I find it hard to talk about Christianity or to identify myself as a Christian. It's because the Christian movement has become so fractured, so diverse that the terms have almost become meaningless. And the cultural reputation of Christianity -- based largely on conservative parts of the Christian movement -- mean that using these terms evoke an array of assumptions which, when it comes to me, simply don't apply.
On the whole, Christians have missed the point of their own movement. From the late 19th century onward, Christians evolved an understanding of their tradition as one which was exclusively true (that evolution started much earlier, of course) and was focused on belief. So much so that for most Christians these days, believing is the most important thing -- and that belief insists on ridiculous notions, like everything in the Bible is "literally true", despite the fact that the Bible is full of contradictions. People basically say that if you believe that everything in the Bible is factual, including all the details about Jesus' life, then you're good. You can go about leading an untransformed, unexamined life and do whatever you like because you believe the right things.
I think this is upside down.
When it comes to Christianity, or any other religious or spiritual tradition, the point is always to transform one's humanity. Everything in these traditions is aimed toward that goal. It is not about what you believe so much as about what you practice, and how those practices open you up and enlarge your soul/spirit/mind/heart.
Honestly, it doesn't matter whether you believe that everything described in the Bible happened (it didn't, but let's not get stuck there). It doesn't matter if there was such a thing as the virgin birth of Jesus. What happened 2,000 to 5,000 years ago doesn't much matter to us today. What matters is how the Christian and other religious/spiritual traditions unveil the patterns in our humanity that have not changed over the millennia, and by unveiling them, allow us to recognize and thus to transform them. The stories contained in the great religious and spiritual traditions of the world are not always factual -- but they are deeply true in terms of what they reveal about our humanity.
When it comes to the Christian tradition, there is a powerful truth behind the images of crucifixion, death, and resurrection. These patterns are present in every human life and repeat themselves over and over. The Christian tradition offers us a paradigm for accessing the deeper truth about ourselves. And so does every other tradition.
Recent events in my life have brought to me a new appreciation of how important it is to recognize the destructive patterns in our life and begin to change them. To recognize the degree to which we focus on an inauthentic, engineered self to the detriment of who we truly, authentically are.
The Christian tradition is familiar to me, I have been deeply formed in it, and so it is my tool, my vehicle for on-going personal transformation, evolution, and growth of the soul. But other traditions work in the same way, using different images and paradigms. Whatever works for someone in this work of personal evolution is what works.
And some have no need for any of these traditions at all. And that's ok. I have known amazingly self-aware, transformed, evolved people who have no religious connection or practice whatsoever. And I have known people who have been faithful to a religious tradition their whole lives and seem not to have made any progress.
It is not surprising that most Christians seem to default to emphasizing belief over the work of transformation. Because that work is hard, and almost everything about the world we live in discourages us from doing it. As Jesus said, the road to life is narrow, and few take it. I don't know that I really would have taken it myself (not that I have in any way finished the journey!) if it had not been forced upon me by circumstance.
I'm sure there will be people who read this and will be concerned by the emphasis I place on religious/spiritual practice as a vehicle for personal transformation. They will rightly say, "But what about working for justice? What about serving others?" And I would agree that working for justice, serving others, selflessness -- all of these are important. But in my experience, the outward work of service can become distorted if we are not also doing our own inner work. If we all had a deeper sense of peace in our hearts, the world around us would be a much more peaceful place. I don't think it's a question of choosing between the outward and the inward. They both ask for our attention at the same time.
The Jewish tradition has an idea called in Hebrew tikun olam, which means "repair of the world." All of us should seek to be repairers of the world to the extent that we can be in the places we find ourselves. And with that, we should also be about the work of repairing ourselves, as so much of what we do and who we are as human beings impacts the welfare of the larger world.
In closing, I will say that I think that for people, religion is optional (obviously) but spirituality is not. Everyone has a spiritual self, that place in us that seeks meaning. Whether we choose a religious tradition as a vehicle to explore that spiritual self or not, we do need to tend it. And I will also say that the transformation and evolution of our human-ness that happens when we do that must move in a particular direction if we are doing that work honestly and authentically. True spirituality and true religion always open us up, make us less certain, more curious, less judgmental, and more compassionate. If following a spiritual path leads you in any other direction, something is wrong.
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