I just finished reading a bunch of stuff about religion in general and ‘Christianity’ in particular. It’s been a search that I avoided and certainly delayed for decades. The last piece I’ve read is about the man who highjacked Jesus and ‘created’, out of the Crucifixion event, the mystical seed of the Christianity that most of us know today. That man of course was Paul. In the meantime I’ve read and thought about the many con- and a few pro- religion ideas I’ve seen posted on Facebook by various individuals. I’m more or less at the end of my search now. What I’ve read and thought about has confirmed for me the importance of Christianity to me from a cultural perspective; and the lack of importance of the standard creedal tenets of Christianity to my faith. What I want to share here are three conclusions I’ve reached about faith and religion in general as well as our beliefs and our search.
First, it occurred to me that in our collective search perhaps thousands of ‘students’ (i.e. scholars) have written countless more documents seeking to find ‘The Answer’ to questions about God, Jesus, and The Christ; or seeking to prove their opinion regarding something that can neither be answered nor proven, because the raw information required just isn’t available to definitively do so. In producing those documents the writers have been supported by the rest of us in our vain hope of finding an answer—‘The Answer’.
Second, over the millenia more has been written than can possibly be read by the rest of us. Recognizing that fact in some way, we either throw our hands up in frustration and choose to reject religion wholesale as a confusing morass (which in fact it is); or accept, on blind faith and without thinking, some religion, any religion (or more specifically its creed or someone’s interpretation of that creed) that makes us feel good or at least better about life. This applies whether the person is/becomes an atheist or is/becomes a devout ‘Christian’.
Third, faith can be irrational, based on nothing but an idea and containing all sorts of fantastical, farcical, and perhaps totally unrelated ideas; or it can be ‘totally’ rational, having been thought through logically and meticulously starting with whatever and however limited information might be available. The ‘type’ of faith people gravitate to depends entirely upon the mix of intellectual and psychological needs and abilities contained in the organ residing at the very top of our body. How we believe is a function of our entire being which includes the record contained in our brains of our life experience. Consequently, it is very unlikely that all the talk in the world will ever change it appreciably—unless, of course, we remain emotionally and intellectually open and honest to such change in the face of new and reliable information and ideas.
