Author: JOHN
To: Suzanne, Bob, and Steve
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Note: This trialogue had its beginnings in a series of emails between John and an old college friend, Suzanne. They became reaquainted through notations in an alumni publication, and started corresponding after 30 years. In writing about their children, Suzanne and John discovered that both were sending their kids to Catholic schools, even though neither was Catholic. From there the discussion turned to some general exchanges about religion, and ultimately to John offering a "credo" of his beliefs for discussion. The following excerpts from the John/Suzanne emails, which John shared with his friends Bob and Steve, set the stage for this trialogue.
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Dear Suzanne:
You're right, there are some interesting
resemblances between our spiritual lives. It so happens I have just come
from hearing a Lenten lecture by one of my favorite religious figures, the
Bishop John Spong, so I'm in a mood to talk about religion. Several of us
at my office have been having interesting discussions about his lectures, all
week. I am really a bit surprised that some of my coworkers are so
liberal about religion and so willing to talk about it. And on top of
that, it is nearly Easter, so the Jesus question is much in my thoughts.
After our last exchange, I sort of posed
myself a challenge: how would I summarize (at the email level!) what I
have learned or adopted or at least taken from all these years of spiritual
searching? I think I can break it down into three categories: What
I DO believe (right now, that is), what I definitely DON'T believe, and that
third gray area for which the jury is still out, but which I tend to have
opinions about.
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What I
DO believe:
There is a part of ourselves, call it
spiritual or even a soul for lack of a better term, that both precedes and
follows our earthly existence.
I believe there is a God, but God's nature is
still far beyond our ability to comprehend at this point in our evolution.
I say "still" because I believe that
we are evolving, both individually and as a race, toward an understanding of
and possible union with God, in this reality.
I believe that at some level we are God,
little bits of the God consciousness that have been allowed or encouraged to
explore certain issues through our incarnation in this physical world.
In order for that to work, at birth we are
separated for the duration of our lifetimes from our unity with and true
knowledge of God, but this is only a temporary illusion and a "rule"
of the "game."
I believe that the central issue we
explore through living is free will. In living we walk a long and
continuously forking path, passing by innumerable things that interest or repel
us. Moment by moment we make choices, so that the path ahead is forever
changing in its direction and potential.
One of the reasons we are separated from God
is that otherwise, this free will could not fully operate. Too direct or
too close a contact with God would foul the game, because our individual egos
and lives could not bear the certain knowledge of God's overawing power.
We'd burn out like the filament of a bulb exposed to too much voltage.
In God's wisdom, people have appeared in the world
with special roles to play to help us evolve toward God, some of them conscious
of it, Some not. Jesus was most probably the greatest of these, but not
the only one, nor is attention to him the only pathway to God. Others of
great power and importance might include Moses and Gautama Buddha, and others
at a somewhat lower "level" or power might include Martin Luther
King, Gandhi, and even Walt Whitman.
I believe that along with the gift of free
will, we accept responsibility for the choices we make: We eventually
reap what we sow. Since it is obvious that this principle does not apply
to each individual during his or her own lifetime, it leads me to believe that
the reaping must take place either in an "afterlife," or in a series
of lives in the material world.
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The
Jesus question:
In regard to Jesus, I believe only a fraction
of the actions and words that are attributed to him in the Bible were actually
his. I believe that much of the so-called gospels are examples of
religious myth. The gospels themselves do not constitute the infallible
word of God, but are very human documents, full of errors, exaggerations,
misunderstandings, misinterpretations, wishful thinking, political
spin-doctoring, and even purposeful deceptions. An example of what I DO
believe to be true is the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, the
"cast the first stone" story. This story is in accord with my
innate concept of what a Christ would have been: incredibly wise, sympathetic,
loving, forgiving. Similarly, most of the sermon on the mount and the
parables strike me as authentic.
I believe that Jesus was fully human, but was
endowed with what is sometimes referred to as the "cosmic
consciousness," which to me means a connection with God of infinitely
higher clarity, power, and authority than most, if not all other people.
There are several things in the Jesus story
that stand out in my mind from the background of confusion, contradiction, and
speculation that constitutes the gospels, and these have convinced me that he
did serve a "divine," if your will, role. These have mostly to
do with the crucifixion. Though I have doubts about the resurrection, I
do believe that Jesus was crucified, and that the crucifixion was possibly a spiritually
meaningful event in the history of the world. Here are the salient
points for me: (1) Jesus could have avoided his crucifixion had he wanted
to, but chose to let the events unfold and subject himself to the most hideous
torture imaginable. This to me would indicate that either Jesus was
crazy, or that he was something like the Christ that his followers thought him
to be. Since other parts of the story jibe with my concept of cosmic
consciousness, I reject the craziness option. (2) While dying on
the cross, Jesus says: "Father why hast thou forsaken me?" I
trust that he said this, because an expression of this kind would not be
reported by someone who was inventing a story to make others believe in
Jesus. My conclusion is that in order to let Jesus be fully human, God
either withdrew his presence from Jesus at this time, or at least allowed
human doubt to gain the upper hand. The logic of this to me is that only
in this way could God demonstrate, through the agency of Jesus, his understanding
of the human condition. In effect, the ending of the Jesus story I
interpret as God's ultimate demonstration of sympathy to the human
condition. He demonstrates this sympathy, but does not "save"
Jesus, indicating that suffering is sometimes a necessary condition of this
world, where the free wills of billions of souls are played out.
(3) The other thing that I find convincing about the Jesus story is that
his cowardly and confused band of followers turned into courageous
disseminators of his message, courageous to the point of nearly all of them
giving their lives violently for the cause, and this transformation took place
after Jesus was no longer among them. To me this indicates that something
of great power and certainty happened to these men after the crucifixion; they
would not have given their lives to perpetuate a myth that they themselves
invented.
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What I
DON'T believe:
That we are "born in sin," that God
waits to punish us in the afterlife for every little sin or mistake, the existence
of hell, the existence of Satan, the virgin birth, shepherds visited by angels,
wise men following at star, et., etc., etc., etc., and many if not most of the
miracles in both the old and new testament.
In addition, I recognized that there are many
charlatans out there preying (with an 'e')on the religious or mystical-minded
(among them in my opinion Carlos Castaneda). Although I do believe that
some people have "powers" the vast majority of us don't have, I do
not necessarily ascribe these to anything spiritual, but possibly to
undeveloped human characteristics or potentials that may be latent in all of
us.
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Some
gray areas I continue to explore:
A question I wrestle with is the degree to
which God does or doesn't interfere and interact with human affairs, especially
the idea that He can be communicated with directly and will respond to these
communications. I see little evidence that God answers prayers directly
(i.e., a mother prays that her son will be spared from cancer, and God heals
him). On the other hand, I can easily accept the idea that God could be
working in "mysterious ways" through the rich diversity of earthly
existence, through disparate events and linkages that are purposely kept so
mysterious or invisible to us that we can never see or rarely see all the
connections that bring bout the "answer" to the prayer. In fact
I tend to agree in principle with the idea that God answers all prayers, but
sometimes the answer is "no."
I am also sometimes fascinated with what people call "coincidences," which seem to happened to me so often with such glaring obviousness that I can hardly dismiss them as pure chance. I can even give you an example from this morning: As I was waiting in the drive-thru line at a fast-food place this morning for a breakfast to be eaten during my commute, I was consciously working up my response to the question I posed for myself at the beginning of this email: how to summarize why whole system of beliefs. I was sitting there in the car, with the drive-thru windows on my left, and cars before and behind me. I was sort of rehearsing in my mind the points I have made above, and I was thinking in particular of Jesus, when a huge dump truck pulled up close beside me on the right, blocking my view completely. As I looked out the passenger window, I saw that the truck's owner had had a large, quite nicely-done portrait of Jesus painted on the side of the truck, along with the words "Lo I am with thee always," and this tableaux pretty much unavoidably took up my entire view. Coincidence? (Well, yes, it could have been).
Among the
non-Christian, but "spiritual" interests I have are the writings
of Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts. But they are long stories in
themselves (along with a negative story about Castaneda) that I will have to
save for another time.
Well, if you are still
reading, you are worn out and possibly think I've lost my mind. But
that's the beauty of email: one can throw out ideas and not have to see
the weird expressions on the other's face! This has been a good exercise
for me, partly because with my two skeptical sons I recently have been finding
myself in the once-unlikely position of defending Christianity. Maybe
I'll make a copy of this and let them read it.
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