evolution of religion

In this article regarding Haiti, voodoo, and Christian evangelicalism, we once again see religion’s influence and its value or perhaps more accurately lack thereof. The voodoo priest is complaining that the evangelicals are hogging the airport and the supplies and then distributing them in such a manner as to increase the evangelicals influence among the Haitian people. Whether this complaint is logistically true or not, I have no way of knowing. It's the thinking behind the scenes that intrigues me.

It seems like we'd all be better off if we gave up our superstitious religious beliefs and took responsibility for our behavior towards others. I'm not just talking about the voodoo priest. Religion, in general, seems to be expert at clouding relationships and separating human beings from each other.

Why didn't God make a world where love, peace, joy, and all those wonderful things just existed without the option of human beings messing things up? That would be my old brain trying to simplify things. I no longer pretend that life is simple. Trusting God exclusively to take care of all the things “out there” is no longer something I‘m able to do.

In spite of my rant above, religion is a part of the social construct of man and has been around for a long time... perhaps beginning with simple folk tales regarding the death of loved ones and bringing comfort to those still alive by explaining that they (the dead) were still present though invisible. This would be comforting indeed. We created gods or a God in order to explain the unexplainable. Religion has worked well at uniting people. Amazing civilizations have existed in history and religions have played a part as unifier in many of them.

Somewhere along the way we developed the idea that the gods or God could be placated, pleased, commandeered, or even manipulated by our actions of sacrifices, prayers, worship, idol making industries, and more. We created ways to get what we needed (safety, acceptance, comfort) even though it may have simply served psychological purposes. This went a long way in soothing fears in a very unfriendly world filled with natural and unnatural catastrophes.

While religion has positively contributed to societies, it also produces negative situations in people's lives. People have learned how to control other people by using religion in any number of ways. A few examples would be… Constantine, the Roman emperor, making it the empire’s state religion in order to maintain control of his people, hell doctrines, inquisition killings, shaming, money making schemes (i.e. tithing/prosperity gospel). Religion needs conformity from its constituents in order to survive and at the same time produces a form of security. Thus religion survives.

As I have been studying evolution (natural selection) over the past number of months, its probability has grown in my mind. I can see how evolution has worked in religion. Religious concepts evolve. In Christianity alone there appears to be an observed peace amongst the 30,000+ sects/denominations in Protestantism since its birth 500+ years ago. It certainly didn't start out that way, but you don't hear of many killings related to denominational differences anymore at least not in the United States.

The divide between world religions is another matter. Wars are being fought today because of these differences. The Abrahamic faiths... Judaism, Christianity, and Islam especially have a history. “My God is the one true God and yours is not.” Our current war with radical Islam shows the Islamists’ religion and its preservation as the motivating forces behind the terrorists’ insistence that the ways of the West must die.

War should be a last resort and I'm not saying we shouldn't protect ourselves. Evolution insists on self preservation. Each religion must evolve to the place where it recognizes its own survival is dependent on peace. Perhaps Buddhists, Taoists, and other seemingly peaceful religions have learned this, I don't know.

Religions also need to police their own fundamentalist extremists who do not understand the concept of compromise and tolerance. I know that's easier said then done. It is in everyone’s best interest that the concept “our God is the only Right One” evolve into extinction. Will we evolve quickly enough to avoid major destruction? How much pain will it take? Will religions' inability to bring peace be the end of its own existence?

"spiritual animal"

Another C.S. Lewis quote from A Grief Observed:

"Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your grand experiment. Or no; not an experiment, for you have no need to find things out. Rather your grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a 'spiritual animal'. To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, 'Now get on with it. Become a god'." (page 72)

We are so silly; so ill equipped it seems. Our mind machinations cause us so much unnecessary suffering. Lewis talks about us being a "spiritual animal". I think he's right. Becoming aware of this spiritual being in us is what's needed.

I'm convinced that the world we live in will continue in its lost condition if it does not come to this understanding. The systems by which it functions, whether political, economic, or religious, are destined to produce both good and evil. It all depends who's running them. Heart change is what's needed in order for evil to perish. We need love to come alive in the heart of this world creation.

How can this love be attained? We may demonstrate a semblance of love from time to time, but it usually doesn't take long before we are judging and condemning again. We somehow lose the love. Our focus goes back onto us. We seem to always be concerned about how we will be affected. We want control. We want to be in charge. We want to be important. We want significance. All these desires center in our ego which is constantly working for its own survival. This part of us, whatever you want to call it (ego, self, desires), it works against "what is". It works against reality.

What is reality? God is love. God is in us. The love we need is present in us. This is pretty simple. Why is it not obvious then? Because we don't believe it. We believe we are our history or our yet unrealized future. We believe our thinking. We believe our ego mind talking inside us. And it is talking all the time. Our mind has the ability to convince us of anything, whether real or unreal because survival is deemed necessary. Mind activity can hide who we really are. We are not our thoughts. Our ego thinks we are and has spent our whole life trying to convince us that it is what matters. We have covered our true selves over with blankets of cultural, societal, and religious thinking. We think we are these things that have influenced us. We are not. We are uniquely created spirit beings that live to show the light of the creation.

It might take some time to figure out what the ego claims as its possession. A daily reckoning of what is real and what is not begins to expose our true heart where love and light reside. This is God in us. This is our true self. I don't know how it happens but it does. This life/light begins to change the heart of judgment and condemnation into a heart of love. An aliveness comes. Rest takes work's place and the yoke becomes easy. By simply bringing awareness (recognition) to what does not belong, transformation commences. Simply observe the problem. We are not needed in the fixing of it other than observation. The shining of light accomplishes the fixing. I don't know how it works. I just know that it does.

reality

C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed wrote about the shattering of his faith after his wife's death:

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. (p. 22)

"Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. (p.23)

" ...if my house was a house of cards, the sooner it was knocked down the better. And only suffering could do it. (p.38)

"God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. (p. 52)

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? And most are 'offended' by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. (p.66)

"All reality is iconoclastic." (p.66)

If decision is needed between reality or a concept developed in the mind, take reality. Life is found in reality. Truth is found in reality.

no stone will be left, part 2

Continuing on from part 1 where I've quoted Anthony de Mello in his book The Way To Love. Most of us despise others judging us, yet we don't see that we too judge either intentionally or more likely out of habit, not realizing that that's what we've done. This writing is helping me to understand how this process happens and that there is a solution to judgmentalism.

"Let us examine these layers one at a time. First, your beliefs. If you experience life as a communist or a capitalist, as a Moslem or a Jew, you are experiencing life in a prejudiced, slanted way; there is a barrier, a layer of fat between Reality and you because you no longer see and touch it directly.

"Second layer: your ideas. If you hold on to an idea about someone, then you no longer love that person but your idea of that person. You see him/her do or say something or behave in a certain kind of way and you slap a label on: She is silly or he is dull or he is cruel or she is very sweet, etc. So now you have a screen, a layer of fat between you and this person because when you next meet him/her you will experience them in terms of that idea of yours even though they have changed. Observe how you have done this with almost everyone you know.

"Third layer: habits. A habit is essential to human living. How would we ever walk or speak or drive a car unless we relied on habit? But habits must be limited to things mechanical -- not to love or to sight. Who wants to be loved from habit? Have you ever sat on a seashore spellbound by the majesty and the mystery of the ocean? A fisherman looks at the ocean daily and does not notice its grandeur. Why? The dulling effect of a layer of fat called habit. You have formed fixed ideas of all the things you see and, when encountering them, it is not them you see in all their changing freshness, but the same dull, thick, boring idea acquired through habit. And that is how you deal with people and with things, how you relate to them: no freshness, no newness, but the same dull, routine (boring) ways produced by habit. You are incapable of looking in other, more creative ways, for, having developed a habit for dealing with the world and with people, you can put your mind on automatic pilot and go to sleep."

"Fourth layer: your attachments and your fears. This layer is the easiest to see. Put a thick coating of attachment, of fear (and therefore dislike) on to anything or anyone -- in that very instant you cease to see that person or thing as it really is. Just recall some of the persons you dislike or fear or are attached to and you will see how true this is.

"Do you see now how you are in a prison created by the beliefs and traditions of your society and culture and by the ideas, prejudices, attachments and fears of your past experiences? Wall upon wall surrounds your prison cell so that it seems almost impossible that you will ever break out and make contact with the richness of life and love and freedom that lies beyond your prison fortress. And yet the task, far from being impossible, is actually easy and delightful.

"What can you do to break out?"

Continue to part 3

no stone will be left, part 1

Recently I've been thoroughly enmeshed in the audio and writings of a man named Anthony de Mello. I heard about his work on one of the blogs that I follow. He was a Jesuit priest from India who died in 1987. His work was based in India and later in life he discovered some keys to living life that he wrote about. I’m posting, over the next several days, a writing where he gives ideas on how change occurs in our lives if we cooperate and understand the dynamics of our basic makeup. This comes from his book entitled The Way To Love.

"When his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple, he answered them “you see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” Matthew 24:1-2

"Think of a flabby person covered with layers of fat. That is what your mind can become -- flabby, covered with layers of fat till it becomes too dull and lazy to think, to observe, to explore, to discover. It loses its alertness, its aliveness, its flexibility and goes to sleep. Look around you and you will see almost everyone with minds like that: dull, asleep, protected by layers of fat, not wanting to be disturbed or questioned into wakefulness.

"What are these layers? They are every belief that you hold, every conclusion you have reached about persons and things, every habit and every attachment. In your formative years you should have been helped to scrape off these layers and liberate your mind. Instead your society, your culture, which put these layers on your mind in the first place, has educated you to not even notice them, to go to sleep and let other people -- the experts: your politicians, your cultural and religious leaders -- do your thinking for you. So you are weighed down with the load of unexamined, unquestioned authority and tradition."

Continue to part 2

A Quiz

Here's a personality quiz I took over at Belief-O-Matic Quiz answering questions about my religious and spiritual beliefs. Mind you, it's highly unscientific, only 20 questions, and some didn't have the answers written the way I would have answered. The results seem accurate enough if you paint with a broad brush, although I find quite distasteful the idea of labeling and stereotyping. I'm the one who decided to take the quiz though, figure that.

Something that drew my attention on this was how much similarity there must be between beliefs. How could I be 64% Buddhist? Perhaps we're not that different from one another in some of the core ideas.

1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Orthodox Quaker (98%)
3. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (87%)
4. Liberal Quakers (82%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (79%)
6. Seventh Day Adventist (68%)
7. Eastern Orthodox (68%)
8. Roman Catholic (68%)
9. New Thought (65%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (64%)
11. Theravada Buddhism (64%)
12. Reform Judaism (64%)
13. Hinduism (63%)
14. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (62%)
15. Baha'i Faith (59%)
16. Orthodox Judaism (59%)
17. New Age (56%)
18. Scientology (54%)
19. Sikhism (52%)
20. Islam (51%)
21. Taoism (51%)
22. Neo-Pagan (49%)
23. Nontheist (45%)
24. Jainism (44%)
25. Secular Humanism (44%)
26. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (29%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (19%)