Incuriosity

Daniel Florien from Unreasonable Faith shared this interesting quote a few weeks ago by Stephen Fry.

"The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is."

—Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

[ Marks at Parent Teacher by David Hayward, The Naked Pastor. If you haven't visited his site or seen any of his art or cartoons then you're missing out.]

To play a bit of devil's advocate I would add some people may not have the time or luxury to be curious. I'm extremely curious and love exploring new ideas and concepts but I barely have time to even blog let alone time to myself for imagination and curiosity. Regardless I still agree that you must have a thirst for knowledge to be knowledgeable. What bothers me the most are so called experts on a topic in which they've only studied the facts that support their own claims (e.g. the "experts" proclaiming in 2010 that Muslims are attempting to take over America with mega mosque training camps). I love wrestling with  questions, especially questions I myself can not answer. I love it when I come across a new term or idea I've never heard before.

I can't imagine not being curious, not asking questions even of beliefs I (currently) hold to be true. I don't question my traditional religious backgrounds to be rebellious, because I love sin, or because I hate God and Christianity. I continuously question everything because I find it more spiritually rewarding. When I use the term spiritual I use it to describe my humanity, my humanness, my weaknesses and my strengths, all that makes us human. I believe we are born curious (note the word believe) and that as we grow we are raised to avoid asking certain questions and avoid giving certain answers to our children. If I don't know an answer to a question my children ask of me I tell them there are some things daddy just doesn't know. So then we sit down and try to discover the answer together.

What I believe people fear the most is not so much the mental taboo of asking difficult questions but what to do with the new knowledge once Pandora's box is opened. I can't unlearn that men of the church, not God, decided which books were to become the Bible. The mere notion that there were other possible book candidates for the Bible must be mind blowing enough for any regular church going Christian. It's easier to not ask certain questions, to not open certain door which may lead us to doubt. But then avoiding questions I believe stagnates spiritual (there's that word again) growth. I'm not saying that questioning your religious traditions and background will lead you directly into the pit of Atheism, but asking questions will lead you to discover a bit more about who you are and our relationships with each other.

Quote on Marriage

 I've been reading Robert Heinlein's sci-fi novel Time Enough for Love today when I happened to come across this thoughtful quote. And with the recent news of the Marriage Equality Act passing in New York I found it very apropos.

"Companionship, partnership, mutual reassurance, someone to laugh with and grieve with, loyalty that accepts foibles, someone to touch, someone to hold your hand -- these thing are "marriage", and sex is but the icing on the cake." Robert Heinlein

With all the condemnations by God-fearing folks like this guy focusing solely on the "ickyness" on what homosexuals do in the bedroom they never consider that as human beings we all need companionship. We all want to be loved and have someone to share the love we're born with. Does preventing someone's pursuit of companionship really make life better, safer, and more enriching for the rest of us? Or is it because as heterosexuals who have mucked up the institution of marriage **cough, divorce, cough cough** that we want everyone else to be as unhappy as we are?  

(Just a note of clarification before I get into trouble with the Mrs. I am merely speaking in generalities, not from personal experience. Although to be honest, marriage is tough at times, but even the rough times are 1000 times better than one moment of loneliness. And I would never dream of taking those moments of companionship from anyone regardless of sexual orientation.)

Quote of the Rabbi...err I mean Day

"If you’re going to imagine a god who chooses people, it isn’t surprising that you imagine this god choosing you. If you’re going to imagine a god who reveals truth in a book, it isn’t surprising that you would imagine this book is your book. And if you’re going to imagine a god who dabbles in real estate, it isn’t surprising that you would imagine that your land is in fact the Promised Land."" -Rabbi Rami Shapiro

 Thought I would share this honest bit of truth Rabbi Rami shared today on his post on why Rabbi Rami is a Rabbi. And for you Facebook and Twitter followers you can find him here and here.

On Christianity and Religious Tolerance

"Those who believe the Ten Commandments is the basis for American jurisprudence are no less adamant than Moses in insisting that there be "no other Gods" before the God of the Bible. The modern idea that formed as a result of more and more immigrants coming to America and bringing their non-Christian religious traditions along with them (and worse than that, some would argue, popularizing them here) that all religious belief systems deserve equal respect really was not the "original intent" (as they call it) of our Founders." Doug B. from Groping the Elephant.

Doug has a great post today on Christianity in America and the paradoxical themes of freedom (in this case religious freedom) and the intolerance and exclusivity of the Christian faith. This is exactly the kind of topic I hope the PBS documentary God in America I wrote about on Thursday will at least briefly mention when it airs in October. How then does the average Bible believin', freedom lovin' American reconcile the two without blowing a circuit? Outside of not giving it much thought or establishing the beliefs in God and the Bible as superseding the universal rights of being human I can't see any other way around it. The rights and beliefs of others more than likely loses out in this battle whenever personal faith is challenged. This is because personal faith is so closely tied to our identity that any attack on the faith is a personal strike against us. This is insanity! And this is why I've departed from Mainstream Christianity to a very Liberal expression of Christianity (if I even continue to call myself a Christian at all is a topic I've written about in the past and something I will touch upon again in the near future). I do not see suppressing the universal rights of our neighbor just to secure my own sense of security in divisive and exclusive beliefs as the core of being Christian. Tolerance is not a Christian ideal but it is a human ideal. At the very least we should be progressing forward and not just meeting the status quo of the Founding Fathers. We should be more loving than Jesus, more compassionate than our scripture, and far surpass the original intent of our very human, and very fallible Founding Fathers.

Quote of the Day

"Once upon a time the mouth, the hands, and the feet said to each other, 'We do all this work gathering food and chewing it up, but the lazy fellow, the stomach, does nothing. It's high time he did some work too, let's go on strike!' Whereupon they went many days without working, but soon found themselves feeling weaker and weaker until at last each of them realized that the stomach was their stomach, and that they would have to go back to work to remain alive."

From The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts.

Quote of the Day: sine qua non

"But it is true that whenever we develop machinery to the point where it will support large populations at a high standard of living we are then bound to keep that machinery running, or suffer the consequences. But the real hazard in that is not the machinery, but the men who run the machinery...When a population is dependent on a machine, they are hostages of the men who tend the machines."

From The Roads Must Roll by Robert Heinlein.

Understanding the New Testament

During our last Jesus of Nazareth class session my professor handed me back a quote along with my graded homework. Most of the papers I turned in over the semester bordered on a Liberal Christian "let's-not-interpret-the-scriptures-literally" view and I think this quote is his subtle final response to my work over the semester.

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament." by Søren Kierkegaard.

Yes, I agree that the minute we understand (to grok!) the New Testament we will act accordingly although not because we feel we are obliged but because the Spirit of the New Testament moves us to act accordingly. It is not the obligation to follow the New Testament blindly to the letter but to incorporate the Spirit of the New Testament into our being. (I have yet to read any of Kierkegaard's work so forgive me if he touches on this topic.) We are caught in a lifelong struggle to incorporate what I believe to be the core of Christianity, unconditional love for your fellow man. Unconditional Love is, or at least should be, at the heart of Christianity and yet we (the church) have replaced that core with doctrine, beliefs, and theology about the man who is an earthly expression of Unconditional Love. My personal issue with the Bible is not that it is too constricting to follow (although the Old Testament Laws may be a bit difficult to follow to the letter) and might hinder my personal life, but that it should be read as a guide book to becoming Love Incarnate and not a rule book since it is a product of man. Being alone with the Spirit of the New Testament, or with scripture from any faith, is to admit that we need to transform ourselves from broken and fallible creatures to beings of Love.

Yet, I would go one step further and say it is dreadful to be alone with God! For to move into the presence of the Divine is more dreadful than embracing the structures, beliefs, thoughts, morals, and philosophies of man for it is our interaction and communion with the eternal that reveals to us the significance of living and loving every moment of our short lives. When we peak through the curtain that divides the mortal from the immortal we return with a fragment of love beaming from our faces. When we pray and commune with the Divine, help and walk justly with our fellow man, when we as a community come together we share our fragments of light and bask in its tremendous, eternal, and warm beauty. It is this light of love which humanity seeks in a dark and troubled world, and when we share it, God is found.

Quote of the Day

"I try and do one impossible thing everyday." Professor John Merchant, while attempting to edit Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" down to a 60 second scope in class.