Singing Loudly

With the release of Passion of Christ, I feel compelled to give a very Kierkegaardian expose into a religious feeling that has been rustling around inside of me for awhile. I’m not a theologian, I’m probably not a “good” Christian, and it’s certainly not my intention for this to be something to evangelize. If you care to read you should go for it, but I’ve made necessary disclaimers that it’s heavily imbibed with Christian (although certainly not conservative Christian) beliefs.

I know that it’s been a difficult year for some of my friends; I’ve also had a heck of a year. And I can’t really say it’s been altogether spiritual for me in the former understanding of the word, but I remember vividly about 10 year ago when my friend was in a near-fatal car accident going to visit him in the hospital. I later told my mom that I really didn’t think I had been praying for him like I thought I should. She said to me that sometimes we have a prayer life and sometimes we have a life of prayer; she said, “I believe that every sigh and groan you offer is considered to be a prayer.” That has slowly formed the shell of my religious beliefs.

I think that the one thing that I really have talked to my friends about, and experienced spiritually, is how the idea of boxing spirituality into a certain set of what are considered religious tasks, is a damaging idea. I think that spirituality was always meant to be integrated with who we are as people. When I have studied traditional cultures I found that there are often spiritual activities tied to all sorts of everyday things. Like the Celts for instance had prayers or charms (depending on whether we are talking about pagan or whatnot) that would they would say when milking a cow or lighting a fire or any other activity that affected their daily life.

There is something about that which is really appealing to me. In a lot of traditional religions (not meaning Baptist) there is a sense of attachment of spiritual realities to the physical realities. Example, the rain isn’t coming so the God must be mad. There is a limit to this as it can cause a detrimental situation. If you recall the situation of Job, every evidence suggested that he should (like his wife suggested) just curse God. Job was able to have a faith which was super-circumstantial, it was above the circumstances. He was able to recognize that there was a higher reality, a spiritual reality, that was at work in a way which was not very visible.

At the same time, I think that sometimes what happens to us Christians when we divide everything up into secular and sacred, and we have our job and life personality with our church personality and our home personality is that we end up going in a bad direction. We end up associating spirit with life and flesh with death. What I mean by this is that if you follow the history of the certain religions is that you can see views that look at life deeply routed in the physical expression. Giant feasts with wine are seen in the Old Testament.

In a sort of knee jerk reaction many Christians associate the physical with sin. There is a fear of falling into sin that makes many Christians want to cut off all of these things. For example there are some who say that too drink is absolutely anti-spiritual. But there is no evidence in the Bible that this is true: Jesus didn’t accidentally perform his first miracle by turning water into wine; it wasn’t like he was backed into a corner. So it obviously must not be the great sin some people would have you believe it to be.

It does go further than that because drinking can be more of a take it or leave it thing. There is a lot of room between complete sobriety and drunkenness. Sex, for instance, is a wonderful thing. It needs to be in the right context but when it is it isn’t something to be shameful about. So many of us are taught to look at the ground when that word is mentioned or when things are discussed, or when they aren’t discussed. It’s unfortunate when kids have to learn on the playground what things are. I think that is a product of how ashamed many people, because of their beliefs that separate.

I think that often us Christians are separated from being able to live as humans, because we think that to be human is essentially to be sinful. We were created in the image of God and so there is something good and glorious about being human. There is a way in which some people approach faith that is damaging. They say that all things human and physical and of the temporal world are of the devil and all things invisible and of the spiritual world is Godly. That is actually heresy and is something that can lead Christians into serious trouble and lead into living a guilt-ridden and depressed life.

There is no hope for being authentic people if we can’t deal with the fact that we are humans. Sometimes in our faith walk, or journey, we shun the good aspects of humanity along with the bad because we are so afraid of sin. But God didn’t say that when we accept what Christ did and become saved we will leave this world and be transported to some astro-plain. He could have if that was the plan but it wasn’t. He believed in redeeming humanity because he was still happy with what he created. He believed in it so much that he became human to redeem us. From the Christian understanding of what Jesus did he was resurrected in the human form. Even now Jesus is in human form. This expression of solidarity, that approval, is so crucial in living through faith.

The reason I’m saying this is that when I’m going through the grief of life it doesn’t always help when people give me the spiritual explanation. Sometimes I think that I’ve strayed from the faith by believing that being human was wrong but God is content with me being human. Come what may in the difficulties and joys of being human.