|  Candace Talmadge Read Candace's bio and previous columns
May 6, 2009
Time for a Real Spiritual Revolution
Lordy, not again.
ABC News reports that
Orthodox Jewish communities in Baltimore and Brooklyn now face multiple and
serious allegations of sexual abuse – shades of the pedophile priest
controversy and prosecutions that dogged and damaged the Catholic Church at
the start of this decade.
There is an old saying
along the lines that if we let others do it for us, they will
eventually do it to us. In the realm of religion, what we allow
so-called authorities to do for us is mediate between us and God. We imbue
the sanctified with some sort of mystical or better connection to our source
than we possess, and hope to ride to salvation or Heaven or wherever on
their presumably purified coattails.
The preceding is an
insidious, dangerous delusion. No one has the right or authority to stand
between anyone else or dictate another human being’s relationship (or lack
thereof) with God.
A wise rabbi named
Jesus told his listeners that the kingdom of God is within. He did not mean
a physical structure like a church, a mosque, a temple or an ashram. He was
referring to within self, inside the hearts and spirits that truly define
who we are as both physical and spiritual beings.
Most of us, even those
who profess to be followers of Jesus, act as though we don’t believe him. We
look everywhere except within for a relationship or connection with the
divine. In vesting our trust externally, we give over our power to the rabbi
or the priest, the pastor or the imam, the lama or the guru. Tragically and
just as inevitably, some among them betray us. They cannot help it. They are
human just like us, and despite all pretensions to the contrary, they don’t
know anything more about the divine than the rest of us.
Yes. This is a rant.
That’s because our relationship with God (or whatever word we want to call
it) is the one of the two most critical relationships we will ever have. It
is far too central to our well-being and wholeness to vest it in someone
else’s jurisdiction. It is ours alone to nurture and grow, although we are
certainly free to seek out help and advice along the way. That’s why God
didn’t stop with Adam in fleshing out creation. We are here to help each
other, not step on each other’s spiritual toes or butt into each other’s
spiritual business.
By all means, let’s
hope this ends in some prosecutions and some sort of vindication for
accusers who, yet again, are denied, vilified and disowned even by their own
families for daring to step forward and speak their truths.
Prevention is the far
better approach, however, since it avoids the grievous spiritual and
emotional injuries that ensue from abuse by a religious authority, that
abiding sense of betrayal and abandonment and the resulting anger at the
authority, and at God.
And the only way to
prevent abuse by religious or any other type of authority is to stop bowing
to external authority, reclaim our power and rely on our own inner
authority. Holy smokes! We’re talking real revolution here, and ultimately
the only one that counts.
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