Humanism, Escapist Theology & Interrelatedness

Humanism

As I was growing up, it was often stated in church that “humanism” was the enemy of God. I got the impression that lifting up humans or humanity was denigrating the Almighty. Of course, it only became clear to me later that our precious creation story in Genesis 1 and 2 was the story of a God leaning down to make literal mud pies (latin root of “human” being humus — “dirt, earth or ground” and the name “Adam” from the Hebrew “adamah” meaning “earth” or “red dirt”) into beings “in his image” by “breathing” his spirit into them.

Now that’s lifting up human beings.

It also seems we often misapplied the other end of the book — the part about Jesus — by thinking teachings about loving enemies or turning the other cheek weren’t literal or at least should only be applied to minor enemies inside our church — like folks who just annoyed us.

Everyone seemed very positive about killing true “enemies” on the battlefield or in the execution chamber.

In my own deconstruction and reconstruction of spiritual worldview, and as a teacher and practitioner of the English language, I came to understand that the way we thought the Bible worked was a piece of the problem. “Inspiration” had always been considered the exclusive territory of the Christian Bible, once again ignoring the very story in its opening pages that claims inspiration (breathed-into by God) for all of humanity… and by extension, all human endeavors. No, what my church meant, along with many others, by “inspired” was a super-human, a beyond-human, an other-worldly sort of knowledge and authority that couldn’t be accessed in any other way.

This gave my church — and anyone who sees some “holy text” in this way — a sense of special leverage. It’s a leverage that often supersedes logic, ration, the senses, science, math, human empathy. “Don’t question scripture… don’t question God” as though the entire story from Genesis to Revelation wasn’t the trajectory of humans questioning each other and the unknowable and failing miserably at most of the answers. Because of our brand of theology, we could juxtapose a story of God’s commanding Joshua’s army to slaughter every man, woman, child and animal to possess a city with Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” and pat ourselves on the back for being “faithful” enough not to question or look too deeply at what was going on in this apparent contradiction.

Only godless humanists would do that.

Escapist Theology

All of this was framed by what some have called an “escapist” view of humanity’s purpose. In church, we sang gleefully,

Jesus is coming soon, Morning or night or noon, Many will meet their doom, Trumpets will sound. All of the dead shall rise Righteous meet in the skies Going where no one dies Heavenward bound.

You see, we thought the world was doomed, our “home” was elsewhere, our job was to get “saved” and “save” others FOR that other world… and none of it needed to make sense because “making sense” or “being rational” or “believing science” or even “trusting your experience, instinct, heart…etc” was all simply an act of faithlessness.

So, in part, converting others was a matter of converting them FROM sense, ration, science, their own experience, their instinct and their own heart… and from the world we all live in, TO a world of contradictory commands, oddly random requirements, endless doctrinal battles, and eventually… golden streets, harps, eternal singing, pearly gates…whatever. This escapist view of our purpose was a direct result of our view of scripture. The “sense” or the “authority” of scripture came from somewhere else… beyond humanity. It had to be trusted, not questioned. That meant that our REAL existence, our real home was elsewhere as well. Forget the creation story about humanity being a melding of God’s spirit and the literal dirt of earth. Forget the story of the creator stepping back and saying, “This is all good.” That was all undone by the Fall and Sin.

So, as our story went, the creation was adulterated (and will be burned) humanity is sinful (and will be burned eternally without end) a “just” God needs a price (someone has to die) He killed his son instead (Jesus’ blood can cover my sin, but…) anyone who wants to go to Heaven when everything else gets burned has to “accept” Jesus’ sacrifice in whatever specific way their own particular religious group is promoting as “biblically” correct… and really HOPE they are right… but without questioning (because that would be faithless).

So… feed the hungry (if the meal gets them to church), house the homeless (if the bed you give them gets them converted), welcome the immigrant (if they’ve done it legally and might convert their family), bicker endlessly with atheists, agnostics, humanists, people of other religions AND so-called Christians who clearly aren’t reading the Bible honestly because they didn’t think it said precisely what we KNOW it says, because these people — no matter the apparent good they are doing in this world — are leading most of humanity toward an eternity of burning sulphur pits.

Interrelatedness

What if, at the core, in the shared spirit of the dirt-people of this earth and the other living-dirt beings growing and thriving around us, there is some sort of guiding directive. Maybe the world is like a well-evolved singular body equipped with antibodies and healing mechanisms, repair cells, growth cells, all programed with the same end-function, the health and preservation of the whole body. In human terms, wouldn’t that internal directive look something like “Do unto others…” or perhaps the Lakota prayer, “Mitakuye Oyasin” All my relatives… ? That Genesis story tells us we are all related… as do many, many origin stories from around the planet.

Could it be that we are built with this communal health and survival directive, but that we are prone to forget it or occasionally mutate it? Could it be that along with wars, colonialism, greed, and tribalism, our sacred texts and faith traditions bring us hints of that true nature (Love your enemies) AND examples of our tendency to lose that directive (kill every man, woman, child, animal). Then, it may be the escapist nature of our theology — a lack of HUMAN awareness — that cuts us off from that directive that is central to humanity, central to the part of our brains, the frontal lobe, that has developed so beyond the brains of our other relatives on this planet. It’s that part that is capable of empathy, of imaginative planning, of altruistic responses that supersede the impulses of flight, fight or freeze.

Recognizing that a good for my neighbor is a good for me is central to humanism. So is realizing that destruction, even of my “enemy,” is also a destruction of a part of myself. These concepts seem also to be central to the “better angels” of every faith tradition.

If we go back to the Genesis story, we see at the center of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… and we have a serpent. As the story goes, the serpent lies by saying, “You will not surely die if you eat from the tree.” Maybe the serpent isn’t lying. Maybe their misunderstanding of what death is and where death comes from is the point. You see, they thought, in the story, that God would strike them dead for eating from the tree. When they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God didn’t strike them dead, but they began a path of leveraging “special knowledge” possessed by only a few. It was knowledge about what is “good” and what is “evil;” it was a path of leveraging moral codes against each other. Perhaps that is what’s killing humanity — not religion per se, not the innate sense that somehow I’m a spiritual being. The desire to leverage superior, “otherworldly knowledge” against others destroys us.

If you are a theist of any sort, perhaps you can look at it this way. “Inspiration” may be something that all of humanity has. That flicker of spirit inside the dirt of each person is the core of humanism, of humanity. That flame guides us through experience, through empathy, through love and even through literature, art, science and what we think of as sacred texts. Our prime directive is the health and wellness of the organism, the whole organism, the whole of creation that we are a small part of. All of these elements together assist us in doing this, but reaching for special, exclusive ways of knowing takes us into destructive patterns that harm ourselves and the whole.

If you’re an atheist, perhaps you may see it more like a murmuration of starlings. They have form, continuity, unity, purpose and even beauty resulting from centuries of evolution moving toward that singular prime directive of health for the whole organism. A sort of meaning, a sort of rationality, a sort of “whole organism understanding” is emergent as the parts come together creating new forms that perpetuate the whole. But as an atheist, you can look at all of those “sacred texts“ as pieces of that evolving development of the human species. As humanity has developed with a centralized prime directive of health and wellness for the whole organism, we have developed elements of art, music, political structures, and even sacred texts and religions, that are sources of both healthy growth and the cancerous mal-growth that sometimes overtakes parts of the organism in destructive ways. We as individuals and in community must sort that out, particularly in times of crisis when it’s tempting to shut down our normal inputs and look for otherworldly solutions, whether they present as religious, magical or conspiratorial.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire

I’ve come to believe that the best way to guard against atrocity is to remain firmly rooted in the dirt — senses, science, experience, art, story, community, even religion… but to remember I’m dirt, and so are you, and something bigger — something we’re all a part of — makes your well-being my responsibility.

The Boat From the teachings of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai A group of people were travelling in a boat. One of them took a drill and began to drill a hole beneath himself. His companions said to him: “Why are you doing this?” Replied the man: “What concern is it of yours? Am I not drilling under my own place?” Said they to him: “But you will flood the boat for us all!” (Quoted in Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 4:6).

Right here, on this planet, we can inspire each other, we can inform each other, we can protect each other… or we can sink each other. This is the boat we are in. We are the ones in it. That’s humanism.