For those who have known me long enough, you’ll know that I was raised without any particular religious traditions. I tried going to Sunday School as a young child of 7 or 8, after being called out as a “heathen” at school but received an icy reception when it was clear I was there without parents* so I bailed on that idea.
I returned to Christianity as a teen– drawn in by youth group that started and ended with prayer but included much more fun in between so the trade off felt reasonable. Then one day, when I was 17, I was moved to tears by a song about Revelations and the rapture and I knelt with the youth pastor and right there, accepted Christ. A few weeks later, I was baptized — full dunking — in front of the whole congregation.
I continued on the Christian path when I lived in England, reading the entire Old Testament start to finish and all the Gospels, paying close attention to Mark and even taking an examination on my understanding of that book. It wasn’t until some time in my undergraduate studies that my faith started to unravel. After learning how the Bible came together and was edited, translated, re-edited, re-translated, and so on, I could no longer accept it as an authority. I stopped attending services and gradually just stepped away from Christianity altogether.
However, I’ve felt from time to time a real loss of something. I’ve filled that gap with various things including drinking (when I was younger and my liver had higher tolerance), shopping (as budgets allowed, and sometimes even when they didn’t), and eating — but there was still a lack of both ceremony and community that thrives within a congregation.
At times, I find myself searching for that community and ceremony. I know that Christianity is not something I will return to, for various reasons, so I started looking elsewhere.
A few years back, I was exploring various Wiccan, Pagan, and Celtic traditions but I discovered I’m not quite as earth-focused as those communities. I like the idea of pan-theistic religions, but I am not ready to delve into the structure of Norse or Hindu traditions — that said, I love my Ganesha pendants and wear them frequently.
In my 20s, around the time I was beginning to question Christianity, a friend was exploring Buddhism. He was explaining to me some of the many different variations, including one group which only asked that followers “have faith.” That simplicity always stuck with me.
Over the years, I have found myself attracted to the basic concepts of Buddhism time and again. When I had some time and cash to buy books last fall, one that I grabbed was What Makes You Not a Buddhist. I liked the way the author approached the misconceptions about Buddhism while teaching the reader in more depth than I’d previously encountered. I’m still not finished the book but it is an excellent overview. I also stumbled across this article at Tricycle: 10 Misconceptions about Buddhism which is another good intro.
Right now, Buddhism appeals on many levels, but I’m not ready to claim any faith yet. I will continue to explore, study, read, and think about what fits my life and what aligns best with my own beliefs and understandings. It’s a personal journey and I’ve had this post in my draft folder for months, adding a bit here and there, trying to just put it into words. I’m posting it not to invite debate but rather to just try and articulate my search.
*What an opportunity this church missed! Not only to convert the child, but maybe meet and convert the parents! Even then it seemed like an ass-backwards way of thinking, but now it seems ridiculous that they might have shunned a potential new member.
Thanks for sharing. I was never really raised *religious* but I always had prayed to ancestors etc growing up. I, too, have been looking for something to lean on when I needed faith, and for me personally I came down to do just my own thing. I won’t bore you with details but ever since I started praying every day to “my things” I feel much, much better spiritually. Good luck with your journey.
I doubt very much the details would bore me! I am curious now 🙂
I think a lot of it comes down to a daily practice, however we each choose to do that.
I’ve taught Sunday school, witnessed in the Xtian faith, done the Catholic catechisms, been born again (full immersion like you), John 3: 1-9 – read the Bible in English, French, studied it in Greek and Hebrew – and there is where it fell apart. Like you, I could not reconcile the cutting and pasting, the Council of Nicea, the political machinations, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the gospels of Judas, Mary Magdelane with logic of Occam’s Razor. I’ve studied Bahai and Islam in depth, though I never performed the Shahada in the latter.
I’ve studied Zen (and other) Japanese forms of Buddhism, reading (and translating) most of the the original texts, many not available in English and therefore not available to western ‘Buddhist’ teachers. Therein lies my problem with western takes on (especially Zen) Buddhism – many well meaning authors, teachers, laypeople traipse around in the accoutrements – and yet they don’t have access to all the teachings – as if the robe, rakusu or komuso makes up for that lack of access – if it looks Buddhist, it must be the real thing, right?
Ultimately, as a scientist/archaeologist I think the religion is a comfort to many (hence its popularity) and probably an evolutionary artefact of symbolic thinking that emerged 50,000 years ago or so, but I think it leads down a dark path and probably will be designated a mental illness in the not too distant future. (The literature is starting to fill up on this account.) I don’t think it is something that our species could escape, it is probably something that we have to go through and in the end throw off, realising that with the bad, (and there is a lot of that) some good also came out of it – the comfort of ritual, community, art, literature and self-introspection.
I can be smug about it because as a species we’ve probably gained all the good that we will get out of it and it is clear that as an influence it is waning and will soon be relegated to the dustbin of human history – and that can’t come soon enough in my humble opinion.
I disagree that we’ve “gained all the good that we will get out of it”; I actually find that atheism has more than its fair share of overbearing fundamentalists with a tendency toward smugness. 😉
I’m not ready to give up finding a tradition I can follow. It’s not so much organized religion that I seek but the community of like-mindedness and the focus that comes with habits of practice. Yoga works as well as anything but I want to see if there is something that works better for me than yoga.