The Death of God

I feel that I am filled to the brim and ready to burst. So, I am writing again. I've always made a conscious effort to be objective, as a moderation to the things I believe, the things I'm passionate about. Perhaps that's because I've always seen passion scare people, or perhaps I wish to always see every side of an issue. Maybe I just don't want to get into more fights over things that I feel should be positive. Regardless, I am passionate about my faith.

It's an extremely conflicting experience to relate to and agree with atheists, but be a theist and a Christian. When I read and hear about people moving from Christianity to atheism, belief in religion to other ways of believing, I am conflicted. I have had to move on from the Christianity I've grown up with as well, though I have never found it necessary or correct to move beyond a belief in God, in the spiritual reality that is connected to our experiences, and the checkered and conflicted history of the Church.

I've written lately about my experiences in Christianity, and currently I feel that all of the things I believe in are most closely represented by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Perhaps I am merely fooling myself, as I've been to one of these churches only once. As most people can tell you, experience often colors the theoretical understanding you have of things in ways you would never expect. I am both afraid of trying a new church and desperately want to be involved in a community that discusses things meaningfully. I do not miss most of my college experience, but what I do miss is the good conversations. The ones that naturally happened as far divorced from the "spiritual formation" efforts the school made to indoctrinate us as possible.

I've watched more and more people move away from Evangelical Christianity, and some people move deeper into it, become more conservative, more entrenched and, I suppose, stronger in what they believe. But strength in what you believe is often overrated, and often goes along with stubbornness, blindness, and lack of compassion. Those things are not necessary to be strong, but the baby often gets thrown out with the bathwater on this matter. Regardless, Evangelical Protestant Christianity will shortly be a memory, and will polarize to the level of fundamentalism. At the same time, a lot of the more "liberal" Protestants I've known have polarized more toward atheism. Sometimes I wonder if I'm polarizing to one side or the other, but I know the truth.

I've always been torn between two extremes. Don't get me wrong: I'm no moderate. If I'm pointedly ask what I believe or think about a subject, I will tell you, and I've never tried to balance extremes. What I have tried to balance is who I am. I will laugh at almost any religious joke a person makes, and I will make fun of my own beliefs. To me, that is a sign of security. Plus those jokes are usually hilarious until they turn awkwardly hateful. Regardless, it is unnecessary for me to defend anything, because the truth will eventually prevail, whatever that may be. The truth is that the church has often stood in the way of the truth it claims to protect. The truth is, religion has often made people blind.

The truth is, it does not have to.

I will tell anyone that I believe Jesus Christ is God. I do not believe in the penal substitutionary atonement, original sin, or the inerrancy of scripture. I am not a traditional Christian in the Western sense of the word, and when people make light of the Christian belief that "God kills God to satisfy God's wrath" and say it's absurd, I can only agree. When they say a book cannot be without error if written by people, I can only agree. My foundation for my beliefs has always been and will always be founded in experience, intuitive understanding, and church history. If the human race lost all memory of the era that the historical Jesus came from, I have no doubt that the God I believe exists would have other creative ways of seeking out humanity. I also have no doubt that our understanding of religion, philosophy, metaphysics, science, and the nature of reality and truth is so entirely small that the ultimate God I believe exists goes over our heads all of the time. There's so much we do not know.

Every single person has a right to disagree with me. I expect no respect for my beliefs, nor do I expect anyone to care that I even have them. I'm not the best person in the world, and I often act selfishly or impulsively. But I do try. I want to make my surroundings better, but I've been blessed and cursed with a critical mind and a great deal of passion for fairness, justice, and the truth. I end up being way too excessive on these things more often than not, and end up as a hypocrite quite often. I am no role model.

However, one thing college taught me is that no one else is, especially not the authority figures that claim to have spiritual truth and maturity figured out. Even those that claim to know the entirety of the truth are guessing, like the rest of us. Perhaps some have more educated guesses than others, and I respect those people, especially the ones that will admit that the more educated they become, the more questions they have.

This is the adventure of life. Know more, discover more, find more truth, and realize just how much more you have to discover.

A lot of people call the world we live in Post-Christian. The more I experience and talk with people, the more I have to agree. Christianity, as the Western world knows it, is dying. The remnant of Western Christianity will be a core group of extremists that preach God's vengeance and anger and will become more embittered by the progress of society, and the world will move on as it always has, leaving them behind. However, there is another group of Christians that are content to quietly believe what they do believe, and recognize that their faith does not represent a comprehensive understanding of reality, only a claim that God loves every soul, and has more planned than we can ever imagine. These are truly two different gods represented, and to react against one is not to react against the other.

As Nietzsche prophetically spoke, God is dead, and we have killed him. The question we must answer is simple. Which god is it that is dead, and was his death necessary?

Why I am not a Western Christian: Rome, Nietzsche, and Protestantism

I've written over the past month about my history with religious institutions and movements, and where all of that has led me. I think it's fair to say that at this point I am a mix of conflicted sentiments, beliefs, logical claims, and emotions for that matter. It's difficult for me to sort through all of these things when I'm trying to talk to others about these things, and it becomes even more difficult when they have strong claims. Most of the time when an atheist tells me they can't take Christianity seriously for almost any reason, I agree. Usually there is some kind of straw man involved, as usually when people oppose something, it is because they are hurt. For me there is no escape from that. However, I believe that it's beneficial to call out one straw man in particular, even while agreeing with the reactions I often hear in the same breath.

What this means is that when someone tells me that Christianity has been responsible for a lot of killing, hurting, and obscuring of the truth, and that there are a lot of ignorant people spouting Christianity, my response tends to be two-fold. First of all, and this is usually the only response I have time to give, I agree and can only say I'm sorry. My particular convictions lead me toward the term Christian, and so I am truly sorry for all of the people doing stupid things and forcing inane beliefs on others that use the same term. It aggravates me that I'm even associated with some of them, and it's hard to see the ones that are reasonable and good people when you've been hurt by the unreasonable ones taking cheap shots and being generally dishonorable and destructive.

Secondly, I believe that this portrayal of Christianity requires nuance, at the very least. I don't blame anyone for thinking that Christianity is only its' Western expression, because I live in the west and most of the Christianity that people have experienced has been western in nature. What this means is that the Christianity people react against is at once influenced by the modernist, Enlightenment era thought, and it is usually reacting to it. A good example of this is how the Catholic Church often makes claims and takes stances on contemporary issues like abortion, the political conflict surrounding homosexuality, contraceptives, and generally will makes its' voice known coming from their "faith centered" perspective. For the devout Catholics, their faith runs through every bit of their lives through various expressed opinions and actions, and their politics and social activism are greatly affected by their theology and spread through their church's power.

Another good example of Western Christianity is the "Moral Majority." I shudder to even bring this group up because of how offensive they are. To put it simply, this movement served to take Conservative Christianity into the political realm and bring about change by outlawing abortion in all cases, oppose any governmental acceptance of homosexuals, promote a "traditional" view of family life, and target non-Christians for conversion (Evangelical activism). The Moral Majority was nearly a theocratic movement, seeking to make the US Government Christian (or return it to its' Christian roots if you ask them).

It is on this second point I wish to focus. How can I call myself a Christian and be revolted and enraged by much of contemporary Christianity?

The movements mentioned are only examples of the way Christianity has evolved in the past few centuries. Indeed, this extends far beyond Evangelical Christian Conservatives and Roman Catholics. This sort of wide sweeping agenda has been happening for centuries. Rome has been this way since the schism from the East a millenium ago, and they've evolved ever since, constantly adapting to culture and being a voice on relevant issues, reasoning from their core theology and often speculating. The Pope's "Ex Cathedra" (infallible while speaking on matters of Doctrine) has assisted with their development. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century reacted to the abuses of Rome and demanded a reform of the church to do away with malpractice and corrupt theology. This eventually lead to another schism of the church, and many more to follow.

Protestantism came about around this time, and they distinguished themselves from Rome with doctrines like the Solas and several different fundamental summations of beliefs. In general, the way Protestantism has come to distinguish itself is by the reliance on the Bible as its' sole source of authority, justification by faith alone, and the priesthood (some would say papacy) of all believers. What this means is that a Protestant believes that the Bible is the authoritative source of truth, salvation and justification from Original Sin (I'll get to this in a minute) comes by faith in Christ alone, and the responsibility of all Christians to act in a governing manner in the church from their reading of Scripture.

Protestantism distinguished itself from Rome by moving away from the apostolic succession of the priesthood, probably because of a denial of Papal authority in all matters of doctrine. In other words, since the Bible was now seen as the ultimate source of authority as opposed to Rome's traditions and the authority of the pope, the Bible was theoretically the Pope's replacement. In addition, priests in a Protestant Church were now every member, with a preacher in a loose leadership role. Some protestant churches use deacons, and some use elders, but this is purely for loose ecclesiastical use, as opposed to Rome's authoritative priesthood and ultimately authoritative pope. The protestant is solely responsible for their own faith, and though "good works" are seen as beneficial, they are not seen as necessary in Protestantism. "You will know a tree by its' fruit" has come to mean that you will probably see some sign that a person is saved, but Protestantism sharply reacts against Rome's "works based" Salvation. The Protestant generally shuns the Sacraments as means of Grace, usually preferring to call them ordinances or specific things like the Lord's Supper/Communion or Baptism.

Protestantism kept to their Roman roots in some other ways, however. They kept the doctrine of Original Sin as taught by Augustine, which teaches that all of humanity sinned in Adam, and so we are all guilty and subject to judgment from birth. This has lead to Calvin's emphasis and eventual teaching of predestined Election of the saved, as well as to some odd teachings like the "Age of Accountability," which teaches that before someone can make the intellectual decision to be saved, they are essential saved by their own "innocence." In Rome's case, Original Sin lead to the dogma of Immaculate Conception, which taught that Mary was born free of Original Sin, which allowed for Christ's birth of Mary, a Virgin, without it. More on Original Sin in a moment.

In a way, Protestantism has also largely held onto the legalistic views of Rome by way of their Salvation narrative. In general, Salvation is seen as an intellectual acknowledgment of one's broken and unsaved state to God, and an acceptance of Christ's death as the payment for their sin. From that point, the Protestant is now legally justified in the sight of God, saved by faith alone. Some say they can fall away from this faith given an adequate rejection of Salvation, and some say they never can. Still others say that if the Christian's salvation is rejected, they were never saved in the first place, as the predestined will persevere to death and the end of time.

What I hope you are noticing in what I'm saying here is that Western Christianity has come to be what people generally think about when you say the word "Christian." When I started at college, I made a Facebook group called "Catholics are Christians too!" I made this group after noting the large amount of prejudice against Roman Catholics on my college campus. It was common for someone to state that Catholics believe in dead religion and works based salvation, usually in a tone like they're cursing or about to spit on the people. I created this group because I believed that Catholics had just as much of a claim to the term "Christian" as any Protestant. I bring this up because often people would ask me if I am Catholic. When I said no, they'd be confused, and ask if I was Protestant. Only two options were present for them, Catholic and Protestant, with Protestant usually meaning "Christian." Obviously, not all Protestants are this way. However, it is important to note that the movement of Protestantism itself started from dissatisfaction from Rome that lead to a schism and pointed reactions against Rome's theology.

Roman Catholicism originally schismed from the Eastern Orthodox Church around 1054 AD. They schismed over several matters of theology and practice, but the deciding factor of the schism, in addition to Rome's assertion of the Pope (Bishop of Rome) as the prime authority of the church, was the addition of the filioque to the Nicene Creed.

Filioque. "And the Son." This was a phrase added to the Nicene Creed to make it state that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, rather than simply the Father.

If you weren't raised in Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism you may be asking yourself "who cares?" I know I did for a long time. The East saw this as an addition that brought undue imbalance to the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is a Tri-une God composed of the persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The balance of the Trinity was due to each person of the Trinity having specific roles as seen in history and due to all of them sharing the essence and nature of being God.

If you wonder why you never hear about the Holy Spirit unless you're talking to a pentecostal or someone involved in a charismatic movement, this would be the reason. The Protestant Church inherited the filioque from Rome (though they're generally not as rigorous in theology on this point, obviously), as well as the legalism inherent in the institution that can ultimately be traced to Original Sin.

"Original Sin" as a term, has been used throughout Christian history. It initially referred to the original catastrophic act that caused the brokenness of humanity. If we go back to Genesis, this act was disobeying God by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was largely caused by Lucifer's corruption and subsequent deception of Adam and Eve into committing this act, which destroyed their innocence and introduced Death into the world. Original Sin came to mean that all of humanity sinned in this act, and we genetically inherit the guilt. I'm going over this again because this is important.

Fast forward to Christ (most Protestants do), and we have a righting of this wrong. One can be wiped free of this curse by accepting the sacrifice which Christ took on himself on the cross, and be resurrected from death in the same way Christ was literally resurrected. Legally, we are justified in God's sight by the Father allowing Christ to bear the entire punishment of Original Sin (the Calvinist at this point would say the punishment for only the chosen Elects' original sin).

Salvation has come to be a "get out of hell" card. People often refer to this as "fire insurance."

No, I am not kidding.

So, to come back to my original point. I think Christianity needs nuance. I agree with Nietzsche's reaction to Christianity, and I agree with the atheist's objections. Indeed, God is dead in our culture, and we have killed him. The Western religions of Christianity have the common threads of being legalistic, reductionistic, impractical, and omnidirectional/contradictory in reasoning in political, theological, and philosophical areas. God kills God to satisfy God's wrath so we can all go to paradise in the clouds or a city paved with gold. All you have to do is believe.

I am not a Western Christian because I think there is far, far more to life than this, and that we cannot rely on myth and storytelling to give us a literal picture of the future or of reality. Salvation has to mean more than this, and Christ's story has to be accepted fully rather than a grand total of 4 days of it. The Bible did not come from a vacuum or float down from the clouds in all its' perfection, and a book cannot possibly be the ultimate source of truth or the ultimate authority on life. I do not believe in Original Sin as taught in Western Christianity because I do not think people are born guilty, and do not think that this esoteric "imputed sin" is passed down through any genetic means. I do not accept the legalism that's been taught to me by the west because of this, and I do not accept the imbalanced version of the trinity that I've also been taught, where the Holy Spirit is either elaborate magic or does not exist, and Christ has primacy over other aspects of God. The question here, however, is why do I believe these things? Who cares what I accept and don't accept? Why does what I believe matter at all, in comparison to the true reality of the universe, if there is one?

Well, that's a story for another day my friends. That day will be next week, or perhaps Friday if I can swing it. Be well, and thanks for reading.