Transition from Fundamentalism to Agnosticism, part four.

 

I here continue posting passages from my private journal, in which I document my transition away from fundamentalism and toward Christian agnosticism.

Here is some of what I wrote on 17 February of 2005. “Churchy people imagine God with a sword and a plan, who hands them the sword and reveals the plan which, marvelously enough, just happens to be what they were going to do anyway.”

I particularly struggled with the Trinity. Nobody seems to have a clue about the Holy Spirit. Much of my angst came from trying to force two-thirds of a God to do the work of the other one-third. It finally became apparent to me that what I was seeking was the Spirit, not God or Jesus. This Spirit “is the only presence of God in our universe—to love the flowers and trees, and help others do so, and associate with those who do; to not be surprised when people we had assumed to have true inner goodness turn out to be merely selfish; to await and use opportunities for helping to bring light into the world. This is all we can do, in a world where God’s presence is only through a Spirit who does not impart any answers but only creates love, where God’s presence does not create any miraculous interventions, but works only through the quiet mulch of those who love…I cannot ask God to humble the arrogant; I must just be happy that the arrogant have not yet stamped dead every flower in the world.”

On 24 February, I wrote, “But the main lesson, for those of us who truly have the Spirit of love in our hearts and are always in exile in a world run by selfishness at best, cruelty at worst, is that we must settle in, live our lives, raise families, take care of the earth, and be a blessing to all of society around us.”

Then in that same entry I wrote some humor that had occurred to me during my sleep study, when I was wired up to a computer with lots of sticky electrodes on my scalp. “In Hansel and Gretel, Englebert Humperdinck wrote something like, When I lay me down to sleep, fourteen angels watch do keep… Why stop at fourteen? Why not one for each organ, each hair follicle, or…During the sleep study, the computer (and the technician) monitored at least fourteen things, like an angel for each eyelid, my nose, four points on my cranium—is that what a Humperdinckian God is like? The computer recorded my every breath and blink. Not my every fart, there were no sensors there, but if pressed to answer, a fundamentalist would say God notices and remembers our every flatus.”

But I also wondered about the synchronicities I experienced in my life—things happening at just the eerily right times. As if “God has written me into His novel which is being carefully read by fourteen angels who have infinite time, since they have all the time in the world.” I still do not know if there might be some hidden structure to the universe, or whether these synchronicities were merely coincidences. And there is not much chance that I will ever figure it out.

The Excruciating Pain of Reading Old Novels

I suppose we should be happy that our society has moved away from racism and sexism, however incompletely, and however vigorously conservatives have resisted it. Also, we should be happy that fiction has moved away from pretentious and shallow writing (or not). What is there to not like about this? Right after this essay, I will get back to my series about how I became a Christian agnostic.

One thing is that there are hardly any old novels that we can read that do not make us cringe. I will use just one example: Sinclair Lewis, the first American writer to have received the Nobel Prize for literature. One of his major novels is Main Street. I thought that I should read this novel (which was in my giveaway pile). Even though I enjoyed his Arrowsmith when I read it decades ago. Arrowsmith was about a microbiologist in public health—what’s there not to like about that?

But Lewis’s writing would have gotten it immediately (and perhaps correctly) rejected by any modern agent or editor. To start with, the narration was self-consciously clever. Just to use one example, he wrote of the female character, “Ever she effervesced anew…” The main character was also not credible. She was a flighty college girl who had ever such a difficult time deciding what to do with her life, until she decided that she would leave the city and go out to a “prairie town” and tell them how to transform their stolidity into elegance. Even if such a character could exist, she is not someone I would want to spend lots of reading-time with. Agents always say, in their automatic rejection software, that “I didn’t connect with the character,” which implies that they actually looked at your submission. But in this case, it is true: it is difficult, if not impossible, to care about this person. Actually, she sounds like a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald characters.

Even worse, Lewis begins with a snub of “squaws and portages,” by which he dismisses the Native Americans (in this case of Minnesota) as gruesomely boring. Only white people are interesting or have stories worth telling, in the Lewisian mindset.

A few novels from the early twentieth century told interesting stories from non-white cultures. One immediately thinks of The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. While the entire novel is written in a condescending, paternalistic mode, The Good Earth was, within its context, an attempt to see an Asian culture with real people, good and bad, completely apart from white culture.

We now squirm with discomfort at the entertainment of nearly all previous ages, for example Spike Jones and His City Slickers performing Hawaiian War Chant. While we may lose much of value by turning our noses up at the past, it is the inevitable side-effect of ethical progress. In a similar way, while we may lose much insight by turning away from the religion, and religious writings, of the past—such as the Bible—it is necessary that we do so.

Transition from Fundamentalism to Agnosticism, part three

This is a continuation of insights that I wrote in my daily journal back in 2005, as I tried to navigate a transition from doctrinal Christianity to a Christian-spirituality-agnosticism.

But if God is in me, as in all creation, he is experiencing creation. He is in me in a way he is not in a rock, because in me he experiences consciousness. As I continued on 24 January 2005, if God pervades all of nature, “occasionally tendrils of the holy come together, coalesce, react, sprout into phenomena that deny explanation…All I know is that music and color and science are all more beautiful than we have any right to expect.” The next month I wrote, God pervades everything but does not actually cause anything in the Newtonian sense.

At the same time, I admitted the truth of agnosticism: “All of conservative Christianity is a scab that hides true religion and, in order to prevent the scab itself from being shed, doctrinal Christianity prevents healing.” It keeps you scratching at the wound. It keeps you going to church, instead of healing your mind and returning to clear and happy thought. “Religion is the great fester on the sick body of humanity.

“There is both senseless chaos and blessed order in the world. There is frightful chaos that is not God’s will…Each day we must reaffirm whether we concentrate on the beauty or on the terror. I have several reasons for choosing the beautiful. First, if I cannot be sure there is no God, then I assume there is. Second, our evolution has made us religious, and the mind requires some kind of religion just as the body requires vitamin C, so I might as well choose a healthy religion. Third, it is deeply, not intermittently, pleasurable to have a good religion. Just as our eyes and mind create a model of the world, with things such as color that are not really there, so our minds create religious order.

“…I swim through a reality of God’s thick presence. Thick light, the antithesis of Thick Darkness. [I am not sure what this means. But I just like the imagery. It helps me live. The Bible in several places used the imagery of thick darkness, the kind of foggy darkness through which you cannot even see a ray of distant light. I wrote a series of novels with this name. Thick light is the kind of light in which you cannot see the light source, but it is all around you.]

“Religion is a coping mechanism. We can face disasters but not chaos. The question Can I trust the world requires a religious, rather than a scientific, answer…We must simultaneously admit suffering yet affirm the good in the world. The mother telling the child everything will be all right, and religion telling us the same thing: both are equally truth or lie. No one would think of censuring the consoling mother.

“…the pursuit of goodness and love is worth it, even if no one ever hears a heavenly voice saying, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”