The Slippery Spirit

Before I can exorcise all the gook in my head that created this thesis, I have to define the Western Religious Tradition (WRT). To be simplistic, it is all of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. But the definition actually goes more deeply than that, because these faiths occupy a dominant position in the West. They influence the greater morality of our western society in a way that is largely unseen, or at least not very obvious. They all originated from the same concept that God made the material universe because he is a mega-powerful spirit-being. The material universe, as a creation, is separate from that which is spiritual. It is a difficult place we have to experience for a short time so that we can get the heck out of here - to a paradise - which is better than this material world here. This kind of eschatology spread throughout the Ancient Near East. Once a part of the faiths that originated there, it became incorporated into our deeper morality and eventually our legal syste...

We have all encountered obsessed Christians. (I don't write this post to be anti-Christian. The Christian doctrine of proselytization makes the obsessed, pushy kind very visible and annoying, which helps me make my point in this post.) We have all been trapped by the awkwardness of their guerrilla preaching. They have backed us into corners, trapped us at supermarket checkout lines, caught us at the mailbox or on a subway. They always have something to say about their own spirituality. The feeling I get from them is not unlike being solicited by a panhandler, except I am willing to offer my coins to one in need. For the proselytizer, I have nothing to offer but the grumpy feeling that my own faith is being insulted and belittled. Unfortunately, that obsessed spirituality isn't unique to Christianity; in fact, it extends itself into paganism. There are those who don't just live their paganism, they obsess over it. Every trip they take is a "pilgrimage." Every chi...