What an interesting post, penni!
Let me add my own doodlings in the margins of some of your observations. (And I will admit to stealing one of Lather's metaphors.)
I keep trying to find something that will allow me to stay within the structure of Christianity, where I am comfortable and where most of my friends have their spiritual basis, but helps me overcome my inability to accept it as it is presented.
If I were faced with this sort of dilemma, penni, there would be two ways in which I would approach it.
The first would be to try to find some belief system that I could believe in, because it could be logically demonstrated to be "true." I know from experience I would end up with nothing.
The second is (for me) much easier. It would be to try to find and/or invent a religious view that satisfies me, even though I know it is not necessarily "true," and might not satisfy the emotional/aesthetic/whatever demands of anyone else. Then I would act AS IF it were true. Call this the "make up your own myth" strategy, which requires that you remember that your myth is only a myth -- myth here understood as a symbolic representation of what you would like the ultimate reality to be.
Personally, I am not at all sure that I would want to know the Ultimate Truth. For me, much of the pleasure in life comes from asking questions, not from getting definitive answers.-- First of all, what's left to do after you get The Answer? The fun of the search is gone; the mystery of existence evaporated. Secondly, what if I don't like the answer? Suppose, for example, that the Creator God is really an Evil Demon, as some of the gnostics argued?
I think it quite possible to live in a state of tension between belief and disbelief. Dostoyevsky, for example, maintained that it was even desirable: that doubt should sit at the heart of belief.
Not only that, I don't agree with Campbell's proposition that "moral breakdown is occurring because people have no new mythology to hang on to." First of all, I don't think there is any "moral breakdown." People today are no worse than they ever were; they may even be better. Secondly, "mythologies" have little to do with "morality"; they are ways in which we explain the cosmos to ourselves. Thirdly, there is no way, in the modern age, which is still The Age of Reason, that any kind of one-size-fits-all mythology is going to be universally accepted.
Getting back to you, penni -- why should you not just develop your own interpretation of Christianity, one that is satisfying to you? (As long as you do not try to proselytize the rest of us -- which I know you would not do, anyway.) There are all kinds of interesting interpretations out there, as well as some non-denominational religious speculations (e.g., process philosophy)that you might find congenial. And so what if your version of Christianity does not coincide exactly with that of your friends? Variety is the spice of life...<gg>
And that New Age, Esoteric Christianity, stuff is not for you, unless you like mumbo-jumbo, and have no problem with the suspension of disbelief. New Agers tend to buy into every fad that comes down the pike, from astrology to Tarot Cards to the mystic properties of gems to astral bodies. Religion as "magic," in other words. That does not strike me as being your bag.
More anon....
Joan |
