WHICH
GODS MIGHT EXIST?
God-Talk
Might Be a Way of
Expressing our Spiritual Dynamics
SYNOPSIS:
Even if we have decided that none of the traditional
Gods exist,
we might still find it meaningful to use religious language
as a way of exploring and expressing our own internal spiritual
quest.
OUTLINE:
1.
EXPLORING CAPACITIES OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT
WITHOUT REFERENCE TO GODS.
2. DEMYTHOLOGIZING
RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE.
3.
FUNDAMENTALISMS GET LOST IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE PAST.
4.
FINDING
NEW WAYS TO EXPRESS ANY 'FAITH'.
5.
GOD-TALK AS A WAY OF EXPRESSING OUR SPIRITUAL DYNAMICS.
6.
CONCLUSION: WHICH GODS EXIST FOR US?
WHICH
GODS MIGHT EXIST?
God-Talk
Might Be a Way of
Expressing
our Spiritual Dynamics
by James Park
Now that we have come to the end of our series
exploring which Gods do not exist,
we can ask if there are any possible valid ways
to express truths using God-language.
If we have followed the argument so far,
we already agree that there are no Gods:
who created the universe,
who wrote holy books,
who are watching our behavior,
who are all-powerful, or
who can save us from death.
These five possible functions of the Gods
by no means exhausts the activities
that have been attributed to Gods in human history and pre-history.
And even if we do firmly reject these Gods,
this does not prevent us as human persons
from discovering new phenomena that we might describe using
God-language.
1. EXPLORING CAPACITIES OF THE
HUMAN SPIRIT
WITHOUT REFERENCE TO GODS.
Another series of cyber-sermons explores the meaning
of spirituality:
WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?
1. Beyond the Life
of the Body, the 'Heart', & the Mind .
2. Ways to Expand
Our Spirits .
3. Self-Transcendence,
Self-Criticism, & Altruism .
4. Freedom:
Transcending
Enculturation and Choosing for Ourselves .
5. Creativity:
Making Something Genuinely New .
6. Love: The
I-Thou Encounter, Discovering Other Persons of Spirit .
7. The
Disclosure of Existential Anxiety
and
other Manifestations of Our Existential Predicament .
8. Glimpses
of Joy and Fulfillment .
These explorations of the various capacities of our human spirits
do not use any traditional religious language—God-talk.
But historically earlier explorations of the same phenomena
have often explained creativity, for example, as an effect of the Muses.
2. DEMYTHOLOGIZING
RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE.
Another way to explain the move from religious language to existential
language
is to say that we are 'demythologizing' the religious language.
This does not mean merely rejecting all the false claims of the
religions of the world,
but it also seeks deeper truths contained within the
religious expressions.
Putting the question another way:
Could it be that religious thinkers of the past
had some valid insights into our dynamics of spirit
which they nevertheless expressed in the religious language
available to them in their time and place?
If so, we should not merely reject
everything expressed using God-talk,
but we could look for the
valid insights into human spirituality
that might be contained in the religious language.
(I have made my own
detailed attempt
to demythologize the first century book of Romans:
An Existential Interpretation
of Paul's Letter to the Romans:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/RM.html.)
3. FUNDAMENTALISMS GET LOST IN THE
LANGUAGE OF THE PAST.
Literalism is the downfall of almost all world
religions:
When the religion has a sacred text or texts,
those particular words
become identified as the truth.
And anyone who departs from the sacred words as established
is declared to be a heretic by that religious tradition.
But demythologizing does not worship any particular
text.
Rather this approach to interpretation
seeks to understand the spiritual dynamics
that led the original creators of the words
to say what they did.
For example, as a matter of historical fact,
Søren
Kierkegaard
believed that the universe was created by God only a few thousand years
ago.
He died in 1855 and almost everyone else
from Kierkegaard's time and place also held the same belief.
The Bible tells a few stories of this recent creation of the world.
And most believers up to this time accepted these stories without
question.
Charles Darwin did not publish his Origin of the Species until
1859.
But perhaps Kierkegaard had some insights into spiritual matters
that are not limited by his concept of a Creator God.
Every writer who attempts to express something
spiritual
must use the words, images, thought-forms,
& cultural presuppositions of his or her time and place.
Every language is a human creation.
And every religion is expressed in human language.
Most people who explore spiritual
matters
find themselves looking to the past.
They might spend their whole lives studying and interpreting
sacred texts created thousands of years ago.
But persons of spirit who look to the future
are willing and able to express their spiritual insights in new
forms.
Most of us come
from some religious tradition.
But if we have genuine spiritual insights,
based on our own spiritual changes,
then we should be able to express those truths
without merely repeating words from our religious traditions.
4.
FINDING
NEW WAYS TO EXPRESS ANY 'FAITH'.
In fact, this could be a measure of how well we
understand our own 'faith':
Are we able to explain our inward experience in our own words
—with
little quotation from our religious tradition?
Can we separate our own inwardness
from the images, stories, & language of the tradition
that might have originally started us on the pathway
that has eventually led us to our more advanced spirituality?
For example, our original religious beliefs might
have included lots of doctrines about Gods,
which we can no longer believe because of our continuing intellectual
growth.
So the question then becomes:
Can we keep the spiritual progress we have experienced
while at the same time rejecting all of the traditional Gods?
Put another way:
Can we have spirituality without Gods?
Can we abandon the outmoded conceptual tools
without losing our 'faith'?
5. GOD-TALK AS A WAY OF EXPRESSING
OUR SPIRITUAL DYNAMICS.
But we might take another approach to our religious
traditions.
Perhaps we will find ways to continue to use God-talk
as a way of expressing our inward developments of spirit.
If we choose this option for spiritual expression,
then, in a sense, these Gods
might exist for us.
For example, many forms of faith refer to God as
father.
This never means that God is the same as our physical, biological
father.
But God-as-father might be a way of expressing
our dependence on something beyond ourselves.
When we pray to God-the-father, we might be bringing ourselves
into the posture of submission and surrender,
which we might find to be very important in our spiritual growth.
Would it be possible to express and discuss these
same changes of spirit
without any explicit reference to God or Gods?
It seems to me as the centuries continue to move by,
there will be less God-talk
and more discussion of
spiritual dynamics
that do not refer much to the God-talk of the past.
Right now in the 21st century,
we can choose to use as much God-talk
as we find useful for our own spirituality.
If traditional religious expressions actually help us
to move in the spiritual directions we find meaningful
then we will continue to use those familiar words.
But if our religious traditions hinder our spiritual
progress,
we ought to have the courage to abandon
at least the worst parts of our religious system of beliefs.
Does traditional God-talk help or hinder our
spirituality?
If we find that some traditional religious expressions
actually help us to
move to the new levels of spirit that we desire for
ourselves,
then we will (and should) continue to use those religious expressions.
Or to put it in the language of this series,
such Gods DO exist for us.
And if we really understand our 'faith',
we should be able to re-state its basic discoveries
without depending on the traditional language.
If something is really happening within our own spirits,
we should be able to express it in our own words.
6. CONCLUSION: WHICH GODS EXIST
FOR US?
We probably cannot claim that any Gods exist
objectively.
But if we have some new conditions within our spirits,
we might find it valid to express such inward changes in religious
language.
We might decide to use this religious language only for ourselves.
Or we might find it meaningful to attempt to share our insights of
spirit
using religious language because that form of expression
continues to be meaningful to the other people
with whom we want to share our spiritual progress.
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent thinker on matters of
the spirit.
He has written several books on spiritual dynamics,
only one of which uses God-language,
—actually
language addressed to You.
(This book demythologizes Romans.)
All of James Park's books on spirituality
(along with similar works by other writers)
will be found in the Existential Spirituality Bibliography:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/B-XSP.html
Created
10-2-2007; Revised 12-31-2007; 2-15-2008; 3-13-2008; 3-23-2008
If
you would like to respond to this cyber-sermon,
write to the author, James Park, e-mail: PARKx032@TC.UMN.EDU
Go to other cyber-sermons in this series:
WHICH GODS DO
NOT EXIST?
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.
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