paradigm of religion
Monday, June 30th, 2008this is my part of a conversation i’ve been having about my experiences with religion… i spent so much time on it i thought i should share it with more than one person. maybe one day it will turn into a chapter in my book.
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We know the church has it’s own culture. When I was still part of it I tried to avoid appearing too religious. I tried to speak and act with as little of it’s influence as I could. So did most of the people in the progressive congregations I aligned myself with. We wanted to be relevant so we tried to put what we believed in today’s vernacular and live like people today.
One of the things I began to see more clearly the further I stepped away from those societies was how invasive their culture actually was. It is not just words or phrases. It is more than a concept or idea. It is an entire way of understanding, a paradigm.
How many people are converted by the church from a non religious background?
When I first considered that question I was sure there would be a few but going back through my personal experiences I found only one. Only one person who could understand Christianity who wasn’t raised with the predisposition to do so. Countless people had “Returned to the Lord” but so very few had found him later in life. Children’s ministers are fond of pointing this fact out. They say that they are the foundation of the church. I believe them.
My religious experience started as a child. The religious leaders, my school teachers, and my parents told me that I could sin by thinking the wrong thing and that I had to guard my mind and keep my hands busy or I might be tempted. They were right. I failed to keep out the impure thoughts and found myself enjoying things like music, wearing shorts and kissing a girl. Sometimes all at the same time.
Unable to abandon my lifelong beliefs but needing to justify my actions I became progressively more liberal. I found groups of Christians that taught that god was willing to accept me how I was and that he would work to change me from the inside. So for my late teens and most of my twenties I aligned myself with these people and tried to follow their loving Jesus.
Even with this acceptance one of my biggest struggles was forgiving myself. I understood that Jesus came into this world to free people from their sins not to bind them with guilt but I still new that everything was either right or wrong and that a large portion of the things I did or wanted to do were wrong. Trying to be more like the perfect Jesus meant coming to grips with the guilt of my sinful nature on a weekly if not daily basis.
There I just mentioned it… twice. I was trying to save that word but it’s hard to talk about religion without using it… guilt.
The word guilt and it’s cousins shame and forgiveness go hand in hand with, right and wrong, light and darkness, good and evil. Together they make up the paradigm of religion.
Like sunglasses this paradigm is hard to see from inside but it filters everything you look at. Just like nonbelievers can’t understand religion Christians can’t understand disbelief. It’s outside of the what they can perceive. In fact it’s the very sunglasses of guilt that block their sight.
Once on the outside I began to see more clearly and I understood that this guilt was the thing that all of the converts had in common. That’s why they returned to the church. They needed to relieve that feeling of sinfulness and shame.
It’s genius really. The church creates the disease and then offers the only cure.
Stepping away and turning down the churches medicine is as difficult as deciding not to take chemotherapy for your cancer. That’s why so many of us go rushing back.
We’ll see how I do.
