Being "Non-Religious"

Many of you know that one of my favorite religious scholars is a retired Episcopalian bishop named John Shelby Spong.  He is one of the leading voices in progressive Christianity and his books have really gone a long way toward shaping my own religious views and beliefs.  Even though he's in his mid-80's now, he's still publishing new books (his most recent, which I haven't read yet, is on the Gospel of John), and he does a weekly Q&A via email newsletter, which I subscribe to.  

I thought this week's edition was worth re-posting. 

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Question: 
What do you mean by the phrase you use so often "for the non-religious?" Do you mean those who don't go to church or do you mean those who don't believe in God? Or something else?

(Spong has written two books with this phrase in the title: "Jesus for the Non-Religious," and "Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World.")

Answer: 

It is not that easy. Lots of people who do go to church are "non-religious." Lots of people who say they don't believe in God are profoundly spiritual and searching people.

What I seek to describe with the phrase "the non-religious" are those for whom the traditional religious images have lost their meaning. There is no God above the sky, keeping record books, ready to answer your prayers and come to your aid. There is no tribal deity lurking over your nation or any other nation as a protective presence. There is no God who will free the Jews from Egyptian slavery; put an end to the Inquisition or stop the Holocaust. If these goals are to be accomplished, human beings with expanded consciousness will have to be the ones to accomplish them. This means that the category we call “religious” is too narrow and limited to work for us in the 21st century.

The question I seek to answer is that when we move beyond the religious symbols of the past, as I believe our whole culture has already done, do we move beyond the meaning those outdated symbols once captured for us, or is the meaning still there looking for a way to be newly understood and newly symbolized? The word “God” is a human symbol. I believe though that the word God stands for a reality that the word itself cannot fully embrace and that no human being can define. To worship God in our generation means not that we must move beyond God, but it does mean that we will have to move beyond all previous human definitions of God. So to be “non-religious” is just a way of saying that the religious symbols of the past have lost their meaning. That does not mean the search for God is over; it means the quest for new and different symbols has been engaged.

The Psychology of Following God's Will

I've been involved recently in a discussion with several people, including a faithful Mormon, about seeing God's blessings in your life as a result of following God's will.

The Mormon in these discussions has been arguing that one of the reasons he feels so confident in his faith is because once he started making the decision to listen to God and do God's will, things started turning around in his life.  He uses several examples of personal experiences, which he believes are simply too astounding to be coincidental.

To repeat just one of them, he had been out of work and applying frantically for jobs.  He wasn't able to find one and eventually his unemployment insurance ran out.  Just two weeks after this, he got an interview at a place he had applied for more than two months earlier - and had more or less given up on.  He ended up getting this job, which was a blessing in its own right, but after he started, his boss there told him an interesting story.  He said that he had been going through applications, and had been set to hire someone, but for whatever reason, this person turned out to be ineligible for hire.  On the same day that he called this person to let him know the bad news, the Mormon's application appeared in his email inbox.  Recall that the person in question had sent this application two months earlier.  For some reason, however, it came to the hiring manager at just the right time, he called the guy, and the guy got the job.

My Mormon friend regards this as a blessing from God for following God's will and making God the center of his life.

He has also argued that since he listens to God - waits for God to give him direction on big choices - he always knows that his choices will turn out good, and he can always look back and see how God has blessed him.  This is a very common idea within Christian circles at large - the notion that sometimes you find yourself in what seems like a bad situation, but if you trust God and do God's will, you will eventually come to see how God was working through your life.

Most Christians, I believe, could probably give examples of situations like this.  I'm immediately reminded of an old Garth Brooks hit called "Unanswered Prayers," which tells the story of how badly he wanted a girl in high school, and prayed ceaselessly about it, didn't have his prayer answered, then saw her again many years later and realized that she was nothing compared to the wonderful wife that God did give him.  The moral of the story is that God is in control, and if we simply trust God and follow God's will, we will always see God's hand at work in our lives - even if we can't see it until much later.  (I've always found it highly ironic, and I must say, a bit amusing, that Garth Brooks eventually divorced this wife and ran off with Trisha Yearwood.)

In any case, these discussions got me thinking about the psychology underpinning this sort of faith.  It seems to me that what people like my Mormon friend call "God's hand at work," people in secular society simply call thinking positively and looking on the bright side of things.  When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Anyone, Christian or not, can look back on events in their lives and see experiences that seemed terrible at the time, but which turned out for the good.  In my life, for instance, my family moved to a new city during the summer between 7th and 8th grade.  The experience was horrific and traumatic for me, and quite frankly, scarred me emotionally in many ways.  Yet I have always looked back and thought about all the things that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't moved.  I wouldn't have met my wife.  I wouldn't have gone to the college I went to, and met all the friends I met there.  I wouldn't have the job and the friends I have today.  I wouldn't have the children I have today.

If I were a secularist, I would just call this a positive attitude - finding the good in things.  If I were a Christian, I would call this God's will playing out in my life.  The phenomenon is the same - it's the language we use to describe it that is different.

In any case, I think this particular tendency among Christians can also certainly have a negative impact.  When we expect God to move in our lives, and when we interpret good things as God's blessings in our lives, if those things end up turning to crap (to put it bluntly), where does that leave us in regards to God?  Take, for instance, someone looking for love and finally finding someone they believe is their "soul mate."  They attribute this wonderful experience to God.  Two months later, the soul mate gets hit by a bus.  Now what?

As a matter of fact, I even have experiences in my own life that are related to this, and perhaps this goes a long way towards explaining to people why I have more or less given up on the religious beliefs of my childhood.  I'll tell you a story, and I hope you'll stick with me, because this story gets right to the heart of what I am trying to get at here.

In 2007, I was a year into a degree program in Radiology.  I already had one degree, but had gone back to college at age 31 to get a second degree.  I was now far enough into my program that I could begin working as an X-ray tech in doctor's offices.  I was not yet able to work in hospitals.

For the first 9 months of my program, I had taken classes four hours each night, while working full time during the day.  I essentially left the house at 8:00 every morning, went straight to school from work, and didn't get home until 9:30 or 10:00 in the evening.  I did this four days a week - there were no classes on Friday.

Beginning in September of 2007, I had to start doing clinical rotations during the day, which forced me to resign my day job and get a part-time job in the evenings and on weekends.  I went to work for about 9 bucks an hour inside the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant.  This was a huge financial loss for me, because not only was I getting paid less, but I was also only able to work about 20 hours a week.  Furthermore, I was now having to work on weekends, which essentially meant I was going 7 days a week between clinical rotations and work.  It was a very stressful period.

In December, I finished that particular round of clinical rotations and was now qualified to get a job as a doctor's office X-ray tech.  My plan, and my sincere hope, was to get a part-time job at an office somewhere, working in my new field and getting paid pretty well, while continuing with my schooling and clinical rotations.  I would go so far as to say I was desperate for this.

Around this same time, in December of 2007 - and totally unrelated to my work/school/financial situation - I decided to take a hiatus from blogging in order to do what I called a "Spiritual Quest."  In the post where I announced this, I said that I was wanting to take some time off to better understand God.  I had spent several years formulating new ideas about religion, but still felt confused and uncertain about what I actually thought of God.  Who is God?  What does God do?  How does God impact my life?  What, essentially, is my basic philosophy on God?  I didn't have answers to these questions, but I hoped that by going on this "spiritual quest," I might figure it out.

As laid out in that post, my quest involved prayer, meditation, and directed reading.  Specifically, I was going to read three books - one scholarly book on the "history of God" within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, one book by an atheist about why God doesn't exist, and one book by a former atheist who changed his mind and embraced Deism.  I hoped that by reading from among these three perspectives, I might better formulate my own ideas about God.

I felt, at the time, that my decision to do this was in some ways serendipitous.  I had just finished the famous self-help book "The Road Less Traveled," which talked a lot about concepts of God, and I had also just finished a novel called The Source, which traced - in fictionalized form - the history of Judaism and dealt quite a bit with the evolving concepts of God within Judaism.  I had known that The Source would involve topics like this, but I had not expected The Road Less Traveled to deal so much with philosophical concepts about God and religious faith.  The fact that I had, quite accidentally, read these two books at the same time, seemed serendipitous to me, and it is what ultimately inspired me to begin this "spiritual quest," where I took about two months off from blogging and writing about religion, and focused all my energy on, basically, "finding God."

So this was all going on at the same time that I was finishing up the first part of my degree program and frantically trying to find work as an X-ray tech while I continued on with school.  I wanted out of the Mexican restaurant, I wanted to work in my chosen field, and I wanted the better money that I knew would come with that change.

In early January of 2008, I got an interview with a chiropractor who was interested in hiring a student X-ray tech.  Another of my classmates also interviewed for the same job.  To my great surprise, I ended up getting hired, even though I had fully expected my classmate - who was every bit as qualified as I was - to beat me out.  He had actually been more aggressive in going for the job, and I figured this would probably give him an edge.

I was very relieved and excited to start working in my field and receiving significantly better pay.  I went in to work at the Mexican restaurant on a Sunday, planning on telling them that I was quitting and that this would be my last shift.  I was starting at the chiropractor's office on Monday.  When I arrived at work that day, I found out that the restaurant was shutting down - closing its doors for good - that very night.  The lunch shift I was working, in fact, would be the restaurant's last shift.  We had been given no prior warning.  We all just showed up for work to find out we were unemployed.

I felt immensely blessed.  I could not believe my good fortune.  Had I not gotten this job at the chiropractor's office just two days earlier, I would have found myself in an even worse situation than I was already in.  I hated the job at the restaurant, but I definitely needed the job from a financial standpoint.  If not for the incredibly fortunate timing of this new job, I would have been out of work with no unemployment benefits.

Naturally, I began very quickly connecting this situation to the "spiritual quest" that I had been on, by that time, for about four weeks.  Here I was, explicitly and intentionally "seeking God," focusing all my creative and spiritual energies on understanding God and my relationship to God, and voila, this incredibly good situation seemingly drops into my lap.  I avoid unemployment, get a job in my chosen field, increase my pay - and all this happens with unpredictably good timing during a period of deep spiritual reflection and meditation.

Surely, I reasoned, there must be a connection?  How could there not be?  The coincidence was simply too great.

I started my job at the chiropractor's office the following day.  From virtually the moment I walked in the door, it was a horrific situation.  I had actually sensed this even during the interview, but had more or less tried to ignore it.  I could write 50,000 words on everything that was terrible about this job, but I will attempt to condense it.

The chiropractor I worked for was what I can only describe as a "fundamentalist Catholic."  I hadn't even known, up to this time, that such a thing really existed.  He had actually asked me about my own religious beliefs during the interview, and had more or less implied that he wouldn't hire a non-Christian to work for him.

He was training someone in the office to take X-rays along with me, even though you have to have a state license to operate X-ray equipment - which this person didn't have, and couldn't get without going through an accredited program.

He was an herbal-medicine charlatan who essentially told his patients that all prescription medicines are poisonous.  This includes everything from ibuprofen to antibiotics.  I explicitly heard him tell a patient one day that antibiotics weren't as effective at attacking bacterial infections as garlic supplements (I think it was garlic - anyway, some herb).  He once criticized me for talking about how I had taken Advil that morning for a headache.  His comment was something to the effect that if I wanted to "pop pills" on my own time, that was one thing, but don't be talking about it in front of his patients.

He asked us to pray for more business.

He had a machine in his office which he claimed could diagnose any disease known to man, including cancer, AIDS, and anything else - simply by hooking up a few leads to your wrists and forehead and evaluating your energy fields.

He claimed that he once saved his son from death during an asthma attack by giving him an emergency back adjustment.

He performed a ritual on new patients that involved putting a bottle of the discontinued anti-inflammatory Vioxx onto a patient's area of pain.  With the bottle held at the source of the pain, he would then perform a strength test on them which was aimed at demonstrating how the body knew that the medicine was poisonous, because the muscle strength would weaken.  He would then pull out a trusty bottle of his magic herbal pills, stick that bottle on the source of the pain, then perform the strength test again.  Magically, the strength test would now be positive, because the body knew the herbal medicine was effective.  The entire thing, of course, was a magic trick that involved him using differing levels of pressure during the two strength tests.  I watched these performances in horror, and so did many of his patients.  I know of at least one who never came back.

He was committing insurance fraud by billing Medicare for therapeutic treatments that he was not actually performing.  He would do some other treatment - which Medicare would not pay for - but call it the thing that Medicare would pay for.  I know this, because the other chiropractor who worked in the office told me.  

He once paid me and another employee cash out of his wallet for working with him at a vendor show.  This was done "under-the-table," not reported to the IRS.

There are so many other things I could talk about, but I've already failed to "condense" this the way I had wanted to, so I'll just note that, in short, he was a lunatic, a charlatan, a virtual dictator, and a criminal.

Within three weeks of starting this job - still in January of 2008 - I was already trying to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to find another job.  He solved that problem for me by laying me off, claiming that there just wasn't enough business to justify keeping me on the payroll.  I briefly considered reporting him to authorities, but decided to wash my hands of the whole ordeal and move on.

As a result of this horrific situation, several things happened.  First of all, I was out of work with no income.  Secondly, I was questioning whether I was even doing the right thing by going into the medical field.  Are all jobs like this?

I ultimately decided to stick with Radiology, realizing that the bad job experience really didn't have anything to do with my own career field.  But I also decided to simply go to school full time and not work.  I felt burned, as it were.  As a result, I had to take out living expense loans to help support my family financially.

Fast forward almost four years, and here I am today, working full time as an X-ray tech in a hospital.  I love my job and my co-workers, and I get paid reasonably well.  My wife and I have a dual income and we have a new house.  However, we are immensely burdened by school loan debt, a significant amount of which comes from those living expense loans.  Had this horrific job situation never cropped up, I may never have decided to stop working, and may never have taken out all those loans.  This would make life, today, considerably less financially tight.

What all this means, of course, is that the entire situation was a negative one.  Virtually nothing good has come from it, except an emotional scar and a burden of school loan debt.  It most definitely had nothing whatsoever to do with God working in my life, rewarding me for faithfulness because I was on a "spiritual journey" and seeking out a better understanding of God.

It was just a coincidence that seemed wonderful at the time, but turned to crap.

I wish I could say this was the only time I had experienced something like this in my life - a situation where I thought God was at work, only to find out later that it was nothing of the sort.  Unfortunately, I've had several of these experiences.

And of course, these experiences are one of the biggest reasons why I tend to be skeptical when I hear others attribute good fortune to the workings of God.  It's one of the reasons why I tend to view it as being underpinned by psychology - seeing the good in things, making lemonade out of lemons, having a positive attitude.

The fact is, we all face choices every day, and sometimes we face very important, life-altering choices.  What I have come to learn, however, is that most of the time, life will be okay regardless of what choice you make.  Human beings are enormously adaptable creatures.  It's written into our very biological code because it provides a significant evolutionary advantage.

So if someone is deciding whether or not to move the family cross-country, there may be good things that will result from that, and bad things that will result from that.  Similarly, there will be bad and good that comes from staying put.  If you move, you may have to get used to a "new normal," but you will ultimately adapt.

If you are a Christian, you might look back on the situation and remark at how many wonderful things have happened since moving, and attribute those things to God's blessings for following God's will.  But, of course, that conclusion would ignore all the possible good things that might have happened if you had stayed put.  Maybe you would have won the lottery.  Who knows?  The possibilities are endless.  In the end, you adapt either way.

I believe this is the psychological underpinning of attributing good things to following God's will.  Maybe God really does respond to those who follow God's will.  But if that's true, then God also responds to people who are not explicitly trying to follow God's will.  Both good and bad things happen to everyone.  It's ultimately your attitude that determines whether you view events in your life as a blessing or a curse.  If you choose to couch that language of attitude in religious terms, that's certainly fine, but attitude is what it's ultimately all about.

God in Popular Consciousness

Over the years, I have come to understand something about Christian belief in God: a lot of folks, whether they are casual believers or weekly church-goers, whether they are Protestant, Catholic, or non-denominational, whether they are male or female, black or white, American or foreign-born, rich or poor, rural or urban, east coast, west coast, or Midwest – regardless of any of those things, many have a stunningly shallow conception of God.

That may sound like a harsh and blanket criticism, but it is not intended to be so. Certainly there are plenty of folks, from all those categories, who have very well-developed, consistent, deep, and meaningful conceptions of God. And one can argue over how to even establish what constitutes “deep” and “shallow” in such a metaphysical discussion. But it certainly seems, to this casual observer anyway, that the deep believers are heavily outweighed by those for whom God is just a sweater they put on from time to time, but mostly just gets moth-eaten in the drawer.

I was thinking the other day about some of the more typical and traditional views of God, as accepted by a lot of Christians and Jews around the world (and a lot of other religions, for that matter), and it struck me that a lot of folks pretty much treat God like Santa Claus for Adults. Or, reversed, Santa Claus is God for Children.

In any case, consider the following similarities:

1. Santa lives above us, at the North Pole, which is a magical place no one can see. God lives above us, in heaven, which is a magical place no one can see.
2. Santa gives us things we ask for in letters or in person. God gives us things we ask for in prayer.
3. Sometimes Santa doesn’t give us what we ask for. Sometimes God does not answer our prayers.
4. Sometimes Santa brings us things we didn’t ask for. God too.
5. Santa is a man. So is God.
6. Santa is old, with a white beard. God is the Old Man In the Sky.
7. Santa “knows when we’ve been bad or good” and can essentially monitor our behavior all year long from afar. God has this omnipotent quality too.
8. Santa is immortal. So is God.
9. Santa can perform miraculous feats such as entering and exiting locked houses and individually bringing toys to all the world’s children in a single night. God too can perform various kinds of miracles.
10. Santa is surrounded by a retinue of elves. God has angels.
11. Santa rides a sled through the sky, pulled by magic reindeer that can fly. In Jewish mysticism, God rides a chariot through the sky, pulled by magic horses that can fly.
12. Santa likes milk and cookies. God likes milk and honey.

Okay, so that last one was kind of a joke, but you get the point. Either way you look at it, Santa Claus is God for Children, or God is Santa Claus for Adults.

Do we want to live our lives putting God on like a sweater and viewing God as little more than Santa Claus for Adults? Or do we want, as the apostle Paul said, to give up our childish ways and come to a deeper, more meaningful, and life-changing understanding of God and our relationship to God? In following the example of Jesus, I have chosen the latter.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A few comments about the "issues"

1) Abortion: I am anti-abortion and pro-choice. I support a woman's right to have an abortion if that's what she chooses to do, but I would never personally encourage a woman to have an abortion for birth control reasons. I suport a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy that has put her own life or health in danger, or in cases where the fetus is malformed or has serious genetic anomolies.

However, I cannot support late term abortions, because even though some of these procedures can be performed humanely (as opposed to, say, partial birth abortion), I see no reason why a woman in the 7th month or later should not have already made up her mind about whether or not to abort. My personal opinion is that the fetus becomes a viable human being when it reaches the stage where it could live outside it's mother's body. To me, aborting a baby after that time is akin to murder. Even in cases of medical necessity, there is no reason why the baby could not be taken intact by C-section, as opposed to aborted in the womb. The baby could then be put up for adoption. I could only support late term abortions in rare cases where the medical situation made C-section impossible, and the mother's life or health was in danger from the pregnancy or labor.

In cases of rape and incest, I support a woman terminating such a prenancy.

2) Healthcare: Strongly related to the abortion issue is the issue of healthcare. 40 million Americans (about 15%) don't have any health insurance at all. Twice that many are underinsured, making the total of underinsured and uninsured people in this country near the 50% mark, or 1 in 2. Mothers unquestionably will sometimes choose abortion simply because they can't afford the doctor bills. If we are going to have a consistent view in this country of the sanctity of life, we MUST do something about our healthcare crisis. Part of the government's constitutionally-mandated responsiblities is to provide for the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for its citizens. If ensuring that all Americans have affordable access to good medical care does not fall under the umbrella of "life," then I don't know what does.

It is significant to point out that the United States is the only major developed, industrialized country on earth with no federal health insurance plan. Other countries that have put such a plan in place have not descended into socialism, and the doctors and nurses and healthcare workers have not been sent to the poor house because they can't make money anymore. Suggesting that a federal health insurance option is like "socialized medicine" is not only a case of political spin, it's an outright lie. People who can afford good private health insurance should be able to continue to get that. Those who can't should have the option to have federal health insurance. Such a plan would require strong checks and balances and strong oversight to ensure it wasn't taken advantage of to the degredation of hardworking people.

3) Death Penalty: I am opposed to the death penalty, because I believe that our country should be focusing on the sanctity of life, not ending life. With it being known beyond a shadow of a doubt that innocent people have been executed, and knowing that there is no way to ever know with absolute certainty that a person committed a crime they have been concvited of, I do not believe any government should have the power to put people to death. But even if we could somehow be 100% certain that a criminal had committed a certain crime, I still would not support the death penalty, because I do not believe that any civilized government should have the power to kill people, for any reason. The country should be focused more on ending poverty, and thereby reducing crime, rather than worrying about which criminals to put to death. Countries - such as Japan - which have extremely low poverty rates, also have extremely low crime rates, and very little murder. There's a lesson to be learned there.

And that doesn't even address the issue of the huge state expense associated with all the judicial processes that are involved in death penalty cases. It's far more expensive to keep someone on death row than to simply incarcerate them for life. Taxes could probably be lowered across the board just by eliminating the death penalty (that's probably an overstatement, but you get the point).

4) Homosexuality: I don't believe homosexuality is a sin, but I do believe it is a "sin" to discriminate against homosexuals by disallowing them the same rights as married people. Marriage ceremonies in churches are just that - ceremonies. They are not legally binding. The thing that makes a marriage legally binding is the civil union - the certificate of marriage that the government gives you. Religious views on homosexuality should have no bearing on the government's choice about who can and can't have a civil union. Denying gays the right to get legally married is simple discrimination. And amending the constituion - either of a specific state or the U.S. constituion - to deny gay marriage is simply a case of legalizing discriminatory practices. Whether a constitution is amended or not, denying gays the same rights as straights is discriminatory. It can't be anything else.

Christians who are opposed to gay marriage need to recognize that "marriage" is a government contract, not a holy union. The church is what makes it a holy union, but that's only if the couple wants to have a ceremony in a church. There is certainy nothing requiring two people to have a church ceremony. Suggesting gays can't get married would be like saying atheists can't get married. Homosexuals are living in sin, so they can't have a holy union, and atheists don't believe in God, so they can't have a holy union either. But do I hear any Christians suggesting atheists shouldn't be allowed to have a government conract of marriage? Of course not, because that would be ridiculous. But it's no less ridiculous than saying two gay people can't get married.

Just because a Christian may not approve of the choices gays make, does not give those Christians the right to discriminate against gays, any more than they have a right to discriminate against atheists, Jews, Muslims, or Rastafarians. Those people aren't going to have a marriage ceremony in a Christian church either, but they still are going to have a government certificate of marriage. Why should gays be excluded from that? It's simple discrimination.

5) God: I believe in God, and I follow and attempt to emulate the life and teachings of Jesus as they were remembered and creatively told in the New Testament. I do not, however, believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. I believe it is a significantly human text, describing ways in which ancient Jews attempted to connect and unify with God. What I take from the New Testament are the teachings about love, compassion, kindness, and humility, and the warnings against greed and selfishness. I believe the overpowering message of the New Testament is about abundant life in the here and now, more so than about anything that happens after death.

It's those warnings against greed and selfishness that I think far too many Chrisitans either ignore outright, or only give blithe lipservice to. Jesus talked about greed and money more than just about any other topic. He warned continually about the dangers of greed, and made it clear that anyone who pursues wealth and material possessions is not living in union with God. You can't serve both God and money, Jesus is recorded as saying. That's why I find it ironic when I pass churches on Sunday morning and see them filled with luxury automobiles, decorated with fancy statues and expensive ornamentations, and populated largely by upper middle class people in expensive clothes. Our entire social system is built on the pursuit of wealth - something Jesus assured us was a direct road toward disunity with God. Far too many Christians conveniently ignore that.

We like to think that we are living a Christ-like life (and I include myself in this), but most all of us are actually deeply involved in the pursuit of wealth, and this keeps us from really living like Jesus told us to live.

And if we're living in pursuit of wealth, then we are living in sin, and therefore is it reasonable to say we're any different than the abortion doctors and homosexuals? Jesus never mentioned abortion or homosexuality, but he sure did talk a lot about greed and money.

Free Will and God's Will: Mutually Incompatible

Free will is generally defined as the freedom of human beings to make their own autonomous choices and decisions, and to reap the consequences of those decisions. While there is certainly room for philosophical posturing in regards to whether we truly have free will, or whether we are simply automated by our genes, most everyone can agree that, from a practical standpoint, humankind exhibits free will. We are free to make our own choices, and the various experiences that define who we are come from the product of our free will choices and the free will choices of those around us.

Yet while most people will agree that human beings have free will, many people also abide by the belief that God has a will, and that this will is frequently enacted within human history. Thus you hear folks say things like, “It just wasn’t God’s will,” or “I’m trying to follow God’s will for my life,” or “I decided to just sit back and trust God’s will.” When good things happen, many believers will give the credit to God, and if something does not turn out the way someone hopes, they will frequently remark that it simply “was not God’s will.”

But is this consistent? Can humankind have free will, while simultaneously living in world where God’s will is routinely in play?

In a word, no.

For God’s will to be enacted on earth, a suspension of human free will is required. This is seen time and time again in the Bible. The Old Testament story of the Exodus goes so far as to explicitly state that God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” – implying that the pharaoh was merely a puppet on God’s string. The Jews did not escape Egypt by their own strength of conviction and good fortune, but escaped because God allowed them to. Later, Joshua defeated the Canaanites not through the excellence of his own military prowess, but because God made it happen. God even made the earth stop rotating so that there would be longer daylight to allow Joshua to keep slaughtering his enemies. In the New Testament, the entire story of Jesus’ life is an example of God’s will invading human history, with all of Jesus’ enemies acting out the grand plan of salvation enacted by God and predicted by the prophets. The Roman soldiers, for instance, did not choose of their own free will to cast lots for Jesus’ clothing, but did it like puppets on a divine string in order to fulfill scripture. Later, they pierced his side but left his legs intact, not because they made this decision of their own free will, but because this was in fulfillment of prophecy and scripture.

The Bible is not the only place that God’s will seems to come into play. Most traditionally-believing Christians will argue that the various doctrinal councils of the 4th and 5th centuries were doing “the will of God” when they determined which books would be in the Bible and when they settled on a set of doctrines and creeds. Furthermore, these same folks will argue that the texts of the Bible, while written by human beings, were divinely inspired, meaning that when these human beings were writing their texts, God was directing their pens – thus, they could not have been acting of their own human free will.

Even today, many Christians will argue that certain events are tinged with God’s intervention – such as when an ill person makes a miraculous recovery, a major disaster is narrowly averted, or a remarkably positive event occurs in a person’s life. Recently, Kansas defeated Memphis in the NCAA basketball tournament championship game. Memphis blew a late lead, and missed some key free throws in the last few seconds of the game. After the game, the Memphis head coach remarked that it simply was not God’s will for those free throws to be hit, or for his team to win the game. In other words, the team lost not because they got outplayed, and not because they missed some free throws, but because it was not God’s will.

Of course, many Christians would admit that the Memphis coach’s comments were absurd, and were simply an emotional response to a huge disappointment. But even in doing so, many frequently still hold fast to other ideas of God’s will being enacted in human life, and many would probably make similar comments in similar circumstances. I feel confident that whatever religious beliefs the Memphis head coach has, they are probably not unusual or out of the ordinary.

So how can believers reconcile God’s will with human free will? The most common answer would probably be that God chooses, from time to time, to invade human history and suspend free will as he sees fit. He is omniscient and all-powerful, after all. He can do what he wants. Yet if free will can be suspended, at any time, then free will does not truly exist. The very concept of free will demands that it exists at all times, unimpeded. If God can suspend free will at his whim, then we do not truly have free will. Instead, we are free to do as we choose only insofar as God allows it. That is not free will, by any definition of the phrase. As such, if we truly have free will, as most people seem to assume, then God must, by definition, not ever invade human history with his own agenda.

What I am getting at is this: one can not believe that human beings have free will, and also believe that God has a will which sometimes gets enacted on earth, without simultaneously holding two contradictory beliefs.

Many Christians might respond to this by suggesting that perhaps we do not, in fact, have free will like we think we do. Doing so, of course, does in some ways resolve the problem that I have illustrated, but it opens a whole other can of philosophical worms. If we do not have free will, then what does this mean for our very existence? Furthermore, how does it affect our relationship with God? Does God, then, choose us, rather than us choosing God? What would make God choose one person over another? Why would a loving, merciful God send the majority of people (that is, non-Christians) to hell? Is anything we do actually determined by us, or does God control everything? If we determine some things, how does God decide when to let us make our own choices, and when to do his own thing? Why does God – who controls everything and leaves nothing to chance or free will – cause some people to get sick, and others to be healthy? Why does God make hurricanes and tsunamis and tornados exist, and why does he cause some people to survive those disasters, but causes others to get killed by them? These are the kinds of philosophical and theological questions one must face if they choose to reject free will.

The other option, of course, is to recognize that we do have free will, and the things that happen on this planet, for good or bad, are the result of that human free will, as well as chance and luck. As such, God has absolutely nothing to do with any of it, beyond allowing us to have free will in the first place.

The important thing to realize, and the entire point of this essay, is to raise to consciousness the fact that most of us hold contradictory beliefs regarding free will. We say we believe in free will, but simultaneously believe that God invades human history with his own agenda. It cannot be both ways, and this is the point that I would like to stress. Think on it.

An Argument Against Exclusivity

I am back from my spiritual quest, and I feel that it has been very worthwhile and very spiritually uplifting. I feel that I have, and am continuing to develop, a relevant and authentic personal understanding of how I relate to and conceive of God. So in that sense, my time away from blogging and debating religion in Internet forums has been good. I also hope that I am learning to develop a more calm, confident tone in my writing when it comes to religious discussions, moving away from the shrillness of many of my previous essays. I can't promise that some may not still find my ideas troubling, but I at least hope to present them calmly and rationally, without the need to offend unecessarily.

Anyway, here is my latest effort:

Many Christians frequently argue that God is omnipotent and all-knowing, omniscient and all-powerful. God, they say, is love – an all-loving, all-merciful Father in heaven. They further argue that God desires every person on earth to be saved. They will point to biblical passages such as 1 Timothy 2:3-4 which states exactly this: “God…wants all mankind to be saved.” Indeed, it is the altruistic, if not Utopian, goal of all evangelical Christians to bring the message of Christ to every person on earth, with the hope that every person on earth can be saved.

Many other religions have, or have had, similar concepts that necessitate the need for all humans to accept faith in their particular image of God, so that all humankind can be saved.

The problem with this idea is that it is entirely impossible and fails to take into account the basic nature of the very human beings that God created.

There can be no absolute, unanimous consensus.

By our very nature, human beings are incapable of agreeing on anything, from where to eat for dinner, to how to image and relate to God. If a study of human history can point to any absolute truths about human nature, it is that we disagree. Even evangelicals agree that while their goal is to convert all the world to Christianity, this is an impossible prospect. No sane modern person, regardless of religious persuasion, can argue that there could ever come a time when 6 billion people might agree on even one cultural persuasion, much less one religious persuasion. Even just among Americans, if we can’t agree on healthcare reform, politicians, or what constitutes good art, how could we possibly ever agree on God?

Evangelicals frequently point to the prominence of Christianity as evidence that Christianity is the “right” religion. Two billion people in the world are Christians. That is an impressive number, but if fails to point out that this leaves 4 billion – or twice as many – who are not Christians. Furthermore, and more significantly, it fails to demonstrate the wildly diverging beliefs among those two billion Christians. Indeed, by its very nature, Christianity is one of the world’s most malleable religions. Because Christianity is easy to mold into a highly personal religion that can fit comfortably with a wide variety of cultural and cognitive persuasions, it has been able to spread far and wide over the centuries.

In fact, there are far more differences among many various Christian groups than there are between other Christian groups and completely different religions. For instance, a Greek Orthodox Christian will likely have far more in common, religiously, with a Buddhist than a fundamentalist Southern Baptist Christian will have with a progressive Christian of the United Church of Christ. Similarly, a Pentecostal Christian will have far more in common with a Hasidic Jew than a Unitarian Christian will have with a Roman Catholic Christian.

So even within Christianity itself, the various views and beliefs are so divergent as to render any claims of the unity of “2 billion Christians” absurd and meaningless.

Human nature absolutely guarantees that human beings will never come to any unanimous consensus about anything.

How, then, can we reconcile this apparent truth to the general Christian idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving God who desires the salvation of every human being? If God created humanity, and if God desires that we all accept his revelation through Christ, then why would God have created humans in such a way that positively guaranteed this would never happen? Such an idea makes God inconsistent at best and a monster at worst.

The inability to reconcile these problems, of course, is what has led many modern people away from any traditional belief in God at all.

Others, however, have used the same irreconcilable problem to argue predestination. Instead of rejecting a God who would create human beings in such a way as to guarantee the eternal damnation of most humans, those who believe in predestination have actually embraced this very idea as God’s intended method. By their beliefs, God predestines some people to be saved and some people (actually, most people) to be damned. This, of course, only makes God even more of a monster, and even more repugnant to most people.

Yet even those Christians who don’t actively and consciously accept the doctrine of predestination (and many, even probably most, don’t), they are still implicitly accepting the doctrine by assuming that an omniscient and all-loving God would create humans in such a way as to secure most people’s highway to hell.

It is for these reasons that I reject any notions of exclusivity within any single religious tradition. No matter how strongly some evangelically-minded Christians may feel about “getting the Word” out to all the world, there will never be a time when all the world accepts Christianity, or any other single religion. As I’ve already said, the world’s 2 billion current Christians can’t even agree unanimously on God’s nature or the significance of Jesus’ life – the two most central aspects of the religion. And since I reject any notion of a God who would purposely damn most humans to hell simply by virtue of the very nature with which he designed them, I reject the idea that any religion holds the exclusive pathway to God. That is the only honest and all-inclusive answer I can conceive of to the problem. God is revealed differently to different people, groups, cultures, and religious traditions. If that is not true, then God must be, by definition, not all-loving and not all-merciful.

Of course, others would say there is a second answer – atheism. I reject this as well, however, as God can most certainly be experienced in a very real and life-changing way. But it is the very nature of this experience that points to a God who is approachable from many different pathways, and by many different methods. I don’t even believe you have to actively believe in God to be experiencing the ineffable reality of God.

If there is a hell (and I don’t personally believe in any traditional concept of hell), then I suppose it must only be reserved for the most base, degraded, twisted examples of humanity. But even these folks must surely find mercy before an all-merciful God, because no one chose to be born, and no one chooses their genetics, their parents, their upbringing, their culture, or their particular social status – and these are the things that determine our particular paths in life. Everyone is born utterly innocent. Thus, the only possible authentic image of an all-loving, all-merciful, omniscient God is one that welcomes all humankind into eternal spiritual union with the Absolute, through myriad paths and persuasions. Any other image of God is, for me, inauthentic and irreconcilable.

A Spiritual Quest

I have decided to start a spiritual quest of sorts.

I just finished reading The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck, and in that very well-known self-help book, he ends the book with a discussion about what he believes is evidence of God's immanence in human life. Far from supporting any institutional religion over another, Peck's philosophy is rooted (as might be imagined) in psychiatric phenomena such as serendipity, synchronicity, ESP, and the like. He argues that God's "grace" is enacted through the unconscious, which works beyond our conscious control to assist our spiritual growth. I found a lot of what he said to make sense on a certain level, and at the very least his arguments were interesting and unique.

I read this book, obviously, as a means to help me along the path of my own spiritual and emotional growth, and it has inspired me to continue along that "less traveled" path. In doing so, one of the issues that I want to reconcile within myself is my concept of God. In Peck's book, he talks about the idea that many people must first reject God (that is, the God of dogmatic institutional religion) before they can find the authentic God. This definitely resonates with me, as I have experienced a similar situation. However, I don't, yet, feel like I have found that authentic God. I have come across a lot of ideas that really makes sense to me, but none that I have been able to fully and completely grasp.

What is interesting is that I just finished a novel by James Michener called The Source, which fictionalized the history of Judaism, and had, as one of its primary themes, the evolving nature of the God concept. Without even realizing it, this was actually the start of my quest, because it definitely got me thinking a lot about my concept of God, where it comes from, why I believe it, and what it means for me. Bearing this in mind, while reading The Road Less Traveled (which I was reading at the same time as The Source), it was rather serendipitious (to use one of Peck's arguments for God's grace) that this book, too, began an in depth discussion of the very same topic: the concept of God. While I had known that The Source -- a novel fictionalizing the history of Judaism -- was going to deal a lot with the changing concepts of God, I had not known that The Road Less Traveled had any "God" discussion in it.

As such, I am going to run with this moment of serendipity and begin an intentional quest for God. This, of course, is nothing really new -- I've been searching for God my entire life. A few years back, when I first began to reject the concepts of God that my church had taught me, I read a very enlightening book by Marcus Borg called The God We Never Knew. So this "quest" isn't really anything new for me. However, it's more "intentional" now, I suppose.

What I intend to do on this quest involves a mixture of prayer, meditation, and reading. The prayer and meditation is self-explanatory, but I intend to buttress those things by reading three books.

The first is a book that I've had on my shelf for well over a year (maybe even two years), but have never read. Again, the serendipity involved in the fact that I have chosen not to read this book yet, so that it is now there available for me when the issue of God has come to the forefront of my consciousness, simply makes my dedication to this "quest" all the stronger. The book is by British scholar and academic, Karen Armstrong. It is called A History of God. In it, Armstrong discusses and illustrates the long history of the God concept, how it has evolved through Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and how people's interactions with God have evolved through the centuries. I believe this will be a great starting point for my quest, one which will ground me in the history of God and in humanity's concepts of God. Where The Source was a fictionalization using the evolving God concept as a theme, A History of God is an in-depth, scholarly look at humanity's changing concepts of God.

After this book, I intend to start a book called There is a God. This is written by philosopher Anthony Flew, and I came across it quite by accident (again, that serendipity thing) the other day while browsing the bookstore. I've never heard of Flew before, but evidently he has been regarded by many as one of the "Fathers" of modern atheism. In the 1950's he wrote a scholarly paper on the depravity of religious belief, and it has been hailed as the pentultimate thesis on atheism ever since (I think I read that it has been distrubuted more widely than any other scholarly paper in the 20th century).

Despite this, Flew has now embraced a sort of philosophical theism. He's now an old man, of course, and his change of heart might be chalked up to the fear of approaching annihilation, but either way, he has written a book detailing why he has rejected atheism, after a lifetime as one of the foremost champions of atheism, in favor of philsophical theism. He hasn't, apparently, accepted any dogamatic institutional form of religion (which, of course, is one thing in his favor), but instead has accepted more of a Martin Gardner type of belief -- a creator God who is involved in human life and is interested in the spiritual growth and fulfillment of human beings. Since this is not at all unlike the God concept Peck paints in The Road Less Traveled, I'm very interested in hearing what Flew has to say, particularly since he comes from a background of militant atheism.

After I finish Flew's book, I will finish up by reading the extremely popular and controversial book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. As a sort of "counterpoint" to There is a God, I want to see what all the fuss is about regarding this book, and see what I really think of the modern atheist position.

By reading these three books -- a scholarly history of God, a story of a former atheist turned philosophical theist, and a militant treatise on the harmfulness of religious belief -- I hope to come away with a more informed and well-rounded view of God. This, coupled with a lot of prayer and meditation will, I hope, allow me to settle on a concept of God that resonates with me -- or perhaps, no concept at all. I am willing to risk the descent (or ascent, as some would say) into atheism in order to find God. If I never return from that journey into atheism, then so be it -- at least I will have found an answer that works for me. Of course, my intention is not to turn atheist, but to buttress my sense of spirituality and universal mystery by coming to a deeper understanding of God.

I want to end by extending an offer to all my readers to join me in this quest. I realize, right from the start, that this probably will not be taken up by anyone else. It's a lot of work, and as Peck says in The Road Less Traveled, most people are not equal to the work required for spiritual and personal growth. In that same vein, Mark Twain once said "Be good, and you will be lonesome." This became the basis of a wonderful Jimmy Buffett song in 1987. For certain, the road to spiritual enlightenment is a lonely one.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that if you choose not to take this particular quest with me it means you aren't dedicated to personal and spiritual growth. Maybe this just isn't the way you want to go about it. And that, of course, is a highly personal decision, not one I can make for anyone but myself.

But if anyone is up to the task, I would encourage you to read these books, in this order, along with me, and buttress it with prayer and meditation. I think it would strengthen my quest, as well as yours, to be able to discuss it with someone else.

Finally, I want to add that I will not be blogging between now and the end of my quest. Not because I'm going to be holed up in the woods muttering Buddhist mantras -- I still have to work, go to school, and be a father, after all -- but simply because I want to focus my spiritual and intellectual attention right now on this quest. Theology, the meaning of Jesus' life, Church history, and all the other things I love to write about are not germaine to this particular quest. This is a quest to find God, and that's what I want to focus on. So unless I change my mind later, I won't blog again until I have completed this journey. Naturally, if any of you do want to come along with me on this quest, please let me know.

Until then, shalom, and I'll see you on the flip side.

The Trinity Doctrine: Bad Math

The Trinity Doctrine is a theological Christian concept that says God has three manifestations or extensions – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of God’s manifestations is an independent extension of God, but the three together make up the whole. The idea is that God is composed of “three persons,” but only “one substance,” as the official doctrine states.

In this day and age, the Trinity Doctrine is so entrenched in mainstream Christian consciousness that most Christians hardly give it much thought or critical examination. Certainly no mainstream Christian would consider herself a polytheist. Yet early in Christian history, before Christianity was the force in western society that it is today, it was commonly recognized among non-Christians that the Christians had three gods. Even as late as the 19th century, when the British were busy colonizing and converting the native tribes of Africa, it was understood by the African tribesmen that the British had come from the Great White Queen across the water (Victoria) who worshipped a three-headed god. To people not familiar with this deeply entrenched doctrine, it fairly screams of polytheism at best, and Dissociative Identity Disorder at worst. Maybe Sybil wasn’t so crazy after all.

Read the New Testament, and you won’t find a single instance of the word “trinity.” It is a concept that was developed not by Jesus, not by his followers, not by the writers of the New Testament, but by the ecumenical councils of the 4th and 5th centuries – in other words, groups of old, rich, powerful men who met in lavish palaces, all expenses paid, and were plied with gifts and food and wine while being tended to by servants, all while doing the so-called work of God to formalize and systematize Christianity so it could be sold to the masses. As Rabbi Joel Blau once said: “Theology: that madness gone systematic which tries to crowd God’s fullness into a formula and a system!” And nothing represents this idea better than the doctrine of the Trinity, which was birthed as a result of the group copulation of those aforementioned old white men at the ecumenical councils of the 4th and 5th centuries.

Of course, I’m speaking a little tongue-in-cheek here, and to be fair, the Trinity concept was first discussed as early as the 200’s in the writings of Tertullian, but it became a central issue of the first ecumenical councils, and it was at those councils, in the 300’s and 400’s C.E., that the concept was finally cemented into a nice, beribboned theological package – a perfect way to describe how God and Jesus could be one, with the Holy Spirit (whatever that is) thrown in for good measure. The ironic thing is that Tertullian, despite beginning his days as a great defender of Orthodoxy, later moved away from the Catholic Church, referring to it as “the church of a lot of bishops,” and began following a form of Christianity called Montanism, which the Church (of course, since it wasn’t their own) considered heretical. For this reason, Tertullian, despite being a leading theologian, prolific writer, and prominent Christian apologist of the early Christian era, has never been canonized. So the person who, 200 years after Jesus’ life, first gave us the Trinity concept, is also someone who the Church – which adopted that Trinity concept and put it into a nice package – deemed a heretic.

It has long been debated – literally since the doctrine was established – whether there is any biblical veracity for the Trinity idea. I’ve already mentioned that no New Testament text uses the word “trinity,” and the idea itself wasn’t conceived of until at least the 200’s, and wasn’t formalized until the 300’s. But can one go to the words of Jesus, or to the words of other New Testament figures, to find evidence that the Trinity exists?

For those who abide by the Trinity Doctrine, their strongest textual argument comes from the last passage of the book of Matthew. There, Matthew describes the resurrected Jesus’ ascent into heaven. Prior to flying off into the great blue yonder (where, presumably, he donned a space suit and oxygen tank so he could breath in low earth orbit), Jesus instructed his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Here, then, is the only instance in the entire Bible where all three of God’s distinct yet unified personalities are mentioned together in one breath.

The problem, of course, is twofold. First, we can’t know for certain whether these were the words of Jesus, or the words of Matthew. Skeptics might immediately reject the words as coming from Jesus, since they are purported to have been spoken after his resurrection. But it’s always possible, of course, that Matthew accurately recorded something that Jesus said, but simply stuck it into a post-resurrection narrative. A scholarly look at the texts of Jesus’ life would imply that he probably did send his followers out to teach in his name (Mark gives a detailed summary of Jesus doing just this during his ministry – sending his followers out two by two to heal and teach). But would Jesus have talked about a Father and a Son and a Holy Spirit? Since messianic prophecies weren’t applied to Jesus’ life until after his death, it seems rather unlikely. Of course, even if they were only the words of Matthew, and not Jesus, they are still words written early in Christian history, in the Bible itself, which might help support a Trinitarian doctrine. This, however, leads to the second problem.

Whether Jesus said these words, or Matthew simply put them into Jesus’ mouth, there is no indication or even implication that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all of one substance, as the Trinity doctrine states. Because the Trinity doctrine is so entrenched in our Christian mindset, we read this passage through the lens of that later doctrine. Yet, if you strip the doctrinal blinkers away and read the passage as it was written, you can see that Jesus is simply instructing his followers to baptize people into the names of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. He says nothing, and implies nothing, about these three entities being one and the same and equal. It would be no different than telling someone to go teach the principles of American democracy to foreigners, “baptizing” them into the names of Jefferson, Washington, and the Continental Congress. That doesn’t mean Jefferson, Washington, and the Continental Congress are all of the same substance.

On the flip side of the coin, there is another passage, this time in Mark, where it seems quite clear that Jesus is, in fact, saying plainly that God is “one” (as opposed to “three” as the Trinity doctrine suggests). This “one vs. three” dichotomy has long been the central issue between Christianity and Judaism. I read a rabbi/priest joke just today that centered on the idea of God as one and God as three. Jews, of course, believe that God is one, relying on that oft-repeated mantra from the Torah: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Christians, because of the Trinity concept, believe God is three.

The writer of Mark – the earliest of the Gospel writers – gives us a very detailed picture of Jesus’ last week on earth. According to Mark, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on Sunday, and spent the week before his death teaching and fending off attacks from the Pharisees. In Mark 12:28-34, Jesus is approached by one of the “teachers of the law” and is asked to tell which commandment of God’s is the greatest. I’ll let you read the rest of the passage for yourself:

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared asked him any more questions.

As you can see, this is a rather eye-opening passage, in light of our understanding of God as three. Jesus – who, of course, was a practicing Jew living in a pre-Christian Jewish world that knew nothing of 4th century Trinity doctrines – said that the greatest commandment, the one that stood out above all the others, is the very one that Jews still use to this day to ritualize their belief in the basic oneness of God: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The “teacher of the law,” the Orthodox Jew, says that Jesus was “right in saying that God is one,” and Jesus then recognizes that the man “had answered wisely.” As with the passage in Matthew, whether you attribute these words and thoughts to Jesus himself, or simply to the writer of Mark, the fact remains that this New Testament passage is clearly describing God’s nature as one, not three. For a traditionally-believing Christian who accepts that the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible are accurate, this passage should be quite eye-opening, as the Son himself is unmistakably saying that God is one.

As you can imagine, I don’t personally find any absolution in the idea that God has three distinct personalities. I believe Jesus was a man who was uniquely in touch with the essence of God, and who taught a message of love, peace, acceptance, and servitude. Regarding God, I suppose I conceive of God more like a Jew than a Christian – that is, I conceive of God as unknowable, unnamed, and formless. For me, God is love, and love is God. As for the Holy Spirit, I’m not sure I could even define what Christians believe the Holy Spirit is. Clearly it is born from that feeling of religious ecstasy that people experience from time to time. But how this emotional feeling could relate to a being that exists as a personality of God is beyond me. It would be like suggesting that the feeling of anger is a divine aspect of God. I think most Christians probably don’t understand the concept of the Holy Spirit either.

Most Christians will freely pray to God and Jesus, individually, but I’ve never heard anyone address the Holy Spirit, as an entity, in prayer. Yet, by the doctrine of the Trinity, that would be perfectly sensible and reasonable. Unfortunately, from my perspective, that’s about the only way that “sensible and reasonable” could occur in the same breath with “doctrine of the Trinity.” For me, the Trinity doctrine is bad math; three just doesn’t add up, either biblically or spiritually.

Two Views on God

There are two interesting email messages I have recently received that I wanted to post. The messages, while tragic, give what I think is an interesting, if not outright disturbing, 21st century view of God. Receiving these messages was strange, because I received an article last week from a friend that I felt was probably best commentary on God that I have ever read. Upon receiving it, I immediately planned on posting it on my blog. I think it provides a unique and interesting parallel to the concept of God outlined in the emails.

I’ll first post the two email messages (with names and locations removed, of course), and then the article.

Email # 1:

SUBJECT: Will you pray?

Some of you may have heard about the tragedy that our family is currently facing. My son-in-law, JOHN DOE, the husband of my daughter JANE DOE, had a freak accident on Tuesday, and is now in desperate need of your prayer support. JOHN is extremely asmatic and apparently very allergic to bees. He was stung while working on a car, and though there's a long horrible story of all that has occurred thereafter, he is currently on life support at A HOSPITAL, and the prognosis is very discouraging. However, we firmly believe in the power of prayer and are counting on you, our friends and family, to interceed on our behalf during this midnight hour.

Please pray for JANE as well, as she's 14 weeks pregnant with our first grandchild and is beside herself, needless to say.

Believing that The Great Physician still makes house calls and that He who raised Lazarus will also raise JOHN.

Love,
[Blank]

Email # 2:

SUBJECT: Graduation...

As many of you know, our son-in-law, JOHN DOE, the husband of our precious JANE DOE, experienced supernatural graduation on Friday morning, April 6 . Though we certainly will not pretend to understand God's timing during this dark and devastating hour, we trust Him and lean heavily upon Him for strength and comfort.

JOHN loved the Lord, treasured our daughter, adored his son, and was looking so forward to the arrival of our grandchild this fall. Having known and loved JOHN DOE, our lives will never be the same.

[Funeral information deleted]

Words can never convey our sincere thanks for your prayers and encouragement these past few days. We covet your continued intercession on our behalf.

Love,
[Blank]

Now, here is the article:

Rabbi Marc Gellman on Whether God Is Real
The debate about whether God is real misses the true nature of the question. Here's why.
MSNBC Article Link

By Marc Gellman
April 5, 2007


The recent theological disputation between Rick Warren and Sam Harris on whether God is real was wonderfully enlightening—but sadly was offered up without a verdict. Since I am both a professional religious guy and also have a doctorate in philosophy, I thought I might declare a winner in the spirit of the old Yiddish joke in which two disputants ask the rabbi to resolve their argument. After hearing the first man the rabbi says, "You are right." Then the second man protests and tells his side, after which the rabbi says, "You are right." The men go away puzzled and disappointed whereupon a third person complains to the rabbi, "They can't both be right." The rabbi looks at him and says, "You're right, too." So here is my verdict: Both Rick and Sam are right and wrong and if you think this is impossible ... you're right, too.

The problem with these debates is that they do not understand the nature of the question being asked. The French existentialist Gabriel Marcel in his book "The Mystery of Being" helpfully distinguished between two types of questions: problems and mysteries. Problems are questions about things outside of us that we lay siege to. When we answer them correctly they go away forever.

Once chemists thought that a mysterious substance called phlogiston caused combustion. Then in the 1770s Antoine Lavoisier conclusively proved that oxygen causes combustion, and nobody thought about phlogiston again. This is because the question of what causes combustion is a problem, not a mystery.

Mysteries are not questions we constitute (those are problems). Mysteries are, according to Marcel, questions within which we ourselves are constituted. Mysteries are not problems that have not yet been answered. "What is the cure for cancer?" is an unanswered problem, not a mystery, but the question of whether God is real or whether goodness is rewarded or whether there is a purpose to human existence or why do fools fall in love or who put the bop in the bop sh-bop sh-bop—these are all mysteries and they will not go away and they will always be important and they will always define us by the way we answer them with our lives and our hopes.

So both Pastor Warren and atheist Harris have erroneously come to believe that the question of whether God is real is just some problem that can be answered—like how far is it from New York to Cleveland? God cannot be proved with evidence that is outside of us. Said another way, the mystery of God is resolved by the answer we give to it with our life. If a person believes that all human beings are made in the image of God and thus deserve respect, then God is real for that person as the source of his or her transcendent duty to treat all people with love and respect. If, on the other atheist hand, people are just one of many species ruled by the survival of the fittest, then God does not exist for that person and neither does any transcendent duty to treat others with dignity. In this dispute, Sam is not wrong, he is just on the side of those who do not believe in the sanctity of life. Why they believe that others ought to be treated with dignity is not clear to Rick, and it is not clear to me, but I would not make the invidious case that atheists cannot be moral. Nor would I say that Sam is wrong. We might well be alone in a chaotic meaningless cosmos. I stand with Rick in responding to the mystery of meaning in the universe by affirming that I am not alone and that when I look into even Sam's eyes I cannot help but believe that I am looking at the image of God. Sam's response to the mystery of meaning is to try to hold onto the absolute moral judgments born of Rick's and my faith while not allowing the God who both birthed and sustained that moral truth. This, plus Sam's personal desire for a kind of rational spirituality, as well as the massive empirical evidence of religious altruism—which he admits—versus the admittedly thin record of well known atheistic altruism all leads me to believe that Sam Harris may well understand deep down that ditching God is not remotely like ditching Zeus.

As for my evangelical friend Rick Warren, I continue to pray that his faith becomes not less strong but less exclusivist. Perhaps I am, in fact, saved by the atoning death of Jesus, and perhaps I need to say that in order to be saved. I don't believe so, but I do not feel degraded or belittled by Rick's belief that I need to do so. What I believe, the way I respond to the mystery of God as I have learned it through Judaism, is that God did not give all the truth to just one faith. What I believe is that, "The righteous of all nations have a share in the World to Come." This means that I expect to see Rick and Sam there, but instead of continuing their debate, I expect them to be laughing and saying to each other, "Why didn't we listen to Gellman?"

Happy Passover to my Jewish readers.
Happy Easter to Rick and all my Christian friends.
And to Sam Harris, happy springtime.

Is God in Control?

“A man is on a long journey trying to escape from some villains who are out to get him. He gets to a wide open plain offering no place to hide and guaranteeing the faster villains will catch him. But then a ‘miracle’ fog hides everything, allowing him to escape. The character is able to communicate with a ‘higher power’ and learns the fog didn’t just ‘happen.’ The higher power knew of this need millennia ago and set the natural order of things so that the fog would be where it needed to be.”

This is a slight rewording of a comment made by a poster on an Internet message board. The poster was paraphrasing a science-fiction story he had read some years earlier. He went on to point out that this idea of God “setting the wheels in motion” really “resonated” with him. He was arguing that free will and determinism don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

On the surface, I suppose this sort of idea would resonate with just about anyone. It certainly resonated with me for a long time – well into my adulthood. It is a common and widely accepted idea within mainstream Christianity. It is the idea that “God is in control.”

The problem, for me, is that it does not hold up to scrutiny. In fact, it was through scrutinizing concepts like this that I eventually began to move away from a belief that God is, in fact, in control. It only takes a few minutes to see the inherent problems in this sort of theology. If, in the example above, God truly “set the wheels in motion” in order to make the fog appear at just the right time to save the character’s life, does that mean that when things do not go our way, God has set the wheels against us? Let me illustrate this point with a scenario.

At 8:07 a.m., a tractor-trailer driven by a driver who has been driving all night is going to run a red light at the corner of Main Street and Second Street. Unknowing, John Doe leaves his house at 8:00 a.m., as he does every morning. He pulls out of his street and makes his way through the neighborhood, which empties at the corner of Main and Second. About two minutes after leaving his house, but before getting out of his neighborhood, he realizes he forgot his lunch. He considers whether he should go back to get it. Tomorrow is payday, and he does not currently have any available cash, so he cannot go out to eat for lunch unless he charges his lunch. He does not want to do that, as his credit card is pretty full. Therefore, the only option is to either turn around and go back, or head on to work and just skip lunch. He chooses to go back. He turns around, heads back home, grabs his lunch, then leaves again. It is now 8:04. As he is turning out of his neighborhood at 8:07, his car is smashed by the tractor-trailer, and John Doe is paralyzed, doomed to live out the rest of his life as a paraplegic.

Now, you can see that there are several different ways this scenario could have turned out. John Doe could have left home the first time a minute early, therefore putting him at the intersection at 8:06 instead of 8:07. He could have not forgotten his lunch, therefore eliminating the need to go back home, and putting him at the intersection at 8:03. He could have not gone out to dinner the previous weekend and spent fifty bucks on his credit card, thereby making money tight by the end of the week, such that he could not afford to charge his lunch that day. Furthermore, the tractor-trailer driver could have stopped at a rest area to sleep, meaning at 8:07 he would not have been anywhere near that intersection, and when he did finally reach the intersection, he would not have been so tired that he ran the red light. The tractor-trailer driver could have gotten hung up at a weigh station a few extra minutes, putting him at the intersection at 8:09 instead of 8:07. He could have gotten stuck behind a slow poke who pulled out in front of him, delaying him by a few minutes.

But none of those things happened. Instead, everything worked together to cause that tractor-trailer to run that red light at 8:07, and to cause John Doe to be turning through that same intersection at 8:07, thereby leading to John Doe’s paralysis.

In this scenario, did God make it happen? Did God “set the wheels in motion” by allowing all those “what ifs” to come together in just the right way, such that John Doe ended up in a wheelchair? More importantly, why didn’t God “set the wheels in motion” to allow just one tiny little detail to change, such that John Doe and the tractor-trailer would not meet up in that intersection at the same time?

How would mainstream Christianity account for this tragedy? From my long experience in the church as a traditionally-believing Christian, I think I can say with certainty that the general answer would be that this is a flawed, cruel, uncaring world, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. Thus, we need God in order to cope with the cruel tragedies of life. God doesn’t make bad things happen. Bad things happen because Satan holds dominion over this world.

But what if this scenario had not turned out this way? What if John Doe had decided, for instance, to just go without lunch that day? He’s been eating a little too much lately and has packed on a few extra pounds, so it would do him some good to skip a meal. Thus, he decides, at 8:03, to just head on to work instead of turning around for his lunch. He pulls through the intersection safely and moves on with life. He later learns from a neighbor that a tractor-trailer ran a red light at the intersection just a few minutes after he pulled through, but no one was hurt because no car was in the intersection at the time.

Considering this change, now how would mainstream Christianity account for this situation? Again, as a church alumnus and a nearly 30-year veteran of traditional Christian beliefs, I can say that the general answer would be that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord (to quote the Apostle Paul), and that God helped set the wheels in motion to keep John Doe out of that intersection when that tractor-trailer came rumbling through.

Unfortunately, it cannot be both ways. Either the world is a cruel, cold, uncaring place where bad and good things happen based on the whim of chance, without any interference from God, or God is in control of everything, meaning he caused both John Doe’s paralysis in the first scenario and John Doe’s salvation in the second scenario.

Most Christians want to have it both ways. When bad things happen, they want to turn to God for comfort and solace against a cold, cruel, indifferent natural world. When good things happen, they want to attribute it to God’s control.

For me, the inability to reconcile these dichotomous positions caused me to ultimately move away from the belief that God sets any wheels in motions, intervenes in any way in history, or has anything at all to do with tragedies and blessings.

I believe in God with all my heart, soul, and mind. I believe in a God of infinite love. I believe God can be experienced in very real ways. But I do not believe in a god who intervenes in history, either directly or indirectly. I do not believe in a god who has the power to prevent tragedies, but chooses not to. I do not believe in a god who bestows blessings and fortune and success and safekeeping on some, while leaving others to the whims of a cold, cruel world. I do not believe in a god whose ways are so self-contradictory, illogical, and inexplicable that he must be worshipped as “mysterious.”

When we can learn to love unashamedly and without prejudice, when we can learn to live fully in each and every moment, and when we can learn to be the very best that we can be, we can move into communion and life with God. And when we do that, the need to explain tragedy and blessing in supernatural terms dissipates (in fact, the very idea that events on earth happen at the intervention or neglect of a whimsical god becomes absurd and incompatible with Godly thought). Instead, we can simply face the intersections of life with courage and conviction, we can live as children of God in happiness and peace, and we can truly say that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord.

Hell: The Disgrace of Christianity

I recently ran a poll on an Internet message board I frequent, asking respondents to choose what they believe God will do with humanity at the end of time. Among the choices were the following:

1) All non-Christians will go to hell.
2) Anyone who doesn’t believe in God will go to hell.
3) People will get a chance to accept God before the final decision is made.
4) Only the most evil and unrepentant will go to hell.
5) God will have mercy on everyone.

I then asked them to choose what they would do if they were God. The same choices applied. My gut feeling was that some people would choose answers 1 or 2 in the first poll (believing that God would either send all non-Christians to hell, or at least all non-believers to hell), but that far fewer people would choose answers 1 or 2 for the second poll.

My assumptions proved true. For the first poll, two respondents believed that all non-Christians would go to hell, and one respondent believed that anyone who didn’t believe in God would go to hell. The majority, of course, chose something between answers 3, 4, and 5. Yet no one, when answering the second poll – the one about what they would do if they were God – answered choice 1 or 2.

What does this say about our conceptions of God? Could it be true that these rebellious, sinful, hopeless creatures called human beings are more merciful, forgiving, and loving than the very God who created them? If one abides by a traditional/evangelical Christian view of reality, this seems to be the only assumption one can make. We think God will send all non-believers, and maybe even all people who aren’t specifically born again Christians, to hell, yet if we were God ourselves, we would be much more lenient, merciful, and forgiving.

Something’s wrong with this picture.

By the standards with which we understand the terms, the very idea that an all-loving, all-merciful, all-compassionate God could even conceive of a place such as hell is counter-intuitive and nonsensical. You must redefine those terms in order to make sense of such a concept.

Yet, this is the prevailing concept within traditional/evangelical Christianity. God is love. God is merciful. But God will send you to roast for eternity in unimaginable torment if you don’t believe and do the right things.

It can’t be both ways. If you abide by traditional/evangelical Christian thought, then you must either acknowledge that God is not loving, not merciful, and not compassionate, by the standards with which we understand those terms, or you must acknowledge that the very concept of hell is flawed.

I personally believe that the hell doctrine is Christianity’s single biggest doctrinal disgrace. For centuries it has been used as a tool to wield power, scaring people into submitting to the will of the Church for fear of eternal punishment. It is certainly not worthy of the God we believe embodies love, mercy, and compassion, and it is not even biblical, if one understands the background against which the bible speaks of hell. Even if one makes the argument for the biblical veracity of a place called hell for sinners, such teachings would clearly fall into the category that the Episcopalian bishop, writer, and scholar John Shelby Spong would call a “sin of scripture.” It can stand proudly beside those other sins of scripture such as mandatory execution for homosexual acts, the slaughter of innocent Egyptian babies, and words of encouragement and support for beating and abusing wayward children.

I don’t personally believe in hell. I believe in a God of love, a God of compassion, and a God of mercy. I believe in forgiveness and acceptance. I don’t believe that anyone is completely guilty of whatever crimes/actions they have committed. No one is born evil, or born with a desire to do evil. We learn these things through society and culture, and usually a healthy dose of neglect, abuse, and bad influences. Even if someone is born with a mind seemingly pre-wired to criminal pathology, is it their fault they were born with such a mind? Did they ask to become a homicidal maniac, child molester, or serial killer? I believe in the concept of basic human innocence. We are born innocent, and anything that happens thereafter is a complex combination of psychological pre-wiring, nurture, and societal influence. No one can do anything other than attempt to make their way in the world with the set of parameters they have been given. Some of us get two loving parents, a nice house in suburbia, reliable cars, good schools, and positive influences. Others of us get an abusive mother, a drug-dealing father, dangerous schools, ghetto tenements to live in, and the stench of crack pipes to fall asleep to. Still others get the impression of stability in white suburbia, but grow up behind the scenes with sexually, physically, and emotionally abusive parents.

Where would you be, if you had been given scenario number two or three in the paragraph above?

I’m not suggesting I believe that crimes should go unpunished or that serial criminals should be allowed back on the streets. What I am suggesting is that when it comes down to ultimate truths and ultimate realities, we all have innocent souls. Therefore, how could anyone be worthy of a place like hell? Don’t forget – hell is not just a place of temporary punishment where you get to burn in utter agony for a few weeks in order to pay for your crimes. Hell is a place where you burn in utter agony, without dying, for all eternity! No crime/action/inaction in life could possibly justify such a punishment – especially not the crime of believing in the wrong religion, or choosing not to believe at all.

The ancient Jews did not really have any unified or structured concept of hell. The closest thing to an afterlife to the ancient Jew was the place called “Sheol,” which was more or less the underworld – the world of shadows, under the ground, where all people went when they died. It had nothing to do with eternal torment, or any sort of reward/punishment cycle.

Hell came into being along with the birth of the Christian church. If you open your bible, you won’t find any reference to hell until the New Testament. During the time of the birth of Christianity, there was a garbage and refuse dump outside of Jerusalem, called Gehenna in Greek, which was routinely on fire as the city’s waste was burned. The early Jewish Christians combined their understanding of the spiritual place called Sheol, with their knowledge of the physical place called Gehenna, to form the concept of hell. It was a way for them to makes sense of the tragedies and persecutions that they suffered, and it was a way for them to satisfy the basic human idea of reward/punishment.

Although the gospel writers (writing several generations after Jesus’s life), attributed words to Jesus that included talk of hell, most scholars do not believe the historical Jesus would have had any concept of hell as we understand it, as the concept was not developed until long after his death. If Jesus ever spoke of eternal rewards and punishments, it would have been in a metaphorical sense – in other words, to live apart from God is to doom yourself to eternal suffering through being separated from the source of your being; to live in union with God is to live in perpetual exaltation with the source of life and love. Which sounds better to you? I know I would choose the latter.

For the kingdom of God to be realized in the present, I believe Christianity must jettison outdated and immoral doctrines like the doctrine of hell. If God is all-loving, all-merciful, and all compassionate, then all human beings have innocent souls, and all are equally deserving of eternal communion with God.

Thank God I Don't Have to Thank God

On my way home for lunch today, I drove past a house in our neighborhood that sustained some wind damage this past weekend from an arctic cold front that has moved into our area. The damage consists of a large section of vinyl siding that has come off the side of the house, exposing the insulation and packing material underneath.

As I was driving by, I thought I saw a statue of the Blessed Virgin on the front porch of the house. Upon closer inspection, I realized that whatever had caught my eye was not a statue at all. I think it may have been a shadow. But regardless, for that split second in which I thought they had a statue of Mary on their porch, the thought ran through my mind, “Well, I guess the Blessed Virgin didn’t help keep their house safe during that storm.”

This fleeting notion began a whole train of thought for me about finding the good in bad situations, and thanking God (or whichever god, saint, or prophet you prefer) for those good things we find in bad situations.

Most importantly, I began thinking about whether it’s appropriate and emotionally satisfying to connect the two.

In the scenario above, a good Christian wouldn’t say: “Well, I lost some vinyl siding in the windstorm, so God obviously didn’t protect my house.” A good Christian would say: “Boy, I’m glad a few pieces of vinyl siding is all we lost. God really blessed us.”

But what if it hadn’t been vinyl siding, but rather several broken windows?

“Well, a few windows got broken, but that’s easy to repair. It could have been the whole roof that blew off. God really protected us.”

What if the roof had blown off?

“Well, we lost our roof, but at least our whole house wasn’t taken from us, and we didn’t lose any vital possessions. We can get a new roof. God was really watching out for us.”

What if the whole house had been blown over?

“Well, we lost our house and possessions, but at least none of us where hurt. We still have our health, family, and loved ones, and material possessions can be replaced. God really took care of us.”

You see how that works? No matter how bad the situation is, religious people can always find away to give the credit to God.

Now, I’m not suggesting that it’s bad, or irresponsible, to look for the silver lining, or to focus on the good in a bad situation. Of course that’s a better, happier way to live, and I would encourage anyone to do this. The question is whether it’s appropriate to bring God into the equation.

I don’t wish to discuss whether God exists or doesn’t exist. That’s material for a different topic. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that some kind of “creator” or “all-loving” deity does exist, whether or not we can ever know this deity. Even assuming that, is it reasonable or appropriate to bring God into the equation in situations like this?

If you simply try to be positive, and look for the good in every bad situation, I would think this would help you to deal better with stressful situations, have a more pleasant outlook on life, and generally get through difficult times more quickly and with less negative side effects.

But if you choose to couple that with your conception of God, and attribute the good things drawn from bad situations to God’s “blessings,” then I would think you would actually decrease your overall happiness, your ability to handle tough situations, and your ability to pick up the pieces and move on.

If you leave God out of it, then you are simply thinking positively, focusing on the good, and learning to see difficult times, and even tragedies, as temporary in nature and not life-shattering or earth-shattering events.

By drawing God into it, and saying things like, “Well, we didn’t lose the house, so God really blessed us,” you are suggesting that God is physically capable of protecting your house, and therefore could have protected your roof too, but chose not to.

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make me feel better. In fact, that makes me feel worse. Why didn’t God protect my roof too, as well as my house? No one else’s roof came off. Why did mine? Is God trying to test me? Why would God want to do that? Don’t I have enough stress in my life as it is?

For the intellectually honest person, bringing God into the equation just raises myriad unanswerable questions - which leaves you ultimately either feeling disillusioned, or forced to fall back onto the same old “God works in mysterious ways” argument, which is unsatisfying to start with.

So my feeling is that it is best not to bring God into the scenario. God neither caused the damage to your house, nor prevented it. A storm came through and your house got damaged. End of story. Look on the bright side, find the positives in the bad situation, and begin moving on.

Injecting God into the situation only hinders recovery and healing, because it brings up so many unanswerable questions, and it turns God into some kind of capricious, uncaring wizard, who intercedes in human affairs at his whim, takes apparent pleasure in our suffering, demands our complete faithfulness, and feels the overwhelming urge to continually “test” us to make sure we stay in line.

I don’t want to worship a god like that, and that’s why I am learning not to conceive of God as a whimsical and capricious supernatural genie – which is exactly what the traditional concepts of God imply about God’s nature. Only a whimsical, untrustworthy, insecure deity would be capable of saving my roof, but choose not to.

So I wouldn't thank God that my house was saved. I would just focus on the fact that I only lost my roof, which can be repaired, and this frees me to heal from the tragedy, and to move on in life, working to spread love, be all that I can be, and live my life to the fullest – which is what “thanking God” really means to me.