Reflections from Journal Entries
Now for another set of ten reflections selected/adapted from journal entries written during my Vermont years (1992-95).
- To be ‘non-religious’ is to be modern and/or post-modern but not pre-modern. To be religious’ is to be pre-modern to an increasing degree across the theological spectrum from ‘liberal’ end to the ‘fundamentalist’ end of the spectrum. Disposition toward thinking scientifically (e.g., cause and effect, critical inquiry, inductive reasoning, careful observation, testing hypotheses, unbiased gathering/handling of data, less than complete certainty, pursuit of objectivity, using statistical analysis, . . . ) is an effective angle for distinguishing ‘pre-modern’, ‘modern’, and ‘post-modern’.
[Note: analyses such as David Fischer’s Historians’ Fallacies had guided me since my graduate studies in the 1970s toward scientific historiography. I had traced as a graduate professor the interplay of science with philosophy, theology, politics, economics that has fueled change in Western culture. My roots by 1992 as ‘a historian first, theologian second’ were already deep. Still I entered the medical education/practice sphere in 1992 not yet adequately familiar with the scientific underpinnings of medicine. As the titles in the list of books I have read since 1992 indicate, I have placed a high priority on deepening my understanding of what it means to think scientifically. Such understanding is necessary for approaching spirituality and ethics ‘with the world face to face’.] - A ‘non-religious’ view of spirituality and of being human builds on human strengths rather than on human weaknesses.
[Note: I would now change the wording to ‘ . . . builds on human strengths more than on human weaknesses’. On a spectrum with ‘0’ being an equation of humanness with weaknesses and ’10’ being an equation of humanness with strengths, I find myself most often around ‘7’ in my view of myself and others. I have found ‘religious’ language to be nearing ‘0’ on this spectrum as one moves through evangelical to fundamentalist language within Christianity.] - ‘Non-religious’ spirituality is defined by and experienced as imaged by the ‘wilderness’ metaphor. ‘Non-religious’ spirituality is shaped by and focused on surviving in extremities, in ‘the worst’.
[Note: a few years earlier, I had stated in print my intent to speak as a witness to the spiritual and ethical consequences that follow prolonged exposure to tragic and offensive human suffering. For there is a place where two ten-year-old boys are charged with the brutal murder of a two-year-old child . . . where the memories of sexual abuse seem fresh every morning . . . where an ICU nurse turns and bathes geriatric patients whose skin tears away from their shriveled frames . . . where wounded veterans of war never leave the hospital ward . . . where distraught parents reel from their daughter’s murder by a jilted boyfriend at a youth meeting in the activity room of a church building. There is a place where this does not appear to be “my Father’s world” . . . where few “go for a together” with ‘God’ . . . where no relief comes from trying to “count your many blessings” . . . where it is difficult to “praise ‘God’ from whom all blessings flow”. There is a place where trust is expressed through the language of doubt, lament, fatigue, frustration, self-reliance . . . where the vision of a peaceful time in which to die is shattered . . . where the boldest goal is to “walk and faint not” . . . where being before ‘God’ is experienced as being without ‘God’ . . . where prayer for recovery becomes prayer for the end.] - A ‘non-religious’ approach to spirituality and ethics takes shape around/from a ‘from below’ resolve to be genuinely present with and deeply conscious of innocent sufferers.
[Note: here I had in mind Bonhoeffer’s 1942/3 ‘The view from below’ fragment (my translation) – “It remains an experience of unparalleled (incomparable) value that we have learned to see for once the great events of world history from below – through the perspective of the barred (put out, cut out, blocked), the suspects, the badly treated, the powerless, the oppressed (restrained), the scoffed (derided, mocked), in short the perspective of those who suffer. (It is) only in this time when neither bitterness nor envy (jealousy) has cauterized (corroded, gnawed away) the heart that we see with new eyes great and small, fortunate and unfortunate, strong and weak; that our view of greatness, humaneness, justice, and compassion has become clearer, more free, more incorruptible (not subject to bribes); indeed, (that we see) that personal suffering is a more suitable (qualified) key (code, cipher), a more fruitful principle, than is personal good fortune for exploring the world by observation and action . . . .”] - A ‘non-religious’ theology does not presuppose a ‘scripture’ perspective. Instead, from an alignment with innocent sufferers, a ‘non-religious’ perspective looks for what in Jewish scripture and Christian scripture ‘rings authentic’ when considered through this existential (Bonhoeffer’s ‘outer line’) grid.
- To be ‘non-religious’ is to be iconoclastic.
- I am convinced a Berdyaev-type critique of the anthropo-, socio-, and cosmomorphic character of ‘God’ language is true. I am convinced all ‘God’ language that is of such character.
- Being ‘non-religious’ is, simply put, being without ‘religion’ or a ‘religious’ factor/facet in one’s approach to and experience of ethics and spirituality.
- My primary reference point as I form/follow a ‘religionless’ approach to spirituality and ethics has been Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Secondary reference points include Berdyaev, Merton, Teilhard de Chardin, the Quaker tradition, Harnack, Kierkegaard, Eckhart, Pascal, Quoist, Francis, Erasmus, Dostoevsky, . . . . All these reference points are found on the margin of the ‘religious’ sphere in various ways.
[Note: by ‘on the margin’, I meant controversial and often heretical.] - To be ‘non-religious’ is to be an ‘outsider’ or ‘guest’ in relation to the ‘religious’ sphere.
