Saturday, December 10, 2011
Hegel, Moksha Yoga, Perception and Rollins
Bear with me while I take all of the above and attempt to cohesively unite them into a single, solid point. Maybe not a fully solid point, but they're all things I would like to elucidate on, so I'm assuming that they all have some sort of commonality.
Firstly, Hegel and yoga. The connection between the two isn't really anything to do with anything Hegel said and what is common in Yogi spiritualism, but rather the approach I take to both, specifically, my ability to understand how well I grasp either.
Today I was reading an overview of Hegel, and one of his points was that truth is subjective, and my first thoughts were "Well, either that's an objective statement, and inherently self-contradictory, or that point is also subjective and therefore doesn't actually have lasting merit, ergo it's not really worth worrying about." They weren't that concise, but that was the general thought process (I feel a need to point out how long the thought process took, as though the efficiency with which my brain connects ideas has some sort of merit, or is anything to take pride in. Silly me.).
After I had that, I felt a little bit uncomfortable with it. If I, an informal student of philosophy, can read the viewpoint of a fully recognized philosopher and find a flaw in it, it is much more likely that I don't understand it, than that the argument is in fact invalid. This reminded me of yoga, which is quite challenging. A lot of the poses are quite strenuous and moderately 'painful,' but one that I preferred was 'downward facing dog' because it was simple and a good resting place. As it turns out, I was doing it wrong (my butt was improperly positioned), and when I actually do it correctly, it's as stretching as all the other poses. As such, I realized that I can troubleshoot my way into most of the poses by just finding a way to get to the maximum amount of stretching. If it's difficult to maintain, it's probably correct.
I think my understanding of philosophy is correlative: if I can easily dismantle it, it's because I'm not dismantling the real thing. So I'm just dismantling my version of it, not the actual thing. So, if I can push myself into a position where I can defend and criticize a philosophical school with expertise and ease, then I'd say I have a much fuller grasp than simply criticizing.
An issue with Christianity these days is that it's desperate. It has a lot of criticism, because, well, it sucks. It's archaic and it's been twisted so thoroughly from the biblical basis that it's unrecognisable (or, conversely, the basis has been so twisted that finding it is like burning a house down then constructing the attic from the ashes; possible, just takes very interesting, non-linear thinking). Because it's so desperate for validation, a lot of Christianity seems predisposed to entertaining new notions and idea's to two ends: either so that it can support Christianity, or it can be disproved in a way that supports Christianity. Since other things exist to prove Christianity as right and valid and such, the actual point of these other works gets lost, and it all becomes a matter of appeasing an ideology. I'm not sure if this is something that most people would recognize or agree with, but it was certainly something I was implicitly taught to do.
Enter Rollins. In his book The Orthodox Heretic, he goes after the hypocrisy of the church right in the first chapter, and he does so very, very concisely. A lot of his work however, is incredibly academic, and his language matches it. So, for people who spend their lives doing other things (such as engineering or nuclear mechanics), his writing really isn't the easiest to get through. So, in summary, amazing points, heady language. Not verbose, simply thick.
However, in reading criticisms online, people don't go after his direct idea's about what Jesus was really advocating and how the church should be. They go after his theistic beliefs (and how unconcerned he is with advocating an absolute existence of god, or the resurrection as a historic event) or his use of language. Never the bits that are the actual point of his work. The critics have sought to understand only to the point where they can argue, and as such have missed the heart of his work.
I feel as though Rollins is cumulative, but to attempt to summarize I would say his basic message is more or less "Following Jesus makes a lot of sense, however, the majority of people who say they follow him don't, but it doesn't really matter what you say, it's how you act."
I have of course, skimmed over a lot (A LOT) of his theology and philosophy, but that seems to be an underlying theme through-out his work. But people ignore it, and go for the things that can be criticised (things, that with a proper understanding of Rollins, stop mattering, and as such, he doesn't bother to correct the critics).
I'm being presumptious, but I feel as though it's because his actual idea's are too uncomfortable for western Christianity to openly deal with; hence why 'celebrity' pastors like Mark Driscol and his ilk haven't publicly defamed him, because to do so would give him a wider audience. With Bell, a wider audience is fine because the paradigm he operates under is similar enough to Piper et al that Bell can be criticised and people can sleep comfortably.
Rollins though.
To simply say he is wrong is to miss the point, and to say he is wrong is to give him exposure to people who might agree with him and start acting off their convictions. A scary thought to those in power. A scary thought to anyone really. Imagine if we all lived not only in perfect alignment with our convictions, but if our convictions were in perfect alignment with what was right.
Sensational.
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