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Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom
^^^Ultimately, if there is a "God", it lies within every one of us - it's our own spirit, our soul. A presence that can be used for compassion or destruction, and presence that requires us to be responsible/caring/nuturing to our own "God".
Mostly Harmless - you own personal "theology" is admirable; however, I would argue that what you feel runs counter to what you decide to believe - these are two different things for me. Christianity, from the 6th Century (with the imposition of the Holy Roman and Orthodox empires), has been deliberately and consistenly dogmatic (there's plenty of evidence now to suggest that much of the original collection of Bible "stories" were tampered with even at it's inception...), and the reading of the Bible has been (whether Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Evangelical etc) by and large very controlled and restricted. This is one of my issues with Christianity in general - it's a political theology (compare with Buddhism, for example), always has been, and whatever good insights that can be gleaned from it are far outweighed by the overall message: BELIEVE. (An imperative command, no "may" or "could" here. I honestly can't see how an fundamentally individual interpretation of the Bible is possible without also facing the risk of being excommunicated from the Christianity branch that you may belong to...
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1. It's true that where there are people in mass, there are politics. And I don't think you can avoid it when an organisation becomes as big as Christianity, but the Orthodox haven't gone through the many, many schisms and the weird "antipope" struggles for power and indoctrinating things that might be "useful" We're a much less political denomination than similar faiths.
2. Melly, I'll concede completely that the Catholic faith has time and again restricted use of the Bible to the common public in very weird, perverse ways. And indeed, it is a very weird, very polictically charged denomination of Christianity, in which the pope has all but directly pronounced himself God. Petty internal politics aside, I don't consider Orthodoxy to be polictical religion. I might've considered a case for it back Byzantium's time or most recently in Tsar Nicholas's reign, but in modern day our Patriarchs don't hold major political sway on the rest of the world, nor do they seek it, keeping in line with "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's" in the end, they're still monks, and humility is priority #1.
In the best of my knowledge, they aren't involved in external polictics at all. The Catholics for many years were plagued with that bullshit (Protestant Schisms, the French Antipope crisis, CounterReformation, or mudslinging among heirarchs such outrageous slanders like "antichrist", etc.)
3. I can individually interpret the Bible without fear of being caught in some belief contrary to my interpretation because my branch makes it a point not to indoctrinate things that do not hold the entire faith together.* In other words: if it's not a pillar we can't live without, we leave it up to the individual's speculation, which makes reading the opinions of various elders really rewarding. There's no right or wrong answer to whether dogs go to Heaven in my faith, some believe it and others don't. But whether dogs go to heaven or not sure as hell doesn't make or break our fundamental beliefs, so we don't indoctrinate them (make them a "right or wrong" issue)
This again is the completely opposite mentality of the Catholics, who must reach a logical conclusion on great mysteries whenever a question pops up. I won't lie: I don't read Catholic theology, partly because I don't consider it legitimate, and partly because I've heard the gist of many Catholic beliefs without the pain of looking up actual documents. But from reading ex-Catholics it's a lot like reading a handbook of various, inflexible laws. Which makes for lame reading.
4. Man, I totally respect Bhuddism. You can truly gain a lot from it as a Christian.
I realize this post might read like a bunch of Catholic mudslinging, and I don't mean it to be- it just provides a good juxtaposition to better explain Orthodoxy.
*Which still means that somethings in the Bible are indoctrinated. But honestly, whenever I read what a past authority wrote was crucial on the subject, it leaves me pretty convinced. St. John Chyrostom's reasoning always kicks the shit out of anything I thought. That isn't to say I haven't had serious problems before that I didn't agree with that I'd read, but I just take it up with a priest and he helps me iron it out.
Melly, you made a solid argument that I can't completely disprove, and I admire you for it. And thanks for reading all this bullshit.
I slept about four hours the night before, and I pulled an allnighter today,
so I think I'm going to sleep for at least a little while.