We recently made some friends who referred us to an organization called LL Research. They are a nonprofit dedicated to discovering and sharing information to aid in the spiritual evolution of humankind. This intrigued us as much as our description of the Lost Sheep Research Fellowship did our new friends, but upon examination we want to distinguish the mission of the Fellowship.
First we want to state we are not entirely new to the examination of world religions, and also we are Christians convinced Jesus is the Son of YHWH, that he was resurrected in a display of the natural cycle of humans (to be resurrected) and that he is the Way, truth and light. We study other religions because we believe the story of the Tower of Babel is fact, and YHWH showed a great deal of wisdom in dividing our languages as he did.
After high school I [Jodson] left home to study in Arizona. I spent weeks researching how different religions expressed their faith. I'd been raised in Southwest Oklahoma with an extremely conservative Christian background. My theology came from infamous preachers like Kenneth Copeland, et. al., so I was actually quite eager to explore other possibilities. What I found was that I couldn't find a narrative as compelling as Jesus for the solution to the sin problem.
Sin is a sticky religious word. So much so, I like to take an atheist perspective to the question of sin. "Who is to say there is anything wrong with the way we behave?" The essence of this question implies the lack of a source for moral standards. Without such a definition, the question muses, we cannot define fact and so are left to our own devices. The argument allows the user to flow through philisophical responses that suit them in the moment and is extremely problematic in establishing patterns of "right" in a society and is frankly unscientific. For example, we know gravity exists, but the graviton particle is absent from view and remains a theory.
Humans are the only real problem humans have in the present day. We have conquered the biosphere and though the geosphere is not fully within our control, we have altered it thoroughly, proving a future is coming where we will direct this planetary feature toward our objectives as well. What hasn't changed much is our ability to control each other. One people or nation hates another and so attempts metaphysical or physical genocide. This happens quite often in macro and micro socioeconomic instances.
To prevent wholesale slaughter we form states which establish laws, raise taxes, armies and secure people within a territory Being mechanical assemblies of people, states can also engage in human violence. Over time, we have learned to engineer states to prevent them from running amok but such programming requires users to be extremely active, leading to constant near brushes with destruction. Daron Acemoglu calls this the Red Queen Effect and likens the dynamic of governments and peoples to a master holding a ferocious beast at the end of a leash. While the beast the government-- offers protection when it can be directed, it also threatens its master-- the people-- and while the struggle can be off-putting to adversaries, a cunning foe might take advantage of it, destroying the nation.
NTARI's goal with the Lost Sheep Research Fellowship is to bridge the syntactic gap caused by the events chronicled in the Gigantomachy, Enmerkar and the King of Aratta and the Tower of Babel. Regardless of cultural norms, the truth is all humans share genetic origins and our global dispersion from that evolutionary emergence resulted in these stories. Our national and ethnic alliances are the result of fearful, prideful and vindictive attitudes born out of the scarcity caused by these same events. To pretend otherwise is to live in willful ignorance of history.
We don't stand in opposition to LL Research, we just realize the differences in our approach to reuniting mankind in theological peace. This process is complicated and we are destined to make mistakes along the way, so we humbly submit the following critique. To start, we do not observe the term "spirit" in the same light. Similar to the word "sin" it is sticky. Spirit carries connotations that mislead the hearer and reader. This is something we found disturbing early on and sought to understand through the science of etymology.
The English "spirit" as a noun means:
the nonphysical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.
those qualities regarded as forming the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period.
As a verb:
convey rapidly and secretly
These definitions led us to search for synonyms of the word because the ideas surrounding it are so polluted with ghosts, and conjurings beyond our understanding. Faith and belief come through observation, and to believe a sinful human (which is every one of us) conveying unfamiliar information, regardless of personal belief, is not faith but gullibility.
There is a lot of room surrounding the word spirit for invention and misinformation. Magic is a term used to describe events we do not understand. The magician is one who causes such events and their activity becomes either entertainment or means to manipulate through fear.
A key theme in the Bible is, "Do not fear,". No religion takes this lightly, even the atheist does not openly exercise fear. Humans often use anger as a mask for this emotion, but its root is the undirected adrenaline caused by uncertainty in the moments immediately following the present. Fear is the body's attempt at prescience--knowing the future through instinct-- and while it is useful in surviving in nature, social constructs often cause the body to misfire on perceived threats.
As a meditation on fear we have thoroughly enjoyed Frank Herbert's Litany Against Fear:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
We often replace the word spirit with character, citing phrases and events like "the spirit of a nation", and "spirit week". The Spirit of Nations was a book published in 1753 by François-Ignace Espiard de la Borde. It examines how a nation's character emerges from the relationship between laws, its physical environment, religion, and political institutions. Similarly, the tradition of spirit week is a hyperbolic display of a school's character. We say all that to say this: we cannot be guided by magic in the science of theology. The divine essence and creative force is already shrouded in uncertainty, why complicate things more? Relying on a concrete definition is to take the scripture literally, which most people do when examining a text, but literal understanding means the reader does in fact understand and is not led astray by missed details in the magic of the text.
While we do agree with many of the actual observations made by LL Research they also come dangerously close to promoting magical ideas. This may be a result of a focus on the beautiful texts of Indian origin which, from our limited experience, carry a much more magical timbre than Christianity-- acknowledging these tones may be the result of translation. This happens with the Bible too. Just visit your local Pentecostal denomination for a lively, rational display.
To prevent this sort of error, scholars of theology study words from the perspectives of multiple translators. A scholar truly bent on understanding rather than relying on the inherent magic of the text, will become dissatisfied with examining the finished sum of someone else's work and begin deciphering words, phrases then whole passages in the language of origin for themselves. That kind of work is akin to mining and requires tools.
For Biblical studies we turn to online tools like Biblegateway.com, Biblehub.com, and for etymologies Abarim-Publications.com. Each of these contain at least one version of the Bible in English, multiple concordances and specialized smaller tools to give users the ability to decipher the meaning of passages, names and words on their own terms based on empirical fact-- what they observe through engagement with the text.
We also use Google Translate when we want to check word roots or questionable interpretations--scholars are humans too. The Google Translate machine is especially useful when we place a word in another language and start deleting characters one at a time from either end, paying attention to if/how that changes the English rendering.
This week, we will be adding embedded concordance links and translation machines like Google Translate to the resource library on the LSRF page to aide chapters in sourcing multiple versions of their theology of study. We will also begin exploring options to supply physical copies by connecting with local congregations dedicated to each book. This is in line with our intent to use scientific theology at LSRF-- the study of how all things lead to the divine essence, the creative character of all.
If you wish to add to a dedicated fund for physical copies of theological works, please give by clicking the campaign button below.
We look forward to studying with you
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