I am a 63-year-old man who was raised in the Pentecostal Church until I
rebelled and forced my way out at about age 14. I subsequently have lived
my life with the existence of God as an open philosophical question to me
and with utter contempt for all religious structures and teachings. I have
always thought they were self-serving as institutions and for the people who
wrap themselves in those teachings.
I once had a conversation with two doctors who were both raised in the
same Muslim faith. One remains devout in the most human way. The other has
drifted from the religion of his birth. He now believes that "democracy"
is the best religion. I have thought about his concept and your teachings
as I have read them in your newsletter and several of your books.
Democracy, in its purest form, and the Christ experience as you ponder and
teach it. What a marvelous concept. In a pure democracy there would be
neither "man nor woman" nor any other of the differences that exist now in
our world and religions. For me, my recent reading of your teaching on Paul
and the scripture quoted above seems to make "democracy" and humanity the
best religion. As for the Christ experience and your teachings not just of
faith but humanity in the Christ experience, it is something I have started
to think about. I must thank you for a lifetime of faith, work and all that
goes into it so that one day I might pick up your writings, read them, and
begin to think about WHY AM I HERE DOING THE GOOD "CHRISTIAN DEEDS" IN MY
LIFE WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF RELIGION OR EVEN A BELIEF IN GOD BECAUSE I
BELIEVE THEY ARE RIGHT?? Maybe there is a new Christianity that would
reveal itself in me, but perhaps not in my lifetime. Thank you for
reaching out to people like me. I look forward to each newsletter.
Thank you for your letter and a description of your pilgrimage. You
are certainly traveling in the same direction that I find myself walking. I
think faith is a journey to be undertaken not a set of propositions to be
believed.
Religion always seems to begin in childlike immaturity in which God is
portrayed as a being, supernatural in power, eager to bless, protect and
care for us in our childlike fear. As we mature, the need for the parent
God fades and the divine, as being itself or as that experience of
transcendence, comes into focus. The boundary between humanity and divinity
also fades and the two seem to penetrate each other, making the way into the
divine and the journey into self-awareness quite similar. The goal of the
Christian life then becomes not rescue from the bondage of sin, but
expansion into a deeper sense of what it means to be human.
This approach represents, I believe, a significant shift in
consciousness. It also makes it clear that the content of the traditional
religious myths is no longer operative. Facing the end of traditional
religious systems, we fear that nothingness dwells at the heart of life and
that drives us to create security systems to protect us from our fear. Some
are religious and they always claim to possess inerrant truth or to be
guided by an infallible authority. Others seek to lose themselves in the
pursuit of the idols of alcohol, drugs, sex, wealth and pleasure. Still
others sink into the despair of being alone in an impersonal universe. I
believe there is a better option.
My sense is that the Christianity of the future must be willing to let
go the content of yesterday in a far more radical way than people have yet
imagined, but to do so without sacrificing the experience that created
yesterday's content. Only then can we begin the slow and laborious task of
developing new content to make sense of the eternal experience of being
human.
Long after fundamentalist churches have moved away from their excessive
but uninformed zeal and long after Benedict XVI has discovered that no one
can return to the Middle Ages without committing intellectual suicide, a
still, small voice will speak and a new reformation will begin on the edges
of yesterday's religious systems and slowly begin to make its way into the
center of our reality. I live for that day.
John Shelby Spong
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