Monday, April 2, 2012

getting my Christian chain yanked

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The older I get, the more I seem to take my spiritual training from movies. Not 'spiritual' movies, just ordinary adventures. In this, perhaps I am not far from my sons who seem to read "The Godfather" after having seen the movie ... and found it a great book. I too like "The Godfather." And I like "Open Range." And I like "Second-Hand Lions." And I like "The Cup." Besides being good stories, all have information worth savoring ... at least in this aging mind.

Today, as I was dawdling around after lunch, I came upon "Stigmata" on the TV. Described as a "horror" film by some, I think it was more like good sci-fi ... horror movies scare me too much. In the movie, a young woman in Pittsburgh exhibits over time the wounds Jesus was said to have suffered. She proclaims herself an atheist, but that doesn't stop the wounds from wounding her. There is some nice, quiet tension between the woman (a hairdresser) and the priest (Gabriel Byrne) who comes to investigate and it's not (thankfully) entirely clear whether she is possessed by some demon or by something holy. The movie ends somewhat unclearly, but I liked the drama well enough to watch.

And that led me to look up the Gospel of Thomas -- a gospel not included with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible. The Thomas work differs from the other gospels in that it is not narrative in structure. It is more like a collection of sayings attributed directly to Jesus ... or maybe not ... there is a lot of argument about its place in the Christian narrative. Maybe this, maybe that ... but as I read over even so thin a source as Wikipedia, I found myself applauding for the Christians instead of the lions. The heresies of Thomas -- if heresies they be -- speak in a way that anyone familiar with the age-old orthodoxy-vs-mystic argument will find pretty ho-hum.

But it had been a long time since I heard/read of anyone standing up for "direct and unmediated experience." And it was a pleasure to read the suggestion that prayer and grace -- the touchstones of Christian orthodoxy -- were really not enough, that there was another way, a way of insight in which "... the hearer's attention is directed away from objectified judgements of the world to knowing oneself in direct and straighforward manner ...." The Thomas Gospel is refrained to some extent in other gospels (John for example), but this one seems to have really hammer home the point of the movie -- churches are not the church worth attending.

Watching the movie ... going to a flimsy source ... and feeling both delighted and sheepish. Delighted because I live in a Christian country whose Christianity, sometimes nice and sometimes nasty, seldom reaches out to the church that anybody might seek ... and here was some counterpoint to my skeptical views. And sheepish because all too often -- but not without reason -- I can rest my head on that skeptical pillow.

I like having my chain yanked.

I guess I'll watch more movies.
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2 comments:

  1. My favorite from the Gospel of Thomas:
    "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you deny what is within you, what you deny will destroy you."

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  2. Daishin -- Yes, I read that one too in the process of revisiting my own careless conclusions.

    And yet I will admit as well that I don't think those sometimes acid conclusions are entirely unwarranted.

    On the one hand, Christianity has the tools -- and the expositors of those tools -- to open its eyes to a wider plain. On the other hand, it steadfastly closes its eyes.

    John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, George Fox and no doubt a bunch of others all pointed to an unmediated access to and actualization of God. They are part of the Christian tapestry and yet receive either smug and smarmy smiles ("yes, that's true ... they are the exceptions that prove the rule") or an outraged rebuttal that speaks to nothing so much as a fear of what the implications might mean for those in the orthodox catbird seat.

    In a sense, I was surprised at my own surprise and wonder when I skimmed Wikipedia-fashion over the Gospel of Thomas. I knew that stuff existed and had even delved into it at one point or another. Why was I so surprised and delighted now?

    The answer, I guess, is that since the Christian orthodoxy gives such encouragements short (and sometimes petrified) shrift, I too relegated them to the back burner of whatever I thought of "Christianity." Joseph Goebbels was an effective man.

    Oh well, live and learn. The tug of war between mystics and orthodoxy is old, old, old. There's nothing spectacular about it.

    But sometimes my own ignorance strikes me as spectacular.

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