Fascinating conversation. My cousin is graduating next week from Claremont with her PhD in theology and we have the most interesting discussions. She's Christian and is enormously patient with me and my thousands of questions. It's funny how all religions kind of sounds ridiculous when you're on the outside. This is not to say they *are* ridiculous or that it's wrong for anyone to take part.
My religion is basically Church of Beisbol with a healthy dose of Be Kind. It works for me. I'm kind of like Stephanie in that if God is playing with us, I don't really like the game.
Right, that is not modern-day Presbyterianism. Which IME is closer to Steph's
(1) God made us as fallible people who fuck up, and, knowing he did that, is cool with our failings, since they're his fault anyway;
with an expectation that you will do you best to do better.
Allergy sufferers, you have my great sympathy.
If (1) is true, we're all good. If (2) is true, then I don't actually want to follow a god like that, so I'm still good.
This is very much my stance. In another place when I described the thought process that took me from Fundie-liciousness to "If that's how God works, I want nothing to do with Him. I'm not sure what I believe sometimes, but ... I believe in cats. And sometimes I see the powerful love behind cats as Divine. And sometimes I see the Divine as a gentle, loving Parent, not too dissimilar to what I was taught in some parts of Sunday School, but who is gentle and loving to all and sundry " - someone replied "What a lovely conversion story!" And I realized that indeed, a shaky belief in Love and Mercy was better than the most rock-solid faith in the Fundie God.
There's a bit in Revelation, talking about the wedding of the church to Jesus, and that gets visualized as believers who are just saved with no good works are in the plainest wedding gown or even naked (but hey, it beats being in hell), but the ones who do lots of good works get to be in the prettiest, fanciest, most wonderful gown.
Huh, so that must be the basis of the Mormon belief in a hierarchical heaven, Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial. Celestial is where you go if you've punched all the holes on your Mormon ticket, Terrestrial is where you go if you've been mostly worthy, and Telestial is where you go if you haven't done anything Hell-worthy but the Mormons won't have you/You won't have the Mormons.
Protip: you can take the "once-daily" antihistamines, like Claritin, Zyrtec, or Allegra, twice a day if your allergies are really bad. Don't do it forever, but a couple of weeks of twice-daily Claritin is fine.
Oh, good to know! I've always been afraid to do that, and Claritin seems to be the thing that works best for me when my allergies are at my worst, so that's an excellent tool to have.
I didn't much care for the Philosophy of Religion course I took in college (I wanted comparative religions, realy, and it was solid Christian philosophy)) but the concept that God c/should have the attribute of being "worthy of worship" is one I'm glad to have learned.
The "worthy of worship" idea seems to be fairly new. In the old days, it was probably more of "worship him or he'll kill you". This is why I like the study of religion and how the human perception of its place in the cosmos has changed.
I was raised Baptist, asked too many questions at Children's Sermon, and decided to stop going to church at 10, went to a friend's REEEEALLLY fundie church a few times at about 11 or 12 and was shown horrific Number of the Beast Hellpocolypse movies at Fun!Wednesday!Church! which (seriously) paired with watching movies and reading horror stories culminated with me learning how to sleep with my foot tucked under my butt because I kinda worried that Satan was going to ass-rape me while I slept (heyyyy, seeds of chronic insomnia much?!), read a lot of everything as a teen and young adult, dabbled in paganism in college, and studied a lot of medieval history on religion, and basically decided I'm agnostic -- I don't know, can't do anything about the existence or not of god(s)/whatever, Old Testament God is kind of a dick, MOST Roman/Greek gods are dicks, and if there is a god, he/she/it should be more mannerly and sensible that most people ascribe him/her/it to be, and if he/she/it is such a dick that I have to bow down and kiss its ass to get to heaven, send me to hell, kthxbai! -- I'mma just going to pet kittens and love rivers and sunsets and good stories and try not to be a dick.
Most of the sensible theology I've read boil down to Don't Be a Dick, But You'll Probably Be a Dick Sometimes, So Recognize Your Dickishness, Apologize and Try To Do Better. I kinda hope there's some type of afterlife/physics energy self/soul thang but if there isn't, I won't know I didn't go on, because I'll be dead and won't care anyway. and there's nothing I can do about it, so why stress? Live life, think about stuff and try to be nice to people, because being nasty and grasping and mean is just exhausting and horrid, and there's too many interesting, delicious, pleasurable, thinky, feely, pretty, amazing things to see and taste and experience, so eat the delicious cake and sit in the sun and read All The Things, and leave me the hell alone to do this, thanks, and fight against other people being Dicks.
That's the Church of Me.
