And so it begins again…
It is early morning–well, not so early for me, as it is 5:45 a.m., and I have been up since 4 a.m. I am writing this in the hopes of sharing a personal transformation–yet another one–that has begun in my life. It is one that I consider the most important one to date that will shape not only the rest of my own life but the lives of my children and most everyone who knows me well.
My first important spiritual awakening occurred in 2006 around the time of my second divorce. Divorces have a way of waking people up to their own stupidity. I started going to church again after a LONG absence. The last time I had taken church seriously was in high school–and I just could not wait to get out. In 2006, I was awakened to the importance of spiritual things in general through my interaction with Elevate Life Church, which was then called Celebrations Covenant Church, in Frisco, TX.
I never missed a service from 2006 through 2007, and I read every book of the month. My favorites include Feeding Your Appetites: Take Control of What’s Controlling You, A Tale of Three Kings: A Study of Brokenness, and The Richest Man That Ever Lived: Kind Solomon’s Secrets to Success, Wealth, and Happiness. I found great wisdom, comfort, and strength in the pages of these books as I traveled back and forth for work to New Jersey each week. I read like a maniac on each 3 hour flight to and from Philadelphia each week.
Metaphysics and the Law of Attraction
As I delved deeper into the principles I was reading, I began to explore more generic spiritual knowledge. I did this, because deep inside, even though I knew I was being helped by my going to church and bringing spirituality back into my life, I still did not trust Christianity itself. My distrust in Christianity is rooted in my childhood, where I was raised in the Worldwide Church of God (to best get a taste of what that church used to be, check out the Restored Church of God or the United Church of God), which, at the time, was a borderline cult with the following weird beliefs:
- Sabbath–From Friday night sundown until Saturday night sundown, we could do no work, and this included sports games, watching television, or practically anything that wasn’t reading the Bible.
- Holidays and Birthdays–We had none of those, and, in fact, would have to get permission slips for school to excuse us from practicing these pagan holidays like Christmas and Easter with our classmates.
- NO Vaccinations–We had to trust that God would protect us from measles, whooping cough, and small pox.
- No interracial dating/dancing–Races were meant to remain separate, and there could be NO mixing–not even on the dance floor. This leaves few options for Black people when the church membership was well over 90% white. This made every Black woman within a 100 mile radius my potential soul mate.
Our religion was not the only Christian religion with weird beliefs. In fact, all Christian religions have beliefs and practices that others in the world would consider weird or impractical. This is why I gradually turned to metaphysics and philosophy as what I considered superior guides to your life. The Law of Attraction does not conflict with the teachings of the Bible (although some my disagree, this is the truth when the New Testament is properly interpreted in the light of Christ’s teachings), and the practice of it seemed to transcend and obsolete religion altogether. I mean, in a digital age of enlightenment, why would one need a church? Church and religion seemed to breed hypocrisy and separatism that certainly seemed counter to the superior goal of Cosmic Law, which is for the good of everyone regardless of religious background.
The Great Logical Flaw
So as I became more confident in my ability to apply the Law of Attraction and learn more about it and all related metaphysical theories and philosophies, I stopped going to church again. I thought I had it all figured out. I arrogantly considered myself “past” religion, and my already present distrust for Christianity was never addressed through my initial enlightenment. Then, the great flaw in my thinking slowly began to expose itself.
Partial Success, No Peace, and Restlessness
No doubt about it–the Law of Attraction WORKS no matter who you are or whether you go to church or not. That is a fact that explains why people all over the world earn millions of dollars and appear happy and successful while never darkening the door of a church. But is that the whole story? For me, it was not. As a stopped attending church, the sense of peace that I had that contributed to my rapid expansion in thinking slowly but surely dissipated. I was left restless and with something missing in my spirit, and reading more and more books by the Dalai Lama and other spiritual gurus did not seem to help. I learned a lot, and I was continually good to others, helpful, and generally a good guy, but I was missing something.
Relationship Failures
One notable symptom I observed throughout 2008-2010 was my rate of failure in romantic relationships and inability to establish a spiritual common ground with anyone. All my romantic relationships were “3 and out”–3 months and I was out of them. This continued until I met the love of my life, Dawn Inman, in July 2010.
Breakdown
My spiritual arrogance did not allow me to see what I needed to see in order to make the right adjustments to make personal relationships–not JUST romantic ones–work. You see, in all areas that did NOT involve other people in the exercise of the Law of Attraction, I was successful for the most part. I always had business coming in–even if slowly during the economic downturn. However, in my first relationship lasting past 3 months since my last marriage, I had breakdowns. I would try to apply what I thought I knew from other books I had read–like The Five Love Languages and my general spiritual guidelines that made me generous, attentive, and passionate. We had a terrific first 10 months, but the picture was incomplete, and I did not understand why. It did not make sense to me until after making a series of mistakes leading to a critical moment in my relationship with a woman I KNEW I loved (and that is key given my personal history–I knew this was indeed my soul mate sent from God for me) that I finally got it.
The Christ Context
It was from a discussion I had LATE one night with my father that the truth hit me in a way that I could not deny. I could not arrogantly excuse it away with mere formless philosophy and continue on my unguided path to destruction. The truth is that metaphysics, the Law of Attraction, and philosophy are only tools for the mind, but the mind needs a master. That master must be committed to a path that was created outside of the self–and not given to the self’s weaknesses. That Master is Jesus Christ. It is in this context that the truly magical powers we are all born with are brought forth in full. It is the only way we find contentment in the exercise of the tools and the only path through which we actually experience the peace necessary to truly fulfill our potential as human beings.
A New Enlightenment Journey
I have been compelled by experiences to this day to embark upon a NEW enlightenment journey that includes Christianity, faith, and a God-focus as key elements. I want to invite anyone that is reading this and feels something common in their experience to come with me. I went to church this past weekend for the first time in a LONG time. I attended the Gateway Church with my brother in Southlake, TX and had a moving experience that saw the return of a peace I had only felt in two other periods of my life–ironically including my childhood in the church I grew up in. That is a message for all of us regarding church. It does not really matter which one you go to as long as you go with the intent of searching for Christ and a relationship with God.
Trusting Christianity
But what about my inherent distrust in Christianity? Has that gone away? How will I handle that? Well, no, my distrust of the human side of Christianity is still there, and I still must resolve the details of what I believe in the context of Christianity in the following areas:
- Christian Living–What is the TRUE standard? What does it mean, and how should it affect the decisions I make about how I deal with friends, family, work buddies, and people in general–especially in cases where beliefs are radically different?
- The Meaning of Life–Why are we here and what is our purpose in this context? Philosophy gave some decent answers, but what about the Christian answers, and how do those answers apply to those that existed prior to Christianity millions of years ago?
- The Time/Space Question–As per the point preceding, it was one of my beliefs in rejecting Christianity that notion that Christianity being the ONLY way was illogical at its core considering the millions of years the earth has been in existence. I considered it arrogant for Christianity to believe that it had the whole story–all the body of spiritual knowledge. I will seek to resolve this discrepancy in my new journey.
- The Nature of Consciousness, the Body, and Spirit–I had an explanation of the line between the body and spirit coming from generic spiritual studies in other books, but some of those theories that seemed to explain this to me do conflict with Christian beliefs as I currently understand them.
- This Life, Karma, and the After Life–Like the dividing line between the body and the spirit, this question is answered to my satisfaction outside of Christianity in a way that seems to make sense, but the answers outside conflict with my current understanding of Christianity in certain areas.
How I Will Study and Blog
I plan to investigate and study these questions and more, blogging here with my answers and results. I hope people who read this will be motivated to comment and challenge the things I write, so the truth can be found and shared with all. I will start by finding where all the best sources for the most current and well documented information are, and I found some listed below that represent a starting point:
- Theologians–I have “Googled” to identify the most noted theologians in the world and found N.T. Wright, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jürgen Moltmann, who is considered by many as the world’s top living theologian. I have downloaded books by all of them to my iPad, and I am starting with Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense by N.T. Wright.
- The Bible–Everything I read from anywhere I will check against the Bible, researching all related scriptures and all various available translations.
- Local Churches–I will visit many local churches, listening to the sermons, studying those, and reading suggested books by the churches I visit.
- God Himself–The point of all this is, in the end, to have the right relationship with God, and He is available for us to speak to at any time. And He DOES answer. The fact that I am sitting here writing this is proof positive that God answers prayer, because my desire to embark on this journey results from those answers first revealed.
Conclusion and Thanks
I will conclude this rather long blog posting by thanking God, my father, Leonard James, my brother, Dr. Kevin James, my fraternity brother, Edgar Gilmore, and my close friend whom I met at the beginning of my first enlightenment, Richard Hobbs. Separately, I want to thank the love of my life, Dawn Inman, for being so forgiving and sticking with me through my arrogance and confusion–and most of all for agreeing to take this journey with me. Stay tuned for the answers to the questions I have posed and the sources supporting those answers.
It’s interesting that you send that link to your blog entry. I’ve been thinking a lot about old WCG lately, which is why I sent you and Kevin that note on FB the other day. I thought it was funny.
It will be interesting to see how your journey progresses. Mine has taken me to a place where I do not accept the divinity of Jesus Christ nor can I accept that the Bible is the word of God as opposed to the word of man. That isn’t to say that there aren’t useful or interesting insights into how we treat one another, etc. However, it’s also filled with unresolvable inconsistencies and dangerous assertions that have driven people to bigotry, misogyny and violence because its books were written in a time when those things were de rigeur.
There are two books by Bart Ehrman, a theology scholar at UNC Chapel Hill and former evangelical, are worth reading.
– Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) — Gives a historical context for Jesus, begins to touch on how the Bible was constructed and how that makes a difference in how we read and apply it and how it has been read and applied in throughout history
– God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer — Ehrman looks at all the explanations of human suffering in the Bible and walks through the study and processes that lead him to religious skepticism despite his upbringing as a devout, evangelical Christian. If nothing else, his personal journey as a theologian is fascinating.
I’ve been asked by many in our extended family why I describe myself as an agnostic. My questions about the existence of God form a larger and separate topic, but I will tell you why I no longer describe myself as a Christian. In summary, my journey has lead me to this: While I can accept benevolent interpretations of the Bible and its use to help people live better lives, being a Christian is about more than that. It entails accepting the story of Jesus and his divinity as literal truth, which I can’t. The exercise of suspending my logical faculties to take that leap of faith to virgin birth and Christ as God and man is one I can’t force to make sense.
a) Why suspend my logical faculties for this religious story as opposed to all the other alternatives that exist? Why not do it for the Koran or the Book of Mormon or Scientology or some guy rambling on the corner? What makes the Christian story special or superior? As one religious skeptic one put it (can’t remember who), he’s done the same thing Christians have done with regard to the reasons they reject all other religions as illogical or wrong, he’s just gone one step further. They’ve narrowed it to one. He’s narrowed it to none.
b) Accepting the story of Jesus as divine is, it seems to me, really a question about accepting the Bible itself as the literal truth of God. In which case, what do I do with many of the inconsistencies, contradictions and anachronisms that clearly exist? For example, there’s not even one consistent story of Jesus in the Bible. The gospels were written down years after the events and years apart, and the passage of time between them reveals significant influence of the political and social realities of the times they were recorded. Meaning: the story changed as it suited the person doing the writing down. As a result, there are some clear discrepancies between different books of the New Testament. Some of the books we presume to have been written by Paul, for example, clearly couldn’t have been written by him or in his lifetime. There are numerous other examples. Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted is one that delves into this.
c) Once I arrive at the conclusion that I won’t accept the entirety of the Bible as the literal truth and start to see it as figurative so I can resolve the inconsistencies and create a cohesive view, I’m already applying my own subjectivity. I’m already picking and choosing based on a sense of philosophy and morality that exists outside of the text. And I will continue to do so because there are some things in the Bible or interpretations of the Bible that I reject as a matter of principle — which is another topic entirely.
d) So if that’s what I’m really doing anyway, why am I going through this to start with? I don’t need to suspend my logical faculties. I can take the elements of the Bible that inform my life or give me comfort without accepting the story of Jesus as divine, which means I’m not really a Christian — though perhaps if I did these things I would consider myself a follower of Christ’s benevolent ideas.
I might attend a Christian church to hear the messages that are applicable to daily living. I might find comfort in particular scriptures or ideas posited by religious authors that are Christ-centered. However, bottom line, Christian faith requires something I can’t logically do, which, I suppose, is the point of faith to begin with. Even the Bible tells us that’s what faith is – there’s no evidence for it. There’s no proof. There’s nothing to be seen or measured to support one’s belief. You just have to believe, and I cannot.
Christina, you are describing many of the reasons I initially rejected Christianity after leaving for college. Too many inconsistencies and what seemed to be ridiculous assertions and obvious inaccuracies in interpretations that suited the needs and goals of those doing the interpreting. To be honest, I STILL agree with you on much of what you said, but I still believe in this journey despite that for the following reasons, many of which are ironic considering I used these same points to beat up on Christianity in the first place:
1. The Bible is known to be incomplete in the first place. The 66 books included were a compromise to suit a political objective at the Council of Nicaea. Missing from the texts are the Gnostic Gospels–including the Gospel of Thomas, which actually explains some of the discrepancies found in the Gospels that religions have chosen to “resolve” with even more mistruths and inaccuracies that have led to even more distortion of Christ’s true message.
2. Christ was never member of His OWN church. The church was formed AFTER His death by men who, yes, had their own agendas, goals and purposes–some of them good and some not so good.
3. The TRUE story of divinity is NOT that Jesus was divine and we are not. His actual message is that we ALL are divine and have always been divine from the beginning. In my readings before my latest epiphany, I had already learned that Jesus actually sought to prove what WE could also do given the divinity we already have! A couple of scriptures that make this point:
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”–Philippians 2:5-6
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do…”–John 14:12
4. Bible translation and interpretation have been inaccurate when local idioms, linguistics, and customs of the time of the writings is considered. Many scriptures are taken to be literal when they are actually metaphors intended to ensure preservation of the message when passed down orally without the benefit of printing presses and the Internet 2000 years ago. Reference the book, Let There Be Light, by Rocco Errico for details about this.
So the question is this: do these imperfections and inaccuracies actually NEGATE the validity of Christianity or do they actually indicate the need for more understanding in the Christian context? I used to think the former, and now, I think the latter, and I will use one of my favorite and famous quotes from the past few years to prove it:
“There is nothing good or bad but what you think of it.”–William Shakespeare
We have a choice, at all times, as to how we CHOOSE to interpret data coming into our lives. We are the author of our OWN experience, and my study and practice of metaphysics OUTSIDE the context of Christianity has proven this definitively. So what does this mean? Does this mean that Christianity is wrong? I used to think so, but I have chosen another thought: it actually PROVES Christianity in the proper context. You see, Jesus TOLD us that we are Gods ALREADY. Even our old church believed that even though the details of implementation were way off.
We have a choice as to how to expand our thinking in any direction from any context. Jesus proved this, and He gave us a framework for doing so IN THE BIBLE. The trick is what we do with it (remember the Parable of the Talents?). God wishes that we discover Him–personally–despite all the noise created by religions that would always be known to be imperfect anyway by definition.
I hope to demonstrate and recount what I find through this blog, and we can all see…
I think it negates the idea that the Bible is THE infallible source of spiritual knowledge. Think of the fact that we use the term “bible” to mean a book of ultimate authority in multiple contexts. Is it THE bible of religion, morality, ethics, and proper living? It might be instructive or even authoritative, but infallibility is an issue if there are all sorts of ways you can show that it’s fallible.
If I eliminate the fact that I was born into a culture where the Bible is the dominant and presumed source of knowledge, is there any reason besides an accident of birth why I start from that position? If I don’t start from that position, how do I get there? Is there any reason for a person to be primarily concerned with what the Bible does or doesn’t say, what is or isn’t included over any other ancient text, modern text, or anything else? That’s a matter of personal decision and personal faith, except when it turns into telling the rest of us what we’re supposed to do.
Thinking of the role the Bible plays in real-world America, is there any reason to be filled with anxiety over what the Bible does or doesn’t say about topics such as – slavery, race, homosexuality, marriage and female submission, etc. – as a single source of knowledge on the topic? Politically, should we accept Biblical arguments to answer civic matters (although the Constitution is pretty clear on that matter, IMO)? Scientifically, should people be using it to describe physical phenomena over and above peer-reviewed academic research? Now I’m getting political… but I believe it matters a great deal whether the Bible is cohesive, who wrote it, and whether it makes sense to accept it as the unchanging word of God. It’s hard to talk about these ideas in the abstract when ultimately these are ideas to be taken into the real world, and in the real world, setting up a single person or book as infallible is a recipe for disaster.
I agree with the Shakespeare quote, which is why I question whether there is a “master” of the mind to be found or if the “master” is just whatever we think to be. I think being raised as we were, we may look for infallibility, and the Bible is our original master. People may accept the discrepancies under the idea that God’s ways aren’t our ways, so they study and listen to pastors, etc. to work through those details as a way of helping them navigate life. The Bible fills that infallible role for them still. I question whether anything ever fills that role. Nothing is infallible. Nothing, in my opinion, is solely “master.” I think I just try to anchor myself to a few core beliefs that make sense to me and use that as a rubric, understanding that I may even contradict myself at times. Honestly, I think that’s all any human being ever does or is capable of doing. For some that’s depressing, but I find it liberating because then you can drop the quest for some nebulous notion of perfection, which only makes you crazy.
In trying to identify a single source or master, we risk contorting a text (the Bible) to fit what we want it to because there’s this desperate need to reconcile two basic things:
1. I think what I think for a variety of reasons I believe to be valid, and the truth is, that’s not going to change.
2. The Bible (or whichever source text or person) says what it says, means what it means. “I am that I am.” And what that is may be diametrically opposite from what I think.
The conflict produces anxiety. After thinking and considering the issues and real world consequences of my stance, I can either change myself or I can change the Bible (reinterpret it, look for ways it really does say what I want it to say). But if I drop the idea that there has to be one infallible truth, I don’t have to do either. I just accept that the two things aren’t in 100% alignment. I can say without angst or fear of lightning bolts: If that’s what the Bible says, it is just wrong or mistaken about xyz. Then, I can move on.
This may seem like moral relativism, but the reality is: relativism is inescapable because our human subjectivity is inescapable, and God is inaccessible in the sense that who can ever really know whether God is the source of that book, that church, that intuitive feeling, that voice in your head, that event (good or bad) in your life, etc. People can believe that God is found in a book, church, feeling, voice, or event, and I can’t really tell them they are wrong or even argue with them about it — unless they start trying to tell me that I’m supposed to rearrange my life according to their idea. This is why I’m agnostic – and not atheist. The only thing I know is that the answer is, for all practical purposes, unknowable.
Travis, thank you for sharing your blog. I’m impressed with your insight, wisdom, and courage. I like the path you’re on. I believe it’s the right one.