| Some Thoughts About Christianity |
[Jan. 5th, 2009|06:15 pm] |
I don't usually write much about, or discuss, religious beliefs. I believe that people must and will define for themselves what they believe and what they don't, and I also believe that God so loves us that He/She has sent us any number of messages and opportunities to find Him/Her. We cannot know the nature of God -- such conception is beyond us and is a matter of faith (beliefs that exist without proof).
My faith, my belief, is that God is omniscient, omnipresent and all-powerful, and God is a conscious entity of Love. Perhaps we see/know something of God in the dark matter and dark energy that constitutes 96% of the known universe, and which does not conform to our understanding of physics but which creates an ever expanding universe as opposed to one that will collapse and die. For me, ultimately, it doesn't matter greatly. What matters is that we be grateful to God for all that we have and that we do our best to live our lives according to God's tenets or directives to us, as we understand them in our respective religions.
Having said that, I was raised at a Christian, to the extent that I occasionally went to Sunday school and, as an adolescent, sang in the church choir of a United Church. I try to live in concert with the ten commandments of the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, such as: judge not, lest ye be judged, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, blessed are the merciful, and that we should not make an exhibition of our beliefs but pray privately, in a closet. I also recall that Jesus told us we had to accept him and God with the innocence of a child, and that he was not God, but was the Son of God and the way to God. For me, 'Christian' means accepting that Jesus lived and was the Son of God, who came to teach us and to bear the pain, suffering and death of a human being to show us that those who believe will be resurrected after death, to dwell in the house of the Lord. Of course, there is much more to the story but these elements are, for me, the essence.
So ... does this mean I go to Church regularly? No. I pray in private. Do I think others are misguided to go to Church? No, not at all. There can be great comfort and strength in worshiping as part of a community.
But I think there are dangers in any Church's tenets to the extent that Jesus's life and death and teachings, indeed, the whole of the Bible and the recently discovered gnostic gospels, are subject to the interpretation of Church leaders over time. I feel that the essential teachings can be twisted to greater or lesser extents based on the biases and beliefs of those interpreters. As a woman, I suspect that interpretation is also impacted by the very nature of the interpreters, most if not all of whom were and are men. The nature of man (as opposed to woman) is to be in charge, in control, in power, so much so that many different religions, not just Christianity in various of its forms, reject the legitimacy of women to be spiritual leaders. And, in keeping with the aggressiveness that testosterone gives men, most churches/interpretations not only trumpet that they are the only ones with the truth, but are willing to fight (and even kill) to assert their superiority. Do we really think God is so limited that there is only one possible 'way' to find and worship Him/Her? I don't.
I worry that Christianity has become a religion of worship of Christ as God, as opposed to the worship of Christ's Father. We have a monotheistic (one God) religion that tries to make sense of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a tripartite entity. Again, I don't really care how it comes to make sense or if it does. For me, though, we should not confuse Christ with God. To be deliberately heretical, I could postulate that our spirits are all 'a part' of God, like the Holy Spirit, but that we've been granted a kind of separation in order to live freely, to exercise choice and free will. In that construct, we are all children of God, immortal souls living in mortal bodies, and Christ was/is our big brother.
Why am I writing this now? I've recently become a 'snowbird', a dweller of cold northern lands that flees south in the winter. My new winter community has a chapel and regular Christian services. I've met a number of members of the congregation and they are all very kind, friendly, pleasant people. But I heard one say that he'd not see his brothers again because they'd not accepted Jesus as their saviour before they died, so they wouldn't be in Heaven when he got there. And the services I've attended so far have a sense of self-satisfaction, of people who have found the truth and the way, and who are quite willing to be missionaries to save others but if others don't believe as they do, then they are, by definition, lost. I'm sorry, but I don't think any of us have the right, the ability, or the role of determining who God will welcome on the other side. We are all so imperfect, only doing our best, but all of us subject to temptations, great and small, so there is little for us to be self-satisfied about. I seek humility, not pride; acceptance, not judgment.
And yet, I feel uncomfortable with my discomfort with this community. Am I not judging them in accordance with my own beliefs? And by definition, is that not wrong? Meanwhile, I've been watching the History channel show about the finding of the Gnostic gospels, in particular, the unknown Mark's gospel and Judas' gospel, which raise questions the orthodox, male dominated church doesn't want to address such as the equality of women and even, gasp, homosexuality. The Judas gospel indicates that Judas wasn't a traitor but a conspirator with Jesus, who knew he had to die to show the supremacy of the soul and resurrection after death. Apparently, there's a great kerfuffle going on over this. ::shakes head::
I remember when I was a very young child in Sunday school that it seemed manifestly unfair to me that Judas should be condemned to hell for having played such a necessary and integral role: Christ had to suffer and die for our sins for the prophecy to be fulfilled. So for me, the new gospel makes sense. I can still believe Judas would kill himself afterward because playing such a role had to be devastating for anyone who loved Jesus, the man, let alone the Son of God. But ... again, faith isn't about solving historical mysteries, it's about believing as a child would believe, without complexity, with innocence and purity ... it's about believing in the supremacy and majesty of God, being thankful for the life we've been granted, treating others with respect and love, and leaving judgment to Him/Her.
Why must we complicate what is so inherently simple? |
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