I Believe

I want to use this post to try to do a “check in” about my spiritual life. I need to do this on a periodic basis to be sure I am moving forward spiritually. It is just too easy to sit back and say “I have learned enough”. That will never happen to me as long as I draw a breath. If you are not constantly growing, then you are stagnating. So, here goes…

I have always been troubled by the belief that there is only one true religion and all the others are fakes. I can see that same logic play out with so many things that have troubled our world. Things like:

“We whites are the only real humans, all the rest are inferior to us.”
“Women should know their place in the world. They are meant to be subservient to men.”
“ The size of your head determines just how smart you are.” (Eugenics)

These types of rationale, which can be found to some degree or another in the biblical text, have been used for two millennia to keep one group of people dominant over others.

I can’t believe that there would be a God who proclaims in one breath that he loves all of us meager humans and in another commits genocide and kills everyone off except for a handful of people in an ark. After he did that he proclaimed that he made a mistake and won’t do that again. That sounds like a wishy-washy god to me.

My God doesn’t proclaim to control everything. Instead he put the wheels in motion and then stepped away to let us make our world what we will. If he is indeed responsible for everything he is accountable for little children being abused, raped and dying from starvation. He is responsible for us dying by the millions from one disease or another. He is responsible for every hurricane, tornado, tsunami, and other weather events killing so many of us.

My belief in God is pretty much aligned with a famous quote fro Isaac Asimov

> So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.

I can’t rearrange the universe so I better rearrange my beliefs. I believe that the Bible is stories from hundreds of authors about their spirituality. Some should inspire us, some have to be written off as a product of a unenlightend age, and then others are just myths and fairy tales.

I believe that the teachings of Jesus is a sound spiritual foundation for life. He made it clear to us that we are all in this together. By his actions he showed us how to love the unloved and how to treat every soul as a part of God. I don’t know or really care if he isn’t God as we humans define him.

I believe in something much more than is described in the biblical text. I have to say that my beliefs are mine and I would never try to force you to align to them. I don’t fault anyone else for their beliefs. You, like me can believe anything you want. I can’t ignore that there is a force at work in the universe that is causing evolution of our world. There is something at work, and it makes me feel good knowing we aren’t alone.

I will continue to use the teachings of Jesus as my purpose in life.