When I went down the steps of our split foyer home, where we used to live, I did it with no concern about the steps caving in causing me to fall to the concrete foundation below. Why was I not concerned? I had gone up and down these steps for decades and through experience know their strength and used them with complete faith.
When I learned about water, how it changes from a liquid to a solid or to a gas depending upon its temperature, I was enthralled. Over time I experienced water crystallizing in the winter, rain falling in the spring, steam rising above a stove and water vapor forming clouds in the sky or fog.
For years in school and my life since, I have been introduced to many more facts about our world and cosmos. Much of this knowledge has been demonstrated to me through experiences. I grew to have great faith in what science reveals to me.
When I read Jesus’ sayings in the Bible, like, “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), or “turn the other cheek” (Luke 6:29), I wondered why the Gospel writers would write their stories having Jesus say such things. So I tested these lessons, myself, with the same curiosity I had when observing water turn to ice.
To my amazement, when others were mean to me, or mad at me, but I was kind in return, their attitudes and behaviors gradually changed. I changed too, and gained friends and unexpected successes.
Studying one Sunday school lesson at a time through the years I developed a profound faith in the teachings of Jesus because I experienced the outcomes. They are quite real. This is why Christianity is, for me, all about living an attitude of unconditional love and very little about sin or judgment.
In every area of my life my faith rests on honest assessments of the results of personal experiences. Of course, as a young child I had few experiences to know much. Therefore, I had faith in what my parents, other adults, or older kids said because they knew more.
However, as I became able to think for myself (as I learned and matured) what my parents, siblings, friends, teachers, ministers, etc. said to me had to make sense. If it did not, I respectfully set aside their teachings. You lose integrity when you cling to ideas that conflict with how you experience the world.
When I am told or when I read you cannot be a Christian unless you believe literally in the virgin birth, Jesus’ miracles, his resurrection from the dead, etc. my reaction is a quiet, “Is that so?” I am a Christian and I understand the symbolism underlying these ideas quite well, but I certainly don’t believe them literally. Also, whether or not I am a Christian is my decision, not anyone else’s.
How many events occur in our universe that support fundamentalist Christian dogma? How many corpses come back to life after being dead for days? How many people walk on water? How many trees burn, but do not get consumed? The answer is none. These are not stories about physical realities. They are interpretive stories inspired by spiritual experiences.
Treating such Bible images as literally true is irrational and, strangely enough, fundamentalists actually agree by saying these beliefs must be accepted on “faith alone.”
Those claiming that religious faith is somehow beyond rationality bear the burden of proof for such a claim, not we who have no difficulty harmonizing our spiritual understanding with scientific knowledge.
This places Christian fundamentalism in a logically irresolvable position. If accepting the premise that fundamentalist dogma must be irrational, as they assert, then none of their final conclusions can be considered rational no matter how precise or erudite the reasoning in between. A line of reasoning cannot be more valid than its basic assumptions.
Fundamentalism is a personal choice. It means you are willing to accept contradictory views of reality (that of the secular world versus that of your particular religious organization) simply by ignoring the differences. You must pretend that life events can occur simultaneously in two mutually exclusive realities. Personally, I feel this is detrimental to both individual spiritual growth and to cultural harmony around the world.
Faith based on tradition alone, no matter the multitudes of people who honestly believe such a tradition is literally true, proves only the reality of the tradition, not anything about how the universe operates. Personal religious faith must be based ultimately on something that occurs in the objective universe. If it is, then that faith has meaning and can be verified, demonstrated, and taught to others. If not, it is fantasy and requires neither any basis in fact nor any discipline in its acceptance or use.
It is my belief that the fundamentalist mindset is not best described as faith, at all, specifically because it isolates itself from any rational challenge. It is better described as selective memorization of traditions to support an imposed doctrine.
Personal faith should require more from an individual than an unflinching allegiance to dogma presented to you by others, even if those others are people you love and respect. Reason is what differentiates humans from all other forms of life. It is inconceivable, therefore, that you should abandon reason when seeking a spiritual understanding of life.
Rational faith is always more meaningful and exciting than faith by proxy (strict obedience to traditions without question), because it is real and verifiable. It is the necessary foundation for a life expressing unconditional and universal love. A rational faith is what Jesus demonstrated for all of us to follow.
Jesus did not direct us to worship him as a human-like vessel in which a theistic god resides. Early evangelists, church leaders, and scribes promoted this first century Greco-Roman-like model of Jesus after he died.
They wrote and altered New Testament passages to propose and to support traditions such as Jesus’ virgin birth, performance of miracles, resurrection, and ascension. All of these traditions are trying to express significant and real spiritual experiences, but the traditions, themselves, are not historical events, and don’t have to be.
None of these traditions was known by the initial followers of “The Way”, the sect within Judaism that saw Jesus as a spiritual fulfillment of Jewish messianic hopes. Paul, as the author of the earliest writings included in the New Testament, shows no awareness of these traditions.
Paul described Mary as a normal human mother and his brief comments about Jesus’ birth suggest it was totally human and natural. He reported no miraculous acts by Jesus. Plus his own account of his vision of Jesus (not the version written in Acts by the author of Luke) does not suggest a physical encounter, but a spiritual awakening.
Jesus, did, however, teach that we should love God (ultimate truth and the source of all creation) and seek God’s wisdom to guide our lives, in the ways he demonstrated. We are to follow his example on the inside and not make him an idol on the outside. How you view Jesus makes a big difference.
A Jesus that is entirely human, completely spiritual, and wholly rational (just as each of us can be) requires no miraculous proofs. The practical applications of Jesus’ teachings stand on their own and fit easily within known and emerging scientific knowledge.
“Faith requires the experience of personal discoveries,
not the rote mastery of traditions or doctrines.”
No comments:
Post a Comment