Aug. 22nd, 2002

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Last night, I finished reading the cover article in last week's Reader. [For those of you who aren't local or don't make a habit of picking up Chicago's free weekly, it described the events leading up to the suicide of a highly-placed member of a secretive, litigious, pay-as-you-go religious organisation I'd prefer not to name.] Finally, someone put their finger on what may be my fundamental problem with LRH's church: A lack of human charity.

Not that a doctrine of charity is a necessary component for any religion, but the fact that every major world religion (_pace_ Ms Rand) has one should tell us something. True, this charitable impulse can undergo some striking contortions (as anyone who ever gave money to name a pagan baby can tell you), but its existence consitutes some sort of limitation on the greed and self-aggrandisement of an organised church. Any human organisation--whether it claims divine guidance or not--is prone to short-sighted abuse and self-preservation at all costs. But at least if they claim charitable aims, you've got a stick to beat the clergy with when they end up enriching themselves (or, as the case may be, enrich others in order to save face and status).

Of course, the question foremost in my mind when reading the article was: How does the church explain the wigging out of such a high-ranking member? I mean, this is not a religion with a doctrine of the inherent fallibility of man to fall back on; its central teaching is the perfectability of persons in this lifetime. If Greg B. was so perfect, why did he cease functioning and off himself? If he wasn't progressing, what were church members doing telling him he was and promoting him to ever higher ranks in the organisation? How much more negligent and uncharitable could you get? Sadly, even if asked, the question was never answered.

The other thing that strucke me was the parallel between the C of S and gnosticism. It was enough to make me wonder whether Poul Anderson (R.I.P.) had it in mind when he wrote his fantastic Operation Chaos stories, featuring the sinister neo-gnostic Johannine Church. Some of the basic beliefs smack of Buddhism, but the focus on the selfish acquisition of wisdom is about as far from the Mahayana tradition as one can get.

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