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On Faith
I have been a skeptic for as long as I remember. In junior high, I was the child who asked the assistant minister those difficult questions. I wasn’t trying to be a smart aleck. I was trying to get my head around those unfathomable questions, the whys of faith, trying to true up a teenager’s reality with teachings that seemed to be both the result of selective historical memory and of exaggeration, if not outright fiction. My questions never received proper answers. It came down to faith; that is acceptance of the implausible. When I asked why I should accept these things on faith alone, I was told that faith was not a matter of should, but must.
That answer, the must, seemed to me to be a reflection of the old, jealous, vindictive, and unpredictable God of the Old Testament. That did not seem to square with the teachings of the New Testament, with its stories of good Samaritans and charity toward all. The New Testament God, the God of infinite grace, would never condemn the souls of the kind and innocent but un-indoctrinated masses. This demand for Faith seemed to me to be superfluous and even coercive, a demand for alliance and support. I rejected it. I would not be coerced.
But that was not all. There was also the issue of obedience. Much as the clergy might try to convince me that their concern in this transaction was the future of my immortal soul, I could not help but believe that it was not my soul they were ultimately concerned with. Others might call it arrogance, vanity or hard-headedness, but I couldn’t seem to subrogate the moral superiority of affirmed mystics over my own perceptions, even if those demanding my allegiance were truly excellent and decent human beings.
I decided that I could accept the wisdom and morality informed by the New Testament while remaining highly skeptical of the more implausible parts. The story of Jesus itself then became a parable of love and sacrifice; I had no need for explanation of its inconsistencies or when it strayed from reality. I could acknowledge that the Gospel accounts were selected among many similar writings; they were subject to translation and retranslation and they may well have been exaggerated. Moreover, if I accepted the idea of human frailty, my own inherent flaws, and tried to live a decent and moral life, the question of my mortal soul became irrelevant. Living a good, decent and moral life was enough. The idea of immortality was rendered irrelevant and unnecessary; Faith itself was irrelevant and unnecessary.
Am I then, a Christian? Christ’s teachings and story inform and guide my life yet I remain a skeptic, a person who believes that if Faith is something that someone must have to be a Christian, then I have failed that test. I do not reject religion, so I am not an atheist. I sympathize with William James’ inability to rationalize the existence of God, yet I am not an agnostic. And yes, I pray sometimes, for wisdom, patience, clarity and for others, while I also acknowledge that this practice may also be irrelevant and unnecessary. But somehow it helps me and I still think it is good.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Interesting. That is similar to the Catholic concept of Purgatory (a place of preparation for Heaven), though we have Hell also.
We believe that before the Messiah came there was something akin to the Greek idea of an underworld, where all souls of the dead existed together. It is only after Christ that we get the concept of separating the wheat from the chaff, the loving souls from the wicked.
Well . . . I’m no expert but this is what it says in Exodus:
“The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness and truth … Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” (Ex 34: 7)
So it sounds like the children will be punished in their own lifetimes, not in the afterlife. To make things more complicated (Jews like to do that), the sages dispute whether G-d would punish the children at all for their parents’ sins. Go figure.
Me, too…For similar reasons…
Here you go, Doug. The bit of evangelism that I’m most likely to point out to seekers.
Yup, that is one of the the quotes, and I think there is a corresponding quote from the OT that hundreds of generations will be rewarded for your fealty / good actions (going completely from memory)
According the book, only punishing three or four generations of descendants was considered extreme kindness relative to other deities at the time and the disparity between the number of generations that benefited from your fealty and the number of generations that suffered from your impiety clearly demonstrated what a magnanimous deity he was.
I bought his book when it was on sale at Amazon, but haven’t read it yet
I am at loose ends in terms of religion. I was brought up in the Congregational church, my husband and kids are Catholic, and I attend mass every week. My Catholic father-in-law was active in the ecumenical movement in our small north-of-Boston town. I always admired him for that. The Masons and the Knights of Columbus together ran the kids’ Fourth of July picnic day. :)
That said, I got more spiritual strength from Man’s Search for Meaning than from anything else I’ve ever read.
There are at least three terms that are translated in English Bibles as Hell. The word “Hell” actually comes from Germanic, including Anglo-Saxon, mythology. So, of course Jews don’t believe in Hell. They weren’t German pagans. ;) But the three terms were Gehenna/Ge Hinnom, Sheol, and Hades. As Susan mentioned, Ge Hinnom was a place of purification, not eternal damnation. Now, the original concept was more the burning of garbage at the city dump rather than a washing machine, but it is still not eternal. Sheol means hollow, cavernous, empty. Hades, well it was a Greek place guarded by a three-headed dog named Spot.
I love Klavan.
Thanks for the knowledge.
Since Hades is a greek word, presumably it only appears in the new Testament, is that right?
Correct. And in some translations, Sheol is also rendered as “grave” or “pit” in English or in specific verses.
As often, Wikipedia is not a horrible source on the topic.
On Hell in Judaism
On Hell in Christianity
Who was not even born until 354 CE, mind you. Like many other things that were added on later, it was not integral to Christianity and does not seem to have been something Jesus believed.
Yup. Hell seems to have come into Christianity with the Christian Platonists (ie, it’s not very present in the Canonical texts) and obviously Dante informed our modern view of it quite heavily. It seems fairly pervasive in Christianity today (though I recall Kate arguing for a non-burning-fire form of hell at some point).
Back to Doug’s original post, I’ve always found the pass/fail test concept of heaven/hell the most challenging concept of Christianity to fully accept, particularly when combined with predestination (that not all Christians believe in.)
Actually, I believe she said she doesn’t believe in Hell at all, although @katebraestrup can correct us on that. Certainly up the stream a bit, she was saying what happens in this life is what is important. Unitarian Universalism has roots in Christian Primitivist movements where people started going back and trying to figure out what was originally there and what got added on later. My own Unity was heavily influenced by Unitarians.
What I recall her saying was something along the lines of, hell is the absence of God’s love. When compared to the heaven of living eternally in God’s love, it seems like hell (but not like the burning fire hell of my youth). As you said, she can (and I’m sure she will) correct us.
Very nice expression. I welcome the experience, should It come my way.
There are so many parts of Christianity, in all its forms, that are difficult to square with the formative Gospels. The concept of Hell is one example, brought up here. It is a powerful concept, paramount in so many Christian faiths, and yet, it may well be just another syncretization that has no legitimate place in the faith. Imagine that? There is a similar controversy over Mary Magdalen. Many believe that the characterization of MM as a fallen woman are false. In fact, I believe there may be a Gnostic Gospel attributed to Mary Magdalene. Whether this Gospel is legitimate or not as something other than additional historical evidence of the existence of Christ is not important. What is important is to note that a self appointed group of early Church clergy made the decisions about which Gospels should and should not be included in the story of Jesus. These men had no first hand evidence of which texts were more accurate or sacred. They just decided. At least in the story of the Book of Mormon, an angel plays a part in the revelation of the additional word of God.
Speaking of Revelations, that most difficult of the books in the New Testament, it is missing from the Orthodox bible.
Anyway, I bring all this up because I must. I’m still that eighth grade wiseguy to some degree. I don’t want to challenge anyone’s faith, but I just want to point out that it requires much more than simply accepting JC, the Trinity and God’s grace.
Right. People and their offspring could be cursed for all time! So this was a good deal. ;-)
I like to remind people that we are capable of creating heaven or hell on earth, too, personally or culturally.
Revelation is a fascinating book, especially when one knows the history of how and where it was written and why it takes the form that it does. The John of Revelation was in prison for preaching. He sent out several letters to his followers. What were his letters intended to do? Preach, of course. The problem was that the guards were reading his letters to ensure that he didn’t preach, since that was why he was confined to Padmos in the first place. So, he wrote letters as “dreams” in lurid imagery. The guards read it, figured that stuff was just crazy, and let it go. But the people to whom he was writing had a shared culture and understanding, so they could decode the letters he sent and understand him.
Your story describes most people at any given time, but the lines that jumped out were that “if I were a moral, decent person, then it was enough and immortality was irrelevant and not necessary”. Whoa Nellie! The whole basis of the Christian faith is immortality, and Jesus, who was both flesh and divine, overcame death. If immortality didn’t matter then his death on the cross for our sins, descending to hell, overcoming sin and death and rose from the dead to descend into heaven was meaningless. He was a good person, but much more. We are only here a brief time, but the hereafter is forever. Read anything by CS Lewis. You can get his complete classics and Mere Christianity is a good place to start. He was an atheist originally and his writing is very good. We all fall short on a daily basis of being decent or good – I do. There are no points to be earned and no “should”. Faith is trusting in God’s promise. I’d never make it to heaven but by mercy and grace.
Very cool. Of course this is also what makes a modern interpretation of that book so difficult. It was not meant to read as literal text, yet it is often revealed as literal text. Perhaps that’s why the Eastern Church left it out – too easy to misread? Who knew that these words would be attributed to God Himself? Yet it is not. It is a letter from John, the most poetic of the apostles.
So, You’re saying you’ve met my Mother-in-law.
Objection: the clergy who made those decisions were not self-appointed. They were bishops, and the bishops (we Catholics believe) were commissioned by the original apostles … who, in turn, were chosen specifically by Jesus himself. There were a number of different collections, but the formation of the Christian canon was agreed upon by the bishops. That’s what made them the canon.
The modern depiction of Hell is guided by Dante and Milton more than the gospels, but that doesn’t mean the gospels have no mention of punishment.
Kate and I share a similar lack of concern for immortality. Christ may have freed us, but not of mortality. The prime lesson may have been in his willingness to die to bring his lesson of love and sacrifice to the world. He showed men a new way, one where every human being had value and was worthy of love. This was revolutionary in itself. The rest? I’m not so sure.
And I’ll bring up, because I must,
that most of what you say in that first paragraph is just nonsense.
You are challenging our faith by denying Hell, and saying that the books of the Bible were decided upon just because. That is preposterous.
Sorry if you find this discussion uncomfortable Scott. And I didn’t say that the books of the Bible were selected arbitrarily. I think it was likely informed, determined and decided after much consideration and candor. It’s held up pretty well over the centuries. Of course there have been documents discovered since those frothy days that pretty much ratify those inclusions. Likewise, with respect to the Gnostic “Gospel of Mary”, many modern scholars question its provenance, confirming any decision to leave it out of the Gospels if it was one of those writings being considered when the final compilation of the bible was being assembled. There were other “Gospels” and others have been discovered since.
On “hell”, I suggest you read the threads above. It is not apostasy to suggest that this concept may have evolved over time, useful as it may be in proselytization.
You guys are so good. I really wish I had your certitude. I tried and failed. I even thought about sneaking in sideways by joining a local Evangelical Lutheran congregation. They pretty much allowed conversion without question, and the Roman Catholic church accepts those who wish to convert from that faith to Roman Catholicism with a simple acknowledgement of the Mother Church. Conversion from the Episcopal church is also pretty easy but those Anglicans are tough on skeptics like me. In any case, I decided not to pursue these courses, at least for now. I may yet.
Thanks for explaining the transfer of apostolytic authority within the Church. I figured something like this was at play. It makes sense. Still, we have the scribes and translators of the texts, and before that, the oral histories. Nonetheless, they chose wisely.
Scott, be careful of descending into invective or bombast here: We have no notion of how nonsensically/erroneously the faith itself may’ve been presented to DK originally. You also know that nothing DK describes is directed at you – or believers in general – personally. We’re not under siege/threat from Doug’s reminiscences. Both you and I – at different times, and by radically different paths – were granted the *gift* of faith. Gifts can be asked for and sought, never accepted by force. Prayer and patience, please/thank you? Pax Christi!