mindingmybiz

This blog is my shared process in working towards integrating self-awareness with all other aspects of life, while on my way to becoming more authentic and whole.

Archive for the tag “Christianity”

23 Apr 2024

Empirical Spirituality: Two Things

I ventured outside “the church” about 10 years ago. Prior to that, I spent almost 20 years of adulthood in the church.

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Leaving the fold started with the ending of my marriage. In retrospect, it could have been said that through my divorce, my ex-husband got the church, and I got the world and the freedom to explore who I was, what I believed, and more importantly how I wanted to live my life and why (not just because the Bible or Jesus says so). This forced me to develop critical thinking and self-reflective skills which emphasized emotional intelligence from the inside-out. This was akin to an overdue internal reset, while raising young children.

Deconstructing my spiritual worldview, which was embedded in fear, gradually ensued.

A persistent fear of an omnipotent evil force ruling the world and my private thoughts was slowly investigated, along with a subtle but persistent fear of abandonment by a more loving but less powerful and erratically intervening God as punishment or mere consequence for not conforming my thinking, believing, and behaving to a set-standard.

Keep in mind – this has been about a 10-year journey, not a rapid and haphazard endeavor. As far as I can tell, this will be a lifelong journey, with different seasons and excursions throughout.

You see, the missing component in my spiritual worldview became apparent – a clear sense of what it meant to be me, according to me.

A slow and careful deconstruction involved my sense of self, which was also, guess what – feared as wholly untrustworthy. That belief had to be closely examined, with support of many trusted others.

The presumption that I was consensually conforming to this worldview from a place of being loved was something I could not grasp. It felt rigidly incoherent. I could not grasp this any longer, nor could I dismiss that I could not grasp it either. So, I tapped out.

Who was I? What did I believe in when it came to relating to the ineffable? How could I even embark on that when I couldn’t fully allow myself to express what was within, what I thought, felt, valued, and why? It all felt backwards. How could I relate to the transcendent when I didn’t know how to relate to the immanent? I often couldn’t clearly define what I felt, thought, and valued for myself. Why? Because I feared and/or disavowed all of that “fleshly” material for the transcendent. Again. Something felt amiss.

Looking back, the only thing I brought with me when I left the church was a curious, searching mindset out to answer something I couldn’t clearly articulate yet. What was I even searching for? I couldn’t have told you.

What I was searching for was a clearer sense of a self – both as a unique individual and as a non-unique human being. How could I truly love or be loved without a clearly sensed self, first? Love involves freely sharing something of the self.

Codependent (vacillating between being overly independent or overly dependent vs. interdependent), fear and shame-based conformity was all I knew. I conflated that with love and faith.

As I moved beyond the confines of the church, I took this one premise for deductive reasoning: God is love.

That’s it.

But what in the actual eff, is love? An apropos question following a divorce, don’t you think?

How do you define, characterize, and identify something that has felt so forsaken, foreign yet natural, innate yet elusive, for much of your life? Another premise was running in the back of my mind and that was this: Whatever I thought I knew about God and love was wrong. I need to start over. Burn the dead trees and see what comes up.

Reflecting on lived experiences, lots of therapy, lots of studying about attachment theory, different spiritual worldviews, along with some inductive reasoning formed by a developing reflective self or put simply: a self, an autonomous self, has helped point to something a lot less foggy.

I decided I needed to explore the world and myself, outside of the codependent relationship I had with religion, within the Evangelical Christian worldview.

As much as possible, I wanted to explore my own spirituality; empirically, autonomously, honestly, and authentically. When I say “spirituality”, I’m referring to how I relate to that which is immaterial and ineffable.

For the first time, I felt a newfound and yet terrifying sense of freedom to explore who I was outside of a belief system that defined my identity and values, the nature of reality, and God, for me. I was now able to discover and develop a more empirical spirituality and identity vs. a theoretical one, for myself.

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It was like I was an eager student/scientist when it came to existential angst and humanistic questions that I was now free to ask, test, and not have to immediately settle with answers I had already been given.

This felt both liberating and terrifying. What if I got it all wrong? What if I can’t figure this out on my own? What if, what if, what if?

My divorce provided a sense of “evidence” that what I had believed, how I had perceived myself, God, reality, and life…was missing that foundational piece: A clearer sense of a me. Again – as a unique individual and as a non-unique human being.

Along with my own observations without the fear of hell and the devil overshadowing everything. This was truly the biggest test of faith or of trust in God I had ever taken: leaving the church. It felt like I was leaving “home”. Leaving “Kansas”.

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Prayer (or self-talk) with open, honest, and emotionally raw relating did not cease. If anything, it increased. It reminds me of the Psalms of David. He had no “book of Psalms”. He didn’t know he was writing what would someday be used as a hymnal or considered sacred Scripture call “the Psalms”. He was just pouring out his naked heart and soul to God (or himself), uncensored.

This is what I did not leave behind when I left the church. God (which I also define as “Reality” or simply “what is”) cannot be boxed into a church, an idea, a belief, or a label. This is what I refer to as empirical spirituality. I used my ability to observe honestly; internally and externally.

Leaving the church actually helped me become more of an honest observer of life, of myself, and of the hardest age-old questions that still are unanswered. Like why is there so much unjust suffering in this world? A devil, spiritual warfare, and a loving and powerful God who is at war in unseen dimensions does not sufficiently answer that, even if it may be so. Nobody can conclusively prove or verify this, nor can anybody conclusively disconfirm and disprove it either, just like the existence of a Creator God or the non-existence of a Creator God. It is an unanswered question I’ve learned to live with, honestly. It will probably remain as such.

This is how living in faith feels to me; learning to be at peace with uncertainty.

I have read, listened to, worshipped with, visited, conversed with, and digested enough of a diverse plethora of perspectives on religion, theology, epistemology, religious and secular historicity, and psychology to say this:

At the end of the day, I don’t know what the actual facts are about so many things, in the least – what I’ve not borne witness to (like the resurrection or a man named Jesus). Yet, I can say this: only two things really matter.

But first, I have to say this from being such a devout “believer” prior to venturing outside of the church:

What specifically doesn’t matter most is what you (or I) say you (or I) believe in or don’t believe in, when it comes to religious faith, or spirituality, or epistemology.

You can label yourself a Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, Ex-Evangelical, Born-Again, Progressive, Spiritual-but-not-religious, Jew, New Ager, Hippie, Rationalist, Non-Dualist, Buddhist, or Muslim for all I care.

These labels mean very little.

What matters most is how you show up in life, especially in relationships. And this includes the relationship with your very own self, for that replicates in your relationships with others. For example, if you’ve got low tolerance for your own emotions, you’ll probably have a low tolerance for other people’s emotions.

So, what are the characteristics you embody while relating to others?

Simply put: How do you behave towards others?

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How do you treat your family, partner, friends, exes, co-parents, ex-friends, co-workers, subordinates, bosses, neighbors, enemies, other people’s kids, people you’ve heard gossiped about, the have’s, the have-nots, acquaintances, people who are not like you, people you disagree with, or people you interact with online?

Of course, the way you relate to others varies immensely depending on context and many variables. There isn’t just one description, there’s complexity.

But in general, consider the people you interact with most – what characterizes how you show up? Or, do you avoid getting close to people?

How do you try to repair the inevitable mishaps in ongoing relationships?

How do you treat people who don’t interact with you regularly? Do you treat them better than those you interact with regularly? Or do you treat them a lot worse? WHY?

That is what matters most to me. It’s what I ask myself constantly.

How much do you care about how you treat people? Your label and beliefs mean very little compared to this.

Secondly: Are you growing?

How are you changing? One thing is constant and unchangeable in life: change itself. While change is inevitable, personal growth is not.

So, are you growing? And, how would you know? What is used to measure this change, merely your own opinion of yourself while you live a relatively isolated life? Ha! That’s a funny one! Especially if you have no record or documentation to track your inner life, your internal dialogue: your thought and emotional life. If you’ve not shared or expressed your inner life over a period of time to anyone, even yourself, i.e. a journal – how can you know any of this with confidence? Don’t fool yourself! Are you relying solely on memory? That is another thing that constantly changes. The story you tell yourself about the past. Your memory might be misleading you without you knowing it. Memory is very limited and bias, depending on mood and cognitive capacity, especially as you age in adulthood.

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Don’t get me wrong, you’re definitely a major source of information, but you cannot be the only source with zero accountability or reference checks, so to speak. Who else would be able to answer this, in addition to yourself?

Consider thinking in terms of blocks of several months or years. How have your relationships changed? How has using your time and money changed? How has your perspectives changed?

Are you growing? And how do you know?

Is the only thing that is changing in life, the calendar and the ticking clock?

For me, to answer these questions with more clarity, I had to step outside of the church or a systematic worldview that I conformed to without a clear sense of self. I felt the pull to develop a spirituality that was more empirical. More authentic. More real and meaningful to me. This involved taking detailed notes, journaling in-depth, recording vulnerable discussions within myself/to God, and at times this involved sharing these with another trusted person.

I’ve found that for me, God represents a focus on reality and relationships, including the relationship with oneself, and fosters growth in how I connect with myself and others. In essence, God is reality: that which is or simply exists, empirically rather than theoretically.

The labels, beliefs, canonized books, and whatever interpretations come from ancient, canonized literature all matter little in comparison to those two things. At least, for me.

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And one thing is perhaps the icing on the cake: Spiritual community. Authentic spiritual community. Where can I turn to for this? I think I can now turn back to the church. Perhaps, I am more ready to integrate community because I can find enough solidarity within any community as long as those two things have plenty of sunlight, soil, and water for there to be deep growth with others despite differences in mere labels.

Relationships and growth. They go hand in hand, together.

Let’s see what this will bring forth. I am looking forward to this next chapter and in contributing in a meaningful and authentic way. And community that can help foster those two things (which go hand in hand) is good enough for me!

At the end of the day, I will grow…come what may.

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Posted in Christianity, deconstruction, existentialism, personal growth, personal healing, Progressive Christianity, spirituality, Uncategorized, Wisdom and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
21 Feb 2022

On Morality & Love

There’s a story of a man named Simeon in the Bible (see Luke 2:25-35) who was described as being “righteous and devout”.

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What does it mean exactly, to be righteous and devout? I’ve got my personal stereotypes and caricatures that portray someone who is “holy”, meaning a bit emotionally cold or stoic, conditionally approachable, not very down-to-earth or relatable, probably intelligent, sophisticated, and rather arrogant. That’s the best description of the image I find that initially emerges into conscious awareness.

Well according to how Jesus answered a teacher of the law, the highest form of morality can be boiled down to love (see Mark 12:29-31). Sequentially and specifically; loving God with your whole inner and integrated being. And then Jesus adds an addendum that seems inseparable to the first command (and that’s much easier to measure) – ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

So, I think it’s safe to presume that being righteous and devout means loving an external, metaphysical, ethereal, abstract Being with YOUR whole internal, metaphysical, ethereal, abstract being – measured by an empirically validated and evidenced way – how you treat “your neighbor” as well as yourself.

It’s so simple that we don’t buy it and we often find ourselves adding on a multitude of “morality measurements” with countless other morality clauses than what Jesus added. Just love your neighbors as yourself, that’s hard enough. And your “neighbor” is something else to contemplate in the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, which I won’t go into in this post.

So, the question I’m pondering here is this: How is mental health and development, factored into this command – to love so integratively in a way that it manifests with congruency with other people?

By all appearances and experiences of mine thus far I’m quite sure of this: being loving is not an inborn human trait. Being loving isn’t innately and independently present in human infants. I’ve given birth to and am raising 3 human souls, and I’ve watched them closely.

Now to be clear— being IN NEED of love, at birth and onward is inborn and innate. And when you form a secure attachment and nurture and protect your babies they coo, smile, and affectionately bond with you right back. It’s a beautiful circle of love. But it didn’t begin with the baby first loving me. It started with a baby who needed to be loved and cared for, FIRST.

The nature of the intimate dyad of human caregiving determines (although not exclusively) a great deal in how “loving” a person will eventually be, influenced by how much they themselves felt loved, or more specifically – securely attached.

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“Loving” is not to be confused with merely how “nice”, “polite”, socially acceptable, or virtuous they appear in public. This is about way more than mere etiquette. Rather, it’s far more about how much they’ll be able to enjoy consensual and reciprocal vulnerability, authenticity, and work through the inevitable interpersonal conflicts with a selected few. In other words: healthy interpersonal relationships.

In an ideal world, humans would produce loving human beings – generation after generation. It doesn’t take much to see that we don’t live in an ideal world. Far from it.

So if children grow without enough of this kind of emotional secure attachment created within their earliest and formative interpersonal relationships, how can we expect them to give what they don’t have? For so many who didn’t, are we screwed? No. There is a path of healing and inner recovery. God is sensitively attuned to the broken-hearted, who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Just meditate on the Beatitudes in Matthew 5.

I believe humans are biologically wired to be moral creatures. When we are immoral, we suffer and often find ways to escape or find relief from suffering. To be clear again: We are innately moral creatures which means our biology is wired for thriving when we’re morally strong. And I hope I’ve made it clear enough by now that when I say “moral” I mean we’re biologically created to be loved and loving – this is how we’re morally biologically wired – for love, aka to need to give and receive secure emotional attachments. Possessing a familiarity of attachment styles in both childhood and adulthood is helpful to understanding where I’m coming from. Hopefully if you’re making a living within the mental health field or personal development arena, you’re more than a little familiar with the scientific literature on attachment styles and neurobiology. Hopefully.

I digress. Getting back to morality and love…

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

So, to those who perceive themselves as morally righteous, and therefore loving as described above – What is your detailed and coherent, autobiographical narrative that’s made sense of your adulthood in light of your childhood?

In all transparency, this is somewhat of a trick question. I’ve heard people saying they grew up with love and support from their parents, yet these same people are often times some of the quickest to criticize or judge others and are also some of the most emotionally cold or shallow people I know. To be sure, they are often very “nice”, “polite”, socially acceptable, and fluent in practicing social graces/etiquette. Yet, there seems to be a gaping hole, a sense of wtf-ness that’s hard to explain and even harder to convince them of.

Now of course, I could very well be totally off myself here. But the disjointed feeling I get in this wtf-ness experience is because I hear they consider themselves as lucky for growing up the way they did, and therefore they don’t “morally” struggle much. Yet at the same time, I observe that they find it very difficult, unvaluable, and unnecessary (if they even notice) to be emotionally vulnerable, authentic, and show capacity to work through interpersonal conflicts with their loved ones. It’s a head-scratcher for me.

This is the best I can come up with to try and explain the dissonance between morality and love, profoundly the kind of love from God, that pours out interpersonally. Unless you experience it yourself with God, it’s hard to explain to others.

There was a woman who was described in Luke 7:37 as “a woman in that town who lived a sinful life”. She wept on Jesus’ feet (portrays her as probably crawling on the floor in approaching and being next to Jesus) kissed his feet, then wiped his feet with her hair, and poured perfume from an alabaster jar.

To be loved and to love.

I think she gets it.

Intuitively.

Without explanation.

Her story might help shed light on this gaping hole for those who need an explanation. Jesus saw that Simon the Pharisee didn’t get it either.

“Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

Luke 7:44-47

How well you understand the love of God for yourself has much to do with how much you’ve experienced forgiveness from God. And if in your own self-estimation, you don’t have much to be forgiven for, you’ll find it hard to love others who do.

It boils down to compassion. If you don’t have much need for compassion from others, you won’t feel much compassion for others either.

If you’ve never felt much need for love from others, you likely won’t feel much love for others.

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06 Jun 2014

Homosexuality and Christian Leadership: Setting An Example of Biased Grace?

jesus drawing line in sandI’ve recently become aware of Christians who lost their jobs in a leadership role within a church ministry, getting fired due to being in a lesbian relationship and not being willing to end that relationship.  While there are a host of issues this post could address, such as homosexuality and the Bible, I am not going to go there.  I am not a credentialed theologian or Bible scholar, but I do consider myself a student of the Bible who is personally invested in these issues.

I am wrestling with the subject of homosexuality and the Bible myself, trying to process such a profoundly complex issue of humanity’s sexual expression of love and union, and all I can say now is I do not think the Bible is as cut-and-dry on homosexuality, as most Christians I’ve heard of, seem to think it is.  I will reserve that for perhaps a future post, but if you want more on what influences me in this process, check out this video.

I respect and honor that Christians in church leadership are trying to consciously live out their interpretations of the Bible on personal matters, and model that for those in their flock out of a sincere place.  At the same time though,  I cannot understand how the Bible justifies terminating Christians in ministry due to openly being in a loving yet imperfectly human, committed, consensual, homosexual relationship.

Why are certain “lifestyle choices” OK to rationalize away, while others (namely openly being in a committed, loving and consensual homosexual relationship) will cause you your job and ministry if you will not end it?  What is the limit as far as what is acceptable and not when it comes to living according to what’s concluded or defined as Biblical principles?  There are more Bible verses that speak against being indifferent to the poor, gossiping, and greed than there are about homosexuality.  Will a person in a church or ministry leadership role get fired for not giving a certain percentage of their income to the poor, while they go with their basic needs met with more to spare?  Or will they get fired if they gossip about a homosexual’s “lifestyle choices” or any other lifestyle choices they do not approve of all while being disguised in “prayer needs”?  I highly doubt it.

There seems to be something wrong with this picture.  I cannot quite put my finger on it, but my gut instinctively acknowledges and feels the ick factor.  Terminating jobs due to one living consistently within their homosexual orientation AND their walk with Jesus certainly does send a message, but the message is one of a double-bind.  Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.  It paints a picture of biased or conditional grace, is that a Biblical principle?  It implicitly supports playing favorites when it comes to who is “in” and who is “out” in non-impartial standards of godly living, while holding a professional position in Christian ministry.  I’m pretty sure THAT is inconsistent with the message of the gospel and the life Jesus died living out: Him willingly laying down his life and dying on the cross for all people, including those who invalidated his proclamations of having a divine-identity unlike no other, which therefore gave him the authority to reframe religious laws that were being used by religious leaders to marginalize people (whom God made and loved) through scapegoating them.

Jesus carried this message and lived it out through the ways he related with certain people who were commonly looked down upon by religious leaders in his time; the prostitutes, Samaritans, tax collectors, and Gentiles (that’s most of us unless you’re an ethnic Jew).  With Jesus relating to these people as friends and even as examples to others, the religious leaders in his day looked less than godly, which was something intolerable because feeling and looking godly to certain others was a source of life to them.  It is a false source of life though.  Isn’t the message of the New Testament that the only source of life is God’s profound love for us, which is proven and demonstrated by what Jesus did on the cross despite what we have or have not done?  And isn’t it true that part of Jesus’ story (per the Bible) involves him being tortured and murdered by an agenda promoted by the religious leaders of his day, whose particular interpretations of Scripture were used to justify and demand his death-penalty?  Jesus was put on trial and crucified by the religious leaders/experts who distorted the Scriptures’ essence in order to justify finding Jesus guilty of blaspheme.

“So woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites! You tithe from your luxuries and your spices, giving away a tenth of your mint, your dill, and your cumin. But you have ignored the essentials of the law: justice, mercy, faithfulness. It is practice of the latter that makes sense of the former.  You hypocritical, blind leaders. You spoon a fly from your soup and swallow a camel.”  – MATTHEW 23:23-24 (VOICE)

Don’t Jesus’ words here seem pertinent towards much of the church in America (self included) today?

 

 

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11 May 2014

Jesus Follower or Christian GroupThink Follower?

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I so admire my weekly spiritual teacher (aka pastor).  He explicitly affirmed me identifying with the notion of being resistant to identifying myself as a Christian, especially to people who do not identify themselves as “Christians”.  -Inconceivable!  I dig it.

I can’t know what cognitive and somatic associations get conjured up for you when hearing the label “Christian” but I know what mine are, and it isn’t much of anything I want to be associated with regarding my spirituality and the way I want to live that out.

I consciously seek personal and in-depth contact with God, as I understand God.  My understanding of God is primarily interpreted and informed through the life of Jesus, shown in the new testament of the bible, not Christian groupthink.

My understanding of God is in active recovery from a complicitly abusive religious system which interprets me, God and others through a shame and intimidation based system, in the name of Christianity.

When I read certain bible verses, I often find myself needing to rephrase the statements, due to them being inappropriately applied and interpreted over me by a complicitly abusive religious system.  It’s a system that has used certain bible verses to accomplish changing my thoughts and behaviors through using shame and spiritual intimidation.

I am also at-risk for doing this not only to myself, but to others as well – no more denial.  That is why I want and need spiritual teachers who GET this, AND to be involved within a community of others who do as well.

When it comes to what I extract from bible verses, words are extremely important, and ameliorating Christian-jargon takes conscious effort, but I have found it to be very enlightening.

An example taken from “The Voice” version of Colossians 4:5-6

“Be wise when you engage with those outside of the faith community; make the most of every moment and every encounter.  When you speak the word, speak it gracefully (as if seasoned with salt), so you will know how to respond to everyone rightly.”

My personal interpretation (everyone has one) is this:

Be mindful when I engage with those who for whatever reason, do not associate within Christian circles, make the most of every moment and encounter you find yourself in.  I am not called to force these moments and encounters,  just to notice them.  When I use my words to talk, do it gracefully and season (not drench) it with salt.  Salt is what gives it flavor, which is my authentic-self and personality.  Grace doesn’t mean being pretentiously nice, because that tastes bad.  Seasoning with salt is being mindful that my call to authenticity is not a license to be insensitive and presumptuous towards others.  The combination of grace and salt, will position me to respond to everyone rightly, through transparency and humility.  Rightly doesn’t mean having the “one right” or “better” answer.  It is right, to admit that there are many answers I do not have for others.  It is right, when I have direct experience with the issue at hand, to share my experience of how I see my decision to follow Jesus shaping my circumstances and myself.  When I do not have direct experience or am largely unaware/ignorant of the issue someone is experiencing or sharing with me about, I can respond with sincerity and compassion saying, “I don’t really know.”  THAT is responding rightly.

Jesus Follower or Christian GroupThink Follower?  There is a difference.

 

 

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