Religion without Belief

I have been thinking about the real impact of doubt in the existence of God or the verity of the numerous historical claims of religion vs. the practice of discipleship. I wonder if there is a way out of worrying so much about truth claims regarding religious events while gaining the benefits of following a religion. Aside from religion, people are devoted to causes, companies, sports, projects, countries, nations, ethnicities, races, etc. Most of these devotions are based on intuitive judgments, traditions, and the ethos and mythos of the group, movement or endeavor. Americans generally believe in and attempt to put their actions as americans in the certain set of myths about how America is a country built on freedom and justice. Few people care about the real historical accuracy of the mythos that supports the “American Way”, the “American Dream”, the Constitution, etc. but they still have a degree of reverence for the ideas they represent.

The fact that America was built on slavery as much as on freedom, on genocide in nearly the same proportion as tolerance does not diminish the dream and the vision of America in the minds of many. Of course there is a hefty amount of delusion in the dream, but the dream and the ethos that springs from the mythology has had the power to bend and temper opposing forces in a way that makes some aspects of the vision reality. The huge, powerful, rich, multicultural country we live in that enjoys unprecedented freedom of speech, expression, and religion appears to be in a large part the product of the “religion” of Americanism. Of course, during recent years we see the destructive power of dark, reactionary, myopic forces that also dwell within nationalism, but those are also to be expected. We believe in the ideals, despite evidence that our behavior is contrary to the ideals, not because the historical myths regarding the justice of America are true, but rather because the ideals are living, they resonate with our own aspirations of justice and right.

Am I really a Christian? are you?

It seems that is a question that I am always ask myself on any given day, and keep asking myself.

After reading through the Gospels recently it struck me that there is an awful lot being made in the religious world about being saved, and how to do it when Jesus didn’t talk a lot about it himself.

I just posted these comments Here, a LDS/Evangelical Discussion blog.

but I will discuss the idea a bit more here here:

Jesus is quoted as giving some pretty direct statements regarding who would be his true followers and be part of the kingdom of heaven of which he spoke so often. It appears to me that he defined his disciples by those who choose to follow his highest moral teachings. i.e. the Sermon on the Mount and the “New Commandment” to love others as he had loved his disciples.

Forgive the provocative title.

Reading through the Gospels has put a lot of questions in my mind about what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Jesus is quoted as giving some pretty direct statements regarding who would be his true followers and be part of the kingdom of heaven of which he spoke so often. It appears to me that he defined his disciples by those who choose to follow his highest moral teachings. i.e. the Sermon on the Mount and the “New Commandment” to love others as he had loved his disciples.

After the Sermon on the Mount he is quoted in Matthew 7:

15“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

24“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

In John, Jesus gives this definition:

34 A new commandment^. I give to you,⁽that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”John 13 34-35 (NIV)

Again in John, Jesus is quoted as saying that the choice to do the will of God was the path to understanding if Jesus was really of God, as opposed to relying on your interpretation of scripture the Pharisees were doing) :

John 7: (NIV)16Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. 17If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.

From my point of view the title of “Christian” is something that Jesus would not give out to all those who claim that title today, Mormons and Evangelicals included. It seems rather clear from these two accounts, that There has to be a will to follow God, and to put Jesus’ teachings into practice rather than a simple confession of faith. Indeed, according to the Jesus of Matthew, a correct confession of correct faith in accord with the learned seems to be something quite superfluous if you actually choose to do God’s will, i.e. you will know for yourself without scriptural confirmation.

So according to Him, isn’t it a bit presumptuous for us to call ourselves “Christians” without searching our hearts to find out if we really want to put the very difficult teachings of Jesus into practice. He does not say: ” By this shall men know that you are my disciples, if you have the correct creed and teaching about my true substance” or ” By this shall people know that you are my disciples, if you belong to my one and only true church”.

It seems a bit strange that we so readily defend ourselves as “Christians” because we believe that Christ died for our sins, when this theological fact was not at all the focus of what Jesus had to say to those who believed that he was the Messiah. I, for one, would think that He would look more favorably on those who sought to put his words into practice, whether or not they believed He died for their sins, was resurrected, was God, a God, or part of a triune substance that is the Trinity. He does say that these people, apparently regardless of their particular brand of theology, will be on the solid foundation when they stand before Him. I mean, may of the much maligned “hell-bound” secular humanists seem to fair better on this front than those who call “Lord Lord” quite often. It seems that the focus on our own salvation and doing what it takes to “get saved” really misses the point, doesn’t it?

So, does it make sense to call yourself a “Saint” (latter-day or otherwise) or a “Christian” without the will and inclination to put His teachings into practical application

____________________________

Others, inside and outside of purported Christianity seem to have previously picked up on this same thought:

As Gandhi observed. “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” discussed here by an Anglican.

An inside LDS Perspective on this Topic from David Haight

and Joseph Smith (verses 34-46)

I think Nietzsche’s perspective was quite interesting:

The everyday Christian.— If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God universal sinfulness election by divine grace and the danger of eternal damnation were true, it would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one’s own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of ones eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.

Looking for a Science of Religions

Here is a quote from William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, this resonated with me, I would like to be a part of the sort of Science he proposes (maybe at the risk of being labled a heretic and apostate):

“What religion reports, you must remember, always purports to be a fact of experience: the divine is actually present, religion says, and between it and ourselves relations of give and take are actual. If definite perceptions of fact like this cannot stand upon their own feet, surely abstract reasoning cannot give them the support they are in need of. Conceptual processes can class facts, define them, interpret them; but they do not produce them, nor can they reproduce their individuality. There is always a plus, a thisness, which feeling alone can answer for. Philosophy in this sphere is thus a secondary function, unable to warrant faith’s veracity, and so I revert to the thesis which I announced at the beginning of this lecture.

In all sad sincerity I think we must conclude that the attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutely hopeless.

It would be unfair to philosophy, however, to leave her under this negative sentence. Let me close, then, by briefly enumerating what she can do for religion. If she will abandon metaphysics and deduction for criticism and induction, and frankly transform herself from theology into science of religions, she can make herself enormously useful.

The spontaneous intellect of man always defines the divine which it feels in ways that harmonize with its temporary intellectual prepossessions. Philosophy can by comparison eliminate the local and the accidental from these definitions. Both from dogma and from worship she can remove historic incrustations. By confronting the spontaneous religious constructions with the results of natural science, philosophy can also eliminate doctrines that are now known to be scientifically absurd or incongruous.

Sifting out in this way unworthy formulations, she can leave a residuum of conceptions that at least are possible. With these she can deal as hypotheses, testing them in all the manners, whether negative or positive, by which hypotheses are ever tested. She can reduce their number, as some are found more open to objection. She can perhaps become the champion of one which she picks out as being the most closely verified or verifiable. She can refine upon the definition of this hypothesis, distinguishing between what is innocent over-belief and symbolism in the expression of it, and what is to be literally taken. As a result, she can offer mediation between different believers, and help to bring about consensus of opinion. She can do this the more successfully, the better she discriminates the common and essential from the individual and local elements of the religious beliefs which she compares.

I do not see why a critical Science of Religions of this sort might not eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. Even the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of optics — it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet as the science of optics has to be fed in the first instance, and continually verified later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the science of religions would depend for its original material on facts of personal experience, and would have to square itself with personal experience through all its critical reconstructions. It could never get away from concrete life, or work in a conceptual vacuum. It would forever have to confess, as every science confesses, that the subtlety of nature flies beyond it, and that its formulas are but approximations. Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late. No one knows this as well as the philosopher. He must fire his volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, for his profession condemns him to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness and irrelevancy. His formulas are like stereoscopic or kinetoscopic photographs seen outside the instrument; they lack the depth, the motion, the vitality. In the religious sphere, in particular, belief that formulas are true can never wholly take the place of personal experience.”

For full text of this great book go to: Varieties of Religious Experience Chapter 18 (Philosophy)

Why I am a Mormon (and so can you!)

As my previous post indicates, I have recently had a crisis of faith of sorts. The events in my life have brought forward many of the doubts and questions that I had about religion in a way that did not allow me to simply ignore them. I want to find some more meaning and purpose and direction for life and in life and the unresolved concerns with Mormon Christianity.

Ultimately I remain a believing LDS Christian (of sorts) because at root I believe that what I perceive as the core of the religion and I believe that I have enough basis for that belief to order my life around it. I think Mormonism is compatible with the Articles of Understanding that I have settled on.

To me, the teachings of Joseph Smith illuminate the real connection we have with God, i.e. the Spirit. What the history of religion suggests is that actual 5-senses experiences with the supernatural are very few and far between, grains sand on the beach of all of human experience. Believers rely on the testimonies of those who see visions and extrapolate theology from that. However, what is also apparent is that many, if not most, humans have internal experiences that we can define as spiritual; feelings, impressions ideas, inspiration etc. that accompany religious practice. People read the Gospels the Torah, the Vedas or the Book of Mormon and are convinced of their divinity by the spiritual experiences that accompany the reading of those texts and practicing their teachings. I have had many of such experiences, nearly all of them came to me in the process of practicing and living as an LDS Christian.

Due to my own experience, one aspect of Joseph’s teachings that I embrace is the fact that we can have hope to access the Divine through spiritual experiences and that the Spirit is “poured” out on all people and worthy of following. Joseph was revolutionary in that he rejected the arbitrary boundaries that I believe close us down from all further enlightenment. I can agree with the approach to religion he describes here:

“I cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations, because they all have some things in them I cannot subscribe to, though all of them have some truth. I want to come up into the presence of God, and learn all things; but the creeds set up stakes, and say, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further”; which I cannot subscribe to.”

Joseph taught others to “seek the face of God” not only as a possibility but as a commandment. (1 Chr. 16: 11, D&C 101: 38 ) The reality of his own experiences were his guide. He believed and taught and revealed that we were all entitled to see God if we were pure in heart.

My understanding of God as Love requires such a democratic access to truth. If we are to take Jesus’ recorded promise that anything we ask in his name we have to believe that he will give us Confirmation of his Divinity and reality if we ask for it.

Another thing is also clear to me, that it is practically impossible to distinguish between my sincere spiritual experiences and those of others who would brand me a heretic and infidel (or fool) for believing what they confirm to me. This leads me to the conclusion that I think we also have to approach spiritual truth with a tremendous amount of humility and, for lack of another word, skepticism. To remain both intellectually and spiritual honest I think I have to float all of our doctrines on the sea of reality and be open to what is revealed as real, through ours and others senses, experiments and experiences as we

While this point of view may put into question all kinds of doctrines and current teachings of the LDS Church, in my mind I can (still) be a Mormon because the religion allows for this sort of radical open-mindedness, the ability to accept all truth and bend and adjust previous beliefs to reflect the reality that is revealed and understood through investigation. I believe Joseph Smith stood for and died for the idea that we can believe lots of varied things but yet remain open further light and knowledge to correct us as we move closer to understanding of reality.

This is not to say that this brand of Mormonism is generally accepted, there are as many closed minded Mormons as any other group. But I believe that I both embrace Mormonism while being fully open to further understanding that may shift my understanding to directions that other Mormons would not accept.

Wasteland

I suppose I should have no surprise about what I am going through. I have fought doubt for a long time, simply ignoring it over a more convenient, if more superficial, belief. If belief were less convenient, or rebellion more tempting, I would probably have probably come to this crisis long ago.

After about 15 years of adulthood I found myself more comfortable with facing the uncomfortable. It seems better to face now what will eventually have to be faced later since if I do not pass through this crisis I don’t think I will have a clear handle on the meaning and purpose of my life. Of course the danger and the fear is, that I am losing my direction and ability to recognize my purpose, and I am, at the same time, alienating myself from one of the greatest sources of meaning and inspiration I have known.

It’s a terrifying and even engulfing feeling. It turns out, that the feeling is utterly common among those who think deeply about faith and meaning in life throughout the history of the world. It is reflected in the scriptures on several occasions, the most notable of which is in the Book of Job, which depicts a man at his most confounded and conflicted, wishing for death and cursing the day he was born. It is iterated in the words of Jesus when he asked why his God had forsaken him on the cross. To accept and embrace that feeling is, to me, a critical part of accepting our humanity. I have come to accept the feeling as, at times, inescapable, and to reject position of some religious who claim that God will ultimately protect His followers from it.

Joseph Campbell, in a pithy section in the Creative Mythology volume of his series The Masks of God describe what he calls an essential problem of the Christianized Western World. Campbell explains how historical and scientific discovery has lead to a deep alienation in the Western Consciousness:

“Unhappily, however in the light of what is now known, not only of the history of the Bible and the Church, but also of the universe and evolution of species, a suspicion has been confirmed that was already dawning in the Middle Ages; namely, that the biblical myth of Creation, Fall and Redemption is historically untrue. Hence, there has now spread throughout the Christian world a desolating sense not only of no divinity within (mythic dissociation) but also of no participation in divinity without (social identification dissolved): that, in short is the mythological base of the Waste Land of the modern soul, or, as it has been called these days, our “alienation”.

The sense of desolation is experienced on two levels: first the social, in a loss of identification with any spirituality compelling, structuring group; and, beyond that, the metaphysical, in a loss of any sense of either identity or of a relationship with a dimension of experience, being, and rapture any more awesome than that provided by an empirically classifiable conglomerate of self-enclosed, separate, mutually irritating organisms held together only by lust (crude or sublimated) and fear (of pain and death or of boredom). “

This is appears to be where I am at. The general depiction of creation and simple acceptance of scripture and doctrine and certain historical accounts generally accepted among my fellow Mormons and other Christians seems inaccurate, incomplete or incompatible with other evidence and intuition that I trust. The dissonance puts a wedge between my own intellectual conscience and the Church and where I have always looked for greater hope, meaning and elevation. As Campbell mentions, the dissonance leads me, at times, to the cold reduction of all my thoughts, wonder and spirit into some materialistic theory based on a crude understanding of biology. I think intellectual discomfort with half-truth, unsound argument, ignored fact or manipulated logic is a force that is completely underestimated by those who don’t have it, or suppress in themselves. Thus the problem is not adequately (or ever) really addressed at church.
            Mormonism during its short history has built a superficial mythology around itself that is easily punctured and has built itself up through a corporate structure that is often alienating. What people find when they dig is that the history of the church has been whitewashed by its leaders and members, which causes doubt and often a sense of betrayal, the Church doesn’t appear to be precisely what it often claims to be. Even if you ultimately can get past the use of propaganda to make the Church appear more appealing, the ignorance, myopia, or intolerance of some members of the church can make social activity unappealing and unsatisfying. A Mormon thus alienated is left in a waste land, having been disconnected from the perceived source of the most real spiritual experiences they have had, and left without direction as where to re-experience that spirit. Often this leads to the wholesale rejection of religion and God, feeling as if they were fooled by the Church they were equally fooled into thinking that their psychological reactions to the religion were real spiritual experiences.

The dissonance between the totality of evidence and the story of a faith makes me rethink my spiritual experiences, doubt my faith in God, distrust the Church, and leaves me alienated. It also leaves me without an effective way to explain my faith and my spiritual experience. If my faith has crumbled in some of the standard axioms of the Mormon religion, what can I make of my religious experiences, which have often been profound? How do I make sense of them in a way that enables me to maintain a connection with and trust in spiritual experience?

The prospects outside of Mormonism do not seem to be any better. At times it seems as if all religious belief is propped up by followers with self-deception and willful ignorance of history, science or reason (or all three). Veneration and near worship of religious texts can seem completely bizarre when considered from an outside perspective. The typical conception of God seems monstrous in light of what I believe about love and justice. The eastern and roman catholic churchs as institutions seem to be obsessed with dogma and shoring up the institution and push creeds that are impossible to swallow in the manner they are offered. The Bible is offered as the inerrant truth, and what it says in places can impossible to square with plausibility, morality or history. On top of this, the fact that there are thousands of religious directions available makes me doubt that there is a golden ticket to be found out there, that cannot be found within the sphere of the religion that I grew into. But some sort of search outside the context of my experiences to some new religion seems premature and fruitless if I cannot deal adequately with the fact that I have had spiritual experiences and even continue to have them. Ultimately I have to come to grips with the religious experiences I have had in order to understand how to interpret whatever experiences come my way in the future. Escape is not an effective option. Traveling away from what I have experienced does not help. I agree what Emerson said:

” He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. . . Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.” R. W. Emerson – Self Reliance

Lately I have come to believe that unless (or until) I recognize and deal with the “giant” that is my struggle for understanding and meaning of my life and my experiences with a diligence and dedication of thought, talent and effort I will remain in the waste land that I appear to have found myself in. I am optimistic that there is a way out.

“To thinkers whose studies have brought them into collision with religion. . .”

If a person studies too much and exhausts his reflective powers, he will be confused, and will not be able to apprehend even that which had been within the power of his apprehension. For the powers of the body are all alike in this respect.

Moses Maimonides- A Guide for the Perplexed