The religion that got away, Part 1

I've mentioned previously how I had to take two theology classes at Texas Lutheran. The first one pretty much made me into what most people would call agnostic, although I didn't yet think of myself as one. That experience did not put me in a great hurry to take that second class, and I wanted to be as far away from Christian teachings as I could get. Being at a Lutheran college and all, that wasn't very far, but they did offer a course on Judaism that was taught by a rabbi. I figured that was my best bet.

I learned that in many cases, Jewish and Christian interpretations of the same scriptures are often radically different. This is due in part to some differences in translation. The commandment cited by Christians as, "Thou shalt not kill," is cited by Jews as, "Thou shalt not murder." The verse in Isaiah that talks about a "virgin" conceiving is translated in Jewish Bibles as a "young girl" conceiving.

Sometimes the disagreements are over interpretation. The biblical story where Abraham is told to sacrifice Isaac is viewed by many Christians as God's way of testing Abraham's faith. But a common Jewish interpretation of that passage is that it was God's way of telling Abraham that there would be no human sacrifice in this new religion Abraham was founding.

As you may have guessed, these experiences tore away whatever shreds of Christian faith I might have had left. I didn't leap right into Judaism, but after I decided Buddhism wasn't for me, it was something I decided to give a shot. The religion I learned about in class struck me as practical (I'll expand on this in Part 2), and I liked the idea of a religion that was more focused on action than belief.

My Early Faith: The Coroner's Report

As you might expect, I've read my fair share of arguments for and against the existence of God. A favorite counter to certain atheist arguments is, "That's just the crazy fundamentalists. Even most believers don't believe in that God. You should read some sophisticated theology."

Well, I've read my share of theology, and every argument I've seen boils down to cherry-picking. This is not to say that fundamentalists don't cherry-pick, because I think you have to with the Jewish and Christian scriptures. It just seemed like these "sophisticated theological arguments" could all be said as, "Ignore the parts you don't like."

Let's take that sentiment to its logical conclusion, shall we? Say someone gives you a novel and tells you it's the best book you'll ever read in your entire life, but oh, you might want to skip this paragraph, this chapter, etc. But this book is the gold standard for all books. Is it, if you're having to skip portions of it? Sounds more like a book in need of a competent editor!

I'm not inherently opposed to the "ground of our Being" God-concept. However, I don't think there's acknowledgment for that in how Christianity is usually practiced. That seems a bit odd, because I'm willing to bet that there's a lot of individual Christians who believe that way, but I don't think there's a real institutional framework for that mode of thought (as opposed to most Eastern religions, where that pretty much is the framework). I don't really know what such a church would look like, but I'd think it would have to toss out a lot of the old hymns and rituals, or at the very least approach them differently.

Since that church doesn't exist, a lot of people have to make big compromises for the sake of community. And I understand that everyone makes some compromises when choosing to be part of a larger group. But that seems like an awfully big one to me. While I do find some of the Gospels' teachings inspiring, it's not enough to enable me to sit through songs with militaristic overtones and being preached at like all I need to do is read the Bible more (or its flip side with watered-down hymns and a message I could get by watching Oprah). And frankly, I find just as much inspiration in texts from other religions as I do the Gospels.

Once opened, you can never close the gate of "psychologically true." The trick is where to go from there, and I haven't seen much advice from theists in that regard (you can probably guess what an atheist's advice would be). Don't worry, I have some issues with atheism, too, which I'll discuss soon.

How Theology Killed My Faith

First off, I'd like to apologize for yesterday's somewhat craptastic post. I think it's about as exciting as, well, sitting through a Lutheran service on Setting II. But it does give some background for the information in this post, which I think will be a bit more interesting.

Texas Lutheran requires all its students to take two theology classes. There's an introductory course that everyone has to take, and after that you have your pick of advanced classes. I had put off the intro course because I had this terrible fear of it being a kind of Sunday school for college credit, even though friends assured me that was not the case.

I finally got around to the intro class my junior year. It certainly wasn't Sunday school! We read books like Honest to God by John A.T. Robinson and Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich. Robinson said that instead of thinking of God as "up there" or "out there," we should think of God simply as love. Tillich said that faith was whatever our "Ultimate Concern" was and that God is "the ground of our being." Reading books like these illuminated the theological and intellectual canyon between clergy and laity in most denominations. Apparently Robinson's and Tillich's ideas were much less controversial among theologians and pastors than they were among ordinary members.

At first I was furious. I felt like these ideas had been kept from me as if I'd be too dense to understand them. And then I started pondering the implications of these ideas and got really furious. I thought, "Well, if it's all just metaphor and poetry, why bother?" Now I just think the Hindus beat these guys to that approach by a few thousand years.

I actually have more to say on this topic, but the point I want to make deserves its own post, which I'll probably put up sometime tomorrow.