We Lack New Religious Images

Some of the TRADITIONAL IMAGES ARE SPENT AND EVEN HARMFUL

SEEING: What is reality according to religion? Any world view can be reduced to a few traits or basic images. In outline, what is the world, what is reality, as it is seen by religion? The vast majority of Christians would answer that reality is: -A God who lived alone forever, who one day decided to create this fragile world, which continues to exist because he sustains its being; -An almighty Lord God who dictates his law moral to us so we can be incorporated into his Plan of Salvation for the world, whose final triumph he guarantees; -A God the Father who tests us in this material world in order to later bring us to eternal life with him in heaven, after we are judged... These are three basic schemes or scenarios by which reality is understood or imagined by religions, e.g., the monotheistic ones. And many believers think the reality is just like this, literally. JUDGING: But reality, in itself, continues to remains an inaccessible mystery. Why does reality exist, rather than nothing? asked Leibniz. Cultures--and religions within them--responded to this anguished unresolved question by picturing reality as any of these or other scenarios, through creative and original images and metaphors, sometimes beautiful. Our ancestors were able to live with these schemes, which gave them a purpose, an understanding of the world, a hope, a mission. But we ask ourselves, do these images describe reality as it is? Obviously not; reality itself is a mystery that surpasses us. Only fundamentalists think that reality is literally how religions traditions describe it. These traditions are symbolic: profound truths, not literal truths, not descriptive truths. Are images perfect? Or can they have their drawbacks? Can they be improved upon? Are they eternal images for forever, or do they expire? Can it be that some are not only obsolete, but even negative, harmful today?
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Jos Mara VIGIL

Panam, Panam

Specific problems of these three images The image of a Creator who created everything out of nothing has its difficulties. If God always existed by himself, and he could have always existed like that, what is the meaning of reality? Is it a whim (of God)? Could everything not have existed? Isnt there anything that exists in itself? This image of creation completely eliminates the reality between the Creator and creation, emptying this entity and reducing it to a mere contingency, only sustained in its being by God. A transcendent God distant from the world would truly be the totality of being. But who says that reality is dual, and that there is a creative principle exiled from reality, entirely different and transcendent, and that the real reality that we know and are is pure emptiness and dependence? The world we live in today, and that the current scientific explosion presents us with, is incompatible with that image. For a quite a while, this creation has not been plausible according to science. Can religion contradict it? This dualistic and split image harms us because it alienates us, removes any existential reality from the cosmos, and removes immanence from our world. It prevents a unified holistic experience of transcendence and immanence: it makes us schizophrenic. The image of God as an almighty feudal Lord who we all must serve by virtue of being born in his fiefdom, whose principle essential relationship with humans is a relationship of total dominance-submission, also has major problems. Imagining God as a King who rules the world has every appearance of being a projection of patriarchal agrarian society, which spread through cultures starting from the Neolithic era, when religions (not religiosity) of the warrior, patriarchal, monarchical God began to appear. But an image like this does not respond to our sensibility, our vision, our current situation. Today this ontology of lordship and hierarchical-patriarchal domination is unacceptable to us. Moreover, this im-

age absolves us of our responsibility when we believe that God will save the world no matter what happens. This image hurts us in the present situation where we live with the possibility of a final global disaster (nuclear or climate) caused by humans because it makes us blind to what we now see clearly: that the world is in our hands, and nobody will come to save it if we refuse to accept our responsibility. In this concrete sense, the common religious discourse about God as Lord harms humanity and the cosmos. The image that we are souls currently reduced in our spiritual condition, living for a short time chained to a material body, but destined to an eternal life in heaven after passing an individual judgment has been in force with much strength for millennia. This view looks only at the historical drama of humans. They are the only important thing in reality: the rest of reality is accidental, additional, only props in a scene in which the spiritual salvation history of humans is represented. All material is an aspect or negative marginal episode that will finally disappear... But we do not live in that dualistic world of matter and spirit at odds. Those Platonic concepts are simply unacceptable once we open our eyes to todays world, where the distinction between matter and spirit is increasingly uncertain. There is no matter entirely devoid of selfhood, energy, and life. Particles and waves, matter and energy, land and life, mind and consciousness...are only different aspects of the same single reality. We cannot think that we are expatriates of our original world, nor that we are competing for an individual salvation outside of this world. We no longer share this vision that the most important thing in the cosmos is the human being, along with our interests, history, and personal celestial salvation. We want to live the religious dimension in the real world of the cosmos, of Gaia, in a holistic manner with all matter, energy, life, mind, spirit, and Divinity. Being the last to arrive, we have the privilege to be trained to humbly and responsibly take on the co-governance of nature. Many more things should be said about these and other images (we say a few things in complementary materials) that seem discordant today, and that for many Christians who live in accordance with the best advances in current thinking seem strange (original sin, redemption, heaven, hell).

ACTION: Recognizing the nature of religious language We must be aware of the peculiarity of religious language: it is symbolic, metaphorical. It expresses deep truths. But it does not have the capacity or power to describe to us or inform us about reality, the other world, material, and spirit. It is like poetry: it tells us wonderful things and transmits profound experiences with lots of true content, but we should not get confused by it, interpreting it literally instead of poetically. Our ancestors interpreted the symbols literally, as descriptions. We are the first generation that is seeing this epistemological cultural change. No one has seen Ultimate Reality, but all people have needed to ask about it to live out our religious dimension. This inaccessibility has been supplemented with intuition, imagination, creativity, symbols, and metaphors. Religious images made like this cannot be perfect (they are human) or endure forever (because they wear out over time and lack foundation with advancement of knowledge). There may come a time when they not only cease to be useful, but even prove harmful. Moreover, if we look at history, we see that traditions, including ours, have never ceased to create new images and to abandon others. It is not anything new. Only now, the change is faster, more radical, more urgent, and, for the first time, conscious. The problem is complex and has no easy solution, because metaphors do not come about by decree or by the brilliant imagination of one individual. They arise from the collective subconsciousness of the time. What should we do then, just wait passively? It is possible to do many important things: become aware of the particularity of religious epistemology, overcome fundamentalism, recognize that our religious discourse does not describe reality, and consider the need to renew it, even when our community tranquilly lives with its inherited ancestral images. There is no need for people to change who do not feel the need, but it is important that they recognize the problem in order to understand what is happening with many people, and in order not to impede the necessary transformation. In the supplementary materials of this Agenda, we q offer texts, reflections, and suggestions.

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