Faith and Religion

Teasing out Content from Form

The Walls of Old City, by Elena Kotliarker

A nexus for the three main Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam are found in East Jerusalem’s, Old City. (Which has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.)

As we unravel this weary world I’m not surprised we find ourselves focused here - on this geographic spot - which has been the cause of so much conflict, suffering, injustice and killing. Much of it in the name of God, of course.

The threading in of religious themes and claims, when pursuing political agenda and self-interest is both despicable and common.

Righteous and holy wars. These were ‘givens’. Framings and conceptual contexts to make room for what should be unacceptable. We were born into a world that’s conditioned us to accept inhumane behavior, as if, it’s just the way it is.

What bullshit.

The sacred, the historic, and mythic - all come together in this land.

So many claims. So much bloodshed. Political aims to increase power and land using religion as justification is an old theme and it belongs in the old world that is at a breaking point.

Why do many so many support it and go along with obvious wrongdoing being done in the name of God?

Do you suspect that manipulation and deceit - becoming more obvious by the day - made its way into our religious traditions?

I do. It would have to. If you’re going to enslave a whole world, you’d need to include faith. Or rather, religion. It’s a major underpinning.

You’ll need to merge faith with religion, (and religious doctrine and scripture) create divisions with other religions and frame things to work for hidden agendas of control.

All of this has happened. This slave-system has been going on a long time.

I had - a while back - done an outline for a book called, Freeing God from Religion. It was about the two aspects of faith; the intuited, primary aspect, or the content of faith, VS its secondary aspect which is its expression or form.

The primary or intuited aspect is universal. Faith here is an inner acknowledgement of connection to what animates us and gave us life.

The secondary or expressive aspect refers to the many forms that essential intuition can take in the world.

These two aspects mean that while we may all intuit the divine as essence - which is unifying - we can still maintain many disagreements at its secondary and expressive aspect.

Religion is not faith even though we’ve merged them in many cases.

Religions are expressions of faith. Often, instead of unifying us in that shared intuition of a unifying Source, they dismantle and separate us in the name of God.

Irony of ironies.

If the Divine is an essential knowing then utilizing religions to create divisions around that insight, is at best, ironic. At worst, deeply fucked up.

Faith as an inner perception doesn’t need any supporting material. It just is. Documents or endorsement by someone or something else is superfluous.

There is no arguing with faith in its universal aspect.

Though it may seek expression - including in religious institutions - it doesn’t require it.

Religions on the other hand, require faith and the faithful; they exist only because faith as an essence, exists.

When we talk about faith, however, we often collapse these two distinct aspects. Which tends to muck things up. When we separate them out, things get easier.

Recap: The intuited aspect is primary and universal and connects us to the animating force behind life - whatever name you call it. The secondary aspect is expressive; a form of, that primary insight.

When we place the secondary aspect - the particular form - in front of the primary aspect - or universal insight - we reverse things and basically put the cart before the horse. Which doesn’t make for smooth going.

I’m a Christian or I’m a Jew are examples of merging faith with religion. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just making a point.

It’s different than saying: I’m a person of faith, who currently expresses that faith as a Christian or as a Jew.

This may seem like a small thing but it has huge consequences. Consequences we are all living with.

The my faith is better than your faith, or more important than or more real than … are consequences of this cart before the horse reversal.

On the other hand - faith as essential perception places us - not our religion - in the drivers seat. We are each the ‘authority’ of our own faith.

We know this. We know the idea that anyone - let alone an organization - is in a position to confirm or sanctify our relationship to the Divine - as we experience it - is the height of arrogance.

Yet this is what religious institutions have effectively tried to do.

I know Christians who think if it’s not Christianity you are practicing then you’re doomed in the afterlife. Believing this, in my opinion, is the result of merging their faith with religion. They haven’t separated out what they know intuitively from its form in religion. I also know Christians who don’t feel this way.

I know Jewish people who think that Jews are the Chosen Ones; favored by God. Again, a merging of the two aspects. I also know Jewish people who reject this idea.

Whether I agree or disagree doesn’t change or threaten my faith in the least. I don’t feel a need to defend anything or persuade anyone.

Which brings us to an essential point: When faith is cloaked in religion, it’s like you joined a team. Suddenly there is something to protect or defend. When faith is simply a spark of recognition - there is nothing to defend or protect.

You just know what you know.

We don’t have to understand faith’s inner working to embrace it. That’s part of its mystery and ineffable quality. It’s not fixed, it’s fluid, it changes as we change, and it changes us. There is a dynamism to embodied faith that doesn’t always easily translate into reason, though too, many include reason into their faith.

However when faith is encountered via institutionalized religion first, (what we’re born into) this may set up some obstacles to accessing that connective spark. Over time, the reorientation can happen and the horse put back in front of the cart, so to speak. But sometimes that doesn’t happen, does it? And this inversion of religion first - as doorway to faith - actually blocks our entry. Another sad irony.

The essence of faith is ultimately mysterious and individually accessed. There is nothing to criticize here. This is not where the problem of faith resides.

That happens at the religious-expressive level. We can and should criticize those religions and institutions when they operate in bad faith (pun intended) and in ways fully antithetical to their very reason to exist.

Especially when they abuse and use their members faith to do outrageous and criminal things.

And that’s my critical point. We can criticize religions while simultaneously, maintaining respect for each other’s faith.

We should question and criticize the cover ups in the Vatican, the secret library they keep from their ‘flock', their questionable financial ties and when they insert themselves into political agendas.

(I’m not going to link anything, do a quick search on the Vatican and you’ll find plenty. You can also check out Laura’s stack for the deep connections the Vatican has to criminal families and global control structures.)

We should call out bullshit when God is used as justification to push people out of their land and kill large numbers of them. (Which is not the same as defending oneself from attack.)

Using God to justify slaughter is beyond contradiction. It’s blasphemous, to use a term I almost never use.

Perhaps our faith even requires we call it out?

All of this is happening now. And all of it has to happen.

More and more of us are coming to the realization that religions can be hijacked, distorted and corrupted. As a control mechanism they can be the perfect vehicle of manipulation. Precisely because once our inner knowing - the content of faith - is merged with it, we can’t always un-tease those aspects apart. Attacks on the form of our faith, feel like attacks on the content of our faith. This is how THEY manipulate their members to defend indefensible actions.

It’s an abominable thing to do; manipulate their connection to the Divine.

It’s been done. Is being done. We must see it, in order to avoid it.

Fortunately - however chaotically - the tide is turning.

Suppressed knowledge is surfacing and accepted stories that were part of our orienting ‘givens’, are being challenged.

Here’s an interesting discussion, covering a range of subjects, with Billy Carlson. You don’t have to agree with his conclusions to appreciate his questioning and open mind.

Final note. Faith that is alive, relevant and immediate (no mediation needed) doesn’t require any dressing up. If the cloak it once wore, tatters, so what? Faith will abide like an internal flame that never goes out.

It doesn’t need a club or a room or a doctrine. Those things might be nice and serve other purposes, but they are all redundant to the light of faith.

If part of how we interacted with our faith falls into question, or just falls, that innate spark doesn’t die out. If anything, it clarifies and strengthens as the debris that clung to it, goes.

I think we’re all getting big lessons in false authorities. Some of these lessons are uncomfortable - Wait, that was a lie too?! - but it’s not the end of the world. Just a version of it. And a version of you, who identified with it.

All of this shredding and shedding will leave what’s essential.

I have faith in that.

Thanks for reading.

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/devanneyka1