Faith

I was raised as a Catholic. As a Catholic kid with two religious, church attending parents, an uncle who is a Catholic priest, educated at Catholic school, and surrounded (mostly) by neighbors who were also Catholic, I did not question the essential correctness of the Catholic worldview throughout my formative years. In this I was quite inside the mainstream of American religious life: most people hold to the religion of their parents, who followed the religion of their parents and so on back through the generations. Despite being surrounded on all sides by Catholic people - family and friends alike - this is not to say that everyone practiced their Catholicism the same way. Many people whom I knew picked and chose what aspects of "the faith" they would act upon and which aspects they could safely ignore. However, even those who did not attend church and for whom the tenets of "The Church" held only a tenuous grasp on their daily lives, the framework, the overall worldview of Catholicism still held sway. There was seldom a conscious thought that it was all wrong, but that one simply didn't follow the rules. There was no real questioning of the basic assumption: that there was an omnipotent, omniscient being who created the heavens and the earth and somehow ran the whole thing.

When I was 19 I encountered through a family member an organization called The Way International. This group claimed to have an understanding of the bible that no one else had; they also claimed to be able to teach keys to interpreting and understanding the bible that anyone could use. Although in retrospect their logic and conclusions were somewhat suspect, they provided me with an alternative to what I had been raised believing. At the time what they were telling me made sense and seemed to be consistent in a way that mainstream Christianity, including Catholicism, was not.

 As it turned out, no one else in my family or circle of friends (with a couple of exceptions) was at all interested in what The Way International had to say about anything. I eventually left The Way for reasons that I'll relate shortly, but during that time, no one in my family, despite their opposition to my involvement, ever took the time to really investigate what The Way was promoting. Most of them were influenced by the anti-cult rhetoric of the times. My parent even considered having me deprogrammed. 

In retrospect I assume that their opposition was primarily to my changing my religion, no matter what it turned out to be. My family wasn't really any different than many others - they did not question the basic rightness of what they were brought up believing. Any differences in what The Way (or anyone else for that matter) taught from what the Catholic Church taught were dismissed as wrong, or even "bizarre" without any real understanding of the biblical or historical basis of either. It was wrong, not because of any objective analysis of its tenets, but because it was different and possibly because I was public and vocal about my beliefs. To this day there are family members who privately question the basic assumptions of Catholic doctrine and the legitimacy of the organization of the Church, but who publicly adhere to the rituals. Relatives who have told me that they don't believe in God, but still cross themselves and murmur the prayers. On some level I understand this: most people have no desire to rock the boat or upset their more religious family members.

Following some internal scandals I took a long hard look at what had been taught in The Way as well as the actions of the leaders of the group and ended up being kicked out for my dissenting views. Up to this point in my life, despite changing religious affiliation, I still believed the basics: that there was an all-powerful, all-knowing God who created everything and that his son Jesus accomplished something, although there are differing interpretations and opinions regarding precisely what that was. Even though The Way and Catholicism seemed worlds apart, they still had the root beliefs in common - they just disagreed about the specifics.

My initial "long hard look" involved comparing what the second president of The Way, Craig Martindale, was promoting compared to the foundational teachings of The Way that had been taught in the Power for Abundant Living class (their introductory, or "foundational" class, which all new Way people sat through before becoming truly involved). My first try at it yielded ten pages of discrepancies. At that point I still believed in the effectiveness of utilizing the keys to interpreting the bible that I had learned in The Way and used these keys to analyze what was being taught. I was not at that time comparing Way doctrine to mainstream, orthodox, Christianity but to what The Way said about itself, judging by their own standards.

There isn't anything, in and of themselves, wrong with the "keys" as taught by The Way. They're pretty simple and at first glance without bias or doctrinal point of view: read what is written, (rather than read into what is written) read the context, understand words in light of how they were used when the bible was written (and when the translation/version being referred to was written), understand biblical era customs, understand figures of speech. Check to make sure that words were accurately and consistently translated from the original languages into English. Pretty standard stuff, obvious stuff.

To me it was obvious that what the current (at the time) leaders were promulgating did not line up with the bible according to their own standards. When my concerns were ignored and rationalized away by Way leadership I began to dig deeper. I began to find problems with what had been taught and accepted in The Way since the beginning. Despite the consistent message and promise that we were being taught how to read, interpret and understand the bible ourselves, if at any time anyone's interpretation or understanding deviated from what VP Wierwille, The Way's founder, promulgated, then a number of things could possibly happen: (1) You could be nicely told that you just don't get it and need to study further and you would be instructed to "hold it in abeyance" until you did get it (2) You would be mocked for your ignorance (3) You would be thrown out of the organization (especially if you knew the talk as well as the leaders) - but it always ended up with Wierwille's view holding sway.

At about this time I became aware of various Way offshoots, or splinter groups, that had split off from The Way in the wake of the death of the founder, VP Wierwille. To my surprise at the time, all of these groups had deviated from what had been taught in The Way, even though they all claimed to be faithful followers of Wierwille and all claimed to be using the "keys". What I got from this nugget of information was that the method of studying and interpreting the bible was nowhere near the foolproof path to truth that I had thought it was. While I had previously thought that the multitude of Christian denominations (and any dissension within The Way) was simply the result of fallible humans refusing to just "read what was written" - I now saw that it was the result of the bible being an extremely unclear set of books that defied an authoritative interpretation.

The contradictions, which The Way always called "apparent contradictions" and bent themselves into pretzels to explain, and the mainstream churches just ignored, were just that...contradictions. And with so many contradictions, how could this collection of writings realistically be anything other than a work of man? And if it were merely a work of fallible men, what compelling reason would there be for believing anything contained therein? The life and sacrifice of Jesus, the ministry of the apostles, the miracles, the existence of God himself was based on a book that has no more authority or reliability than any book in the fiction section of the public library.

At that point I took a bigger step in some ways then the one that I took when I left the Catholic Church behind to join The Way; I stopped believing in the god of the bible.  I stopped praying, I stopped thinking about an afterlife, I stopped viewing anything taught in the bible as binding in any way upon me. 

In some sense I have The Way to thank for this. Despite my discovery that they were doing what they accused everyone else of doing, i.e. reading into what the bible said and devising their own interpretations, what they got me to do was think about what I was reading and to question the conclusions that mainstream churches had come to. 

I have not taken what might be thought to be the logical step of becoming an atheist. Right about the time that my belief and faith in "God" and the bible began to fade, I became fascinated with the pre-Christian beliefs of the Irish, the ethnic group with which I most identify). This led to studying modern Wicca, magick and other neo-pagan beliefs, which I will discuss in a part two.

In my early days of disbelief in the divine inspiration of the bible I gave the authors the benefit of the doubt, that they were sincere people who attempted to put into words their own experiences with the divine, with the world of spirit. The contradictions were the result of there being multiple authors, that every book of the bible was written by a different person, all of whom had differing viewpoints and experiences. However, the more that I really thought about what was in the bible, the less I held on to this view.

Look at the first book of Genesis - a straight up creation myth, not all that different in kind than any other creation myth from any other culture, and like all other creation myths, completely lacking in anything that could be viewed as factual. Look at it metaphorically and it's in the same category of any other myth. Following on the heels of the creation myth is a Flood Story and then the legendary beginnings of the nation. Flood stories are pretty common and most nations and tribes have a legend or myth to explain their origins. Exodus completes the origin legend, then we have 3 ½ books of rules and regulations, many of which don't make sense. Then we have the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, a supposed history of "God's people". Scattered throughout this "history" are exhortations to genocide as well as death sentences for egregious sins such as touching the holy bookmobile or working on Saturday. And let's not forget the Book of Job, a story about how God allows Satan to kill Job's family, plus his hundreds of servants, give him a horrendous disease...all on a bet. Then berates Job for daring to question him. How about the gospels? How about four accounts of the life of Jesus that contradict each other on multiple points? Or the epistles? Read them carefully and they contradict each other as well, and read like propaganda pamphlets reacting to the opposition parties.

Not only is the bible not divinely inspired, but it has so few nuggets of actual morality, so little actual helpful information. It is useless, if not actually harmful. And this is what the majority of people in this country base their lives upon. Or at least say that's what they base their lives upon, without actually knowing the details, or at least ignoring them or rationalizing them away.

At this time in my life, I am not at all surprised that most people are uninterested in logic, consistency rational thought. Back during my days in The Way, I frequently encountered people who got angry at the suggestion that what their church was teaching might be at odds with what the bible actually said. While I now know that much of what was taught in The Way was just as much based on a man's opinion as anything any church was putting out, the concept of wanting to reconcile biblical contradictions and to line up what one was preaching with the holy book alleged to be the basis of said preaching would seem to be what any Christian would want. But even back then I saw that most people wanted  to stick with what they were comfortable with and not be burdened with the responsibility to think. 

What has changed for me since those days is that I have abandoned the idea that the bible is inerrant, or even that it derives in any way from a supernatural being. In the past, even though I did not accept the specifics of my family's faith, I still clung to the belief that the bible was somehow given to us by a supreme being and that it was possible to determine exactly what that supreme being had to say about...everything. Without that presumption, upon what would a belief in anything that's in the bible be based? I know that there are plenty of people who do not hold the belief that the bible is an error-free, god-inspired book yet still "believe in God", or even consider themselves Christians. What mystifies me about these people is that I just don't see what they are basing their beliefs on. If the bible is anything less than perfect, where does your conception of "God" come from?

I'm sure that believers would come up with different answers, if they would even deign to answer the question, but what I see is that most people believe what they believe because they are culturally conditioned to believe so. Even people who have never cracked open a bible or heard a bible verse buy into the culturally dominant view that there is a supreme being-creator-god and that there is a heaven and a hell. People who haven't done anything to align themselves with the bible or "Christian principles" or even actively stand against them still define themselves according to the biblical theistic worldview, talking about their behavior causing them to "go to Hell" upon death, or "God striking them with lightning". They reject the lifestyle, but still on some level acknowledge the supposed consequences of that rejection.

Now the ethical, moral and behavioral framework is an altogether different thing. If someone wants to adopt a lifestyle that reflects what they think Jesus taught, I really have no problem with that, but only if they are doing it because they think that it makes sense, rather than because  they will burn in Hell otherwise or because some deity says so. Living ethically because you are threatened or blackmailed is not really ethical, and blind obedience is just as bad. Is something right because God says it is, or does God say it is because it is right? If the former, then you will likely make all kinds of excuses why genocide, slavery and rape are okay...because the god of the bible endorses them. If the bible were just full of rules for good living with "God said" tacked on, I might chalk it up to personification, but "God said" to do a lot of things that most reasonable people would be appalled at.

Faith...an excuse to refrain from thinking.