What's your religion?

[KDude]

If it was Protestant, then it would still be a public notion.


Anyhow, in my case, I disagree. My initial faith had no connection with the public or any denomination. I had some personal experiences that simply made me think twice about faith and God... that's the best way to put it. I've tried to seek out community afterwards, don't get me wrong, but that isn't what got me where I am.

 

[Sniffles]

It's still basically a Protestant derived idea, and you made references to Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith; and Kierkegaard was operating under the Protestant paradigm(although friends did speculate that had he lived longer he would've converted to Catholicism - but that's another matter).

 

[KDude]

You're reading too much into my beliefs. The Knight of Faith is simply a method to illustrate what I already experienced. It's an anachronism, if you will. I'm not a Protestant. I didn't know much about Protestantism at the time. I had only been to one Protestant church before I came to any religious beliefs.. it was Sunday school, when I was 6 or 7. Other than that, I went to a New Year's Party at a Baptist church in my teens. You give my faith too much credit, as if I had put that much thought into it at first. I don't think I even subconsciously approached it that way, because I never paid attention to Protestantism to begin with.

 

[Lark]

That's a good analogy. I also like the Asian saying of "one road, but many paths" as well.



This often entails loving a god made in your own image, rather loving God as he actually is. So in the end you're just worshipping yourself and calling yourself god.

I tend to think that personal fit can lead to what you've mentioned here but I also think that there's more than one way to pay homage to God, for instance not everyone is cut out for the religious life, whether its a monk, priest or missionary, and equally there are people who arent cut out to be fathers, mothers or raise a family but those are two distinct ways of paying homage to God just as an example.

 

[Sniffles]

There are several ways of honouring God, as I acknowledged your analogy about there being several ways to the right answer in math. What I'm criticising is the over-focusing on the individual aspects of faith, to the point of reinventing God in your own image.

 

[Lark]

There are several ways of honouring God, as I acknowledged your analogy about there being several ways to the right answer in math. What I'm criticising is the over-focusing on the individual aspects of faith, to the point of reinventing God in your own image.

Which I think is an important critique to be made, the idea of a personal relationship or a relational basis for faith is interesting and it probably was pretty radical at one time and place but now its not, at least I dont think.

Its a little like the response to war in the west now, people are valourised because they died, they are remembered and their death personalised, very little is said about what the sacrifice is for or anything like that.

It could be clever control of popular sentiments to prevent out breaks of animosity at home between sympathisers for either side in a foreign struggle but I tend to think its even beyond that to some sort of post-modern deal in which all ideology, religion or anything else is excluded altogether.

 

[KDude]

There are several ways of honouring God, as I acknowledged your analogy about there being several ways to the right answer in math. What I'm criticising is the over-focusing on the individual aspects of faith, to the point of reinventing God in your own image.

Well, for the record, I never tried to reinvent God in my own image. There isn't an "over-focus" on myself. I'm just saying that I came about faith from a personal standpoint. Nobody really held my hand when I got there. But that said, there were so many unanswered questions from my personal standpoint that I've done my best to make sense of things in light of the "public". I've explored.. Even Catholicism to an extent. I don't want to be entirely disconnected from at least some things you believe in. It just wouldn't be true if I said your religion or Protestantism actually helped me appreciate these things to start off with.

 

[Sniffles]

Well now the notion seems to be the norm. The notion that maybe religion has public elements as well and that one should love God as he actually is is now the radical counter-argument.

 

[Lark]

Well now the notion seems to be the norm. The notion that maybe religion has public elements as well and that one should love God as he actually is is now the radical counter-argument.

I think faith could and should be public but I dont think that it should be political and I think even when its public it can be full of pit falls for that very reason, I think this is why Jesus told people not to be like those who fast and cry out and cover themselves with ashes, that they already had their reward because they where looking for attention but those who did so in secret would have their reward in heaven.

 

[Nonsensical]

i worship cabbage

 

[Sniffles]

Well, for the record, I never tried to reinvent God in my own image. There isn't an "over-focus" on myself. I'm just saying that I came about faith from a personal standpoint. Nobody really held my hand when I got there. But that said, there were so many unanswered questions from my personal standpoint that I've done my best to make sense of things in light of the "public". I've explored.. Even Catholicism to an extent. I don't want to be entirely disconnected from at least some things you believe in. It just wouldn't be true if I said your religion or Protestantism actually helped me appreciate these things to start off with.

Whether or not you directly encountered Protestantism or not is not the point really. The point being that the concept you're describing is derived from Protestant thinking(or Gnosticism depending on your POV).

 

[Ginkgo]

What I'm criticising is the over-focusing on the individual aspects of faith, to the point of reinventing God in your own image.

I think this is a side-effect of postmodernism. Some people think that faith and the institutions associated with faith are imperfect or a mere cultivation of culture, 'therefore', their doctrine is incorrect. After that happens, they make their faith an individual and personal activity because they think that it is a necessity to create the truth, rather than let the truth "create" them. Then, the reshaping of God is bound to take place. (yes, I have been there, done that) Sometimes the reshape comes in the form of a kind of pantheistic God(s), or something along the lines of Spinoza's God, or maybe something else entirely.

 

[Sniffles]

I think this is a side-effect of postmodernism. Some people think that faith and the institutions associated with faith are imperfect or a mere cultivation of culture, 'therefore', their doctrine is incorrect. After that happens, they make their faith an individual and personal activity because they think that it is a necessity to create the truth, rather than let the truth "create" them. Then, the reshaping of God is bound to take place. (yes, I have been there, done that) Sometimes the reshape comes in the form of a kind of pantheistic God(s), or something along the lines of Spinoza's God, or maybe something else entirely.

Yes, I think I showed you Voegelin's basic take on this issue, of how God is murdered by claiming that God and religion are just mere human inventions and thus tries to give man ultimate authority over everything.

 

[KDude]

Whether or not you directly encountered Protestantism or not is not the point really. The point being that the concept you're describing is derived from Protestant thinking(or Gnosticism depending on your POV).

Fair enough.. but there are Catholics who have come to their convictions out of personal experiences at first too. It's not solely a Protestant or Gnostic idea, because being an individual is also part of the human experience. Some people are going to come to things (or not) in different ways.

It almost sounds like you're just stating a Fe POV rather than Fi, in my eyes. You're just calling Fi Protestantism or Gnostic.

 

[Sniffles]

Fair enough.. but there are Catholics who come to their convictions out of personal experiences at first too. It's not solely a Protestant or Gnostic idea, because being an individual is also part of the human experience. Some people are going to come things in different ways.

Well I'm not discounting personal experiences or their legitimacy in religion. I after all came back to faith through that route. I'm just saying that one cannot rely on that alone, just like one cannot rely on community alone in faith either. You need both.

It almost sounds like you're just stating a Fe POV rather than Fi, in my eyes. You're just calling it Protestantism or Gnostic.

Well the point about Protestantism is that it emphasizes private faith and Gnosticism emphasize the divine knowledge(Gnosis) that lies within oneself.

 

[Lark]

Fair enough.. but there are Catholics who have come to their convictions out of personal experiences at first too. It's not solely a Protestant or Gnostic idea, because being an individual is also part of the human experience. Some people are going to come to things (or not) in different ways.

It almost sounds like you're just stating a Fe POV rather than Fi, in my eyes. You're just calling Fi Protestantism or Gnostic.

The RCC is reconciled to the position of the Lutherans on this anyway, there was a consensus document and everything, I would say that it involves protestantism as an event or stage in history as opposed to a creedo.

 

[Aquarelle]

Whether or not you directly encountered Protestantism or not is not the point really. The point being that the concept you're describing is derived from Protestant thinking(or Gnosticism depending on your POV).

And what's wrong with Protestant thinking? I think what you and Lark were getting at earlier is the idea of "one God by many names." My take on faith is that whether I believe in the Catholic concept of God, the Protestant concept of God, the Muslim concept of God, the Jewish concept of God, even the or even the Pagan concept of God, a hybrid of many concepts of God, or my own concept of God derived from tenets of different religions and my personal experiences, it's really all the same God, all one God. There are many ways to conceptualize God/a higher power and many ways to honor him. In my mind, pretty much any religion that values human life and holds ideals of respect and compassion is completely valid. Many roads to the same destination.

 

[Ginkgo]

Fair enough.. but there are Catholics who have come to their convictions out of personal experiences at first too. It's not solely a Protestant or Gnostic idea, because being an individual is also part of the human experience. Some people are going to come to things (or not) in different ways.

It almost sounds like you're just stating a Fe POV rather than Fi, in my eyes. You're just calling Fi Protestantism or Gnostic.

I find it odd that I've seen 4 or 5 Fi doms come up with the same gnostic ideas here on the forum. Fi is contrary to the "tyranny" of Fe; but claiming that functions are influential of one's religious orientation is just a tiny fragment of a larger picture.

 

[Beargryllz]

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

 

[Lark]

And what's wrong with Protestant thinking? I think what you and Lark were getting at earlier is the idea of "one God by many names." My take on faith is that whether I believe in the Catholic concept of God, the Protestant concept of God, the Muslim concept of God, the Jewish concept of God, even the or even the Pagan concept of God, a hybrid of many concepts of God, or my own concept of God derived from tenets of different religions and my personal experiences, it's really all the same God, all one God. There are many ways to conceptualize God/a higher power and many ways to honor him. In my mind, pretty much any religion that values human life and holds ideals of respect and compassion is completely valid. Many roads to the same destination.

Well, if you consider it literally protestant then the thinking is nothing but a spirit of protest, righteous indignation, its pretty reductivist I know but I do think its accurate since there where and are schisms before and after the reformation from the RCC.

Hilaire Belloc wrote about this in his book on The Great Heresies and probably in his other books on the reformation but I've not read them all. I dont agree with him entirely and I just know from reading his books that there'd be a personality clash between myself and him if we'd ever met. On the other hand I kind of know what he's talking about when he characterises the protestant spirit as a sort of radical, unflinching, throwing the baby out with the bathwater contrarianism.

I didnt used to feel this way but reading Erasmus and Luther's Discourse on Free Will totally knocked me for six and I couldnt see anything good about the reformation from then on if I could judge what was happening at a popular, public level was in any way like what happened in that exchange at the level of theologians and scholars.

The pattern, which I associate with the Reformation, of overthrowing an authority but then erecting an equally authoritarian order in reaction to the unleashed chaos (Luther's attack on papish, then support for principalities contra the peasant war) or creation of an alternative polar power which then tries to out do the horrible actions of its opponent, real or imagined (Calvin's Geneva) is something which I think has been repeated in almost every single revolutionary upheaval since, almost regardless of context or epoch, with the exception of the US revolution, perhaps because it was a big country and was more of a seperatist struggle.

This is something I'm very wary of discussing because of the capacity for unintended offense to friends, I really hope I've not offended you.