Returning to The Word
Are religious texts still valid in the 21st century?
🚨Welcome back, ya cunts! I would apologize for the delay in posting this, but I don’t give a shit anymore 😃👍
In all seriousness, after all the slacking and procrastination, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this. Much love ❤️
🎧 Song Pairing: Herald of the Change
📖 Reading Time: ~5 minutes.
The Communal Currency Of Humanity
"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
I’ve always been fascinated by stories and storytellers. It’s one of the only ways language can grab us by the nuts and ruffle us around. We chase stories and the kick they give us.
Whether it’s your grandma’s fairy tales about foxes in the backyard or bad trash TV, it all serves the same purpose. Stories convey more than literal expression.
A study on the effects of stories concluded this—
“People often unconsciously synchronize bodily functions like heartbeat and breathing... when they share an experience, such as a live performance or a personal conversation. Our heart rates synchronize even if we are just listening to a story by ourselves.” (Source)
Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, states this-
Since the Stone Age, we created stories and convinced as many other people as possible to believe in them. Yet this is actually a good thing, he says. Because fables, myths, sagas, and religions bring people together. (Source)
Stories are the communal currency of humans. The naked truth or wisdom is never enough. It’s not enticing enough. So, we construct metaphors, and analogies, and narrate tales.
Stories are the only tool we have in our arsenal to express spiritual experiences. They create a cocktail of thinking and feeling.
They dictate everything. Everything you see around you is a by-product of stories we told ourselves or a group of people believed. From capitalism to religion, we sort complexities through stories.
"The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story. This truth applies both to individuals and institutions."
So, Why The Bible?
"Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form."
In this current age of Alexandria, why should a book that’s over 2 millennia old matter? Why not read, say, “Can’t Hurt Me,” by David Goggins? Well, It depends on what you’re looking for.
Water finds itself in a puddle because a place for it to fit existed first. “How To Win Friends And Influence People” is popular because a need for it existed.
The collective human experience sought the solution to a problem the books provided. And, a good rule of thumb for readers to select their next book is— Does this solve the problem I have at hand? And, do other people agree?
The longer a book has stood the test of time, the more powerful it is. Let's take Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A book written in 100 AD is still adored and celebrated today. Why? Because the problems faced by a fucking powerful Roman emperor are the same problems you and I face.
The things Aurelius wrote about were a collective human problem. It's simple business logic- The bigger and deeper the problem = The higher the demand.
And, one of the oldest books that has managed to do this is The Bible. It emerged from the pains and complexities of the collective human consciousness. It didn't help change your circumstances but was a manual of self-accountability.
The stories shared are old, and dense, and go deeper than we all realize. The fall from the Garden of Eden speaks to the pain of being conscious creatures. Knowing good from evil is a feature of our conscious minds. It’s a story about how we were ripped out of the web of animal instinct when we developed sufficient self-consciousness to be morally culpable for our choices. Suddenly, we gained the “knowledge of good and evil”. Source
Bearing your cross, the snake on the staff, love thy neighbor— the themes run deep. But, we’ve been ignorant. The fact that the doctrine has existed as long as it has speaks for itself. I am not making the case for the existence of God here, but rather the wisdom contained in the text.
We’re funny creatures. We can sit through 3 hours of a man in a tin can flying and shooting laser beams at poorly cast Afghanis. But the second a parable is mentioned, our fragile ego rejects it. Why?
It's a question I asked myself over and over in the last few months. Why was I so reactive to a singular book? What was in it that made me feel this way? Or, what was in the text that makes it so polarizing?
And, why was it that logical and successful people that I looked up to were being so curious about this book? I decided to look for myself. And, what I found couldn't have been better explained by Charles Eisenstein-
“This is what is so exciting about my reacquaintance with Christian tradition: I’m learning to see new levels of meaning in stories I had formerly discounted as naïve. The simple literal interpretation I was raised with provides comfort & guidance to billions of people, but not to me.
Now I’m returning to these stories with renewed affection, I’m starting to see there’s a more complex metaphorical understanding available for those of us who can’t stomach the literal reading.” Source
The point I am trying to make is there is wisdom in the word. We could gather a lot of wisdom for living in the 21st century. And, rejecting tradition and the wisdom of our ancestors may not be the answer. Unless you have a very good reason to believe so.
What’s Your Fucking Point?
I’ll leave the conclusion of this month-long project in the hands of someone who is far more articulate and wiser than I am— Charles Eisenstein:
“Let me spell it out: if we can quit our contempt for traditional religion, I think we’ll find a lot of useful insights about how to act wisely in the world today…”
”By reconnecting to this old set of stories I feel like I’m getting a power boost from past generations. Instead of having to invent everything from scratch, I’m seeing my ancestors as active present allies with wisdom to share…”
“Brother, sister, I’m not writing this to convert you to Christianity, that’s not the point at all. But I want you to really consider how our discourse might change if we stopped treating our forebears as primitive bumpkins? What could we learn if we imagine they might have access to perennial wisdom, ways of thinking & living that are especially useful in times of intense uncertainty & fear?”
“What if we saw the great cathedrals of Europe not as tourist curiosities or “art history” but as a precious gift from our ancestors, a reminder of what is most important in life? What if we saw the people who lived before us not as dead footnotes in our story but as active present allies who packaged their best lessons into our cultural inheritance?”