What’s the Difference?
5/5/2023
Every once in awhile, I get stuck for an idea to write about. Often, my ideas come from prompting by a question or post on my Twitter feed (@NewEcclesiastes ). The screenshot above is from an atheist that I communicate with. Yes, I do that. At least with the ones who ask honest and perceptive questions of me regarding my faith. I’m going to address this question.
I have touched on this subject before. My friend has a very good and reasonable point. There are those who call themselves Christians who are a majority in Western Countries. Most of the Buddhists are in southern and eastern Asia. Most Muslims are found in the Middle East, or SE Asia.The Jewish people are more scattered throughout the world, but their base is the area we now call Israel, where the Jewish religion formed. Christianity and Islam are both offshoots of Judaism.None of these religions is landlocked to their areas, but have adherents in the minority in many areas of the globe. So what is the impact of geography or culture on religion.
Let me preface with the parameters that I am using to answer. I start with the basis of the single God. I have repeatedly said that the idea of God being some old guy in a chair in the sky, looking down at us in abject disapproval, is not how this works. Many religions alter that concept and have several or no Gods to explain their beliefs. Christianity tends to split the difference with the idea of a triune God. That is the unique concept of one God, but he splits his function into 3 entities who are called Father (Yahweh — the Creator), Son (Jesus — the Redeemer, ans the Holy Spirit (the Sustainer). That is some unique logic that I will deal with at another time.
I have also taught, almost ad-nauseam, that all “major”, and most “minor” religions hold as a core tenet that what is pleasing to God is to treat other humans with kindness and respect. This is the “Golden Rule” concept.
Yet we have had a birthmark as a species both in the development of religion, and warring between which religion is right. And all of these warring religions (mostly among the Abrahamic religions) preach the “love your neighbor” concept. Assuming God exists (my standpoint), why would God give different sets of people different ideas about what is good or evil, what is right or wrong?
Simple. He didn’t.
B-b-b-b-b-u-t — the Bible, the Torah the Quran, the Vedas, the natural religions — all of these different complicated rules and rituals… WTF? And they conflict with each other. What was God thinking?
Religion is not God, and is not Faith. Faith has come into disrepute lately, as it is not “logical” or “scientific”, but faith is manifestation in our own personal lives, that there is something beyond what we can understand or explain, that is very important to who we are as humans. Faith is your personal assurance that something is true, even though we can’t prove it. Yet. Think of every police drama where a cop leaves the storyline because of a “hunch” or “gut” feeling and then spends the rest of the episode or season, or the run of the entire show to prove it. That is faith. It is universal to humans — both the religious, and even the atheist — whose unproven scriptures are called theoretical physics.
God preceded humans, but the idea of God came after humans — after all, for an idea to appear and be recognized, it needs to form in a human mind. Chris Hitchens is absolutely correct that human decency predates religion. It does. It is part of the divine spark within us. Religion does not equal faith. Faith is of God, religion is man-made. Which is why the religions all agree on the big picture, but get mired down proving their way is the right way to do it.
How do we explain this?
The Greek philosopher Xenophanes summed it up this way-
“The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,while the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, and could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.”
Nothing forms in a vacuum. People are social animals. They live in groups and interact. There is a genetically hard-wired need for human interaction built into the vast majority of us. It is evolutionary beneficial. We are also hard wired to be suspicious of the unfamiliar, and will act to defend “our” group against another group that is “different”.
God sends a message down, usually to some hand-picked human, to tell us to be nice to each other. The human delivers the message to the rest of us. the rest of us are the tribe, family, group and “culture”. Different things are acceptable to different cultures. The religions that arise out of God’s message are all influenced by the culture the “prophet” was raised in. As the culture is what is to receive the message of God, the culture influences what is acceptable and not acceptable in the religion.
For thousands of years this was not a problem, because people stayed within their culture, because where were they going to go — on foot? As travel increased among humans (horses, boats, and all the way to modern jetliners) cultures came in contact with each other. We like to find out what’s over the next hill.
Well, there were people there, but they didn’t live like we live. And our genetics kick in. We are suspicious of what is different, and we move to defend our own. Past defending our own, we then try to prove we are right. Sometimes that is a discussion where ideas are exchanged and everyone comes out the better for it. More often, it leads to a clash in cultures, or outright war. And this is where we are.
As different as human cultures are, we are mostly the same. No culture thinks murder is a great idea, or theft, or rape, or lying, at least among themselves. The default position in all human minds is that I/We are the correct way to live. Why -because it is in accordance to what God told us. Other cultures are thought to be a bit backwards so it’s ok to kill them to bring them “civilization”, which more often than not is “what our culture (religion) says it is”.
And this is where we wind up. God sends a simple instruction — basically, play nice with each other. As as a culture (religion) we make up the rules as to what constitutes nice. That inevitably leads to conflict when my nice is in conflict with your nice..
This is why I stress in my ministry that religion does not equal God. God is God, and he sent out a consistent message to us. Be nice to each other. Humans created religion to do that, and wound up turning the most basic good idea into a circus, and not a very entertaining one.
New Ecclesiastes bases itself on that universal message of God. Anything that conflicts with that is specious, and comes from the culture that originated the religion — man-made rules, man-made rewards, man-made punishments. None of it is pleasing to God, unless it affirms his actual request.
There is no reason that we cannot just simply do what God asks. Just do it. It’s fairly easy. This is an individual effort, not a group thing. It is nearly impossible to change the world, but we have all of the power in the universe to change ourselves. Do that. Be kinder, be more respectful, be more in tune with the needs around you and try to help. You will then be truly doing God’s work.
In Peace, Faith and Love
Ecc. RL Brandner
New Ecclesiastes Ministries
