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I have been thinking about the idea of having one’s beliefs challenged. I’m of the attitude that once I put something out there it’s rather unreasonable to expect everyone to agree or to not respond unless I have asked people to just listen. My closest friends challenge my statements and it often forces me to either change my mind or communicate more effectively. And since they are my friends we know that ideas can’t separate us. Actions can, but ideas are simply dreams until they produce action.
One of the things I learned from 12 step work was the idea of a moral inventory. This was taking an honest look at myself with the energy I might put into taking inventory of stuff in my garage. The key to a good inventory is accuracy. What condition is something in? Am I going to still use it? Should I get rid of it? Is there something better? Can I recycle it? Is it poisonous? etc.
The driving force of addiction is self-centeredness. Part of that inventory was accurately identifying my own self centered actions and thoughts. The higher the level of truth, the more freedom. This process required my sponsor to challenge everything I presented to ferret out the self-centeredness and to see what my ego was connected to. This often manifests as a resentment. And if I wanted to be free then I had to stop defending stuff simply because it hurt my feelings. I had to let go. In AA they have a cliche that says, “Let go and let God.”
As I began to take inventory of my Christian belief system I realized how much of it was self centered. My salvation. My eternal life. My humbleness. My relationship with god. My character. My goodness. My badness. The “my” word was so embedded in my consciousness that it was really synonymous with god. And even those things that were helpful to other people were still “my” goodness. Where was god in my life? As far as I could tell it was me doing the harmful stuff and me doing the helpful stuff.
I had to answer honestly that god was not to be found. I had to let go of god.
Now I have had people come and say, “Well you have to let go of your concept of god and allow god to reveal himself to you.” That made sense at first and I tried that for a while except everything that comes through my brain is essentially my concept and perception. I’m not sure how god is going to transcend the limitations of my humanity. As far as I can tell every voice in my head and feeling in my body is mine.
I have read a lot of stuff searching for god. I have studied a lot of different religions and processes and tried a lot of different things. I have to be honest that it’s been a long time since I have come across something new.
I don’t want atheism to be true. I would love to be proved wrong. I would love to have something to point to as evidence of a loving creator that was pure and didn’t contradict reality. Part of allowing for that possibility is to allow people to challenge my beliefs or non belief.
Atheism is simply a default in the absence of any other evidence. If one is a hard line atheist they state that there positively no god. I’m agnostic. I say that I don’t find any evidence for one, but I’m not sure there isn’t. This is the result of doing a rigorously honest inventory.
The payoff has been an extremely broad sense of freedom, major reduction in fear, much more intimate connections with people, and a deep sense of purpose. I could never figure out a way to do this with a belief in god. I’m not saying that other people can’t do this with a belief in god, but I have to be honest I find most believers to be some of the most frightened people in the world.
And since I don’t want to live my life in fear, I am extremely suspicious of claims about god’s ability to provide anything. One of the ways I unravel this is by asking about beliefs and seeing if they have solved some of the problems I have been unable to solve. If I see them get defensive, offended, or rude, I know right away that the connection with their belief is based on some form of fear. If it wasn’t it wouldn’t matter what I asked.
I know, for myself, that when I base my claims on things I observe in reality, I don’t need to convince anyone because I know reality will do that for me or reality will force me to alter my claims. I know that I can learn from other people’s mistakes or I can go through the school of hard knocks. And if my ego doesn’t allow me to change my approach then I’m going to go through remedial school of hard knocks until I get it.
Time is always on the side of truth. Time and reality don’t care what I think or feel.
So, to me, the most loving thing to do is to reveal truth. I think that’s why overly nice people tend to irritate me. I know that I used to irritate me.
So my goal is to explore truth in as honest a fashion as I can and to do it as kindly as I can without compromising what is true.Granted, there are times when we need to just vent without being required to make sense. I understand that. And I have those times as well. But eventually, once I have reset, I want to know what is true, even when I don’t like it, because eventually, in every case so far in my life, the truth sets me free.
I like your post @richard. Almost like a manifesto. It’s interesting especially today because I’ve been thinking a lot about Krishnamurti, the eastern philosopher. My favorite book of his, “The Urgency of Change”, is a book I read every year. I think it is excellent theology. He never ever mentions God… or if he does it’s very seldom and it’s usually to expunge our images of God. He insists we can never see God because of our minds and categories etc… He seems to suggest that the revelation of the Other is totally impossible unless… and he has a lot of unlesses. What you’ve written sounds very much like that.
Good post. While I still have a vague sense of God that I believe in, I too enjoy challenging myself and reassessing all that I believe. It’s an entertaining journey for the most part.
AnonymousGreat thoughts, @admin. I love Krishnamurti.
AnonymousRichard – Thank you for the link to Krishnamurti’s book. I read the first chapter and it really validated a lot of things my belief system has gone through since leaving the institutional church. And of course it gave me some new things to think about as well. That’s an author I assumed would be way over my head, but surprisingly it wasn’t. (Well at least so far. Gonna go read chapter 2 right now.)
Good post and I see exactly what you mean about Christianity being self-centered, that there is too much focus on the self which is interesting because the church like to say that its all about God. I think everybody needs to be prepared to change and have their world views be altered, to welcome new perspectives, but the problem with a lot of religious people is that they flatly refuse anything else, and I think they are basically just limiting themselves to a very narrow view of life and humanity itself. I feel like that the past year I have started to let go, and I have started to understand the perspectives of those who believe differently to me rather than attack them as I did in the past, and I have come to discover that the ideologies of certain Atheists for example make so much sense, I can see full well see why they believe what they believe. I have experienced periods of great doubt over the past year, and to be honest, I have been afraid at times; afraid that I was loosing faith or abandoning God somehow, and I still do have those moments of fear, but I think in time, and with more soul searching, people can learn to let go of the fear and search for their own truth in comfort. Jesus did indeed say that the truth will set you free, and I genuinely believe that he wasn’t talking about one specific religion, but everyone’ s personal and spiritual journey.
For me at the moment, I believe in God, and I believe in Jesus, but I don’t quite know what that means and where I should take that. Christianity would have you just go to church so you can bask in the awe of the Bible and make fake relationships with other Christians, but I don’t attend church any longer and I’ve rejected most of the church institutions, so its like being stuck at a crossroads with signs pointing in different directions written in another language, and you start walking down one road only to change your mind and walk back and have a rethink. The problem is, you really don’t where you’re supposed to be going anyway.
A litte Philosophical humor from The Onion.
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