God

  I've always believed in God. I have had my dogma change over the years. I've had to admit some things to myself about religion and spirituality that have made and still make me uncomfortable. But, my inner dialog hasn't changed that much.

I still talk to "God" since I don't have a better name for the Ground of All Being or Source and having been raised Christian it flows easier for me to say God than to say Spirit or Source. Still, my experience with the presence I call God or Holy Spirit has certainly changed over the years.

 I have tried my best to be honest with myself about what I really think. It's really not easy in the South to admit you no longer follow the religion that most of our politicians  give lip service to and most people here still casually say "are you saved?"  I mean you can be meeting somebody for the first time and three things will come up if you're southern. Would you like a glass of tea? Where do you go to church? What college football team do you support?

Now it's okay to say "I don't really go to church" as long as you don't say "I don' t really believe in going to church." You will get a "Well, bless your heart" and a " Well you must have been hurt by religious people and my church isn't a religion." I know insert eye roll here but you have to know where you are and the south is truly a different world in many ways.

Even African American's in the south want to know where you go to church. I had a young African American co worker telling me about how Jesus wants you to do this and that. I finally said "Ya know." "you sound like every white bread Southern Baptist I have ever spoken with."  He looked shocked. Because of course he wasn't a Trump loving evangelical type. But, he was Southern and for all the fighting and racism and misunderstanding southerner's have we are all alike in many ways regardless of color. One of those ways is a healthy dose of religion from our mother's knee.

Looking at this you might ask how I still maintain my identity as a Christian since I no longer follow a dogma. Well, for one thing I have looked at religion and non religion and I honestly don't think it matters what religion you are. I have always thought it silly to think that God is so arbitrary that simply saying the sinner's prayer will get you to paradise even if you have raped, pillaged, robbed and murdered your whole life. On the other hand if you have fed the hungry and cared for the poor and treated people with dignity and still didn't say the sinner's prayer then you are going to burn forever and ever in a hell fire and brimstone.

Some things make sense to me and some don't. In the world we live in I have to be honest and  tell you that it's extremely unlikely for a virgin to give birth or a body to decay in the ground and then be knitted back together at some magical trumpet sound on the "last day." It's also unlikely that "God" would be subject to environmental factors like getting angry and being subject to the fits of rage of a human because somebody pissed him off. The creator being inside the creation as a victim of the creation is not a description of "God." But, it is a description of "god." or a god. or Superman take your pick.

So, why do I still pray? Well for one thing my experience in life has been that spiritual reality does happen. I've had dreams and intuitons and other things happen that point to more than simply brain chemistry going on. I also have my own inner dialog and while I don't think that God is a cosmic Santa Claus I do think it matters at least on a personal level when I pray or meditate.

Materialist humanism is a very poor outlook on existence. Honestly when I look at people being put into ovens and babies being raped and people being sold into slavery and all the other stull that has happened and then an atheist or humanist say's something judgmental about Hitler or Stalin or Charles Manson for that matter then I realise that they have no ground to make a judgment. If all we are and all the evil that was or will ever be done is simply due to chemical reactions and a by product of a soulless evolutionary march to oblivion then nothing really matters at all. Everybody dies and everybody is just a meatbot and you certainly don't morn when a robot dies do you? So, no I'm not an atheist and certainly not a materialist humanist.

What happens when we die? I honestly don't know. I have had some dreams and visions and inner experience. I've read a lot on Near Death Experience studies and the studies on reincarnation especially in the memories of small children who say they have lived before. I would recommend Ian Stevenson and also the University of Virginia Center of Perceptual Studies as far as Reincarnation goes. Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring and other studies of Shared Death and Near Death Experience. Also, a youtube channel called "New Thinking Allowed" with Jeffery Mislove. Now these things don't prove anything and they all have their critics. But, these are a few of the jumping off points to research and learn more about these subjects.

Still the question of why I still call myself Christian is one I wrestle with everyday. On one hand I was born and raised to be a Christian. I'm a Christian the way a Middle Eastern Arab is a Muslim or a Chinese Tibetan is a Buddhist. It's in my blood. But, there are other reasons and the biggest is this.

I admit that I feel that Jesus was telling people that we all are sons and daughters of God. Now, I'm not a biblical scholar and I'm not talking about the Southern Baptist Seminary either. I'm talking about people who know how to read the original Greek and Arabic and Hebrew and know some of the context of the ancient world. What you get in Sunday School no matter how well meaning is not the "literal" meaning of the Word of God and as a matter of fact there is no single written word that has been handed down from the mount. The bible is a collection of writings from ancient sources over 2 to 6000 years and is full of hope, myth, truth, politics and even genocide. Sorry, if that offends anybody but I'm just going by what it says. Of course as I said before I'm not qualified to give the context or original language of the bible. But, then again neither is the local preacher or the TV Evangelist either.

But, the reason I consider Christianity the superior religion in my own opinion is this. The story of Christianity is the story of the absolute ground of all being. The whole cause of the cosmo's and the whole reason there is anything at all from eternity to oblivion and thankfully that means there isn't oblivion. At least not in the way we fear it. Anyway I'll say "God." So, God actually has such a regard for the concerns and life and death of these children he has spun into this world. So much feeling that he actually decides to bring a part of himself into this world so that he can participate in the hopes and dreams and tragedy and loss of his creatures. That is love. And that is why I still call myself Christian.

Peace.