Letters to the Editor
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I feel like I am someone like God I do not know why.
Darcey, I hope you read this. Your daughter has written the words that everyone must come to feel the truth of. Jesus also said: "Know ye not that ye are Gods?" "Except ye become again as one of these little ones, ye shall in no way enter in."
Until our "rational" mind takes over, around puberty, we all live in the sacred place where the "imaginary" is at least as "real" as the sensory. And that's where we end up, also.
Jesus was God - that Light from which "we" all sprang. The Light came here simply to reclaim it's own. ("...ye do it unto me.") And we are Him!
Only in returning to the essential oneness of our true "Self" (by crucifying the false "self") can the illusion be dissolved, and "Love will move the stars" - and our lives.
Rock on, sister!
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Something to believe in
Our journeys are as many and varied as our number. Whether we like it or not, if we think, we want to believe in something. And we do...each of us. And what we believe in determines who we are. Atheists, agnostics, and the rest of us all believe. We must...because we think and perceive and cannot know reality for certain.
Peace to all. May your beliefs bring you peace.
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Is this what-
- the inside of a "believer's" head is actually like? A maelstrom of fear and guilt and doubt and passive-aggression?
Yuck.
Salon has published another excerpt from another book about a doubtful superstious person. A person who WANTS to belive, who NEEDS to belive, who is TRYING to belive, and Christianity STILL CAN'T SEAL THE DEAL!
Another excerpt about a person bending themselves into knots trying to make sense of, and conform to, some half-baked iron-age middle-eastern sand cult.
Another excerpt about a person with real problems, real issues, who makes everything worse by throwing in a bunch of imaginary baggage they have to cart around.
And the wishy-wahsiness of it all... double yuck! I'm no "scholor", but I'm pretty sure the bible lays out exactly what you get to belive in. I thought that was part of the point.
I have a feeling Sister Goddess and Father Historian (whose real names I can't recall right now) probably sing a much different set of tunes when someone higher up the hiarchy comes to call. But day to day? Whatever gets butts in seats.
To Darcy Stienke, and all the other doubters, I say put the holy texts, images, dvds, whatever, away for a month. Confront your life AS your life without the extra burden of ancient fairy tales.
Just one month. 30 days. Change your life.
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Re: Epicurus
The Epicurus questions regarding God and evil is handled by people far more qualified than I. But the simple existence of evil and pain does not negate the existence of a merciful God, if you believe that this world/life is not all there is.
What happens on this earth is temporary. God doesn't "let" evil happen per se. People are granted free will, which is how we get Einsteins and Mother Theresas and Hitlers and Pol Pots. And despite all the horror in this world, from natual disasters to diseases to genocide--or even something as personal and benign as a stomach virus--we have the afterlife to look forward to.
Even Christ accepted the torture and pain of crucifiction.
But if you don't believe any of that, that's cool.
I just don't think the argument "Because there's evil, there can't be God" to be valid. If this world were all there was, then yes, it would seem sadistic or "impotent" of God. But God is omnipresent, not one who's pushing buttons controlling everything.
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doubt and assurance
Sadly, in discussion of religion, the moderate voices are often drowned out by extremists on both sides. Both fundamentalists and mean-spirited atheists function in the same way: They declare that anyone who does not perfectly ascribe to their own personal convictions is evil or devoid of intelligence, and they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that they aren't capable of knowing everything. They refuse to meet with their fellow man on a level of mutual humility, acceptance, toleration, outreach, and general interest in the other person's point of view and experience. I have found that I have great ease living with and loving people of wildly disparate beliefs. It is not usually the content of a person's beliefs that turn them into a dogmatic, mean-spirited evangelist, but the manner in which they present them to other people, and the manner in which they treat other people. My friends are atheists, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, univeralists, Buddhists, Christians of every flavor, but above all they are kind and empathetic.
I apologize if this sounds as though it has little to do with the article itself, but I feel that so-called religious discussions online, which typically amount to little more than name-calling and false prophecying (whether of "god" or "science"), are rife with the sort of dismissive, ignorant people who distract from the real issues at hand.
This time last year, my fears, doubts, and religious compulsions were so strongly mixed together that I was in physical and psychological pain throughout the Easter weekend. It was a culmination of thoughts and emotions that had been building for six months, and those same feelings continue to today. It did not help that I go to college at a religiously-affiliated school: Therefore we were on break, and I was almost completely alone on campus. But doubt, fear, and pain are not the end of the story, just as my pastor/friend/former professor told us at the Good Friday service last night. I am surrounded by people who understand that faith is not a weapon or a tool or a bribe. Faith is a way of life, ideally a life in which the practice of love for mankind becomes habit and a relationship with God stays fresh and new.
I have come to terms with my faith, regardless of whether or not other people think I am nuts for it. Sometimes, I think I'm nuts. I often wonder about the sort of person who thinks they're totally rational all the time. But I also know that my faith, fraught with episodes of doubt and (rarely) assurance, more richly informs my life and my relationships than mere resignation to any dogmatic, heartless approach, whether it be pure science or literalist cultism.
Love is irrational. Faith is irrational. God is irrational. Christ on the cross is irrational. Suffering is irrational. Hate is irrational. Life is irrational. So-called "rationalists" are willing to accept that life is full of irrational things... they just choose for themselves which they will accept. Non-believers and believers... we are the same thing. We are all believers. It just depends what we choose to believe.
I don't know whether I have chosen to believe that Christ literally died on a cross and rose again some two milennia ago. I have certainly chosen not to believe that the Bible was ever meant to be interpreted literally or as a set of guidelines for life. But I have, as Niebuhr once wrote, chosen to identify with the cause of Christ: That cause is merely the reconciliation of man to God and God to man, and so also of reconciling men to each other.
If you choose not to believe in God, and even if you choose to believe that people like me are insane for believing so, I have little argument with that. But let us not end there: Let us not allow the dialogue to end with that. That would be the real sin. Let us speak to each other as brothers and sisters of humanity with the common goal of understanding each other, bringing an end to pointless suffering, and silencing self-righteous Pharisees of all stripes. Maybe Christ did not die on the cross two thousand years ago. But let the image of a God who so loved us that he would love and suffer and die among us compel us also to love and suffer not by ourselves, but with all of mankind.
For whether or not a man rose two thousand years ago, He is risen indeed.
In God's love,
Rosenkavalier