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I am a Christian
The internet has me rather annoyed tonight with blanket Christian bashing, and I've meant to do this for a while. I'm not feeling very eloquent, but whatever.
I am a Christian, a Lutheran to be specific. I may not be as good a Christian as I'd like to be, but my faith is important to me. Moreover, this affects the way I choose to think and live my life. I hold many of my values because of (or maybe with, its hard to tell) what I think is most important in my faith. My faith is a deep part of me. I am certainly a member of organized religion, and want to make clear that fact.
This does NOT mean I interpret the Bible literally, nor that I hate or think everyone who disagrees with me is evil. Nor does it mean I'm a crazy wacko. (At least not for that.) It also doesn't mean I follow the official interpretation of every religious issue, I actually do think about things and come to my own conclusions. I'm fairly liberal and like to think myself intelligent as well.
I also agree that organized religion has done some bad things, but want to point out that governments have as well. They also do great things, both of them. One of the things about large organizations that affect millions of lives is that they are imperfect, and sometimes do things counter to their very reasons for existance. We should do our best to point out and attempt to fix these misdeeds, but to suggest the entire institution is inherently immoral is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
All of this has much more to do with some some misperceptions I've run across rather persistantly online, among some otherwise fairly intelligent discussion, than it does the people likely to read this. I also realize I've only really talked about what I believe in in a negative sense, in contrast to some stereotypes. As to what I do believe in, maybe I'll write about that soon, though it'd be a whole lot harder to put into words, and my desire to be accurate and fear of misrepresenting things I care a lot about would be much higher.
I am a Christian, a Lutheran to be specific. I may not be as good a Christian as I'd like to be, but my faith is important to me. Moreover, this affects the way I choose to think and live my life. I hold many of my values because of (or maybe with, its hard to tell) what I think is most important in my faith. My faith is a deep part of me. I am certainly a member of organized religion, and want to make clear that fact.
This does NOT mean I interpret the Bible literally, nor that I hate or think everyone who disagrees with me is evil. Nor does it mean I'm a crazy wacko. (At least not for that.) It also doesn't mean I follow the official interpretation of every religious issue, I actually do think about things and come to my own conclusions. I'm fairly liberal and like to think myself intelligent as well.
I also agree that organized religion has done some bad things, but want to point out that governments have as well. They also do great things, both of them. One of the things about large organizations that affect millions of lives is that they are imperfect, and sometimes do things counter to their very reasons for existance. We should do our best to point out and attempt to fix these misdeeds, but to suggest the entire institution is inherently immoral is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
All of this has much more to do with some some misperceptions I've run across rather persistantly online, among some otherwise fairly intelligent discussion, than it does the people likely to read this. I also realize I've only really talked about what I believe in in a negative sense, in contrast to some stereotypes. As to what I do believe in, maybe I'll write about that soon, though it'd be a whole lot harder to put into words, and my desire to be accurate and fear of misrepresenting things I care a lot about would be much higher.
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Now, this is not to say that there is no way to do organized religion right, but it is to say that human nature makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to actually construct one which isnt subject to these problems. These problems arise, not primarily in the individual believer, but in the consequence of the structure of the organized entity and the way it uses its believers.
Spiritual belief should be something arrived at through contemplation and experience. It should not be something ramrodded into a child's brain. And i dont think that contemplation+experience would create any set of uniform beliefs such that organized religion could legitimately exist, which is why religions favor and encourage (if not demand) the brainwashing of children. Further, it also means that organized religion philosophically does not believe in diversity of religious ideas - if they could compel it they would compel everyone to believe in their religion. The actions of the Catholic church, such as the inquisition and the crusades, but also the prosecution of a variety of heresies (including the heresy of owning a bible and not being a clergy member) are not unusual, they are the natural result of a near monopoly on organized religion. You'll note these religious travesties ended with the reformation, and otherwise span the entire existence of the catholic church (defined as when the bishop of Rome became the central power in the early church). To say there is a baby in this bathwater is to conjure up an entity of whose existence there is no proof.
Again, this is not to say individual beliefs are bad. I'll encourage individual belief. I'll encourage group bible study. I'll encourage fellowhsip. What i don't encourage is power structures, spiritual leaders, or anyone who can claim a monopoly on knowledge of any aspect of the 'truth'. Build an organized relion without these things, and i'll concede that there exists an organized religion whose existence i approve of.
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