I recently resigned from St.Andrews and St.George's Church West Edinburgh because of their perceived attitudes towards children and related matters. The following treatise is likely to remain forever incomplete:
CHILDREN OF THE SPIRIT
Thomas Hoskyns Leonard
.
1.
INTRODUCTION
I
am writing this article in response to a fear that many
of our
children may
still being taught about religion and spiritual matters in a too
rigid
and authoritative (i.e. prescriptive)
manner. Many caring adults remain angry at the high-handed attempts
made to 'control their minds' when they were young,
and many lead highly beneficial lives without needing to defer to a
god
or an institutionalised religion. It seems much more important to
teach children about human values, and
to do so in
empathetic
ways e.g.
by encouraging them
to always consider the feelings, hopes
and
ambitions
of other
people as
well as their own.
If
we do this, then many children will develop their own spiritualities
which may well turn
out
be in remarkable agreement
with the key, non-
fundamentalist,
underlying messages of the main religions of the world. In
extreme situations
where
they
are instead brainwashed
when they are young then they may well develop a resistance
to
religiously expressed ideas as they
grow older.
Thinking
about being friends
with an 'all
seeing eye'
such as a god or a
Messiah
may help
some
people
to live their lives in better ways, though
other
people think in different ways.
'Loving
thy
neighbour
like thyself' is
regarded by many
to be just as virtuous as
'Loving thy God with all thy
might',
particularly
if you
regard everybody to be your neighbour.
According to New Testament accounts, Jesus protects and guides
his children like sheep. Some churches think that this
means that they can treat their congregations like sheep. However,
many people think that ministers and church elders are there to serve
and encourage their flock, rather than to tell them how to think.
Some ministers, including several I know, are very enlightened on
this issue.
During my explanations of the way I think, I will be
interrupted from time to time by children, animals, and the
occasional adult, for example:
[Doubtful Duncan: I don't enjoy chewing
the rag with the guy in the collar, but I like nibbling the grass
which he feeds me.
Anxious Ailidh: You baa like a lamb and
mew like a scaredy-cat.
Leo Bo Peep: So what? I stand up on my hind legs and
roar.] [Inset]
Where
am I coming from? I regard myself as a very heretical Christian who
would have been burnt at the stake in previous centuries or hung from
a tree. A
fate even
more dire may
well await
me!
I
don't regard myself as being a
liberal,
and my closest
friends
certainly
don't. A couple of them
even think that I'm a fat
cat.
I believe myself to be addressing
main stream concerns
in a sensible manner which
isn't either fundamentalist
or liberal
MY PERSONAL
STORY: PART A. Although my parents were not Church
goers, my mother believed dutifully in God as a 'higher power'
while also defying my father by ardently supporting the crassness of
the Tory governments of the 1950s. I was christened in Emmanuel
Church, Plymouth during 1948, and sent to Sunday School
there between the ages of eight and eleven, before putting my
foot down and refusing to go anymore as I had better things to do
with my spare time, like play. While I was a goody goody at
primary school, I was thoroughly naughty
at Sunday school since I didn't have any respect for
the way I was spoon fed (the main Bible stories were taught
much better at my primary school). To atone for my sins, I had
to study Religious Education for five years at grammar school, as
well as listening to a hymn, a prayer, and a bible reading every
single morning during Assembly. When I took my O' levels in 1964, I
couldn't even remember the order of the events during the Last
Supper, but I scraped a pass in Religious Education with a grade 5.
Then during my final two years, another guy came into my
science class each week and re-preached the gospels at us, somehow
without getting across too many of Jesus's key messages. I was left
with a feeling that God is a pillar of the institutionalised
establishment, and very little else.
2. THE SPIRIT
Let's forget for the
moment about churches, mosques, and temples, and being told to say
prayers. Lots of people think that there is a spirit of human
decency which bonds decent and compassionate people together.
Therefore as well as feeling compassionate inside, we can, if we
wish, feel part of the Children of the Spirit, the many
billions of caring people in the world today. In other words, if
billions of people are caring and decent to each other, then this
creates a world wide network of people of the Spirit.
Many Children
of the Spirit think that it doesn't matter how we enjoy ourselves, as
long as we don't harm ourselves or other people in the process. Some
think that very sensitive companionships between two adults can quite
reasonably include physical acts of love and healing, even when what
they do is frowned upon by other people. Many
experts think that it is essential not to bully other people since
this may cause far more harm to their victims' future lives than they
might imagine. In more general terms, many decent people think that
they should only treat other people in ways they would want to be
treated themselves. Many compassionate people believe that violence
should only be used as a last resort and in self-defence. Many caring
people know that they have a dark side and actively seek ways
of being nicer. They know that you get what you give out.
Some Children
of the Spirit believe that they should always forgive other people
their sins and bad deeds. However, others don't think that they
should always do this, for example when an adult seriously harms a
child or when a doctor poisons his patient or when a politician wages
unnecessary war or votes in favour of starving people or driving them
to suicide. More about this key issue later.
If you are not
ready to forgive somebody then it would seem important not to try to
take revenge on them (apart from attempting to take just recourse
through the law). This can, for example, harm your own psychology.
You might instead take reasonable steps to defend yourself, or simply
walk away from anybody who is damaging your life.
You don't need
to believe in a god to be a Child of the Spirit. For example, many
people who call themselves agnostics or atheists would
find most of these ideas to be acceptable. In contrast many of the
more fundamentalist religious people don't. I will sometimes
refer to the fundamentalists as 'modern day Pharisees'.
Everybody is
able to be a Child of the Spirit if they so wish. However some people
would appear, because of their wicked actions, to prefer not to be
described in this way.
Maybe we
should also think in terms of a life force of everything which
mixes the forces of good with the forces of evil. The spirit of human
decency could be regarded as contributing to this life force.
[Lucky
Luke: I'm good when I'm not being wicked.
Laughing
Leia: I enjoy being wicked.
Ant
Thirty-Two Bits: I do my own thing. I'm a
robot.]
3. THE SPIRIT AND THE LAW
We
certainly need a set
of rules which we can agree upon together,
since people need to be protected against evil doers and perpetrators
of crime, and they need to
feel that they are living in a safe
space.
The
law of
the land, which
is decided by our politicians for their own reasons which
do not necessarily include the common
good, should
apply equally to everybody, and
it should be equally accessible and
financially affordable
to everybody. For example,
élite
groups of people should not be allowed to regard themselves as above
the law. Ordained ministers should not be made
exempt from investigation by
our local police forces for
grievous offences against children simply because they are 'holy
people'. Churches which
are corrupt and the worst of
our charities should not be permitted to feel effectively
exempt from
prosecution for fraud. More
generally, the law should not be used as a mechanism by our cynical
Establishment for
controlling and repressing the population at large.
Many
people believe that we should try to follow the spirit
of the law rather than
the letter of
the law,
and that a bad law is there to be broken. For example, if there is a
local by-law against feeding beggars in the street then many Children
of the Spirit would still feed them.
If there is a by-law against
pitching tents in local parks, then many compassionate people would
ignore it if the tent was providing much-needed accommodation for a
homeless person.
[Anxious
Ailidh: I'd love to play
in that tent in the park.
Doubtful
Duncan: But there's a
tramp living in it.
Mrs.
Nimby: In that case,
I'll ask the police to take it away.
Daring
Deirdre:
But everybody deserves a home.
Mr.
Bother: Not if they're
out of work,
they don't.]
If
an obstructive official deserves to be yelled at,
then some adults think that
it is worth risking
breaching
the peace in order to do
so, even when they may get
punished for doing this. If
there is a rule telling you not to share your school lunch, then you
could well feel justified in
risking
detention by offering
your pea soup
to a friend in return for extra apple crumble for dessert. If there
is a law against wives in the State of Michisota
tickling their husbands'
tummy buttons, then who will be there to observe
the transgressions? If a modern day Pharisee puts a sign up
forbidding trans-folk from using the Church loo, then please feel
free to tear it down.
In
1897, the State of Indiana legislated that all schoolchildren should
be taught that 'pi
equals three'. That caused some strange problems when calculating the
circumference of circles. Fortunately, some clever children broke the
law and got it right. During
the 17 th century, Galileo
was
threatened with torture by the Roman Catholic Church for claiming
that the Earth moves around the Sun. Nowadays,
you can get your hand or head chopped off in Saudi Arabia for all
sorts of curious misdemeanours including challenging the status
quo, and in the U.S.A.
you can be imprisoned for being poor and shot for being insolent or
out of touch with reality.
In
general terms, it is up to you to
decide how to interpret the
law and how much to push your luck when following the spirit rather
the letter of the law. But be ever
so polite to the kindly
police officers
when they
come after your hide. Mr.
and Mrs.
Plod are not
always
there to
solve real crimes.
They're
there to
maintain 'public
order'; they're 'puppets
on a string' who are
there to express the
policies and whims
of our all-encompassing Establishment.
4. THE CREATOR
Humans
possess very complicated
brains, biologies,
and chemistries,
all of which work together in an
exceedingly complicated way.
For example, the birth of a
child is very complicated in
terms of the biology involved.
We
all experience
very subtle and highly
imaginative dreams, sometimes
as we are about to fall asleep. I sometimes wonder whether there is
something inside my head which is far more intelligent than I'd
previously imagined.
Overall
we each seem to be as complicated as the Universe in which we live.
As there are zillions of bacteria
living in us, you could even think of yourself as being a Universe of
your own!
Evolutionists
think that we were created by natural
selection.
Others think that we were in some way intelligently
designed.
I
think that we could have
evolved through some sort of
intelligently designed process involving
some natural
selection, though
I believe that how this would
have actually happened is
beyond current human understanding and not completely explainable by
our geneticists.
All
of our animals, birds, fish, flowers, and trees were also created in
some way. They live with us in the natural
process, in
other words as parts of nature.
The
movements of the tectonic plates below
the Earth's crust affect the temperatures and movements of our oceans
and influence our weather, as well as causing earthquakes. It's
as if some grand Creator
designed the geology inside Planet Earth for the purpose of helping
to control our weather systems.
It
seems to me to be far too incredible to assume that the billions of
stars and planets in the Universe, each with their own geological
system and chemical make-up, were created by random
chance
or a big bang out of nothingness. I personally think that big bang
theory is extremely naive. Indeed,
a number of scientists have recently come
up with
other more
flexible suggestions.
Let's
keep
things simple
for
the moment, and define the Creator
to be whatever intelligent force or forces created us,
the
Universe, and everything in it, including random chance and the evil
forces which move among us.
There are a number of logical problems with this definition.
For example, time may be circular, or have no beginning or end. In
this case there would be no beginning of time at which things could
be created out of nothingness.
An
ancient philosopher, whose name slips my mind, pointed out that
any Creator would need to be created by another Creator, who
is created
by a
third Creator, and so on and so forth. So where does that get us? You
may well ask!
[Doubtful
Duncan:
Who was God's Daddy, Father Gabriel?
Father
Gabriel:
Creators don't need fathers, you silly boy.
Anxious
Ailidh:
If God had a Daddy, then who was his Daddy's Mummy?
Daring
Deirdre:
His Granny, stupid!]
If
we ignore these tricky
problems and use our
simple
definition as a working
proposition, then the
proposition doesn't
necessarily
mean
that the Creator is benevolent, or
judgemental, or a God, or
anything which communicates with ANY
individual human being
(including the Pope and the
Queen!) in any sensitive
way. For example, the Creator could be playing some very grand sort
of game for reasons best
known to itself. We may be
the pawns
in the game, or
we may be here to create 'extra intelligence' which the Creator can
suck into its own super-brain whenever it wants to.
Some
people think that 'the Creator God controls our lives'. Like many
other things in the Old Testament (like
Moses believing that it is right to stone a man to death for
collecting sticks on the Sabbath),
I find this idea too hard to swallow.
Some
old-fashioned
philosophers
and theologians
believe in pre-destination,
and that the Creator controls absolutely everything that we do and
think. That would mean that you
had no freedom of choice
and no responsibility to try to modify your
behaviour. It would be a bit like observing your life like an action
movie. Now that's a crass idea!
5. NATURE WORSHIP
Many
of the old pagan spiritualities, including the worship
of Baal, the
Middle
Eastern
God of Light and Fertility,
addressed a common spirit between everybody and everything in the
natural process, including
humans, our wild life, and the flowers and trees.
Some
modern religions have
concentrated much more on human spirituality, while giving lip
service to
the needs of animals and nature itself. Nature
worship can also be found in pantheism,
animism,
and shamanism,
and it has been encouraged by certain
types of witches
as part of the Occult.
The burning of
witches until the late eighteenth
century can be partly
seen as an attempt
by Christians to stamp out the worship
of
nature.
Many
modern day witches are to be highly respected. For example, the
members of a witch's coven in Lancashire honour, revere, and
give thanks to
nature, and celebrate the seasons. In
spring, they celebrate life and rebirth, and then in winter they
celebrate decay and death to make way for new life.
[Anxious
Ailidh:
I'm
a witch. I like stirring the pot.
Daring
Deirdre:
Me too. I brew potions from
the leaves and herbs.
Sensible
Cecilia:
Is that to cure the sick animals and birds?
Daring
Deirdre:
No, it's to
give
to my Granny for afternoon tea.
Bishop
Hotaway:
That's enough of that, girls. Away to the ducking stool with you!]
6. IS THERE AN
ALL-SEEING EYE?
Is there some entity
somewhere e.g. a living creature, a god, creator, Messiah,
force field, gigantic
computer system, or
intelligent life force,
which watches and listens to each and every one of us as we live our
everyday lives,
though without necessarily
controlling us? If there is,
then some people would call it the All-Seeing
Eye. Others
call it the Eye of Providence.
Having faith in the existence
of an all-seeing eye which is
watching us from some other
space is the basis of many
religions around the world today, including
Christianity and shamanism.
This is very much a question of faith,
since science is in no
position to prove that an
(external)
all-seeing eye actually
exists.
Human beings do of course
observe each other. So we could all be regarded as being parts of
some sort of all-seeing eye. Alternatively,
the spirit of human decency,
which moves between
compassionate
people, could be regarded as an almost-all-seeing eye, as
could the life force of
everything which we
also discussed
in section 2.
[Anxious Ailidh:
There's a big eye staring at me from behind the Moon.
Doubtful Duncan: Maybe
it's a fat giant who wants to see what you're eating for supper.
Daring Deirdre:
Perhaps it's a spaceship from
Orion. Maybe it's sneaking in to take a peek at the London
Eye.]
If there is an all seeing-eye
watching us from some other
space, then the questions arise as to whether we can communicate with
him,
her, or it, e.g. 'through our
mind-waves' or by
prayer, and whether the
eye
sometimes reacts to things that we do, think,
or say.
It can sometimes be useful to think
that it does.
Such
thoughts can, for example,
help us to treat each other in caring and helpful ways. But,
again this is all
a matter of faith.
We should of course be careful
not to allow spiritual communications like this to 'tell us' to do
bad things. We need to reason out for ourselves what it takes to be
caring and compassionate and how to avoid harming other people.
I personally believe in the
existence of an all-seeing eye, though
I don't know whether it comes from without (from another space) or
from within (from the recesses of my own mind)
and, as a Christian,
I believe that Jesus, or
Messiah,
symbolizes the eye.
But that is a matter of choice. People from different cultures find
different ways of symbolizing the eye.
MY PERSONAL STORY, PART B. I was married in a dusty old church in
Wolverhampton in 1969, and believed this to be creating a life time
contract between God, me and my good wife. In 1972, I was appointed
to be a lecturer in Statistics at the University of Warwick. In 1978,
I visited Kingston, Ontario to study a large amount of data (i.e.
numbers measuring pieces of information) which recorded the
birth-weights, lengths of pregnancy and various other measurements,
for over 2000 births. When I plotted the numbers in various ways on
graph paper, it was 'as if Jesus was sending me messages' and I was
able, to my utter surprise, to arrive at an unexpected conclusion
which turned out to be of some medical importance.
I have since learnt that the celebrated nineteenth century
nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale (the Lady with the Lamp)
thought that clever ways of illustrating the data helped her to learn
'God's messages from the data'. However, I was thirty years old when
I first suspected that 'divine intervention' might just be a bit more
than wishful thinking.
7. IS
THERE AN AFTER LIFE?
After you die, are you ever likely to be conscious of anything in the
hereafter? Many people think that either all or some of us
will become part of a larger spirit. Others think that we are
reincarnated as animals or other people. Some people think
that our conscious thoughts stop at death and it is how we are
remembered that counts. Others think that the way our humanity
influences our blood descendants is the main issue.
I believe that Hell (in our afterlives) was invented by
religious zealots as a threat, and a way of bullying and controlling
people. While you could achieve a sort of Hell during your own
lifetime, I very much doubt that it exists in the hereafter. However,
some people still genuinely believe that sinners are go to Hell for
ever and anon.
It is possible to achieve a sort of 'Kingdom of Heaven' during
your own lifetime, when you find peace with yourself as an adult.
Many people believe that there is a Heaven in the hereafter, but a
number of great philosophers, including the Persian poet and
mathematician Omar Khayyam (who
was one of the most influential
thinkers of the Middle Ages)
have doubted this. Khayyam did however say
'When the last great scorer comes to write against your name,
he'll ask not if you won or lost but if you played the game.'
I would like to think that my consciousness will surface
again during the hereafter, if only because I might learn more about
the mysteries of creation. But maybe that's wishful thinking.
A quantum theorist has recently suggested that our brains will
be downloaded into another space after death, but perhaps he
was being fanciful.
[Anxious Ailidh: I dreamt last night that I was talking
to the Archangel Gabriel in Heaven.
Doubtful Duncan: Was he wielding a flaming sword?
Anxious Ailidh: No, he was cutting his overgrown
toenails with a tiny pair of silver scissors,
Daring Deirdre: I was there too, drinking strawberry
milkshake, but then I fell straight through my seat and burnt my bum.
Crafty Colin: They don't call you the Hellfire kid for
nothing.]
7. HELPING
OTHER PEOPLE, AND OURSELVES
8.
OUR DARK SIDES
9.
SHOULD WE ALWAYS BE
FORGIVING? (not according to Jesus!)
10.
THE SAD STATE OF THE WORLD
(cannot stand aloof . Must engage in it)
12.
DO YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN JESUS?
13.
THE JEWISH NATION
14. BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL DISCUSSION
15. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
16. REVELATIONS
Manner of teaching, Queen, Pope, Josephus, the Holy Land
At end: Section by Section Bibliography,
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