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A few short years ago, unlike myself, my very respectable and loyal catholic elder brother, had to consider the possible death of his youngest daughter, when only weeks before her marriage, a large brain tumor was discovered. Not long after that he himself had to confront his mortality face to face with prostate cancer. Able to afford the very best medical care, both 'still' survive. Having paid off the surgeon, I'm sure he says his prayers every night and has a 'God' rational for their continuing existence. But I know through the family grapevine, his 'faith' took a severe battering and rightly so. This taste of hell should have sobered his ideas of God, but not nearly enough.
The number of individuals who have completely lost and left their religious faith do to the unexpected tragic loss of a child, partner or other loved one have yet to be counted. No doubt the number is considerable, Charles Darwin being among the more well known of these. Personal tragedies are always a trial of an individuals religious convictions, because they are both inexplicable and contrary to expectations of those with a religious faith and who expect that conviction to have value at such times. It is only when that faith losses the illusion of value, after watching a spouse slowing destroyed by debilitating degenerative illness, or when as my mother once said with her sister dying of cancer, 'I'm all prayed out', to no effect, that the faith spell is often broken or at least becomes 'conditional'. Even confronting great religious hypocrisy and corruption, both individual and institutional, the ongoing sexual abuse scandals of the roman catholic church for example, doesn't seem to be enough for a general questioning of the origins of this ancient and mostly unaccountable institution. Such is the spell religion can hold over the 'faithful'. But that spell is slowly evaporating in the light of contemporary realities.
Whatever war, conflict or other great injustices there may be, if it is possible to keep them at arms length, let someone elses son die on the battle field or see some other house destroyed or repossessed, faith can remain mostly unruffled. But then there are those still rare occasions when the stakes get higher, much, much much higher.
When massive natural disaster strikes, and both the religious and non religious, atheist, agnostic, pious and impious, gay and strait, good and the bad, children and adults, are all simply wiped off the face of the earth without mercy or pity and with it a considerable chunk of civilization destroyed, closing ones mind to the great questions and implications are not so easily avoided. For here is where faith and fate might as well be interchangeable. Where faith is subject to fate and without value, where God, at least the conception of God provided by religious tradition, is exposed as an empty and bitter cup.
While those 'professional' religious are well practiced at offering a rational for almost any personal tragedy, as their 'God' conception works in 'mysterious' ways, large scale natural disasters blow all their good news rhetoric, God loves you, dogma and doctrine, claims of certainty right out of the water. Pictures of demolished cathedrals and churches in Haiti and Christchurch NZ are probably closer to what God thinks of these all too human theological creations pretending to his name.
And scientific 'rationalism' which has seeded so much atheism, should also watch it's back. Observing the temples of their high knowledge and technology going up in smoke, potentially threatening more than either earthquake or Tsunami, should give them pause to consider their own limitations and question whether technological arrogance is so much better than others spiritual vanity, as both are likely leading to more hell on earth than is comfortable.
At such times, there are many who retreat into the obscurantism of older tradition, believing longevity is a measure of legitimacy. But tradition is founded in part upon the measure of perception, of the continuing value of those ideas that underpin it. And when the legitimacy of these founding ideas erodes and is lost, tradition, only designed to defend its assumptions, usually turns into itself, so heavily wrapped in mythologies, and unable to see or question it's own origins. As some measure of authority or deference is usually associated with tradition, knowing when their time is up is problematic. But civilization has only advanced by discarding untenable ideas well past their sell by date, defended by tradition, into it's own dustbin of oblivion. This process of necessary change, of dislodging mankind from those illusions created about himself is called revolution! And we describe that all too bloody and painful story as history.
Christianity, her moral authority almost completely rejected, as she continues to propagate ideas the modern world finds irrelevant and divisive, offering nothing new to support any moral or progressive goals, her claims to speak in the name of Christ or God are toothless and like much of the world is in debt for the extravagance of her material facade. Christian institutional forms and their theological foundations start with views, assumptions and prejudices about human nature, truth and God several millennia out of date. Does theology only exists because nothing has been revealed? Any assumption made by religion and accepted by gullible believers, that God is active in the affairs of our world has not stood the test of time or experience. And institutional wishful thinking doesn't get humanity very far.
As mankind stumbles at every approach to addressing fundamental problems facing the planet and our very existence, with aspirations to higher ideals mostly baffled by our own limitations as a species and with materialism the only measure of value and progress, what is and where is wisdom? If any 'religious' truth is self evident it must be this: as in the beginning it is not God that failed man, it is man who failed God, himself and his fellow man. That is the way of the world.
If God is true there must be a living demonstrable proof for faith and one that meets all the criteria of the highest Enlightenment idealism. This radical idea does not contradict the scriptural record. There are too many passages of a direct, evidential character to ignore, pointing towards the potential for something very great and profound. And that would be a potent catalyst for change and 'monkey-wrench' to the intellectual gears and vanities of our modern world.
A complete rethink of the religious conception handed down by tradition is now very much on the cards and it won't be kind on tradition. For however unexpected and probably unwelcome, the first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the Gospel/moral teachings of Christ is spreading on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word, Torah, Baptism, the Trinity and especially the Resurrection. Questioning the validity and origins of all Christian tradition, and focusing specifically on marriage, love and human sexuality; it overturns all natural law ethics and theory, and at stake is the credibility of several thousand years of religious history.
Or in the words of Dante Alighieri from his The Divine Comedy:
For as I turned there greed mine likewise
What all behold who contemplate aright
that's Heaven's revolution through the skies.
http://www.energon.org.uk
