Growing your own roots 


A reflection on choosing a religion. 

One of the areas of interest in my life is religion. This is the first of many posts on the topic, I'm sure. I was talking with my partner, Stephen, after our monthly service as sacristan at Trinity Episcopal Church. He was saying that quite a few of our parishioners have gone back to the Roman Church.
"Why do you think that is?" I replied.
"They go back because their early Indoctrination is still influencing them," Stephen said.

This got me to thinking about choice and freedom. I started out by reflecting that these kinds of questions are likely to generate rather tenuous and uncertain answers. I know that after a lifetime of thinking about my relationship to God, I still feel that I know very little about what that relationship is in this life, and even less about what happens to Jim when he dies. These are challenging and difficult matters, and I suppose for a lot of people, it's just easier to turn the thinking and the decision over to some other person or organization. Maybe it's even one valid solution. After all, we find ourselves having to trust doctors, teachers, bankers and lawyers in uncertain situations, why not priests, preachers and seminarians.

But then I reconsidered. This is not a good idea, especially in serious situations. Look at the situation in law, for example. Suppose someone commits a crime, but doesn't know the law that covers the situation. Suppose that person is caught and brought before a judge. The more serious the crime, the less likely the judge is going to excuse the guilty party because of ignorance. We are supposed to know what the law is. But if that is an accepted fact, why isn't it all the more important to have given careful thought to moral, ethical and theological matters, which are presumably behind the law, anyway?

We owe it to ourselves to be informed, and where the information invalidates our early indoctrination, we need to be ready to reeducate ourselves. I know that many people have a deterministic or fatalistic outlook when it comes to these matters. But it seems to me that the only way to have a choice about who we are is to evaluate where we came from, where we have been, and where we are going. Even if the answers come out tentative and uncertain.

I've been a Baptist, an atheist, a Pentacostal, a meditator, and now an Episcopalian. But except for the Baptist background, which was where my mother sent me when I was young, each position I have adopted has resulted from thought and evaluation. I rejected the Baptists because of the scientific training that I was getting in high school. But I rejected the atheist position because it didn't truly reflect my awareness of my own createdness and relationship to some greater creator. Finally, I became an Episcopalian because it was the best compromise that Stephen, a former Roman Catholic, and I could find. With seventeen years of faithful practice, we have found that here, as well as most other places, there are things we like, things we don't like, and things we take on faith.

But I keep my mind actively engaged. I'm trying to strike a balance between just accepting what I am told to believe, and just trying to tell everyone else what to believe. In forging that balance, I am in community with others. Hopefully, this is a loving community. Stephen and I know that where we are currently planted, we are welcome, we are loved. And we are tolerated for thinking for ourselves, and sometimes, even encouraged to do it. Still I also like the UCC motto, "God is still speaking."

Where does this bring us? I'm not sure, but I have to go out and work in the yard now. Stephen is building a box for his daffodils and tulips. (It makes it so much easier for the squirrels to find and eat the tuilp bulbs when they are planted in a box.) Tee hee. See you soon.  

Posted: Sat - October 22, 2005 at 11:41 AM          

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