Christianity Without Superstition: Meaning, Metaphor, and Mystery
128
Christianity Without Superstition: Meaning, Metaphor, and Mystery
128Paperback(Reprint)
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Overview
A careful study of Jesus shows that his intended legacy for us was not a set of propositional beliefs, but a way for being in the world, a way that opens us to the extraordinary opportunity of the present, a way that can convert our hurried, anxious lives into something luminous.
Our obsession with "what to believe" misses the primary message of the Bible, says McQuiston, who illustrates that the paramount message of Jesus, and even the Hebrew Scriptures, is not about what stories to believe, but how to live.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819227386 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2012 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT SUPERSTITION
Meaning, Metaphor, and Mystery
By JOHN McQUISTON II
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2012John McQuiston IIAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2738-6
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1Should Belief Have Primacy?
For decades I struggled with the question: What should I believe? In that regard I am not unusual. I am a child of Western culture and institutional Christianity. Both have been obsessed with this question for centuries.
People from every background have grappled with this issue and continue to do so, particularly when it appears in the form of the question: "Is there a God?" Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, says no and Karen Armstrong, in The Case for God, says yes. These are but two examples of a debate that began when humans first looked at the stars and wondered. Mankind's ceaseless effort to understand the universe is an expression of the need to know what to believe.
Throughout history, the institutional Christian church has attempted to tell people what they should believe. Declarations of required belief have been put forward in many forms: in sermons, creeds, catechisms, decrees, papal letters, articles of faith, and books of all sorts. Like so many others brought up in a Christian church and a predominately Christian community, I questioned the truth of such statements in my late teens and to a greater extent in college. In this also I am not unusual.
During my second year in law school, my wife and I began to attend a Sunday school class for people who might be interested in joining the Episcopal Church. In that class, I asked the rector of the church what I was required to believe to be a member of this church. I was surprised by his answer: "That is up to you."
At the time I wondered how he could give that answer and not be in conflict with the creeds printed in the Book of Common Prayer, as well as in trouble with church authorities. Many years have passed. Today when I recall that answer I think how wise it was.
I live in the United States, in the South, in the heart of the Bible belt. In my city most of the people are church members. But the South is an anomaly. In the United States and Europe huge numbers have rejected Christianity because they do not believe the things Christianity seems to require.
Should being a Christian require belief in the Nicene Creed? The Apostles' Creed? The Catholic Catechism? None of these were written until long after the death of Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples.
A careful study of what Jesus said and did shows that his intended legacy was not a creed but a practice—a way of living, a way of relating to one another and the world. From scriptures that were already ancient in his time, he distilled and taught, by word and example, an extraordinary, life- enhancing method of enriching this life. Jesus showed no interest in authoring any creed or any statement of belief at all.
When Jesus was asked how to find the "kingdom of God," his answer, given centuries before the sciences of psychology and psychiatry, was that the kingdom is found through the creation of an interior state:
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within you"
Luke 17:20–22
The Christianity that is the subject of this book does not try to persuade the reader to accept or reject the traditional statements of Christian belief. Although this book is primarily addressed to those who do not believe in the literal truth of the traditional statements of belief, it has no quarrel with those who accept them and the images of the world and God embedded in them.
We might expect that a Christianity that does not require belief that the creeds are statements of fact would have no room for the miraculous and would be reduced to mere secular morality, but it is not, although it is moral, even moral in the extreme. Far from dismissing the miraculous, this Christianity without superstition recognizes that there is a depth to reality beyond our comprehension, a hidden profundity to existence that is suggested by the equations of contemporary physics and the discoveries of science as well as by cathedrals, liturgies, religious art, and music. This Christianity does not insist that we believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, but it does ask us to become fully conscious that we, and all living beings, inexplicably arose from the dead, inert detritus of exploded stars. It asks us to become aware that we live in a ceaseless miracle that is ultimately unfathomable. It asks us to wake up to the incredible everyday fact that in this corner of infinite space choirs sing and dirt becomes a living rose. As the old prayer says, "Days pass and years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles."
A Christianity freed of the demand that we believe things we cannot believe recognizes that this dimension-less universe in which "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) is relational at every level, from the sub-atomic to the stars, from the intensely personal to the global movement of the world's economy. Indeed, the relational nature of reality and of every aspect of our existence is the reason Jesus' way has the power to transform our preoccupied, too often anxious, not quite fulfilled lives into something luminous.
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
John 10:10
I grew up going to church. I suppose that there has never been a time in my life when I was not a member of some church. But can I truly be a "Christian" if I do not believe in the factual truth of the statements made in the creeds and other traditional statements of belief? There are many who would say that I cannot. But if being a Christian means to live Christ's way, then, for the reasons to be explained, they are mistaken.
CHAPTER 2Are There Required Christian Beliefs?
It is commonly, and mistakenly, assumed that Christianity consists of a uniform set of fundamental beliefs. Although many assert that a person is a Christian only if he or she believes certain propositions, the particular propositions that one "must" believe have changed over the centuries and continue to change today. Christians—and there are two billion of them today—have always believed many different and often contradictory things.
Some Christians insist that the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin is absolutely essential to being a Christian, while others consider that belief irrelevant and misguided. Some Christians assert that one cannot be saved without being baptized, others do not. There are conflicts over the meaning of the Trinity, the authority of the church, whether there is a heaven or a hell, whether there is an afterlife. There are great differences over the meaning of "accepting Jesus" and "being saved." The Book of Acts and the letters of Paul, Peter, John, and Jude chronicled differences among the earliest followers of Jesus. The two-thousand-year history of Christianity is replete with disputes over beliefs.
There have been many efforts to establish agreement among Christians concerning beliefs. It seems that we humans have a strong urge to seek uniformity of belief. Perhaps it is because we feel more secure when others believe as we do, and we are troubled by those who challenge our beliefs. The need for other people to believe as one believes, and the fear of those whose beliefs differ, are powerful impulses. They have led to the redrawing of boundaries of communities and nations, to murder, and to religious wars.
Imposing uniformity of belief is a proven method of obtaining and maintaining political control. Three centuries after the death of J
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Excerpted from CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT SUPERSTITION by JOHN McQUISTON II. Copyright © 2012 by John McQuiston II. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface
1. Should Belief Have Primacy?
2. Are There Required Christian Beliefs?
3. Truth
4. Humility and Knowledge
5. The Limits of Our Languages
6. Presence
7. In What Can I Believe?
8. Eternity
9. What Am I Willing to Do?
10. Death
Conclusion
Endnotes
Acknowledgments