Why I dislike religion.

Let me preface this by saying to what in this context I mean religion: dogma, legalism, rituals, ceremonies and liturgy, the view of insiders vs. outsiders, snobbery, deification of a man authored holy book, denominations, liturgy, demand for conformity of beliefs, the notion (which many hold and most deny) that you must think just like me to receive salvation, the passing down of belief systems without any thought or assessment from the receiver, the search for corroborating evidence instead of the search for truth. A final note before my original post is that I don't believe Christianity was ever supposed to be a religion, but a decision that transforms the way you treat others.

Religion is like train tracks for those trying to know God. It keeps everyone on the same track, going the same way, seeing the same scenery, leading to the same conclusions about God. It is following all the cars in front of you. But it is not people we want to follow; rather it is a God for which we search. It is inevitable for a few to get derailed, some of which crash, and never reach their destination, while others go out exploring, maybe taking a little longer to find God, but seeing and experiencing so much more. These latter have seen different things than the clones who have stuck to the tracks. So what leads some to derailing? Questions and fortitude. What keeps one from crashing? Even more fortitude. Stick to the tracks if you want, but do not say I cannot follow by foot; for I forsake the tracks when I see flaws, and wander when the lines are skewed.

A Jesus Question

So I've always held the notion that it is only fair for God to experience humanity. That is, if he expects us to be "good," he ought to come down here and give it a whirl himself, just to know what he's truly asking. However, if Jesus was that divine manifestation, then it wasn't exactly fair since he could do all the miracles he wanted. One could counter that he did them not for himself, but for others out of compassion and sympathy. OK, so if that's the case, then why isn't it happening now? Surely our God still feels compassion and sympathy, right? So why did he perform miracles then and not now, or before he came?

Quick Thought on Forgiveness

I just got to thinking about a question that was posed to me, which essentially boiled down to this: How will trusting in God's judgment affect how you treat people? And my response was: Well, trusting in God's judgment means nothing to my actions if I also trust in God's forgiveness of all the crap that I do to people. So where this led me was this thought:

The only way for us to be capable of showing love is for there to be no consequences for us.

If God did not erase everything we did, then all of our good actions would be tainted by the self-interest involved in avoiding judgment. Only with the full knowledge that even if I sin I am forgiven do I yield the power to return God's love and give untainted love out to those around me.

Crap happens. But why?

Anytime something like this happens, always one of the first things to cross my mind is this: there are so few really good people out there, and so many jerks and straight up otherless (see earlier post) people; so why are we robbed of the good ones?

So, why does bad crap happen to good folks, as far as God's intervention is concerned?
Either God does not intervene in this world, or he does, but chose not to in this case, or God chose it to happen.

The first option seems the easiest road, but there just seems to be so much of my life that I just must attribute to and give thanks to God. So even though my natural inclination would be to this conclusion, some part of me tells me it's not quite right. In addition, if this was true, then suddenly the world is a much scarier place. It's like walking the tightroap and all of a sudden you notice there is no safety net below you. I can't think that God would allow no room for maneuvering on his part. Why would he limit himself that way?

So if God does intervene, where the heck was he? Why act sometimes and not other times? I don't think we could ever answer that unless we actually knew what, if anything, was due to his intervention in our physical universe.

Surely God wouldn't choose this to happen. Not a good God, and the whole universe screams to me saying, our God is good.

One final thought, and thank Bella for this one. I had to put up an electric wireless fence for my idiot dog. It gives her a nasty zap when she tries to leave our backyard. She doesn't understand why she would get zapped. She's just trying to find me. But I, being more evolved, know that she'll get lost and starve to death, or she'll get hit by a car on Johnson rd. So I zap her instead of letting those things happen. Is this what is happening to the Ray's? Is God giving them a well meaning zap? It'd be nice to think so, but I still don't. It'd be nice to think this incident had a divine purpose, but I don't think God would be responsible for this.

What I do think is that while God does intervene sometimes, his intervention is the anomaly, not the norm, and most of the time crap happens. Now God and the Ray's could use this to a good end, but I don't think it was a designed plan. This makes me walk a little more timorously. And much more worried about those I love.

I suppose that we should have strong enough hope in an afterlife to feel OK with losing people, but my beliefs on that aren't nearly solid enough to make me sigh with relief.

Scott said something to the effect of when he was a kid, his church was conditioning people to be more like the pharisees and not like Christ. Another friend of mine shared that he was scared for his own salvation because he hadn't been to church in awhile. What a load of rot. Scott, here's your corroborating evidence to go along with your thoughts. At what point did we fall back into legalism? Apparently pretty early, from Paul's letter to the Galatians. That sucks. We finally got the chance to live in the great outdoors and instead we go back to our safe little cardboard boxes that we feel so comfortable in. There's so much to experience, enjoy, and yes, there is danger out there too, but if we stay in our smothering boxes, we received nothing new when we let Christ take our hand.

I think of little children in school, having to walk single file, no talking, no turning around, etc. This is what legalism is. It is controlled, it is safe, it is comfortable and predictable, but so limiting. God has given us more freedom and responsibility. We are free to roam the halls at will. On the one hand, there is less human control, and there may be some serious disruptions. But some of us will wander off to do good things. Maybe this is a bad example.

Life is unpredictable, with ups and downs. Some of us only see the ups, some only the downs, and most of us are on the roller coaster, riding the hills and valleys. Now, if we have followed all the rules, but we observe someone in need of comforting, loving, support, financial help, etc., we have no need nor are we responsible to aid this person. We've done all that is required of us. We've given our 10%. We've gone to church the right number of times. We've followed the rules. However, outside of legalism, we might not give 10% to charities, but then again we may give 20%. We may have never stepped inside a soup kitchen, or maybe we know some of the homeless by name. But we are always compelled to love. That person in need should get our help, and it doesn't matter one bit what we've already done or not done. In fact, all that we do is a reflection of the love in us from God, so the more we receive from God the more we shine.

Instead of a checklist, we have a journey to make. Instead of rules, we have a chisel. We can follow the rules or break them in the legalism method. In God's method, we are either becoming more Christlike, or going back to looking like ourselves.

"FREEEEEEEDOOMMMMMMM!!!!" says William Wallace, and so says Christ.

Otherish or Otherless

So here's a hypothesis:
Every choice we make is based on what will bring us the decision makers more joy (or less pain).

What I mean is this: Selfishness and selflessness don't revolve around yourself at all, but rather what you do for other people. People who are selfish and people who are selfless both are acting and making decisions based on what they think will bring themselves the most joy. The difference lies in whether that joy includes other people or not. Maybe we should talk about people being otherish and otherless.

Here's where all this came from.

Clearly, selfish (otherless) acts can be seen as bringing the selfish person joy, but what about unselfish acts?

First, let's look at coercion/doing good things with a crap attitude. (i.e. We do something because someone else wants us to do it.) For example, I go see a chick flick because my wife wants me to go with her. But really I decide to go because I'd rather endure the film than have an argument, or maybe because next time I get to choose. Or I tithe, but only because I'm supposed to. So I'm doing a good thing, but I chose to do it because I'd rather lose the money than lose the eternal rewards. Or I serve someone, but I do it because I'd rather have people think highly of me than have my time back.

Second, we give/serve, and we do it with a great attitude. But the real reason why we chose to do it is because we enjoy giving/serving others than keeping our money/time/sweat to ourselves.

Challenge: try to come up with a scenario in which a person can possibly make a choice that will not bring more joy/less pain to the decision maker, without disregarding the emotional effects of the choice.

Thanks

I am so grateful that God has given me more than I need. It is such a great and enjoyable thing to be able to share with others, as opposed to being God's charity.