Divine Presence in Liturgy and Compassion

The medium of film can treat organizational, societal, and global ethical problems either from one standpoint, which is appropriate if the assignment of blame for immoral conduct is clear (e.g., the Nazis), or by presenting both sides of an argument so to prompt the viewers to think about the ethically complex problem. This second approach is useful if it is not clear whether a character or a given conduct is unethical. When it is obvious which characters or actions are unethical, a film can still stimulate ethical reasoning and judgment by drawing attention to unethical systems as distinct from individuals and their respective conduct in the film. The film, Spotlight (2015), which is a true story, takes the position that Roman Catholic priests who molested and raped children in the Boston Archdiocese in Massachusetts behaved ethically. The dramatic tension in the film is set up when the chief editor of the Boston Globe, Liev Schreiber, tells the paper’s investigative “spotlight” managers that the story will not go to press until the system that enabled Cardinal Law and others to cover up many child-rapist priests by transferring them to other parishes is investigated. “We’re going after the system,” Liev says in keeping the story under wraps until the entire informal system that has enabled the rapists to continue to lead parishes.  

The full essay is at "Spotlight."

The Apocalypse

In the film, The Apocalypse (2002), the Apostle John is a prisoner at an island-prison because he is a Christian. He is having visions of heaven in the last of days and Valerio, another prisoner is dutifully writing what John dictates so various church congregations can know of John’s revelations. He is esteemed so much by other Christians that he feels pressure to steer them to God’s truth. Too much esteem, I submit, is being directed to John, as he is, as he admits, only a human being, though he does get caught up in his own direct access to God, as in being able to know the will of God. This is a temptation for any religionist, especially religious leaders. Although subtly, the film conveys John’s over-reaches though without having another character explicitly refer to them as such.

The full essay is at "The Apocalypse."

Renunciation vs. Dutiful Action in Hinduism

Hegel looked at human history as developing through dialectics resolved at a more advanced point in a trajectory of expanding human freedom. It may be in the history of religion that less superstition evinces an evolution of a different sort. The monotheism of the Abrahamic religions came out of a polytheistic context, but it is a more difficult matter to claim that monotheism represents a development of human religion historically because polytheism has continued. Even though some contemporary interpreters of Hinduism’s main text, the Bhagavad-Gita, claim erroneously that the god Krishna being the supreme deity in that text means that it is monotheist even though in that text, Krishna himself acknowledges that people pray to other gods and goddesses that exist. Rather than maintain that monotheism is an advancement on polytheism, I submit that conceptual contradictions between contending religious claims in any religion can be surmounted, as transcended, though with the caveat that in polytheism, contradictions have a firmer grounding even though they too are to be transcended if religion itself is permitted to evolve.

In chapter 5 of the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that dispassionate action is superior to renunciation: “the Karma-Yoga is better than (mere) renunciation of action.”[1] In the next chapter, Krishna essentially redefines renunciation as the action of a person “who performs the action to be done, regardless of action’s fruit.” Such a person is “a renouncer and a yogin.” In contrast, a person who “is inactive” is not a renouncer.[2] In short, action (which is not motivated by its consequences) rather than inaction is renunciation. This flips the concept on its head. In the Gita, Lord Krishna wants Arjuna to fight rather than to renounce fighting relatives in the civil war, so the deity simply redefines renunciation to hinge on motive or intention rather than conduct (or lack thereof). In the Christian Gospels, Jesus says something similar regarding lusting itself rather than only actually having sex outside of marriage. Such an interiorization of religion may be a step in the evolution of that domain such that intention, not only what a person does, matters.

Lord Krishna’s conceptualization of renunciation conflicts with the conception of the word in Advaita philosophy, in which renunciation means abstaining from as much action as possible; meditation, rather than performing dutiful action even in battle is Shankara’s preference. To that famous Advaitan philosopher and theologian, Brahman, which is infinite being, is more ultimate than is any deity, including Krishna in the Gita. So, Shankara advocates meditating on Brahman rather than bhukti devotionalism to Krishna. Both regarding the different conceptions of renunciation and whether ultimacy is infinite being or a Supreme Person (e.g., Krishna in the Gita), compromise is elusive and perhaps impossible. That different strains of thought and even conflicting claims exist in a religion is difficult for us to accept even if the history of a given religion shows us how the differences arose. If Brahman is one, as both Shankara and Schopenhauer affirm in their respective writings, and if the existence of several deities in a polytheistic religion is possible rather than self-contradictory, then would it not be appropriate for religious leaders to gather to select one among conflicting claims?  In Christianity, this occurred in the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.

On the other hand, the insistence on consistency may be premised on the exclusive existence of only one deity, which applies to the Abrahamic monotheist religions but not to a polytheistic religion such as Hinduism. Different perspectives, and even contradictory claims, may be consistent with the existence of several deities, even if one of them is supreme over all of the others. In the Gita, for instance, Krishna claims to be the supreme deity, which, by the way, is different than stating that among gods and goddesses that are worshipped, only Krishna exists. In the Gita, Krishna does not make this claim, even where he claims to deliver the goods when people petition other Hindu deities. In ancient Greco-Roman polytheistic religion, deities fought with each other, so even contradictory beliefs among the faithful would make sense. In polytheistic Hinduism, however, Advaitan adherents who follow Shankara’s theology, Brahman as the ultimate one over even Krishna in the Gita means that contradictions are illusionary rather than real. Even the deities are not real, according to Shankara.

Even in the Gita, Brahman itself, including the consciousness (i.e., general awareness) that being itself has (or is), transcends pairs of opposites. After Krishna asserts that a person “who does not hate or hanker after (anything) is to be known as a perpetual renouncer,” that deity states, “For, without (the influence of) the pairs-of-opposites, [such a person] is easily released from bondage.”[3] By implication, Brahman transcends pairs-of-opposites too. Indeed, yogins whose “defilements have dwindled, (whose) dualities are destroyed, (whose) selves are controlled, (and who) delight in the good of all beings” reach “extinction in the world-ground.”[4] Transcending dualities in the world ultimate results in one’s very self (atman) no longer being a distinct entity in Brahman. Therefore, contradictions even in scripture are surmountable. Moreover, as the example of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Ramakrishna illustrates, scripture itself can be transcended by genuine religious experience even in ritual, such as in devotion intensely directed to a deity. If so, not only cognitive contradictions, but much more could be transcended if religion on the human side develops further.

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1. Gita 5.2 in Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), p. 149.
2. Gita 6.1. in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 157.
3. Gita 5.3 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 149. I have changed Feuerstein’s use of brackets to parentheses because in quoting Feuerstein’s text, I use brackets to add words to those which Feuerstein has written. This is consistent with Feuerstein having used brackets to add words to the text he was translating. I submit that this is a legitimate exception to the general rule that that which is quoted should be quoted as is, including the punctuation marks in the text.
4. Gita 5.25 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 155. Italics added to certain English words.

The Count of Monte Cristo: On Vengeance and Forgiveness

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” is a Biblical saying that is perhaps as well known as it is typically ignored in the midst of passion. Even the advice that revenge is better served up as a cold dish rather than immediately when the grill is still hot is difficult to heed. The 1975 film, The Count of Monte-Cristo, can be likened to a “how-to” recipe book on how to exact revenge against multiple people, one after the other until the sense dawns on the avenger that one’s one life has been utterly consumed by the desire and then feels empty once the deserved suffering has been sufficiently inflicted. It is admittedly very difficult to walk away from a grievous injustice if the agent of the harm is allowed to evade suffering that is deserved. In the film, however, Abbé Faria, a Christian priest who has been unjustly held in an island prison for fifteen years, nonetheless urges Edmond Dantes, whose prison cell is connected to Faria’s tunnel, to resist the temptation to ruin the lives of the four men who had unjustly imprisoned Edmund, including De Villefort, Danglars, and General Fernand Mondego. In the end, Dantes, as the Count of Monte-Crisco, pays dearly for having gone down the road of vengeance. Even if the suffering inflicted on the unjust is deserved ethically, distinctly religious implications should be considered lest avengers are left existentially empty rather than as one might expect, finally at peace. The Christian notion of the Kingdom of God is prominent in this distinctly religious regard.

The full essay is at "The Count of Monte Cristo." 

The Physician: Medical Science and God

In the 11^th century, Christians were not welcome in Persia, so in the film, The Physician (2013), Rob Cole, a Christian, pretends to be Jewish in order to travel from Western Europe to study at the medical school of Ibn Sina, a famous physician in Isfahan. He eventually reveals his religion as that of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” when he is on trial before the local imam. The Jews there doubtlessly feel used and betrayed. As interesting as interreligious controversy can be, I contend that the nature of Cole’s crime is more significant from the standpoint of religion itself. In short, the film illustrates what bad effects are likely to come from committing a category mistake with respect to religion and another domain. Whether conflating distinct domains or erasing the boundary between them, category mistakes had diminished the credibility of religion as being over-reaching by the time that the film was made. As for the matter of interreligious differences, the sheer pettiness by which the three Abrahamic religions that share the same deity have made mole hills into untraversable mountains is hardly worthy of attention, whereas that which makes religion as a domain of phenomena unique and thus distinct from other, even related domains, is in need of further work. The film could have done more in this regard.

The full essay is at "The Physician." 

Hope Gap: A Critique of Institutional Religion

Organized or institutional religion as the Roman Catholic Church is in the background in the 2019 European film, Hope Gap. Even with such names as Grace and Angela, religious connotations are present. In fact, the film can be interpreted, at least in part, as a critique on religion in general and Catholicism in particular. The medium of film can indeed play a vital role in critiquing sacred cows from the vantagepoint of an oblique angle or a safe distance.

The full essay is at "Hope Gap."

The Master: A Religious Cult

In The Master (2012), Lancaster Dodd tells Freddie Quell, the man whom Lancaster wants to cure of alcoholism and mental illness, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.” Given Lancaster’s presumption of infallibility concerning knowing that every human soul has been reincarnated even for trillions of years, the end of the line would more fittingly be, “I am a man above all (others).” With regard to being a physician, Lancaster comes up short because he underestimates the medical severity of Freddie’s alcoholism and his likely psychotic mental illness. Upon being released from jail, Lancaster should realize that Freddie’s rage and temper-tantrum in his jail cell evince mental illness of such severity that it is lunacy to suppose that the patient can be cured by walking back and forth in a room between a wall and a window and being sure to touch both, and by saying “Doris” over and over again in a dyad with Lancaster’s new son-in-law. In fact, Lancaster actually encourages Freddie’s alcoholism by asking that Freddie continue to make his “potion,” which contains paint-thinner filtered through bread. It is not Lancaster, but his wife, Peggy, who puts a stop to the “booze.” From her sanity, both that of Freddie and Lancaster can be questioned. That Lancaster is the Master of a religious cult, or “movement,” renders his mental state particularly problematic.

The full essay is at "The Master."