Narrowing Down The Issues

On the one hand, I’m sure it looks like I’m going ’round and ’round in circles with God and religion, retreading the same ground and getting nowhere. Sometimes I wonder if that is in fact what is going on, and if I can ever be satisfied and happy. Most of the time, though, I am pretty sure that I am slowly, carefully refining the issues, figuring out really what is at stake and what I think, and what decisions I really have to make.

At the moment, I think I have my religious question basically boiled down to the following ideas:

I’m inclined to think that there is a god, even though I have my doubts. I do not think that god is completely knowable by human beings. I also do not necessarily think that getting some (or even a lot of) things wrong about god is as big of a deal as human beings historically tend to. I’m not sure if god is personal or impersonal, or if god is maybe impersonal but with facets that can be personal-ish. Maybe. In any case, atheism does not suit me. I want both a religious identity and a path for spiritual development. Thus, I want a religion.

I really like a lot of things about Christianity. I find Christian theology appealing. I like the liturgy, the hymns, the architecture, the ritual, the idea of church, the liturgical year, the resurrection. I like C. S. Lewis, a lot. When I read C. S. Lewis, I want to be a Christian. Theoretically, I like the Bible, even though my attempts at reading it over the last two years have been most unsatisfactory.  I’m attached to Christianity as a religion, and am extremely bothered by the idea of giving it up entirely.  I even sometimes entertain the notion of going to seminary and becoming an Episcopal priest someday.

Unfortunately, despite everything I’ve just said, I don’t think I actually believe (in) Christianity. I like the idea of Jesus Christ as God incarnate quite a bit, but I don’t seem to actually believe that it it is so. I like the idea of salvation from sin through Jesus Christ’s supreme sacrifice, but I’m not sure I’m really all that worried about my sins, I find the idea of hell implausible, I don’t necessarily feel like I am in need of salvation (I feel plenty of wretched, just not necessarily wretched because of my sins or sinful nature) and I’m not convinced that this supreme sacrifice in fact happened. I think that the resurrection is plausible, but I don’t necessarily think that it means the whole package of Christianity is true.

I think I actually believe something a whole lot more like Vedanta, like the ideas expressed in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita about Brahman and everything, the world and people and you and me and God, all being really the same thing. I’m not culturally Indian, so Hinduism as a religion has no appeal to me whatsoever, and all of the New Religious Movements that have spun off from Hinduism in the west are, well, New Religious Movements. Pretty much they are to Hinduism what Mormonism is to Christianity (and Soka Gakkai is to Buddhism), and I am not interested in that at all. I’ve already done aa quasi-cult, thanks. I’m not really in the market for another one.

So I would prefer to read the Bible because I prefer the idea of reading the Bible, but in reality I find the Gita and the Upanishads so much more meaningful.

Also, I find various flavors of Paganism (neo and otherwise) extremely appealing: Asatru, Druidry, the Greek Gods, etc. I feel like all of that would dovetail a whole lot better with the Bhagavad Gita than it would the Bible. I’m European, not Indian, so actually becoming a Hindu is not interesting at all to me, but I think that the philosophy underlying Hinduism and tying it together can easily be applied to any Indo-European mythology.  I think that AODA Druidry as spiritual practice, Vedanta as philosophy, and European myth as a corpus of spiritual literature is an extremely reasonable combination, and probably a hell of a lot closer to what I actually believe than Chistianity ever will be.

But, Christianity is more appealing for some reason.  And for a lot of reasons, Vedanta+Druidry+Mythology, although it might actually be what I believe, is extremely unappealing.  There’s a lack of clear religious identity, for one.  There’s no Christmas.  Druidry as spiritual practice sometimes seems shallow and empty to me–it is missing the millennia of tradition that Christianity has.  There are the social and cultural problems with identifying as an odd religion.  Treading a new path means missing out on the guidance of people who have gone before.  There’s the worry that I’m really just cherry-picking the things I like.  There are issues about the source of morality and the source of values (that I am exploring in another series of posts).  And in my head, Vedanta+Druidry+Mythology just doesn’t have the same, I don’t know, pow! that Christianity has.  And it doesn’t have C. S. Lewis.

So I know what I probably believe, but it doesn’t happen to be the same thing as what I would like to believe.  But my desire to believe Christianity is subtly undermined by the things I actually do believe.  I’m not sure how to resolve this painlessly–there may simply be no painless resolution–but I think it is extremely important that I have arrived at (or at least I’m getting closer to) the central question in my search for God.

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What To Do About Christianity?

I am increasingly suspicious that Christianity isn’t going to do the trick for me.  I have reasons.

First, I really do not think that that Christianity, the Bible, the God of the Bible, and/or Jesus Christ objectively represent absolute truth.  I’m just not convinced, and I think, weighing the evidence in my mind, that it is less likely than otherwise that Jesus is the Son Of God send down to be Sacrificed For Our Sins and representing the One True Way.  Absent some compelling reason to think otherwise, I just don’t believe it’s True.

That, of course, does not end the inquiry, because I’m pretty skeptical in general of the practical reality of objective absolute truth.  I’m willing to accept the possibility that Christianity is Truth even if its foundational and theological truth-claims are questionable.  To that end, I have danced around with Christianity and belief in Jesus for most of the past year.  I’ve prayed.  I’ve read in the gospels.  I’ve attended a handful of churches.  My attitude was that I was willing to set aside the objective truth inquiry and settle for asking if Christianity is meaningful to me.  I had an intuition that there was transofrmational power in Christianity that I was keenly interested in, that Christianity could turn me into a New Man, the way C. S. Lewis talks about it in Mere Christianity.  I even felt the beginnings of some kind of personal transformation in my life as I genuinely tried to live a Christian life.

So why then am I afraid to move forward?  What holds me back from asserting, “this is what I believe; this is where I stand?”  What keeps me from diving in and accepting Jesus Christ and Christianity with open arms?  What is it about Christianity that simultaneously attracts and repels me?  I know there are probably some simplistic answers from the Christian perspective.  I’m not interested in those; I don;t really find them convincing.

Am I so scarred from my disentanglement from Mormonism that I am unwilling to embrace any religion, like an abuse victim who has a hard time forming new relationships because of deep-seated trust issues?  Did Mormonism leave me with a lingering sense that I will only be satisfied when I find a religion that I am certain is objectively, absolutely true?  (If so, I’m pretty much screwed, because I’m comfortable saying there ain’t one out there).  If I say No to Christianity, will I be able to say Yes to anything else?

What is it about Christianity that appeals to me?  I like Jesus himself, and his teachings.  I find the general theology of Christianity, the picture of God made man to save fallen humanity, appealing and comforting.  I like Christian liturgy.  I like hymns.  I am comfortable with the Bible (although I have spent my life learining to see it through uniquely Mormon eyes, so in many ways I am still completely new to scripture).  I’m a western person, and Christianity is unquestionably the religion of the West–it’s the religious currency of our society and it is probably the most culturally relevant.  And like I said above, Christianity at least seems to offer something transformational that I feel like I need.  I’m a pretty broken person in a lot of ways, and I think I could certainly use a heapin’ helpin’ of healin’ atonement.

Also, I really like Christmas.  Particularly, I like the religious/sacred message of Christmas.  The juxtaposition of the darkest, coldest time of the year with the birth of Mankind’s salvation.  I love the sacred Christmas hymns.  I love the Christmas story in the gospels.  I eat it up with a spoon.  I’m not sure what I’d make of Christmas if I wasn’t a Christian (watch for a blog post coming up about this), but I am absolutely unwilling to completely give it up.

On the other hand, I have a sneaking, growing suspicion that the Jesus of history really wasn’t the Jesus of Christianity.  If Jesus isn’t actually the one true savior of fallen humanity, then I don’t really need him in any any kind of external, objective, cosmological sense (I may personally need him because of the requirements of my own psyche, but that’s a different issue).  And if I don’t need him, then what is he to me?  Even if there is truth and meaning in the Jesus myth, I don’t know that I am willing to make it my exclusive truth and meaning or even my primary truth and meaning.

I don’t think I believe in a personal god at all, and I also don’t think I belive that Jesus is a unique incarnation of God.  I’m not convinced that the gospels are an accurate depiction of the life of Jesus, or that Paul’s epistles are a univerally and objectively correct interpretation of the life of Jesus, either.  I’m not certain I think I need Jesus to save me from my sins (since I’m not really sure I belive in sin, hell, or the Devil, certainly in the orthodox Christian sense).  I’m also strongly turned off by both fundamentalist/evangelical and liberal Christians, and I have serious reservations about the emerging conversation.

I’m not certain that I want all of my life to be Jesus-flavored.  In other words, I’m not ready to devote myself completely to Jesus, and I don’t know if I’m even interested in doing so–sometimes it seems great, but usually it seems like to make it work for me I’d have to do a lot of self-brainwashing that I am absolutely unwilling to do.

What about the personal transformation that I claimed to have felt beginning?  If that’s the result I want from religion, and my intuition says Christianity offer it, and I’ve even felt its beginnings as I started to practice Christianity, then why did I stop?  They were great, I’ll admit it.  In fact, This is not an easy question to answer.  Maybe personal transofrmation isn’t really what I’m wanting after all.  Or maybe it is, but there’s too much other stuff in the package of Christianity (or even in the package of Jesus), such that I feel the need to look elsewhere for transformation.  Or maybe a part of the transformation I wanted was a connection, a relationoship with God that never seemed to actually happen.  Perhaps the transformation I want is not just into a better person, but a better person that is connected to God.  And I certainly didn’t feel like that was happening.  Not even a little bit.

So what am I supposed to make of all of this?  I’m at a loss.  On some level I have an attraction to Jesus and to Christianity, but not such that I would be willing to call myself (or think of myself as) Christian in any meaningful sense.  Does it matter?  On one level, no–I can believe whatever I want, of course.  On another level, if I could self-identify as a Christian, then it would give so much direction to an otherwise extremely difficult (and basically directionless) spiritual journey.  Maybe that’s not enough.  As usual, I just don’t know.

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