12/27/2023 – After Deconstruction

What happens after deconstruction? It’s a great question and this is gonna be a great episode. Check this out. This is TenOnReligion.

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We’re going to talk some more today about religious symbols because they’re so important for understanding how religion works. You see, when people religiously or theologically deconstruct, what they really mean is that the symbols no longer work for them. I talked about this a little bit in the “I Deconstructed” episode a few months ago, but let’s unpack this a little bit more… or maybe a lotta bit more. Let’s go.

All religious faith assumes some risk in believing in and affirming symbols which express something ultimate. The risk pays off as long as the symbol has or retains currency. When the symbol no longer expresses something ultimate, one’s perception changes into affirming a wrong or incorrect interpretation of ultimacy. Symbols lose their power when they no longer “say” anything anymore. It’s interesting because when the symbols of a given religious tradition are fresh and living, people see through them to the divine. They do not notice the symbols as such any more than they notice the glass in a window. How do religious scholars know this? Take an example. When another religion with different symbols is encountered, suddenly one can easily see religious symbols as, well…symbols, and it’s as if the window was dirty. For some reason, one is often not able to see the “symbolness” of their own religious symbols. They don’t recognize them as symbols. But why are some symbols in culture accepted and others rejected?

Symbols get networked together in a system of layers. The modern problem with networks of religious symbols is that frequently some of the layers don’t make sense as the culture receiving the symbol from ancient times has changed significantly, such as a primitive or false geography for heaven and hell, which made sense several thousand years ago but no longer does today. Or the idea that Jesus is returning on clouds of glory but somehow needs a spaceship with a heat-resistant shield to complete the journey. That’s silly. Yet these meanings cannot be removed or decoupled by choice. The attempts by some to purge a system of symbols by force results only in transforming the symbols into instruments of something else rather than symbols of ultimate realities. And, the important thing is, symbols are true insofar as they engage us correctly with divine or ultimate matters. Symbols are inadequate simply at the level of imagination if they do not engage us, which simply means we need to find better symbols.

What does all this mean? If one looks only at the symbol, it often loses its power. Ultimately, the question is not how to get symbols to represent a reality to which we have non-symbolic access, but rather how to correct the symbols we have. Let’s summarize this in one sentence. All symbols are broken since they’re on the finite side of the finite/infinite equation, yet they’re still true because they carry across the value from the infinite side. When one deconstructs, their religious symbols no longer work as intended. They no longer carry across the value from the infinite side. The window becomes dirty and we now realize it’s there and perceive it as a window rather than not noticing it because it’s transparent. The goal is not to reject religion altogether, but to find new symbols that do work. Raimon Panikkar referred to this as the new innocence and for Paul Ricoeur this is the second naiveté. The new innocence emerges when new symbols are discovered which make the window clean again and it reacquires its transparency. The second naiveté is when one comes to a point of realization that symbols show us what the world was like in a way that history or science cannot. Symbols point to something that is other than themselves and that’s why they are transparent. A symbol is participatory. One uses the idea of a stain and the idea of cleaning. A stain can be understood more easily as a moral disorder and cleansing with water like spiritual purification because stains are really dirty and water really cleans. This is why they are symbols. Ricoeur described something to be a symbol when a direct, primary and literal meaning designates another meaning which is indirect, secondary and figurative, and which can be apprehended only through the first. Yeah.

Two final points. Religious symbols can be both polysemic or repurposed. Symbols can be polysemic, meaning they can mean more than one thing. For example, the Exodus account can mean Zionist nationalism for Jews, freedom from slavery for African-Americans, or God in salvation history for German theologians and later evangelical Christians. The devotional use of symbols is to have the power of transforming the religious dimension of a life considered in relation to a finite/infinite contrast. Sometimes such devotional symbols are really specific to the point of distorting reality in order to speak to the person at their particular state or stage in life, such as a blue-eyed blond Jesus when he obviously looked like a typical first century Jew. But when religious symbols are adapted to devotional use and made appropriate to the state of the devotee, it seems almost universal that there be a reification and personification of a divine object. We have to identify with our religious symbols or else they typically don’t work very well.

Religious symbols can also be repurposed. Religions which look for something in the future are great examples of this, such as the coming of a future Messiah in Judaism, the return of Christ in Christianity or the return of the Madhi in Islam. Apocalyptic expectation arose from the painful experience of injustice and powerlessness in the face of evil and oppression. This occurred in contexts such as the Babylonian captivity in ancient Judaism, or the complicated relationship between Judaism and the Roman Empire during the Second Temple time period. Both used and repurposed older images such as the Moses and Exodus narrative, or the suffering servant in Isaiah. The value of religion lies in its narratives to be continually kept alive by those in the present who find its themes connecting to their own lived context. What is the meaning of the story in the language of the story, and how can that be applied to our lives today? We shouldn’t stick our head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend that criticism doesn’t exist. Nor should we be critical and then label religion a whole bunch of nonsense. Mature religious adherents are post-critical, accepting and understanding the criticism while choosing to take the step beyond the criticism to find out what is truly meaningful in the sacred texts or scriptures, the religious practices, and the religious lives of dedicated followers. This doesn’t mean that one should be unaware of or ignorant of people and situations where religious symbols are used inappropriately like many religious and political leaders have done over the centuries. These situations should be called out and identified as wrong. Rather, find the situations when and where religious symbols have had a positive impact and try to emulate and imitate those to make a difference. This is the reconstruction of symbols. So, what happens after deconstruction? Either discovery of new symbols that work better, or the repurposing of older symbols in a way that makes better sense in reflecting or expressing the ultimate.

So, what do you think about the explanation of what happens after deconstruction? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.