Tag / belief

by bcmiller2014

Belief

I find I’m coming to be an avant garde kind of Christian who may quite possibly be considered no Christian at all by people I do and don’t know. I persist, however, in believing in Jesus, so I myself am unable to fully separate myself from the term “Christian” even though I find some supposedly Christian views to be in direct opposition to the person I believe Jesus to be. 

I believe in God and I believe he is good. He made the universe out of an overabundance of love. I believe he made us and when he said we should have “dominion” over the natural world he meant we should serve it and care for it, or else the leadership style of Jesus means nothing. I believe Jesus is the son of God and provides a bridge between ourselves and father God, but I also believe that anyone who is truly seeking for God in love and truth will be able to spend eternity with him, no matter their faith background. No one can serve darkness with a pure heart, so I believe there are people serving the triune God who may not even know they’re doing so. Hell is only a place where people can go if they choose not to be with God. He will not force himself on anyone, so the only people who go to hell are the people who decide to do so. 

I adamantly refuse to believe that God allows suffering so our characters will improve. He does sometimes end up improving our characters when we’re in the midst of suffering, but that’s because he specializes in making good come from bad things. It’s not because he planned for disaster to happen for our spiritual “benefit”. Birth defects are not the equivalent of an ethics and moral compass lesson. They’re tragedies, as are the rest of the diseases, wars, social injustices and the rampant destruction of the natural world. 

I don’t know why he sometimes answers prayer and sometimes doesn’t. He’s a deity. I suppose it’s his prerogative. I do have to admit, however, that his seemingly unpredictable nature leaves me feeling insecure, even while I admit that in the balance between my knowledge and God’s, he will certainly win.  This is why I still think he is good. My understanding  is practically inconsequential when determining the character of someone who happens to be infinite. As such, he did create a stunningly gorgeous and bizarre stage on which our little human dramas play out, and for this I am grateful. I do believe we mucked up his original intentions for the place, although he must’ve known we’d do it. He made us anyway, which means he’s a hell of a lot more sure of his plans than I am. 

And by the way, I don’t see how the fact that something is divinely inspired (in this case, the Bible) means that it’s perfect. Artists and poets and musicians are divinely inspired all the time, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t any errors in the work. In addition, we have over a dozen versions of the Bible and each of them focuses on different things. We’d need to know Hebrew to have even a shot at a correct-type interpretation. The stories recorded were placed in a particular time and culture. How do we manage to take these stories and mold them into messages that promote discrimination, homophobia, mysogeny, and other acts that are not initiated by love, when Jesus was himself the embodiment of love?  He never became infuriated by anyone but the religious leaders of the day. I believe that if we’re really going to follow God, pride, self-importance, greed and cruelty must be abandoned. Pride is a big one, which I believe the church as a whole has tripped over for millennia. We can become so certain of our own views and correctness that we forget the main point of the whole story I think the Bible is ultimately trying to tell. Jesus himself gave us the most important rules to follow, which are to love God and each other. And what does God require but justice, mercy and humility (rough translation)?  These are my cornerstones.  

I freely admit to being scared of God, which emotion I’m supposedly supposed to both feel and not feel, having both the fear of God and having been perfected by love which casts out fear. God is love, but fearing him is the beginning of wisdom. I know there are different translations of fear in this context which makes me refer back to my earlier statement about needing to study the Bible in Hebrew.  Figuring out who God is feels like trying to package the Milky Way so it will fit in my kitchen cupboard. He’s enormous and mysterious and loving and inscrutable and odd. If you don’t think he’s odd, take a look at those fish that live in the dark and are made of teeth, except for one glowing lure right in the front. Weird. So I guess the fact that I can’t figure him out is actually quite reasonable. 

I must admit, I like the idea of knowing him as a person, which some have interpreted to be possible. I also have to admit I feel very much like the main character in that old animated film called “Antz”.  The main character is talking to his therapist and saying something like, “I just feel so desperate to do something important with my life but I can’t escape the feeling that I’m insignificant.”

“This is wonderful!” the therapist replies. “You’ve made a breakthrough!”

“I have?” replied the ant. 

“Yes! The therapist continues, throwing open the window curtains to reveal the outside world.  “You ARE insignificant!” he says. 

Perhaps someday God will respond to this desire of mine to know him in what appears to me now to be a ludicrously personal way. If so, he will have affirmed his weirdness and a crazy streak of affection for minuscule things. I, however, cannot make this happen. No amount of studying supposed facts about his character is going to substitute for him stepping into my life in a perceptible way and saying something like, “Hey. What’s up?  What’s going on in your heart and mind?  Why don’t we go get some fair trade, organic tea in a compostable mug at a family-owned shop (because I don’t support child labor or slavery or racial inequity or wanton destruction of people or natural environments)?  I think I’d like that. 

by bcmiller2014

X-Files (because how else does one follow the story of a brother’s death?)

Since the last thing I wrote about was the death of my adopted brother, I wasn’t quite sure where to go with my next entry. It felt a bit strange to say anything without it sounding like, “Well, one of the most important people in my life died a horrific death at a premature age. Now, Happy Holidays!”  Weird. So I decided there was really only one thing I could do. I wrote about the X-Files. 

When the show “X-Files” first aired in the late 80’s, I wanted no part of watching it. I didn’t want to develop my own mental files full of spooky images and metaphysical freakiness. I was such a little Puritan back then that I didn’t even listen to “secular” music, and my absence of a dating life was, well, fodder for another post. 

It took a number of years, but as I grew up I started thinking that if God was threatened by a little Sci-fi he needed to be bigger to be worth my time. I also became a sucker for imaginative, morally complex programs and probably dared to try the show once and got hooked. I admit to being a born nerd. 

I still watch the show in syndication.  It’s outdated. The computers are antiquated and the effects rely heavily on low light levels. As with any good show, though, it rests on solid characters who are believable and three-dimensional. Dana Scully is young and idealistic. She a doctor who follows the rules and relys on scientific deduction in order to establish her beliefs. She’s also the one with a faith tradition in the Catholic Church, and her cross necklace is intentionally visible in various episodes. As the show progresses she struggles with her faith but it appears to me that over time she becomes the embodiment of a marriage between science and faith. 

Fox Mulder has plenty of faith, but sometimes lets his judgment become clouded by his passions. He is the believer avidly pursuing evidence to support his theories of government conspiracies and extra-terrestrial life. Without Scully’s steadying influence he has a tendency to get himself in trouble with vampires or killer cockroaches or some guy whose shadow kills people.

In my early days I thought the show was sort of heretical, God help me. Since then the internal boxes in which I held all life’s answers have become unhinged.  Engaging in the mental work of reconciling spiritual mysteries with concrete realities is a struggle from which I’ve emerged thinking that mystery is one of the few realities that are actually dependable.   God, if he is any kind of God at all, isn’t afraid of mystery or doubt or the study of science in the world he made. 

Real life may not be full of monsters and aliens and toxic bugs, but then again, it’s a damn dangerous place. And the dangers here can be interminably dull when you know there’s no able partner out there, running to your rescue. It’s tempting to give up, to curl into a ball and close out the world. Hope can look stupid.  

I’ve been tempted many times to disengage from the process of growing, facing my demons and engaging in relationships with other people. It felt too overwhelming and futile. Thankfully, when I’ve been in that state I’ve had people who’ve extended themselves and offered safe haven to my delicate heart. It’s helped me not to give up. Believe it or not, that’s what X-Files is mostly about for me. They never give up. I want to believe.