On Freedom & Function In Spirituality & Religion

See this previous post:

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/on-rules-and-freedom.html

1 Corinthians 10:23-33

"It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all Ways and be more and more in accord with his own."- the Hagakure

A religion that fails to be spiritually open and experimental is doomed to die. God is alive, and practices of worship must therefore also be alive, and all living things evolve and change. There must be a spirit of adventure and openness and dialogue. I have learned much from the other religions of the world, especially the mystical traditions.

But in my experience a spirituality without a strong, indeed religious, center cannot really hold. It quickly becomes a tool of the ego and subjects people to flights of fancy that have no baring on the world of shared experience. I greatly admire the art and religious musings of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. They have good ideas here and there, and they are talented. But ultimately their overall systems degrade to a meaningless and self-refuting relativism OR a self-aggrandizement that ultimately kills genuine living.

Being open to the insights of other faiths need not mean one takes all religions to 'mean the same thing'. Nor does it require that one give up all claims to particular truth. A person whose life is centered on Christ can remain fully a Christian even while one investigates other faiths for true insights, perhaps even insights lacking in Christianity. For example, Buddhist mindfulness is useful even if the central metaphysical and existential truths of Buddhism are false, which I think they mostly are.

There have to be real, substantive truths that we as Christians hold up AS true, and that means we have to point out where we think other religions get things, important things, wrong. This need not lead to hate and division, any more than moral disagreements need tear society apart. There are constructive ways to approach disagreement on important issues. 

I think progress in religion is possible. I think we can genuinely discover things about God and our relationship with Him. I think Judaism moved us along, and the the revelation we have in Jesus Christ moves us even further along. Committed to that view, which I would defend passionately and to the best of my reason's power, I must eschew any wishy-washy or purely relativistic worldview, as well as beliefs held in other faiths that genuinely contradict those discoveries. But I retain the right to travel wherever the Spirit leads, and to use the reason God gave me to travel the adventure of life as The Son's Incarnation did: in acknowledgment of my nothingness before the Divine Mystery and with a reckless abandon that would lead some to question my virtue and sanity. (Mark 10:18, Luke 7:31-34)