My Personal Faith Statement
by Robert W. Brawn
revised in May, 2002
not copyrighted
Quick jump to the Table of Contents.
INTRODUCTION
Several friends from my church have been curious why I do not have more information about my own walk with God in the "Church" section of my personal web homepage or in my "Social Agenda" paper. I decided to attempt to state my beliefs in this paper to answer their curiosity. I recognize that it may be concern as much as it is curiosity, but either way, since they asked, I'll answer. And I find writing this kind of introspective paper to be a fascinating and enlightening process.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
(If you link to a chapter, you may use the "Back" button on your browser to come back to this table of contents. You may also read the document from top to bottom without linking).
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
First, I am sure that my personal theology has greatly impacted my political and social priorities, but I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and in free choice of religion. It would show a lack of intellectual integrity for me to make religious arguments in support of the various governmental proposals I have spewed throughout my "Social Agenda". They simply do not fit there.
I value religious freedom. One of the reasons that I keep finding myself comfortable in my own local church (Good Samaritan United Methodist Church) is our tradition of accepting people wherever they find themselves along their own spiritual journey. My personal theology is probably different from that of any other person in our congregation. I'm very glad that I am allowed to believe what I believe, and that I am not forced to pretend to believe precisely what somebody else tells me to believe.
There is another more personal area in which I practice the separation of church and state. This compartmentalization is particularly evident in my treatment of crime and punishment in my "Social Agenda". I encourage us as a society to treat criminals quite harshly. Many Christians do not encourage society to handle groups of people any more harshly than they imagine Jesus would treat an individual, face to face.
For some reason that I'm not sure I understand, I am comfortable compartmentalizing my face-to-face handling of individuals, apart from my desires for social rules that deal with groups of people. As a society, we basically choose to live together under a set of rules designed to preserve the society from anarchy, and to protect the safety of individual members of the society. That has nothing to do with how I practice my religion, or how anybody else practices theirs. I may be quite compassionate in a face-to-face interaction with a serious criminal. Maybe. I might remember to try to see his value as a person, and apply situational ethics to his circumstances. I might remember to try to deal with him as I imagine Jesus would have done. Maybe not. But I still want to live in a society that enforces rules for my protection. And I have no troubling personal conflict with those social rules being quite divergent from my own personal implementation of my own personal theology.
And I most certainly appreciate a distinction between our society's rules and the ways that some other people practice their own religious traditions!
PERSONAL THEOLOGY
My own theology and its development are personal. They are my own. I'm willing to share my opinions and thoughts, especially since people have asked. But it is not my intention to cram it down your throat. I don't claim any better (or worse) grasp on religious truth than anybody else. I don't quote very brief passages from the Bible, out of context, to support a weak logical argument and thereby claim to be on the side of absolute truth and authority. As you may have guessed by now, people who do that generally offend me, or at least annoy me.
I verbalize a prayer when asked to do so (at family meals, during holiday celebrations, among the musicians before church performances, and so forth). But I generally find that other people's verbal prayers do not often capture and articulate the details of what is in my own heart at that moment, so I assume that I do not intercede exceptionally well between other people's hearts and their mental images of God. I think a lot of my colleagues at my church tend to appreciate beautiful, well-crafted, poetic prayers. I also think they judge people to be vaguely more or less "Christian" based on the artistic crafting of their verbal prayers. People sometimes tell me they appreciate my prayers, but I suspect God appreciates their own individual silent prayers more than my well crafted verbal prayers on their behalf.
In fact, I would prefer to be judged by my behavior and interactions with other people rather than by the artistry of my prayers. Actually, I guess I would prefer not to be judged at all, but I know that is not practical.
I can remember a few instances in my life, when somebody I had recently met asked me if I was a religious person. I responded that I was very active at my church. One gentleman that I recall said that he was not surprised. He had guessed, based on my interactions with him and with others around us, that I must be a Christian. I considered that a nice compliment.
By the way, he could have just as easily assumed that I had wonderful supportive parents as terrific examples of how to live a good life, and he would have been just as correct. Who I am -- who I have become -- has been affected by my church, and by many other positive and negative influences as well. I can not draw a line between what positive aspects are due to church, Youth Fellowship, Camp Celebration, music groups, Boy Scouts, outstanding parents, some equally impressive grandparents, a few superb schoolteachers, influential friends, good genes, spontaneous genetic mutation, a long string of extremely lucky breaks, or some other mysterious anonymous random factors.
At least a few other people have made similar observations, and given the credit to my family rather than my church. I consider that just as high a compliment, and just as valid an explanation. I treasure those rare and precious compliments, regardless of their particular flavor.
A friend recently pointed out to me that I must be a more "spiritual" than "'religious" person. Since then I have thought about the differences between the two words. The biggest difference in the way I use those words is that "spiritual" is more internal, and "religious" is more associated with organizations. If my connotations are correct, then I believe my friend was also correct. I consider myself a spiritual person. Therefore, I find it amusing that my church is such a major factor in my life. Not bad, just amusing.
FAITH IS DIFFICULT
I am an engineer. I program computers by profession. (Check out my my resume for verification, if you wish) I am also a short-term stock market investor, and therefore, a technical analyst. My brother is a brilliant network security designer. My mother is a special education schoolteacher and an accomplished musician. My father is an electrical engineer and computer scientist with an extremely well respected ability to communicate technical concepts in familiar lay terms. It is very natural for me to have strong analytical tendencies. I pride myself on critiquing information I receive before accepting it as truth. I love intellectual exercises. I hate being proved gullible. And I specifically remember estimating answers to math problems FOR FUN while growing up (Dad led us in figuring out on a restaurant napkin an estimate of the size of a theoretical dirt pile, if it were made of the top 3 inches of topsoil from the earth's surface.) And I remember being told to look things up in Dad's college chemistry textbook far more often than the number of times I actually cracked open that book and searched for the resolution to my curiosity. Critical analysis is a desire woven throughout my being.
I learned that it is good to be able to support positions with logical arguments based on empirical facts.
Religion is largely based on faith. The evidence of God's existence is anecdotal or hypothetical at best. It takes a great deal of faith to earnestly believe in something that can be neither proved nor disproved.
It's easy to believe in unseen things, like wind, if they have predictable behavior and tangible results. But the tangible results of God are all explained, it seems to me, by some argument that originated with an assumption of the existence of God. And from the Bible stories I learned as a kid, I have not always found God's behavior terribly predictable.
I have always struggled with faith.
There are things I take on faith, like the existence of God as some kind of divine entity rather than a grand coincidence. My faith is fairly stable at my ripe old age of 41. That is to say that I'm pretty comfortable with my faith, so I do not actively pursue changing it or continuing its development very much. However, from time to time I still struggle with what things I should take on faith because I know I'm supposed to (from religious influences), and what things I should try to re-evaluate with my God-given gifts of intelligence, logic, and good old healthy cynicism.
When I take too little on faith, then I feel that I am not a "good Christian". When I take too much on faith, then I feel that I am a poor scientist. And I do not buy the theory that I can not be both. So I walk a tricky balance to have faith, but still to be an active thinker, as I believe God made me to be.
While mixing faith and science, let me just state that I do not recognize a big dichotomy between creationism and evolution. We've all heard that "God works in mysterious ways." Well, evolution could easily be one of those mysterious ways in which God works. And as long as the 6 days of creation and 1 day of rest are taken as metaphors rather than literal 24-hour periods, then I don't see the conflict. Besides, I believe that God actually rested for 6 days and then pulled an all-nighter.
GOD DOES EXIST
I believe God does exist. That is a statement of faith, as described (painfully) above. I can not prove that God exists, but I choose to try to live my life within the belief that God does exist.
I don't believe that God is a fatherly (or motherly) figure. I don't believe that God is a universal force or energy, although the vagueness of that description frankly appeals to me. Richard Bach's book "Illusions" uses the term "The Infinite, Radiant Is", and that makes about as much or as little sense to me as any other name for God. I believe that God is something beyond my limited ability to define. When I pray, I pray to God, and sometimes I have a mental image of a fatherly figure at the time. That's most likely the result of an old lingering habit. Since I don't have a clearer mental image available, I don't consider it an inappropriate inconsistency.
SIDEBAR: I would like to share one other brief passage from Richard Bach's book "Illusions" that I find memorable and interesting. The context is a discussion of right and wrong (or perhaps good and evil), and of how much "The Infinite, Radiant Is" cares about it. Bach's spiritually enlightened character draws an analogy of kids playing Cowboys and Indians or some similar game, and a parent's relationship with the kids. The parent loves the kid, regardless of whether the kid is playing a good role or a bad role in the game. The kid may play another role in the same game tomorrow, and the parent's love for the kid will not have changed in any substantial way as a result of that role playing. To depart from Bach's book, and extrapolate the analogy further, I believe that God is much more interested in how I play a role in life, than in which roles I choose to play.
PRAYER
Some acquaintances of mine pray to Jesus, not to God. It's a subtle difference, since the concept of The Trinity is that Jesus and God and The Holy Spirit are three different views of the very same thing. Those acquaintances that pray to Jesus feel that they have a more personal relationship with Jesus. That's fine.
When I'm doing something as concretely religious as praying out loud, I try to do it in the way that I think Jesus instructed, not to Jesus. But I recall that Jesus instructed his disciples to pray in private, rather than noisily trying to impress people by how well they prayed in public. When I have to pray out loud in public, I certainly try not to make a fool of myself, and I try to say something meaningful, but I also feel that the verbal prayer is less legitimate than my own meditation on my own thoughts and feelings; or especially yours.
THE HOLY TRINITY
The Trinity is a very interesting concept. One of the things that makes Christianity different than many other religions of the world is that it is monotheistic -- there is one God and ONLY one God. But that God is 3 Gods in one, God the father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Spirit. But be careful not to treat these 3 Gods as any kind of polytheism! For centuries, Christian missionaries persecuted, tortured and killed "heathens" just for praying to multiple Gods.
I enjoy a couple of lines I heard in college -- Monotheism is a gift from the gods. -- God is a polytheist.
What is God's role? I don't know. Creator? That makes sense, and it's comparatively easy to take on faith. Judge? Maybe. It probably makes sense to live one's life as though it were being judged by God, to determine afterlife decisions like heaven and hell. Not because I don't want to take any risks, but because it feels like my life is better when I make my decisions based on what I know to be right and wrong.
Do I know what's right and wrong? Does everybody? Is it part of that soul that we are born with, which only religious institutions recognize and scientists can neither prove nor disprove? Again, I don't know. But I have a sense of what is right and wrong for me. I don't know if I was born with it or if I developed it through influences like church and family. Most likely both. It's one of those things that I appreciate, and rely on, no matter where it came from.
I have known people that seem not to have any internal sense of moral integrity. That surprised me. I guess I had assumed that everybody had that sense, whether or not they chose to listen to it very carefully. But I know I can ignore some very obvious things simply out of stubbornness, so I assume other people can as well.
What is the Holy Spirit? I think of it as the synergy that exists among cooperative believers. The connection between the traditions and the souls. I believe similar synergies exist in other contexts. But I don't have a convenient name like the Holy Spirit with which to tag the benefit of getting a bunch of diverse programmers in a room and throwing a business problem up on the white board. I would like to say that the Holy Spirit is more sacred than other interpersonal synergies, but I can't explain logically why it is important for me to say so.
THE DEVIL
It is very natural to talk about both heaven and hell; It is likewise natural to talk about both God and The Devil. But I just don't have that much to say. I do believe in the existence of God. I have not decided whether or not I believe in the existence of The Devil. With my goal of trying to live an honorable life, it does not much matter to me whether my human temptations are due to The Devil or any other set of causes.
I guess my theology, such as it is, has enough room for the existence of The Devil as a real entity, or for the legend of The Devil to be a creation of our natural duality as a tool of rhetoric and debate. Suffice it to say that I am not terribly motivated by fear of either hell or The Devil.
MY FIRST DEPARTURE
I would like to describe my first major falling out with Christianity. I was in about 4th grade, I think. I had been a regular attendee of Sunday school, and I had been pumped fairly full of easy-access warm & fuzzy children's theology. Basically, the Old Testament was full of scary dramatic stories of God's judgement and vengeance (getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden; great floods; years of drought, famines, and locusts; hiding out from evil rulers killing babies). Then God sent Jesus to get people on track again. The New Testament stories that I recall hearing showed a far more understanding and compassionate God. I learned easy little catch phrases, like "God is love". They were (and still are) very comfortable.
Then I heard about this particularly disturbing scripture, where Jesus said that he was the way, the truth, and the light. And that nobody could come to know God except through Jesus. It didn't fit in well with the rest of what I knew. God was fair and loving and compassionate and forgiving. No matter what you did, all you had to do to be forgiven was to ask forgiveness, and have faith in God, and try to do the right stuff afterwards. Now, suddenly, there was this huge monkey wrench thrown into the works. You could only get to heaven through Jesus.
At that time, Jesus had been the only messiah in my faith journey. But if you didn't know and follow Jesus, you couldn't get into heaven. That means that everybody who was born and died any time before about 30 A.D. couldn't get into heaven because Jesus had not even started preaching his message yet. So the millions of human beings that comprised the several millennia between the missing link and Jesus' time were doomed. Not very fair, compassionate and loving! After Jesus' time, there were still millions of people living so far away from the Holy Land that they could not possibly have heard of Jesus. Even today, there are people in rural areas of China, India, the Amazon River basin, and most of the African continent who could not possibly have heard of Jesus. Are all of them damned just because they happened to have been born in the wrong place at the wrong time? That just did not compute together with all of the "God is love" stuff I believed.
So I concluded that something must have been incorrect. Either Jesus was not the only way to heaven, or God was not such a fair, loving, compassionate father figure. I concluded that Jesus was not the only way. I didn't have much to base it on, and I still don't. To be honest, it's far easier to rely on God being compassionate and understanding, and just assume that some monk got it wrong when translating that passage from one language to another several hundred years ago.
Also, it seemed to me terribly improbable (and arrogant) that a few hundred thousand United Methodists, or even a couple billion Christians, were the only ones saved, and that the billions of followers of other religions were fatally mistaken.
I recognize that I took the easy way out at the time. But I have not encountered a really compelling reason to re-evaluate the decision. And I think that a lot of my current faith is based on the realizations that grew from my early revelation. What are those realizations? One is that the Bible has been translated by fallible humans. Therefore, it is not the actual, literal word of God. This gets me in trouble with various fundamentalists. I'm OK with that.
A LITTLE LIGHT-HEARTED FUNDAMENTALIST BASHING
One of the cornerstones of my own personal theology is that it is interpreted, and subjectively personified.
My view of Jesus is that he was much more into situational ethics than absolutes. He defended a prostitute about to be stoned by saying that whoever had never sinned should cast the first stone. He recognized that everybody (including the prostitute) had sinned. He was not willing to watch the prostitute get stoned for her sins while he knew that she was also a valuable person, and that those getting ready to stone her were also sinners. When I consciously try to behave as though I believe Jesus would have behaved (which is not all that often), I try to recognize the value of people, and subjectively judge the relative rightness or wrongness of the available alternatives. Not very fundamentalist.
You may have noticed that I also paraphrase, rather than directly quoting, most of my biblical references. If I can't restate it in my own words, then I don't think I've understood what it is that I'm quoting. I throw in enough of the commonly quoted words to make the reference clear to those who are much more familiar with the Bible than I am. But I try to pull some meaning out of the passage; or else I generally don't even try to quote it.
I consciously avoid claiming absolute authority by literally quoting little tidbits of the Bible out of context! I've had that approach used against me, and it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
I do believe that a fundamentalist approach is valid and meaningful for many people. I also very firmly believe that I ain't one of 'em.
I think the issues I have are not just with the Christian Right, but rather with extremists in general [however I do agree with the bumper sticker I saw, that "The Moral Majority is neither"]. I believe that I have an easier time trusting and respecting moderates than extremists in religion and politics and probably many other endeavors as well. People unwilling to approach life with some manner of open mind and some willingness to compromise make me uncomfortable. If that makes me a "luke-warm" Christian, then I guess that's what I am.
OTHER RELIGIONS ARE VALID
I also tend to believe that other religions may be every bit as valid as my own Christianity. I have found that many large, established religions have a few most prominent values, and that they are sometimes pretty similar. In Christianity, Jesus said that the most important two commandments were to love God and to love each other. Most of the rest of the commandments seem to be subsets or derivatives of those. One tends not to cheat, steal from, or kill people whom one loves. One tends to respect parents whom one loves.
The basics are pretty easy, but the situational ethics can be quite puzzling in complex circumstances. Anyway, other beliefs like Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism (or at least some major branches of them) have similar tenants of loving each other and respecting God -- however God is described in those religious traditions. In my very narrow view of Islam (spoon-fed to me by American media seeking increased circulation), it seems that the respect for God is more important than the love for others, since killing non-believers is the right thing to do, at least by extremists in that tradition. But then, as I already said, I am quite uncomfortable with extremists in any religion.
I don't respect all other religions. I recognize that there are some cults that seem to have few or zero redeeming virtues. I have not figured out how to draw the line of distinction between religions and cults. I'm willing to judge things subjectively (at least for my own opinions) without crystal clear criteria.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that all Christians are right; and I do not believe that all others are wrong. In fact, I have known a few agnostics that seemed more "Christian" than most of my fellow churchgoers.
JESUS WAS A MESSIAH
I was always taught that Jesus was The Messiah. Capital "T", Capital "M". The only one. God's son, but also God himself (because of that Trinity concept), sent to redeem us sinners back to God. I can't take that one on faith. I think if Jesus was The Messiah, then probably Buddha was too. And probably Mohammed [I hope I spelled it right]. That would make each of them A Messiah, rather than The Messiah.
It is easy and comfortable, but not terribly intellectually honest, to say that my Messiah was The Messiah and the other guys were just well-enlightened prophets or something. Instead, I choose to believe that people who have lived in different parts of the world (and at different times in our evolution) have developed cultures that have some real distinctions. God may have sent The Messiah to different people in different times and places, in somewhat different forms. Or maybe none of them were all that sacred, and all of them (including Jesus) were just people with insights that proved useful and popular.
I choose to follow the teachings of Jesus, often as retold by Paul, more than any other significant religious figure, for at least two reasons. One is familiarity -- my parents took me to my church all of my life, since before I was born, and my church is Christian. By the way, when I was very young, my parents used to read to me at bedtime. Sometimes it was Bible stories from the Christian tradition, and sometimes it was Aesop's Fables or other sources. We did not draw distinctions between which stories were literal facts and which were parables, nor did we make distinctions between sacred and secular. We just listened for life enhancing lessons in stories we could remember. I like that approach.
I said familiarity was one reason I follow Jesus. Another is that I find Christianity fits pretty well with my cultural priorities. I took a college class comparing a few eastern religious traditions. I found the entry-level information about Hinduism to be easy to grasp, and fairly compelling. I started thinking of myself (briefly) as a student of Hinduism. It had already been a popular fad among my circle of friends to proclaim personal knowledge of mystical, ancient eastern wisdom. But I quickly realized that I was not seriously studying or following Hinduism, I was simply spouting the few nuggets of knowledge I had gleaned from the class, and only at times and in circumstances that seemed appropriate. I was a "Sunday Hindu", to borrow and abuse a more familiar term.
I no longer consider myself even as much as a "Sunday Hindu", but I do still continue to recognize some major nuggets of truth and validity from other religious traditions besides Christianity. And I choose to believe that the God(s) worshiped in some other religious traditions are essentially different views of the same God I worship (as are the 3 components of the Holy Trinity).
BIBLE AS THE WORD OF GOD
Ernie Bringas was the minister of youth at my church for quite a long time. He was also an associate minister, meaning that he would preach sermons in the regular Sunday morning worship services from time to time. But he focused the bulk of his energies on building and maintaining a very dynamic and exciting program for high-school aged youth. He left our church during the summer just before my freshman year of high school. So I didn't ever participate in his YF (Youth Fellowship) programs directly, but the counselors running my YF groups had been heavily influenced by Ernie's presence.
Long after leaving my church, Ernie wrote a fascinating book titled "Going by the Book: Past and Present Tragedies of Biblical Authority". I believe the book is available to be purchased from Amazon.com by following THIS LINK. His basic thesis is that religious discovery was halted several hundred years ago, before the renaissance started the process of modifying a lot of our scientific understanding of our surroundings. But because the state derived some of its power from the sacredness of religion, it was in their best interest to keep the Bible stable and sacred and protected. Frozen. As a direct result of that, the level of maturity of our common, popular religious understanding is as naïve as any other medieval thoughts (like "the world is flat" and "blood-letting is the best medicine").
I find Ernie's presentation of evidence and logical development very compelling. I agree with his premise. I think that a lot of strife in the world has been caused by the protection given religion by the simple assertion that the Bible is sacred, as the literal word of God. As soon as it becomes sacred, then it is no longer open to interpretation or even correction of historic mistakes in translation. Then those who claim to know some passage can use it to obtain absolute authority for whatever absurd position they promote.
By the way, Ernie's liberal use of his tremendous vocabulary makes his book a bit difficult to read. But I still recommend it. Just be sure to read it with a dictionary in the other hand.
I don't consider the Bible the literal word of God. Picture this: Somebody gets up in the morning; decides to write a book to be included some hundreds of years in the future in a religious book that has not yet been compiled; grabs a blank piece of paper and a pen; sets the pen on the paper; and then waits for God to move his hand. I don't buy it. That's not why I wrote this webified diatribe, that's not why Paul wrote his letters, that's not why the Psalmists wrote their poetry, and that's not why people wrote down the stories that they heard about the prophets.
Even if the material in the Bible started out as the literal direct ramblings of God (which I don't accept), then certainly in the oral retellings for generations and the translations through two or three or four languages, the material has changed. Current biblical scholars know about some of the big things that changed. For example, the word which translated into Mary being a virgin could have meant "virgin" or it could have meant "young woman". It seems to me that this would make a tremendous difference to people who rely on literal precision. For people who search for a metaphoric meaning that they can incorporate into their own faith, it may or may not be such a big deal. If it's not a big deal, then there's no real problem with being open-minded enough to consider the possibility of other translations. But for those people whose faith depends on word-for-word sacredness, these issues are terribly problematic. I don't know how such people get past the two different creation stories in the book of Genesis -- was Eve made from dust, or was God only ribbing Adam? As you can tell, that internal conflict in the Bible does not cause great concern in my own faith journey.
I also don't consider the Bible to be The owner's manual for the world. It's a cute phrase, but it just doesn't carry much meaning for me. Let me attack the notion of owning the world. I'm quite fond of a bit of dialogue from the movie "Crocodile Dundee". The two main characters are discussing land ownership rights. Paul Hogan's title-character tries to explain that the Australian aborigines consider themselves to be owned by the land, not the other way around. He says that it's kind of like two fleas arguing over who owns the dog. I really like that. So I don't see the Bible as the flea's owner's manual for the dog.
I've listed a couple things I think the Bible is not. That's easier than defining what it is. It is a compilation of writings that somebody thought deserved to be stuck together in a religious document. The New Testament is seemingly the most complete historical record about the life of Jesus that was available several hundred years ago, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is also a collection of some stories, which contain useful lessons about living a positive life. It is not the only such collection, but as a religious document, it is certainly the most common and popular Christian collection.
Perhaps you can tell that I do not consider myself a biblical scholar. I guess I feel that I've heard enough reference, use, and abuse of the Bible to develop my own strong opinions. And they are opinions that I feel justified in having, in spite of my lack of individual in-depth research. There's an awful lot that I don't know about nuclear power generation, but my ignorance does not prevent me from having very strongly held personal opinions on the subject. For me, the Bible is similar. I know just enough to be dangerous -- enough to have opinions that I am not embarrassed to have.
By the way, my opinion (in case you're curious) is firmly pro-nuke. I think I'll have to add an "energy" section soon to my Social Agenda paper.
CONSISTENCY OR "SUNDAY CHRISTIAN"
I enjoy making people laugh. One way that I enjoy doing that is through the employment of off-color jokes. It often surprises people when I tell off-color jokes inside the physical building of our church sanctuary. They seem to feel that those jokes are just fine over the phone, at home or at work, but they're questionable in the church parking lot, and totally off-limits inside the church sanctuary. My feeling is that they are out of place in certain social circumstances, like during the worship service or during a department meeting at work. And there are a few jokes that I'll never tell my mother, anywhere. But I don't automatically equate the church facility with a different standard of behavior.
In fact, I find it a bit disingenuous to have a radical difference in decorum and behavior between Sunday morning in the sanctuary and Monday afternoon in the office. If we are called by God to behave in certain ways, or to make decisions based on certain commandments, then it seems to me that we are called by God to do that every day of the week, and every waking hour of the day.
Church-going people in my parents' generation tend to have a fierce respect for the church, including all of its trappings like buildings and furniture and decorations. It seems like a good, honorable respect, or at the very least that it is not harmful in any serious way. Although they may laugh at a crude joke during a party in somebody's home, they're more likely to groan and shake their heads in disappointment if the joke is told (even on a weekday) in a church sanctuary.
And they can all recite the little poem and hand motions about "Here is the church, here is the steeple, look inside, the church is the people" along with their grandchildren. But to them, the church is also the building. I know too many dirty little secrets from the blueprints of our sanctuary! I know beyond any doubt that it is just a strange building with a really bad roof. "The Church" to me is the organization, the people who comprise it, and the collection of traditions that help define it.
I would like to think that I treat people fairly consistently wherever I meet them. That means that I frequently read nametags and enter first-name-basis conversations with restaurant wait-staff and grocery store checkout clerks. It also means that I tell crude jokes to church staff on church grounds. Even to the senior pastor on Sunday mornings. It's possible that I'll burn in hell for that transgression, but I don't think it likely.
HEAVEN & HELL
I'm not sure that heaven and hell exist. I'm also not sure that they don't. I've even toyed with the idea that heaven does exist and hell does not, but thoughts down that path have not lead me very far. I'm quite comfortable with that notion (heaven yes; hell no), but the notion has not contributed any interesting revelations in my faith.
I have solid evidence that people are comforted by the notion of an afterlife. When I attended my grandmother's funeral, I was shocked at how dramatically I could tell the difference between the frequent and infrequent churchgoers in the family. There were some of us who grew up in Sunday school being told that we'd see each other again after death. We were sad and grieving, but we were also pretty calm. I think we were better able to celebrate her life. Other family members did not have that ingrained understanding, and they were saying goodbye forever. It was very difficult for them to do that. That experience made it very clear to me that regardless of how accurate the concepts of afterlife may be, we find them very comforting.
The traditional concept about heaven and hell is that people's decision making can be influenced by a desire to go to heaven and/or a fear of going to hell. It dawned on me, fairly early in my own personal faith journey, that the present life might be more fun and generally better if I lived it in a way that was supportive of going to heaven. Then it occurred to me that perhaps heaven and hell are different states of existence here and now. It could be that I am already in heaven in those instances when I am happily comforted by the assessment that I am doing exactly the right thing -- the thing that I should be doing at that time.
In the same way that one's school performance can be a training ground for one's career performance, I believe that one's life can be thought of as a training ground for one's afterlife. Like the analogy, it does not mean that everything will be automatic or easy, just that one will be well prepared if one succeeds now and continues working at it.
In a summer camp I attended, we had an event that we called a "love feast". The premise behind the love feast was that both heaven and hell are comprised of a fabulous, wonderful feast, with every desirable food imaginable. But everybody is stuck with forks longer than their arms. In hell, people try to figure out how to feed themselves, and they simply can not do it. So they are starving, while tempted by all of this unavailable food. Heaven has the same setup, but there people feed each other across the table.
I'm not proposing that the love feast scenario is the way it must be. But I think it's a way it might be. And I find it personally comforting to think that my generosity, integrity, and honor grant me the power of choice over heaven and hell.
It seems that the likely way to achieve heaven in the afterlife (assuming that both heaven and the afterlife exist) is to behave in a heavenly manner during this life. And it has the huge fringe benefit of making my current existence generally happier here and now. That way, whether or not I end up meeting Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates upon my death, (and inappropriately pumping him for more "Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates" jokes) I've already gained some tangible benefit from laying the ground work.
Now, doing what I know (or at least consider) to be the right thing is not always easy, and it is not always rewarding in terms of instant gratification. And I confess that the trappings of the "Me Generation" heavily influence me, and I am delayed-gratification-impaired. But habitualizing an existence that I think is pretty good has served me well, I think.
I try to achieve that goal of current heavenly existence when I can, and frankly, when I remember to think about it. I also try to make habits out of things I want to do or know I should do, so that they do not tax my brain as much all the time. You know -- always put on the seatbelt when in the car and lock it when you leave, on auto-pilot, and don't decide each time whether or not to do it. In the same manner, always act as if God were watching over your shoulder, to the point that it is not a conscious thought, but just a habit. I don't claim to be an expert at that approach, but it's what I try to do for myself.
Just as an aside, let me relate a story I enjoy. A Buddhist monk was sitting beside a stream, meditating. A few students were also meditating nearby. The monk noticed a scorpion in the stream struggling to keep from drowning. The monk reach into the stream to scoop out the scorpion. The scared scorpion stung the monk's hand, and the monk reflexively jerked his hand back, dropping the scorpion back in the water. A second time the monk tried to save the scorpion and was stung. And a third time. A student asked the monk why he kept on trying to save a scorpion that was continually stinging him. He said that it was the scorpion's nature to sting him, and it was his nature to try to save the scorpion.
The monk clearly had a more honorable nature than I do. However, I find this story memorable and enjoyable. And I strive to have a positive nature, and to pay attention to it.
EVANGELISM & MISSIONARIES
Like faith, evangelism is another area where I struggle. I probably just don't get it. But I don't really want too many of you to offer to clear it up for me. Thanks anyway.
My goal is to lead a good life. If people notice me leading a good life, and want to know about it, it is very likely that my church-related activities will come up in the conversation. I'm happy to talk about my church when asked. I'm more hesitant to talk about my own personal theology, but as this paper clearly indicates, I'll do it when asked in the right circumstances. But I am not at all comfortable going around handing it to other people, uninvited.
I guess I feel like I've worked out some of the answers, for myself, to my own satisfaction. I don't feel like I've worked out all of the answers for myself. And I am not convinced that I've worked out ANY answers applicable to anybody else. And since my personal theology is such an intellectual exercise in interpreted learnings and situational ethics, I don't have any fixed answers (like a Bible) that I can comfortably hand out to people so that they won't have to think about it. That just doesn't make any sense to me. In fact, ways to keep from having to think about it seem to move in the wrong direction, at least from my perspective.
So I am a really pitiful evangelist. I don't look for opportunities to drag potential converts into my church. And I resent the terrible human tragedies that have occurred in the past, with the goal of evangelism. Like any other broad population, some missionaries have been great, and some have been disastrous. The crusades were even worse. I suspect that more people have suffered in holy wars than in wars stemming from any other cause.
There's a progression at work here. First, I consider my religion different than yours, even if we worship the same God, attend the same church, listen to the same sermons, and read the same books. My religion is the result of my emotional and intellectual struggles with what I've learned and experienced. It's not possible for yours to be exactly the same. Second, I do not see my religion as the ONLY true or valid religion. I suspect that your religion has as much chance of being true as does mine. Third, I think Jesus was either mistaken, misquoted, or badly translated when he said that through him was the only way. Fourth, believe it or not, I have some shy tendencies about convincing people to change course. I am not shy about sharing my personal experiences and thoughts, in fact I'm probably more open and honest about personal stuff than many people (at least with friends). But I don't often see the need for rhetoric, so I'm not very experienced with it. I'm not very adept at picking up women I've just met in bars, I failed miserably at multi-level sales, and I'm not very good at going out and making "fishers of men".
This is one area where I really am not sure that my approach is better, even for me. But I do recognize it as my approach, for better or for worse.
By the way, I think that there are some missionaries doing amazingly good work. But I think most of that work is in the areas of assistance for a better life in physical, tangible, logistical terms. The work they also do teaching about religion may do more good than harm, but it is not what I recognize as excellent work. I think if those missionaries performed exactly the same work, but did it under the banner of the United Way or the Red Cross, rather than some church organization, their work would still be as valid, and I would still respect it as much. I would not hear about their activities in the same circles, and the assistance I give them might come out of my United Way payroll deductions rather than the offering plate at my church. But other than those differences, I would see the circumstances as pretty similar. If you help treat somebody's wounds or illnesses, teach them how to provide better food for their family, and tell them about your view of God, how important is the God stuff in the grand scheme of things? I honestly don't know.
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
Many self-avowed Christians use the term "Christian" as a description. It often is used to mean "good", "honorable", "morally admirable", or "a person of integrity". That's a nice little sentiment, but it is not a terribly valid use of the word. Christians are people who practice Christianity, a broad category of religions based on the recognition that Jesus of Nazareth was "the Christ" -- the personification of God incarnate. The savior. The "lord of all" and the "prince of peace", having come to redeem people from their sins.
But the Bibles that Christians use have very little direct information about Jesus. I understand that a little bit more historical reference has been available since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But those texts are not in any Bible I've seen, and I have not read them in any other book either. Often it seems that letters from Paul to various churches in the years after Jesus' death comprise the vast majority of New Testament texts to which people refer. Perhaps it would be more valid for us to call ourselves "Paulians" or "Paulists" rather than "Christians". But that trend would find nearly infinite resistance among those who overload Christian vocabulary with so much "Sacred" extra meaning and absolute authority.
Christianity, like any other broad population, includes a tremendous diversity of people. Some are good, some are bad, and most are in-between. Some are more "Christian" than others. In some respects, most Christians would not consider my opinions very "Christian". But I still identify with that group of people, and remain involved in a lot of activities within a Christian church.
EASTER
Easter is the celebration remembering how Jesus rose from the dead after being crucified and entombed, appeared to many disciples, and then ascended into heaven. Many Christians treat Easter as the cornerstone of the faith. It's the proof that Jesus actually was The Messiah.
Does this mean that had Jesus not risen from death, he would have been labeled a false prophet rather than The Messiah? Does this mean that the various teachings presented during Jesus' brief preaching career held no value until after his death? Is The Sermon On The Mount like a fine painting -- people appreciate it and enjoy it when it's painted, but its commercial value really takes off only after the artist dies?
Once again, I find myself more drawn to the lifestyle I believe Jesus tried to promote, and less moved by the absolute authority granted by miracles like rising from the dead.
Do I believe that Jesus rose from the dead? I believe that may have happened; and I firmly believe that it appeared to have happened that way. I also believe that there could have been alternative explanations. I don't really care. My faith is not built on Easter. If I ever discovered that Jesus was actually in a temporary coma, or that his body was stolen and reports of his appearance were wishful thinking and coincidence, those realizations would not crush my implementation of my faith. If I see Jesus in heaven, I don't think it's going to be necessary for me to feel the wounds in his hands and feet and side in order to be convinced.
The ascension is interesting. I have not done the homework to verify this story, but I was told that there is a rock in the Holy Land with a footprint in it. Churches have been built around this rock for centuries. It is widely believed that Jesus left the footprint in the stone as he ascended into heaven. Unfortunately, it is also widely believed that Mohammed [I still hope I spelled it correctly] left his footprint there in the same way. So two fairly different religions fight over ownership of this sacred relic and the church built around it. I, for one, do not believe that Jesus left the footprint there and Mohammed did not. It seems equally implausible that either of them did it.
I have matured to a point in my life that I am comfortable living with many unsolved mysteries. My current faith journey is not stronger because of Easter, but it is also not weaker.
On the other hand, I'm sure the Christian church is much stronger because of Easter. This point was made in the most recent Easter sermon I heard. Had it not been for the general belief (at least) that Jesus rose from death, it is very likely that the early church would not have started. In that case, the entirity of my faith would now be strikingly different.
MIRACLES
To me, miracles are riddles, not proof that my religion is correct. Some have already been explained, and some have not. The virgin birth may have been as simple as the misinterpretation of an ambiguous term during translation. Turning water into wine is quite a party trick, but if the party attendees are drunk enough already, a charismatic and persuasive person may convince them they're drinking anything.
By the way, I don't believe that Jesus actively tricked people. I believe that Jesus had a valuable message, and that in person he must have been an amazingly charismatic and compelling person. I don't think he needed any party tricks to get his message across to his direct audience. I think it much more likely that miracles were used by story tellers to add credence and a memorable zing to their stories. And I think that some of the miracles may have started out as footnotes, but grew in the retelling.
Here's the thing. When I watch a magician do the impossible on stage, it's great entertainment. It's not much less entertaining if I already know how the trick is done. When a story includes a miracle it's entertaining. Some of them have reasonable explanations and some don't. Would the value of Jesus' message be invalidated if some number of his miracles were explained? Not to me. But like Easter, there may be no Christian church now without the miracles then.
CULTURALLY-APPROPRIATE EXPLANATIONS
The Bible stories were told in terms to which the listeners could relate. Two thousand years ago, illnesses were generally believed to be caused by evil spirits. When Jesus drove the spirits out of a crazy man, and into a herd of pigs (turning swine into lemmings), that was a very impressive example of a talented healer doing exactly what healers did then.
Most readers of this website probably believe that many illnesses are caused by infections of viruses or bacteria or other very small parasites. The story would not make much sense if Jesus had extracted the viruses from the man and directed them into the herd of pigs. But the evil spirits thing doesn't make much sense today either. And if the story actually talked about viruses, which were not discovered until quite recently (in biblical terms) and are still not understood exceptionally well by the general population, there is absolutely no way that the details of the story would have ended up in the King James version of the bible as "viruses".
I don't have a good explanation for the story. I can't reverse-engineer an explanation that makes sense in current jargon, that would have made sense then. I don't know why the pigs suddenly went crazy when the man was suddenly healed. Also, I don't really know what message the story relates, except that Jesus was able to work miraculous healings.
But I believe that the bulk of the Bible stories about Jesus were told in culturally appropriate terms, and that those terms may not be very valid anymore.
There are at least three causes for the invalidity of those terms. First, the stories were retold for years before being written. Like any good fish story, an oral account of history tends to change a bit in order to remain interesting and memorable. Second, once written, the stories were translated and interpreted, and clearly some bits were changed. We can not know how much changed and how much didn't, or in what ways they changed. Third, our understanding of the cosmos has evolved more than the Bible stories have. The stories may have evolved for the first several centuries, but at some point they became sacred and holy and authoritative. They were frozen in that time.
I would like to make up an obvious example. Let's pretend that something in the scriptures talked about spreading the word to the four corners of the earth. Personally, I have seen models of the solar system, seen pictures taken from the moon, calculated network transmission delays across land lines and satellite hops, flown to other continents and had to reset my watch for the appropriate timezone based on where that part of the globe was in its rotation. I believe the earth is nearly spherical, that it rotates on its axis approximately once per day, and that it travels around the sun in a nearly-circular elliptical orbit approximately once per year. I do not believe that the earth is flat, nor do I believe that it has four corners. And I don't believe anybody will ever be able to convince me that the earth is flat and rectangular. But I differentiate between the message and the details. In my hypothetical example, "four corners" is a detail and "spread the word" is the message. Factual errors or inconsistencies about the details do not invalidate the whole message for me.
Of course, I used a blatantly obvious parable, and I even made up the whole darn thing. But I do believe that the Bible is full of examples of similar (although much more subtle) instances of The Parable Of The Four Corners Of The Earth.
I try to pay attention to the message, and I try to relax about issues with details. This approach leads me to my non-traditional, apathetic view of sacred miracles. It also leads me to simply ignore various bible stories that seem to me to be all about the details and too vague on the message.
By the way, spreading the word is something I don't do well whether or not four corners are involved, so if you can think of a better parable for me to use, I would be delighted to hear it! Comments may be directed to the author at robert@angelinn.net. Thanks.
WHY I GO TO CHURCH
Since I have mentioned my activities within a Christian church, maybe I should delve into that subject a little deeper.
I think I have four priorities that keep me going back to my church. One is fellowship. My friends and my family are very important to me, and my church is an excellent place to keep in touch with many of them. More than just convenience of routine time and place, church also provides an atmosphere in which people have an easier time dropping their defensive shields, and communicating about real subjects in pretty intimate ways. I think of that phenomenon as the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I appreciate it. Admittedly, there is a little bit of parental guilt keeping me there as well.
Music is also a very high priority of mine. My church allows me to perform music on guitar and vocally. And the members of the congregation are an exceptionally forgiving and supportive audience! Most of the music I know is music that I originally learned in support of some church performance or program. Most of the challenges that have helped me grow musically were direct results of church activities as well. I consider many of my musical endeavors as ministries I am able to provide to the rest of my church. And I get to hang out with some incredibly talented other musicians when I perform at church. I also consider performing in worship services to be a wise and fruitful use of God-given talents.
I also dabble in audio systems as a hobby. At my church, that dabbling includes live audio engineering, operation of a recording studio, and design & installation of sound systems. Once again, I try to maintain an attitude of helping to provide a ministry.
For several years, I used to think that these three priorities (fellowship, music, sound systems) were the things keeping me at Good Sam, and that the development of my own personal faith was a very distant fourth. Then a change in preaching staff at the church convinced me that something was missing from my life when I was not hearing any thought-provoking sermons that I could respect.
To fill that void, I went out church-shopping, and did in fact change my membership and attend another church (Los Gatos United Methodist) for a few years. Then the staff changed again, and the 4 decades of history of fellowship compelled me to return to Good Sam. It was strangely comforting to discover my need for intellectually challenging and/or emotionally moving sermons. It gave me hope that my faith journey was not dead in the water, but rather was mature enough to be evolving at a reduced pace.
I have enjoyed fellowship groups of various forms over the years. I have not been in one recently that filled my need for mental stimulation in religious terms. I trust that I will find such groups again and again over the years to come. In the mean time, I do have other areas of my life that I am trying hard to develop.
WHAT'S NEXT?
So, how does one conclude a treatise like this? Well, I have been warned that many of my friends are going to read this and then try to save my heathen soul and convert me to a more accurate (or at least traditional) form of Christianity. I hope not. I enjoy a good debate from time to time, and I would be happy to read your views, or even your rebuttals to my views. But I don't have much patience for people who try to save me because they absolutely know that their religion is true, whereas they also know that mine is false.
I have many other priorities besides my own personal faith journey. But who I am as a person is one of my priorities. I believe that my ideas, both religious and secular, evolve over time. It will be interesting to see how my views change over time, now that I have their basic framework documented. It will also be interesting to engage in respectful, open-minded, intellectual conversations with people as a result of all of this heresy of mine.
If you have skipped to the conclusion without reading the rest of this paper, then you probably don't know as much about "who done it" as you might learn from the last page of a novel. If you have read this whole thing and are still reading at this point, then I admire your tenacity. I hope you found some of my writing enjoyable or comforting or mentally challenging. Or even revolutionary, although that would surprise me. And if you have known me and liked me, and you know me better now, I fervently hope that you still like me too. I truly hope that I have offered a bit of myself in a non-threatening way, and that I have not crammed anything distasteful down your throat!
Admittedly, with some minor hesitation, I'll be curious to hear some of your reactions.
Peace be with you.
--Robert.
I would like to acknowledge and thank each of the following...
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