I’m trying out a new religion today.
What do you think?
It doesn’t really give me any authority. And sometimes it might make me vulnerable and powerless.
And it might take a lot of practice…
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Well, if you said, “My God is Love, and my religion is Charity”, I would suppose that you’re a Christian in the manner of the apostles. But since you say, “My God is Love, and my religion is empathy”, it makes me think of a publicly practicing Buddhist who secretly worships the Christian God.
Of course, if you had said, “My God is love…”, (lowercase ‘love’) then it would be something else entirely. I’d assume that you were into something similar to Babylonian Ishtar worship, cult of Aphrodite, Thelema, or similar.
That’s quite the buffet of religions!
The goal was more non-labelist, I believe. Maybe the problem is the capital “G”. Or the order. “LOVE is my god and empathy is my religion”.
Edits and proofs to come…
How big is Thelema anyway? I looked into it a year ago, and like the pithiness, the sayings. But it didn’t really grab me as worth much commitment.
When I read ideas like that, my first impulse is to say something rude. I was about to when I asked myself, why it was so. I’m not certain I can explain it, but I’ll try.My mum is one of those peeps who nominally call themselves Christian (Lutheran in her case), but who really couldn’t give tuppence about the whole topic. But I was sent to relgious instructions both in school and in our parish (leading up to confirmation, when I was 14.) So were my siblings.Before her death of cancer my sister, who was about to have her confirmation at the time, was quite concerned with the whole thing, and we talked about it (from our 13/11 year old perspectives) a lot. And later, I tried to voice some of what occupied my mind about this to the pastor and the teach, but in both cases all I got was hollow phrases from them grown-ups and groans of annoyance and boredom from my mates. Maybe that is part of why I tend to react with little patience to this sort of kumbaya feel good stuff.Okay, so for starters, of course you can say “my god is” and than fill in the blanks howsoever you wish. But that is just words. That is like saying “he worships money”. Go ahead, worship love. But that is using the word “god” at the furthest end of metaphor.God, to really, fully deserve the name, has to be some transcendent power that truly moves and shapes the world. Maybe your god is just one of many gods, and there are also gods of hatred, gods of grief, gods of humour, gods of snivelling, gods of jealousy, gods of exploitation, and gods of enlightened self-intestest in that pantheon of yours, and you just have decided to make the god of love you personal household deity or something. But if you phrase it the way you do, you deliberately create the idea that this god of love is the supreme if not the only god. And that, mate, is bollocks.That is what all those pastors and religious instructors tried to tell me: That God is love. That the world is love. And I have to wonder, where the fuck do those peeps live? Pull your collective heads out of the sand, and take a look around. If God is love, he seems to be a thoroughly powerless and incompetent chap.Secondly, love is a word almost as big as god. It means a lot of things.
“Even if I’d known the right thing to say, I probably couldn’t have said it. Speech destroys the functions of love, I think – that’s a hell of a thing for a writer to say, I guess, but I believe it to be true. If you speak to tell a deer you mean it no harm, it glides away with a single flip of its tail. The word is the harm. Love isn’t what these asshole poets like McKuen want you to think it is. Love has teeth; they bite; the wounds never close. No word, no combination of words, can close those lovebites. It’s the other way around, that’s the joke. If those wounds dry up, the words die with them. Take it from me. I’ve made my life from the words, and I know that is so.” (Stephen King, The Body)
Or: “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” (Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones).I get so annoyed because of the rosy prism approach to both God and Love. What you seem to mean to say is that all is well. But all is not well. God is cruel. Love hurts. Making a religion out of the lovey-dovey illusion means to make a religion out of a lie that keeps hiding the truth and that keeps us from dealing with the real world. With poverty, and discrimination, and disease and pain, and loneliness and fear.It’s a bit like a dotty old aunt patting your hand and saying: “There, there, dear. All will be well.”It may be a nice sentiment, and well meant, but it’s totally useless.(And don’t get me started on Empathy… lol.)Seriously, though, I better stop ranting, huh?No offense, but, well, that’s why I have a problem with this harmonious healing-crystal let’s all hold hands approach to religion.
“you can say “my god is” and then fill in the blanks howsoever you wish.”
That’s exactly the point of this website, and I’m so glad to see someone gets it and rails against it as much as I do. Admittedly, I steep things too much in the irony of language and haven’t found my proper balance.
Your rant kind of predicts two of my own posts I was going to put up this week.
I’m constantly amazed that Christians can claim ownership over a word like “love” and then think that absolves them entirely or creates moral authority. Or that Buddhists can claim ownership of “empathy” or “compassion” while trying to dissolve the self.
Thanks FF, but I would have appreciated something rude too.
It would have fit the spirit of all this.
sounds dangerous. i opt for judgement and callousness.
Mind if we make up a new image?
Thelema has always been pretty tiny; basically just the disciples of Aliester Crowley, and not as much traction since he died. L Ron Hubbard was once a disciple, as was the founder of NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. I have a friend who was raised Thelemite by his dad, so learned a bit about it.
Good point about their sayings. One of the most famous is “Love is the law; love under will”. It’s a fascinating saying, because it completely inverts what Christianity means by “love”, but tends to be a good summary of what a lot of people today think about “love”, even if they don’t admit it to themselves. If there is one thing Crowley was good at, it was in throwing things into stark contrast to force people to figure out what they really believed.
I love it. LOVE is… It just IS. We can choose to be Love, all of the time. Just for the heck of it. Because it feels better. As a gift to ourselves. Who cares if someone or something “deserves” our love or not… WE deserve to BE love and every moment we spend outside of love we rob ourselves of a beautiful moment. So there. That’s my religion. I love it.
Hi Anna Mae,
Thanks so much!
I like how you put it – “every moment we spend outside of love we rob ourselves of a beautiful moment.”
A neat turnaround, the idea of stealing from ourselves.
Wow, I put this up a year ago. I’d almost forgotten about it.
Hehe – did you check out my follow-up post, from z1g’s suggestion?
http://godwillbegod.com/blog/omglols/even-newer-and-somewhat-older
I guess you could say I’ve gone through a number of religions
…
I do not even know the way I stopped up correct here, nonetheless I thought this put up was very good. I don’t understand who you are but certainly you might be going to a famous blogger when that you are not already Cheers!
note – this looks like spam, and spam is getting more and more contrived. I’m going to remove the link, let this through, and see if Earnest is earnest.