Forging Order Out of Chaos
Greetings,
It feels good to write again. I much prefer it to the video format because I can slow down and say what I want to say exactly how I want to say it, rather than snatching words out of the maelstrom. I burned out on writing in college, and my time as a teacher was spent writing assignments; nothing too inspiring. I hope you find something here worth your time.
My interest in religion is complicated. It really has devolved into a struggle between small "o" orthodoxy and the mounting evidence against it. I finally surrendered to reason, but not without much struggle, because for so many years I believed salvation was dependent on purity of belief rather than purity of action. I had a strict religious upbringing in the Baptists/Evangelical tradition, and if there's one thing these people do not tolerate well it's uncertainty in religious matters. They absolutely must have some guarantee of heaven; they must know and "prove" the Earth to be 6,000 years old; they must assure themselves that the rapture is just a few months away and will spare them from persecution. There is very little room either for doubt or innovation with the result that one must either conform very closely to the established doctrine or hide.
One of the worst things that could befall a young Baptist is being unsure of his salvation, or unable to remember his first palpable experience of God. Descriptions of Hell were vivid, with every emphasis placed on its eternality and the unbearable pain. I remember stoking the fire of our wood stove and feeling the heat on my forearms. I had a panic attack that lasted for days. I couldn't focus on anything else, because nothing finite mattered. I failed at forming relationships, landing a decent job, getting an appropriate education; all because the most pressing question could not be answered.
I once tried very deliberately to pray the "sinner's prayer" on the back of a Billy Graham track. If anyone was to be considered an expert on the point of salvation it would be America's evangelist. I prayed his prayer to the letter and waited for God's light and love to pour in. Nothing happened. I read the Bible frantically, cover to cover, looking for answers. What I found disturbed me to my core, as it would anyone whose entire collection of mental furniture consisted of Baptist platitudes. The Bible contained nothing like the "sinner's prayer," and on many points violated clear Baptist dogmas (faith alone, once saved always saved, anti-sacramentalism, etc.). I finally settled on mediating on that passage from Paul:
"If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
Of course, this dies the death of a thousand qualifications, but this is as close as I could get to salvaging my Baptist faith. I especially fixated on the resurrection from the dead. Causally, why does this event justify me? It's far more allegoric than mechanistic. And with so many warnings against false faith and self-deception, when or how would I know that I was redeemed? A thought then struck me like a bolt of lightning right through my mind and soul: I would not have any certainty in this life; that's the nature of faith and trust.
I would have difficulty putting into words what transpired next. Existential dread turned to panic; panic turned to mania; mania exhausted itself into a fatalistic apathy. I continued believing in God, but I was certain I had been abandoned by him. My attitude toward religion became hostile and aversive. I began to hate God while still yearning for his presence. I should have been seen by a physician; I would have been diagnosed with anhedonia and religious psychosis. I had lost the ability to form meaning from the shapes and sounds of daily life. The interior of my mind had become a sea of chaos, and I was hardly more than a boy. I had lost all grasp of the Logos.
Everyone should experience the catastrophic failure of a belief system at least once. I've experienced it twice, but we'll get to that. The upside of having your illusions destroyed is that, while you may not be able to make sense of anything yet, at least you are no longer believing in lies. To see clearly with the mind, one first has to become blind. I stumbled around mentally blind for years before things came back into focus, and when the darkness dispersed, I had brand new eyes that could see what many could not see. It happened slowly at first, and then in great leaps. I liken it to being re-gifted the privilege of accessing the Logos.
The Logos is logic, reason. Our possession of it is what differentiates us from most of the animal kingdom. It's what allows us to think what has never before been thought. It is the manifestation of God in man on the temporal-physical plane. If you've ever started at an abstract painting for a few moments and were unable to make sense of the shapes; unable to find a pattern in the randomness of forms, then you can understand both the purpose of Logos and what it means to be temporarily deprived of it. Logos is the meaning maker. The Logos is necessary to forge meaning out of chaos.
The great mistake of Christian theology concerning the godhead is the idea that God, in his very essence, is a person. God cannot be a person in essence, because a person is a part, and the essence has no parts. Even when a confessional Lutheran, for instance, holds to divine simplicity, he mishandles it because he begins with the Trinity, or even with the Father as the fount of simple divinity when this is impossible. To speak of the "Father" already implies differentiation (contra "mother") which is not compatible with simplicity. God, in his essence, is the undifferentiated infinite, utterly imperceptible to the human mind which can only perceive the world via differentiation. What was there in the beginning? We would perceive it as nothing, but in fact, God was an undifferentiated everything. When he began to create the world, He began by separating heaven from earth in the swirling chaos and void. Then he separated darkness from the light, and for the first time, sight was possible. It is by a process of differentiation that anything can be perceived, and it is by the agent of the Logos that this process is carried out, first in creation, and then in the human soul. If God is a person, that person is the Logos, an emanation of the godhead, but not the essence proper.
I did not learn this from any Christian church. Sadly, Christianity's most sublime teachings are horribly flawed and many an honest man has given up the faith because he could not reconcile it to reason. I learned this most basic reconciling doctrine from Albert Pike, from Kabbalah, and from the Blue Lodge. The most basic expression of this teaching is not conveyed in words, but by symbols. These symbols are as old as the Canaanite religion of the ancient near east, including the religion of the Israelites. Every near-eastern temple seemed to be equipped with twin pillars. Solomon's temple was not unique in this and was likely modeled after a Tyrian temple. Even the temple of Dagon featured twin pillars, between which was chained a blinded Samson.
When Samson pushed on these pillars, something happened that we moderns would not expect. The entire edifice collapsed. It was supported by these two main columns and had no integrity once these were compromised. The temple of Dagon, and in fact, every temple, is a symbolic model of the cosmos, supported by the twin pillars of differentiation. This dualism is not unique to the near-east, although the pillar symbolism seems to be peculiar to that time and place. The Greeks had their own dualism. Creation was birthed by Chaos and Night, who gave us Uranus and Gaia. Nothing could exist or be perceived without this primal duality. Our three dimensional perception demands a horizon, which would not exist without the division of heaven and earth.
The blinded Samson met God between the pillars where he gained his spiritual sight because it is the Logos that dwells between the pillars. It is enlightenment that dwells between the pillars, figured in Samson whose name means: Child of the Sun. The pillars symbolize mercy and severity respectively, and the initiate, the Logos, the Christ, Hermes, situated between the pillars is a third pillar symbolizing harmony and mediation, not just between two extremes of emanation, but between God and man. Samson found himself between the pillars, blinded by severity, but still alive by mercy, mediating between God and the Hebrew people. God heard him between the pillars and he wrought a great deliverance. And notice what happens to the cosmos when the pillars of differentiation are eliminated: the cosmos collapse into primordial ruin.
And consider the Christ hanging on the cross between two thieves. To one mercy is extended, but to the other severity because he remained unrepentant. Christ the Logos hangs between them as the third mediating pillar of harmony. He speaks to the Father while condemned, and with his death comes a dissolution of the current order: an eclipse occurs overhead and the veil of the temple is torn in two, symbolizing the destruction of the cosmos and its rebirth into something new. Creation has been renewed many times it seems, but always by a process of collapsing the differentiating pillars.
A similar depiction now associated with the two luminaries and assigned red and blue
Looking forward to more writings brother.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. I think this is an ideal space for movie decodes and other topics that require more depth. I'm going to try to write one article per week.
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