A lot has been going on in the world lately, particularly regarding the relationship between violence and what we commonly call "religion." Some have interpreted their faiths in terms of commands from God, specifically, commands to violence, which is opposed to peaceful communion. This got me thinking.
One night, after a particularly painful massage and a relaxing shower, I had an epiphany. All genuine traditions of piety and belief (which most today problematically refer to as "religions") historically began not in the ethical mode, but in the relational. One calls out to the Divine (by whatever name), just like a child calling out to a parent. The Divine responds, and a relationship develops, one which boils over into the lives of others, so that the relationship grows into a communal act as well as a personal one. Genuine traditions of piety and belief have always been this way.
One night, after a particularly painful massage and a relaxing shower, I had an epiphany. All genuine traditions of piety and belief (which most today problematically refer to as "religions") historically began not in the ethical mode, but in the relational. One calls out to the Divine (by whatever name), just like a child calling out to a parent. The Divine responds, and a relationship develops, one which boils over into the lives of others, so that the relationship grows into a communal act as well as a personal one. Genuine traditions of piety and belief have always been this way.
The ethical concerns itself with what an individual ought to do in order to live well, so what does an ethic of faith look like? What have the faithful been commanded to do? Given that true traditions of piety and belief sprang from the relational mode, an ethic of faith is less concerned with prescribing the minutia of day to day living as it is with opening individuals to an active awareness of the fundamental nature of the relational mode. It is not "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" so much as it is "Thou shalt be with me and with thine fellow creatures and with thine world, and what shall define that be-ing will be love." We were relational beings before we were ethical ones. An ethic of faith is a call to communion, a call to a deepening awareness of one's relation to the Divine, one's relation to one's neighbor, and one's relation to one's world. When faith finds itself reduced to petty legalism, or when it becomes defined strictly in terms of orthodoxy to the point of neglecting orthopraxy and communion, then whatever ethic faith lays claim to loses its legitimacy.
It really is just like they always said to me growing up; faith is about relationship, and that is something this world consistently demonstrates it is incapable of realizing. When the mountains of mankind at last make themselves humble before God, their submission will coincide with the realization that the sole command God issued them was at the heart of their greatest yearning, which is to call out and to be responded to, to be with, and to be with in love. God's command for each life is this: "Thou shalt love in communion."
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
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