Have a meeting with a Lutheran priest on Wednesday for lunch. I admit being away from religion the past two months has been freeing. I very much believe in God but attributing any of it myself or any set of behaviors is freeing. The Catholic guilt is slowly subsiding. I think Ronito may have been right when he said a while ago that you don’t need religion and I should just take the training wheels off they’ve helped with and just be free.
For instance, I don’t need religion anymore to value fasting for God because it has taught me that. But I might not need it any longer.
Quotes from a PM exchange Puppy and I had. If he doesn’t want them posted I’ll delete them as requested:
In the Mormon church the only thing worse than murder is not believing in the church. A murder will still go to a type of heaven, but someone who left the church and tells people why, they don't go to any heaven. they're the only ones who go to hell. So imagine the reaction I got from my friends when I, whom many people saw as the religious scholar, the guy who knew everything about he religion, came out and said, "Yeah, it's not true." People thought I had no moral strength or lacked conviction and honesty. Others thought I was lead astray by a desire to sin. One person literally asked "So, how long have you been addicted to porn?" And others were convinced I wanted to become an immoral person, Someone asked what there was to keep me from raping and murdering. Others thought I must not love my family. To them they had equated their morality and love to the church. But none of those things were true. I don't love my wife and kids any less. And if religion was the only thing keeping me from raping and murdering, well then I was never a good person, I was just a bad person pretending to be a good one. My wife's sister even said that if it wasn't true, she wouldn't want to know, yet she is a person that often sings about the virtues of truth.
At the same time a few of the people that I knew that were Atheist were like "Good, you're getting rid of the weakness of religion. Now leave it all behind." And when I would say that I wasn't tossing out spirituality they were like "Fine what other church are you going to go to?" And when I said that I didn't really believe that other religions were much better. They couldn't grasp what I was saying and they thought I was still weak for holding on to a sense of spirituality. On the other hand my mormon friends and family thought I was immoral because I left. So I got to see both sides of the perspective. There was nothing I could tell my mormon friends to convince them that I wasn't a vile sinner for leaving, in fact, their belief in a way demanded that they view me as a sinner, how else could someone that knows everything about the religion leave? Likewise, there was nothing I could tell my atheist friends that would make them believe I wasn't weak for having some sprituality. And honestly, there are plenty of religious people that do indeed hold up to their accusations of weakness and greed. They're both sitting in very different places, both having very different views, and most people lack the ability, or the will, to put themselves in the other person's place.
Also, to show how much I value my religion. I normally wouldn't talk about this. It's something I keep to myself and it's between and God. I'd like to tell you this story if only you'll keep it to yourself.
I get tips at work. I've been low on money recently and my card has been declined. I can't eat today. There's a mother whose baby was born with a heart defect and will need to go through heart surgery at work. They're using it for a raffle for 500 dollars in Best Buy credit. You donate, you get a ticket. Instead of using my tips for myself even though I lack money for food, I've been giving the money to the mother. So far I've given about 50 dollars. I've declined not taking a single ticket because the baby having a chance at life is important. Today, I had ten dollars in tip and could have split it up and give five for the mother and five for me but the baby needs it more and I've decided to sacrifice eating in order to give the baby a chance. You could say that I'm doing this for a ticket into heaven, but I'm not - heaven is the last thing on my mind. You could say that it's about guilt, but it isn't. I'm doing it because it's right. Even before I became religious again I valued giving. I believe in that. I trust in God to provide me with nourishment, even though I am hungry. Without religion, how could I hope to make this sacrifice? This is how much I value it and how serious I am about it.
I only tell you this in the hope that you may understand.
I do and I don't understand. I understand why you feel that your religion has had input into you making such an extraordinary sacrifice. However, I firmly believe in you. I believe that had you learned to listen to yourself you would make such a sacrifice. That sacrifice was born from you, you needed to be taught to still your mind and listen to your inner self. Now, you could have learned those stories of self sacrifice and the ability to listen to your inner self from any number of places, but it came to you from the catholic faith. But to me, you always had it in you, it could have been set free by any text or example that spoke to you, you just had to give yourself permission to hear it. This is in a way everywhere in christianity as the "light of christ" now, I'm a little different in that I don't believe that it is given to "all men".
The reason that I understand is because I was just like you once. I was like "I'm mormon because the mormon church is the only church where sin means something! How else could I do all these selfless things without the church! Without it I'd be a terrible person!" It might seem counter-intuitive but that was a form of narcissism. It took me too long to learn that I was in essence saying "Look at me! I've found something you don't have! Aren't I so clever?! Also look at this amazing thing that I'm doing!!" Everything became about my acts, and my acts were ultimately about me. Likewise when I would beat myself up for sinning that too was a form of narcissism, I was saying, "I have this amazing destiny and I'm such a terrible person I'm not living up to it!" Again it was all about me. Of course it didn't help that there was a whole team of people whose job it was to feed into both forms of narcissism, But it's my failure.
To me religion is a lot of like trying to teach a young child about the moon. Take a toddler and point at the moon. They will look at your finger pointing at the moon and focus on that rather than the moon you're trying to show them. To me that's religion. God is trying to show you the incredible universe and we instead focus on the finger pointing rather than what it's pointing to. Like Elijah, god was not in the wind, or the earthquake or the fire. To me the truth about god is bigger than we can imagine and vaster than we can comprehend.
Like I said, I get why you feel as you do. Religion spoke to you and therefore you ascribe your goodness to it. I argue you were already good (religion makes good people better and bad people worse) and religion showed you it was possible. Also, I don't think you can deny that there are people that do good solely for the greed of the promised treasures in heaven. When I was mormon several of my cohorts would say that the reason they would go on missions was so they could get a wife and the harder the mission prettier the wife. So you can understand where others criticism comes from
On the other hand the message from the priest is very encouraging. Very skeptical of Lutheranism though because of Luther’s abhorrent anti semitism and I have full love and support for Jewish people and religion. I’ve never been to a Lutheran Church and wonder how it compares to Episcopalian/Anglican.
Message the priest sent (who is a woman btw):
I am back from a few days of vacation.
Thank you for sharing a bit of your journey.
"...bigotry masked as love..." is definitely present, unfortunately throughout Christ's church. This is not God's will or way, but the brokenness of humanity. I love the old saying that churches are not museums of saints but hospitals for sinners.
A loving, caring, honest faith community is what you need and long for, and what you deserve as a beloved child of God.
What is your schedule like this week? Give me a text or a call and we can work something out.
Tbh I just want to see what she has to say.
