This weekend we were given a few days of free HBO and couldn't resist the exposition on Scientology, that loopy quasi-religion fronted by Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Started by dime-store sci-fi novelist L. Ron Hubbard, the special has a quote from him stating, more or less, "the only way to make good money is to start a religion." If this sounds cynical, it should, but Hubbard was more than just a Huckster - he was seriously and dangerously psychologically ill, as shown in his letter to the VA office to "please help me." They did not help him, and Hubbard went on to create from his "scientific" system of Dianetics the religion, known now for its creepy police state-like tactics and crazy cosmology about aliens and spirits in volcanoes and on and on.
The people shown in the film were ex-Scientologists, most well-intentioned and intelligent, who apologized again and again for their years of blind faith in Hubbard and his fantasy religion. Some joined because they thought they could save the world, while others did so to resolve certain problems, but all said that it was as if they were in a trance - and once the trance was broken, they could not believe their own gullibility.
It is an easy religion to mock, for its founder is well known and its tactics deplorable, but when examined with honesty, it might not be so crazy after all - when compared with other religions. Taking as a reference our daily, "news hour" mentality, which religion really passes the plausibility test? I asked my wife this, and she quickly mentioned Mormonism. Begun by a vision of angels and of holy, golden plates on a mountain top in New York by Joseph Smith, we know of him, too, of his somewhat loopy beliefs, of the disappearance of the plates, of his now largely dis-proven account of American archaeology. Most regular Christians of today consider the bulk of it to be bunk, and it is hard to argue against it. And yet, Mormons now form part of a dependable bedrock of American culture. And with time, the crazier things about the religion have either been changed (polygamy) or been glossed over (American Indians as the Lost Tribes of Israel).
But let's look at my own religion, Roman Catholicism. We believe in a man-god who rose bodily from the dead, and now sits with the "father" until the end-times that he prophesied, when the wheat, or believers, shall be winnowed from the straw, the sinners. The believers, as it says in the Nicene Creed, will be "resurrected" - and by that is meant shall be bodily resurrected, as was the Christ. Thereafter, we (the elect) shall reside in heavenly bliss for all time.
Crazy stuff, none of it scientifically verifiable, none of it even common sense. We are, as Jesus said to Thomas, to believe, sight unseen, because...because Jesus was said to produce miracles and, simply, because he said to believe. The consequences for non-belief are pretty drastic - eternal suffering in Gehenna, or what we now term "hell." And all this from a loving God. And we all know of the oft-times brutal tactics of the early Church.
Of Jesus, I was told in theology class that, given his words, we must either consider him to be a liar, a psycho, or what he said he was, the Son of Man. On here, we may point to a departure from Hubbard, for Jesus's philosophy for life was profound and humanitarian. However, we are conditioned to think so - what of Nietzsche, who believed that the passive-aggressive approach to Christianity was the nuttiest thing in the world, a reversal of all that life teaches us (the meek shall inherit the earth, give your cloak to the poor, and so on) for survival. Now, Nietzsche did go certifiably mad himself, and maybe he always was, but his point has long been worth pondering.
Mainstream Christianity is no longer coercive (Islam currently presents another problem, but that is beyond this essay's scope). It has also been tested and added to and redefined over the centuries, and with our co-evolution, seems fairly normal to most of us in the US - although not so much to Europeans any longer. But the question rationally remains - is not Catholic Christianity just another product of a messianic complex and a will for people to believe in something, anything, but death and dying on earth?
I am currently reading a beautiful book, "Dakota," by Kathleen Norris about contemporary life on the western plains. It is, she says, a desert of the soul, where one can, if one opens to it, find his soul, as did the desert fathers in the first three centuries after Christ. Her most heart-felt companions, even though she is a lapsed Protestant, are the Benedictine monks who have a monastery not far from her home - people who have also sought the desert of the world to find the desert of the soul. And it is through them and her own experiences that she has found an affinity with the earth and the sky, and with herself and others. And she has also re-found her Christian faith, not in a slavish way, but in the way of wisdom and openness and love. While there have always been the sky and the earth, it is in silence and belief that she has been moved, has grown.
Given my pesky barrage of questions yesterday, my wife was finally moved to say, "Christianity is another way to God. There is nothing like God in Scientology," and she is right. While our thoughts as humans will always be incomplete and stupid, no matter how smart we think we are, there is in our depths something longing for kinship with the Truth. We know it exists when we find it, and we know it is real because it gives us nothing of this world and takes nothing from it either (which is reflected in the precepts of a true religion). Instead, we feel that kinship in ways beyond our everyday world, and are helped in this by a template of faith that is far more apt than a dry materialistic approach that gives us tidbits but never the big picture. We want that big picture - proof of something else right there - and the help that is given us through certain teachings. If those teachings can lead to infinite expansion, to a growth in this immense desert, they are good. The Benedictines know this, as does Norris and anyone else who has felt the stirrings in the desert of the soul and found a path in it through faith. FK
The people shown in the film were ex-Scientologists, most well-intentioned and intelligent, who apologized again and again for their years of blind faith in Hubbard and his fantasy religion. Some joined because they thought they could save the world, while others did so to resolve certain problems, but all said that it was as if they were in a trance - and once the trance was broken, they could not believe their own gullibility.
It is an easy religion to mock, for its founder is well known and its tactics deplorable, but when examined with honesty, it might not be so crazy after all - when compared with other religions. Taking as a reference our daily, "news hour" mentality, which religion really passes the plausibility test? I asked my wife this, and she quickly mentioned Mormonism. Begun by a vision of angels and of holy, golden plates on a mountain top in New York by Joseph Smith, we know of him, too, of his somewhat loopy beliefs, of the disappearance of the plates, of his now largely dis-proven account of American archaeology. Most regular Christians of today consider the bulk of it to be bunk, and it is hard to argue against it. And yet, Mormons now form part of a dependable bedrock of American culture. And with time, the crazier things about the religion have either been changed (polygamy) or been glossed over (American Indians as the Lost Tribes of Israel).
But let's look at my own religion, Roman Catholicism. We believe in a man-god who rose bodily from the dead, and now sits with the "father" until the end-times that he prophesied, when the wheat, or believers, shall be winnowed from the straw, the sinners. The believers, as it says in the Nicene Creed, will be "resurrected" - and by that is meant shall be bodily resurrected, as was the Christ. Thereafter, we (the elect) shall reside in heavenly bliss for all time.
Crazy stuff, none of it scientifically verifiable, none of it even common sense. We are, as Jesus said to Thomas, to believe, sight unseen, because...because Jesus was said to produce miracles and, simply, because he said to believe. The consequences for non-belief are pretty drastic - eternal suffering in Gehenna, or what we now term "hell." And all this from a loving God. And we all know of the oft-times brutal tactics of the early Church.
Of Jesus, I was told in theology class that, given his words, we must either consider him to be a liar, a psycho, or what he said he was, the Son of Man. On here, we may point to a departure from Hubbard, for Jesus's philosophy for life was profound and humanitarian. However, we are conditioned to think so - what of Nietzsche, who believed that the passive-aggressive approach to Christianity was the nuttiest thing in the world, a reversal of all that life teaches us (the meek shall inherit the earth, give your cloak to the poor, and so on) for survival. Now, Nietzsche did go certifiably mad himself, and maybe he always was, but his point has long been worth pondering.
Mainstream Christianity is no longer coercive (Islam currently presents another problem, but that is beyond this essay's scope). It has also been tested and added to and redefined over the centuries, and with our co-evolution, seems fairly normal to most of us in the US - although not so much to Europeans any longer. But the question rationally remains - is not Catholic Christianity just another product of a messianic complex and a will for people to believe in something, anything, but death and dying on earth?
I am currently reading a beautiful book, "Dakota," by Kathleen Norris about contemporary life on the western plains. It is, she says, a desert of the soul, where one can, if one opens to it, find his soul, as did the desert fathers in the first three centuries after Christ. Her most heart-felt companions, even though she is a lapsed Protestant, are the Benedictine monks who have a monastery not far from her home - people who have also sought the desert of the world to find the desert of the soul. And it is through them and her own experiences that she has found an affinity with the earth and the sky, and with herself and others. And she has also re-found her Christian faith, not in a slavish way, but in the way of wisdom and openness and love. While there have always been the sky and the earth, it is in silence and belief that she has been moved, has grown.
Given my pesky barrage of questions yesterday, my wife was finally moved to say, "Christianity is another way to God. There is nothing like God in Scientology," and she is right. While our thoughts as humans will always be incomplete and stupid, no matter how smart we think we are, there is in our depths something longing for kinship with the Truth. We know it exists when we find it, and we know it is real because it gives us nothing of this world and takes nothing from it either (which is reflected in the precepts of a true religion). Instead, we feel that kinship in ways beyond our everyday world, and are helped in this by a template of faith that is far more apt than a dry materialistic approach that gives us tidbits but never the big picture. We want that big picture - proof of something else right there - and the help that is given us through certain teachings. If those teachings can lead to infinite expansion, to a growth in this immense desert, they are good. The Benedictines know this, as does Norris and anyone else who has felt the stirrings in the desert of the soul and found a path in it through faith. FK
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