back of a spreadsheet; back of the net

I was thinking the other day about how people interact with their gods. This thought may or may not have been spurred by the series of Test Matches now taking place between Australia and India, or it may be completely unrelated (1). I'll leave that to the reader.

Now I am not a religious man, nor a pious one, nor a spiritual one in particular. I am I suppose a Protestant atheist. I live in what I think is still probably a broadly Christian country - in outlook, if not in faith - but one which is pretty secular and multi-faith. However, I am not close friends with very many people who practice a religion that is not Christianity. I have a couple of close friends who are Jewish but either atheists or agnostics or the like or not particularly devout. I think I have a friend who is a practising Buddhist but she might just be Buddhist curious.

But all the people I've ever had a serious conversation about how they experience their god have been monotheists and almost all Christian.

So my model for how people who are devoutly religious is very Christian centric. That there is a single God, who is personally interested in you as an individual and with whom you can be in communion. This God is likely to have some instruction for you personally on how to live your life. That instruction might be best accessed through a personal process of meditation or through communal worship. It might best be supported by ritual and ceremony or not. It might be delivered to you directly from God or by the intermediaries in a priesthood but you are engaged in some dialogue with God.

I think, based on very limited knowledge, and mostly by looking at the outward appearance of Jewish religious organisations that Judaism has a similar approach and similar divisions.

I've no idea on Islam and beyond the monotheistic faiths I'm not even sure I have the tool kit to think about the question. How do Hindus view their relationships with their pantheon of gods? Is a relationship with those gods that important to the? How do the practitioners of Shinto or Australian Aboriginal Peoples experience their religion.

No idea.

I'm not burning with a desire to know. I'm not about to go an seek out this knowledge. I merely that my world model is narrow here. Hey ho.


(1) actually it was prompted by reading the Twitter feed of a Scottish rugby player and noticing his public declarations of faith.

I recently read excellent two posts about a Jewish person’s reaction to the term Judaeo-Christian. Both posts touched on the use of the Old Testament by Christianity and Christian theologians. This doesn’t do either of the interesting posts justice but they could be crudely summarised as “These are *our* stories” and “These are our stories and we’ve been thinking about them in a different way from you for a long time.”

At least, that’s partly what I took from them.

They didn’t feel like *my* stories.

And this got me thinking about whether I think I am part of the Judaeo-Christian culture. I’m not so sure I really am. I might have identified myself as part of that culture until recently but these two posts got me thinking about where my cultural roots really lie.

I’ve never read the Bible entire or the Torah in part. I’ve been to church perhaps a dozen times in my life – including weddings. I’ve never been to synagogue and I’ve been to one Jewish wedding (sort of). I don’t take a particular interest in Jewish history compared to the history of other peoples (except where they bump up against Rome or my mum). I don’t take a particular interest in the history of Christianity. In fact my interest in Roman history is pretty much bounded by the adoption of Christianity as a the state religion by Constantine.

I have spent years reading Roman law, Roman jurisprudence, Greek philosophy and jurisprudence and political philosophy grounded in Greek and Roman foundations. I’ve read more Greek and Roman theology than I have Christian. More Homer and Euripides, Cicero and Juvenal than Mathew, Mark, Luke or John.

I’m sure my meme pool is really awash with Jewish and Christian ideas but they don’t come alive for me the way Greek or Roman one’s do when I become aware of them.

These things are obviously really complicated and multi-layered and it’s very likely to be impossible to pick out the cultural influences in real time.

But if I had to chose to label myself at Judaeo-Christian or Greco-Roman I would pick Greco-Roman.