There Are No Teams

I’m re-reading Antony Flew’s 2007 book There Is A God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind.  In the Preface, Roy Varghese laments the rise of the “new atheists,” Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.  Dismissing their work as largely demagoguery, he ties them to Bertrand Russell (who was influential to my deconversion), whom he accuses of contributing little to advancement of religious discussion, but gaining notoriety through sarcasm and colorful language.  He then, says the following:

"The chief target of these books is, without question, organized religion of any kind, time, or place.   Paradoxically, the books themselves read like fundamentalist sermons.  The authors, for the most part, sound like hellfire-and-brimstone preachers warning us of dire retribution, even of apocalypse, if we do not repent of our wayward beliefs and associated practices.  There is no room for   ambiguity or subtlety.  It’s black and white.  Either you are with us all the way or one with the enemy.  Even eminent thinkers who express some sympathy for the other side are denounced as traitors.  The evangelists themselves are courageous souls preaching their message in the face of imminent martyrdom."

I think Varghese is exactly right on this point.  While his preface is an amazing example of how to be a hypocrite while also saying something important, this paragraph sums up a huge problem on all sides of the religious conversation.  We all think we’re right.  We all think “they” are wrong, and more than being wrong, they have bad intentions, and can’t be trusted.  When I was attending beer church, this was on display constantly.

When Antony Flew came to believe in God (the Prime Mover, not the Christian God) based on what he perceived to be solid evidence, he was practically carried around the world by believers proclaiming, “See!  You guys are wrong!”  Likewise, when evangelical preachers like Dan Barker and Jerry DeWitt go from Christians to atheists, they are touted by the freethinkers as an example of how Christians ought to be able to see the error of their ways, and reject their silly faith.

What’s interesting about the converts (Flew, Barker and DeWitt) is how noticeably different their approach is compared to the evangelicals (Varghese, Hitchens etc.).  Because they’ve been on the other side, they don’t treat people who disagree with them like they’re stupid.  Certainly they weren’t stupid when they held those beliefs themselves.  I think people like Flew and Barker can be quite useful for those who need validation as they reach the conclusion that they’ve been wrong.

We might ask ourselves why it’s so easy to demonize people who have done nothing other than hold a different idea.  What threat does an atheist pose to a Christian?  What threat does a Christian pose to an atheist?  Certainly there are some doctrines that don’t help mend these fences.  Eternal hell as punishment for not holding a narrow truth certainly presents an issue.  Fortunately, this doctrine is losing steam, both as it contributes to people leaving their faith, and as believers reject it as bad theology.  With that threat less prevalent, can we begin to discuss these issues in good faith, assuming that no matter who is speaking, she is being honest in what she says, and charitable in her responses?

For those to whom the existence or non-existence of God matters, who have rejected agnosticism as laziness, and who try really hard to determine the answer to the question, let’s hammer out the arguments thoroughly, admit when we’re wrong, and see if by having these discussions, we can improve the world we live in.  The solutions to poverty, wars, and inequality don’t require common ground on God.  If we’re willing to trust each other, I think we’ll find that we want the same things, and can achieve those things together.

For your viewing pleasure:
Dan Barker’s testimony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-91oN4Km5U
Jerry DeWitt’s testimony: http://youtu.be/ZZ5AmfluwjY?t=2m
Anthony Flew: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbyTwmaJArU
 (sorry for how crappy Flew’s video is.  He’s an old, old man, and most of his more coherent stuff is pre-YouTube)

First Word 5/19/13

Text of my opening message at West Hills Friends on 5/19/13




Evangelicalism taught me to be a fighter.  Fight for the truth, no matter what it costs.  Fight for God, even at the expense of others’ feelings.  Fight for the Bible, even if faith is all you have to fight with.  Nobody told me that faith is a fleeting weapon.

Quaker retreat stirred some stuff up within me, and I’ve been struggling to put them to words.  The group was invited, without the usual pre-requisite that one be prompted by the supernatural, to speak about what they were feeling, about their current situation, whatever it may be.  It was my chance, I thought, to say the things I’ve been feeling without having to pretend that a spirit wants me to say them.  But I couldn’t speak.  I bit my upper lip and tried to keep the tears silent.

When I realized I didn’t believe in God anymore, intellectually or emotionally, I thought I did a pretty good job of putting my history in its proper context.  Church and faith had been a result of family influence, as we went every Sunday.  I, as the child of two confident people, had become zealous in my faith, sometimes obnoxiously so.  This would have happened to just about anyone in my situation, so I reasoned.  And it’s true.  Most kids who grow up with a faith system in their pocket tend to hang on to it.  Other religious ideas seem foreign, not part of the safety of home.  This attachment isn’t a good measure of the validity of these beliefs, but it’s a good explanation for why it’s so hard to leave the faith of our childhood.  Attending West Hills has made me see, by contrast, the damage that evangelicalism did to me, separate from issues of faith.

Evangelicalism taught me that it is virtuous to be stubborn in one’s convictions.  Adulthood has shown me that this is wrong.  The fool, upon being shown his errors, should change his mind.  It is not virtuous of him to cling to his error.  What began as stubborn apologetics became stubborn insistence that we should watch Survivor first, then go to bed.  Your valid argument that sleep is more important loses to my virtuous hold on the remote.  Evangelicalism taught me it’s a good thing to stand out from the crowd, that your message is more likely to be received if people know who you are.  What started with zealous evangelism became a narcissistic need to be special.  I have to stand  out wherever I go.  If we’re all playing golf, I’m special because I’m left-handed.  If we’re having dinner, I have to find a conversation topic that I’m more knowledgeable about than you are.  And if we’re sitting in silence, I have to stand out because I’m an atheist.  As if non-belief is somehow inspirational.

I think I recognized my need to be special just as I should have been standing to speak at retreat.  And in this rare moments of honest self-reflection, this community invalidated my argument.  There is nothing I think or feel that isn’t being felt by someone else in this group.  When someone stands to say she doesn’t know if anything is going to happen when she dies,  I’m with her in that thought.  Someone spoke of her husband who is on a different faith path, and how much he’s enjoyed the retreat, and for the first time in a decade, I have good news to share with someone about church!  I am not alone in my doubt, but I am also not alone in my feelings of home within this community.  I am not special, and it’s a relief.

Not being special is a realization that is healing a lot of wounds.  Being special lets me be separate from, or outside of, groups of friends and family. Being special assures me that if something goes wrong, I can exit painlessly, because I was never really on the inside.  But one can’t experience the full benefits of community while insisting on being special, and outside of it.  For my growth as a person, even if never as a believer, I must learn how to envision myself as part of a group, not a special visitor.  

To close, I want to comment on Greg’s message regarding evangelism from 2 weeks ago.  While you and I may disagree on whether or not certain beliefs are worth sharing with others, we all agree that embracing our gay brothers and sisters as equals is an essential element of this community.   When I see A.J. being welcomed as a member of this meeting, another piece of my anti-religion worldview disappears.  This has been happening more and more recently.  What I want to say about evangelism is that if churches want to bring in people from the outside, be they disillusioned Christians from other denominations, or an ex-Baptist atheist who would love to find God under a rock one day, that church must embrace the gay community.  It’s practically a consensus among non-believers, and much to my surprise, a growing contingent of Christians are taking the brave stance that the God they believe in doesn’t intentionally create people that She thinks are genetically flawed.  This stance you have taken is the biggest reason I came here in the first place, and if the rumors are true that this church marches in the Pride parade, you can count this atheist as someone willing to march in line behind a church banner.

The Purity Ring

Abi Rine’s fantastic post about Christian culture’s obsession with sexual status (http://mamaunabridged.com/2013/04/04/what-im-not-going-to-tell-my-kids-about-sex/
) got me thinking about my own experience as a male in the same culture.  Cherry popping probably has its own section at your local Christian bookstore.  But why?  Certainly not because virginity is obsessed about in the Bible, because it isn’t.  While I don’t recall any seminars about wise mortgage choices or how to best help the poor, it seemed like as soon as we hit puberty, purity was the only thing that mattered.

I distinctly remember one of these seminars, held in the annex of my childhood church.  The speakers spoke of how unsafe sex is, equating the doors of the sanctuary to the material of a condom, then throwing a beach ball through it from 5 feet away, exclaiming, “see how easy it is to get AIDS?!  That beach ball is a male sperm!”  Each year, we’d all pledge, sometimes in writing, that our virginity belonged to God, and we wouldn’t give it away until our wedding day, OR ELSE!!  I don’t think we gave much thought to the “or else,” we just knew it would be a terrible, awful thing to lose our way and slip into coitus.

At some point during these puberty years, my parents gave me a purity ring as a symbol of my pledge to remain pure until marriage.  My dad even had a chunk of his wedding ring cut out and melted into it.  This certainly increased the pressure to keep it in my pants.  It also made it that much worse when I lost the ring a few years later.  And I hadn’t even had sex yet!

In Abi’s post, she uses a figure of 80% of evangelicals who lose their virginity prior to marriage.  Sounds right to me.  I lost mine in a school building during freshman year of college.  At that point I was still mostly gung-ho about Christianity, and felt a certain amount of guilt at having succumbed to my carnal desires.  But after a few days, I hardly thought about it anymore.  The same was not true for my girlfriend.  She felt a huge amount of guilt about it, which came back each time we had sex.  While I don’t remember girls being specifically singled out in our abstinence seminars, it was clear that the message she received was that her virginity was a huge piece of who she was as a person, while I had not received that message.  Certainly it was a bummer for me, but it was almost expected that a 19 year old male had had sex.  19 year-old women was still expected to be pure and holy, unpopped and waiting for the godly man in waiting.

I think Abi’s post thoroughly explains how harmful this obsession with purity in Christian culture is.  What I would add is that it distracts from what is happening in real time.  When you’re 13 and a virgin, pledging not to have sex in the future isn’t all that hard.  But as a 13 year old, what am I supposed to do with all these hormones?  In my case, from approximately age 10-15, I was attracted to everyone!  What am I supposed to do with that?  By 15 (freshman year of high school) I was terribly depressed.  I thought I was doomed to some sort of bisexual hell of a life, since nobody I knew would admit that it’s absolutely normal to have different desires during puberty than one has before and after.  There was nobody to talk to about these things.  The year I spent 4 nights a week at church was the same year I felt most alone.  Sure, I promise not to have sex, but who’s gonna promise that God didn’t create me with desires he specifically condemns (just this week, my mom told me she still thinks gay people choose to be gay)?

With the end of puberty came the return to my usual straight-person lust, and my depression went away.  And by the end of college, I could recognize that what I thought was an awful and complicated spiritual battle was just puberty doing it’s ridiculous hormonal thing.  But for those who entrust their kids to the church, there must be a better way to approach sexuality than just to obsess over virginity, or secondary virginity, and learn to help kids when they need it.  Had there been one person during that year who offered to talk to anyone struggling with same-sex desire, the worst year of my life might have been dramatically different.  Instead, all we got was talk of purity, and promise rings.  With an 80% failure rate, my hope is the church will do better for those still there so we don’t have to write blogs about our church sex trauma in our thirties.

Voting for the Bible (until it affects me personally)

I’m finding faith issues sorta boring lately, so I want to talk about something else.  I want to talk about empathy, how it affects our conclusions in personal and political matters, and whether with enough self-reflection we ought to be able to change our minds without having to confront an issue via a personal situation.

Republican senator Rob Portman announced his support for gay marriage last week, 2 years after his gay son came out to him and his wife.  He is likely the most conservative Republican in the senate to have taken this position.  His position changed because with the knowledge that his own say is gay, has always been gay, and didn’t choose to be gay, he couldn’t stomach the idea of his son being treated unfairly.  His interpretation of the Bible seems to have also changed based on his personal confrontation with the issue.

“"It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a Dad who loves his son a  lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have -- to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years," Portman said.

Portman said that his son, who is now a junior at Yale University, inspired him to reassess his position on same-sex unions. The senator also consulted clergy on the matter, as well as friends such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter Mary is openly gay. According to Portman, Cheney told the senator to "follow his heart" on the matter.

"The overriding message of love and compassion that I take from the Bible, and certainly the Golden Rule, and the fact that I believe we are all created by our maker, that has all influenced me in terms of my change on this issue," Portman said.”

While my gay friends were quite excited to have Portman’s support, I felt disappointed that it took something so personal to make him look in the mirror.  Shouldn’t we be able to look at any issue as if it personally affects us, and make our decisions from that perspective?  White people will never be black, but we can see the harm in racism and discrimination.  So why is gay marriage and acceptance so different?  Both are easily supportable with Bible verses, yet some issues are easy for people to see from outside their own perspective, and some aren’t.  Why is this?

Certainly not all issues are as simple as racism. The use of taxpayer money for social programs can’t, in my opinion, be resolved simply by asking how we would vote if our own children needed those programs.  But it’s certainly a good starting point.  How would we think differently if our own daughters got pregnant at 15?  Or our sons fell in love with an undocumented immigrant?  Our it was one of our kids at Sandy Hook?   Maybe we’d see things differently, maybe not, but I propose we don’t take the “if it were my family” approach often enough.  A friend of mine recently wrote, discussing his increased empathy, that it didn’t mean he was going to raise taxes to help people.  So if not taxes, what?  What are we going to do differently today, that we would end up doing anyway if an issue affected us personally?

Perhaps we wouldn’t change anything.  But at minimum, I think we’d gain a little more understanding for people that disagree with us, and take the edge off a lot of the things we say to each other.  Many political issues don’t directly affect our kids right now.  But they affect somebody, and if we’re going to vote or act against those peoples’ wishes, let’s make sure we’re doing it with forethought and empathy.


All quotes via Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/rob-portman-gay-marriage_n_2881805.html

First Word

Text of my First Word speech, given at West Hills Friends, 2/24/2013


The castle walls of Hinson Baptist Church stood tall amongst the humble SE Portland houses.  I first found God there.  Younger than ten, I confirmed to the pastor that yes, I believe in the redeeming power of Jesus Christ, yes, I have asked Him to forgive me of my sins, and yes, He is my personal Lord and Savior.  The pastor lowered me into the warm water, symbolically washing me of my sins, and pulled me up again, symbolically thrusting me into a new life - a cleansed and forgiven life.  These were convictions, held strongly and intellectually.  The truth was packaged nicely into a box, placed in my hands, and I cherished it.

Middle school began, and with it came puberty and emotional development.  I again found God there.  What had been a sensical system of ideas and facts blossomed into an intense craving to be known and loved by the only force that had ever created something from nothing.  My thoughts were consumed with my salvation, and the miracle that substitionary atonement was to me.  For hours I would converse with my savior, and he would converse with me, and I knew to the core of my being that I was a cherished son of the almighty God.  The truth was now inside an even bigger box, held strongly, and now emotionally.  And I cherished it.

By high school, much of my effort was spent trying to share the truth with others.  Where I could find a listening ear, I would passionately proclaim the truth of Christ, the depravity of man, and the single source of salvation that was freely offered, should one only reach out and take it.  Memorizing the book of Phillipians, we took to the streets, looking for anyone who wanted to go to heaven.  I chalked up convert after convert, each one another soul saved from damnation by my God, who could be nothing but loving.  Where questions arose, someone was there to provide an answer.  And I had lots of question.  Questions about bushmen in Africa who had never heard of the Lord, questions about how so many smart people could fall for Democratic politics, and questions about hell.  I had so many questions that eventually the youth pastors ran out of answers, and I turned to books.  Books that didn’t assume the infallibility of the Bible.  Books that did not fit inside my box.

Beginning college, the emotion of my faith kept me going strong at first.  Though my questions were still present, I was meeting other Christians who weren’t as conservative, but still had the same fire.  Perhaps, I thought, the core of my truth was correct, but some of the details weren’t black and white.  I could live with that.  But when one holds a book to be infallible, and a belief system to be perfect and complete, it doesn’t matter if one factual error is found or a hundred.  The bow is off the box, and it’s just a matter of time until it all falls apart.

To agree with one of my favorite songwriters, I discovered hell to be the poison in the well.  The conviction that hell, even a temporary one, could not co-exist with any kind of loving God led to a series of, what I believe are logical conclusions.  Without a hell, the need for salvation disappears.  And without a need for salvation, Jesus becomes irrelevant.  Coupled with a thorough review of the arguments for the existence of God at all, my box of truths emptied slowly and entirely over a period of 4-5 years.  It is common for people to believe that faith or lack of faith is within a person’s control.  I don’t believe this to be true.  Whether I wanted to or not, I was forced to watch as my personal lord and savior climbed out of the box and walked away.

It’s been a matter of years since my faith left me, completely and most likely permanently.  I am convinced that the evidence does not support the existence of God, and without that issue resolved, discussions of complicated belief structures like Christianity are, to me, akin to debating what color a unicorn’s horn is.  But arriving at atheism is hardly a satisfying conclusion.  Atheism gives me intellectual satisfaction, but it doesn’t give me hope.  I don’t want my life as an Earthling to be the end of the story.  While the evidence suggests that it is, my daily struggle is to be content with the evidence.  I want to be wrong.  I want there to be something else.

If there is something else, it makes sense to me that I won’t find it behind an intolerant pulpit.  I won’t find it with people who treat others badly because of how they were born or believe violence is an acceptable method of problem solving.  I hold out hope that I might find it in silence.  And even if I never find it, I believe there is value in community.  I believe there is value in allowing my kids to follow their own path.  My daughter learned of God from her daycare provider, and believes very strongly.  She knows her dad doesn’t, and her mom isn’t sure.  But when she tells me, as she did very recently, “Daddy, I hope that when I’m older I still believe in Jesus,” I believe I owe it to her to be surrounded by those who do, and let the cards fall where they may.  These are the reasons I’m here.

Evolution Sunday

I thought I had taken away religion’s ability to disappoint me, but I found out last night that I was quite mistaken.

For a variety of reasons, my family (now a family of 4!) has been attending a Quaker meeting fairly regularly.  Quakers are generally on the liberal end of the Christian spectrum, so last week when they announced that this week was billed Evolution Sunday, I was excited!  The theme was that faith and science need not be adversaries.  Fair enough, I thought.  After all, there are certainly aspects of cosmic history that science hasn’t yet discovered, including how the smallest of cells managed to self-replicate, allowing life to finally form from whatever was first around.  And of course, how those first cells came to be in the first place.  While inserting an answer of “We don’t know, therefore God” is lazy thinking, at least it’s an answer that science hasn’t already embarrassed the way it has good portions of Genesis, Noah’s ark, etc..

The speaker was a biology professor from my alma mater George Fox University.  I had heard great things about him from my friends who had science majors at Fox, and since he is a Quaker, figured we’d be in for some pretty good science talk, if not flavored with Christianese.  Instead, he treated science like a board game you only play when the power goes out.

His first mistake was admitting that he doesn’t really care about the evolution vs. Bible discussion, and only agreed to speak because the pastor “caught him in a weak moment.”  Ok…..  He confessed that his stance is that he is a creationist, but that the methods of creation are “unknowable.”  Therefore, it’s ok with him when new students have various forms of beliefs on creation, because as long they believe in God the Creator, what they believe about creation is just a “debatable detail.”  Of interest, the existence of God, with is neither testable or provable, is the only essential component.

Now, I’m far from a scientist.  I hated the subject when I was little, but have become much more interested in it since becoming convinced that nature is probably all we’ve got.  I know enough to know that science has curb stomped nonsense like young-earth creationism, and yet here’s someone who absolutely knows better letting young earthers off the hook because it’s a “debatable detail.”  Except that it’s not debatable, at least not scientifically.

Most of his talk was his own biography, the biography of Christian scientists before him, a brief mention of atheist Sam Harris (I suspect he forgot to delete that slide from a prior talk where he wasn’t being so polite), and finally a plug for a science association he’s a member of.  His one bit of red meat was recounting a phone call he received from a parent who thought that if one wasn’t a 7-day and young earth creationist, they were going to hell, because THE BIBLE SAYS SO!!!  His response was that the sun wasn’t created until day 4 according to Genesis, so the prior 3 24 hour days would have existed how?  He didn’t get into how plants, created on day 3, managed to live without the sun, but hey, how much can an atheist ask for in church?

I’m frustrated about this because education is supposed to cure ignorance, not pat it on the back and tell it it’s still a decent person.  And here, in a church of all places, a guy who knows better was coddling ignorance.  How is the church supposed to grow out of its generational love of anti-science if even the scientists won’t rid them of their bad information?  And how am I, as a seeker, supposed to take this place seriously if this is as close as it gets to smart religion?

A few points of personal responsibility: it’s not anyone’s job to fulfill me spiritually.  It’s not the church’s job to cater to non-believers.  My disappointment is because of my own incorrect assumptions about what would be said on “Evolution Sunday.”  That said, the most spiritual fulfillment I can find these days is watching Neil Tyson talk about the universe on the YouTube, which makes me think this journey might not be worth the effort I’m putting into it.

Smile Into the Abyss

Melanie Mock, a blogger whose work is freakin’ awesome (http://deconstructingchristianimages.blogspot.com/) asked me a really good question that has kind of a long answer.  After posting links to atheist articles or videos, she asked why these resources resonate with me.  To answer this, I probably need to juxtapose the mindset of faith vs. the mindset of no faith.

As a believer, the world is full of wonder, and it is full of answers.  As a teenager, my life had purpose - I was a son of God, worshipping Christ by witnessing of his sacrifice to those around me, and doing my best to follow His guidance in my daily life.  There was a sense of urgency to my actions, as Christ could return at any time, and I certainly hoped He would.  I believed in angels and demons, and especially after a few Frank Peretti books, believed there was spiritual warfare at play all around me.  I attended street-preaching seminars (for one of them, memorizing the book of Phillipians), went with the church youth group on mission trips to Mexico and Indian reservations in Montana, hoping to spread Christ’s salvation to those who didn’t know about it.

The world was black and white in those times.  The Bible had the answers to any question that was important.  Why are we here?  What happens when we die?  What do I need to do to reach heaven?  These truths were so convincing to me, that it gave me the courage to tell it to others with absolute confidence, and many people accepted Christ after talking to me about them.  On even the worst day, I could find purpose and comfort in my status as a follower of Christ, who was with me always.

The loss of that faith doesn’t happen quickly.  Once the intellectual realization is there, the emotional connection takes awhile to sever.  The urge to pray persists long after you’re pretty sure nobody is listening.  There are divisions created by faith that don’t disappear right away.  There is the fear of what will happen when people find out…

Atheists are lonely.  I don’t mean in a cosmic sense, but in a very real physical sense.  Faith comes with community, family, celebration and love.  Once a person has no more faith, many of these other things disappear as well.  There’s no welcoming committee into atheism.  When I lost my faith, the internet wasn’t what it is today.  There weren’t support groups or thousands of YouTube videos that allowed me to know I wasn’t alone.  I only knew one other atheist personally, and we weren’t close friends.  It’s a conclusion that one reaches mostly alone, and once reached, can often leave one alone for quite a long time.  My loss of faith significantly damaged my relationship with my mom, and is the reason I have almost nothing to talk about with my sister, who is now a Pentacostal pastor.  I have a number of long-time friends that continue to hold the worldview that I have rejected.  This leaves those friendships limited to topics that don’t invite conflict (In Christian circles, it is common to praise God for things that happen, or for missionary work to be an acceptable life goal.  How is an atheist friend supposed to react to these things, which are believed to be nonsense?  Most of the time, I think the best response is no response).

To answer Melanie’s question, these videos and articles resonate with me because it provides a sense of validation that there are other people who have reached the same conclusion.  Dan Barker’s video especially resonates with me because he lived the life I lived (although he was far more committed to evangelism), and reached the same conclusion, and had the same emotional difficulties with it that I did.  Certainly there are atheists who go beyond simply discussing why there’s no reason to believe in God, and go into mockery of religion and religious people.  I’m not a big fan of that stuff, but I understand why people do it.  Atheists face a huge amount of discrimination based on a lack of belief.  We only have one person in congress of like mind, while we account for anywhere from 10-20% of the population.  Belief is pushed on us everywhere we go, usually without the inflicters being aware of it.  Finding others who have escaped religion provides a sense of community that can only be partially imitated with friends and family who still believe in talking snakes and eternal punishment.  And without an afterlife to relieve of us stress, often times community is best we can hold onto.

I’m not hoping to unconvert anyone by sharing these ideas or resources.  By nature, faith is difficult to crack with logic and reason.  This is why most people have to lose faith by themselves.  They’ve been taught their whole life that faith is outside the realm of the human mind.  It’s a convenient trick that prevents otherwise smart people from realizing they’re wrong.  Ultimately, the only reason that I talk about this stuff is because I want to be understood, I want to be available for anyone I know who finds themselves on a similar path, and I hold out some hope that those who are using their faith to harm others might have a moment of self-awareness.

Atheist Resources

I don't have much new to say, but I've been doing some inspiring reading and listening lately, and thought I'd pass along some links for your spare-time, should you be so inclined.  I'm largely past the point of hoping that some variant of religion will come along and rescue me from my lack of faith.  Fortunately, I'm also largely past the point of despairing about it.  Here are some ways to either understand the atheist condition, or, on the off-chance you are one, some friends to share the experience with:

Susan Jacoby on the Blessings of Atheism
 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/opinion/sunday/the-blessings-of-atheism.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

David Bazan on doubt and the decision to un-convert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXNsdARmDfE

Ricky Gervais is interviewed by Richard Dawkins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd92qy2ZmV0

Penn Jillette on why Mitt Romney isn't crazy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qJDd-2tM-A

Christopher Hitchens, approaching death, discusses his mortality
http://gawker.com/5608640/index.php?op=showcustomobject&postId=5608640&item=0

Evangelical pastor-turned-atheist Dan Barker discusses losing faith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-91oN4Km5U

Losing Faith

Losing faith was a long process.  For 20 years I built a structure with many moving parts.  When combined, the structure could defend itself from any attack - the attack of other religions, of liberals, of abortion lovers, of doubt itself.  This faith that I had, that we as a group of Christians had, was impenetrable.  Within those walls dwelled certainty.  Certainty that we were loved by the creator of everything, that our faith granted us the keys to heaven, and the certainty that everyone else was wrong.

In recent weeks, I’ve gotten clarity on why this loss of faith has been so painful for me.  From the beginning of my upbringing in the Baptist church, it was never enough to leave faith alone.  Faith always came with justification.  Everything we believed came with a reason why it was true.  Whether it be believing in creation (we can prove this through science!), the flood (science again), the life of Jesus (there are x number of manuscripts from the Bible, which is waaaaay more than any other book), etc.. it wasn’t ever just about believing these things were true.  It was about KNOWING they were true.  People like Josh McDowell and Randy Alcorn wrote books giving kids the “answers” to all the questions they might face from their heathen friends.  I memorized all these answers, forged them with my faith, and proceeded to try to convince the unbelievers that they were wrong.

Faith, by definition, does not involve the known.  It involves the believed, things past the point of evidence and proof.  The parts of my religious experience that I mourn to this day are the parts that truly were faith.  I miss the emotion that comes with believing Jesus was speaking to me directly.  I miss the feeling of purpose that came with an undeniable place in this world.  I miss the connection my relationship with Christ gave me with my mom.  In many ways, I miss Jesus.

By tying rationalization to faith so strongly, the church unknowingly made it quite easy to start tearing down the faith structure.  Once I was smarter than the people leading youth group, and their answers turned to some form of “you just have to have faith,” it wasn’t good enough.  I’d never had to just “have faith” before - there was always a reason to believe.  I didn’t think my faith was built on fairy tales and wishful thinking, I thought it was built on solid evidence, or at least, was more likely to be true than not.  When the evidence I thought was there turned out to be either made-up, driven by bad logic, or intentionally misleading, I took my structure apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left.

What lingers, what keeps me from being content with the dreary conclusions of atheism are the remnant feelings of true faith that I want to so badly to hang on to.  To feel connected to the creator of everything, to feel like I have a purpose, to feel a guiding hand.  As a father, I feel like I owe it to my daughter to never be content with what I think at any given moment.  Thanks to some indoctrination by her daycare lady, Taylor really wants me to believe in God, and in Jesus.  We’ve been attending a Quaker meeting for a few months, and she enjoys the Sunday school there.  Last week she asked me right after church, “dad, do you believe in Jesus now?”  I told her I don’t, but she can if she wants to.  After all, I know exactly what it feels like.

I discovered an album by one of my favorite musicians, David Bazan.  His path is very similar to mine.  He wrote an album about losing faith, and this song has been with me this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxI8oLQ1kec

In Stitches, by David Bazan

my body bangs and twitches
some brown liquor wets my tongue
my fingers find the stitches
firmly back and forth they run

i need no other memory
of the bits of me i left
when all this lethal drinking
is to hopefully forget
about you

i might as well admit it
like i even have a choice
the crew have killed the captain
but they still can hear his voice

a shadow on the water
a whisper in the wind
on long walks with my daughter
who is lately full of questions
about you

when job asked you question
you responded "who are you
to challenge your creator?"
well if that one part is true

it makes you sound defensive
like you had not thought it through
enough to have an answer
like you might have bit off
more than you could chew

On Guns

On Guns

With another murder/suicide in the news, the usual gun control debate is all over the media.  It’s a story we’ve heard before.  Angry person with possession of a death toy, people wind up dead.  The argument is one we’ve heard before, too.  While not exactly a liberal vs. conservative issue, there seem to be two sides: outlaw guns (or at least the automatic ones) vs. don’t outlaws guns.

The arguments for outlawing guns are certainly compelling.  I’m not too interested in the stats, but we can all agree that most violent and accidental deaths in this country, if they don’t involve a vehicle, involved a gun.  We can probably also agree that this is not what we want to be happening.  But is that where our agreement has to stop?

The pro-gun side will cite the founding fathers, the 2nd amendment, and the natural human need to defend one’s self.  The prohibition side will argue that automatic weapons go far beyond anything needed for simple defense, will probably bring up the nefarious intentions of the NRA, and can provide endless stats showing that far too many accidental deaths occur because children have access to guns, as do angry people in an argument.

In general, I try to base my opinions on laws on pragmatics.  Just like with abortion and the use of  most drugs, just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean someone should go to jail for it.  It’s also pragmatic to recognize that politicians aren’t interested in using their political muscle on issues related to guns.  The outrage towards guns flares after an incident, then dies when people forget it.  A few months later, something else happens, we all throw bumper stickers at each other, and then we move on.  Let’s admit that after Columbine, Batman-gate, and hundreds of accidental child deaths, if guns are still legal, it’s not likely to change.

So what now?  There’s an awful lot of apathy on both sides.  The prohibitionists spend a lot of time arguing for the banning of certain guns (much like pro-life protesters spend a lot of time waving signs in the rain), but very little time trying to end the systemic problems that bring the issue up in the first place (also like said protesters).  The pro-gun people simply make their usual points, and go on their way, apparently with little concern with how many people are dying from death toys.

If we really care about people like we say we do, we need to do better than rehashing our arguments every time someone kills with a gun.  We can’t control many of the systemic causes of our problem.  We can’t force the TV networks to tone down the rhetoric and name-calling anytime someone disagrees.  We can’t take away the speech rights of musicians, rappers, and artists that glorify violence.  And we probably can’t end the nation’s absurd bloodlust, which results in the worship of soldiers and war.

But we can control what we say as individuals.  One at a time, we can make our best effort to calm down, listen before speaking, and treat other people with decency and respect.  We don’t have to follow the example being given by our favorite political pundit.  We don’t have to call people idiots on Facebook.  If there’s one systemic problem we can fix all by ourselves, it’s the elevated tone of our routine conversations.  And I’d suggest that if we can all calm down, we’ll all be less likely to believe that our problems have to be resolved instantly and violently.

P.S.  Slave-owning Brits founding a country doesn’t make them experts on 21st century domestic policy.  Just sayin’.

Military Philosophy and Pacifism, Part 2

While my solder friend finishes his contribution to this series, here's an entry from Mike McGeehon - Quaker, Pacifist, and school teacher.  If you would like an entry all to yourself, please send it to me!

What is your religious affiliation, if any?
I am a member of the Society of Friends (Quaker).

Politically, what are the issues that are most important to you?
I think my politics are pretty much wrapped in my personal religious beliefs: that violence is the weapon of the weak; that all people are equal; that integrity is important; and that we are all in this together, so what does the greatest good for all of humanity.

Do you have a political party affiliation?
I would be a member of the Liberal Democrats in Great Britain, but unfortunately they do not exist here. I am a registered democrat, leaning towards Pacific Green.

Please describe your involvement in the military, if any
My family has a rich military history (as many poor families do). I personally have never been a member of a military branch.

What do you think the function of the military should be (ideally, not based on any current situations)?
In an ideal world, we would have no need for any standing armies, because we would be able to resolve our differences in a civilized manner through negotiation and mutual best interest. Talk about idealism!

In what situations, if any, is it acceptable for our military to set foot on foreign soil?
Honestly? I don’t really think there is a reason for us to set foot on Foreign soil militarily. I do not believe in just war; I do not believe that you can bring peace through force.

In what situations is it acceptable to kill foreign soldiers?
Do you mean for me personally? It’s never acceptable. Even in self defense, which I would participate in reluctantly but honestly, I don’t think there’s a morally acceptable reason to kill anyone.

In any current military conflicts, do you think the people that are dying as a result of war have anything to do with the decisions that led to the war?
In some ways, yes they do. They are complicit with whatever cause has led them to military action. But are they wholly complicit? Not necessarily. A lot of kids end up dead because of an idealistic belief that they are serving their country when they enter an army, when often they are serving their country’s interests (that’s a very different thing).

Morally, what does it say about a country if a conflict has to be resolved through violence?
It says that they have not looked for the long, slow, difficult and ultimately stronger resolution of conflict through diplomacy, dialogue, and resolution. This takes YEARS, and absolutely goes against human nature (we are designed to kill. Look at our forward facing eyes, our tool making abilities, our strategic based minds). But I’m an idealist, and think that diplomacy is always the best way.

What do you think about pacifist ideology?
I think it is naive, utopian, and ultimately probably foolish. But it’s the tent that I have raised for myself.

Do you make a distinction between violence by a group (like the military), and violence conducted by an individual on a personal level?
A group affects far more people.

Anything else you want to say?
Please note that I know how idealistic and foolish my point of view seems. I know in the real world war is going to happen. As I said above, we are built for violence, all the way to the DNA level. But I truly do believe that violence is wrong, even when I revel in it.

Military Philosophy and Pacifism, Part 1

I’ve been wanting to write about the military for a long time.  It’s a difficult subject.  Like with most things, there’s a lot of nuance in my opinions, and because I care about people on nearly every side of the issue, it’s not something I get emotionally worked up about, but sometimes I feel like I should.  Rather than giving only  my opinion, I’ve written a list of questions that I will answer for myself, and I’ve asked some friends to answer them also (their entries will be up once I receive them back).  My hope is that the group of answers will give food for thought, regardless of one’s current opinion.  There are no easy answers to problems of violence, but I’m optimistic that there’s still room for progress to be made.

Demographics
What is your religious affiliation, if any?
    The most succinct way I can answer this question is that I’m a recovering atheist.

Politically, what are the issues that are most important to you?
    I’m a huge proponent of people being more important than money.  So, issues like marriage equality, equal pay for women, lowering the income gap between workers are bosses, and universal health care are very important to me.  Support for marriage equality and opposition to the death penalty are probably the only two issues that I’m 100% unwilling to budge on.

Do you have a political party affiliation?
    I’m registered as a Democrat, but am considering switching to the Green party, mostly because of the issues discussed below.
Please describe your involvement in the military, if any
    None

 Questions about the military and violence

What do you think the function of the military should be (ideally, not based on any current situations)?
    It saddens me that we need a military in the first place.   In a perfect world, conflict would be resolved peacefully through negotiation, compromise, and a common respect for the humanity of everyone involved.  Obviously that’s not the world we live in.  I’m realistic enough to admit that a military has to exist, but I’m not sure that it has to exist for any purpose besides defense (and when I say defense, I mean the opposite of offense).  I think the libertarians have it right when it comes to the military.  If it must exist, it should exist to defend the citizens of our country, within our own country, and whenever possible, without the use of violence.

In what situations, if any, is it acceptable for our military to set foot on foreign soil?
    I have trouble justifying this in any circumstance.  In my view, our military traveling abroad to impose the will of the USA via violence, or the threat of violence, is not justifiable on moral grounds.  It attempts to resolve disagreement through physical force, rather than with respect and care towards other people.  The obvious problem with this is that our “enemies” are no more inclined towards peace, and can’t be counted on to act peacefully.  There’s not an easy answer to this dilemma, and I don’t pretend to have one.  But I’m confident that trading dead bodies is not going to resolve whatever conflict we might be sending our military to resolve.

In what situations is it acceptable to kill foreign soldiers?
    If it’s on their turf, I don’t think it is acceptable.  It’s hard to argue that our military is defending me thousands of miles outside my country.  Since we’re discussing philosophy more than current events, I’ll avoid Bush’s wars, but in general, there don’t seem to be many, if any, instances of others directly threatening Americans in a manner that can be resolved by traveling to their country and killing them, without making the situation worse.

In any current military conflicts, do you think the people that are dying as a result of war have anything to do with the decisions that led to the war?  Morally, what does it say about a country if a conflict has to be resolved through violence?
   One of the easy criticisms of war is that it’s started by those who have little risk of being harmed, and fought mostly by those whose best life path was to join the military (how different would things be if the draft were still in place - I suggest we‘d think more carefully about going to war if our children were unwilling participants).  While there is certainly bravery involved in signing up to fight, I don’t agree with our national sense of pride over being a soldier.  This would be different if our soldiers were kept here in a defensive role, but today’s soldier signs up to be sent around the world either threatening violence to strangers, or enacting it, and I don’t see the nobility in that.  We’re so often told that our soldiers are “defending our freedom,” or “fighting for their country,” but my freedom is not something that anyone can take away from the other side of the world.  The ideas of equality and liberty are not threatened  - not by Muslim extremists, not by anybody.  They are ideas born of evolved thinking and moral goodness.  To kill others out of a false fear that someone wants to take our rights away (as if they could) makes a mockery of the ideas on the first place.  It’s to say, “we recognize we are equal, and we will kill you to prove it.”  Defense of values by violence says that American humanity is greater than the humanity of those we deem our enemies.  Do our enemies not also want happiness?  Do they not also believe in their own humanity, and the right to live the way they want to?  There has to be a better way to allow everyone freedom than to kill those with the least physical power.


  What do you think about pacifist ideology?
  I know a lot of pacifists.  I respect the purity of their philosophy, and I wish I could call myself one.  But for mostly intuitive reasons, I can’t quite there, for the reasons below.

Do you make a distinction between violence by a group (like the military), and violence conducted by an individual on a personal level?
     I think it’s a big distinction, and it’s the reason why pacifism ultimately doesn’t quite attract me.  Military violence is cold, calculated, intentional, and attempts to settle disputes with might rather than intellect.  Personal violence is often the same, but not always.  It’s not usually a good idea to develop philosophy based on unlikely scenarios, but I do in this case.  To put it simply, were a member of my family in direct, immediate danger of death or serious injury by another person, and it was only in my power to prevent it by causing death or serious injury, I would do it.  I think nature shows this to be a natural response worldwide.  In that moment, an idealist philosophy isn’t going to make me feel better about a dead wife or child, and I don’t think it’s a moral failure to commit violence in that situation.  I don’t have a better explanation than that.

Anything else you want to say?
  There are a decent number of things that cause an instant recoil when I see them.  One of the big ones over the last 12 years is the hero worship being given to the American soldier.  After 9/11, the American flag wasn’t just a country symbol, it became the symbol of might over right, of unapologetic bluster, of ignorant rhetoric instead of careful consideration.  Eventually, the country realized its mistake, and we have largely become hesitant about war once again.  But the solder worship continues.  We can talk poorly of our teachers, scientists, politicians, and police, but god help us if we criticize our instruments of war.  We are asked to believe that the young men and women of our armed forces are out there somehow preventing our freedoms from being taken away, and dying for the American utopia of freedom and justice, but I don’t see the cause and effect.  I don’t believe that if our military were smaller, and kept at home, that our liberties would disappear.  And I don’t believe that a soldier dying because of a roadside bomb has any correlation to whether America will continue to be a great nation.  These are preventable deaths, they’re tragic deaths, but if we‘re going to call them heroic deaths, I propose we need to assess what it means to be a hero, and apply the word equally to civil servants, ranging from teachers and police to scientists and authors.

Following an order to kill is not valiant, nor is being killed while doing it.  I grieve our lost soldiers, and I have known a few of them.  But if the pageantry involved in a military funeral is bestowed even on those who have done little more than volunteer and show up, let us equally honor the lives of those who served their country through non-violence, peace, and the education of society.  Let’s not treat our soldiers poorly, as we did after Vietnam, and some on the left did in the early 2000s.  But let’s also not elevate them to being better than the rest of us simply because of their bravery in the face of potential death.  We’re all people, we all live and die, and as much as possible, we all serve our country the best we can.

That said, for those who do follows their orders, and suffer physical and mental harm because of it, we must improve our medical and psychological treatment for them.  I’ll let my friend Nick speak to this in greater detail in his entry, but our VA system is struggling mightily to keep its promises.  The patriotic zeal with which we send our friends into battle seems to disappear once they need something in return.  If our tax dollars can send them to death’s door, surely those same dollars can help repair the damage once they come home.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments, either on the blog or on Facebook.  Thanks.

Skepticism, and Purging Wrong Doctrine

While atheism is a tenable position (the lack of belief in gods, NOT the faith statement that there are no gods), its conclusions leave a lot to be desired emotionally, and effectively end the spiritual journey.  This statement has been the beginning idea for my current spiritual wandering.  But in searching for a way out of this cycle of despair, I’m realizing that often times skepticism pulls me back in.  Skepticism is easy.  Anytime something looks bright, shiny, and new, skepticism is there to remind you of its faults, so that it is no longer attractive.  And with skepticism as my dark passenger, when will anything seem worth the effort that I’m trying so hard to put into it?

I’ve been attending a Quaker meeting for about a month now, and it’s been a mercurial ride.  Some days it seems absolutely meant to be, others I feel embarrassed to be there, like I’m fooling myself on purpose.  Since I generally don’t believe in counseling (skepticism again), I try to self-reflect on what makes things pleasant or unpleasant for me.  In the pleasant times, I feel like there really is a way out of atheist despair, something that is concrete enough to not be ridiculous, but open enough to allow me to wiggle around within it.  In the unpleasant times, it’s like I’m back at Baptist church, or college, where there was a lot of showmanship, but very little acknowledgement of the difficulties with the consistency of what was being preached.  There are a lot of issues I’ve been thinking about, and would like to write about when I can formulate things a little better (the issue of primary authority is a big one), but for the time being, I’m realizing that I have a lot of baggage from the faith of my youth.  Ideas that need to be purged so I can move on from them and listen to/for whatever might be out there trying to talk to me.

Hell is first.  The issue that started my departure from Christianity is still real to a lot of people I care about, including my mom.  She said to me recently that she sometimes thinks about being in heaven without some of her kids being there, and it makes her sad.  Well of COURSE it makes her sad.  It’s a terrible thought!  The God of love allowing His own creation to suffer forever over a faith decision sound like a petulant child that gets his toy taken away.  Except for the universalists (among the few that seem to be taking the Bible’s original language seriously), hell is such an essential doctrine of most Christian groups that it would be hard to define them without it.  And yet it’s such a simple issue to dispose of, in my opinion.  If we make a few assumptions (there is a God, God loves humanity, God wants to be reconciled with his creation, and God is all-powerful), eternal hell is gone.  But people don’t seem to want it that way.  They cling to a silly notion that the free will of humanity (because going to hell is MAN’S decision, not God’s) is so strong, that even God can’t override it.  God really really wants us all in heaven, but NOPE, human free will wins, so people stay in hell by choice.  While this idea makes me angry, I need to purge it.  It’s already done its damage to me, and it continues to do damage to the people that believe in it, and I need to let it go.

Second is the sin nature.  The dreary religions tend to focus a lot of time and energy on what they perceive to be the negative aspects of humanity.  Because Adam and Eve screwed up, every person for the rest of time is a despicable, vile creature, only allowed to take a breath because God is so loving, unless you don’t accept a very narrow faith structure, then it’s back to hellfire once this life is over.  I don’t think the idea of sin nature is helpful to anyone.  While protestants have largely avoided Catholic guilt by emphasizing faith salvation over works salvation, the damage is still done.  People are still being trained that they are inherently despicable.  I reject this is manipulative baloney.  I much prefer the Quaker notion of there being the light of God in everyone (even there is no God - at least this belief gives us a positive starting point).  I need to purge my anger over sin nature, and have sympathy for those that embrace it, not anger that it’s still around.

Lastly, for now, is exclusivism.  Many of the world’s religions are not exclusive.  They don’t claim that their way is the only way to heaven, or nirvana, or whatever the end result is.  But in our society, exclusivism is everywhere.  Dozens of denominations within Christianity, all claiming to be the using the Bible as their authority (yet somehow all arriving at different conclusions), believe their way is the only way.  That God is so concerned with the details that unless every line of the creed is fully embraced, it’s not quite enough to earn Christ’s forgiveness.  I can’t count the number of times I heard a youth pastor tell me that if someone really believes in X, they aren’t really a Christian because they haven’t fully accept teaching Y or Z that is clearly spelled out in the Bible.  The idea that God, if she exists, is such a stickler for theology seems absurd on its face.  Exclusivism divides people who would otherwise be a community.  It creates “us” and “them” over something as silly as an idea conflict.  I’d like to imagine that God is not so immature.  Even this week, I’ve seen adults who should know better make reference to “the world,” as if the world is something separate from themselves, and they are above it.  I need to purge exclusivism.  I need to give away its power to make me angry so that I can search for the light without old wounds being allowed to distract me.

I write these things out knowing that a lot of my friends and family believe in them.  I don’t intend to insult anyone.  I wrote in my first entry that this blog is for my benefit, and it’s still true.  I’ve spent enough time being angry about religion, and I’m doing my best to let these things go.  Sometimes that means spewing the angry out so it can’t come back in.

My goal going forward is to find ideas I can accept, not just focus on things I reject.  To this end, here’s a rare piece of positivity that I wrote to a friend on Facebook, who put out a general question about what beliefs mean to us:

“I think beliefs should be few and simple. Most things can be known, and don't require belief. But if something must be believed, it shouldn't hurt other people. If it does, a person should find a way to abandon the belief for something more loving.

For me personally, abandoning beliefs in exclusivism, hell, Bible worship, being-special-because-i-was-born-in-a-certain-place-or-with-certain-preferences..rejecting these things have allowed me to start over, which is one of the best things I ever did.”


To you, the reader, what ideas might you be needing to purge?

Learning to Speak Another Language

Beer church (Wednesday night at 8pm, Horse Brass Pub, come on down!) has been a great learning experience for me over the last few months.  It’s a lot of fun to not only talk through my religious journey with an ever-changing variety of people, but also to listen to theirs.  In this setting, evangelism is not the goal, so a lot of the usual pressures of multi-faith discussions are taken away.  Souls aren’t for sale, and so people aren’t treated like prospective customers (try openly confessing to not wanting to be an atheist anymore - the sales pitches are plentiful!).

Something that has been striking to me recently is how language plays such an important part in our personal religious journeys.  The phrases and concepts people use are so different, but so often the same.  In my Baptist culture growing up, there was a lot of focus on the pessimistic interpretation of the Bible and of the world.  Ideas like original sin, depravity, hell, the need for salvation - lots of “I’m bad but God is good.”  Buddhist culture is quite the opposite.  When I attended a Buddhist meeting earlier this year, one of the few things spoken from the pulpit was “you are already perfect.”  Quakers, the liberal branch of which I’m beginning to align myself with, almost never speak of things like sin, hell, and depravity.  They speak of light, community, and peace.  Because they believe in ongoing revelation (a trait they share with the Mormons), they aren’t stuck worshipping a dead book, and this frees them to spend their time listening for truth instead of obsessing over every hermeneutical detail.

What I appreciate about liberal Quakers is their acceptance of different forms of language.  If words like God, Christ, Jesus, etc.. make you uncomfortable, don’t use them!  Many of my Quaker friends frequently refer to holding someone in the light, as opposed to “I’ll pray for you.”  For people like me who have a lot of baggage tied up in the “old language,” it’s freeing to be able to express positive will towards someone without having to fraudulently refer to prayer.

Another thing that has stood out to me at beer church is that no matter what name is given to our religious identity (yesterday we had 2 Thelemites, a conservative Vineyard member and his family, an agnostic, a Quaker pastor, and whatever I am), we all seem to want the same thing.  We want to make sense of ourselves, our lives, whatever “other than me” might be out there, and we want our understanding of these things to make our lives better.  I think it’s important that we recognize this commonality in each other.  My struggle is to remember that this is also true of those who still believe the things I have rejected.  No matter how narrow or mean I may find their beliefs to be, they hold their beliefs for the same reasons I’m looking for mine, and it does me no good to write them off.

To close for today, the Quaker pastor that attended beer church last night gave me some great advice for recognizing if a church community is right for you.  “Just stand up and yell FUCK! If they still accept you afterwards, you’re in the right place.”

On Being Willing to Believe

There are times when the desire for connection with the divine is so strong, it almost becomes a physical object.  This divine is not the same for everyone.  What I want it to be is so different from what I recognized as divine so long ago.

I’ve realized that if I can’t be certain of the spiritual things, at the very least I can discern what I want to be true, and see where that takes me.  I want there to be an eternal consciousness that involves me, both during this life and after.  I want there to be meaning to this life - to the words that are said, the actions that are done, the bonds that are created between like-minded people.  No matter when my life ends in this body, let that not be the end of me.  I want peace, but not just peace, an inner delight in the people and world around me.  I want to know, and to be known.

In my silence at West Hills Friends this past week, the sentence that kept coming back to me was, “If I want to believe, I have to be willing to believe.”  It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but being willing to believe is harder than it sounds.  It takes an active rejection of the need for logic and evidence, and an acceptance that maybe, just maybe, an experience of something divine can occur in spite of its nonsensicality. Maybe the connection I want won’t be found in words or holy books, and it certainly isn’t likely to be found in a burning bush or the physical presence of a god, which would take away the need for faith at all.

I’m embracing the idea that my search and discovery of anything divine can be my own.  It doesn’t have to fit within a denomination, it doesn’t need a label, and it doesn’t need a guide.  It doesn’t have to include the word God, or extend to the Bible or Jesus or anyone else with claims to be holy.   I’ve begun to FEEL the things I’ve been looking for, even if I don’t always know what those things are.  This struggle against faith is no longer a matter of which system has the best answers to the questions, or which proof for the existence of a god is most likely to be correct.  My most recent intuitions are that these things are valuable tools that ultimately help one to realize that they don’t matter.  The adventure is in the journey, not in the conclusion, which is likely to never come.