Recently, I read an Op Ed column in the Sunday NY Times, “Between Godliness and Godlessness” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-between-godliness-and-godlessness.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=0). It’s about a renowned atheist author, Sam Harris, who describes a moment of transcendent peace while walking in Jesus’s footsteps. The article explains that atheists, agnostics, and spiritual-but-not-religious people also experience moments of connection to ideas bigger than themselves, but lack the language and connection to express it within the normal “church” options of American culture. Columnist Frank Bruni asks, “The question is this: Which comes first, the faith or the feeling of transcendence? Is the former really a rococo attempt to explain and romanticize the latter, rather than a bridge to it? Mightn’t religion be piggybacking on the pre-existing condition of spirituality, a lexicon grafted onto it, a narrative constructed to explain states of consciousness that have nothing to do with any covenant or creed?” To which, I respectfully reply, “Uh YEAH it is!”
My worldview of a Christian religion, my commitment to a journey with Christ, the organization of my life around the Episcopal church as a cornerstone, is all a result of moments of transcendence and the pre-existing condition of spirituality. My religion is most certainly a lexicon, a context, a language, with which I can express the divine. I mean, what else is it? Excuse me as I sound like a 7th grader, but, “Duh!” I'm sorry to sound dismissive of the argument, but I can’t see religion any other way. Remember the Taoist idea that religion is a finger pointing to the moon, or a boat that can carry us toward enlightenment? It is neither the moon, nor the distant shore; it is the direction and the vehicle.
This is why I genuinely like atheists, agnostics, humanists, pagans, Unitarian Universalists, and all other people who cannot quite find their niche in the buffet of organized religion. This is why I honor the seeker in all of us. My relationship with God is not a product of my religious upbringing; as a matter of fact, I could only come home to a church after a journey through agnosticism, atheism, Buddhism, and Unitarian Universalism. My relationship with “the great love in which we live and move and have our being” (as my beloved UU pastor used to say) is because of the moments of transcendent peace I experienced, on the back of my horse, after the death of my father, in my classroom at work, or while sobbing in despair on the tile of my bathroom floor. Something incredible happened to me in those moments of my life, which spurred me on to a search for truth and meaning. Eventually, I found a connection to truth, in Christian theology, the Eucharist, and the liturgy of the Episcopal church.
Unitarian Universalists have a saying, “One Light; Many Windows” to describe their expansive faith. They explain that the light of God (or no God, if you’re an atheist or a humanist) shines through the windows of our worldview, like the windows of a great cathedral, which lights the multitudes within it. Bible scholar, Marcus Borg, calls religion a lens; a lens through which we view the world, through which we construct meaning. For me, the teachings of Christ and his church are my lens, but not everyone has the same prescription.
It makes me smile when my atheist friends make rational arguments against the existence of God. They don’t see things through the same lens. As a matter of fact, their rational arguments sometimes refine and temper my own faith. Atheists often argue against a God I don’t believe in anyway--a God of judgment and wrath, a God that is an old man up in the sky, a God who manipulates our every move with dispassion and calculation. That is not my God. I don’t need to prove to anyone that my God exists. As a matter of fact, I could be absolutely wrong--there may have been no divine incarnation in Jesus Christ, no resurrection, no ascension, no promise of coming in glory. At the end of the day, I could live this life and find out, well, nothing in the end. If at the end of the day, all the peace and love I’ve found at church is merely a product of my own brain’s endorphins, rather than the grace of God, I will be no worse off than before. That possibility of being wrong doesn’t keep me out of church. I don’t go to church for proof, for validation, or for an eternal reward. Right or wrong, I have a strong faith in a God of Love--a faith of questions, of experience, and of longing. I go to church because that’s where I find my lens with which to view the world, my language to discuss the divine, my connection to the transcendent mystery that creeps up and taps my shoulder at random moments in my life.
So, yes, Mr. Bruni, my feeling came before my faith; without the feeling of transcendent peace and connection, there would be no faith at all, no need for doctrine, no need for liturgy, no need for any organization at all. My religion is “piggybacking on the pre-existing condition of spirituality, a lexicon grafted onto it, a narrative constructed to explain states of consciousness that have nothing to do with any covenant or creed”. Isn’t everyone’s?
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