What do people need / want / get from religious texts?

August 7, 2006 7:39 PM

What do people need / want / get from religious texts?

I've been asked to write some texts for my church, and I'm at a bit of a loss as to where to start.

To what end do you read the texts of your church?

If you had to prioritize your religious texts, which types are most interesting / useful / important to you? Creation myths? Morality tales? Stories of the life of the prophet / saviour? Descriptions of the world / the afterlife? Pithy aphorisms / koans / tales? Commandments from God?

For bonus points, any tips or obvious pitfalls I should be aware of? Please forgive me if I am missing something obvious, I am a total noob at this.

posted by Meatbomb to religion & philosophy (23 comments total)

Start with Genesis: come up with a myth that explains the creation of the world. Then populate the world. Then explain why the world is so fucked up. Explain why people need to kill things in order to live.

Have you read Joseph Campbell?
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 7:53 PM on August 7, 2006

Is this for your cult? If so, I'd just go with whatever is most useful for your own purposes.
posted by meerkatty at 7:57 PM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

Are you actually starting a religion from scratch, Meatbomb, or are you working from an established faith?

That said, I like some narrative and metaphor in my sacred writing. My favorite religious work is probably The Book of the New Sun.
posted by Iridic at 8:00 PM on August 7, 2006

People want to feel safe. They want to know that there is someone rooting for them, someone that feels for them, and most importantly - someone out there that UNDERSTANDS and ACCEPTS them. Give "your people" these things.

You don't seem particularly religious, so you probably won't be offended when I suggest you read some religious texts (See here) and even crib a little from them (despite the fact that they are completely different religions). Belief systems of all kinds tend to have common characteristics.

Good luck.
posted by ifranzen at 8:04 PM on August 7, 2006

From one meatbomb's other ask mefi:
It should be something like "never think again", "you needn't think anymore", "we'll think for you",

Pretty strong slogan for somebody who needs help with their homework. Maybe your texts could offer counsel on the virtues of thinking for yourself.
posted by doctor_negative at 8:07 PM on August 7, 2006

doctor_negative, you are not answering my question and even worse, you are totally killing my buzz.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:10 PM on August 7, 2006

Iridic: I am free to pick and chose / modify texts to my tastes, but I was thinking of starting from scratch on a lot of it, too.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:12 PM on August 7, 2006

You are hilarious. I'd say you need a lot of stuff that explains the randomness / unfairness of bad stuff. You should get the (non)finality of death in there somewhere too. And make it mostly narratives. People like stories.
posted by crabintheocean at 8:17 PM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

Seconded. Bonus points if they're your own personal stories. Maybe how you "woke up" and saw the light?

And make it mostly narratives. People like stories.
posted by ifranzen at 8:20 PM on August 7, 2006

whatever you write or interpret, wind up at a morality that allows for or accomodates the concept of social coexistence. Otherwise you've failed the world. ;)
posted by jak68 at 8:21 PM on August 7, 2006

I think you have to make them contradictory, in an artful sort of way, so that future generations can look at the same passage and use it to support completely different arguments.

Or you could split them up the way that Islam has the Q'uran and the hadith. The Book of Good News for Liberal Democracy and the Baked Wisdom of Brother Meatbomb.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:26 PM on August 7, 2006

In my faith (LDS), we're encouraged to liken the scriptures to ourselves. Meaning, when I read Paul's epistles to various folks in the New Testament, I should be thinking:

*Why did Paul write this?
*If this letter were to me, what would it mean to me, and how would I respond?
*If I were in Paul's shoes, and I wrote this letter, what would I want to make sure that the recipient takes away from it (based on the text)?

...And so on.

But I can't say that scripture is for any one thing. Some of it is cautionary, some of it is morality play, some is prophetic, and even parts that I feel I understand really well give new meaning on subsequent readings.
posted by SlyBevel at 8:46 PM on August 7, 2006

Read Joseph Campbell. The Power of Myth or The Hero with a Thousand Faces. That will tell you all you need to know.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 8:47 PM on August 7, 2006

Ah. My RSS reader didn't tell me that you weren't talking about canonical works. So sorry. Next time I'll pay extra attention to reading the zarking question.
posted by SlyBevel at 8:49 PM on August 7, 2006

Maximum flexibility. Have your messiah preach peace and bring a sword. Make your people flee from oppression to a new land, where they are allowed, nay, required, to slay all the natives (except the hot women, who they get to rape). Condemn adulterers and homos and people who wear two kinds of cloth to death, tell everyone they're guilty from birth and doomed by the sins of their fathers to suffer eternal pain, but then proclaim that whosoever believeth in You are redeemed and washed clean of their sins, no matter how vile, that they've committed with their own hands. Etc.

This way you can justify everything from slavery to abolition, genocide to saving the lives of those yet unborn, celibacy to multiple wives to cuckolding your friends and then sending them to their deaths. That way, you can do what ever you want whenever you want, and have ready made mumbo-jumbo to cover yourself in sanctimony (while the rubes cough up coins engraved with Caesar's profile).

Just beware of re-interpreters names Saul of Tarsus Paul on the road to Damascus.
posted by orthogonality at 8:58 PM on August 7, 2006

You need to tune in to WII FM. Whats In It For Me?
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:23 PM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

I've been asked to write some texts for my church

By whom? I thought you were the founder and sole member at this point. But to answer the question: poetry. The best religious texts I've read - the Book of Job tops the list - include some amazing poetry.
posted by mediareport at 10:31 PM on August 7, 2006

The waning Catholic in me: People want comfort. Things that make them feel warm and good for being the religious people they are. Things that show how their god loves them, what a great afterlife they'll have, and what they need to do to get there.

The budding atheist in me: People want to have their views backed up in official texts. Just look at, say, gay marriage: the fact that the Bible condemns homosexuality gives homophobic people an excuse to oppose it.
posted by fogster at 10:40 PM on August 7, 2006

If you give people exactly what they want you are gonna have a religion full of weenies! A good religious text (and among 'good religious texts' I include not only the ones that SlyBevel and I hold as canon, but also the Q'uran, the Dao De Jing, a bunch of Buddhist teachings (the closer to Gautama the better), the Book of Enoch, Jain vows, the Gospel of Thomas, just about anything ever written by William Blake, and a whole bunch of other stuff)—as I was saying, a good religious text should comfort you sometimes, but at other times it should kick your butt.

Have a look at the Sermon of the Mount. Have a look at the economic laws in Deuteronomy. Have a look at the many commentaries elucidating what can and cannot be done during Ramadan. Have a really good look at Jainism. These texts are not about fluffy feel-good strokes and they are not about enshrining conventional wisdom. They are direct challenges to complacency, short-sightedness, and especially to the illusion of self-importance.

Sounding entirely reasonable would be a pretty good clue that a religion did not come from the transcendent realms: If you could have come up with it all yourself, you probably did. This is why, compared to traditional religious content of any variety, Tony Robbins and his ilk leave me cold. Don't settle for that: Be bold, be mystical, be intuitive, be brutally sincere.
posted by eritain at 2:17 AM on August 8, 2006 [2 favorites]

Rather than creating a canonical archive, it sounds like you are interested in something more along the lines of pamphleteering.

Think of your leaflets as invitations...but to what? Free rice and beans? Rousing vocal music? Idealistic camaraderie? Entrancing rituals? Mass weddings?
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:27 AM on August 8, 2006

If I were doing this, I'd break it down like this:

1. Rules - You need to make people do things, make them feel like they are sacraficing something that the unbeliever's don't. There must be some sort of unpleaseantness to make them feel different and righteous. There also needs to be a sliding scale of obdediance, if you will, so more hardcore believers can further differentiate themselves, but still allow room for the everyman to only slightly adhere. All successful religious have this. Examples are obvious, but here are a few inspired (*rimshot*) ones that crop up over and over: dietary restrictions, repression of sexual desire, rejection of technology (this is a great one for the modern world, because it's making a lot of people miserable), and mandatory charity (which may be charity towards The Great Meatbomb). The goal here is to make people feel guilty about everything they do, but provide a clear path for compulsive behavior to deal with it. This also provides an opportunity to sell stuff, like classes (scientology style) or prayerbeads.

2. Guilt/Forgiveness - While you need to make them want to follow the rules, they need to understand that they will always be a [insert deity here]'s name. The rules you carefully constructed before need to be possible to follow to a reasonable degree, but against human nature, so everyone will falter and become filled with self-loathing. But they can escape that self loathing through [insert deity here].

3. Distance Yourself - You should not be the deity. You should only be tangentally realted to the deity, a messenger for his/her/it's will. This way, your faults are a result of your (partial?) humanity. The suggestion above about insulating yourself with apostles is a good one. It can't be too obvious that you are doing this to get rich, you need to appear humble but righteous.

4. Nonbelievers are miserable - The rules will make them feel miserable about "sin" and you need to extend that feeling. You need to make it clear that everyone is going to be unhappy unless they convert. This way, every time they look at a loved one they can't help but think how badly they have failed by not converting them. Do not make conversion a rule, that'st too transparent.

5. This world is insignificant, and so is human reason - It is critical that you downplay the importance and credibility of their perception of reality, and indeed, the very legitimacy of this reality. This is nothing but a dream world designed to tempt them away from [insert deity here] who wants so desperately to love them. Logic is completely irrelevant, because you have faith...

6. FAITH - Above all, faith is should be the most prized virtue of your faith, far above following the rules. Faith is winning out over [satanic figure] despite his overwhelming hold over the world of the believers perceptions. It's all lies though, only meatbomb can show you the way.
posted by phrontist at 6:26 AM on August 8, 2006 [2 favorites]

faith is should be the most prized virtue of your faith

[satanic figure] is hard at work today making me sound like a gibbering idiot. That should read:

faith should be the most prized virtue of your religion
posted by phrontist at 6:28 AM on August 8, 2006

MEATBOMB -- I work on a radio show that deals with people who do sermons in nearly every faith tradition. I can really only give you one piece of advice however. READ BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR that woman knows how to write a sermon, and deliver it.
posted by parmanparman at 8:01 AM on August 8, 2006