Religion, God, Hubris
Interesting thoughts from someone about to read my new book …
Dear Mr. McLaren,
I’ll be honest right from the beginning – the train, for me, has left the station and I won’t be returning to organized religion any time soon.
More so, I tend to be pretty outspoken against it whenever the setting seems appropriate. I don’t consider myself an atheist and, at the same time, dislike the term agnostic because it seems so indecisive. I have a (to me) clear and distinct, if eclectic, faith. Jesus is even still a part of it. That said, I wouldn’t find a home in any church I’ve ever heard of even if I was so inclined.
But my Mom and Dad still believe hard. I may wish that they were ‘free’ enough to escape what I see as the manipulation of formal religion, but I don’t hold their faith against them because, well, that would just be hypocritical wouldn’t it? That’s why I appreciate the idea of your book (I say ‘idea’ because I haven’t yet read it – I start in a few days though): from what I have read you are creating space for faith to evolve. And I respect that.
One of my largest problems with religions and formal systems of belief, all of them, has been the hubris involved in thinking that we know it all. The concept of god I believe makes it ridiculously foolish to think we will ever know much; that it’s a journey that we can start but never finish nor get very far along in the space of a human lifetime. Organized religion, on the other hand, seems to hoist itself onto a podium as the sole arbiter of access to god. I find this ridiculous and arrogant, on a scale similar to believing that a person could learn everything there is to know about the universe by looking up at the night sky once or twice and watching a show on Discovery. Personally, I don’t want to know a god that can be explained to me by someone who thinks that small.
But books like yours expand the possibilities and make it permissible for religion, religious leaders and believers, one and all, to keep looking for more to the story. They make exploration a present possibility instead of something that people did in the past. They make it okay to still want to aspire, and that is a step in the right direction.
Thanks for thinking and not settling.
