On my religious and spiritual journey - Part 3/3

When I started re-evaluating my concept of God and what his will was, I went back to basics. I remembered a scripture in the bible of when Jesus was explaining the purpose of what Mosaic law meant. The law given to Moses had hundreds of commandments of what the Jews had to do and not to and when, etc. The purpose of it all was to ensure that the Jews worshipped God in a certain manner and also that they be protected from harm. Then Jesus implied that after his death, Mosaic law was to be abolished and he said that the whole of God's will can be summarized in only two commandments (not the hundreds given to Moses): 1) Love only God as god, and 2) Love each other as God loves you. That was it.

I concluded that God's will had nothing to do with guilt, and guilt was not a virtue to God! Sure, the bible still has those commandments about how to practice his worship and no idolatry, no fornication, etc, but also it tells me that God does not ask of me any more than I can give and that He will be the only one to judge my sins, errors, behaviors etc. I am not God; I have no place trying to judge other's sins or punishing myself for my own. God who knows what is in my heart, my intentions, why I do the things I do, why I desire the things I do, I believe is the only person fit to pass judgement on me. And that is my "new" thinking. That is how I came to stop feeling depressed about having to make religious sacrifice and how I overcame my guilt for just being human. If I had to do it all over again, I don't think I'd pick a different faith, I'd hope I just merely came to this conclusion faster.

So what is my philosophy? As I’ve discussed previously, my personal values are my family, participating in and enjoying life while I am alive, and not making a world a worse place for anyone or anything. I believe in God, but I also believe in humanity. I believe human's greatest quality is our ability to think and reason for ourselves. I sometimes meet with a religious group whose ideology I mostly share and I call myself a Christian because I do believe in the Bible being a holy book and I aim to follow the guidance provided in it by Jesus Christ. I worship God because I am grateful to him for all I believe he has been responsible in my life. I follow the things the Bible says because I believe it is wise and its mandates are for my overall good. I’m not scared of God that he will punish me in any way because the God I believe in is understanding, merciful, forgiving, and not vengeful. I believe he is far too grand to be offended or hurt by the actions, words, or thoughts of one little person as I am. I understand also that my belief in God may be mythical, as real as he feels to me. So I hold nothing back from this life that I may experience it in an afterlife that I am not 100% guaranteed will actually happen. Once upon a time perhaps my faith was stronger, but for now this is the God and the rules and the values I believe in. This is the type of God I respect, and the type of God I want to emulate.

I love God. My God. I love the type of God that lets me love him and not at the exclusion of also loving myself.

On my religious and spiritual journey - Part 2/3

If it weren't because of the lack of contact with other believers and an ever deeper instruction in them, I would have joined a Jewish or Buddhist religious organization. I did wish that Judaism had reached out to me further rather than feeling that it was not a religion that encouraged new members from other cultures/ethnic group. So I delved further into going with what was around me, which was for a long time was only Catholicism. I asked a lot of questions and mostly I was shut down because, I was told, some things I just had to accept and believe rather than understand.

Only one religious group welcomed my questions and actively sought to reason with me using a holy book (the bible), "logical" deduction methodology, and my own knowledge of the world and science, etc. This group's philosophy and people welcomed me and I welcomed all their doctrines into my life too. The fact that I welcomed it too shaped the next few years of my life. Many of these group's ideals had been my pre-existing ideals also so that certainly helped to adopt this new religion. It interpreted the bible's New and Old Testaments largely literally - and it even tried to show with historical and scientific correlation how this text / prophecy was a true document that should inspire my belief and obedience. And I still to this day believe it is so, either in spite of or because of my academic background in science.

I came to believe that the bible was a document worthy of my respect and belief, and I believed then that I must do the things it says that I do and don't do in this life. Obeying bible advice was at times instinctive, but often contradictory to what I wanted and desired. No other aspect I think was more pronounced for me than its concept of "fornication" or sex outside of a traditional marriage. That was certainly not instinctive! Yet for very many years I bared my stake/cross and sacrificed my desire for sexual intimacy for the sake of not displeasing the God I had learnt about in the bible. I still don't feel that this sacrifice was in vain or bear resentment of it, but rather I am still proud (and amazed) that I was capable of such dedication, commitment, and self-control for all those many years.

If you asked my why I joined the religion I did (and I'm not talking about Catholicism, which I inherited and never chose), I would say it was because it was the one that to me seemed to have a concept of God and practice that I thought would most resemble a God that I could respect. This God (and this religion) encouraged my questions and helped me find the answers in a book believed to be inspired by God. He was also a God that had many good qualities, that encouraged new followers, and that gave commandments that were meant to benefit me and not merely fill me with guilt. I liked this God, and I liked what he stood for.

Over time I found myself becoming more and more unhappy, depressed, feeling guilty all the time. This was because I was finding it increasingly harder to do what God asked of me and it was really weighing me down. The more I tried to be a good Christian, the more it hurt. I became depressed. There were many reasons that culminated in my depression, but my spiritual beliefs should have been my saviour not the lead weighing me down further. Then I finally put the pieces together to my inescapable depression: one of the main characteristics of depression is undue guilt; and yet one of the tenets/virtues of Christianity is to feel guilt!

In Christianity it is believed that Adam and Eve were guilty of the the original sin (disobedience) and from them all human beings have inherited both the tendency to sin and guilt for this sin of theirs. Do you know how hard it is to overcome depression when you continue to feel guilty? I can see the futility of my thinking now, but for a long time I had no idea why so many of my other co-worshippers were suffering depression too. Guilt will eat you alive! Now, I'm certainly not saying that all cases of depression are due to undue religious guilt, but taking to this concept of Christianity as passionately as I once did does push you further down into a black hole. Luckily, I did not stop learning or thirsting for more knowledge and wisdom once I had become a full member of my new religion.

On my religious and spiritual journey - Part 1/3

I was baptized as a baby into the Catholic Church. This was not my mum's idea and nor did it actually signify anything as to what my life would be as it was purely done out of cultural and family tradition. Growing up my mum taught my siblings and I to be respectful of others, not hurt them physically or verbally, to be respectful of the law, and basically to treat all human beings as equal and as we wanted to be treated in return. She also taught us about this spiritual being called God that we could never see or hear but that we could talk to in prayer to ask for help and guidance in our lives. She taught us about this book called the bible that had all these stories about God and things he had done for other people who were "good" and others who were "bad". As a result of that I concluded that I wanted to be "good" to please this God being and have his blessing and not upset him and have his punishment in the future, which mostly meant after I was dead. She didn't teach us religious rituals or ritualistic prayers like those practiced in the Catholic Church as she herself did not believe they served any purpose.

When I was seven or eight it was decided that it would be nice for me to get to wear a pretty dress, like other girls in our town did, and partake in Catholic communion. Like my baptism as a baby, it was more about tradition than any religious or spiritual symbolism. A few kids and I met for a few weeks with a very nice and respectable member of the church to learn from an illustrated book about Catholic rituals and a bit more about the stories in the bible about angels, Jesus, his mother Mary, and also about how the communion ceremony would proceed in a few weeks. We rehearsed the ceremony and learnt some Catholic prayers and hymns. My mum had a really pretty white dress prepared for me. I still remember some of the songs we sung and the part of the communion ceremony where I forgot everything we had rehearsed for it, specially of what I was supposed to say to the priest the first time I took the Eucharist and he said something about the "body of Christ". I was completely blank standing in front of him and wondering what I was supposed to say back to him so that he would give me that sticky wafer. I remember he kept asking me over and over again, changing the intonation of his voice to a slightly more angry one, and I couldn't think of anything to say back to him. At one point he inflected his voice to sound like it was a question "body of Christ?" and I thought I had finally figured out the answer. "Yes", I said. No, he repeated it again and then asked if I didn't know how to answer properly. I said, "Yes, please". Finally a child standing behind me in line said to me "you have to say Amen". Finally I said it and the priest gave me the Eucharist, but before I walked away he asked who my communion teacher had been. I can laugh at it now but for years I felt guilty that I had gotten Cesar, my teacher, into trouble by forgetting the word "Amen". (Guilt, mea culpa, and penance were some of the catholic "traditions" of christianity that Cesar had also taught me.) At the end of it all, everyone commented on how pretty I looked in my communion dress, and that to myself and my family is all Catholic communion meant: a chance to wear a pretty dress in front of a lot of people. My baptism had been my grandmother's idea (my mother thought it was a waste of time because I was a baby and I would have had no idea about Christianity), and my communion was town tradition mixed in with vanity.

I completed my Catholic "confirmation" when I was about 10 years old or so. This time it was one my aunt's idea for whatever reason that one my brothers, her son, and I all partake in this ceremony. Again, I had to go to catholic Sunday school for a few weeks. We learnt from another illustrated book about angels, catholic rituals, and Jesus. The book was very colorful and I liked the drawings in it. We also had to go to confession where you'd tell the priest bad stuff you've done and, as if he was some sort of authority, he told you that God would forgive you if you repeated some ritualized prayers so many times. I hated going to it as I had to think for ages on what I could possibly have to feel guilty about at 10 or 11 years old so I could feed to the priest at confession. After some weeks, the communion ceremony was held and we got given little certificates, a little badge with a dove on it, and we took heaps of photos in our nice clothes. Our school principal was at the ceremony and participated in it, which I didn't like because he was very mean to everyone at school and often hit the boys' hands (and once mine also) with a wooden ruler for misbehaving. I thought he was a hypocrite and not a good person, even though he was apparently a good Christian. I knew, though, even at an early age, based on what mum and not any of my Catholic teachers had taught me, that it was not my place to judge him.

After arriving in Australia, I attended a catholic primary school (with the principal I spoke about) and then a catholic high school. High school for me was such a massive change from what I had been in primary school. I finally got over my shyness and I started to form my own ideas about life, etc. As any other teenage kid, I started challenging my superiors and rebelling just for the sake of rebelling. At school I wanted to challenge my religion teacher's doctrine, and at home I wanted to challenge mum's. My mum had started to become involved with a Christian group that went very much against idolatry and religious rituals. I began to wear a crucifix I was given at school as a necklace to irritate her. At school, I would question my religion teacher about some of the scriptures I'd overhead mum learning about at her home bible study and other things I had learn at Catholic Church too. I asked my teacher about worshipping a cross or a manmade icon when God had strictly forbidden such behaviour to the Israelites in what is commonly called "the Ten Commandments", or why I had to call the priest "Father" when Jesus had insisted that not even he (allegedly God's son) be called this let alone any other human being, or why had to talk to the priest to ask for forgiveness and not directly to God if God allegedly loved me and was all-powerful and so should be able to hear my prayer directly, etc. etc. I admit most of the time I was just trying to stir people, my religion teachers or my mum and her friends from her new Christian group, but underneath it all, I guess I was also curious about religion and spirituality. Gradually I started to become more and more interested in theology.

By the time I was 17 I was very much into reading about different religions and theological belief systems. I found Christianity particularly fascinating in that so many hundreds of denominations exist with slightly (or very) different focuses, practices or rituals, and interpretations of what is essentially the same story in one book. The common origin of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity seemed so enthralling to me. The more human-oriented philosophy of Buddhism and Eastern traditions inspired me to wonder more about what is "humanity" in humans. And the polytheist religions both inspired disbelief (because it was so foreign to all I'd ever learnt with only one God) and curiosity as to how models of religion and spirituality are constructed by the minds of human beings. By the end of my schooling and soon after starting university, I was sure I'd one day I'd either join Judaism or Buddhism. I was a lot more preoccupied with religion in my teenage years than in what other teenagers were interested in; yet not completely. Sex interested me. It interested me in the normal way, and it interested me in the way it was so closely related to spirituality in most religions.

On (some) injustices

Galileo, buried at the Basilica di Santa Croce

There was a time in my life when I used to get really frustrated, really upset, and I felt generally just very bitter at some of the “injustices” I felt were being inflicted upon me. At around that time I had just started reading some of Napoleon Hill’s work and I remember a story he tells about Christopher Columbus. We all know him because he ‘discovered’ the Americas – and yet you could also consider him one of human history’s greatest failures. He set out to find a new shipping route to India via the west – and he failed miserably at his task! But his failure achieved for him the fame and place of pride he holds in human history. Why did this story come to mind to me today? Because lack of “success” (what some may call failure) is such a common finding in people we often call our heroes.

Let’s briefly consider Eva Perón, the argentine political minister who after her death was considered almost a saint for her deeds and passions. In life, though, she had hundreds of enemies in high places. She faced great political opposition and suffered unjust and inflated accusations from her opponents. She was, on the other hand, cherished by the working class - the numerical majority. The harder she fought both for herself and as a representative of the labour and social welfare of her nation, the more she was accused of wrongdoing by those that held the financial majority. Now, what’s my point? OK, I’m not saying that only those with greater social and moral stances face injustice. All I’ve noticed is that the names of those that serve their nations, their societies, that serve with pride in something other than political or financial approval, those who remain true to their humanities, are those who experience true success despite their adversity. What are the names of those that opposed Eva Perón, those that dominated politically and financial while she struggled? Did they succeed? What did they achieve? Where are their admirers and who still recalls them?

Now, a person could feel down because they are accused of wrongdoing, because they are accused of it only to ‘punish’ behaviour that is thought not to be respectful of the authority of those in power. Insolence is often punished by actions aimed to show you who’s boss. It’s not a new concept, that’s the reason Hitler kept ‘yes-men’ around him and those that disagreed with him quickly disappeared. It’s the reason that Jesus humbly declaring his father’s kingdom was punished with death. It’s the reason people who refuse military service – or any other behaviour not condoned by governments – have in the past been incarcerated. I remember a quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky that says that “power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up”. Perhaps we should expect no less from our enemies in high places, but that does not mean we should accept their punishment as well-deserved either.

‘If a person slaps you in the face, turn the other cheek’ means to accept that there are people who will act with hurtful intent toward you. It does not mean that you have to believe that you deserved either the first or second slap. In times like these I think it’s better to remember your own name and what you stand for, because no-one will even remember those who wanted to show you who’s boss.