Religious confession
Thursday, 12 February 2009 15:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earthbelow
I hope I don't offend anyone on my f-list. I know there are a lot of diverse views and beliefs here, and I want you to know I respect those beliefs and I'm not insulting them. I'm just trying to parse out my own.
I think one of the hardest problems I have with even thinking about going back to a church or becoming a practicing Christian again is that I'm really stuck on the idea that somehow, those who believe in Jesus and ask him to save them go to heaven, but those who don't go to hell.
Actually, the first part doesn't bother me. Saying that belief in Jesus, and practicing his teachings is a way to heaven is just kosher with me (wow, talk about mixin' your metaphors). If it stopped there, and allowed for the validity of other religions, that'd be fine.
But I can't wrap my head around the idea that God created the world just to hold a popularity contest for his son, and whoever likes Jesus enough gets to go to heaven and whoever doesn't goes to hell. Because to me, it comes off like a fifteen-year-old on MySpace does, not the divine creator of the universe. I'm trying to imagine a being superior enough to create the universe saying (essentially): "ZOMSELF, you guys haven't commented enough, I'm defriending you, GTFO!"
It's just that I see stars and galaxies and people who can run a mile in under four minutes and how gorgeous people can be and how music makes me cry from how beautiful it is and how people can love each other and do really spectacular things and books and how there are these planets and these laws of physics that work every time and how fish come in a billion colors even though I don't like them and snow and dogs and fuzzy animals and TV shows and everything that I love most about life, I see all this, and I can't help but infer that if it was the work of a deliberate hand, then the mind behind it must be vast and wise and unfailing. The consciousness behind the cosmos must be a staggering thing.
But to think that such a mind would be possessed with pettiness that reeks of humanity, not of divinity, really bothers me. Because the idea that those people who are on your side are always right and get rewarded and those who aren't get punished is not only the most human thing I've ever heard of it, it's one of the most petty human things I've ever heard of it.
It sounds childish. It's the kind of religion I'd expect a five-year-old to come up with.
And maybe I'd be content just floating out here in the world with my own little views, but sometimes, I miss having people to talk to. People who, if they don't totally agree with me, still come from a somewhat similar place.
There are bits of church I miss. Not the religious teachings, but the fellowship. I miss the principle, if not the practice. I miss the idea of people coming together to discuss and think and better themselves through thought and song and listening. I miss the idea of creating a community where the only requirement is that you have an open mind and an open heart.
Yet that's precisely what's driven me away from churches. Because they're not open minded, definitely not open hearted.
I was a United Methodist growing up, and I remember that one day, our youth pastor lead a group of all white kids in a discussion of whether we would ever be able to accept a black person who came to our church. I remember how many admitted openly and even a bit proudly how uncomfortable and maybe wrong it would be to have a black person in our white church.
I never forgot that. I never forgot that it wasn't enough to be Christian in that place, in that church, that there were other, secret requirements, ones not in the Bible or in the Methodist doctrine, but ones that were just as held to and enforced as everything else.
I think about now, how many churches are actively trying to forbid others to have equal rights - about how the majority of Christian denominations will not bless a same-sex marriage, and believe it is a sin punishable by hell.
This is to say nothing of some of the verses of the Bible that I find rather disturbing. Or the fact that every once and a while, I'll read verses or passages from other people's books and texts and I'll think what a good idea it is.
It makes it hard to jump back into the world of Christian faith eagerly for me, and it keeps me searching for a place where I feel I can belong and makes me wonder if I can ever be Christian, if Christianity and I are so fundamentally incompatible.
But maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's a point. I don't know that I believe that God has a set plan for all of us, but I don't think we're all just bumping around totally at random, either.
I think one of the hardest problems I have with even thinking about going back to a church or becoming a practicing Christian again is that I'm really stuck on the idea that somehow, those who believe in Jesus and ask him to save them go to heaven, but those who don't go to hell.
Actually, the first part doesn't bother me. Saying that belief in Jesus, and practicing his teachings is a way to heaven is just kosher with me (wow, talk about mixin' your metaphors). If it stopped there, and allowed for the validity of other religions, that'd be fine.
But I can't wrap my head around the idea that God created the world just to hold a popularity contest for his son, and whoever likes Jesus enough gets to go to heaven and whoever doesn't goes to hell. Because to me, it comes off like a fifteen-year-old on MySpace does, not the divine creator of the universe. I'm trying to imagine a being superior enough to create the universe saying (essentially): "ZOMSELF, you guys haven't commented enough, I'm defriending you, GTFO!"
It's just that I see stars and galaxies and people who can run a mile in under four minutes and how gorgeous people can be and how music makes me cry from how beautiful it is and how people can love each other and do really spectacular things and books and how there are these planets and these laws of physics that work every time and how fish come in a billion colors even though I don't like them and snow and dogs and fuzzy animals and TV shows and everything that I love most about life, I see all this, and I can't help but infer that if it was the work of a deliberate hand, then the mind behind it must be vast and wise and unfailing. The consciousness behind the cosmos must be a staggering thing.
But to think that such a mind would be possessed with pettiness that reeks of humanity, not of divinity, really bothers me. Because the idea that those people who are on your side are always right and get rewarded and those who aren't get punished is not only the most human thing I've ever heard of it, it's one of the most petty human things I've ever heard of it.
It sounds childish. It's the kind of religion I'd expect a five-year-old to come up with.
And maybe I'd be content just floating out here in the world with my own little views, but sometimes, I miss having people to talk to. People who, if they don't totally agree with me, still come from a somewhat similar place.
There are bits of church I miss. Not the religious teachings, but the fellowship. I miss the principle, if not the practice. I miss the idea of people coming together to discuss and think and better themselves through thought and song and listening. I miss the idea of creating a community where the only requirement is that you have an open mind and an open heart.
Yet that's precisely what's driven me away from churches. Because they're not open minded, definitely not open hearted.
I was a United Methodist growing up, and I remember that one day, our youth pastor lead a group of all white kids in a discussion of whether we would ever be able to accept a black person who came to our church. I remember how many admitted openly and even a bit proudly how uncomfortable and maybe wrong it would be to have a black person in our white church.
I never forgot that. I never forgot that it wasn't enough to be Christian in that place, in that church, that there were other, secret requirements, ones not in the Bible or in the Methodist doctrine, but ones that were just as held to and enforced as everything else.
I think about now, how many churches are actively trying to forbid others to have equal rights - about how the majority of Christian denominations will not bless a same-sex marriage, and believe it is a sin punishable by hell.
This is to say nothing of some of the verses of the Bible that I find rather disturbing. Or the fact that every once and a while, I'll read verses or passages from other people's books and texts and I'll think what a good idea it is.
It makes it hard to jump back into the world of Christian faith eagerly for me, and it keeps me searching for a place where I feel I can belong and makes me wonder if I can ever be Christian, if Christianity and I are so fundamentally incompatible.
But maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's a point. I don't know that I believe that God has a set plan for all of us, but I don't think we're all just bumping around totally at random, either.
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no subject
Date: 12 Feb 2009 21:08 (UTC)If God's a loser like that and wants to send me to hell, that's totally fine with me. It sounds like there are a lot of people in hell that need to be loved and cared for. That's what I'll do with my afterlife.
no subject
Date: 13 Feb 2009 15:07 (UTC)Yeah, the Bible is my other real sticking point. I cannot now or ever believe that it is, in actuality, the Word of God. I know just a little too much about historical facts to believe that it's anything but a hodge podge collection of things that were edited and re-edited over the ages.
I've never understood how some schmuck writes some letters and suddenly it's The Word of God. There was nothing particularly holy about the things Paul wrote when he wrote them. It would be like if in 2000 years we said that a Rick Warren book was the Word of God.
If I write a letter to my old church back in Jackson, can it get canonized? Can there be First Jacksonians and Second Jacksonians?
I have no issue with people reading the Bible the way you'd read a God for Dummies, as something that contains lots of good ideas and history and things to think about, but not as unimpeachable and perfect.
But when people start insisting that the Bible cannot be argued with, I part ways with them, because that's usually a sign that things are going to get ugly.
no subject
Date: 12 Feb 2009 23:57 (UTC)2) I was once at a lecture by "The God Squad"--that is, a rabbi and a Catholic priest, and someone asked the priest, essentially, how he dealt with the thought of his non-Christian friends going to hell (at a Jewish book festival, no less). He said, essentially, that non-believers who still followed the basic teachings (IE were good people) would still be allowed "in". If I got that right.
I honestly think you may have been in the wrong sect. Then again, maybe not. Though I wonder if there's an NYC equivalent of my synagogue, because all the things you described? Sounds like CRC (except, obviously, the Jesus part). I don't know much about how most Christian sects are organized, but maybe you just haven't found the right church?