Do Churches Teach You Not to Think?



The journey that makes the snowflake makes it unique among its brethren for no two journeys are the same.


Up front let me self-identify. I'm a Sevenfth Day Adventist - member in good standing and all that. I know I should leave them alone, but when someone posts a question like this or makes the claim that churches force you to close your mind and accept a kind of forced ignorance, I just can't let the basic assumption behind that claim stand.

A church is, after all, a place where people study and share ideas. Very few congregations have such a rigid structure that there is no exchange of ideas. The sermon alone is a flow of ideas from the speaker to those who hear him. Ministers constantly challenge the comfortable assumptions of their parishioners and invite them to contemplate that which is infinitely beyond themselves. What could be more mind-expanding than that?  What the recipient receives and how it gets interpreted, is entirely up to the listener, but as the Germans say, "Sie gedanken sind frei."  You're thoughts are free.

Holocaust survivor, famed author and psychoanalyst Victor Frankl realized this in a very powerful way when, his family murdered and himself stripped naked and tortured, he discovered that no guard, no SS torturer could reach inside to control who he was in his inner soul.  He discovered that if one has a reason why he should live, if one truly holds love in his heart, he can survive any horror, any trial intact.

Some basic truths I have found:


1. Before a man can clearly look at any set of data, think about it and decide for himself (or herself) what the data means, he must have a mental construct or frame from which to analyze the data and come to a decision as to what to do about it. For some, formal religion or a specific philosophy serves this purpose. Even if you think you don't have a religion or philosophy, you will pick an underlying belief system up from friends or from TV or family -- somewhere, whether you like it or not.  Everyone has a mental framework or belief system. The construction of this framework is the entire work of childhood. Were we not to create a coherent belief system, all the data we absorb would be meaningless. You would be trapped in a kind of perpetual befuddled infancy, unable to decide what was important and meaningful and what was not. There would literally be thoughts you could not think.
2. When that belief system or paradigm is challenged, it causes some level of anxiety.  You experience much greater anxiety if your belief system is fragile or not working very well for you.  You experience far less anxiety or maybe none at all, if you are secure in your intellectual paradigm and can assign meaning to what is happening to you be it good or bad.

3. Shakespeare said, "Methinks thou doth protest too much." When our beliefs are challenged and we are not truly secure in them it disturbs us.  When a challenge to your beliefs is clearly articulated, and you have no ready answer to the challenge it presents, you may experience a fight or flight reaction. Panic may ensue and you resort to fighting, accusation, intimidation or threats against the person who disrupts your comfortable belief system. You do this in order to protect your core beliefs. On the other hand, you may simply flee from it and refuse to look at anything which challenges your beliefs.

4. In truth we all are conservative in our thinking in that we naturally resist changes that threaten the mental structures we rely on to process information. That's why a sudden conversion to a new paradigm can be mentally disorienting and frightening, even if it's a conversion to a better, more stable belief system. 

5.  Ultimately, the strength of our belief system depends heavily upon how much thoughtful work you put into constructing that belief system. If you never examine what you believe; if you never purposefully consider what you believe; if you do not consciously accept ideas that make sense to you and reject ideas that you find through study and research are without value, then you never really develop the ability to resist the instincts of the herd. It's how the Germans both knew about the holocaust, but could claim, honestly that they didn't. Their unconscious belief system accepted the idea that something should be done about the Jews - everyone believed it, didn't they?  At the same time they simply avoided thinking about what that meant in terms of actually doing something about the Jewish problem.

Conclusion: We each begin our search for God or for some kind of enlightenment from exactly where we stand. There is no other way. If God is up there (and I believe firmly that He is), then He is quite capable of locating us where we are and bringing us to Himself along a straight and narrow path. Remember, though that the world is a three dimensional place. We all, if searching sincerely for God, will find Him and meet at His feet. But because we all start in different places, it is conceivable that our paths might never cross except at the end. It's pretty certain, in fact, that no two of us will ever experience the journey in quite the same way. That is why, like snowflakes, no two of us are ever exactly alike.

And that, my friends, is, I believe exactly how God intended for things to work. Our work is to search for truth, to examine our beliefs and to choose whether we wish to love outward or to do the opposite which according to Elie Weisel is indifference. Indifference is what happens when you turn love completely inward and no longer care about anything or anyone outside yourself.
 
Me, I choose love; the powerful reaching out beyond yourself toward infinite love that transforms the soul and leads you home. I choose love every day of my life. In the meantime, may you find for yourself that path that leaves you strong, self-aware, and truly possessed of free will as God intended.
 
Till then, I'll see you at the journey's end.
 
Tom
(c) 2011

Widdershins

The word of the day, as sent to me by Miriam-Webster was "widdershins".  It's an old word meaning "in a left-handed or contrary direction."  I just love this word and fully intend to use it whenever I can. It's absolutely perfect. It comes from the medieval belief that demons always approach the devil from the left. A left-handed, counter clockwise or 'widdershins' path was considered evil or at the very least, bad luck for the person who took it. By the 1500s it had taken its somewhat less sinister current meaning.

Were I to use it in a sentence, I'd say, "The United States is totally widdershins and we may soon find ourselves unable to stop it!" 

It's interesting to note that originally, widdershins meant "bad hair" and describes hair that stands out in all the wrong directions. I submit the following photo from the recent "Occupy Wall Street" protests without comment.

article (c) 2011

NP Quarterly Takes a Swipe at Another Conservative Philanthropist

Got my Nonprofit Quarterly today and found an article entitled, "Art Pope, Bankroller of North Carolina's Republican Agenda, Tells All" by Jeff Cohen. I read it with interest, thinking to hear Mr. Pope's side of the issue. Instead I was directed to a New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer that did everything BUT give Mr. Pope's side of the issue.



Art Pope during his days as a NC Legislator

 Mr. Cohen meanwhile suggested the New Yorker piece would tell you what made Art Pope "tick". It doesn't. Mr. Cohen tried to sound fair, but he did manage to get in a couple of comparison's to the Koch Brothers and used perjorative words like "secretive" and "tea party" (at least tea party is perjorative to liberals, many of whom apparently subscribe to NPQ).  Interesting that Mr. Cohen never touches on the overwhelming contributions by individual liberal cause-funders, many of whom dwarf what conservatives like Pope or the Kochs spend.

In a Newsobserver.com story by Rob Christensen about Mr. Pope, Christensen quotes veteran Raleigh political analyst, John Davis. "The Democrats have always had the ability to win the close races because they outspend the Republicans 3-1, 4-1, 5-1. That disparity has been eliminated by the new independent expenditure laws," Davis said. "I know the Democrats are frustrated by the fact that they can no longer run over Republicans with their financial advantage, but frankly they have had an undue influence over the legislative politics of this state for decades because they were able to get extraordinary financial advantage."

Davis adds, "Money flows to power, and Democrats have always had the power - the president pro tem of the Senate, the speaker of the House and the governor," Davis goes on to say. "There has never been anyone to stand up to the union support for the Democratic Party and the business support for the Democratic Party,"

Pope, himself, says. "Part of my decision to give more than usual is to try to offset the advantages that the Democratic Party has."

Pope believes his political contributions should be seen in the context of his family's larger philanthropy on a wide range of community projects such as $1 million for a new hospice building and $1 million to help move the new Campbell University law school to downtown Raleigh. His family also gives to local universities, food banks and indigent health care.

"What we give politically," Pope points out, "Is a fraction of what we give to charity,"

The New Yorker story is typically pro-Democrat and basically spends its ink whining because Pope, a North Carolinian with experience as an elected North Carolina legislator, is spending money to help break the hold of Democrats on power in North Carolina.

It's ironic that those who claim to believe so strongly in "diversity", object so strongly to a publicly expressed second opinion when it comes to politics.

Cohen, in the Nonprofit Quarterly article, of course, gets in a shot at the evil Koch brothers who actually have donated to Democrats and to organizations with liberal leanings. He fails, however, to touch on the obvious other side of the coin, avoiding mention of pro-liberal agenda philanthropists like conservative bugbear George Soros, whose charitable contributions are almost entirely about driving a political agenda. Soros and other big name billionaires spend folk like the Koch brothers and Art Pope under the table on political agenda driving.

So, why don't we hear any complaints about attempts by progressives to "buy the government", especially in a publication that bills itself as the Harvard Business Review of the nonprofit world and is supposed to be politically neutral?

The simple answer is, because folk like Jane Mayer and Jeff Cohen approve of money driving agendas, so long as the agenda is one with which they agree - specifically larger government. Since the objective of the conservative groups the Pope Family is funding is limited government, Pope draws the wrath of those who currently have a huge stake in growing their political power. Pope has further angered liberal media pundits and North Carolina Democrats by helping organize and sponsor Tea Party rallies and meetings around the state. (Insert gasp here!)

In the meantime, I don't suppose the nonprofits that are receiving Pope checks are complaining that the Pope family are driving a pro-education/pro-healthcare/anti-poverty agenda with their funding of hospital indigent care programs, hospices, universities and food banks.
Democrats claim Pope supports candidates that are "bad for North Carolina". While it's true that more elected Republicans might certainly be bad for North Carolina Democrats, others, Pope among them, cite the recent record of Democratic rule as one of failure - including corruption cases, a broken probation system, a troubled mental health system, a high school dropout rate, a recent tax hike, and budget problems.

As Pope points out, two senate candidates in recent years Democratic Senate candidates John Edwards and Erskine Bowles each spent far more of their own money on their campaigns than Art Pope has put into North Carolina conservative political groups.  If Art Pope is buying the state, as Ms. Mayer claims, he's going to have to come up with far more than he has so far, because his political adversaries are still out-spending him and have been for a very, very long time.

None of the article I read were by conservatives. The Newsobserver article was at least balanced and gave both sides of the story, allowing the reader to decide what to believe about Art Pope. The American system allows for dissent by American citizens. Perhaps, in recommending an article like the one Cohen gushes over in the New Yorker, Nonprofit Quarterly should also include a link to something that at least gives the other side of the story. Pope may be bad for Dems, but he apparently is generous with nonprofits. The question I'd ask?  Is Nonprofit Quarterly about what's good for a liberal political agenda or what's good for funding our nonprofits?

If it's about funding worthy causes, the Pope Family Foundation certainly deserves a pat on the back for its stewardship whatever you think of its politics.

(c) 2011 by Tom King