What’s Wrong With Religion?

          Religion is not at all the same thing as belief in God.  Americans who describe themselves as “spiritual” do not necessarily feel drawn to a religious path.  I know many “spiritual” people who view religion with distaste and distrust.  Here are some of the reasons they give:

(1) Religion is the historical source of more murder, war and plunder than any other human institution.  (2) Religious people act as though they have The Answer.  Therefore, they think everybody who has a different view is going to hell.  (3) Religious people are constantly being exposed as hypocrites.  (4) Religion is a business.  (5) Religion is elitist.  (6) You don’t need religion to lead a righteous life.  (7) Religion is a collection of myths rewritten time and again to reflect the views of people in power.  (8) Religions that teach God’s forgiveness allow people to escape responsibility and accountability.  (9) Religion is boring.  (10) It consists of a lot of ritual and tradition that has no relevance to today.  (11) Religious groups hate each other and put each other down.  (12) If we’re all children of the same universal divinity, what use is religion?  (13) Religion is too influential in politics.  (14) Religion has too little influence in politics.  (15) Proselytizers are annoying and offensive.  (16) Religion tells lies about God.  (17) Religion is a way of distracting people from noticing the injustices taking place under our noses.  (18) Educated people and those with high intelligence don’t affiliate with one religion.  To mention a few.

Recently Brit Hume indicated that Buddhism could not redeem Tiger Woods; only Christianity could do that.  This is the sort of statement that turns so many off religion.  It indicates a superiority that makes Americans uncomfortable.  How can merely believing a certain bunch of ideas result in salvation, while good people who hold other very good ideas end up suffering the torments of eternal damnation?

I watched Brit Hume on TV and saw in his eyes, heard in his voice, the deep faith he has in his denomination of Christianity.  A little Googling explained a lot:  His faith helped him in the aftermath of his son’s suicide.  Although I do not subscribe to Hume’s misrepresentation of Buddhism, and while I am not a Christian, I see in him a kindred spirit.   He is a man who has sojourned in the belly of the whale.  This has taught him compassion.  He wished to share with Tiger Woods the wondrous resource that saved him.  I choose to look at the generous, heartfelt impulse that moved him rather than the self-righteous tone of his words.  My religious affiliation helped me get to this point, where instead of reacting with knee-jerk criticism because he violated the P.C., I can see beyond to the divine impulse in him.  In other words, religion isn’t all bad.  Depends on who is looking at it and speaking for it.

Religion is, or should be, about community.  People who share a certain heritage/value system/upbringing/spiritual yearning/social need/list of questions about meaning in life/etc. come together for a communal experience.  That experience may consist of music, meditation, service, ceremony and so forth; what is important is that it is a shared communal experience.  Physicists can explain the difference between individual and communal experience.   My understanding of physics is non-existent; however, I do know there is energy–atoms, molecules, quarks and nutrinos.  Their behavior in a community situation differs from their behavior when a prayer is made in solitude.  The communal energy is so powerful that groups attempt to tap into it during, for example, the world-wide Prayer for Peace at the new year. 

But please don’t take my word for it.  Check it out yourself.  Notice whether being part of a group has a different energy from being by yourself.  Then ask yourself what this might have to do with religion. 

Please let me know what you find out.

What’s Wrong With God Part II, Barbara Sherrod

So the question on the table is:  How can there be a good and omnipotent God when there is so much evil and suffering in the world?

I reject answers that blame the victims of evil and suffering.  For instance, I have heard that the Holocaust wiped out 12 million people because (1) they sinned, (2) they were too prominent, (3) they weren’t smart enough to leave Europe in time, and on and on. 

I also reject answers claiming that evil is God’s will because it teaches us or tests us.  The same for the answer, It only appears evil.  If we could see things from God’s point of view, we’d perceive the good behind the appearance.  I don’t believe God arranged the Holocaust to teach a lesson or test us.  Nor do I believe the Holocaust only appears evil.  It really was evil, period.

I spent a lot of years being angry at God for being, as Woody Allen put it, an “underachiever.”  In response, I tried agnosticism, atheism and indifference.  They worked for a time until it struck me that my anger–my strong sense of what constitutes justice, mercy, evil and righteousness–remained.  More important, I felt, they were divine.  That is, they came from somewhere beyond culture, tradition and history.  They were a gift.  It hit me that my anger proved that I had an innate sense of the divine and no amount of God-denial would cure it.

Having accepted the reality of what is commonly called”God,” at least in my life, I still had to figure out the evil problem, and it seemed to me that the stumbling block wasn’t the question of whether or not a just God exists but the question of whether the job description we give God is accurate. 

Some of the things I did were (1) read the Bible for what it  SHOWS about human nature and the way the world works, (2) get rid of all my preconceived notions about how God is supposed to behave, and (3) let go of my wishes that God be Superman (a rescuer), Santa Claus (a kindly granter of goods), and any other image put out there over time.  In other words, I started from scratch with God, hoping God would reveal Godself.  It was an experiment, in a way.  Instead of imposing a job description on Divinity, I’d see how God operated in the world.

Here are some things I learned:  From the Bible, Genesis to be exact, that human creatures (we are portrayed as brothers and sisters) compete and conflict.  That is part of our life’s journey.  However, reconciliation is possible.  Ishmael and Isaac come together to bury their father, Abraham.  Humbly Jacob seeks out Esau, after having stolen his birthright and blessing, and Esau welcomes him.  Joseph embraces the brothers who sold him into slavery and he is reunited with his father.   Human perfection is not possible, Genesis shows us in the many flawed characters portrayed; however, God remains loyal.  God was with Ishmael in the desert, with Jacob in spite of his deceit, with Joseph in the pit and with the slaves in Egypt.

I learned that God’s job is not to afflict us so we’ll be strong and moral, but to give us the strength and moral clarity to come through affliction.   While God did not invent, produce or allow the Holocaust, God did inspire people to rebuild from its ashes.  I reject all notions that the State of Israel would not exist but for the Holocaust.  Cause and effect are not inevitable here, in my view.  God gave the human race the free will to choose what would happen after the Holocaust.  Following the exhortation in Deuteronomy, people chose life.

It is my firm belief that one of humanity’s missions on this earthly plane is repair, on all levels, and I begin with myself.  I am awed by the number of people who are so certain they know what is best for others and do not bother to scrutinize their own lives.  You are damned to literal or figurative hell unless you vote a certain way or believe a certain way.   Not only is somebody else’s truth not necessarily my truth, but it is not possible for me to accept what I am told without examination.  Examination has led me to engage with what is truly valuable and holy.

What do you think?

What’s Wrong with God? Part I

The most popular reason why people become atheists or agnostics, including great minds like Bart Ehrman and Jon Stewart, is this question:  How can there be a just and merciful God ruling the universe when there is so much pain and suffering in the world?

Each answer to this question is a “theodicy,” which Webster’s 9th Collegiate defines as a term that came into use around 1797 and means “a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.”

The Book of Job is a theodicy that rejects popular theodicies.  The foremost being the one that says if something bad is happening to you, you must have done something wrong.  You brought it on yourself because God (1) punishes the wicked, (2) ONLY punishes the wicked (3) God is just and merciful and wouldn’t do bad stuff to you unless you deserved it, or (4) in Job’s case, God made a bet with Satan that Job would never reject him no matter what evils were inflicted.

A note here:  Satan in Hebrew means “the antagonist,” not the Devil, as in other religious traditions.  Satan is an angel who holds Socratic dialogues with God, presumably to keep things honest by presenting the negative side of the story.  Pronounced:  sah tahn.

Why do I mention the Hebrew meaning of Satan?  Because it shows that Hebrew Sc ripture portrays God as the single divine power of the universe.  The natural conclusion, then, is that evil somehow comes from God.

The Coen Brothers’ movie A SERIOUS MAN is a modern commentary on the Book of Job.  Instead of Job’s comforters, they give us rabbis of increasing status and uselessness.  None of them can tell the hero why so much misfortune is heaped on him, from his wife’s infidelity and his son’s school troubles to his job uncertainty and moral questioning.  The movie is as excellent as it is controversial.  It’s also funny as hell.

Here are some other theodicies:  (1) God set the world in motion, just as you would set a clock, and like a wound clock,  it runs on its own.  (2) Evil isn’t God’s fault; it is human kind’s.  (3) God is good but not omnipotent.  (See Kushner, WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE.)  (4) Evil has to be part of creation so that humans may have free will.  (5) God makes mistakes.  (6) Without evil we wouldn’t appreciate the good.  (7) Evil occurs when there is separation from God.  (8) Human nature is sinful and causes evil.  (9) Although humans are born good, they are susceptible to an evil inclination, which causes evil.  (10) It’s a mystery. 

What do you think?

Can This Book Get Published?

My intention has been to track my efforts to publish my now completed book, GONE MISSING.  Something always comes up to distract me, it seems.  At the moment, it’s the 2 week or so wait for my first grandchild to arrive.  I am loving the build up to her entrance on the world scene.  The closeness of our family awes me.

Another distraction is my desire to write about spiritual matters.  Much as I love the characters in my novel, I love even more what is real in my life.  Because I am not one of those people who are in your face God-wise, I am hesitant to put out there what I’ve learned.  Is it possible my spiritual journey would help anybody else?  Would I cheapen it by setting it down in language?  All these years of writing have taught me that it is nearly impossible–no, it is fully impossible, to describe the ineffable.  Good writers use metaphor to do it.  Am I up to the task?

My daughter sewed a kitty for me for my birthday.  I call her Alice. 

To all the world, I wish a happy new year.  Special blessings to those who know we don’t have to keep doing things the same way; we can do them better, and it’s not as hard as we imagine.

Fibromyalgia

I am going off sugar.  It has caused a flare up of, to use the doctors’ term, fibromyalgia.

Sixteen years ago I received a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.  Although I got a second opinion which confirmed that diagnosis, I still wonder.  My mother had mixed connective tissue disease very late in life.  My sister had an episode of rheumatic fever very early in life.  These diagnoses are, I often feel, a catch-ll name given to a set of mysterious symptoms.  What I know to be true is that there is chronic pain.

In recent years I’ve learned that the pain is too often a result of eating foods I am sensitive to, though not necessarily allergic.  The prime culprits are wheat, gluten, soy, dairy and sugar.  As a result of eating too much sugar, which allows yeast to grow to an extent that unbalances my system, I have not only pain but brain fog, low energy, lack of motivation and the blahs.  The car accident I just had may possibly have resulted from the effects of sugar on my brain.

I become addicted to sugar easily.  I eat to wind down, gear up, get quick energy, relax.  Anything that seems to accomplish so much can be too attractive to ignore, like cigarettes used to be.  It’s difficult to regard sugar as a chemical but I’m trying to think of it in that way now.

I’ve devised three strategies for coping with sugar craving, and I hope they work:  Drink lots and lots of water, because I love water.  Prepare my food with lots of herbs and spices; meals that are satisfying to the tastebuds reduce my cravings.  And when I’m tempted, go and read a good book.  Eating is sometimes a distraction from worry or boredom.  A book I can immerse myself in is ultimately more satisfying.

I am grateful to have a friend I check in with each day on our eating.  Feel free to use this blog to check in on where you are today on whatever challenges you.

 

 

When Do You Say, “The End”?

My writing partner just read the latest version of my novel.  She liked the changes.  First, I kicked out one of my heroine’s children and gave her actions to Gloria, who is now more complex.  She had further suggestions for improving the novel, so I ask the question, When do you say, “The End”?  When is a book finished?  Raymond Carver kept editing his stories, even after the New Yorker had published them.  And yet I want my story to be as tight and polished as it can be, so that I can be satisfied.  Will a reader be satisfied?  I  don’t know.

Let’s Play a Game by Barbara Sherrod

A  Woman Marries the Wrong Man by Barbara Sherrod

      A woman, played by Katherine Hepburn, marries the wrong man, played by Mike Tyson.  A woman, played by Katherine Heigel, marries the wrong man, played by Orrin Hatch, then falls in love with Mr. Right, played by George Clooney.  A woman, played by Meryl Streep, marries the wrong man, played by Humphrey Bogart, then falls in love with Mr. Right, played by Glenn Beck.  A woman, playing the fool, marries her high school sweetheart, who turns out to be an identity thief.  A woman, played out, married to her high school sweetheart, falls in love with her identity.  A married woman identifies Mr. Wrong with Mr. Right.  A married woman, loved by Mr. Wrong, realizes he’s Mr. Right after all.  A wronged married woman identifies The Right, which, it develops, is not a Mister after all.  A wronged woman identifies Mr. Wrong but marries him anyway.  A wronged woman marries Mr. Right but he soon turns into Mr. Wrong.  A woman marries the wrong man but in time he becomes Mr. Right.  A woman who cannot distinguish between Mr. Wrong and Mr. Right marries one of them, who eventually becomes Mr. Wr0ng.    Then Mr. Wrong receives a diagnosis of lung cancer.  Doctors give him 6 months to live.  What difference does it make whether the man is Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong?  He is a man, eyes squeezed tight in pain.  From under the comforter, he reaches a bony hand to her.  Taking it, she presses oh so gently, so as not to cause more pain.  As she holds it to her lips, it glistens with tears.

Do you want to play?  Start with:  A woman/man, played by —————, marries the wrong woman/’man.  I want to see where you end up, so send me your story.

 

 

 

Of Nothingness, Dreams and Destruction

The drive to and from California took us through the prairie deserts of Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.  When I say I loved the drive, I am invariably told, “But there’s nothing there.”  That is precisely what I like about it.  Nothing there–no malls, no crowds, no top volume noise, salespitches, partisan anger.   Just the two of us, driving75 mph, scarcely stopping, switching drivers at rest stops, some of which feature bison herds and picnic tables, listening to Mozart, a book or each other. 

I dreamed during the trip that I entered a museum where new Chagall paintings were supposedly on display.  When I entered the room, however, there were no Chagalls on the walls.  I asked the curator if I might view them.  He rolled out two canvasses.  One was all “Chagall blue,” with the fabled goat playing a violin and the entwined couple.  The other was all golds, browns and tans.  I realized Chagall had moved on to another way of painting.  Then I dropped mustard on it, which burned a small hole in the canvas.  Unwilling to admit what I’d done, I ran to my husband in another room.

Last night I dreamed that Alice was rubbing against my legs and purring.  It struck me that I was the canvasses in the earlier dream.  The first was my ordinary life.  In the second, I created the hole by putting her down, something totally new for me.  I’d destroyed a piece of myself along with allowing her to go, even though there was no choice and her end was not only inevitable but beautiful and merciful.  Nevertheless, it left a hole in me.  Since those dreams, my mourning feels lighter.

I want to get back to blogging about my book.  A recent reader said she stayed up two nights in a row because she couldn’t put it down.

It’s All About Me, Barbara Sherrod

I no longer focus on Alice, what she needs,

whether she’s in pain, if I have let too much time go by–

 or not enough.   All I can think of is me me me, what I’ve lost,

my empty spaces, the buddy-less me.  That is the selfish part

of grief.  The vets have all sent condolence cards, even Alice ex-vet. 

Neil says the next time he’s sick he’s going to see the vet instead

of a doctor.  And nobody has said to me, “It’s just an animal;

you’ll get another cat; she’s in a better place.”  Everybody gets

it.  They all say the right things and their hearts are in the

right place.  That does not diminish the me-ness, however. 

Only time will do that.  Some people refuse to have pets because,

they claim, they don’t want the responsibility.  I suspect they

don’t want to make the emotional investment.  Chances are

you will outlive your pet and feel the loss.  I recollect the time when

my dear friend and spiritual sister left Colorado and moved

north.  I cried and cried.  But when someone said to me, “That’s

what happens when you befriend somebody who’s here just

temporarily,” I declared, “I wouldn’t have traded that friendship

for anything.”  The blessing is we are still friends.  So to have had

Alice in my life was worth it, even the selfish bit I’m feeling now.

Missing by Barbara Sherrod

I’d grown used to hearing Alice pad up and down the stairs, meow when we came home from running errands, wait for us on the bedroom rug to finish brushing our teeth.  Empty is the word; the house feels empty.  Now I no longer think about her and relieving her of pain; I think of myself and what I’ve lost.

The reason I adopted Alice was to make amends.  I’d owned cats before but had not treated them as responsibly as I should have.  My intention was to get it right with Alice and square myself.  So she had a good life with us, and we had a good one with her.

When I visited the county Humane Society, I was looking for a calico or tortie, like my daughter’s cat.  Alice campaigned like a politician.  Snuggling, rubbing, purring, she outdid all the other animals in lobbying for adoption.  Turned out, when I got her home, that she didn’t go in for a lot of affection unless she was in the mood.  She was, in short, a genuine cat.

It’s easier to write about her than about my book, “Gone Missing.”  I have to reread it to see if it has any redeeming features.

If you are reading this and you have lost a pet or a loved one, please know that there are lots of us out there and we are with you in this time and space.