How to Appreciate Other Religions/Political Parties

This isn't compromising your beliefs.  Keep your beliefs, but learn how to appreciate where others are coming from, too. Even if for no other reason than to understand how to change their mind better!!

  Do you ever feel like you can't bring up the dual conversational unmentionables--politics and religion--without getting frustrated or upset?  Read on then!

• Finding Common Ground
• Values
• Many times beliefs are different ways of expressing the same values.  It's tragic that we don't realize this enough.  Let me give some examples.  
• Healthcare in the US--to definitely and admittedly oversimplify, one group thinks it barbaric to withhold proper medical care to the poor in one of the richest countries in the world.  Why?  Because they care about people.  That's the heart value that drives their beliefs.  The other side doesn't want universal health care because they think it will drastically reduce the quality of the care and further dig America into a debt hole.  Why?  Because they care about people.  Same value.  Different application.  Different way of serving that value.
• How about another extremely heated topic--abortion?  One side says abortion is wrong and their value is that human life (the baby's) is precious.  The other says abortion is morally permissible because life (the mother's) is precious.  Each can say one side is mistaken or deluded, but it helps me to avoid vilification to understand what value is driving the person's belief and often how drastically similar they are to mine--trying to protect a life. 
• Remember to remember why people are passionate about causes--they care!  They really love something!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

• Questions
• You may not have the same answers as someone in a different religion, but many times your heart is still crying out the same questions.  
• What's the purpose of my life?  Help/love others, glorify God, attain enlightenment, jihad, etc.--all different answers to the same question.
• Where did I come from?  God, evolution, God+evolution--different answers, same heart cry.
• How can I live on past death?  Nirvana, Valhalla, Heaven, Moksha, legacy, etc.--same desire for ourselves and our loved ones--that we'll live on in some respect. 

• Debating Safely
• Get Down to the Fundamental Question of the Debate
• E.g., the fundamental question surrounding abortion is, when does a human become a human?
• For universal healthcare it may be something like, what is the role of the government?  What are inalienable human rights?
• Getting down to the fundamental question that is actually being debated has two positive effects:
• Clarity is brought and distraction can be set aside
• It can show how gray the subject really is.  Highlighting ambiguity builds compassion and patience over disagreements.

• Understanding Differences
• Reactionaries
• Show me an extremist, a fundamentalist, a fringe voice and I'll show you a reactionary.  People that have extreme views or ways of expressing themselves aren't usually crazy--they're trying to use a valuable communication tool--contrast.  E.g., the most drastic tree hugging environmentalists aren't off the wall--they're trying to live and speak in such a way that shouts above the distracting hum of life.  If the rest of us actually cared like we should they wouldn't have to go to such extreme measures of living/behaving/communicating.  They aren't crazy.  They're just trying to get heard.  Same with any other example from religion, politics--fundamentalism, conservatism, liberalism, etc.  Don't hear what/how they're saying it so much as you hear their heart and what they're contrasting themselves with.  Furthermore, recognize the importance of reactionaries in society--nothing would change (as it needs to) without prophets, heralds, extremists, fundamentalists.  Find the middle ground between the two polar opposite extremists and you'll often find the truth.

• False  Dichotomy 
• Maybe you're both right
• 'Either' / 'or' thinking  vs. 'both' / 'and':  Sometimes it isn't 'either' this 'or' that.  Sometimes it's 'both' this 'and' that.
• Perhaps the goal isn't about promoting one ideology and eliminating the other, but instead listening to both sides and finding a balance.
• Different Kinds of Truth
• A person, religion or political party can be dead wrong about one category of truth, but on the money in another.  This may sound strange to your ears, but hear me out.  What is truth at its most fundamental level?  An idea that helps you deal with reality, life, yourself, others.  Truth is a mental tool to navigate reality.
• Philosophical Truth
•  E.g., 'a' can not be 'non-a' at the same time and in the same sense.  That is absolutely true, but it is a very different kind of 'true' from the next kind of truth.
• Empirical Truth
• The kind of truth you get from a laboratory, an experiment, a test tube--the sciencey kind.  You're manipulating, removing and isolating variables to test a hypothesis.
• Descriptive Truth
• The kind of truth you get from the field, observations.  Your paying attention in order to learn something about a process, correlation, potential causation, etc--seeing patterns.
• Historical Truth
• Can't test it, can't observe it, but many of us would agree that it exists (at least beyond a reasonable doubt).  We  believe in it so much that we bet people's lives on it. #CapitalPunishment
• Ethical Truth
• "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
• "Don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you."
• Instead of completely discounting a religion's holy scripture because you disagree with its empirical, descriptive truth maybe it is time that you started to appreciate its ethical truth and the next category below.
• Proverbial/Wisdom Truth
• "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
• "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
• "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
• "Don't remove a fly from a friend's head with an axe."
• "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
• "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise."
• If you really care about living life well you'll learn to appreciate wisdom from surprising and unexpected places.  You can learn a lot from a heretic.
• Artistic Truth
• Good literature, art, movies, mythology, comedy can often leave us saying something like, "That is sooo true."  (Especially good comedy.)  Art can get us to realize something that was right in front of us, but hadn't seen before.  It can resonate our deepest, inmost being.
• Paradigmatic Truth
• Gives us a framework to think within, a scaffolding to build understanding.  This is true both in science and in religion.  The easiest example I can think of is light.  By analogy we speak of light as being a particle and a wave.  In reality it's neither.  And both...Speaking of light as a wave and a particle may not be true in a literal sense, but incredibly true in a paradigm sense and is enormously beneficial for scientists.  (The same could be said of String Theory, analogies for dimensions greater than three, etc.)  In a similar, analogical, paradigmatic way religion can be similar.  It doesn't have to be true to be a helpful way to think about the universe and that has great and significant value.  More thoughts here.

• Perfectly Understandable Reasons That People Will Never Change Their Minds
• Trust (see more below)
• Loyalty: Is it really reasonable to expect people to turn their backs on their friends and families ideology?  
• Identity:  Is it really reasonable to expect people to give up their ideology and have to complete refigure out who they are?

• Concessions - Why It Isn't So Bad After All
• Good vs Right: Maybe not everyone has to be right.  Maybe being just being good isn't such a bad concession.
• Intermediary Beliefs: Can you imagine going to a remote tribes person and trying to explain the internet to them?  Before you could explain what the internet was you'd have to explain what a computer was, but to do that you'd have to explain what a machine was and then you'd have to explain what electricity was and then you'd have to explain...Historically maybe mythology and a great many false ideas were an essential stepping stones that absolutely had to be used to us where we are today.  Maybe we owe today's stepping stones a great deal of deference for getting us where we are today and for taking us to a better tomorrow.
• Beliefs Have Functions
• To balance out extremes: Polar opposites might be a way that the cybernetic system of society maintains balance.
• For the greater social good: Maybe the ideology that you're frustrated that someone you know believes is the only thing holding back anarchy in their life and in society at large?  Maybe you're completely unaware of all the positive ripple effects it is causing and that if you were aware of them you'd shut the h*ll up and not argue with them so vociferously.  

• Justified False Beliefs
• People for thousands of years people thought the Earth was flat and that the Sun moved across the sky.  They weren't idiots and they weren't suppressing the truth.  They were justified in their belief based on what they knew.  We'd all do well to remember that each one of us is a product of our culture and that in other's shoes we'd believe the same thing as they do.

• Attribution
• Malevolence vs. Benevolence: We have a choice in how to interpret people's beliefs--either negatively like they're stupid or maliciously denying truth or positively like they're trusting individuals or they're trying to protect something precious or they're acting out of a pure intentions/heart, etc.  It is far, far more likely that their beliefs are a reflection of their virtue and not their vice, strength and not weakness--their deep seated convictions and character.  Remember that.
• Internal vs.  External:  Are  they the devil or are they a victim of the devil?? Kind of nature vs. nurture.  Does a person believe something because they are a certain way or because they were raised a certain way?

• In-Group / Out-Group--Evolution's Legacy
• In our evolutionary past it paid to:
• Trust insiders unquestioningly.  If you want to take down a woolly mammoth together you have got to have each other's back without hesitation.  This legacy lives on in the tenacity we hold on to cultural beliefs even far past their expiration date.  Why wouldn't a person trust what ever their parents or an authority figure says?  Why would people lie to them?  Trust is a very good thing and the very reason  human society has come as far as it has.  Remembering that can help us see eye to eye with people we disagree with.  Consider your own beliefs.  How much do your beliefs line up with your chosen group's?  That might not be such a good thing...
• Distrust of others.  Let's face it.  We have a violent past.  There were time periods in our history in which something like a third or a quarter of all adult males died in battle (proof for this can be seen in the numerous bashed in skulls we've found and from comparing with current day tribal communities).  If you didn't distrust outsiders you died.  Therefore, our default state is to distrust anyone that is different--skin color, ideology, religion, political party, etc.  Distrusting and vilifying outsiders got us ahead in the past, but now it only hurts us and the world.  When you find yourself thinking in terms of 'us', 'them' remember where that distrust comes from and then remember to expand your circle.  The most important 'we' today includes everybody.  E.g., get beyond 'Republican' and 'Democrat' to something larger like 'Human'.

• Simian Simpletons
• What is the evolutionary purpose of our brain?  Survive and reproduce.  Not think rationally and critically.  It isn't to understand science, math and logic.  It is much, much more of a relationship machine than it is a computer.  It should be more shocking to us that we ever think logically than that we sometimes have lapses in judgement.  Be patient with your fellow humans.  They're doing the best they can.

• Leaders of Movements and Movements Are Different
• Sarah Palin doesn't represent all Republicans.  Osama Bin Laden doesn't represent all muslims.  Benny Hinn doesn't represent all Christians.  Child molesting priests don't represent the entirety of the Catholic faith.  Stop mixing up movements and leaders.  They're different.  Knock it off.  :)

• You Could Be the Wrong One
• Don't forget it.  
• Ever.  
• Ever.

• Maybe We're Better Off Disagreeing
• Seeing things differently is
• Enriching: ‎"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas." --Linus Pauling
• Sharpening: Is anything more stimulating and growing than a good debate?

Pictures from here, here, here, here, here, here, here , here , here , here and here.

How to Love the Truth

• Seek It 
• Be curious 
• Indulge your curiosity 
• Be around curious people 
• Google your questions 
• Read 
• Go the library 
• Ask experts/friends 
• Trust 
• Senses - They are good enough to drive with. 
• Mind - It is good enough to get man to the moon. 
• Experts - They're scared enough of losing their job that they relatively have their shtuff together. 
• Doubt 
• Authority - Beware of hegemony, self promotion and parasitic self replicating memes. 
• Tradition - Question the status quo.  Those that don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.
• Self - There are many, many, many things that you are wrong about. Don't add to that list by being wrong about being wrong 
• Defend It 
• Argue with people--civilly. Truth is discovered communally. A community of people exchanging ideas like a super network of neurons firing back and forth to each other. The world community is one big brain (and the internet is the synapses:)). We're smarter together. 
• Proclaim It 
• Start conversations: Bring up important subjects. Go beyond small talk. Talk big. 
• Preserve truth in writing: Make it so you and others can come back to that thought after it's faded or been forgotten.  Why aren't you blogging?  Srsly.

Why I Quit Seminary

I almost died within feet of the exact spot that I was born.

For several days I had been battling unrelenting food poisoning (or so I thought), wild spikes in temperature to 104.5 and exhaustion like I've never experienced before or since.  My appendix had ruptured.

That, however, wasn't what my doctor had diagnosed.  I was prescribed medicine for food poisoning and told to go home and rest.  Days went by and I was slowly rotting from the inside out.  When I could barely hold myself up to walk across the room I called my family and we went the hospital.

It was there that the first deep axe swing was sunk into the felling of my faith.

I can remember staring at the ceiling (I was there for 8 days.  that's quite a bit of time to uninterrupted time to contemplate) dispassionately accepting: "My ancestors were apes."  What I had accepted at face value from the Bible was wrong.  A piece of vestigial tissue several centimeters long that almost killed me proved that.  This organ, once used to process cellulose in my ancestors now was a perfect pocket for deadly bacteria that would love to make a meal out of me.

It was that pivotal moment that started my turn from faith.

There were things that for years i had accepted as 'mystery' that started to break down into 'iron/bronze age mythology.'

Question #1

A reoccuring question arose: did I really believe the miracles in the Bible happened?  The question often took on a more specific nature, did I really believe that Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale?

Really thinking through it, if miracles happened they had to have had a method of occurrence.  If Jonah was swallowed, what organism could have done it?  What was the 'fish'?  My understanding is that while whales are enormous, most are plankton feeders and could not swallow a man.  They're essentially slurpers.  There's hardly anything out there that could have swallowed a whole man without any mastication.  Could it have been something extinct, like Carcharidon Megalodon?  Let's say it was something crazy like that, how would Jonah not been dissolved to bits by the acid for three days?  How would he have breathed?  You could just say it was a miracle, but even a miracle needs a M.O.  Did oxygen miraculously appear in his lungs while his body was shielded with some divine acid deflecting force field?

A tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Come on. Really?

Or, take another example--walking on water.  Let's say Jesus and Peter walked on water.  How?  Did the water become viscous?  Did their bodies become hyper-buoyant so that they floated on the surface?  Were they weightless?  Was it like walking on a smooth surface or was every ripple and wave jarring or possibly painful and sharp?  These questions aren't an  attempt to count angels dancing on needle points.  They're an effort to pass the story through a b.s. determination matrix.

These thoughts haunted me.  

Time passed, I graduate from UCF and enrolled in the Reformed Theological Seminary.  This was a means to the ends of furthering my ministry readiness, in addition to being a Pastoral Intern, playing guitar/singing on their worship team and being a youth minister at another church.  I remember Dr. Steve Childers giving the convocation service for the incoming students and saying how much seminary can challenge your faith in so many ways (not just academically).  He went so far as to say that some of the people there at the service might even lose their faith during their degree.  I remember thinking how that seemed impossible to lose your faith in a seminary and even if that were possible I dismissed his hyperbole for myself outright.  His words now seem almost prophetic.

The first objection concerned the content of the Christian scriptures and the second was their means of transmission.  Part of going to any reputable seminary is taking Greek.  As a part of the three semesters of Greek that I took one of the things that you have to learn a good deal about is the manuscripts that we use to compose the Bible.  Massive volumes and whole careers are dedicated to deciphering the minuscule flecks and fragments we have of incomplete and contradictory copies of copies.  We don't have the originals.  What we have are a plethora of bits and pieces of manuscripts copied years/generations after the original with hundreds of thousands of slight (and in some cases major) variations .  All this on top of the fact that we can't even be sure who wrote the original!

It came down to this, I felt like I wasn't really sure who wrote what, and even if the right apostle wrote it, how do I know that what we have is what he wrote?  AND even if he did write it and we have the right version, how do we know that we're translating this ancient, esoteric language correctly (examp.-->does John 1 say that Jesus is divine or not?).  and while we're at it, how does inspiration work?  So, the thoughts, words, use of amanuensis, the transmition of the text through copying, and the choosing of the cannon were all inspired?  And what about the varying accounts in the Gospels, the reference to extra-Biblical books like Enoch and the Assumption of Moses, the weeding out of other apocryphal and pseudopigraphal documents,  the view of women in the Bible, and the pericopes that are debateable in origin like the end of Mark or John 8, etc?

Question #2

If the Bible is divine then why can't we agree on the original message, messenger and message language?

The next major serious objection was one that had to stew in me for a few years until it reached a boil.  In an introductory theology class one of the optional papers really stuck out to me.  The concern that it asked me to address was how or whether or not mentally handicapped people can understand the Gospel and have saving, efficacious faith.  "Wow!" I thought. "Now that's something I've always wondered about."  This type of question is more often phrased as, "Can babies that don't hear about Jesus go to Heaven?" or "What about some tribal bushmen in Africa that have never heard about Christ?"

I researched.  Checked out books.  Got on the internet.  Talked to people about it.  The answers didn't sit right with me.  If a more conservative stance was taken, then there were some people that got to go to heaven simply because they knew the right people. If a more progressive stance was taken (like almost all Christian denominations with babies going to Heaven) then there was a huge, monstrous loop hole (or just a hole in the logic) in the doctrine of faith.  Bottom line: faith wasn't the only way to get to heaven.

This objection became much more palpable, tangible and inescapable when I went on a little trip--to the other side of the world.  I went to China on a missions trip.  One image in particular became burned on the retina of my consciousness.  I was able to spend some time in a city called Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province.  By the way, have you ever heard of Chengdu?  Neither had I.  Yet, the city is about 3 million larger than New York city.  There was one particular city corner downtown that we were standing at waiting for the light to change so that we could cross the street.  I looked to me left.  I looked to my right.  I looked behind me.  I looked ahead.  In each direction (which, by the way, was a completely unencumbered view since I was a giant at 6'3" in a land of munchkins) I could see tens of thousands (without exaggeration) of people.   Hordes of people going to work, headed home, with worries, with secret triumphs, with to-do lists, with families, lovers, histories, futures.  And all of them...going to hell?

Question #3: Did I really, really believe that all those Chinese, 1.4 billion were all going to hell because they hadn't accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior?...

It often is that people aren't too shallow to think on deep, philosophical verities of the universe.  It's more often that they have more important things to do first.  Like ministry.  And so was I.  I had big questions looming in the back of my mind, but I also had a job, friends, home work, deadlines, entertainment, etc.  These questions would sprout up perennially when I had motivation to question.  When burnout would set in.  Fatigue from school.  When people became odious.  I'd like to pause for a second and be honest in saying that, yes, in some ways I did want to stop believing (I say this to the Christians that might want to simplify my entire story and say that my objections were nothing but straw man arguments really trying to mask and hide my inner rebellion).  Large decisions like vocation, religion, social spheres, identity are never, ever made purely on the basis of logic and reason.  We think with the same organ that we feel with and the two often alloy (how easily we see this in the cross-hybridization we see in the language of "I feel" and "I think).  Reason may keep us out of the gutter like gutter guards in bowling, but it's motivation and emotion that toss the ball.

So, back to the impression that China had made upon me.  If Christianity was true, I began to see the overwhelming need that there was over there.  Straight up, literally like a billion people headed straight for eternal torment and damnation.  If Christianity was true, I needed to be a missionary there.  But.  But, I didn't want to go.  I liked America.  I like freedom.  I liked dairy products. I like sit down toilets.  I like home.  Home!

And back at home I was working at two churches and suffice it to say that people were behaving like people.  Glorious and self-sacrificial and other times greedy, clutching, duplicitous (just like me)--the dual nature of man.  Sigh.  To summarize much in a little, I didn't want their life.  i didn't want to think like them.  I didn't want to judge like them.  I didn't want to be afraid like them.  Afraid of losing.  Afraid of being wrong.  Afraid of questioning.   I didn't want to maintain a false sense of security in a lie like them.  I didn't want to foster a system of untruths for convention, hegemony or social status.  And i didn't want to work in the speed dating, social club churches of America.

i just wanted to be honest.

I just wanted to be able to change my mind if I wanted.

I just wanted to have the freedom to question.

I just wanted to be able to stay in America and no worry about indoctrinating others with a system of beliefs they have done quite well without for millennium, thank you very much.

I just wanted to be me.

There were other key moments, watching Letting Go of God by Julia Sweeney was one.  Reading the Pseudopigraphal Gospels was another and other modern apocryphal cannon like Bart Ehrman's stuff.  I remember being in a panic about losing my faith and going out and buying Miracles by CS Lewis, reading the whole thing in one day and being totally let down that someone I viewed as one of my spiritual gurus couldn't even answer my questions.  But, as is often the case, it was one personal touch that was particularly guiding.

I was arguing on my old Christian blog with people, you know, "defending the faith!" (which was actually largely because I had to in order to get an 'A' in my apologetics class) and within that blog I made what I thought was going to be a coup de gras blow in a particular argument with a particularly bright fellow.  While it was more involved and I don't want to get into it now I was basically arguing from the beauty of the universe and saying that must be a artist if there is all this beauty--there must be a creator if there's a creation.

Boy was I headed for a side swipe.

Never even saw it coming.

Which has more beauty, mystery, compelling simplicity: a universe that some ethereal spirit being popped into existence

-Or-

a universe that simple is.

Is evolving, morphing, transfiguring from one degree of wild singularity and white hot nebulous gasses to the self-organizing spin of the spiral bands of the galaxies, to the supernova burp of star dust that we are composed of on a wet iron ball orbiting our star made up of a masterwork of macro-molecules machines composed of millions, billions and trillions of simultaneously coordinated synchrony.

I'll phrase it like this:Which is more beautiful: a finished painting or a canvas that is painting itself?  A plan or a stunningly serendipitous, felicitous happenstance?  A loaded deck or a legitimately won Royal Flush?

That it had to happen or that it just did happen?

It's a subjective argument.  But one that stuck in my craw.

To quote Darwin, "There is grandeur in this view of life."

There is beauty in a universe that owes nothing but serendipity.