I am in the middle of reading a biography of James Boswell, famous for his biography of Samuel Johnson; but when I read about Boswell’s London Journal, I got distracted — went out and found a copy, and started to read it. Near the beginning of the Journal, Boswell goes to church one fine Sunday, but is distracted from the sermon by other thoughts:
“Monday 29 November. I breakfasted with Mr. Douglas. I went to St. James Church and heard service and a good sermon on ‘By what means shall a young man learn to order his ways,’ in which the advantages of early piety were well displayed. What a curious, inconsistent thing is the mind of man! In the midst of divine service I was laying plans for having women, and yet I had the most sincere feelings of religion. I imagine my want of belief is the occasion of this, so that I can have all the feeling. I would try to make out a little consistency this way.”
But Boswell is mistaken in thinking that consistency is possible for us human beings. Don’t you think?
I’m imagining this as a sermon reading. LOL You could look around the room and see the guilty faces. Minds do wander. It’s okay just keep bringing them back and that is why when people talk to you about what you said, sometimes they come up with such interesting stuff. Stuff you didn’t say but wouldn’t have considered saying… LOL.
Can’t help but wonder why you titled this post “The truth about worship services.” That’s far more interesting than the question of “consistency.” When Christ is interrogated by Pontius Pilate, Christ states that “Everyone on the side of truth hears my voice.” To which Pilate replies: “What is Truth?” Pilate’s question seems to me to be a better and more honest response to a sermon than Boswell’s fretting about his plans for hitting on women during the course of listening to a sermon. The truth about worship services is that the truth we hear on Sundays does not exist, they are only words to which we have attached some meaning. So, what do you think the truth is about worship services? I’m curious.
so what’s the inconsistency here?
Ah. And what a reader response critic would do with Boswell’s response to the sermon. Or, for that matter, a semiotician.
Jean @4: Yes, a semiotician would have a field day.
Boswell was bored by a long-winded sermon and started fantasizing. We’ve all been there. This merely confirms that what goes on now has been going on for a long time.
The solution is either a.) Have more interesting worship services, or b.) make sure that there is a singles’ group meeting after church on Sunday.
I am strongly in favor of both!
Bill @3. The inconsistency, I believe, is between the “Truth” as spoken by the minister (“..the advantages of early piety were well-displayed”), and the reality of Boswell’s thoughts to do precisely the opposite (“…laying plans for having women”), while at the same time “having sincere feelings of religion.” In his 18th century rationalistic view of the world, that was an inconsistency in his mind, and he attributes it to a “want of belief.” Freud and his contemporaries blew that notion into oblivion by their construction of the psyche as composing an “id,” and “ego” and a “super-ego” which could function at the same time. In this particular case, it’s a battle between Boswell’s “super-ego” which aims to achieve perfection, and his “id” which is an instinctual drive. Caught in the middle is Boswell’s “ego” trying to make sense of these two “inconsistencies.”
Victor@7 – I was part way through reading your post, but I began thinking about women. ;-)
The challenge of a church is to unify the super-ego and the id; is UU’ism really working much on either?
I’ve always thought that the purpose of sermons is to inspire you to go deeply into your own thoughts, so that it is right and proper to stray in your thoughts from what the sermon is saying as long as it’s valuable thinking for you. Not to think about the grocery list or what will happen at work tomorrow, but to think about things of worth. The content of the sermon is less important than the inspiration it brings.
Victor @ 2 — You write: “Can’t help but wonder why you titled this post “The truth about worship services.” ”
Good question. I guess I was thinking that so many people believe that worship services should have a high degree of internal consistency — that everything the worship leaders do should have a high degree of consistency, and everything that individuals in the worship community experience and do should have a high degree of consistency. But in my experience (as both worship leader, and as part of the body of worship experiencers/doers) is that worship services tend towards less consistency.
Jeremiah @ 4 writes: “Boswell was bored by a long-winded sermon and started fantasizing.”
But Boswell explicitly states that he thought it was a good sermon. Elsewhere in his writings, I seem to recal that Boswell is pretty good at telling us when he thought the sermon (and the rest of the worship service) was not up to par. So I take Boswell at his word — it was a good sermon, and he thought about sex at the same time he was listening to the good sermon.
Jeremiah @ 8 writes: “Victor@7 – I was part way through reading your post, but I began thinking about women. ;-)”
Sometimes I wish I were bisexual so I could think about both men and women — oh wait, I think I was just distracted from the point of this comment… Jeremiah @ 7 also writes:
“The challenge of a church is to unify the super-ego and the id; is UU’ism really working much on either?”
The theologian Thandeka wants to use Freudian thinking to ground the theological anthropology of Unitarian Universalism, so you are probably in good company when you make this comment. For my part, I do not believe that Freudian theory makes for an adequate theological anthropology/psychology. For one thing, some psychologists (and other sicentists) would argue that you can’t prove the existence of the super-ego and the id through standard scientific method; that in fact the super-ego and id don’t exist. For another thing, I suspect more Unitarian Universalist thinkers would draw on the insights of Jungian psychology or Rogerian psychology or Maslowian psychology or family systems theory — and would ignore Freudian psychology altogether.
For my part, when I do theological anthropology and theological psychology, I use family systems theory a lot (Murray Bowen, Edwin Friedman, etc.). I have found Carl Rogers’s early work useful, esp. where his work is firmly grounded in empirical data; Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is also very useful. And I use developmental psychology a lot, particularly Piaget, Kohlberg (as modified by Kegan), and Vygotsky; and, to a lesser extent, Fowler. But I have to say that I have never found Freud particularly useful — while I give him full credit for establishing the modern discipline of psychology, and for teaching us all to think psychologically in a way people did not do before his work, his theories are a little too dated.
Therefore, I would say that from a psychological point of view, the challenge of a church is to lead us through some identifiable developmental stages (in childhood) and then towards a deeper knowledge of self and greater spiritual maturity (as adults), in part by creating physically and emotionally safe social spaces which promote the health of the family systems and organizational systems in which we as individuals are embedded.
kim @ 9 says: “The content of the sermon is less important than the inspiration it brings.”
Oo, oo, I wish I had said that!!
Concur with Jeremiah @8.
Dan@10: What?? Freud’s theories are “dated”? Not at all, mon ami. They are classic and timeless. Simply because there is no scientific proof of the existence of a super-ego and an id does not mean they do not exist. (We can’t prove the existence of the unity of existence either). Voltaire in his satirical novel Candide best explores the fallacy of actions driven soley by the id (instincts) and the super-ego (morality). Read a student’s treatise on this topic at: http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2005/4/18/75311/3879 As the essay concludes, Voltaire teaches us that one must reach decisions that appease both, and in so doing “let us cultivate our garden, and achieve our ego.” That is the challenge of church. And, BTW, I think you are saying the same thing.