It happened: try as I might to avoid it, politics pushed its angry head under the tent of my conversation once again. No, really, it wasn’t might fault – at least not mostly. It was at a neighborhood croquet match just completed, a bunch of people as old or older than I seated at a picnic table for a final good-bye to summer and the departing snow birds, when she said it: “We should just have a popular vote on everything. That would fix things.” This in reply to someone else’s complaint that everything now was so, let us say, “messed” up.
Of course I had to open my big mouth. “That would be even worse than our current leadership. Most of us don’t know that much about what’s happening, from finances to world politics. A lot of it is beyond our understanding (money) or necessarily held secret. We would be the really blind being led by the partially blinded, manipulated like never before.”
Oh, the look of evil I got from her! I am not really sure why – maybe it wasn’t politics but my smart-ass approach – but peace had been temporarily shattered.
Fortunately, I was able to break the evil air with a few observations about breaking air. As we were a bunch of old folks, we all had out stories, but allow me to return to a more mature point: what I said is true. No one knows the whole of everything. Some of us know a lot about one thing or a few things, but most know less than we think we know about just about everything. This realization brings doubt. Doubt brings darkness and troubled thought. We strive – need - clarity, even fake clarity. Maybe my dismissal of that woman’s clarity was the cause of the hateful look and it really was all my fault. Then again, maybe it was really the weather’s fault, as the dark October skies have filled me with a coffin full of grave and sepulcher thoughts.
While the weather may have started this descent into doubt, it was a chance (is anything really just “chance?) detour into our church library that brought it to full force. As the woman who was managing things there has decided that she is now too old or too busy for such things, the library has become a mess of books scattered about with no rhyme or reason. So it was that I shuffled at random through a pile and walked off with one that seemed promising – Notes from the Underground (written of a few essays back) by Fr Cozzens. As an old priest, the author questions the authority of the Church concerning all sorts of things, especially sexual things, about which the Church seems particularly preoccupied. As I read and often nodded in agreement on several things, general doubt about all things increased. Will God really send me to Hell for purposefully missing a Sunday mass? Will I be condemned to eternal torment if I remarry after a divorce without an annulment? True, there is scriptural evidence for much of Church dogma, as well as some practical reasons, but many pronouncements such as those above seem to be more in line with the letter rather than the spirit of the law. This made me think: how much of this or any religion is based on discursive law divested from spiritual law? How many bricks, we might then ask, can we remove from religion in general before the structure crumbles?
Another book came to me shortly after, Salt and Light, by Eberhard Arnold, a German author writing from between the World wars. This book was given to me by an old and politically radical Catholic woman several years ago shortly before her unexpected death. I figured I knew what it was about, and, not being a radical myself, shelved it and forgot about it. Suddenly, just after finding that other book by fateful chance, this appeared before me on my bookshelf as if by magic. We never know when the Holy Spirit or the guidance of angels is with us, so of course I had to read it. And it, too, was disturbing, as it, too, led to great doubt concerning the truth of discursive orthodoxy.
In summary, it talked of the Sermon on the Mount, that impossible list of things that Jesus said were necessary to live by to enter the Kingdom. We all know what some of these things are: love your enemy just as you love your family, turn the other cheek to be stricken again rather than to strike back, give your tunic as well when asked for a cloak, and so on. Such behavior is impossible for us and seen by most to be metaphors for the perfect love of God. But Arnold has a different idea. Says he: think not of these commandments as laws such as were written for Moses; rather, think of them as pointers, as signs, telling us that we must give ourselves totally to the Spirit. For any human attached to this world, the New Kingdom is beyond them, but for those who have abandoned themselves totally to God, the behavior described in the Beatitudes would come naturally and without thought. That is the only way the new laws of Christ can be fulfilled: not by any force or pressure or rules from the outside, but by the inspiration of God. We cannot demand this, but we can will ourselves to accept this. The rest must be done by Spirit.
I have long known this truth and in fact argued with the woman who gave me the book about this very fact. Her extreme activism, I told her, applied human force, which would necessarily produce a profound counter-productive reaction. While this made me feel smarter than her, the book slyly took away my prideful inner certainties. Within a few chapters, I found that I have been hiding behind the written law of our church more than I have thought. And just as with the beginning of this essay, my acceptance of Church doctrine started with politics. The conventional Catholic Church is now a bulwark against the lunacy of woke-ism (you can tell my political affiliation), which has brought me under its overall fold. However, I soon realized that such an alliance can easily close the ‘self’ to that which is beyond the letter of the law. No permanent good can come from the rhetorical thoughts of man. Clearly, no heaven will ever come to earth base on, say, the dogma of Marxism, but heaven cannot come to us through the dogma of the clergy, either. The two are certainly not the same; unlike Marxist philosophy, many religions point the way to heaven. But we cannot take the sign for the real thing. We must open ourselves to the force that inspired our religion, and then allow for the internal change that is necessary for true conversion.
Such it is that doubt is essential both in the world of politics and in the world of faith. Still, unless we want to live the tragically stoic life of an existentialist, we must have certainties in our lives, some framework that helps us understand our own significance. For politics, I think we need the test of time to clear our thoughts of the rhetoric, vitriol, and outright lies. Did going to war with X bring long-lasting positive results? Was Y really a stooge of a communist or fascist or enemy country? In hindsight, should I trust this person or party more, or trust this institution or that call to war? So we must make our judgements, hopefully with care and precision. And hopefully not like my paternal grandfather, born 1888, who believed that the government was so corrupt that it faked the moon landing. Then again, maybe he was smarter than I.
For religious institutions, I think we have to contemplate where the dogma brings our hearts and souls. Think again of the Sermon on the Mount: does this law or that action promote the vision of Christ? It is far from easy, I know. For instance, should we be accepting of this or that sexual practice if it appears to adversely affect society, the family, and/or the children? Should we live and let live, knowing that such non-judge- mentalism might lead to personal or social destruction or even death?
In retrospect, there is no way to fully dispel doubt without a full-faith effort in something, with which we must drop all doubt. Is God love? Is the God of Abraham and Jesus – and His other aspects as shown by the other great religions - real? Is He all-knowing and all- powerful? Somewhere inside we know. If in the clarity of contemplative silence the answer is “yes,” then we must drop our doubts. Then the rest will come. As St Thomas Aquinas said on this deathbed, “All I have written [compared with the eternal presence he was experiencing] is as straw.”
So doubt until there is no room left for doubt. This is certainly uncomfortable for those like me, who have caught themselves resting on a pedestal of pride and security. To take the sign – or the propaganda – for the real thing will, without doubt, bring us to a dead end. On the other hand, to deny where these signs are meant to take us will almost certainly bring us to a death as certain as winter.
It happened: try as I might to avoid it, politics pushed its angry head under the tent of my conversation once again. No, really, it wasn’t might fault – at least not mostly. It was at a neighborhood croquet match just completed, a bunch of people as old or older than I seated at a picnic table for a final good-bye to summer and the departing snow birds, when she said it: “We should just have a popular vote on everything. That would fix things.” This in reply to someone else’s complaint that everything now was so, let us say, “messed” up.
Of course I had to open my big mouth. “That would be even worse than our current leadership. Most of us don’t know that much about what’s happening, from finances to world politics. A lot of it is beyond our understanding (money) or necessarily held secret. We would be the really blind being led by the partially blinded, manipulated like never before.”
Oh, the look of evil I got from her! I am not really sure why – maybe it wasn’t politics but my smart-ass approach – but peace had been temporarily shattered.
Fortunately, I was able to break the evil air with a few observations about breaking air. As we were a bunch of old folks, we all had out stories, but allow me to return to a more mature point: what I said is true. No one knows the whole of everything. Some of us know a lot about one thing or a few things, but most know less than we think we know about just about everything. This realization brings doubt. Doubt brings darkness and troubled thought. We strive – need - clarity, even fake clarity. Maybe my dismissal of that woman’s clarity was the cause of the hateful look and it really was all my fault. Then again, maybe it was really the weather’s fault, as the dark October skies have filled me with a coffin full of grave and sepulcher thoughts.
While the weather may have started this descent into doubt, it was a chance (is anything really just “chance?) detour into our church library that brought it to full force. As the woman who was managing things there has decided that she is now too old or too busy for such things, the library has become a mess of books scattered about with no rhyme or reason. So it was that I shuffled at random through a pile and walked off with one that seemed promising – Notes from the Underground (written of a few essays back) by Fr Cozzens. As an old priest, the author questions the authority of the Church concerning all sorts of things, especially sexual things, about which the Church seems particularly preoccupied. As I read and often nodded in agreement on several things, general doubt about all things increased. Will God really send me to Hell for purposefully missing a Sunday mass? Will I be condemned to eternal torment if I remarry after a divorce without an annulment? True, there is scriptural evidence for much of Church dogma, as well as some practical reasons, but many pronouncements such as those above seem to be more in line with the letter rather than the spirit of the law. This made me think: how much of this or any religion is based on discursive law divested from spiritual law? How many bricks, we might then ask, can we remove from religion in general before the structure crumbles?
Another book came to me shortly after, Salt and Light, by Eberhard Arnold, a German author writing from between the World wars. This book was given to me by an old and politically radical Catholic woman several years ago shortly before her unexpected death. I figured I knew what it was about, and, not being a radical myself, shelved it and forgot about it. Suddenly, just after finding that other book by fateful chance, this appeared before me on my bookshelf as if by magic. We never know when the Holy Spirit or the guidance of angels is with us, so of course I had to read it. And it, too, was disturbing, as it, too, led to great doubt concerning the truth of discursive orthodoxy.
In summary, it talked of the Sermon on the Mount, that impossible list of things that Jesus said were necessary to live by to enter the Kingdom. We all know what some of these things are: love your enemy just as you love your family, turn the other cheek to be stricken again rather than to strike back, give your tunic as well when asked for a cloak, and so on. Such behavior is impossible for us and seen by most to be metaphors for the perfect love of God. But Arnold has a different idea. Says he: think not of these commandments as laws such as were written for Moses; rather, think of them as pointers, as signs, telling us that we must give ourselves totally to the Spirit. For any human attached to this world, the New Kingdom is beyond them, but for those who have abandoned themselves totally to God, the behavior described in the Beatitudes would come naturally and without thought. That is the only way the new laws of Christ can be fulfilled: not by any force or pressure or rules from the outside, but by the inspiration of God. We cannot demand this, but we can will ourselves to accept this. The rest must be done by Spirit.
I have long known this truth and in fact argued with the woman who gave me the book about this very fact. Her extreme activism, I told her, applied human force, which would necessarily produce a profound counter-productive reaction. While this made me feel smarter than her, the book slyly took away my prideful inner certainties. Within a few chapters, I found that I have been hiding behind the written law of our church more than I have thought. And just as with the beginning of this essay, my acceptance of Church doctrine started with politics. The conventional Catholic Church is now a bulwark against the lunacy of woke-ism (you can tell my political affiliation), which has brought me under its overall fold. However, I soon realized that such an alliance can easily close the ‘self’ to that which is beyond the letter of the law. No permanent good can come from the rhetorical thoughts of man. Clearly, no heaven will ever come to earth base on, say, the dogma of Marxism, but heaven cannot come to us through the dogma of the clergy, either. The two are certainly not the same; unlike Marxist philosophy, many religions point the way to heaven. But we cannot take the sign for the real thing. We must open ourselves to the force that inspired our religion, and then allow for the internal change that is necessary for true conversion.
Such it is that doubt is essential both in the world of politics and in the world of faith. Still, unless we want to live the tragically stoic life of an existentialist, we must have certainties in our lives, some framework that helps us understand our own significance. For politics, I think we need the test of time to clear our thoughts of the rhetoric, vitriol, and outright lies. Did going to war with X bring long-lasting positive results? Was Y really a stooge of a communist or fascist or enemy country? In hindsight, should I trust this person or party more, or trust this institution or that call to war? So we must make our judgements, hopefully with care and precision. And hopefully not like my paternal grandfather, born 1888, who believed that the government was so corrupt that it faked the moon landing. Then again, maybe he was smarter than I.
For religious institutions, I think we have to contemplate where the dogma brings our hearts and souls. Think again of the Sermon on the Mount: does this law or that action promote the vision of Christ? It is far from easy, I know. For instance, should we be accepting of this or that sexual practice if it appears to adversely affect society, the family, and/or the children? Should we live and let live, knowing that such non-judge- mentalism might lead to personal or social destruction or even death?
In retrospect, there is no way to fully dispel doubt without a full-faith effort in something, with which we must drop all doubt. Is God love? Is the God of Abraham and Jesus – and His other aspects as shown by the other great religions - real? Is He all-knowing and all- powerful? Somewhere inside we know. If in the clarity of contemplative silence the answer is “yes,” then we must drop our doubts. Then the rest will come. As St Thomas Aquinas said on this deathbed, “All I have written [compared with the eternal presence he was experiencing] is as straw.”
So doubt until there is no room left for doubt. This is certainly uncomfortable for those like me, who have caught themselves resting on a pedestal of pride and security. To take the sign – or the propaganda – for the real thing will, without doubt, bring us to a dead end. On the other hand, to deny where these signs are meant to take us will almost certainly bring us to a death as certain as winter.
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