On Authority

September 4, 2007Posted inChurch, Religion, Spiritual LifeNo Comments

Two months ago, I decided to write on the topic of spiritual authority. As soon as I decided to do this, I realized that I have never talked to a single person who did not have a strong opinion about it in either a negative or positive sense. Because of this, I apologize in advance if this is something that has been beaten to death in the the course of your readings on the internet. My intention in this post is not to rant on about how much I dislike spiritual authority, or how badly it has been abused throughout history, but just to voice my honest attempt to understand it from my experiences. In addition to this warning, if you have never had problems with church or other religious authority, what I am going to say will probably not make sense, or worse make me sound like a person who hates authority because he is selfish. You would probably be better off not reading on because it will not be productive. But to everyone else, hopefully you’ll find my musings interesting, and if you are willing, to leave your own thoughts in the comments.

Aftermath of anger

August 1, 2007Posted inGeneral2 Comments

After reading a similar post by John over at mindonfire.com, I thought I would capture my thoughts here in a post based on my comments there.

It is amazing how anger can spur action and give us endless amounts of energy and creativity. My anger caused me to leave bad churches, reevaluate bad theology and religion, and rethink a large part of my beliefs about the spiritual life that I had just believed without thinking. It caused me to create a weblog and join a community of other folks like me who were also reeling from similar bad experiences – people who were also trying to figure out the spiritual life in the aftermath of their bad experiences.

However, as I mentioned in an earlier post on forgiveness, my anger has run its course. It has now been 3-4 years or so since my encounters with bad religion occurred. It has been one year since I started truthandpurpose.com. I have wrangled with those bad experiences and come out at peace. Even though I have not answered all the questions that come pounding at one’s door when life becomes painful, I have been able to answer enough of them sufficiently to be in a place of peace.

For me, something unique in my experience is happening. I have become pulled very strongly towards a greater cause that I don’t understand yet. It is a very strong feeling – one that is driving me even more strongly than my anger did (which I didn’t think possible): an unselfish desire to prepare my life for something very big – much bigger than myself. It was so profound a change in who I am and what fundamentally motivates me that it drove me to redesign my weblog from scratch – images and recoding templates, pack up my family and move to another state, and enroll in a masters degree program at a seminary there. It is the greater motivator.

In the aftermath of anger, there is something with more energy and creativity. Anger, like other things in life, was meant to lead us to a greater thing. It’s energy wanes – it was designed to have a greater thing take its place. It is not unlike how romantic love leads a person to embrace love in its fullest sense – unconditional true love.

So what replaces anger? What is greater? That’s what I want to explore here.

Site Update

July 9, 2007Posted inGeneral6 Comments
I just finished a site overhaul. Whew. It took me about 15 hours from the drawing to the final upload to the server. Let me know if anyone sees some…

The “Lone Ranger” Spiritual Life – is it possible?

June 26, 2007Posted inPersonal Background, Spiritual Life9 Comments

One essential element of living a thriving spiritual life is being part of a spiritual community. Being an independent-thinking kind of guy, I can’t say I really like this reality. When I was young, I was just part of a good community (which was composed of people from many, many churches) and didn’t think about things. When left home and went out on my own at college, I continued to go on autopilot – I attended a church regularly. Only when things went sour, after I had left college and started attending a bad church near where I worked, did I start to question the need for one. Can a person get along without a community of other spiritual people? Can a person live a thriving spiritual life by himself/herself?

Forgiveness

June 20, 2007Posted inBelief, Confusion, Motivations, Personal, Worldviews1 Comment

About three years ago, I had a very bad church experience. It colored how I thought about church for a long time after – that it was corrupt and imperfect, an entity that detracts from a person’s thriving spiritual life. However, I realized the other day that I have completely recovered from my anger towards all churches.

What was the thing that helped me?