This is a deeply personal post. It delves into issues of faith and belief. I hesitate to release it into the world for many reasons. If you have never wrestled with religious belief or struggled to understand what faith means, you may want to skip this one. It may surprise or shock you if you do choose to read, but I am merely trying to be honest with myself about my journey.
My sister called me the other night. We are close, but talk infrequently and see each other even less frequently. She lives out east with her life, and I am out here with mine. We love each other, though, and when we talk, we return to themes that have ordered our conversations for years. Re-discussing them never gets old, because even as we do (get old), our views on these matters continue to evolve.
Our most recent conversation was occasioned by what I wrote about our mom. Her first comment to me (after telling me she liked the piece) was to say it made her angry at mom. That surprised me at first, but as we talked, I understood why.
I had remarked that “at least we did not grow up in a dysfunctional family,” which she immediately contested. Rare in our conversations. Of course, I was thinking of dysfunction along the lines of the kind of physical abuse and neglect my daughter, who works in child protective services, tells me about on a routine basis. My sister, on the other hand, was thinking about a different kind of abuse—the spiritual kind—that she felt our parents had subjected us to. Her anger with mom, in part, stemmed from that upbringing.
I conceded the point. Of course, we had grown up in a dysfunctional home. A home in which religion (I won’t say “faith’) was weaponized to keep us in line. The weaponization was not always carried out by our parents. Rather, it came from the religious environment in which they raised us. They merely reinforced what our pastor told them to do. Religion—the old-time gospel, as some called it—was a form of social control, and while my sister, as a girl/woman in its patriarchal culture, suffered in ways I never had to, both of us agreed that we had been raised to live in a strange kind of fear: the fear of what would happen if we abandoned the “faith.”
And yet, there we were, talking about that very thing: leaving behind the carefully crafted, controlling narratives of our childhood. I told her that I never expected to fully leave that fear behind; that I had decided I would wrestle with it for the rest of my life.
Admitting that helped her a little. Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to live with the cognitive dissonance that comes from knowing we must abandon a deeply ingrained belief, while simultaneously fearing the wrath of the higher power behind the faith we had abandoned. I know that does not sound healthy. But here we are.
Without pushing me, my sister skirted the edges of the question that is not safe to ask: “So, what DO you believe?”
While I think about that question incessantly, I have avoided putting my thoughts down in words because doing so would make the break—the abandonment—official. Am I ready to do that? Maybe not.
Where I am in relation to “all that” is not a simple statement and must be rolled out in relation to four themes: what I believe about 1) the Bible, 2) the Church, 3) God, and 4) Jesus. I place these in order of complexity—what is easiest to talk about first, and what I really do not want to say out loud last.
I also need to put down a narrative of how I understand humankind’s place in the world. I will come to that last.
Note: My sister and I were raised in a brand of Christianity that used to call itself “fundamentalism,” now falls under the umbrella of evangelicalism, but is more a kind of non-charismatic, pietistic, Christian Nationalism.
The Bible
We were taught that the Bible—“Old” and “New” Testaments—was the inspired word of God. God did not dictate the words of the Bible; rather, God inspired men to write them to lay down an accurate account of what had happened in the world.
While the entire Bible was considered a kind of moral guidebook, not all parts of it were equally important in practice. Writings ascribed to Paul were given primary place; the four Gospels were used sparingly, mostly to prove the virgin birth and the importance of the cross, and, to a lesser extent, the resurrection; and the so-called books of prophecy were scoured relentlessly to divine secret truths about the end times.
I acknowledge that the Bible is a historically important “book.” But I don’t understand what it means to say that it is God’s word. It is a collection of stories, histories, bits of advice and wisdom, accounts (real or imagined), and proclamations that flow from one religion to another (the second birthed from the first).
If there is a single narrative arc running throughout the whole thing, I am not sure there is any universal consensus on what it might be.
The writers invoke God’s name and claim to act on God’s orders, but I think that many of the writers were merely using God as a cover for some pretty nasty business. To suggest that a God whom they call just would order the pogroms, ethnic cleansings, and genocides that are scattered across the Old Testament is ludicrous. These writers just wanted to pass off evil acts as the work of a higher power. I am not buying that “God told us to.”
I don’t know who wrote what and to what end. Most of it seems self-justifying, and because I was never taught to read the Bible with an eye to its cultural/historical/sociological context, I am left wondering what the motives really were. And much of the time, I am not even sure what the point was or is. In other words, is it relevant to my life?
The Gospels tell a significant story, but are they historically accurate? How can we know? Can I gain solace, wisdom, or guidance from the Gospel accounts? Yes. Can I state with any certainty that it all happened that way? No, and I won’t try.
Growing up, to deny the Bible was, literally, the road to perdition. Without the truth of the Word, there was no reliable source of ethics. There was no anchor in a “storm-tossed” world; there was no way to know right from wrong. We were taught that the Bible is sufficient in itself as a source of instruction for how to live a holy life. Those who doubted its truth would end up wayward—at best. Frankly, if you doubted that God had inspired the Bible and that it contained the “truth,” you were already lost. The fear starts here, because I no longer believe the Bible is God’s word.
The Church
This one is a bit tougher, largely because the word “church” carries so many meanings. On the one hand, there is the “church universal,” which is the communion of all the saints (believers) of all times, everywhere in the world. Let’s call that church with a capital C.
Then there is the “church local”—the gathering of believers in every place where they come together to celebrate sacraments, sing, pray, receive teaching, and do the things that communities of practice in all religions do everywhere.
Of course, one does not “believe in” the church, but one has understandings of its role and one’s responsibilities to it.
The most salient thing I learned about the church growing up is that we must not “forsake the assembling together of ourselves, as is the custom with some.” In other words, you need to go to church.
That expression “go to church” was the foundation of our social lives growing up. Not going to church would be like not being in a family, or leaving your town to wander as a stranger. You simply had to do it, and to “forsake” it was to admit, publicly, that you were not a believer.
I don’t “go to church” anymore, and I don’t plan to. It still makes me afraid to say that.
I can try to explain why. I don’t go anymore because the church (local) has so disappointed me. I know that all institutions will disappoint us, after all. For example, I am not always proud to work at the university that pays my salary. But I stay there. I can’t think of a single organization I have been part of that did not let me down at least once. I have left many of them, but rarely because of disappointment.
But the church holds a special disappointment for me because it is supposed to be different than other institutions. It is supposed to be the place where the hurting can find solace, the outcast can find a welcome, and where the lost can locate themselves. It is supposed to repent of its collective sin. It is supposed to be better.
In my experience, it is and does none of those things.
Okay, let me be careful. There are some congregations—some churches—that inspire confidence. I have friends who work in this field, so I want to confirm that the church is not rotten everywhere.
But in my experience, it has never failed to let me down. Is that sufficient reason to abandon it? Maybe not. But I finally came to the point about a decade ago when I asked myself what is the point of sticking with this? Is it ever going to change? Will it ever change?
Not only is the American Church (capital C) a wasteland of navel-gazing and petty fights over popularity, it is frequently racist, sexist, homophobic, and… you can add to the list. Not all churches (congregations), but many of them. White nationalism thrives in the American Church.
But, and I am going to say this as carefully as I can, the so-called progressive churches are also places that may SAY things I agree with, but in my experience, practice a bunch of self-serving actions that are about local prestige and a focus on their own well-being.
I know that sounds harsh.
But I have had a front row seat. When I was mayor, there was a time when I desperately needed local churches to step up and defend the humanity of unhoused people in my community. But they were nowhere to be found. They were too busy (apparently) making sure their building campaign was on track or that their parking was not impacted by city actions.
I stood alone, fighting the dehumanization, while the churches apparently had better things to do.
I am sure I sound bitter, but at least I see things clearly now.
Growing up, to leave the church was a brazen statement of abandonment of one’s faith. My parents would speak in hushed tones about so-and-so who had “left the church,” their voices tinged with pity and fear for the very soul of that wayward person. Of my siblings, my mom had very few questions, but a key one was always “Are you going to church?”
I want to be clear: I did not “leave the church;” the church left me. Indeed, it left me over and over many times over the years.
God
Okay, we are really getting down to it now. What do I believe about God?
Let me return to some things I noted in the Bible section above. The Bible’s portrayal of God is problematic in many ways. The worst of these are the sections where God tells the people to wipe out entire populations. Now I can say that the writers were merely using God to justify their evil, but what I was taught about God and the Bible was that, actually, God ordered those things, and if I did not understand them, well then I just needed to “use the eyes of faith” to accept that there were some things about God that were beyond humanity’s grasp.
Except, no. If the God of genocide is what or whom you are asking me to believe in, then I can be clear. I don’t believe in God. If that entity is truly the God of the universe, then I think we are all in trouble, because that God is a capricious, vengeful being who deserves neither worship nor praise.
But let’s say we accept the argument that those stories are just projections of humans’ bloodlust onto a deity. Then, what IS God really like? And does that description help to decide what to do about the “God question?” If I get to choose the kind of God I want, haven’t I essentially created God in my image? Doesn’t that make me God (kind of)?
The question I ask is: “What is the purpose of God?”
Notwithstanding what I was taught growing up, there is no proof for God or why there is one. The idea of a supreme being who oversees everything feels old-fashioned, from a time when the scientific method had not yet begun to explain the world and the heavens. God used to have considerable explanatory power in describing the “miracles” of the world. But in these times, most miracles have given way to empirically-derived descriptions of how things work (at least at a basic level). Now granted, there are still many things we cannot explain, but even in my lifetime, we have come to understand and “see” things we could not have imagined in prior generations. I am thinking about things like the human genome, the brain/mind, and the nature of the universe itself.
Looking at it that way, is there really much space left for a God? Is there a reason for God?
I would say no, but. But. But I have yearnings. I have a hunger. I experience awe. I see my complex and unknowable heart. I see the resilience of life. I give and receive love. I find joy, and heartache, and hope.
There is more, but my point is that I find what others have referred to as a “God-shaped void” at the center of my being. I want more. I am desperate for more.
I understand that all of these can be explained as merely the result of a long evolutionary process, as social conditioning, or culturally determined ways of interacting with the world. But the utter longing I feel for “more” leads me to the choice I have made. I choose to believe that there is a God who knows us and, in some way, cares about the direction the world takes. A God who can give me the answers to the yearnings, and fill the hunger.
Perhaps my decision to believe in a God is a remnant of my upbringing, a kind of cosmic insurance policy I can pull out if I have to stand someday before my Maker and plead my case for why I belong in their presence. I will acknowledge that this is possible.
Nonetheless, it is something that I choose to do.
Choosing to believe in God would have been considered the height of hubris growing up. And it still may come across that way now. All I mean is that I can’t prove God’s existence, and I won’t try. But, I will still move through the world living a life centered on the idea that if there is love in the universe, if there is redemption for my errors, if there is reconciliation of broken relationships, if there is hope—all these things are possible BECAUSE there is a God whose nature makes these things possible.
It is a choice I have found I must make over and over.
Jesus
It might surprise folks to learn that Jesus was a bit player in the religion of my youth. Of course, he was behind it all—after all, we called ourselves Christians (but more often believers). Jesus was the object of our beliefs, and we prayed in his name, but his role in our lives was largely limited to his birth and his death.
His teaching? Not so much. We learned about him in Sunday School—the only time we were ever taught by women —and I now sometimes see how these teachings were somewhat subversive and not mainstream fare in the upstairs (Sunday school was always in the basement) sermons.
Even then, most of Jesus’ teachings were reduced to simple morality stories. Jesus was completely ripped from his historical and cultural context. The Jesus of the Sunday School stories could have fit right in at our church (except for the robe and long hair—at that time, only hippies dressed like the portraits we had of Jesus). He was white, and I always kind of assumed that if he were alive today, he would live in America.
It wasn’t until I was well into my adult life that I learned that some folks within the broader Christian tradition took Jesus’ words and teaching utterly seriously. They saw the Gospels as like a “canon within the canon” of sacred writings, and they spent their time trying to figure out how to live according to his life and teaching. These folks changed my understanding of Jesus.
So, where am I with Jesus these days? Great teacher? Moral leader? A kind of first-century Gandhi or King? Messiah? Son of God? Savior?
I can start by saying it’s generally accepted that a person named Jesus actually walked the earth, and he did enough to attract the attention of some folks in first-century Palestine. And not too many years after his death, his reputation spread across much of the Western world and had a lasting impact on its people and cultures.
I believe that Jesus followed in a long line of prophets within the Jewish tradition. He called out religious institutions, called his co-religionists to repentance, and lived a simple life of devotion to God. He attracted a small group of mostly lower-class folks and a variety of social outcasts, and they followed him faithfully until the very end.
I think there is also some evidence that the religious powers of his day saw him as a sufficient threat to persuade the political power of Southwest Asia at that time (the Romans) to put him to death in a most public and humiliating way.
His teaching, in modern terms, focused on social justice, centering on the depredations of the wealthy (and religious), and a “preferential option for the poor.” Beyond that, he preached a message that suggested he was bringing about a different kind of reign. But even then, he turned political power on its head by engaging in outrageous performances like riding into Jerusalem triumphantly—on a donkey, or inviting prostitutes and other outcasts to dinner. The kingdom that he said was coming (was actually “here”) was so wildly at odds with what humanity had ever experienced that most people ended laughing him off, and his irrelevance was sealed by his crucifixion. (“See what happens to people who step out of line? You end up like Jesus” might have been the lesson that parents and religious leaders told their children and followers.)
All of this would set Jesus up as little more than an interesting historical figure. Someone whose teachings might be a useful set of moral and socially useful aphorisms.
But then his followers claimed he had come back to life. And that really raised the stakes for what this whole thing is all about.
In a letter attributed to Paul, the writer claims that without the resurrection (first Jesus, then his followers), there is no point. No point to faith, ultimately no point to life: “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
The resurrection is central to Christian orthodoxy, and its celebration is the point of its holiest day.
What does one do with that? Rationally, scientifically, people do not come back from the dead, and if Jesus merely appeared dead, then the whole Christian project is thin gruel.
Resurrections move us beyond redemption to a new life itself, after all.
So, when it comes to Jesus, one has to deal with this central claim. And what we do with Jesus, and how Jesus fits into any story, turns on the point of what happened after his death. The whole story of “Easter” is, in itself, a social and political statement. According to the Gospels, the first person to discover the event is a woman, probably a woman of ill repute. Even his closest male followers are in doubt, but the woman believes. But can anyone believe her?
Further, what does it say about the mightiest military on earth that their mechanism of torture and death of a traitor cannot keep him down? What does that ultimately say about the power of the state, the power of any earthly institution, to prevail? If resurrection is a thing, then, ultimately, the powerful who tread the meek of the earth underfoot will not have the last word, and they are rendered powerless. I say, ultimately, because whether death is three days or three thousand, resurrection promises ultimate justice for the oppressed.
If moral arcs bend—or are bent—it would seem that it takes something like a resurrection to provide the pressure.
I am not interested in following Jesus as simply a moral teacher. His claims about himself, though at times oblique, combined with his reported actions, are simply too bold, too self-assured, too world-challenging. Accepting Jesus feels like a package deal, and that includes the resurrection.
Again, acceptance and belief can only come as a choice. In this case, a choice to suspend belief about rational explanations as a sufficient guide to life. Maybe this is Kierkegaard’s leap. Maybe we can only ever come to accepting something as ridiculous as a resurrection this way: through a leap.
I feel like I have jumped.
I want my life to follow the life and teaching of Jesus. There are reasons I will try to describe in my “narrative,” but many more that would take too long for this piece. Put simply, though, I want to follow Jesus because I believe he brought the key to saving humanity from itself.
To fully engage his life and teaching, I have decided that I must choose to accept the resurrection and move on in hope from that point.
It is a choice I must remake quite often.
Meta Narrative
Herein, I try to pull all of this together into a story—or perhaps what I think of as a story of stories. The story of humanity. The Bible is a necessary ingredient, as are beliefs in God, Jesus, and the resurrection.
A story:
When humans evolved to consciousness, to self-awareness, the God who had spun out the universe for reasons known only to God, sought out humanity to offer relationship and support. God had no desire to control humanity but wanted to offer it all the beauty and joy God could provide. God loved these conscious, fragile beings. No one knows why.
And so, God made the offer.
But humans saw more opportunity in power—power over themselves and power over others. Not everyone could have power, but it was clearly something worth fighting for. So, humans rejected the offer and went their own way—like sheep they wandered away.
They chose autonomy.
They gained a keen knowledge of good and evil, and quested for autonomy and eternality. And it did not work out so well for them. Murder, domination, and injustice showed up quickly, and so humans called out to God. Help!
And because they understood good, but also learned to practice evil in such exquisite ways, God handed down a code. God called out a people to be the “code-bearers” and gave them the law to be an example to humanity. The code was set up so that good had a fighting chance against evil.
And the code helped a little, but evil still prevailed. Indeed, humans twisted the code to use it for the evil it was meant to prevent.
Evil prevailed because humans were so enamored with autonomy—the desire to be left alone to seek to be their own best selves (frankly, they/we wanted to be gods). But their autonomy quest only ever ended up in violence, oppression, rape, carnage, and death.
But God still loved humanity (no one knows why). And God pursued humanity, knowing that if humans would only accept God’s gift of relationship, they could find what they truly wanted: belonging, peace, meaning, and love. God knew that the autonomy quest promised much but offered nothing.
Humans used the God-given code to oppress and obstinately refused to back down from their destructive evil. And so God decided to show them the truth of what they had become, the failure of the code, due to their own bent to turn it to evil.
So, God sent Jesus into the world, just like God had sent prophets in the past. But Jesus was a spotless human. A human that the code could never condemn. A human who taught a way out of the autonomy quest. A man who taught self-sacrifice, love of enemy, preference for the downtrodden, and radical interdependence. Everything that could make humans fully human. Everything that autonomy could never provide.
God was not testing humans to see what they would do. What they would do had been pretty clear for some time. Humanity would never accept abandoning the quest, and so, it was easy to see that things would not end well for Jesus.
And that is what happened. The code holders and the powers that controlled the entire world decided that the only just human would need to be killed. And, as evil does, it created trumped-up charges of sedition against the one good man. And it savagely beat and killed him in the most public way—as a lesson.
No, this was not a test.
This was a demonstration.
God showed humanity who it was. God showed humans the vacuousness of their pursuit. God, in Jesus, demonstrated the falsity of what human autonomy promised. God revealed the lie of it all.
And, the story could have ended there. Proof. Evidence. Now, humans, do with it what you will.
And humanity would have absolutely fumbled it. It would have said, thank you very much, but we know. We know better.
But Jesus did not stay dead. After demonstrating the failure of the old way—the code way—Jesus came back to life to disclose the other truth: there is a way out. And whatever you might decide to do, God will never abandon God’s pursuit of you. And you, humanity, now know the nature of the choice. You can continue down the path of destruction, or you can choose another way—the way of peace, reconciliation, love, and belonging.
In a loving community, you can spread this message of hope and live lives that demonstrate its power.
This, I think, is the narrative that seems to reveal the most about myself—the yearnings, the hunger, the doubt, the wonderment.
And this is the narrative I choose to believe.
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 