Generally people think of religion as, by definition, something that you take on faith. And indeed most religious questions aren’t subject to scientific testing—there isn’t an experiment that will prove or disprove the existence of God or an afterlife. And yet, our religious convictions are only really meaningful if they hold up in the context of our lives and our other beliefs, to the tests of whether they make sense and whether they help us to live better lives.
What religious beliefs have changed for you as you’ve tested them against your life and values?
Well, I grew up Catholic, afterall! I ended up here because I really couldn’t square the literal acceptance of the virgin birth, the Trinity and the bodily Resurrection with what I knew from my high school biology class! I probably came to Unitarianism via the Transcendentalists whose spirituality more closely resembled my own, but I also wanted to be part of a religious community that did not demand a rejection of scientific evidence and Reason.
The belief that God or some higher power has a plan for each of us – or for that matter humanity or the world – stopped being worthy for me when I was a teenager. Even so, just this morning I spoke with an agitated grandmother whose child has been placed in a high risk situation by the child welfare system. She asked me to pray for her grandbaby. I responded with “we know his eye is on the sparrow.” To me, that eye is a metaphor for all of us working as hard as we can to protect the child, and therefore very real.
I am catholic, and I´ve raised many personal questions about some of Church´s teachings. Maybe there is an attachment to the past that makes it difficult to face the present days.
What does not make sense for me, for example, is the idea of someone being excluded from blessedness on grounds of religious upbringing (putting it clearly, the idea manifested by many religious that if one does not join their religion one is going to be damned).
I think that many teachings about sex seem to be fairly outdated (and if I was the target I would say something more, as these teachings hurt many people´s feelings).
But in the end, one sees Mother Therese, and one knows that there will always be a precious stone, even amid some dross.
No one is perfect, we must tolerate one another, and Light will always prevail in the end.
I am grieved to say that after 48 years as a UU, my sense of belonging has taken some very hard hits in the past few years. The worst has been an affirmation of faith used in my congregation that concludes, “and thus do we covenant with each other, and with All.” All??? Oppression? Brutality? Violence? I do know what the word All means. This concluding phrase perfectly exemplifies the notion that “UUs can believe anything they want”–a notion that UUs so desperately attempt to deny. Of course I never let those words pass my lips. But they are slowly eating away at my present faith and causing me agony over where UU might be going. It takes up a lot of energy to tune them out every, every Sunday. I wonder how long that energy can last. I wonder what will happen to me if it ever just dries up. I wonder how in my life I could EVER not be a UU.