Chapter 8

My Revisions

“What is it about Christian tradition that we love– and what is it that we cannot love?”

Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief

As mentioned earlier, it was the issue of hell that caused me to begin looking for answers outside of the Christian religion. How could a God of love (“God is love,” says the Bible) create a universe that includes eternal torture for millions of people? Millions of souls. That didn’t make sense. That seemed like something a God of hate would do. So I began looking at God in a different way. Different than a king on a throne. Different than a guy in the sky. Eventually I came to believe that God is within me, which was a life-changing event for me. It was a new perspective. A new awareness. And as my beliefs about God changed, other beliefs also changed. It was inevitable. It was part of the process. Things had to make sense.

But religious beliefs are indeed just that— they’re beliefs. They can’t be proved. Or disproved. They can be disputed, however, thus conflict continues. And thus it would be good for we humans to agree on some beliefs. Some realistic ones. So for the sake of progress, I offer you some of mine, but to reiterate— I know what I’ve experienced and I know what appears realistic to me, but I can’t say for certain that my beliefs are true. No one can say that. So in this chapter, I’m theorizing. I’m doing theology. I’m revising some Christian theology.

Some revisions were blatantly necessary. As my beliefs about God changed, then my beliefs about heaven had to change also. If God isn’t up above the sky then heaven must not be up there either. So if heaven exists, then where is it? And the obvious answer is— heaven must be wherever God is. So if God is within, then heaven must be there too. In the spiritual realm. In the non-physical realm. The subconscious realm. A realm that’s very near, although we’re typically not aware of it.

And ultimately, heaven is the presence of God, it seems. This seems true even from a traditional perspective. Heaven is heaven because God is there. But the presence is internal, as I’ve come to believe, rather than an outward place where God dwells. Heaven is the experience of God in the spiritual realm, the realm within. That’s the ultimate heaven. It’s the union with God, our conscious mind merging with the mind of God in the depths of our own being. It’s Christian perfection. It’s the beatific vision. It’s nirvana. It’s janna in the Muslim religion. That’s my understanding of it, although I’ve not personally had this experience. It’s been described as being immersed in light. It’s been described as oneness with the universe. It’s been described as euphoric.

But the subconscious realm itself could also be considered heaven to a lesser degree, I believe. I did have an experience in that realm, and it was indeed heavenly until it was suddenly interrupted. It was serenity. It was clarity, and it occurred in an inward place. A non-physical place. A spiritual place. A deeper realm of my mind. It’s the place we all go after the death of our physical body, I believe. According to the voice that spoke to me, our conscious mind recedes unto the subconscious realm. And the experience of that realm is a good experience for most people, according to what I’ve read of near-death encounters. (It was a good experience for me.) Most people are good people. (I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes but I’ve got a good heart.) We experience that realm according to our nature, according to who we are, who we’ve become, and what we’ve done, so it’s unique for everyone. It’s subjective.

But not all people are good. Some people are cruel. Some are malicious. Some have done some horrendous things, which shifts our focus here from good to evil. From heaven to hell. If heaven is real, then is hell real also? Well, yes and no, it seems. Not in the traditional sense. Not like a fiery dungeon So what is it then? Well, it’s the same process of course. It’s the natural thing. We all go to the same inward place after death, but we all experience it differently. We experience it according to our nature. It’s subjective. So for a corrupt soul, a cruel mind, one who’s been ruthless to others, that place may not be too pleasant, as I see it. It could be quite unpleasant, in fact. It could be hell.

But I don’t believe it’s never-ending. I don’t believe it’s eternal. What’s the purpose in that? What’s the rationale for eternal torture? It doesn’t make sense. Where’s the love? Where’s the goodness of creation? Where’s the goodness of God? This is the issue that eventually caused me to begin looking for answers outside of the Christian religion. If we look to the natural world for comparison, we see that, yes, things may die, but they don’t suffer forever. In the physical realm, when things die they’re absorbed back unto the physical earth. Nature operates in circles and cycles. The earth spins around and around, it revolves around the sun. The seasons change, night turns to day, we sleep, we awaken. Perhaps the life of the soul has a similar pattern. So even though a corrupt soul may experience the result of its own corruption, that experience eventually comes to an end. When the cycle is complete. When the season is over. When the soul either awakens from its bad dream or is absorbed back unto its source as an individual. It’s more humane (and surely more godly) for a soul to simply go out of existence, rather than be tortured forever and ever. We humans have laws against torturing people. Surely it’s not something God would do. Forever and ever.

And if God is within us and not up above the sky, then another traditional belief that obviously needs to be revised is the belief that God is coming down from the sky someday. Or Jesus. That’s a belief in the tradition I grew up in. The rapture, it’s usually called. For me, that belief always was a strange one, even as a boy. It wasn’t realistic. But maybe we can revise that belief also rather than delete it entirely. Maybe there’s still some truth in it. Possibly. Hopefully. Maybe God is still coming. From within. Gradually. Naturally. Up from the subconscious realm. Up from the soul like a seed that grows, or millions of them. So in this way, God comes to earth not from up above the earth, but within the people of the earth. Perhaps that’s the goal. The goal of creation. The goal of evolution. The goal of our growth. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” was the prayer of Jesus. And the kingdom is within.

The kingdom is in the depths of our being. It’s the spiritual realm. It’s the realm of God. And when I first came to that realization many years ago, it was then natural for me to believe I could find God there. (I was young and idealistic.) In the depths of my soul. Here and now. In this life. Through meditation. So I began working on that. In the beginning, it was a matter of simply sitting by myself on my beanbag chair learning to control my thoughts. It was learning to simply be aware of my inner self. It was continually refocusing my attention, prohibiting my mind from wandering. It was tedious. It’s a discipline. Later in life it developed into more of a constant thing. It’s not something I now do routinely, but it’s something that’s always with me. The essence of meditation is to slow down or stop the flow of thoughts that are constantly passing through our mind, thus creating a reflective, silent state of mind that is sensitive to the subconscious. Sensitive to God.

But meditation wasn’t too important in the Baptist tradition of my youth. It wasn’t part of it, except for being referenced in a couple of Bible verses. Prayer was, however, and prayer and meditation are closely related. They occur in the same state of mind, true prayer does. Prayer isn’t reaching out to God, prayer is reaching in to God. (And so we bow our heads and close our eyes. We got that part right.) Prayer is implanting the seeds of thought, emotion, and imagination into the subconscious, while in a state of meditation. This process is described by Jesus in Matthew 6:6 of the Bible. My comments on this verse are in parentheses— “But whenever you pray, go into your room (your inner being) and shut the door (close the outer world) and pray to your Father (the source of being) who is in secret (within you), and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”^[1] That which is planted in the subconscious mind will grow in our conscious life.

And as you know by now, I no longer believe the Bible to be literally true, much of it, but I do find truth in much that is attributed to Jesus. I believe he probably was a person who experienced that intimate union with God, that spiritual merging with God, while living in this physical realm. I believe he truly was one with God during that experience. Everyone is, but it’s a rare experience. And probably he did speak in parables about the spiritual truth that he perceived, and probably he was crucified for it when he defied established religion. When it got political. (Jesus is mentioned in some historical sources other than the Bible.^[2]) Religion and politics were very intertwined in ancient Jewish culture, as in other cultures and other times throughout history, much of it. Religion and politics are even intertwined in current American culture, which is unfortunate because historically, the two don’t mix.

And there are other traditional Christian beliefs we could discuss here of course. Like salvation. That’s an important one in evangelical Christianity, my heritage. The all-important one, although I no longer adhere to that doctrine. I now believe growth is the important thing, growing unto the presence of God, the union with God, working on that growth process. And there are other beliefs we could revise, but there are also principles that need no revision, principles that are good and right just as they are, and that will presumably never need revision. Just emphasis. Like having love for one another. Like doing unto others as we would have others do unto us. Like forgiveness. Like the power of faith. Like belief in God who is spirit, light, and love. And these are some of the most important aspects of Christianity, although they don’t get much attention in the present day and age, except in certain groups.

And there are great differences in groups and doctrines within the Christian religion. Christianity has gone through many changes in the past, resulting in many divisions today. There have been schisms and reformations, new branches and denominations. During the 1800s some new branches developed in America including one now called New Thought Christianity. New Thought then gained momentum in the 1900s and now there are several worldwide organizations. And New Thought is just what its name implies— a new way of thinking of Christianity and therefore a new way of thinking of God. New Thought refers to God as Spirit and believes God to be infinite intelligence. The ideas put forth in this little book meld well with New Thought theology. It’s been one of the influences on my own thought. The world has changed a bit since the earliest biblical writings were penned about three thousand years ago. Life was much more primitive back then, and religion was too. And religion is much slower to change than other fields of knowledge and study, like science and technology, but religion does change, although stubbornly. So it’s not surprising that old religious beliefs and attitudes are reasserting themselves in the world today. That’s occurring here in America largely for political purposes. But an underlying change is occurring. A shift is happening. The numbers are telling the story. New beliefs and attitudes are growing. The pendulum will swing. It’s swinging. The world is moving in a forward direction, it doesn’t go backward for very long. “Glory, glory hallelujah, truth is marching on.”

Footnotes

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[1] The Bible, Mathew 6:6. (NRSV).

[2] Non-biblical sources that mention Jesus include the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus, and the Roman historian, Tacitus. Both were born in the first century CE.