Dogma*

There is considerable contention within Christianity and among its divisions over certain aspects of the faith, very old aspects, such as dogma and doctrine. The legacy of the reformation has created a body of Christians who loathe the very idea and like to point fingers and declare their view to be authoritatively based on scripture alone. It is one of those contentious little details that I perceive as a fallacy, one of those hypocritical acts of finger pointing that people of all makes and models are prone to do.

A lot of that dogma has to do with creating the right atmosphere. By that I mean to include all that is within the scope of the spiritual Christian and faith. There are many ways to do that, perhaps. Some people may find the right atmosphere sitting on a hilltop watching the sun set. In other words, the essentials can be stripped down to their bare essentials but there will be a body of knowledge and of practice that the Christian accepts and understands. Whether it is the Church itself that has determined these essentials or a protestant denomination or a single individual it remains technically dogma to those who follow it.

Atonement is a biggy! There is a confusing array of potential doctrines, but as with so many things of faith we can poke holes in all of them or they all fall short of explaining exactly what happened. My own doctrine, if you will pardon me, is that God perceived that we humans wouldn’t be able to accept forgiveness unless we understood that a price had been paid and so it was arranged. I don’t think God needed to sacrifice his only son. God can do anything. It simply reflects the story of Abraham and builds on the ultimate potential sacrifice for the satisfaction of sin. So, our Lord died to save a bunch of goats. *Said with a smile, of course!* Actually, it is a whole lot more complex and I don’t know how to write it. I don’t like rotten tomatoes, either.

At any rate, when we approach God in prayer, we know that we have been washed clean and we know that it isn’t something that we did. It makes God more approachable and at the same time still instrumental to our well-being. So our knowledge of sin creates a right state where pride has died and humility reigns.

I don't think it is ever in believing any thing about God (Christ). I think it is in believing IN, or having faith in Christ, the person. Faith being complete trust. Contemplation requires emptying ourselves, the "Cloud of Forgetting". It isn’t in knowing the right stuff. It is not thinking the right thoughts. It is rather like not thinking at all. It is an act of opening ourselves up to the one we call on. That's why so many find the foreshortened Jesus prayer so effective. Some of us, however have overactive minds. We are so totally self-absorbed that it takes more to bring us into his presence.

In the Church, the ancients used song (chant) psalmody and prayer, reading and contemplating and praying the scriptures to empty the mind in an active way. Or rather, as a means of losing self-awareness. I say I am a reader and I can read my way into the right state. St. Mary was often depicted with a Bible on her lap as a contemplative early on. That was her as role model.

Rituals tell us when God is active among us so that we are more open to his presence and accepting. It isn't that God isn't present at all times, but that we need help sometimes in opening ourselves up to his presence. People may reject those rituals, but they replace them with other rituals they don't call rituals but they still believe that God meets them in their anti-rituals.

An example of such a ritual would be the requirement of the Fundamentalists that baptism is only done after a person has repented of the sin and accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It would be by submersion only and infant baptism is not considered either valid or possible. To claim that this is not a ritual would be ridiculous. To claim that it is not a tradition would be equally ridiculous. It has become both for them in their practice of faith. Thus the hypocrisy! But it serves the same purpose. Almost.

Splitting hairs over a word is ridiculous. The scriptures, especially the Epistles, are full of what we are to do and what we are not to do, of what we are to believe and where we might err. To claim that dogma is an invention of later days is a waste of effort! Official dogma was mankind’s effort to set into concrete something they were afraid somebody else might come along and change. Note that I like rock and concrete for their very concreteness.

Find God wherever you can. I find God in my garden, in the pefection of his creation as in the moist cool earth in spring or the opacity of a flower petal. I find God in the dark of night when I am alone and afraid and he calms me. I find God in an infants face, in the trickle of water from a rock, in a bird's song from a treetop. And one night in Holy Week, I left the Church with an unsatisfied feeling only to find what I was searching for in the midnight blue sky dominated by the full moon.

It is not anything ABOUT God, it is not "right belief" or "right doctrine." God is not in a place such as a church building while not being outside its doors. God is not in a cross and he certainly is not within the covers of a book or at least no more so than he is in a handful of dirt (the very rocks would cry aloud). God is Spirit. It is all about seeking God and where he can be found and listening to God and hearing God--an active, living presence.

The problem, I think, is that if I tell you that the only way that you can seek God is to do it my way. God is so much bigger than that!