Recovery From Dogma

I recently saw the meme above on Facebook and thought "Ah, yes. To coexist, discuss life, all the things we have in common, our struggles, and all the good things we can do together. How awesome would that be?"  I think John Lennon would approve and love this concept. Who wouldn't? It happens every day around the world; people of different faiths (and none at all) engaging one another in respectful ways toward common goals. What else happens every day around the world? Not this. There are many ways the peace can be broken, but the deepest division happens along the lines that are most meaningful to us. Politics, for example: What values and resources are we going to share for the common good of the communities we live in? And then, of course, religion. Rather than focusing on the good things we can agree on and do together, someone decides to make their personal religious beliefs a mandate for others to accept or else there will be consequences. They could be temporal, po

A friend's post this morning conspired in perfect timing with my own ruminating over life, expectations, disappointments, and moving ahead in a positive direction. His query involved self-loathing as an unavoidable outcome of not living out the salvation his Creator gave him. I responded with a call to look into the root cause of self-loathing and indicated that believing you are depraved, unworthy, and sinful from birth could lead to such self-loathing.  My counter-query is this: Do we all need a savior, even those of us who no longer have faith based in theism? I'm beginning to think the answer is yes.  Some groundwork: What is sin? I'd assert that "Missing the mark" is as good a definition as any. We can argue over where the mark is, whether placed there by God, reality, society, ourselves, etc.  Some versions of Christianity assert that Jesus died for your sins as an atonement and that all you need to do is accept this gift of forgiveness. Some believe it'

I've been toying with the notion of returning to a church at some point in the future for quite a long time now.  Until very recently, every time I considered it, a sense of dread started to wash over me when I would mentally walk through the likely experience and the conversations I'll have with the people I meet.  Ultimately, "beliefs" would come up and I'd either have to keep my mouth shut or risk offending someone by expressing my heresy. I know, I know.  Some of my atheist friends are already asking themselves "Why in the hell would he do such a thing?" The forms of Christianity I've been involved with through my life have centered on "beliefs".  Whether they call it this or not, it's orthodoxy. Orthodoxy  (from  Greek   orthos  ("right", "true", "straight") +  doxa  ("opinion" or "belief", related to  dokein , "to think"), [1] ) is adherence to accepted norms, more specif

I posted the following meme on Facebook this morning and it drew quite the discussion, as have others recently.  The discussion turned to why I'm often critical of Christianity. So, why am I critical?  Bad ideas.  I'm critical of what I find to be bad ideas.  Especially bad ideas I once embraced that cost me so much and I found to be hugely damaging.  I'm critical of bad ideas that I find damaging to others and I advocate their reconsideration. But criticizing Christianity as a whole is too broad.  I have many friends who practice various forms, hold disparate views and by no means find all of their views completely devoid of good fruit.  But I definitely take strong positions against the form I was taught.  What are some of those elements? The notion that we s hould not rely upon our own understanding is chief among them.  Somehow we're supposed to divine the mind of God and rely upon an intelligence outside of us.    This cost me hugely.  For much of my life, I pushe

This post is as much about feeling as it is about thinking. A strange thing happened to me yesterday.  I started thinking about the first babysitter I ever knew.  She took care of me during very early childhood, probably for a couple of years total.  I called her Mama Pardo.  I remember her as always being happy, funny, loving, and nurturing.  Her husband was a good man, but I remember him being a loud "Man's man".  I believe he was a blue-collar worker at a refinery or something. Although she only kept me for a couple of years, I was always fond of her and visited her and Papa Pardo a few times throughout my school years and for the last time while on leave from the Navy.  That last visit was about 28 years ago. We moved away from her neighborhood when I was two or three years old, then my parents divorced when I was four.  By the time I was nine, my mom and I had moved to Houston, over 250 miles away, so the only opportunity I would have to see Mama Pardo would be when

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! It's that special time of year when many of us will find peace and renewal with family and friends.  For many others, it has the potential to be a divisive time of stress and confrontation. I wish I would whip some guru-esque wisdom on you - a Vulcan Mind Meld perhaps - that could convince you that it's all within your control and that it is all going to be OK.  But I can't, because that's bullshit.  Every relationship has multiple parties and responsibilities lie on both parties for the relationship to be a success.  We can only control our piece. But we can control our reaction to the behavior of others.  We have a choice.  We can actively decide if we're going to buy-in to their drama and participate in it.  I know some who know exactly what they're heading for - whether it's a passive-aggressive family member or a drunken hot-head - and they see it as a game.  They're confident enough in who they are and know not t