What we mean when we think about God

As far as I understand it, the idea of God being an old man with a beard who smites people either because of his own capriciousness or at the request of others, is held by two belief extremes; the atheists who think that all Christian see the Bible as being literally true, and the fundamentalists who actually do see the Bible as being literally true (please see note below). Both of these conceptions are damagingly limited. I know that when I was an atheist, I certainly assumed that any belief in God involved a ‘him’ to start with, with human characteristics. Because of course we would have to label something as transcendent and ephemeral as the life force of the Universe in those terms. We humans are not very good at getting our head around things unless we can label them and put them in a box, are we?

I think that how we each define God probably says a lot about how we see our faith, too. My own view of God has changed hugely over the last decade or so. And now I’m probably most comfortable than I’ve ever been with my conception of God; that of, ‘I don’t really know exactly…’.

There’s a quote which I can’t remember exactly (please let me know if you do) which says something along the line of the people of the old days were smart enough to understand that the Old Testament was allegory and myth and story, but today we seem to have gone backwards and we have groups who believe that it is literally true. Sounds like is could be Spong. Or Rohr. But it’s not how the OT was intended to be read.

I think the reality of God, the he/she/it is too tricky for us to get our head around, so we have to tell stories and invent out own parameters to understand it truly. So using a female pronoun is just as valid as a male pronoun, because it’s all a construction anyway. ‘A force that emits love’ probably isn’t catchy enough to get converts. My favourite phrase is Ruach Elohim which is more the spirit, or the breath, of God. I think it’s beautiful.

But there are probably as many conceptions of the universal life force that is ‘God’ as there are minds on the planet.

What do you think of when you think about God?

Note; In the comment section, Ruth asked an important clarifying question that brought to light a problem with how that sentence could be interpreted. My usage of the word THE (the atheists, the fundamentalists) was meant to imply that not ALL people within those groups think that way. If I’d meant ‘all’, I would have said ‘atheists’ without the qualifying ‘the’. But I can completely see how it could be read in the other way, and thank Ruth for bringing it to my attention.

Blast from the Past…

I know that the ‘Was she even ever an atheist’ conversation is long behind us and noone wants to waste their time discussing it any more but this week I reconnected with a man that I dated during the 90s. A series of serendipitous circumstances led to his finding me on Facebook ( he saw photos of me and the family in a house for sale and decided to see what I’m up to these days). It was an amicable break up and it was great to chat. During the conversation I thought I should mention my faith, because our joint atheism was something that was important to us back in the day…

Does not compute? I totally understand what he means!

So, he married a Christian, and I’ve become one. Oh how the mighty have fallen 😉

Tidying Up.

I’ve been spring cleaning a bit. I’ve got rid of the ‘Reading Aspirations’ page, because I’d forgotten that it existed (and it was dull), and added a photo to the ‘About Me’. I’m experimenting with adding my Instagram but may decide that was a bad idea quite soon. I’ve also added a comment policy finally (after 2500 comments!) as I’ve realised that I don’t need to make apologies for having certain standards. This, of course, means that I hate free speech and rule with a trigger happy ban hammer, so be warned*. It seems as though we have moved into an internet culture where saying that ‘I will not stand for being called X or Y’ is the new pariah. Those who rail against ‘political correctness’ are also those who seem most affronted that their ‘freedom of speech’ is being curtailed.  Spoiler; that’s not what freedom of speech means.

I’ve read some great articles over the last few weeks; that have made me smile or think or furrow my brow. Presented here, for your consideration but without comment…

The Moral Bucket List

Rob Bell on Life and Faith

The Growth of No Religion

“Re-examining Monica, Marica, Tonya and Anita, the ‘scandalous’ women of the 90s”

 

*And yes, some people will think I’m being serious. I’ll pray for them 😉 .

The Debrief.

A debrief? Well,  I’m not exactly going to rehash this weeks palaver. We were all there. It was tedious enough for those involved; it must have been bemusing for those following along at home, to say the least. The post that launched 1000 comments, and who knows how many spin off posts.

You know, I’m sure, that I was accused of deceit and lying and other unpleasant things. And posts were made on the basis of that, even though several of these bloggers had never read my blog before. Drive by commenters, they are called. All the opinions, none of the context.

And then we had other claims; that I’d never been an atheist (oh my god at least once a month for the first two years of blogging I talked about the fact that I was!) that people were only supporting me because of the fact that I have (admittedly fabulous) breasts, that I was trying to evangelise to the Monty Python demographic (don’t even know), that I must have suffered a psychological trauma that pushed me into the arms of faith. That the fact that I was writing from beside my child’s hospital bed was the obvious key to my conversion. That I was purely a made up persona (I can’t even…).

But what threw me the most was the fact that the little group of biting, acerbic, pseudo intellectuals that spoke so dismissively of me and my life in other comment sections…used to be me.

See, when I was a committee member of the Australian Skeptics in my state (those of you who know my sir name are welcome to google that. Because, lies and everything…), we used to meet for monthly dinners and discuss just how ridiculous people of faith (and of course other topics) were. We would roll our eyes and decry anything that we couldn’t prove with the scientific method. Of course we never plumbed the depths of nastiness that the internet supplies (I’m a mod at Reddit; I know how it goes), but we were scathing and dismissive. Because we were right, and they were wrong. Because we had knowledge, and they had superstition.

So being in the scathing and dismissive and ‘right’ group is familiar to me. But this time, I wasn’t in it. In fact, I was the subject.

It made me take a step back, believe me.

And all the fears that I’d had about how people would perceive me if I became a Christian, came true. Right in front of my eyes over a period of two days.

I was being mocked.

I was being laughed at.

People said I had a psychological problem.

People posited that I was suffering from a trauma

People decided I was delusional.

People decided that I was desperately trying to belong.

All the things that I’d been so scared of when I first felt the pull of Christianity. People were actually saying them. About me.

I haven’t used the tag ‘atheism’ in my blog posts for years, because I wanted to keep a low profile (which may be why my detractors have done such a spectacularly bad job at actually finding the 40 or so posts where I’ve mentioned my own atheism). I was nervous about being made fun of, you see. But here it was, in spades.

And of course the stereotypes were all there. The ones I used to promulgate. Christians want to make everyone else a Christian. Christians are prudes. Christians are all evangelical. The stereotypes flew thick and fast. Almost amusingly. Considering I was being lambasted for promulgating the myth of the ‘angry atheist’, this group of 4 or 5 commenters were not doing a great job of proving the assertion wrong.

But you know what? In all of this, I never once thought ‘Fuck I’ve made a mistake’.

It would be easier to join the acerbic eye-rolling group. On the internet and in society. Much easier. As I said, most people I know are non-believers, from the ‘don’t care’ variety, to the ‘sharing atheist memes on FB every day’ ilk. It would be no issue at all to rejoin. I have, at heart, a biting and acerbic sense of humour.  It’s my default.

And this is the first time my decision has really been challenged, in my own mind. Shit, people really don’t like Christians. Right in front of me. Evidence. These commenters were not even zoning on one or two main problems, as the original complainant had done. They were having a go at everything.

But you know what? I realised that I am utterly happy with my decision to become a Christian. It has been an astounding, eye opening and incredible experience. And I’m thrilled that it’s happened.

My fears about what might happen if I became a Christian came true, but I now realise that they never mattered at all. They can think I’m stupid. They can think I’m having a crisis. It’s OK. I don’t love it, of course. I’d rather people didn’t criticise me. But it means so much less to me than I ever thought it would. I’m positively zen about the whole thing.

I’m not trying to convince people here. I’m telling my own story. From my perspective, with my own prejudices and limitations and faults.

And I could be utterly and entirely wrong.

I’ve never claimed to have all of the answers.

I’m a Christian. I’m also a Universalist, a left winger, a gay-marriage advocate, a Monty Python fan, I swear, drink, am a feminist and like Wicca and Buddhism. I have a sharp tongue that I’m not always proud of and I’m pushed every day to be a better person. By my kids, by my self, by God.

It’s my story. I can be what I want. As can you. I have found my place, and I hope that everyone else can do the same.

As I’ve said before,

that’s good enough for me now.

All the opinions, all the time.

People roll their eyes when the ‘Christian voice’ is heard in the media on morality, or family issues, or what ever is dominating the news cycle on that particular day. The media loves to portray certain viewpoints and have no problem making sweeping generalizations; but of course groups like the Australian Christian Lobby don’t do their brothers and sisters any favours by claiming to speak for all of us. But people do love to have their bias confirmed, and I guess that does it for them. Apparently Christians are a homogeneous group and there is little to no dissent about big, or little issues.

Oh please.

There are some things that I think I have a particular perspective on, given my move from atheism to Christianity. I don’t think that this perspective is the be all and end all of course, given that certain other qualifiers have to be attached to anything that I claim to have an insight into (introverted, a bit pessimistic, intuitively cynical, a little mocking on occasion).

But I can say that I have noticed a real difference in the way that people treat me regarding my opinions about things these days. And by ‘things’, I mean the ones that they expect ‘Christians’ to have a particularly strong viewpoint on (abortion, euthanasia, pornography, Llama farming practices). There are a few steps involved here.

They assume that I am going to have an opinion, or take a stand. (This is something you would feel strongly about, surely?)

And then they assume (again) that they know what my opinion about that would be. (You would be against that, right?)

NO I DON’T AND NO, I WOULDN’T.

There are a couple of issues here. Firstly, I don’t feel the need to have an opinion about everything. It’s not that I don’t care about, for example, abortion or euthanasia, but I genuinely don’t have an opinion. I can see that they are nuanced and complex areas and it’s not an area I feel equipped to delve into. Do I have feelings about the issue? Sure. But I have feelings on lots of things that are just ridiculous and emotional and are better off left unexplored (I frequently want to pull my kids out of school and teach them at home, for example. This would be a shockingly bad move for many many reasons).

People find that hard to understand. You don’t have to have a dog in every fight, seriously. You don’t have to have an opinions on every single bloody thing and from what I can tell, others find it especially hard to get their head around this when you’re a Christian.

Sometimes, I just don’t care.

Sometimes, it’s so big and complex and I don’t want the responsibility of making a decisions.

Sometimes, I just don’t feel the need to share my thoughts with others.

I think that it is assumed by many that the Bible is a concise little rule book that has a clear and easily referenced solution to every quandary that will crop up during life.

Well, it doesn’t. Except it does, I suppose. There’s ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself ‘. So we have to love God, and others, deeply and passionately. Does this mean dictating what they can do with their life? Does this mean making decisions on behalf of them? What does Loving Others actually involve?

We need to look at the world through a framework of Jesus’ love. But that can go in many different directions. I personally don’t see how, within that framework, there can be a lot of disagreement on how to treat asylum seekers, but that’s because it’s one issue that I do have all the opinions on. And we are all going to be different in which battle we choose to fight.

But we also need to remember that loving others also means treading carefully with our opinions.

A slightly ranty atonement post.

This post is one of those ones where I’m basically clarifying my stance on certain issues for my own elucidation. For me it’s important that I can clearly articulate my own take on certain key issues. I know that many people are fine with things just being all mysterious but I need to get things relatively clear in my own head from time to time.

It’s no secret that the whole idea of substitutionary atonement makes me very cranky and I find it completely incompatible with every thing I know to be true about a loving God.

When I was an atheist, the idea of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins was a prime example of the delusional thinking of Christians. As an almost- Christian the idea of substitutionary atonement was still a huge issue for me. But gradually I came to realise that substitutionary atonement wasn’t an absolute belief within the faith. There was also the moral influence theory of atonement- the belief that positive moral change is the ultimate goal of Christianity.

In fact, this theory is one of the oldest views of atonement and was the dominant one during the second and third centuries. This is a pretty important point, hey? If the people who lived closest to the actual time of Jesus had firm beliefs regarding what his life was about, then it certainly bears a closer examination.

Jesus’ life was so fundamentally about social justice, yet his whole death was ultimately about our sins and a blood sacrifice to a vengeful god? (insert scornful swearword here). What a way to devalue everything that he stood for and everything that he tried to achieve. The Gospels are chock full of directives to us about how to live a righteous life, yet when it comes down to it we don’t have to actually do any of those things at all? He died just to absolve us of sins and that’s the message we should take away from his life?

Rubbish.

Although I shouldn’t dismiss the whole sin thing quite so off handedly. Absolutely we need saving, but it’s more about saving us from our acceptance of oppressive systems, from our complacency and from the fact that we seldom do nearly as much as we could to bring about real change, confronting injustice and taking on the responsibility of bringing about God’s Kingdom here and now. If we do sin, then we sin by ignoring the clear teachings of Jesus.

Look, God didn’t need his wrath assuaged to be replaced by mercy after Jesus’ execution on the cross. What kind of a vengeful prick does that make God? You don’t punish your other children by killing one of them to make yourself feel better.

Jesus advocated moral change. He spoke of the world that is to come; the world that we could bring about if people took his message seriously. His teachings and examples push us onward to try and live out his message. People, and then societies, can move towards this, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

For acting in the greater good, dismissing his own safety, and preaching a radical message of societal transformation, Jesus was killed by the Roman Empire (well, it was actually sedition) in an appalling and shameful way. The resurrection shows us that even death cannot separate us from God’s love.  That whatever you face and however you are challenged while striving for justice in the world is insignificant when it all comes down to it. Even if the worst happens to us, God will still be there to love us and lift us up.

One of God’s chief commandments is not to kill. While God didn’t ‘need’ Jesus to die, it served to demonstrate what was supposed to be the last example of religiously condoned violence. The end of the sacrificial system; the end of redemptive violence. Jesus’s death is part of a much wider picture and frame work than the penal substitution theory would have it. Jesus isn’t reduced to to sacrificed lamb. That darn Sermon on the Mount actually meant something after all.

While I’m not going to proof text and play Bible passage tennis to support my argument, there is absolutely a firm biblical foundation for this view. Many New Testament passages allude to a final judgement that concerns moral conduct. The Gospels are essentially chock full of how to be a moral person. Much of what Jesus said concerns this. Yes, Paul did talk about the fact that salvation is by faith and the fact that ‘works of the law’ are not what we would be striving for but if it’s a preach-off between Jesus and Paul, then I know which side I’ll be on. (As a side-note, Hebrews, the book in which much of the blood sacrifice talk can be seen, may not have been written by Paul at all which detracts from it’s importance if it is true).

Next up, universal salvation! It’s just party time here at the moment, isn’t it?

Re-defining Christianity.

My friend Eric recently wrote this article on the redefinition of the word ‘Christian’ and Progressive Christianity. It’s a great article and certainly worth the click over (come on, it’s 2 seconds. Unless you have my internet reception and then there’s a whole peddling monkey effort to be dealt with).

This paragraph, particularly, resonated with me;

If you have been sitting on the side lines trying to avoid the word Christian because of the stigma it carries, or because you can’t wrap your mind around many of the intellectual barriers, I bring you “good news” that the word is changing (in a way I believe Jesus would appreciate). I invite you to come on over and join the movement of “progressive” Christians who are swimming against the current, making space for education and reality within Christianity, and defining our own creeds on our own terms.

It would seem at this stage that I’m not going to be labelling myself as a ‘Progressive’ Christian even thought I think that I probably am one according to the definitions, but I’ll write more about this next week.

Act Justly, Tony.

Like many Australians I’ve been increasingly dismayed at Tony Abbott’s leadership of this country, and the decisions being made in his name which are resulting in the heartless treatment of the vulnerable and at-risk in society. The United Nations this week found that Australia’s detention of refugees, including children, is ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ which is forbidden by international law (report here)

That’s a fairly big call, isn’t it? A supposedly advanced and civilised country treating people in way that actually breaks international law and sends asylum seekers back to countries where they have a ‘substantial risk of torture’. We are acting really badly not by some arbitrary yardstick created by the lefties of Australia but by international standards.

And I’ve been wondering how a christian man, a man who spent three years training to be a priest, can have moved so far away from the message of the gospels. How does this happen? How can someone who believes in god and believes that Jesus died because of what he stood for (although I have the feeling that Abbott is a Substitutionary Atonement kind of guy rather than a Moral Influence one) and I’m asssuming has understood and internalised what the New Testament is actually about make these decisions which completely fly in the face of what Jesus was here to talk about?

I was reading James 1:27 this weekend and I came across this;

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless in this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world

Now I suspect that most commentaries will see ‘pollution’ as being lust or immorality or something along those lines (because isn’t it always?), but what came to my mind is that ‘polluted by the world’ is actually referring to a person getting so caught up in the dominant paradigm of their world (in this case, the Liberal Party) that they lose sight of the deep values that should be an intrinsic part of their make up. Tony Abbot has lost the ability stand up for what is right, because he has forgotten what that actually is.

He has become ‘polluted by the world’ and the opinions of those around him have become more important than compassion. If questioned, I’m sure that he would talk about pragmatic and practical and economic concerns but that is just my point. When you forget what is at the heart of what we are here on this earth to do, then you have truly lost your way. He has lost the ability to act justly and to love mercy, which is a bit of a pity because he actually could do something about it if his vision cleared a little.

It’s such a waste of a Prime Minister, really.

 

Mysterious ways and all that.

If you’ve read here for a while, you would know that I like a bit of god/religion/bible talk, and I don’t get a lot of chance to do that in my day to day life. (Well, theoretically I could get more of it would involve a lot more ‘all christians are delusional and religion starts wars’ than I’m comfortable with).

Now, we have a ‘granny flat’ on our property and recently a friend and her family have moved in to rent it for a while. If you’re an introvert, you will understand that having people living 10 metres from your front door and sharing a washing machine is EXACTLY THE SAME as living together, so we’re basically living together. I knew that she and her husband were real-proper-christians which is something I find a bit intimidating because in my mind christians = all life figured out and probably quite eye-rolly at me and my ill-conceived notions of god and my cobbled together belief system.

But of course that’s just me projecting and my stereotype of what a ‘christian’ is has been proven wrong time and time again. I’m having a lovely time hanging out with an actual grown up and our two year olds LOVE each other and she cooks meals for my husband which quite frankly he isn’t used to at all and had better get un-used to in about six weeks when they move out.

Then yesterday I discovered that they are creationists and don’t believe in evolution one little bit. At all.

Yep. I’m living with creationists.

Actually, I’m friends with creationists.

Do you ever get the feeling that God engineers situations purely so she can have a good old laugh about things from time to time?

Shermer the Splitter

Well, not quite, but a vague Monty Python allusion is always a nice start, don’t you think

This article is interesting. A bit ambiguous; I don’t quite know what’s going on with it, and I can’t seem to find any commentary. Michael Shermer was part of my holy trinity (Shermer, Dawkins and Harris, thanks for asking) back in the day and I have a pile of Skeptic magazines upstairs that are still good if I need to rebut a homoeopath or anti-vaccer.

But is he saying that this was a paranormal experience? In the past he has explained occurrences away with the precise ‘billions of things mean that a coincidence will happen’ explanation that he seems to dismiss in the article. I’m annoyed by the fact that he admits that he would dismiss it out of hand if it had been someone else. YES, WE KNOW. It’s always the skeptics arrogantly telling people that they didn’t have the experience in the way that they think they did because, well, science and the dominant paradigm and all that. But ‘shook my skepticism to its core’. Really? or hyperbole? I’m expecting him to reveal it as a social experiment or similar next week.

The comments aren’t particularly glowing, are they? Skeptics are such poor losers. Much arrogance, many rudeness. It reminds me of when Anthony Flew came out as a Deist in the 2000s. Of course he had to be suffering mental decline, didn’t he? No possibility that his lifetime quest of following where the evidence leads could direct him to belief.

God I sound cranky tonight. I must go and carry some water.