The Religious Quest

         For many years I had followed the traditional orthodox Christian teaching and model of the religious quest by believing that Jesus was the unique “Son of God” and expecting God to accept me into “heaven” after my death if I maintained that belief. Nothing else really mattered, I was taught, since God would forgive my sins because  “salvation” from this temporal earthly life into eternal heaven depended entirely on my faithful belief in Jesus as the one & only savior of the world.

         Over the years, however, I have come to see that such a religious quest is shallow, self-centered and even anti-biblical. It has been based on church teachings hardened into “creeds” and propagated over the centuries by church leadership for dubious self-serving motives. 

         Jesus, I now believe, was a “god-saturated,” deeply sensitive, highly intelligent human being who realized, at an epic changing time in human history, that the divine calling was for all humans to awaken to their own souls  attachment to God. and to  give themselves to the task of becoming  fully human beings each with a unique divine calling, & using all the intelligence and gifts with which they are endowed to do so.
         Becoming fully human, of course, is the task of a lifetime and is hindered by our tendency to  self-centeredness which we call” sin..”
         Yet, a “heaven on earth” is possible if all humans were to realize and accept their connection to God and their divine calling or “vocation;”  hence the phrase in “the “Lord’s Prayer,” – “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is our life’s task, which includes loving others as we love ourselves, i..e maintaining a deep respect for the divine potential in every other person.
         Karen Armstrong , religious scholar and former Catholic Nun, put it this way in her autobiography: 
         “The idea (of the religious quest) is not to latch onto some superhuman personality or to ‘get to heaven’ but to discover how to be fully human …”(1)
         This humanizing  task can be very difficult and even discouraging at times as it was for Jesus who is described as praying “in agony” in the Garden of Gethsemane for strength and courage to face the consequences of his life‘s vocation of compassionate teaching and healing, and speaking truth to power.  
         The challenge to be fully human in our time is no less difficult, nor as followers of Jesus should we expect it to be.  We are all God’s children, called, as C.S. Lewis put it so well: “to be little Christs,” (2) or as the prominent 20^thCentury theologian Paul Tillich has suggested: God calls us to have “The Courage to Be.” fully human.(3) This is the “Religious Quest;” the pathway of faith, as I now understand it. 

(1)      The Spiral Staircase. 1978
(2)      Beyond Personality, 1945    

(3)      The Courage To Be, 1952

God in the 21st. Century - Part 1

         In ancient times, our ancestors believed that there were many Gods and each community or tribal group adopted their own set of Gods which were often understood to be in competition with each other just as individual humans were competing over the necessities of life

         Then, around 2,500 BCE, an epic breakthrough came in this pattern of religious belief and practice when one tribe in the area of the world we call the Middle East - the Hebrew tribe -  decided that there was just one God – their God – and He was superior over the “false gods” of other tribes.  

         The stories and history of this Hebrew tribe are written in what we now call the Old Testament. Their God, to whom they gave the name YHWH – “Jehovah” - or “Adonai,” was described as omnipotent – all powerful- and omniscient- all knowing. He created the world and all things In it.  He selected certain people as leaders and gave them moral laws to live by. Otherwise he was as capricious as any human being, displaying jealousy, favoritism, and requiring praise, adoration and sacrifice from His “chosen people.”

         A second epic breakthrough came from this tribal tradition around 25 C.E. when a man named Jushua  or Jesus,  began to teach that their God was not a tribal God but a universal God; a God of all and for all people; a God characterized by love, compassion and mercy. 

         Jesus’s teaching and action was such a radical re-interpretation of the God of his Hebrew tribe that the religious leaders saw him a treat to their own religious authority. So they accused him of political treason  and managed to get the political powers to arrest, try and execute him 

         A small group of his followers began to spread his radical message of the God of love, compassion and forgiveness which “caught on” and launched a movement that became known as Christianity. A number of writers told different versions of the story of Jesus life and teachings, some of which are included in our New Testament. The N.T.  was “Canonized”or made official,-by a group of church leaders in 325 CE  at a council called together by the Roman Emperor Constantine.  This Council voted to include some earlier writings about the life and teachings of Jesus & his followers, but exclude others

         Over time, the Christian religious tradition became hardened into creeds – statements of  belief -  which codify the “doctrines”  taught and enforced by the institutions of both church and state.  

         But other religious continued to exist in the human world and others were added creating competition and even wars between national religions, some of the worst in which Christianity has been involved are known as the “Crusades” and the “Hundred Years War”

                           (To be continued)