What Inspires Morality?

A few years ago, I was sitting with a group of friends from my church (all of whom I love, but some of whom are a bit more theologically conservative than I am), and we were talking, as one is wont to do, about all the ills of our society and how people seem to have no respect for others. One of the women whom I'll call Judy started talking about how it all began to go down hill when we took prayer out of schools, which in her mind led to the lack of attendance at church, and lack of people learning about God. But then she said something that really disturbed me, which was,

"The problem with kids these days is that they're not afraid of anything. I was afraid of my parents when I was a kid, and I do what's right now because I'm afraid of God's punishment. But these kids don't know about God."

I sat in complete silence, as did others around me. That was the first time I'd ever heard an adult say something like that. I remember that sort of fear as a child, all tied up with fear of punishment from all the adults in my life who were trying to teach me to behave. As a child, a punishing God made perfect sense to me, so I tried to do what I thought God wanted me to do, but, really, more important was minding my parents and teachers, because punishment from them was far more real than punishment from this ethereal big parent in the sky I'd never seen and who'd never done things like belittle me in front of the class or made me go to my room.

By the time I became an adult, though, struggling with my belief and doubt in God, coming back around to making the decision to join a church, reading the Bible, and falling in love with the teachings of Jesus, the Great Psychologist, I let go of all ideas of God as some sort of disciplinarian. I see God as someone who knows how incredibly difficult this life is, who is there to encourage me and to give me guidance and hope, someone to give me some focus so I don't waste time worrying about unimportant things. I don't "behave because I fear God's punishment". I behave (if you even want to call it that) because all the things we consider bad behavior, all ultimately boil down to one thing: hurting others.

I have no desire to hurt other people, at least not in the abstract. It's different, of course, when someone's lashing out at me or someone I love, or I hear about some horrible abuse. Then, of course, I feel like hurting back, and sometimes I do, even though I know it rarely gets me anywhere other than feeling even worse than I already did. I don't need a punishing God to to keep me from hurting others. My instinct is not to hurt others unless they've hurt me.

I think there are others in this world, though, who don't have this instinct. They're narcissists or sociopaths who don't have the capacity to empathize. They have no qualms about hurting others. Some even get joy from it. I don't know why such people exist any more than I know why people like me exist. I'm pretty sure, though, that a fear of God, if taught to them, doesn't keep those people from doing what they do. All you have to do is read children's stories written during the days when prayer was allowed in school. The class bullies still existed.  There have always been kids who didn't mind hurting other kids who grow up to be adults who don't mind hurting other adults.

When I listen to and read what contemporary atheists have to say these days in arguing against God and religion, they often bring up this point about morality and God. I guess they, much more than I, have been exposed to those who believe we'd have no morality in this world if we all stopped believing in God. In other words, those who are religious are only, like Judy noted, "good" because they fear God's punishment, or "good" because God has given them a list of rules to follow, and they follow them. I agree with these atheists who claim they don't need a God to keep them from stealing and raping and murdering. I wonder about those like Judy, though. I know this woman. She has a kind, loving heart and one of the warmest smiles that can't help but cheer others. I'm quite sure she wouldn't go around stealing and murdering either, even if she didn't believe in God. Meanwhile, there are those who murder and steal in the name of God. Also, different people define morality differently. Humans can find very little that they all agree is "good" and all agree is "bad". Morality, then, is a human-centered, not a God-centered concept.

I don't have any answers here. I do hope, however, we don't live in a society in which the majority of people are only "good" because they're afraid not to be. I also do know that one of the messages of the Gospels is not to fear. I can't imagine God wants us fearing God. And I'm quite convinced I don't need God in order to be a moral person. I need God in order to have somewhere to take worries and anxieties and to get out of myself. If this helps me to be less selfish, to focus on others, and to be more compassionate, well, then, yes, I suppose one could say God makes me a moral person, but I'd say God makes me more peaceful and joyful not more moral.

Getting to Know Me II

In my last post, I provided my own thoughts on each of the first four Points of Progressive Christianity as laid out by Progressive christianity.org. These are the other four points and my responses to them. 

5. Find grace in the search for understanding and believe there is more value in questioning than in absolutes.

My response: Life is all about searching, which leads to learning, which leads to understanding. I’m quite sure that we’re all in this world to learn something, to expand our horizons, to grow our minds. I believe that, quite often, when Christ was talking about “The Kingdom of Heaven”, he might have been referring to a way of existing that we all enter when we die, one in which we are overwhelmed by a peace and love we’re only able to get tiny whiffs of here on earth if we prepare ourselves properly in this life to open ourselves up to that love and peace, but I also think he was often talking about ways to get there right here and now in this life, that we don’t have to wait until our physical bodies die. I’ve known people who’ve found that, people who are just so full of gentleness and understanding and peace and calm. I strive for that understanding and can feel the grace in this striving. 

Absolutes bother me, because they cut off the opportunity for dialogue and understanding. Besides, I’ve learned that by paying attention, absolutes can be turned upside down. So often, I’ve thought I’ve known somebody or something, have made my judgments and then found out how wrong I was when provided with more information. I think we’ve all had that kind of experience, which should make us humble, and is probably why Jesus told us not to judge.

6.  Strive for peace and justice among all people.

My response: I don’t know why some of us in this world get to be these very lucky, white middle class Americans who’ve never known what it’s like to go hungry, or to have to fear for our lives every day, or to see loved ones brutally killed in front of us. I do know (this is an absolute I can live with) that my luck comes with a responsibility which is to use my good fortune to aid those who don’t have it. I do believe that I can make a difference, even if I can only make a difference in one life. This would be a pretty amazing world if everyone who was fortunate and had plenty chose just one other person, who wasn’t, to help. And I mean really help, not just throw money at. 

7.  Strive to protect and restore the integrity of our Earth;

My response: We are only one small part (tiny, minuscule) of God’s creation. There is no reason to believe that we’re superior or that we have more of a right to be here than any other species, especially since we know so little about other species. The sad truth is that, in this broken world, we all must kill in order to survive. I’m not sure why that’s so. The story of Adam and Eve tells us it’s our fault, but I’m not so sure about that because it puts humans at the center of everything, which I don’t think we are. 

I don’t think our ancient mythology has an answer for why things are the way they are. My hope is that God has an answer for this that we’ll one day understand if we’re just patient, that it’s something that weighs heavily on us in this existence, in this world, but that when we move on and move closer to God, we will see that it was all for the good, in the end, kind of like a 4-year-old not understanding the good behind that horrible vaccine he or she has to endure. My biggest hope is that, although death seems like a horrible thing to those of us who are living here on earth, it’s actually a wonderful thing that brings about a much better existence, and so it isn’t so bad that we have to kill in order to survive. 

In the meantime, I think we need to be doing all we can to preserve this planet. I know scientists predict that in about 5 billion years or so, the sun is going to explode, which will, of course, mean the end of planet Earth, if it hasn’t already ended by some other means. I’d hate to be responsible for bringing an end to it before its natural time, and we need to listen to science, pay attention, and do all we can to limit our carbon footprints. I know I don’t do enough in this regard, but I’m certainly trying. 

8.  Commit to a path of life-long learning, compassion, and selfless love.

My response: This is the only path worth being on. I can’t imagine trying to live life any other way. The learning for me is easy, so is the compassion. The selfless love? Well, like I said, I’m a work in progress. 

Getting to Know Me

This is a brand new blog. You don't know me from Adam (or Eve. Why do we only focus on Adam? Oh, that's right, the whole patriarchy in religion thing, in which, in the conventional Judeo-Christian tradition, Adam was the innocent fallen man and Eve was the temptress). I could give you a long, detailed (and snooze-worthy, I'm sure) biographical sketch, or I can just let you get to know me organically, through reading this blog, pondering things with me, and (I hope) carrying on a dialogue with me via comments and emails, if you so choose.

So, I've decided to open this blog by responding to Progressive Christianity.org's 8 Points of Progressive Christianity. If you've never visited that site, do. It's great. While you're there, watch that really cool video of Eckhart Tolle explaining faith (or essence). I much prefer his definition of faith, based on his interpretation of what Jesus was trying to say to people who didn't (and obviously still don't) understand, to that of Peter Boghassian who, in his book A Manual for Creating Atheists has defined faith as "pretending to know things you don't know", which is an interesting definition but one that doesn't hold true for me, despite my being a person of faith. For instance, I have faith that a cure for cancer will one day be found. I'm not pretending to know something I don't know, because I don't know for sure a cure will be found, but I have enough faith in modern research and technology to be convinced a cure will be found. Likewise, I have faith that my life would be far more peaceful and happy if I could truly live life the way Christ taught us to live it.  I certainly don't know this for a fact, but I have faith in Christ's teachings, and I have evidence that when I do things like forgive other people instead of holding onto grudges, that peace comes (interestingly, I read about a recent study that concluded that letting go of grudges leads to greater happiness).

The 8 Points of Progressive Christianity are a good starting point for those who don't know what progressive Christianity is. These are my personal responses to each of the 8 points, which might help you understand my positions and whether or not this blog is for you. I will address these 8 points in 2 separate posts.

Here are the first 4 with my thoughts:

By calling ourselves progressive Christians, we mean we are Christians who...

1. Believe that following the path and teachings of Jesus can lead to an awareness and experience of the Sacred and the Oneness and Unity of all life.

My response: When I was thirty-something, I decided it was time, once and for all, to read the Bible all the way through. Although I was a church-goer, I didn't decide to read the Bible for religions reasons. I decided to read it because I didn't believe I could call myself truly literate if I'd never read through the whole Bible. So much of (some might actually argue all of) classic Western literature was inspired by and makes reference to Biblical stories and thought (even, I would imagine, works whose authors don't necessarily know where those stories and thoughts originated). 

Until I did this, I had no idea how often Shakespeare quotes the Bible (nor how often my own father actually quoted it). I already believed in God. I didn't expect to have any sort of great revelation(s) or to deepen my relationship with God. I just wanted to be literate (this, I hope, tells you that I've never believed that the Bible is the inerrant word of God).

But then I began to read what Jesus taught. I became fascinated by it. My reading of the Bible convinced me that Jesus was the first great psychologist. I majored in psychology in college and have continued my armchair study of it ever since. Everything Jesus taught was everything any 21st-century therapist would advise his or her clients to do to ward off depression: let go of hate, which only destroys you; deal with anger; forgive others; focus on helping others; understand that happiness and peace come from within not from worldly things; understand that family ties aren't as important as we make them out to be, etc., etc. The more I read, and the more I consulted scholarly research, the more I realized what a radical Jesus was. 

Because I had trouble believing in miracles, per se, I decided to read The Jefferson Bible (a little known work by Thomas Jefferson, in which he translated all four Gospels, leaving out the miracles, so the reader can focus solely on Christ's teachings), and I realized that to be a Christian meant simply to follow Jesus's teachings -- those that have survived for us to read -- as best as we can. Forget all other definitions of "Christianity" and what it might mean to others. Christianity is merely a human-made religion, and I've witnessed many who practice this religion embracing the antithesis of what it seems Christ actually taught. I call myself a "Christian" because I believed in the teachings of Christ in the same way one might say, "I'm a Jungian" because he or she believes in the teachings of Carl Jung.

Since then, I have read and studied much more, including much more about other world religions. My reading and studying has led me to believe in, as this point #1 states, the Oneness and Unity of all life (not quite sure why we need to capitalize them, but there you have it). And by all life, I mean all life (not just all human life or all mammalian life or even all animal life), but you'll learn more about that aspect of me in future posts, I hope. Suffice it to say that my reading and studying has definitely led me to believe that following the path and teachings of Jesus can lead to an awareness and experience of the Sacred and the Oneness and Unity of all life.

2. Affirm that the teachings of Jesus provide but one of many ways to experience the Sacredness and Oneness of life, and that we can draw from diverse sources of wisdom in our spiritual journey.

My response: I'm not and never was Catholic, but I graduated from a Catholic high school, a place that was a rarity among the seas of Southern Baptist schools in the South in which I was raised. At that school, run by the (mostly) open-minded Sisters of St. Joseph, I was taught that "We all worship the same God, we just worship him [sic] in different ways." Forgiving their assumption that God can be identified with a gender and that that gender is male, God bless these teachers for teaching me religious tolerance. How absurd is it, really, to believe that God is only revealed to us in one way and that if we don't happen to encounter God through that one way, well, then, sorry, but we'll never encounter God? That wreaks of human arrogance and competition to me: my religion is the only valid way to find God, and you're not worthy of God if you don't encounter God my way. 

God isn't human. God doesn't care how we find or meet God. In fact, I've often believed that God just keeps providing other avenues for those of us who find it hard to encounter God in already established ways. That's why, say, Buddhism evolved from Hinduism, why Christianity evolved from Judaism. Some Hindus got it and needed nothing more, but others didn't. Some Jews got it and needed nothing more, but others didn't. Same with Muslims. God is open to any path we take, and old paths have to evolve while new paths open up because, well, humans keep screwing up those paths and doing things like killing others in the name of God via some path that's been cut off from the original one.

I often like to think of myself as a Hindu-influenced, Buddhist-intrigued Christian. The old Eastern religions are far better (as far as I'm concerned) at helping humans get away from the ego and into the spiritual realm, that Oneness. I find plenty of room in my religious thought for the possibility of reincarnation, and I love the intellectual gymnastics of Buddhism, but I always fall back on Jesus as the Great Psychologist.

So, yes, I definitely believe there are many paths one could take to experience the Sacredness and Oneness of life. Probably the more you take, the more likely you are to experience the Sacred.

3. Seek community that is inclusive of ALL people, including but not limited to: 

Conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,

Believers and agnostics,

Women and men,

Those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,

Those of all classes and abilities

My response: Okay, I absolutely seek to be all inclusive, but I have to admit I often find myself struggling with certain (not all, but certain) “conventional Christians” and questioning skeptics (I'm wondering why Progressive Christianity.org decided not to list nonbelievers). There are those in both categories who just don't seem to be able to rest without converting others. They are so absolutely certain of their own positions, their own beliefs, and they seem to have adopted a life mission focused on convincing anyone who doesn't think and believe as they do that they are wrong in their thinking and beliefs. I have trouble understanding this certainty.

I've been criticized in the past for saying this, but that doesn't stop me from believing in what I call fundamentalist thought. My (completely unstudied and undocumented) theory is that there is some sort of underlying factor (insecurity? doubt?) brain chemical? I don't know what it is. Who wants to take on the challenge of doing a study for me?) in these people's belief systems that drives a fundamental need to convince others to believe whatever they believe (strength in numbers? Maybe they can conclude their belief system is the "right" one if only there are enough people who also believe it), which leads to fundamentalism in religious thought as well as in non-religious thought. In other words, I believe that, just as there are fundamentalist Christians, there are also fundamentalist atheists, all on crusades to convince others to believe what they believe. 

Interesting to me is that the more I study those individuals I'd label as "fundamentalist atheists”, the more I seem to discover that they seem to have been inculcated with a very conservative theology, and when they speak about God and religion, they speak about them in terms pulled from that theology, so, for instance, they refer to God as "he", and they talk about believers as if we all are convinced our purpose in this life is to save souls. They may be able to shed themselves of their belief in God, but they don't seem to be able to shed themselves from fundamentalist, black and white, "I'm-right-you're-wrong-and-I-need-to-save-you" thinking, which I assume they encountered in some sort of religious setting when they were children. I find it fascinating. I also find it very sad. Seeking to get everyone to think the same way you do is an impossible vocation and can only lead to frustration and unhappiness.

Still, I believe in being all-inclusive. This means I am always looking for common ground with everybody, and I love to engage in dialogue to try to understand others. I run into trouble, though, when they don't understand that's what I'm doing. 

4. Know that the way we behave towards one another is the fullest expression of what we believe.

My response: If you start talking to me about God, you will soon hear me say, "I don't know." Because there is so much I don't know. This, however, is one of the things I do know: if I behave as lovingly as I possibly can towards others, then that is the fullest expression of what I believe, which is that I should love all others. I'm convinced that doing so would lead to extraordinary peace, but I'm a work in progress who hasn't achieved the ability to love all (Donald Trump, Adam Lanza, Osama Bin Laden, that petty man or woman at church who tries to find fault with everything, anyone?) and, thus, have not yet achieved that peace. I'm working on that petty man or woman at church, though, learning to love him or her, so I'm getting somewhere.

That's it for this post. Next 4 points will be addressed in my next post.