Posted on 03/23/2004 6:58:35 AM PST by presidio9
Yet there are people in the congregations and also in front of them, who clearly don't believe at all, yet there they are anyway. I'm still trying to get a handle on that.
It is in two threads,
and, frankly, if it is bad,
the only bad thing
is that comparing
the film business to hookers
is hitting too hard
at the prostitutes ...
Sorry, but I stand firmly
behind this comment.
What a fascinating thing to say! Seems kind of like a stock fixture of the Left "progressive" imagination to suggest that some people are so deluded or dumb that they can't even tell whether they've really had an "experience."
Seems to me that an "experience" is quite a factual thing because it is a lived thing, not something that just happens in one's (self-deluded) imagination, something impotent to actualize in "reality"....
If you feel it -- if your total body and your emotions are resonating to something such that physical changes are taking place -- then that something is likely to be "real" enough....
For this dude, there is no genuine religious experience here -- for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a "genuine religious experience" in principle: Such are only in the deluded imaginations of backward, unprogressive, superstitious Christians....
But of course, an experience of this sort is unimaginable to this guy; ergo, such cannot possibly happen in the "real world." (I.e., he makes himself the measure of what is possible.)
What is wrong with people like this? Folks like this so often appear truly demented to me, not to mention relentlessly uncharitable (and baselessly judgmental) towards their fellow human beings. They do not seem to live in the same world as the rest of us...or want to.
Maybe they are just firmly planted in a relentless denial of Reality.
Which would call for our pity, compassion. Still, I do get a little sick of the manifest arrogance of this attitude so common in the ranks of our self-appointed cultural elites.
Thanks for the post, presidio9.
Also, remember that Mel said he purposefully omitted some of the message hoping viewers would go out on their own to find the answers.
See the movie again and watch John and Mary Magdelene before and during the crucifixion. There's alot going on there, very subtle acting. At the cross, John and Mary both get a revelation about who Jesus is and his mission.
Mary Magdelene sees that when the Romans turned over the cross, Jesus held himself off the ground in order to keep the prophecy true which says the Messiah will not have any broken bones. Mary realizes that Jesus has direct control over the forces of nature. When Jesus is lifted up she covers her head, just as she would in the courtyard of the Temple before the Holy of Holies which is the presence of God. Mary realizes that Jesus is God just as he told Caiaphas.
On the way to the crucifixion, John looks sad, angry and disappointed in this apparently tragic and meaningless end. Then John flashes back to the Last Supper where Jesus said "This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, poured out for you." John looks at Jesus on the cross and his eyes fill with tears of joy and he understands what Jesus' mission was and the purpose of the cricifixion.
C.S. Lewis on reality (paraphrased): "Everything is real. The question is, are they real snakes or real delerium tremons?"
Or as they say down home, "The silly boy picked up a snake to kill a stick."
Schrader is just like most of the rest of us - he sees what he is, but in his case reality is illusion and illusion is reality.
Exactly, logos. Voegelin makes much the same point. Wish I could quote him here (it's a very amusing insight), but the source is at home.
The jist of what he said is that even the visions of a psychopath are real enough, in that they enter into empirical reality.
But to the extent that they are "deformations of reality," and thus deformations of the truth of reality, they enter into the world as sources of disorder: What starts out as personal disorder finally, ineluctibly translates as a source of social disorder.
I think this may be the case with Schrader. As you note (fairly I think), "in his case reality is illusion and illusion is reality."
But to the extent that they are "deformations of reality," and thus deformations of the truth of reality, they enter into the world as sources of disorder: What starts out as personal disorder finally, ineluctibly translates as a source of social disorder.
Hitler. Stalin. Pol Pot. Most of Hollywood. Clinton. Etc.
Your post:
Every time "the church" and "the synagogue" took a step back, it created vacuum. It is into this vacuum that the idealism you referred to stepped in. This utopian ideal took different forms but was always the same at the foundation: it replaced G-d in heaven with man-god.
Reminded me of the following "diagnosis" of the problem from Jacob Needleman in his book "The New Religions." The context for this quote is an essay on why Eastern Religions were becoming so popular in this country during the 60's & 70's:
Various rituals, prayers, services and the like no longer function as part of the mechanics of the religious process, but mainly as an emotional 'lift', something to help us return to our ordinary life feeling better, psychologically more secure. In this way they help to preserve the quality of the life we lead, rather than transform it.This general forgetting of the instrumental nature of religious forms is in a way really quite bizarre. It is as though millions of people suffering from a painful disease were to gather together to hear someone read a textbook of medical treatment in which the means necessary to cure their disease were carefully spelled out. It is as through they were all to take great comfort in that book and in what they heard, going through their lives knowing that their disease could be cured, quoting passages to their friends, preaching the wonders of this great book, and returning to their congregation from time to time to hear more of the inspiring diagnosis and treatment read to them. Meanwhile, of course, the disease worsens and they eventually die of it, simling in grateful hope as on their deathbed someone reads to them yet another passage from the text. Perhaps for some, a troubling thought crosses their minds as their eyes close for the last time: 'Haven't I forgotten something? Something important? Haven't I forgotten actually to undergo treatment?'
It is impossible to say when this forgetting of the fundamentally instrumental nature of the religious forms began in the West. But obviously the general clergy--priests, ministers, and rabbis--forgot it quite as much as their congregations. No wonder the young became disillusioned with religion. They heard exhortations, commandments, prescriptions by the basketful, but nobody was telling them how to be able to follow them. I do not say they formulated it this way to themselves, but they--and not only they--saw the absurd discrepancy between the ideal preached in their churches and the actual behavior of men, behaviour which seemed reinforced rather than seriously challenged by religion.
The Eastern teachings which are attracting so much interest in this country have by and large preserved this instrumental aspect of their religion. That is why they come to us with such things as meditation techniques, physical and psychological excercises, and why they tend to emphasize the necessity of a guru or master. It takes no great research to discover that practical psychological methods were always a central part of Christianity and Judaism, and that they still exist in monastic settings, or, for example, amoung certain communities such as as the Jewish Hasidim. The point is that this aspect of religion has been forgotten by almost all other Westerners.
It was only because it was forgotten that Judaism and Christianity were so shaken by psychoanalysis and various other movements in modern psychology. Compared, for example, to the early Christian diagnosis of the inner human condition, Freud's 'expose' of the nature of human motivation is a very weak tea indeed. For one thing--and this is the very least of it--he retained his trust in the power of reason, his own, and observation, also his own, to arrive at the truth about human psychology. But for the early Christians, and for several of the most interesting new teachings, the power of thinking and observing clearly is a quality of a higher state of consciousness, and not something that man is able to rely on without work in a spiritual discipline.
The main point here, however, is that because of the instrumental nature of religous forms was forgotten, the science of psychology suddenly appeared as something new. Such an absurdity could only arise on the basis of a total misunderstanding or ignorance of the history of Judaeo-Christian thought and practice. One need only glance again at the writings of Augustine, Eckhardt, the Eastern Orthodox Fathers, or the great rabbis to confirm this point.
-- Jacob Needleman, The New Religions. New York: Crossroad, 1987 (1970), 17-18
I must have completely missed the "self-flagellation" in the movie, but I do remember a scene where ROMAN SOLDIERS whipped Christ --it's flagellation, but hardly self-flagellation.
There is no possible way anyone with the least trace of intellectual honesty can even make a claim like that. The statement was absurd before he even spoke it.
You got it, Ronzo! Today these "sources" are legion....
I finally saw The Passion of the Christ last night -- a profoundly moving film and an astonishing artistic achievement. I found myself seeing the unfolding action through the Blessed Mother's eyes (Maia Morgenstern portrayed Mary's profound suffering and personal courage to "see it through to the end" with her Son superbly, brilliantly. My tears flowed with hers....)
I was fascinated by Gibson's portrayal of Satan. I need to see the film again (perhaps several times) to confirm this for myself, but it seemed to me that Satan was visible only to Jesus; except for once, he/she/it was visible to Mary.
I say that Satan was unseen by the many because when he/she/it moved through the crowds, no one seemed to acknowledge or react to his/her/its presence. It's as if Satan were "invisible." Not even Judas gave any sign of seeing Satan directly, only through "proxies" -- the demon-like children who harried, jeered at, and chased him, culminating in his suicide.
On one occasion, it seemed to me that Satan was visible to Mary.
When Jesus bore the cross to Golgotha, with Mary alongside, Satan appeared with a "babe in arms," apparently intently looking at Mary. It was a monstrous parody, a jeering caricature of the Madonna with the child Jesus in her arms.
Of course, that "babe in arms" was no child, which was obvious from its total lack of the quality of innocence -- that "babe" was a hate-filled demon, sharing Satan's delight in the suffering and grief of the Holy mother and her Son. The "babe" was an anti-Jesus, and Satan an anti-Mary in that scene. It was a gratuitous, spiteful, evil parody of love and life -- and of a mother's incalculable sorrow and grief over the suffering of her only Son, borne with immense courage and grace.
It seems to me that people like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and the others you name have the same contempt for all that is good and holy. They are the implacable enemies of the Holy Spirit, divine and human. In this, truly they are satanic figures.
So true, Ronzo. Yet God asks us for a change of heart, a transformation of our life....
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