My Second Oral Presentation

Vern Rossman created this course for people who feel instinctively that life should be directed more by creativity, compassion and celebration than solid exertion of the will or unquestioning loyalty to tradition. This was what interested me about this course. From my experiences, I have always thought of most religion as rigid and traditional. Being 22 years old, I still have this romantic notion of living in a politically correct society free of hatred and inequality. Thus I saw religion as a narrow-minded person's way of dealing with the world. Mr. Rossman's site proved to me that religion can change with the times and beliefs of the present society and that there are other ways to reach "enlightenment."

The God Self

If there is a God, how can we know what that being is like? Which of the gods pushed at us is closest to the true God? These are the questions that Mr. Rossman poses in the introduction of his web site. He theorizes that as we individually move greater and greater into maturity, we are likely to worship seven different gods, each corresponding to a stage of development. These are the seven stages:

Stage 1: God is a deity of magic, taboos and unpredictably dangerous behavior. Uzzah reaches out to steady the
Ark of the Covenant and is struck dead. This corresponds to the young child's magical interpretation of events in
the world she does not yet have a cognitive structure to understand.

Stage 2: God is one who rewards and punishes and can be bargained with. If there are ten righteous ones in
Sodom, the city can be spared. Abraham negotiates. (Genesis 18) Or, as it is put later: "If it is the Lord who has
turned you against me, an offering to him will make him change his mind." (I Sam. 26:19) God keeps a big book
in heaven into which he enters all our good and bad deeds. This god is very real to the seven year old whose
favorite phrase is, "It's not fair!"

Stage 3: God is a very personal deity who takes special care of me and mine. This teenager's god is seen as
tolerating young love in the back seat of the car because he knows their love is special. King David's special
relation to god as protector made his enemies god's enemies: "Do I not hate them that hate thee? ... I hate them
with a perfect hatred." (Psalm 137:8,9) This god (inconsistently it must be admitted) sends misfortune down on
evil people and protects the righteous.

Stage 4: God is the deity of the law and order people, sustainer of my country "right or wrong." This god floats
three feet above the flag in the Fourth of July parade and justifies killing those "lesser breeds without the law.” It
is a god who still has a most favored nation policy.

Stage 5: God is a rather liberal deity, a tolerant grand fatherly sort. Like the stage 5 person, god is confused by
conflicting systems of values and is not sure how to relate to his old autocratic exclusivist self.

Stage 6: God now has a universal perspective, embraces and loves all humanity. Where once people thought
God distinguished between good and evil nations and between good and evil persons, now it is clear that good
and evil are in each individual. There are no good kingdoms and evil kingdoms; there are no purely good people
and evil people. This god finds it impossible to choose sides in wars and weeps over killing and cruelty to any
person. From stage 6 on, god is inevitably a suffering parent, crucified on the divisions and violence of the
children.

Stage 7: God has a cosmic and transcendent perspective. This is the god of the saint, mystic, prophet and seer.
This is the god of those who have overcome the power of death in this life and who live in eternity, which is to
live in the wholistic power of the divine love. People at this stage are aware that the true God has designed them
for a glorious eternal destiny of loving creativity. The Cosmos is their living room and workshop.

If you have taken developmental psychology, you will by now notice that the definition of the seven gods are correlated to Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development. I have made a table of Kohlberg's stages for those who needs a bit of refreshing:

Stage	General Class	Reason for Behavior	Orientation Context
I	pre-moral	to avoid punishment	punishment, obedience
II	pre-moral	to obtain rewards, favors returned	naive instrumentalism, hedonism (pleasure/pain)
III	role conformity	to avoid disapproval, dislike	good relations, approval, role models ("good boy, nice girl")
IV	role conformity	to avoid censure by authorities, guilt	authority, law and order, codified or socially sanctioned systems.
V	self-accepted moral principles	to maintain respect (in eyes of impartial observer), community welfare	community welfare, contract rights, democratically constituted law
VI	self-accepted moral principles	to avoid self-condemnation	universal moral value, conscience, individual accepted principles

Though the connection may seem somewhat vague, I can understand how Mr. Rossman relate the development of morality to our perception of god as we develop mentally and emotionally. In my opinion, the majority of values that are instilled within us come from our belief systems. Our morality depends on our beliefs which are developed through our perception of the world, life, relationships, and even god. Ultimately, we all want to reach some sort of salvation, the key to happiness. In the web site Mr. Rossman writes that when we reach stages six and seven, we discover that God doesn't punish and has no need to do so (you can find it on this section.) This is what he consider as salvation, and ultimately, we are in made in the essence of God.

What I got from his writing is that because we have been created in the essence of God, within each of us, we have what Mr. Rossman calls a "god-self." He defined it as, "... what holds us together throughout these recurring disruptions. This is a wholistic core self, a heavy gravitational center which helps prevent us from flying apart. The god-self is the inner reality through which we find and express our likeness to God" We cannot see our god-selves physically. I think it is felt, like an inner strength that keeps us alive. When we realize our god-selves, we understand that God is not our master and we his/her servant. I think what Mr. Rossman wants us to realize is that we need to change our perception of who God is and we can because we are all created with the understanding of who god is, it is just the fact that we need to realize this understanding within us.

So where do we go from here? Mr. Rossman explains that, "The revolutionary new faith for the 21st century is based upon nothing less than the whole, healthy, strong, loving, joyful nature which, in our most perceptive moments, we all desire. This is the divine excellence which has been designed for
us by God. We can see flashes and fragments of it in ourselves and in others around us (you can find it on this section)." It just seems like the next logical step for us humankind to make. I have to agree with Mr. Rossman in that to be happy is to be whole; whole in spirit and mind.

My Reaction

It took me a while to think about the relevance of this web site to our class. For one thing, this site had nothing to do with the social factors of the internet, all it talked about was religious faith in the 21st century. Then I realized that it is not what was in the site that had much relevance to our class, but just the site itself. This is an internet course, which people all over the world can log on to. It doesn't require a traditional classroom setting, meaning a teacher lecturing students in a classroom. Instead, the classroom is the cyberworld, and the students are the human population that has access to a computer. Thus it is very fitting to teach a course that talks about the future of religious faith as a whole on the internet, which of course at this moment holds the future.

Vern Rossman: The Author Behind the Article

Vern Rossman has a wide experience as a writer in the religious field. He is co-author of a study book, Called to Mission and Unity and has written two plays and many articles for the religious press. He has spend two decades in church communication, which includes nine years as associate director of AVACO, the audio-visual production center of the National Christian Council for Japan; and seven years as director of Intermedia, the overseas communications and literacy arm of the National Council of Churches in USA.

Since the 1960's he has been seeking to bring together the findings of a variety of disciplines in a more adequate "space age" understanding of God's purpose for humanity.

Your Questions and My Answers

Mr. Rossman's definition of the God Self is, "an inner reality of pivotal psychological and spiritual power." It is a unity of all our "sub-selves." Th god-self is the inner individual expression of what philosophers call the ground of being. Some psychologist calls it the true self. from what I understood from Mr.Rossman's writings, I see the god self as the in a way your spiritual center, and all your values and experiences are the sub selves that makes the god self whole. It made me think about the line in the bible that said, "and God created man in the image of him."

This seems like a more open-minded religion and it seems to envelope some ideas of Psychology, Is this true (Jason T.)?

I think Mr.Rossman is not trying to create a new religion, but instead "improve" on the old. In my opinion, he seems to have realize that society as a whole has evolved tremendously since the beginning of time and that religions should be evolving as well. He related how we see God with Kholberg's stages of moral development because he thinks that as human's mature, so does their perception of God. Ultimately Mr. Rossman wants us to realize that God allowed us room to perceive his grandiosity in our own creative ways.

I think that he is a new generation Christian because he is trying to update its ideals so that it would suit our modern society.

I think Mr. Rossman does incorporate eastern religion into his ideas without using eastern religions as examples. This is purely my opinion, but I think that most religions have the same basic ideals behind their beliefs, it is just practiced in different ways. So when he talks about the God-Self is the western sense, it is very similar to what the Asians see as Chi.

In my opinion, the stages that Mr. Rossman used in his web site to describe how we see and worship God as we develop is mostly about our psychological understanding of who God is. Mr. Rossman's explanation is that theoretically you can't really get "stuck" in an stage because, "God chose to grow us, by stages, and will succeed, in part because this expansion of the boundaries of the self is one dynamic built into the processes of human history and personality. Our ascent cannot take place without our assent, but mature wholeness is a gift we will, by sharing graceful love back and forth, eventually give to one another in this or future lives." Thus when you think you are stuck in a stage, technically you're not because you are growing even when your not. I guess you can say that this is how God "helps."

Is religion only something that you believe in God, or does it also involve how you behave in society? Will that behavior directly affect your beliefs (Mr. Man)?

I think when you talk about belief in God, it doesn't constitute the whole ideal behind religion. I see religion as having not only spiritual, but also social, psychological, and geographical factors to it. If your society believes that offering human sacrifices is a way of showing your faith in God, then that behavior in your society is deemed as normal. I think that how you behave in society is base on your belief systems whether it is your belief in the Christian ideals or the Taoist ideals. So to sum it up, I see it more as your beliefs affecting your behavior and not the other way around.

In class you went through the different stages of seeing God-at which stage do you think most people are at? Do many people reach the highest stage (Cindy)?

It is hard to say where most people are at because we are all at different stages of maturity. I can tell you what stage I think I am at. I think I'm at the Fifth stage (see stages above). It is hard to generalize about the populace in this situation because I think we all all unique and I just wouldn't feel right trying do judge that.

As for the second part of the question, Mr. Rossman states that because instilled in us is our god-self, "Kohlberg's stages 6 and 7 are already being formed within us as patterns long before we are able to consciously affirm those advanced values or live by them for more than fleeting moments." So theoretically, everybody can reach the highest stage as long as they realize their god-self.

I was brought up as a Catholic, but when I entered the University, I started questioning my faith. I couldn't agree with some of the Christian ideals that my Church was trying to instill within me. This web site showed me that although religions have been around since man has been, we are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating our beliefs and the ideals behind it.

My Reaction

I have to admit that I was very nervous about the presentation. I had a lot of information that I wanted to share with my fellow classmates, but I was so worried about trying not to bore them with to many information. To make the long story short, I didn't share all the ideas about this site because I was too self-conscious. I must say though, I was less nervous during this presentation compare to my first. My classmates asked some interesting questions during the question and answer session, and I hope that I was able to at least give decent answers to them. Some of my classmates seemed interested about my site, but others didn't. I think it was because I was the second presenter, and it was quite hot that afternoon. All in all, I think I got the general point of this site across, and hopefully some of my classmates (and Dr. James) enjoyed my presentation.

Me vs. Them

I think that compare to the oral reports done for Sherry Turkle's book, the web site oral reports allowed me and my classmates to present the report more creatively content wise on our homepages. I liked Mrs. Korff's report on Affective Computing. She really did a thorough presentation both in class and on her site. Because it is a report on a certain web site, most of my classmates also talked about how these web sites are related to cyberspychology.

A Few Words for the Future Generations

Here's a few words for the future generations: don't lag! I know that in every single one of my other sites I have mentioned this, but it is pertinent that you stay on schedule. This report was fairly easy to do because it didn't require us to do too much research, and since we had to do the presentation before we do our oral report on our web site, I had some sort of idea on how to do this report.

If you are interested in my report on the God Self, you can go a check this site out. Since it is an internet course, it will take you a while to go through the whole thing. But, it is worth a check!