In this month's PLPT Guest Post, Pastor/Professor Lawrence Ware helps us to more clearly see how our ideas around God and spirituality are affecting us.
I love parables.
They are little stories that allow divine truths to be communicated in deeply affecting ways. If one were to discuss the phenomenologically transcendent nature of reality, then they would lose their listeners. Tell a story about a prodigal son, and people are all ears. Jesus was a master of them. So was The Buddha.
There is a story The Buddha tells of a few blind men and an elephant. Each blind man is led to a different part of the elephant (one the head, another the trunk, another the leg), and each is told simply: this is an elephant.
As the men discuss what an elephant is, they discover that they have very different impressions of the same being. They discuss the matter with such passion, that some are aroused to anger. In fact, they almost strike one another!
The Buddha uses this parable to teach the importance of intellectual humility.
We live in arrogant, dismissive times. Tolerance is in short supply. Many are seduced into thinking that their way of life is the only way. The Buddha, here, teaches that we are only partially aware of true reality—that is, we are only partially aware of God.
We love to place God in boxes. We say he is revealed exclusively in the Quran; or he is felt most acutely via meditation; or that God is the universe—thereby emphasizing God’s transcendence; or he is a he, not a she. These are all limitations that we place upon God, not limits that God places upon God’s self.
Truth be told, God is bigger, more complex than any of us could possibly imagine. No one has the market cornered in regard to truth. There is so much to learn and experience. We spend too much time talking, and too little time listening. We are an opinionated generation that is short on truth. We are so busy announcing what will and will not work for us that we fail to give what we know a diligent try. We are so conscious of the religious mistakes of previous generations that we fail to see that what they believed, while flawed, helped them to endure.
Our culture is hungry for spirituality. We are beginning to understand that consumerism isn’t going to fill the emptiness inside. We can cover it up, dress it up, or ignore it, but at some point we have to address it: the things of this world are unsatisfying. Children grow up. Spouses and loved ones disappoint. Cars lose value. A chair is just a chair, and a house is not a home.
We yearn for something deeper. We yearn for something more substantive. We yearn for that which can only be whispered, never fully known. We yearn for God.
Devote yourself to earnestly seeking God, and you may be surprised where he shows up.
Lawrence Ware is lecturing professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University and Pastor of Christian Education at Prospect Church. He writes for Tikkun and Religion Dispatchers all while living in Oklahoma City with his wife and sons.
3 comments:
Thank you for this.
I love this post. Very well written and I think really captures how many people feel about religion and spirituality these days.
Especially this paragraph:
Truth be told, God is bigger, more complex than any of us could possibly imagine. No one has the market cornered in regard to truth. There is so much to learn and experience. We spend too much time talking, and too little time listening. We are an opinionated generation that is short on truth. We are so busy announcing what will and will not work for us that we fail to give what we know a diligent try. We are so conscious of the religious mistakes of previous generations that we fail to see that what they believed, while flawed, helped them to endure.
"Our culture is hungry for spirituality. We are beginning to understand that consumerism isn’t going to fill the emptiness inside. We can cover it up, dress it up, or ignore it, but at some point we have to address it: the things of this world are unsatisfying."
This is my language...this is almost exactly the same thing that Shirley McClaine said in her Oprah interview. And, what I'm going to chip away at in my lifetime.
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