LGBTQ+ questions over identity and faith connections

How can I stay connected to my faith when Christian teachings conflict with who I feel I am as a person?

Reply: It is key to realize that your deepest and most abiding identity is not around your sexuality but rather around your relationship with God. That is what is deepest and most abiding and most important about you. So, what is most important is that you're a beloved child of God.

It's only out of that more fundamental identity that you'll come to understand something like your sexuality. [We need to resist] the tendency to say that anyone's sexual identity is what's most basic about them. That is not true. It's that we're a beloved child of God that is what's most basic. That's what the church is fundamentally addressing all the time - how to be a mature child of God.

Here’s another insight:

People who experience same-sex attraction should know that, according to the Bible, they are not condemned for that attraction, any more than a heterosexual person is condemned for experiencing wrong sexual desires.

Both need their sexuality redeemed and all their sins forgiven. Both desperately need Christ and are called to live according to his kingdom.

A final thought:

Whatever personal (human) rights we have are not absolute. In every circumstance of our life we are limited in a variety of ways, whether we are dealing with free speech, or the gamut of conditions under “the right to life, liberty and security of person”.

Our rights are God-given, meaning they arise from the status of each human being as one endowed with qualities – transphysical characteristics – that point to a divine intervention in the history of the development of humans. Therefore, we recognize the fact that “God is God; I’m not”. God has made us in a certain way – in his image – and we are at most peace with ourselves when our behaviour is guided by the attributes of God. Also, the knowledge that God loves us balances any grief we feel because of restrictions on our wayward desires.

If anyone has a response to this post, write a comment. Complex matters demand thorough discussion.

Suffering and other acts of growth

With the Covid-19 virus continuing to cause upheaval both among nations and individually, the importance of accepting suffering in our life is gaining renewed attention. This attention is using the new experience of suffering to build on the realisation of people who have come through severe suffering in their life that the experience was formative, spurring growth and maturity. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung has left us with this conclusion from his studies:

A life of ease has convinced everyone of all the material joys, and has even compelled the spirit to devise and better ways to material welfare, but it has never produced spirit. Probably only suffering, disillusion, and self-denial do that.

Researchers from Bath University in England last year were surprised to find that 88.6% of the participants in their study identified positives arising from the pandemic. "The majority (74%) of respondents were working exclusively from home, and almost half reported a reduction in income. Most of their children (93%) were home taught, and 19.5% of them reported having a family member with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection." 

Despite these burdens, participants reported "improved relationships, a greater appreciation of life, discovering and embracing new possibilities, and positive spiritual change". From this outcome, researchers were able to gain insights into what is categorised as "post-traumatic growth".

Mental health counselor GinaMarie Guarino explains:

Trauma has a lasting impact on a person, but it is a misconception that you cannot recover from or grow from trauma. Post-traumatic growth comes from overcoming challenges that you may experience in reaction to trauma and learning from the recovery process.

Self-denial and personal discipline, though partly forced upon a person by the dificult circumstances of the pandemic, can foster a person's ability to both look beyond inconvenience and more deeply consider the needs of others. Guarino puts it this way:

The removal of distractions helped many people reconnect with family and focus on their life goals and career aspirations.

Paul Stallard, professor of child and adolescent mental health at Bath University, says of his research:

It’s important to share the findings to provide a more balanced story about COVID-19. There are lots of news stories about the negative effects on mental health but people are also identifying some benefits out of this difficult situation.  

"Most of what we learn that has any value arises out of our own personal experiences", according to Stephanie Dowrick, a writer and explorer of Christian and Buddhist spirituality. "And often what we learn from, because they are so tenacious and difficult to escape, are our experiences of suffering". 

What suffering does that books, or conversation, or observing others, do not do is that it "knocks our corners off".

Suffering does that. Through tearing us down, and forcing us to think about what really does matter, it offers an irreplaceable opportunity to see things through the wisdom of the heart as well as of the mind. 

Finally, in her book Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love Dowrick points out that deciding to rise above the suffering that each person's life delivers makes "sublime good sense" whereas not doing so puts a person on a path to "inner bleakness". 

All of this has its echoes in Jesus' words just before his crucifixion: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

It's an intriguing snippet of information that the advice "Be not afraid" occurs a total of precisely 365 times in the Old and New Testaments. 

Grasping at an understanding of the universe

                                                                                     Courtesy of PBS Learning Media

On the occasion of a recent startling discovery one astrophysicist exclaimed that it's a great time to be studying the universe because there was so much to learn about "the cosmos and the exotic and extreme objects that exist". Reporting on the discoverythat evoked that excitement, Marina Koren at The Atlantic relates how astrophysicists are puzzled by new findings on the Cygnus X-1 black hole. 

[When...] a team of researchers directed their attention to it a few years ago, they noticed something weird. According to their recently published findings, the black hole, the [stellar] system’s main attraction, is much more massive than they thought. Which is particularly strange because, based on what astronomers currently understand about these kinds of objects and the way they form, this black hole probably shouldn’t exist.

Koren continues her report on the findings, published in Science, The Astrophysical Journal, and here, by pointing out:

Black holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the universe, in our own Milky Way galaxy and many light-years beyond, and they often surprise the researchers trying to understand them. [In this case, ] a familiar black hole showed it still has secrets. The accidental discovery is a reminder that astronomers are still trying to understand some of the most basic forces in our galaxy. 

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There are still many unknowns, and even the most familiar objects, like Cygnus X-1, can still confound scientists. The latest research updates the black hole’s size from 15 times the mass of our sun to 21 times that of our sun. To the untrained eye, this is a small, almost negligible, jump. But to astronomers, the revised estimate means they must revisit their theories on massive stars and the black holes they become. 

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Astronomers thought, based on what they understood about stellar metallicities—a gorgeous term for the abundance of heavy metals in massive stars—that the biggest black hole an environment such as the Milky Way could produce would max out at about 15 times the mass of our sun. The existence of Cygnus X-1 suggests that this fundamental fact of our galaxy is incomplete. 

In summary, Koren writes, "attempting to decipher black holes can often feel like a game of galactic whack-a-mole. 'Every time you have some new bit of information, or answer one question,' [a team member] said, 'three more appear.'”

Postscript: From the Eurekalert website we get these reasonable comments from the leader of the Cygnus X-1 team, Professor James Miller-Jones from Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research:

Studying black holes is like shining a light on the Universe's best kept secret - it's a challenging but exciting area of research.

As the next generation of telescopes comes online, their improved sensitivity reveals the Universe in increasingly more detail, leveraging decades of effort invested by scientists and research teams around the world to better understand the cosmos and the exotic and extreme objects that exist. It's a great time to be an astronomer!

Near-death experiences and the spiritual realm

 A new book is out in which a psychiatrist relates what he has found from a long investigation into what sometimes happens to those at the point of death. Bruce Greyson, now a professor emeritus in psychiatry at the University of Virginia, tells an interviewer how, a month into his psychiatric training, in the 1960s, he had been “confronted by a patient who claimed to have left her body” while unconscious on a hospital bed, and who later provided an accurate description of events that had taken place “in a different room”.

 This made no sense to him. “I was raised in a scientific household,” he says. “My father was a chemist. Growing up, the physical world was all there was.” 

“It was a common phenomenon.” He became fascinated by the qualities of the episodes and the questions they raised, including perhaps the biggest of all: what actually happens when we die? “I plunged in,” he says. “And here I am, 50 years later, [still] trying to understand.”

Over the years, he has collected hundreds of near-death experiences, he says, either from people who, aware of his research, have volunteered their stories, or from patients who happened to have episodes in hospital. 

Of those patients he interviewed, about one in five had had an experience. His book is titled After, and it contains accounts of many experiences. "Most episodes involve  feelings of wonder, mental clarity and bliss, Greyson says."

His interviewer draws from him information on what makes this kind of experience so fascinating. This is whether there is evidence of a "transphysical" or "transcendent" element beyond the physical brain.

When I ask Greyson why he decided to publish After now, after all these years, he explains that “we had to wait until we had enough knowledge about near-death experiences to be able to understand what was going on,” by which he means not that we know what NDEs are, but that advances in science have allowed us to rule out a heap of things they are not. “There are physiological hypotheses that seem plausible theoretically,” he says, but none have stuck. Are feelgood chemicals, like endorphins, released into the body at the point of peril, creating euphoria? Does the brain become starved of oxygen, prompting real-seeming fantasies? Do various areas of the brain suddenly begin to work in concert to create strange, altered states? Nobody knows for sure. “We keep thinking, ‘Oh it’s got to be this,’” Greyson says. “No, the data doesn’t show that. ‘Oh, this then?’ Well, nope, the data doesn’t show that, either.”

Later in the article:

In After, Greyson writes: “I take seriously the possibility that NDEs may be brought on by physical changes in the brain,” though he also accepts that the mind might be able to function “independent” of it. There have been reports of people experiencing near-death episodes while their brains are inactive, he says, and “yet that’s when they say they have the most vivid experience of their lives.” This doesn’t make sense to him. Partway though our conversation, he asks: “Are these the final moments of consciousness? Or the beginning moments of the afterlife?”

The article provides a sampling of explanations for near-death experiences. Greyson seems to hold that they are more than the product of the brain. The article goes on:

Greyson knows that events in near-death experiences are impossible to corroborate. “We can’t do research on a deity,” he says, drily. But still, he finds it tough to dismiss wackier theories, even if the data isn’t there. When I ask him what his current logical understanding is, he looks resigned. “It seems most likely to me that the mind is somehow separate to the brain,” he says, “and, if that’s true, maybe it can function when the brain dies.” Then he adds, “But if the mind is not there in the brain, where is it? And what is it?”

Further:

To Greyson, the impact near-death experiences have on people’s lives has been his most surprising discovery. “I make a living by trying to help people change their lives,” he says. “It’s not easy to do. But here I’ve found an experience that, sometimes in a matter of seconds, dramatically transforms people’s attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviours.” Often, these changes persist over decades. In most instances, experiencers realise they are no longer afraid to die, which “has a profound impact on how they live their lives”, because “you lose your fear of life as well – you’re not afraid of taking chances.” Greyson sometimes asks people to describe their partners before and after an event, “and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, this isn’t the person I married; this is someone different.’” He adds, “They see a purpose in life they didn’t see before. I don’t know of anything else that powerful.”

The final paragraphs contain telling conclusions about Greyson's insight into the spiritual capacity of the human person:

I ask if Greyson’s research has changed the way he thinks.

“I don’t think it’s changed me in terms of my relationships with other people,” he says, “except it’s made me more accepting, more open to unusual ideas.” As a psychiatrist, he remains “aware of what it means to be psychotic”, but, he says: “I’m more accepting of unusual thoughts that aren’t crazy, and it’s made me much more conscionable with the unknown.

“I grew up without any kind of a spiritual background,” he continues. “And I’m still not sure I understand what spiritual means. I am convinced now, after doing this for 40, 50 years, that there is more to life than just our physical bodies. I recognise that there is a non-physical part of us..."

That recognition can also be derived by the findings of Dr Janice Holden's assessment of 39 near-death experience studies in her Handbook of Near-Death Experiences (2009), where she found that there was a great deal of accuracy (83 per cent of the cases surveyed) in what the patients reported, and this was using strict criteria. In Spitzer's words (2015) commenting on Holden's findings :

It is difficult to believe that this degree of verifiably accurate reporting, which occurred at a time when there was no electrical activity in the cortex, can be attributed to a physical or physiological cause.

In view of this fact, as well as many of the reported incidents reached beyond human capabilities of the patient, it is not unreasonable to conclude that these perceptions (as well as the self-consciousness that accompanied them) existed independently of bodily function and could therefore persist after death.

The publisher provides these endorsements of Greyson, whom it states is "the world's leading expert on near-death experiences":

"Captivating…a major contribution to the study of what happens when we die, and will quickly prove to be a classic in near-death studies." —Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D., author of Life After Life.

"Dr. Greyson’s work has the potential to completely change our fractured and confused world, offering insights that may lead to an explanation of the nature of consciousness." —Eben Alexander, M.D., bestselling author of Proof of Heaven.

"A major international book of lasting value." —Alexander Batthyány, Ph.D., professor of Philosophy and Psychology, International Academy of Philosophy, Liechtenstein Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute, author of Mind and Its Place in the World.

After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond. St Martin's Essentials (a Macmillan company) 2021

What Genesis really means in the modern era

Wired.com

The biblical book of Genesis is often at the forefront of discussion about the origin and nature of humankind. But Genesis is poorly understood, even among those educated within the Judeo-Christian civilisation, even among churches, especially those outside the mainstream. 

Scholarly scrutiny of the the language and culture of the biblical world is a relatively new field of study. The mainstream churches have largely kept pace with this, but those who follow Martin Luther and his contemporary rebels in upholding a literal reading of the text have been left floundering.  Those churches that have maintained adherence to the principled traditions of historical Christianity have been open to the light shed on scripture by literary scholarship and so have been able to learn how God's message to humankind is conveyed in the Bible by means of the language and culture of each writer. God inspires the writer to capture theological truths, not  necessarily scientific truths.

A valuable account of how Genesis should be read has been given by the Catholic Archbishop of Singapore, William Goh. In expressing the Catholic viewpoint, his main point is this:

The account of creation is certainly not historical or scientific in today’s terms.  The book of Genesis presents to us two different accounts of the creation story.  It is not concerned with the question of how creation came about.  The author is not interested in physics or the question of evolution.  These are not the questions of the author.  So if we read the creation story to discover some scientific truths with regard to how creation came about, we would be disappointed or worse still, impose on the authors our understanding of how creation came to be.  

Rather, the purpose of the creation story is to reveal to us the theological truths of creation.  They reveal to us who we are, our identity and place in creation, our relationship with God and with the rest of creation.  Most of all, they reveal to us the divine plan of God for humanity, which is to share in His life and love.  But [Genesis] involves taking us into the mystery of God’s creation, evoking wonder; and contemplating His majesty, evoking adoration.

[Therefore], the author does not seek to explain creation.  He is certainly aware that it is contradictory to speak of creation of the sun and moon (Gn 1:14-16) when light was already created on the first day.  (Gen 1:3) Furthermore, how could we speak of the first and subsequent day when sun and moon were only created on the fourth day, a day implying sunrise and sunset?

 The author wants us to know that light is not even dependent on the sun and the moon.  Indeed, if God is the creator of the world, when was darkness created? It seems to pre-exist before creation and so too the water!  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  (Gen 1:1f) Clearly, the author is not dealing with the questions of science, the “how” of creation but the “why” of creation.  Science deals with the “how”, theology deals with the “why.” The creation story is meant to lead us to God, the mystery of all mysteries.  

Yet even in the mystery of creation, there is a certain order and contingence. God placed some kind of order in creation itself.  Hence, the author speaks of creation in stages.  There are natural laws in place to protect creation.  The author describes creation as systematically structured around the theme of six days, concluding with the seventh.  Indeed, God is seen to bring order and form into creation gradually, moving from preparation on the first three days to completion in next three where He then created the sun and moon, followed by the birds and fish; and then vegetation and living creatures.  The climax was reached with the creation of human beings, male and female in His image.  (Gn 1:27) Creation therefore has its own natural laws.  Indeed, there can be no science if there is no rationality in the created world.

The question is, where does this order in creation come from?  There must be a Mind controlling and ordering creation.   It cannot be nature itself.  Someone must have put order into creation.  Even for us human beings, where does our reason come from, if not the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God?  In other words, the author wants us to arrive at this truth, that the entire creation is dependent on God.  God is the Reason in creation.  This is why, in the creation account, the world is created by the Word of God. 

Each day of creation is prefaced by the words, “God said …”  The Word is the Logos, the divine reason for creation.  St John speaks of creation as coming from God through Christ.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  (Jn 1:1-3) St Paul in his letter to the Colossians, wrote of Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him.  He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  (Col 1:15-17) 

The questions that arise about the nature of humans, questions spurred these days especially by the findings of astrophysics and neuroscience, are only the latest that have been intriguing thinkers for millennia. Over the centuries, Christians battled whatever offended reason but have taken on board may have been useful insights into the human predicament and our relationship with God:

Since the beginning, the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #285) 

As to the scientific studies of the modern era:

The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity, or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called "God"? And if the world does come from God's wisdom and goodness, why is there evil? Where does it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is there any liberation from it? (284)

Such matters are not to be passed over lightly, because they give rise to the basic questions that people throughout history have asked themselves: 

"Where do we come from?" "Where are we going?" "What is our origin?" "What is our end?" "Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?" The two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions. (282)

NOTE: Archbishop Goh's reflections are not archived. His latest are at this website: https://www.catholic.sg/archbishop/scripture-reflection/ 

Salvador Dali and the beauty of science Part II

Salvador Dali produced breathtakingly original works of art. What makes him all the more interesting is how he combined his religious belief with care over scientific principles that he incorporated in his work.

See this blog’s examination of this fascinating aspect of Dali’s intention to reflect the wonder of the world through the mathematical design of a piece or the imagery deployed. For example, the complexity of juxtaposed images and the perspective shown is clear from this work, The Ascension:

Are we witnessing the splitting of an atom or activity of a human cell? One answer:

What we do know is that directly behind the ascending Christ figure are the florets of a sunflower – a natural design by which Dali was intrigued, because its continuous circular pattern follows the laws of a logarithmic spiral – a naturally occurring phenomenon he also found in the horn of a rhinoceros and the morphology of a cauliflower.

That comment refers, of course, to Phi, the golden matrix, that figures in so much of the natural world. For more on that topic, refer to this book The Golden Ratio – The Divine Beauty of Mathematics, which is by Gary Meisner, creator of the Phi website .

Drawing for Crucifixion

However, the “divine beauty” of Dali’s works, based on his use of mathematics, receives attention in the United Kingdom’s Guardian website here. The article points out that:

"The study for Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) shows how he explored a depiction of the cross as a tesseract, a hypercube with eight cubical cells, which is thought to have been inspired by the work of the 16th-century Spanish mathematician and architect Juan de Herrera."

A conclusion to be drawn from Dali’s practice is that art and science are embellished by religious belief, not diminished – and vice versa.

The human cost of technological 'progress'

Facebook and Google have been centres of attention over the past week, not because of accomplishments but because of the insights provided as to how top-echelon enterprises fail in the moral or social spheres.

Under the headline “Facebook’s news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web”, Jennifer Grygiel, Assistant Professor of Communications (Social Media) & Magazine, News and Digital Journalism, at Syracuse University, writes, “Just because advanced technology exists doesn’t mean it’s helpful in all situations or good.”

After the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre of 51 Muslim worshippers in 2019, Grygiel was also able to identify where technology breakthroughs can have a devastating impact on society. The point of her article at that time is summed up in the headline, “Livestreamed massacre means it’s time to shut down Facebook Live”.

As to Google, it has been hauled over the coals since late last year for being more concerned over profit than the welfare of its staff and the true good of the public. The strife has been articulated by a Guardian journalist in this way:

“Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly write about the negative effects of technology and offer unflattering perspectives on their employer’s products.”

Therefore, as a particular technology begins to hold sway in society it certainly is a fruitful exercise for the principal players to stand back and offer a transparent view for all to see and understand what kind of difficulties are arising. Those difficulties have to be taken seriously.

In a simple form, “multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Social media may promote negative experiences such as: Inadequacy about your life or appearance.” This last point seems to be especially true for girls.

From a wider perspective, there is growing interest in the “’rules, norms and governance’ that should be applied to social media and technology companies”.

In the same way, the personnel working at developing technology, whether in the medical field or agriculture to name but two areas of concern, must have focused attention individually on the ethics of the direction they are taking. They must decide where the common good lies.

Taking such steps follows in the path of the 70 Manhattan Project scientists who signed nuclear pioneer Leo Szilard’s petition imploring President Truman not to use on Japan the atomic weapons they had developed. Unfortunately, Truman never got to see the petition before he made his decision to reject realistic alternatives and to kill in the order of 200,000 civilians.

With technology these days having an impact so widely and quickly, there's a clear case that all the smarts and beauty of technology do not negate the need to be alert as to the consequences of what can be done. There's conflict in working out where the boundaries of technological and scientific activity lie, but it is imperative that we accept that not everything that can be done should be done. 

After the populations if Hiroshima and Ngasaki were annihilated, Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project, told Truman, "I have blood on my hands".