Making use of religion
Garvey, John
Of several minds: John Garvey MAKING USE OF RELIGION SIMON MAGUS WAS SINCERE Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the Apostles' hands, he offered them money,...
...Tradition in its most subtle and strong sense is the harmony in all of these voices...
...it is instead a surfacing of an eternal truth which happened to take place in Islam...
...much more importantly, Simon thought he could make use of a religious teaching in order to enhance his own power...
...It is meant rather to transform the hearer and user of the language, to bring the hearer into the deepest experience of the church...
...For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity...
...What concerns me about the current use of religion is precisely that it is a use...
...This is, to say the least, a mysterious story...
...But the simple fact put up against ti absolute statement doesn't make th whole edifice crumble...
...It docs not exist for the hearer and speaker of the language as he or she is, presently, to use in a way which underscores the hearer's present status or point of view...
...The problem is that he was still too formed by everything 18 October 1985: 551 which had formed him — all of the habits of thinking and feeling which made him the man he was...
...Acts 8: 18-24 (RSV) THERE IS SOMETHING particularly poignant in the story of the magician Simon, who according to the Acts of the Apostles was neither a bad man nor a manipulation wizard, but a believer who got it wrong...
...Tradition can be seen as a fossilized thing, but it is, when it is living and truly orthodox, a language before which the language's sharer must be humble...
...Right, left, and middle make use of religion...
...Simon's problem was not that he did not want to do what was right, but that his heart was'' not right before God,'' and he was told to repent and pray that "if possible" he might be forgiven...
...And Peter told him, "Your heart is not right before God," and the part of Simon which was in fact on the right track responded with a plea that Peter pray for him, to keep him from the harm that can come from going in the wrong direction...
...Of several minds: John Garvey MAKING USE OF RELIGION SIMON MAGUS WAS SINCERE Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the Apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying "Give me also this power, that anyone on whom I lay my hand may receive the Holy Spirit.'' But Peter said to him, "Your silver perish with you...
...Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you...
...A Christian of the Enlightenment will discover one truth of Christ, and call it essential...
...I was wrong to do that...
...To be honest about the terrible failings of historical Christianity without at the same time buying into the spirit of the age leaves us vulnerable, within a tradition which is no longer seen as imperial and strong but might at last be able to participate in the poverty of Christ...
...But what we have to fear is that money is only one way to buy something...
...It is, in some of the literature I've seen, so cleansed of asceticism and doctrinal force that it couldn't scandalize a Unitarian...
...john garvey 18 October 1985: 553...
...Paul spoke of another...
...There is a danger here, too: "The spirit of the age" can be defined as any of those things with which we are ideologically uncomfortable, from the point of view of a conservative or liberal or left-wing form of Christianity...
...I am writing this a few days after the earthquake in Mexico, which had nothing to do with what the people there had in mind, and has everything to do with the God we have a glimpse of in the book of Job...
...Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me...
...Simon was sincere...
...The problem is that it is not so simple in practice, whether the practice is that of the Buddhist moving West or the Christian moving East...
...Something in him, something which was the seed of whatever Simon was meant to become, was capable of responding to Philip's teaching...
...The point of religious traditions is in part to make us aware of the fact that wanting to do the right thing is not quite the same thing as knowing the right way...
...and where we are not sure in our own experience that something is true, silence is essential...
...good intentions can lead us over cliffs, and a wily approach, if it is headed in the right direction, may serve us better than sincerity...
...From one point of view the argument can be made that the Buddhists in America and the Sufis in England (where they seem to be more popular than they are here) are making good use of a missionary strategy which is echoed by various Christian missionaries in Africa and Asia...
...National Catholic Register...
...There is a disturbing similarity of tone which can be found in the National Catholic Reporter...
...And Simon answered...
...it only shows that what we are dealing with is a harmony of faith, a scries of chords, not a fortress...
...This is easier to say than to live out, because self-deception is a large part of (he human enterprise, and it is too easy to mistake an emotional or self-justifying response to the words of the liturgy for real attention...
...At the moment when he asked if he could buy the power which the apostles had, he no doubt thought he was doing something right, or at the very least was unaware that he was doing anything wrong...
...That something else, that bundle of formed responses which is a great deal of what we consider ourselves, responded with a profound misunderstanding of what the power of God means...
...He was an apparently sincere convert, who responded to Philip's preaching and was amazed, after his baptism, at the great works which attended the preaching of the Gospel...
...We should look for what it is that makes all of the voices forming our tradition a conciliar thing, and we should approach this humbly...
...The only alternative is humility, an honesty about our own unknowing...
...The same ought to apply to Buddhism moving West...
...That God is not one our culture, including our religious or political culture, spends much time on...
...It doesn't have to do with simple monetary gain...
...This could be part of the meaning of Jesus' mysterious lines about making friends with the mammon of iniquity...
...because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money...
...Shouldn't Christianity be stripped of its European fixations when it is presented to people from other cultures...
...nothing of our religion may be used if we are honest...
...I have used tradition myself, pulling the odd fact out of context to prove a point...
...I say nothing of the "us" against "them"' righteousness of The Wanderer...
...His response to Peter is hardly an arrogant one...
...This part should worry us...
...it is hardly the only medium of exchange, even if one of the crudest...
...The humility which our wonderful and horrible universe demands must be absolute...
...The idea that it is possible to go in the wrong direction even if you would like to do the right thing is disturbing to us, and seems profoundly unfair...
...Axios...
...But there was something else in him, and it was capable — with all the best intentions in the world — of being misled...
...It certainly has something to do with his counsel that we be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves...
...It is not a distillate which any one of us can perceive to be right and true...
...It is true that facts can be used to show that absolutist conceptions of truth defined oncc-and-for-all are demonstrably weak...
...You have neither pan nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God...
...Buddhism in America is, compared to Buddhism in Thailand, often a homogenized thing, cleansed of any moral discipline...
...He believed this power was something he could attain...
...There are Sufis who deny that Sufism is really part of the Islamic tradition...
...a medieval Christian will discover another...
...His story has been used through the ages to illustrate the wrongness of buying or selling church offices and blessings, but the meaning is certainly deeper than that...
...But that talk usually aims to reassure us in some way...
...It is also unfair when a blind grandmother hits the roller skate at the top of a flight of stairs — she certainly didn't mean to do that — but it happens in the universe we live in, a universe which believers insist was, in a way none of us can claim to understand, intended...
...At one level, of course, his wrongness was in thinking that the power he sought could be bought...
...This use of religion has cultural and political, as well as religious dimensions...
...We cannot assume that our Commonweal: 552 point of view is more clear than that of someone else in our tradition, nor for that matter should we assume that it is false...
...It is especially mysterious in a time which makes sincerity a virtue and in which good intentions count for so much...
...and Sojourners...
...This sort of talk is much scarier than the sort we arc likely to hear from pulpits...
...The Orthodox belief is that, even granting historical limitations and cultural limitations, the language which becomes the language of prayer and worship can be Spirit-bearing when full attention is paid to it...
Vol. 112 • October 1985 • No. 18
