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by guest blogger Mark Derewicz

Every religious tradition on the planet can be broken down to its three main parts. Each one has a religion of God, a faith of God, and a Cause of God.

The religion part is simple. It’s a series of practices and beliefs. Muslims pray five times a day; they fast one month out of the year; they go to mosque every Friday. And they believe Muhammad was given a message straight from God. He recited the message, which was recorded in a book.

Same drill for Christians–pray, go to church, Christ is the Son of God who was born of a virgin, died on the cross, and was resurrected from the dead. Catholics and Baptists and Methodists, etc, have unique practices and doctrines. People organize around these practices and beliefs. If these practices and beliefs are kept private and used only as a means to a personal end, there would be no argument. Unfortunately, a lot of people let their personal beliefs run rampant over their egos. They start believing, “If I’m right, then they are wrong. And if they are wrong, we must do something about that.” Such simple thinking has inspired wars and terrorism and severely misguided souls protesting funerals.

The faith of God is nearly as simple, but not quite.

Every religion is composed of a bunch of principles. Christians find these principles in the gospels. Love thy neighbor, turn the other check, forgive people, have compassion, have faith, feed the poor, etc. If you would read the Quran or the Hebrew Bible or the Baha’i Writings or the Bhagavad Gita or the sutras and other books of Buddhism, then you’d see that they have very similar–often identical–spiritual principles. All these compose the Faith of God.

When religious people from different faith traditions gather for some greater purpose, you see the best of religion. I’m thinking of the interfaith gatherings that sprouted up after the attacks of 9/11. Dogma took a back seat to the spiritual principles inherent in each faith. People prioritized the eternal spiritual teachings of their faiths over the temporal teachings best left in their historical contexts. (If you were being chased from your hometown and across the Arabian desert by idol worshipers known to bury alive their newborn baby girls, then the Quranic verse, “kill the infidels wherever you find them,” would make perfect sense to you. But that verse has to be left in it’s historical context. Same with the Bible verses, such as the one where Jesus said he did not come to bring peace; he came to bring a sword. You can look it up.)

And that brings me to the Cause of God. The religious leaders who gathered after 9/11 did so for the sake of unity in the face of a crisis. They sought to create unity while the terrorists were sewing the seeds of division.

Unity, in a word, is the Cause of God.  Who am I to say this? I’m a reader of history, and a kind of lazy one at that.

Think of who rallied to Christ’s side, the downtrodden and marginalized Jews who may not have lived their lives to the letter of Jewish law, as stipulated by the Sadducees or Pharisees, but they loved Moses, the prophets, and God. Jesus spoke to their hearts. And they loved his message–the meek shall inherit the Earth!? Right on, Son of Man!

Greeks and Romans and Arabs and Turks and Kurds and others were also attracted to this message. And they listened. And they watched. And they saw Jesus do something amazing for that time. He stressed the deed of the Good Samaritan. All the good men, clergy even, passed up a chance to help an ailing man on the side of the road. All passed him by. But the Samaritan helped the man, and Jesus dubbed him the Good Samaritan.

But history shows that Samaritans were a loathed people. Jesus turned that notion on its head. He said that the traditional views of Samaritans  didn’t matter; the good deed mattered. In the course of decades and centuries after Jesus, His message attracted disparate peoples from all sorts of cultures into one faith and one religion. This is how the greater cause of Christ was unity.

It is incredibly unfortunate that his spiritual message has been so thoroughly corrupted. Too many, often loud, believers prioritize practices, dogma, and tradition over spirituality. Christendom splintered into a thousand pieces. And now many sects hate each other. What an ironic, horrible shame.

And lest you think I’m picking on Christians, Muhammed united warring Arab tribes and actually set up a constitution to maintain unity. He called Jews and Christians People of the Book and said they needed to be protected and not forced to convert. Then, mere days after His Muhammed’s death, the truth of this cause was corrupted by lesser men. They prioritized cultural norms and dogma and belief ahead of spirituality and unity. Islam, too, splintered into a thousand pieces, the two main groups–Shi’a and Sunni have been at some form of war for more than one thousand years. Yet, in Islam’s earliest days, when Muhammed had a chance to take vengeance upon the woman who tortured and killed a member of his very own family, Muhammed pardoned her. He forgave her.

What a horrific irony that any portion of Islam has become intolerant to the point of killing innocent people via terrorism.

To me, the greater purpose of religion today must be to organize along the spiritual principles inherent in all faith traditions in order to inspire us all to take up the ancient call of unity.

It seems all too obvious to me that peace and security will simply never be fully attained until unity is firmly established. This seems incredibly obvious. Unity first. peace second.

Okay. I admit it was easy to write that last paragraph. How could such a lofty–nay, idealistic–notion ever be achieved in reality?

Oh, I have a few ideas . . .

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Mark and Offspring

Today,  the third in guest blogger Mark Derewicz’s Organized Religion trilogy—originally posted on Mark Derewicz’s Weblog.

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There were only five protesters. Five. Five out of more than two billion Christians in the world. Five people who wanted media coverage for their beliefs that God hates Elizabeth Edwards.

Five people. They were from a tiny church in Kansas whose leader has called for his flock to protest funerals, especially those of soldiers.

Soldiers, you see, dedicate their lives to the defense of a country that tolerates gay people. And Elizabeth Edwards wanted to give rights to homosexuals. I guess the logic is that the country and world are going to hell in a hand basket because of heathens, unbelievers, and blasphemers when in reality the world is going to hell because too many humans, especially our leaders, refuse to see the greater purpose of religion and life itself.

According to their actions, the Westboro folks simply don’t read the gospels.

There’s a button on the church’s website labeled “God’s Hatred in the Bible.” I clicked on it, and there was a list of eighteen verses, all but one of them were from the Old Testament—Psalms, Leviticus, Proverbs, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Hosea, Malachi, Zechariah, and Lamentations. And the lone New Testament verse was from Romans 9:13, in which Paul quoted the Hebrew Bible.

Do you see it? The elephant in the room? I’ll give you a hint—the elephant looks like a prophet . . . who wore sandals and fed the poor.

The Westboro Five said they were doing God’s work. The church says they are Christians. Yet, there are no Jesus quotes on the church’s website list of hate. Probably because Jesus never said a word about homosexuality, not according to the Bible. And Jesus never said anything good about hate. He did say an awful lot about love and compassion and forgiveness. In fact, the only time Jesus showed anger—not hate mind you—was in the Gospel of Mark. And why was he upset? Because of the hardness of the people’s hearts.

So, really, prioritization is the underlying fault of these misguided people from Topeka. They think they are bringing attention to an issue that is killing America. But that wasn’t the sort of “bringing to awareness” that Christ did. He brought spirituality to the forefront of people’s consciousness. He tried so very hard to get people to see reality with their inner eyes—their hearts—with love and compassion. When he saw people judging others, he told them to take care of the log in their own eyes. He comforted people. He inspired the downtrodden. He healed the sick and aided the poor. Simply put, he defended the defenseless.

And so it brought great joy to my heart to see hundreds of people stand opposite those five protesters to defend Elizabeth Edwards, who cannot defend herself anymore. Good Christians, the lot of them, even if some of them say they don’t believe in God. To me, these people were saying, “Westboro might be organized, but they’re not a religion. Not a religion of God. They are far from God; they are far from what Christ taught.”

To me, the counter-protest was symbolic for what right-thinking people must do more of. Prioritize the spiritual teachings over the mere facts of belief. Pick up this cross and defend the defenseless. In this, we would see the true godliness of people no matter their religion. In this, we would see Christ in the world again.

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Mark and Offspring

Today,  the second in a series by guest blogger Mark Derewicz originally posted on Mark Derewicz’s Weblog.

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Is it okay for people to organize around a delusion?

Dawkins

I imagine this would be renowned atheist Richard Dawkins’ first thought upon reading my previous post defending organized religion. So let’s just take on the concept of God directly.

Speaking in literal terms for just a moment. God doesn’t act like a person or by the conventions we’ve set up as humans. God is not a thing that can be quantified in any scientific way. And God doesn’t act by any measure we humans can calculate. This should not be news to anyone who’s read the New Testament, in which Jesus says: “God is a spirit and must be worshiped in spirit.”

If the figure who inspired an entire religion says God is a spirit, and a spirit can’t really be defined in any literal terms, then to me the entire question of the existence of God is kind of silly and beside the point. How exactly do we prove the existence of a spirit?

One way, I think, would be to consider holy scriptures as collections of metaphors and analogies that speak to the heart and not the head. Jesus spoke metaphorically about who he was–I’ll address that some other time–and he spoke metaphorically about God, whom he also called, “Father.”

Think about that for a moment. In my son’s eyes I’m this source of unlimited knowledge. (Scary, I know.) I tell him that Humboldt squid live deep in the Gulf of California and swim closer to the surface to feed at dusk, and then my son reflects this knowledge back into the world though his play. More than knowledge, it would be good if I exhibited virtues and attributes so that my boy could mirror those back, too. (But what am I, some sort of prophet?!)

An adult’s relationship to God is similar. The knowledge of the living universe–that is, God–is so vast that we can’t possibly comprehend the essence of it. Expecting an adult to know all of what God is–to be “aware” of this existence–would be like expecting my four-year-old son to give me a treatise on the Iraq War or health care reform or even car repair and to be “aware” that such things exist. Such knowledge is beyond him. Likewise, most knowledge of the universe is beyond us. God, as a thing we can define down to its essence, is beyond us. But as we grow we are able to see patterns, become wiser, and gain nearer access to this wealth of spiritual knowledge just as my son will learn over time to understand some of the broader issues of the world. . . . . And this will have positive consequences as we act in the world.

So, God as the father is merely a metaphor. To my mind, this does not diminish the power of Christ’s message or the existence of some greater wisdom.

And that brings me back to my main point. Some atheists view religious people as a bunch of deluded sheep who  believe that Jesus performed miracles, was literally born of a virgin, and rose from the dead. Some religionists are so vehement in their beliefs that they demonize others, turning into hypocrites, and thus giving further ammunition to those who disparage religion in general. A vicious cycle, as it were.

But all that is so far beside the point. According to the Bible, never did Jesus say that his miracles were central to his cause. Never did he himself mention his birth, let alone its divine circumstances. Instead, he viewed himself secondary to his teachings. He was like a lamp. The lamp is beautiful. It’s okay to cherish it. But the sole purpose of a lamp is to shed light. That purpose must trump anything else. The purpose of Jesus was to spread spiritual teachings. Those teachings–and those of other religions–are as close to God as humans can get. We can even say that they are God. That’s where our focus should be.

If people were to organize around the spiritual teachings, which they do in many cases, then good would be poured out into the world . . . as it is much of the time.

This is the purpose of organized religion. Or at least it should be. The fact that we get it wrong, that we cling to dogma and doctrine and exclusionary thinking, only means that we’re human.

The way I see it, if we give in to radical fundamentalists, if we let them define what religion and spirituality are, or if we let the Richard Dawkins’s and Bill Maher’s of the world define the conversation, then we are doing a disservice to the truth and the purpose of our existence.

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Mark and Offspring

Beginning today, we’re bringing you a series by guest blogger Mark Derewicz that was originally posted on his weblog, which he calls Mark Derewicz’s Weblog. Mark describes himself as someone who likes to write and says that he has “lots of ideas and opinions, mostly about religion and myriad lesser and sillier things.”

Here, without further ado, is Mark Derewicz, guest blogger.

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In the past I could lash out against organized religion with such a vengeance that you’d think the Pope had sold me a defective toaster that burnt my house down.

Adam, Eve, Apple

From the get-go there’s a major problem: a woman is more or less blamed for original sin. Man’s favorite scapegoat—the wife. Skip ahead a few thousand years to the Zealots of the pre-Christ Jewish state who were keen on assassinating those who differed theologically. Then, a few hundred years after Jesus was martyred the Church simply decided on what was Canon and what was not. The four Gospels were deemed divine. So were books entitled Romans, Acts, and Revelations. But there were many that the Church simply decided to not include.

The Inquisition, the Crusades, witch hunts, the KKK, Kashmir, and most recent, Bin Laden, the Taliban, and John Hagee. Some form of organized religion spawned them all. And, I have to say, I can’t blame any Catholic who is furious at the idea of organized religion in light of certain atrocities perpetrated by priests.

And that about wraps up this post.

Oh. Wait a second. I was supposed to defend organized religion.

Right.

King

The way I see it, organized religion is like organized anything. It involves people who are less than loving, people were simply  born into a belief system, others who joined a religion to be part of a community, and of course the saints, those grand souls who are beacons of spiritual light–Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa.

Stalin

The thing is that pretty much the same thing can be said for every organized group on the planet. Think of governments. I have a problem with even the best governments. I think they are more or less political machines that involve some very good and very bad individuals. You could say that they’ve caused massive wars and millions of deaths, way more than any organized religion could lay claim to. Think of the ungodly Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge. Do we want to go without government?

I suppose the real argument against organized religion has to do with groups of people organizing around certain beliefs–say, the belief in some unprovable entity called God. And that these groups clash over these beliefs. I suppose right-thinking people say, “geez, why bother. Can’t we just go without these religions?”

I agree that it’s better to go without religion if it causes division. But religion doesn’t cause division. Believers do. For instance, two people can look at the same Bible passage and can come up with two vastly different interpretations. One can lead to hate and exclusion. The other can lead to love and unity.  When people say the Word of God is alive, they’re not kidding. It changes color depending on who looks at it.

Obi-Wan

Religion is kind of like The Force–it has a dark side and a light side. It can be used for good or for ill. I’m of the opinion that people who are antagonistic toward organized religion–again, I used to be one of them–simply ignore the spiritual power some people find in religion. Do you really think MLK would’ve had the resolve to accomplish what he did without his core beliefs found in the Word of Christ? Do you think Gandhi became steadfast out of thin air? Do you think Christ endured what he did out of some form of insanity? No. The spirit provides power.

Nugent

But I digress. Organize is what humans do in “modern” times. A lot of us seem to relish in community. We organize according the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We organize in defense of the environment. We organize to form fan clubs for our favorite rock bands.

With all these groups the problems are always the same–the members are human, and humans are imperfect.

At their worst, humans organize to form the Taliban. At their best, religionists organize to help their fellow man, to feed the hungry and cloth the poor and give money to the needy and council the grieving and inspire the downtrodden and on and on and on.

Gandhi

Religion, after all, is just the form. It is the template. It is the means to an end not the end itself. In other words, you pray and meditate and go to church and believe what you believe not because you’re supposed to but because it helps you progress as a spiritual being with the ultimate purpose of transforming society . . . slow though it be. The old Gandhian cliche is true: be the change you wish to see in the world.

When these organized religions teach hate or intolerance they should be called out. But, really, if an organized religion spreads hate or intolerance, they might be organized but they’re not religious. They’re not spiritual. They’re not of God.

I’d rather make this distinction than throw baby Jesus out with the bathwater.