One reader responds:
Wow! Sitaram! You put so much thought into your post that I hate to be such a spoil sport- almost. Saved from what? From being the animals we are? There is no salvation. There is no damnation. All the people you mentioned, imho, are deranged and self serving. There are many wisdom books and ways of inviting other humans to extend mercy to one another. Hope is something we give ourselves and bring to fruition alone.
Sitaram replies:
Thanks for the wow.
I was hoping for a "Holy cow!"
Consider the game of Chess.
Imagine that I had written, not about the history and development of theological doctrines, nor the inchoate weakness of various scriptural arguments, lying in waiting to refute scholars with their own words, but, rather, that I had written about the history of chess, the supremacy of certain strategies, the essential character of those few in each age who become grand masters, and the mystery of IBM's Deep Thought program.
And, after you read my monograph on chess, you dismiss it all by pointing out to us the obvious: Chess is only a game, you say, and not a matter of importance in the course of human events; the chess pieces are merely carved wood or ivory at best and plastic at worst, you say. " You take your hand and sweep the pieces off the board and onto the floor with a laugh, and give us a look of satisfaction. "
But, have you told us anything we did not know before? Have you added to or detracted from anyone's observations regarding the game? Of course, in theory, the world might go on without the game of chess, though in practice it shall not, for chess and religion are human activities. It is not the pieces or the board, or even the players, which are of significance, but, shall we say, the mathematical patterns, eternal patterns of logic and illogic, which are the real object of study. And shall there ever be a Kurt Godel of chess, to unravel the seeming infinity of moves in our Sisyphean labors and put Deep Blue forever to rest with a meta-mathematical model of incompleteness?
Have you made a point, or missed the point?
There are those who pose challenging questions. There are those who find clever answers or solutions. And then, there are those who neither pose nor solve questions and problems, but dismiss them as insignificant.
Whenever we are confronted by a dragon, we have a choice. We may attempt to slay the dragon. Or, we may dismiss the dragon as something which does not exist. We slay non-existent dragons in our imagination and our fiction, using our minds. Dragons exist as ideas and ideas are very real, and can sometimes be very dangerous. Epics are always peopled by heroes who are dragon slayers, and not nay-sayers.
We must be careful not to dismiss or write-off too many questions and problems, or our mind may suddenly find itself unemployed.
We can never prove conclusively to everyone that God and heaven and hell exist or do not exist, but we all know there is a Northern Ireland. Belfast requires no phenomenology.
We need to be saved from ourselves. As e. e. cummings said, "The mind is its own beautiful prisoner."
The mind is a faithful servant, but a cruel master.
We must try to save ourselves from the damnation of our own intolerance before terrorism and retaliation destroy us all.
Being, myself, more Hindu and Buddhist than Christian in my personal beliefs, I have other fish to fry. But I know a few interesting things about Christianity.
There is no salvation or damnation in the sense that, if we don't follow the right set of rules in the right way, some part of us will survive death and find itself in an eternal lake of fire or orgasmic bliss. It's important to realize that there's more to existence than trying to appease a mythic God. In a sense, that could be the function of the maturing ego, to slay that God and reject the arbitrary cruelties of one's society.
And yet there's more to life than perpetually denying that there could be anything divine going on!
hakim
Dear Hakim, thank you so much for your time and interest to post meaningful reactions to my blog.
Your insigtful observation regarding salvation and damnation resemble an obscure Greek doctrine known as "The River of Fire", which sees heaven and hell as the same place, namely, in the bosom or fabric of God. And it is WE who, by our freewill choices in our life have caste our nature in a certain fashion, either as meek loving and compassionate, in which case for us, dwelling in the fabric of God is bliss, or else, we have become selfish, proud, callouse, and so for us, the fabric of God is a torment.
But the "river of fire" theology dates back to the Zoroastrian notion of a "lake of fire" prior to the judgment, which is soothing as warm milk to the righteous, but scalds the wicked.
If we look at the 3 children in the fiery furnace, in the Old Testament, Shadrack Mishach and Nebednigo, they were not consumed by the flames but dances, and an angel could be seen with them, but when the wicked servants of the king peered into the furnace, the flames jumped out and devoured them.... POOF.
The afterlife is really about this life, is how I usually try to look at it, and that's how things usually make more sense to me. We're always rising again, always on the sifting bridge--and always finding ourselves tormented by demons.
Sitaram, your knowledge of the various religions and ability to compare them so usefully reminds me of something I learned about the Five Percenters (via Mike Knight), that all traditions are corrupted or imperfect, and we should study them all with an eye toward what they have in common, to learn the truth. (That's how I remember it anyway.)
I suppose dwelling in the Kingdom as opposed to the lake of fire depends partly on one's sense of self. If I am an isolated, exclusive individual and I must compete with others for my share of anything, I'm in hell. If I open my eyes (or heart) to the community ("all our relations" as some say), then I am in a sea of love that created me from a clot and will continue to nourish me for the time being, in which I arise, manifest, and pass away into the eternal oneness, just like everything else blessed with existence. (On a good day! Some days are more tormented by demons than others.)
I must say, a few years ago I could have written what your commentator above wrote, and in looking back I had to figure out why and how I still agree with a lot of what that person said. It still feels unusual to me to be talking about God as something real and meaningful.
hakim baker
The greatest sin, perhaps the only sin, is to yearn for some future afterlife and ignore the implacable grandure of this life which we already possess, (to paraphrase Camus.) "Hell is other people." - Sartre
Hakim, your one sentence, "The afterlife is REALLY about THIS life," is so profound that I have posted it to my blog at myspace.com, together with an advertisement for Laury's excellent website.
Click here to see my blog entryÂÂ
Thanks, I'm flattered :)
hb