Dr Macnab
Components of the New Faith
The New Faith Lecture I - 24/02/2009
New Faith Lecture I Transcript - February 24
New Faith Lecture II Transcript
Purchase DVD's and bound versions of the transcripts here
Master's Notes 2009 - Alumnus Newsletter
Good caring presence within us,
around us,
and above us;
Hold us in a sense of mystery and wonder.
Let the fullness of your goodness be within us
and around us,
Let all the world know your ways of caring
and generosity.
May we find we have all we need to meet
each day without undue anxiety.
Overlook our many stupidities, and help us
to release everyone from their stupidities.
May we all know we are accepted.
Strengthen us that we will reach out
to the best, always with faith
to rise above the ugly realities of our existence.
And we celebrate the gifts you have given us-
the rich kingdom of life's possibilities
the power to do good and the triumph of good
and the moments when we have seen
the glory and wonder of everything.
You are life's richness.
You are life's power.
You are life's ultimate meaning.
Always - and for everyone - and for evermore.
Francis Macnab, 2007
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Commandment 1 Believe in a Good Presence in your life. Call that Good Presence: God, G-D - and follow that Good presence so that you live life fully - tolerantly, collaboratively, generously and with dignity. |
Commandment 6 Be magnanimous and excessive in your support of good causes, and use your affluence and material goods and scientific skills in altruistic concern for the future of the world. |
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Commandment 2 Believe in a God-Presence in your life that will lift you constantly to live harmoniously in yourself and with others, always searching for your best health and happiness. |
Commandment 7 Study ways to encourage and sustain the dignity, hope and integrity of all human beings and study ways to help all human beings embrace their dignity, hope, and integrity. |
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Commandment 3 Take care of your home, your environments, your Planet and its vital resources for the life and health of people in all the world. |
Commandment 8 Be alive to new possibilities, new ways, and to the unfolding mysteries and wonders of life and the world. |
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Commandment 4 Be kind and caring of the animals, the birds, and the creatures of land and the rivers and the seas. |
Commandment 9 We often focus our lives on many things and pursuits that promise our fulfilment. Study the deeper things of the Spirit, and the things of ultimate concern for all human beings. Be part of an evolving life-enhancing Faith that will also bring a new resilience to the future. |
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| Commandment 5
Help people develop their potential and become as fully functioning human beings as is possible from birth, through traumas and triumph to the end of their days. |
Commandment 10
Take time to worship the great Source of all the positive transforming energies of life, and search to be at one with "the spirit of the good, the tender and the beautiful." |
THE NEW FAITH AND 10 NEW COMMANDMENTS
Dr Francis Macnab
(From his Address on 5th October 2008)
Over the last few weeks there has been widespread comment on our NEW FAITH projection, and on my statements on the Ten Commandments.
Some of the comments have been knee-jerk reactions, uninformed and heavily overloaded with bad manners.
Other comments have been thoughtful, (even where there was rational disagreement) and notable for their concern for the state of religious beliefs in this country and the huge disaffection of people with the Christian churches.
It was no surprise for me that some people from the Christian churches were critical of us here at St Michael's. That was not new.
But I was concerned that some people threw in an extra - that I had offended the people of Judaism. While there are those within the Christian Church who will always reject a caring debate, people of the Jewish religion are generally more ready for a courteous dialogue.
So at the outset of this address on the Ten Commandments, it is important that I state my credentials.
In my theological student studies I took distinctions in Old Testament, and did post-graduate work in Hebrew language and history.
In my doctoral program, I became one of the early workers in bringing psychoanalysis and religion into an intelligent and workable dialogue.
Two of my basic sources were Paul Tillich, the most outstanding existential theologian of the 20th Century, and Martin Buber, also in the 20th Century, the most highly regarded Jewish Scholar and Expounder of Hasidism. When he died, I delivered one of the memorial lectures to honour him.
In the ensuing decades of my career, I have continued to keep informed in these areas of interfaith. I am abreast with many writings of modern Judaism and have great respect for its beliefs, traditions, and rituals. But there is a fact of life that the Christian religion has taken its own course, its own beliefs, traditions, and rituals, that are different.
Basic to both religions is what is called THE COVENANT. The Covenant is the basic promise of God to be a caring protective God and the people's promise to be a caring worshipping people. Thereafter differences emerge.
Simply put, early Judaism saw their God as a talking God, a god of Law. Christianity saw their God would be found "in spirit".
Both religions saw their God as a "Presence" - a mysterious presence that seemed to call them to be better people.
Our Christian theologian, Paul Tillich, in his debate with Albert Einstein back in 1940 said, we can think of God in symbolic and personal terms, but God is not "a person". He said the Personal God "is a symbol, not an object."
We have seen the proposition that human beings have a NEED to believe. But what will they believe?
And will that be -
dominated by fear or by the energies of hope?
dominated by irrationality and primitive thought, or by intelligence and an informed searching?
dominated by the boredom and emptiness of theological irrelevance or by the excitement and
vitalityof a New Faith that emphasises the ongoing search for health and wholeness for us all?
Roger Scruton, professor of Psychological Science in Virginia, delivered atheists and Christian believers a major shock, when he wrote -
"...Religion is not primarily about God, but about the human (search) need for the sacred."
Prospect Magazine Aug 07, p 32
Critical to the early awareness of the Moses period and long before, was the need to stand quietly before the sense of the sacred in human life.
In this context I turn to the Ten Commandments. For those who do not know where they are - they are in the Old Testament (ie symbolising for us the Old Covenant) in the book of Exodus 20.1-17 and the book of Deuteronomy 5.6-22.
Some were apparently shocked that I said they were the most negative document ever written.
Some thought this was outrageous because it indicated that I was saying they were not to be believed, when I said nothing about believing them.
Others reasonably queried whether I could use the word "most", and that is open to a necessary justification.
While I have no intention of denigrating the Ten Commandments as a sacred symbol of the Jewish Torah and the Old Covenant, I say they are negative - and most negative - for the following reasons -
1. They take their origins from a particular view of God - a god who talks, a god who describes himself as jealous, intolerant, and punitive. A god who would protract his punishments through three and four generations.
2. There follows several rules of "Thou Shalt Not". In some "not" omitted. There are a couple that most people disregard. And one carries a qualifying sentence of severe punishment:
"Honour your father and your mother." We often fail to recognize the accompanying clause - "that thy days may be long upon the face of the earth."
At another point, we see what this entails. In Deuteronomy 21.18-21 a dishonouring son would be stoned to death!
A blanket command to honour parents is made without acknowledgement that some parents by their behaviour could never warrant their children's honour, less still their love!
Yesterday, I stepped out for a brisk walk in the sunshine. In one street oozing with affluence, there was a small lad, not much more than three years old, walking along the low fence line.
His mother appeared and said, "Duncan come here."
Before he could lift his eyes, she called, "Duncan, come here or you know what you'll get."
Duncan knew what he would get so he delayed by two breaths and then ran to his mother. She forthwith walloped him as I watched. Can you honour parents who behave badly?
Sadly some people have taken their religion in this way. Like Duncan they had done nothing wrong, but they still copped it.
One woman said, "I've given religion and God away long ago. I did everything right - my child was run over by a car and seriously injured, and then I got cancer! How can I believe in a God who is watching over us?"
3. The implication throughout is that a breach of these commandments will incur punishment. (You might say that all books of rules are like that, but as you read further into the requirements of the Old Testament Law, you would quickly see that there is no way any person in this 21st Century civilization could endorse these sanctions in toto.)
Do we need a belief in God and absolute imposed standards to ensure moral conduct?
Can we have morality without a belief in a God who will (according to Scriptures) visit punishment onto the third and fourth generation?
Any reasonable review of history will show how morals and ethics have evolved over the course of time.
Things that God apparently claimed as a necessary obedience have been rejected on moral grounds.
There are many who say that the god-belief does not control human hostility and hate but actually fuels it.
It is noteworthy that Professor Lloyd Geering, an Old Testament scholar par excellence, wrote
"Moses led his people out of slavery...but in the course of time, the meticulous observance of the (laws of Moses) the Mosaic tradition, led to a new kind of slavery - enslavement to the written word of the law. At least, that is how the early Christians saw it, even though many of today's Jews would strongly deny that they find the legal prescriptions of the Torah burdensome."
Christianity Without God, Polebridge Press, California, 2002. p133
4. The Ten Commandments have long been the source of guilt, and over the centuries people have continued to struggle with the awareness "we are not good enough", "not clean enough", "not worthy enough".
Consider the oughts and shoulds that have played a strong part in Christian religion through the General Confession of the Anglican Church -
"We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to havedone; and there is not health in us."
And another - "God have mercy upon us miserable sinners."
And many prayers in the "free" churches are crowded with confession of multiple sins, inciting everyone to believe they are always regarded as sinners.
5. Many of the items in "the Ten" have no relevance to us in this urbanized country, eg coveting a neighbour's slave-girl, his ox or his ass, loses relevance in our society. Some get over this difficulty by inserting other terms, but that in effect acknowledges the irrelevance.
6. There are three critical commandments which are disregarded or are readily and sometimes endorsed.
"Thou shalt not kill". (In wars we have killed approximately 70 million men, women and children in the 20th Century to the present time.)
"Thou shalt not bear false witness". People do this without reflection.
"Keep the Sabbath day holy".
7. The Commandments of "Thou shalt not" omit - thou shalt not hurt, abuse, or damage the souls of children.
Thou shalt not destroy the vital resources of the rivers and the oceans and the land. Thou shalt not endorse the ethic "greed is good".
By several vital omissions, they fail to reflect a God who says, "Suffer the little children to come to me." In this omission and failure, I give them a negative.
8. The negative status of The Ten are reflected in Jesus of Nazareth's one word. He said -
"You have heard that they said of old -
"Love your neighbour and hate your enemy -
BUT (THAT is the word!)
But, I say to you "Love your enemies and do good to thosewho hate you." (Matthew 5.43)
Furthermore he said -
"You know the commandments, BUT I give you three (better) ones -
Love your God. Love your fellows. Love yourself.
Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.THAT is the law and the prophets!
You might see that when we are looking for a NEW FAITH that is positive, plausible and powerful -
We are reflecting what Jesus of Nazareth was doing in his time.
SO I TURN TO MY SUGGESTIONS OF TEN NEW COMMANDMENTS.
In the last 50 years of the 20thCentury there was a groundswell of change in our education practices and our religious understanding.
We moved away from authoritarian impositions to creating environments and awareness of growth and potential. We moved away from the appalling abuse many of us saw when we were kids at school, and we moved towards the principles and practices of acceptance, affirmation and acclamation. Religion has been slower to move and when it is still into its declarations and demands, and its derogation of people, it has been increasingly discarded and people have shown with their feet where they would prefer to be.
So the Ten New Commandments need to assert a new WAY that is meaningful for the way we will live. We all need some guidelines.
TEN "NEW COMMANDMENTS"
Central to Jesus of Nazareth was his pointing finger -
And the pointing finger was towards -
a New humanity
a New way to be human
a New Faith for living life!
We have seen how easily we spin away from this ethic, and all too comprehensively endorse the
most horrifying aspects of our humanity.
Commandment 1:
Believe in a Good Presence in your life. Call that Good Presence: God, G-D - and follow that Good presence so that you live life fully - tolerantly, collaboratively, generously and with dignity.
Would you give that a Tick?
Practise the reality of the ‘experience' of God.
"Poets, painters, composers and writers have struggled for centuries to express this mystery. It is what the prophets and religious thinkers from Buddha to Moses to (Jesus) toMohammed describe and revere. Those who sanctify their ownpower deny this mystery."
(Chris Hedges Losing Moses on the Freeway, p 41 Free Press. NY, 2005)
Commandment 2:
Believe in a God-Presence in your life that will lift you constantly to live harmoniously in yourself and with others, always searching for your best health and happiness.
Would you give that a Tick?
Commandment 3:
Take care of your home, your environments, your Planet and its vital resources for the life and health of people in all the world.
Would you give that a Tick?
Commandment 4:
Be kind and caring of the animals, the birds, and the creatures of land and the rivers and the seas.
Commandment 5:
Help people develop their potential and become as fully functioning human beings as is possible from birth, through traumas and triumph to the end of their days.
Commandment 6:
Be magnanimous and excessive in your support of good causes, and use your affluence and material goods and scientific skills in altruistic concern for the future of the world.
Commandment 7:
Study ways to encourage and sustain the dignity, hope and integrity of all human beings and study ways to help all human beings embrace their dignity, hope, and integrity
Commandment 8:
Be alive to new possibilities, new ways, and to the unfolding mysteries and wonders of life and the world.
Commandment 9:
We often focus our lives on many things and pursuits that promise our fulfilment.
Study the deeper things of the Spirit, and the things of ultimate concern for all human beings. Be part of an evolving life-enhancing Faith that will also bring a new resilience to the future.
Commandment 10:
Take time to worship the great Source of all the positive transforming energies of life, and search to be at one with "the spirit of the good, the tender and the beautiful."
These Ten Commandments are positive, plausible and powerful. If you embrace them, really put them into practice, they will change your life. And they will change the world.
Dr Macnab's Address at Easter
As printed in the Herald Sun on Thursday April 9
THREE major concerns, well known to us, are making a vast impact around the world: violence in many forms; the repetitive predictions of gloom; and the divisiveness of religious faiths.
Nations and groups fight over their religious beliefs. Psychologists and health specialists, often in flight from their childhood hang-ups, have refused to examine the role of faith in human behaviour.
If we move away from the dogma of "faith beliefs", we see faith as an act of the total personality. Faith becomes the energy of people living together.
Without that faith, we resort to violence and destruction.
Similarly, faith is a necessary ingredient in the healing process. Without faith in the process, in the helping person, and in the world of health and science, the energy of growth and recovery is diminished.
In our focus on illness and disease, we can fail to study the pathways that lead to vitality, exuberance and a new faith.
The wide current of predictions of gloom and the heightened fears about the future have left many in a state of anxiety and depression, with impoverished resources to cope.
The energy of faith has been neglected, as has the role of the human spirit. Many have been drawn to violence in its many forms.
Our nightly entertainment is loaded with compulsive viewing of violence, anger and mindless impulse.
It signals our loss of genuine community belonging, as we turn inwards on ourselves.
A loss of empathy with our own best spirit, and with other people, soon becomes a loss of basic care for anybody.
Dare we think about our concealed emptiness of the human spirit? And what of the detailed task of recovering the enrichment to the human spirit.
Without that enrichment, we "couldn't give a damn" and we lose the necessary vitality and faith in people and in communities of people in all their differences.
Tomorrow, at St Michael's, the story will be one of violence and its degradation of the human spirit and of our humanity. We will ask the question: "Can we find a better way?"
On Easter Sunday, we will note there was no physical resurrection.
St Paul, the earliest of the Christian writers, gave focus to a spiritual resurrection.
Centuries later, psychologists and psychoanalysts do not use such a term even though, in the ultimate sense, it is a major objective of their clinical endeavours.
Perhaps it means an awakening to the best in the human spirit: how to release its vitality (again) and how it can flourish - like a resurrection of the whole personality.
It takes faith for that to happen - a different kind of faith - even a New Faith.
Nightingale, King, Macnab
Three people with a vision of new possibilities...
New possibilities for humanity, of healing the body, mind and spirit; of moving towards a vision of a life that calls for our positive and best qualities.
This is St Michael's vision.
The New Faith says Faith is an act of the total personality, and it calls upon us to discern and analyse the world around and use this understanding to build a Faith in ourselves. It is a vision of people finding a better happier flourishing way to live.
The New Faith focuses on what Jesus of Nazareth was pointing to;
Basic human attributes -our personality affecting our actions, and the choices we make and the choices we ignore.
Human dignity and human potential,
The energies of renewal and inspiration
A life that is healthy and flourishing
The spirit of inclusiveness, compassion and kindness
The awareness of forces that can send us backward.
A new faith that is relevant to people in the 21st century.
The New Faith comes as a shock to many people. It says faith is not about which God you believe in or how you pray, it is about the way you live. This is in contrast to a faith that is judgemental authoritarian, dogmatic and negative, emphasising how sinful we are rather than our best possibilities.
The New Faith sets before us the goals of living fully and generously. It recognizes that people can be ugly, judgemental and violent; it draws on the great themes of acceptance, inclusion, human potential and wholeness. It looks to the God not "up there" but to the God seen in a good spirit in human relationships and conversations.