Paul Tillich, the 20th century Protestant theologian, defined a symbol as something that points beyond itself. Symbols are unique mental objects which have no fixed referents. They can be contrasted with signs which have fixed meanings. Symbols are described as layered, multi-valent, multi-dimensional, or multivocal (Victor Turner's term). Their personal meanings and interpretations evolve to reflect the evolution of the individual, and the meanings of cultural symbols that are shared evolve as the culture changes.

Symbols are complex because they have different meanings that change as they are explored. The figure of Christ has meant different things to different people at different times. For instance, Christ was characterized as a warrior during the crusades going into battle to defeat the unbelievers. In the early 20th century, he was characterized as a businessman and the perfect salesman and marketer, a union organizer and a friend of the working man during the rise of unions, and a strong athlete who could fast and control his desires through physical and mental discipline as preachers focused on the masculine virtues of Christ. Jesus is both the ideal capitalist and socialist depending on differing interpretations.

In the early medieval period, Christian Neoplatonists saw Christ as the logos or "divine mind". Here, God the Father was infinite being or awareness which supplied the light and power of creation. Jesus as logos was the set of archetypal patterns or templates that took this power and created the "world soul" or Anima Mundi realm where living things such as plants, animals, and humans came into being. The Holy Spirit was God's presence that infused matter and living things. These three abstract entities were "personalized" by later Christians, and became the basis for the three persons of the trinity. For many early Christians, Christ symbolized the divine intellect and salvation was attained through wisdom rather than faith. This abstract and universally creative function of Christ differed greatly from the incarnate Christ who served as the ethical model for the path to salvation popular in more modern interpretations.

These examples all illustrate how broadly the symbol of Christ has been interpreted over time.

Symbolic statements such as "Christ is the Light of the World", "In the beginning was the Word", and the necessity of having faith the size of a mustard seed also have different possible meanings and interpretations. Literal interpretation of such statements renders them absurd, and metaphor is a dangerous slippery slope that threatens those who believe the Bible or other holy book must be literally true.

Symbols are dynamic as they grow and reinvent themselves.

Symbols can be looked at as having a spatial dimension. As one layer of meaning is peeled away or shed, another comes into view from behind the first one. Symbols also have a volume dimension. They are receptacles that "hold" meaning and power for the individual. The more power they hold, the more they become holy and a focus for prayer and contemplation. As they gain power, they also provide motivation and inspiration for religious individuals and groups.

A symbol is multivocal because it communicates different things depending on where the individual is on his or her spiritual journey. Symbols may be said to speak to people in much the same way that sacred scripture becomes like a living thing when religious people are able to enter into a kind of contemplative dialogue with the text.

Symbols also have a vitality dimension. Symbols are in a sense alive. When a symbol fails to hold power, it becomes dead or meaningless.

Religions can be looked as systems of symbols. Whole cultures evolve as newer symbol systems replace older ones. No one believes in the Greek or Babylonian gods any more. They are part of dead symbol systems (and therefore dead religions). Many of the symbols from mainstream religions such as Christianity and Buddhism derive from religious narratives describing the activities of founders of these religions and their disciples. For instance, the life of Christ is turned into a set of symbols in the Catholic Church's stations of the cross, which distill the major events in the life of Christ into a set of fourteen images. The Buddha's life is also captured in a set of images documenting his adventures in some Tibetan Thangkas, and the incarnations of the god Vishnu appear in depictions of the "ten avatars" in Hinduism.

A charged symbol has power and is alive with meaning. Symbols may be charged spontaneously, and have power when first encountered. This often happens in religious conversion where an individual finds him or herself irresistibly attracted to a religious figure or symbol system, and converts to a new religion. Symbols may also become charged as an individual uses them in prayer and meditation, and directs attention and positive emotion towards them as part of a spiritual discipline or search. Such charged symbols can be very valuable when the individual directs attention towards them during spiritual travel.

One extraordinary thing about spiritual travel is that religious people who adopt a spiritual practice involving contemplative prayer and meditation do not have to wait until death to perceive the power of the symbols that they employ in their practice. They can get glimpses of the value and power of these symbols here and now which can be very motivating and inspiring. Contemplating a charged symbol while in an out-of-body state can be much like stepping into a whirlwind of powerful forces. The individual is picked up and carried to mysterious and extraordinary states of consciousness with the symbol acting as the method of transport. The symbol can function as the key that opens the door to a sacred reality.

The Downside of Losing Symbolism

One trend seen in modern religion is the idea that there is one literal interpretation of scripture on which all reasonable people will agree. Passages from sacred texts are many times highly symbolic and multidimensional containing many possible interpretations. However, scriptures are being flattened and frozen into a single interpretation by authorities that know, for instance, what the Bible literally means. The other common levels of interpretation including the allegorical, ethical, and mystical interpretations are denied and suppressed.

The first result of such an approach is that the authority of preachers who claim to know the correct interpretation is vastly increased. The twin doctrines of literal interpretation and inerrancy (the Bible is one hundred percent true, perfect, and without error) give vast authority and credibility to those professionals who preach the true word. The individual believer's power is in equal measure lessened.

The second result of this concept of literal interpretation is that it leads to an over simplification of religion where only a short list of "fundamentals" are deemed important. This occurs because the same confidence that leads people to claim to know exactly what the Bible means also makes them certain that they know which parts are most important, which parts can be ignored, and what needs to be done to gain salvation. In this environment, simplified stripped down religion tends to become a formula. Here a personal relationship with the divine is reduced to uttering a prescribed set of phrases, which when spoken sincerely and correctly become a ticket to heaven. Salvation is achieved by religious conversion, which is, in turn, achieved by employing a simple ritual formula.

When such formulas are treated like life preservers thrown to the drowning, they are grasped so tightly by the individual that they become an excuse for some to stop growing spiritually. The formula for salvation is repeated over and over again as if it were some sort of magic charm for luck and protection. Once the formula is accepted, the practice of religion becomes primarily the task of getting others to subscribe to and repeat this same formula. Thus we see the emphasis on evangelism.

Being certain about one's salvation because there is faith that sins are forgiven lays the foundation for a happy life and a joyous self-confidence. It is difficult to fault anyone who seeks such assurance in their spiritual life. The people who seek this kind of security and the church leaders who try to provide it are sincere and honest in their efforts to create a viable religious tradition that can stand against the many challenges to religion posed by the modern world.

However, there is a hidden or dark side to such an approach. When one has the ultimate answer which is distilled in this simple formula, why continue to seek and ask questions? For some, spiritual growth or the process of sanctification becomes irrelevant and unnecessary. For others, when salvation is certain, religious practices can be put aside. Still for others, when forgiveness of sin is assured, ethics can be put aside, and this can be very dangerous. If all sin is forgiven, committing another sin is not such a bad thing.

This is especially true if the ultimate goal of the sin has a higher purpose. This "end justifies the means" type of morality has been responsible for much of the evil and suffering in the world because it sugar coats evil making it appear virtuous, and having some religious or idealistic goal. The more grandiose the goal, the greater the dishonesty and cruelty. Thus we have religious "stealth candidates" who lie about their true views running for political office and judges seeking court appointments that avoid answering questions that will give a true picture of who they are and what they think. We also have religious leaders making claims that Christianity is a religion of war and vengeance, who advocate torture of enemies while they claim to follow Christ who told them to "love their enemies". On a more subtle level, we have clearly biased religious authorities with limited educational backgrounds making dubious pronouncements on matters of history and science.

Certainly not everyone takes these approaches but many seem to be attracted to these fundamentalist traditions because of them. Modern religions that take the twin approaches of the certainty of salvation and of all sin being forgiven are seeing increased membership.

The richness and beauty of religious texts become sterile and dry as monolithic interpretations are accepted by whole church councils, denominations, and congregations. Agreements arise on what and how people must believe in the name of group unity, or faith, or security, or salvation. Some protestant denominations that protested the authority of the Catholic hierarchy in the reformation so that each individual could become his own priest have now taken on different authorities in the form of church conventions or charismatic preachers who tell them the true and only interpretation of the Bible.

Formerly congregational churches where the local church members decided doctrine are being pressured by interchurch hierarchies to adopt the true interpretation or be expelled. Authoritarianism is ascendent, and the individual is expected to adapt and conform to the group. Fortunately, Bible study groups, where people are sometimes encouraged to discuss differing interpretations, run counter to this trend.

These group interpretations have the virtue of clarity and simplicity, and can be very helpful, but they are only a point of departure on an individual spiritual journey, and not a final destination. Those who tell people who are at the beginning of a journey that they have already reached their final destination do them a great disservice.

These group interpretations also have the distinct down side of creating tendencies towards a "fortress religion" where everyone who does not believe the proper interpretation becomes a threat or an enemy or of the devil. Religious communities, which should be cohesive based on bonds of love, can shift the basis of this community to bonds of fear and hatred of the outsider. Having the correct religion combined with its correct interpretation has been the basis for many religious wars in the past, and could easily become the basis for another wave of cultural and religious wars in the future.

It is the deeply symbolic nature of religious texts and imagery, and the inability of some religious people to accept the pervasive ambiguity of a religious life based on shifting meanings and interpretations, that is the source of these fundamentalist revivals. In this situation, scripture becomes history and its symbolic doorways can become closed and locked. The revelatory nature of symbols requires that their meanings change in order for the symbols to function as doorways to the sacred.

The literalist is continually caught in confusion trying to make clearly symbolic statements sound literal and struggling to give them only one interpretation. Another approach is to draw an imaginary line between those biblical passages considered clear or literal while ignoring passages that are obscure or mysterious which are on the other side of that line. For those who take the first approach, it is ironic that the Book of Revelation which is among the most highly symbolic books in the Bible is one of the most important texts for Christian literalists. Similarly, those who treat the Bible as a kind of divinatory text which predicts what has happened in the recent past, and what will happen from now until the rapture are on very shaky ground. The dense forest of symbolism which must be crossed to understand, for instance, who is the Antichrist, what country will produce him, and the states that will be at war during the end times is anything but literal. People who claim a literal interpretation as they wade through a sea of symbolism seem to simply have forgotten what the term literal means.

For most of Christian history, the Book of Revelation was considered a historical document that described events that occurred in the first century A.D. rather than a blueprint for future events that will occur at the "end of time". It was very nearly not included in the original biblical canon because so many bishops and scholars objected to its contents. It was also the vision of a single individual (John of Patmos) whose history is unknown and who almost certainly never met Jesus. Those who believe that John of Patmos was the same person as John the Evangelist (author of the Gospel of John) can provide little evidence to support this conclusion. Focusing the bulk of one's theology on this single text with its obscure symbolism as many apocalyptically oriented believers do is quite a radical departure from fourteen hundred years of Christian thought and history. Christians who embrace this radical modern interpretation and call themselves conservatives seem to have forgotten what the word conservative actually means.

The literalist is largely cut off from the power of sacred symbols and therefore from religious experience. This being the case, the individual turns to external authorities for guidance. Faith-based religions which rely mostly on external authorities are excellent places for the autocrats and the power hungry to gain followers because it is easy to gain the trust of those that consider faith a saving virtue. Religious language is easily learned and easily manipulated, and con artists have been using religion for centuries to swindle the unsuspecting.

Since revelation exists only in the past, history becomes central and the desire to envision an ideal period of perfection that all the faithful must return to becomes very strong. The tendency to project a fantasy world (golden age) which describes an ideal religious past that must be "conserved" is a prominent feature of these fundamentalists groups. This is one reason they consider themselves to be conservatives. Without an ideal place and time to return to, there is nothing worth conserving. It may be the 1950's, the revolutionary period of the founding fathers, the time of the prophets, or the period of the early church before the canon was closed. These historical periods are often associated by individuals with their childhoods which are remembered as times of religious faith, peace, security, and order created by pious and good parents or authority figures. But whatever period is chosen (it is often left vague), the danger lies in religious leaders claiming to be historians as well as preachers, and in their claiming absolute authority in both their interpretation of history and of scripture. In doing so, they are vainly taking on the status of the prophets of the Old Testament. These prophets also talked of war, enemies, the chosen people (or tribe), and the wrath of God.

To control the image of the ideal past is to control the minds of the people in the present, and this is the reason that history must be changed and manipulated by those who seek to inspire faith on one hand and gain authority over others on the other. Such activity can be justified because a false story that inspires religious faith is superior to a true story that is neutral or even worse, causes religious doubt. Without religious experience, faith is a fragile thing that must be nurtured at all costs, even at the expense of truth.

It is simple to define the world view of people who believe themselves to be religious conservatives. All that is needed is to tell them what all the good people in some idealized past believed, and they will believe the same thing. The fact that the past as described never existed is of little importance. Many founding fathers were Unitarians, Deists, and Masons (heretical groups), and were most influenced by the early modern and enlightenment philosophers who were suspicious of religion and its irrational elements. Religious wars had created chaos in Europe and they hoped to avoid recreating the same situation in the new world. Six out of the first seven Presidents of the United States were Unitarians or Deists for a significant period during their lives. The first protestant belief system focuses on the unity of God and denies the Trinity which, in turn, denies the unique role of Christ as the bringer of salvation (heretical by most Christian standards). The second (Deists) believes that God created the world but left mankind on his own to run it (God is disinterested and uninvolved in human kind's salvation).

In the idealized version, these same people all wanted America to be a Christian theocracy.

In the early church, the most respected church leaders were the most sophisticated in their interpretation of scripture seeing layer upon layer of symbolism. In the idealized version, these elders and scholars were only interested in simplicity and a single interpretation.

Perhaps even more dangerous is the sincere but confused religious person who as a political leader uses religious ideals to convince others to support policies motivated by ethnic, class, nationalistic, commercial, or personal ambition. Medieval history describes a long series of popes, bishops, judges, inquisitors, muftis and ayatollahs employing crusades, church courts, jihads, and pogroms to carry out war, torture, murder, and mayhem in the name of religion. Mixing politics and religion sooner or later creates a toxic brew. Those who believe the two should be mixed need to look closely at current and past theocratic governments and the injustices they promote.

Religious people with political power often take on a tribal identity, and tribal societies often persecute outsiders and look upon them with distain. The positive side of tribalism is group unity, tradition, and community but the negative side is xenophobia. Negative tribalism is corrupting to religious people because it focuses their attention on their enemies instead of their ideals. To become a member of a tribe is to have one's identity mostly defined by what one hates or fears. To identify with a tribe is to surrender the religious life to the secular, and become truly "of the world". The often repeated argument that criticism of political leaders "helps our enemies" is a tribal-centric argument that seeks to divide the world into us and them. The virtuous, supportive, loyal tribal members must be separated from both their external enemies and the evil traitors in their midst, and oppose them in ways ranging from moral argument to war.

Sadly, it usually takes many years for those who mix politics and religion to notice the corruption and cynicism it breeds in their ranks. Eventually they discover they are not the victors but rather the losers who have sacrificed their religious ideals and values on the altar of political power and expediency on one hand, and tribalism on the other. Political leaders who claim religious authority sooner or later loose their appeal.

The lack of personal religious experience forces the individual to substitute various things for the ultimate reality as God becomes distant and weak, and dependent on his followers who must serve as defenders and religious warriors. The "render unto Caesar" biblical quote is completely ignored as religious leaders seek to become "players" on the political stage with "a seat at the table" of power figures. Religious individuals come to distort religion

• by focusing on the rapture and the end-times, and how those outside the faith will suffer during this period
• by joining "culture wars" to fight the forces of evil that are believed to threaten society
• by falsely claiming to be threatened minorities and demanding special protection and consideration when they are, in fact, members of a majority with considerable political power
• by distorting science and investigating theologically based theories that can never be disproven
• by transforming religious congregations into political action committees
• by rewriting history to support a religious world view based on nationalism and the pride of being a nation "chosen by God"
• by attempting to bring about the "end of time" and speed up their own salvation by financing the return of Jews to Israel (fulfilling an Old Testament prophesy)
• by making claims about the Bible being against abortion when the concept of abortion is not mentioned in the Bible at all (although Exodus 21:22 says that if men cause a women to have a miscarriage, then they have to pay a sum of money to the family - they are apparently not accused of murder for killing the unborn child but of theft of an object of value, and are required to pay a civil penalty in the amount determined by a judge to compensate the family).
• by forcing religious rituals and proclamations into secular schools and courtrooms
• by claiming that abortion is killing an "innocent child" when nothing is clearer in Christian theology (from both Augustine's Catholic doctrine of original sin and Calvin's Protestant doctrine of "total depravity") that the child (born or unborn) has original sin - the child is therefore not innocent but inherits the "sin of Adam" and is thus guilty
• by claiming that state-supported religion is fair when the vast majority of funds go to one's chosen religion, and the money is given with no audit requirements to determine how the funds are spent

This external and highly politicized approach to religion fills the void left when direct spiritual experience is impossible, and religious symbols become signs devoid of real spiritual power. For the spiritual traveler, religion is much more than having the right beliefs, or a supportive community who all believe the same thing as you. It is about employing belief, religious ritual, and group or private contemplative practices to generate charged religious symbols which can open up deeper layers of realty so that faith matures into direct spiritual experience.

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