Time for more abstract and philosophical analysis, possibly blasphemous but certainly something to consider.
Same summit, different approaches. The image which came to me was of a top summit, like Mount Everest. Viewed from the top, a mountain peak has 360 degrees of approach around it, which could either be described in terms of degrees, or more easy-to-grasp, clock positions from 12, 1, 2, 3, etc. all the way back to 12 – and compass points as well, 12 being North, 3 being East, 6 being South, and 9 being West.
Figure all of us monotheists – as opposed to atheists or polytheists – are attempting, in some way, shape or form, at our own paces, to climb that summit and reach the top. Catholics take the North approach, non-Catholic Christians take the East approach, Jews take the South approach, Muslims take the West approach, and so forth. Then figure there are Sunnis vs. Shi’ites, Orthodox vs. Conservative vs. Reform Jews, all sorts of Protestant religions and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Each is trying to reach the summit from a different direction and each claims that the others’ way is wrong. But we all know and accept that the summit – the God – is the same, but we argue that the means by which we try to reach Him, is itself so important as to trump everything else. As if, upon reaching God at the top, God turns to us and asks, “well, thank you very much for coming up here. By the way, how did you get here?” “Uh, I came up from the South.” And God goes nuts and says, “INFIDEL!!! You blasphemer! Didn’t I send Mohammed down there to tell you to come up the West way? What is wrong with you?? Begone!”
This is why I find religious intolerance among fellow monotheists to be so idiotic – especially when it reaches the point of KILLING others simply because their particular form of monotheism is different. Again, back to my example: you get to the top and say HI to God, and tell him, “Oh, by the way, there were some Jews coming up by the South approach, we killed them. Pretty good, huh?” And God will say, “Way to go, Abdullah! Here are your virgins!” Granted, back in the Middle Ages (a long, long time ago) the Christian Crusaders decided that the Muslim way was so wrong that it merited termination. And we have no shortage of anti-Semitism to observe, perpetrated both by Christians and Muslims, although this form of discrimination appears to be racially motivated rather than due to any religious differences. To me it’s all stupid. Who cares how we get up the mountain? And are we so sure that God cares, that we’re going to kill anyone going up the mountain the wrong way?
Jesus rises. Awhile back I analyzed the New Testament between Easter Sunday and Asension, and realized that after Jesus rose from the dead, He made no public appearances. All His appearances were in private, solely to the Apostles, who were predisposed to believe in Him. Why didn’t He meet Pontius Pilate, or Caiaphas? Raising from the dead would have been front page news: to everyone. Surely a public appearance by this guy who everyone - Jews, Apostles, Romans, etc. - saw crucified would be a killer recruitment for Christianity, and since Jesus sent out the Apostles to spread the word, we knew He wanted this to be a mass movement, not some secret society only a few select people were invited to, like Amway. What comes to mind is that He returned from the dead not in the literal sense of being flesh and blood, but in the spiritual sense of retaining consciousness and some identity after death – that we have a soul which survives death, as His did. So He came back to show his Apostles that, for believers at least, there would be life after death, just not on this Earth, in this form as we knew it. This also explains why He returned at Ascension, instead of staying here indefinitely. But that leads me to wonder: where did Jesus live when He was alive?
You can’t make me. I also noted that through the Bible, God can never make anyone do anything. The most He can do is send an angel or a dream to persuade someone of the “right” course of action ("by the way, you might want to do this"). Here are some examples:
1. Jonah and the whale. God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people there to shape up. Jonah thought to himself…. “nah….”. And so he ended up in the whale. And then he thought, “this sucks, maybe I should go to Nineveh after all.” And he did. The whale was just God’s way of being persuasive – and it worked.
2. Joseph & Mary. Joseph was due to be Mary’s husband, but found she was already pregnant. Not good – he was inclined to call it off. But the angel came and backed up Mary’s “conceived by God” story (of which I’m sure Joseph had probably been somewhat skeptical), so he decided to go along with it. This was not an angel with a shotgun.
3. Three Wise Men. Herod wanted them to come back after seeing Jesus and fill him on the Manger location – so he could have Jesus killed. The angels sent the Wise Men a dream and advised them to take an alternate route home. Once again, very persuasive angels – the Three Wise Men took another route, Herod was not able to have baby Jesus terminated before Mary and Joseph escaped to Egypt.
Why is this important? People see all the hatred, the violence, the cruelty, the torture, the evil in the world and ask, “how can God allow this to happen?” The answer is: God can’t stop it. God couldn’t make the gas chambers fail, the machine guns jam, the swords and machetes too dull to cut anyone, or make rapists impotent. And He can’t control our behavior. We control our behavior, for better or worse – all too often, for worse. You may as well scream at your best friend for not having stopped the rain.
Homily. I go to mass, at the local cathedral (Catholic) almost every Sunday. One thing about Catholic mass is that no matter where you go, around the world, you know the mass will have the same format: intro stuff, two readings (someone from the audience), a gospel (by the priest), a homily (the priest’s sermon), the collection, and then stock material until the Our Father, the peace be with you “shake the hands stuff” (half the people only lamely shaking hands with anyone outside his or her own immediate family), communion, then the end where we get announcements and the blessing, and then we charge out.
I tend to zone out during the homily. There are really only so many different ways the priest can basically say, “Jesus died for you, be good, m’kay?” Too many are off in the stratosphere of abstract discussion. Occasionally the priest gets cute; one time the first two rows were Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, so the priest said that Jesus’ 40 days in the desert was like a “camping trip”. It’s a rare priest who can reconcile the abstract with the concrete and keep my attention. Then of course, one of the priests is Father Shakedown, who monotonously recites all the huge bills the church has (“that air conditioning in this huge place isn’t free, people! Cough it up!”).
After Mass. In Paris, we went to St. Joseph’s, an English-speaking Catholic church down Ave. Hoche from the Etoile. After mass we’d go someplace special. Originally we went to a McDonald’s, in a part of town I don’t recall. This was a 70’s vintage McDonald’s, with horribly greasy food: even the French fries were green. Blah. But then we went to an arcade next door. This was before even Space Invaders or Pac-Man, so God only knows what horrendously primitive games we could have played. Later on, Burger King arrived on the Champs Elysees, far cleaner and nicer than the skanky Evil Clown in that other part of town. And again we went to an arcade – this one had Rolling Thunder, which I really liked.
Churches. Part of the charm of Catholic churches is their antiquity and elegance (I have no reason to visit Protestant churches and have no experience therein). There seem to be two types of church. The first is the fancy old style, in the shape of a cross, with stained glass windows, statues, old style pews, all the medieval stuff we’re familiar with. St Peter's in Rome is obviously the biggest and most impressive, but there are many others: Notre Dame in Paris, various cathedrals around the world, even the Madeleine in Paris, which is set up like the Parthenon in Greece. What they all share is a faithful adherence to some form of classical, or even Gothic, style.
Then there are the IKEA churches: someone studied the schematics of Merriweather Post Pavilion or the Nissan Pavilion, because the seating is ampitheater style, in a large fan radiating out from the altar. The imagery, to the extent there is any, has a sparse, abstract feel to it, like Pablo Picasso designed it. I suppose this was some movement in the 60s or 70s to modernize the Church and distance it from the archaic medieval feel it once had. These are churches for the automobile, Internet, cell phone age, as if to say that religion isn't some irrelevant anachronism from medieval times, but still relevant and meaningful to us even today. Both styles have their supporters and virtues.
I've even seen churches which were converted from movie theaters, either as temporary expedients or permanent arrangements, but in that case we're really stretching the envelope of what we can consider a "church". Maybe it was officially blessed or consecrated by the appropriate bishop, but it certainly doesn't feel like a church.
Having been to Egypt, I’ve been to mosques. After being used to churches filled with pews, mosques are kind of bizarre: no seats, just tons of carpets to kneel down and pray on. Needless to say, I was a visitor and not praying to Allah myself.
When I visited the USSR in 1983, part of the tour – Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad – was countless Russian Orthodox churches and monestaries. ZZZZ. They’re all the same: chock full of Cyrillic lettering and icons. There’s a Romanian Orthodox Church across the street from me, which has a similar deal, though the lettering is Roman, and the language is Romanian. But style-wise it’s almost identical. And the service is in Romanian, which I don’t speak, except “va rog” and “multumesc”, and some naughty words like “pizda” and “pula” (unlikely to be heard in a mass, anyway). But of all the Romance languages, Romanian is by far the closest to the source language, Latin.
Latin Mass. It’s difficult to find a High Mass (in Latin) these days. The vernacular (local language) has been more popular since the 60s; I recall my dad bitching about how the Church went liberal in the 60s to sell out and attract people back into the pews, and ditching the Latin Mass was the biggest factor. But even a Latin mass was not all in Latin: only the standard, boilerplate stock language which is the same every Sunday, is in Latin. The readings, the homily, and most everything else is in the vernacular anyway.
