quote-786

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Religions speak in the vernacular of a language that was current at the time and place of its revelation – but the cultural, semantic implications of words change in time. A notable consequence of this reality is that ‘religious language’ tends to induce an alternate mental framework. We can’t really think effectively about God or Meaning with our current idiomatic use of language, from the usual ‘social head’ that each one habitually reasons with. That mind is so constructed that it can deal with every issue in the world, other than:
WHY ARE WE HERE – AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT ?
That is what religions are concerned with! But they speak in terms that, perchance, could have been understood at the time they were recorded. They still do have the power to affect us emotionally and to place us, sometimes, or at least some people, within a statewhere these ultimate questions make sense, at least as questions. Those emotions are so unlike our usual sense of life that they tend to be accepted, if at all, as THE religious experience – and as if the maximum of what could be known or experienced in that area.

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