I've reached a point in my healing where I am gettinng comfortable enough to tackle religious matters.
Like many, I experienced a good deal of religious abuse. Some from the inherently damaging dogmas of my childhood church. But more so in how my mentally ill parents interpretted those dogmas onto oppressive tortures of mind, body, and conscience.
Like so many, I feel that loss of faith. I might as well admit I have it. In my deeper moments, I have plaguging suspicions there isn't anything beyond this life. See for me, being so drilled in apologetics, and subsequently applying that same dilligence to my questions, I have not fallen off the wagon at the points so many do: How a good God could let this happen. How the dogmas are to protect the abusers. Even I'm fine the way I am. These all seem ignorant cop outs to me.
I'm not fine the way I am, I'm a wreck and I hurt people. That's why I'm doing this therapy!
Because bad people manipulate teachings to their advantage doesn't make them less true. They also use gravity to their advantage. Plus there are many other teachings that are protective. The abusers just choose to ignore those.
And how can I see what is good. For a long time, I thought my parents were good and I was the problem. Obviously, my sense of good and bad are no standard to follow.
So I stayed on a lot longer. I'm not off now. I'm just having trouble finding who is really driving this cart. Or if the cart is moving at all. See for me, it comes down to two possibilities. Either there is nothing, in which case this life has no meaning and I go back to the cold empty embrace of nihilism and eat the bullets it feeds me.
Or there is, in which case I don't know what or how, good, bad, indifferent. Are the buddhists right that there is no deity, only consciousness? Well this is hard to swallow since most native buddhists believe in a heaven and pray to their version of saints and gods. Though perhaps true to original writings, that atman is brahman teaching only really exists in western imports. Sorry, nice idea, but I'm not swapping one myth for another. I need facts here.
So without going through the decades of the search, I'll skip ahead and talk about where that leaves me.
Jesus. The central figure of my faith. I just can't let go of this guy. He historically existed. We know that. His teachings are widely attested. Hotly debated, yes, but well documented across ages and languages and cultures. This guy brings tears flooding to my eyes instantly. Why? Because I want that life. I want him. I want to BE him.
If I were toive my life the way he did and then die a torturous death like he did and find there was nothing else, it would not have been a waste.
While I could never endure my skin being peeled off alive rather than recant the 3 spiritual laws, I would scream from the burning stake that each lonely child is worthy of love, deserves to feel safe, and that I do in fact see them. They should boldly set about making that world a reality and militantly hope nothing that meets those primal needs in another is in vain.
And if Jesus were to knock on my door or ride over the crest on a bike (see previous posts), my reaction would be, "Oh thank God you're true!"
So for this and no other reason am I a Christian, a disciple of this man. And if he truly is one with God, as he says, I'm all in for it.
