As a very young child with my daddy as he stoked the tobacco barn furnace after dark, we lay flat of back gazing into the night’s starlit sky. What’s out there? I would ask. Where does it end? He answered: there is no end; it goes forever; eternity; infinity; no one knows. Is that God, where He’s at? My earliest memory of learning about God in a religious setting was when I rode to Sunday school with my uncle Carl Westbrook on his Model-A Ford. On the 2.5 mile ride to Ebenezer Methodist Church my maternal grandfather, Eldridge Troy Westbrook, had been instrumental in founding, Uncle Carl would let me help him steer the car. Excitement enough for a young kid! And those stories about Jesus from the class of Mrs. Sally Porter made Sunday mornings satisfying. Many Sunday evenings at home my daddy, or one of us kids, read scripture and the family sang hymns around the piano played by my mama.
My life would become unwittingly coupled to organized religion. At Ebenezer, I took my turn as Superintendent of Sunday school assembly as was tradition for senior high students. Later Rev. John Cooper asked if I would be a lay speaker, even so knowing of my deficient-qualifications. Reluctantly, I agreed. I believe the topic was Abstinence of Alcoholic Beverages. Appropriately so since teetotalerism was an unspoken rule at home! After my first message at Maple Grove Methodist, Mrs. Hudson graciously asked: when are you getting your preaching licenses? Of which I’m sure she probably meant to say “you need to be certified before getting in the pulpit.”
Following that period, at my Smithfield residence I became involved in the church’s leadership, and have continued in regular attendance of Sunday school and church services and involvement in missions, Disciple Bible Study, and social events at Centenary UMC. A week without participation at Centenary lacks refueling the soul. The rock star, Bono, for me perhaps puts it best: “I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.”
Although, I have always had many questions about my religion: salvation, eternal life, God’s Kingdom, or how authentic (dependable) is God? Recently I learned a church friend had invited a lecturer to Johnston Community College to give a “Christian perspective on the scientific theories of the origin of the universe.” The speaker, a professor of chemistry and of substantial credentials, Dr. Henry Schaefer, lectured on "Big Bang, Stephen Hawking, and God." Dr. Schaefer brought to critical-question the theories of Hawking in defense of creation. When I had sent this church friend some information about what some scholars where bringing to question about religion, he recommended a book to me: No One Sees God. (Thanks V. E.) Michael Novak, in this book, takes theories of several atheists, devaluing their reasoning and responding that other relevant, material reasoning supports God’s existence. In short, even though God cannot be seen, no one can prove God does not exist.
While science vs. creation (for me neither is opposed to the other) is an interesting debate and No One Sees God was a notable read, in fact, I didn’t need proof of God, Creator of the universe. Although, I appreciated the opportunity to learn more, even by my uneducated, intellectual ineptitude; at times, it seemed an exercise in futility.
Forgoing any special authority, a main point in this milieu is to speak to the medium, i.e. religion, by which people seek transcendence to know or feel closeness to God. The medium, religion, when at its best, gives respectfulness, tolerance, and affirmation to others to have a different belief that do not see eye to eye. What happened on September 11, 2001 profoundly affected the way I think about religions there forth. I wanted to know more about the theoretical religion of those who high jacked planes to kill 3,000 people and more about my own religion, Christianity. It was in an agonizing post 9-11 search to become more knowledgeable of the world’s largest religions which gave lyric to God to Save His People.
To begin my quest for religious insights, I read Karen Armstrong’s book, A Brief History of Islam, followed by an article, Oh, Gods!, in the Atlantic – which said the World Christian Encyclopedia published by Oxford University Press recorded over 9,900 different religions throughout the world. For Christianity alone, there are over 1,000 faith groups in North American and 34,000 worldwide. Clearly, human beings have a propensity and predilection to be spiritual people: in the World are Christians 33.32% (of which Roman Catholics 16.99%, Protestants 5.78%, Orthodox 3.53%, Anglicans 1.25%), Muslims 21.01%, Hindus 13.26%, Buddhists 5.84%, Sikhs 0.35%, Jews 0.23%, Baha'is 0.12%, other religions 11.78%, non-religious 11.77%, atheists 2.32% (2007 est.) Most religions decree their doctrines to be, at the least, near infallible, I suppose. But no one faith, according to the religious scholars’ research, can claim “truth” in exclusion to all other faiths. In No One Sees God, Novak says that neither atheist nor faithful people should think we “possess” the whole truth. Novak: “We may each try to be faithful to the truth, at least to that sliver we are able to discern. We ought each to be happy to learn a little more of that truth from others who are equally serious in its pursuit.” Should we ever doubt our belief, our long standing system of belief in our religious faith? Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1979, questioned her faith! Paul Tillich, the Protestant theologian wrote, “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is the element of faith.” I find myself with one foot stuck in church dogma and the other out.
What’s most troubling about religion is not the old proverbial “God’s name used in vain,” but that God has been given a “bad name.” Over the centuries self-righteous adherents have acted as “God’s chosen people” to do heinous things against humanity. The Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Jews and Muslims have used problematic scriptures to justify genocidal crusades, claiming their Holy Books’ “literal word of God” must prevail. The Torah’s (and other books) narratives manifest a “bloodthirsty God.” Commonly with some current day pious/political devotees is the use of “a personal omnipotent (self-proclaimed) truth over God’s Omnipotence” in an attempt to gain the higher moral ground. E.g.: The Army of God; anarchic, extremist anti-abortion-terrorist. Walter Rodgers writes Religious bullying is a problem around the world, not only in the Islamic faith, also Christian and Jewish: “Religion should have a humanizing effect on its adherents. Civilizing barbarians was an original aim of Islam. Christianity is supposed to cultivate charity for all mankind. The original idea of loving thy neighbor as thyself was first articulated in Jewish Scripture. Yet when religion loses sight of its potential civilizing leaven, it risks merely becoming tyranny in subtler guise.”
Religions’ nescience of God’s Omnipotence, His firmament, His Plan if He has one, and/or its less than candidness about man’s role (not necessarily God inspired) in its inventiveness, religion and church origins, in part, not only has given God a bad name in some environments ----- it has given many good people of Christian Faith pause to reconsider their tenets and worship habits. In this report: For “R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent.” A case in point: Parents gather to nurture nonbelief. Or Erik Reece, the grandson of a “fire and brimstone” fundamentalist preacher, who has written a book, An American Gospel, an examination of family, history and the Kingdom of God. In fact, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades, which indicates that Christians have lost 3% to other faiths. A Christian Methodist Newsletter reported last year that since the first year’s (1969) tracking to 2006 there was a loss of over 2.8 million members in the United Methodist Church.
There is a transformation occurring within Christianity (and other religions) because the stars do not align with universal findings/reality, partly driven by the speed of Internet’s freedom of information and other modern day technological research and dispensing of information. It is akin to China’s peaceful revolution enabled by the same forces. It’s, in some respects, not unlike what happened at Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press (c. 1430s-50) that facilitated Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation: from the first English translation of the Bible by William Tyndale (c. 1530s) to the mass reproductions, culminating in the first completed English King James Bible in 1611.
Canonization of the Old & New Testaments in the 4th Century formulated agreed upon books, and at the Ecumenical Council of Trent (1546) the Catholic Church’s doctrine was standardized. There are differences in Catholic and Christian Bibical cannon and variation in different denominations. Debates continue on “closed” or “open” cannons: [read the debate], [debate]; the Nag Hammadi find in 1945 (Nag Hammadi Library and Hidden Gospels); the History Channel’s Banned from the Bible series; many scholars’ research around the world from best known theological universities, such as Duke University; books of many Bible scholars of which their books are sold by some religious publishing houses, such as Methodist’s Cokesbury (note Karen Armstrong’s many books) ----- all bring better understanding of the Bible’s formation. Well known Midrash (root out or investigate and fill in the missing links) of the ancient stories reveals how the rabbis doctored the script. E.g., the rabbis tried to reconcile the two different Genesis’ creation stories to make it a sacred text. (When a lady, a few years ago, came to teach my Sunday school, she said as a child and youth she had been taught that the Genesis story was just that, a legend --- but now she had learned it was literal, history. How and when did this happen?) Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar, in Misquoting Jesus reveals how the scribes and copyist made alterations to the original manuscripts.
Religious scholars agree the Bible is Law, Legend, and History. This, indeed, is evidenced by research of the foremost distinguished contemporary religious scholar, Karen Armstrong. She says literal reading of the Bible has only come about in modern time. Charles Hodge, a Princeton professor of theology, published Systematic Theology (1871). In 1881 his son Archibald and Benjamin Warfield published a defense of ‘literal truth’; inerrancy meant ‘every biblical statement -- on any subject – was absolutely true to the facts.’ This was a new departure from the past, alien to how the Bible had been read over the centuries. This new interpretation of the Bible became crucial to Christian fundamentalism, says Armstrong. Integrally, an Englishman, John Nelson Darby, touring the U. S. between 1859 and 1877, gave impulsion to the fundamentalist-movement. Through his ‘literal reading’ of Revelation was convinced God would shortly bring this era of history to disastrous end. Revelation, the antichrist theory, thereby as we now know became more than just a cottage-industry. Armstrong says, scripture must be read allegorically or metaphorically to make it speak of charity; otherwise, we are our own editors of literal interpretation who can cause havoc.
Acknowledgement of authentic origins of the Bible and religious faiths’ progression through the centuries should bring a unique enlightenment for a more honest, conciliatory, uniform-understanding of our Christian Faith. Whatever one’s beliefs, Karen Armstrong’s book, The Bible, A biography is an insightful reading. Or in a brief introduction to the Abrahamic religions’ insights (and her Charter for Compassion), you will find Armstrong’s interview by Bill Moyers most fascinating: listen to parts I and then part II at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html. If the Bible could be universally taught in this reality, this understanding, how would it change Christianity, our society and the world?
Madeleine Albright, in her book, The Mighty & The Almighty, said that while religion has done much harm in God’s name, the good it does far outweighs the bad. Indeed, the church does much good, otherwise never to be met. Christianity’s growth (in developed nations), seems to be an enthusiastic, energetic focus on social salvation, feeding the sheep; meeting the needs of young families. Embracement of Social Gospel, social justice, ministries has been a revival of some churches. Those such as Allen O. Morris of the United Methodist are convinced that a revival by the Holy Spirit’s conversion to born-again Christians is the only way to revive the church. The gospel of saving grace has worked time and again; it’s probably the primary gospel where the church has growth in undeveloped nations. But that gospel alone doesn’t necessarily propel the broader message: the need for Christians to be reborn daily, to carry Jesus’ paramount message of “Loving God and neighbor as our self.”
While we have freedom to proselytize, we have a responsibility that requires respect for all religious beliefs, to be more introspective and empathetic toward people of opposite or nuanced beliefs within our own Christian Faith. My personal opinions: For most churches, status quo will not sustain vitality in a community; revival, liveliness will be by innovations that for some Christians might seem an anathema to traditional ethos. The Church’s, at large, leadership is caught in a hard place; tension between reform and tradition is never easy. However, a pragmatic, levelheaded teaching with honest applications by the Bible’s originally intended allegorical or metaphorical messages (as Armstrong says, made to speak to charity) will advance the transformation underway. Lisa Miller, writing on Robert Wright’s, The Evolution of God: religion can "help us orient our daily lives, recognize good and bad, and make sense of joy and suffering alike." Wright is optimistic even about Islam in today's world: "The ratio of good to bad scriptures varies among the Abrahamic faiths, but in all religions it's possible (emphasis added) for benign interpretation of scripture to flourish." To the extent religious reformation succeeds, it will necessarily imbue a benign, compassionate, charitable interpretation of scripture.
Do any of these examinations diminish (undermine) my Christian Faith? No. Jesus remains my Faith’s center, a model for living God’s Kingdom, here and now. If salvation is real, my hope is in A Psalm of Grace. St. John 14:6, for obvious reasons, will never relate to all 6.8 billion people of this world, even though it’s a Christian way.
Has anyone seen God? Not even Moses! Senses of mystical transcendence to God have never descended upon me. Not in Moses’ dramatic burning bush experience but could God have been seen in the face of a newborn baby? If God is Love, I may have felt His presence at an Emmaus Walk where the affection of brothers, friends, and family transcended to a higher level of unconditional love. God-transcendence may be found in nature as expressed in the Hymn of Promise: In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree; in co-coons, a hidden promise: butter flies will soon be free! In the cold and snow of winter there’s spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
Even though humans may be the highest intellectual power on this earth, or of the universe, this planet may be only as a speck of dust in the vastness of the Universal Ruler’s Creation. As President John Adams said, it’s something we should never pretend to comprehend. All the same, come Sunday again, I’ll be with the Master Builder – to see if my temporal walls are straight or crooked, for the soul deep within seeks to be more pure.
