Relationship vs. evidence
My reply to a blog post discussion with an atheist...I was not attempting to convert him. Just sharing my story.
What a neat discussion...I love it when people can talk about these kinds of things respectfully. How much we can learn from each other when we know that the other person is not going to ridicule or go off or resort to insults. THANKS!
For what it's worth, my two cents are below. :)
I grew up in Evangelicalism, but my faith became the most alive when I ditched the rules and the play-book of 'making converts' through arguing the Bible and defending God (God doesn't really need me to do that anyway). I made it about 'me and God', not 'me, the rules and how I can convince everyone that my religion is right by explaining the Bible empirically'. You can't do that. The Bible isn't a science book. It is a book of experiences and intepretations of experiences by other people - humans as jacked up and confused by life as I am than I was ever taught in church.
The way of life and faith that Jesus teaches flies in the face of logic and survival instinct (love enemies? Do good to those who persecute me?! Let people kill me for following this way??). At its core, faith in Jesus isn't sensible. People who face death and have died rather than renounce their faith know and have experienced something beyond what is tangible...Who would die for something they were unsure of or for something that they only read about in a book and thought maybe, could be true? The early followers of Christ were not convinced of his resurrection until they saw him. They were not convinced just because they heard it was true. Something real happened to them, an experience.
As a book-learning geek I tend toward a need to 'figure it all out'. I think there has to be some amount of 'sense' to my faith or else I'd 'fall for anything' or worse, fall into brain-numb Scripture-quoting/platitude speaking. But overall, after years of frustration at the failure of God to live up to my intellectual expectations, I have found it more beneficial to spend my time stumbling through what it means to live as Jesus taught and relate to God as Jesus taught (not because I fear I will go to hell if I don't, but because I believe it is the best way to live).
In essence, I surrendered. I discovered that if I truly wanted to 'meet' this creator more deeply - beyond physical evidence, there had to be some willingness on my part to play by a different set of 'rules' than I might be comfortable with.
That didn't mean checking my brain at the door. I still study, I still want all of my questions answered. I go 'round and 'round with 'Papa' ALOT (btw -I choose the masculine pronoun for God because I am most familiar with that, I do not follow the patriarchal hierarchy common among my 'people'). At the same time I have stopped putting my brain first. After all, is any relationship cooperative with my expectations of how it 'should be'?
When I let go a little bit, I found that something 'moved in' and began to work in (mess with??) my heart and mind. I call this the Holy Spirit. This spirit has offered me something akin to the 'real' experience the first followers did before they would believe. Granted, I don't have the 'touching the wounds of Jesus with my actual hands' that they had, but it is real enough to convince me that Jesus wasn't BS-ing.
It has been a wild ride since then. It can be frustrating but more often it is amazing and freeing. And it is much less frustrating than it was to sit on the side-lines with my Bible and my rules and wonder what people were doing who lived this way and why they did it.
I have nothing I can give to anyone demanding an explanation to satisfy an evidentiary hearing of cold, hard facts. I only have my journey. I could desire with all my heart for the earth to rotate in the opposite direction, but that just isn't the way it works. I have to learn to live with that or spend my time banging my head against a wall. Know what I mean?
So, there it is. That's my story.
My best to you in whatever way you choose to walk out life...May you find lots of love and laughter because I think those are two of the best things in the world whether one believes there's a God or not.
Helen
What a neat discussion...I love it when people can talk about these kinds of things respectfully. How much we can learn from each other when we know that the other person is not going to ridicule or go off or resort to insults. THANKS!
For what it's worth, my two cents are below. :)
I grew up in Evangelicalism, but my faith became the most alive when I ditched the rules and the play-book of 'making converts' through arguing the Bible and defending God (God doesn't really need me to do that anyway). I made it about 'me and God', not 'me, the rules and how I can convince everyone that my religion is right by explaining the Bible empirically'. You can't do that. The Bible isn't a science book. It is a book of experiences and intepretations of experiences by other people - humans as jacked up and confused by life as I am than I was ever taught in church.
The way of life and faith that Jesus teaches flies in the face of logic and survival instinct (love enemies? Do good to those who persecute me?! Let people kill me for following this way??). At its core, faith in Jesus isn't sensible. People who face death and have died rather than renounce their faith know and have experienced something beyond what is tangible...Who would die for something they were unsure of or for something that they only read about in a book and thought maybe, could be true? The early followers of Christ were not convinced of his resurrection until they saw him. They were not convinced just because they heard it was true. Something real happened to them, an experience.
As a book-learning geek I tend toward a need to 'figure it all out'. I think there has to be some amount of 'sense' to my faith or else I'd 'fall for anything' or worse, fall into brain-numb Scripture-quoting/platitude speaking. But overall, after years of frustration at the failure of God to live up to my intellectual expectations, I have found it more beneficial to spend my time stumbling through what it means to live as Jesus taught and relate to God as Jesus taught (not because I fear I will go to hell if I don't, but because I believe it is the best way to live).
In essence, I surrendered. I discovered that if I truly wanted to 'meet' this creator more deeply - beyond physical evidence, there had to be some willingness on my part to play by a different set of 'rules' than I might be comfortable with.
That didn't mean checking my brain at the door. I still study, I still want all of my questions answered. I go 'round and 'round with 'Papa' ALOT (btw -I choose the masculine pronoun for God because I am most familiar with that, I do not follow the patriarchal hierarchy common among my 'people'). At the same time I have stopped putting my brain first. After all, is any relationship cooperative with my expectations of how it 'should be'?
When I let go a little bit, I found that something 'moved in' and began to work in (mess with??) my heart and mind. I call this the Holy Spirit. This spirit has offered me something akin to the 'real' experience the first followers did before they would believe. Granted, I don't have the 'touching the wounds of Jesus with my actual hands' that they had, but it is real enough to convince me that Jesus wasn't BS-ing.
It has been a wild ride since then. It can be frustrating but more often it is amazing and freeing. And it is much less frustrating than it was to sit on the side-lines with my Bible and my rules and wonder what people were doing who lived this way and why they did it.
I have nothing I can give to anyone demanding an explanation to satisfy an evidentiary hearing of cold, hard facts. I only have my journey. I could desire with all my heart for the earth to rotate in the opposite direction, but that just isn't the way it works. I have to learn to live with that or spend my time banging my head against a wall. Know what I mean?
So, there it is. That's my story.
My best to you in whatever way you choose to walk out life...May you find lots of love and laughter because I think those are two of the best things in the world whether one believes there's a God or not.
Helen
Comments
1) "At it's Core, Faith in Jesus isn't Sensible" I agree with that, and I think it's an intellectually honest approach to Christianity and Religion. It's not going to convince me that what you experience spiritually exists beyond your subjective experience, but I think expressing your spiritual life is more compelling than Christianity's attempts at a rational defense of Christ's divinity. However, it's a paradox, because only a rational argument will convince me of it, so I continue to encourage Christians ( and believers of any faith) to attempt to make them. It's also, I think, at the core of the issue most Atheists have on twitter and otehr social media. They are trying to use a rational argument to talk people out of what is essentually a irrational belief based on subjective experience and feeling. That's very difficult to do. I don't really try to do that. I don't really care about converting people to Atheism. I do, however, care about people, Atheists and Theits alike, thinking and acting more Rationally. It's a Quixotic quest, I know.
2)What you are describing is very nice, I imagine it's very comforting andrewarding for you. It gives you a purpose, and makes you feel loved. But to me, the subjective experience you feel, when you have the "holy spirit", when you live a "christ like way", the journey you are on.. I see no substantive difference between that and the religious experience of people all over the world. I see little difference between christians who actively try to Live like the loving christ (which I find to be particularly nice version of christianity, that aesthetically I like more than other, more warlike versions), and the Hindu Bhakti Movement. The spirit that you're filled with, when you Let go, it's difficult for me to see a difference between that and Sufist Muslims. There are religions and spiritual traditions all over the world, people experiencing things all over the world. The problem I have with it all is 1) there is no evidence that any of it is real, beyond the individual person's subjective "spirtual" experience with it 2)There is no way to prove that one of these spirtual interactions with the divine is legitimate, and all the others are illegitmate.
I will tell you something about my journey, however. I was just like you, about 3 years before I came to grips with the fact that I didn't believe in Jesus or God at all. I was raised in Evangelicism, I couldn't come to grips the intolerance of it, I couldn't accept that just people who didn't believe were going to hell.. so I just rejected the stuff that I didn't like, and felt that some how my view of Christanity was the "True" way, and these mean, hateful christians were missing the point of Jesus's return. I was extremely tolerant of non-believers, and tried to express Christ's love in everything I did, with everyone I came in contact with. However, the more and more of the Bible I disgarded, the more and more that I altered tradition evangelicism teachings, the more and more I came to realize that my beliefs, my desires, were based on literally nothing but my own wish that they were true. I had no evidence what I was feeling was real, in any tangible sense. Could make no rational argument to my atheist friends on why they should believe. One day, my feelings just weren't enough. I needed proof. You may never need proof Helen. For you, faith alone, your feelings alone, may be enough. They aren't enough for me.
Here is the reply:
Wow, thanks for responding, Jim! Nice to see some activity on my blog! LOL!
I agree with just about everything that you said. I totally get where you are coming from in your journey away from Christianity. The intolerance, the theology of hell, etc. There are days when I have doubted all of it. Mostly it is theology and not God himself that I have doubted, though I have at times chalked all of the things that I have seen and experienced as crazy coincidence. But then, that is intellectually unsatisfying to me as well.
And besides, if it all does turn out to be bogus, like my mom always says 'what have I lost by believing'? I enjoy wonderful relationships with my fellows that go beyond 'the world', I have a really cool imaginary friend who has the ability to do things like give me something to say to someone broken and hurting and lifted them up to see their worth - words that made no sense to me but spoke beauty to them.
You reference 'my feelings alone' being enough. I'm not sure that I would say that this is true, for there are more than feelings involved with why I believe what I do. There are experiences which inform my faith as well. It isn't all just warm and fuzziness. Sometimes my faith leads me to alot of internal pain, especially when my faith goes from the simple, pat, Bible answers that I was spoon-fed into deeper questions where I have to dig and listen and dig some more. It's not all about floaty feelings and flower power - though I confess to being partial to those times. :)
Note that in my reply I did not say that my experience of the Holy Spirit was different or better than that experienced by Muslims or Buddhists or anyone else who experiences a similar 'intangible' kind of thing in their oen faith traditions. Some of my friends might have a cow if I say so, but as far as I am concerned they are one and the same spirit so long as they lead to what my scriptures refer to (and other faith scriptures my refer to in other ways) as the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, etc. Those things make this world a better place, make us see each other in ways that lead away from violence and toward restoration.
Whether or not a person living those values comes from Christianity or Atheism is not that important to me. As for what our beliefs do and don't do for us beyond this life is for bigger minds than mine to figure out. I have ideas and theories that can be debated forever, but that isn't here or there.
I no longer need to be able to explain my faith or relatiosnhip with God in a hole-proof, intellectually satisfying manner for everyone. The value of my faith isn't based on how many I can convince of its voracity. It won't makse sense to everyone. That's one of the basics that Jesus taught.
If someone wants me to try and explain it I will do the best I can, but it's OK if that doesn't change anyone's mind. That isn't my job anyway. According to what the Scriptures teach, my job is to love people. Period. I am more than happy to allow the Spirit to do the Spirit's job.
Blessings and Namaste! :)
Helen
Anyway, to your comment
1) "what have I lost by believing" Well, what you're describing is, as I'm sure you know, called Pascal's Wager. And as I said, I really don't have an issue if you believe, and I'm not really trying to talk you out of it. The only thing you are really giving up, to my way of thinking, is the truth. At looking at the world in the most rational way possible. If that's a trade you're willing to make, that is entirely your prerogative.
2) When I say your feelings, I don't just mean your positive ones. When I say " feelings" what I really mean, is the breadth and depth of your subjective experience. You say you have questions about God, that are sometimes painful. When you find answers to those questions, not through thoughtful analysis, and not relying on the texts and rules that govern your religion, what is left but your feeling? How do you determine what is true, expect by what you feel to be true? You might have a different name for it, what God puts in your heart, or w/e, but that's how I view it. It's that kind of subjectivity that I have a problem with. I think religion can only make claim to subjective “truth” for an individual. And that can be fine, for the individual. But when Religion attempts to extend that subjectivity, into objective, universal truths, Religion encounters a great deal of rational difficult.
3)I find your Universalism and the peace and love aspect of your religious beliefs to be really nice, and I do wish all the religious viewed religion that way. I would have much less of an issue with it. However, I don't think there is anymore evidence that it's founded in reality than Militant Islam, Caste Era Hinduism or the Warrior Orders of the Catholic Church during the middle ages. It's the irrational, more even than theism, that I have an issue with anyway. The Irrational is not the sole domain of Theism, there are plenty of irrational atheists, and atheistic movements that I have deep issue with. I think, when you base your beliefs on the irrational, you are just as likely to land on something hateful and destructive, as you are on something positive and loving. I'm glad things landed the way they did for you, Helen. You threw a lucky dice roll.
I really do understand how you have reached the conclusion that you have...And I respect your honesty...I also thank you for taking the time to converse with me. So often two people on polar opposite sides of an issue can't do that. Feelings, pride and insecurities get in the way.
There's no way that you can talk me out of my faith...Nor will I talk you out of yours. I don't think either one of us is attempting to do that.
As always, the best to you!
Helen...
And I'm running out the door again so I might have more later...or clarifications as I ponder things today...I will also copy these discussions to your blog for fair sharing! :)
That said, I do wish you all the best in your purely rational journey. I hope that it brings you everything that you seek.
Take care!
Give me your blog link again? I linked to it from Jay Bakker's twitter feed when he posted it. And was 'Please' Jay Bakker? I wondered if he responded.