I'm reading this book that has a chapter on being able to communicate outside of your realm of experience and it really got me thinking. I'll ask a few questions that it has had bouncing around in my head, but first I want to quote what it was that I read. Please note this was written about 40 years ago by a man who was, by religion, nominally Jewish.
"For another example of the same principle, here is a Christian civilization where most people have gone to church and have mouthed various Christian doctrines, and yet this is really not a part of their experience because they haven't lived it. Their church experience has been purely ritualistic decoration. "The New York Times some years ago reported the case of a man who converted to Catholicism at around the age of forty and then, filled with the zeal of a convert, determined to emulate as far as possible the life of St Francis of Assisi. He withdrew his life's savings. He took his money out in $5 bills. Armed with his bundle of $5 bills, he went down to the poorest section of New York City, and every time a needy looking man or woman passed by him he would step up and say, 'Please take this'... Our friend attempting to live a Christian life and emulate St Francis of Assisi found that he can do so for only forty minutes before being arrested by a Christian police officer, driven to Bellevue Hospital by a Christian ambulance doctor, and pronounced non corpos mentis by a Christian psychiatrist, Christianity is beyond the experience of Christians... "I have been asked, for example, why I do not talk to a Catholic priest or a Protestant minister or a rabbi in terms of JudeoChristian ethic or the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. I never talk in those terms. Instead I approach them on the basis of their own self-interest, the welfare of their church, or even its physical property. "If I were to approach them in a moralistic way, it would be outside their experience, because Christianity and JudeoChristianity are outside the experience of organized religion. They would listen to me and very sympathetically tell me how noble I was. And the moment I walked out they would call their secretaries in and say, 'If that screwball ever shows up again, tell him I'm out.' "
So hear's what I've been thinking: 1) Is Alinsky(the author) right or is this just the skepticism of the nonreligious. I have to keep in mind that he had been working with ministers as a social reformer for about thirty years at the time of the writing. 2) Were he writing the book today, forty years later would his view of Christians be any different? 3) Could you say then, or more importantly for us... now, that American society is Christian in reality or even in name?
This is the most crucial question and is very much at the core of my 180 days... 4) What would a Christian life lived out today really look like?
In the counsel of many there is wisdom... Please, give me your imput.
But I can identify with him. O, how strong and idealistic the zeal of the freshly converted!
On to your question:
1. Alinsky is right about approaching ministers and rabbis on the basis of their own self interest. It's the only way to get anyone to dip into their pockets. They are human beings before being priests. He is partly right about morality being outside the organized religion. Not because it doesn't exist but because organized religion is all about rituals and there;s no morality in rituals.
2. No comment
3. Not american so don't care.
4. A Christian life would be any person that has lived refraining from lying, cheating, stealing, etc. There's more but i have no time.
P.S.
In the counsel of many there is wisdom...but too many cooks spoil the broth.
Sometimes, when I try to talk about spiritual things, I find that my own life..style.. trips me up. Some people don't want to hear me say that after 10 years of deciding to do something, THIS TIME I'm going to do it -- really. I have been a hypocrite for so long, in so many ways, that how do I now decide I'm finally going to do what's right?
So maybe this man wanted to discuss faith after a lifetime of living like the dickens. You don't know. I don't know. But yes, I'm tempted to believe that if I gave out $5 bills on the streets of any large city, I might be visiting a mental hospital in a cool new long-sleeved shirt, too. Nobody can understand that type of zeal, because we've all squelched it. Is that all bad? (Like Todd Agnew, it seems I have better questions than answers. )
