Where is Truth: In Antiquity or Modern Times?

In my search for meaning and understanding, I've found it most useful to read the writings of 2nd and 3rd century church fathers who spent their lives studying in their attempts to align themselves with God.

Today, when I see where I've been, it gives me pause. The more I learn, the more I think that contemporary religious movements designed through some sort of supposed divine guidance are merely attempts to create comfort for and to ensure conformity from the masses. They exist in sharp contrast to the process marked by the ancients: a path mainly involving meditation, contemplation and personal transformation. The spiritual path as a personal path rather than as a pied-piper path to wealth, popularity and power.

The more I study and explore, the more I am coming to appreciate the concepts associated with Catholicism. Not the Roman Catholicism that most of us assume to have a general idea about from an outside view, but a broader view of Catholicism.

From Wikipedia:

The word catholic (derived via Late Latin catholicus, from the Greek adjective καθολικός (katholikos), meaning "universal"[1][2]) comes from the Greek phrase καθόλου (kath'holou), meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words κατά meaning "about" and όλος meaning "whole".[3][4] The word in English can mean either "including a wide variety of things; all-embracing" or "of the Roman Catholic faith." as "relating to the historic doctrine and practice of the Western Church."[5]

It was first used to describe the Christian Church in the early 2nd century to emphasize its universal scope [italics added]. In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. In non-ecclesiastical use, it derives its English meaning directly from its root, and is currently used to mean

* universal or of general interest; or
* liberal, having broad interests, or wide sympathies.[6]

I am finding great interest in the idea of studying a universal religion of general interest that is liberal in its exploration of areas of mystery related to God. The thing I find most interesting about this school of thinking is that it allows me to study without reference to exclusionary doctrines.

It is freeing. Liberating. It carries a broad message through which people of many varied levels of belief and spiritual development can find growth, transformation and enlightenment. For some reason, I think this is the kind of religion God would intend for humankind.

As I write this, my mind goes to last Sunday morning's church experience. My husband provided the sermon for the Unity of the Crossroads Church in Riverside, California. His talk was decidedly Catholic (which I understood based upon my recent studies - very different from the sermons of the Unity slant - which I have listened to for much of the past year). I watched as the congregation were moved by the Spirit moving through my spouse. With a Catholic message. The congregation were united, uplifted and inspired. The message was broad and rich; while providing a specific call to action for personal and communal transformation. The concepts were beautiful. A Catholic message that appealed to a Unity congregation. Simply. Beautifully.

My Sunday morning experience provided a stark contrast to the experiences of my roots in Mormonism. Mormons often refer to Catholicism as the "great and abominable church" or the church of the devil. The basic assumption is that all churches or organizations that are designed to take men away from God comprise the church of the devil. Mormon scholars and lay scriptorians will point to the pageantry, rituals, symbolism and rites of Catholicism and accuse the oldest Christian religion of taking men from God. It's curious.

In my experience and opinion, the reading of the ancient fathers related to the Catholic belief have brought me closer to God. And, informed by ancient wisdom related to God and the Universe, Catholic rites feel rich, symbolic and nourishing. In so many ways, what I am learning is so much simpler, yet so much more rich than anything I've ever encountered in a religious forum before.

It brings me to conclude that in the attempt to make religion more accessible to the masses, modern men messed it up. I'm speaking of all of the Protestant sects that rebelled against the old ways. True, the Catholic institution may have become corrupted, but why throw out the old teachings and ritual ceremonies that carry so much spiritual power while rejecting more modern policies?

So, in rebellion, Protestant sects developed. Among them, Mormonism, with it's unique vision of God: as a man perfected. Why would Joseph Smith decide to proclaim that he had seen a vision wherein God and Jesus personally appeared to him in the form of men having flesh and blood?

I've written about this before. We can't help but place human definitions on God. But our definitions of God have nothing to do with the reality of God.

Let's listen to ancient wisdom (as explored by Clement in "The Roots of Christian Mysticism":

"People never cease to project on to God their individual and collective obsessions, so that they can appropriate and make use of him. But they ought to understand that God cannot be apprehended from without, as if he were an object, for with him there is no outside, nor can the Creator be set side by side with the creature . . . . " Olivier Clement then quotes Clement of Alexandria "Most people are enclosed in their mortal bodies like a snail in its shell, curled up in their obsessions after the manner of hedgehogs. They form their notion of God's blessedness taking themselves for a model." And Theophilus of Antioch: "Seeds in a pomegranate cannot see objects outside its rind, because they are inside. Similarly human beings who are enclosed with all creation in the hand of God cannot see God . . . Friend, it is through him that you are speaking, it is he whom you breathe, and you do not know it! For your eye is blind, your heart hardened. But, if you wish, you can be cured. Entrust yourself to the doctor, and he will open the eyes of your soul and your heart. Who is the doctor? God, using his word and his wisdom . . . ." Finally, Gregory of Nyssa: "Every concept formed by the intellect in an attempt to comprehend and circumscribe the divine nature can succeed only in fashioning an idol, not in making God known."

So, what would be the appeal of making God into a man (as Joseph Smith did)? For God's purposes, God became incarnate (in the person of Christ) so that through our physical experience, God could communicate to us in a way that we understand. So that God could lead us home. God speaking our language and using The Son as God's vehicle to create such a miracle.

But the story of Mormonism added so much more to the simple, beautiful story that still works when God is left to do it God's way. God, who is the origin of the Universe we know, the reason we breathe and the force that brings draws us to Divinity doesn't need man's help. In fact, I believe that reducing the Creator to a man does irreparable harm (see my previous post about this).

Today, I understand what non-Mormons saw as Joseph Smith worship - an idea that confused me while I still lived under the foggy-veil of the Mormon Church. God doesn't need Joseph Smith's help. Mormon folklore says that Joseph Smith has done more for mankind, save Jesus Christ himself, than any other man on the earth. I agree - more to pull God's creatures away from direct communion with God. But, why?

I think there were several things in play at the time. During Joseph Smith's youth, there was a great deal of energy and fervor regarding religious and spiritual things. Many men were recognizing that they could acquire a great deal of popularity and power by calling out their particular brand of doctrine and watching the masses follow them like so many lost flocks after shepherds who promised to know the way.

Joseph Smith, young and impressionable (yes, and uneducated as to the ancient spiritual fathers' teachings), got caught up in the fervor. Whether he was charlatan enough to make up the story of the first vision of God and Jesus before him - telling him no church was correct - or whether he was simply mentally off doesn't seem to matter. His hunger for power and/or delusionary states caught on and he got his own followers. Followers who still revere him today -

But, let's look at some of the ways Joseph's dogma differs from ancient wisdom.

The first is one I've explored here and in previous posts: Joseph Smith appealed to the human desire to understand God in human terms and proclaimed that God is simply an exalted human. Neatly packaged in terms easy for human beings to understand, we can use God for our own purposes. We can blame God when things don't go our way. We can shake our fists in the air at God as if God were just like the parent we have unresolved issues with. But, when we do those things, we are relating to an idol of our own creation - a human God. And, we limit ourselves. Unfortunately, Mormonism has this doctrine built in via Joseph's first vision. One of the first "testimonies" that a Mormon initiate must gain. (For a partial discussion of the nature of God, see the post I already referred to above.)

Another twist on ancient Truth involves Joseph Smith's assertions that the link of the priesthood was broken, so that Spiritual Gifts, Communion with God via the Holy Spirit and Priesthood authority could only be enjoyed through the authority supposedly granted him during his organization of the church. Mormons teach that a personal connection to God can only occur once one has been baptized a Mormon and confirmed a member of the Mormon church and been given the opportunity to Receive the Holy Ghost. While I was Mormon, I often wondered how other Christians could feel connected with God.

Now I know. This point makes me saddest for the Mormons. My connection with God has been intensified since I left the Mormon church. Communion with God is not an exclusive right of members of the "Only True and Correct Church on the Face of the Earth." No. In fact, Mormons would say that I am now relegated to the circle outside of the gifts of being touched by God's Spirit.

What I've found by personal experience is that I've been under God's influence in spite of my upbringing as a Mormon. Now that I've left Mormonism, I feel God more intensely. And I don't have to pray and pray and pray to feel it. I recognize that the spark that I feel inside of me is the Divinity that draws me to God. I'm moved by spiritual things much more easily than before. I have so much more joy in my life. My heart is open and changing. It is God's Grace like I've never felt before.

These are things I only hoped for and struggled to attain as a Mormon. They (the Mormons) make it too hard.

You don't have to be in the special Mormon club to connect with God. You don't need to hold the special Mormon priesthood to act in God's name. It makes me sad that they believe this way. That they have no idea of the joy that comes by stepping outside of the maze that is created by the Mormon Theology.

Another myth of the Mormon Theology is that the priesthood had to be restored because it was gone from the earth after the death of Our Lord. In my recent attendance at Catechism for the Orthodox Church, I learned otherwise. But it is unlikely that Mormons would get the history of the Old Church from the Old Church! They say that if you want to know about Mormonism, ask a Mormon - not someone else. But, they will "adjust" history to say that the Church was completely eliminated from the earth during the early centuries - to make way for the new Mormon Myth. It is simply untrue.

But, correctly packaged, a religion that takes people's focus away from the true nature of Spirituality makes the spiritual journey different. I wouldn't say easier or more fun, because I found Mormonism flat and unfulfilling during my last few years there. Too loaded with lists of things to do that kept me too busy and worried to correctly focus my daily life on God.

Yesterday, I attended my first High Mass in the Orthodox Church. It was beautiful and sacred. I'll write more about it and my thoughts about how that contrasts with my Protestant experience in a new post.

But, it suffices to say that since I left the Mormon church, I am experiencing a new level of awareness: that spirituality involves becoming increasingly open to personal, direct contact with God. And the dogma of protestant churches miss the point when they are doing things like splitting hairs of doctrine; that it is inner transformation that is the key. And there are powerful spiritual tools that have been available to us since the beginning of Christian history - but they require a different kind of discipline to acquire.

I want the meat. In my experience, the Protestant (specifically, the Mormon) way drowns the meat in a confusing casserole of story telling and silly rules that left me hungering for something more. A hunger that I am finding can be satisfied by partaking of the Truths preserved through antiquity.

*Just as an afterthought - In my journey, my husband points things out he thinks I'm missing. In this case, he keeps saying that the Orthodox have rules, too. Well, not like this!!! This article is tongue-in-cheek, but not far off the mark! Relief Society President Released After Confession

The Nature of God: Inspiration for Guilt or Source of Love?

I find that I'm in a very interesting place: for the first time in years, I feel an openness and a curiosity about spirituality and mysticism that drives in me a hunger to know more.

The first whisperings of this came when, as an active member of the Mormon church, I struggled to reconcile the contradictions between my intuitive awareness of God and what was right versus what I was being told. To be fair, I need to reveal that my angst centered around the religious dogma and the social customs surrounding the family. I had grown up believing that my highest calling was that of a mother. That to bear children through my loins was the most noble of actions: direct partnership with God. Mormons believe that family is the most direct, clear course to heaven. In fact, without marriage (performed in their temples as the only appropriate route to life with God after death), one can only be assigned the responsibility of a "Ministering Angel." (I find it interesting that in the general Christian parlance, angels are lower than humans. But Mormon's don't actually come out and tell their membership that without marriage, they will be lower than the creatures they were on earth. Wonder how the Mormon women who haven't found their Modern Day Moroni would feel about that?! Interesting side note . . . .)

But I digress. The reality was that I was infertile. Hence, my reproductive status relegated me to the fringes of Mormon society. Of course, there were signs that the Mormon culture had a desire to enclose me in the fold. For example, the official church magazine paid me a handsome $300 for an hour's work when I wrote a treatise to how I was, in fact, part of Jesus' flock even though I could not bear children. Yes, they published the article; so other outliers could, perhaps, be placated by my words and the "official" recognition of the problem of infertility (or as I would put it now, the problem of the Doctrine that speaks as if it's Universal while alienating so-called children of god). It was true that I received platitudes from well-meaning Mormons who feared thinking outside of the box with people like me (and single people, and gays, and blacks); well-wishers who comforted themselves by offering words like "You'll be a mother in the next life" or "There will be plenty of children who need a mother in heaven." (I can't imagine how "You won't be gay in the next life" would feel - or "Aren't you glad God finally accepted you and your black-skinned family and let you have a chance at Heaven?" Really?! Complete with a plate of cookies, no less! And I wonder how black families swallow the Mormon belief that as a people becomes more pure, their skin gets whiter. It's right in the Book of Mormon, folks!)

The subtext, even though it was denied each time I opened my mouth to speak of it directly, was that I was less than. Of course, they made concessions when I became the squeaky wheel in the style that I typically do. I helped bring about the change in the Mother's Day tradition in my local ward. Now, instead of requesting that all mothers stand up to receive a gift on Mother's Day, they ask all women, aged 18 and older, to stand and receive a wilted carnation and a baggie of chocolate-covered trail mix. People tried. But the reality was that my life experience fell outside of the net that provided answers Mormonism was supposed to provide.

Interestingly, when I convinced enough of the fact that Mormonism didn't work to actually state to my local authorities that I was withdrawing my membership in the church, the big pull was for me to stay; so that I could continue to provide comfort and hope to the other "outliers." Yeah, right . . . .

Once I was outside the church, I began to question the nature of God. Specifically, I knew that my Mormon upbringing had tainted my experience of God in some significant ways. For example, I had noticed, time and again, that no matter how hard I tried to follow all of the rules, I still felt guilt. Fundamental guilt. As if nothing I could do would ever please the Mormon God. Yes, the Evangelicals reading this would assert that of course, I can't please God. That's what grace is for. I know, I know . . . . That's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm speaking of having an internal sense of connection with God, but feeling wrong based on everything I had been taught - of which the example of infertility within a family-based church was just a small part.

Stepping outside the church offered pure refreshment. Recently, I'm discovering why.

My first discovery came when I was introduced to the writings of Richard Smoley in his book: "Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition." In it, he spoke of man's relationship to God. Specifically, addressing the "radical personhood of God," he states:

"Consider the following analogy. Suppose two cells in your bloodstream possess a certain measure of self-consciousness. They begin to reflect on the nature and purpose of their existence, and they dimly begin to suspect that they are part of a larger whole. What is this larger entity? they ask each other. Is it a living thing, a cell like themselves? Does it know of them, care about them, love them? Does it respond to their needs and hopes and wishes?

What could one say to them? How could two cells, no matter how precociously endowed, ever really understand the human organism that is their universe? Is this entity a cell like them? Yes and no. Like individual cells, a human organism has life and purpose and intention. But it is far more than a mere cell. On the other hand, the life force that courses through us is supremely conscious of each of these cells. It cares for them, feeds them, protects them, even if our conscious minds have no part in this process."

Interesting, the idea that God isn't personal. I found that it appealed to my sense of order. If God is a source, an energy that creates and organizes life - capable of communicating with humans in the way humans need to attain understanding of things Divine, then I no longer need to try to figure out why a personal God, who knows and understands my needs, would deny me those needs. I no longer would have to explain why an orphaned child whose ability to connect with other human beings was broken from spending her first two years untouched in an orphanage would, through no fault of her own, be relegated by a "loving God" to a life of misery because of her fundamental inability to create true human attachments. It no longer makes sense to shake my fist at the heavens screaming "Why Me" any more than it would make sense for those two blood cells to deride me for catching a cold. Shit just happens.

And if God isn't personal and specifically aware of my needs, desires, hopes and dreams, then I don't have to worry about His All-Seeing-Eye watching my every move, thought, misstep and "lascivious" desire. No. I no longer need feel guilt for existing and being a lusty, passionate, fully-alive woman. And, as I already said, I no longer need to hold anger or hostility when things don't go my way.

But good and beauty happens, too. And this is where we find God through a soul-craving that causes us to reach, to know more. The soul-craving that comes from the Source. From God.

In Olivier Clement's work "The Roots of Christian Mysticism," he quotes Hilary of Poitiers (born 3rd Century A.D.):

'For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator' (Wisdom 13:5).

The sky and the air are beautiful, the earth and the sea are beautiful By divine grace the universe was called by the Greeks 'cosmos', meaning 'ornament' . . . Surely the author of all created beauty must himself be the beauty in all beauty? . . . But if we are blessed with an intuition of God, what shall we gain from it if death does away with all feeling and puts an irrevocable end to a weary existence? . . . My mind was bewildered, trembling for itself and for its body. It was troubled at its fate and that of the body in which it was dwelling when, following on from the Law and the Prophets, I made the acquaintance of the teaching of the Gospel and of the apostles.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and life was the light of men. The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it . . . The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not . . . But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father' (John 1:1-14)

My intellect overstepped its limits at that point and I learnt more about God than I had expected. I understood that my Creator was God born of God. I learnt that the Word was God and was with him from the beginning. I came to know the light of the world . . . I understood that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us . . . Those who welcomed him became children of God, by a birth not in the flesh but in faith . . . This gift of God is offered to everyone . . . We can receive it because of our freedom which was given us expressly for this purpose. But this very power given to each person to be a child of God was bogged down in weak and hesitant faith. Our own difficulties make hope painful, our desire becomes infuriating and our faith grows weak. That is why the Word was made flesh: by means of the Word-made-flesh the flesh was enabled to raise itself up to the Word . . . Without surrendering his divinity God was made of our flesh . . . My soul joyfully received the revelation of this mystery. By means of my flesh I was drawing near to God, by means of my faith I was called to a new birth. I was able to receive this new birth from on high . . . I was assured that I could not be reduced to non-being.

From these readings I draw several conclusions that present great comforts to me. Read closely, the above text illuminates the reality that ancient mystics understood that by nature of becoming flesh, God empowers us, in-the-flesh to reach the Divine once the spark of Divine is enlivened in us. It is the source that causes us breath. It is the source that draws us to the place where Divinity becomes alive within each of us who cares to take the inner journey.

It inspires an awakening, an enlivening, a growth process that leads to greater light.

It provides proof that God is Love. Not a loving, personal god, but the energy and force that we know to be love in it's purist form. Insomuch as we can know love at all.

I believe that in some sense, it is necessary for us, as humans, to use our language to define God. In order to talk about God. To understand God in our limited way. But I think that when we attempt to do that, we limit ourselves to a limited understanding of God. We tend to anthropomorphise God; even in the basic use of personal pronouns (He and/or She) to refer to God. But, if I apply human characteristics to God, I cannot help but apply maleficence to God's character when I believe God is allowing me to suffer. Reminds me of the reason we need books like: "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." I don't think it's possible to think of God in human terms and only apply loving characteristics to God because we are human. Our tendency is to apply the same characteristics and motivations to others that we experience ourselves. How can we keep God exempt in that practice? I don't think we can.

But if I think of God as the energy that gives me life. The Word. The Light. Beauty. Love. The Source. Then, I can tap into that Energy as part of my innate desire for growth and connection with the Divine. Then, it isn't personal. It's my choice to take part in the Energy and Power that is available to all.

If I follow the path led by the inspiration within me - that inner spark that causes me to have life and connects me with every beauty in creation - then I can experience and live a life of love. There is no room for guilt in that! Nor is there room for guilt in believing in a God that is love. The force. Not some jealous, nit-picky God of man's creating. God is outside of church definitions. Unless, of course, church is in the heart.