I am going through a period of confusion

[hedrick]

I think part of the issue too is that many people in general aren't really all that concerned about going deeper into their spiritual practices, even in the more "liberal" churches, so it would be unusual to find more than a few in each church.

Right. The main exception is Pentecostals. Are there emergent Pentecostal churches?

 

[bekkilyn]

Right. The main exception is Pentecostals. Are there emergent Pentecostal churches?

I haven't heard of any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. It seems most of the emergent churches I'd heard about were primarily non-denominational, but my knowledge and experience with emergent churches is very, very small.

 

[FireDragon76]

Galatians 5:1 - For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:13-14:
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.
14 For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The principles of the faith aren't rules and boundaries, but of freedom and love. When we show love for our neighbor (who is everyone), we show our love for God. Jesus' ministry here on earth was not to reinforce the yoke of legalism, but to free us from its law of sin and death.

I can't even see how thinking of religion as obedience in that way is particularly spiritual. It's not being responsible for our own beliefs and behaviors.

It isn't the church, foolish other religions and fitting or feeling in or feeling comfortable, it's about Jesus Christ and believing and accepting Him and the Gospel message. Without that the rest is useless, you can search the rest of your life for something comfortable or fitting for you, die and go to hell with the rest of the lost.

I think this demonstrates perfectly the problem I have with many Christians, and why I find church so alienating. I am always worried I am being suckered into having that kind of an attitude, which I see as toxic. The idea of a cosmic concentration camp for those who refuse to subscribe to a religious ideology isn't something I can take seriously anymore.

 

[hedrick]

I can't even see how thinking of religion as obedience in that way is particularly spiritual. It's not being responsible for our own beliefs and behaviors.

I'm not entirely sure how you mean this. But I don't think Jesus or Paul would say that what they taught was entirely spiritual. Jesus said he was sent by God to establish God's kingdom. He taught specific things about how one behaves as a member of the kingdom. He emphasized getting our hearts right and our intent, and so he's wasn't (in a 1st Cent Jewish context) rule-oriented, but he did teach that there were specific things we should and shouldn't do. He surely did teach that obedience was important, though again we have to be careful about just how we formulate obedience.

 

[Dave G.]

I think this demonstrates perfectly the problem I have with many Christians, and why I find church so alienating. I am always worried I am being suckered into having that kind of an attitude, which I see as toxic. The idea of a cosmic concentration camp for those who refuse to subscribe to a religious ideology isn't something I can take seriously anymore.

Of course.

When you get done searching come to Him in faith as scripture tells us too. He's waiting for you

 

[FireDragon76]

I haven't heard of any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. ...

They do exist though they are rare. Mostly, Pentecostalism is dominated by religious fundamentalism.

I'm not entirely sure how you mean this. But I don't think Jesus or Paul would say that what they taught was entirely spiritual. Jesus said he was sent by God to establish God's kingdom. He taught specific things about how one behaves as a member of the kingdom. He emphasized getting our hearts right and our intent, and so he's wasn't (in a 1st Cent Jewish context) rule-oriented, but he did teach that there were specific things we should and shouldn't do. He surely did teach that obedience was important, though again we have to be careful about just how we formulate obedience.

I see Jesus as being something like a humanist when it comes to ethics, in contradistinction to Evangelicalism or pre-Vatican II Catholicism.

I do not believe Evangelicalism is all that helpful in understanding even what it means to be human, since it depends on an externalization of morality. People can draw on their own experiences of the world, using the Golden Rule, to understand how they should live.

This interview with Don Cupitt hints at what I'm talking about (I particularly think his reference to the Quakers is apt):

In some ways it's not unlike Bonhoeffer's insight that ethics is rooted in non-cognitive experience of the world, and is therefore inherently relational.

 

[FireDragon76]

Your experience is not uncommon, so there are plenty of people out there who you'd find it useful to be with. I think it's best to be part of a community. As you've discovered by now, denominational boundaries don't always mean much. There are plenty of Episcopal churches that welcome the kind of broad spiritual experience you're talking about. Also PCUSA, Methodist, and Quaker.

Methodism might be a natural choice because it does value personal experience, but their stance on gays is worse than the ELCA's. I can't join a church like that in good conscience, that proclaims that gay people need "fixing".

In contrast, most Buddhists have far less negative attitudes towards gay people and homosexuality. Humanistic Buddhists generally believe that sexuality should not be divorced from love and commitment, and that sexuality itself should not be idolized or used destructively, but otherwise, being gay is not considered wrong.

I suppose that's part of the appeal to me. As a Buddhist I never had to be involved in a culture war about gay people, or even accept such a perspective as legitimate.

 

[FireDragon76]

I'm not entirely sure how you mean this. But I don't think Jesus or Paul would say that what they taught was entirely spiritual.

I don't believe in a spiritual/physical dualism like that. But I believe that real change is society must come from within. All the positive enduring change in the world has come from that. That's why I disagree both with the evangelical approach, which negates the value of the world, and the secular left approach, which reduces social change to politics. And I think engaged mysticism, as exemplified by some Catholics such as Thomas Merton, or Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh, is something I can resonate with.

Jesus said he was sent by God to establish God's kingdom. He taught specific things about how one behaves as a member of the kingdom. He emphasized getting our hearts right and our intent, and so he's wasn't (in a 1st Cent Jewish context) rule-oriented, but he did teach that there were specific things we should and shouldn't do. He surely did teach that obedience was important, though again we have to be careful about just how we formulate obedience.

Protestant moralism misses the ball too if it's focused on external conformity. That kind of morality is easy if your life is uncomplicated, but I've had friends from all sorts of different backgrounds that did not conform to bourgeois standards of decency. I'm interested in breaking through the facades of superficiality.

 

[SkyWriting]

I have come to realize slowly in the past year that I feel confusion in my life after the election of Donald Trump as president. I have struggled with anger and dismay, and I have been feeling alienated from my Lutheran congregation over the past year. It feels like a different tribe to me. I have had issue with their allowing security teams and firearms in the worship space- the church no longer feels like a sacred space.

I grew up a Methodist who attended church a few times a year, and was not deeply religious. In college, I became irreligious altogether. At one time in my life I was a Mahayana Buddhist under the lineage of the Ven. Master Thich Nhat Hanh. I later explored Eastern Orthodoxy also but ultimately I was at odds with the church's authoritarian, anti-humanist approach. So I left the church and became very alienated from Christianity. When I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, I considered myself ex-Christian, and I took refuge in Amithaba Buddha. I hung out with a few folks online and received guidance in the Pure Land teaching, which was mostly shaped by a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese teachings of various sorts, and I would spend some time twice a day burning incense in front of an icon on an altar in my room, listening to chanting of the Buddha's name, and holding prayer beads and focusing on the gratitude I had in my life. I accepted that I was a fundamentally foolish and weak person and entrusted myself to primordial Wisdom and Compassion expressed in Amithaba Buddha.

Some time later (and after more medical tests revealed I did not actually have cancer), I fell in love with a woman who was disabled, not unlike myself, and I eventually moved in with her. She was ex-Pentecostal, she had come out as transsexual years before and was forced to leave her church. She had struggled with alcoholism. I was impressed by how her faith helped her to give up drinking. Eventually, we decided to try going to an Episcopal Church together, which was OK at first but eventually they had a controversy where people in the church expressed objections to baptizing the child of a gay person. I decided to leave because I felt hurt by the church's intolerance, and afraid for my own family, and we started going to an ELCA church where the pastor said I was welcome and nobody would be forced to leave. But after a few years, I started having real problems at the church, I just do not mesh with white evangelicals very well, even the more tolerant ones, such as are at in my congregation.

And I still struggled with irritability and I started having panic attacks at church. So, I decided to go back to at least working with biofeedback, so I bought an emWave machine from HeartMath and I learned how to use it. And very soon afterwards I came to the realization I was not happy at my church so I stopped going. My partner still goes but I don't. I might go to the dinners but I really have differences with the pastor and the church council that I am not sure how to resolve.

It was around this time that I learned that Master Thich Nhat Hanh had fallen ill over the years and probably won't be alive for much longer, and I remember feeling a sense of gratitude for his teachings, aware of how much learning to be mindful had helped me to see the truth more deeply. So, I became interested in meditating again, connecting with something that had been a source of strength in my life that I owned for myself, and I can see I have benefited from that in the past month.

My perspective now is probably closer to a very liberal Protestantism or liberal Mahayana Buddhism... and I am far away from the Lutheran confessionalism of my pastor's background, and much of the congregation I am a member of (I consider God a symbol of our deepest intuition, but my metaphysics are probably closer to Process thought or Mahayana Buddhism). I am very much concerned about environmental issues, and my church doesn't seem to focus on this issue much, but I have read a little bit about TNH's teachigs about environmentalism, and what he says just makes sense: environmentalism is a spiritual problem, not a technological problem, that comes from alienation, from people that have a delusional view of the self that does not also include their relationship to nature.

I also want to read Laudato Si by Pope Francis, on the subject of the environment. Some Catholic monks like Br. David Stendahl Rast greatly impress me, but I could not be Catholic due to my living situation, and at any rate I don't agree with their teachings about LGBT people. So Catholicism is not an option for me, even if I feel affinity with Catholic monastics.

Years ago I had a moving experience walking in the woods, during a period when I was alienated from church. I can't put it into words fully, it was almost animistic (like St. Francis canticle). I am convinced connection to nature is important spiritually, and I simply can't take seriously a religious ideology that seems to objectify nature.

Find a group that welcomes you. It may be a small sub-group of any church.

 

[gerbilwoman]

I agree you need to find a group that welcomes you. This website lets you search for LGBT-affirming churches.
Gay Affirming Christian Churches; Homosexuality & the Bible

 

[zippy2006]

I don't believe in a spiritual/physical dualism like that. But I believe that real change is society must come from within. All the positive enduring change in the world has come from that. That's why I disagree both with the evangelical approach, which negates the value of the world, and the secular left approach, which reduces social change to politics. And I think engaged mysticism, as exemplified by some Catholics such as Thomas Merton, or Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh, is something I can resonate with.

What happens if you can't find a perfect congregational match? It may be that you simply need to find a community that is workable, disagree when necessary, and be a small spark of life for the positions that you believe are important. I have become fond of a band named Dawes, and there is a good lyric in one of their songs:

And she thinks, "Most people don't talk enough about how lucky they are."
"Most people don't know what it takes for me to get through the day."
"Most people don't talk enough about the love in their hearts."
...But she doesn't know most people feel that same way.
-Most People
​

I actually think your situation is more common than we might think. I think most people feel the same way, and must cope with imperfect communities. I do, and reform in the Catholic Church is a long and winding road.

 

[PloverWing]

I agree you need to find a group that welcomes you. This website lets you search for LGBT-affirming churches.
Gay Affirming Christian Churches; Homosexuality & the Bible

Hey, my parish is listed on that web site! Cool!

 

[Mustaphile]

I am convinced connection to nature is important spiritually, and I simply can't take seriously a religious ideology that seems to objectify nature.

I think Carl Jung talked a bit about this idea of maintaining a connection with our primal beginnings.

Recently I was watching a lot of documentaries that showed how many mass extinctions we have had in the past. It makes me wonder whether we cling too tightly to our perceptions of being the penultimate expression of life. Apocalyptic visions of a world destroyed by fire make more sense in the light of our planetary history. If we transcend our material nature though, what does it matter? We can watch the next iteration of evolving life from a lofty viewpoint.

 

[dms1972]

-

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

If we transcend our material nature though, what does it matter? We can watch the next iteration of evolving life from a lofty viewpoint.

Most of us are stuck. We have a transcendent nature, a spiritual nature, a physical nature and in between is our emotional nature. But we identify most with our physical and emotional nature. Spiritual practices are ways to resolve that fixation and be more aware of our interconnection and unity. The lofty viewpoint probably has far less ego.