Ghazali often quoted this Persian proverb:
"Eat the vegetable wherever it comes from, and do not ask where the garden is."
He quoted this, for example, when counseling people how to fight demons (The Marvels of the Heart). Why get caught up in origins, ontology, and metaphysics, asking what world demons come from, what level of being they occupy? The main thing is to conquer their temptations in your heart, with your heart so you can walk uprightly in this world, with love, justice, and humility.
But this proverb also expresses Ghazali's view of truth. He pulled his writings and teachings (which influenced many Jewish and Christian theologians) from many different sources, the Qur'an, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, colloquial sayings, Greek philosophy, and much more.
This practice and understanding of wisdom is a welcome one in our current situation, in which fundamentalists (among all religions) and militant secularists (from among all religions) have crowded the stage, pushing all people of faith seeking understanding off the stage, calling us "rebels" or "infidels" for holding a view of God with which they do not agree, or "idiots" for trusting in God at all. Both these dogmas, as different as they seem to be, share a belief: that the origin of an idea contaminates or purifies it. For religious fundamentalists, any idea or image of God that does not come from the one true source that their group identifies (the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian scriptures, the Qur'an, or others), as interpreted by them is not only suspect but false. For the materialist or secular fundamentalists, those who reject any possibility of the reality of God, any idea or image of God, especially if it comes from an organized religion, is false because it is nonsense, meaningless. For them, any statement that is not objectively verifiable, that does not originate in scientific thinking, must be false.
For both these varieties of fundamentalism, faith and reason are mutually exclusive. For the religious dogmatists, whatever does not come from (their) faith comes from human reason and is therefore deception (because human reason is clouded by sin and it is only pure revelation that can be trusted). For the secular dogmatists, whatever does not come from (their notion of modern scientific) reason comes from faith and is therefore self-deception (because human beings are weak and childish and want an illusion of something greater than they are to depend on).
I am reminded here of the logical fallacy called "poisoning the wells." One identifies the one pure source of truth as the well one drinks from, and claims that all other wells, and everything springing forth from them, every word, thought, idea, practice, is, by necessity, contaminated. Thus, they drink only from their wells. They eat vegetables only from their gardens.
Ghazali's proverb can show us another way. "Eat the vegetable wherever it comes from, and do not ask where the garden is."
Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. Throughout history, in all religious traditions, western and eastern, there have been thinkers and communities who have not been afraid to recognize truth no matter what its source. Not just mystics and radicals, but people at the heart of religious traditions have recognized and absorbed truths that came to them from outside their tradition or culture. Philo, Jews returning from captivity in Babylonia, Augustine, Ghazali, Ibn Arabi, Maimonides, John Calvin--the list could go on and on. It was the medieval Christian theologian Anselm who gave us the common motto for this approach, faith seeking understanding. But the approach knows no historical, cultural, or religious bounds. Trusting in the Oneness and infinite wisdom of God, they strove to recognize truth whenever and wherever it appeared, even if that truth came from Greek philosophy, Persian religion, or the best science of the day. For them, to reject a truth simply because one is unfamiliar with its source is to be ungrateful to the One; it is to reject the Oneness, infinite wisdom, and overflowing abundance of the One and the gifts that flow from God. When one recognizes a truth, one sees that its ultimate origin is in God, not another person or community. That is why one accepts it if one does.
So let's be discriminating, yes. Don't eat cardboard or rancid meat. Know what you're eating. Seek out nourishing vegetables. And when you find them, don't subject them, or their growers or deliverers, to a long inquisition about the garden they came from, the mineral content of the soil, the rain levels, the integrity of the gardeners, and so forth. Did this truth grow in the garden of faith? No matter. No reason to condemn it. Did it grow in the garden of reason? No matter. No reason to reject it out of hand. Let's move beyond the false dichotomy of faith or reason and start talking about what truths nourish us and that we share with others.
We could die of spiritual starvation in this desert of fundamentalism before all the garden questions are raised and answered. The practice is simple and profound: Eat your vegetables; and leave the garden, Pardes, paradise, which is more glorious and abundant and various than we could ever imagine, to The True.
Showing posts with label Anselm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anselm. Show all posts
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Is Astrology a Victimless Crime? Do We Need “A Warning Against Astrology”?
It’s not just astronomers and skeptics who love to bash astrology. Theologians, ethicists, and philosophers do, too. Yet for many people, even those who agree with the criticisms of astrology as unscientific, illogical, a convenient escape from personal responsibility, a silly waste of time, or a scheme to make money selling people something absolutely useless, astrology still holds an irresistible appeal. Consulting their horoscope for fun every day is one of their guilty pleasures.
I want to reflect on three questions:
Here’s my confession (and it’s not an easy one to make): I don’t know why most people read horoscopes—for fun? for diversion?; I do know why I have read them. There have been times in my life when I frantically consulted three, four, five or more daily or weekly, monthly or yearly horoscopes. I felt guilty doing it, and stupid. I agreed with all the criticisms of it. Yet I did it. Why? I was consumed by fear and anxiety. I wanted control over my life. I wanted to know something about what would happen, even to think I knew something, to calm me. I wanted to find a reason to hope, or simply to find reassurance. In certain moments of crises, after a string of difficult years, when I feared in a post-traumatic-stress-syndrome way that my day or week would surely shock me with one more sorrow or catastrophe I could not have imagined, I would read and read—sometimes for an hour or more—until I found a horoscope that “promised” an end to pain or the beginning of something new, or help of any sort. Sometimes I read until I found a warning about something bad happening--a legal run-in or personal conflict or financial challenge. That would calm me down. If something painful or difficult was going to happen, I wanted to know. Knowing about a trauma before hand seemed far better to me than living in uncertaintiy, waiting for the next blow and not knowing when it would come, from what direction, or from whom, or why. If I knew it was coming, I could handle it, I thought. It was those unpredictable assaults, out of nowhere, that I couldn't live with. Reading “predictions” was my anti-anxiety drug of choice. I needed it. I couldn’t get through the day without it.
This is an embarrassing admission on so many levels, but especially on the spiritual level. Yes, it meant that I was experiencing a lot of grief and trauma and was not acting like my normal self. But I don’t want to use this as a dodge. What it really meant was that I was not trusting in the One. I could not live in uncertainty, with seemingly nothing to hang on to. Why didn’t I just pray and read the Psalms, as I otherwise did, for reassurance and comfort and a sense of community? I am not really sure. I think I was desperate for something that seemed more immediate, more concrete, more practical, a secret message meant for me. This lack of radical trust made me flail my way across the Web looking for comfort and hope.
What are the theological responses to astrology?
In the eleventh century the Sufi mystic and theologian Ghazali objected to astrology because it denied the absolute dependence humankind must have on God at every moment in life. God directly causes every occasion, he argues, which is divine providence, and we are to trust absolutely in God, link ourselves directly to the ultimate source and ground of every act or event or situation, and not look to proximate or intermediate causes like stars and planets. In the twelfth century, the Jewish mystic and theologians Moses Maimonides argued similarly, saying that believing in astrology denies the providence of God and also freedom of the will.
In the sixteenth century the Christian mystic and theologian John Calvin wrote a treatise called “A Warning Against Astrology.” He raises many objections to consulting horoscopes, including Ghazali’s and Maiominides's main points—that it displaces our trust in the only trustworthy One and therefore detracts from the glory of God who providentially cares for every detail of creation; and it denies our moral responsibilty.
But the criticism Calvin offers that always surprises me for its practical, modern sensibility, is this: Astrology is anti-community. God, he argues, placed the sun, moon, and stars in creation so that human beings can tell time and seasons and make plans with one another about when to worship together, when to come to courts of law together to settle disputes, when to meet for other social occasions. They are community-building tools. What if one were to consult his or her horoscope on the way to court and find it is not an auspicious day, and turn back? What if one’s personal chart argues against one observing the Sabbath or a festival day? To use God’s creations in this way to deny God and the image of God in our fellow human beings. It isolates us from others. Trusting in the One, however, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, links us to all other creatures, all the rest of creation—for that is part of our purpose here—to escape the prison of the self and experience communion with others.
Is astrology harmless?
Many people make light of astrology, saying, “Oh, I don’t really believe it! It’s just fun. It’s harmless.” Our common greeting to one another, Good luck! Mazel tov! suggests how much we have absorbed the idea of astrological influences, even if we reject outright causation. Mazal means a planet and its influence, so we're wishing for good astrological influences for others.
Maybe it's harmless to wish someone Mazal tov (instead of saying, "Ezrat Hashem, God's Help" or Retzon HaShem or Insha'Allah, God Willing). But I’m not sure astrology is harmless. Just as prostitution is often called a victimless crime, yet often leads to great harm, so astrology can cause harm. It erodes one’s trust in the One. It corrodes one’s sense of relatedness to others and our responsibility, for one’s own actions and for the care of others. It can keep us trapped in fear and anxiety, dependent on remedies that can never assuage our fears but only postpone or mask them. It can prevent us from growing toward deeper trust and faith that bring the peace that passes understanding.
Astrology isn’t “of the devil,” and consulting one’s horoscope isn’t evil--any more than anything else that tempts us away from depending on the One and befriending all that the One creates and embraces. But it’s not harmless.
I want to reflect on three questions:
- Why do people read their horoscope?
- What are the theological or spiritual objections to astrology?
- Is astrology harmless?
Here’s my confession (and it’s not an easy one to make): I don’t know why most people read horoscopes—for fun? for diversion?; I do know why I have read them. There have been times in my life when I frantically consulted three, four, five or more daily or weekly, monthly or yearly horoscopes. I felt guilty doing it, and stupid. I agreed with all the criticisms of it. Yet I did it. Why? I was consumed by fear and anxiety. I wanted control over my life. I wanted to know something about what would happen, even to think I knew something, to calm me. I wanted to find a reason to hope, or simply to find reassurance. In certain moments of crises, after a string of difficult years, when I feared in a post-traumatic-stress-syndrome way that my day or week would surely shock me with one more sorrow or catastrophe I could not have imagined, I would read and read—sometimes for an hour or more—until I found a horoscope that “promised” an end to pain or the beginning of something new, or help of any sort. Sometimes I read until I found a warning about something bad happening--a legal run-in or personal conflict or financial challenge. That would calm me down. If something painful or difficult was going to happen, I wanted to know. Knowing about a trauma before hand seemed far better to me than living in uncertaintiy, waiting for the next blow and not knowing when it would come, from what direction, or from whom, or why. If I knew it was coming, I could handle it, I thought. It was those unpredictable assaults, out of nowhere, that I couldn't live with. Reading “predictions” was my anti-anxiety drug of choice. I needed it. I couldn’t get through the day without it.
This is an embarrassing admission on so many levels, but especially on the spiritual level. Yes, it meant that I was experiencing a lot of grief and trauma and was not acting like my normal self. But I don’t want to use this as a dodge. What it really meant was that I was not trusting in the One. I could not live in uncertainty, with seemingly nothing to hang on to. Why didn’t I just pray and read the Psalms, as I otherwise did, for reassurance and comfort and a sense of community? I am not really sure. I think I was desperate for something that seemed more immediate, more concrete, more practical, a secret message meant for me. This lack of radical trust made me flail my way across the Web looking for comfort and hope.
What are the theological responses to astrology?
In the eleventh century the Sufi mystic and theologian Ghazali objected to astrology because it denied the absolute dependence humankind must have on God at every moment in life. God directly causes every occasion, he argues, which is divine providence, and we are to trust absolutely in God, link ourselves directly to the ultimate source and ground of every act or event or situation, and not look to proximate or intermediate causes like stars and planets. In the twelfth century, the Jewish mystic and theologians Moses Maimonides argued similarly, saying that believing in astrology denies the providence of God and also freedom of the will.
In the sixteenth century the Christian mystic and theologian John Calvin wrote a treatise called “A Warning Against Astrology.” He raises many objections to consulting horoscopes, including Ghazali’s and Maiominides's main points—that it displaces our trust in the only trustworthy One and therefore detracts from the glory of God who providentially cares for every detail of creation; and it denies our moral responsibilty.
But the criticism Calvin offers that always surprises me for its practical, modern sensibility, is this: Astrology is anti-community. God, he argues, placed the sun, moon, and stars in creation so that human beings can tell time and seasons and make plans with one another about when to worship together, when to come to courts of law together to settle disputes, when to meet for other social occasions. They are community-building tools. What if one were to consult his or her horoscope on the way to court and find it is not an auspicious day, and turn back? What if one’s personal chart argues against one observing the Sabbath or a festival day? To use God’s creations in this way to deny God and the image of God in our fellow human beings. It isolates us from others. Trusting in the One, however, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, links us to all other creatures, all the rest of creation—for that is part of our purpose here—to escape the prison of the self and experience communion with others.
Is astrology harmless?
Many people make light of astrology, saying, “Oh, I don’t really believe it! It’s just fun. It’s harmless.” Our common greeting to one another, Good luck! Mazel tov! suggests how much we have absorbed the idea of astrological influences, even if we reject outright causation. Mazal means a planet and its influence, so we're wishing for good astrological influences for others.
Maybe it's harmless to wish someone Mazal tov (instead of saying, "Ezrat Hashem, God's Help" or Retzon HaShem or Insha'Allah, God Willing). But I’m not sure astrology is harmless. Just as prostitution is often called a victimless crime, yet often leads to great harm, so astrology can cause harm. It erodes one’s trust in the One. It corrodes one’s sense of relatedness to others and our responsibility, for one’s own actions and for the care of others. It can keep us trapped in fear and anxiety, dependent on remedies that can never assuage our fears but only postpone or mask them. It can prevent us from growing toward deeper trust and faith that bring the peace that passes understanding.
Astrology isn’t “of the devil,” and consulting one’s horoscope isn’t evil--any more than anything else that tempts us away from depending on the One and befriending all that the One creates and embraces. But it’s not harmless.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Secularism Envy?
Have you ever envied your totally secular friends? The ones who don’t think or worry about God? Who aren’t troubled by God? Who are comfortable living in the world they can see and hear and touch and explain (if not now, someday)? Those for whom “God” is a sociopolitical problem, cultural artifact, or distant memory from their childhood, nothing more?
I have. In college, I studied philosophy and literature, not theology, because I wanted to be the kind of person who had nothing to do with God—an intellectual! How could you be and intellectual and believe in God, a holdover from a more primitive, less enlightened time? When I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School to study history of religions with Mircea Eliade, I wanted to be like many of my classmates—interested in God only from the distancing vantage point of academia, not from within the standpoint of a faith community. To be a person of faith meant you were not capable of true objectivity about your own religion or that of others.
Many times in my life I have wished I could just forget about God. It’s nothing but trouble and embarrassment, being a person of faith who is also a 21st century post-Enlightenment, post-Darwin, post-modern, post-post citizen. How can one defend oneself? There are no airtight proofs of God’s existence. The reality and experience of God exceed the limits of reason. The concepts we’ve inherited for talking about God, self, and world are woefully outmoded or just out of touch with the assumptions or worldviews of most people. We often look like fools or are taken for fools.
Here’s the burden or responsibility some of these fools bear: finding ways to mediate between the wisdom of our faith and the best of contemporary culture’s rational understanding of the universe. It’s a classic move among people of faith, faith seeking understanding. Origen, Philo, Augustine, Anselm, Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn-Sina, Ibn-Rushd, Maimonides, Ibn-Ezra, Erasmus, Schleiermacher, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, and H. Richard Niebuhr practiced it.
It would be easier to ditch God and run with whatever current or perennial philosophy is hot. I’ve tried. I can’t do it. I have to accept that I was born tuned to spirit. Not everyone is. That’s good, too. And sometimes I wish I were like them. But whether i like it or not, I’m one of those fools who dance to music some people can’t hear. And that means I have to shoulder my part of the burden of finding new ways of practicing faith seeking understanding today. I’m often not sure how best to do that. Counter the fundamentalist attack on reason and science? Create new concepts and images for God that incorporate recent scientific understandings of matter and the universe? Sidestep science with poetry? Bracket God and focus on morality? I’m still finding my way. What’s yours?
I have. In college, I studied philosophy and literature, not theology, because I wanted to be the kind of person who had nothing to do with God—an intellectual! How could you be and intellectual and believe in God, a holdover from a more primitive, less enlightened time? When I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School to study history of religions with Mircea Eliade, I wanted to be like many of my classmates—interested in God only from the distancing vantage point of academia, not from within the standpoint of a faith community. To be a person of faith meant you were not capable of true objectivity about your own religion or that of others.
Many times in my life I have wished I could just forget about God. It’s nothing but trouble and embarrassment, being a person of faith who is also a 21st century post-Enlightenment, post-Darwin, post-modern, post-post citizen. How can one defend oneself? There are no airtight proofs of God’s existence. The reality and experience of God exceed the limits of reason. The concepts we’ve inherited for talking about God, self, and world are woefully outmoded or just out of touch with the assumptions or worldviews of most people. We often look like fools or are taken for fools.
Here’s the burden or responsibility some of these fools bear: finding ways to mediate between the wisdom of our faith and the best of contemporary culture’s rational understanding of the universe. It’s a classic move among people of faith, faith seeking understanding. Origen, Philo, Augustine, Anselm, Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn-Sina, Ibn-Rushd, Maimonides, Ibn-Ezra, Erasmus, Schleiermacher, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, and H. Richard Niebuhr practiced it.
It would be easier to ditch God and run with whatever current or perennial philosophy is hot. I’ve tried. I can’t do it. I have to accept that I was born tuned to spirit. Not everyone is. That’s good, too. And sometimes I wish I were like them. But whether i like it or not, I’m one of those fools who dance to music some people can’t hear. And that means I have to shoulder my part of the burden of finding new ways of practicing faith seeking understanding today. I’m often not sure how best to do that. Counter the fundamentalist attack on reason and science? Create new concepts and images for God that incorporate recent scientific understandings of matter and the universe? Sidestep science with poetry? Bracket God and focus on morality? I’m still finding my way. What’s yours?
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