Can't Get Around It
All, let's do it. Let's get into it. I've been reading on this topic much in the papers, in books and all my friends are just going off on it. We can't avoid it. We can't pretend it doesn't exist. We can't throw a simple answer at it and hope it goes away nor can we hide in a coccoon of ignorance or indifference. We have to face the fact.
God is out to get us.
All right. Now that I have your attention, I want to address a few topics. I don't flatter myself in believing that this entry is going to be the end-all be-all when it comes to these topics. Rather, I hope it lays a foundation for future discussion, discussion of people who are trying to articulate their own thoughts and beliefs through dialogue with others. In other words, fools and instigators, piss off.
The first thing I want to say is that there is NO FINE LINE between religion and culture. You CANNOT draw a line in the sand and say this is religion on one side and culture on the other. It just doesn't work that way. Religion and culture are two huge spheres of influence that overlap in most respects. There are some things in MY LIFE or YOUR LIFE that can be strictly said to come from my religious beliefs and others that are strictly cultural norms. But the vast majority of things we are talking about are BOTH. They are culture and religion. They are religion AND culture.
The argument that "Oh that isn't the religion, it's only the culture" is inherently flawed. The religion has spawned the culture and is therefore directly responsible for it. You can't say "Oh, but the Church is good, it's just the people and culture." I'm sorry, you cannot completely separate the two.
I am going to take the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because that seems to be a good example and because I know a lot of people who can identify with it. But the same principles apply with most any religion. Many people I know try and distinguish and say that somehow that the Church is not responsible for the actions of its members and the culture of, say, Utah is not really the Church but is simply and outgrowth of people. (One could argue the same thing about Muslims in the Middle East and the groups of people, both terrorist and peaceful, who worship according to its precepts).
The problem with that argument is that the culture would have never existed without the religion and the religion would have never have survived had the culture not been there to support it. Much of what the LDS Church is in Utah is an outgrowth of 150 years of people living its doctrine and doing so in the company of an evergrowing minority of unbelievers.
The truth is that much of what is called "Doctrine" in the church is very culturally specific. I'm not claiming that its right or wrong, but I am claiming that it must be understood and taken within the sphere in which it exists. Do you think God worries about alcohol, tobacco and Rated R movies in his sphere? No, because they are so culturally and era specific that they are prohibitions and edicts proscribed in our time and our time only. Christ drank wine (don't give the specious argument about "new" and "old" wine, THE SON OF GOD DRANK ALCOHOL.), so did Moses, Abraham and Lot. Yeah, Latter-day Saints claim now to be very chaste and virtuous but you have some of its founding members being married to dozens of wives including women who were married to other men AT THE SAME TIME (read: Brigham Young-- check your history books if you don't believe me).
Does that make these things right or wrong? The purpose of this discussion for the moment is not to say if they were right or wrong (I have strong opinions on some of this, but that would only muddy the waters at this point) but to point out that what many look at as tried and true unchanging principles upon which to judge and attack others are actually culturally mandated norms proscribed by men who claim to be inspired of God. If you believe them, great. But make sure that you're not saying that these things have been and always will be thus, because history and factual research tends to make a fool out of many absolutists.
The same is true on the other side of things. Some people hold up a banner of "tolerance" and "free-thinking" as if they were the only two true virtues in the world and everything else was relative. They condemn any judgment by any person and laugh at people who hold anything as sacred. Then, when these people have "tolerated" everything and everyone to the utmost degree, they find their feet cut out from under them as groups they have tolerated turn and rend them limb from limb. In other words, you have to take a stand. You have to believe in something, in somethings. "Tolerance" in and of itself really has no value unless you have virtues of your own as a point of reference.
I guess the end point of this all is that we need to continue to learn. We need to continue to listen. We need to read and write and argue and yell and then go back and consider it all. Not only does no one culture and religion have a monopoly on truth but no one culture can consider itself the one legitimate outgrowth of truth or religion. We can grab on to truths and make them hard and fast in our lives, but we should be ready to defend them and exchange them out if they prove to be a shaky foundation. Don't mistake culture for religion, but don't make the mistake that you can completely untwine the two either.
God is out to get us.
All right. Now that I have your attention, I want to address a few topics. I don't flatter myself in believing that this entry is going to be the end-all be-all when it comes to these topics. Rather, I hope it lays a foundation for future discussion, discussion of people who are trying to articulate their own thoughts and beliefs through dialogue with others. In other words, fools and instigators, piss off.
The first thing I want to say is that there is NO FINE LINE between religion and culture. You CANNOT draw a line in the sand and say this is religion on one side and culture on the other. It just doesn't work that way. Religion and culture are two huge spheres of influence that overlap in most respects. There are some things in MY LIFE or YOUR LIFE that can be strictly said to come from my religious beliefs and others that are strictly cultural norms. But the vast majority of things we are talking about are BOTH. They are culture and religion. They are religion AND culture.
The argument that "Oh that isn't the religion, it's only the culture" is inherently flawed. The religion has spawned the culture and is therefore directly responsible for it. You can't say "Oh, but the Church is good, it's just the people and culture." I'm sorry, you cannot completely separate the two.
I am going to take the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because that seems to be a good example and because I know a lot of people who can identify with it. But the same principles apply with most any religion. Many people I know try and distinguish and say that somehow that the Church is not responsible for the actions of its members and the culture of, say, Utah is not really the Church but is simply and outgrowth of people. (One could argue the same thing about Muslims in the Middle East and the groups of people, both terrorist and peaceful, who worship according to its precepts).
The problem with that argument is that the culture would have never existed without the religion and the religion would have never have survived had the culture not been there to support it. Much of what the LDS Church is in Utah is an outgrowth of 150 years of people living its doctrine and doing so in the company of an evergrowing minority of unbelievers.
The truth is that much of what is called "Doctrine" in the church is very culturally specific. I'm not claiming that its right or wrong, but I am claiming that it must be understood and taken within the sphere in which it exists. Do you think God worries about alcohol, tobacco and Rated R movies in his sphere? No, because they are so culturally and era specific that they are prohibitions and edicts proscribed in our time and our time only. Christ drank wine (don't give the specious argument about "new" and "old" wine, THE SON OF GOD DRANK ALCOHOL.), so did Moses, Abraham and Lot. Yeah, Latter-day Saints claim now to be very chaste and virtuous but you have some of its founding members being married to dozens of wives including women who were married to other men AT THE SAME TIME (read: Brigham Young-- check your history books if you don't believe me).
Does that make these things right or wrong? The purpose of this discussion for the moment is not to say if they were right or wrong (I have strong opinions on some of this, but that would only muddy the waters at this point) but to point out that what many look at as tried and true unchanging principles upon which to judge and attack others are actually culturally mandated norms proscribed by men who claim to be inspired of God. If you believe them, great. But make sure that you're not saying that these things have been and always will be thus, because history and factual research tends to make a fool out of many absolutists.
The same is true on the other side of things. Some people hold up a banner of "tolerance" and "free-thinking" as if they were the only two true virtues in the world and everything else was relative. They condemn any judgment by any person and laugh at people who hold anything as sacred. Then, when these people have "tolerated" everything and everyone to the utmost degree, they find their feet cut out from under them as groups they have tolerated turn and rend them limb from limb. In other words, you have to take a stand. You have to believe in something, in somethings. "Tolerance" in and of itself really has no value unless you have virtues of your own as a point of reference.
I guess the end point of this all is that we need to continue to learn. We need to continue to listen. We need to read and write and argue and yell and then go back and consider it all. Not only does no one culture and religion have a monopoly on truth but no one culture can consider itself the one legitimate outgrowth of truth or religion. We can grab on to truths and make them hard and fast in our lives, but we should be ready to defend them and exchange them out if they prove to be a shaky foundation. Don't mistake culture for religion, but don't make the mistake that you can completely untwine the two either.
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