CONTROVERSIAL QUESTION: on women and spirituality

by Terry 4 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Terry

  Early Christianity largely spread because of the viral nature of political expediency among pagan leaders, rulers and kings whose mothers, daughters and wives had accepted the Christian Faith.
  The wife has the ear. The wife has the influence. The wife has the emotional persuasion. Moral suasion, you might call it. And certainly the long-term influence over children as I mentioned above.

  Women in the Roman empire were ready and willing to embrace the peaceful aspects of christianity after centuries of seeing their sons grow up and die in silly wars. Christinaity was "turn the other cheek." Christianity was pro-family. Christianity was anti-politics.

  Slowly but inexorably it was women who made Christianity a powerful and mighty influence.

  Men retained the power as long as they possibly could by creating marginal status for their christian wives and daughters, but, today we see that women have finally broken through the "glass ceiling" of prejudice and Pauline prohibitions.

  Turn on your tv and visit your local christian bookstore. WOMEN ARE TAKING OVER RELIGION at long last.
  But, STOP!
  Is the female effort to detach male-dominated RELIGION from a comforting closeness to the divine (i.e. SPIRITUALITY)
  an improvement? Is it the next positive step toward healing? Or, is it self-deception and deflection?
  Recovery from a cult can be a time of confusion. How much do we give up and what do we retain?
  *** ***
  Tell me if you disagree with my next bold statement:
  Spirituality is a word designed to fool you into thinking your aren't being RELIGIOUS.
  Think about what Bill Clinton said about smoking pot: "I didn't inhale."
  Think about what Bill Clinton said: "I didn't have sex with that woman.."
  What was he saying in DIFFERENTIATING the way he did?
  It is a semantic dodge.
  Being SPIRITUAL is "not inhaling".
  Being SPIRITUAL is "not having sex with that woman.."
  How splitting hairs solves the problem is an emotional threshold in each person. How close do you get before you ADMIT something to yourself?
  That is what SPIRITUAL is: a semantic dodge and deflection.
  The PROBLEM for most of us is getting straight inside our own mind THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FANTASY WISH-FULFILLMENT and a KEEN SENSE OF REALITY in this life here and now.
  Do we solve our own problems or wait for some fantasy to make them go away?
  Agree? Disagree?

  **** **** ****
  Yes, I'm going to go . . .THERE!
  Remember how Scarlet O'Hara made her dress out of the drapery in Tara?
  I would assert today's women have made SPIRITUALITY out of the drapes in the male-dominated churches!
  What is my chief complaint?
  We live in a real world with genuine problems which begin in the family.
  Just because men are ineffectual assholes doesn't mean the answer is "happy talk.'
  Incense and candles and fuzzy bunny prayers are probably comforting and aesthetically soothing.
  But let's get real: bullshit is bullshit no matter what silverware and crystal you set the table with.

  *** *** ***
  I don't mean to start a war of the sexes with this topic. But, I do want to hear from both men and women
  who have come out of the cult.
  Is clinging to ethereal and numinous framework the healing solution to lives WASTED on pie-in-the-sky-bye and bye??
  Your thoughts, please.
• 

  Terry

  You might want to scan through this article just to get the "flavor" of my premise above:

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/08/women-religious-leaders_n_4922118.html
• 

  Fernando

  In my personal experience, faith and spirituality are opposite and antithetical to religion.
• 

  Terry

  From what I see in the dictionary, the "binding" focus of spirituality is religion.

  Around what idea or toward what end--regardless of one's opinion--the spiritual emotion centers on a concrete value.

  A word that can mean anything means nothing.

  The more GENERAL a thing is the less well-defined.

  Think of the simple word "god."

  You can get almost everybody to agree to express some sort of confidence in "god."

  But, that is an illusion of semantics.

  If you begin to ask specific questions, immediately people who believe divide themselves off into groups.

  There are about 40,000 distinct and separate denomination of Christianity.

  Stop and ask yourself what the DISagreement consists of---if not a separate and distinct specific idea of spirituality in the worship of Jesus.

  Is the Mormon Jesus the same Jesus as the Jehovah's Witness Jesus? No.

  Is the Jehovah's Witness Jesus the same as the Catholic Jesus? No.

  Is the Catholic Jesus the same as the Baptist Jesus? No.

  And so on---keep on going and going and you'll divide up into idea of specificity.

  But, my REAL TOPIC is about WOMEN and spirituality isn't it?

  How did we miss commenting on the role of WOMEN in shaping contemporary ideas into NEW definitions and practices??
• 

  Fernando

  Maybe not exactly what you're after Terry, but I'll give it a crack, until the other half of the world wakes, at which time you may see scores of brilliant posts pouring in.

  Women, I believe are generally more disposed to (promoting) natural spirituality.

  Maybe this is because they are more community, compassion, people and collaboration oriented.

  Men, I believe are generally more disposed to (promoting) religion, war, politics, exploitative commercialism, competition, supremacy and division.

  Men, it seems to me, more easily fail to discern the spiritual dimension - the "hidden" realities behind the physical shadows.

  Men, being low on sixth-sense or intuition (a key component of the human spirit) aggressively demand evidence that will satisfy the lower or base five senses.