Climbing Without Stairs: Spiritual Commentary

There were a lot of analogies going on in my head when I thought up the title for today's entry but it's because my head was swimming so much that I decided to blog in the first place so I picked one. It's origin is this: Imagine that you're in a two-story building with no stairs. Then, imagine that you are on the second floor. How did you get there?

What I'm getting at, of course, is reaching a conclusion (or destination) without quite knowing what brought you to that point. I have been doing it to myself lately without even realizing that I'm falling into the same kind of habitual problem that I've been examining. Let me show you what went on in my head today and then I'll break it down. It's a simple title or heading of a paragraph.

PROBLEMS WITH MODERN CHRISTIANITY

I didn't take into account that before we can explore the problems , we need to define what we're working with. It's like examining an experience that you haven't been through; like being on the second floor and wondering how you got there. So, fine, jump back a step and say, What is modern Christianity? What is modern? What is Christianity?

The reason why I came to this impasse is because I read an article (and the subsequent comments on it) about Atheism and "that sort of thing." Some of the comments eluded to the persuasion that Christianity was an archaic religion, having it's roots two-thousand years ago, and that it had no bearing on our current situation. Mythology was a good word that was brought up; assuming both the creation myth in Genesis being their referenced point since my usual assumption is that they haven't actually read the Bible. I could be wrong.

Regardless of the source and the discussion, the point is still theirs to make. Except, something I thought of after viewing both "perspectives" in response to the article. I think this statement is both hilarious and true, and you can definitely quote me if you want.

"Atheists tend to oversimplify things. Theists tend to overcomplicate them."

If you examine an atheist's argument against spirituality/religion, you can almost always say that they have "broken it down" or "zoomed out" to the point that the components of what they're discussing have only a vague and ambiguous meaning. God becomes this mysterious figure "in the sky" that is either cruel or indifferent; people that believe in God take on the stereotype of the guys on CNN that get questioned every time the news wants an extremist point. I could go into much greater detail here (and may, at some point in the future).

On the other hand, theists (namely Christians that I see, I apologize for any blanket statements made here that do not apply to other faiths) tend to delve way too far and ignore the fundamentals that their beliefs are based upon. Someone pointed out a situation recently (via a book called Velvet Elvis) that nowhere in the Bible is the word "Trinity" used. It strikes me as incredibly odd that one of the basic tenets that define someone as a Christian (belief in God/Christ, therefore Christ as God, therefore 3-in-1) is not expressly stated inside the text that we claim to use as the very foundation of our belief structure.

Of course, talking about things that are or aren't expressly stated in the Bible is a completely separate argument. So is the example that I brought up. This is kind of why I hate examples, but at least I'm not comparing salvation to a car (no offense against the person who used this example).

Sometimes I find it very difficult to expect people to "jump-in," midstream, without some kind of reference-able guide to our destination. Now I get to spend the rest of the paragraph defining that statement. By people, I mean " new Christians." Those who, by some evangelical procedure that I'm not quite familiar with, are converted to the belief structure labeled as Christianity. Consequentially, "jumping in midstream" is representative of coming to church with the assumed foundation of prior knowledge of the fundamental pieces of the religion they now subscribe to. Imagine picking up the Bible and flipping straight to Acts 1:1, without any knowledge of the prior pages in the book. Wouldn't starting reading there take away from the overall experience of reading the Bible? Wouldn't the knowledge gleaned be diminished and wouldn't the person be required to make incredible amounts of inferences and estimations?

As for the reference-able guide, people always cringe when I mention this. Could we - as a "nation" of Christianity spanning all denominations, countries, cultures, languages, translations, and interpretations - create a concise, easy to understand, valid, and correct piece of documentation that would explain what it means to be a Christian in a way that it would be comprehensible to someone who had no idea what that meant? By the same token, could we conceivably create the same type of guide on what it means to be human ?

Without some kind of foundation for what we believe, we're definitely left wondering how we got to this point. Unfortunately, with discussing theology we usually find ourselves not on the second floor but much, much higher than that. Rather than looking for a single flight of stairs or a ladder, I believe we face the possibility (and challenge) of re-examining hundreds of them. Do we, instead, decide not to question by looking down and thereby simply content ourselves with the fact that we have climbed so high? Do you know anyone like this? Spiritual stagnation!

Can you imagine that we've actually lost sight of the ground and desperately need to regain some kind of bearing on exactly which "floor" we are on?