CP Part II #10: The Intricacies of Christianity Format

I'm continuing the Christian Pragmatics (CP) theme by looking at some of the techniques Christianity uses and at the same time by endeavoring to explain some of the more difficult Biblical New Testament passages.  Believe me, this segment of CP is so surprising that it is unlikely to find many who accept and believe the words I write.  Maybe, if the CP writings last, readers in 200 or 500 years will find it more to their liking!

There is a central point to be made in this section:  Christianity is not based on reason and is not rational; nor is it based on emotion and is not attitudinal.  It is based on our ability to get in touch with the Divine and is cosmic in dimension.   That is to say, we, human beings, have the ability to fathom the divine in all its glory!

Why get in touch with that which is rules the cosmos?  Because by doing so, we can become at one with the universe.  Its principles by which the planets and suns move become what can motivate and can lead us to greater personal enrichment.  We truly can become heavenly creatures.  And just as a sun moves about in the sky, so even I can move and be directed on this earth by the forces of the universe.  The assumption is that in living at one with the principles of Creation, we shall live long and just as important, we shall live well.

But we already know that the principles which govern the entire universe are not known by reason nor by emotion.  They are truly beyond human comprehension.  The only way, I believe, we can decipher them is through the religious experience.  William James in the early 20th Century wrote a book about persons who approached the cosmos religiously entitled The Varieties of  Religious Experience.  A reader of that book might get the impression that people who have a religious experience are crazy, ready for the nut-house.  It is because the people who have religious experiences ought not to talk about them, but only to point out how such experiences have changed the way they live.  For, the religious experience is not describable in human language, only its structural effects are known to those who participate in them.

In Christian Pragmatics. I am approaching the topic of the religious experience tangentially.  That is, I am going to bring to bear the techniques that Christians use who integrate them into their lives. I will concentrate upon the differences such experiences have upon their daily living and ordinary thinking habits.   

For Christians who rely on religious experiences to structure their lives, the work of Jesus in establishing the Kingdom of God heralds another way of living we ought to embrace in order to become spiritually-oriented: Christ has led us to the Way of Harmony with the immutable laws of that govern the universe, i.e., its universal principles.  In Christian terms, we of the Kingdom of God live in the world of the Holy Spirit.