These contemplations were written in Vienna in May and June 1986. They are entirely unstructured and split into the separate sessions when I originally wrote them. They are, perhaps my first ever blogs although that long ago there was no www around to host the blog \ud83d\ude02 that is how old I am. They can be seen as an early attempt to “feed my ignorance” in precisely the way that this blog later took form. They are, of course, representative of my thoughts back then which have inevitably changed in many ways since that time.<\/p>\n
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To know that there is something to be clarified is the starting point. It is mainly self-clarification, but it may help others also. The problem with this starting point in where to start the clarification!<\/p>\n
Given my recent readings, it may be worth starting with Soren Kierkegaard’s (SK) statement “the established Christianity is not the Christianity of the New Testament”. This is something in which I can find no fault. There is little doubt that Christianity has changed in character over the centuries. Is it true that the Church is afraid to admit that fact?<\/p>\n
Christianity is used these days as an “excuse” in a lot of cases. One has only to look at the situation in Northern Ireland to realise the depths to which “Christianity” can sink. No one in his right mind could justify the violence and hatred in a Christian way. There have been a number of times in the last 2000 years when people have launched Jihad in the name of Christianity. Sone have perhaps been justified, although even that is doubtful. <\/p>\n
Perhaps it is necessary to redefine Christianity as was attempted by Dan Cupitt (DC) in “The Sea of Faith”. The ideas contained therein may be sufficient and complete enough to define a “modern” Christianity. This however would not be the Christianity of the New Testament. Would we want it to be? Would God want it to be?<\/p>\n
Religion should surely be appropriate to the age in which it exists. Therefore, while the basic concepts of a religion would remain constant through time, the practice of the religion would move and change with the changing environment. This is undoubtedly true with Christianity. It is less than 2000 years old but has changed to the point where, I believe, an independent observer arriving from “out of this world” would be unable to reconcile the bare facts of Christianity today with that of the New Testament. This is not to say that either or both are wrong, merely that they are different when viewed without the interconnecting history. <\/p>\n
In Jesus\u2019 time there were twelve apostles and a “handful” of Christians. Today there are millions of “so-called” Christians. A reasonably large proportion of these could legitimately call themselves Christians, although in order to do so truthfully there would have to be a definition of what a “Christian” was and is. There are, nowadays, hundreds of branches of Christianity. Which branch is true “Christianity”? Is any? Does it matter? This last question may well be viewed as verging on the heretical. What I mean is is any branch better than any other? There may well be branches of Christianity today which are not only worse than the others but are also positively evil.<\/p>\n
The difficulty as ever is in defining our terms of reference. Looked at in a wider sense which religion is “best”? Have all religions got both good and bad points? Is any religion perfect?<\/p>\n
There are so many questions. One answer which is, I believe, almost certain is that NO religion is perfect. That is because all religions are human religions. Humans make mistakes The wide diversity of religions tells us that they cannot all be right about everything since there are so many contradictions. My immediate thought is that in reality there are just a very few religious “truths” which will be adhered to by all the “serious” religions, no matter how diverse, and that all the frills around these central truths are man-made embellishments which are not essential to true religion.<\/p>\n
Of course, not all of these embellishments are presented as essential to a given religion. Given that branch of the Christian Church which I know best, the Salvation Army (SA), there are a large number of rules and regulations which, while the SA holds that obeying these is essential for SA members, no one would ever suggest were essential for admission to the Kingdom of God. <\/p>\n
There are, as I say, so many questions. It would be easier if there weren’t. The fact that no one has yet found an answer to them all which satisfies everybody is surely proof that the questions are fundamental to human existence since everybody has their own ideas as to what the answers should be and steadfastly defends these ideas. My aim is to find my ideas. <\/p>\n
That say seen a strange statement to make, but it surely states the position of everyone who recognises the fact that what they believe may well be no better than the next person\u2019s beliefs. Returning to the problems of Northern Ireland, if everyone there were to realise that deep down the enemies who are their neighbours believe exactly the same as they do then the troubles would be less. As I say though, religion is not the real cause of the troubles in that place it is only an excuse.<\/p>\n
So far I offer no solutions, only pose problems. I expect that the problems will increase rather than decrease for a relatively long period of this investigation. I am sure that, at the end, the only person who may be satisfied with the solutions is myself. The only other possible solution is that even I am not satisfied. The reason for this is simple. The only person who can justify your personal faith is yourself. You can never convince anyone else that you are right. You can only hope that they convince themselves after listening to what you have to say. I hope that by the end of this journey I may be convinced, although I am sure that the journey will be a long one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These contemplations were written in Vienna in May and June 1986. They are entirely unstructured and split into the separate sessions when I originally wrote them. They are, perhaps my first ever blogs although that long ago there was no www around to host the blog \ud83d\ude02 that is how old I am. They can … Continue reading “Contemplation No.1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[83,103,105,119],"class_list":["post-3371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-faith","tag-philosophical","tag-religious","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3371"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3404,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions\/3404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}