Hope for Tomorrow

The religious landscape is changing once again.  We are experiencing what many are seeing as a paradigm shift in human spiritual consciousness.  Despite national boundaries, disparate cultures and religious expression, we no longer live in a partitioned world where one can pursue a totally independent existence, unconcerned about the circumstances of those in distant lands, totally reliant on our own resourcefulness and resources.  Our living is dependent on interdependence on a global scale. 

Dogmatic religion is dying.  It’s a slow death because of the holding power of belief systems engendered and cultivated from childhood.  At least two factors are dominant in this death watch.  One is the breaking down of cultural and religious barriers as people are exposed to new ideas that call into question deeply ingrained beliefs and foster a spirit of inquiry not tolerated in earlier days.  Another is the continuing loss of credibility and influence of religious institutions due to their rampant hypocrisy and perceived irrelevance within the cultures that spawned them.  And there are others.

Many churches have lost touch with their essential reason for being, i.e., for United Methodists “to make disciples for the transformation of the world,” originally perceived as a mission to evangelize the world for Christ.  We have become content to gather for fellowship, worship, and a semblance of spiritual growth in the faith.  We are spiritual children resisting and avoiding maturation.  We still believe that God’s greatest desire, if not His plan, is that all of humanity ascribe to traditional Christian beliefs – that all are in bondage to sin, that our only salvation is acceptance of the proposition that Jesus, God in human form, died to cleanse us from sin and make possible our eternal habitation in the presence of God.  All of this, while accepting that life’s anomalies (bad things happening to good people) are somehow part of the plan of a gracious, forgiving, and loving supernatural being we call God.

One asks, how did we come to be this way, and why?  One reason might be that we humans, particularly those who experience ongoing suffering and oppression, are pre-disposed to invent religious systems that have a strong “hope” component, one that can only be realized in an afterlife of serenity and freedom from suffering, with an alternative destination for those who caused their suffering.  Another, that we are easily led by those whose strength of personality and rhetoric are convincing and supportive of our own thinking (or lack of).  Another, that we find tradition more persuasive than independent thought.  Another, that the comfort and security of community acceptance is preferable to its alternative.  Another, that we find religion a useful prop for our enmity toward others and our justification of their destruction.  Another, that disparities in human social, economic, and political circumstances can legitimately be attributed to a willful God created in our image (yes, I meant that).

I’d propose that until we are able to conceptualize God in something other than anthropomorphic terms, rewarding with one hand while punishing with the other, sitting in righteous judgment on a fateful day for all humanity, we are destined for a spiritual oblivion. I choose to envision a creative intelligence (I call “God” since I was taught to), the source and essence of all that is.  Pure humanism, some will insist; Buddhist theology.  I believe Jesus was a humanist in the best sense of the word.  His teachings and model make sense to me.  If they didn’t, I wouldn’t be his follower.  Thankfully, I was taught to know him.  And I have chosen to seek to know others of like mind and character.  Theirs is a common message of justice, equity, and compassion for all of the human family.  For me, the “hope” is that theirs will eventually be the dominant voice.