Organic Christpower vs the Concretized Church-ianity
I do not believe in the "zapping God" of the fear mongering Fundamentalists, but I believe there is this underlying Organic Pattern of the Good which can be called God. By this I mean that “the divine” can be thought of as working in and through natural human behavior via memetically embedded divine habits and algorithms. In other words, I see “God” as manifest in the Idea of the Good, spreading packets of ideas of the Good from mind to mind to produce good people.
I see God as an organic algorithmic reality that manifests The Good. For me, God is the ground of creativity as Paul Tillich put it; the cosmic power that operates in and through the physical organic growth processes and patterns to grow a healthy social consciousness in humanity. This divine Source Power operates through psychology and memetics and what Daniel Goleman calls positive emotional contagion by emotionally intelligent people. As I see it, this is not that outlandish when one considers that we are the only species that have complex minds and humanistic traits that are in part derived from our symbolic language and complex ethical cultures. Why is that? Why did that evolve? Even the atheist has to admit this is the case, that we evolved toward the Win-Win Good, as Robert Wright argues, even if they reject the God-explanation. Thus, there is as a matter of fact a good and evil language, a symbolic pictorial of evil in the New Testament, that produces the belief in good and evil; and this leads to the behavioral patterns that create a philosophical ethic of objective good against objective evil and the belief that is best to seek the Good. That is all real, and I call that phenomenon a form of evidence for God. I take a leap of faith (i.e. I hypothesize) and deduce that a Mysterious Divine Dimension could be the source of that higher consciousness that produces the symbolic pictorial language that leads to the behavior of the Good. One could even consider it the revelation of The Good, the Word made flesh, i.e. divine Wisdom manifest in a human personality (Jesus).
So as I see it, God is as real as the belief in real Good and real Evil. The Good is as real as feeling good doing acts of kindness, life saving medicine, good samaritans, nonprofit hospitals and natural remedies; God is as real as our belief in the Bill of Rights stemming from the Declaration of Independence and the religious statement:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Without the hypothesis of a “Creator,” then it is not self-evident that men are “created equal” and “endowed with certain unalienable Rights …” Just read some Nietzche, as I have, to see that on atheism, “endowed Rights” is far from self-evident! Belief in inalienable Rights is an outgrowth of the Judeo-Christian/New Testament Ethos.
God as a Sinek’s EDSO and Existential Confidence and Vitality
He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
~ Psalm 91:4 (NKJV)
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
~ Psalm 23:4 (KJV)
Whenever I read verses like the above, I don't for a minute take them literally but the metaphorical language has a powerful psychological impact on me. I find myself feeling consoled and empowered at the same time in the midst of anxiety and uncertainty.
after living as an atheist for about 10 years and reading and listening to atheists almost daily I began to see the pattern of them habitually describing reality and nature as the enemy (as something against you). The reason this is done by many atheists (not all) is because they are countering theist claim that God is benevolent and works through nature. so many atheist spend a lot of time describing nature as hostile towards you and life is meaningless in order to counter Christian claims.
I seem to have become addicted to disproving God and enjoyed the dopamine rush of hearing a good argument that I thought disproved God. Yet looking back I can see thought I was seeking these intellectual ptosis do cancer act the existential vacancy after leaving the powerful dose of religion I once felt.
As I got older I began to realize just how empty of EDSO of God I was compared to when I was spiritual. The first glimpse of this was after hearing a few talks by the author of a year I'm living biblically. The author claims that after living the lifestyle of the Bible for a year as an agnostic he did not change from being an agnostic the one of the things that struck me was how much more gratitude she had in life by constantly praying and thanking God.
I thought back to all those times when I pray to God and thought about my own studies in psychology and how important it is to have a nurturing and loving parent for a child to grow into a healthy adult. I began to realize that as an atheist I was psychologically orphant and so there was a lot of existential angst and loneliness a spirit that went with that. At this point I am not leaving the realm of science and speaking only in scientific terms. My point is that God is clearly a psychological reality and all the neurological studies and brain scans show that believe in God and praying to God has healthy benefits to the brain. So I began to see that constantly rejecting God what is the equivalent of a child abandoned by his parents. I began to see that many atheist where Noble and of high character and had ethics but I also saw a common theme of cynicism and philosophical pessimism and even a crankiness in their energy. Of course I am not committing the fallacy by saying all atheist but I'm merely speaking and it's totally based on my own personal experiences and the thousands of hours of listening to atheist audio and reading atheist literature.
When I was an atheist I would sometimes have what I was called moments of weakness and enjoy reading a book by Adnan see his Christian like John Shelby Spong or Marcus bored and listening to their lectures are reading their books. Looking back Now I can see that I enjoyed re-experiencing the god D.O.S.E. and all the pragmatic benefits that went with it. because these authors often spent an equal amount of time critiquing Bible literalism / fundamentalism, I was able to balance by spiritual brain and my rational brain.
even though at the time I was an atheist when I gave john’s eulogy I turned to words of episocopal theologian John Spong his nontheistic God belief allowed me express my feelings spiritually yet honest intellectually. MindOS would not been appropriate language, not Aristotle or the Stoics, ...well it's a euogy Bill, we all get a bit exetential.at a funeral bit then we go about our day and ignore existential.concerns. I cry bullshit on that. Some of us are just better ignoring existential issues but under the surface it's there, like our breath we ignore until we sit to meditate. Point is we are all at death's door and as Covey's pits it we Begin End in Mind. Spong was appropriate Jon's eulogy because his words honor Life, reverently expressess our longing fort the Transcent. Why just talk sports, fitness, business, and self improvement and ignore the weightier matters of the soul?
To conclude, with all my analysis and argumentation, the bottom line is that I like being Christian, it feels good, it feels whole, it feels like being connected to a pheople, a long history of thinking and arguing conteined in the Bible which is a library, to be christian to me is to join those arguments, like the one’s between Proverbs and Job and Ecclesities, etc. it means being part of a tribe and belonging which on Maslow’s hiearchy is very important. I may not agree with the Baptists or the Evangelical Fundamentalists, but we have the same goals in living out the teachings of Jesus and revealing the Good Operating Dimension. As of this writing not church fits my needs but I have not exhausted all possibilites, but church is not what is important, but the curch, the Ekklesia, the wall-less creed-less embodiment of Jesus’s spirit, his voice echoed through the unified voice and hands of those seeking to imitate his way. I feel connected to this, the Ekklesia, which grounds me. In this way driig by a church no longer irritates me but comforts me, as ththerein are poeple embodying jesus’ way best they know how. We share that goal. They share teh desire to feel immersed in the Ground of Dualities and connect to and tap into the Good Operating Dimension. We share that goal, that vision. All the divisions over creeds and interapretations over absractions will go on as long as the human ego rmains, but beyond the sectarianism and dogmatism and charasmic leaders who are currpt, there is underneath it all the same G.O.D., and the same words of Jesus.
living within the Christian symbols and stories as opposed to the banal and nihilistic alternatives is just simply better I think, more empowering and emboldening and meanginful and dare I say true. I have tried on and acted out the Gordo gecko mentality and Niteacheizeam and Machaveliianism and I did not like how it made me feel nor the results it produced. I have tried on many ideas and systems and acted it out and I did not like the way it felt nor what it produced. I tried secular Buddhism but found it …. I tried just not thinking about any of this, but that felt shallow and a form of avoidance and not having a philosphy resulting in adopting the philosophy sppon fed me by popular culature (consumerism, modernism, etc.). When I have tried on things like tell Dale Carnegie philosophy (which is Christian in essence) and the philosophy of Jesus I like what it produces. I like the way it makes me feel. I like that it makes sense, while my dual G.O.D. acronyum not only inspires me to see and aling with the Good but life is torch touched with existential meaning again. I talk about how Jesus gave us a way to know if his lifestyle philosophy is good and true in this blog post here where I quote Grant Palmer’s book on Jesus ////// I find this to be true, that when I live the practices of Jesus and Dale Carnigie, life opens up to me adn delievers more fruitful dividends that other more nihilistic or selfish methods. Turns out ethic living, the golden rule and seeking justice and all the rest, simply makes me happier.
Jesus as Eastern Wisdom Sage and His Father as The Realm of Nature
When reading the unvarnished New Testament, I found it striking to read Jesus refer to Had as the father in the skies. But then I realized this translation avoided platonic theological language and Catholic and Protestant Evangelical dogma that came with the term which would have been alien to the historical Jesus. I was then reminded that Jesus is very nature oriented, referring to seeds and gardening to describe his Father's King(d)om. He also stays within nature to describe his God as an impartial God to defend loving even one's enemies when he talks about God sends the rain on the just and the unjust. In Matthew 6: 14, in the JMNT translation it reads, “…. your heavenly Father (or: your Father Who inhabits, and can be compared to, the atmosphere) …”
what is interesting is that Jesus is not a seminary-theologian invoking abstract concepts but constantly uses earthly (this world) natural metaphors to describe God as the fatherly-presence within the natural cycles of the Earth: a divine Power that germinates the tiny seed to grow into a massive tree and a divinity that is akin to Nature that clothes the lilies of the Field; and Jesus describes the sacred breath (Ruach) as acting like the unbounded natural wind in John ///; or there is the language of Jewish Mysticism in John's Gospel and how Jesus is the organic vine providing divine sustenance to his disciples who act like grapes bearing the fruit of goodness.
What all of this does is provide real-world practical examples of how natural reality, when combined with virtue-ethics and noble character, works to produce the effects of consistent cause and effect abundant ethical fruition.
Jesus uses these real world metaphors to describe God because he is not some seminary educated theologian sitting in an ivory tower writing 500 page books on systematic theology and composing doctrinaire creeds; quite the contrary, he grew up around poverty and was probably considered middle class, and spent a lot of time among the working farmers and carpenters and stone workers; and had as his inner circle not a bunch of theologians and scripture-lawyers but chose "blue color" fishermen and tax collectors and spent a lot of his time around nature.
And the synoptic Gospels Jesus reveals Divine wisdom through logical arguments and debates with his fellow Jews, especially the Jewish Temple elite and scripture-lawyers and in the process he showed the errors of the religious charlatans of his day.
A summary review of Lloyd Geering Christianity with God which does a very good job showing at Peter and James are Jewish Messianic Jews and how modern humanist American culture flows out of the wisdom tradition of Christianity with Jesus as a Wisdom Sage they saw the natural cosmos as synonymous with God and that aligning with nature was aligning with God and he goes on to talk about how Jesus refer to God as nature he then goes on to argue persuasively that in the Jewish Sage tradition the kingdom of God was described as an earthly organic Realm on Earth https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/does-the-kingdom-of-god-need-god/
This talk to the good job explaining how I am a high C with a spiritual brain and a rational brain I see a rabbit and a duck, I see the world through the scientific lens and I see the world through the New Testament lens.
Article made me realize that in Jesus' teachings there is a naturalistic emphasis on:
Nature's laws: lilies of the Field are clothes by the father of the skies working in in through natural processes.
The Cause and Effect relationship between our Choices and the Natural Realm: you most often reap what you sow, knock and it will be opened up to you, ask and you shall receive, and the blank that you measure out it will be given unto you, don't even get so angry lose your temper lest you act it out in violent act caused by your anger and your executed in your corpse tossed into gehenna. it's not what goes into you but what comes out of your mouth that defiles.
Germination and fruition: the realm of God is like …
In almost every instant the Realm of God is described in essence as a natural interweb of universal principles and natural cycles guided by an underlying Divine Force fueling the entire organic process.
Most of the New Testament describes the divine as Creative Growth working in and through Jesus as his Way acts as a memetic germination process that transforms the inner heart to bear the fruit of a noble character and enacts the good as a psychological light shining on the world; as healing energy turning illness into health, despair into hope, negativity into faith, selfishness into agape love.
his disciples want to call down thunder but he corrects them. Most of Jesus miracles are healing miracles or feeding miracles (and are a midrash on Old Testament passages), or miracles that celebrate life like the water into wine to keep the party going (which is possibly designed to counter the Greek god Dionysus).
the gospel themselves define divinity not so much in terms of an interventionist God as much as a God that works in and through Nature and human beings who take on Jesus' easy yoke; and the Gospels themselves are a prophetic cautionary tale wherein the Jesus figure Warn's is fellow Hebrews in the 30s AD that if they don't changetheir heart and their behaviors that their attitudes and actions will generate a cause and effect domino effect which will lead to the Romans slauterring thousands of Jews and destroying the temple in 70 AD; and their corpses thrown into Gahanna.
so we see the god is described working within the Natural Realm as the cause and effect interweb relationship, so that the crooked path and misalignment with the Natural Realm (God) leads to destruction. the corrupt religious Temple priests and Zealots and dagger men going to war against a far stronger opponent ( the Roman army) resulted in the causal web results of 70 AD.
The Gospels are this way a parable (as John crossin puts it) set a Ames to reveal this interconnected web of corrupt religion and religious leaders that became the vipers or snakes like Cain and the serpent in the garden story leading to the fomino effect of thousands of Jews killed and God's very body (the Temple) destroy. So that the spirit of God leaves Israel and the Jewish temple to dwell in not just Jews but Gentiles as well.
the message is the new Testament is that If you align with the natural realm -- and it's divine powers of Wisdom implanted within and Wisdom within you growing to fruition outwardly via cause and effect toward the upright path of Goodness and Shalom via the power of the growth of a noble character -- that you will reap what you sow and by their fruits you will know a disciple of the Eastern Sage named Rabbi Jesus; as goodness and beauty will follow them all the days of their life or at least more so than those walking the crooked path.
For more details on how Jesus viewed God as the wholistic Natural Realm, see:
> Part 3. The Recovery of Jesus' Teaching by Lloyd Geering (From The Fourth R
Volume 17-4 July–August 2004) https://www.westarinstitute.org/resources/the-fourth-r/is-christianity-going-anywhere-part-3/
> God's Garden by Jonathan Mitchell
> https://incommunion.org/2004/12/11/jesus-and-the-natural-world/
Jesus' Atmospheric God & The Ending of Job
One thing I've learned from studying The works of progressive Christians I THINK TIM IS A THE ENERGY PERSONALITY DETERMINES CHRISTIANITY, I am allowed to question the activity of a personal interventionist god in a world of suffering (which we see in the book of Job) and I can even question the existence of the afterlife and life having any divine purpose at all (as is covering in Ecclesiastes) yet despite my occasional doubts and skepticism, still, I find myself feeling a part of the "Bible people", as those who rote and edited the library of documents that compose the Bible alowed the doubt and skepticism of these two books (Ecclesiastes and Job) to be in the canon. So I share with them their doubt and their hope contained in the same library call scripture. Hence the Bible itself contains doubt and skepticism and that is allowed "within the people of God-seekers." to occasionally have moments of doubt and questioning like these books is to join in the history of a lineal tradition spanning 5000 years.
in this having a nondogmatic stance I'm having a faithful Trust and the Divine algorithm while also embracing mystery in Paradox in the face of calamities and human suffering. Has the character in the Bible says Lord I believe help thou my unbelief. I can both believe and not believe at the same time has Frances shaver put it so well in his book why I'm an atheist who believes in God. I can doubt the existence of a personal God and even an afterlife while also finding in Jesus a personalized representation of God. I can believe in the person and character of Jesus and his acts and deeds and teachings as a representative of the Divine; and I can find in Paul a genius poet who was a master at midrash; who had this this never ending drive and Hope that the cosmic Christ (that divine Wisdom or Logos that provides the physics for the seed growing into a tree) was represented in Jesus of Nazareth and that after his death the spirit of Christ has become a life-giving phenomenon so that through the Christ there is the survival of consciousness after death.
so Jesus can inspire me to spread the good and Paul can give me hope and trust that there's more to life and death, " where is thy sting I also allowing myself days of despair and questioning and doubting skepticism at the same time.
In the footnote of the NABRE translation of Job 38.1 the footnote explains that the words out of the storm frequently the background of the appearances of God in the Old Testament. Like a powerful and unpredictable storm God goes on to describe himself as this mysterious power originating all Forms and Cycles and Ecology on earth and the Earth itself. I find this phone to be an ancient poem about the cosmic mystery of Reality itself. The message is that Reality is bigger than human comprehension. But the human mind and brain cannot possibly fathom that which originated the Big Bang and the laws of physics and our expanding universe.
The message of Job as I read it is an agnostic message, similar to Paul saying that we see in a glass darkly (///), in that we can't comprehend the complexity we see all around us of animals feeding on animals and the cycles of nature acting in harmony amidst it's cruelty in benevolence intertwined. the book of Joe presents the Divine as the mystery power originating this paradoxical complexity which is beyond human comprehension.
Rather than explain suffering trope book of Joe presents an agnostic message in an appeal to the Divine as the power originating all the paradoxical complexity in in the first place, the ultimate ground of the formation of all things, and leaves it at that.
Job 38. 28 God says, "Has the rain a father?" I reading this implication that behind the massive amazing grandeur of Nature's God in Job is a Divine Source. from jobe to the gospels we see God presented as the fatherly force of mysterious nature, we're crawling caterpillars literally metaphoricize into a new form called the butterfly (which if we had never seen before would consider a miracle).
I have become greatly enlightened by the translation of the New Testament by Mitchell, who is help me see that Jesus describes the father as natural Atmospheric phenomena. Hence just as job describes God as this powerful Source emanating all natural phenomenon that is a complex synergy of opposites and ecological unity and transformation beyond human comprehension, so too Jesus describe God in terms of natural phenomena which I covered in these blog posts ////…
unlike jobe which ends with God as a massive powerful force in the phenomena of reality in nature all around us what is mysterious, Jesus uses the atmosphere as a metaphor for God sending rain on just and unjust and so that just as God is this expanding force of plenty and apparently non-judgmentally giving to all equally, we too should be just as non judgemental in Zen like and I approach to how we think about and treat others.
yet what Jesus adds that is missing in jobe is that this divine Power can be harnessed to create God's garden by instead of appeasing a transactional God in the sky, bringing the Sky Realm Ideals down to earth and humans themselves (rather than the gods) acting like the way of the Ideal King(d)om and enacting the Divine Realm here and now; as the Divine Realm is inside us and we bring it forth as the Divine Realm is created in our midst as we plant and water and grow it to fruition by spreading good memes and deeds: a friendly tone of voice (rather than a fiery tongue that can burn down a forest, James ////), and non-judgemental words of positivity and edification; like seeds sown in a garden to produce flowers and trees.
Yes there will still be the occasional weeds in this Human Garden, but as the Divine Garden becomes more full of flowers and trees there will be less weeds. And most important, the Divine garden of humans sprouting Goodness will be a shining Light on a Hill to all those outside of this divine-like Humanity, this city of God/Goodness, this Ekklesia, of two or more people gathered together acting out the Jesus Ethos.
Original Christianity was Nearly Dogma-Free
two strings of Thought within the original Jesus Movement as a sect of Reformed Judaism:
Jesus, James and Peter (who remained Torah-observant temple attending Jews) and Paul (who sought to integrate Gentiles into Israel without full Torah-observance) and the John-community (John as in the Johannine Community) who were a mix between the two.
The Only Scripture (among Jesus, James, Peter, and Paul and John):
- Hebrew Bible (OT)
The Only Shared Doctrine (among Jesus, James, Peter, and Paul and John):
- Hebrew Bible (OT) + The use of Jewish Midrash (in Letters, Epistles, Gospels)
The Only Heresy (if it can even be called that):
- The tradition of the elders
- Denying Christ crucified in the flesh (denying Jesus was a human being, born of a woman and crucified on the cross as a real historical person)
- Not loving the Ekklesia as Thyself
- Making your brother or sister in Messiah stumble in your practice (like eating meat sacrificed to an idle causing them to stumble)
- Moving away from virtue-centeredness into vice-centeredness; not being clothed in the Toga of Christ.
Note that Paul encouraged Gentiles not to follow the letter of the law in Judaism yet he himself showed his Jewish devotion to the Church in Jerusalem of full practicing Jews; and while Paul discouraged his Gentile assemblies from being circumcised, he willingly circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3) because his mother was Jewish. In other words, there is no core doctrine or systematic theology absent Judaism (and Jewish Midrash in the New Testament). What was considered "Orthodox" with a set "Creed" was a Jew named Paul presenting Jesus from the OT as the Suffering Messiah, Logos/Sophia, and Shekinah glory using midrash, but like Philo he did so within the symbolic universe of Judaism. Meanwhile James and Peter remained Torah-observant temple attending Jews. While the only scripture-Bible that Jesus, James and Peter and Paul and the Johannine Community used was the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible or OT).
What the short summary above does for me is show that my problem has never really been with the first century christian community, but with Augustine and Calvin and Jospeh Smith, etc. The Jesus of history has always been who he is. Paul has been who he is and never claimed to represent teh histoircal Jesus but his spiritual Christ expereicne. The Gospel authors never tried to harmonized each others gospels into one. The author of Job does not try to answer why goood poeple suffer with religous platitudes. In other words, the oringal new teastment community never claimed to be something it is not, which is what the clergyman of today do, which is make them say and do and belive in things they never did. Jesus and paul knew nothing of a creedal Trinity dogma, they knew nothing of sola scriptura, or Bible inerrancy. That stuff is all made up decades after Jesus and Paul and their first followers had died. I began to realize that I was sticking up for Jesus when I rejected the clergyman and their dogmas, I was allowing the diverse voices in the Bible to speak for themsleves, and was allowing htem to speak their peace wthout trying to forcefit their words into a creedal box just to make myself feel good. But what I also realized is that all the authors have almost the same vision and goals, which I talk about in my essay The Messy Bible.
https://eruptionofhope.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/christpower-thoughts-of-spong-in-verse/
My own poem on God using Christian language? See if it's in my crossintity
ADD images from the pdf Cultivating-a-Movement-of-Fresh-Expressions_20 pages
ADD with diagram above of spiraling galaxy the poem by Spong from Christpower book
https://www.thenarrowtruth.com/uploads/1/0/6/9/10698654/4643783.jpg?555
https://i2.wp.com/jesusandbenedict.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-27-at-9.33.43-AM.png?resize=768%2C635&ssl=1
From this divine center spirals outward from one’s core eternally true and natural laws and principles and virtues that are true regadless of your belief or creed.
Paul intended to teach his Christconsciouness-embodied congregants true principles, virtues and values by modelling to them what Christ had modelled to him so that they would imitate him as he imitates Christ; and that through this apprentice process of mentorship and stepping into a new conscioness, they would in turn not require direction but could govern themselves with Christ in them; the biblical symbols and stories and the lifestyle and parables of Christ would mix in them like leaven in bread dough rising into bread, or like seeds in good soil that produces a tree garden. It was not a pyramidal top down boxed up systematization Paul was offering, he was preaching nothing but Christ crucified: meaning a Jewish rabbi was killed as an enemy of the state, as an opponent of Rome and the dark Powers, yet whose courage to oppose Evil and his tragic suffering and death resulted in his actual triumphant, as his spirit sprouted the Christpower and Christconsciouness into others which inaugurates a potential new creation.
Paul was not demanding rule-followers and memorizing and reciting creeds but adopting a story of a people that are transformed into the people of Goodness.
To me, to be a Christian is to embody that Christpower regardless of your theology. So as I see it, both the New Testament Christians and Christians today are all members of the same spiritual family. Just as I have aunts and uncles and cousins who are some conservative and others liberal, and others have great ideas and some have not so good ideas; so too I have spiritual brothers and sisters and spiritual cousins and aunts and uncles, as one spiritual family in Christ. My Mormon and Jehovah's witness cousins have more controlling parental overseers in their Christian households and my Pentecoslal Christian cousins are real holy roller types. Some of my extended spiritual family are real loose and like to play guitar others stick to piano. Others have family rules as long lists, and others have little to no rules. What we all have in common is the Jesus-experience: we have all absorbed Jesus's parables and teachings and we all seek to walk in the dust of Rabbi Jesus. We have all experienced Christpower: as both the ground of dualities and the good operating dimension. We may disagree and differ and divide when we fixate on the boxes (containing abstract opinions) but when we focus on the circles (the memetic experiential dimension embedded in our psyche resulting in upward spirals of positivity and virtue ethics) we have more in common then we realized through a core connection: we are bonded in the Jesus-experience and unite around the Christpower, the True Vine that glues with sap our rooted branches like Aspen roots.
Tapping into the Christpower is being that drop of living water that ripples upon the lake; like one friendly facial expression or edifying comment or charitable deed that touches a heart and sets off a domino effect of positive ripples in one's life.
The opposite is also powerful. I remember watching an HBO TV series called Oz with actors playing prisoners, where before Kareem Saïd (played by Eamonn Walker) converts to Islam, he made one comment to a guy that planted the seed of pessimistic atheism into the guy's mind and heart. The ripple effect was that the man led a life of existential despair and discontent and cynicism, that led to a life of anger and hate and criminality.
I can think of Christians who did this for me, who planted Christpower into the soil of my soul and it reverberated outward in my enhanced self-esteem and positive outlook and instilled in me Christlike energy; like a guy named Aaron Needham when I was a teenager, Elder Weaver on my mission, and speakers and authors like Rob Bell and John Shelby Spong, Richard Rohr and Peter Enns, Frank Schaeffer and Bruce Sheiman, who elevated me above the pit of pessimistic atheism and upward onto the riverbank of a science-based faithwardness.
Mormons and Evangelicals do not Own the Copyright on the Bible
What I began to realize is that Mormons and Evangelicals had nothing to do with the personal experiences I had when engaging with the stories of the Bible.
The power of believing in a higher cause which motivated me to learn Portuguese and overcome low self-esteem and actually start approaching strangers with confidence, was something birthed in me from the New Testament Ethos. Those experiences stand alone and apart from the Bible literalists demanding I take this or that story in the Bible literally or Mormons claiming The Book of Mormon is a historical document.
In other words, the Mormon religion could have sold me many fraudulent anti-historical ideas and the New Testament stories could have still have had a valuable impact on my psyche, which they did. Evangelicals could have been manipulative when I tried to participate in their groups and yet the New Testament could still provide me with a powerful meaning for life and the context for ethics.
When I was a Mormon I read the King James version (KJV) of the Bible and had been taught how to read the KJV words so that each time I read a word in the New Testament there would pop into my mind a whole packet of ideas. When I was an Evangelical for a short time, I absorbed their dogma and I read their Bible translations (like the NIV) at Evangelical Bible book stores; and so when I read the words of the New Testament in their translations certain packets of ideas would pop up in the idea cloud of my mind. But when I began studying the etymology of the words and the historical context; and a more Hebraic perspective and read more literal translations (like The Unvarnished New Testament), a whole different message and meaning was brought to my attention: that was far more attractive and inspiring and even rational compared to Mormonism and Evangelical Fundamentalism.
If you pick up any Bible say do not have a copyright on the Bible. Their dogma is not sacrosanct. When Evangelicals bow down at the feet of Augustine and Calvin or Mormons praise Joseph Smith, that does not mean that you have to as well.
I began to see that the atheists were ( most of them) reacting to Calvinism and Augustinianism; and that when you take a more sophisticated and nuanced perspective and actually study biblical scholarship and Jungian psychology, and read several different Bible translations and commentaries, you begin to find a greater value to the New Testament symbols and stories. You begin to realize that those symbols and stories can belong to you, and you alone.
I began to realize that no, my childhood was not wasted learning Bible stories. My teenage years were not wasted teaching the New Testament as a missionary in Brazil and Missouri. In fact, I had created my own experiences with the characters and stories in the New Testament that no Evangelical or Mormon or even Atheism could take away.
Let's say you join a martial arts dojo, and unbeknownst to you you do not learn the original martial art but adopt the dogma of a particular cult guru in the dojo. You were taught many unhealthy ideas and practices to cause you to be unhappy and you find the teachings ineffective and scientifically false. So you leave the dojo and say that you hate that particular martial art because of all the damage it caused you. But then let's say you have an experience with the actual authentic martial art that's not come with the baggage of that particular cult guru in that particular dojo and you begin to appreciate the original martial art and its practical benefits it did have on your life. You begin to separate the martial art and it's practical utility and psychological benefits on your psyche and person from that corrupt Jojo and the leaders of the dojo.
I began to see that characters in stories in the New Testament we're deeply subjective and personal and experiential, and my experience with the gospels and letters in the New Testament were personal to me and had nothing to do with what the evangelicals were saying or even doctrinaire Atheism says I have to reject about those stories. There were times when the stories inspired me to be nicer to family or friends. there were times when those stories inspired me to be more confident and socially outgoing. there were times when those stories inspired me to be more forgiving and tolerance in kind. there were times when those stories inspired me to be more courageous and have a fighter spirit and take up my cross and fight the good fight and overcome bullies and other Goliath figures. I began to realize that those stories had an impact on my psyche that was mine and mine alone and had nothing to do with Atheism or Fundamentalism.
I began to realize that those stories and symbols were part of me and that my character was forged in the furnace of the symbol ethos of the New Testament. I began to see that there was a home for me in that Ethos.
I began to realize that as a child there's a sense of security around the neural firings of the brain's synapses around a particular symbolic memeplex, so that after abandoning that symbolic mental architecture (as an atheist), when I began to re-entertain it and allow it to work within me there was a reconnection of Brain synapses: providing a D.O.S.E. (Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, Endorphins), which was healthy and organic and felt fantastic just like it felt when I was religious as a missionary.
And Nietzsche parable of the madman we get a glimpse of the disorientation of actual atheism. In the parable the mad man approaches people declaring that we have basically killed the God-concept and its accompanying concept of Goodness and existential Meaning. The middle of the passage reafs:
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html
as I read these words it captures how I felt when I left my Mormon religion and then after a brief. Of trying to be an Evangelical Christian ended up an atheist. The language above rightly conveys the feeling of dizziness and loss of equilibrium.
N was one of the most intuitive and insightful philosophers of his age. He predicted the coming collapse the meaning and morality and the Advent of the Nazis and relativism. As Jordan Peterson rightey puts it, Nietzsche predicted the problem but his solution was problematic.
Nietzsche thought that in order to regain our equilibrium and overcome the dizzying effects of killing God, that humanity had to become their own God and produce their own values. Yet, Jordan Peterson rightly points out that Nietzsche was wrong about this, that humanity had already gone through the process of creating the Good through the Bible stories. Humanity had already spent thousands of years working through right and wrong and the Good Life through a process of trial-and-error in order to discover what is best for Humanity to be most happy and flourish; and that trial-and-error process is embedded in our unconscious and in the Bible stories as a psychological history of the development of our higher consciousness.
So like nitsches madman who is spinning out of control with no up or down in a dizzying state of existential angst, what reconnecting with the mental architecture of the Bible did for me was reconnect me to a firm foundation.
After drifting at sea by ship I found harbor. Like an uprooted aspen tree then reconnected with the family root system of a Aspen tree family that connects its roots as a single organism (see https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/tree-profile-aspen-so-much-more-than-a-tree ), I became rooted into a long history of humanity and gained a kind of psychological confidence and interconnectedness.
Some people seek D.O.S.E. in illegal drugs or risky behaviors or intellectual pride; that can lead to addictions and death or crime and prison or loss of friends from social isolation from intellectual elitism. So I began to realize that reconnecting with the spirituality of my childhood and youth was safe and healthy.
I began to see that the symbolic package of spiritual ideas I absorbed deep in my unconscious in my inner childhood self, and the memories and neurological connections that have been forged at an early age in my teen years; that with that came a profound sense of existential security and spiritual power that is more potent than any secular form of confidence I've ever experienced.
So that after being a reductionist and a cynical atheist for years, when I began to allow myself to re-experience even glimpses of that spiritual power and that symbolic universe I began to get "doses" of the same spiritual confidence and existential grounding: that feels fantastic! A surge of psychical light and existential grounding, feeling spiritually nourished and more vibrant and ever illuminating.
Granted, my skepticism and pessimism would often break in and cut off the SPIRITUAL D.O.S.E. but when I was able to integrate my rational brain with my spiritual brain, I began to experience the feelings of existential certainty and rooted confidence and cosmic purpose that I felt as a missionary in my 20s and a child in Sunday School; and it felt wonderfully secure and whole, as if floating in oceanic present moment Stillness and full of the psychological electricity of positivity and exuberant vitality; and I realized there's no reason not to abide in those experiences more long-term.
I began to see that when the spiritual stories worked within me I was joining a community of real human beings that passed on their memories and metaphorical stories in the Bible, providing insight and wisdom into what works and does not work through symbolic structures of Meaning; and I was participating in a grand historical narrative spanning thousands of years of learned wisdom and artistic expression, of real humans engaging in trial and error and providing me stories of inspiration and their failures and their learning curves balancing Chaos and Order; and they were using symbols and stories to provide the integration of the psyche just like MindOS by Dr. Paul Dobransky does with diagrams and equations.
Thus I saw no reason not to integrate the memories of my childhood and the confidence of my youth with a unifying language that most people in America speak anyway. The language that allowed a brother of mine to call up somebody he had a disagreement with sand quote from the New Testament story where Jesus says that if you have a squabble what's someone to lay down your gift at the author Altar and go be reconciled with that person. a language that creates an instant bomb with anyone all over the world when they speak the same symbolic language of New Testament Christianity.
What's the Alternative?
Kevin Smith has said on his renewed religious faith:"It costs me nothing."
I tried really hard to replace the spiritual world view of my youth and no matter how hard I tried find solace and "spirituality" in science it always came up short a truly uplifting and inspiring, and it never came close to the powerful feelings of existential security and confidence that I felt when I was spiritual / religious.
Whenever my inner cynic start speaking up my skeptic starts questioning my attempt to be spiritual, it is easily silenced with the simple question: what's the alternative?
The only alternative hopeful spirituality is a cold dark endless expanse of empty space, just endless nothingness, and belief in no soul and no free will and no existential meaning; and just the annihilation of your Consciousness as your body Rots as worm food after death as this life is pointless as a blip in cosmic time. Bone appetit! Would you like a glass of piss to go with that shiity outlook.
No wonder I couldn't sleep the first year after losing my religion! no wonder it felt like all my charisma in confidence seeped out of me and I struggle to re invent myself.
I just compared the above to the religious view this is life has a higher meaning and you do have a soul or at least a consciousness separate from your brain and that you will experience your loved ones again and at least some alternative universe and there is some spiritual meaning to all of this even if we can't articulate it in scientific terms it is something deeply felt in the core of one's being.
so whenever my inner cynic starts asking the what about questions, what about this? or what about that? Not only do I have answers to most of those questions now some years of studying serious academic biblical scholarship; but the number one answer is: what's the alternative?
Because I have looked into every nook and cranny of philosophy seeking to find something better and did not find anything comparable. I tried really hard to replace the power of spiritual stories that grounded me in a meaningful cosmos with a purpose and a soul, and I found nothing comparable as an alternative.
Imagine A Pie Chart on the Subjects and Themes the New Testament most covers:
I believe that pie chart would have the following percentages:
50% practical ethics
10% miracle stuff
10% Metaphorical stories
30% Mystic (Non-Dual) experiences
So for example, Jesus's healings are both practical and metaphorical as stories based on midrash and are about the realm of heaven breaking into the world. Paul's Shadow healing someone is obviously magical language but these stories are fewer than expected. The talk of the holy spirit (literally sacred breath) is often mystical language. "Christ in you" is mystical language. This is the language of practical inword transformation and use of metaphors to instigate that change of heart and character.
thus the New Testament is not as bad as atheists make it out to be. What activist atheist do is cherry pick and find out all of the magical stuff and ignore the 90% of heart transforming metaphors, mystical language for inner transformation, and the practical virtue ethics inspires people to be more noble and virtuous.
For example in the BCR PDF virtues vices see in this article with color coding just how often the New Testament emphasizes the positive virtues and discourages the negative vices. So that when one consumes the words of the New Testament, yes they may run into a magical incident now and again that's hard to swallow, the vast majority of the content is them downloading the power of virtue ethics onto their unconscious.
meanwhile the life of Jesus is mostly lived out in practical terms with him going around healing people and discussing practical ethics and the right way to live that is very applicable today, especially when he criticizes dogmatic religionist types and the religious orthodox who are actually spiritually fake.
there's a very small percent that covers sexual ethics. That is not the focus of the New Testament. But ever since Augustine who is hung up on sex that has become the single main ethical issue in North American Christianity. When in reality according to the author of what Paul really meant Paul advocated celibacy to his emissaries, and when he brought up premarital sex he was talking about sex with pagan prostitutes and he was condemning things like pedophilia and incest...t only time Jesus brings up sex in the same place they don't have sex with another man's wife if you can handle being celibate go ahead. That's all that really said about sex and yet fundamentalist strain at a gnat and swallow a camel and disregard.
Basic message of the New Testament ethic is "don't be a dick" and "act as if you were God's bodily representation today." Yet somehow many American Fundamentalist Christians hyper-focus on superficial issues like profanity, how you dress at church, having the right creedal thoughts in your head and paying your church leaders. Meanwhile they often act somber, pompous, elitist, cliquish and classist (and contemptuous towards the marginalized), inhospitable, with a Pharisaic holier-than-thou attitude. The exact opposite of how the New Testament Jesus acted. This led Gandhi to say I like your Christ I don't like your Christians.