Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Something greater

When people talk about believing in something greater than themselves they are usually taken to be alluding to God and religion. But why? Lots of things are greater than you, me and the human race - the known universe and everything that exists, to name but two. We seem strangely reluctant to concede this. In fact most religious teaching is not about something greater than ourselves. It's about other people like ourselves, and how we should deal with them, respect them, take care of them, love them. It's about other people as the object of our ultimate concern.

The Christian message that I was brought up with and came to teach and preach myself was something very like 'God is Other People'. In my declining years, as I drift into irrelevance, this begins to feel constricting and the thirst for 'something greater' remains.

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