Tag: spiirtuality

On Spirituality, Part 2 – A Measure of Religion

“You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.” — Anne Lamott

"You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do." -- Anne Lamott

When they came to the “New World” the Puritans had a mission. They were educated, adventurous, pious, intellectually curious, ambitious, and sought freedom to practice their religion. Nonetheless, they visited upon early America the Salem Witch Trials in which over 160 men, women, clergy, and even young children were accused of being witches – a crime punishable by death. This was in two settlements with a population of about 600 people. Many lost their standing in the community, their property, their freedom, and some, ultimately, their lives. Nineteen people were hanged, and another died by torture. In their religiously shaped world view they were under constant threat of assault from the devil who took the form of the French, Catholics, Quakers, native peoples, disgruntled or unpleasant neighbors, dark-skinned people, and the poor. Their religion said these “others” made deals with the devil to thwart their Puritan mission. The Salem Witch Trials ended the Puritan experiment, which was America’s first and – so far – last theocracy. In my view it failed because it abandoned spirituality in its quest for religious purity.

In my last post, I noted “spirituality” exists only in relationships. How I relate to and interact with others is how my spirituality lives or dies. I didn’t address either God or religion because they can be apart from spirituality. Although many people practice their spirituality via their religion, today, a commonly heard phrase is “I’m spiritual but not religious.” I embrace this, but find it overly vague, needing defining by illustration. Let’s look to the role of religion in another historical case – American slavery.

The permanent, generational subjugation of an entire race was supported by large parts of early American religions and their sub-sects, bringing their theology to support it. People of African descent were deemed only quasi-human and so, theologically it was morally permissible for European [white] people to own and treat them as livestock. It was practiced in the nation’s North and South; Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in upstate New York. This was not only considered normal, but “American.” Arriving white immigrants conformed to belong in their new country. Puritans, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Quakers; they all supported the institution and many kept slaves.

But religion also fueled the pre-Civil War Abolition Movement. Among many others, Christian preachers such as  Sojourner Truth, John G. Fee, Lucretia Mott, and  Jermain Wesley Loguen, and Jewish teachers such as Rabbi David Einhorn and Ernestine Rose pricked the conscience of the nation. They challenged slavery as a systemic evil to be erased. For speaking out, many were threatened and ostracized from their own religious communities. While abolition was initially viewed as irreligious and unAmerican, their spiritually courageous, moral voices prevailed.

Thus, history illustrates religion can be a blessing or curse in spiritual development. Some religions are frankly toxic; building walls, defining “others” as dangerous, or useful only as tools to serve me and mine, promoting fear, and excusing or absolving from blame the ongoing use or abuse of these others. Such religion obstructs spiritual development. What joins the Puritans to the later religious slaveholders was their classifying of whole groups of people – apart from any personal behavior – as beneath and possibly dangerous to them. Today, whole sections of Christianity preach–as a Christian friend stated it a few years ago–“the politics of hatred and division disguised as the gospel.”

Conversely, a spiritual religion offers an inclusive, embracing view of humanity, promoting the worthiness of the other, including racial, ethnic, political, sexual, or social status groups outside of its own. It embraces the value of other species of life and the whole planet’s ecosystems.

The religious concept that most resonates with my personal spirituality is “tikkun olam,” a Hebrew term that roughly translates as “heal the world.” In Talmudic Judaism, the world is seen as broken and needing our labors to mend it. This concept motivates me to improve my personal relationships and social actions to heal the broken world. It requires my practice in my workplace, my home, my friendships, and my family. It focuses me on my deepest personal values, including such intangibles as honesty, kindness, fairness, discipline, and compassion to name only a few.

Do I practice any of this perfectly? Oh, hell no! I’m a volatile, passionate person and I sometimes offend others in my zeal to be “right.”  But to quote Robert Browning “Ah, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for.” My spirituality draws, and sometimes goads, me toward my better self. Should I fall short – and I will – I’m still beyond where I am now. At times my spirituality feels rewarding, like when I volunteer at the local food bank, and other times it sticks me like a needle driving me to “eat crow” after I’ve shot off my mouth without thought and wounded others.

Evil does exist and I’m perfectly willing to call out evil behavior and individuals who have given themselves to it. Sexual predators, greedy corporatism, corrupt politicians – these are true evils to me because they damage others, and build systems for damaging others, for their own personal benefit. They are the opposite of tikkun olam, wounding and killing rather than healing. Will those doing such things end up in hell? I can see they’re acting like hell, but what happens afterward is not my business. As I told people in my clergy days, “I’m in sales, not management.” I attempt to promote a healing presence in the world; what happens to people afterward is not my decision or business.

For many people religion is a source of comfort, but it may not be a source of spirituality. Only when it promotes compassion and world-healing behavior would I consider it spiritual. At its best, a spiritual religion should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Should it promote subjugation, control, denigration, greed, fear of, or hatred toward others, it has lost its way. Spirituality can transform religion into a living, fruitful form. The loss of spirituality can make whole religions a withered branch, keeping the form of spirituality but having lost the substance. I don’t worry about being religious. I do aspire to be spiritually better.

 Thanks for your time. Tikkun olam. AB

Nature Don’t Care

In my first semester of college I had a profound religious experience. Having grown up in a family that practiced a perfunctory Christianity, I found myself surrounded by friends who took their faith quite seriously.  I was intrigued. This was in the early 1970’s when the “Jesus Movement” was well under way. I was persuaded and became fully involved. It was a culture where God was found more emotionally than intellectually, and more in experience than in clear thinking. I still have friends I made in those days and I learned some perspectives I continue to value, but I also picked up something theologically problematic; a belief that God would rearrange reality on my behalf. This is not an uncommon belief.

Of course, I never stated it that way; that would smack of undo pride and arrogance. What I said was that God would hear my prayers, meaning God would protect me, heal me, arrange the world to make sure favorable things happened for me. It was a belief that made me feel protected and valued, and in an emotional sense, what is love except feeling secure and valued by someone else?  It was comforting and powerful. But there was this one problem. I was a homosexual, and everyone assuring me that God had my back, also told me this was a very bad thing indeed. It would make God rethink loving me.

In the mistaken belief that I needed to undo my gay reality, I set out to provide all the conditions in which God could – and therefore of course, would – fix it. Heterosexual marriage and sex (in that order), seminary, ministry and service to others, Bible study, faithful prayer sometimes in tears, counseling both secular and spiritual, journaling, exorcism, ex-gay – for twenty-five years I did it all. Many things changed. Many great people crossed my life in meaningful ways. Many wonderful events and spiritual moments happened. A change in my sexual orientation was not one of them.

After 25 years of great difficulty and anguish, I finally realized there was a basic reality at work in my life and no amount of spirituality was going to change it. This was a valuable life lesson. When you try to live against reality, you can hurt yourself… and others. This became important for me – “Don’t try to live against reality.” Nature doesn’t care what you want or believe. So a mantra in my life is this “Nature don’t care.” I became more of an empiricist – show me the science. It is no accident that my 2nd career was grounded in reading, understanding, summarizing, and teaching others research-based ways of dealing with life issues.

Imagine an ideology determining gravity is “just a theory.” (And by the way, that is exactly what gravity is – a theoretical understanding of how spacetime works.) Imagine then being taught that with sufficient spirituality you can “transcend gravity.” I’m not talking about flying which has  scientific principles behind it. I mean the belief that, with sufficient faith, you can levitate off the ground. Some who engage in transcendental meditation have asserted exactly that. I’ll only say the evidence for this being true is lacking and as we in the research world are fond of saying: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” No such evidence has emerged. For the rest of us mere mortals, acting upon this dismissal of gravity will lead to serious physical injury or even death. Imagine breaking an arm, leg, or your neck because you jumped off a ledge, and then having someone tell you the cause of your injury was not the fall, not the gravity, but your lack of faith and you should really repent of your disbelief and try it again. That is the idea of “faith” too frequently promoted.

This may seem an obvious life lesson, but today, especially in this era of pandemic, there are literally thousands of people who fail to apply this basic understanding in the real world. Claiming to be “covered in the blood of Jesus” or some other such religious-based, magical thinking they will swear they are immune to the SARS-Cov-2 virus. They will refuse to wear a mask, practice social distancing, or take other simple measures to protect themselves and others. God, they assert, will alter reality for them. Some have become ill. Some of have died. Some have infected and killed others. I don’t mention these folks to demean or mock them. I’m sorry for them. I’m sorry for those I misled with that same bad theology. I use my story, and sadly theirs as well, to illustrate the danger of these beliefs, how widespread they are, and how they threaten everyone.

Here’s the bottom line: God is not going to alter the physical world to suit your doctrines or even your health. Neither the world nor God work that way. Viruses are not moral agents; they are natural phenomenon and will follow the laws of nature. Whatever your religion, politics, intellectual rationalizations or other barriers against reality, nature don’t care. Learn to say this with me as a basic fact of life – Nature don’t care.

Shalom. AB