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 20thCentury 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.
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 20thCentury 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.
(2) Beyond Personality, 1945
(3) The Courage To Be, 1952
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