Two days ago I received this email:
Dear John,
I have a problem (and know two others who share it). I was brought up in a Bible-study church. Thirty-plus years later, I've all but abandoned the Christianity of my childhood, mainly because it made God less than loving: cold, distant, mostly interested in tripping me up, even untrustworthy. I've since joined an Episcopalian church, because they seemed to be focused on the grace and love of Jesus. I believe Jesus would be more of a Democrat than a Republican: giving to others; not worshiping the almighty dollar and big biz; loving the unlovable; accepting of homosexuality, etc. (That whole thing about homosexuality being a sin pisses me off; I know too many gays, and cannot accept they're destined to hell.)
My problem is that on a deeper level, something inside of me is saying that the Christianity of my childhood is the true way. I have a nagging in the back of my head, saying, "Episcopalians and these other sorts of liberal Christians aren't Bible-centered. They aren't right. Few will make it into heaven. Homosexuals will go to hell," etc., etc. All of that kind of thinking is so ingrained in me; it's like a stain that cannot be washed off.
My question: Could the devil have his hand in my liking my liberal Episcopal church? I know my feelings about Christianity have much to do with my psychological makeup, but knowing that doesn't give me freedom. (Some quick background info on me: my dad, the demonstrative parent, died when I was two. My mom remarried someone like her: cold and distant. They both loved the kids, but it was conditionally and from afar.) Have you ever come across anyone like me? Someone who started their lives with a legalistic and punishing concept of God, later turned away from that view in search of a loving God, but was ultimately only able to accept as true about God what they so didn't want to believe was true? That God really is a judgmental, legalistic SOB? What if the God I so do not want to believe in is the true God? Your thoughts on this would be extremely appreciated. Thank you!
First of all, thank you for writing me this letter. Simply by presenting it in the thoughtful and honest manner you have, I know you've helped others who are also burdened with this pressing, deeply personal concern.
What really jumped out at me here was, "I know my feelings about Christianity have much to do with my psychological makeup, but knowing that doesn't give me freedom." Simply thinking the thought that your theology and psychology are intermixed might not give you freedom, but the magnitude of that truth is the mountain you'll have to start taking apart if you truly desire your view of God to be unobstructed.
I'd readily bet my house and everything in it that your problem isn't that you're torn between a harshly judgmental, condemning God, and a loving, benevolent, forgiving God. I'd bet you're torn between a loving, forgiving God, and the single, illusionary entity in your mind that consists of a combination of your parents and the God they helped inculcate you with.
You wrote, "I was brought up in a Bible-study church." Look at how seamlessly, how instinctively you merge your home with your church. It's very unlikely that phrasing was simply a convention of language. It's often in how we use language -- especially when we're speaking or writing directly from our heart -- that we reveal deeper, core truths about ourselves and our foundational operating concepts that are so primordial to our identity that they're barely subject to language at all.
And look how you describe your parents: cold and distant. You couldn't pick two better words to also describe the God whom you're now fearing is the "true" God.
I strongly encourage you to consider that you've superimposed -- that, in psychological parlance, you've transferred -- your feelings about your parents onto at least part of -- the negative part of -- your conception of God. And please know that there's not a thing in the world even slightly weird or wrong about doing that. People all the time confuse God with their parents. And that they do makes perfect sense. The first thing we ever know about our parents is that, in every last meaning of the word, they are our gods. We depend wholly upon them for our survival. If they don't give us what we need, both materially and emotionally, then we just don't get what we need. Their power to make of our lives heaven or hell is absolute.
And what's one of the primary determinants of which of those two it will be? Their judgment of us! Of what we do. Of how well we behave. Of how assiduously we follow their rules. Of how "good" they decide that we are.
Out of fear and love for the gods that our parents are to us, we endeavor as children to obey the rules that they give us, so that, pleased with us, they won't make a hell of our lives; out of fear and love for God, we endeavor as adults to obey the rules that He gives us, so that, pleased with us, he won't make a hell of our afterlives.
And so we have this ancient, cultural, deeply salient tradition of a God who, essentially, spanks us forever. Who from above wags his giant scary finger at us, and in thunderous tones booms at us about how wrong, bad, and disappointing we are. Who makes us feel weak and ashamed. Who severely punishes us -- but only because, through our disobedience, we force him to.
Look what you wrote about your parents: "They loved us kids, but conditionally, and from afar." In a nutshell that captures the lion's share of 2,000 years' worth of Christian theology: God loves us, but conditionally, and from afar. Take your parents, merge them into one imposing male figure, move that figure into heaven, put a white beard and robe on him, and voilà : the popular conception of the God of the Old Testament.
But that's not the God you want to be the "true" God, is it? You do not want God to be a harsh, judgmental, dictatorial, authoritative, "cold and distant SOB." You want God to be loving, compassionate, patient, forbearing, and forgiving.
What you want is Jesus. The Jesus of the New Testament doesn't show us a God who is harsh, punishing, aloof, and vindictive. He presents a God possessed of qualities directly contrary to those, a God who loves as God alone can: absolutely, unconditionally, unmitigatedly, freely. The New Testament shows us a God ready to love us the way that as children so many of us wish our parents had loved us: exactly as we are, without regard to rules. Significantly, the only people to whom Jesus showed extreme displeasure were those authority figures who, in the name of God, judged and condemned others according to whether or not they obeyed The Rules.
Why, it's like so many of us had fathers named Pharisee, and mothers named Sadducee.
Just like everyone else in the world, you have work to do in separating your ideas about God from your deeply rooted ideas about your parents. At the beginning of it, that process is like sitting down before a chess board upon which are both chess and checker pieces. The simple and complex games are all mixed up. You can't tell which if any rules apply. You don't know what pieces you're supposed to move, or how, or where. You have no idea how to win. You don't know who's supposed to be crowned king.
Sorting, as it were, the chess from the checker pieces, isn't easy. It takes a lot of emotional work done over a great deal of time. If you're serious about undertaking that prodigious journey, seek as a guide and helper a good psychologist or therapist. It's almost impossible to do such challenging work alone. We all need help freeing ourselves from the oppressive tyrants of the old, and accepting for ourselves the liberating, true love of the new.
****
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Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
13:41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
13:42
Jesus will send his angels to gather up "all that offend" and they "shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
Ouch.
I would guide any one who has similar problems with thier understanding of christianity,to gnosis.org.
After many years of meditation, study, and personal experience, I resolved some similar cognitive dissodence.
It was resolved through meditation, experience, and readings of vedic scripture, I find that the gnosis.org Jesus and creation story , relates most closely to what I find as the best metaphors in in christendom, explaining the mechanics or unfoldment of creation, manifestation or nature.
The article points out a very real experience for no doubt many a people who grow up with certain ideas fed to them. Some of these Ideas are untrue. When, at the time, the highest authority in truth telling, father such and such, says only Jesus can save youre mortal soal and has the backing of Rome and all the other churches around the world, it gets burned in, has very deep roots, and can be a hard one to yank out. But as the dentist says, that ones gotta go. That one and a few others I would say.
Jesuses teachings can help save or heal your soal, but so can other great teachers and teachings and practices.
Great article, very real problem
They invented the concept of "Divine Being" ... and the concept of "Divine Beings".
God was angry and the devil was chained in every back yard. Reading certain books was a sin and rock n' roll was invented by the devil to seduce teens to his ways. Everything of this earth was basically evil/flawed and one should be concerned about being saved in order to go to heaven. Actually, this made me very depressed and suicidal. How could I ever live up to this? None of it made sense to me. I loved all people, wanted to play, read everything, and knew that the world offered more.
I found compassion in my life. But, some of these doctrines still stay in the back of my mind. I cannot tolerate racism or sexism. So, maybe the repression was a gift, but it hurt like the hell that I was headed for according to this ugly religion.
what they have done is put a face on that which they know little of.
a vitality and substance in the universe and before the universe.
that which cannot be defined for to define infinite is to limit infinite.
now the infinite universe theory is like the person when asked what holds up the earth that person stated one big turtle.
well then the person asked what holds up that one big turtle?
why of course more turtles they replied.
what created the universe why one big universe.
well what created that universe?
why bigger universes??????????????
For an excellent review of god's characteristics as revealed in scripture I strongly recommend
"God: A biography" by Jack Miles.
for the record Miles is not just another crackpot.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Miles
for example " Jack Miles was a Jesuit seminarian from 1960 to 1970, studying at Xavier University in Cincinnati, the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before completing a doctorate in the department of Near Eastern Languages at Harvard.[1] He is fluent in several languages."
he is, for example, fluent in the various languages of scripture in which he undertook his research.
I think you will find that the god he reveals is rather more complex and contradictory than the god from the land of the nice happy people that apologists would like represent to us.
PS blaming all the bad stuff on the jewish god and claiming that god the nice guy is the christian god is an argument so bogus I'm hoping no-one is going to try pulling that one on us.
The whole thing about labeling God's attributes as good, bad, desirable or undesirable, those labels are subjective and based upon our own finite understanding.
I've never read Miles. It really doesn't matter to me what background, degrees or linguistic fluency is attributed to his good name. He's probably a very intelligent and accomplished man. And I'd say I agree with his posit that God is certainly complex and contradictory—at least according to my limited understanding. Otherwise I wouldn't be impressed or awestruck by God if He was obliged to acquiesce or conform to my limited understanding of right and wrong and how I think He should conduct Himself. I mean, if we are the arbiters of ultimate righteousness or perfection, why would we need God? And if there is no God, and we are the end-all-be-all of goodness, why has our world failed to achieve perfection?
Really? He does?
So what's up with:
Quick readings of Matthew (11:20-24) and Mark dispel that one pretty quick.
Think Mark Twain said it best:
"Now here is a curious thing. It is believed by everybody that while he was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous, and cruel; but that when he came down to earth and assumed the name Jesus Christ, he became the opposite of what he was before: that is to say, he became sweet, and gentle, merciful, forgiving, and all harshness disappeared from his nature and a deep and yearning love for his poor human children took its place. Whereas it was as Jesus Christ that he devised hell and proclaimed it!
Which is to say, that as the meek and gentle Savior he was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament -- oh, incomparably more atrocious than ever he was when he was at the very worst in those old days!
Meek and gentle?"
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainlfe.htm
God alone? Sounds exactly like my Golden Retriever who, may I just add, does not require me to fork over 10% of my income nor does he try to rape my children.
That said, the Jesus of the New Testament is hardly the benign and benevolent friend that this blogger wishes he was. That's just more projection. A clear reading of the text shows a Jesus who is, indeed, both harsh and judgmental - whose character and personality is an extension of the old Testament Yahweh, rather than an exception. As such, he displays both merciful compassion AND supposedly righteous vengeance upon his enemies.
Two brief examples: First, Jesus tells the parable of Abraham and Lazarus, where the sinner Lazarus is burning in an eternal hell and cannot be reached by Abraham. And second, we have the really spectacular fireworks of the Book of Revelation, including all the eschatological fun and games that good, Bible believing Christians both believe and make movies about (Thank you Tim LaHaye).
Don't get me wrong - I think it's all nonsense. But that's the basic text that Christians must either work with, or work around. So to say that people are merely reacting to their own projections is really not the whole truth.
Your parents, as flawed as they were, loved you and cared for you as God does. What they lacked is the ability to display love you as you need. It was your needs that were not being met, while another child may not have interpreted there action as being cold and distant at all. Christ was not needed because the God of the Hebrew Bible was a jerk. Christ was needed because the needs of the audience had changed. The God of the Hebrew Bible was bing interpreted as cold, harsh, and distant. He isn't.
Thanks again for an excellent piece. I always enjoy your writing.