THE UNIVERSE AND US

The advantage of being an agnostic is that I can admit to not being certain about much of anything.  This is not to say that I don't have beliefs and opinions about things that are based on factual knowledge as we know it today, but facts are not immutable.  Facts are prone to change as new facts are established about our world, ourselves, and the universe we inhabit.  There is much that we humans have opinions about and believe that have no basis in fact apart from us having them.  Unfortunately, these are the types of opinions and beliefs that are often treated as concrete, absolute truths, which only serve to divert us from seeking the factual. 

Being at the debatable top of the food chain on the speck of cosmic dust we call our planet home has led us to become rather arrogant and self-possessed about our place in the universe.  After all, as far as we can tell we humans are the only life form that we actually and factually know to be cognitively aware of ourselves and our surroundings.  We are intellectually capable of creating diverse cultures and keeping a historical record of our activities unlike any other life forms on this planet (or so we believe at the moment). At presents, we can only speculate that if we exist there is a good chance that there are other intelligent life forms we share the universe with. 

That we humans are conscious beings is as much of a mystery as our existing at all.  Consciousness is a mystery to brain scientists and neurobiologist.   Where consciousness comes from remains unknown.  It's not traceable in the brain even though the brain is obviously involved.   It is not a sense like the other senses which can be traced to their geographic locations in the brain.  It is a phenomenon that simply is.  

I speculate that consciousness is foundational to the "I" capabilities all life forms possess:  Instinct, Intuition, and Intelligence.  I have no doubt that some readers will argue that plants and some animals do not possess any of these capabilities; that only higher forms of animal life may possess them.  While these particular "I" capabilities are unique to Homo sapiens, other life forms have similar or like capabilities unique to them.  

Plants behave in conscious ways.  They possess an awareness of their surroundings even though they are largely immobile and having nothing that represents a central nervous system, yet they are capable of  responding to their environment and sending messages to members of their species when endangered.  Even single cell life-form is reactive to its environment and behaves in conscious ways via the impulsive nature of DNA.  If that were not the case, evolution could not have occurred and I wouldn't be writing this post.  

What does this say about the universe we live in?

* * *

Before answering that question, it is best to spend some time examining us human beings.  Perhaps the most conscious and cognizant creatures on our planet (at least in our collective opinions), the mystery that is us conscious beings points to the greater mystery of a conscious universe.  This simple correlation is based on the fact that we have evolved from the universe itself; that there is something about and within the universe that gives rise to consciousness and suggests that the universe is conscious in a way completely unknown to us.  

The universe appears to have an awareness of itself as demonstrated by the laws by which it operates and can be deciphered by conscious beings like us.  We know things about the universe because it is knowable and because the universe is a reactive entity imbued with the knowable which it emits to conscious receptors like us who seek to understand it. You might ask how the universe communicates as sense of  consciousness.  

The observable universe communicates through chemical means, light, and colors.  It pulsates and emits sounds that can be heard.  It has a gravitational pull on us both literally and figuratively. We sentient creatures must remember we do not stand above or below nature; we are merely part of it.  Our purpose may simply consist in our being the sensors that makes the Universe conscious.  We could be part of an extensive neural (organic transmitting) system made up of other sentient and conscious beings that are located throughout its vast expanse.  Within the scope of the universe, we are no more than a spark of a consciousness transmitter by which a possible eternal universe experiences itself.  

Everything in the universe is derived from the constancy of its mass and energy, including us.  That the universe expands or contracts neither adds or subtracts from this constancy.   In other words, we consist of recycled atoms that are likewise an eternal factor that comprises the universe.  No matter how much we make or destroy on this speck of dust, it has no effect on the weight of universe's mass and energy.  The only thing new about us or about anything in the universe is the particular arrangement of its atoms and their particles that currently take our form.  

Interestingly enough, this reality was intuited by writer of the Ecclesiastes 1:9, who said, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." That is certainly true at the atomic level of existence.  In this sense, reincarnation seems a bit more likely than resurrection, but one must keep an open mind about this because the universe likely has its own methods when it comes to such processes.  

What seems to be factual is that the sum of our parts consists of recycled particles rearranged as us.  The you and me that exist now may be a one time life form that will never exist again, in the dimensional sense we exist now.  What we leave behind in the macrocosm is our atomic particles that may or may not be used with other atomic particles found in the universe to create newer life forms sometime in the distant future.

* * *

Early on in my posts I mentioned that I did not like to use the word mystery.  My reticence in using that word within a theistic context was that mystery serves as a locked door to keep questioning minds out; as in, "It's a mystery.  You can't understand it.  Just believe it."  In the realm of science, however, mysteries are the things that stimulate a need to seek an explanation, to explore and to establish facts and theories that deepen our understanding.  In the scientific world mysteries abound regarding the universe and  life on our planet home.  There is a great deal that we do not know but that does not mean we won't increasingly discover the universe's secrets and solve its mysteries.  

Norm

  

HOW DID WE COME THIS WAY? - A Poem

 

                                        How Did We Come This Way?

                             How did we come this way?

                              Did we miss a fork in the road?

                              Did we ignore a sign?

                             Was this path meant to be?

                                                                                               * * *

     

                                Stony the road ahead we tread,

                                Watching one’s step along the way.

                                The thoughtful mind filled with dread,

                               Its thoughts shall never say.

                                                                                              

                                                                                               * * *

                                 The careful do not speak,

                                The complacent do not hear,

                               The compliant do not see,

                              The arrival of their fear.

                                                           Norm Wright

                                                           December 1, 2024

ART'S PERSPECTIVES

When exploring the variant realities we humans create, the museum, the theatrical stage, the concert hall, the library and the restaurant prove to be the best resources by which to navigate the broad spectrum of those realities.  Sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch flood the emotional senses of awe, ambivalence, joy, happiness, love, compassion, longing, anger, fear, hate, disgust, sorrow, sadness, and the like to create and recall memories that shape our perspectives and understanding of the realities we humans have created.   Similarities can be as shocking as the differences we discover which challenge our perspectives and understandings of the realities we have created within this creative universe.  

Art is paradoxical.  To construct art always involves the deconstructing of something; usually the products of nature like rocks, plants, and animals to create the food we eat, the sculptures, the musical instruments, the paints, the theaters, the libraries we make and the books we write, and so on.  The art of living things is made up of living things that have been deconstructed by nature.  The atoms we are made of are recycled from the atoms that once made up dinosaurs and one-celled animals that evolved from stellar and planetary collisions billions of years ago.  Birdsong, hoots, howlers, squeals, booms, and the human voice evolved into the language of earth's species that began with the deconstruction of a universal silence, known as the Big Bang which created an eternal hum that sings throughout the universe.  

Art is analytical.  All art is an analysis of what is.  The tools that we and other animals have created to feed ourselves and make life more comfortable began with an analysis of the conditions in which we live.  Even plants, perhaps amongst the most creative life forms on the planet, are analytically reacting to the conditions of their environment; having the ability to create chemicals from light in order to protect themselves and which other life forms, including we humans, have become dependent on in order to exist. For us humans we use every from of art to express and analyze who and what we are.

Art is proportional.  This may strike some as me exposing a bias to certain forms of art that "make sense" mathematically.  Math certainly is evident in art and almost all art forms can be understood and dissected mathematically, but where art is concerned, proportionality must also fall within the domain of art's paradoxical and analytical domains to express the disproportionate.  In the visual arts, proportion and disproportion exist in classical and abstract forms of art.  In music, proportion and disproportion exist in classical harmonies and lyrical sequences as well as dissonant harmonies, syncopations and tonal qualities.  In the theatrical performance, we find both classical and absurdist theater.  In literature, especially in poetry, there are classical, abstract, and dissonant forms.  Even novels are increasingly exploring proportionality with the twisted or absurdist plots that apparently have no connection to reality as we know it, but which make us think about the reality we live in, the purpose behind all art. 

Human beings as works of art from which the variant perspectives of reality emerge and are expressed is too big a topic to include in this post, but collectively we are the outcome of universes creative processes, works of art.  Within that creative process we have created realities that are expressed and analyzed in the art we create.  The universe is an ever expanding work of art that we cognitive creatures are blessed to enjoy and ponder in the time we are given to interact with it.  

Norm

   

  

 

FAITHFULLY AGNOSTIC

What does it mean to be a faithful agnostic?    

When I began this blog, my definition of a faithful agnostic was one who remained faithful to the Christian faith I belonged to as I questioned certain aspects of its teachings.  It comes as no surprise that  I have come to understand that Christianity does not lend itself to being questioned. 

While some theologians claim that doubt is a path to faith, as an agnostic I can only respond paradoxically by saying, "Perhaps but perhaps not."   Both theists and atheists dislike that sort of answer.   For Christians, doubt is tolerable as long as it doesn't result in denial of its main tenets.  On the other hand, atheists are frustrated with someone who doubts but holds that there might be some meaning to a long-held beliefs that have no factual backing.  Humans are uncomfortable with the grayness of ambiguity.  "Either be for something or be against it."    

There is a Christian (and thus a cultural) bias against being non-committal which I grew up with and is expressed in the third chapter of the Book of Revelation where its author writes:  

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:  ... I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."   That's an image that can stick with one. 

What about religion?

When it comes to theistic religion, I have cooled down to the point of being on the cool side of tepid rather than lukewarm.  I get that a good many people feel they need religion in their lives as it gives them a hint of certainty and a modicum of control over the chaos we all fear.  On the other hand, I also know that all religions have their ardent ideologists who have caused much of the chaos we fear and have led to the most violent wars in history.    

I am reticent to discuss the topic of God, which I've done a great deal of in past posts, but I feel compelled to give a brief repost of where I'm at on the topic.  The term God is problematic as it generally personates something as accessible and capable of being appeased or manipulated to do what we ask.  There has never been nor can there ever be any proof that such individuated being exists.  

When I use the term God, I am thinking of a ubiquitous force that permeates the universe, including us.  Hypothetically speaking, we are because it (the universe) is.  That is perhaps the closest one can get to certainty with regard one's existence.  

What about reality?

I have said in past posts, that reality is consensus of perceptions.  In that sense we humans are dealing with a multitude of realities at any given point in our collective history.  Every religion, theistic and secular, creates its perceptions of reality.  All perceptions are malleable.  Those that constitute common shared perceptions of objects are those which have been handed down as a continuous chain of perceptions.  Ultimately, reality is nothing more than  perceptions that have no intrinsic meaning.  

Beyond shared mundane perceptions of objects, reality becomes increasingly diverse as abstract perceptions called ideologies.  Most malleable realties are those that broadly fall under the domains of economics, politics, and religion; realities that have an impact on the welfare of every living creature on our planet home. 

Being an agnostic does not mean I don't care about such ideological realities.  I care very much about them.  My skepticism does not make me ambivalent to them - quite the opposite.  Skepticism leads me to research and understand the ideological realities that we humans create and are dealing with.  

If one wants to study the vastness of the realties we create, art in all of its various forms is a great place to start.   Dance, music, novels, plays, poetry,  paintings, sculptures, all forms of audio, culinary, and visual arts are ways to engage our senses and our variant perceptions of what is real in the world of our making.  In the post that follows, I will ponder with the reader how art projects our perceptions and shapes our sense of reality.

* * *

Norm   

THE MORNING OF HOPE - A Poem

 

The Morning Of Hope

                                            The morning of hope had vanished behind flag-striped booths 

                                            where dotted ballots erased a republic with pock marks 

                                            made on a paper wall by a firing squad, millions strong. 

                                           Darkness descended before the sun could rise; a horizon of avarice and fear

                                            shading the beacon on the hill and the golden lamp welcoming the 

                                            tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free.

                                    The people spoke the sentence that doomed their freedom;

                                     the irony lost with the loss of the dream once 

                                    held by those who said it.

                                            Time backwards does not flow,

                                            Molding a future from a history once lived 

                                            never lives again.

                                    The past a fading mirage, 

                                    a lifeless icon offering nothing but the semblance 

                                    of a bygone remembrance.

                                    The dictated day will be long.

                                    Where no sun rises, no sun will set.

                                   The sun will rise on a day not dictated,

                                    but on what will it shine?

                                            Norm

                                            November 6, 2024

LEAVING CHURCH - A NEW START

This was the last Sunday my wife and I were member of the church we belonged to forth past thirty years; a church where our daughters were confirmed and where our oldest daughter was married, a place where I have been an organist and lay worship leader for the past twenty-five years.   I'm sure some of my regular readers are thinking, "Well, its about time.  You're hardly a Christian."  I really can't argue with that assessment.  

* * *

I like Jesus.  I like what Jesus taught and find his teachings inspiring, but I no longer put him on the divine pedestal that Christianity has placed him on.  As many of my posts have pointed out, I find Jesus more interesting as a human like you and me than his being a god or demigod who is nothing like you or me.  For some time now, I have struggled with the thought of leaving the Church as a God-believer (of sorts) who doesn't believe God is a good term to describe what I mean when I  use the term God.  I can do without the biblical or to be more specific, the apostolic teachings about Jesus, that are the backbone of Christianity today.

Of course leaving a church is usually prompted by some form of dramatic event; a conflict or falling out with someone (usually a priest or pastor) or something like a change in the church's program or vision.  There is that, at some level, in my case which has provided an opportunity to step away, but such prompts are largely irrelevant when it comes to making a decision to leave organized religion which in essence is what I am doing.   My decision is fundamentally based on changes in my personal beliefs which were best left fully unsaid in the church I belonged to.   Having served as a lay preacher for many years, I have been finding it increasingly difficult to hold the party line, so to speak, when preparing a homily. 

* * *

Like Jesus, I am not trying to nor do I want to start a new religion.  What I truly want and, more importantly, what I need is to make peace with who I am and what I have come to believe about life and my place in an immense and unfathomable universe that has resulted in my being.  There is a great depth of spirituality present in all the life forms that are all around us.  I can no longer commit to being religious in the affiliated sense of that word. 

To forgive the abuse and the pettiness that religions frequently engage in requires me to let go and step away from such toxic environments.  Clinging to a belief system and a religion on the premise that my eternal wellbeing is dependent on doing so is self destructive. 

* * * 

At a time in one's life when religion is usually deemed important, I am finding it toxic to my very soul and the wellbeing of my family.  What I will miss most about leaving our former church is being its organist and having access to a pipe organ that I greatly enjoyed playing.  I can honestly say that I am virtually addicted to playing a pipe organ.  It had become a creative outlet for most of my life, but as the saying goes, "All good things must comes to an end."  I will survive its loss, knowing that in moving on I will feel and be more honest about myself and where I am going in life's journey. 

Speaking of moving on, this blog will likely change the topic matter as I will probably lean into my being an agnostic as opposed to trying to save Christianity from itself, which is at best a Sisyphean task.  So stay tuned as I ponder the journey I have embarked on today.

Norm 

 

  

  

RECALIBRATING MY BELIEFS

In this post, I examine the personal evolution regarding my beliefs about Christianity.  

When I began this blog ten years ago, I was already questioning my Christian faith.  I call my blog, "The Faithful Agnostic," not so much because I considered myself an ardent agnostic who is ambivalent about whether there is a god and whether religions are relevant, but rather by identifying as an agnostic I am admitting that I know so little when there is so much to know.  In particular,  I believe no one knows why we are here and if the God Christians claim to know is in any factual sense knowable or real.  

I added the adjective "faithful" to agnostic because, while in questioning what I believe and what most Christians believe, I see value in taking another look at this Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth, and his teachings as found in the Synoptic Gospels.  I feel that Christianity would benefit by becoming less of what it has been for the past two millennia and more of what it could be if it were recalibrated in the light what we know of universe we live in today and in understanding Jesus as purely one of us, child of humankind, a son of man(kind).  

Like many agnostics and atheists, my journey started out trying to serve God and the Church as an ordained  minister.  I made several attempts at becoming a pastor, but none of them took root in the way I hoped for.  On the contrary, I felt called  away from the ordained ministry much like a minister might say he or she was "called" into ordained ministry.  What may differentiate me from ardent agnostics and atheists is that the pursuit to be an ordained minister led me to pursue the study religion, in particular, the religion I have long identified with, Christianity.  

SO WHERE AM I AT IN THIS RECALIBRATING JOURNEY ?

I find the traditional, dogmatic Christianity of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and mainline Protestantism has lost its appeal to me.  They have failed to embrace the radical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth by obscuring them in the mystery of the divinity they have consigned him to.  Ironically, being both a confirmed Lutheran and Episcopalian has confirmed nothing for me with regard to Christianity.  

On the contrary it has led me to question everything about Christianity and religions in general.  What drew me to the Episcopal Church besides its liturgical services and music is that reason is considered an honored path to understanding the spiritual, but reason in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion is constrained within the parameters of Scripture and Tradition, which seems to  be unreasonable to me.  Start questioning the validity of Scripture as the Word of God or (perhaps worse in the Episcopal Church) the validity of Tradition, one can find oneself on the fringe of membership.

I think it fair to say I have read myself not only out of the church but also out of  traditional dogmatic Christianity.  This is not to say I don't believe in a creative force that brought all things into being, what many religions identify with the term "God," but I have come to the conclusion that the term "God" carries a lot of baggage.

What I find alluring in Christianity are the teachings of a first century Jewish man,  Jesus of Nazareth.   I see in his teachings a way forward in today's world in the manner he was trying to find a way forward in world of his time.   What I have a problem with in regard to Jesus are the teachings about him. 

First and foremost, I have a problem seeing him as God.  I don't believe he is and I doubt Jesus ever thought of himself as God.  Secondly, so much of the teachings about Jesus push his relevance in our  lives to a point when our mortal coils have long been shuffled off. As such, there is no immediate relevance in being Christian that helps us live in this life beyond encouraging us to keep ourselves from the wrongdoing and taint of this world so as not to prevent us from the eternal bliss of a new heaven and earth.

GOD

"God" is a catchall term that we humans tend imbue with whatever we want "God" to be or do.  We imbue God with compassion, love, and life-giving, but God is also imbued with angry, revenge, jealousy, and destructiveness.  We treat God as a pincushion on which to pin our needs and desires.  God, as a metaphor for the creative force that brought the universe and ourselves into being, however, is not something we can pin down.  

According to the Holy Bible, God will be what God will be.   God is whatever God is at any given moment or place.  Closer to the mark, is to say that God is a ubiquitous and indecipherable type of intelligence at work in every aspect of the universe   Even the Scriptures admit, "God's ways are not our ways." We  humans are merely living entities that temporarily reflect the intelligent ambiguity and ubiquity of  God.

Perhaps properly understood, God is a simile for the Theory of Everything.  God has no need of a plan since God is the plan being carried out since the beginning of time (if such a beginning ever happened).  God is multi-dimensional.  God is not and cannot be separated or "individuated" from that which God creates.  The constant creativity of God is not only all around us but also is in us and exists through us.

I use the term God only as a reference point that most understand, but it is far from being a description of something that is far beyond any definition.  Whatever God is we and everything that has existed and will exist are intrinsically related to it, to each other, and the universe as a whole.

JESUS

I can understand the Christian belief that Jesus is the human face of God, because Christians see in Jesus the God they want, a God of love and compassion; a God who is faithful to us, is forgiving, and has hope in us.  Jesus exhibited these attributes in his humanity.  To observe and listen to Jesus as one of us is to see that we, like him, aspires to something far greater than we can conceive., 

I have written a great deal about Jesus and his being a Jew living in a troubled time in what is now Israel.   Jesus had a remarkable, insightful mind, and an intuitive ability to see purpose in and beyond the mundane and often troubled existence we humans experience.   I believe he was devoted to his Jewish faith and who wanted to recalibrate and share his understanding of that faith through the lens of his unique understanding of God as a father figure.  Jesus brought what it  means for Jews being God's Chosen People down to a personal level in which each Jew is God's chosen child; someone loved by God and in whom God is well-pleased.  Over time, Jesus would be amazed to find that gentiles grasped this understanding of being God's offspring worthy of consideration like his fellow Jews.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus channeled Ezekiel by adopting God's moniker for Ezekiel, Son of man, to himself.   As such he saw himself as an exemplar to his Jewish brethren an inclusiveness that was largely foreign to the world and the times in which he lived.  Jesus loved life and loved people.  

Jesus understood the burden that the concept of sin had on people.  In some cases, being an identified sinner made people physically and mentally sick.  Jesus understood sin because he experienced being sinful in his life.  If he didn't have such experiences he could not have related to the human need for forgiveness as healing.  

Jesus demonstrated a repudiation of the hypocrisy of self-righteousness by befriending the hated tax collector, prostitutes, and those on the fringe of Jewish society.  Jesus touched the leper, welcomed little children, and accepted the gratitude of the thankful.  His main tool for healing those who came to him was to forgive what they couldn't in themselves. 

Jesus demonstrated that if God can forgive, then so must we.  If Jesus taught us anything about saving ourselves from ourselves, it is that we must forgive others as we desire to be forgiven.  We must do unto others as we would like others to do to us.  We must love our fellow human beings as ourselves because we cannot claim to love God when we are not loving what God loves.  

* * *

I do not believe Jesus was sent from heaven to die for our sins.  He did not give us a free pass to do nothing on this earth and in our lives except believe that he did it all for us so that we do not have to do anything to gain salvation.  On the contrary,  I believe Jesus showed us the way to forge a path to salvation in our lifetimes, by doing the difficult and often thankless job of lifting people from beneath the hardships they piled on themselves and the hardships that others and society placed on them.  This Jesus did, one person at a time.  I believe this is the task Jesus his followers to do, the role we humans are meant to step into but, as yet, have failed to fully do.  

This undertaking extends beyond forgiving humans and treating them with love and respect as our siblings.  It extends to attending the bounty of creation with care and gratitude, recognizing our commonality in the mutual needs we share with all living thing; the air we breathe, the water we drink, and so much more.  We must consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field because they too are God's offspring; they too are products of the same creative force that made us.  All life on this planet is dependent on some level with all other forms of life.  We humans are neither the masters nor the epitome of creation on the planet we share with other creations.   We are undoubtedly more dependent on them than they on us. 

Like Jesus, we can understand ourselves as incarnations of God, the evidentiary products of the creative force that brought us into being.  Like Jesus we can resurrect to new and vibrant experiences in this life by "letting go and letting God," by commending our life force to, the creative life-giving force from which all that exists proceeds, in which nothing is lost, and to which all that exists returns.   

This relatively unknown Jewish man from Galilee made a lasting impact on what it means to be a human.   His teachings and  his treatment of others keeps him alive in our hearts and minds.  He is an exemplar for all of humanity.  I believe that to follow in his footsteps is to bring about a better world or, as Jesus would have put it, brings about the Kingdom of God, a world that could and should be. 

THE HOLY BIBLE

The Holy Bible is a fascinating work of religious literature.  Both Christianity and Judaism have a navel-gazing relationship with it; in that, they both treat it as a self-defining resource that needs no other outside sources to verify its validity.  While neither claim to worship it, their treatment of it is seems to belie that claim.  The familiar, "The Word of the Lord"  said at the end of reading a portion of scripture in many liturgical Christian churches seems to be an attempt to close the doors of one's mind to what it says, to leave it unquestioned and thus undigested.  

The Old Testament (Judaic Scriptures) are fascinating to me as they show the evolution of the Jewish religion from a tribal, mountaintop understanding of God as one of many gods, to the one God of monotheism.  I consider the book of Genesis to be the most singular important book of the Bible.  It is the bedrock on which both the Old and New Testaments rests. 

The Old Testament is collection of diverse forms of literature.  Myth, legend, history, poetry, prophecy and wisdom abound throughout its pages.  There is nothing particularly consistent in its presentation but rather it is a menagerie of literary types that reveal an evolutionary process regarding a particular people's experiences and understanding of God.  

The New Testament, on the other hand, is an attempt to present a consistent narrative about Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ of God.  The consistent narrative consists of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke that present a linear narrative about Jesus life, ministry, death, and resurrection that contain his teachings in forms of conversations, sermons, and parables..   Then there is a theological presentation of who Jesus that begins with the Gospel of John, the legendary accounts found in the Acts of the Apostles, the letters  ascribed to Paul, Peter, James, John, Jude and the Book of Revelation.  Most of the New Testament is aimed of promoting the teachings about Jesus; otherwise known as, the apostolic teachings.  

The  Bible is not the Word of God.  It is religious literature and nothing more.  Like the Greek myths, the Jewish and Christian myths  contained in it tells us more about who we are than who or what God is.

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I find myself questioning how a collection of books at least two to three thousand years old maintains its hold on people or why the moral codes of an ancient civilization is considered the basis for all moral and ethical decisions being made today.  By now, we know that stealing, murder, adultery, for example, are wrong.  I sometimes think the fear of losing the Bible is that we humans will go off the rails and lose all sense moral and ethical conduct.  Personally, I doubt that.  The problem I have is that it so many Christians use the Bible to bully and justify harming people in the name of a God.  

Jesus was no literalist when it came to the scriptures he knew.  While Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew claims he did not come to change one "jot or tittle" of the law, he certainly broadened the law's meaning. For instance, whenever Jesus says something like, "You have heard... but I say ....."  A good example of this is when he says in Matthew 5, "Love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may claim yourselves to be the children of your Father in heaven" 

If only Christians would follow Jesus' example of treating scripture as a living document, open to interpretation and reinterpretation as the times demand.  Jesus places our enemies and persecutors in the same category as our neighbors, the people we are to love. In claiming oneself to be child of God moves one to recognize that one's enemies and persecutors are also one's sibling in the eyes of God.  How are we to treat such siblings?  Do we give them multiple chances to recognize us as their siblings or do we disown them?

The Gospel of John and the scriptures that follow after it present a different story.  They depict Jesus to be revealed as different from the rest of us due to the resurrection story that reveals him not only to be more than the Messiah, but also the only-begotten Son of God sent to earth to take away the sins of the world.  This is a remarkably different understanding than the Synoptic Gospels present  Jesus as being.  

It is my belief that the Synoptic Gospels were edited to lean into the notion of Jesus being the Messiah as the only-begotten Son of God via Jesus' birth stories in Matthew and Luke and to further the notion that his life purpose in was meant to be a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world.  I think this is an erroneous interpretation of Jesus' life and ministry.  His death was an unnecessary tragedy that cut short a life that was transforming the world one person at a time.  His inner circle of disciples did their best to continue that approach.

The resurrection story is mnemonic device to keep Jesus' teachings alive and relevant following his death.   People, at the time, undoubtedly believed it to be a factually true story and it certainly is presented in the Gospels as being so.  Nevertheless, like so much of miraculous accounts recorded in the Bible, there is little or no proof or way of proving them to be factual events.  The resurrection stories of Jesus fall into the category of things unprovable and non-replicable.  Believing or disbelieving such stories does neither enhance nor deprive them of meaning, which is why I believe they have relevance in defining the human experience.   

Undoubtedly, the Holy Bible will remain the foundational mainstay of Christianity, but I feel it needs to be recalibrated from the position of being the only source of understanding Jesus and God.  There is so much information coming to light via historical discoveries, anthropology, the sciences that continue to shed new light on our planet home, our place in the universe, and the importance of all living things.  As such, I see a need to reevaluate the meaning and role of these ancient scriptures in the light of such information.

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God indeed moves in mysterious and wondrous ways.  The being-ness that is the vastness of the universe, the macrocosm and microcosm, presents multidimensional possibilities as exhibited by the creative forces that have brought about our lives and all the forms of plant and animal existence we know on this planet.

Obviously, the beliefs I grew up and which became part of my psyche has experienced changes over the years.  At times these changes have made me feel discomfort as what I had thought I believed with all my heart began to melt away. As such, one questions why one stays and continues to nominally belong to a Christian church whose doctrines one largely disagrees with.  While I have left and am letting go of many of my indoctrinated beliefs about God and Jesus, I am finding  new ways to understand the concept of God and the person of Jesus that I find  more meaningful than what I have previously believed throughout most of my life.  

Stay tuned.

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Norm