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.
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