Saturday, February 8, 2020

The Underpinnings of Faith

When the Foundation Crumbles
The thing that was most destabilizing and devastating for my faith of 50 years was when I realized that the foundational dogma did not hold weight, in neither the real world nor in my mind.

Only as dogma was cleared away could I begin to have conversations of depth without limitations. Dogma blocks understanding because... if I or you already know, I or you can no longer learn.

I long, only, to be a man of great character and integrity, love and hope, but not great faith in dogma.

As Abigail Adams said about George Washington at his death:

‘Simple truth is his best, his greatest eulogy.’”

“Washington’s biography is the story of a man constructing himself.’” (W.W. Abbot, an editor of Washington’s papers)

Underpinning #1: We can be certain of our origins, our identity and purpose, and our destiny and future.

 Unfortunately, the first thing I realized is that nothing is certain, nothing is permanent; everything is temporary and thus uncertain. That is the design of the universe. Nothing happened in the way that we were told it did. And the future is nothing like what we think it will be. And life never goes like we plan. For me, it is wonderful to know that we don't know. I became weary of "thinking I know." It is so freeing to know I don't.

 In other words, life never goes as we plan. Isn't that wonderful?

Underpinning #2: We can know the truth and the truth can set us free. And we can know this for sure. 

One of the first revelations when I started going deeper and really questioning life is this, which has been my mantra for 13 years. “If I already know, I can no longer learn.” Certainty is an illusion. The only thing that never changes is that everything is constantly changing.

 Underpinning #3: God’s Word is inerrant and inspired by God. It is the perfect word of God which contains everything we need for life and Godliness. 

Words are nothing more than signs and symbols that can only point toward reality (or truth) but they are never the reality (or truth) itself. Our understanding of words is unique to ourselves. They are images in our minds, stories in our heads that differ in each and every human being and in each and every context. And since words cannot contain truth or God, neither can books or even our own minds. Because both books and our minds are limited. We are continually creating things in our own image because books are written in words and we think in words. In other words, we create meaning in our heads for each situation and then project them outward toward others and toward reality. Or more accurately, we create images in our heads and think that our perceptions, concepts, and images ARE reality. But they are not. They exist only in our heads.
See also, How Holy is the Holy Book? Holy Bible Inspiration or Idolatry? 

Lost in Translation
The Nature of Language, Words, and Thought
  • So first, in all of life, we lose meaning between reality and our image of reality.
  • When writing the bible, or any book, the author can only describe the images in their heads and then project them onto the page in their words with their meanings in their contexts. Then when we read them, we perceive those words in our minds and create our own meaning in our context. Our minds struggle to make meaning out of those words and more image-making happens in our heads which can never be the same reality that the author intends to project. Similar, hopefully. Successive approximations at best. This reality is always different from what ends up on the page. It is the nature of language. And for any religion that believes in a creator, this is what we ended up with. This is how we were created or evolved or whatever we think happened. This is the design of our universe.
  • Then we lose meaning through language when we try to describe our reality (actually images in our heads) to others.
  • When a preacher preaches what she/he thinks truth is in the bible or in his head, that is always his own image, interpretation, understanding, etc, that will always be different than what anyone else can understand. That is the nature of language on earth. That is what we have been given. Language is sort of a miracle in and of itself. It is amazing that we can communicate at all.
  • Words are never reality. All they can do is point to the reality that we have created in our thoughts. Language is nothing more than projecting those stories in our heads to others as nothing more than images, projections, creations, perceptions.
  • Is the Bible accurate? This is critical since accuracy presupposes inerrancy and inspired by God.   https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2020/07/a-simple-thought-experiment-defeats-claim-that-bible-is-accurate-2/ 
Underpinning #4: Total Depravity versus Basic Goodness.
Why do we believe that we are flawed, dirt, depraved; a worm such as I? Is that possibly holy propaganda for fostering the belief that we NEED religion and God? See below in the last section for more on this.

 Underpinning #5: Love is all. All of the “law and prophets hang on these two commandments: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” And we are to love God because he first loved us. And his love for us is unconditional.

If we are to follow these precepts, then the God that commands this must demonstrate this for us. In the Bible, it is repeatedly said, “be an example to others.”

The main characteristics required of all relationships are to be present, approachable, and visible and to communicate directly, honestly, and regularly. And yet the two most conspicuous characteristics of our image of God are his silence and his invisibility. In other words, the primary unchanging attributes of God are silence and invisibility.

Also, unconditional love is very different from the love that the God of the Bible proclaims and demonstrates. It is very conditional and punitive from mostly an angry and jealous God. How cruel is that? Or it is very conditional and exclusive based on obedience and compliance. How controlling and petty is that? And when people, created in the image of God that he says he loves, do not comply, they are eternally punished; not so they can learn and repent but so they can suffer forever with no chance of repentance... ever! That sounds malevolent and not benevolent. So the third attribute of god is conditional love. Exactly the opposite of what is expected of Christians.

Taking it one step further, check out God's commandments for all time here, The 10 Commandments: the best morality of all history?

And going a step further: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” (Richard Dawkins)
This happens not just for noncompliance but also for not believing and not only that but also for imperfect theology; that is, for not thinking like we are told to think. That contradicts the very essence of what it is to be diversely and uniquely human. It is a violation of creation itself.

It seems to me that maybe Christians ARE created in the image of the god they themselves have created; full of judgment and conditional love that is mostly angry and vindictive. Be good or else. Believe right or else. Any time we learn and change based on external criteria, rarely is that change sustainable. Learning from a role model is one of the most effective ways to internalize growth and change. But that teacher, that role model, that god must have integrity, which means that the primary and most consistent attributes emulate the kind of person that one wants to be; kind, generous, loving, patient, non-judgemental, etc. I used to have so many arguments with myself about this but when I stopped arguing and just looked carefully and clearly, all of the arguments faded away since it really didn't make sense to me anymore. 

A Sacrifice for the Sins of Humankind??? 7 Reasons Why Jesus was not Sacrificed for Your Sins.

The Problem of Evil

"The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God  (see theism).[1][2]  Or as the first known presentation by the Greek philosopher Epicurus puts it: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"[3]
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil)

The Problem of Eternal Torture

If God is all-loving, omnibenevolent, he would not torture anyone eternally.
If God is omnipotent, all-powerful, then he could create a way for all people to want to choose him instead of hell
If God is omniscient, all-knowing, then he would know exactly what each person would need to understand in order to choose God instead of hell.
If God is omnipresent, then we would be with all people at all times and know them so well that he would show them the way and not choose hell.
Imagine there was a heaven, a hell, and a God. 
Who the hell would ever choose hell??? Unless maybe they don't understand all that is needed for it to make sense even to a skeptic. For this supposed God of the omni's, it would be a no-brainer, unless for some reason he did not have the will to do so. But then what does that say about the big guy in the sky?

The Nature and Character of God

A God Problem

Perfect. All-powerful. All-knowing. The idea of the deity most Westerners accept is actually not coherent.
If you look up “God” in a dictionary, the first entry you will find will be something along the lines of “a being believed to be the infinitely perfect, wise and powerful creator and ruler of the universe.” Certainly, if applied to non-Western contexts, the definition would be puzzling, but in a Western context this is how philosophers have traditionally understood “God.” In fact, this conception of God is sometimes known as the “God of the Philosophers.” 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/-philosophy-god-omniscience.html

Regarding Omnipotence: "You’ve probably heard the paradox of the stone before: Can God create a stone that cannot be lifted? If God can create such a stone, then He is not all powerful, since He Himself cannot lift it. On the other hand, if He cannot create a stone that cannot be lifted, then He is not all powerful, since He cannot create the unliftable stone. Either way, God is not all powerful."


Regarding Omniscience: "What about God’s infinite knowledge — His omniscience? Philosophically, this presents us with no less of a conundrum. Leaving aside the highly implausible idea that God knows all the facts in the universe, no matter how trivial or useless (Saint Jerome thought it was beneath the dignity of God to concern Himself with such base questions as how many fleas are born or die every moment), if God knows all there is to know, then He knows at least as much as we know. But if He knows what we know, then this would appear to detract from His perfection. Why?

"There are some things that we know that, if they were also known to God, would automatically make Him a sinner, which of course is in contradiction with the concept of God. As the late American philosopher Michael Martin has already pointed out, if God knows all that is knowable, then God must know things that we do, like lust and envy. But one cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them. But to have had feelings of lust and envy is to have sinned, in which case God cannot be morally perfect."

This article above goes on to present many contradictions in the basic nature of God, which I believe presents us with two ways we can go to reconcile this dilemma.
  • Either God was created by man in the image of man and hence flawed in definition by man's thinking and man's anthropomorphic images and concepts.
  • Or God is indescribable by man which means that if there is something greater than I, it would be futile to put that greatness into words or into a book or into a theology because all of these modes of expression are nothing more than human constructs.
Or is there a way to integrate multiple perspectives and hold each of them up for examination alongside other perspectives, refusing to conclude anything for sure, similar to what is done in this book?   https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brainstorm/201208/the-god-problem-interview-howard-bloom

The God of the Old Testament is arguably
the most unpleasant character in all fiction:
jealous and proud of it;
a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak;
a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser;
a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
(Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion)

Building a House on Sand and Uncertainty
Jesus used the parable that tells us to build our “house” (our life) on solid rock so that it will stand the test of time and withstand the storms that will come. And yet, our very faith has been built on the sand and its foundations are crumbling. This was a very hard lesson for me to learn. It took many years. Wisdom comes through pain and suffering and is purified like gold in the fire to burn away the dross. Inner discernment is the fire that tests for truth and burns away all that is false.

And yet there is no rock upon which to build. This is myth that we want to be true. I would love to know and know for sure that I am building on a solid foundation that will not crumble. But that would require some form of certainty and permanence, which we do not have. The only constant is change. That's the only thing we can be sure of.

So where does that leave us? Or probably the better question is, where does that leave me? ...since these are questions we all must face individually.

So if there is not a rock upon which to build my life,
If there is no solid foundation upon which to build,
How can I weather the storms
and withstand the fierceness of life?

I must be rooted in reality and grounded in my ground of being, a groundlessness with fearlessness. See Grounded in Groundlessness.

So Why Do We So Desperately Need Religion and God?

I wonder if it is because we so desperately need certainty.
I wonder if it is because we so desperately need to know and to know for sure about everything, even though we are finite creatures.
I wonder if it is because we so desperately need to be told what to do and to think and to act and how to treat each other.
I wonder why we can't not know?
Is "knowing" and certainty the idols that are buried beneath our image of a god we created in our image? ... out of our neediness for certainty?
Can we not be OK with who we are? Or does the grass always have to be greener on the other side? Do we forever have to want more and more and more without ever being content with what we have and who we are?

This sort of feeds into the need for the belief in total depravity. If we are so dependent and not able to think on our own because we are so flawed and depraved, then we are in dire need of god. Maybe this stems from the need to be dependent on authority outside of ourselves, whether the pulpit, the throne, or the gods above the clouds. That would probably work out best for the powerful. Keep us dependent and in line, thoughtless and compliant. Heaven forbid that we have an inner authority and discernment, an inner teacher or a still small voice, or an inner Light. If we did, we might wake up and rebel and maybe even take over our own lives and governance and spiritual journey.

But what if we took away "such a worm as I" and believed there is a basic goodness within each person as with nature and the universe as the Buddhists believe? What if there truly is "that of God" within each of us so that we can relate directly with any person because of that belief? 

What if we could believe in each other, in ourselves, knowing that there is this goodness within that we can trust?
What if we believed that there is this inner teacher or inner voice birthed by our inner goodness?

Maybe then we would no longer need to be told what to believe, what to think, and what to do. 
Maybe then we will grow up as a human race, transforming into all that we can be, our full potential. 
Maybe then we can find a solid foundation upon which to build our story; the basic goodness of each person, nature, and the universe.

The Chronology of My Crumbling Foundation

1. I earned a bachelor's degree in religion, bible, and greek at a well known Evangelical, bible, liberal arts college. There I was required to develop a Christian world and life view based on my indepth studies of the bible. But since then, there has been a deepening dissonance throughout my 30s and 40s. I could not quiet it with answers anymore. The answers were no longer alive, they were dying on the vine and I was becoming desperate. I began to understand and appreciate a good question; how it deepened me and opened me up. That's why on April Fool's Day, 2006, I began blogging. I didn't write because I knew anything, I wrote because I no longer knew anything. I wrote in order to understand and listen to life.

2. Then life upended me. It was like a whirlwind ripping and breaking, uprooting and upending everything in my life. The American Dream, gone. In the spring of 2008, I lost my marriage (divorced!), I lost my kids half time (joint custody!), I lost my house (forclosed!), I lost my job (downsized!), I lost my mental health (clinical depression!). Like my first divorce when I was 30, I turned to God and clung to what I was taught. I prayed harder than ever. I studied the bible. I went to church. And yet those deep wounds would not heal. I tried and tried and tried. And also, I kept writing. I didn't know why. I just knew that I had to. The compulsion to keep on writing was undeniable, incessant, and irrepressible. I had to write. It took a long time to begin to understand that it was the silence, the reflection, and the contemplation that began my healing. This I learned from a Buddhist Priest as I practiced shambhala meditation. I carried it on for a few more years in silent worship with the Quakers.

3. The questions along with the dissonance became a continuous and relentless roar throughout my 50s. It reminds me of the neverending tinnitus in my ears now in my 60s. At times it brings me to my knees.

4. First it hit me that "knowing" is a presumption that we have abused. We do not "know" and we cannot "know." And it also hit me that if I already know, I can no longer learn. (see Underpinning #1&2 above)

5. Then it hit me that along with knowing, certainty is nothing more than a story in my head. We are humans. We don't get to be certain about anything except that everything changes constantly. There is no permanence. Everything is temporal. And if I think that I know or that I am certain or that I am permanent, then I am playing God. (see Underpinning #1&2 above)

6. This then made me begin to question the foundational things of my faith: an inspired, inerrant word of god. Not long after I began to see that, then I realized that the concept of a word of god period is absurd. And when I was then forced to question why we would be told this, the dynamics of power and oppression became clearer and clearer. External authority is another story in our heads that we tell ourselves. Sometimes it is practical (like government and laws) but not when it comes to the things of life and death that no one can know.  (see Underpinning #3 above)

7. Once that foundation (#6) began to crumble, everything else began to unravel, and kept unraveling until there was nothing left. The nature of language and the identity of words furthered and deepened my understanding.

8. Then came the nature and function of thought, of reality and perception, of concepts and illusions, and of fictions and the stories we tell ourselves.

9. Then my eyes opened to the principalities and powers that were really running things. Then the structures of power and oppression, inner and outer authority, being controlled and compliant versus living out our full potential, 

10. A great eye opener is my understanding of myths per the teaching of Joseph Campbell along with the understanding and influence of conditioning according to Krishnamurti.

11. Once I turned 60, the scales fell off my eyes and I could see all of the wishful and magical thinking that I still clung to. At that point, I was finally ready to say "STOP" "enough!" It was at this point that I could fully let go of dogma. What I experienced profoundly and astonishingly is that I was finally free. No more shackles on my mind or on my conversations with others or in my acceptance and inclusion of others; unconditional love! I was finally free!

Who'd'a' thought that the total unraveling of my life would result in such incredible freedom?

“How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.” -Richard Dawkins
By Ron Irvine at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)