Why I am an agnostic now
Apr. 10th, 2007 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greybetaSo, recently I’ve changed my religious views on my facebook to “Agnostic.” Dictionary.com defines an agnostic as:
1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
To put it more plainly, I believe in God but I simply cannot acknowledge that Jesus is the only way to know him because I don't believe knowing God is exclusive to Christianity.
Then there must be a question that arises. Why, if I believed in Christianity before, would I be willing to switch to agnosticism now?
Well, it has to do with my time off. I meditated and I realized something heinous about myself. I was one of those people who had faith that the good Lord would take care of anything and everything in my life. All I had to do is sit and wait.
But the more I thought about it, the more irrational it seemed to me. I mean, I’d always wanted to study history but my parents wanted me to be a doctor. Even when I did switch I could never feel their full support. It seemed to me that if I fully pursued my wishes to teach history, I’d fail to meet their expectations. But if I went back to being a doctor, I’d fail at meeting my own expectations.
This is what you call a vicious circle. Or, as one of my electrical engineering professors said, it’s a circuit that just keeps the room warm (before it burns out).
The rational play for me is to resolve this cognitive dissonance. But, to do that, I would have to do the one thing that I thought I would never do. And that would be to become an apostate of something I held very dear.
I had to renounce my faith.
If I came back to Christianity now, I would return to my former state. If I am to quit blaming God for everything that goes wrong in my life, then I have to put that responsibility on myself.
Now, I know many of those who I worked in ministry with might say that is not much different from their faith. Fair enough.
But then if you put a gun to my head and asked me if I believed that claiming Jesus Christ was the Son of God and the only way to heaven, I would say no. I would deny the exclusivity of Christianity (or any religion for that matter).
But…Jesus died for our sins, didn’t he? We’re all the children of God. We can’t store up so many good deeds and commit crimes to balance the ledger. Salvation is a gift, it can only be given, not earned.
And yet, I think about all the terrible things that happen in the world today. God does a lot of good in this world, and yet he allows a lot of evil.
And in that lies the fearful power of Jesus. I mean, my goodness, if people didn’t believe in Jesus then how could so many good things happen in the first place?
Then again, plenty of other religions allow people to cope with reality. What makes Christianity different?
Jesus died for you.
That’s the first thing you have to admit if you are going to be a true believer in Christ. My problem is that I had it backwards.
In other words, Jesus already died for me. I still had to die for him.
In the Baptist Church, believer’s baptism signifies one’s death to be reborn. I had it wrong. I thought that one baptized one’s self to die, but the truth is that you’re already dead before you become baptized.
The belief is that “once saved, always saved.” Then the answer in my case was that I was never saved in the first place. Rather, I claimed to be and followed the outward forms of being saved, but inwardly I had no such intention.
That’s what Christians talk about what they talk about denying themselves. No, they’re not going to starve themselves to death. It’s a denial of who they are, and it’s not a one time thing. Nope, they’ve got pick up their cross and carry it daily.
Or to sum it up more tidily, the exclusive nature of Christianity is irrational to me. I remember Jesus saying that one should be cold or hot because he would spit out the lukewarm people first.
If I am to be a true believer, I can’t just believe in the parts of Christianity that make sense to me. I also have to believe in the parts that make little sense to me.
In that case, the rational thing to do is to reject it in its entirety.
Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that I’m a rather irrational person.
1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
To put it more plainly, I believe in God but I simply cannot acknowledge that Jesus is the only way to know him because I don't believe knowing God is exclusive to Christianity.
Then there must be a question that arises. Why, if I believed in Christianity before, would I be willing to switch to agnosticism now?
Well, it has to do with my time off. I meditated and I realized something heinous about myself. I was one of those people who had faith that the good Lord would take care of anything and everything in my life. All I had to do is sit and wait.
But the more I thought about it, the more irrational it seemed to me. I mean, I’d always wanted to study history but my parents wanted me to be a doctor. Even when I did switch I could never feel their full support. It seemed to me that if I fully pursued my wishes to teach history, I’d fail to meet their expectations. But if I went back to being a doctor, I’d fail at meeting my own expectations.
This is what you call a vicious circle. Or, as one of my electrical engineering professors said, it’s a circuit that just keeps the room warm (before it burns out).
The rational play for me is to resolve this cognitive dissonance. But, to do that, I would have to do the one thing that I thought I would never do. And that would be to become an apostate of something I held very dear.
I had to renounce my faith.
If I came back to Christianity now, I would return to my former state. If I am to quit blaming God for everything that goes wrong in my life, then I have to put that responsibility on myself.
Now, I know many of those who I worked in ministry with might say that is not much different from their faith. Fair enough.
But then if you put a gun to my head and asked me if I believed that claiming Jesus Christ was the Son of God and the only way to heaven, I would say no. I would deny the exclusivity of Christianity (or any religion for that matter).
But…Jesus died for our sins, didn’t he? We’re all the children of God. We can’t store up so many good deeds and commit crimes to balance the ledger. Salvation is a gift, it can only be given, not earned.
And yet, I think about all the terrible things that happen in the world today. God does a lot of good in this world, and yet he allows a lot of evil.
And in that lies the fearful power of Jesus. I mean, my goodness, if people didn’t believe in Jesus then how could so many good things happen in the first place?
Then again, plenty of other religions allow people to cope with reality. What makes Christianity different?
Jesus died for you.
That’s the first thing you have to admit if you are going to be a true believer in Christ. My problem is that I had it backwards.
In other words, Jesus already died for me. I still had to die for him.
In the Baptist Church, believer’s baptism signifies one’s death to be reborn. I had it wrong. I thought that one baptized one’s self to die, but the truth is that you’re already dead before you become baptized.
The belief is that “once saved, always saved.” Then the answer in my case was that I was never saved in the first place. Rather, I claimed to be and followed the outward forms of being saved, but inwardly I had no such intention.
That’s what Christians talk about what they talk about denying themselves. No, they’re not going to starve themselves to death. It’s a denial of who they are, and it’s not a one time thing. Nope, they’ve got pick up their cross and carry it daily.
Or to sum it up more tidily, the exclusive nature of Christianity is irrational to me. I remember Jesus saying that one should be cold or hot because he would spit out the lukewarm people first.
If I am to be a true believer, I can’t just believe in the parts of Christianity that make sense to me. I also have to believe in the parts that make little sense to me.
In that case, the rational thing to do is to reject it in its entirety.
Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that I’m a rather irrational person.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 02:16 am (UTC)There's nothing wrong with being an agnostic, or a deist, or even a fundamentalist Christian or an athiest. (Well -- unless you're using your beliefs as an excuse to hurt other people, but I know that's not who you are.) You have to follow where your heart leads, follow your bliss as Campbell said. I think that's the only path to truth. I can't imagine finding my personal truth on another person's path. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 03:21 pm (UTC)Deism is what the founding fathers, for the most part, believed. It's believing in God, but not in God intervening on earth. The way my father described it to me when he was teaching me about religions is that they believe that the universe is a great and wonderful machine, like a beautiful, complicated clock, but that machine had to be designed and started by SOMETHING, and that something is God. However, Deists also believe that after getting the ball rolling, God stopped dabbling and interfering.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-11 04:45 pm (UTC)Agnostic is literally "A" (no) - "gnostic" (spiritual knowledge). I have no clue. None at all.
There are more hardline levels of agnosticism that go as far as to say that human knowledge of the beyond is impossible, and I don't go that far. It has been argued that someone who believes in a faith but doesn't KNOW that it's true in the strictest sense is also agnostic, but I think that corrupts the general understanding of the word, since faith, by nature, is a matter of belief rather than knowledge.
I do have ideas in terms of what doesn't really make sense to me, but even then, I recognize that I've got a pretty narrow viewpoint and the truth isn't something that's necessarily going to make sense. However, I'm not comfortable accepting any one faith as a postulate.
Does that make any sense? (Sorry, high on allergy medication and lack of sleep.)
BTW, try looking up Deism and Agnosticism on Wikipedia. I seem to remember that they have some very good articles on theology/philosophy.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 05:39 am (UTC)