Losing My Religion (At Least That’s the Plan)
June 11, 2012 By
I have made some hard decision[s] in my life–professionally and ecclesiastically–by asking myself these sorts of questions. I do not want to be around religion. I want to lose my religion.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/06/losing-my-religion-at-least-thats-the-plan/
Comment I left there (in moderation):
ReplyDeleteWhat’s so ironic about this post is that Dr. Enns is one of the biggest violators of it (sorry to be so outward focused!). Dr. Enns is constantly criticizing a certain type of Christian (we all know who they are, so I won’t elaborate on the point). In fact, in this very post he’s criticizing a type of Christian—those who are “outward focused,” those who point out flaws in others and desire to see a change in them. Clearly, Dr. Enns thinks this is a flaw in others and desires to see them change. Along with this, he thinks leaders of seminaries and other Christian institutions of higher learning are damaging to the faith in the way they treat the “best and brightest” students and scholars. They should change. He writes posts pointing out their flaws and imploring them to change, bemoaning the fact that they probably won’t (which is, of course, another flaw). This is my first comment here, but this comment is but one example of a repeated trend I see in Dr. Enns’ posts: he excepts himself from the criticisms he applies to others.
Fascinating that Rohr is now one of his seminal thinkers to be learned from - let see Darwin fan club boy goes to learn from Buddhist panentheist nee Roman Catholic monk. The circle is now complete...
ReplyDeleteMy response to Enns' response to the above is waiting in moderation:
ReplyDelete******
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Dr. Enns, while you did hedge your bets against some criticisms, you did not against mine. I did not say you think you shouldn’t tell people they’re wrong or that we should always agree. And, I certainly did not see a “logical contradiction” in your post. I simply pointed out that you frequently—it almost defines your blog at times—are pointing out what is wrong in other people and how they need to change. The quote from Rohr puts my point nicely: “Now, what most religious people do is they use religion to try to change other people. It’s always someone else that needs changing.” This is what you’re doing in this post, and what you do in many of your posts.
Your bet-hedging qualification does not seem to help so much as to obfuscate. For it depends on vagueness so as to allow you to do the very thing it appears is condemned. If *you* do it, well, it’s not “dominant.” But what defines that? Is it the “week-in-week-out” Rohr mentions? So it must be done 52 times a year? First, who does that? We now have a boogey-man instead of a real opponent. But, secondly, the problem here is that you criticize others and seek to change them more than 52 times a year! No, I’m being too precise, you’ll say. You’ll fall back on some vague claim about it “dominating” your life, and then claim that it doesn’t dominate *your* life, but it does dominate *their* life—and *they* need to change.
So, that’s my take. You may disagree, that’s fine. But remember, the very thing you think justifies you can be used by the “them” you critique. Of course, *they* will say that it doesn’t dominate their life, and they will say that they are just calling out others who buy into some “sub-Christian” and “debilitating” behavior. *They* see how “pathological” it is, and *they* “will call it out”—even if their calling it out is a small part of their 7/24, 365 day Christian life.
I hope my point is more clear now.