" OK, you say that you believe everyone has a need for religion in their lives, but you don't believe in organized religion."
To: cybrgbl@deltanet.com
From: kellym@juno.com (kelly madison)
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 23:12:14 -0600
Subject: i'm back...At 11:12 PM 9/12/97 -0600, you wrote:
Hey Rich...how are ya? Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you...thanks, again for the Whitman quote...I can't believe I didn't see it - it was right under my nose!
So how are you surviving prep school kids? Are you finding any behavioral similarities? Hey, you never did say why one of your notes said you were moving to LA. These two weeks have been packed - schools started 3 weeks ago, so everything at work is back at full speed. Actually, in Sept., things are usually at more than full speed. I just took over our confirmation program, and rearranged the entire thing - for 60 junior high kids. So far so good.
I should clarify what I meant when I said you seem anti-religious. It's clear that your being forced to church led to resentment, and that something completely turned you off to even thinking about Christianity. In reading much of your writing, it seems as though you have had only negitive experiences with religion/churches, and that you see that as more of an extra in life that some people use to fill a need, but it's not a necessary part of life. It's as though you neither agree or disagree with church teachings, you hold a great deal of doubt as to the truth of it all. And because of that, you don't understand how Christianity can be more than just a ritual, how it's in the depth of people's souls. AND, I hear a little of that idea some have, that people who aren't religious know something the rest of us don't.
OK, you say that you believe everyone has a need for religion in their lives, but you don't believe in organized religion. What IS that? What do you mean by "organized religion"? Even universalism and other "spiritualness of self" religions are organized.
I think I could understand where you are coming from better if you told me what parts of Christianity are a part of you. You say you've read the bible as a book filled with much wisdom. Have you read much of it? I'm curious to know how you have such a high regard for the teachings, but don't believe in "organized religion" - that's a HUGE piece of the NT. What do you believe in? With what part of the Christian faith do you disagree? I'm curious...
Please tell me I'm not coming across critical...I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from. You've had such a different experience than me, and I want to learn & understand. As I said once before, I think that we remain stagnant when we discuss life with only those with whom we share opinions. It's in the differences that we continue to grow.
take care...later - k. :)
Dear Kelly,
My life sounds similar to yours right now. School is back and that is always stressful and exciting. Nearly everyday I give thanks for being at my new school. The kids are all well behaved and smart and it such a pleasure! I guess whenever you have been in hell, anything else is paradise. On the other hand, I feel a little sorry for all my former students back in the ghetto who do not have access to this kind of an education.
The kids I have now and those I had in the ghetto are so different I do not even know where to start. My new kids seem happier and they are more culturally literate. They all have favorite authors, have traveled and know the world (to one degree or another), and know that it is their job to learn in school. Discipline is almost a total non-concern. I finally feel like I am just one more scholar (in my own humble way) in a learning community. I feel like I am in a place devoted to learning and the life of the mind. In my last school, many of the teachers were more youth counselors or social activists than independently curious scholars pursuing the truth.
Changing topics, I think there is a big difference between religion and spirituality. I have many friends who became suddenly very religious after college when they lost their sense of student community and so came back to religion for an anchor. They belonged. They went to church and felt the structure and rules and believed they were not alone in the world. Then there was my mother who was the most spiritual person I have ever known. She almost became a nun before my father met her. She left the Catholic Church because of its oppression of women and still was the most devoted Catholic I know in her heart.
I could read endless times the Book of Job, certain psalms, parts of genesis, the story of Solomon and David, the sermon on the mount, etc. etc. Yet I get tired of all the emotional language to God in the Bible. It is like Augustine (whom I despise) where if you do not have an emotional connection to God it just sort of falls on deaf ears. It is like listening to people talk about how great the Super Bowl was when you don't like watching sports. I currently teach in a Jewish school and I feel exactly the same way about all the Jewish religion thing. I respect the Jewish faith and history very much. I just don't get it when they start singing in Hebrew. When I see many of my colleagues greatly moved I wonder to myself what it is they are feeling.
You say I do not believe in organized religion. I do believe in it. I respect the Jewish and Lutheran and Bhuddist and Catholic faiths. Who am I to say they are right or wrong? I just do not belong to their communities. When I die, I will die alone. This is not a conclusion I came to after years of deep theological cogitation, but goes to the very core of my personality. I am the one in the family who needs to go live by himself and be independent. I hated in church when some lady looked at me with that look which said, "We are all on the same team and since you are the same religion as me I know you in some deep way." She did not know me at all.
I have really not much to say about organized religion. But when I hear someone take a position and use purely religious reasons to back them up, "Turn the other cheek," or "it is a sin" or "Jesus or Moses says in the Bible and the Law..." When I read the Catholic Bishops or the Lutheran Bishops take some position about nuclear war, I start to get mad. I don't really look for political advice from religious people any more than I look for spiritual advice from politicians. When I hear an ecclesiastical leader rely on religious principle rather than explain their opinions in the language of the real world, I have little time for them. Such reasoning might work for those who are imbued with the love of the church and specific church teaching, but this is the death of truly free thought. It is not that I hate religions so much, but that I hate "group think" and think above all things it is important to be honest and search for the truth wherever it takes you.
I am fascinated by Jesus and the forty days in the desert. I believe in the theology of Milton where man has been burdened with freedom in the same way and that "man does not live by bread alone." Many would say that the real substance that men live on is the word of Jesus Christ. I think that is baloney; whatever path works for a person is fine by me. I reject the idea that Jesus Christ is the ultimate truth and that the only way to true salvation is to accept Him into your heart. That sounds very narrow minded to me. I like the metaphor of Job as a man who suffers and strives in the world, accepting bad things which happen to good people. But in the end I think Jesus's message of universal love is a failed one in this world where people kill their prophets. I think Christianity might be a good idea if people actually decided to try it. But I don't believe that day will ever come.
I agree with the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoyevski at least partly when he rejected God's offering of freedom to humanity as being unworthy of this world. How can you argue with him? He is backed by thousands of years of heavy human history. Maybe the world will embrace the message of Jesus Christ someday. I doubt it, and will not be holding my breath. I learned that turning the other cheek with a violent felon will get you killed and not change anybody's mind. You will just be another murdered person in this world. If they come to kill you, kill them first! And if you have them down, you had better finish them off or they WILL come back to get you. That is what life has taught me.
I dislike Christianity for esthetic reasons as much as anything. I am not attracted to people or ideas that are too saintly and filled with goodness and love. I like a little darkness and sin once every blue moon and don't hold it necessarily to be a bad thing. I am not talking violent sin or stealing, but maybe a little something earthy here and there; sex without at least some sin is kind of like eating fat free ice cream, I suspect. Especially in women, I cannot find anything more boring than an Augustine-Tolstoy person chaste in body and spirit. I have been kind of a intense and "dark" lover and that has worked well for me. There need be an element of aggression here, a fierce maleness. I saw a couple of years ago that male lions bite female lions on the back of the neck gently when they have sex. I like that. I never met once a woman who did not like it when I pinned her hands above her head in an intimate moment. Not that I was going to do something against their will or hurt them, but you know what I mean... I believe in my animal roots as much as I do any possible Christian transcendence.
All that has a lot to do with why I don't like belonging to religious congregations. I have never felt like I could be myself. In my experience, belonging to such a congregation means ascribing to the larger goals of the church. I never could do that and in good faith look other people in the face without thinking that I was deceiving them. Believe in the church and stay, or don't and leave. That seemed to me the options I have.
I really do respect people whose religion is a deep part of their souls. In my experience, to not believe in the same God as others is to almost unavoidably reject an important part of them. People take offense (as I hope you do not). There is something in us human beings that wants everyone to believe in the same thing, hold hands together, and walk together towards a better future. I hate that. I believe that is unavoidably and ineluctably the first step down the path to the drawing up lists of dissidents, Hitler, Stalin, the Terror, the Inquisition, etc. Believe in my God or I will kill your God!
All that is what I don't believe in. What I do believe in is in the "credo" section that you read. It might seem shallow to those who are imbued with the fire of faith, but it works for me. It is true that I hold a great deal of doubt about things, but I accept that as the norm. As my hero Voltaire said, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." Why did Voltaire like to chase women when Rousseau was (in his own strange way) so deeply religious? I think that has a lot to do with their very different personalities. One is credulous, the other skeptical. I hate Rousseau and love Voltaire. I cannot tolerate Augustine and I like Erasmus. I liked living in Hollywood and hated the suburbs.
Well, that is pretty much how I see it. I apologize for extemporizing at such length.
Have a great weekend and we will talk later.
Very Truly Yours,
Richard
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
H. L. Mencken
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