What say you, Interwebs?

[clarentine]

Posit: faith is submission.

Discuss.

(Yes, this is pertinent, and I do want others' opinions on the subject, preferably those of people who consider themselves to have religious faith.)

Comments

[clarentine]

So, I can conceive of and even (a bit) understand a faith that has an external structure and derives all its benefit for the object of faith (with overlap onto the officers of the Church.) I suppose one benefit for the faithful there was the chance to maybe not go to Hell, if you'd made God happy enough with your faith...

Do you suppose it's possible to realistically have a faith where the reason for faith is to benefit the worshipper? Or is that just me, the non-joiner, being confused about why people join groups that don't benefit them? That's the crux of this inquiry, I guess - I get structure and why it exists, but I don't get faith, and I had to go and write this novel where considerations of faith are at the heart of the conflict. Argh! *g*

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

The varieties of faith that either don't benefit the believer, or only benefit the believer indirectly, are confusing as all heck to me, too, and I grew up in one.

What I have now is a faith that benefits me, and if it benefits what I believe in, it is as a side effect of what it does for me. The reason I believe what I believe is because it provides me with multiple positive benefits, answers my questions about the world and my place in it (another really important part of faith, btw,) and provides, as a side effect of my faith, benefit to the world around me.

Only so far as the world is divine does my faith benefit what I worship... there is no direct benefit paid out to any external structure/church thingy. No tithe, no obedience, and I look to no outside authority when making decisions.

Now, the reason why structures like the Church have lasted as long as they can are rooted in human psychology. We are joiners, usually, and love to be part of a group. The Church (speaking of the early Church, the Catholic one, that influenced all later churches and the basic structure (ha ha) of western civilization) seems to have been almost designed from the start to have a very strict hierarchy and rigid dogma -- two ingredients necessary to wind up with a religion that delivers the benefit of faith not to the believer, but to someone else within the structure.

The early Church as a hierarchal organization grew out of Paul, who was Roman, and therefore very familiar with the social/political set up of Rome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity for more details, and some of the interesting history.

(there I go, history geek and philosophy geek melding into one big anthropological geek fest...)

And now, psychology geek as well! Humans are joiners, like I said, and we love to be a part of the 'in crowd'. Especially when joining the in group gets you something cool. And if joining the in group, doing what they say, and working your way up the ranks gets you even more cool stuff, well! Hierarchies are perpetuated because humans like to be special; one way to feel special is to be able to look down on someone else.

You look down on the unbelievers, on the people who got it wrong, on the newcomers, on the lower ranked ones... and the fuel for the fire that keeps people in the church is envy. Humans want to move up in the ranks, we want what they have, and will put up with a lot of crap to get it... we'll even be submissive to charismatic leaders who tell us it's for our own good, who tell us to send them our money, time, effort, and to go march to war and die for them, just because we want something 'better'.

Add in the wonderful carrot and prod that are heaven and hell, and you've got the perfect storm of self perpetuating hierarchal structures. Now the highly ranked leaders don't even have to deliver a tangible benefit to their followers -- if you truly believe you'll get your reward (or punishment) when you die. Meanwhile, don't forget to tithe...

So, with the rise of Protestant faiths, the Victorian eras' prudishness, the Puritans, Luther and his rant he nailed to a door... you wind up with lots and lots of competing religions, and faiths, that all deliver pretty much the same benefit to the believer.

A benefit that isn't even tangible anymore. You get the security of belonging, the 'high' of being righteous, the right to look down on others, the hope of a reward later on, oh, and community. You get a sense of community. Your fellow believers may chip in to help you out in a crisis.

One more thought, then I'll stop geeking out for a bit...

The Church (capital C again), or rather, someone in the church, figured out that in order to keep people focused on that intangible reward instead of on a real world here and now reward, they'd have to make the mere idea of a here and now reward or benefit from faith into something heretical. Thence arose all the orders that do the 'mortification of the flesh', and the idea of the 'righteous poor'. While, of course, the upper echelons profess to poverty, and dine on china and sleep on silk. Because it belongs to the Church, and therefore to God, and so glorifies God, not the head currently sleeping on that silk pillow... of course.

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

I tend to get a bit bitter in tone when I start talking about 'Church' stuff, so I hope I kept most of it out this time. If I didn't, sorry 'bout that; just chalk it up to disillusionment with what the Church could have been, and what humans made it.

:)

[clarentine]

Nah, I get that - I grew up in the South, too, and I have my own deep suspicions of all things Church.

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I just found this: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all/1

which if you extrapolate from a scientists' belief in their hypothesis, to a 'true believers' faith... is really interesting, from a neuroscience point of view. :)