I came across the Great Commandment today in my readings and it made me think. Love God with all your heart, all your strength, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. I understand this from a naturalistic perspective now.
To love God completely means to love the source of your life. Your life includes everything about you, your heart, your strength, your mind. You do not choose to think; you just do. That comes from God. You do not control how rise from a chair and stand; you just do. That comes from God. You do not choose to feel; you just do. That comes from God. You do not choose to be born. You do not choose the fact that you will die some day. You just were and will. We don’t know God directly, we only know our own lives. Our appreciation for our life is our love for God. Appreciation implies that we are thankful to someone or something. That object of our appreciation is God.
To love your neighbor as yourself means reciprocity. It means you treat others like you expect them to treat you. As long as you both have the same expectations you will get along peacefully.
Every once in a while I come across an article that says the Great Commandment is to love God and to love others. That isn’t correct. That isn’t the Great Commandment at all. That statement is about religious passion (religiosity), and compassion for others.
The Great Commandment is not a command to be passionate towards God and compassionate towards others, rather it is a statement of naturalness. The Great Commandment is a natural law like gravity is a law. It isn’t a command or legalism.
Religiosity and compassion are not bad things. They have their place. But they are not the Great Commandment.
As for reciprocity, I have some wonderings about that. What happens if the two people have different expectations, like maybe a peace loving Quaker, and a member of the Taliban? And what happens when there are only enough resources for a few, and many are in need? What happens if a person or group is insane? Those are the beginnings of wars and violence. Then another law, survival of the fittest, comes into play. The strongest will win in the end. If there is a great legal command it would be to always be stronger than your enemies, and to protect and maintain your resources.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackInteresting thoughts.
As both a Deist and an Objectivist, I find your appeal to biblical scripture interesting (in light that you too consider yourself a Deist); I don’t see anything wrong in reflecting on scripture, per-se, and I myself use quotes and teachings from scripture when I believe they are correct and at least partially applicable.
Having said that, I think you are going too far in giving credence to the Great Commandment. Keep in mind, I am on Objectivist… as in, an Ayn Randian… as in, I’m a proponent of “the virtue of selfishness”… I don’t at all believe that you should treat others as yourself but rather you should treat them as they treat you (however, I am willing to practice — and do so regularly — the notion that most people want to treat me with respect so they are due that from me until they demonstrate otherwise); but teachings such as “turn the other cheek” are the ancient equivalent of (for example) allowing Hitler to keep committing his atrocities and (as implied by these teachings) just “let God be the judge.” Such teachings are errant, dangerous, and abhorrent.
The “love God with all your might bit” isn’t totally wrong; the problem is that it is easily controlled and taken out of context to suggest to people that they place *spiritual* matters before *temporal* matters. Clearly that is wrong. As Mike Mentzer taught (and I paraphrase from memory), “the human soul is neither a decerebrated body nor bodiless brain; it is a joined-entity of both mind *and* body and that combination is what brings mankind both life *and* happiness. Without either, man ceases to be man as we know him.” The point is, teachings to “love God above all else” ignores the fact that God clearly placed us in a temporal life and expects us to take advantage of it (which you *clearly* explained); these teachings overemphasize one gift of God (the mental/spiritual) to the detriment of another of God’s gifts (the physical).
In my view there is nothing great about the “Great” Commandment. I think you make a mistake in your attempt to learn from it. That’s not to say *every* lesson in scripture is invalid; but I think this one is.
Nevertheless, I recently found your site a few weeks ago — thanks! It’s a good read. Plus, I liked your “D” logo a lot and used it in one of my software engineering classes. It’s wicked kewl.
Thank you again! :D
Thanks for the feedback.I’ve been reading about Unitarianism because I’m considering joining the American Unitarian Conference. The Unitarians are interested in early Christianity. One of the things I’m learning about early Christianity is that it seems to have originally been an attempt to bring a greater rationalism to Rome. The existing religions were set in their ways. People believed that reform was needed, but the existing religious state was set in its ways. A new religion was introduced that incorporated a more reasonable way of approaching life and government. The Romans adopted the dying cult of Christianity and imbued it with ideals more in keeping with rational thinking of the day. At least that is my current understanding.
So understanding Christian values means understanding the early attempt at rationalism. In theory there is a lot of rationalism buried in the original Roman Christian story.
The Christianity we know today evolved in the middle east, an ancient and foreign culture. Christianity grew from oral traditions that probably developed over a hundred years or so. It grew in the middle east over 2,000 years ago. By the time it was standardized it had gone through decades of evolution. It was translated and converted by Roman commoners where it evolved some more. It was modified and evolved some more by the Counsel of Nicea, another ancient and foreign culture. It evolved further after being adopted as the official religion of ancient Rome. It evolved further after Protestant reformation. It evolved more during the Enlightenment. Then modern historians began digging into the stories and began modifying it even more. American Christians today are evolving Christianity even more. Christianity has been in a constant state of change since its beginning.
The Christianity of today is so removed from the original story that it cannot be anything like the original Christianity. That is a given. To believe that modern Christianity comes directly from God requires a powerful suspension of disbelief. I would guess that we agree on this.
My challenge as a Naturalist is not to claim authenticity in Christian teachings. My challenge is to find where there is rational truth in the teachings, no matter how incredible the myth is. Since I am considering whether to join the American Unitarian Congress, I am working on rationalizing the 7 Religious Principles that can be found on the AmericanUnitarian.org home page. Honestly, I’m not sure I can.
#5 is “Religious experience is most fulfilling in the context of a tradition.” I believe this is true. You can’t just throw rationality at people. It doesn’t stick. People need a simple story that they can grow with. And they need simple teachings. Religious teachings have to speak to children, drunks and people on the verge of mental meltdowns and lead them to growth and change. You can’t reason with a small child. You can’t rationalize a drunk into sobriety. You can’t debate an upset person into calmness. The problem as I’m sure you are aware is that tradition is kind of goofy. But if tradition can be used to bring maturity, sobriety, and peace of mind to the young and the suffering without being overly oppressive, I see that as a good thing.
I don’t follow your disagreement with me about loving God completely. As I pointed out in my original blog entry, loving God means to love life with the understanding that God is the source of life. Yes, this can be taken in a literal sense that religious manipulator can use to control people. But so can pretty much anything that is said about God. Perhaps you missed my point that the Great Commandments are not legalistic assertions. I think the name “great commandment” is misleading and confusing. It is probably one of those things that evolved in Christianity over time to assert control over the Church members. My argument is that love is God is a natural fact because it is really love of life. So I don’t follow your argument.
As for reciprocity, or “doing unto others,” early American Unitarians and Deists understood that reciprocity is a natural fact. It is not about “shoulds.” Rather, they observed how people relate to each other and described this as reciprocity. We generally do unto others because that is how we expect them to do unto us. We treat others the way we would like to be treated. There are no “shoulds” or personal philosophies to reciprocity. Just an observation of human nature. It dates back at least to Roman times.
From readings of the history of the development of the United States, the principle of reciprocity is the same as “the Laws of Nature.” “Laws of Nature” means natural law. Natural law is based on reciprocity, which depends on a standard of reasonableness. I’m working on an article about Natural Law based on Emer de Vattel’s “Laws of Nations, or Principles of the Law of Nature, applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns” (1758) . See < http://www.constitution.org/vattel/vattel.htm>. A quick read through Vattel’s Preface points out that Natural Law dates back to Roman traditions and Hobbes. So a little digging into Hobbes might draw a direct Christian connection. Perhaps the reciprocity in the Christian “Great Commandment” came directly from the Romans, not from a jewish guy. That’s possible too, given the story of Christianity’s development.
I’m glad you like the flaming D logo. I updated it a few days ago. The new version is styled a little more like the D in the Declaration. It has better curves. I’m thinking about selling bumper stickers with the flaming D on them. I’m also thinking about about making a number of different versions and publishing them for people to use as they wish.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Scott,
Wow — good response! :)
I don’t want to get into a lengthy debate b/c I think your knowledge of Christian history is much greater than my own even if my own is much greater than the average Christian’s. You have obviously invested a lot more time in it than I have, which is remarkable considering most people accuse ME of being over-read on the matter. (ie: they don’t understand why I can’t just read “the weekly assigned passages” and take everything on faith). Me, personally, I despise faith (as it is commonly understood, not necessarily every possible definition of it); sorry, I got sidetracked, that statement has nothing to do with the topic at-hand. :)
Once I read enough scripture and history to realize that the contemporary (by which I mean the common/modern well-accepted view, not the historical one nor the traditional view held by any other group in time) view of Christianity was so wildly inaccurate and coupled that with my already-arrived-at observations that no other religion was accurate either, I chose to discount all religion (as in ORGANIZED religion, not spirituality per-se nor God). I am in most ways a traditional Deist, not the Christian-Deist sort; this means, of course, that I don’t subscribe much to scripture (except where I observe it is valid) — and I have a natural disdain for referencing scripture when the contemporary view of that passage is (in my view) wildly incorrect.
Having said that, I have a natural aversion to the Great Commandment. Not so much to *YOUR* view of it — I pointed out (but obviously not well enough) that you were applying the “Love of God” concept correctly. My problem with your interpretation of that part was not so much with your actual interpretation of it; but only with the fact that you were trying to learn wisdom from a passage which has been and is continued to be used by others to teach falsehoods — not just occasionally, but almost all believers in that passage. When the vast majority of followers of a tenet interpret it in the same way, and in the wrong way, it suggests to me that they are not entirely at fault and that some fault most likely lies with the tenet itself.
As regards the part of the passage concerned with others; well, your historical knowledge on that passage is clearly much better than mine. Again, I am not as concerned with the HISTORICAL basis of a tenet but more with the MODERN contemporary view of it. I am not interested in attempting to fix Christianity because Christianity cannot be fixed — as you pointed out, Christianity has a life of it’s own and evolves on it’s own; there’s really no turning back. With the average person, you can’t simply “rewind” the tape — far easier and more effective to REPLACE the tape.
At least, that’s what I did in my life almost 5 years ago — and I feel much more certain about my place in life than I ever did before.
I am not trying to overly-critical — it is obvious you are a good and a deep thinker. And you are better-read than I, which is saying something. Up until I was 30 I was actively chasing the cart you are now chasing (though not with the same degree of zeal as you, but nevertheless with quite a bit of valid attempt) — an attempt to “make sense” of religion, Christianity in particular, and Mormonism specifically — and around age 30 it finally occurred to me that you can’t make sense of it all precisely for the reason you mentioned… it’s been a story evolving over too much time with billions of individuals from diverse cultures and time-periods collectively putting their spin on it… it’s simply much too big a topic, much too involved and confusing, with far too many trails for any individual to follow accurately. You simply CANNOT read everything there is that is needed to read, and what you CAN read you don’t know how much of it to take as fact and how much of it was incorrect (for a number of reasons), and no one can keep all that data straight in their head well enough to see a clear picture of it. And even if you could, like revelation, how can you possibly expect to convey that knowledge to anyone else? The minute you try, the other person will misunderstand something and another new great insight will be corrupted. So why try?
*IF* God is like many traditional Deists hold (this is where I diverge from them, however) and is something of the absent watchmaker, then understanding the big story of Christianity (or any other religion) matters little if at all.
On the other hand, *IF* God is like most religionists hold, and is involved in our daily affairs and is waiting for us to return to heaven… well, then I assert that an “all knowing” and an “all loving” God would have both the understanding that the average person cannot make heads or tales of the story and S/He would also have the compassion of our inherent weakness with not being able to comprehend the story… that this God would act in only 1 of 2 ways: 1)to see our struggle and give a direct-revelation to every person so that they clearly understood what was required of them and could have no room for *reasonable* doubt, or 2)to have compassion on us and choose to disregard our dis-belief in such a convoluted story, choosing instead to judge us on our best/honest-attempts to understand God and our place in the world.
Personally, I think the truth is somewhere between option #2 and the dis-interested God of the traditional Deists. But regardless of which option is correct, those are the only 2 reasonable options when you accept the contemporary view that God is both “all knowing” and “all loving” — it’s either those 2 options, or the one that follows from the notion that God is disinterested.
The reason I went-on at-length on this line of thought is to make clear why I think *struggling* to find wisdom in a religious-based teaching that is, contemporarily anyways, flat-out wrong. Doing so is not needed. We can understand God via more direct ways and with the simpler process of logic rather than having to trust the word of others who have gone before us and rather than having to spend an inordinate amount of time sifting through their work — with no certainty that they actually *KNEW* they were correct.
As you pointed out about tradition: you can’t rationalize with little kids or drunk people. I would also posit that you cannot expect even REASONABLE/CLEAR-MINDED people to sift through such large volumes of history in order to arrive at the original understanding of some teaching.
Far better that individuals are taught to see for themselves the wonder that surrounds us, taught to THINK of their own accord, and shown how to apply logic to their problems. Far better that individuals are taught to sort these matters out on their own, rather than be taught to rely on dusty words of men long-dead — or on even new words of men still living who attempt to piece together a puzzle impossible to be re-assembled.
Having said all that, keep in mind that I also view tradition (for the sake of tradition) akin to blasphemy. Humanity’s brain is the unique gift Nature’s God gave to us. It is our highest moral-value to use it. We should never relinquish that use to another. Tradition is nothing more than someone else doing our thinking for us and “dumbing down” a concept so that the individual is released from their need to do their own thinking and their own work in understanding. Your comparison of using tradition with drunks/children is a good one. But most of humanity are not drunks. And children can be taught complex lessons more simply than by reverting to tradition. Teaching them tradition will ultimately lead to one of 2 situations: 1) children who grow into mindless-adults that just accept the tradition at face-value, 2) children who grow up to apply their own thinking and realizing how ridiculous the tradition they were taught is they in some way rebel against the tradition and go through a process that disrupts their stable life. For situation #1, I offer as evidence the majority of believers. For situation #2, I offer as evidence the commonly-seen problem of mid-life crises as well as the position many late-teens to late-20-something’s find themselves in where they completely shed their family’s traditions.
Needless to say, outside of small family traditions, I am not a big fan of tradition per-se.
Having said all of this, it is clear that we are approaching Deism from entirely different perspectives. I am a bit closer to Agnosticism while I think you are a bit closer to Christianity. That’s not saying I am agnostic about God; I am referring to beliefs in things like religion/tradition/scripture/etc. Where you are busying yourself trying to explain these adornments of religion, I am taking the position that none of it ultimately matters.
It’s ok that that’s your position, I am not criticizing you so much as just offering my own insights. I read your writings, so obviously I’m interested.
I just think, with regards to the Great Commandment, you are wrong. Hahah. ;P
NOTE: once again, by “wrong” I mean you chase a teaching not worth being chased; but I do not mean you are wrong in your interpretation of the teaching.
Keep up the good work — valid attempts to understand our place in life are ALWAYS a good thing. Maybe, through your writings, I can come to see the wisdom in things like faith and tradition — who knows, crazier things have happened! ;P
First thanks for making me laugh, haha. :P
I’m not going to let this become one of those long boring overly intellectual argument threads. So I’ll just make a couple of comments and end my part of the thread here. I think you are on the right path. Like a lot of recovering Christians you have an abhorrence to your old faith, which, IMO is the main thing that separates a Deist from a Christian Unitarian. It is also the main reason I’m considering forming a Deist church that is a subsect of the American Unitarian Conference. Christian Unitarians try to learn from the New Testament. Deists do not. CUs and Deists believe along similar lines except for that. A lot of Deists are people who got burned by Christianity.
Next, just a minor correction, not so much to convince you, Bane, but so my other readers don’t get confused.
The Deist God is not the uninvolved watchmaker. I think there was one philosopher who once suggested that concept as part of a philosophical discussion. A lot of naive critics of Deism pick up on the uninvolved watchmaker thing and repeat it. Most Deists do not believe that God is uninvolved with the universe and their lives. Most Deists are everyday people who believe in God, who believe God wants them to be nice to others, who don’t buy the stories of God talking directly to people through angels or prophets or what-not. Most Deists have never heard the word “deism” before. This has been well researched. About 20-25% of the US population are Deist based on their personal beliefs about God.
As for religious guidance, the role of religion is not to guide mature sensible people to proper behavior.
Religion is meant to keep immature and insensible people in a behavioral straightjacket until such time as they grow up or become sensible. Some churches actually go further and try to reprogram the insensible and program the immature to behave in socially appropriate ways. We all know how these churches can be abusive.
I once read something from a Christian priest. He said that people turn to the church for the 4 D’s. Death, Divorce, Drugs and Disaster. I think that sums up a lot of what the church is about. Helping others when they are in crisis, just as we would appreciate them helping us should we fall into the crisis.
The church also provides a place for community. Tradition provides a pretense for coming together. A lot of people go to church as a social activity. And young women go to church because they want a lovely place to have their traditional wedding. And young men go to church to meet nice young women.
I’m not at all close to Christianity in my beliefs. I’m just trying to understand it so I can use the tradition found in it as a religious structure that I can build on. But I’m struggling with interpreting Christianity in such a way that it does not conflict with what I believe and what I know of Christianity’s history. How much of Christian tradition can I use, and in what ways?
I think that my faith is more along the lines of what Jefferson called Apriarian. An apriary is a honey bee hive. Jefferson once suggested that the best religion would be one in which the followers picked out different beliefs and practices from all different faiths, like bees go out and collect nectar from all the different kinds of flowers.
Scott,
Nice reply, thanks. I agree; I’m not trying to hijack your site, I promise. ;)
I’ll re-address a few of your points as succinctly as I can; not to counter you, only to show that I think we have had something of a meeting-of-the-minds.
1) I don’t consider myself as a “recovering Christian” nor as having been “burned” by Christianity; I simply woke-up won day. But I do think you are probably correct that most Deists would identify with that.
2) I agree that most Deists don’t believe in the watchmaker. I don’t particularly either. I only use that concept as the “minimum basis” of my belief. I think it’s illogical to believe that that LESS than that is the foundation of reality but I also don’t think there is enough evidence to say with any certainty that MORE than that is the foundation of reality. IOW, I consider the watchmaker as the MINIMUM defensible position and the involved/caring-God as something I have HOPE in but don’t really know for sure. I would say that’s probably the fairly standard view among many, if not most, Deists.
3) I agree with your position that the role of religion should be to guide the immature. Sadly, I think nearly all of them overstep that bound and pretend to be a law unto themselves. That is why I despise organized religion. I also am not sure that humanity is capable of organizing religion without it eventually devolving into that — as humans, we tend towards wanting control and power. At best, I think, religion should remain non-denominational and organized only at the most local level — like typical U.S. non-denominational Christian churches are.
4) I think Americans would profit much more from celebrating NATIONAL traditions rather than fuzzy religious ones which most no longer really understand and are so easily taken out of context. Rather than divide and fragment ourselves as believers of different systems, far better that we do things to celebrate our sameness — practicing in American traditions. I understand your argument that Deism *IS* the American tradition, and I agree. If it’s kept really, really generic and mostly focused on national-unity then I think it might be a good approach.
5) I think going out to various belief systems and absorbing “the best of the best” is the right way to do it. While you’re at it, if you haven’t had the opportunity, might I suggest you delve into Objectivism? It’s a stellar philosophy that has several principles that are right-on-the-money; basic American values put, for the first time ever, into a formal philosophical system. Rand was an Atheist, and some of her arguments were atheistic; but, as a whole, there is nothing atheistic per-se about her philosophy. It can easily be viewed from Deistic-angle (though certainly never could be adopted into a revelation-believing religion, as you’ll see when you read her). But yes, I try all the time to incorporate right-thinking from any source I find it — the basic American way, after all, is founded in “the free marketplace of ideas”, right?
I still don’t like the Great Commandment; haha. But we could go on more about that, I haven’t addressed all the reasons I don’t like it — but we’ll leave that for another day.
I will continue to read your blog — I’m sure we’ll have more opportunity to debate. :)
PS: thanks for the 9/12 photos in DC — they were awesome!
~Brandon
crap, that still turned out longer than I anticipated… I’m a windbag! (sorry)
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