Not EVERYTHING in the Bible is spelled out as consistently and clearly as say God’s jealousy, the rights of slaves, the property that is women or its utter inconsistency between old and new covenants. Let’s not get into the weeds by dissecting adjectives or comparing chapter and verse. Let’s take a Sinai view from 7500 feet above sea level at some overarching themes.
EYE FOR AN EYE v TURN THE OTHER CHEEK
There is a lot of bloodlust in the Hebrew Bible, a collection of stories, songs, poems and prophesies we find in our Old Testament. The Law of Moses was that justice requires “an eye for an eye,” and that justice was meant to be carried out quickly and severely. So severe were the edicts of God, who we’ll get to below, that not even babies or livestock were spared. On several occasions, YHWH commanded the Israelites to commit utter genocide that didn’t stop with the humans. His bloodlust was such that not a living thing was to be spared! YIKES. Sorta like the concept of hell, this justice seems unduly harsh. But that was the “old way.”
The “new way” of looking at justice, according to Jesus, was DON’T strike back, don’t repay evil with evil. That’s now considered barbaric. Instead, we are to turn the other cheek. Justice in the New Testament became self sacrifice, embodied in the man-god (demigod) Jesus. No babies or goats were harmed after 33 CE. Nowhere in the second half of the Bible—the good half, the Jesus part—is anyone instructed to plunder, rape and pillage. Nope. If you were wronged, bend over and say, “Thank you Father, may I have another?” First Peter 4:12-19 asserts that sharing in suffering makes you one with Christ.
These two concepts, while written 500-800 years apart scholars believe, couldn’t be more opposite than if they were the North and South poles. What is God’s justice, then, because it can’t be both! Does judgment come in this life at the hands of God’s elect or in the afterlife at His hands? Are we to pluck out our attacker’s eye as one covenant suggests? Or turn the other cheek and endure double the pain?
TRIBAL WAR GOD v ABBA FATHER
The Old Testament God, YHWH, is a brute force who led his tribe, Israel, into battle. This was not a foreign concept at the time, say two millennia BEFORE Common Era. The Canaanite God, Ba’al, was the son of the Most High, El, and a tribal warrior god. Scholars believe ancient Israelites revered and worshipped them all (see Exodus). But as we pointed out above, this version of the Biblical God, seems bloodthirsty, unsatisfied until every living thing is killed. I mean there was that whole flood narrative in Genesis. Gods in the ancient world were bloodthirsty and YHWH was no different. Look at the story of Abraham and Isaac. Blood sacrifice was known in the ancient world to appease the gods.
I won’t belabor that point. But when Jesus arrives on the scene, he paints a VERY dissimilar portrait of YHWH. In fact, that Hebrew alliteration is abandoned for the Greek Adonai or the Aramaic Abba for father. Never before in Hebrew culture was God depicted in this way. He was unknowable, unfathomable. Only the anointed High Priest was able to survive in the presence of the Almighty, according to Hebrew scripture. He was unapproachable. That is, until this hippie rabbi comes along telling a completely different story. So which is it?
Is the God of the Bible a bloodthirsty warrior God of ancient tribal people housed in a tent? Or is he the cuddly daddy God of Jesus, who is totally approachable, kind and compassionate, housed in Heavenly Glory?
You can’t read the Bible cover to cover and say there are no inconsistencies! Just like his two vastly different covenants, God himself seems to transform right before our eyes (somewhere between Malachi and Matthew). How is one to make logical sense of this? And these are just two overarching themes! When you dig down to verse level, there are TONS of incongruencies. It cannot be read literally or you’ll go mad making sense of it. Prove me wrong.
DISCLAIMER: I have succumbed to an existential crisis in my fifties much like Leo Tolstoy, but unlike him this did NOT lead me back to god.
In the beginning, there was God. I wholeheartedly believed in him. I worshipped him and he became the center, the anchor of my universe. God became all-in-all, or at least that’s what I told myself. Then came existential crisis number one in my thirties.
I was majorly depressed and struggling mightily with feelings of abject failure. God was nowhere to be found. I decided to end my life. I wanted to replace God in the center, on the throne of my life. I pulled up anchor and set sail for the afterlife, only I didn’t succeed. The ultimate failure was my inability to die 24 years ago today.
I felt like God showed up in a big way that next year. My whole life turned around. I purchased my first home, a brand new custom-built one with four bedrooms and two full baths. I believed God arranged a miraculous adoption two months later and I became a dad. Life had done a one-eighty in a matter of eight months!
A year or so after my second adoption (another miracle), I was no longer flying high. I began deconstructing my faith and my marriage at the same time. Existential crisis number two, still in my thirties. I realized that part of my depression and feelings of failure were due to my marriage and career path, if you could even call it that.
I didn’t have grasp of the wheel of my life. I “let go and let God,” as the popular Christian slogan goes. I was not living intentionally. I had no grasp of that concept. I fully believed that whatever happened to me, good or bad, was God ordained. It was easier to blame him for my lazy complacency. I think I began to realize this in my late thirties. My religion was no longer making me happy. I began to wonder if it ever had. I soon realized, after leaving the church, that ritualistic, religious abuse was a major part of my depressive episode in 2000. It contributed to my awful self image. It always had.
My spiritual journey led me away from church and traditional Christianity. I later found replacements for God, including The Universe, Consciousness and The Higher (or Divine) Self. I turned to modern philosophers who embrace Christianity AND New Age Spirituality, like Eckhart Tolle. I embraced his “Power of Now,” present reality focus. I realize that our control is limited to our thinking, unconscious mind and our ability to control it with “presence.”
That gave me some peace, some of the time.
It hasn’t been lasting. And where I found myself meditating or praying out loud, sometimes to the cosmos, I began to wonder what was so different. Did I look or feel any less insane, whether wrestling with God verbally or shouting my displeasure to the stars??? Wasn’t I just replacing one spiritual practice for another? Replacing God?
So now that I’m facing existential crisis number three in my mid-fifties, I’m left wondering what does any of it matter? The sun rises over the good and the evil just the same. Likewise, the rain falls on both without discretion. I’m paraphrasing Christian scripture here. There is no greater purpose.
This landing squarely in nihilism makes the most sense to me. How arrogant is our species to believe that we are so much more highly evolved? How arrogant is humankind to believe that we are created beings, special and important to our creator, be that a Demiurge or the Almighty? It’s pretty damn arrogant, if you ask me. Our species just evolved on this planet like every other living organism. We aren’t special. We weren’t placed here for some divine purpose.
Life is basically meaningless. This is what Leo Tolstoy realized in his fifties. It’s what I’ve come to realize. I’m done replacing God. He is not the center of anything, not the Universe, not my life, and concepts like Source, Consciousness or Divinity are just as imaginary as “he” is. I won’t be returning, like Tolstoy, to the religion of my youth. I’ll just live out my days on this planet until I am no more.
This is the 24th anniversary of my suicidal episode. If you are struggling, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, just dial 988.
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.
Haven't posted in awhile. Life happens. 2020 is different, though. We've faced a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. America has lost almost 180k lives to it. Our president has failed us. He's about to be voted out in a few months. There's been racial unrest with rioting, protesting and over-policing, which just fuels more of it. We're about to see history unfold as two potential hurricanes form in the Gulf at the same time. California is largely on fire and I'm facing the move of a lifetime. Life happens was kind of a muted understatement :)
But here we are nearing the peak of hurricane season. I'm no longer living on the Gulf coast so I'm well out of harm's way. I find myself at my Dad's house in Indiana, starting week three. This is supposed to be my transition to Colorado. I feel as if I'm in a holding pattern.
Even with all the unrest and upheaval this year has thrown at me, particularly the last 5-6 months, I'm relatively peaceful and calm. Facing the negativity and ritualism of my father, I'm relatively positive and making progress.
How is this possible?
Gratitude. Presence. Spirituality.
I've found a path to more mindfulness, more peace, by looking inward and diving below "the unconscious mind," as Eckhart Tolle likes to say. He's my spiritual guru. I've digested more of his videos in the last month than I can count. He preaches presence and getting past the clutter of "the thinking mind." It has helped me a lot. I'm finding a spiritual discipline that didn't exist in my past life as a seeker of Truth.
I mentioned my father's ritualism. He's part of the tribal cult of religion. He believes the Bible to be the inerrant word of God. For him, it paints a picture of God's design and dominion over humankind, the earth and it's history. He trusts that the spiritual, dare I say mythical, guide book was transcribed by men who were mere conduits for the voice of the divine. It's as if God couldn't write it all down for us, as he did for Moses on the mountain, so he began with the Old Testament scribes, and they captured it precisely and perfectly as God intended. No errors, no omissions or translations. Purely the essence of God's wisdom captured in a man-made book.
That's the biggest myth of fundamental Christianity. But Dad's faith is built on that, so I have to allow him his beliefs. He doesn't want to hear otherwise. There's no room for debate.
Take Creation v. Evolution, for instance. He doesn't believe there is room to believe that God set into motion the evolutionary process that took millions of years and still continues to this day. No, the myth says that there was a literal creation that took place thousands (not millions) of years ago and it happened in a literal week. You know, because God is bound by time and space and put "himself" on a tight deadline. The book says it, so it is so. No wiggle room.
Where I diverge from his ritualism is that I see the Bible as a book of myths and stories pointing to a larger Truth. The same Universal Truths we find in other spiritual guidebooks and paths--from Eastern to Western cultures and religions. I don't believe in God's will superimposed over history, or that "he" spoke the Bible into existence and men merely transcribed what they heard, as if on dictaphone. On the contrary, I believe the oral tradition passed down for generations to Abraham, Moses and Jesus, were largely based on myths, like the story of creation. It helped to make sense of the world to nomadic, tribal people in times before the written word. The Bible, then, is man's writing of history to explain the why questions. Once the oral traditions and ancient myths were captured in writing, it's like they were set in stone...by God. But it's humankind's way of explaining the unexplainable God, not the other way around. The myths point to larger Truths, like guideposts. That's why I see spiritual writings as guides and not rulebooks.
Religion, tribalism and ritualism seem rooted in ancient times. Truth is transcendent. That's why you find kernels of it in all religions. There are enough similarities in the major religions to see a pattern and to be able to discern the essence of the divine.
I guess it comes down to having a more humanist view of God than a deist one. I began years ago, and it's documented in this blog, seeing the divine in other human beings. I look for it there. Even Jesus said we'd find him when we helped others--fed them, clothed them, gave them a drink of water. I think that is God finding God. We have the divine spark within us. That's not blasphemy or heresy. That's in Jesus' own teaching. It's evident in a lot of spiritual writings. It's what Tolle calls our "essence," part of "the Universal Consciousness." I don't care what you call it, that resonates with me.
Getting in touch with who I really am at my core--my essence--is where I find the most transcendent peace, or what Jesus called "peace that passes understanding." To get there, I have to escape the clutter of my non-stop thinking mind. I don't have to make sense of the totality of life or how we got here. The why questions are becoming less and less important. I'm finding a new ability to let what is just be. It is what it is. I'm not playing some karmic game with fate or God. I'm finding peace in presence. I'm also finding more gratitude for what is, for abundance, for blessing in my life--deserved or undeserved, I no longer place a value on it. Let's face it, the blessings in my life are invaluable. That's why I recognize it as abundance. And the same goes for trials and challenges--they don't come as retribution for past sins or where I may have misstepped, taking that zig when I should've zagged. That's more judgment and attributing the minutia of life to God-level consciousness. God's not up there playing a game of chess with me. No, as I said at the start of this post, "life happens." It's how we deal with the unexpected complexities of life that matters most.
So far, I've survived 2020. I haven't gotten infected with the COVID-19 virus, to my knowledge. The one test I had done came back negative four weeks ago. I haven't succumbed to the panic over the viral pandemic that went global back in Dec/Jan timeframe, but only really grabbed our full attention in late March. I didn't die from homelessness. I survived much of this year with my girls--my lifeline. I found some new meditation practices that have become part of my daily spiritual discipline. I've actually used this year of upheaval to grow and adapt.
This blog post really focused on spirituality and religion, but that's only because I've been smacked in the face with my ritualistic past because I'm living with "old me" in the form of my Dad. I love him dearly. I'm just glad I evolved past his tribalism and stranglehold on the Truth. We've largely avoided discussions on this topic, to my great surprise (and with great effort on my part). I don't discuss politics for the same exact reason. My sanity is largely in-tact, but not just because we've avoided these hot-button issues, but because I continue to practice gratitude.
Here's what that looks like in the mornings-- I'm often up before sunrise, as I am today (typing this at 4:36 a.m.). I'll take my freshly brewed Cuban coffee outside (weather permitting) and greet the sunrise with gratitude. I might thank the Universe for the sun's energy, it's life-giving and sustaining force, it's warmth, it's light. It's really that simple. I don't take everyday things, like the sun coming up over the eastern horizon, for granted. I say thank you...to God, to Life, to the Universe, the planet...I am grateful. I might, then, turn my attention to the things that thrive on photosynthesis like the grass under my feet (I try to ground myself, barefoot, to the Earth) or the plants and trees around me. There's an abundance of life all around me, so that even if I didn't have a penny or a roof over my head, I could still be grateful for abundance. There is abundant life on this planet that we just happened to be fortunate enough to be born onto. I'm grateful for that...for life on Planet Earth. Then I bore down into more personal areas, like my health, my daughters, my family, etc. It's really not that difficult. I try to start everyday with gratitude. I absorb the positive energy of the sun (which I can do even when it's not visible, on cloudy, rainy days) and try to radiate that positivity outward, in the form of considering and praying for others. If the focus is merely inward, it's not really gratitude, it's narcissism. I want to be a blessing on the Earth and vibrate on a higher frequency than I ever have before. I am noticing a difference in just a few weeks of practice.
Ok, I've rambled on long enough. Peace, my friends. Be blessed.
I haven't expressed many religious views in some time and that was partly the basis for this blog which began in 2005 or thereabouts. And as I was showering this morning, I thought about the deconstruction of my faith that has been occurring in spurts and starts ever since that time. So let's talk about that, shall we?
MONOTHEISTIC MYTH
Some of the world's great religions--Christianity, Islam and Judaism--purport this mythic creative being who is so above our human consciousness so as to be nearly incomprehensible. But is "he" really?
On counterpoint, the humanist idea purports this idea of the fully realized self--the perfect human, if you will. But is that idea really so different? Allow me to explain from my own personal upbringing.
The God of my childhood was certainly created in human image and explained to me as a loving, yet militantly disciplinary parent. I mean, uber-militant, like say your prayers or risk hellfire. Scary, right? Juxtaposed to his sense of fairness and justice, was the loving father figure who, once in his good graces, couldn't lavish enough love on you. As I grew to understand this concept of a perfect being of the most perfect love, I realized God possessed both masculine and feminine characteristics. I mean, even the Bible describes him/her as a mother hen gathering us like chicks under her wings.
But in all those descriptions, meant to put God in terms we could understand, he/she is merely the perfect parent or fully realized human--God in our image.
Is that so different than the humanist view of a supreme being? To me, this idea purported by monotheism that he is something more is a vain attempt to explain how and why we are here.
INTELLIGENT DESIGNERS
The argument of the intelligent design community is a full spectrum away from the randomness of the chaos theory. But let us be honest. Isn't it just as plausible that aliens of a far more advanced reality designed our universe as it is that a God creature did it in a mere six days? And what's so intelligent about a black hole anyway? Did those designers say, "Yeah, this is great and all, but you know what this galaxy needs? A huge vacuumous drain!"
I'm only halfway joking, here. If I am supposed to believe there is this incomprehensible being "out there" somewhere looking over this intelligent design he created with a word, why can I not consider him/her and alien being. Maybe she's an alien mother hen that exists in another realm---a highly creative chicken with a sadistic sense of humor.
ANTI-CHRISTIAN
My deconstruction of my faith has caused me to become very anti-Christian. Especially in today's polarized social climate, I have very little tolerance for the bigotry, sexism and homophobia of ultra-right-wing Christian expression.
My own Christian experience ran the gamut from Catholic to fundamental Baptist to the zaniness of Pentacostalism. I minored in religion at Florida State University to try and make sense of it all. What I came away with left me convinced that they are all basically full of shit. And the crazy part is that the Protestants don't seem to understand that the book they so highly value was given to them by Catholic Bishops from the 4th - 6th centuries, who couldn't have been any further removed from the Christ figure if they were meeting on Neptune, instead of Europe. And these bishops had an agenda. Why do you think some books were in and some were out? Because they picked what fit with their worldview, theology and bias. And the world--Catholics and Protestants, alike--have been lapping it up like it's water from the fountain of youth ever since. We don't even question it, not even when it clearly contradicts itself, at least I was raised not to question it.
My father, to his credit, did question the authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church. That's why we left and became Baptists in the late 1970's. He had what he describes as a conversion experience in a charismatic Bible Study that led him to a spiritual retreat called Cursillo. Just before we moved to Florida, however, my mom got very interested in the Charismatic movement in the Church, an outgrowth of the hippie church movement of the late 60's. She and my dad read a book called "Walking and Leaping" by Christian author Merlin Carothers. Once in Florida, they sought out a church that was "filled with the Spirit" and that's how we became CathoBaptiCostals, term I like to think I coined in the mid-1980's.
I always said that this upbringing gave me a well-rounded view of Christianity, but it really didn't. It was all pretty much based in fundamentalist ideology. It just took very different approaches to the foundational salvation message. It wasn't until college and even into adulthood, when I first encountered liberal Christians on Internet message boards, that my fundamentalism was even challenged. I'd never considered Christianity from a liberal or humanist worldview. I didn't know those kinds of Christians existed, or at least I never validated their brand of Christianity. I looked down upon such blasphemers as fake Christians.
When I go to church now, which is infrequently, I surround myself with these liberal types, who believe in justice, equality, inclusion and such. But I go to that church with a very anti-Christian mindset. I just don't trust Christians very much anymore. I totally get why a large portion of the world hates and distrusts them.
I still want to believe in goodness, in love, in fairness and justice, I just don't believe that it all starts with this other-worldly being who we cannot really comprehend. It'd be just as reasonable to assert that it started with highly evolved beings from another galaxy or whatever.
The theology and the book it is loosely based upon don't interest me as much as the result. How does your belief define you and make you treat others? Are you a decent human being? Are you a responsible, charitable and compassionate inhabitant of this planet? Do you make others better by your being here? The results, the actions, are what speak the most to me.
Well, I've run out of steam, so we can discuss this more later...
Last Sunday, I checked in at GoodSam on Facebook with a status, "Being church with Makenna." That's my youngest daughter and the reason I am even in church. But that status stuck with me all week. So when I was asked to write a blurb for this week's e-Newsletter, I titled it "Being Church, Clothing Christ" because we were seeking donations of kids' clothes for a widowed mother of two. It warmed my heart that the congregation I now call family wanted to help this woman in our community who is not a member. I don't know if this woman even goes to church, but she works at a grocery store nearby. Sunday, they are giving me a Mother's Day Card to present to her with a check to help with her financial burdens, now that she is a single mother. What an awful thing for her to spend this Mother's Day with two grieving children, as she herself grieves the loss of their father. But what a blessing to be a conduit of God's love, grace and mercy, through my church family.
Beyond the warm feelings I got when the church offered to help and asked me to be the messenger, I was inspired and awed by the universal truth that we are, indeed, God's hands and feet at work in the world. In reality, that's what "being church" means. We are to be the conduits that carry the essence (call it Holy Spirit, if you will) of God into our homes and communities. That should cause you to stop and reflect, as it has me all this week.
It doesn't matter your level or brand of faith. The church building where you spend your Sundays (or whatever day you worship) is of very little importance. It's the congregation of people, each individual member of "the Body," that makes us Church...and that's a capital "C" for the universal congregation of believers.
For those of us who chose to label ourselves "Christian," WE, as the spiritual descendants of Peter, are that Church built upon the rock. In fact, Peter's name literally means "rock" (Look up Petra in the Greek). WE are Church. So being Church takes on so much more of a personal flavor. There is a lot of personal responsibility to being Church. It means doing something; being something; being different.
There are a lot of people that GO to church; but sadly, it seems very few of them know how to BE.
I was one of those "goers" for a very long time, but then I fell out of practice. I stopped going. I became very jaded, cynical and lost my identity as Church, for awhile. I gradually came back to the "being" but I still wouldn't darken the door of a church building because of all the contempt built up in my heart.
It wasn't until my mom was dying of cancer that the return to "being" was completed.
She was diagnosed in early Summer 2014. Within 17 months, cancer that started in her breast had metastasized and was ravaging her 66-year-old body. She chose quality of life over quantity and enjoyed her children and grandchildren, even a great-grandchild, for that last year and a half. I was blessed to be able to spend Summer 2015 with her in Noblesville, IN. I took three trips up to see her in 2015, the last was over Thanksgiving Weekend. She died that Sunday as I was just about to come home.
Mom's dying wish was to see me and my girls back in church. We hadn't gone regularly since my youngest was born. So to honor Mom's wish, I invited my girls to church and picked the one closest to their home because it had a cool name, Good Samaritan. I didn't care that it was United Methodist, just that it had a good reputation in the community and it was closeby...walking distance, even.
In the last year and four months at that church, minus the Summer 2016 which I spent with my widowed father in Indiana, I've seen myself fully return to "being Church." My cynicism and jadedness has faded and is being replaced with hopefulness and peace. I feel that I'm part of a family of like-minded believers, again; people that aren't just there to go through the motions or talk a good spiritual game. I joined a home group of these people who took me in, fed me (in more ways than one) and have become solid friends. I've seen this family serve together, play together, let their hair down, but get serious when a need arose. They are real. I call GoodSam the church of misfit toys. But that's just what the apostles were, too. Jesus didn't hang out with the politicians, the polished, the church leaders. I feel like today, he'd be found in the pubs, pool halls and hooka bars.
I know that Mom is in heaven smiling down on me this Mother's Day Weekend. I kept my promise. My daughter was baptized in the church last year. We aren't faithful attenders, but we are getting better at being Church on a daily basis. And that's the point, isn't it?
Recent conversations over at The Ooze have reminded me what I don't miss about going to a typical church, namely "Christianese." If you've gone to church much or hung around many Christians, then you've heard Christianese. It's that secret language those people use to communicate things about God, faith and right living. I've blogged before about the bad taste it leaves in my mouth.
I guess my detoxification is complete, because when I hear Christianese now, I get that queesy feeling...like when Mom broke out a new can of Chop Suey. Yum! Well, when discussions began about what Jesus wants from his followers and how one "gets to know God," I got that same sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Sure, Jesus wants us to love God and love others, but when you ask most Christians what it truly means to love God, you'll get a myriad of answers. As one participant in the discussion describes it, you should go on dates with God. Of course, being the sarcastic twit that I am, I asked if God should always pick up the tab, or if his date is always responsible for 10%. (Editor's note: check out this humorous look at tithing...at least I hope it was meant to be funny.)
If you can't verbalize what it means to love God without turning Billy Graham on me or resorting to some cheesy verbage from a Vacation Bible School tract, then don't bother. Christianese is like nails on a chalkboard to someone, like me, who is a recovering evangelical, pentacostal. I can hardly stand it.
Talk to me in simple, everyday terms. Make yourself plain. Get your head out of the clouds (or whatever cavity it's stuck within) and be real. You can't go on dates with an unseen deity and its quite difficult to hold a conversation with someone who doesn't talk back...well, except in your head, and those voices probably aren't the Almighty.
