Today’s Post

Last week we saw how human evolution proceeds through the trial-and-error process seen in our attempts to ‘articulate the noosphere’, and how successful attempts are captured in the ‘cultural DNA’ through the ‘tissue of culture’ as found in religion, philosophy and laws.  This week we will continue this exploration by looking how sacraments can be seen as examples of human activity in which the work of grace, the energy of our personal evolution, can be seen to occur.

Sacraments as ‘Signs of Grace’

One treatment of the sacraments suggests that they are rooted in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ values.  In this interpretation, the sacraments were instantiations of seven times in Jesus’ life that he highlighted the action of grace in human life, times in which humans participate most deeply in their lives.

In the posts on Jesus (beginning with http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?p=352) we looked at Jesus as a signpost to God, and discussed how he can be seen as evolution becoming aware of itself.  As western religious tradition has seen it, there are seven activities of human life that Jesus recognized as critical to our personal evolution.  Just as Jesus was a ‘signpost to God’, these events were ‘signposts to grace’, events to which we should pay special attention as they are examples of times in human life in which this ‘evolutionary energy’ is most active.

The idea of seeing some human activity as more significant to human life is found in other religions as well.   In his book, ‘The Souls of China’, Ian Johnson addresses the trend in which many Chinese are beginning to identify themselves as Daoist, Buddhist, Christian or Muslim after decades of having religious expression outlawed.  He explains how traditional rituals help people overcome urban anomie and answer the “pragmatic but profound issue of how to behave at critical life junctures”, such as weddings, funerals, pilgrimages, social work and meditation.

So, as we proceeded in the other objects of our search for the “Secular Side of God”, the key step in this search is the reinterpretation of those traditional teachings from the secular perspective that we have developed.  The sacraments are no exception.

What Are ‘Sacraments?’

    Christianity identifies seven events in human life that are ‘occasions of grace’: events in which our lives are infused by the energy of grace.  Although the church places great emphasis on the action of the church hierarchy in ‘conferring’ the grace that flows in these events, a secular approach simply sees them as events in our lives in which we are cooperating with this flow of grace in such a way that our personal evolution, our ‘spiritual growth’ is enhanced.  Paraphrasing Teilhard, when we participate in these events we are ‘trimming our sails to the winds of life’, aligning our lives to the axis of evolution.

Traditional church teaching identifies seven such rituals, all of which require church hierarchy for the ‘conferring’, and all of which recognize the action of grace which takes place.  These teachings place great emphasis on the both the need for the church to perform the ritual and to effect the outcome of the giving of grace, and the need for our participation in them as a condition for church membership.

From our secular perspective, however, we can reinterpret the church’s concept of the sacraments in terms of our understanding of grace as the energy of both our personal evolution and the resulting evolution of our species.

The Next Post

This week we began to look into how the Christian concept of the ‘Sacrament’ can be seen from our secular perspective, as the continuation of the thread of evolution as it rises through the human.

Next week we will look at each of the sacraments themselves to see how they can be reinterpreted in the light of this secular perspective.