Buy and Sell your Jesus here
Or, faith is the currency of the Spirit
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JoeUser Forums
This is not a rant about the materialism of the Christmas season - even though there's need of such a rant, since this supposedly 'holy' season has become nothing but one more holiday and an excuse for the grossest and most pathetic manifestations of greed. However, I'm not inclined to write it, not today. Instead it's a meditation relating to some of the similarities between faith and money.
It's been borne in upon me, over the last few months, that faith is a tool and not an end in itself. This is one of the Doctrines of Chaos that my wife first introduced me to, when we first began talking online. Needless to say, while I grasped the meaning of the individual words in the sentence 'faith is a tool and not an end', the sentence as a whole at first meant almost nothing to me. It has since, over these last few years, become a cornerstone of my beliefs, though its taken me a long time to grasp even a few of its implications.
Faith is a tool, not an end. An 'end' is a summation, a completion. And most people, when they find a faith, regard it as the 'end' of their seeking after meaning in existence. But not all people. Some, when they find faith, enter into a rapturous 'honeymoon' period in which their newfound faith is in every way sufficient - but, over time, find cause to question what they at first accepted both wholeheartedly and passionately.
I was and am one of those. I won't bore you with the details of the questions I began to ask, or with a recitation of the insufficient answers I received. Suffice it to say that those answers were insufficient, and that insufficiency started me down the road that leads to where I presently am.
Faith is a tool, not an end.
A tool is something used to achieve a purpose. A wrench is a tool. A hammer is a tool. A wrench exists in order to loosen or tighten things. A hammer exists to pound on things. In other words, the existence of hammers and wrenches is contingent. Contingent upon having things to hammer, and things to loosen or tighten. Without those other things there is no purpose to a wrench, and no purpose to a hammer. Money, currency, is also a tool. A tool for the expression of value in exchange. When you buy something you proffer the monetary value of a thing in order to purchase another thing. Money, especially paper money, has no real value in itself - it's simply the universally accepted means for the exchange of values.
In order to use money you don't have to understand anything about exchange rates, commodity prices, use-value, or absolute value. In other words, you don't have to understand how money works. All you have to understand is that everything has a price and that money is how that price is expressed. Faith, generally understood, is like currency. The dollar is money in America, and currency throughout the world. Christianity, on this analogy, is money among the Christians, but currency throughout the rest of the world, the rest of the world that accepts the general value of faith as something in itself.
But unlike real currency, a particular form of faith is not exchangeable outside the spiritual and intellectual milieu in which it evolved and to which it is native. You cannot, on most accounts of such things, be at one and the same time an Islamist and a Christian. They are mutually exclusive forms of spiritual 'money', though both are equally legitimate forms of spiritual currency.
Faith is a tool, not an end. I believe in currency, but I see 'money' as nothing but a tool to be used in order to achieve my objectives. "Christianity', 'Islam', 'Hinduism', 'Seikhism', 'Jainism', 'Zoroastrianism', 'Ritual Magick' - these are all forms of 'spiritual money' and all alike are accessible to the one who knows how to deal with them, as tools to achieve whatever end is desired by the one who engages in manipulation of them.
As an example, tomorrow night is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, and an event recognised in all Solar Myths as a profound moment of change, of renewal and rebirth. I intend to perform Ritual tomorrow night, a Ritual which will engage with these profound concepts and turn them to my own use and advantage. In order to do so I will invoke certain of the Names of God that are known within the Christian tradition (with which I'm most at ease and most familiar). But I could just as easily and with as much faith invoke Names that are known in other traditions.
We all know that currency works to achieve our ends. We also all know that certain forms of currency work more acceptably in some places, and less acceptably in others. But they all work. Faith works too, and in just the same way. Should it be necessary, I can be a Christian in the morning, a Hindu in the afternoon, and Muslim in the evening.
Because all the gods are dead - and all the gods live forever.
Faith is a tool, not an end."
It's been borne in upon me, over the last few months, that faith is a tool and not an end in itself. This is one of the Doctrines of Chaos that my wife first introduced me to, when we first began talking online. Needless to say, while I grasped the meaning of the individual words in the sentence 'faith is a tool and not an end', the sentence as a whole at first meant almost nothing to me. It has since, over these last few years, become a cornerstone of my beliefs, though its taken me a long time to grasp even a few of its implications.
Faith is a tool, not an end. An 'end' is a summation, a completion. And most people, when they find a faith, regard it as the 'end' of their seeking after meaning in existence. But not all people. Some, when they find faith, enter into a rapturous 'honeymoon' period in which their newfound faith is in every way sufficient - but, over time, find cause to question what they at first accepted both wholeheartedly and passionately.
I was and am one of those. I won't bore you with the details of the questions I began to ask, or with a recitation of the insufficient answers I received. Suffice it to say that those answers were insufficient, and that insufficiency started me down the road that leads to where I presently am.
Faith is a tool, not an end.
A tool is something used to achieve a purpose. A wrench is a tool. A hammer is a tool. A wrench exists in order to loosen or tighten things. A hammer exists to pound on things. In other words, the existence of hammers and wrenches is contingent. Contingent upon having things to hammer, and things to loosen or tighten. Without those other things there is no purpose to a wrench, and no purpose to a hammer. Money, currency, is also a tool. A tool for the expression of value in exchange. When you buy something you proffer the monetary value of a thing in order to purchase another thing. Money, especially paper money, has no real value in itself - it's simply the universally accepted means for the exchange of values.
In order to use money you don't have to understand anything about exchange rates, commodity prices, use-value, or absolute value. In other words, you don't have to understand how money works. All you have to understand is that everything has a price and that money is how that price is expressed. Faith, generally understood, is like currency. The dollar is money in America, and currency throughout the world. Christianity, on this analogy, is money among the Christians, but currency throughout the rest of the world, the rest of the world that accepts the general value of faith as something in itself.
But unlike real currency, a particular form of faith is not exchangeable outside the spiritual and intellectual milieu in which it evolved and to which it is native. You cannot, on most accounts of such things, be at one and the same time an Islamist and a Christian. They are mutually exclusive forms of spiritual 'money', though both are equally legitimate forms of spiritual currency.
Faith is a tool, not an end. I believe in currency, but I see 'money' as nothing but a tool to be used in order to achieve my objectives. "Christianity', 'Islam', 'Hinduism', 'Seikhism', 'Jainism', 'Zoroastrianism', 'Ritual Magick' - these are all forms of 'spiritual money' and all alike are accessible to the one who knows how to deal with them, as tools to achieve whatever end is desired by the one who engages in manipulation of them.
As an example, tomorrow night is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, and an event recognised in all Solar Myths as a profound moment of change, of renewal and rebirth. I intend to perform Ritual tomorrow night, a Ritual which will engage with these profound concepts and turn them to my own use and advantage. In order to do so I will invoke certain of the Names of God that are known within the Christian tradition (with which I'm most at ease and most familiar). But I could just as easily and with as much faith invoke Names that are known in other traditions.
We all know that currency works to achieve our ends. We also all know that certain forms of currency work more acceptably in some places, and less acceptably in others. But they all work. Faith works too, and in just the same way. Should it be necessary, I can be a Christian in the morning, a Hindu in the afternoon, and Muslim in the evening.
Because all the gods are dead - and all the gods live forever.
Faith is a tool, not an end."
