28 April 2012

What Do I Know of Holy?



What do I know of you who spoke me into motion?
Where have I even stood but the shore along your ocean?
Are you fire?

Are you fury?
Are you sacred?
Are you beautiful?
Lord, what do I know?
What do I know of holy?


Words by Jenny Simmons. Performed by Addison Road.

 Mt. San Gorgonio

Warning: Heresy ahead.

I first contemplating writing this post last May. Now here I am a year later, I've thought on and off about it for the year, and I'm still hesitant to push the "publish" button. The reason I hesitate is that this is a topic that is deeply personal for me--more so than anything else I have ever written about--and yet I want to share it. But I have just spent several hours today forming my thoughts here instead of studying for my upcoming final, so I owe it to myself to publish.


Some of you may be familiar with the religious environment that I grew up in. But for those who aren't, I will summarize for you what I remember most about that environment:
* We know what the Bible means.
* We know what God wants.
* We are obligated to do certain things--primarily reading the Bible and praying--in order to have "a relationship with God."
* If you do not have a relationship with God, you are a bad Christian.
A relationship with God and a belief that Jesus was the Christ and that he had died for your sin was supposed to free you from your sin. It was supposed to take away your guilt and shame.

To be fair, there were times when I felt this way about my practice of religion--that it freed me from my guilt and shame, that grace was wonderful, and that I was happy with my "walk with Christ." But most of the time it was a source of guilt. I wasn't reading the Bible enough. I didn't pray enough. I didn't feel that spiritual connection with God enough. I was not a very good Christian.

I honestly didn't feel very much guilt and shame for the ordinary, everyday things I did in my life. I was not, am not, and never will be anywhere close to perfect. I wronged people and I hurt people, just like every other human being. Some times I tried to make amends. Some times I did better than other times. Some times I would live up to my resolve to next time be more patient and and more kind--more like Christ. Some times I would ask for forgiveness--from the person I wronged, and from God. But those actions were not the primary source of guilt in my life.

I was taught a very strict interpretation of the Bible. We had to know what the Bible said, we had to define what it meant, and we had to follow it in order to not be in sin. So, obviously, we knew what the Bible said, and we knew what that meant. If you did not agree with the reigning interpretation of the Bible within the community, either there was a lot of controversy or you were in sin.

To those who are reading this that I grew up with--please do not take this as an attack on you or your beliefs. I freely acknowledge that I was much a contributor to this environment as anyone else. I believe that your intent was good--to encourage people, to help them, and to help them be more like Christ. You loved me unconditionally, with all my flaws, and I owe you a deep debt of gratitude.

In me, however, the end result appeared to be different than in all of you. Religion, God, Jesus--it was all supposed to be wonderfully freeing. I felt trapped.


Some probably blame the college I went to for my move to agnosticism, which I define to be uncertainty about the existence of God. I will definitely agree that the school facilitated this change, but it was by far not the source of this change. I held to Christianity throughout my time at school, but there were three definite factors that made me question my beliefs.

The first was having close friends that were not Christians, and seeing that their lives were not terrible and conflicted because of their lack of Christianity. This was not as I expected.

The second was the unquestioning adherence to scientific thought and the scientific process over religious texts when it came to matters of science. I remember during my freshman physics class being taught about dating igneous rocks based on the magnetic field that had been "frozen" in them. I don't remember the specifics of the lesson, but afterwards I approached the professor and asked how we knew that the field captured in those rocks was actually as old as the date given. Again, I don't remember the specifics of the answer, but what surprised me was the complete disregard for any religious theory about how old the rocks should be. To these people, the debate between creation and evolution that I had been taught was a huge controversy didn't even register as something worth thinking about. They were not hostile or opposed to Christianity--it just wasn't even an issue.

The third was the seminar class I took my senior year titled Science and Religion. Our professors were a philosophy professor who was an atheist and a chemistry professor who was a Christian. For the first time in my life I was exposed to someone who believe the Bible and practiced a religion similar to the one I had been taught, but who did not seem to require that he believe every word of the Bible as literal fact in order to practice his beliefs. I was relieved to see a glimpse of an alternate method of practicing Christianity, but I wasn't ready for it myself.


I honestly don't know what prompted my actual shift to agnosticism. I do know that it took me nearly a year after I graduated college, a year of puzzling and pondering, to make a decision. I doubted the Bible's veracity. There were multiple passages that I couldn't believe literally, as I had been taught. Moreover, if I couldn't believe some of it, then the claim that every word of the Bible was the word of God was suspect. I decided that I couldn't rely on the Bible to tell me anything about God, and not only that, I didn't have any independent evidence even of the existence of God. I couldn't say for sure that God didn't exist, but I couldn't give you a good reason that he did exist, either.

This took me a while to come to terms with. My faith, for the pain and difficulty it had caused me, had been a huge part of my life and something that I had relied heavily on growing up. It was difficult to decide that it was no longer a significant part of my life. However, I do remember the moment that I decided that I would no longer force myself to believe that God existed--it felt as if a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. I did not decide that I was going to believe that God did not exist, or that I could never return to the belief that he did exist. I merely decided that I was going to be honest with myself about what I believed or didn't believe, and would not believe something because someone else had decided that it was true.


I spent a good amount of time in fairly solid agnosticism. I attended a fairly liberal Episcopalian church about once every month and found both the liberalism and liturgical approach to be useful changes from my previous experience with religion. Their approach to religion--a de-emphasis on the literal meaning of the words of the Bible, and a strong emphasis on physical ministry and care for the community--was refreshing. I wasn't sure what the theological basis for their approach was, but the outward effects--love the poor, care for the needy, welcome the outcast--was exactly what I believed Christianity should be.

My questions about the theology of the approach--even though I wasn't sure I cared about the theology--was settled when some good friends gifted me with Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith as a present after my graduation from graduate school. I will not go into the specifics of the book here, in part because it has been several years since I read it and I don't remember the specifics, but the most significant aspect of the book that I remember was the emphasis on the truth of the Bible rather than the literal meaning of the Bible. The truth of the Bible--that God loves people, that he wants a relationship with them, that he wants to heal them and care for them--does not rely on a literal interpretation of the stories of the Bible. I wasn't sure what the doctrinal authorities that I was accustomed to following would say about this approach, but I didn't and still don't care. The approach made a lot of sense to me. More importantly, I was relieved that there was an approach to Christianity that did not require me to believe the literal interpretation of every word of the Bible.


Even though I was relieved to learn that I could go back to Christianity without being trapped into something I couldn't believe in, I didn't see a reason to go back. Christianity had been mostly a source of guilt for me. For most of my teen years I had difficulty believing that hell existed, and since I'd become agnostic, I wasn't sure about the existence of heaven either. So if Christianity did nothing for the afterlife, and made my life here on earth worse off, there didn't seem to be much point to me.

My concept of the purpose of Christianity did not change until after I joined the Marine Corps. I have made it a habit, once I learn that a friend or acquaintance was is Christian, to question them in a non-threatening way about their beliefs--what their beliefs are, and why they hold them. So one night when I was at TBS and my platoon was cleaning weapons late at night after returning from a field exercise, I asked another Lieutenant in my platoon about his religious background. I told him about my background, and when I did he did not immediately try to convert me back to Christianity (like just about every other Christian I have met that learns that I am an apostate). He did, however, recommend that I read C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, and then he actually loaned me his copy. About a week before we left TBS, we sat down at lunch and had a long conversation about it.

I told him more about my understanding of religion, and how it had restricted me--how a relationship with God was a chore and an obligation and something that did not bring anything positive into my life.  He told me about his childhood, and about how the situations he had dealt with growing up had nearly destroyed him. Then he told me about his concept of God as a Father, how God had healed him, and how his relationship with God brought him joy and peace. I was pretty sure his theological conception of God was not as I had learned growing up, but to this day he is the best witness of God's love and grace that I have ever met.

My conversation with him made me realize something else--that true faith in God and love for God comes out of true brokenness and despair. Not necessarily the brokenness that you are required to feel and profess because you attend a church. But because there is a place in a life that needs healing. I'd never felt that way in my own life--that something was so completely broken that I needed God to step in and fix it. I wondered if that was why I wasn't a Christian, and if I would ever get to that point.


It was about a year ago that I realized that I believed in God again. I was hiking through Joshua Tree on a day I had off in the middle of the week. I was struggling with some recent events in my life--nothing like what my friend had dealt with, but events that at least gave me pause and that I had to figure out how to deal with. As I hiked back down the from the pass, I saw Mt. San Gorgonio in front of me as I listened to the words of the song I transcribed at the beginning of this post. I realized that I was worshipping God even though I couldn't tell you for sure that he existed. The song seemed to take everything I had believed and not believed about God since I started my journey and sum it up--what do I know? What have I seen of God, but the sliver of an ocean? How could I know the true nature of God? When have I ever experienced the grace of God as it is supposed to be? What do I know of God's love?

The answer is: I don't know. I can't know. The love and grace and majesty of a God is certainly much greater than my ability to imagine. Even more importantly, I would rather commune with a God that I don't know in a time that is reserved just for me and him then go to church every week and profess to know him.


Maybe you are thinking: ah ha! She finally gets it! Maybe you are thinking that despite what I have written of my characterization of my religious background, what I have expressed here about the nature of God is what you believe. That is perfectly acceptable to me. Just please don't ask me to characterize my beliefs in the same way that you characterize yours.

Maybe you are thinking that I have it wrong. You can argue with what I have written here all you want, either on a theological basis, or on any other basis you choose. Maybe you will argue that I am making this about myself and not about God. Please don't be offended, but I don't care. What I have and what I have decided for myself is for me and me alone. You are not going to convince me to believe something based on your interpretation of the Bible. If you don't like what I have written, that is perfectly acceptable to me. I am not asking you to conform your beliefs to mine. I am simply telling you what they are.

These days I am very sensitive about public displays and declarations of religion. It doesn't matter who it comes from--a family member, a friend, a youtube video--but every statement reminds me of the religion that I tried to live with for too long. It makes me angry, in part perhaps because the people who make these declarations seem to have something in their practice of religion that I could never figure out, and in part perhaps because I used to make the same kind of statements but feel that I was being dishonest with myself when I was making them. My beliefs are a personal matter to me, and unless people are feeding the hungry or caring for the sick, I wish people would keep their beliefs as a personal matter to themselves.

I am not offended when someone brings a matter of religion to me privately. My brother recently asked me about what I believed and expressed his desire that I make a decision because it was something that was very important to him. I do not agree with his approach, but I am grateful that he loves me enough to ask. (Brother--I'm sorry that I don't have a better answer for you!)


I don't have a good definition of what I believe right now. This is the way I put it to a friend just over a year ago, prior to my hike: "I honestly couldn't tell you if God exists or not, although I do have an ongoing conversation with him regarding who he is, what exactly he does around here, and why I should really care. Is that irreverent? Maybe. But that's my honest attempt to figure things out. Is it inconsistent? Of course, but I've learned to accept some uncertainty and inconsistency when it comes to religious issues." I am okay with not knowing. I am okay with having questions. I am okay with doubts. My state of not knowing and having questions and doubts is much more fulfilling and real to me than what I had when I said that I knew.

The most important thing is that I am honest with myself. Just like I decided several years ago, I will not force myself to believe something because someone else says that's what I must believe. I believe that God would rather have my honesty than a complete declaration of theology. If that's not true, then he's not a God that I want to believe in.

I won't call myself a Christian. I can't because I won't make the statement that I believe that Jesus died for my sins. I disagree with C. S. Lewis' characterization of Christ and am perfectly comfortable saying that he was a Jewish prophet but not the Son of God. I am perfectly willing to say that he was a radical figure that challenged the religious authorities of his time, who loved people that society treated like dirt, and gave of himself sacrificially. I believe the world would be a better place if we tried to live like him, and although I do not do so as extensively as I used to, I do try to pattern my life after his.

I don't believe that the Bible is the word of God. (I warned you at the beginning that there would be heresy.) I believe that it was written by men and that it describes their perception and knowledge of God. Occasionally I'll open mine, but I don't need to open it to know the parts that are most important to me: "For faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." "We walk by faith, and not by sight."

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this... a very authentic and very personal journey. Two gut reactions: (1) you sound like a perfect Episcopalian, and (2) I would encourage you to read some things by Madeleine L'Engle.

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  2. Interesting read and I never knew by definition I was a agnosticism. I too on several backpacking trips have found myself deep in thought about my belief in god and the science knowing both cannot be right. My own theory is were we visited by aliens? Writers of the time tried to document the events in the way that they understood it. Yes I struggle with this too again because science does not back up this theory either.

    I conclude, like you that this world would be a better place if we all tried to live like him but than as I write this the cursades come to mind. I guess I will do the best I can to live a good life, extend a hand when I can and reach for one when I can't.

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