This guy speaks truth. What do we really “own?” We are temporary, finite creatures on this planet. We have things we USE. He calls it a basic fact. Most people don’t get this. Can you take it with you?
Typically, for most folks, the biggest financial investments we make—homes and cars—are consumable commodities. They can be consumed, as in burnt up in flames, until they are gone. In accounting, we call them depreciating assets. Even homes that gain value over time will one day decay, become dilapidated to the point of falling in on themselves or get torn down. It will become a dump, a trash heap of debris. It’s a consumable commodity, a depreciating asset, that may serve a purpose in your life until the time you die. It won’t last forever, either. Even if you “pass it down,” the average lifespan of a home is three generations. Homes and treasured heirlooms have a limited lifespan. People who suffered through but survived Hurricane Ian understand the limited lifespan and value of THINGS, even precious things, irreplaceable things. Things that are consumable, though, and won’t go into eternity with you.
In moving back to this island among those survivors last year, that weighed heavy on my decision. I’m a minimalist and have lived that way since 2011. The six years leading up to that, I began deconstructing my sense of self, my faith and downsizing. In the year that followed I got divorced, downsizing even further and going deep into myself TO FIND ME! So that when I moved back amongst the living dead, one year and eight months after most of them LOST EVERYTHING, I believed I would be amongst like souls who had learned this valuable life lessons. Things hold no eternal value.
My girlfriend and I just went round-and-round on this very topic. The cremains of our parents do not hold their essence. The ashes of their mortal bodies do not keep them close to us in spirit. They are but a reminder of them, their essence and presence in our lives. Even less valuable things, like keepsakes from childhood, or our kids’ childhood, hold no real eternal value. They are mere pointers, physical reminders, of what we had, what once was. They stir our nostalgia and our fuzzy recollections.
I can remember our old 8mm home movie reels. Dad had a Bell + Howell movie projector and a movie screen that he’d setup in our basement and play for us early childhood memories. There I was on the movie screen at 3 years old playing football with my dad on the living room carpet, at 5 years old being walked down the street towards kindergarten by my 3 year old sister, or at 6 years old playing in the fall leaves at Broad Ripple Park (Northeast Indianapolis). I would watch those movies for years and it brought back wonderfully nostalgic feelings. But I didn’t travel back in time and become that 3 year old in an oversized football helmet. You can never go back. And now that the home movies are gone and I’m aging, those memories from long ago get fuzzier and more distant. Dad even had them digitized before the film totally deteriorated, but then he lost the disc. Unless digital copies exist somewhere in the cloud, those old movies are gone forever, lost to time. They were not eternal, either.
What’s my point? I’d give everything I have to have those digitized films back for antiquity. I’d love to hand them down to my adult daughters. I’d love to hear their laughter over me crying because I didn’t WANT to play football or wear that ridiculous helmet! I’d love to know that they could one day show their own children, should they have any. But they DO HAVE memories of our lives together. THAT will be my enduring legacy, the only thing of eternal value.
What do we really own? Our life on planet Earth is SO SHORT! We take none of the stuff with us, but as George Carlin put it, we spend so much of our lives worrying about our stuff and where we are going to store our stuff. It’s comical because it’s true. But it’s also sad. It shows us the ridiculous value we place in things and the ridiculous amount of time we spend working for and worrying about things. They are insignificant refuse meant for the garbage heap of time. Even our bodies are consumable. Mine will be burnt up in a crematory one day.
That’s not fatalism, but realism.
So where do you place value in your life? What are you working so hard for? Things that are eternal and priceless or consumable commodities, like creature comforts? Do you need them, like air and water, to survive? Then what are they really worth? What are you investing in of any significant value? Where are your priorities? What is the payoff?
I have been talking about humility a lot lately. I think that it has fallen on deaf ears, but it's something I've studied, before as a student of religion, as a leader of men on retreat weekends--I wrote about that here.
I've actually written quite a bit on this blog about Humility. But in the post, above, from March 2014, I'd just gotten out of a committed relationship and returned to Tallahassee to be with my girls full-time. In reading the post, it was very beautifully moving and emotional for me to read, but I just wish I had followed my own advice. Life just sometimes gets in the way. Circumstances and situations arise that take us out of our peace and we become reactive. We often react out of stress or anger or whatever, and we don't always choose humility.
But we always come back to it.
When I wrote that post in March 2014, my girls were 9 and 12. My oldest was about to become a teenager...and my biggest challenge. We went through some rough years while she was in high school and the three of us were living in their mother's townhouse. I remember the most heated exchange we ever had was one night when she was probably 17. She was in charge of dinner, but only as a result of not doing dishes the night before. That was my rule. If it's your night for dishes and you choose to put them off, they are expected to be washed and put away before dinner the next night. On this occasion, they were not. One thing led to another, and I let myself work up a load of steam before she triggered me and I flew off the handle, cussing and slamming a pot of sauce on the floor to make a point. It was an overreaction, to be sure. She left the house saying she couldn't live there with me anymore. Her's was a typical teenager overreaction, but I did not stop her. Before we went to bed that night, me in her bed and her at her best friend's house, we spoke by phone and each of us apologized for our overreactions and our part in creating the drama.
So even in our worst moment as parent-child, we came back to our senses and back to common ground. It takes humility to admit when you are wrong. So even if I didn't model it perfectly at all times, like I wrote that I would on this blog, I hope that they came away understanding that life principal. Being humble with people, especially those you love, can express to them how important they are to you. Like the last act of Jesus for his disciples, stooping down to wash their dusty, dirty feet. Humility that speaks love.
I've made so many mistakes in relationship, too many to count. But I still understand humility. Even when I don't show it, I always come back to it. In situations where I've been wronged, repeatedly, I still find a way back to humility. Even when I know that I was wronged, and I was right to call out the offender, I have humbled myself in order to preserve the relationship. It was a tough lesson that I learned from living with my Dad.
Dad grew up in a home where you had to PROVE you were right on any given topic. His surviving siblings will tell you stories of them taking dictionaries and thesauruses to the dinner table to "win" a debate with their father. They've all told the stories and bear the scars. In fact, James H. Doyle, my grandfather, was nicknamed "Preacher" in high school. No wonder where my Dad gets it. He's never wrong. And don't expect him to admit it, either. But when being "right" comes at the expense of those you love, by hurting them with your judgy nonsense, then what good is being right all the time? Where is the prize for that?
It used to infuriate me when my father would constantly argue with family members over things consequential--politics and religion--or inconsequential, like how to cook something properly. It was always HIS WAY OR THE HIGHWAY! There's only one right way (and perhaps there is for some things) and he's going to be sure to tell you what that is. He was an expert on things, just ask him. Well, no one was willing to bring a Bible, a law book, a medical journal, a dictionary or thesaurus because he'd even argue that THEY were wrong! He was always right.
There is no prize for always being right. Your ego can take the blow of being wrong once in awhile. You might serve the higher purpose of fostering relationship and peace in the home over being "right." But that would take humility. And so I would often challenge my dad, "Are you really wanting to be right on this? Or do you want to have relationship?" Because I could see him pushing away all of those he loved most dearly, over his ego and being right. Aren't those we love worthy of a little of our humility?
It takes humility to give second, third and fourth chances, but you are capable. I found I was until I hit my limit. After choosing relationship over being right a number of times, I had to stop and ask myself is this humility or is it foolishness. So I point blank asked my partner, when is it YOUR TURN to act humbly and choose US over your ego? Will you ever humble yourself and just say, "You know what? You're right. And I love you more than I love being 'right' all the time."
It's not always easy, but it's right.
That was my aim in 2014. Yes, I'm human and I fell short, but I do hope I imparted that lesson to my daughters. I feel that I failed to impart it to my partner. She just shat all over the idea, arguing with me until I gave up and left.
I have situational depression. It doesn’t make me suicidal. It just takes me to a bad headspace and holds me captive for a time. It doesn’t last, however, the depression usually fades just as quick as it rushes in. My best defense is to stay in the present. Like Eckhart Tolle preaches and even wrote in his book “The Power of NOW“ your problems that you perceive to exist in the present don’t really exist in the present moment. When you stop and look around, where are they? Simply put, in your mind. And I'm either looking back at something that has happened moments ago, weeks ago or years ago or I’m looking ahead to what I perceive will happen in the next moments, weeks, months or years. And the mystics and sages tell us that "to live in the past is depression, to live in the future is anxiety." That’s why Tolle preaches to stay in the now.
And I haven’t read his book. I have watched tons of his lectures online and I know this principal. It bears out. It is true. #TRUTH
My problems, whatever they are, do not exist in the present moment. At the present, I am breathing, I am alive, I am present and aware of my breath, my internal environment and my surroundings. Just taking that momentary inventory is enough to tell me, nothing is threatening me at this very moment. There is no black bear hovering over me ready to devour me. So why do I act as if there is??? That black bear, as fictional in this moment as my perceived problems, does not exist. I am not in imminent danger. Nothing is wrong right this second. It's only in my mind.
Where does worry and anxiety exist? Only in our minds. Where does my depression exist? Only in my mind. Well, don't we have control over our minds??? If not, who does? Who controls our present if not us?
That's the place where you discover that YOU ARE THE PROBLEM! It's not your circumstance, your situation or anyone else in your life. It's YOU! You got yourself into the predicament you are in, whether you caused it or not, you reacted to it. Who controls your reaction? Who regulates your emotions? YOU DO!
So if you come to that point of discovering, I AM THE PROBLEM! Then what are you going to do about it? Fix it or ignore it, hoping it passes?
Nothing in you will change unless you change it.
If you find yourself spiralling with worry, doubt, anxiety or depression. Stop and take stock of everything around you. Are you still breathing? Is the bear hovering and ready to devour? Then where is the perceived threat? Somewhere in your past? Somewhere in your future? Has your crystal ball EVER been that accurate? Or do things typically work themselves out?
I live on a barrier island that was wiped out just 25 months ago by Hurricane Ian. The survivors here remember the fear of death like it happened to them yesterday. They suffer PTSD, which is totally understandable. But Ian didn't happen to them yesterday. It's not going to happen tomorrow. Chances are, in their lifetime, they'll never face another devastating, life-altering storm like that.
So what "Ians" are we facing? Am I facing...right now or in the future? Probably none. Again, it was a once-in-a-lifetime storm that, fortunately, I did not go through. Can I sympathize with my neighbors here. YOU BETCHA! Is their PTSD real and rooted in a past traumatic event. ABSOLUTELY! But do they have to live in fear for the rest of their lifes. NO! That trauma lies in their past and only truly exists in their memories of that day 25 months ago.
Look, nothing that happened 25 months ago, 45 years ago or even an hour ago has to effect you right now, in the present! You can let it if you want to, but you have complete control. That's not to discount the lingering effects of trauma, PTSD or past experiences. But the reality is, they are no more a threat to you right now, in this moment, than the make believe black bear in my living room. It doesn't threaten you right now. The 18-feet of storm surge isn't taking your foundation out from under you RIGHT NOW! So why act as though it is?
BE PRESENT.
Don't let anxiety about future perceived problems or obstacles get in the way of your life today. Don't let current circumstances overwhelm you. They don't have power over you. Regulate your emotional reactions to whatever it is that's really going on, or just going on in your brain. That's where your control is, over your reaction to it. Why are you overreacting, or wasting any energy or brainpower whatsoever on something that MIGHT occur in the future, whether it's another major hurricane or a shortage of income? Whether it's a near-death car accident or a hangnail? Can you control either, or stop them from happening, with worry? NO! You're just taking precious years off your life. That's all worry does.
That's self-defeating. To continue down the path of worry and slowly killing yourself. Other living things in the animal kingdom don't do that!
What is threatening you right now? If you're not sliding across the median into oncoming traffic as you read this, why are you worrying about that accident that COULD happen but is not happening now? If the bear isn't standing in your living room ready to pounce, why are you acting as if he is, scared to make one false move. JUST BREATHE! Your problems only exist in your brain. Somehow, you'll find a way to pay that bill from your shrinking bank account, even if you have to "rob Peter to pay Paul." I've been there many times. I have the overdraft receipts to prove it. Those times of worry and doubt or doing without DIDN'T KILL ME!
I've even lived homeless for a time. Did it kill me? NO! I'm here writing about it. I actually thrived in that inhospitable, unsafe environment around drug addicts, perverts and the mentally unstable. We are animals built to survive. We don't need all the creature comforts we've come to enjoy, but we believe we need them to survive. We don't. We need air, water and something to eat. That's how animals survive in the wild. And they don't kill themselves early by worrying about it.
Why am I posting all this. I'm not preaching to anyone. This is my present reality. I'm sitting on my couch, in my living room (creature comforts that don't keep me alive) with this laptop on my lap, writing about where I am at. I've been struggling for weeks with situational depression. I put a video by Eckhart Tolle on the television, using the YouTube App on FireTV (more creature comforts that don't keep me breathing) and that's what led to this entire post. It was for me, primarily.
I am a student of this shit. I have gone deep many times to rediscover myself, who I am at my core. But I still struggle up here at the surface ALL THE DAMN TIME! I'm not perfect. But I do know who I AM. I just need to be reminded over and over and over...because I am human. I have tendancies. They don't always serve me well. But tapping back into SOURCE and finding myself in the deep, does help me to survive...sometimes on the daily. Often times, moment to moment, like Bob Wiley "baby steppin." Baby steps back to the present. Baby steps back to who I know that I AM. Seriously, I have to get that rudimentary.
Nothing in my present situation is killing me. There are no current threats to my life or safety in this present moment. Stay tuned.
I don't remember when I created this graphic, but I go back to it all the damn time!
This YouTuber really resonates with me, this video in particular. I've written here many times about Praise. I even sat down and for several months wrote a manuscript whose working title was "Man of Praise," because I thought that was my purpose on Earth. It was a well-written piece on Christian virtue, humility and worship. A book on being a man of faith. It was so inspiring to my ex-pastor's father-in-law, that the retired pastor wrote a forward for my book. It was nearly ready for publication. But then my world crumbled and I deconstructed my faith, much like Kristi Burke.
I'm dedicating this blog post to my two sisters, Heidi and Keely, who cling to their faith in God, the faith that we were raised in, and the belief that this "Heavenly Father" has our best interest in mind always. No judgment, but this is the religion of privilege. Look what Father God has DONE FOR ME! Yes, but what about babies who cannot survive outside the womb? Why did Omniscient, Almighty God "knit them together in their mother's womb" to begin with? He just needed another angel? What about children born to impoverished parents in abject poverty without clean water or enough food for their bellies? People all over the world are born into unimaginable suffering. Is "Abba" not concerned for their wellbeing? He clothes the "flowers of the field" and cares about the sparrow, but not these human beings He created?
This flawed theology is covered in Kristi's video. She takes offense at so many things in fundamental Christian theology, but omits the one thing that's always stuck in my crawl--blood atonement/human sacrifice. The most holy book ever written is replete with it. Humankind is meant to worship, but also to suffer. The original sin that He created and put on us, knowing we couldn't resist temptation, could only be removed with the blood of a "perfect" human being, Jesus, his son. This was foreshadowed in the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Judaic scriptures. Was that a literal command? "Abraham you cannot love me unless you kill your baby boy that I promised to give you, so that you could 'father my people?'" What kind of love or devotion is that? Kill your own child because your bloodthirsty deity demands it??? Sadistic AF!!! And barbaric...and not even an original idea. But I digress.
In the video she challenges other facets of the all-knowing, all-loving Daddy in the sky. She covers our purpose in Creation. She questions God's fragile ego that he needs constant praise and words of affirmation. She gets angry that it is coerced out of us for fear of damnation and the shame that evokes. Don't get me started, I grew up Catholic. SHAME IS REAL! (I may need a Brene Brown video after typing this! LOL!). This leads to mental health issues, like it did in me many years ago. Yeah, she covers that, too. The "white privilege" of American Christianity, which I've already touched on, she touches on in a roundabout way. I mean, from the beginning of Scripture, God chooses a select group of people, right? It creates the US v. THEM mentality that permeates society today! Why am I blessed (chosen, privileged) when so many other innocent children on the planet suffer? They weren't chosen, too? And that's LOVE??? She questions the idea of "free will," of God's "omnipotence," and inconsistencies in the Bible, like the slaughtering of women, children and animals because God's angry, impulsive and vengeful...and He didn't choose them!
I wholeheartedly believed this idea, at one time years ago, that my sole purpose on Earth was to praise this magnificent Being, who was so benevolent that he put me on Planet Earth and left me to my own devices. As Kristi begs the question, why does God need praise? Why does He require it? Why is suffering and eternal punishment the retribution for not getting on one's knee and bowing down to Him? Why is that so important to the Almighty Creator of heaven and Earth???
It seems like a wholly human idea that some dude millennia ago cooked up in his human brain. It doesn't make any sense. It never really did. But from an early age, I was brainwashed to believe it made perfect sense! I went to Mass every week in a church filled with the iconography of bloody, human sacrifice--from the crucifix hung above the altar, to the bleeding, pierced heart with a crown of thorns around it, but a golden crown on top in the stained glass! Were my parents and the Catholic church trying to scar me for LIFE?!?!?!
Shame was the message. "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE GOD DO!!!" "You should feel ASHAMED!" It was my sin, my fault, my flawed nature that caused all that iconography around me. I was five or six before the shame hit me. What kind of guilt is that to put on a small child? What kind of Joseph-Mary-and-Jesus kind of child abuse is THAT??? Not to mention all the actual child abuse that was going on behind the scenes!!! THANK GOD my parents got us out of that faith tradition before I BECAME A STATISTIC! As I wrote in my last post, A Faith Journey, I really wanted to become an altar boy. We left just before I was able. WHEW!!!
Once we got into Protestant versions of the faith, I was told I could have a "personal relationship" with this bloodthirsty, psychotic Being. GREAT!!! I was shamed and scared straight again, when I was shown some 70's, low-budget version of "Left Behind." If I didn't get baptised and right with God, despite already being "sealed" as a child of God from birth and my baptism in the Church, I was gonna deal with severe consequences here on Earth, being ruled by an evil AntiChrist! And if that didn't scare me straight, I'd suffer eternal damnation! Like I think they literally believed I could lose my salvation. But I said the prayer, I got sprinkled and dunked! I did "all the things!" Not good enough??? MORE SHAME and scare tactics. THANK YOU RELIGION for that!
But as I matured in my faith and bought into this idea that I had a "perfect Dad" up in heaven, I leaned ALL THE WAY INTO IT. Read my previous post, linked above, or just scroll down to the next headline. I WAS ALL-IN! But then something broke in me.
All that time in church, believing, doing all the things, like getting baptised a THIRD TIME (in the Holy Ghost, even!!!), and taking on all that shame and ritualistic abuse...and what did I have to show for it? NOTHING!!! I was a barren, wannabe dad with a worthless degree that I had hardly used in the 13 years I had it, I was used and abused by leaders in the church (by the Church, itself) for a dozen-plus years and I was exhausted! I tried to end my life in December of 2000. The weight of all that guilt, shame and responsibility (I was a leader in church and ministry for years) was just too much to bear. I wasn't happy in my marriage, in my life or in my chosen career. I wanted OUT!
Sad that the relationship I had fostered with this imaginary Being wasn't enough, didn't make me feel worthy or good enough, but only made me feel shame. I felt like the biggest phony and a miserable failure at everything, even my religion!
Like Krisi, I had to deconstruct everything I believed about the world, about life, about God, theology and religion. It all seemed so pointless. But deconstruct I did and came out the other side. I still have the scars to prove I went there...got the T-shirt. But what did I really gain other than trauma and emotional scarring? VERY LITTLE! I had the praise and adoration of my parents, but it left as soon as I left the church and divorced my wife. I had the praise and adoration of my fans inside the church and the ministries in which I was involved--Tres Dias, Vida Nueva, music...
I felt very used, abused and taken advantage of. Here's deeply committed Chris, playing drums for free in a church that pays many of it's musicians. Here's Chris, giving up time with his wife and two small children, to spend his Wednesday and Thursday nights in youth ministry or rehearsal, and then giving up half of his Sunday, and for what? That little bit of respect and adoration? For my parents approval???
That didn't fill my soul with anything of eternal value. I felt victimized by it all. No wonder I wanted to give up and say "WHAT'S THE POINT!"
Well, child of God, the point is that He loves you. He's proud of the victim you've made of yourself. Keep bowing down to Him and getting shit on by His people. Keep sacrificing what's most important, the investment in your adopted children, and keep giving freely of your time, gifts and talents. That makes Daddy God so happy.
FUCK. THAT!!!
Daddy God needs to find another sucker! DOYLE OUT!!!
And so the shame and abuse of the Church, at the hands of "God's chosen," drove me far away and made me question everything and deconstruct. It was catharsis. I found real healing--body, mind and soul cleansed of the BULLSHIT!
There's no reason to subscribe to any theology. The word itself means the STUDY OF GOD! It doesn't mean TRUTH. It means trying to make sense as a human being of things we will never fully understand. And faith is trusting in it with ZERO EVIDENCE! NO PROOF! Just believe and He will be happy with you. You'll have peace and rest ONE DAY...in eternity...down the road. Right now, though, just join in Christ's suffering and it will all be worth it. You have an eternity to bask in the reward for your good behavior. Don't expect shit here on Earth, in reality...just believe.
NOPE! Not good enough.
Faith and belief in goodness should change your life in the NOW! It should make a difference on Planet Earth. Not some bullshit bank account that you're building up equity in for the future, for eternity. We don't even know if that's real, if it exists! A wise person once quipped that religion is the "opiate of the people." Not unlike the Kool-Aid served by Jim Jones to his followers in Guyana, fundamental Christian theology is for the weak-minded who can't think, judge or discern for themselves. Just keep drinking the Kool-Aid. It tastes good. It will help you.
And this isn't to cast judgment on those who believe. I understand you. I WAS YOU! I'm just saying that I put reason and logic to it and it doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. In fact, it borders on the ABSURD! But you have to taste it and see for yourself. Maybe you like Kool-Aid. Who am I to stop you from drinking it. Freewill, right? Your choice. If it kills you, but you enjoyed the flavor, then that's on you. I don't pretend to have all the answers. I just know what I know. I don't pretend to know what's beyond, in the realm of the supernatural, in the supposed spiritual dimension that exists in the darkness (dark matter?) all around us. Scientists don't even know what dark matter is. They can't prove it anymore than they can prove what black holes do or how the Big Bang was activated. New discovery in recent years, thanks largely to James Webb Space Telescope, has the science community baffled and questioning everything.
QUESTIONS WON'T KILL YOU! They lead you to discovery.
Dan Barker said, “I was living a delusion.” He made this declaration on the Oprah Winfrey show as one of her guests back in 1984. He'd been a fundamentalist Christian preacher for 17 years before becoming an avowed athiest. That's what earned him a spot on Oprah's popular talk show.
When she questioned who was in charge during those 17 years of ministry and why he even believed back then in God. “The reason was my own personal psychological feeling that I was in touch with the higher mind I prayed every day I saw suppose answers to prayer.” I can relate to this, but let me go back to the beginning.
HOW IT STARTED
I was born into a Catholic household and baptised as an infant. I have godparents. I went to parochial schools and took Communion. I went to Confession. We left the church after mom and dad's "conversion," before I was able to become an alter boy or go through catechism and Confirmation. But I really wanted to, first, be an altar boy and ring the little bells during Mass and then to one day become a priest. I was so devout at a very early age (5 or 6), that my mom made me vestments because I liked to play like I was presiding over Mass in our basement "sanctuary." I'd feed my sister, Heidi, soda crackers, as Communion wafers, and grape juice, as Communion wine. I was deep into it.
That didn't change when we left the Catholic church and became Independent Baptists. I was again baptised--fully dunked this time as a pre-teen--and not only immersed myself in baptismal water, but also in Sunday School, VBS and youth group. My parents became high school youth group leaders, so that in 7th and 8th grade, I was hanging with the cooler, older kids.
That grew old and uncool by the time I reached high school. We returned to the Catholic church part-time so my folks could get the tuition discount at my parochial high school. I lost interest in my faith and going to church.
SELLING OUT
We moved to Tallahassee a week after my high school graduation and my parents found a new version of Christianity they liked better in a Charismatic, full Gospel church that believed in miracles and speaking in tongues and stuff like that. Again, I got baptised, dunked a second time, so that I began to call myself a CATHO-BAPTI-COSTAL!
I was baptised into a wide range of Christian orthodoxies. But that last one happened as I was reaching adulthood and seemed to help me make sense of life, so I bought in fully. I mean I "sold out to Christ" as they would say in the 1980's. I burnt all of my secular albums and tapes and immersed myself again in youth group and ministry. I became a youth leader, a men's leader, a drummer for the choir and various "praise teams." I bought in 100%.
I got married in that Charismatic church, where I'd met my wife and where I'd start my family in 2001. It played a very instrumental part in my life for over 18 years.
QUESTIONING THE NARROW INTERPRETATION
When I entered college to expand my intellect and my horizons, I decided to minor in religion. It interested me. Our assistant pastor was a professor of Old Testament Studies. He intrigued me, as a Bible-believing academic. I never enrolled in one of his classes, but I did take an elective called "Intro to New Testament." It was taught by a Jewish professor. Talk about opening my eyes to other ways to look at Jesus and his Gospel.
I'd say I grew up with a pretty narrow, fundamentalist interpretation of the Scriptures. I mean, my dad started reading Hal Lindsey and end times "prophets" like him. He took a very literal view of the Bible, and so did I.
College and life brought me to newer, broader understanding that wasn't so rigid or literal. Like, I understood science and the Big Bang Theory, so I already knew that Genesis was not a literal account of how our Universe began. I started trying to reconcile my long-held faith with scientific discovery. It was like trying to fit God into a non-religious context. It wasn't easy.
EMERGENCE
Back when I started this blog in 2005, I was raising two daughters and working closely with meteorologists who studied hurricanes and climate change. I had fully embraced science and was leaning heavily away from fundamentalism and my upbringing. I was extremely curious about the Universe and other, more liberal interpretations of the Bible and Christian theology. There was a growing, online community of Emergent Christians, who I joined on message boards and whose blogs I read (before podcasts became so popular). I wrote of The Emerging Ooze in May 2005.
That curiosity about differing views on Christianity led me to philosophers like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, a gay Catholic priest. This was the spiritual path that led me to considering Eastern mysticism, where I found many parallels to the teachings of Jesus. I even read some outlandish ideas about Jesus as an Eastern Mystic, somehow inspired by the "three wise men," who were also "from the East." I considered how Jesus' teachings and healing ministry align well with the Gnostics of his time, that might be the desert dwellers he lived among during his "desert period."
LEAVING IT COMPLETELY BEHIND
After quitting the church where we got married and started a family five years earlier, we started a "home group" of sorts of about four or five families who were about the same place in their Christianity and faith journey. That didn't last long. We met a few months, sharing meals, conversation, prayer and taking up a communal offering that the host family was supposed to use to meet a need in the community.
We moved out-of-state to be near my family. We occasionally attended church with them or the church where my wife worked, a Lutheran church with a progressive, older pastor who loved Henri Nouwen. We had several conversations about faith and the church, but when the denomination split over the issue of "gay priests," I lost all respect for him, the denom, the faith...
I began questioning everything, even the existence of God.
I took aim at the heart of Christian orthodoxy--blood atonement. WHY IN THE HELL DID AN OMNIPOTENT GOD HAVE TO RESORT TO HUMAN SACRIFICE?!?! That practice predated Judaism by a long time. And you mean to tell me that an all-knowing deity couldn't come up with a better concept, a plan for humanity??
According to Google A.I., "Human sacrifice was practiced in many societies beginning in prehistoric times, but became less common in Africa, Europe, and Asia during the Iron Age. In the Americas, human sacrifice continued to be practiced until the European colonization of the Americas. Today, human sacrifice is extremely rare and is treated as murder by secular laws."
That made no sense to me...that an Iron Age practice was being carried out (human and/or animal) in Judaism until the time of Christ and that the Roman crucifixion of a convicted criminal was viewed as the "ultimate" human sacrifice, once and for all humankind.
God couldn't come up with a better way, a more humane and moral way to "save us?" He needed to rely on ancient practices dreamt up by mere mortals or "lesser gods?"
MY NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY
I use the term "New Age," sorta tongue in cheek. It was a dirty, demonic word in my parents' home. LOL! But the spiritual teachings of gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Mooji became more relevant to my faith journey. They blend a liberal view of Christian teaching with Eastern mysticism and other traditions to come up with a universal set of truths, like being good to others and loving oneself.
I no longer believe in the Biblical version of "Father God," a very patriarchal and archaic system of keeping people in check, namely women and minorities. If there is some deity out there, it possesses both feminine and masculine qualities and could give a shit what gender you identify with--as in maybe you are both, just like He/She/It. The Divine, as I see it, and you can find Jesus say the same in the Gospels, is WITHIN!
If you believe in created beings shaped in the image of their deity, then this isn't a totally demonic or foreign concept. Christians believe they are the "bride of Christ." They believe bride and bridegroom to be one. Therefore, I don't see how the idea that we all have the Divine, or are one with Source, is in any way heretical.
I try to tap into my "I AM energy" all the dang time. I find it deep in the core of who I AM. Or as Tolle, would say, "the essence of my being, the conscious mind."
This allows me the freedom to trust in scientific discovery. I don't have to fit God or theology into my belief in science. I don't have to limit a deity to dark matter. I don't necessarily believe in God, per se. Something existed before the Big Bang. We all came from SOMEWHERE! Maybe that's "the Source" as many gurus call it.
Popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about “the god of the gaps,” referring to believers whose faith takes over where science leaves off. He sees that as a diminishing god and labels believers as ignorant “because the god of the gaps principal is like a philosophy of ignorance. Science is a philosophy of discovery.”
I'm all about discovery. That's what my faith journey is about--being curious and STAYING OPEN TO POSSIBILITIES!
You don't need a theology to learn to be a good human being. Tolle reminds us that we are, indeed, BEINGS AND NOT DOINGS! We live our lives like Human Doings most of the time. But you don't need to DO anything to be accepted as you are. No one has to shed blood for you to find goodness and morality.
As Barker puts it in the first video, up top, “There can be an objective scientific basis for morality outside of the supernatural outside religion based on the value of human life, based on the fact that life is preferable to non-life; making a hierarchy of value systems, which has nothing to do with receiving an edict written in stone from a God. I am free with the rational mind to determine a hierarchy of values which suits me fine...I have control of my own mind now.”
Like him, I look back on my prayer life and my "relationship with God," as a figment of my imagination. I created a cool, laid-back dad-god who I could converse with casually and who I could depend on to take care of me and look after me like a father. It was very convenient. I just couldn't understand his sense of fairness and justice, like when it came to disasters or death.
I was just watching the aftermath of Hurricane Helene the other day, and one victim who was spared thanked God for watching out for him, when the rest of his neighbors were drowned in a flood. Well, what about them? God just didn't care? He doesn't care about babies suffering and dying a horrible death? He didn't care about millions of Jews, his supposed people, being murdered or burned alive in the Holocaust? Too many inconsistencies in his form of justice...and in the Bible, for my taste.
Who was I really praying to or conversing with? Myself, I presume. It was a psychological construct meant to soothe my soul and help me make sense of this chaotic world that just randomly exploded into existence some 14 million years ago (or maybe not--the James Webb Space Telescope is casting doubt on our entire cosmic model). Like Barker, I had the best intentions. I was attempting to connect to the "higher mind" for my own betterment and the good of those around me.
I'm still trying to connect to that "Universal consciousness," as the gurus call it. That "higher mind" might just exist universally, on some vibrational frequency "out there," that most just haven't tapped into. I don't pretend to know.
These days, you'll find me just conversing with "the Universe." I'll be out on my beach putting my intentions out there and speaking positivity, trying to find my vibration on that frequency. I tell the Universe, whenever I go out there to practice my "New Age" spirituality, that "I'm open to possibilities." I'm still curious and ready for the next adventure.
This white guy from rural America is hardly what you expect.
Dick and Liz Cheney are the LAST Republicans I ever expected to defy party for decency.
But defections like this are becoming common.
We are mere weeks away from a Harris/Walz landslide. Don’t believe the polls. It ain’t that close. All anecdotal evidence points to a large blue wave coming. Let’s hope they win Congress, too.
Young voters and Republicans voting blue are going to turn this election. Mark my words!
