Religion and Change

Should we change simply to suit other people? I would say no, at least generally. 

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not against legitimate and necessary change. Indeed, we cannot become better people if we aren't open to becoming different, even to altering ideas which we may have thought were at the very fiber of our being. But the operative term here is the word simply, in the sense of changing only to satisfy someone else. 

It's fair play to ask: maybe they're the ones who need to change. Maybe you aren't the one who should become different in a given area, but they. That's an important point.

That's the reason I'm skeptical of those who argue that religion should change to fit their worldview. Have they considered, honestly, openly, and fully considered, that maybe they're wrong and religion is right? Because if so, the need to change is on them.

The demand for change simply to suit you may be nothing more than indulgent and selfish. And we should not want to be that.

Being Myself This Morning

For much of the last few years we've heard, ad infinitum if not also ad nauseum, that we need to 'be' ourselves. Notwithstanding that all this actually means is that certain people want me and you to accept certain ways of thought and living which they find agreeable and little more (a rather hollow, selfish, arbitrary and dictatorial mindset on its own terms, frankly, as you may notice that those same folks don't particularly want you to be true to you), it flies in the face of what I remember being taught in the generation before this one. Namely, that we ought to embrace change.

Those familiar with my rants over the years know that I have slight regard for that, uh, I suppose it might be an ideal, either. Those even more familiar with my rants over the years, and I do apologize and feel genuinely sorry for you, know that I don't take kindly to useless phrases and terms. Yet here today I'm giving you two more. Perhaps three.

Exhortations to be yourself have absolutely no meaning outside of context. Neither does any concept of change mean anything worthwhile without the asking and answering of various pertinent questions. 

Be yourself. Well, and I've asked this before, what if you're a jerk, indeed a rather supreme and self satisfied jerk? We tend to ignore that question, and understandably. We would never have urged Adolf Hitler to be himself and follow his dream, would we? So to the point: I'm not convinced that there's an entirely natural 'your self' for which you are, for which you exist. Aren't we always developing to some point? Do not people and events in our lives, quite obviously, direct us in one way or another? Isn't 'yourself' altered by these various forces as they happen upon you? 

Thus, as a practical reality, you seem never to stay the same. Few if any of us are the same at 60 as we were at 20. Things affect us whether we would care for them to or not. And that alters the self. Yet being yourself at its very core indicates that there's an eternal and unchanging self within you. What else can it mean, if we leave being yourself entirely to its own terms?

So it appears we do, and indeed arguably must, be changing. But from what into what? And why? We can't take that to mean we are simply evolving from one blob of cells and matter into another, can we? Don't we want to take shape, to form into something worthwhile? Why wouldn't we?

Of course, the key trouble here is that answering all those questions demands making judgments. Judgments about the good and the bad, the well and the ill. Yet - here he goes again - by modern parlance, we're not supposed to judge. This leaves me with one final issue this morning.

What the hell are we supposed to do then?