The kingdom of heaven

The church I grew up in doesn’t require a literal reading of the bible. I think I must have learned to take interpretive license from a young age. I remember only a little confusion about the creation story at some point, but when I discovered the verse “To God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.” I was able to fit everything together without too much science/religion conflict.

The verses I liked best were of the mystic/poetic variety. I think there were times when I didn’t understand a verse “correctly” but I was using them to get in touch with myself, still buried under my community’s expectations. One favorite is this:

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of heaven would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of heaven does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of heaven is within you.”

First of all, many people think the translation should be “among you” and that Jesus was saying that he was among them already. Whatever.

I wanted to believe that maybe all this theology about a Big Guy in the Sky who was smiting people left and right in the old testament, sending his son in the new, and totally silent in modern times, was bunk. I had a hard time believing God was going to do magic when he made a new kingdom, because I hadn’t seen any magic yet. But if the kingdom of heaven were really about some sort of inner destination, then I didn’t have to believe in magic. I just had to look inward and see this mystic connection.

In the end, looking inward was what allowed me to find myself and leave the pain and cognitive dissonance of religion behind. That’s why I love Luke 17:21, because I still believe the kingdom of heaven is within.

Christians, why are you persecuting me?

If I call myself “atheist” today, it is only as a resistance against the people who ask me to pigeonhole my religious beliefs so they can judge me accordingly. It is only until the day when someone who asks whether I believe really cares about what I believe and how I believe it, not so that they can change me, but so that we can share a connection, so that we can be open to each other’s beliefs, “two solitudes greeting and bordering each other” as Rilke would say. And in that moment of connection, if something moves me, then that is something that is real.

If you are a proselytizing Christian, ask yourself, are your beliefs a fortress? Do you attack another’s beliefs from behind your high walls? This is why people resist, or, if they capitulate it is only an illusion, a heart that is captured but not swayed. If you don’t make yourself vulnerable in this moment of connection, I don’t believe you can ever really touch someone.

Rose

I think many Dawkinsians haven’t seen something like this.

You believe in the ten commandments don’t you?

Should I hurt someone with my beliefs?

Christianity? No thanks, the law is written on my heart

It doesn’t take long for any thoughtful Christian to wonder “What happens to those people who never hear the word of God?”

Yes, truly, with all my heart

Later, I cried because I couldn’t overcome my lust.

The source of all intolerance

I’m pretty sure Dobson hates homosexuality more than he loves god.

First memory of god

“Is Pastor Bill God?”

Rilke

Rilke’s words on religion resonate in me more than any others at this point in my life, and they also inspired the title of this blog. From the “Letters”

- What justifies you then, if he never existed, in missing him like someone who has passed away and in searching for him as though he were lost?
Why don’t you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity, the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? Don’t you see how everything that happens is again and again a beginning, and couldn’t it be His beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful?

I enjoy this lovely twist on pantheism. I always wonder why people think they have so much knowledge of what god is. Or, do atheists know what it is they’re not believing in? Yes, they do, they know that they don’t believe in the utterly facile, narrow conception of god espoused by most religious people. That straw man god certainly doesn’t exist. But god is just a word, and it connects with something, some possibilities of existence that I think we are better off not divorcing ourselves from. That is, I think, what Rilke has captured here.

In the beginning

My relationship with religion began very early, and has undoubtedly been one of the biggest factors in making me who I am today. Even now, when I’ve managed to escape my upbringing with my identity intact, those threads still tie me, and I can’t just forget about religion altogether. Looking around the world, we can see people acting in the name of god for great good or for great evil. And now that atheism has found a new voice, I find myself reflecting on a daily basis about what my stance towards religion should be. It’s personal, it’s political, it’s philosophical, and it’s not going away. So I want to explore my experiences with religion, to find the right questions and to find honest answers.

I don’t care about the existence of gods. I care about what belief means to me, my family, and society.