Ok, the title isn't original - I borrowed it from Douglas Adams - but it covers just about all the topics I might want to ponder here!
As a child I loved hymns. Growing up in the 1960's in the UK we had religious assembly every day. Unlike most of my classmates I loved these gatherings and knew the words of every verse of every hymn we ever sang for Ancient and Modern Revised. The title of my blog comes from one of these - the second verse of " Father, Hear the prayer we offer"
It goes " Not forever in green pastures
Would we ask our way to be
But the steep and rugged pathways
May we tread rejoicingly."
I think I've been one of the lucky ones. Most of my life has been 'green pastures'. I have always been healthy and have never gone without life's necessities and have enjoyed many luxuries and had 3 children, all born without great distress or discomfort to myself, but I often view the rugged pathways others have to tread and ponder the unfairness of life.
I often imagine living in a drought stricken area of Africa. There seem to be many of them and famines occur far too frequently. Being born into that is such bad luck - one has to wonder about God really.
Many years ago I lost my faith in the existence of God. He just failed to answer any questions adequately and seemed to have plans and purposes that condemned innocent babies to lives of struggle and hardship. The world that religions said he'd created seemed such a callous place - how could we posit a loving Mind behind it all? So much death and decay, such waste of life, such pain and ugliness alongside the beauty that the hymns praised him for.
Somehow the christian 'answer' to this - that God shared our pain when he took on our humanity and went to the cross- stopped making any sense to me eventually. I can hardly believe that I once thought it seemed an acceptable hypothesis, but the truth is, I never really questionned it for years; I just went along with it, like the sheep I was encouraged to be. Sheep are not the kind of animals that think or act independently; they are followers and, like most herd animals, a bit stupid, Evolution didn;t need to make them intelligent - all they needed was to keep together and follow the leader. It was a strategy that served them well. It kept them safe. Go into any church, and you will find human sheep in large numbers - grazers, followers, grouped together for security against the outsider.
I stopped being a sheep when my mind started to question things, and once it started, it wouldn't stop.
I then stepped out of the green pastures of my safe spiritual home and began a journey along a rugged pathway. The first step was 'I no longer think I believe in God'.
Quite a lot had happened to convince me that God was either completely indifferent to the pain in this world, and, therefore, not loving at all, or he just simply did not exist. On balance I preferred the latter hypothesis. God was just one big delusion - a very powerful one, but a delusion, nevertheless.He could not be seen, heard or felt and there were never any clear answers to prayers and it was not evident to me that he ever delivered on his promises. And I felt that, if christians were supposed to be filled with his holy spirit, just for the asking, this spirit gave a very poor account of itself, because there was nothing in any church I'd been in that stood out enough to be called 'of god'.
Maybe God had just died somewhere along the way but nobody had noticed. Perhaps he expired on the battlefields during the crusades when the followers of the Prince of Peace invaded a cultured land and slaughtered its inhabitants, labelling then 'the Infidel'. An imposter God was raised in his stead, but nobody realised, because, for centuries they had been worshipping some fiction anyway.
I had about 16 years of never going near a church or opening a bible, after 2 decades of being faithful in both, and i never missed any of it. Or rather, the relief of it was liberating. All that sin, guilt and unworthiness stuff takes its toll on your self-esteem over time. God is supposed to love you, but apparently he thinks you're rubbish, really, and requires that you prostrate yourself in a weekly confession of how bad you've been and wallow in self-loathing so that he can be merciful and forgive you so you will feel really grateful and want to adore at his feet. (egotistic, or what?).
Well, I didn't miss all that, and it was no rugged pathway to walk without the shadow of godawfulalmighty beside me!
When I lost my faith, a very sweet little elderly lady told me that although I had 'let go of God' He would never let go of me. For some reason I've remembered this, so I wonder where God was during my years of never giving Him a single thought, unless it was to feel glad I'd shaken the dust of Him from off my boots.
But He sort of came back again. Richard Dawkins did it, when he published 'The God Delusion'. I was hugely entertained by this book, but also suddenly'switched on' to theology, and began to read some of his source books. This set me off on a rugged pathway back into the Church -not as a believer and worshipper, but a challenger. Was Dawkins right? Was religion really all bad? Was there room in the Church for an Atheist for Jesus? Was there good religion? If so, what was it, and how could it be rescued from the bad? Was it worth rescuing? Did anyone care?
\I joined an Alpha course, just for the chance to explore these questions and to be a 'thorn', but to my amazement I enjoyed it all, though I disagreed with all the teaching, I loved the atmosphere of discussion and appreciated the warmth and sincerity of the hosts.
When it finished I decided to try visiting local churches to find out what opportunities there might be for further discussion and dialogue, and I encountered - desert.
Jesus, of course, went into the wilderness for a time, to collect his thoughts and work out his plan. I wasn't aware I had much of a plan, but I began to see that I had taken some sort of first step on some kind of journey. A book that was trying to put people off God had somehow got me intrigued, at an intellectual level, by Him.
I began to read 'A History of God' by Karen Armstrong, and I became an instant fan, going on to read several more of her books. I discovered Progressive Christianity, and it seemed to be very unlike any christianity I'd ever known. So much so that it looked acceptable, even to a non-theist like myself. I was still a fan of Jesus - that hadn't left me, but I'd long ago stopped believing he was god incarnate. I could not now imagine what such a statement could possibly even mean.
Progressive christianity - a possible future for the church, but there seemed to be a long and steep and very rugged pathway for most churches to even reach the foot of that mountain, let alone climb it, so far were they - and still are- from the enlightened views issuing forth from that branch of theological thought.
Thursday 26 March 2015
Saturday 24 September 2011
Three Facets of New Unity - session 3:Justice
The discussion forum on the New Unity website has a piece on this by me. This amazing church has now started getting involved with the issues arising from the recent London riots and I am finding a great thrill in belonging to such a caring and dynamic community with a real passion for change.
Until I joined the Unitarians I had given up hope of ever finding a spiritual community that would satisfy my yearning to be a part of a movement that could really make a difference and inspire me to further action. Church in the past hugely disappointed me - not enough community action for me, too much dwelling on sin and salvation and all that rot. I wanted to feel that Jesus was in the room with us, and I never did - until I joined a 'church' that never mentions him and yet buzzes with the sort of radical and energetic passion that he had.
Until I joined the Unitarians I had given up hope of ever finding a spiritual community that would satisfy my yearning to be a part of a movement that could really make a difference and inspire me to further action. Church in the past hugely disappointed me - not enough community action for me, too much dwelling on sin and salvation and all that rot. I wanted to feel that Jesus was in the room with us, and I never did - until I joined a 'church' that never mentions him and yet buzzes with the sort of radical and energetic passion that he had.
Tuesday 26 July 2011
life, the universe and everything
Ok, the title isn't original - I borrowed it from Douglas Adams - but it covers just about all the topics I might want to ponder here!
As a child I loved hymns. Growing up in the 1960's in the UK we had religious assembly every day. Unlike most of my classmates I loved these gatherings and knew the words of every verse of every hymn we ever sang from Ancient and Modern Revised. The title of my blog comes from one of these - the second verse of " Father, hear the prayer we offer"
It goes " Not forever in green pastures
Would we ask our way to be
But the steep and rugged pathways
May we tread rejoicingly."
I think I've been one of the lucky ones. Most of my life has been 'green pastures'. I have always been healthy and have never gone without life's necessities and have enjoyed many luxuries and had 3 children, all born without great distress or discomfort to myself, but I often view the rugged pathways others have to tread and ponder the unfairness of life.
I often imagine living in a drought stricken area of Africa. There seem to be many of them and famines occur far too frequently. Being born into that is such bad luck - one has to wonder about God really.
Many years ago I lost my faith in the existence of God. He just failed to answer any questions adequately and seemed to have plans and purposes that condemned innocent babies to lives of struggle and hardship. The world that religions said he'd created seemed such a callous place - how could we posit a loving Mind behind it all? So much death and decay, such waste of life, such pain and ugliness alongside the beauty that the hymns praised him for.
Somehow the christian 'answer' to this - that God shared our pain when he took on our humanity and went to the cross- stopped making any sense to me eventually. I can hardly believe that I once thought it seemed an acceptable hypothesis, but the truth is, I never really questionned it for years; I just went along with it, like the sheep I was encouraged to be. Sheep are not the kind of animals that think or act independently; they are followers and, like most herd animals, a bit stupid, Evolution didn;t need to make them intelligent - all they needed was to keep together and follow the leader. It was a strategy that served them well. It kept them safe. Go into any church, and you will find human sheep in large numbers - grazers, followers, grouped together for security against the outsider.
I stopped being a sheep when my mind started to question things, and once it started, it wouldn't stop.
I then stepped out of the green pastures of my safe spiritual home and began a journey along a rugged pathway. The first step was 'I no longer think I believe in God'.
Quite a lot had happened to convince me that God was either completely indifferent to the pain in this world, and, therefore, not loving at all, or he just simply did not exist. On balance I preferred the latter hypothesis. God was just one big delusion - a very powerful one, but a delusion, nevertheless.He could not be seen, heard or felt and there were never any clear answers to prayers and it was not evident to me that he ever delivered on his promises. And I felt that, if christians were supposed to be filled with his holy spirit, just for the asking, this spirit gave a very poor account of itself, because there was nothing in any church I'd been in that stood out enough to be called 'of god'.
Maybe God had just died somewhere along the way but nobody had noticed. Perhaps he expired on the battlefields during the crusades when the followers of the Prince of Peace invaded a cultured land and slaughtered its inhabitants, labelling them 'the Infidel'. An imposter God was raised in his stead, but nobody realised, because, for centuries they had been worshipping some fiction anyway.
I had about 16 years of never going near a church or opening a bible, after 2 decades of being faithful in both, and I never missed any of it. Or rather, the relief of it was liberating. All that sin, guilt and unworthiness stuff takes its toll on your self-esteem over time. God is supposed to love you, but apparently he thinks you're rubbish, really, and requires that you prostrate yourself in a weekly confession of how bad you've been and wallow in self-loathing so that he can be merciful and forgive you so you will feel really grateful and want to adore at his feet. (egotistic, or what?).
Well, I didn't miss all that, and it was no rugged pathway to walk without the shadow of godawfulalmighty beside me!
When I lost my faith, a very sweet little elderly lady told me that although I had 'let go of God' He would never let go of me. For some reason I've remembered this, so I wonder where God was during my years of never giving Him a single thought, unless it was to feel glad I'd shaken the dust of Him from off my boots.
But He sort of came back again. Richard Dawkins did it, when he published 'The God Delusion'. I was hugely entertained by this book, but also suddenly'switched on' to theology, and began to read some of his source books. This set me off on a rugged pathway back into the Church -not as a believer and worshipper, but a challenger. Was Dawkins right? Was religion really all bad? Was there room in the Church for an Atheist for Jesus? Was there good religion? If so, what was it, and how could it be rescued from the bad? Was it worth rescuing? Did anyone care?
\I joined an Alpha course, just for the chance to explore these questions and to be a 'thorn', but to my amazement I enjoyed it all, though I disagreed with practically everything! I loved the atmosphere of discussion and appreciated the warmth and sincerity of the hosts.
When it finished I decided to try visiting local churches to find out what opportunities there might be for further discussion and dialogue, and I encountered - desert.
Jesus, of course, went into the wilderness for a time, to collect his thoughts and work out his plan. I wasn't aware I had much of a plan, but I began to see that I had taken some sort of first step on some kind of journey. A book that was trying to put people off God had somehow got me intrigued, at an intellectual level, by Him, all over again.
I began to read 'A History of God' by Karen Armstrong, and I became an instant fan, going on to read several more of her books. I discovered Progressive Christianity, and it seemed to be very unlike any christianity I'd ever known. So much so that it looked acceptable, even to a non-theist like myself. I was still a fan of Jesus - that hadn't left me, but I'd long ago stopped believing he was god incarnate. I could not now imagine what such a statement could possibly even mean.
Progressive christianity - a possible future for the church? There seemed to be a long and steep and very rugged pathway for most churches to even reach the foot of that mountain, let alone climb it, so far were they - and still are- from the enlightened views issuing forth from that branch of theological thought.
As a child I loved hymns. Growing up in the 1960's in the UK we had religious assembly every day. Unlike most of my classmates I loved these gatherings and knew the words of every verse of every hymn we ever sang from Ancient and Modern Revised. The title of my blog comes from one of these - the second verse of " Father, hear the prayer we offer"
It goes " Not forever in green pastures
Would we ask our way to be
But the steep and rugged pathways
May we tread rejoicingly."
I think I've been one of the lucky ones. Most of my life has been 'green pastures'. I have always been healthy and have never gone without life's necessities and have enjoyed many luxuries and had 3 children, all born without great distress or discomfort to myself, but I often view the rugged pathways others have to tread and ponder the unfairness of life.
I often imagine living in a drought stricken area of Africa. There seem to be many of them and famines occur far too frequently. Being born into that is such bad luck - one has to wonder about God really.
Many years ago I lost my faith in the existence of God. He just failed to answer any questions adequately and seemed to have plans and purposes that condemned innocent babies to lives of struggle and hardship. The world that religions said he'd created seemed such a callous place - how could we posit a loving Mind behind it all? So much death and decay, such waste of life, such pain and ugliness alongside the beauty that the hymns praised him for.
Somehow the christian 'answer' to this - that God shared our pain when he took on our humanity and went to the cross- stopped making any sense to me eventually. I can hardly believe that I once thought it seemed an acceptable hypothesis, but the truth is, I never really questionned it for years; I just went along with it, like the sheep I was encouraged to be. Sheep are not the kind of animals that think or act independently; they are followers and, like most herd animals, a bit stupid, Evolution didn;t need to make them intelligent - all they needed was to keep together and follow the leader. It was a strategy that served them well. It kept them safe. Go into any church, and you will find human sheep in large numbers - grazers, followers, grouped together for security against the outsider.
I stopped being a sheep when my mind started to question things, and once it started, it wouldn't stop.
I then stepped out of the green pastures of my safe spiritual home and began a journey along a rugged pathway. The first step was 'I no longer think I believe in God'.
Quite a lot had happened to convince me that God was either completely indifferent to the pain in this world, and, therefore, not loving at all, or he just simply did not exist. On balance I preferred the latter hypothesis. God was just one big delusion - a very powerful one, but a delusion, nevertheless.He could not be seen, heard or felt and there were never any clear answers to prayers and it was not evident to me that he ever delivered on his promises. And I felt that, if christians were supposed to be filled with his holy spirit, just for the asking, this spirit gave a very poor account of itself, because there was nothing in any church I'd been in that stood out enough to be called 'of god'.
Maybe God had just died somewhere along the way but nobody had noticed. Perhaps he expired on the battlefields during the crusades when the followers of the Prince of Peace invaded a cultured land and slaughtered its inhabitants, labelling them 'the Infidel'. An imposter God was raised in his stead, but nobody realised, because, for centuries they had been worshipping some fiction anyway.
I had about 16 years of never going near a church or opening a bible, after 2 decades of being faithful in both, and I never missed any of it. Or rather, the relief of it was liberating. All that sin, guilt and unworthiness stuff takes its toll on your self-esteem over time. God is supposed to love you, but apparently he thinks you're rubbish, really, and requires that you prostrate yourself in a weekly confession of how bad you've been and wallow in self-loathing so that he can be merciful and forgive you so you will feel really grateful and want to adore at his feet. (egotistic, or what?).
Well, I didn't miss all that, and it was no rugged pathway to walk without the shadow of godawfulalmighty beside me!
When I lost my faith, a very sweet little elderly lady told me that although I had 'let go of God' He would never let go of me. For some reason I've remembered this, so I wonder where God was during my years of never giving Him a single thought, unless it was to feel glad I'd shaken the dust of Him from off my boots.
But He sort of came back again. Richard Dawkins did it, when he published 'The God Delusion'. I was hugely entertained by this book, but also suddenly'switched on' to theology, and began to read some of his source books. This set me off on a rugged pathway back into the Church -not as a believer and worshipper, but a challenger. Was Dawkins right? Was religion really all bad? Was there room in the Church for an Atheist for Jesus? Was there good religion? If so, what was it, and how could it be rescued from the bad? Was it worth rescuing? Did anyone care?
\I joined an Alpha course, just for the chance to explore these questions and to be a 'thorn', but to my amazement I enjoyed it all, though I disagreed with practically everything! I loved the atmosphere of discussion and appreciated the warmth and sincerity of the hosts.
When it finished I decided to try visiting local churches to find out what opportunities there might be for further discussion and dialogue, and I encountered - desert.
Jesus, of course, went into the wilderness for a time, to collect his thoughts and work out his plan. I wasn't aware I had much of a plan, but I began to see that I had taken some sort of first step on some kind of journey. A book that was trying to put people off God had somehow got me intrigued, at an intellectual level, by Him, all over again.
I began to read 'A History of God' by Karen Armstrong, and I became an instant fan, going on to read several more of her books. I discovered Progressive Christianity, and it seemed to be very unlike any christianity I'd ever known. So much so that it looked acceptable, even to a non-theist like myself. I was still a fan of Jesus - that hadn't left me, but I'd long ago stopped believing he was god incarnate. I could not now imagine what such a statement could possibly even mean.
Progressive christianity - a possible future for the church? There seemed to be a long and steep and very rugged pathway for most churches to even reach the foot of that mountain, let alone climb it, so far were they - and still are- from the enlightened views issuing forth from that branch of theological thought.
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