What if Christianity is not only not helping me, but is actually causing harm? I'm not talking about abuses by Church authority figures, which is its own ironic evil. I'm talking about the way that Christianity is presented and taught in general; what if THAT is what's causing me harm?
Christianity is based on the premise that I am a victim of original sin. I am sinful without any effort from me. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm doomed. BUT... here's the good news! If I accept Jesus's sacrificial death on the cross as somehow making it all better for me, then and only then can I rest in the Father's love again. I intentionally didn't refer to Jesus's "atoning death" because not all Christian traditions see it as a "ransom". Even in the more .... gentle, shall I say?.... approaches to the purpose of the Cross, nonetheless I NEED it. I cannot escape the horrific torture of the Man I'm supposed to emulate, and even if we don't call it "payment for my sins", the implication is there.
The message is clear - I am inherently not good enough. God went through hell and high water and then some to bring me back, and I owe Him my life. This is not the sort of gratitude that I find a healthy approach to life. It's rather a sort of shame-based relief that the wrath of God passed me by. But there's still a wrathful God in the picture, and supposedly this is the God "of love" Who created me in the first place. It would appear that He did so for His own entertainment, then. And if that's the case, this sort of God doesn't exactly scream "virtue" and "goodness" and "righteousness".
It seems that there's the Father, who is the yang, if you will, of the operation, with justice and the ensuing inevitable doom to humanity. And there's Jesus and the HolySpirit Who are the yin or the merciful aspect of God, with forgiveness and love. Or maybe just Jesus is the yin, and the Holy Spirit is the connection between the two? At any rate, it seems like the Trinity and Christianity as a whole is a sort of personification of what we read about in the Dao De Jing.
But in the Dao De Jing, the focus is not on sin, shame, guilt, wrath, punishment. Rather, the focus is on acceptance, balance, inner tranquility, detachment. The framework is completely different. All the same aspects of reality are still there, but we are not taught to fear any of them. We are not running from anything. Or towards anything, for that matter. We simple are, just like God introduced Himself to Moses when He said His name is "I AM". If we are to be like God, then we, too, are supposed to focus our lives on "just being".
I have known this on some level for a long time, but I've been oscillating between denial and unhealthy attachment. I could not let go of my image of God. In spite of my best efforts, I have been breaking the first commandment by creating a certain idol of God based on what other people have erroneaously told me about Him. God is supposed to be mysterious and beyond definition or description, yet this has never stopped religions from insisting they've got Him figured out anyway, at least to some degree. And I totally fell for it. Their assuredness made me assume they were right just bc they believe they are.
Instead, I am learning to trust myself. I am learning to listen to that still, small voice of God that doesn't need to be filtered through the lens of religion and therefore someone else's experience or interpretation. God will tell me whatever I need to know for this journey. I trust God. I trust God more than I trust Church. I trust God completely. I believe in God in that I believe in God's ability and desire to commune with me directly, to convict me directly of what I need to draw closer to Him, to be more like Him, and therefore to be more like My True Self.
I'm tired of trying to force myself into believing "facts" ABOUT Jesus instead of believing (read: trusting) Jesus based on what He taught. I can't imagine going down in human history merely for my death, and not for my life, my character, my teachings, my efforts. To say that we only needed Jesus on the cross, and not on foot among the people is to objectify Him into a token "source of coattails" that we can ride on into heaven. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to get to know Jesus for His teachings, and through His teachings, and I want to emulate Him based on His teachings.
And I believe Daoism actually does a better job of that than mainstream Christianity.
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