Creed, Christ, Doorway
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Creed, Christ, Doorway
By
Jay B. Gaskill
Doorways differ from holes. Doorways invite, enclose and potentially exclude. Holes are passageways to and from…somewhere.
“Spirituality” - in that general, New Age usage sense - exploits ‘holes” in the human experience, noetic “portholes”, if you will, through which all sorts of states of “consciousness” (altered or not) can pass.
But the world’s creedal religions use doorways.
These are metaphorical doorways; they function to open into, protect and define our species’ communities of shared belief. The creeds of the world’s great creedal religions map the boundaries of the “commonality zones”; in effect they outline the shared moral and spiritual territory inhabited by all those who are willing to cross the threshold.
Our species’ common moral ground is itself a creed. Yes, it does exist.
This century's intelligentsia seems to have great difficulty locating any common spiritual and moral territory, let alone being able to reside there. It is as if our post-modern and modern intellectuals are aboard ships without compasses, tossed by the withering currents of modernism, lost in the post-modern fog.
Jews and Christians occupy that common ground defined and hallowed by the profound Event of Creation and the revelation of the Moral Law to and by Moses. Christians are also defined by a New Event (a Divine Aftershock, if you will) that took place in First Century Palestine - the Jesus Event, in which the essence of the Torah tradition was opened up to the world. This was a historical perturbation that reverberated through all subsequent history, the implications of which inspired a common creed (or at least the necessity of arriving at one) for all Christians, a creed of ancient provenance.
This is a sketch of my personal reconciliation with creedal religion in general and an account of my latter day attachment to creedal Christianity in particular. And it is the account of why I opened the door.
For the entire piece – with graphics - go to this link:
http://jaygaskill.com/CreedChristDoorway.pdf
