Today, friends, is a first for me. I was defeated.
I had all these interesting thoughts swirling around my mind about everything I’ve seen and everything I’ve learned over the course of the last thirty days (and my life as a whole). I was making all these connections, and I was getting excited to put them all down in writing.
It started off alright, but eventually I realized that I had bitten off more than I could chew. I intended for this segment to be somewhat of a statement of belief, and I quickly realized that there is more work to be done. As I wrote everything down, it became apparent that the thoughts in my mind were not as cohesive as I thought.
It’s not a problem. It’s a major endeavor, and it’s going to be an important part of this work. I just need more time to crystallize my thoughts. The good thing is, I have plenty of time for crystallizing.
I’ve left the strike-though draft below because it seemed like a pretty cool idea. When I revisit this topic, we’ll both have this to look back on. It’s funny to me how grandiose my thinking can sometimes become. I tried to boil the ocean with this one, and it came back to bite me. Ha! Sometimes all I can do is laugh at myself.
In the spirit of “statement of belief,” I think there is actually something I can offer today. It’s an answer to a simple question:
Why do I do this?
I get many different kinds of responses to my writing - sometimes it’s pity, sometimes it’s praise, sometimes it’s tears, sometimes it’s elation. Sometimes people call my work “tormented” or “childish” or something in between. For me, those are probably the best kind of compliments I can get, because that’s what I’m going for - an honest reflection of whatever it is I’m going through. From the very start, that’s what this has always been about: the truth. I want to take you on an adventure. I want you to walk with me. I want us both to wade though this river of life and suffering, hand in hand, and emerge on the shores of understanding. At the very least, I want us to get as close as we can.
What I want to write is what I want to read, and I just don’t see that in many places (I probably don’t look hard enough for it). Most people, in both writing and in life, put on masks to look a certain way, to please a certain audience, to assert some kind of dominance or to sell something. I’ve been a culprit of that during different stages of my life, but I made a decision early on not to allow that in my writing. The day I do is the day I quit. Writing has turned out to be the purest form of creative expression that I’ve found, and I want to keep it that way. I want it to be raw, I want it to be messy and, yes, I want it to stay as childish as possible. At the end of the day, we’re all just children pretending to be “big-shot” adults, and you won’t convince me otherwise.
Writing isn’t my career, and I don’t have to compromise it in any way for any monetary reasons. I don’t have to sell you anything or convince you of anything. All I have to do is sit down and create and allow you to join me. I will say this: having other people read my writing has brought me joy in more ways than I ever would have imagined. I don’t express myself through speech nearly as well as through writing, so I guess for the first time in my life I’m able to show people who I really am and what I really think. For the first time in my life, I feel seen. For that I owe all of you a big, sloppy kiss on the forehead. Thank you, truly.
That’s it for today. If you so choose, enjoy the disaster below :)
-According to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of metaphysics is as follows:
the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
What this means to us today is that we are going to be diving into some strange, esoteric and abstract conceptualizations. The propositions I’m about to put forth are completely my own, and I have absolutely zero empirical evidence to back them up. What I’m trying to do is locate threads of thought, logic and philosophy that forward and future-focused and see if they can be incorporated into the Christian framework. I want to point out that the primary driver for this segment is intuition, not dogma or theology. Sure, those will be incorporated, but they will not be central. What I ask of you is to suspend judgement and open yourself to possibility, and maybe together we can learn something.
Let’s go on a journey, shall we? Walk with me…
The catalyst for this segment is the question that made me step away from any sort of concrete faith or spiritual system for many years. That question is this:
How can there be so many contradicting viewpoints, not only between the Christian faith and other faiths but within Christianity as well? Jew vs. Christian, Protestant vs. Catholic, Evangelical vs. Secular - there’s just so much discord. It’s all overwhelming, and, for me at least, it puts into question the legitimacy of the entire thing. Every opposing group claims to be the “one and only” perspective that’s true. If everyone claims themself to hold the truth, then in reality no one does - yet even to this day, holy wars are still fought in the name of the “one, true God”. If I keep my focus on Christianity, I think of the thousands upon thousands of lives that were ended over the course of centuries simply because they believed in something else. This absurd and heinous reality is an atheists greatest weapon, and rightfully so. Some of the most horrible crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of religion.
On the religion point, I’d agree with the atheists. Man has corrupted institutions for his own power and greed, and we’ve seen the results play out over the course of history (and to this very day). What happens, though, when we take religion out of the equation and speak simply of spirituality? Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater - most of the spiritual systems generated by the human race are actually beautiful, honorable and filled with the highest ideals. There are still many conflicting beliefs between them, but by removing man’s negative stain on them it makes this adventure easier to embark upon.
We’re left with all these different spiritual belief systems. At their core they’re all actually quite similar, but in detail they differ immensely. So, who’s right? Protestants? Catholics? Jews? Muslims? Hindus? Buddhists? Most adherents of these faiths would claim themselves to be right, so…what gives? Logically, a situation like this yields one answer: no one. If everyone claims to be right, most likely no one is, or at least that’s how it goes. The only other option is that everyone is right, but the terms of our reality do not allow for multiple perspectives to be right at the same time.
Or do they? Let’s get weird.
In order to go deeper into this, I need to reveal something about you, me and everyone who has lived for the past few centuries. Our brains, especially in the Western world, have been formatted through the lens of a Cartesian reality (Cartesian = stemming from the thought of Renee Descartes and subsequent thinkers). By that I mean the view of life through a material and rational lens, the separation of mind and matter and a belief that eternal truths can all be deduced by reason. Maybe you’d disagree with me, but it’s almost a guarantee given the fact that you are alive in this very moment reading this. Reason and rationality have enabled us to accomplish many things, but even they have a threshold and cannot account for everything we think and experience. Like I said in yesterdays segment, if we could a thousand years into the future, I have no doubt we’d know this to be true.
What all this means is that we are unaware of how our philosophical framework for life was imprinted on us, and we are equally unaware of how much it informs what we believe to be true and possible. Rationalism, scientific method, objective reality, the separation of mind and matter - these are not the “be all, end all” frameworks of our existence. They are merely impasses, temporary solutions, the best we have in our day and age. We have come nowhere near figuring out the all the answers and the way things work. Sorry to say it, but no man nor age is that great.
So, we’ve established that we all have philosophical and ontological biases embedded within us. If you can trust me on that, even partially, we may proceed…
If you take the time to look earnestly into quantum theory, quantum mechanics, string theory and the “problem” of consciousness, you will find the areas where our rationalist thinking falls short. We just have nowhere to place these concepts and questions within our current framework. This gives us two choices: we end there and say that some things are not meant to be answered, or we rethink the very way we think. Obviously, I’m in favor of the latter - quite simply because it sounds more fun.
There are a host of thinkers, some from as far back as a century ago, that have begun to do just that. Jean Gebser (with his concept of transition consciousness) and Alfred North Whitehead (with his process philosophy) are two of many examples of this. The work of these men is too detailed and complicated to go into here, but they lead to a few important concepts:
Consciousness evolves (not technically evolves but instead goes through major periods of transition that offer completely new insights about ourselves as a species)Thought and consciousness lose all restraints as previously perceivedMind and matter are not separated, but completely dependent on one anotherBeing and time are dynamic, not static
This all probably sounds like nonsense, and that’s fine. The point I’m trying to make is that we know very little, and there’s more possibility out there than we could ever imagine. Let’s now return to our original questions: in terms of faith and spiritual systems, how can there be so much discord? Who, if anyone, is right?
I’m not prepared to say “everyone is right” as a blanket statement, but I am prepared to say that I don’t think “everyone is wrong” either. My mind so desperately wants a dualistic solution a yes/no, a rational resolution, but I don’t think that’s where the answer lies. Perhaps there are new and different ways to approach these anomalies, and perhaps we haven’t developed the consciousness or understanding of reality to accept them yet. Sure, that sounds crazy, and it’s not exactly how I wanted to express that, but it’s a start.
So, how what does this all have to do with the title of this segment - “Christian Metaphysics”? I think it’s quite possible that all the ways in which we view Christ and the Christ story can all be right in a certain sense. I think that is at its core the true beauty and mystery of Christ. From the fundamentalist/creationist Bible-thumper to the completely mystical, metaphorical interpreter, the truth persists. Each camp holds different views of “how” certain things work or certain things are, but both in the end fulfill their purpose.
Another element to this concept of Christian metaphysics is the timeless concept of Christ as the Sacrificial Lamb…