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?
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