Some Notes About Why I Transcended Christianity
Hi Sharon, this post is in response to your request of a few days ago. I hope you find it useful.
As some readers already know, I was from conception raised in a devout Pentecostal Assemblies of God Christian family. My religious education could be said to have started when in my mother's womb I attended classes in a theological school. I was raised to become an Assemblies of God minister and when at age seventeen the time came to choose a college my parents gave me an ultimatum: "Attend an A of G theological school or we will not finance your education." Being seventeen and naïve I succumbed and graduated from the A of G's theological school after which I studied for three semesters in a non-denominational Christian fundamentalist theological institute. Much independent study of all the major religions was to follow.
It was in the A of G theological school where I first began to seriously question the validity and reliability of the Christian faith. My deep questioning began in a class titled Christian Apologetics when the professor was unable to produce substantive historical evidence -- archaeological or otherwise -- of the actual of existence of a man named Jesus of Nazareth, the figure on which the whole of Christianity is founded.
Further, I found that the noted Jewish historian Josephus, contemporary with the alleged life of Jesus of Nazareth as outlined in the four canonical gospels of the New Testament, lists nineteen different Jesuses but no Jesus of Nazareth. Still further, there are approximately 3,000 different translations of the Judeo-Christian Bible with no consensus about which is the authentic "word of the Judeo-Christian God."
I found these unanswered questions and revelations most shocking! How could this be? How could my parents, my grandparents, my church, my theology professors believe so fervently in an imaginary Jesus? Were they merely the blind leading the blind in blind faith? With all the empathy, understanding and respect due them, I have come to assume they were doing the best they could with the limited knowledge available to them during their respective lifetimes. That traumatic experience was the beginning of my arduous, often psychologically and spiritually painful investigation into the deepest root origins and faith-worthiness of the Judeo-Christian Bible.
I ask that my feelings and thoughts expressed in these notes not be interpreted as motivated by anger, resentment or vitriol. As I said earlier, I was raised to be a born again Christian and a diligent student of Christian theology. I still have a fond regard, even admiration, for some aspects of Judeo-Christianity, for example, selected Psalms, The Songs of Songs, some Proverbs, and some New Testament principles and ideas, such as "Each individual must work out their own salvation." [Our Source] helps those who help themselves." And test the spirits to see if they [are reliably healthful]. Those teachings were, in some ways, an important step in encouraging me to become an integral natural scientist with a primary focus on the integral human sciences. I think I am a better one as a result. However, when conservative evangelical Christians claim, as I once did, that their religion alone is true, I have come to see they must be prepared to answer the deepest, highest, and broadest of penetrating questions which others like myself now pose.
While it may be true that the writers of the sixty-six books comprising the Judeo-Christian Protestant Bible and the eighty-eight writers of the Judeo-Christian Catholic Bible (Douay), probably did the best they could with the limited knowledge available to them in their time and culture, subjecting their point of view to careful scrutiny and critique in the light of current scientific knowledge has an important part to play in helping discern probable facts from probable fiction. I suggest criticism of a given religious philosophy becomes inappropriate only when it is based on deliberate misrepresentation of that religion, or when it descends into an exercise in derision and name-calling. The only time I believe resisting a particular religious philosophy is justified is when it clearly threatens the health, freedom and full functioning of an individual, organization, society, and our planet Earth.
I also want to make it amply clear that I am not sharing these notes for the purpose of persuading the Christian reader to forsake his or her possible allegiance to their faith. If the Judeo-Christian faith is satisfying and healthful for them, it is their right to believe as they wish. All I ask is that they refrain from re-evangelizing or oppressing me with their belief. For those interested all I'm trying to do is share my reasons for transcending the Judeo-Christian faith and moving on in my psychospiritual growth and development. I hasten to add that I see this writing as a collection of my notes, not an exhaustive scholarly treatise.
Further, in offering my reasons for transcending Christianity I recognize that memories associated with my early experience as a conservative evangelical Christian believer will probably always be with me. Not only that, I have friends and relatives who continue to be believers with whom I want to have mutually empathetic and healthful relationships. Consequently, I formulated an affirmation which effectively sums up my attitude to date. It goes like this: I am a pure window-glass-clear constituent of the infinite timeless aware Source of all. I am not any temporal mind-body belief, value, attitude or behavior. However, I have a whole repertoire of temporal beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors with which I am interdependent. I include, own, and manage my repertoire of temporal beliefs, values and behaviors in ways which I intend to be mutually empathetic, respectful and healthful in my relationships with people of all spiritual paths and organized religions, and I expect them to reciprocate in kind.
My collection of notes as shown in the attachment is limited to discussion of the Protestant Judeo-Christian Bible and is divided into three sections plus a section about my current belief system and one listing suggested reading.
1. The Judeo-Christian Bible
2. The Judeo-Christian God
3. The 'Life' of Jesus of Nazareth
4. My Belief System Today
5. References and Suggested Reading
