I’m writing this for a few people. One is a man at work named Joe whom I respect very much and enjoy religious conversations with. We often get cut off mid conversation, so rarely do I get to elaborate on one point or another.
I’m also writing this for my children. Were something to happen to me before I could have this discussion with them, I would want some sort of document stating my beliefs and convictions so that they could better understand how I viewed the world and God.
Lastly, I’m writing this for anyone who finds the subject matter of others personal beliefs interesting. Sadly, I don’t think theres much of a market for discussing God, at least not God as I see Him. Sure, there are plenty of books, both fiction and non, that profess to offer insight. Many of these works have merit. Most don’t.
So, read on if you want to know my beliefs. If you want to pass, I fully understand.
I feel it is important to tell you a little (hopefully very little), about myself before I start. I am 39 years old, have lived in the Deep South most my life and all of my adult life. My father was in the military so we traveled around. I arrived in Mobile, AL in 1985, have remained here since, and will probably die here. I am not an exceptional man in any regard. I am one of countless billions who have been born, will one day die, and soon be forgotten.
Growing up, organized religion was not a part of my childhood. My father has his own beliefs, but keeps them close. My mother would later become a devout Catholic, but for the most part of my childhood was non practicing. I was baptized Episcopalian Not exactly sure why that choice was made. Perhaps it was the early stirrings of my mother’s eventual religious awakening.
In any event, if I ever attended an Episcopalian function besides my baptism I do not recall it. My earliest introduction to religion would come in the fifth grade. Prior to enrolling in Catholic School I was in public. I showed something of a flair for reading, and when I did a book report on Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ my parents decided to invest in a better education for me.
So I ended up at St. Marys by the Sea in Hampton,Va. Nowadays you don’t see too many nuns in habits (their official, penguin-like uniform), and even at St. Marys they were all older ladies. Of course to a fifth grader almost everyone from sixth grade up seems ancient, so perhaps my memories are distorted. Yet I feel fairly confident in stating that, even in the early nineteen eighties, I felt as if I were witnessing some time honored but dying caste in the Nuns. There were only a handful of them. I remember best Sister Angelina, a cheerful old woman with graying wisps impishly peaking out from her hood. The rest of the teachers were lay staff.
So it was here, around age eleven, that my studies, and my search for God, would start. I was not so much studying religion as being indoctrinated into it, however. We mainly covered the New Testament and wrote reports on the Apostles, the miracles of Jesus, etc. I recall being fascinated with Judas Iscariot, and feeling even then that the whole story wasn’t being told. Why would he betray Christ?
Questions like these were glossed over (“He was a bad man.”) and generally discouraged. Later, in high school, they would be outright ignored by most of my instructors. I came to understand that questioning is not smiled upon in religious settings. For most of my studies I would simply write up whatever I knew they wanted to read, putting as much enthusiasm into the assignment as a child who is told to take out the garbage or mow the lawn would.
My Catholic education continued at St. Pius X Elementary when we moved to Mobile while I was in the eighth grade. I found more of the same at St. Pius as I had at St. Marys. I declined to be confirmed in the Catholic religion, despite my mother offering me the (then) enormous sum of $100 to do so. I felt it was a very important decision, making a claim on a religion, and believe so even more firmly now. I remember Confirmation Day, when everyone in my class walked to the altar and were made Catholics. I was the only one left sitting in the pews, a child audience of one, surrounded by my classmates parents, friends, relations.
I didn’t regret it though. Still don’t.
In high school the Catholic education continued. As before, Mass (church service) was once a week. My freshman year was yet more papers on Jesus and the Apostles. Ho hum. I had questions, even more than before, but McGill Toolen High had the only thing more scary than a nun to a young man: Jesuit Priests. With their solemn robes and hard stares, they looked like figures from the Inquisition. Rumors abounded of the terrors they would inflict upon the impious. Whereas the nuns would just beat you unmercifully (so the children’s gossip went, I never saw it) the Brothers would hoist you over their heads and throw you into walls and out of 2nd story windows.
So, again, I kept my questions to myself. In high school you got enough problems without adding survival to the list.
My sophomore year things changed. For some reason I was placed in Advanced Religion classes, and would continue in them through graduation. Finally, some context was placed around the stories and teachings of the Bible. The culture, the history of the Holy Land, the story of the Jews…all this and so much more was opened up to me. Of course dogma was still emphasized. But one teacher, Gerald Darring, really challenged me to, for the first time, think about what it was I was reading. He wanted me to understand not just the message, but why the message was necessary in the first place. Who wrote these words in the Bible? What were their biases? Who was their audience, and who were their enemies? What were their times like?
I am forever grateful to Mr. Darring. Of all the teachers I ever had, he impacted me the most.
For a few years after high school things religious and Godly took a back seat to girls, parties, booze and drugs. Need I really say more? Let’s just say my 18th birthday lasted eight years.
Not all that time was completely wasted, though. I did discover ‘The Lost Books of the Bible’, a thin tome with very little translational help. I read about Buddhism. I discovered some of the more extreme sects of Christianity, such as the Snake Handlers we have in Northern Alabama. But my search for God was definitely, if not on hold, then moving at a very slow pace in lieu of other, more instantly gratifying, delights.
Around 26 I met my wife, settled down. The drinking would taper off over the years. The drugs held little interest for me. Basically, I started growing up. Like my search for God, it has been a long and delayed process, and I doubt I will ever find the finish line.
I’m OK with that. I am who I am (to quote The Big Guy 
).
My earlier discoveries of Christian literature outside the Orthodox led to other readings that I began to pursue with more of a passion now that I wasn’t always hungover from one excess or another. I started with ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls’, mainly because I had heard of them, not because thats a good place to start. I wish I had had a teacher, tutor, or guide of some kind when I began in earnest my search for God. He had His plans, though, and it unfolded as it should.
After the Dead Sea Scrolls I began the Nag Hamadi Library ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library ), and thankfully this was a good translation. What I had read in my younger years was a poor appetizer for this sumptuous feast.
Before I go further, though, I should mention that even the simple act of reading these texts made me feel guilty. Was I questioning God? Would I incur His wrath? Did my perusing constitute unforgivable heresy? You may laugh, but recall that I had been heavily indoctrinated from the ages of ten to eighteen. I still feel twinges of guilt, and pray to God for guidance and understanding with what I read today.
Understanding has always been an issue when reading works such as the Nag Hamadi. I had loved History in school, but to fully understand the apocrypha (non canonical) texts I was studying I had to broadly increase my knowledge base. I was like a celling painter without a platform.
So I also began to read things like the Complete Works of Josephus. Books about life in ancient Palestine, the Roman Empire, the customs and history of the Jews. I studied about the Pharisees, the Saduceees, and Essenes. And of course I was reading my good ol’ New American Study Bible all the while, comparing this with that, checking out footnotes mentioned in the Study Bible the piqued my interest. I still have that dog-eared, paperback Bible. I estimate that I have read it cover to cover at least three times in my life, with many more shorter readings of this book or that. It sits by my bed still.
Anyhow, for the next ten plus years I went on a real reading frenzy. Anything and everything related to Jesus, the Old Testament, the New Testament, that I could lay my hands on was devoured. I read about the ancient heresies with fascination (I strongly recommend ‘Crimes of Perception’ for an easy, beginner’s guide to ancient Christian sects). I came to understand why the Nicaean Creed was worded in the exact way that it was. I learned about why the Council of Nicaea was so important, about Manichaeism- the biggest religion to ever go kaput. I learned of Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Islam. I looked for parallels and contrasts between other religions and what I understood of Christianity.
I subscribed to ‘Biblical Archaeological Review’. My wife got me some Widow’s Mite Coins for one birthday.
I kept looking, searching, reading. If you had asked me then why, I simply would have said it interested me. And I would not have been lying. It all fascinates me still.
In truth, though, I was searching for God.
Who is God? What does He want from us? Why did He create us? Does He even exist? If so, why is there so much suffering in the world?
These are the questions I sought the answer to, and continue to seek the answer to. I will never have those answers, I know that. At least not in this life. But I felt, and still feel, that God does exist. Perhaps this is merely a psychological comfort, a desire to believe in something greater than myself, that death is not the end of me.
Or perhaps it’s more than that. I truly feel, in my heart, that God does exist. I don’t claim to understand Him, or His methods, but I have decided upon some core truths about Him.
1) God is loving. Just as I love my children, so does God love us. We may aggravate him, we may throw tantrums, we may act poorly and against His will, but He continues to love us as any parent would.
2) God is just. I believe God is fair. To think otherwise would mean that God is flawed. I don’t believe that about God.
That’s it. Those two things are the only absolutes I can honestly say I understand about the nature of God. Those two things are core to my beliefs, because if God is not loving and just, then whats the point?
Those two tenants, however, have aided me quite a bit in my meditations and studies. It may not seem like much, but it can be applied to so many things, and from those tenants deductions be hypothesized.
A) Is there a Hell? Many religions have no concept of Hell. I don’t think a loving and just God would allow someone to remain in Hell. Think about it: you are not the person you were twenty years ago. What would you be like in, say, two hundred years in Hell? 2,000? Certainly not the same person who arrived. You would be serving a sentence for a crime you did not commit. How is that just? It’s not. And therefore, by my beliefs, it is false.
B) Is there ‘One True’ religion? No. There is one true God, but the way people understand Him is a reflection of their culture, what they were taught, their environment. Why would God allow His Word to be received by one set of people on a specific part of the globe, then punish the others who had the misfortune of being born somewhere else and raised a different way? If you were born in a village in India, sure there may be a Christian mission nearby, but societal influences are going to lean you towards Hinduism. I believe all religions are, ultimately, about our search for the one, true God, and He accepts whatever path we’re on to find Him.
C) Why is there evil in the world? It breaks my heart when I see pictures of young children abused, murdered, dying. Why didn’t God stop that from happening? I wrestled with this one a long time. God had to be Loving and Just, after all, yet His lack of interference certainly suggested otherwise, or at least that he was more Deist in nature ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism ) than my philosophy allowed for.
This is the answer I have come up with: God could interfere. To do so, however, would remove our free will. If we actually saw God come down out of the sky and fix our problems, we would have no choice but to believe. God wants us to believe in Him, but he also wants us to come to Him out of our own free will. Otherwise we are nothing but puppets.
So where does that leave starving kids in Africa who die of malaria at two years old?
This, too, challenges the Loving and Just platform. Why would God even allow that baby to be born, only to suffer all it’s short days? What’s the point? Why does that happen?
Here, my two planks underwent their most serious trial. Certainly I could say, and many believe, that little dead babies go to heaven. Perhaps they do. But let me ask you, what was the point of their existence then? Human life is short as it is, and even a centenarian knows much less than they do know. What could a child of one or two, or even younger, possibly get out of their short existence? And then they spend the rest of eternity in Heaven? What if, had they the chance, they had grown up to be a mass murderer? But they’re in Heaven, while the baby who didn’t die and did become a mass murderer, spends eternity in Hell?
It made no sense.
No sense, that is, if you believe that this one life is all we are given. I came to believe that this one life is not all that we are given, though. I believe we undergo many lives, reincarnated again and again. Sometimes our lot is happy and long, sometimes sad and short, and all mixtures in between. But it is just, and it passes the test of a loving God. Surely God hates for us to suffer, but He also knows that it shall soon pass. Our eye blink of a life can only contain so much misery, however overwhelming it may feel at times.
What actually happens after we die? Well, I don’t believe we float on clouds and strum harps. I think there must be some sort of review undertaken, some absorption of the lessons we learned in this life. Perhaps we gauge our soul’s strengths and weaknesses, and choose our next life based upon what we need to learn. We may choose to become that starving child, because it brings us closer to understanding hunger, to being more empathetic.
But that’s just a guess. I really liked the way ‘What Dreams May Come’ with Robin Williams presented heaven. ‘Defending Your Life’ with Albert Brooks was another good depiction of Heaven as I think it might be.
D) So what’s the point of it all? I don’t know. I feel the answer lays somewhere around ‘To learn to love.’ Love is stronger than hate. Love is what lasts, not hate. Hate may be showy and cause a lot of short term chaos, but inevitably it sinks back into oblivion taking it’s works with it. Only love endures. A kind act reverberates for all of eternity, passed down from person to person.
E) So what do you call yourself? I call myself a ‘Catholic’, though I was never confirmed as such. ‘Catholic with a touch of Gnostic’ is a more elaborate description. Other Catholics may disagree with me calling myself as such, which is their right. But I still find a lot of solace in the Catholic religion. It’s rites, it’s teachings. When reading the Bible, I try to understand it from the Catholic viewpoint and my own. Any part of the Bible which runs counter to God being Loving and Just I may read with interest, but don’t believe.
F) Do you believe in Christ as the Messiah? I certainly believe that Christ existed. I certainly believe in His message. Oddly though, I find it rather unimportant if He rose from the dead or performed miracles. He may or may not have been divine. Some days I choose to believe He was, other days it seems illogical, and frankly counter productive to God. By that I mean the whole ‘free will’ argument I mentioned earlier.
G) Do you fear Hell? I certainly fear being wrong! I pray to God daily to give me guidance and understanding of His Will. In the end, I listen to my heart, and I think God’s Will rests in each of our hearts. We know, on an intrinsic level, that murder, theft, rape, etc. are wrong. Some will argue that there are no moral absolutes. I disagree. I believe that humanity is basically good, not naturally sinful. Of course that’s often a hard belief to maintain at times, but I prefer to believe it over the alternative so often preached, that man is a sinful creature prone to commuting evil. I reject that. God created us only to set us up for failure.
H) How do you feel about other religions? I try very, very hard to be respectful of other’s religious beliefs. I believe that everyone has a right to seek God, or not, on their own terms. Their understanding of God is where they need to be at this moment. He will guide them if they seek further. But not everyone can seek, chooses to seek, or their lives may be cut short before they can start. It’s OK. On the next go-round perhaps they’ll get further.
Anyhow, it’s not my place to judge anyone else about their relationship with God.
I) What is your general feeling about organized religion? I think it can be a wonderful source of help and enlightenment, when coupled with further study on one’s own. It can also be a tool used for evil means, used to discriminate and murder. On the whole, I think organized religion has done much more good than harm. People will point to the Crusades or 9/11 and blame religion, but what they are not accounting for is all the people throughout history who have led good, moral lives and were led to such through organized religion.
J) What do you think it takes to lead a ‘moral’ life? I think we have to be good to others, help who we can. I think if we all imitated Christ, as presented in the canonical gospels, that the world would be a better place. On my best days, which are much more rare than I would like, I try hard to follow Christ’s example and keep in mind the Buddhist teaching that ‘Desire is the root of all suffering.’
What I don’t think God cares about is what words we use, who we sleep with, if we drink, dance, have sex. Certainly there are boundaries. You shouldn’t have sex with a child, you shouldn’t drink unto drunkenness. But these are crimes against ourself and our fellow humans that impede our Search for God, and we know at our core that these actions are wrong. In our hearts, we know what we should and shouldn’t do, God has planted in each of us a list of rules. Those rules are very few, and I think can be summed up rather tidily in three words: ‘Do no harm.’ If we are doing no harm to others or ourselves, the rest will come naturally.
K) How to you feel about people who take the Bible literally? I feel they are mistaken, and have every right to be so. Certainly any perusing of back issues of ‘Biblical Archaeological Review’ will show that certain stories in the Bible are based in fact. But overall, the message gets missed for the details. It’s great to be able to quote the Bible verbatim, knowing who beget whom and where in Leviticus it says you shouldn’t wear clothes made of different fibers. But WHY are those stories there? What is the lesson?
To me, it more amazing and majestic to believe that God created all life through evolution over billions of years, rather than he just thought all creation in being. For many though, science and religion don’t mix, and there are people in both camps who scoff at the other as misguided. I have yet to see a scientific advancement, be it in astronomy or anthropology, that doesn’t further my appreciation and awe of God. I do not believe science and religion to be incompatible, but complementary.
L) What is the future of religion? In my mind, I see our ancient ancestors, 160,000 years ago or so, asking themselves the same questions we still ask today: “Where do I come from? Why am I here?” And in this imagining, God strikes a tree with lightning, and fire is born. The people worship the fire because they understand, on some level, that it comes from God. Later, the people’s understanding of God is as an Earth Mother type figure. And that’s OK, because that’s as much as they could comprehend without having their free will nullified. Eventually man envisions God in polytheistic terms and creates rites and rituals to honor Him and better understand Him. Polytheism gives way to Monotheism.
Along each step of the journey, on Humanity’s Search for God, we understand His will a little better. He reveals himself to us more and more as we evolve spiritually. What will be the next phase? I do not know. But I feel our understanding is constantly evolving and getting better.
That’s it. Oh sure, there are some minor details I’m leaving out I’m sure. But they aren’t important to anyone but me. If you have made it all the through this note, I hope I have, in some small way, aided you in your own personal Search for God.
Peace,
Mike ‘Pika’ Mclarty
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