I don’t know if this photo connects with the current theme, but for me, it begged to be included. I took the photo at China Dinosaur Park. Though the dinosaurs are all “constructed” and the scene is “staged,” the sense of a time before man, before consciousness. And, I wanted to include the photo simply because I like it for all of its artificialness. After all, even our churches are only artificial representations of what we experience within our human psyche.
Another look at the image changes my mind and I see something arising out of the primordial earth, a trinity of hooks which appear ready to snag and hold fast the unwary, like some trap set by an ancient human race.
“The problem sketched here is particularly acute among the world’s currently reigning monotheisms: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Here three distinct and transcendent Gods with three distinct revelations – each with absolute claims to universal implementation as the condition of humanity’s salvation, and with immense numbers of devotees – face each other in a shrinking globe with obviously increasing enmity. Though this enmity may be less evident (though not always) in their sacred texts and interpretive theologies, the loss of life attendant upon these faiths, reported almost daily in the media, should make this enmity impossible to be concealed any longer, even from the eyes of faith.” (Dourley, The Illness That We Are, p. 11)
For myself, the draw to any of these “faiths” has been ruptured beyond repair. At this point in my thinking and my life, I don’t have the same hope as Dourley has in terms of Christianity, or any religion, coming to grips with this harsh truth and making the necessary changes to transcend its “present configuration” in order to become a more inclusive assembly of humanity.
Our illness is manifested in our unwillingness to take individual responsibility for our own souls, for our relationship with others. Our illness is pathological in that we make our collective responsible for our individual well-being and in making the “other” collectives holders of all the evil that we refuse to see in ourselves.