A spillover from the Golden Compass controversy thread. I usually steer clear of these debates (for various reasons I won’t go into here), but the thread reminded me of something which has bugged me for awhile, and I wanted to bring it up here.
I had a student the other day, and the conversation turned to the Golden Compass (she is a big fantasy fan). She told me that her pastor “warned” everyone in his congregation to avoid the movie like the plague, ostensibly because of this so-called controversy about it being anti-Christian and so forth (which IMHO is way overblown).
I then thought-“If your (rhetorical you) faith is so fragile that seeing a movie can fatally weaken it then it’s not much of a faith then, is it?” What exactly is this clergyman so afraid of? Is he genuinely concerned with the welfare of the souls in his congregation? And if so wouldn’t seeing the movie (or something else), using it to honestly test and examine your faith, and, after it has weathered the storm so to speak, it comes out of the experience stronger than before-wouldn’t that be a good thing?
That is my naive idealistic self speaking above. My cynical side will now speak, and point out that likely the only thing the pastor is interested in is maintaining his place in the church power structure, and if his bishop (or whoever is above him in the hierarchy-non Catholic church here) notices that his Sunday attendance is dropping he might lose his position. [And ironically enough that attitude validates one of the viewpoints of the book and film in question.]
One of my big peeves about mainstream Christianity is how it completely and utterly fails to further the spiritual growth of its members. Once you are “saved” nothing else needs to be done-you are home free and just need to wait around for Paradise to come along and claim you, show up every Sunday and mumble your platitudes and you’re just fine. Hence there is no room in such a structure for honest and reasoned debate, nor for sustained and sincere questioning which would hopefully further transform and strengthen your faith.
Thus once a Christian starts to question things in that way the Church will not help her, at all, and will in fact actively fight her efforts, thus inadvertently pushing her further away from the faith and towards something else (New Age/atheism/Eastern religions/fill-in-the-blank). There is no room in the power structure for anything like that, hence the person will find no recourse, no support, and no sympathy from the Church in her quest. Instead of a living vibrant faith full of sincere and honestly questioning/questing souls, you have an empty faith, one which is easily shattered by the first major quibble which is raised in a person’s mind. And the thing which the pastor is trying to avoid happens anyway (Law of Unintended Consequences). [Not to mention the Forbidden Fruit angle]
It is said that if a Christian sees Jesus coming down the road, he will bow down and kiss His feet. But if a Buddhist sees the Buddha coming down the road, he will pull a gun out and shoot Him. I think the Buddhists had it right, in that you must utterly destroy the creeds, codes, and beliefs which you have outgrown if you are to go beyond them, but still remain as a part of the Whole.
[Disclaimer: I know there are many Christian sects most certainly do not operate like that, and I know that many Christians most certainly do question their faith in the way I have outlined above, so I intend it not as a blanket statement at all.]