"God has no religion." -- Gandhi
Of all the things Gandhi said, this one may be the most interesting.
Gandhi was, by all accounts, rather universalist in his views. We share that, although his perspective and mine were shaped by different core religions. Another thing we seem to share is a belief that all religions are about love. In particular, I think they are (or should be) about love and respect for both God and all His creations.
Everything else is just window dressing. By which I no means intend to say that it's unimportant; the rules you adopt as a sign of devotion are definitely important. The commitment to those rules and rituals help you show that love and respect, and help you overcome your own flaws by doing so. It's a very human thing to adhere to a religion (or a non-religious moral and ethical code), to give oneself a guide to life.
But God isn't human, and he has no need for those things.
Which, again, isn't to say that He wouldn't consider them important for us to adopt. What I think it does mean is that (from His perspective) it matters very little which particular religion is used to acheive the goal of trying to live up to that ideal of respect.
And I think that is what Gandhi was getting at as well.
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Epiphany
So, although I'm not a trinitarian and so have (minor, in this case) disagreements with the details in the post, overall, I'm very fond of this post by Fred Clark over at slacktivist, because it's a great explanation of what's so important about this holiday, which means once again it's time for me to wonder why it is that it isn't a bigger one. Like I said last year, it would seem like a holiday tailor-made for those people who feel secular Christmas and the generic "holiday season" in December are terrible things. Yet the people who scream loudest about how their holiday is being ruined by evil liberalcommienazisecularists don't even tend to notice the holiday exists. Go figure.
It seems to me that today is an excellent day to talk about something I bet most Christians don't think about today (or, in some cases, any day): what if it didn't happen? I mean, what if Jesus was just some really nice guy who didn't even have a pipeline to God? Or, you know, if that's because there is no God? Or what if there wasn't even some guy named Jesus or Yeshua or whatever and the Gospels were the result of a really drunken bet about starting a new religion? What if today was the celebration of fiction?
Well... what if it was? What if Christ didn't exist? Would that make the message any less meaningful? Is charity and brotherhood a bad message? Empathy a bad idea? Even if it were a total fabrication, the message in the Gospels is a good one. It's not a bad way to live your life, after all: caring about what happens to people, wanting no one to have to suffer, doing at least something to leave the world a better place in however small a fashion you can accomplish. If everyone did it, the world would be a better place, and it really wouldn't matter that much why they did it at that point. Even people who give to charity so they can Be Seen Giving to Charity are accomplishing something useful. One less person going to bed hungry, or living on the streets, or being stuck in poverty because they lack education, or dying young because they don't have access to clean water... any of those things is worth a celebration.
And that's an epiphany more people could stand to have.
It seems to me that today is an excellent day to talk about something I bet most Christians don't think about today (or, in some cases, any day): what if it didn't happen? I mean, what if Jesus was just some really nice guy who didn't even have a pipeline to God? Or, you know, if that's because there is no God? Or what if there wasn't even some guy named Jesus or Yeshua or whatever and the Gospels were the result of a really drunken bet about starting a new religion? What if today was the celebration of fiction?
Well... what if it was? What if Christ didn't exist? Would that make the message any less meaningful? Is charity and brotherhood a bad message? Empathy a bad idea? Even if it were a total fabrication, the message in the Gospels is a good one. It's not a bad way to live your life, after all: caring about what happens to people, wanting no one to have to suffer, doing at least something to leave the world a better place in however small a fashion you can accomplish. If everyone did it, the world would be a better place, and it really wouldn't matter that much why they did it at that point. Even people who give to charity so they can Be Seen Giving to Charity are accomplishing something useful. One less person going to bed hungry, or living on the streets, or being stuck in poverty because they lack education, or dying young because they don't have access to clean water... any of those things is worth a celebration.
And that's an epiphany more people could stand to have.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Universalism
I've written before about how I can reconcile being a Christian with believing that non-Christians aren't doomed to either eternal punishment or exile from Heaven, but I've felt a need lately to talk about it some more. Maybe it's because I keep seeing so many people—both Christians and non-Christians—talking about how exclusivity is a major hallmark of Christianity.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Only Human
"There is none righteous, no, not one."—Romans 3:10
"For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God."—Romans 3:23
One thing I find interesting about how people view religion and faith is how the same thing can lead to such wildly different conclusions. For instance, one or both of those quotes above, or the summary of them, is frequently cited by people as a reason they have issues with Christianity. Yet, for me, they're one of the things that form the bedrock of my belief.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sunday Thoughts
I've written before on my difficulties with reconciling the idea of a loving God with a God that would condemn people to eternal punishment for not saying the right words, and why it is I came to believe that the latter is wrong. It's an important topic for me, though, so I have some other thoughts on it.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Science and Faith
For a lot of people, their doubts about the existence of God (or their sureness there is no such thing) have to do with science. By contrast, a lot of people believe science is flawed, because it contradicts what they think they know about God.
I've thought about this a lot, but over time I came to believe that believing in science and reason does not at all impact my ability to have faith, including Christian faith. I don't feel they necessarily are in opposition at all.
"But wait!" you might say. "What about evolution?"
Well, yeah, there's always that question. But even that doesn't seem insurmountable to me.
Let's start with the simple one, which is the concept in general. The idea that species do change and adapt over time, leading to speciation, is not at all incompatible with the idea that there was a guiding intelligence that kicked the process off by creating the original creatures.
But what about the theory that all life started as single-celled organisms?
Well, until and unless someone manages to replicate that, starting with a few chemicals and moving on to walking, talking people, I feel reasonably assured that it's possible scientists could be mistaken. It's not like that's never happened before. And a good scientist, at least in my books, is always open to the possibility that new facts will turn out to make it necessary to discard or revise a theory, after all. Even though that's the commonly accepted theory, it may be that someday we learn differently, or find it's not entirely possible and need to account for why. And maybe 'why' could include God, after all, however unlikely some people might find that now.
Okay, what about the theory that man evolved directly from apes?
The simple answer, of course, is that like the above theory, this one could be wrong. But most people of a scientific bent aren't going to be satisfied with that. The bulk of evidence, they will say, is there.
And maybe that's true. But I still can think of one way that accounts both for ape-to-man evolution and the story of Adam and Eve, and that's this:
Adam and Eve were, not to put too fine a point on it, apes, and the story of the Tree is allegorical for the evolution to the point of distinction between 'ape' and 'man'.
Some people, on both sides of the issue, will find this unsatisfying or a cop-out. I, on the other hand, think it's reasonable, albeit not necessarily the explanation. You, of course, may disagree. I'm not expecting anyone else to use my reasoning here, but it works for me.
See, the thing is, if one believes in a creating force, called God by most, having created every aspect of the universe, that would include the laws of science. It naturally follows from that that science and religion cannot be in opposition, but rather, are by definition in harmony. In cases where they seem to contradict themselves, it merely reflects our imperfect understanding of the world—the same world that even a scientist who is a staunch atheist would presumably be willing to concede we don't fully understand.
I always say that I think language is one of the reasons to believe in God, for instance. I realize there's a great deal of theory regarding the development of language, much of which is devoted to explaining why humans have a complex language but even our nearest relatives do not. But I don't think anyone has yet come up with a theory that has solid evidence behind it, however compelling their ideas may be; the theories I'm aware of always seem to boil down to "Since we have these different characteristics, it must be that language arises from these characteristics", which always struck me as rather circular.
I'm comfortable with believing in both science and religion. I just wish that were true for more people.
I've thought about this a lot, but over time I came to believe that believing in science and reason does not at all impact my ability to have faith, including Christian faith. I don't feel they necessarily are in opposition at all.
"But wait!" you might say. "What about evolution?"
Well, yeah, there's always that question. But even that doesn't seem insurmountable to me.
Let's start with the simple one, which is the concept in general. The idea that species do change and adapt over time, leading to speciation, is not at all incompatible with the idea that there was a guiding intelligence that kicked the process off by creating the original creatures.
But what about the theory that all life started as single-celled organisms?
Well, until and unless someone manages to replicate that, starting with a few chemicals and moving on to walking, talking people, I feel reasonably assured that it's possible scientists could be mistaken. It's not like that's never happened before. And a good scientist, at least in my books, is always open to the possibility that new facts will turn out to make it necessary to discard or revise a theory, after all. Even though that's the commonly accepted theory, it may be that someday we learn differently, or find it's not entirely possible and need to account for why. And maybe 'why' could include God, after all, however unlikely some people might find that now.
Okay, what about the theory that man evolved directly from apes?
The simple answer, of course, is that like the above theory, this one could be wrong. But most people of a scientific bent aren't going to be satisfied with that. The bulk of evidence, they will say, is there.
And maybe that's true. But I still can think of one way that accounts both for ape-to-man evolution and the story of Adam and Eve, and that's this:
Adam and Eve were, not to put too fine a point on it, apes, and the story of the Tree is allegorical for the evolution to the point of distinction between 'ape' and 'man'.
Some people, on both sides of the issue, will find this unsatisfying or a cop-out. I, on the other hand, think it's reasonable, albeit not necessarily the explanation. You, of course, may disagree. I'm not expecting anyone else to use my reasoning here, but it works for me.
See, the thing is, if one believes in a creating force, called God by most, having created every aspect of the universe, that would include the laws of science. It naturally follows from that that science and religion cannot be in opposition, but rather, are by definition in harmony. In cases where they seem to contradict themselves, it merely reflects our imperfect understanding of the world—the same world that even a scientist who is a staunch atheist would presumably be willing to concede we don't fully understand.
I always say that I think language is one of the reasons to believe in God, for instance. I realize there's a great deal of theory regarding the development of language, much of which is devoted to explaining why humans have a complex language but even our nearest relatives do not. But I don't think anyone has yet come up with a theory that has solid evidence behind it, however compelling their ideas may be; the theories I'm aware of always seem to boil down to "Since we have these different characteristics, it must be that language arises from these characteristics", which always struck me as rather circular.
I'm comfortable with believing in both science and religion. I just wish that were true for more people.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Struggling with Faith
(Appropriately enough, my inaugural post is on a Sunday morning.)
Like many Americans, when I was a kid, I went to church. Or, well, my mother took me to church. Sometimes she dragged my father along as well (until they got divorced, at least[1]).
Until one Sunday, when I was maybe six, that I refused to go with her. Like, tantrum-yelling-screaming refused. I don't really remember exactly why[2], don't know what my 6-year-old self was thinking, but I do remember that I was pretty emphatic about it.
Well, my mother gave in, probably because it was easier for her to go alone than be to be saddled with a small kid who didn't want to be there. At least for a while, though I know I started going with her again later.
I don't know if that was an early sign of things to come or not, but it was the point that my relationship with religion became a little less usual.
A few years later, I had the usual bout of kids' questions about religion, but between erratic church attendance, a poor relationship with my mom, an agnostic father, and my one set of living grandparents not really being the church-going type, I mostly had to figure them out on my own. I read a few books (I was always a reader), went to my friends' churches, picked up both the kids' stuff and the adult stuff from the Kingdom Hall when I went (my Mom was a Jehovah's Witness). Most of what I learned about was various forms of Christianity, but I did learn about Judaism, and I understood there were other religions, too, though at that point I didn't know much about them.
My relationship with God, in short, has always been based on belief I developed from a lot of different sources.
By the time I was a teen I'd more or less settled into a sort of non-demoninational Christianity. I'd attended AWANAs, and joined a high school youth group, but didn't regularly attend church on Sundays... my mother was still a JW and I'd more or less rejected them (in part because I was going through more or less rejecting her) and my father was still not religious, so there wasn't a family-going-to-church thing going on in my life, and I felt the youth group events were a better idea anyhow... I had a preference for discussion over sermons, I suppose.
And then I started having problems with depression. Serious ones. Really, really serious ones. And I started having doubts.
It took a while before the doubts really turned into a change in faith. Christianity was still a comfort to me, and I even got to a point where I tried to help a couple friends understand what I believed and why and urged them to consider becoming Christians. I mean, I was not seriously out there prosyletizing, but when it came to my friends, I wanted them to have the same beliefs and comfort that Christianity offered me.
And not long after one of them told me he was becoming a Christian... I stopped. All those things I'd told them became empty to me.
Oh, not all at once. But at some point I just gave up believing that the Christian God could possibly be in my life because my life was really pretty messed up. I had some back and forth on it... part of me still believed, but most of me was looking for something to fill the void I had, the one where my doubts were making a hole in me.
Years pass. I eventually found other things to believe in, and for a while they made me happy to believe, but because there were still a lot of problems with my life, I had a hard time finding any real joy in any religion of any sort. And then there was my problem with... well, let's say co-religionists. You see, over time, I started to feel that any organized religion, no matter how loose, was the real problem. I could continue to believe there was a God (of some sort), I could have faith (of a sort), I could feel I was basically a spiritual person (most of the time), but I could not bring myself to accept, y'know, religion.
For a while that was okay. My actual level of belief waxed and waned, but I avoided participating in religion... which is odd, because I found discussing it, as a concept, pretty interesting. Figuring out why people believe as well as what they believe. Finding ways religions were similar because I thought it was interesting how many of the same concepts appear in so many disaparate religions.
At times I would wonder... if I can believe so strongly there is Someone (no matter what one calls that Someone) and that there is a Purpose (no matter what that Purpose is), why can't I believe in a specific religion?
And it always came back to two things: The way people of the religion acted, and the fact that the one religion I'd ever truly strongly adhered to was presented in ways I just couldn't agree with.
A few years ago, I started realizing again that... for the most part, the things I believe still fit into Christianity. Not any specific brand of it necessarily, but a basic core belief that: a) there's a God, b) God is (or at least should be) about love, c) Christ's teachings about how to treat one's fellow humans were right, and even d) no one who didn't try to act in the way Christ taught could possibly be going to Heaven. Maybe I didn't precisely believe in the things that would make me a Christian in many people's eyes, but I think that an open-minded Christian at least would have seen his beliefs echoed in mine.
There were, however, things I still couldn't get over... things that had been, when it comes down to it, the core of my waxing of faith to begin with. The same doubts that I believe a lot of people have.
Wondering why, if God is love, why so many people hate in His name. Wondering why, if God is love, he allows there to be so much pain. Wondering why, if God is love, why he wouldn't allow people who didn't say the magic words to get into Heaven... that, to the contrary, he'd put them into eternal pain. I couldn't reconcile my internal vision of God with someone who did these things.
Recently, I had an epiphany... well, no, not exactly. It was something I knew already, so maybe I mean I finally internalized this: Even God's most ardent followers, people you can look at the writings of or listen to the words of and just be absolutely sure they truly believe, can't agree on these things. From the same Bible and the same reading of the same laws, Christians come up with entirely different answers to the same questions.
It's strange it took me so long to realize that meant that my understanding was as valid as anyone else's. That I could reconcile some of those questions without in any way saying "I'm going to follow only these parts of the Bible". That the Bible is clearly open to interpretation... because there people are, interpreting it differently.
And lately I've come to consider myself a Christian again, even if I don't necessarily believe in the same precise manner some people do.
See... I don't think I need to believe that there's a magic set of words I need to say to be a follower of Christ. I do believe that people who don't say those words (or express the thought, even) can go to Heaven as long as they follow the same ideals. I think the message is more important than the mechanics... does it really matter most, when you get down to it, if Christ literally only came to Earth so he could be punished in our place? Or does it matter more what he tried to teach us? Because I think it's the latter, to be honest. I'm perfectly willing to believe—do believe—that that was the deal: he was sent to teach us and try to reach us and then he had to also stand in for us so God could cleanse away the sins we had done... we still do. And that should be honored... but not at the expense of forgetting that every word he said was important, that the ideas he tried to get through to us are really the way to Heaven.
You could consider me a heretic[3], or... well, whatever you want. But only God gets to decide if I'm wrong or right, and I think, looking at the message he sent Christ to come tell us, that he'd say I was right... or as close as a flawed human, a human who is prone to all sorts of mistakes, is likely to get without additional divine intervention. I'm not going to say I don't still worry I'm wrong, but when I start to worry, I think: the God I choose to believe in, that I believe made sunsets and kittens and rivers and trees and art and language and most of all love... he wouldn't be such a stickler. He knows we're flawed; that was part of the message. He knows we won't get it all right. He just wants us to try, and to admit when we fail, and to be sorry we did... and then to keep trying.
And most of the time, lately, that's starting to be a comfort again. Because lately, I'm starting to think I can hear Him again, and that's the best part of it. That when I talk, He listens, and when He listens, He understands. And that He is willing to forgive anything I get wrong.
And I still have doubts, but that's human, too. But I also have hope. And that's God.
[1] Actually I have these vague memories of my Dad showing up on the weekends and going with her even after the divorce, but it may've been because those were weekends I was supposed to be spending with him.
[2] I'm pretty sure it had more to do with disliking my mother and the aftermath of my parents' divorce than anything about me understanding church or religion.
[3] I'm comfortable with that label. After all, some of the same Christian sects that are considered mainstream began with someone considered a heretic.
Like many Americans, when I was a kid, I went to church. Or, well, my mother took me to church. Sometimes she dragged my father along as well (until they got divorced, at least[1]).
Until one Sunday, when I was maybe six, that I refused to go with her. Like, tantrum-yelling-screaming refused. I don't really remember exactly why[2], don't know what my 6-year-old self was thinking, but I do remember that I was pretty emphatic about it.
Well, my mother gave in, probably because it was easier for her to go alone than be to be saddled with a small kid who didn't want to be there. At least for a while, though I know I started going with her again later.
I don't know if that was an early sign of things to come or not, but it was the point that my relationship with religion became a little less usual.
A few years later, I had the usual bout of kids' questions about religion, but between erratic church attendance, a poor relationship with my mom, an agnostic father, and my one set of living grandparents not really being the church-going type, I mostly had to figure them out on my own. I read a few books (I was always a reader), went to my friends' churches, picked up both the kids' stuff and the adult stuff from the Kingdom Hall when I went (my Mom was a Jehovah's Witness). Most of what I learned about was various forms of Christianity, but I did learn about Judaism, and I understood there were other religions, too, though at that point I didn't know much about them.
My relationship with God, in short, has always been based on belief I developed from a lot of different sources.
By the time I was a teen I'd more or less settled into a sort of non-demoninational Christianity. I'd attended AWANAs, and joined a high school youth group, but didn't regularly attend church on Sundays... my mother was still a JW and I'd more or less rejected them (in part because I was going through more or less rejecting her) and my father was still not religious, so there wasn't a family-going-to-church thing going on in my life, and I felt the youth group events were a better idea anyhow... I had a preference for discussion over sermons, I suppose.
And then I started having problems with depression. Serious ones. Really, really serious ones. And I started having doubts.
It took a while before the doubts really turned into a change in faith. Christianity was still a comfort to me, and I even got to a point where I tried to help a couple friends understand what I believed and why and urged them to consider becoming Christians. I mean, I was not seriously out there prosyletizing, but when it came to my friends, I wanted them to have the same beliefs and comfort that Christianity offered me.
And not long after one of them told me he was becoming a Christian... I stopped. All those things I'd told them became empty to me.
Oh, not all at once. But at some point I just gave up believing that the Christian God could possibly be in my life because my life was really pretty messed up. I had some back and forth on it... part of me still believed, but most of me was looking for something to fill the void I had, the one where my doubts were making a hole in me.
Years pass. I eventually found other things to believe in, and for a while they made me happy to believe, but because there were still a lot of problems with my life, I had a hard time finding any real joy in any religion of any sort. And then there was my problem with... well, let's say co-religionists. You see, over time, I started to feel that any organized religion, no matter how loose, was the real problem. I could continue to believe there was a God (of some sort), I could have faith (of a sort), I could feel I was basically a spiritual person (most of the time), but I could not bring myself to accept, y'know, religion.
For a while that was okay. My actual level of belief waxed and waned, but I avoided participating in religion... which is odd, because I found discussing it, as a concept, pretty interesting. Figuring out why people believe as well as what they believe. Finding ways religions were similar because I thought it was interesting how many of the same concepts appear in so many disaparate religions.
At times I would wonder... if I can believe so strongly there is Someone (no matter what one calls that Someone) and that there is a Purpose (no matter what that Purpose is), why can't I believe in a specific religion?
And it always came back to two things: The way people of the religion acted, and the fact that the one religion I'd ever truly strongly adhered to was presented in ways I just couldn't agree with.
A few years ago, I started realizing again that... for the most part, the things I believe still fit into Christianity. Not any specific brand of it necessarily, but a basic core belief that: a) there's a God, b) God is (or at least should be) about love, c) Christ's teachings about how to treat one's fellow humans were right, and even d) no one who didn't try to act in the way Christ taught could possibly be going to Heaven. Maybe I didn't precisely believe in the things that would make me a Christian in many people's eyes, but I think that an open-minded Christian at least would have seen his beliefs echoed in mine.
There were, however, things I still couldn't get over... things that had been, when it comes down to it, the core of my waxing of faith to begin with. The same doubts that I believe a lot of people have.
Wondering why, if God is love, why so many people hate in His name. Wondering why, if God is love, he allows there to be so much pain. Wondering why, if God is love, why he wouldn't allow people who didn't say the magic words to get into Heaven... that, to the contrary, he'd put them into eternal pain. I couldn't reconcile my internal vision of God with someone who did these things.
Recently, I had an epiphany... well, no, not exactly. It was something I knew already, so maybe I mean I finally internalized this: Even God's most ardent followers, people you can look at the writings of or listen to the words of and just be absolutely sure they truly believe, can't agree on these things. From the same Bible and the same reading of the same laws, Christians come up with entirely different answers to the same questions.
It's strange it took me so long to realize that meant that my understanding was as valid as anyone else's. That I could reconcile some of those questions without in any way saying "I'm going to follow only these parts of the Bible". That the Bible is clearly open to interpretation... because there people are, interpreting it differently.
And lately I've come to consider myself a Christian again, even if I don't necessarily believe in the same precise manner some people do.
See... I don't think I need to believe that there's a magic set of words I need to say to be a follower of Christ. I do believe that people who don't say those words (or express the thought, even) can go to Heaven as long as they follow the same ideals. I think the message is more important than the mechanics... does it really matter most, when you get down to it, if Christ literally only came to Earth so he could be punished in our place? Or does it matter more what he tried to teach us? Because I think it's the latter, to be honest. I'm perfectly willing to believe—do believe—that that was the deal: he was sent to teach us and try to reach us and then he had to also stand in for us so God could cleanse away the sins we had done... we still do. And that should be honored... but not at the expense of forgetting that every word he said was important, that the ideas he tried to get through to us are really the way to Heaven.
You could consider me a heretic[3], or... well, whatever you want. But only God gets to decide if I'm wrong or right, and I think, looking at the message he sent Christ to come tell us, that he'd say I was right... or as close as a flawed human, a human who is prone to all sorts of mistakes, is likely to get without additional divine intervention. I'm not going to say I don't still worry I'm wrong, but when I start to worry, I think: the God I choose to believe in, that I believe made sunsets and kittens and rivers and trees and art and language and most of all love... he wouldn't be such a stickler. He knows we're flawed; that was part of the message. He knows we won't get it all right. He just wants us to try, and to admit when we fail, and to be sorry we did... and then to keep trying.
And most of the time, lately, that's starting to be a comfort again. Because lately, I'm starting to think I can hear Him again, and that's the best part of it. That when I talk, He listens, and when He listens, He understands. And that He is willing to forgive anything I get wrong.
And I still have doubts, but that's human, too. But I also have hope. And that's God.
[1] Actually I have these vague memories of my Dad showing up on the weekends and going with her even after the divorce, but it may've been because those were weekends I was supposed to be spending with him.
[2] I'm pretty sure it had more to do with disliking my mother and the aftermath of my parents' divorce than anything about me understanding church or religion.
[3] I'm comfortable with that label. After all, some of the same Christian sects that are considered mainstream began with someone considered a heretic.
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