Tuesday, January 22, 2013

post-fundamentalist




I’m Getting Old, So I Wrote Some Things Down
thoughts on what I’ve learned along the way


I grew up in a fundamentalist church. I was taught that the Bible is inerrant (no mistakes or inconsistencies). In some ways it was like being shut up in a room with no windows. I didn’t know what was outside the Southern Baptist Church theology. I believed that if I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I would go to heaven; and if I didn’t, I would go to hell. So, as an eight year old sinner I accepted Jesus into my heart, and they told me I had been born again. They told me I would have joy and peace.

They didn’t mean bad. My parents and Sunday School teachers and my pastors all believed they were doing what was best for me. They cared the best they knew how. But they too were living in a windowless room.

As I grew older I found out that my Southern Baptist worldview didn’t line up with the way life really is. In college (a Baptist college!) my eyes were opened to a more historical understanding of the Bible. For the first time I learned of the ‘prophetic’ tradition of Scripture as embodied by Martin Luther King, Jr. In college and seminary (a Baptist seminary!) I was enabled to break out of the house with no windows and breathe the fresh air of objective history and ecumenical theology.

As I continued to read and study after my seminary days, I discovered that Christians often caricature other religions, and that our exclusive theological stance is based on ignorance or insecurity.  I found out that there is ‘grace’ in Buddhism and other Eastern religions; that the Jewish religion is based as much on grace and mercy as Christianity is; and that even secularists, atheists, and agnostics can embody the love of God.

My belief in a God-up-there slowly and silently ceased. The theologian Paul Tillich saved me from that distant God who made up the Salvation Game with its pedantic rules. Tillich taught me that what we call God is Being-Itself. (Now, I might want to say God is ‘Becoming.’)

I tend to be logical and rationalistic. Too much so. But I have finally figured out that I cannot figure out God. I believe that there is Something More than what meets the eye. But that Something cannot be grasped or apprehended by human logic or reasoning. (Even the term ‘some-thing’ objectifies God in a way that is unacceptable. God is not a ‘thing.’ God is ‘no thing,’ i.e., ‘nothing.’)

And here is one of the most important learnings over the years: All religious and theological language is symbolic. Every time I attempt to say anything about God, my human language falls short. But I can point. Like the Buddhists say, The finger points to the moon, but the finger is not the moon. All we can do is point. 

(more later)




No comments:

Post a Comment