Recovering from Religion, Hanging on to Jesus, Where to go from here?

Recovering from religion, yet not hanging up the belief in God.  What kind of mess do I find myself in now?  I have my beliefs, and they're not atheistic.  They're not even agnostic.  

Most likely, I'd say my understanding of God is panentheistic - that God is a super-personal entity/force that permeates all reality, and as such, is found in all people and throughout nature.  This is not the same as "worshipping nature/the universe"... I don't think?  Unless we redefine nature and the universe to mean that overarching "isness" that unites us all together and is far beyond our ability to understand "it".  If I am called to be "one with God" in the way that Jesus was "one with the Father" (which, btw, is in the Bible, John 17:21), then what I am stating here is nothing new nor radical.

I believe that God is the Source of all that is, and that everything (and everyone) returns to this Source.  As such, I believe in eternal life because death is merly a metamorphosis from this life to the next.  I believe in some form of reincarnation, though the details I don't think are all that important.

Interestingly, CS Lewis argues that there must be a Super-Personal Creator-God for there to be natural law and first principles by which all people throughout history and in all cultures abide by.  Or at least we agree that it is better, for instance, to be compassionate than to inflict intentional harm on others.  Or to be helpful and honest rather than interfere with others every chance we get.  Basically, we believe in the golden rule - do to others as we would have others do to us.  We apply it differently by group, but underneath it all, we agree.  

Basically, it goes like this: The purpose/meaning of human life is to "be happy", and to help others do likewise.  Now, to be happy doesn't mean to get everything we want.  Rather, it means to have our basic needs met, to feel free to explore who we are and the world around us, to ask questions without fear of retribution or ridicule, to take risks and pick ourselves up when we inevitably make mistakes, to have a clear conscience and sleep well at night, to look forward to each new day.  Again, application will look different in different people's lives, but we all want to be happy, and we want to be happy simply for happiness's sake.  We may join a religion, go to church, pray, etc. so that we can be happy, but we do not seek to be happy for any reason other than to simply be happy.

Some people need religion to be happy.  Some people need drugs or alcohol to be happy.  Oops, see what we did there?  We used the wrong definition of "happy".  Anytime we wrap our lives around an addiction or compulsion, we are not happy.  We are merely satisfying our ego.  True happiness is joy and peace.  Contentment with things as they are.  Lack of constant insatiable seeking after something that we think will make us happy, and instead, embracing the power within to simply choose to be happy.

As I write this, Buddhism and Taoism come to mind.  Neither has a God figure in their world-view.  Should this concern me?  Is it my indoctrinated fear of the wrath of God if I don't believe in Him that is causing me this concern?  Frankly, fear is a terrible reason to make any decision; of this I am certain.  And while I don't "fear" God in the sense that I think God will punish me for, well, being human (after all, God did make me human so He knew what He was getting), I am in awe of God.  I look out into space, or even into a vast openness of nature, and I think about how I am such a small part of something much greater than myself.  I breathe in, and there I have God living inside of me.  

I cannot abandon the label "God" because I am much too invested in it.  But I can redefine it and reconceptualize it so it makes better sense to my experience of this God.  Why can't we personify God, as long as this personification helps us on our journey of happiness for all? (Or better yet, peace and joy for all!)  Unfortunately, most religions that have personified God have ended up twisting the message and wringing control out of those who trust them to be guides on the spiritual path.

But I digress.  I need to return to my main theme.  First, I believe God exists, but not the way mainstream Christianity has explained God.  Second, I believe in eternal life, but not the way mainstream Christianity has explained it.  Third, I believe in objective morality, but there is a lot of nuance here, because there are many applications that can often be at odds with each other.  For instance, let's take a look at the basic "Thou Shalt Not Kill".  

War is killing.

Eating meat is killing.

The death penalty is killing.

Abortion is killing.

Self-defense is killing.

You may say that this is a mistranslation, and it is supposed to say "Thou Shalt not Murder".  Ah, now we enter tricky territory.  Murder is defined as the "killing of another person without justification or excuse."  So does that mean that as long as we have a good reason, we can kill?  And who determines what that good reason is?  That's how we get into "just war" territory, and "women's rights" to stop the beating of their unborn babies' hearts. And of course it gives us free reign to torture animals since taking their life does not fit the "murder" definition.  See?  Excuses are never a good way to establish right and wrong.

Maybe there is only one moral imperative - to treat others the way we would want to be treated.  But if you've ever heard of the 5 love languages, you know that different people have different ideas of how they like to be treated!  Some people will feel unloved unless they receive gifts, while others (ehem, myself) hate to give and receive gifts.  Some people like words of affirmation as a sign of being loved (ehem, moi), while others think they're merely empty words.  Some people want to shower others with quality time as that is how they express their love, while others may feel suffocated by the constant togetherness.  Some people show their love via acts of service (which can be devestating for those prone to codependency), while still others by physical touch (which can be especially tricky for anyone who has gone through physical abuse of any kind). So how can we possibly treat others the way we want to be treated if that may actually do nothing to help them feel happy and may in fact interfere with their happiness?  

And what about treating others the way they want to be treated?  How do we know how they want to be treated?  It sounds like a lot of work.  You'd have to be in tune with each individual you come in contact with.  You'd have to actually be present to their needs, take an active interest in them, make the effort to adjust from person to person.  We prefer a boxed approach where everyone is treated the same, since it's easy.  Unfortunately, it's also ineffective and often counterproductive.  

Either way, religion cannot give us the answer to how to treat any given person, because the answer will be - ask them!  And we don't need religion to do that.

And then there's Jesus.  If you didn't grow up in a Christian faith tradition, you may not understand what Jesus has to do with anything.  It would seem the basics got covered above (God, eternal life, morality).  But I've tried to convert out of Christianity before, and I'll never forget the "advice" from a rabbi that has stayed with me.  He said that we must "fall out of love with Jesus".  Or, "we have to break up with Jesus."  I forget which it was, but you get the idea.  That stopped me in my tracks.

I'm going to use a dumb cliche here, even though I don't get it: I wanted to have my cake and eat it too.  (Why else would I "have" my cake if I wasn't going to "eat" it?!)  Anyway - I wanted to follow the logic of the above observations about God, eternal life, and morality and how they naturally lead me away from organized religion and towards a free-thinking spirituality.  But what do I do with Jesus?  

I'm going to return to fear-based decisions here.  Again, I was indoctrinated to believe that if it wasn't for Jesus, I would be going to hell.  I came to be grateful for my eternal life thanks to Jesus.  I was often reminded by my religion that to disregard Jesus on the cross is to show ultimate ingratitude.  And that is one thing I am not - I am not ungrateful!  Every day I thank God for making me, for giving me another day of life, for my amazing husband and children, for all the creature comforts of our lifestyle, for the ability to help others, for our health and safety... the list goes on.  I. Am. Grateful.

But my religious indoctrination tells me that if I do not "ride on the coattails of Jesus", then I am being ungrateful.  And this wrecks havoc on my self-image.  I know ungrateful people and I dislike them terribly.  I don't want to be like those people.  And so I never fully know what to do about Jesus when I come to this fork in the road.  

The truth is, we can't know the full truth of what Jesus taught, much less what he meant by all of his teachings.  We have "tradition" and early church fathers and "the saits" (those who were mostly in line with orthodoxy) all interpreting for us what happened to be a) written down about Jesus decades after he lived, died, and went to heaven (interpret that as you wish); and b) accepted into the canon of Scripture in the first place (which happened hundreds of years after Jesus time on Earth!).

That said, what needs to be addressed about Jesus is as follows: 

1) Was Jesus a historical person who taught and led by example?  (I believe he was.)

2) Did Jesus die on the cross? (I believe he did.)

3) Did Jesus resurrect on the third day, and does it matter? (Pause)

4) Was Jesus in any way "more than" human? (I do not think he was the "unique Son of God".  Rather, I believe that He showed us how we, too, could live in a reality called "kingdom of God" as children of God.)

5) What did Jesus teach and what did his teachings mean? (If this were clear, we wouldn't have thousands of Christian denominations, many of them claiming others are not even Christian!  And we wouldn't have Islam, which claism that it, too, stands on the shoulders of Jesus the Prophet.)

A lot of well-meaning Christians at this point would tell me that I must take Jesus's resurrection on faith.  Two problems with this: 1) it seems too flimsy a reason to place my entire eternal desitny on someone else's say-so, without concrete evidence, and 2) elsewhere in Christian teaching, we learn that faith is actually a gift from God, not something I can earn or dig up on my own.  So it sounds to me like God will give me the gift of faith to believe in Christian orthodoxy if He wants to (or if it's true), but if I don't have faith, then it can't be my fault.  And faith is something you either have or you don't.  If I don't, that neither proves nor disproves the thing I don't believe.  If I do believe, that also doesn't prove or disprove the thing I believe.  Faith is not proof.

So we are back to the uncertainty of #3&5.  It seems like we cannot resolve this uncertainty.  There are only two ways to move forward from here.  Either we take a leap of faith and turn a blind eye to the fact that we are following a great unknown, or we treat this unknown the way we would any other unknown in life.  The third alternative is to stay stagnant and go nowhere, for we cannot make up our minds as to which way to go.  This has been my lot and I intend to not remain here.  

If there is a crime committed, for instance, and we do not have sufficient evidence to convict the suspect, then we err on the side of caution and do not convict, treating him as not guilty.  He may indeed be guilty, but in case he isn't, without evidence, prudence tells us we cannot convict.  Prudence is considered a Christian virtue, is it not?  So how can we, without evidence, say something is true "just in case it is"?  That isn't prudence talking, that's fear talking!

And frankly, the God I believe in (because I do believe in "God") would not expect faith without providing the evidence to back it up.  Otherwise, he'd be a sloppy God hardly worthy of worship.

What if I allowed Jesus to by my spiritual guru?  What would that spirituality look like?  How would my life be complete in this case?  Without religion, but with Jesus?  

Religious exterior makes way to spiritual interior

 Have you ever frantically looked for something, like your keys or your glasses, especially when you were in a hurry and really needed the item, only to finally find them right on your person all along?  The keys were in your pocket, or the glasses were on your nose (or pushed up on your head like a headband!).  This has been my experience with matters of the spirit.

I grew up unaware that there is a difference between religion and spirituality.  I thought spirituality was an aspect of religion, but that they necessarily had to coexist.  I also thought, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that spirituality is informed by religion, and therefore, one must first be clear on which religion one identifies with, and then one may speak of having any sort of spiritual practice.

For this reason, I bounced from religion to religion, denomination to denomination, church to church, looking for that elusive spiritual home.  On several occasions, I thought I found it, but once the dust settled, I realized there was something missing afterall, and off I went in search of God again.

I have often heard it said that we ought to do or say whatever God puts on our heart, without worrying about any visible "effect", because most of us need to hear (or experience) the same thing multiple times before it starts to get ingrained in our psyche.  As such, you never know if yours may not be that final straw on the proverbial camel's back.

In the same way, how frequently have I read, heard, and reflected on Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God."  And yet, I kept right on running, metaphorically speaking, looking for God when God has been with me and within me all along.

So what is it about religion that has prevented me from internalizing the very contemplative message of the good news of Jesus?  Namely, that "the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15).  I believe that if Jesus were to incarnate in a singular historic person today, he might instead say things like, "that of God is within you", "the Eucharist is but a small reminder of the Real Presence of God in all places and at all times," "be one with me the way I am one with the Father" (Oh, wait, Jesus already said that.  See John 17:21).

Yet even though these realizations aren't new to me, per se, this is the first time I'm trying to let them stand on their own, without needing someone else, or many someone elses, to interpret and analyze what my personal experience can handle all on its own.  I've heard a Catholic critique of Protestants once that says that "every Protestant is their own Pope", alluding to the fact that Catholics look to the Bishop of Rome for final interpretation of Scripture, while Protestants trust their own interpretation of Scripture.  The elephant in the room of this argument is, of course, that Scripture must be interpreted by someone.  It does not stand alone.  Sola Scriptura is an absurdity.

When I first heard this argument, I sided with Catholic apologetics.  Of course Scripture must be interpreted!  And therefore, to my mind, it made sense to have a single designated person somehow uniquely inspired by the holy Spirit of God to do the necessary interpretation: the Pope.  

Only, this is not at all the only natural end of the need to interpret Scripture.  In  John 16, Jesus is speaking to his disciples, not merely to Peter (the purported "first Pope"), when he says that "when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you." 

It seems to me that Jesus is telling his disciples, which we are all called to be, that the holy Spirit of God will guide us.  All of us.  In other words, God Himself will lead us to the truth.

At this point, it may seem like I am sharing a story of conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism, but I am not.  At least not mainstream, Evangelical Protestantism, which worships Jesus often to the exclusion of actually following Him.  Jesus never once said "worship me".  He never even alluded to it.  There's nothing we can point to and interpret, metaphorically or otherwise, that hints at the idea that Jesus wanted us to organize into a religion where we worship him.  He didn't really address religion much at all, except to call out religious hypocrites (remember Matthew 23:33?  "You snakes! You brood of vipers!") or praise the good works of people from different religious backgrounds then himself (think the Good Samaritan parable, for instance).

Rather, Jesus said over and over again: "follow me".  What does it mean to follow someone?  I don't know about you, but when I think of following someone, I think of following their advice and their example.  I don't know what else it could possibly mean. And the behaviors that Jesus modeled are just as unpopular today as they were in his day: compassion, mercy, forgiveness, peace, acceptance of God's will, love of enemies... These are the ideals, and often when individuals express such virtuous strength of character, they are lauded by other Christians.  

But more often than not, Christians - Protestant and otherwise - find reasons why Jesus's teachings don't apply to them or to the situation at hand.  I'm thinking here of the gay bashing "in the name of Jesus", and all of the related "pious" behaviors and "righteous indignation" over the "sins of others".  I'm thinking here of the shaming of promiscuous women and girls while turning a blind eye to their male accomplices.  

But this just proves how imperfect the followers of Jesus are.  If we were honest about it, rather than trying to hold on to our egos and convince ourselves and others that we are doing such a good job, then we would talk a lot more about taking the logs out of our own eyes instead of micromanaging the specks in the eyes of others (Matthew 7:5).  We would be reminded at every worship service and Bible study and small faith group meeting to be humble and to worry about fixing ourselves and loving others, insead of fixing others and loving ourselves.  (Of course, we ought to love ourselves, since Jesus did command us to do so in Matthew 22:37, but what I'm talking about here is the surprising number of times I've been encouraged to think of myself as a "princess" because I am the daughter of the King.  Yet Jesus never exulted himself, so why should we exult ourselves, if we are to follow him?)

There is a lot more to discuss here, but I'm not writing to convince anyone of anything.  Words can only take us so far anyway.  I am only here to process my own thoughts and help myself embrace this new understanding of spirituality, which is to say that it is not dependent on religion and in fact is independent of it.  Religion CAN help on our spiritual journey, but it can also hinder us.  Therefore, religion itself cannot be the final litmus test of all things spiritual and divine.  There must be a source independent from both that can guide us.  We know, if we believe the Bible, that this independent source is known as the holy Spirit of God.