Episode 2
The Journey Within: Exploring Spirituality Beyond Institutionalism
Tracking Wisdom
Episode 2
The Journey Within: Exploring Spirituality Beyond Institutionalism
Recorded - 03/21/22
DESCRIPTION
This episode presents an in-depth dialogue regarding the essential functions of religious leaders within their communities, focusing on the balance between authority and facilitation. The speakers initiate the conversation by questioning the nature of authority in religious contexts, advocating for a model of leadership that prioritizes the spiritual journeys of individuals over institutional power dynamics. This perspective is critical, especially in light of the potential for disillusionment that arises from negative experiences with poor leadership. The discussion effectively illustrates how a single negative encounter can result in a broader rejection of organized religion, prompting a consideration of the importance of competent and compassionate leadership.
Throughout the episode, the speakers reflect on their personal journeys, revealing how their experiences have shaped their understanding of faith and the role of community. They emphasize that while leaders are fallible, the teachings of compassion and togetherness inherent in many religions should not be discarded due to the shortcomings of individuals. The speakers advocate for a thoughtful approach to one's faith, encouraging listeners to reconnect with the foundational values that their religions espouse.
Ultimately, this episode serves as both a critique of ineffective leadership and a celebration of the enduring values of empathy and community found within religious teachings. The speakers remind listeners that the core message of kindness transcends individual failings, urging a reevaluation of faith that embraces inclusivity and compassion. Through this dialogue, they seek to inspire a renewed commitment to community engagement and spiritual exploration, reinforcing the idea that positive connections can lead to deeper understanding and fulfillment in one's spiritual life.
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes that the views expressed are solely for informational and entertainment purposes and do not constitute official advice.
- A significant topic discussed is the role of religious leaders and their influence on followers and institutions, questioning the basis of their authority.
- Listeners are cautioned against forming negative perceptions of entire religions based on the actions of ineffective leaders, highlighting the need for discernment.
- The dialogue explores the notion that Jesus was a teacher who sought to address the needs of marginalized groups, contrasting institutional authority with personal spirituality.
- The speakers reflect on their journeys through faith and community, acknowledging the importance of participation in a supportive environment.
- The podcast advocates for a thoughtful approach to spirituality, encouraging individuals to engage with their faith without discarding it due to negative experiences.
Episode Resources
- The Complete Guide to Christian Denominations: Understanding the History, Beliefs and Differences by: Ron Rhodes - A free book found on Google Scholar with a lot of valuable information regarding the topic.
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Keywords: religious leaders, authority in religion, scripture interpretation, organized religion, spiritual journey, bad religious leaders, faith and community, role of faith leaders, institutional authority, questioning authority, church community, personal spirituality, reconnecting with religion, religious disillusionment, Christianity and authority, finding spiritual connection, religious experiences, understanding scripture, exploring spirituality, role of Jesus in religion
Transcript
Views, interpretations and opinions expressed are not advice nor official positions presented on behalf of any organization or institution.
Speaker A:They are for informational and entertainment purposes only.
Speaker A:Welcome to the discussion.
Speaker A:In today's show, we talk about the role of religious leaders and potential impacts on both religious organizations and the faithful, and if there's a basis in scripture for institutional authority.
Speaker A:Now join Ryan and Peter for the next installment of the Tracking Wisdom podcast.
Speaker B:The role of the religious leader.
Speaker B:I guess we haven't really talked about that necessarily.
Speaker B:And like, what is it, at least in our perspective, what, how would we define what the purpose and role, the duty of the religious leader is?
Speaker B:One potential answer to that, which is to be the source of authority as opposed to being a facilitator of someone's journey.
Speaker B:And when they have legitimate questions to be able to.
Speaker B:So your comment about, you know, because I said so, like, that's a cop out.
Speaker B:That's a cop out even for adults who are trying to tell a 7 year old to some degree.
Speaker B:I mean, no, absolutely, you know, so it's like I don't know the answer to this and I'm uncomfortable even wrestling with.
Speaker B:So I'm just going to shut this down versus being open and willing to be wrong or to not know and be able to work with your background in tandem, you know, as a partner with these, this other person, to be able to try and land on some sort of answer.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And I think, I think our concern is that there are undoubtedly potential listeners who have a little less life experience than us who have come across leaders who are bad at their job.
Speaker C:And again, you know, it's, it's like baby with the bathwater that we don't.
Speaker C:Oh boy, maybe I'm dating myself.
Speaker C:Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.
Speaker C:That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker C:That the hazard is because it's possible to have bad leaders, bad religious leaders.
Speaker C:It's therefore possible to completely disillusion a potential follower by thoroughly alienating them because you didn't meet their very serious need and now they're trashing the whole religion.
Speaker C:And I absolutely know people who are vehemently against organized religion and they hate it.
Speaker C:Like when you, you cannot talk to them about organized religion because they are so angry about it.
Speaker C:And that's a huge disservice obviously to them personally.
Speaker C:But, you know, this is a result of again, what I'm calling people not good at their job, then damaging the institution that they signed on to serve.
Speaker C:So the main message is, you know, please don't believe bad things about an institution because you had to deal with someone who was really bad at their job.
Speaker C:And I think, you know, our goal in, in trying to present this content is to try to help people work through that and come back around.
Speaker C:Not that, you know, not that I have an agenda about getting everybody to return to their family religion, but just consider that, you know, if you're able to take the thoughtful approach that Ryan's describing, you may find yourself able to come back around and finding that your family religion is appropriate because you have background in it, but also because now you understand what really the point was.
Speaker C:And so it's better able to meet your needs and then you.
Speaker C:You can find a good professional representative who will meet your needs contrary to your prior bad experience that put you off.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's a great point.
Speaker B:And honestly, it's essentially the summary of my journey, which was that I didn't necessarily had a bad experience from that vantage point, but that I didn't find the value in participating in the activities of the church proper, so to speak, and then had not any experience just because that kind of was my family religion was not going to church.
Speaker B:Not in a negative way, not that there was denigration of the church itself, but that as a family we were finding connection and purpose more so in the family activities in nature than within a congregation or church structure.
Speaker B:But then over time, as I started to question, I mean, so I guess my perspective has been with me since I was at least a teenager, which is, you know, what I said, where I have question of the validity or I don't think Peter will, will argue that I have issues with authorities.
Speaker B:And maybe that's where this is coming from, is I tend to question all authority.
Speaker B:And so when I'm rationally trying to think through this and, you know, I'm questioning the authority and then I'm not finding that I'm getting any good answers to the contrary, you know, nobody's presenting a really good argument to me.
Speaker B:There's like, oh, well, that makes sense.
Speaker B:And actually the best argument I had historically was from my wife, which was when I was dating with my wife.
Speaker B:She grew up Catholic and was.
Speaker B:Has been fairly, fairly religious when we started dating and we weren't practicing, but she still had this drive, this connection to wanting to return to the church.
Speaker B:And I was resistant to it specifically, not the religious piece of it or the spiritual piece of it, but the institution piece of it.
Speaker B:And understanding the fallibility of that and not understanding why would be drawn to that.
Speaker B:What the purpose is.
Speaker B:And she's a very.
Speaker B:Well, she borders on extrovert and introvert, but she does like people and she likes community and she likes that piece of it.
Speaker B:And that was always her response to me wasn't.
Speaker B:It wasn't about the spirituality and it wasn't about the religious piece and it wasn't about the traditions and it really wasn't about any of that.
Speaker B:It was about community and about the people.
Speaker B:And I didn't understand that for a long time.
Speaker B:I'm not a very people driven person and you know, at some point, and maybe I'll go into deeper depth on it in later episodes, but I came to a point in my own maturity as a growing adult as well as, you know, I had kids and ultimately I started to explore in an inquisitive sense.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I was looking to evaluate some of the information that was out there in and around spirituality.
Speaker B:Again, kind of identifying as a nun, spiritual but not religious, and trying to get some context on what people are talking about and what people are saying about this from a variety of perspectives.
Speaker B:And during that exploration I found myself connecting to and wanting to get more involved in, in church specifically, which was odd to me.
Speaker B:And so now we've been involved with and participating in a church.
Speaker B:My wife is working for the church as Christian education director.
Speaker B:So we've gotten, we found ourselves fairly involved in this.
Speaker B:And yet still I'm of the perspective that I'm participating, but I'm not strongly tied to or aligned with the specific denomination and the specific teachings and the specific traditions.
Speaker B:I participate in it in a communal sense, meaning that, you know, I, I've enjoyed working with the people and being part of a community and some of the teachings resonate with me and some of them don't.
Speaker B:And that's okay.
Speaker B:So that was illustrative of, of my journey so far.
Speaker B:And so I, I can by extension envision there are other people who have or are in similar places maybe earlier on in that journey and hoping to bring, bring them to consider these things.
Speaker B:Not like you said, not to throw, not even just religion like a religion, but spirituality and religion in general.
Speaker B:Throwing that out with the bath water just because you, you know, of a bad experience or, or bad press for certain things that happen that are in.
Speaker C:The media a few years ago to.
Speaker B:Me, and this goes to a later point in my notes, but I was thinking about the idea that we're talking about that there's a core teaching and that that core teaching has been presented by multiple teachers and that we believe that there's harmony and consistency with that teaching, albeit there'd be some individual pieces because it's an individual.
Speaker B:It's an individual's experience being presented to a greater, a wider audience that I call myself a Christian, right?
Speaker B:And you call yourself a Buddhist or you're aligned with whatever we want to call it.
Speaker B:But the point being, I say I'm a Christian, but then I talk about how I'm not a Christian.
Speaker B:I believe in the, the central message.
Speaker B:And I call myself a Christian because I choose Jesus as my teacher.
Speaker B:And like thinking like from a martial arts perspective, right?
Speaker B:There are multiple schools teaching similar things.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But I'm going to find a teacher that resonates with me or for whatever reason, I'm choosing this as my teacher.
Speaker B:And therefore I am calling myself Christian because Jesus was my teacher, but not that he's necessarily teaching something different, significantly different than, say, Buddha or somebody else.
Speaker C:That's interesting.
Speaker C:So I think this is the first time I've heard you identify Jesus as your teacher.
Speaker B:This is a segue into a point that I was looking to make before.
Speaker B:And this will potentially call out a specific denomination of Christianity, primarily Roman Catholic, which is the, the holiness of priests and the infrastructure.
Speaker B:And that by being part of this, you somehow have this conduit to God that nobody else does.
Speaker B:And I take exception to that concept.
Speaker B:And that was a big part of where I struggled with Christianity in general, because I was thinking of it from a Roman Catholic perspective, which I only had limited experience in, you know, through high school.
Speaker B:But it is a large part of what people think of with Christianity.
Speaker B:So just that saying I have a hard time with that and I understand, or at least I take the perspective that the ordained individuals are still human and that they have scholarly background as far as having taken the time to.
Speaker B:And invested the time in learning about the Scriptures in general and what the interpretations are, at least within that denomination, which is another problem I think that there is, is how many denominations there are of Christianity.
Speaker B:That leads to another point that.
Speaker B:But I don't.
Speaker B:I want to be careful not to digress too much, taking the time to do that.
Speaker B:So you have some authority, I guess, or credential is the better answer, but that it's important to take the perspective as facilitator, not authority figure.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And so, I mean, this is again, the inherent problem with institution because an institution has to designate leaders to represent the institution.
Speaker C:And not everybody's good at their job.
Speaker C:Not everybody takes a job for the right reasons, even if they have a calling so you may be called to the position, but not be interested in being a facilitator.
Speaker C:If your main interest is just to have authority, that's where things go wrong.
Speaker C:And I'm thinking, oh, of course the big problem is having to designate representatives for an infallible institution.
Speaker C:And I mean, which is what you're talking about, right?
Speaker C:People, humans who are designated as potentially being infallible leaders for an infallible institution.
Speaker C:Now of course, I don't think they're literally designated as being infallible.
Speaker C:And of course, of course there have been mishaps and you know, it comes back, well, they're only human.
Speaker C:And you know, we're all struggling.
Speaker C:But there really is a difficult contradiction there.
Speaker C:And I again, I also thinking of Catholicism with which I do not have any personal contact.
Speaker C:There's, there's a difficult concept here of, you know, absolute faith and obedience versus fallibility.
Speaker C:Like how can you ask to have absolute obedience and then when something goes wrong, say, well, we're only human.
Speaker C:Well then, then don't ask for absolute obedience, you know, or, or is the position, but use your judgment like, but watch out for yourself because there are a few bad people out there.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's something which again, I'm not speaking from any personal experience at all and I'm, I'm reluctant to, to criticize because of that.
Speaker C:But I.
Speaker C:These are obvious questions, right.
Speaker B:The most important thing is to be open to the questions both from an institution perspective and from an individual's perspective where we can, we can recognize that there's going to be inherent fallibility there and maybe some don't.
Speaker B:And I think that part of that comes from just how involved one asserts God is in the construction of the.
Speaker C:Institution, which is, you know, brings us back to something you had on our list as like the construction of Scripture interpretation or non interpretation and how Scripture.
Speaker B:Is created in most forms, at least in Christianity, at least from my understanding and perspective, which may be limited.
Speaker B:The Bible is intended to be the authority, you know, the institution is the authority on the interpretation of the Scripture, but that the Scripture is really the core of the message or where the core teaching comes from.
Speaker B:And looking for evidence that institution was intended within that Scripture, within that text.
Speaker B:I was trying to think through it.
Speaker B:And from now I will admit I have not read the Bible cover, cover to cover.
Speaker B:I've read significant amount of the Bible and am relatively familiar with the Bible.
Speaker B:I'm not a scholar and I don't know the Bible that well.
Speaker B:But from what I've read and Understand, and the primary stories that are taught in service is not about the religious infrastructure and, and the authority of the people working within it.
Speaker B:It's, it's a compilation of people, mostly lay people or essentially lay people.
Speaker B:You know, the stories aren't about this rabbi or this, you know, at least not in a positive way.
Speaker B:You know, in the Gospel you have some of that, but it's, it's, it's the adversary.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I think that in that context it also is relevant that in the gospels and when we're talking about Jesus's ministry, it was in contrast to the institution, while he grew up in that culture and supported it, it was also the antithesis of what he was doing.
Speaker B:So that by way of saying that the Bible is mostly compiled of non religious figures who have been called and are describing their individualized experience with the divine.
Speaker B:So I would not think or say that the institution and the idea of religion, you know, Jesus didn't set out to start a new religion.
Speaker B:You know, that wasn't his purpose.
Speaker B:And the fact that he was out teaching in general in the public, he was out in the marketplace or the square or out in the hills or out with the fishermen and really engaging with people and not people of religious background, people who were gentile or considered unclean, and really trying to bring that message of unity and love and compassion to the public in a way relinquishing the power that the institution had, which is probably where, yes, you know, it all went awry because now they're being attacked, their authority is being attacked, and so they have to respond in a protect, self preserving way.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:So that was kind of the point of that thought was that institution is not inherent necessarily within the Christian Scripture.
Speaker B:Again, I don't have a lot of experience with alternative scriptures, but essentially it's an artifact of the students, not something that is directed by the teachers and by the Scriptures themselves.
Speaker C:So my understanding is that as you say, Jesus was a teacher from the Jewish faith who really saw the institution going astray from the will of God, from the essential intent, original intent of the institution, and that it was in fact neglecting or alienating a demographic, a group of people, as you said, the unclean and the Gentiles, and that God's will was that those people still be included in the faith, that they still be addressed in a positive way, not that they were Jews, but that Jews were supposed to have positive relationships with these people and that there was positive teaching to be done.
Speaker C:So obviously he was a rebel, obviously he was an iconoclast in respect to the current authority at the time, the Jewish church.
Speaker C:At the time, he criticized the Jewish church not because Judaism is wrong, but because the Jewish leaders, the Jewish church at the time kind of wasn't doing their job with respect to these other groups who were not directly following them.
Speaker C:And in fact, he criticized air quotes, good Jews who were, who were essentially being lauded or, you know, gaming the institution, and said, you're not really good Jews.
Speaker C:You're, you're making a show of being good Jews, but you're not really doing God's will because you're not caring for other people the way God wants you to.
Speaker C:I mean, it's a little ironic and, but I mean, I think this is what part of our major thesis is.
Speaker C:This is inevitable, right?
Speaker C:So here's a teacher who was an iconoclast trip trying to improve religion that he came out of, right?
Speaker C:It's like, you guys are not keeping up.
Speaker C:You've drifted from God's will, which is to take care of people because they're people, not because they're Jews.
Speaker C:And then 200 years, 2,000 years down the road we find, oh golly, the people who are following that guy are now in the same position to some extent.
Speaker C:What, what I've learned of interest through Reform Judaism is that the Jewish scripture and Jewish tradition actually has a huge concern for the outsider, for the stranger.
Speaker C:Judaism is not just about Jews, which is, I was interested to learn this because of course we hear of Jews as the chosen people, which makes them sound very self centered.
Speaker C:But that's not what I've learned more recently through Reformed Judaism, like our rabbi, our congregation really teaches that a central teaching of Judaism and part of being a good Jew is not praying the right way, which is, you know, something that Jesus railed again, criticized strongly.
Speaker C:It's not that.
Speaker C:It is, you know, it includes, it includes taking care of the stranger.
Speaker C:And if you're not doing those things, then you're not actually being a good Jew and following the will of God and following the teachings of Torah.
Speaker C:So it's interesting to me to have, you know, a modern Jewish church or denomination, you know, kind of, I don't want to say following air quotes, following Jesus lead in that sense, right?
Speaker C:Of, of basically saying, yeah, you know, we have to be careful as Jews not to be like those New Testament Jews, basically.
Speaker C:That's what it comes down to, right?
Speaker C:It's like, yeah, do it right, be good people.
Speaker C:Because that's the core teaching, right?
Speaker C:And I think that goes back to our Our central thesis really is that all religions want you to be good people.
Speaker C:That's really what they want.
Speaker C:They want people to take care of each other.
Speaker C:They don't want you to use your belief as an excuse not to take care of someone because they're unclean.
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