The Gospel Of gdamed

Continuing a blog from a little while back, The Athiest and the Believer, I have recently been occupied by thoughts from a conversation with an agnostic -- where we came to a friendly spot of agreement despite our differing beliefs, -- listening for a little while to some gospel music, and a humble comment from a brother about his paling and failing to the example of our father, who died two years ago next week.

The gospel music presented a message over and over: that people cannot do and accomplish things on their own and need the saving grace of Jesus. I was trying to reconcile the message with the stardom of most of the singers. It also brought back and reinforced my inability to cleave to the romance with the name of Jesus. For all the sincerety that devotees practice their faith in, it still seems to me like clinging to a rope in order to stand rather than trusting the strength of one's own legs. It's like relying on medication to solve everything, when working through emotional trauma without medication strengthens character and spirit. As I said in the earlier blog, the use of God or Jesus in the unhealthy denial of one's own capacities does not cancel the existence of God. I understand that people will work things out at their level of competence, but we don't often seem to promote that there is a level of competence that exists within each individual and, should it be realized, we could then approach God on a much higher plane.

The 'differing beliefs' with the agnostic is an example of mislabeling. We hold the same beliefs, just call them different things. When the spirit of what we believe is exposed and the labels are for the moment unmentioned, we find common ground. How simple a thing, to leave aside the shallowness and divisiveness of a label. If we dare. What binds us to reliance on labels if they are so destructive is a good question. What danger is there in finding commonality with our brothers and sisters? None, but the exposure of false pride.

My brother mentioning paling and failing to the example of our father was meant as a tribute to Dad, to express his great admiration and esteem for a man who was, after all, exceptionally respectable. And so any critique of how he phrased it is gentle. In reality, none of us lives in the same time as Dad did, we are each bound to other people and situations and factors in life so that any literal comparison to Dad is simply impossible. The only thing that we can really do is to hope that we learned the spirit of how he lived, and that in our unique situations we are able to translate that kindness, caring, and devotion to the way we conduct our lives. So long as we are able to live out that spirit we are in no way failures. My brother is a devoted husband, father, professional, and member of his church and community. So I gently remonstrate him for being too humble. I may cringe at false pride but have no problem with legitimate pride.

Wouldn't God want us to live to our best potential? Wouldn't He be a little disappointed if we didn't nurture the good qualities He made us with, and instead use Jesus as a marketing vehicle, as a codependent to our poor decisions, as a Cosmic 911?

Last week, running across someone I used to go to church with, she said, "You're not going to church anywhere now? Shame on you." How sad, that she didn't even try to understand.