to the Golden Rule.*  By remembering your own sorrow vividly, you will make it possible for yourself to feel empathy with others.

There are many variants of the Golden Rule but they all boil down to the same message – Always treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.

This is Karen:

Compassion

Pembaca buku-buku Karen Armstrong telah mengenal sosoknya sebagai profesor yang piawai menguraikan pelik sejarah agama-agama dalam bahasa yang mudah dicerna. Mantan biarawati ini telah menulis 22 buku, dari biografi Muhammad, Yesus, Buddha, Sejarah Tuhan yang komprehensif hingga Masa Depan Tuhan yang menyanggah pemikiran ateis.

Namun melalui buku ini dia keluar dari posisinya sebagai sejarahwan dan tampil seperti seorang guru spiritual pribadi. Dia memaparkan visinya tentang sebuah dunia yang lebih baik didasarkan apa yang telah diketahuinya sebagai inti ajaran semua agama: Kaidah Emas.

Melalui uraian cerdas dan bernas yang telah menjadi kekuatannya, Karen memberikan panduan 12 langkah yang dapat kita ikuti agar mampu menjalani hidup yang lebih berbelas kasih setiap hari. Dengan pencerahan dan kedamaian yang mengiringi setiap halamannya, buku ini menyimpan kekuatan besar untuk mengubah dunia menjadi tempat yang lebih menyenangkan bagi semua orang.

Judul:
Compassion
Penulis:
Karen Armstrong
Penerbit:
Mizan
Harga:
Rp 39.000,-

            -Karen Armstrong

My grandfather’s study smells like old smoke and dusty paper. Within its dimly lit space you’ll find walls lined with books, books exuding that particular smell of knowledge that can’t be found outside the domain of yellowing pages and cracking spines. The study has become a hallowed place to me. In the mingling of smoke, dust, and paper, I feel like I am breathing in the wisdom of greater men. Because my grandfather’s study, it smells like the birthplace of stories.

You see, my grandfather is a writer. Most days, at four in the morning, you’ll find him at his desk, busy helping stories into the world. Bits of paper and ideas float in the pool of light cast by the desk lamp. Above these drifts the sound of fingers on keys, linking flesh to bone to ink to paper. It’s lonely and it’s thankless, but it’s necessary, because without stories, we lose so much of what makes us human.

I think I’ve spent as much time in my head as I have in the real world. Always a bit of a space case, I was that weird kid who used to sit and stare into the distance, opening imaginary cupboards into worlds that didn’t exist in the same sense as ours. I am thankful for this; I was exploring.

When reading freed me from the fetters of my own imagination, I could even explore worlds and ideas far beyond the abilities of an earthbound boy. I drank in concepts as fast as I could stomach them, leaving me with the aftertaste of something learned. Little by little these encounters changed me.

Stories have been with us for about as long as we’ve been human. Our ancestors used them to make sense of the world. They crafted tales of how the world came to be; of forces they couldn’t understand or control; of their own ancestors and the lives they led, and through these stories came an understanding of how to live. Because they were told to children, who listened and marvelled and remembered like only children can, they lived on. Tales rose up and taught the next generation about the life ahead of them, never actually letting it slip that they were sitting in a classroom.

Peter Rollins once said: “The point of a parable is not to tell you something about the world, but to change the way you interact with it.”

A good story presents a complex picture, one the listener must wrestle with. It grips the guts and shakes until the vibrations reach the brain, sometimes shaking loose little ideas, and ideas tend to grow. Stories give context. They force a re-evaluation of what you believe. Sometimes stories are more true than facts, which is why holy writ is made from the dust of the real.

Stories guide us. They open us up to the possibilities of life in all its gritty confusion. We live the lives we could possibly have led and we get the chance to learn from them. We are given the opportunity to judge another’s actions, only to realise that they are our own.

You see, the wonderful thing about stories is not that they happened, but that they happen every day.

But it’s not just that. In a climate where the act of confession has been hi-jacked and devalued by popular culture; where over-sharing has reached epidemic proportions, and where the path to absolution is littered with histrionic, Reality-TV inspired self-excoriation, I find myself longing for the privacy that would result from a confessional shut-down. The worst offender against the dignity of confession is surely The Jeremy Kyle Show, with its sado-masochistic dance around the poles of blame and culpability – as if contrition had no place among these showy exertions?

So, yes, I’m awkward about disclosure. Resistant to TMI. Leery of Facebook and texting and Twitter – and every other laxative tool that encourages such an ease of communication that you’re lured into giving too much away.

When I find myself standing in front of a confessional, wafts of aromatic wood and incense catching in my throat, and an unreasonable fear of dark interiors building into a pervasive claustrophobia, all these anxieties rise to the fore. I can practically hear the whispering disclosures that are a necessary step towards absolution, and  feel the spiraling up of release that accompanies the penitential rush of self-incrimination.

Perhaps I’m just allergic to the naming of sins, to the listing and counting and parsing of them as matter of record ? Or perhaps I’m simply confused by that fact than in building the case against oneself, one becomes, in confession, both accuser and accused?

Imagine then the contrarian pleasure I took in stumbling upon Michael Mack’s poem about confession and warming to his sense of  impatience to enter the box, and his longing to ‘close the door to a silence absolute, like going deaf and blind at once’. He desires nothing more that to be alone in the dark and the quiet with just his thoughts echoing round his head.

Mack was a victim of abuse and, as a good Catholic, he has spent decades blaming himself for what happened to him. Not surprisingly, his poem exults in expiation: in the knowledge, as it were, that any punishment that ensues will be easier to bear than his guilt, however misplaced it happens to be.

But more than this, it elevates the act of atonement to a kind divine surrender, as he sinks to his knees in the confession box’s ‘velvet abyss.’  The velvet abyss. So plush, so sensual. So protectively maternal.

Most of the group loved this poem for its evocations of the smell of Pine-Sol on paneling, of ‘kneelers lush as wine’, and ‘ancient hunch-backed women’ whispering in the pews. Most of all they loved the fact that we don’t know what Mack says inside the box. Gently, disarmingly, he leads you into its darkness and brings you to the brink of your own confession.

This poignant image of voluntary surrender contrasts starkly with the humiliating experience that Karen Armstrong relates in her memoir Through the Narrow Gate. In the 1960s, as a novice among the Sisters of Charity, she participated in a weekly spectacle of public self-accusation, where the penitent was literally placed under spotlight.

Blinking against a glare so bright she could neither see her sisters, nor feel them in the surrounding dark, Armstrong recalls how she would begin: “I accuse myself to you, dear mother, and to you all, my dear sisters…’ Novices were not meant to confess sins of the heart, only sins of behavior that might have been clocked by the other sisters. And so the litany of accusations that followed might include, showing impatience to a sister, expressing an opinion too strongly, walking noisily, smiling unkindly when another sister made a mistake, and attempting to justify herself when a sister corrected her.

It is as hard to take such trifling slip ups seriously as the proper stuff of confession as it is to overlook the extraordinary cruelty of this confessional circus. Even Jeremy Kyle could not have invented something so Byzantine. It seems to me to set up in the place of forgiveness a kind of sneering pity for the penitent, who is too feeble, too wanting, too selfish to exert even the most basic command over her self.

Of course, Armstrong found the experience utterly crushing. She had aspired, like the saints of old, to ‘grind herself to power,’ to be pulverised in order that her self-love would crumble away by a slow process of attrition and she would be made worthy of accomplishing God’s will. It is a noble aspiration. But if her memoir teaches us anything, it is how distant and alienated religious idealism can become, when such principled goals get entrenched in ritual practice.

Next to Armstrong’s account of her ‘chapter of faults,’ confession’s cycling through contrition to disclosure to satisfaction seems like a walk in the park.

However, I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, as I mentioned in a previous post, and she begins the book by discussing early forms of religions. The people of the pre-modern era developed an sense of the divine early on, and attempted to connect with the divine entity through rituals. They sought to become one with the world and its Creator. Armstrong writes, “People felt a yearning for the absolute, sensed its presence all around them, and went to great lengths to cultivate their sense of this transcendence in creative rituals.”

It seems to me that spirituality is not something that develops out of religion; rather, religion comes to guide our innate spirituality. This is in keeping with the Islamic view, in my opinion, because in the Qur’an God says (and this is my own translation, FYI): “And [by] the soul and its Creator. Who inspired [it to know] its sin and its piety” [91:7-8]. What this means is that we are equipped to know instinctively right from wrong and to sense God’s presence in the world. Religion, when it is revealed, does not create that sense, rather it enhances (and in most cases, reawakens) that sense. Perhaps then, after theology is more established, a respiritualization occurs, strengthened by the rituals that come with organized religion. Of course, this is just me thinking online, rather than an actual observed phenomenon.

So there it is: my thoughts on Sufism and mysticism so far.

       This rationalized interpretation of religion has resulted in two distinctively modern phenomena: fundamentalism and atheism.  The defensive piety popularly known as fundamentalism erupted in almost every major faith during the twentieth century.  In their desire to produce a wholly rational, scientific faith that abolished mythos in favor of logos, Christian fundamentalists have interpreted scripture with a literalism unparalleled in the history of religion.

                                      Karen Armstrong, The Case for God (2009)

In Apes, Ants, and Ancestors, I accept that most of us have past the point of no return.  A modern myth must shrink down into a corner of religion, however small, that can be couched in the language of a hypothesis seeking to be a theory in order to elicit the emotion of belief.  Yes, belief is an emotion.  I am a psychiatrist and I shall demonstrate that belief is an emotion with an evolved function.  It is my hope that if it could be shown that it just might be possible to believe in God in the modern sense, that the old sense of belief as faith and mythos  might come flooding back.

Some in the crowd, having just heard Newt Gingrich’s gung-ho endorsement of killing America’s enemies, were in no mood to embrace Ron Paul’s call for applying the Golden Rule to America’s foreign policy.

To hear a crowd of nominally-Christian conservatives shout down one of the world’s best loved social precepts was like having them jeer at Betty White singing “God Bless America” to a box of puppies.

So as a quick refresher (as some people evidently need), Jesus was a big fan of the Golden Rule. Repeatedly throughout the New Testament you find quotes like this:

Do to others as you would have them do to you. —Luke 6:31

Before you think Jesus was just a pushover, there is this contrasting quote:

Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword! —Matthew 10:34

Regarding Newt Gingrich’s call to kill your enemies, a different Bible quote comes to mind from the ever-warring book of Joshua. God is so eager to let the Israelites continue the slaughter of the Amorites that he decides to stop the sun from moving in the sky for a whole day! (It probably would have been less taxing to just invent some night vision goggles.)

So the sun stood still and the moon stayed in place until the nation of Israel had defeated its enemies. Is this event not recorded in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the middle of the sky, and it did not set as on a normal day. —Joshua 10:13

By the way, It doesn’t help you prove that the 36 straight hours of daylight actually happened, when you tell people to look it up in a book that no longer exists.

Depending on his mood, God can clearly take either side in this foreign policy debate, but how do other world religions feel about the Golden Rule? It turns out that Jesus was in fact a late-comer to this superlative maxim. As can be seen below, it is the closest thing we have to a universally recommended principle of human conduct, for some 4,000 years running.

Baha’i: Choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself. —Lawh’i ‘Ibn’i Dhib, “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf” 30

Brahmanism: This is the sum of duty: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. —Mahabharata 5:1517

Buddhism (560 BCE): Hurt not others with that which pains yourself. —Udana-Varga 5.18

Confucianism: Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself. —Analects 15:23

Egypt (2000 BC): Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do. —The Eloquent Peasant

Greece (400 BCE): Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others. —Socrates

Hinduism (3200 BCE): One should always treat others as they themselves wish to be treated. —The Hitopadesa

Islam: Not one of you is a believer until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.” —Fortieth Hadith of an-Nawawi 13

Jainism: One should treat all creatures in the world as one would like to be treated.” —Sutrakritanga 1:11:33

Judaism (1300 BCE): Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. —Leviticus 19:18

Sikhism: Treat others as thou wouldst be treated thyself. —Adi Granth

Taoism: Regard your neighbor’s gain as our own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. —T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien

Zoroastrianism (600 BCE): That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself. —Dadistan-I-Dinik, 94:5

Is the Golden Rule the ideal military strategy? By itself, probably not, but it’s a reasonable start. I strongly believe in the Golden Rule, and I teach “Treat people the way you want to be treated” to my kids; however, I add my own corollary which is “But don’t let people walk all over you either.”

I’d like to take a second, before you think I’m just out to bash Republicans, to gIve credit where credit is due: a Republican candidate for President advocated we employ the Golden Rule in making foreign policy. Surprisingly, as it turns out, that was a pretty gutsy move. And after he wrapped up and had mentioned wanting to bring the troops home, many in the crowd applauded. So it’s likely that a small minority in the crowd that night were anti-Golden Rule.

But the issue still remains: why do some Christian conservatives, who like to claim this is a Christian nation, seem oblivious to certain sayings of Jesus? Several studies reveal that conservatives in general display less empathy than do other groups.* The Golden Rule is all about seeing things from the other person’s point of view and recognizing our common humanity. It could be that all Christians tend to avoid dwelling on the teachings of Jesus that don’t fit their worldview.

If they were paying attention, they would realize that Jesus’ version goes beyond some of the negatively-stated, do-no-harm-types of Golden Rules and is actually a positive, proactive version. But if they won’t listen to him, maybe they’ll listen to the words of someone they seem to love even more:

We might come closer to balancing the budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule. —Ronald Reagan

* Pratto, Felicia; Sidanius, Jim; Stallworth, Lisa M.; Malle, Bertram F. (1994). “Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Michael Morris is the author of Bible Funmentionables: A Lighthearted Look at the Wildest Verses You’ve NEVER Been Told!, which features all of the shocking and hilarious verses that your minister, rabbi, or charismatic cult leader is afraid to preach.

This was the final book I was asked to read as part of my participation in the Macedonian Ministries project. Whew! What a tome!

Karen Armstrong is always brilliant, always thorough, always helpful in her analysis of broad sweeps of history. I always feel smarter for reading her books—and yet I always find it such hard work. I suspect that the breadth of the material is what makes me feel so overwhelmed by it. I have another Armstrong book on my shelf (The Battle for God). Even though I had hoped to read it before my trip to the Holy Land, I don’t think I have the energy for another one yet.

Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths is exactly what it says it is—a history of this sacred city at the heart of three faith traditions and the center of so much violence and conflict. Armstrong starts with the earliest evidence of settlement in the area, some pottery shards from 5200 years ago. She then traces all the various rulers and peoples in the area that is now Jerusalem. Here is a brief list, which captures in short form a timeline of the various groups who controlled the land: the Canaanite people and the conquest of Joshua; the Jebusites who first settled on the Ophel hill that became Jerusalem; the kingdom of David and the building of Solomon’s Temple; the Assyrian and Babylonian exile and return; Greek and Roman rule; the destruction of the temple and city in 70 CE; the Roman city Aelia Capitolina built on the ruins; the Byzantine rule; Caliph Omar’s peace and tolerance; the mad Caliph al-Hakim and other Fatamid rulers; the Crusades; Saladin’s restoration and peace; the Mamluk conquest; the Ottoman empire; the British Mandate; Zionism and modern Israel.  Each group destroyed some monuments and built others; displaced some residents and brought in others; honored some religion(s) and not others. Armstrong’s chronicle makes it clear that no one faith tradition can lay special claim to the city or its history—each have been responsible for building and cultivating Jerusalem, as well as destroying it.

One of the most interesting themes that winds through the book is the connection between Zion and social justice. From the pre-Yahwist Canaanite worshippers of Ba’al, Mount Zion was a symbol of a heavenly kingdom marked by peace and social justice. Many of the words we hear in Isaiah and the Psalms about the holy city of Jerusalem echo the vision of those Bronze Age Canaanite worshipers of Ba’al, who tied the sacredness of the city to the justice and peace it practiced. All who conquered the city—regardless of their faith—shared scriptures and religious beliefs that implored them to practice justice and peace, to care for the poor and respect their neighbors. Over the centuries, some rulers sought to build that kind of Holy City; others let their jealousy for the land itself override any sense of compassion or justice. The vision of the heavenly city of peace has persisted for thousands of years, yet it still feels very far away.

I felt like this book was excellent preparation for my journey to this city. I had little illusion that I would see the city of Jesus, or that the holy sites we visit will be original and untouched in any way. However, this book gave me a more profound sense of just how political Jerusalem’s holy sites are. Each attempt to build or destroy or even to clean and maintain a square of land is seen as an act of seizing control, usually at someone else’s expense. Every site currently open for tourists is the result of intense and frequently violent negotiations and claims.

I cannot predict how this will impact my experience of the city. It’s possible that knowing the history of battle and bloodshed will make it all seem pointless. It’s also possible that the same history will lend an import and weightiness to the places, no matter their inaccuracy as biblical places. I suspect it will be some mix of the two.

Make a Wish

A little about the book: She wrote this book as a result of winning a TED Prize. She began working on the Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. The charter was signed in November 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders.

Bill Moyers has an interesting profile of Karen that you might be interested in reading.

Schedule for the Study

Please join us for part or all of this study. All are welcome.

• Preface – Wish for a Better World - January 8, 2012
• The First Step – Learn About Compassion - February 5, 2012
• The Second Step – Look at Your Own World - March 4, 2012
• The Third Step – Compassion for Yourself - April 1, 2012
• The Fourth Step – Empathy - May 6, 2012
• The Fifth Step – Mindfulness - June 3, 2012
• The Sixth Step – Action - July 1, 2012
• The Seventh Step – How Little We Know - August 5, 2012
• The Eighth Step – How Should We Speak to One Another? - September 9, 2012
• The Ninth Step – Concern for Everybody - October 7, 2012
• The Tenth Step – Knowledge - November 4, 2012
• The Eleventh Step – Recognition - December 2, 2012
• The Twelfth Step – Love Your Enemies - January 6, 2013

Di tahun 1992, HarperCollins menerbitkan buku Karen Armstrong “MUHAMMAD: Biografi sang Nabi.” Itu pertama kalinya saya mendengar namanya. Ketika saya mendapat kesempatan untuk melihat bukunya, saya langsung melihat bahwa itu bukan hanya sekedar biografi baru tentang Nabi, namun sebuah usaha sengaja untuk mengajak kita meminta maaf kepada Islam. Saya tadinya berharap Miss Armstrong dan bukunya tidak dianggap serius di Barat, tapi saya ternyata salah.

MALAH dia sangat sibuk berceramah tentang Islam, dikedua sisi lautan atlantik. Kelihatannya ada orang Barat sangat terkesan olehnya, seperti ditunjukkan pada tanggal 11/11/2006, di Wall Street Journal. Karen Elliott House, bekas penerbit the Journal, menulis sebuah artikel berjudul “5 buku penting untuk mengerti tentang Islam.”

Dia mengurutkan demikian:

1. “Islam” oleh Vartan Gregorian (Brookings, 2003)
2. “Muhammad” oleh Karen Armstrong (HarperCollins, 1992)
3. “What Went Wrong?” oleh Bernard Lewis (Oxford, 2002)
4. “The Koran Interpreted” oleh A.J. Arberry (Macmillan, 1955)
5. “Wahhabi Islam” oleh Natana J. Delong-Bas (Oxford, 2004)

Saya sangat kecewa dengan buku Karen Armstrong, “Muhammad,” dan untuk menjajarkannya dengan buku Bernard Lewis dan A.J. Arberry sungguh mengherankan, malah mengejutkan! Kenapa Miss House tidak menunjuk pada buku-buku klasik yang menuliskan kisah Muhammad yang dapat dipercaya seperti: “The Life of Muhammad,” oleh A. Guillaume, dan buku standar, “Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman”, oleh W. Montgomery Watt.

Memang berlebihan untuk mengharapkan Miss House merekomendasikan buku paling akhir dari Robert Spencer, “The Truth about Muhammad” Regnery Publishing, 2006!

Begitu anda mulai membaca bukunya Karen Armstrong, anda akan terpukul oleh manipulasi sengaja mengenai data sejarah Muhammad, contoh: Dalam Pendahuluannya ia menulis:

“Tahun 1984, saya harus membuat program televisi mengenai Sufisme, ilmu kebatinan Islam, dan saya terutama sekali terkesan dengan penghargaan Sufi bagi agama lain – sebuah kualitas yang tentu saja tidak saya temui dalam agama Kristen! Ini berlawanan dengan semua anggapan saya mengenai Islam dan saya ingin tahu lebih jauh … Kita tahu lebih banyak tentang Muhammad daripada tentang para pendiri kepercayaan-kepercayaan besar lainnya, maka sebuah studi tentang kehidupannya dapat memberi kita wawasan penting untuk sifat-sifat dasar dari pengalaman religius.” Hal 13, 14.

Lebih lanjut, di Bab 2, dia menulis:

“Dalam Qur’an, oleh karena itu, kita memiliki komentar-komentar dari jamannya tentang karir Muhammad, hal yang unik dalam sejarah agama manapun: Hal ini membuat kita bisa melihat kesulitan-kesulitan unik yang harus dia hadapi, dan bagaimana pandangannya berkembang, dalam jangkauan yang lebih universal. Sebaliknya, kita tahu sangat sedikit tentang Yesus.” Hal 51.

Klaim Armstrong bahwa kita tahu lebih banyak tentang Muhammad daripada tentang Yesus Kristus adalah propaganda murni Islam. Qur’an memang menceritakan episode dalam kehidupan Muhammad; tapi bagaimana kami bisa mempercayainya kalau Muhammad sendiri yang menceritakan/menuliskannya, sambil mengaku bahwa sumbernya dari Allah? Belum lagi biografi Muhammad ditulis lebih dari satu abad setelah kematiannya dan didasarkan oleh laporan-laporan yang diambil dari Hadis. Muslim sendiri menolak sejumlah besar Hadis, karena banyaknya Hadis palsu, sehingga mereka mengeluarkan versi mereka sendiri yang mereka anggap Sahih (Otentik).

Sumber Hadis yang paling berwenang tentang Muhammad diambil dari Hadis Ibn Hisham, yang meninggal pertengahan abad 9, sekitar 200 tahun setelah kematian Nabi! Sebaliknya, Injil, ditulis hanya beberapa dekade setelah kematian dan kebangkitan Kristus, yang memberi kita kisah yang akurat dan dapat dipercaya tentang keajaiban-keajaiban dan ajaran-ajaran Yesus Kristus. Lebih jauh lagi, Ilmu Kritik Tekstual yang ada dalam tradisi Kristen sudah dikenal luas; yang mengumpulkan dan membandingkan manuskrip-manuskrip Yunani yang paling dini dari Perjanjian Baru dengan maksud mendapatkan laporan-laporan yang paling dipercaya dari kehidupan Yesus Kristus. Nah, MANA Ilmu KritiK Tekstual dari Komunitas Muslim untuk Qur’an? Mereka menganggap buku suci mereka sebagai ‘Kalimat-kalimat dari Allah.’ Dalam Islam, Qur’an itu adalah Qadim, artinya tidak diciptakan.

Buku Armstrong penuh dengan disinformasi dan propaganda. Ia tidak letih-letihnya menuding Barat karena ‘salah mengerti’ tentang Islam. Dalam bagian Penutupan “Masterpiece”nya ini, ia menulis:

“Kita di Barat tidak pernah berhasil menghadapi Islam: Pengertian kita tentang Islam adalah primitif dan tidak acuh dan kini kita kelihatannya melanggar janji kita sendiri untuk bersikap toleran karena tidak suka dengan derita dan tekanan yang kita lihat dalam dunia Islam.” Hal 265.

“Kini sebagian Muslim mulai berbalik melawan budaya dari “Para ahlul Kitab” yang telah mempermalukan dan memandang mereka dengan rendah. Mereka bahkan mulai mengislamisasi kebencian mereka. Tokoh tercinta mereka, Nabi Muhammad, menjadi pusat dari salah satu bentrokan antara Islam dan Barat pada kasus Salman Rushdie. Jika Muslim perlu mengerti tradisi dan institusi Barat dengan lebih teliti, kita di Barat terlebih dahulu perlu membebaskan diri dari prasangka buruk kita. Mungkin satu tempat untuk memulainya adalah melalui figur Muhammad: Seorang yang kompleks dan penuh kasih yang kadang melakukan sesuatu yang sulit kita terima, tapi jenius dalam hal tata tertib dan mendirikan agama serta tradisi budaya yang tidak didasarkan pada pedang – seperti yang ada dalam mitos Barat – dan yang membuat nama ‘Islam’ identik dengan kedamaian dan rekonsiliasi.” Hal 266.

Jadi, Miss Armstrong menguliahi kita mengenai perlunya “kita membebaskan diri dari prasangka-prasangka lama kita” dan memulainya “melalui figur Muhammad.”

Apa ia mengharapkan agar kita menghapus semua yang kita pelajari tentang Muhammad, baik dari sumber Arab maupun sumber Barat, dan menerima biografi Nabi yang telah dia saring? Apa betul ia mengharapkan kita untuk mempercayainya, bahwa Muhammad “mendirikan agama serta tradisi budaya yang tidak didasarkan pada pedang – seperti yang ada dalam mitos Barat – dan yang membuatkan nama ‘Islam’ identik dengan ‘perdamaian’ dan rekonsiliasi”?

Apa ia sedang bercanda?

Darimana ia belajar bahasa Arab dan siapa yang menyuruhnya mengatakan bahwa ‘Islam’ identik dengan perdamaian dan rekonsiliasi? Bertahun-tahun saya menghabiskan waktu untuk belajar tatabahasa dan sintaksis Arab. WAHAI Miss Armstrong, ketahuilah bahwa “Islam” artinya “menyerah, takluk.” Penyerahan total kepada Allah, seperti yang tertera dalam Qur’an. (Dan bukan ‘perdamaian’!)

Artikel Wall Street Journal muncul pada Hari Veteran 2006. Lima hari kemudian, Yayasan Mosaic menampilkan dalam buletinnya: Karen Armstrong, kuliah tentang Islam: Agama yang disalah pahami. Yayasan tersebut mengenalkan event yang terjadi pada hari Senin 20/11/2006 dengan kata-kata sebagai berikut:

“Karen Armstrong, penulis, pembicara, guru dan komentator media tentang urusan agama di AS dan Inggris, akan melakukan serangkaian ceramah untuk Yayasan Mosaic “Re-Discovering the Arab World – Penemuan kembali dunia Arab.” Ceramahnya akan berjudul “Islam: Agama yang disalah pahami.”

Ceramah akan dilaksanakan di National Press Club, 529 14th St NW, Lantai 13 (Ballroom), Washington DC. Ceramah ini disponsori oleh sebuah organisasi yang mengaku “didirikan sejak 1998,” sebagai “Yayasan pendidikan AS, organisasi non-profit yang didirikan dan dijalankan istri-istri dubes-dubes Arab di AS. Melalui proyek ini, Mosaik mencoba untuk memperbaiki nasib wanita dan anak-anak secara global dan menambah pengertian dan apresiasi terhadap budaya Arab di Amerika.”

Jadi, istri para dubes Arab meminta bantuan Miss Armstrong untuk mencerahkan pengetahuan rakyat AS mengenai sifat dasar Islam, dan perlunya kita menemukan kembali dunia Arab.

Saya tidak tahu apa yang dicuapkan Armstrong dalam ceramah tanggal 20/11 tersebut, tapi saya dapat memberitahu pembaca disini tentang komentar-komentar yang ia buat pada 18/9, tentang kata-kata Paus Benedict soal Islam yang diterbitkan dalam the Guardian; saya yakin mereka menyediakan kita laporan up to date tentang Kampanye Disinformasi ala Karen Armstrong.

Wawancaranya dimulai dengan pernyataanya:

“Ucapan Paus sangat berbahaya, dan akan meyakinkan banyak Muslim bahwa Barat bersifat Islamofobia (takut akan Islam) yang tak tersembuhkan.”

Minggu lalu, Paus Benedict XVI mengutip, tanpa kualifikasi dan tanpa persetujuan yang jelas, kalimat dari Kaisar Abad 14 Bizantium, Manuel II:

“Tunjukkan pada saya apa yang baru yang dibawa Muhammad, dan kamu akan menemukan hal-hal yang biadab dan tidak manusiawi, seperti juga perintah-perintahnya yang disebarkan dengan pedang.” Vatikan kelihatannya kaget dengan luapan kemarahan umat Muslim akibat kata-kata Paus ini, dan mengklaim bahwa bapa suci hanya bermaksud ‘mempererat sikap hormat dan dialog diantara agama dan budaya, dan jelas menuju pada Islam.

“Tapi maksud baik Paus tidak nampak. Kebencian terhadap Islam begitu menyebar dan berakar dalam kebudayaan Barat sehingga menyatukan orang-orang yang tadinya saling bermusuhan. Baik para kartunis Denmark maupun kaum fundamentalis Kristen yang menyebut Muhammad sebagai pedofilia dan teroris, tidak pernah setuju dengan Paus; namun tentang topik yang satu ini mereka semuanya setuju.”

“Paus Benedict mengantarkan pidato kontroversialnya di Jerman sehari setelah ulang tahun ke-5 9/11. Sangat sulit dipercaya bahwa acuannya kepada sebuah aliran kekerasan dalam Islam merupakan suatu kebetulan belaka. Paus malah menjauhkan diri dari inisiatif-antar-agama yang dibangun pendahulunya, John Paul II, pada saat mereka sangat dibutuhkan. Karena terjadi tidak lama sesudah krisis kartun Denmark, ucapannya ini sangat berbahaya. Ini hanya semakin meyakinkan Muslim bahwa Barat tidak bisa disembuhkan dari Islamofobia dan siap-siap untuk mengadakan Perang Salib baru.”

“Kita tidak boleh menyandang kefanatikan seperti ini. Masalahnya adalah terlalu banyak orang di Barat secara tidak sadar berprasangka buruk, yakin bahwa Islam dan Qur’an adalah candu kekerasan. Teroris 9/11, yang nyata-nyata melanggar prinsip-prinsip Islam, telah menegaskan persepsi Barat yang telah mengakar dalam yang menganggap bahwa semua Muslim biadab seperti itu.

“Sikap kuno dari abad pertengahan terus muncul ke permukaan setiap kali ada masalah di Timur Tengah. Padahal sampai abad 20, Islam jauh lebih toleran dan lebih damai dibanding dengan Kristen. Qur’an dengan keras melarang penggunaan kekerasan dalam agama dan menghormati semua agama sebagai datang dari Tuhan; dan walau Barat tidak pernah setuju, Muslim tidak pernah memaksakan agamanya dengan pedang.

“Penaklukan awal di Persia dan Bizantium sesudah kematian Nabi diilhami oleh politik agama. Hingga pertengahan abad 8, Yahudi dan Kristen dalam negara Muslim secara aktif dibujuk untuk tidak masuk Islam, karena sesuai dengan ajaran Qur’an, mereka sudah memiliki wahyu asli milik mereka sendiri.”

“Ekstremisme dan intoleransi yang muncul didunia Muslim di jaman kita ini memerlukan jawaban politik – minyak, Palestina, pendudukan tanah Muslim, rezim di Timur Tengah dan standar ganda Barat – bukan berupa bentuk perintah yang sudah mendarah daging.”

“Tapi mitos lama tentang Islam sebagai kepercayaan yang berakar pada kekerasan tetap bertahan dan muncul pada saat-saat yang tidak tepat dan kelihatannya sulit untuk dibasmi. Seperti kita lihat, kita lebih suka menuding sebab musabab kekerasan di Irak, Palestina, Lebanon yang sebagian adalah tanggung jawab Barat, sebagai kesalahan Islam sepenuhnya. Tapi jika kita terus membiarkan prasangka kita dengan cara ini, kita juga berada dalam bahaya.”

Saya serahkan kutipan diatas kepada para pembaca dan khususnya kepada mereka yang memiliki karakter berani untuk menampik bualan Karen Armstrong yang “ahli” Islam itu. Ia mahir menganggap Barat sebagai sebab musabab semua penyakit yang ada dalam dunia Muslim, baik yang di zaman dulu maupun yang sekarang. Saya kira, jika ia diwawancarai hari ini, 22 Nov 2006, ia juga akan menambahkan bahwa Baratlah yang sebenarnya bertanggung jawab atas pembunuhan brutal Pierre Gemayel, seorang menteri Lebanon. Memang Kampanye Disinformasi ala Karen Armstrong ini tidak memiliki batas!

*) Motif sebenarnya untuk tidak memaksa Yahudi dan Kristen masuk Islam adalah agar mereka tetap menjadi Dzimmi, yaitu sumber utama penghasilan negara. Mereka harus membayar pajak jizyah (pajak per kepala yang sangat tinggi), dalam keadaan hina, sebagai tanda mengakui superioritas Islam.

A friend of mine gave me an interesting book for Christmas. It is written by Tillian Tchividjian, the grandson of famous Evangelist Billy Graham, and is entitled “Jesus + Nothing = Everything.” Though I am not currently a practicing Christian, I figure there is no harm and only benefit to be had from reading anything on religion. While I have been reading it over the past couple of days, I have also been reading a variety of other literature such as Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” Karen Armstrong’s “A History of God,” Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” and Peter Berger’s “The Sacred Canopy.” The purpose of this article is to discuss some elements of the book that I consider to be either controversial or misconstrued as well as my personal impressions of these books’ various moments of overlapse. In essence, I am using this article to explore various insights I had while reading Tchividjian’s book, a kind of modified book review, if you will.

Humanity’s Depravity

One of the overarching messages of Tchividjian’s book focuses on the sinfulness of mankind. That we are broken, miserable, sinful creatures is one of the cruxes of his entire writing. In one passage Tchividjian states, “When we open our eyes, we’ll see the Bible’s confirmation that we’re a lot worse off than we think we are – much more self-centered, arrogant, and greedy than we would ever admit to ourselves, let alone to other people.”

In another section Tchividjian talks about the restlessness that all humans (arguably) experience and how Jesus is the only escape from such a dreadful feeling of incompleteness. He claims “For each of us, the “everything” that Jesus can represent in our lives is always linked, directly and inescapably, to our most basic need – a rescuer to free us from our slavery to sin, from our bondage to self-reliance, and from the burden of our idols. It’s a need we never grow out of.” (This restlessness, I believe, is a result of human kind’s biological composition. But that will be explained in the section entitled “Sociology and the Origins of Religion.”)

But let us take a step back and analyze this claim holistically. Are we, human beings, really that terrible? Are human beings really that dreadful in our behaviour towards one another? Before anyone tries to answer that question in the affirmative, let us keep in mind that horrible events such as genocide and rape and murder are the exceptions to our behaviours, not the rule. By this I mean that throughout history, though these events are recurring, the majority of the population does not participate in them.

Take Hitler just for an easy (and often overused) example. While the Final Solution was utterly despicable, the reason that we continue to learn from it and continue to abhor it is because, before him, it was previously unheard of [1]. It was so atrocious that it has forever been etched onto our moral memory. Yet there was a time before him when such “depravity” was not yet experienced; it simply did not exist. And therein lies the problem. People take the Hitlers, Stalins, and Genghis Khans, and apply them in retrospect in regards to history, to time periods which knew nothing of such human potential for heinous acts. But let us not forget that Hitler was an exceptional person (though not in the positive sense of the word).

So while there may be many examples of such morally reprehensible events, they are isolated and to be considered only with the utmost gravity and levelheadedness. The reason being is that we often focus on the bad since the good is the norm. Those guilty of such acts, may in fact, be inherently depraved but I would argue that the majority of us are not. The majority of humanity will not commit such heinous acts as genocide or murder or rape. So while Christianity may be right in condemning them, for the rest of us, these cries of inherent human wretchedness are, for the most part, groundless. Humans are capable of committing horrendous, anguish-causing acts, but those are not everyday occurrences. The majority of us live decent lives in which we may be guilty of being indifferent towards one another at worst, but to consider us evil is, also, entirely groundless [2].

But Tchividjian would accuse me of trying to justify my sinfulness. He would accuse me of teleological and psychological motives to avoid the inescapable truth, which is, that I am a wretched, fallen, deluded human being. Obviously I would disagree. And the insight that came to me while reading this book so far is, “Does Christianity overplay the sinfulness of mankind?” Insofar as I can tell, it does. But this too, has a purpose. Christianity’s message focuses on Christ’s sacrifice for our sins so that we may be redeemed, forgiven, reconciled in our relationship with God. Thus, if the sin does not exist, then Jesus’ sacrifice was for naught. Therefore Christianity must preach the inherent depravity of mankind in order to maintain its relevance [3].

Definition of “sin” and the inadequacy of the Bible as a guide to morality

Yet, what does it mean to sin? How is sin to be defined? If sin must be taken seriously, I would argue that to sin means to commit an act which is evil, perhaps even, unforgivable. But let’s take a look at some of the Ten Commandments to see if a violation of any of them warrants a person to be labeled as “evil.”

The first commandment states that there is to be no God worshiped before YAHWEH. But is this truly “evil?” I would say not. For the image of the person, in my mind, that does not worship God does not automatically signify that the person is a savage, immoral person. It seems to me that this verse from Exodus gave rise to the popular thinking that atheists are automatically and naturally bad, evil people. But that’s not the case. It just refers back to the age old question of “Can we be good without God?” The answer is an undeniable “YES.” There have been many great Atheists who have lived happy, healthy, morally satisfactory lives, by anyone’s standards [4]. So to not worship God is not evil. It should not be classified as such.

Similarly, commandments 2 and 3, when violated/broken, are not to be considered moral atrocities. If anything, they are merely to be considered “disrespectful” and/or “tasteless.” For if God does exist and we do not give Him the proper worship and respect He deserves, we are merely guilty of being self-centered and arrogant. But are these two traits “evil?” Again, I answer in the negative.

The fifth commandment states that we should honor our parents. Yet why should we honor our parents if they have been nothing but awful towards us? What if our parents abuse(d) us? What if they try to steal from us, lie(d) to us, or even, God forbid, kill(ed) us? What if they don’t deserve our respectful treatment?

Next, I just want to point out that the actual commandment about ending another human being’s life is not “kill” in a general, broad sense but refers specifically to “murder” which is not the same thing as “self-defense.” There is a giant gap between the two. Yet even if someone was to murder, what if they murdered a pedophile or a serial killer or a person who has committed crimes against humanity? Is this not justifiable? Is it truly “evil?” I would say yes to the former and no to the latter. But then again, it just depends on who the person is. If it’s an undeserving, innocent, productive, kind, helpful human being, then murder is evil. But if it’s a person that arguably deserves it, then it’s not “evil” but rather “inappropriate.”

Stealing is covered next. But is stealing in and of itself evil? What about the praised actions in Robin Hood? What if we steal from those with an excess, those who can afford to lose some of their wealth and possessions to help those who have little to nothing? Is that evil? I would say no. But if something is stolen from the poor, then that could be properly considered “evil.”

Then we have the commandment that prohibits us from bearing false witness. I have heard different interpretations of this commandment. Some say that this refers specifically to not telling lies while in court, lies that can directly affect the quality of one’s life, and not just lying in general. Others will absolutize the rule and say that all lying is bad. Again, lying that may result in one’s wrongful death may be considered evil but lying to save someone’s life or to keep them from experiencing a certain discomfort is more justifiable and not to be considered evil.

Lastly, there is the matter of covetousness. We are commanded not to covet the possessions of our neighbor. But I don’t think these things are evil in and of themselves. Perhaps if it leads to stealing from the poor or murdering someone. But perhaps this force of covetousness could be used properly and responsibly. Perhaps this covetousness could be used to motivate us into doing better than our neighbor, a la “Keeping up with the Joneses.” Again, it just depends on the situation at hand.

In conclusion, these commandments, when broken, are usually not grave enough to be considered “evil.” They may be disrespectful or inappropriate or undesired in certain situations, but they do not deserve the label of being “evil,” much less being considered “unforgivable.” Furthermore, Biblical morality is thoroughly lacking in scope and effectiveness. It provides blanket rules which crumble under further scrutiny as is seen by the various examples I have previously given. And just as a side note, there are numerous other topics which are not covered by the Bible [5].

Biological, not spiritual, explanations

Yet I would like to go a bit further with my analysis of this message of sinfulness and inherent corruption in humans. Tchividjian implicitly argues that our human nature is a result of being “enslaved to sin.” He seems to argue that our sinfulness is a conscious choice, something that we do because we are bad and enjoy bad things. We understand our actions and choose to carry them out anyways. Or perhaps his slavery language means that we are being controlled by forces outside of our control. I will deal with that possibility a bit later. But here, in dealing with sin requiring a conscious effort, I disagree. I believe that humanity’s nature to make the wrong decision, according to Christian morality, comes from our genetic makeup, i.e., instinct rather than from conscious and free will. Humans, as I’m sure we all know, are finite creatures. We are not perfect. But where Tchividjian blames our lack of discipline and inner depravity, I would say that, if anything is to blame, it is biology, more specifically our genetic makeup and the various mutations and behaviours that have been accrued over time thanks to natural selection and other evolutionary mechanisms [6]. As Nietzsche emphasizes in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and Darwin explains in his work “On the Origin of Species,” life is full of struggle. Struggle to live, struggle to procreate, struggle to protect, etc. Indeed, much of Nietzsche’s works dealt with a theme known as “the will to power. [7]” He argues that every human being, every organism, seeks power. It seeks to have control over its own life and destiny. But in order to gain such power one must not think of others, but merely of what will benefit himself. Sometimes the happiness of others overlaps with happiness of one’s self, but not always. There are simply not enough resources for everyone and everything to live in peace and harmony. That is an inherent condition of our Earth. So as we began to evolve, selfish behaviour has paid off more than altruism. It is instinctual in living organisms to take of one’s self and one’s family/tribe/clan/group first rather than caring about the well-being of others, those which are strangers. Indeed, if we are in competition with everyone else and everything else, it would be utterly foolish to care for others first. It would be a vain self-sacrifice, though there are exceptions to this [8]. While I am not saying that we should all be selfish individuals and care only for ourselves and our families, I am saying that this selfish nature has been, historically at least, instinctual.

Does it have to remain that way? Moreover, has it remained that way? Not at all. There are numerous examples of altruism becoming more and more common as human knowledge increases. The effects of globalization, enriched by our technological and informational innovations of the 21st century, have helped us to become more empathetic creatures, capable of understanding how our actions truly affect the lives of others, including those we love as well as those we do not know in the least [9]. I would say that as humans continue to evolve, there will be a shift from obeying instinct to obeying our free will. Similarly, the more information is shared via the television, the Internet, and the radio, the more empathetic we will all become because we will understand the inner workings and beliefs and motivations of various other cultures to which we are not accustomed. I would argue, as well as hope, that as time goes on we will continue to become more and more altruistic until Christianity’s message of sinfulness as inherent to mankind becomes completely and totally obsolete. Only time will tell if I am right or completely wrong. In conclusion, I find Tchividjian’s message of our necessity to be forgiven and to step away from our inherent evilness to be focused on a very slim minority of the human population.

Sociology and the Origins of Religion

Next, Tchividjian talks about humans who aim to create meaning, significance, and/or values for themselves. Tchividjian condemns such an act and any such belief that encourages this behaviour. Again, he uses slavery imagery: “To define ourselves by what we must do, what we must accomplish, and who we must become – that’s the epitome of slavery.” In another section he says “Here in Christ we have worth and purpose and security and significance that make utterly laughable all the transient things of this world that we’re so frequently tempted to identify ourselves by.” But this, I believe, betrays his ignorance of the theories and evidence of the sociology of religion. Here we run into ideas and evidence put forth by Karen Armstrong as well as Peter Berger. Peter Berger, in his book “The Sacred Canopy,” notes that humans are unique in comparison with all other living organisms. Whereas creatures such as dogs and cats, when born, have a instinctual nature, humans do not. A human, at birth, is considered a tabula rasa, i.e., a blank slate which is later developed by environment and experience. While this is an epistemological argument concerning the development of human personality, it can also be applied to a sociological and biological context, as Berger points out: “Unlike the other higher mammals, who are born with an essentially completed organism, man is curiously “unfinished” at birth.” Furthermore, “Man must make a world for himself. The world-building activity of man…is…the direct consequence of man’s biological constitution.” So what am I getting at? I am merely arguing that Tchividjian is discounting the very process by which Christianity and all other religions have arisen over time. He states that such a process is wrong and meaningless, yet it is the same thing that gave rise to Christianity, according to Karen Armstrong. In her book, “A History of God.” she states “When people began to devise their myths and worship their gods, they were not seeking a literal explanation for natural phenomena. The symbolic stories, cave paintings and carvings were an attempt to express their wonder and to link this pervasive mystery with their own lives.” She goes on to state “These myths were not intended to be taken literally, but were metaphorical attempts to describe a reality that was too complex and elusive to express in any other way. These dramatic and evocative stories of gods and goddesses helped people to articulate their sense of the powerful but unseen forces that surrounded them.” Now, this is important because if the sociological ideas about the origins of religion are correct, then Tchividjian is, ironically, condemning the very process that gave rise to his, and many others’, belief systems. Moreover, if this is truly the case, then philosophers such as Nietzsche are correct in wanting to do away with traditional morality and culture and values and replace it with their own which have the potential to be better.

No ultimate meaning without God?

But there is another element to this that I would like to address. It comes from the assumption that, in order for life to be meaningful, the meaning must be permanent. It must be objectively true. Christian Apologist William Lane Craig, along with numerous literary figures such as Dostoyevsky and Sartre and Camus, make the case that without God, life is ultimately insignificant, valueless, and meaningless. Craig argues that if there is no God, then there is no ultimate meaning to life. Whatever meanings we assign to our lives will die when we do. If there is no God, then there is no objective value to life for the basis of such objectivity must be perfect, something humans are not. Thus, humans cannot be the source of authority for values. Finally, if there is no God, then there is a lack of permanency which makes our lives significant. For if we and the people whose lives we touch are the only recorders of our existence, eventually we will fade from everyone’s memories and it will be as if we never existed at all.

Yet Nietzsche raises a good point in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” Why must meaning be objective and eternal? Why must that be the case? Indeed, if the theories of sociology about religion are true, and God is just a creation of our imagination, then even Christians’ meanings of life are temporary and will die out when they do. I feel that this is something that we fail to realize. We get sucked into the assumption that meaning must be permanent to be plausible and acceptable. But if a meaning that we give to our own lives provides us with happiness while we live on Earth, shouldn’t that be enough? If life is really just as miserable as we believe it to be, why not allow the possibility of reprieve from such a terrible fate by allowing us to create our own destinies? Why not allow us to create our own meanings, our own values, our own priorities? This is the whole thrust of Nietzsche’s message in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” He calls for each of us to go through the “Three Metamorphoses.” Sparknotes summarizes this section nicely: “There are three stages of progress toward the superhuman: the camel, the lion, and the child. In the first, one must renounce one’s comforts, exercise self- discipline, and accept all sorts of difficulties for the sake of knowledge and strength. Second, one must assert one’s independence, saying “no” to all outside influences and commands. Lastly comes the act of new creation.”

The stage of “child” in Nietzsche’s writing is echoed in the writings of Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Frankl talks about his experience in the concentration camps of the Nazis during World War II. His motivation to see his wife and to escape the concentration camps in order to publish his magnum opus was what helped him to survive the harsh conditions and the tortures of the Nazis. He states, “I jotted down on little scraps of paper many notes intended to enable me to rewrite the manuscript, should I live to the day of liberation. I am sure that this reconstruction of my lost manuscript in the dark barracks of a Bavarian concentration camp assisted me in overcoming the danger of cardiovascular collapse.” Thus, no matter what hardships one endures, arguably, one can still overcome the odds and survive if he has but a meaning for his life. Frankl goes on to state that man does not need a comfortable, tensionless, frilly existence but rather a goal to strive for. Nietzsche anticipated this with his talk of the “Ubermensch,” the “superhuman.” Nietzsche uses the symbol of tarantulas to warn against a life of contentment, a life in which there exists only the “Last Man” who strays away from any kind of conflict or competition in order to merely exist. The quality of life has diminished once these people are allowed to take over. There is no progress, merely plain, bland, awful existence.

In essence, I would argue that meaning-making and existentialism is not a fruitless, vain, irrational act, but something that all humans should participate in.

Altruism as a Myth

Next, I’d like to focus on Tchividjian’s treatment of human morality, moreover its motivations and desires. It seems that he believes that, with God’s help mind you, we can commit actions that are completely selfless, that are completely altruistic in nature. Again, I disagree. I believe that every human action of kindness is at least in some way motivated by the desire for reward whether it be immediate or sometime in the future. In essence, I view human actions as being divided up between two forces: selflessness and selfishness. Together these create, what is known in the realm of political science as, a “zero sum game.” Or to put it another way, they have an inverse relationship to each other. As one increases, the other decreases and vice versa. But because we are human beings and we are imperfect and we need things, I would argue that, at best, humans can only commit acts that are motivated by a majority percentage of selflessness and a minority of selfishness. But there is no such thing in the realm of human life as a truly “selfless” action. It does not exist. It cannot. True selflessness comes only from being perfect, i.e., without desire. God, if He exists, acted selflessly because He did not want or need anything. He was perfectly satisfied in and of Himself. So His creation of the world is an example of a selfless act. In contrast, humans could never do anything close. My girlfriend has written an exquisite article on this idea which can be found here.

Who were the authentic Pharisees?

Then, Tchividjian further propagates misinformation about the Pharisees, something you would not expect a person with a Master’s Degree in Divinity to do [10]. In this context, Tchividjian speaks of the Pharisees as the ultimate moralists, people who believe that if they behave themselves they will earn their own salvation and receive Heavenly rewards. (This is another topic very important to Tchividjian’s writing, anti-moralism.) He states, “Paul was originally a Pharisee, and the Pharisees in the New Testament were the ultimate moralists. They were remarkably astute at making sure their external behaviour was spic-and-span.” He suggests that in reality they were immoral and mistaken in their beliefs.

But this is a gross misunderstanding of who the Pharisees really were. Karen Armstrong denies such a claim and instead reveals the truth about the Pharisees. “In the New Testament, the Pharisees are depicted as whited sepulchres and blatant hypocrites. This is due to the distortion of the first-century polemic. The Pharisees were passionately spiritual Jews. They believed that the whole of Israel was called to be a holy nation of priests. God could be present in the humblest home as well as in the Temple. Consequently, they lived like the official priestly caste, observing the special laws of purity that applied only to the Temple in their own homes. They insisted on eating their meals in a state of ritual purity because they believed that the table of every single Jew was like God’s alter in the Temple. They cultivated a sense of God’s presence in the smallest detail of daily life.”

Thus, the Pharisees could be seen as the Protestants of ancient Judaism [11]. They broke away from the Scholasticism (to use a Catholic term) of orthodox Judaism in order to bring their faith and religious teachings of YAHWEH to others with more force and passion. They were merely following the rules to be considered proper religious teachers so that they could increase the amount of “priests” of their religious teaching [12]. But let it also be noted that for the Jews, following the laws of YAHWEH was essential to their faith. They had such rituals because Moses and other Jewish prophets had received revelations from YAHWEH commanding them to do so. Jews, by their religious nature, are moralists. This is something that is lost upon the pages and pages of Tchividjian claiming that moralism is terrible.

Personal social validation

Lastly, Tchividjian comments on a peculiar insight that affects our generations currently. He states that he had felt anguish during a particular stage of his life because he had worshiped an idol. That idol was his search of validation via the opinions and statements of others. How many of us are guilty of the same thing? How many times are we disappointed when one of our Facebook posts or Tweets isn’t liked by or retweeted by a sufficient amount of people, respectively? I know I am. And this is one of the insights provided by Tchividjian with which I agree. While we should acknowledge and respect the opinions and statements and feelings of others towards ourselves, we should not let it dictate how we feel about ourselves as people. It is nice to be praised and thought highly of, but this, in no way dictates the success of our lives. Some of the most hated people achieved some of the most greatest things in human history. I suppose this is my preaching and, I admit, it is rather cliché. But I believe we should be ourselves for the most part. There are certain traits and behaviours which can and must be thrown to the wayside, specifically those that cause harm to others, but we should embrace our uniqueness and our flaws for the most part. We are not perfect but we must remember that no one is. Well, at least not right now [13]. But for those of us who are currently among the living, we ought to embrace what makes us us. I’m impatient with willfully ignorant people. Perhaps I am, at times, overly critical of people’s motives and capabilities, but that is just part of who I am. I do not try to reconcile it away. I don’t feel guilty for it. I own it and make it part of my visible personality.

Footnotes:

[1] http://mousewords.blogspot.com/2005/01/are-people-inherently-depraved.html

[2] Note, this criticism assumes that objective morality exists. While it is the general consensus that there are objective right and wrong, I disagree. Unfortunately trying to address that issue within this post is not practical. For an in-depth overview of morality being a social construction consult any of the following websites: http://www.quora.com/Is-morality-merely-a-social-construct-or-something-more – http://www.debate.org/debates/Morality-is-an-evolved-social-construct/1/ – http://lehmanm.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/morals-as-a-social-construct/

[3] Let it be noted that not only does Tchividjian declare this statement, he also asks repeatedly in very pointed ways, whether we “realize” this “fact” or not. He continually asks us to search within the depths of our soul whether we realize that we are wretched beings enslaved by sin. I find his obsession with human depravity to be disturbing, to say the least.

[4] http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/Main_Page

[5] http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=40233

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_power

[7] http://www.whyculturedmeat.org/the_selfish_gene.php

[8] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

[9] http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1925566,00.html

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees#Pharisees_and_Christianity

[11] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/sadducees_pharisees_essenes.html

[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees#A_Kingdom_of_Priests

[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendent_Man#Synopsis

A Time To Keep Silence – Patrick Leigh Fermor
NYRB Classics, 2011 (first published: 1957)
Buy: Amazon | Bookdepository * 

After reading Between the Woods and the Water, I became fascinated with Patrick Leigh Fermor and started looking for other works of him. When I read the description of A Time To Keep Silence, an account of Leigh Fermor’s experiences visiting several monasteries around Europe, I could hardly resist buying it and reading it right away. And so I did.

In the introduction, Karen Armstrong remarks that Leigh Fermor’s conclusions about monastic life are at times faulty. For example:

“As he watched the monks going about their daily lives, Leigh Fermor assumed that ‘the dominating factor of monastic existence is a belief in the necessity and efficacy of prayer’ and concluded that without ‘this first postulate of belief’ monastic life would be farcical and intolerable. I think that he was mistaken in this. It is only since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that the Christian West made ‘belief’ – the acceptance of certain creedal propositions – ‘the first postulate’ of religious life. (…) In the premodern period, however, in all the major world faiths, the main emphasis was not on belief but on behavior. First, you changed your lifestyle and only then could you experience God (…). This has been the experience of monks and nuns.”

This is not just Armstrong’s opinion. Catholic monastic life developed around the principles of acting out faith, instead of the idea that the acceptance of, believing in, Christianity, was enough. Though the above citation suggests that Armstrong links the monastic principles encountered by Leigh Fermor in the twentieth-century to pre-modern times (as if Catholicism is pre-modern at its core), she does in later paragraphs explain that this is simply where this lifestyle originated, and that thus, even though belief would be key to the lives of the monks Leigh Fermor encountered, practicing it through their lifestyle would still be the essential of monastic life.

I am not writing this review to argue for or against the views expressed by Leigh Fermor. In contrast, I think that the fact that in this book someone who has been raised in a different Christian environment, portrays Catholic monastic life according to his experience of it as an outsider, is what makes it so very interesting. Throughout the book, I wondered about the ways in which this small booklet reflects so many perspectives on a (by now) niche Christian phenomenon. Here I was, a girl raised atheist, but from a Catholic background, and having been schooled academically to a certain extent on Catholic traditions, reading a book by an English man who was most likely Anglican (?), that sets out his perspective on Catholic monastic life in Europe, through his own experience and his talks with monks who gave their own views on their life. It was not because of his information that I found this an interesting read, Leigh Fermor’s language can be quite dense and long-winded, with details that at times make little sense, but exactly because it was fascinating what he had to say about this way of life. Clearly, at first he felt it was not for him at all, and you can read the scepticism in some of the paragraphs, but he also admits he was changed by the experience, the rhythm of life, the simplicity. It becomes incredibly clear that Fermor is sympathetic towards Benedictines, but has troubles understanding what would bring spiritual fulfilment about life as a Trappist monk. While I do understand his questions, I felt at times he was very quick in dismissing someone else’s choice of life. Throughout the book it felt as if Leigh Fermor remains at a distance from the monastic lives he describes. To some extent this feels more as an memoir in which we learn little about monasteries and more about Leigh Fermor himself, but in which questions surrounding religion and worldviews are central. I may have found some of his more critical remarks baffling, in the same way that I find it quite hard to understand how you could start living in a monastery for a while without knowing what the basic precepts are, but I was keenly interested all the same. I guess this proofs once again that in all my studies of religions, I am never interested in the rules and official worldview per se, but intrigued about the perceptions and individual appropriation of them.

Now that that long-winded ramble is out of the way, let me tell you that I would not recommend this book to anyone. You would have to be able to look past Patrick Leigh Fermor’s tendency to write long-winded detailed sentences, and his sometimes pompous self-assertion, and definitely you would have to like venturing into a book that describes travels and religion (though I admit, I generally do not enjoy travel writing that much). I think this book serves a niche-audience more than his travel memoirs of Europe during the 1930′s, but for those who are intrigued by the subject matter, it is a worthwhile read, and a short one at that.

Other Opinions: A Work in Progress, Fizzy Thoughts, The 2 R’s, Book Garden, The Mookse and The Gripes.
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1. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when the Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Gremy, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. A great approach to actually facing the difficult conflictual conversations
2. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. Due out in January 2012, a marvelous, big scale, research based complete reframing of political and religious differences. (Note: read in manuscript as I know Jon)
3. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. A comprehensive introduction to our two major brain systems: the automatic, fast unconscious one and the energy requiring conscious one, which together explain why it is do damn hard to get folk to use systematic approaches to conflict handling
4. Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. The best recent guide to changing ourselves, which is hard.
5. Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong. A really stimulating encouragement to living a more compassionate life and that means more compassion in our conflict too
6. War by Sebastian Junger. The best recent guide to show how war is so appalling and yet so   seductive
7. The Science of Evil: on Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron Cohen. A masterful introduction to the emerging science of empathy and its absence.
8. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr. A riff on my own perspective: ‘as our problems get more complex, our attention span diminishes’. Without making the effort to go deeper, and resist the shallows, we are screwed.
9. Patterns, Thinking and Cognition: A Theory of Judgement by Howard Margolis. Perspective shifting take on how our brains instantly pattern recognize and so often get it wrong when it matters in conflict
10. Darwin’s Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson. A great romp through the evolutionary reasons why religions work.

PS I recently re-read William Gibson’s great cyber-punk novel Pattern Recognition that I read most years, and that too throws light on conflict, not to mention introduces my favorite modern fictional heroine Cayce Pollard, and her helpful theory that jet lag happens when our soul is smeared out behind us, unable to keep up with our bodies in a jet age. It takes days to catch up. And yes I know this is Cartesian dualism, but I am a pragmatist and the insight works for me right now as I am suffering from this problem as I write…..

‘Who Needs Religion?’ – Karen Armstrong, Abdel Haleem, SOAS Khalili LT, 6pm, 14/12/11

It was a good talk to go to after having my brains smashed out at the Foster+Partner interview.

I wonder if 2000 years ago, any of the disciples had the slightest inclination that soon one of the few prominent advocates of religion would be an agnostic woman (with a funky haircut) … yeah, I was surprised to find out she’s not a nun.

Points to think about:

Religion is a modern construct that has nothing quite like it in any cultures or traditions outside of the modern West; it took it a good 2-300 years to come about in Europe and originates from the word ‘religio’ which is latin for ‘virtue’; this implies a sidelined preoccupation with something that is private, personal and should be kept to ones self. It is an immense focus on prayer and ritual.

Religions like Islam would see this as quite a strange concept; as the idea of ‘deen’ is social and affects public life; it is not just a private commitment.

Most people say all the wars in history were started off by religion, when they were in fact started off by the Nation State. Secularism, when taking root ‘officially’ in the 15th century, was a planned move towards seizing power. Religion can be violent, like all human activities are violent; modernity is also violent (take the genocides of the 1930s).

In the Bible, the original Latin for ‘belief’ has been missed in translation; where Christ is said in speech to refer to belief, what he is actually referring to is faith. This is because belief is an intellectual pursuit defined most prominently by Newton in the 1800s (e.g. we ‘believe’ in science), whereas faith stems from concepts of loyalty and commitment; an action rather than just a statement. This is because being kind to your enemies, feeding the poor and doing good to others is a commitment not just a statement.

Why does the modern world need religion? Because in an age where we’re rarely encouraged to acknowledge our own limitations, religion is a lesson in humility; it actually teaches us that we don’t know anything, forget everything. Like a typical Aristotelian dialogue (funnily enough- pagan in origin …)

Although post-modernism in Western philosophy was technically the antithesis of Modernism; it has so far been a step even further away from religion as apposed to closer to it. This is because secularism is so deeply rooted in Western philosophy and culture that it’s naturally assumed religion is something from a dark and unenlightened age, something backward and something that quakes and shatters in the glaring wake of progress. It’s taken for granted that there can actually even be a reality outside of secularism.

Readings:

-The Secular as Sacred, Confucius

- The Meaning and End of Religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith

- www.charterforcompassion.org

Of course, there’s the nun experience: one of my little obsessions. Armstrong entered a Catholic convent in 1962 at the age of sixteen, confidently looking forward to a lifelong union with God. Seven years later, after earnest effort, great misunderstanding and deep pain, she was released from her vows and became an ordinary undergraduate at her Oxford college. Yet despite her evident brilliance –which she manages to convey without seeming to brag, a neat trick — her PhD. thesis was failed and she did not receive her doctorate. Thus two cloistered worlds, the convent and academia, were closed to her.

Staircase at the Vatican: probably not what Armstrong had in mind

These developments take up the first half of the book, and I found them riveting, though I wasn’t sure why I was supposed to be interested.  Armstrong is an excellent writer and her outsider’s view of 1960s Oxford was fascinating. The stress here is on her outsider-ness, for Armstrong was not just emotionally damaged by her convent years: it turned out that she was an undiagnosed epileptic. Until 1975 she struggled with seizures and amnesia, despite being under a psychiatrist’s care. For a while she taught, and she wrote Through the Narrow Gate, about her years as a nun. The publicity for that book brought her to the attention of TV producers and she was enlisted to write and present a six-part documentary on St. Paul. (Can you imagine that on TV today?) It was this development that brought her back to the study of religion, in a completely different context, and set her on the path to her current eminence. The Spiral Staircase is structured after the first of T.S. Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday poems, and shows us Armstrong’s life as a climb — arduous, but satisfying — from darkness into light. She went into the convent to find God, she lost him, and found him again in a very different guise.

Yet for me this book felt like an incidental work. It sounds as if her thinking on spirituality and on the related monotheistic religions is so important that any memoir has to be secondary. Toward the end we get a sense of what feels like her non-memoir voice, and it takes on a new authority.  About her decision to write A History of God, she says:

The great myths show that when you follow somebody else’s path, you go astray. The hero has to set off by himself, leaving the old world and the old ways behind…. He must fight his own monsters, not somebody else’s, explore his own labyrinth, and endure his own ordeal before he can find what is missing in his life. Thus transfigured, he (or she) can bring something of value to the world that has been left behind… In the words of the Old French text of The Quest of the Holy Grail, he must enter the forest ‘at a point that he, himself, had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path.’”

It wasn’t until I read this paragraph that I began to understand what all the fuss was about. The Spiral Staircase is pretty satisfying, but I’m left with the impression that Armstrong writes with more passion about God than she does about herself.