Fred Rogers is My Role Model

This morning, a friend posted to Facebook the following question: “What inspires you?” I initially replied with a photo of Donald Trump holding a bible. Of course, I was being bitterly facetious. To my mind, Trump’s Christian pretensions are a grotesque mockery of Christianity and, even more so, of the Christians who support him. But I wasn’t content to leave that as my final answer to my friend’s sincere and serious question. So I followed up by saying:

A more serious reply to your question...is that too many things inspire me to list. But if I seek a common thread in most or all of them, what I find is people being the best they can be physically, intellectually, artistically, athletically, characterologically, "spiritually," and in every other good way possible and being a figurative light in the pandemic darkness of this world. And I've somehow come to view this guy as kind of the patron saint of "light."

I didn’t grow up watching Mr. Rogers. I came along several years before his PBS show did. But if I’d been a young kid when his show graced the airwaves, I’d like to think I would have benefitted from it. I’d also like to think I can still benefit from the shining example Fred Rogers set in videos like the one above and this one and this one.

How so? Well, I think we can all benefit from having inspiring role models in our life. It’s not that we necessarily try to be exactly like our role models. But we can do our best to internalize and manifest their spirit in everything we say and do. And when we encounter challenging circumstances where we aren’t sure exactly how we should proceed, we can ask ourselves what our role model would say or do in that situation.

Christians often ask and have been mocked for asking, “What would Jesus do?” Well, I never saw Jesus. Not in person or on video. But I’ve seen plenty of Fred Rogers. And his gentle voice and loving demeanor fill my mind with the palpable gratitude those Hollywood celebrities displayed during Fred Rogers’ acceptance speech at the daytime Emmy awards. And I want to live what’s left of my life manifesting his spirit in my own unique way.

I’m not sure how to go about doing that. I’ve bottled up a lot of anger and despair in my disappointing life, and I have a tendency to flee from Rogerian earnestness to pseudo-clever irony and caustic sarcasm, and from unconditional positive regard for my fellow humans to angry denunciation and condemnation of their words and deeds.

But I want to stop doing those things. And I’m hoping I have the wherewithal to follow through with my intention while there’s still time even if it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done or ever could do. May the saintly Fred Rogers help light the way out of my darkness.

Hypocrisy

There are so many idiots out there, such as Bill Maher, who take scripture literally, and then attack it for being so literal. As such, when he attacks religion, he is really attacking his own stupidity.
--Gagdad Bob

Don't all Christian churches teach that what the Bible literally says about the nature of Jesus and his purpose on earth is literally and not simply metaphorically true? If so, how is Bill Maher the "barbaric idiot" Gagdad says he is when he accurately characterizes the teachings of institutional Christianity and the beliefs of its members about Jesus?

I agree that there may be something "barbaric" about Maher's blatant mockery of Christian teachings. But don't we find the same "barbarity" in Gagdad's mocking attacks on atheists such as Maher and on Muslims? However, doesn't the barbarity lie not in the criticism of false or dubious beliefs per se, but in the disrespectful if not hateful treatment of the "children of God" who hold them? And when Gagdad disparages another for perpetrating the same misdeeds of which he himself is guilty, doesn't he compound his own barbarity with hypocrisy?

Alan Watts' Skepticism and Mine

I've just posted a four-part series of Alan Watts quotes from his essay Was Jesus a Freak? This is how I understand his essential message:

Those familiar with the history and psychology of religion know that Jesus was one of many who have experienced oneness with Ultimate Reality. Unfortunately, when he talked about this experience, his fellow Jews misinterpreted him to say that he was the only son of the Jewish God as Cosmic Creator-King, and some powerful Jews saw this as blasphemous and used it as an excuse to turn him over to the Romans for execution. After his death, some Jews saw him as the prophesized Messiah as well as God incarnate crucified and resurrected to redeem humankind from its sins. But in understanding Jesus as the one and only God-man who was literally resurrected from the dead, they and the "Christians" who came after them have missed the essential point that they too are just as much "sons"--i.e., of the nature--of God as was Jesus, and in worshiping Jesus as a freak of the supernatural, they have all but denied themselves the opportunity to experience "Christ consciousness" that could kill their false and constricting sense of self and resurrect them to a new and transfiguring sense of their all-encompassing, true Self. They are also inclined to arrogantly see worship of this freaky Jesus as the only truly valid form of religion and the only viable way to salvation envisioned as posthumous eternal bliss in heaven. On the other hand, if they understood Jesus for who he really was and his experience for what it really was, they would understand that Christianity has universal appeal only when it presents Jesus as one of many profound sages cognizant of the identity with Ultimate Reality that we all share, and that those who realize this not only know experientially that the true heaven is right here and now, but they also live more harmoniously with others in this world.

I believe that Alan Watts is right on target with his critique of conventional, institutional Christianity, and I have great difficulty seeing a viable alternative to worshiping the freaky Jesus that would qualify as Christian. For instance, here is the Apostle's Creed:


I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

This creed, which, as I understand it, is officially endorsed or implicitly accepted by most Christian churches in the West, appears to make belief in the literally freaky Jesus paramount. You simply can't be Christian unless you believe that Jesus was a freak of the supernatural.

Now some commentators have suggested to me that Christianity has the potential to grow out of this constricting literalism and its resulting exclusivity that removes it from the living stream of universal, transformative wisdom, and that this growth must come from within Christianity itself, spurred by the great mystics and other realizers of Christianity's higher wisdom and potential for universality. However, I share Watt's skepticism that this can and will ever happen. It seems to me that Christianity is so flawed to the core that it might be better to abandon it than to try to transform it from either within or without.

Soon, I'd like to share with you excerpts from Alan Watts' letter of resignation from the Episcopal priesthood that expresses, with greater eloquence than I could ever hope to muster, his skepticism and mine about Christianity's potential to evolve.

Dispelling the Nongospel of the Freaky Jesus, P. 4

Christianity has universality, or catholicity, only in recognizing
that Jesus is one particular instance and expression of a wisdom which
was also, if differently, realized in the Buddha, in Lao-Tzu, and in
such modern avatars as Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, and, perhaps,
Aurobindo and Inayat Khan. (I could make a very long list.) This
wisdom is that none of us are brief island existences, but forms and
expressions of one and the same eternal "I am" waving in different
ways, such that, whenever this is realized to be the case, we wave
more harmoniously with other waves.
--Alan Watts from Was Jesus a Freak?

Dispelling the Nongospel of the Freaky Jesus, P. 3

So it turns out, alas, that our new breed of Jesus freaks are
following the old nongospel of the freaky Jesus--of the bizarre man
who was unnaturally born and whose corpse was weirdly reanimated for a
space trip into heaven. (One can, of course, interpret these ancient
images in a more profound and nonliteral way...) But to identify
Jesus as the one and only historical incarnation of a divinity
considered as the royal, imperial, and militant Jehovah, is only to
reinforce the pestiferous arrogance of "white" Christianity--with all
the cruel self-righteousness of its missionary zeal. They may,
perhaps, be forgiven for their ignorance, but today, when we are
exposed to all the riches of the world's varying cultures and
religions, there is no further excuse for the parochial fanaticism of
spiritual in-groups.
--Alan Watts from Was Jesus a Freak?

Dispelling the Nongospel of the Freaky Jesus, P. 2

But Jesus had to speak through a public-address system--the only one
available--which distorted his words, so that they came forth as the
bombastic claim to be the one and only appearance of the Christ, of
the incarnation of God as man. This is not good news. The good news
is that if Jesus could realize his identity with God, you can
also--but this God does not have to be idolized as an imperious
monarch with a royal court of angels and ministers. God, as "the love
which moves the sun and other stars," is something much more inward,
intimate, and mysterious--in the sense of being too close to be seen
as an object.
--Alan Watts from Was Jesus a Freak?

Dispelling the Nongospel of the Freaky Jesus

It is obvious to any informed student of the history and psychology of
religion that Jesus was one, of many, who had an intense experience of
cosmic consciousness--of the vivid realization that oneself is a
manifestation of the eternal energy of the universe, the basic "I am."
But it is very hard to express this experience when the only religious
imagery at your disposal conceives the "I am" as an all-knowing and
all-powerful monarch, autocrat, and beneficent tyrant enthroned in a
court of adoring subjects. In such a cultural context, you cannot say
"I am God" without being accused of subversion, insubordination,
megalomania, arrogance, and blasphemy. Yet that was why Jesus was
crucified. In India, people would have laughed and rejoiced with him.
--Alan Watts from Was Jesus a Freak?

Poetry and Scripture

Gagdad Bob was inspired by my recent posts on the Bible and poem deafness to write about "scripture and revelation." I'd like to address some of what he said today.

I am not going to provide a link, because I don't want to needlessly embarrass the person or make them feel self-conscious.

I wouldn't have written about it in the first place if I felt unduly embarrassed or self-conscious about it. Besides, my humble blog could have used the publicity. :-) On the other hand, I don't need a bunch of true-believing proselytizers either.

Basically, the dilemma has to do with an integral-type person who says he does not comprehend Christian scripture, so he must reject it.

I don't "reject" it in the sense of resolutely concluding that it reveals no important truths. But I DO wonder what truths it may reveal and how we can know what they are.

He is particularly appalled by Old Testament stories of God expressing his frustration and disappointment with mankind by effacing them from the planet and starting over. Viewing the situation in wholly humanistic, rationalistic, and literal terms, this person can find no possible justification for God's act of mass-killing. And if we interpret this story in an allegorical way, who's to say that we can't interpret everything else in the Bible in such a way, including, say, the resurrection of Jesus? So this person has jettisoned Christianity entirely, in favor of a more abstract and impersonal Buddhistic notion of God.

What justification IS there when the story's taken literally? What compelling allegorical meaning does it have about any true God? Why should we interpret Jesus' resurrection literally? Do we need to interpret it literally to be "saved"?

Now interestingly, in a subsequent post, this person may have provided a hint of insight into his own spiritual infirmity -- indeed, if that is what it is -- by pointing out that he has never in his life been able to comprehend poetry. He doesn't believe this equates to stupidity, since he certainly understands plain English and has no trouble expressing himself. But when it comes to poetry, he either derives no coherent message or a flat and literal one. He cannot intuit the specifically poetic sense of the poem, which obviously rises above the literal.

This is an excellent summary of my difficulty, except that I said it appears to be true of "most" rather than all poetry I've encountered. I guess the same goes for the Bible. I don't seem to grasp the inner truth of many of its verses, but I think I may understand and even resonate with some of them.

For the whole point about scripture, as far as I am concerned, is that it is not so much the "word of God" per se. Rather, I see it as a message from man to man -- a divinely inspired message from man's higher self to his lower self, expressed in a language that the lower self can comprehend.

If scripture is inspired by God and is "man's higher self" speaking intelligibly to his "lower self," what relation does "man's higher self" have to his "lower self" and to God?

if scripture were purely in the language of the celestial realm from which it arises, man, as he is presently constituted (and certainly ancient man) would not be able to comprehend it.

If man's "higher self" wrote it, didn't it translate this writing from the "language of the celestial realm"? That is, didn't it already understand the "celestial language" before it could express it in scriptural language? If so, why does it need to translate the "celestial" language into something simpler? Why does the "lower self" need to understand it, and can it understand the "celestial language" in any meaningful way from reading the simplified translation?

How do we respond to the person who rejects the entirety of scripture based upon this or that seeming absurdity?

Speaking for myself (and I suspect for many others), I don't "reject the entirety of scripture" based on "this or that" dubious literal passage. I acknowledge that if one looks hard enough, one can probably find "meaning" in virtually every biblical passage, much the way one can "find" objects or even an entire story in every Rorshach ink blot. So, I don't necessarily "reject" any scripture. What I do is question whether parts of scripture that seem incredible on a literal level should be taken that way, even if they're officially supposed to be, and, if some fundamental parts that are supposed to be taken literally are exceedingly dubious when taken that way rather than as allegories, what this means for the entire faith. For instance, if one can legitimately doubt, even if one can't outright dismiss, the unique divinity and resurrection of Jesus, how should this affect our interpretation of scripture as a whole and our allegiance to any Christian church's teachings?

When Scripture is envisaged in its totality it imparts global value and its supernatural character to whomever is not blinded by any prejudice and who has been able to preserve intact the normally human sensibility for the majestic and the sacred."

I may be somewhat "prejudiced" against taking ancient stories of miraculous people and events as actual history, but I don't know that my degree of prejudice in this regard constitutes pathological "blindness." Rather, it seems quite prudent. But what I'd really like to know is what "global value" and "supernatural character" is "imparted" to someone capable of "envisaging" scripture "in its totality." What does this graced person understand about God and Jesus, and how does he feel and live?

Thus, we might say that the "poetic sense" is analogous to the "musical sense" of the sophisticated listener who is able to pull together all of the diverse musical connections as they are deployed in time (i.e., melodically) and space (i.e., harmonically)...While I am unable to appreciate either opera in general or Wagner in particular, that doesn't detract from the deeper point that I am trying to make about scripture and the poetic sense.

If the "poetic sense" is, indeed, "analogous to the musical sense of the sophisticated listener," and most readers of the scripture are no more sophisticated in their poetic sense than most musical listeners are sophisticated in their musical sense, just how well does scripture speak to the "lower self" of most of us, and, if it's truly "divinely inspired," why doesn't it do a better job of speaking to most of our "lower selves" than it seems to?