A few days ago I got an email from a thoughtful and well-spoken Christian, Steve, who had come across the Church of the Churchless. He disagreed with what I said in my “Brother of Jesus ossuary hoax” posting: “Christianity, if it is true, should be independent of Jesus Christ.” I enjoyed reading Steve’s thoughts, and hope he won’t mind my sharing them. Download Message from a Christian.doc (28.0K)
Steve, I admire your commitment to Christianity. I also like the attitude reflected in your comment, “I say this not in an effort to convert you….” Amen to that, and I hope you take this response of mine in the same spirit, for I’m not out to convert you to my unfaith either. I simply enjoy our interplay of ideas. Your email message stimulated some reflections of my own that encompass the theme of this post, “Why I’m not a Christian,” but also go beyond them.
For not only am I not a Christian, increasingly I find myself not anything else either. I don’t know what I am. For thirty-five years I’ve called myself a “satsangi,” a generic Indian term that means a member of a sangat, or congregation if you like. Interestingly, the spiritual organization that I’ve been a part of—Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB—in some ways is more Christian than any denomination that believes in the divinity of Jesus.
Why do I say this? Because the centerpiece of RSSB, along with related groups that fall under the rubric of “Sant Mat” (path of the saints), is a living master who is considered to be, like Christ, a Son of God. The master, or guru, is regarded as God in living form (or GILF, as some discussion groups abbreviate him). Many Sant Mat disciples come from a Christian background. Frequently they find that their relationship with the master and his teachings offers them everything that Christianity did, and then some.
I used to have no doubts about Radha Soami Satsang Beas or my own master, Charan Singh. Now I do. I consider this to be spiritual progress, not backsliding. I used to accept many things on faith that now I put in a “maybe, but remains to be proven” category. This is a big category in my mind. I’ve got countless concepts about God and spirituality filed away from a lifetime of reading, meditating, and general life-experiencing.
What I am sure of would fit on a few post-it notes; what remains a hypothesis fills shelf upon shelf in the library of my mind.
Once I realized this, I could no longer say with my previous ease, “I’m a ________.” That blank has had numerous entries during my fifty-six years: Catholic, hippie pothead, existentialist humanist, satsangi, and now—nothing. Well, “nothing” in the sense of a tidy moniker that I can assign to the form of my spiritual aspirations.
If I had to give a one-word answer to the question, “What do you believe in?” it would be “reality.” This certainly isn’t nothing, but since it is nothing in particular and everything in all I feel that Churchlessness is the straightest path to ultimate truth.
Steve, you said that “Truth—with a capital ‘T’—is outside its [science’s] realm and science is not qualified to posit nor hypothesize in the spiritual or philosophical realm.” Well, then, what is Truth inside if it is outside of science? In other words, where does Truth with a capital ‘T’ reside?
This is the big question. Really, it is the only question. All other queries can be reduced to this Mother of All Questions. My Christian correspondent said that “Scripture is meant to reveal specifics of God; his nature, desires, guidelines and plans.” So does Truth reside in a book? I can’t believe this. How did it come to be in a book? That place, the source, is what I want to find.
Steve’s message ended with: “I don’t see Christianity being on shaky ground at all. However, if you remove Christ from Christianity, you no longer have Christianity.” Yes, we agree on at least the last sentence. However, I consider that a faith which stands or falls on the nature of a single person, dead or alive, is on shaky ground. Others who number in the billions, disagree. And that’s fine by me.
I just cannot accept that the keys to the mysteries of the cosmos are held by a particular man or woman, and no one can pass through the doorway of Truth without following in that person’s footsteps. Could Truth play favorites in this fashion? Can only a chosen few become citizens of Ultimate Reality, with the rest of us destined to remain aliens in this strange material world?
Science seeks the universal, not the particular, for the rock bottom of reality seemingly must be something (energy? consciousness? spirit?) capable of supporting everything. Thus the way of science in knowing physical existence also is the way of knowing spiritual existence. Such is my hypothesis, at least, and it rests comfortably with me.
Along these lines, the New York Times web site had an interesting article today called “God (or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap.” The question “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” was posed to scientists, futurists, and other creative thinkers. Their answers are fascinating. I’ll include the entire article in a post continuation. Here’s how one person, David Meyers, answered the question in a fashion that I wholeheartedly agree with:
As a Christian monotheist, I start with two unproven axioms: 1. There is a God. 2. It’s not me (and it’s also not you). Together, these axioms imply my surest conviction: that some of my beliefs (and yours) contain error. We are, from dust to dust, finite and fallible. We have dignity but not deity.
And that is why I further believe that we should a) hold all our unproven beliefs with a certain tentativeness (except for this one!), b) assess others’ ideas with open-minded skepticism, and c) freely pursue truth aided by observation and experiment.
This mix of faith-based humility and skepticism helped fuel the beginnings of modern science, and it has informed my own research and science writing. The whole truth cannot be found merely by searching our own minds, for there is not enough there. So we also put our ideas to the test. If they survive, so much the better for them; if not, so much the worse.
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