God - Within and Without - Part 2

It is not at all surprising that people have been turned off by religion. The word, "religion" itself is loaded to overflowing with cultural assumptions, founded on the debased and inhuman activities that organized and institutionalized religion has prosecuted in the past.

People complain about Islam and the violent acts perpetrate in the name of Allah. And everyone knows how badly Christianity has violated its own tenets through crusades and "holy" inquisitions. It is a FACT that more people died in the name of Christianity (some 809 million in the last few hundred years), than by the Fascism of WWII (62 million) and Communism (209 million) combined--times two! Islam and Christianity have certainly been busy putting each other's believers in the ground for the last 1400 years. Christianity has probably killed the most people in history, though admittedly it had a 600 year head start. And religion in general has been the source of the most preventable human deaths since the execution of Jesus around 39 CE.

Who can blame people for not wanting to be associated with the "people of the Books [the Torah, Bible and Koran]" and their wrathful, vengeful and unfair male deity--"God"? Because of these bloody religious tyrannies, it is widely (if erroneously?) presumed that religion (being the relationship of the supernatural and humanity) = organized religion.

But that is not what *I* mean when I use the word. Both my friend and I agreed that it is organized religion that turns many thinking people away from the pursuit of a divine Creator. And for a woman like my friend who grew up without any church experience or Biblical training (I was raised a Congregationalist, until I found a better way), the antiquated and illogical actions of religious GROUPS have ruined any chance for her to be attracted in any way to any aspect of their traditions. This is SO true, that she seemed not to have ever even entertained the idea that the relationship of humanity to God could occur in a non-organized way. I wanted to tell her that even further away is the possibility that God ever even WANTED churches, mosques and temples to be constructed for a kind forced (through guilt) worship, or or holy books to be composed by old men and thence shoved down people's throats by well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning religionists since the times of Moses.

Is it so hard for today's religionists (and I mean, in this context, the promoters of organized religion) to accept that the minds of so many otherwise intelligent and good-hearted people would naturally reject all aspects and attributes of the "Old Man in the sky"?

When I asked my friend if she believed in survival after death, she seemed a bit less certain. Both she and her husband lost their parents in different ways. It seems the temptation to believe that somehow their "energy" WOULD go on even after mortal life, is one that is difficult to escape. My impression was that she wanted to believe in some form of non-material existence, where any kind of god not necessary. But it also seemed too much of a stretch for her to believe that their identities (personalities or souls?) could remain intact after life in the flesh.

For me, this kind of non-material energy without personality seems foreign and unlikely. But I come from a post-Christian belief system now (as a student of the Urantia Book). The complex and unique perspective that I have gained in my search for the better way (the non-organized, personal religious way) has long ago satisfied me with the answers I craved in this regard. I was fortunate to have started out in a relatively liberal environment (Protestant Congregationalism) conducive to a concept of the loving Parenthood (Fatherhood and Motherhood) of God, along with just enough dissatisfaction stemming from the required dogma and seemingly meaningless rituals of traditional Christian theology, to want to find this "better way" that I speak of.

Unfortunately, the road to my current belief system cannot be canonized, summed up, written down or described in brief. It is SO different from the norms and memes of historic religious experience that I sometime despair at my inability to at least present an intellectual alternative to the honest inquiries of atheists and agnostics--in the rare instances when they have become interested enough in my views on this subject to inquire at all. To either religionists or atheists/agnostics, my belief system (more like a "Knowing," actually, than a "faith") is not immediately obvious as a rational option for either of them in their own search for truth--be it religious or philosophical. So when she rightly, pointedly and simply asked,

"What do YOU believe?" I was only able to stammer out an inadequate and half-measured reply.

It is fascinating, upon reflection of this dilemma, to relate that a series of learned and automatic thoughts came into my mind and then dissipated between the time I heard her question and the moment I began weakly to answer it.

The first one of these was from my Congregationalist childhood: "Here is your opportunity to 'save the non-believer.'" (Ironic since, in a way, it was this non-believer who saved me--in a sense.)  I was quick to bury that one, as I had so many years previously, when I finally realized (in my teens) that the God who was growing inside me was not a Congregationalist God, but instead, merciful enough to "save" EVERYONE who sincerely wanted to live in the "next world."  And I know from my own journey that we will all be given the opportunity to make that decision in this life or if not by its end, then in the subsequent and transitional state of material "death," no matter how many times we might have rejected the idea, while not having the complete amount of information necessary to choose before that death. But how could I explain this to her on her lunch break?

The next impression that passed into my consciousness was, "If she is happy and satisfied with her life as it is, without the need to believe in a First Source and Center, leave her the hell alone!" This was a more reasonable and humane option. I have learned - by the example of mentors in my own training who discouraged the Christian (and Muslim) idea of proselytizing and religious influencing (and by "influencing" I really mean, "manipulating/deceiving") in an ends-justify-the-means kind of way. And to "let it be" is often the wisest course of action. It is well-understood by Urantia Book enthusiasts who read this blog - accounting for perhaps 75% of its readership - that the book's "cosmic philosophy" is anti-cult, non-organizational and not to be "pushed" onto others.  How many other spiritual books can say that?  Still, though, I was unsatisfied with not saying anything in answer to her query about what I believe.  Thus, came my incomplete answer, previously mentioned.

If any person is able to comprehend the LOVE (rather than the un-real "wrath" of historic religion), the MERCY (rather than the threat of "condemnation to hell"), the SPIRITUAL REALITY (rather than the man-made falsehoods, perpetuated by priests, ministers, and imams), the INTIMATE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP (rather than the mass-minded need of human beings to want to belong to a group/church of similarly-minded people, willing to go to war, torture, bash in the head of or burn alive anyone who dares to "believe" differently than they do), of the God I call, my "Father"--it is this friend. If there is anyone who could receive the tools of divine guidance from within her own mind more efficiently, it is her. If there is anyone who could USE those tools in partnership with her divine Inner Spark, to bring others to their own inner sanctuaries, she could succeed beyond her own wildest dreams...

Nevertheless, I simply love her too much to have wanted her to change anything about herself. She is already living the life that God would want for her anyway. She is already loving the people in her life the way that God would guide her toward. She is already at peace within herself the way that God can bring "the peace that passeth all understanding." She is already socially, ecologically, culturally AND spiritually benefiting the world around her the way that God wills for all of us. She is the exception to what I always thought was the Rule.  Yes, she would certainly drink up quite a bit of the newish information of sources like the Urantia Book, but even the organizations around that are churchifying, and she would never accept such a thing--which, by the way I DON'T either.  A Urantia Church is the WRONG direction for this very reason.

In the crisp, cool, late summer air of my walk home, I considered these things with great care. And a strange, but reassuring, Answer arose that settled the matter for me. Perhaps, it IS the will of God, that the instinctual Goodness of the non-believer should be held in equal measure and with equal respect - even in the cosmic sense - among her human associates, compared with the learned goodness of the believer. My spiritual intuition suddenly and clearly showed me that she is ALREADY choosing the will of a misunderstood, but loving, God, whom she has no need at all to call by name. And in this way, perhaps she possess a purity of spirit and an advanced state of soul-growth that is completely acceptable to the God of the Universe that I believe in, and the essence of the God within her own mind that she

chooses not to believe in.

No one can say with any authority at all whether either she or I walk along the "right" or "wrong" path, simply because we espouse different sources of motivation for our common direction. Thankfully, it also seems in every way to be the SAME path. In a world so tenuously balancing upon the fulcrum of progress and destruction, two friends who love each other, want to see light penetrate the darkness of their world, with the joyful sharing of a mutual lifetime that they have been Consciously OR randomly given - as a team, as a human FORCE - CAN NOT FAIL to ultimate bring more Truth, Beauty and Goodness into this world than it ever would have had without them.

THIS CONCEPT is the thing that could unify humanity in the short-term. It is something above organized religion AND humanist materialism. It IS the EVEN better way. Maybe in this post I won't “lose” her like I have in the past, when discussing these things.  But even if I do, I suspect the impact upon the believers who read it might be more constructive anyway.

On that beautiful September day a non-believer taught a believer a new and valuable lesson. And neither of them had to change themselves one bit in the process.