Am I too a fundamentalist?
For a long time, many years in fact, I was not able to say the Our Father because I was stuck on the Father part. This is what happens when one’s consciousness is raised; blessed innocence disappears for ever.
But last summer, praying near my mother, brought a different perspective. I needed to pray. So I did and let go of my hang-ups.
Later it dawned on me that I too might be guilty of fundamentalism. I say guilty because is it not true that fundamentalism is a sin, a form of idolatry? To take the letter, the written word, made by men (most of the time) and to make it into an absolute, and end in itself seems to me the same as raising a golden calf to worship it as God.
I stopped at the letter, the written word of the Lord’s Prayer, not to worship it, but on the contrary to reject it. I am always prompt to argue that the Scriptures should not be taken literally, but studied and interpreted, reading through the layers of symbolism, to find meanings beyond the accident of language and culture. With a feeling of superiority I laugh at Christians who put the creation myths on the same scientific level as the evolution theory. I would not be so dumb as to confuse myths and scientific facts.
But did I bother to stop one minute and look at the symbolisms beyond the patriarchal language of the Our Father?
