Sacred writ

If you have a holy book that you cherish, it is almost certainly connected to some religion or another. It’s very important that a holy book have sound and adequate morals that it conveys. It’s very important to pay attention to the valid moral elements of the holy writ, and not to take its message too much out of context.

In the case of the Bible, for instance, it’s best to keep in mind its unique context in history, also to consider how modern politics have shifted in ways that demand further interpretation of the spirit of the work, and to stay away from falling into the quagmire of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is an aggressive interpretation of scripture and/or religion that takes excerpts out of context and/or has a tendency to focus on the wrong points. Looked at in-depth, fundamentalism often becomes indistinguishable from superstition, and at that point, it usually carries no philosophy whatsoever. Superstition beggars belief.

Another way that fundamentalism can creep in is when something entirely out of context is selected from a sacred writ and applied to the reader’s life or the contemporary world without a clear connection to the moral message of the scripture. Again, to use the Bible as an example, it is particularly rewarding to read entire chapters in order to complete one book at a time rather than read random excerpts, and to pay close attention to the spirit of the work and its moral message in context (though this would be less applicable in the case of Psalms, for instance). Many people actually use the Bible for divination (instead of using the tarot, for instance) by flipping through it randomly and applying whatever text their eyes land on to their current situation or whatever question they’re focusing on. This is not equivalent to Bible study, and tends not to convey the same things a complete book of the Bible communicates.

Certain kinds of fundamentalists have promoted the idea that Earth is about 6,000 years old, and others have promoted the idea that we can use ancient imagery talking about time and its vagaries to conclude we have to wait hundreds of thousands of years to reach the Satya Yuga. Both theories can be disheartening. In truth, humans in general have never been as good at calendars as we are now, and old scriptures are at their best when we interpret them responsibly and deftly.

──── by Lync Dalton ────

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