By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of Adonai
while in a foreign land?
...
During their nomadic existence the ancient Hebrews conceived of a God who lived in an elaborate tent that was pitched for him. After their multi-tribal coalition had been formed into a kingdom, the same concept applied to the temple—a permanent house built for their God in the capital city. Now that the city had been sacked and the temple was in ruins, now that God's 'house' had been destroyed, where was God? The songs they sang about God dwelling in his house on the holy mountain of Zion made no sense because the circumstances had completely changed. They could and would make a major shift in theology to conceptualize a God who was everywhere at once, who came to dwell whenever and wherever there was a 'together-bringing' (a syn-agogue) happening. This same concept was and is applied to the Christian ekklesia. The theological shift goes hand-in-hand with shifts in cognitive function and social identification—from concrete-operational to formal-operational thought (Piaget), from categorical to cross-categorical cognition (Keagan), from nationalistic land-based to diasporic ethnicity-based social identification, from concrete to abstract.Of course, the older ways of thinking still exist. There are Jewish, Christian and Muslim fundamentalists who maintain what in the modern world amounts to a grossly underdeveloped combination of theology, cognition and social identity. But what about the rest of us? Isn't another major shift in theology long overdue? What new shifts would be appropriate for people who are cognitively and socially developed beyond the very minimum for adulthood? Can we, with subtle reasoning and global social identity stand apart from and look back on the conscious choice to engage in that quintessentially human practice of belief irrespective of evidence (faith), and conceive of God as metaphor for what in our consciousness cannot be named? Here we are again with religious institutions that are at best largely useless and at worst violently dysfunctional. Are thinking people who value spiritual practice not just as much in exile as those ancients?
With 'props' to John Shelby Spong
