A Spiritual Hamster Wheel

I had this thought in reading and responding to a friends tweet this morning:  (https://twitter.com/shawnbrace/status/994189665002541056?s=21)

I’m finding troubling things in my own approach to life/relationships and wondering if for too long I was driven by a deeper “If X then Y” understanding of God that nurtured conditional acceptance and control issues in my behavior that I’m just now starting to understand.‬

I’m not seeing my immediate reactions as being overly harmful or damaging but if I look at the overall trajectory or cumulative effect of my interactions it's a little disturbing, to say the least. 

I seem to subtly break people down through light teasing or sarcasm and then hold them in limbo through a critical spirit or conditional acceptance. This to me seems rather messed up if that's what I’m actually doing.

Now, if I look at the Biblical message and how I understood, embraced or reacted to it all these years: 

1. Your amazingly special...buuuuuut...not good enough.
2. IF you can just X THEN Y

Throughout my life, I have viewed my relationship or lack of relationship with God as a problem on my part. Some sin I was harboring in my heart, some part of my life I had not given over to God, some last little bit of some closet I was still hiding that I didn’t want to give up. (I cant tell you how many times I heard that one in a sermon or camp-meeting tent)

I believe this understanding and approach was very effective in keeping me in a “spiritual hamster wheel”...if I could just stay consistent, if I could just jump through the hoops, if I could just clean out that last bit of that last closet...THEN... I too would be able to feel the presence of God and find peace.

Well...that approach is bullshit, that thought process is bullshit, the way I was treating others was bullshit.

To be clear, I’m not saying the Bible or the gospels or Seventh-Day-Adventism taught, recommend or embraced that approach. I’m only saying that I was internalizing it, processing it and responding to it in that way and it had the result of...bullshit...and this is all very new to me, so this is a thought in the process.

It's hard to admit you’ve hurt others or that you have chosen to operate in a dysfunctional manner...but once you do admit it you can spot it more easily in your behavior and begin to change it...so there is some hope.

Now that I’m working on trying to not take peace from others and help give them peace, acceptance and build them up...hopefully, peace and acceptance will come to me.

Faith, Science and Bullying

Faith, reason, and science are different realms with different standards of evidence/proof and so on.

Science is not and should not be subject to religion in the realm of science (ethics of science and so on are a different discussion...). Also, religion should not be subject to science in the "religious" realm...but... what is the realm of Religion?

It almost feels that if you truly keep religion in its "realm" you then regulate it to a neutered make-believe little club with no real effect in reality, as if its a pretend thing that you occasionally pat on the head and tell to go back to its pretend playground to play more make believe.

The problem is that far to often Religion gets grabby, assertive, disrespectful and oversteps its boundaries and starts to claim objective proofs by its own subjective standards and then attempts to take those subjective standards and beliefs and impose them in reality. We see the extreme examples of homosexuals being thrown off buildings or women being stoned to death for not dressing as they are told they should, in the more mild forms we simply use nuanced societal forms of shame and guilt which have subtle but very real emotional effects that range from low self esteem to community alienation to suicide. In these more moderate forms of religious overstepping and disrespect we basically commit theological bullying.

It's almost as if you cannot believe without hurting others...

So I'm Out...

So I'm Out...

So I’m out of the “questioning” closet now after my 40th birthday.  I shared it all on FB and Insta and it went well. I’ve had an incredible amount of deep interactions with friends, family and more since sharing it. I shared the project on Friday and decided that I would go to church on Saturday and share as I saw fit. I shared my thoughts and questions honestly, openly and respectfully and…it went really well.

In a conservative Adventist church in New England I stated that I don’t believe that it’s our place to judge homosexuals, that it’s not ok or right for us to try and “pray it out of them”, or tell them that thier sexual preference is displeasing to God. I stated that I believed that we should re-examine and ultimately do away with the Adventist view on homosexuality, that it was in my opinion a “cultural” belief from a more primitive, hypocritical and patriarchal biblical culture that we are hanging onto that is literally killing people and separating them from a relationship with God. I shared that they are genuine, loving, feeling, spiritual people just like us with just as much right to God as we have. It’s a disgrace that we would hurt and run off these individuals with our policies, belief and culture. To tell someone you can come and worship, but you can’t be a pastor, leader or elder or teacher…that’s just wrong. But… guess what, no one scolded me, no one was deeply offended and some people even thanked me for speaking out on things that they had been too hesitant to share themselves.

After this experience I think it might be the case that it is actually better to stay and respectfully speak your mind in a spiritual community rather than run when you are offended by beliefs or actions of others…