MysteriousFaith

About

Introduction

With the redesign of MysteriousFaith.Com in the summer of 2005, I contemplated a number of changes to the site. Readers of this site over the last eighteen months have noticed a gradual shift in my beliefs as I have wrestled with a number of questions rooted in the particular faith tradition I was raised in, Christianity. This is not the first time I have had these questions, but it is the first time my response to these questions was under some modicum of emotional control and the first time I fed my doubts with well-grounded, non-hyperbolic academic criticism from those who disagree with the exclusive truth claims of evangelical Christianity.

With the advent of the new site, I asked myself whether or not I wanted to change the name of the site from MysteriousFaith.Com to something else. MysteriousFaith.Com’s name is predicated on two ideas that no longer fully characterize my beliefs, namely, the role of mystery as a sufficient explanation to theologies that do not make sense and the resulting leap of faith mystery serves as a foundation for. I acknowledge that mystery has a role in our exploration of meaning, and so, I have chosen to keep the “mystery” part of the name. We would all do well to acknowledge the limits of our individual and collective knowledge. I say this in the spirit of the four unanswerable questions the Buddha posited should not be attempted to answer, the first being related to the question of God. While an idea I can and do wrestle with, it is an idea that as of today I am content to let go unanswered (does He exist? If so, what is His personality like? What are His plans for the kosmos? Etc.). I choose to acknowledge the limits of human knowledge and choose to not make statements of faith based on anyone who seek to speak to these unanswerable questions.

Faith is an enormously powerful part of the human religious experience, but one I think we would do well to de-emphasize in part because it would be a meaningful first step towards doing away with the primacy given unknowable creedal statements. Faith acknowledges that the very concepts used to posit theology have come apart and now do not make sense; but rather than acknowledge the untenable nature of the resulting theology and make it tertiary to belief, it too often becomes primary. Should I have done away with the “faith” in my web site name? Perhaps, and possibly at some point in time I will do just that. But for now, I choose to keep it because I acknowledge that faith has shaped many people’s lives for good and that it is unrealistic to explore religious and spiritual truths without incorporating a healthy perspective on faith. What faith should rightfully speak to and whether I will feel that way in another 12-18 months is an entirely different matter!

Beliefs That Shape My Writing

With these statements in mind, the following are ideas and philosophies that guide the formation of what I say I believe:

• I seek truth, in whatever form or shape it may come, and I seek it through the single interpretive lens of seeking truth, not a particular faith tradition. To say my Christian faith is the lens through which I come to know truth would not be accurate because it asserts a particular set of doctrines have to be held, regardless of their sensibility, above what we accept as truth in our daily lives.
• I believe an elemental difference exists between religion and spirituality. Religion is profoundly woven into hierarchy, orthodoxy and truths that can not be tested but must be believed. I find much to resonate with inside the life of religion, but believe we must embrace those parts of religious truth that engender the greatest hope for mankind, specifically those truths that transform the inner lives of its practitioners.
• Within spiritual experience, I acknowledge that something quite real takes place when people subject themselves to religious practices; however, I believe this reformation takes place across all faith traditions equally well, serving as an effective apologetic to me that no one faith can claim to be unique in its salvific outworking.
• I believe our interpretations of meaning as to spiritual experiences or models of spiritual development need to be held to tentatively, and deliberately avoid the development of brittle positions of orthodoxy and dogma.
• I know of no other way to give reasonable meaning to the words “I believe” than to base them on what I have experienced in my own life and in the lives of those with whom I have sought truth. There are three primary consequences to this:
  

  • I do not believe in a personal God in any sense of the word “personal” that we use in day-to-day language. I believe in spiritual transformation which must be consciously developed by the practitioner, an equally effective apologetic to their not being a personal God as to their being some ineffable but still somehow personal God.
  • I freely admit to being a doubting Thomas. I know of no other way to differentiate between Abraham’s supposed theophany and David Koresh’s than to assume neither was real. Having acknowledged my doubts, I also admit that my deepest desire is to seek truth which means wrestling with the historicity of any particular truth claim because if I am unwilling to do so, I am not authentically looking for truth.
  • I acknowledge that I see most supernatural statements, regardless of which tradition of faith they come from, to be dubious. Having said this, I believe a sincere pursuit of truth seeks to understand the historical evidence for said beliefs; however, the interpretive lens I choose to live by is one of healthy skepticism. I hold to this because I accept humanity’s (my own in particular) enormous capacity for self-delusion, and because the evidence offered usually amounts to a historical chain of belief going back to people who witnessed the event in question, a logic that would require us to validate competing truth claims as they are often times based on similar reasoning. The final reason I hold to this is my own life experience and the life experience of my family, friends and the civilized world.

• I do not hold essential truths (and the reader should be careful to not read into this that I cavalierly deny these truth statements) to be Jesus’ divinity, his resurrection, or the Trinity any more than I do Mohammad’s night journey or his experience of Divine authorship for the Koran. The ultimate test for me, with respect to each of these religious claims as to historical truth, is whether or not if I were given absolute evidence (in the form of historical “find” or a personal experience) of the resurrection of Jesus would I embrace this truth or resist it because of its potential impact in my life. If I resist, I do not seek truth, but seek a comfortable philosophy of life devoid of higher truths. I must be open to truth, regardless of its implications, regardless of where it is found. I hold essential truths to be teachings on grace, mercy, forgiveness, empowered love.
• I believe we should become increasingly intolerant of accommodating beliefs that hide from verification and their being allowed to shape public dialogue. If I am willing to say my life is based on beliefs I hold to but can not explain, this illogic will have a corrosive affect on my involvement in the world.