DO WE NEED OUR HEAD CANONS EXAMINED?

[TheLightWithin]

It came up on the forum last year, from somebody, that we should do a thread on theological headcanon.
Headcanon is personal belief that may not line up with official canon or catechism.

I think we were talking about what attracted us to an interfaith forum, and many people said they wanted to know what others believed and why. Idiosyncratic personal beliefs and ways of thinking are certainly a window into what and why.

This can also lead to discussion of convictions many have about personal freedom, religious freedom, and so-called heresy, which we can talk more about as we go on.

The word “headcanon” is often used around fan responses to fiction.

See What Goes On In Fans' Heads With "Headcanon"

Fanon - TV Tropes

Theology is different from fiction, but what it has in common with fiction is how much it is about Ideas and how much it uses Imagination, Idiosyncrasy, Intuition, Inference etc.

For our purposes heacanon can include misimpressions or misunderstandings we had as kids, or any idiosyncratic conclusions we drew about spirituality, theology, or religion.

I thought it would be intriguing to swap stories about religious ideas we now believe or maybe used to be believe as kids or young adults, that we now know is definitely not official teaching.

I will start (see ongoing thread)

 

[TheLightWithin]

Not being raised religious, I thought all kinds of things that were out of alignment with any kind of doctrine or catechism, mostly because I didn’t know those things at all and was surrounded by adults who were most definitely not in alignment with mainstream religion.

PERSONAL HEADCANON: I used to think religion was about praying to God for things someone wanted, kind of like wishing on a star.
Or, for protection, or help with something, or finding your way back to civilization if lost in the wilderness, or to get better when sick.

I think I was actually told by someone that you could be religious without going to church, and that being involved in a church was for the purpose of getting mad and judging people.

So, that simple view guided the contents of my head canon for quite a while.

 

[TheLightWithin]

One thing I may never have been incredibly explicit about before is what I DO believe.

Other than to say I share ideas with deists and theists, and that I’m fairly convinced that a supernatural order of some kind exists, I find it unrealistic and unreasonable to make solid claims about anything supernatural, much less have firm convictions about it.

One thing I DO have a firm consistent conviction about, however, is religious freedom.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

Yours, mine, and everyone else’s.

HEAD CANON: Religious freedom is more important than the teachings of any particular religion.

It’s one of the few things within religious ideas that benefits everybody.

 

[TheLightWithin]

When I was little, I heard my country was great because we allowed “religious freedom”

As I understood is, that means you can have any religion you want, or not have a religion.

Some other countries weren’t as nice as you couldn’t have that right.

That is what I was told.

I was fascinated by religion and the differences between religions and cultures – the concept of “different customs” was fascinating to me.

Beliefs in the household I was raised in generally pointed away from most forms of regular Christian belief.

The concept of religion was enthralling to me as I was mostly on the outside looking in.

When passing by a church, I always craned my neck to see which “religion” (denomination) it was. (I still do that) I wondered how many different kinds there were.

Here is some Head Canon: I thought different churches (church denominations) were totally different religions.

More Head Canon: : I thought religions were sort of like jobs where you sign a contract or other groups you can join. You follow the rules of your own religion, and the rules of other religions don’t apply to you. You are only in trouble with God (if at all) for going against the rules you agreed to.

 

[JustGeorge]

Headcannon... Hm.

I think that my focus in headcannon goes through periodic changes, but the core of my cannon has changed little...

I'm polytheistic and believe in reincarnation.

 

[wil]

being involved in a church was for the purpose of getting mad and judging people.

This goes against my headcannon...

Or does it?

I tend to gather with folks that have similar interests...but that doesn't often entail a group that contains members who look down at other folks.

Magicians, mimes, jugglers, street performers compare not only their hats (dollars), skills, and performance, but also have differing attitudes that get stereotyped.

I think the biggest thing missing from atheists and agnostics is the congregational community, yet when they do get together what they often wish to discuss is how ludicrous religionists are.

I think my head cannon is....I don't know. I have opinions and thoughts and speculation, but when it comes down to it, I don't know.

 

[JustGeorge]

I think the biggest thing missing from atheists and agnostics is the congregational community, yet when they do get together what they often wish to discuss is how ludicrous religionists are.

We actually have a local atheist group...

They actively seek to convert, too.

 

[TheLightWithin]

Head Canon about Jesus

I was not explicitly taught to think or believe anything specific about Jesus when I was little.

The conclusion I came to in the absence of any catechism:

HEAD CANON: I knew Jesus had lived a long time ago and was supposed to be returning very soon. I thought what had happened was he saved the world back when mostly by teaching people peace when they were on the brink of a war that would have wiped out their population. I thought that he would come back to either prevent the coming nuclear war with Russia or right after it to clean things up and make sure people survived and rebuild everything.

I thought the reason he was born of a virgin, committed miracles, and rose from the dead, was to prove to people that God was real as people had lost their faith in God and that was why they were going to have the war that was going to wipe out the ancient population. I had developed that idea from hearing people say that loss of belief in God in my contemporary time (1970s) was why we were supposedly heading towards nuclear war. I mean I actually kind of thought that someone explained things to me in a way that sounded like that, but I do not know who would have.

 

[moralorel]

I do miss the awe I used to have about life. When I was 3 years old I remember being amazed about thought and existence. I often wondered if anyone else was amazed that we were beings walking around having independent thought. But as kids nobody talked about that voice in their head. They never talked about their thoughts. When I was able to read I liked to read the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. I always wondered what voices readers used to voice Hobbes and Calvin.

I was quite capable of complex thought. When I was in kindergarten I started reading the Bible. I assumed that God was infinite and hard to understand like the universe. Of course, the universe is infinite and is not infinite so there's that. But I just assumed that some things were just too hard for us kids to understand and that we would understand when we got older. So much for that.

I also thought Jesus was upset with me because I didn't like Christian rock and Christian easy listening music. But I did like gospel music for some reason.

 

[TheLightWithin]

Headcannon... Hm.

I think that my focus in headcannon goes through periodic changes, but the core of my cannon has changed little...

I'm polytheistic and believe in reincarnation.

When I was little my mom told me she thought reincarnation was the most likely scenario.
My grandmother believed in ghosts and my grandfather had not believed in that kind of thing at all, until he converted to a denomination that taught annihilationism / conditional immortality. He was quite dogmatic about it.

I turned all this over in my own head over the years and based on what I learned of religions at some point I developed a head canon that it might be likely that reincarnation occurs and ghosts occur, but not all the time. The default is sleeping in the grave but reincarnation can occur a ghost existence can occur or some form of reward or punishment can occur (possibly by assignment but not by default) Then at the end of time there would be the resurrection, as my grandfather said, and the saved would live on the new heaven and new earth (new cosmos) and the wicked would be permanently destroyed.

I learned later that may not be dissimilar to the afterlife doctrines considered in Judaism, though Judaism does not emphasize the afterlife as much as Christianity and Islam do (AFAIK)

However this would conflict somewhat with my other headcanon

religions were sort of like jobs where you sign a contract or other groups you can join. You follow the rules of your own religion, and the rules of other religions don’t apply to you. You are only in trouble with God (if at all) for going against the rules you agreed to.

Basically that theory was that there is no one natural system of holiness requirements or afterlife that covers all of humanity. You get what you signed up for. That's more or less what I thought when I was a kid and realized how many religions there were.
If you didn't sign up of anything you would just die with no afterlife.

I also thought different Christian denominations were different religions.

 

[TheLightWithin]

I was quite capable of complex thought. When I was in kindergarten I started reading the Bible.

Did you have a kid's Sunday School bible or a regular grown up bible?

I assumed that God was infinite and hard to understand like the universe. Of course, the universe is infinite and is not infinite so there's that. But I just assumed that some things were just too hard for us kids to understand and that we would understand when we got older. So much for that.

Makes sense. It seems true. It may be partially true.

I do miss the awe I used to have about life. When I was 3 years old I remember being amazed about thought and existence.

Those things are amazing. And that feeling does fade sadly.

 

[TheLightWithin]

You get what you signed up for. That's more or less what I thought when I was a kid and realized how many religions there were.

I also thought different Christian denominations were different religions.

Here's where Head Canon comes in

I was therefore rather dubious when people preached loudly that the rules of their religion applied to everybody. My grandfather said things like that, and regular Christians seemed to think that too. My Head Canon: I thought that believing one’s religious beliefs applied to anyone outside the religion, was a total mistake no matter who said it. Or an outright falsehood made on purpose to start arguments.

More of My Head Canon: When people of different denominations argued, I still thought they were different religions. I thought their beliefs had nothing to do with me. I thought (piecing together what I had heard from adults) that all religious people had developed many untrue ideas and knew it but didn’t want to admit it and were blaming each other for their own mistakes.

If you sense at theme of me being critical about what I heard, you're right! Some of this came from the 3 adults in my household being very dubious about mainstream religion, and my mom being entirely dubious about all organized religion.

 

[moralorel]

Did you have a kid's Sunday School bible or a regular grown up bible?

Makes sense. It seems true. It may be partially true.

Those things are amazing. And that feeling does fade sadly.

I had an Old King James version bible at first. It was so difficult to understand. I didn't even understand what the word "thee" meant. I kept having to look up words in the dictionary. I eventually got my hands on a New King James version. We had an encyclopedia set so I learned to use it to help me understand some words and terms as well. It was interesting when I looked up the word "circumcision". I ran to my dad freaking out because I didn't want to chop off my penis for God. My poor poor parents had to explain very adult things to a little child.

 

[wil]

My poor poor parents had to explain very adult things to a little child.

This is where the book banners run into trouble. They want to ban modern books that discuss violence, murder, incest, or sex....yet whenever the bible thumping religionists write down snd list the exact things they are concerned with and the books they want banned, the Bible rises to the top like cream that needs to be scraped off.

 

[TheLightWithin]

This is where the book banners run into trouble. They want to ban modern books that discuss violence, murder, incest, or sex....yet whenever the bible thumping religionists write down snd list the exact things they are concerned with and the books they want banned, the Bible rises to the top like cream that needs to be scraped off.

For those who don't read it -- there was an occurrence I think I heard about in the 80s where someone in some beleaguered library in some book banning community summarized the Song of Solomon or even quote it and the local book banners were all set to take the book out of the library and were stopped short when they found out the book they were trying to ban.

 

[moralorel]

This is where the book banners run into trouble. They want to ban modern books that discuss violence, murder, incest, or sex....yet whenever the bible thumping religionists write down snd list the exact things they are concerned with and the books they want banned, the Bible rises to the top like cream that needs to be scraped off.

I used to be a teacher and had to hear about books being banned in our school. Hypocrisy was all over. The amazing thing was that our school rarely banned anything. The only books we banned were books about building pipe bombs or starting your own boy band.

 

[TheLightWithin]

The only books we banned were books about building pipe bombs or starting your own boy band.

Musical discrimination!
Boys caught harmonizing in back hallways chased, suspended from school, parents called!
Parents up in arms: Let our boys harmonize in harmony!♫♪

 

[TheLightWithin]

Head Canon about Jesus

I was not explicitly taught to think or believe anything specific about Jesus when I was little.

The conclusion I came to in the absence of any catechism:

HEAD CANON: I knew Jesus had lived a long time ago and was supposed to be returning very soon. I thought what had happened was he saved the world back when mostly by teaching people peace when they were on the brink of a war that would have wiped out their population. I thought that he would come back to either prevent the coming nuclear war with Russia or right after it to clean things up and make sure people survived and rebuild everything.

I thought the reason he was born of a virgin, committed miracles, and rose from the dead, was to prove to people that God was real as people had lost their faith in God and that was why they were going to have the war that was going to wipe out the ancient population. I had developed that idea from hearing people say that loss of belief in God in my contemporary time (1970s) was why we were supposedly heading towards nuclear war. I mean I actually kind of thought that someone explained things to me in a way that sounded like that, but I do not know who would have.

I also thought, at some point, that Jesus did something on the cosmic or angelic realms somehow, and saved the existence of the world that way.

I just wasn't grokking the idea of the personal relationship withe the savior element.

I thought something he did must have fixed things somehow, and that everyone was affected whether they knew or not, and everybody who knew was grateful and that is why they signed on to the religion. But that nobody was required to sign on to the religion about Jesus because there were so many religions to deal with. I think I thought all religions had to be full like all companies in town had to be staffed to keep things running. In life, people may praise or curse the mayor or praise or curse the main town industry but not everybody worked there.

 

[TheLightWithin]

When I was a little kid, and even later as a teenager, I thought God’s throne was something like a multi-sided gemstone he was within, (like someone would be in a shuttle craft) [Chariot of the Gods?] and that each religion was seeing him only through one of the angled facets. And that it was supposed to be that way. But people weren’t supposed to fight over it.

 

[TheLightWithin]

Here is some Head Canon: When I was little, I thought different churches (church denominations) were totally different religions.

I also knew there were other religions from far away like Buddhism. I vaguely knew the names of a few religious groups like Jewish or Muslim.

I also vaguely knew the Native American tribes might have had their own religions.

And I learned somewhere that in Ireland there used to be something called Druids and it had to do with religion involving trees somehow. I thought it was real that trees maybe had powers or something and that it was all related to saving the earth like modern environmentalists and that the Druids were good and supposed to help, and all religions were supposed to help save the world.