Gospel & Universe 🌎 Many Tribes

A Specific Version of Infinity

Deity & Exemplar - Orthodox & Liberal

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Deity & Exemplar

When Christians see their ideal as a deity, insisting that the historical Christ is more than just an exemplar, many people of religious intent can’t make this jump to deification. Even if they’re of a mystical bent, and fully open to the idea that there may be some mysterious Force that brings the universe together, they find it hard to accept deification because, as far as they can tell, no such thing as a supernatural being exists in the physical world. This idea of a supernatural being has never presented itself to them as anything more than an ideal or, at best, an image in a dream.

Once there is a stark separation between those who belive in Jesus as Lord and those who believe in Jesus as exemplar, the latter are overtly or subtly outcast from the core of the faith. These secular, liberal, doubting outcasts look back at the temple of their ideals and sadly think of it as having been taken over by a cult, whose members are secluded from the world and who appear to be under some form of group hypnosis.

This is putting it rather crudely, but it gets at the point. It’s crude because the process is far more complex than sitting down in front of a swinging silver cross and succumbing to the words, You are getting sleepy. You believe the Bible is the Word of God. You believe Jesus is the Son of God. You believe that Jesus is the Lord. Rather, the process involves dozens of things: being included in a group; communal connection while reading and singing the same message over and over; reading together the same words and finding in them a solid text and the same meaning (despite philology and comparative theology); finding a coherent message about history and the nature of humanity; finding a message that unites and transcends all the pain and difficulty of this world; uniting one person to the other, even after death; relief from error; forgiveness for all the stupid things we’ve done and continue to do; finding a universe that no longer seems random but instead hums to the sound of the choir, the music of the spheres, surrounded by angels and saints.

This is no simple process, but a complex historical, social, and psychological one. It’s also extremely well-tuned, offering us a human incarnation that we can relate to as human beings. This history-bound figure is also God and therefore He can take us beyond human limits to the very edges of the dimension of this universe, where Heaven awaits. He exists in our human timeline and He takes us from this timeline to Eternity.

It’s a deeply appealing idea, one which makes the agnostic sigh and speak in tongues both Arabic and Spanish: ¡Ojala! ¡If only! ¡God willing!

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Orthodox & Liberal

At this point the unity of Christianity becomes very difficult, given the divide between orthodox (or traditional) and liberal (or ecumenical) believers. The orthodox believe that others must believe what they believe if they are to find the capitalized Truth. Liberal believers on the other hand don’t care if others believe differently from them. They assume that just as they’re free to find their own truth, so others are likewise free. Their truth is an uncapitalized, many-sided thing. It can be reached by many paths, many of which are hidden or may even seem contradictory. This liberal (or ecumenical) believer imagines that there’s more than one way to define truth. And where there are two, there may be three, and where there are three…

Because orthodox Christians deify their ideal, they’re extremely convinced about it. Or, because they’re so convinced about it, they deify it. Either way, the two, as causes, both become effects. And as a result, orthodox Christians are loathe to have their deification challenged, lest it dissolve back into a dream or a mere ideal, and lest others don’t share, and hence don’t magnify the group belief — or hypnosis.

The combination of fervor to believe and stricture not to question wasn’t invented by the Christians, however: the Jewish scripture has a great deal of stricture or Thous shalt nots, chief among them being, Thou shalt have no god (with a small g) before God (with a capital G). Orthodox Christians, heir to the Jewish tradition, naturally have commandments of their own, chief among them being, Thou shalt believe the ideal to be the Reality — with a definite article and a capital R.

This ideal Reality isn’t just a Truth in the most sacred and inviolable sense; it’s also an actual Being that stands separate from us and who is the only Reality that can save us. Even if liberals believe in all the positive things the ideal or exemplar stands for, and even if they dedicate their lives and sacrifice their own well-being to living out all the good things in this ideal, it still doesn’t suffice for orthodox Christians, who still demand that they must believe in the incarnation if they are to reach Truth and eternal life.

In this sense, orthodox Christians are their worst enemies: they alienate whoever is in tune with their ideals and values but can’t believe these values have a divine incarnation, let alone one that is the only way to salvation. These Christians, however, are also their own best friend: their intense specificity of belief — in a God that can’t be seen and in the specific actions and words of this God in human form — creates an intense solidarity with other believers. While atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Daoists may see them as cutting themselves off from the rest of the planet, their singularity of vision only magnifies their sense that they are, even more than their Jewish forebears, The Chosen People.

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Next: ⏦ Nothing in Damascus

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