Creeds

I’ve established here on The Back Porch in prior entries that, as far as faith is concerned, I figure myself to be more Christian agnostic than anything else.  You know, I’ll believe it when I see it.  And with Lent finally starting this week, I thought an entry on personal spirituality might be in order.

I was raised and steeped in Roman Catholicism and thought I knew all I needed to know with meatless Fridays, plenary indulgences, rosaries at the shrine, and the responsibility of getting to church every Sunday.  I learned there in both the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed that I was part of the one true Catholic and apostolic church.  

Later, as a teen, I was surprised to learn that the majority of our fellow earth dwellers were not, in fact, Christians, and as unbaptized souls, they would never be able to achieve heaven.  That conundrum shook my faith hard.  If you believe what I was taught in the 1950s, God would not reward others with heaven because they did not commit to Jesus Christ in baptism.  Didn’t seem socially just to me.    

By the time I reached my twenties, following acknowledgment of other serious reality-check flaws in church teachings, I questioned if the whole church thing was bogus.  I mean, what proof is there of one true religion?  And for that matter, what solid proof was there of one God?  Heaven?  And without those realities, what is Truth anyway?  

Such has been on my mind much through the years.  I have come to understand that I, alone, am responsible for myself.  I’ve learned that the intention of my actions makes all the difference.  And I have a responsibility to see to it that my brothers and sisters are getting along okay, too.  If not, I owe them some help, whether by doing something myself or insisting the government, on behalf of the rest of us, provide assistance.  

I have since come to conclude that our universe is a wonderfully complicated place with myriad ways of explaining all of the stuff nobody can fathom.  Just so happens I was born into a Western tradition with roots that reach back to the Romans and Greeks.  My logic, philosophy, language, and native religion all emanate from that epoch of human experience.  Other folks from other parts of the planet following other thinkers and spiritualists would, then, have different world- and God-views.  Somewhere in there I concluded that there was surely no one particular sect had the inside track on defining a one true God.  Christian creeds had clearly overreached their positions.

So over the last third of my life, I have come to sample elements of Eastern religion and philosophies.  Zen has taught me to be present in the moment and to accept the beauty of every moment and every breath.  All we have is the present, so the teaching goes.  Yesterday is past and tomorrow is beyond our control.  This moment -- this breath -- is all I/you/we really have. Be present for it.      

Hinduism has taught me that the source of human pain is our need to want.   Whether love, cars, baseball gloves, or money, if a person wants something, pain is inevitable.  Solution?  Do not want stuff.  And don’t forget to take care of the poor. 

Following the three-year long meeting of church leaders known as Vatican II in the 60s, the Roman Catholic church made some subtle but important changes.  We were then taught that those not baptized were not, in fact, condemned to hell.  God would reward the righteous.  You still had to be Catholic to go to communion and women were still relegated to subservient roles, but things were changing.  Many of us were glad to see the church liberalize a bit.  We hoped to see more change down the line, but creeds still ruled. 

Then in my forties I got a divorce and an old church teaching took on new meaning: If one is an unconfessed sinner, one is not welcome at the communion table.  Divorced and remarried?  You’re a sinner, dude.  Murderer?  No problem.  Go to confession and you’re back in the fold.  Divorced and remarried?  Sorry, man.  You’re a sinner.  You are actively living in sin, to be exact.  One Bible teaching Catholic authorities like to highlight is that if a man marries a divorced woman, he makes her a prostitute or something horrible like that.  We all know that’s a bad thing.  

So I came to be a churched guy who didn’t really have a church.  My lovely Cindy Lou, however, was attending Christ Episcopal downtown, and after some time going to church with her I came to feel very welcome there.  I also came to learn a more Protestant, and I think healthier, definition of sin.  With Catholics, the big thing is commission.  If you did a bad thing, you are a sinner and you need to confess your sins to a priest.  The implication was that if you avoided bad stuff, you could avoid being a sinner.  I rather liked thinking of myself as a good guy.  

Protestants?  Their idea is that human nature makes us all sinners.  Everybody make mistakes.  We goof up.  Can’t really avoid it, so just accept the fact we’re all sinners.  Nobody’s perfect, after all.  

I have a hard time with creeds.  I hesitate at speaking the phrase ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth....‘  I mean, really?  And an only begotten son?  I have trouble with that one too.

I have come to accept, in my words, a Spirit of the Universe that is alive and present in everyone and every thing:  pine trees, chipmunks, red-tailed hawks, little kids, the Grand Canyon, and in the galaxies only the Hubble space telescope can see.  We are all star stuff.  The cells of every body blew out of a star some long eon ago.  

Is star stuff, then, God stuff?  Now that makes more sense.  To me, the God-force is so much bigger and wonderful and unknown than any creed a council of bishops could write. 

Still, though I struggle with church creeds, I continue to attend regularly despite the apparent contradictions.  Why you ask?   A big part of it is being part of a community of folks gathered together who want to make the world a better place.  And I’m all for that.  

Today’s elder idea:  A few years ago when I thought I had a Marianist brother cornered on some God contradiction I concocted, he replied, “Do you think everybody believes in the same God?”  Well, yes, I guess I did. 


image:  from Casting Out Nines blog at WordPress