#183 - Moving Toward a Post-Christian World

I have debated writing this post for some time because I suspected I might disappoint some of my friends or cause them to distance themselves from me. However, in light of recent events and discussions, I've decided to no longer worry about that.

A number of my friends identify themselves as Christian, (Many of them go further and also identify themselves as Catholic.) I used to be one of them. I am no longer.

I was baptised a Catholic at Easter, 1984. For 20-some years, I tried to be a good Catholic. Yet something about the Catholic Church did not feel right.

So I tried other churches, but I always came back. If nothing else, the rituals of the Catholic Church felt safe. And yet, something did not quite seem to fit.

Something about the Catholic Church in particular and about Christianity in general struck me as contradictory. I had trouble identifying it an making sense of it until I began reading the Conversations With God series of books by Neale Donald Walsch.

I can't pinpoint it specifically, but something in Neale's depiction of God resonated with me. After reading several of his spiritual books, I concluded that none of the faiths with which I was familiar truly understood the nature of God. Many of them had some aspect of God, but none was complete.

I have also come to realize than many so-called Christians cherry-pick Bible verses to fit their faith's view (and by extension, their view) of the world, all the while forgetting that the Bible was written or related by one group of men (mostly), translated by another group of men (mostly), and interpreted and explained by yet another group of men.

In the last several years, I have come to the conclusion that all religious groups may have some understanding of God, but no religious group can claim to be The Way. Not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam. Each has at least one fatal flaw.

That fatal flaw is that each kills in the name of God. Yet Christianity says "Thou shalt not kill" and claims that the ways of God are not the ways of man. By extension, that would seem to imply that Christians do not understand God since they kill in God's name. (The same could certainly be said for many of the other major faiths.)

Reading through a number of books of Neale Donald Walsch, I feel I have come to a better understanding of God and of the contradictions inherent in many of the organized religions now in existence. For instance, it never made sense to me that we would be called upon by the Bible to love our neighbor as ourselves even as we are trying to bomb them into oblivion.

Another contradiction is the call to love God and fear God at the same time. One cannot fear and love together; they are mutually exclusive.

I'm sure there are some who will begin praying for my soul or will begin worrying that I am headed to Hell. Don't. I truly believe God is bigger and is more than any faith can express. Because of that, I don't believe any faith does God justice. I don't think any organized faith can.

#112 - Giving Thanks

In a blog post on the eve of Thanksgiving, Neale Donald Walsch, author of the Conversations With God series of books (among others), made the unique and I thought inspired suggestion to abolish Thanksgiving as a holiday and instead make it a holy day.

While that in and of itself was enough to make me take notice, what I found unique and inspiring was a suggestion he made later in his post with regard to how Thanksgiving is celebrated:

Forget about sitting down to a big meal and offering thanks to God for all the bounty that has been received during the past year. Instead, create a new ritual. Sit down together and thank God for all the goodness that is to come.

He believes we should discuss those things in the coming year for which we are going to be thankful. In other words, looking ahead rather than looking back. As he has stated in Conversations With God:

. . . the message about gratitude is clear. It is the most powerful form of prayer. Gratitude in advance, not gratitude after the fact. This is because to thank God in advance for something is the highest form of faith. It is a statement of supreme confidence. It is the Ultimate Knowing.

Walsch goes so far as to suggest making a list and writing down all that you choose to have happen between Thanksgiving 2011 and Thanksgiving 2012 and then reading it aloud at dinner. He says doing so will give Thanksgiving a new meaning:

It will now be about Sharing and Declaring. It will be about Knowing and Growing. We grow into what we know.

I'm certainly willing to give it a try. So here is my list:

1. I will be thankful for all of the opportunities I have in the coming year to spend time RVing and reconnecting with nature. Spending five weeks without our truck and still being without our trailer makes me realize just how precious those moments are.
2. I will be thankful for the love and patience of my wife, Teresa. She has been and continues to be my anchor (a term I use in a good way), helping me to stay grounded and giving me someone to laugh and cry with.
3. I will be thankful for all of my Facebook friends, people from my past and present, as well as those I have yet to meet. They help to bring to life memories of the places I've been as well as the places I still hope to see.
4. I will be thankful for new challenges and new opportunities to grow. The last few years have been some of the best of my life in terms of growing and learning to better accept myself. I suspect the coming year will bring more of the same.
5. I will be thankful (or at least strive to be thankful) for the challenges of dealing with a teenage autistic son. It now looks like we may have a little help with that, which I think will make life less stressful and more enjoyable for all of us.

I'm not sure those are in the format Walsch is suggesting, but hopefully they will be seen as being in the proper spirit.

Walsch concludes his blog post by suggesting that Thanksgiving should be the holiest day of the year

. . . because gratitude is the most sacred tool in the Creator’s Toolbox. With it anything can be produced, anything can be created, anything can be experienced!

I am not a Biblical scholar or a theologian, but I suspect he may be on to something. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Be thankful. I am.