I have lived in many worlds. And not even many compared to some. It is very true, and has been my experience, that you become one of the world you are exposed to. To survive you must comply. You learn the ways of life in that world.. Though first perhaps strange, soon adopted. You are then a part of a larger community of those that live in that world. You understand what they understand. You speak their language. The world you all live in is understood through the same eyes.
This is basic sociology. The way humans survive in different times and places in systems that run relatively smoothly. Immigrants that move to another country must learn and in some ways adopt the culture and mindset of the people there - otherwise they are isolated and lost.
I cannot repeat enough the importance of being a part of community. So I go on to say that I have lived in many worlds. And not even many compared to some. The worldview has been predominantly Christian. My understanding was shaped according to Christian ideology. But specific Christian ideology - for there are many.
I have uprooted myself time and again and relocated to various communities. I have adopted the charismatic evangelical Christian worldview with more passion and fervour that I have still yet to beat. I have been positive of things that I now question. I had faith that I believed could raise the dead. I was loved. And everybody agreed with me.
I moved to places where no one knew me. I lost that feeling of security and love. That feeling that told me God existed. God was gone.
I was accepted into another community that told me this was ok. God was not about feeling. God existed outside of feeling and experience. I was able to be. I found peace in not knowing. I learned to be ok with questions, with doubt.
I lived in another community that valued the Christian tradition above experience. That laughed at those who thought such things were possible.
I found one that taught me how religions were formed. How spiritual experience was fabricated or merely a biological normality of chemical release in all humans. How believing in God was like believing in Peter Pan. I found a community of reason.
I found a community that believed in God but saw that religions were completely flawed. A community that accepted all on the basis that none of us really knew very much anyway, and if God is a God of grace, we're all in the same boat.
I come back to a community that tells me that loving homosexuals is unrighteous. That drinking is unholy. That 'that girl' who smokes and is a bad influence. That my feelings are again a true display of God's communication. And the underlying message that lays unseen is what I experienced as a teenager - self-justification. The society of SELF has seeped into all areas of human existence including and perhaps especially in religion. Communities whose authority is based on their own certainty of their own rightness. The right thoughts about God, according to self. When we will finally come to the conclusion that SELF is and has been our only goal from the beginning. When will we understand that something outside of SELF is the only way to find hope.
"Since the practical aim of all human religious activity is self-justification and self-sanctification, it constitutes a barrier that must first be removed before people can receive revelation, which comes only by grace." -Karl Barth On Religion
Now tell me, how shall I then live? As one who has uprooted herself to various communities and received education and from numerous worldviews? How do I survive in this current community that I so once understood?
2 years ago
