I read with some interest and alarm the treatise by John Seeland in the recent Pastor’s Point column in The NEWS.
I must say that I don’t know Seeland personally, so to avoid mistaken impressions I will speak only to the sense of alarm I feel when I read certain words. In particular, those contained within the last paragraph.
The article starts off well enough, and points out the tendency to anthropomorphize our god figures. I would say, though, that these tendencies are the ones that follow us from our childhood, a time when we needed these images to help our youthful minds understand concepts that could not be understood otherwise. These things therefore, can only be outgrown, and best not replaced by other anthropomorphized extraterrestrial entities.
I survived the 1960s and 1970s where I have seen my share of alternative spiritual paths come and go. At the time, people were leaving congregations of the Big Three in droves. Thousands of young thinking minds were seeking and embracing alternative philosophies that might possibly explain the turbulent times they lived in, times that saw many long-held assumptions challenged and overturned.
It was a circumstance ripe for opportunistic “holy” men from the East, only too glad to fill the vacuum left by the vacated churches, and many lining their pockets with the filthy lucre the materialistic West was known for, and preached against, by these clever spiritual authorities.
My caution is this: believe in extraterrestrials if you must. Goodness knows that none of us can verify their existence or not. And that is the point. Do not let any self-styled guru hijack your imagination causing you to place your faith in their particular construct. It takes guts to believe in yourself, and if you can’t make it with feet planted firmly on terra firma, there’s no guarantee that you’ll do any better on Planet Zorp.
Craig Drummond
Qualicum Beach
