the truth … a truth

A few days ago I was wandering through our local shopping mall and I bumped into a member of my former church. He knew I had “fallen away” and so used the opportunity to enthusiastically tell me (again) of how he had been miraculously healed by Jesus a few years back.

In his mind, this was a clear proof that what he believes is the truth.

In my mind, this was clear proof that what he believes is a truth.

WWANAD?

During my christian days, one method of resolving moral/ethical conundrums was to apply the WWJD method. (For the dim and slow-witted amongst my readership, this stands for What Would Jesus Do). Or even better (but I digress), the classic variant “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”. Anyway, this leads me to wondering what answers we would come up with to similar questions with WWANAD. (What Would A New Ager Do?)

Thus here some questions I propose for our next discussion group (which will be Wednesday 27th at my house, 7:30pm)

“Is abortion OK? If not, why not?”

“Is watching porn OK?’ (you would simply not believe how many search hits this blog gets each day with poor christians tying themselves up in knots over porn and masturbation)

“Should marriage be abolished?” (Stats show that marriages are busting up faster than ever, and that many that are married are just going through the motions. Is there a better way of doing this?)

For these, and whatever similar questions arise out of the discussion, the underlying question of course is “on what basis do you make your answer?” For christians, the appeal is to the bible of course. But New Agers don’t have a bible, so who says which answer is right? How do we decide? How do we know? Hmmm.

Why is that I wonder?

On Thursdays I play soccer (or football if that makes you happier) and after the game I got chatting with a guy I sort of know about “all this New Age stuff” I’m currently into (a few years ago I would have had a similar conversation only I’d be going on about Christianity). This guy is just your average nice guy. Happy with life. Moseying along, enjoying stuff, just generally OK with his lot. I explained some of the key New Age ideas I’m learning about and he listened carefully, asked some good questions, and really tried to understand what I was on about. But at the end of the conversation he remarked that while he found religious and philosophical discussions of this type interesting, he saw no need to believe in any of this sort of thing for his daily life.

Hmmmm.

That got me thinking. How come he can just get on with his life and not think or worry about “all this stuff” and yet other people (like me) obsess and dwell and dissect and ponder about beliefs and doctrines and truths and wot-not for countless hours, days, months and years?

Why is that I wonder?

PS: Not poor genetic material, please God, not poor genetic material.

A New Doctrine of God and Man

Over the past year I have used this blog to recount my progressive departure from the insanity of christian fundamentalism to the greener pastures of the New Age. One of the underlying questions I have been considering is my understanding (or doctrine) of God and Man.

There are two ways to read this sentence: “My doctrine of God and Man”

The first way is that it refers to my doctrine of God and my doctrine of Man. Two separate things. Two doctrines. God, the creator, in the blue corner. Man, the creature, in the red corner.

The second way is that it refers to my doctrine of “God and Man”. One thing. One doctrine.

I have come to embrace the second of these two perspectives, accepting the idea that God and Man are one in the same thing, or in other words, different expressions of the same thing.

Thus is laid one of the foundation blocks of my new belief system, my new model: “We Are All One.”

The end of a year, an era, a model.

Tomorrow is the start of a new year, and the start of an exciting new part of my journey.

The picture on the left is a model of a molecule. The coloured spheres represent the nucleii of atoms, and the silver spheres represent the electrons which orbit around them.

No-one has any trouble understanding that this is a model. There are not really tiny little red and blue balls with even tinier little silver balls spinning around them. It’s just a model. Models approximate an underlying reality to which we have no direct access. Our human minds are unable to grasp complex realities directly, so we create models which simplify things to a workable and manageable level. The model helps us to understand that reality by simplifying it to a level that we can grasp. A more accurate model (but also more complex) of electrons, for instance, would portray then not as small hard balls that orbit around the centre of an atom, but more as a fuzzy cloud of energy the totally surrounds the centre of the atom. Harder to visualise, harder to grasp, but also a bit closer to the actual underlying reality that it models. Harder still to grasp if we say that the electrons can be in several places at the same time!

Over the centuries, mankind’s grasp and understanding the reality has progressively increased, and with it the models we use are becoming both more accurate and more complex. There was a time, for instance, when the model used to understand the world was that above the skies where “the heavens”, and below the earth was “the underworld.” Not reality, but a model that was useful at that time. Later on, as our understanding of reality increased, we revised our model. In fact, the earth orbits a star we call the sun, which is itself part of one arm of the vast milky way galaxy, which is itself one of countless galaxies, which is itself … well, our current model runs out that this point!

I have come to the opinion that all religions, Christianity, Islam, New Age, whatever you want, are also models. Approximations of an underlying reality too complex for us to grasp directly. Each model has its relative merits and deficiencies, but each is just a model.

My great liberation of thought that will define 2007 for me is that this was the year I realised that Christianity is just a model, and that for many years I have wrongly believed that it was the truth, not a model of the truth.

It has been said “All models are wrong, some models are useful.” 

It is with great pleasure that I look forward to 2008 as a year of great discovery and growth as I leave behind the old Christian model that no longer serves me, and embrace newer models that God has now revealed to mankind.

A schoolgirl lesson

I decided to meet up with my wife for lunch in town today, and on the way there we drove past a girls high school, where they were all outside in the field having lunch. What struck me about this sight was the fact that they were all sitting in little “clusters” in this field with lots of empty grass between the groups, rather than being evenly spread out across the field.

This all seemed very pertinent to a comment a few days ago made by Glenn on an earlier post:

“Hi Jon,
The phenomena you are talking about is Ekklesia, and that happens in all social groupings and where there is a sense of community. Society, is birthed out of this intrinsic need to belong to a group. In christianity we have coined it a church. But truth be told it happens everywhere where people meet. Christian or not. CoffeeShops are more effective “churches” than what happens and expresses itself on Sunday mornings. The discord you have experienced is also not necessarily a Christian flaw but rather a human characteristic. You will find it everywhere. Even the athiests are competing against each other to be more athiestic. weird. either you believe or not.

I know I bleat on and on about this, but I really do think that churches are nothing more than clubs or groups that reflect human natures’ “intrinsic need to belong to a group.”

I’ll shut up now.

So what does matter then?

What would it matter if my doctrine of God, Man and everything was absolutely correct in every way?

What would it matter?

What matters is not that I know or that I believe, but that I do and that I live my life.

What matters is how we express love each day.

That’s what matters.

When you realise it doesn’t matter

I was chatting to a friend today who is a great sceptic and athiest, and also one of the smartest people I know. I asked him when he thought my constant thinking and struggling with/about God would ever come to an end, and he replied “When you realise that it doesn’t matter.”

Hmmmm. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should just get off this endless merry-go-round of trying to sort out this or that doctrine of whatever, and just get on with the business of living my life here and now. Maybe that’s all that matters.

The man who says there is no god is a …

Watch and weep.

What difference does it make?

Over these past few months I have been studying New Age teaching, and really trying to understand the key ideas they are on about. Certainly very very different from anything I have heard from my years of sitting in churches! No right or wrong. God doesn’t care what choices I make. No heaven. No hell. No judgement or punishment.

So I have studied this and now I face myself with the question “What difference has it made to how I live?”

How do I live my life differently now? What’s changed? Has anyone else noticed a difference?

Many years ago a friend of mine was at Bible college, and one afternoon a friendly game of football had been organised. He commented that the character he saw spilling over onto the field was anything but godly! Or another friend of mine who is such a calm, peaceful, easy-to-get-along with guy. Well, that is until you cross his will. And what about me? Am I really any different deep down on the inside now having read some New Age books?

The answer is no. I’m still basically the same old Jon I was, and have always been.

I wonder what are the elements of life that really change who we are on the inside? Is it what we say we believe? That We Are All One, or that Jesus is the Son of God, or that there is only one God Allah and his prophet mohammed?

My answer now is the same answer it has been during my years sitting in churches.  We see the real us in times of stress, crisis, pressure and pain. When life suddenly bumps or shoves us from out of left field when we least expect it, and before we have time to think the real us just spills out for all to see. That’s where the real opportunity for change is. In the midst of difficulty, pain, discomfort, and crisis. That’s where life offers me an opportunity to see myself as I really am. It seems to me that the human soul is fashioned on the anvil of suffering. That’s where we are truly changed.