The Sacred is here to Stay

Whether we articulate it or not, intuitively, we can sense that the sacred or mystical will always be with us – just like the poor (given that nothing much has changed in spite of our current economic demise). We do not need the author of a recent volume, Supersense: Why we Believe in the Believable (HarperOne, 2009) to tell us that the sacred is here to stay.

Bruce Hood (the author) reckons that all humans are equipped with a “supersense” that plumbs into a hidden world of spirits, fates and spooky connections. My deceased grandmother knew this before Hood, though she could not read nor write. Hood’s advantage is that he could locate this in the context of scientific research.

So to the question of the rationalist as to why we hold on to irrational modes of thought even when science tells us otherwise, Hood contends that we have evolved to be irrational as a by-product of various brain mechanisms. If you are constantly stressed out, research suggests adults will tend to revert to irrational thought patterns. I wonder how much of this happens in certain kind of worship! So despite all our best intentions (beware arrogant rationalists) the supersense lingers on at the back of our minds. I wonder what Richard Dawkins will make of this – not that it matters much.

The bottom line here, which may be good news for faith communities, is that religions will not disappear, and science can even make a case to show that we are a sacred species. But lest we get too excited, Christian faith communities need to manifest more trust in the Divine and less insecurity and fear in trying to protect or ring-fence grace. Then maybe we may find new rituals and rediscover liturgies apt enough to connect with the ‘supersense’ of humans?

© copyright Jagessar November 27th 2009

Telling it Plainly – the Politics of Language

This year is the 60^th anniversary of George Orwell’s 1984. Much of Orwell’s projections in 1984 are with us today: "Big Brother" surveillance, control of history, and the corruption of language. Listening to our politicians, economic pundits and some media commentators, one is aware of the Orwellian manipulation of language in a number of ways. "Peace-keeping forces", for instance, is a coded terminology used to initiate war; invasions are described as ‘landings,’ or opportunities to restore democracy; "defense strategy" actually means planning for war; unemployed people made redundant are referred to as potential “micro-entrepreneurs; prisoners become stakeholders, protestors become threats to national security and the new democracy is indebtedness with a growing economy one that encourages spending and indebtedness of its inhabitants.

Language has indeed become so corrupted, abused and misused that one commentator notes that the mantra of New Labour “to deliver on the things that people want delivered” does not necessarily mean “to deliver it”. If anything – it means the opposite – not to deliver. [Jamie Whyte, Standpoint 17 (November 2009), p.10]! What have we become? Why the world of “unreality” and denial in which most of us live in and operate by?

Some contend that there is need to kill the plethora of jargons that have taken over our lives. They point especially to documents emanating from government offices that include words that not even a dictionary will be of any help. These words include: cohort; stakeholders, synergy, transformational, faith initiatives, outcomes, level playing field, improvement levers, coterminous, stakeholder engagement, revenue streams, slippage, can do culture, potentialities, quantum, subsidiarity, value-added etc. The list is massive! The concern is that such use of words is a real stumbling block to communication and create more confusion - perhaps conveniently playing into the manipulation of language that Orwell had in mind.

Churches have also bought into this trend of language manipulation: while on the one hand its liturgical and theological language is archaic, making little or no sense to many in its own midst; churches have also borrowed many of the above words. Our documents today are loaded with most of these jargons that doubly compound our inability to communicate.

Imagine being given permission to create a list of jargons or words to ban from the current vocabulary of our ecclesial institutions, government departments and community organs? What would you come up with? Would our lives be any better and would we have a clearer and more realistic view of our task together for the common good?

©copyright jagessar November 16^th , 2009

The gods of our lives

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz in delivering the annual lecture (2009) of Sir Isaiah Berlin spoke of a vacuum in western society. He observes that we are living in a world empty of Judeo-Christianity values, filled with something else – other gods. According to Steinsaltz, these are actually old gods with new names. He identifies three: power (formerly known as Baal) also known as the god of money (mammon); sex (Astarte or Ishtar); and the craving of immediate fame (Calliope). [See Standpoint 16 (October 2009), pp.68-70]

These gods are located in interesting temples: for instance, the temples of mammon or Jupiter are in London and Geneva (with other competing locations) though they are now called banks and their priests are called managers. While Mammon is often dressed in neatly designed suits, Astarte invests in loads of plastic surgery/botox (forever young and grinning), while Calliope enters homes via numerous television shows. All these gods 'tick', not because of the power of love, but the love of power. These gods compete to become ‘keepers of our souls”. At the heart of their plan is the desire to turn us into genuflecting slaves to money, wealth and fame.

Science is also interested in how these gods and their temples operate to get us hooked, hence a number of research as to the how and why of hooked humans. One recent research shows how much of our behaviour and relationships are shaped by and tied to money. Experts inform us that “just handling paper money could reduce the distress associated with social exclusion”. And, no - they are not referring to the game of Monopoly! Researchers also observed that “people who felt rejected by others were less likely to give a monetary gift”. Others have discovered that money can “act on our minds rather like an addictive drug, giving it the power to drive some of us to compulsive gambling, overworking or obsessive spending". Moreover, we are told that for many, salvation may be found in one of Mammon’s key symbol - credit cards. This symbol can also “act as a ‘decoupling device’ separating the pleasure of the purchase from the pain of payment – pain that gets pushed into the foggy future,”- somewhat too close to a certain kind of eschatology!

So wherein lies hope? It is certainly not in a Luddite approach that is anti-progress or a desire to turn back the clock to some unrealistic and nostalgic period. I suppose hope lies in our ability to believe that something different is possible to model; that in spite of all these gods we are hooked to, there are insights (not templates), values and virtues from religious traditions that can become lived habits that help us to exorcise these modern gods that compete to claim and chain our souls. This demands openness to a radical change of hearts!

© copyright Jagessar November 9^th 2009