Transcript Becoming a Woman of Faith

Becoming a Woman of Mature Faith
Dr. King
Spring 2012
Meaning of Becoming a
Woman of Faith?
 A Proposal:
 Moving from one stage of life to the next ultimately
involves a re-shaping of one’s worldview
 View of what?
 Everything!
 God, humanity, your faith, beliefs, your self-image
Opening Questions: Essential
 What is the nature of Faith?
 What is Spirituality?
 How are the two related to each other?
 Why is it often so difficult to have faith
today?
 *Are social (cultural); psychological,
and developmental reasons
Other Questions
 What does it mean to have a Christian
faith and spirituality?
 What does it mean to become an adult
(with a mature faith?)
 Is God dead, or just hiding?
 All challenging questions that are
central to course
Why is Faith Often Difficult?
 Society and Culture don’t help
 Cultural assumptions deeply influence how
we imagine and understand our faith
 Human sciences (psychology, sociology,
history) have a lot to say on faith
 Have to understand the social and cultural
forces affecting us
Three Critics of Religion
 Who are the three great critics of
religion in the 20th century and what do
they say?
 While each makes some valid
observations, they also appear to
misunderstand or undervalue nature of
religious experience
Masters of Religious Criticism:
Religion is…?
 Freud: a wish/fantasy, neurosis: God
becomes a great Father-in-the-Sky
 Marx: an opiate for the masses keeping
people subservient and controlled
 Niche: prevents people from developing a
personally mature morality
 Each thought religion (formal, institutional
form) was on way out
What is culture?
 The total context that shapes us all
 We are both created and shaped by it
 Is a transmitted pattern of meaning
 All living in ‘webs of significance’ we
are not always aware of
Contemporary Culture?
Different names: High Modern? Late
Modern? Post-modern?
 Needs to be contrasted with a
premodern and modern cultural
perspectives
 *All are present today and deeply
affect our faith
Three
World
View
Perspectives
Premodern
Modern
Postmodern
-Mythic View (magical
imagination)
-faith in God and his
representative (Pope,
King); institutions
-sense of the sacred
-sense of destiny
-respect for past and
tradition
-communal
-humans/world seen as
sinful and fallen
-belief in universal
laws/truths
-Scientific View
-faith in reason and
rationalism
-Loss of the sacred
-individual choice
- human/world seen as
basically good
-sense of future and
progress (rejected past)
Belief in universal
laws/truths
-Man placed at top and
center in place of God
-Relativistic View
-faith in self
(experience)
-aware of limits of
knowledge
-sense of cynicism,
disunion, of things
falling apart
-relational nature of all
knowledge
-basic distrust of
institutions and
metanarratives (?)
Strengths and Weaknesses of Each
 Key points: 1) All still exist in different ways; 2) each has strengths and
weaknesses; value and truth
 Premodern
 Strengths: respect for past, tradition, sense of sacred, place for God
(Transcendent)
 Weaknesses: tends to superstition, distrust of reason; religious
violence; little sense of Other
 Modern
 Strengths: committed to reason and rationalism: scientific
approach
 Weaknesses: loss of sacred; excessive individualism; tend to idolize
science and reason
 Postmodern
 Strengths: awareness of relational nature of all things; possibly
more open to the sacred and divine; new appreciation for the limits
of science and technology;
 Weaknesses: danger of slipping into moral relativism and nihilist
Influences on Contemporary
Christian Spirituality
 Signs of the Times:
 1) Psychological: most dominant, and
overwhelming influence on spirituality
 2) Postmodern: sense of:
 dis-union, fragmentation, cynicism
 distrust of all institutions, sense of
everything falling apart, moral
relativism, ecological crisis
Influences on Contemporary
Christian Spirituality
 3)
Globalization
 Powerful market forces: TNC’s more
powerful than governments
 Commoditization of everything
including religion and spirituality
 Global apartheid: deep and lasting
structures that maintain unjust
distribution of wealth and services
Influences on Contemporary
Christian Spirituality
 4) Technology
 Virtual reality: computers, cell-
phones, internet, social networks:
leads to pervasive fragmentation of
consciousness
 Effects of computer use changing
how our brains work
Impact on Spirituality Today?
 Leads a superficial, self-centered
individualism
 Weakens community-forming forces
 Creates an artificial split between
religion and spirituality
 What should response be?
 Where is faith today?
Assumptions
 God attracts us to Him/Her
 We need only to be willing
 Journey to adulthood a process of
transforming from unlikeness to
likeness to God (?)
 Term ‘Spirituality’ most over-used,
general, and misunderstood term
What does it mean to be
‘Spiritual’?
 When you express in action what you
believe
 an all-encompasing vision for life
 *What faith looks like when its lived
 When your values, visions, beliefs are
in congruence
Meaning/Relevance of God?
 For Christians, spirituality centered on
love, as demonstrated by Jesus
 Involves:
 developing a dialogical relationship
between one’s Inner and Outer world
Our vision of God?
 Often too small, too limited
 God is both The Question and Answer
 God is:
 The Mystery we live
 That which pushes us towards our
True Self, and, ultimately, to
transcend this Self (?)
 Premodern:
 Is hierarchical with God and his representative at the
top
 characterized by a deep respect for authority, the past,
and tradition
 It is communal rather than individualistic
 It’s morality is characterized duty to universal laws and
absolutes
Quiz: Rolhheiser’s Paschal
Spirituality
 1. What are the 2 kinds of death Rolheiser identifies?
 2. What is the difference between the two?
 3-7. What are the five stages of the Paschal journey
 8. What is at center of a Christian spirituality,
according to Rolheiser?
 9. What is essential for a mature spirituality and faith?
Rolheiser’s Paschal Journey?
 1. Good Friday (Death)
 2. Easter Sunday (Resurrected Life)
 3. 40 Days (Transitional Period: adjusting to New Life)
 4. Ascension (Letting Go: of Old Life)
 5. Pentecost (New Spirit descends, grows)
Tuesday’s With Morrie
 How is Rolheiser’s five parts to the Paschal Journey
and achieving a mature paschal spirituality illustrated
in the movie?
 What new insights did Morrie’s journey to death give
you about how to live your life more meaningfully,
more joyfully?