I used to be devout, one of the believers. I was raised by a family who believed the old fire and brimstone teachings. When I was in my teens I began to question. By the time I was out of high school, I could no longer buy any of it.
I went through a period of disgruntled atheism. When I was eighteen, I was one of those acerbic atheists who felt that anyone who had faith was a perfect idiot. By the time I was twenty-five, I had mellowed on that perspective, becoming an agnostic rather than a hardline atheist. I think becoming a parent had something to do with this.
I don't think that we live in a black and white Universe. I think there are a lot of shades of gray. To me, deism has come to make sense. I believe in the possibility of a higher power or powers. I do not believe that they are egotistical enough to require human worship. I think they're pretty well uninvolved.
At this point I see Jesus the way I see Siddhartha: a teacher who tried to guide people to treat one another better. I do not discount the possibility of reincarnation. The personality is energy. It makes a degree of sense that when energy is displaced it changes form and may find a new home.
Following my exodus from fire and brimstone Christianity, I came to see Jesus as a mediator between humanity and a dickish overlord: the God of the Christian Church. This God sees fit to send "challenges" to people to see if they can "maintain their faith" in the face of awfulness, sometimes such awfulness that no-one could come through it unscathed unless they were a completely soulless sociopath. Jesus is the one who helps people bear up under such onslaughts by their dickish, egotistical God.
I think that true Christianity has little to do with the Overlord of Dickishness. It has to do with treating one another as we would like to be treated. It has to do with extending ourselves a little to help one another so we can all live as well as possible.
In my view, God (if you will) is not a dickish overlord. It is a distant, remote, uninvolved power. Such is the nature of deism. Jesus now becomes less of a mediator than a healer and teacher.
I like Jesus. I always have. I do not like the brand of Christianity which pervades in the modern world, which postulates judgmental attitudes and servitude to a dickish overlord. I'm done with that brand of Christianity. If Jesus were here today, I'm quite sure he'd be done with it too.
~Petra~
