My parents graduated from a Nazarene college, but tended to bounce around from denomination to denomination, always staying on the evangelical/fundamentalist spectrum. Growing up, we were baptist (I cannot recall the denomination), Presbyterian (PCA), bible church, Lutheran (Missouri Synod), and various evangelical churches, some of which were unaffiliated or non-denominational. My parents were significant proponents of Focus on the Family’s teachings and ideology, and routinely utilized those “parenting” techniques in our home. I was also homeschooled until 7th grade.
I had faith as much as I knew what it was until late high school and early college when I began asking questions that sunday school teachers could not address, and became a militant atheist. After a really rough patch late in college, I returned to the faith due to existential angst, and remember thinking that even though I didn’t really believe it, I had to just “buy into the BS” to get through that difficult time. Despite that mindset it actually worked, and over time, I forgot about that whole rationalization. At least for awhile.
As an adult, I attended a couple non-denominational evangelical churches and an Assemblies of God church. I became more passionate over time decided to do a career change and become a Theology professor. So I decided to get my Masters from evangelical seminary as the first step before later getting a PhD, which was a good experience despite me non “using” the degree after I graduated. The areas that resonated with me were:
Contemplative Spirituality/Christian Mysticism. The Cloud of Unknowing and the writings and teachings of Julian of Norwich (she was illiterate, so other people who had talked to her wrote them), Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton all resonated with me and still made a lasting impact. I realized from reading Huston Smith, a professor of religion who actually lived out and practiced multiple contemplative religions over his lifetime that the contemplative branches of the various religions had more in common with one another than their parent faiths. I didn’t take is word on this and started reading Sufi (Islam), Advaita Vedanta (Hindu), and some mahayana (Buddhist) works, while dabbling practicing the latter. He was right: the contemplative paths all fit together--they are the same path. For those interested, Smith’s idea actually came from Adolous Huxley in his book
The Perennial Philosophy, which is a great read.
Process Theology/Panentheism. Process theology did not view God as possessing the 3 O’s (omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence), but defined by an unlimited potentiality. Something constantly growing, learning and morphing.
Liberation Theology. It is uncanny how much of the old testament resonates with Gustavo Gutierrez’ readings and the plight of marginalized peoples. In highly religious societies, it is one of the few ways to break up the ruling classes hegemony and mistreatment of common people. It is probably one of the more useful/pragmatic approaches to theology today.
That being said, as I kept at my studies, more and more gaps kept chipping away my faith. First, the discrepancies in the gospel accounts, then the number and nature of the New Testament pseudographs. Then the textual/codex issues, and the political nature of the Council of Nicea, stripping canon away from some texts and adding it to others, in some cases less likely to be authentic. The fantastical claims of creation, worldwide floods, plagues, prophecies, divine approval/disapproval, satan, virgin births, resurrections all powerful gods have no basis or evidence in reality. They weren’t even unique to Christianity/Judaism and in many cases were borrowed from other contemporary religions. I came to the realization that it is highly unlikely that any of it was true. It had humanity’s fingerprints all over it. Who made who?
So then I looked for other reasons to keep the faith. I knew of “Christian atheists” and priests who kept the trappings of religion because they believed it helped more than it hurt thought “well at least the lessons it imparted and the morality that it taught was good”; so it overall it helped people lived moral lives. But far too many examples ran counter to this, whether it was on genocide, sexuality, treatment of other groups, the treatment of women, slavery, the idea that God even has a “chosen people”, how authority should be treated and I realized that it was conflicted at best and actually was a source of suffering and ignorance at worst, so I left the church and the faith shortly after I graduated from seminary.
I think we have little to gain from studying the bible outside of an anthropological approach. Religion is a heuristic that has outlived its utility, something that provided an evolutionary advantage to humans in a previous era. Only certain portions of the gospels have useful moral teachings and it is still mixed with magical thinking and dualism. The majority of people alive today are more moral than the ancients, almost down to a person. For everything that is covered in the text, there is a better source for those things elsewhere. We know so much more than the ancients and our knowledge of how morality works is so much more sophisticated than theirs. We have had 2000+ more years of cause and effect to observe, how could we not have more insight than them into morality, ethics and the nature of things? Again this goes back to epistemology. Does knowledge come down from the heavens, or is it up to us to go out and discover it for ourselves? I think we have to be a light onto our own path. No one else can do it for us.
Since then, I have been a nontheist and have practiced secular buddhism, as most sects in buddhism function not as a religion (although they have the trappings and ritual of a religion), but as a philosophy. A way of living and approaching life. There is no litmus test for belief, no creed to cling to. Some that I sit with still practice Christianity or Judaism. Some believe in reincarnation, while others like myself do not. But there still is one constant, and that is of a continual opening to the nature of reality, whatever it happens to be.
@TheMonkey I read a Richard Rohr book awhile back at it was pretty good. Have you read this one?
