Overwhelming Good

“Then you’re condemning yourself to hell.”

I was taken aback the first time I was accused of being a “non-Christian”.  I had grown up going to services weekly, participating in youth groups, and staying active and involved with the United Methodist church that had been a tremendous part of my life since attending preschool there.  Yet here I was, being confronted by a girl my own age in early high school.  She started with a seemingly-innocuous, somewhat cryptic question:  ”Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?”

I paused.  What exactly does that even mean? I thought.  I could tell that this was a leading question, so rather than answer directly, I figured I should ask for clarification first.  She responded, “You have to invite Jesus into your heart to be a Christian.  If you don’t do that, you go to hell.”  I wasn’t buying it.  The Kool-Aid tasted funny.

“Wait a second, now I’ve always understood that God’s supposed to be a forgiving, magnanimous entity trying to get people to love one another.”  Not a big stick-wielding, threatening being that lords over (ha!) anyone who doesn’t take some sort of cryptic spiritual step to prove his/her belief in Him, I implied.

But the girl pressed on.  ”But if you haven’t accepted Jesus into your heart, how is God supposed to know whether or not you believe, whether or not to send you to heaven?”

I retorted, much to her chagrin:  ”I’m not sure I even believe in hell.  I mean, doesn’t eternal pain and suffering go against the whole message of love and forgiveness?  Seems like that would be a little contradictory to me.”

She wasn’t a particularly happy camper after that, and over the following years, I had many intense discussions with her and others about the merits of different theories of the nature and demeanor of God.  Maybe I missed the whole point (I’m sure some, including that particular girl, think I did), but the message I got from years of attending my hometown church was that we should strive to be our ideal selves in terms of goodness; that is to say, love one another, act with others in mind, and over all, forgive.  Principles of sharing indiscriminately.  Recognizing value in people regardless of background, race, condition.  That’s what Christianity’s about to me–that’s what I see as what Jesus, the prophets, and the disciples tried to teach.  So I’m skeptical when I see some people so caught up in the “practice” and mysticism of Christianity instead of focusing on acting it out in life.  I mean, the whole idea of evangelism, for one…  When I went to college, I found groups systematically trying to “harvest” new Christians by pulling them in with some sort of veiled threat of salvation (do it, or else!).  I rarely, if ever, share my faith directly unless asked or if it’s relevant to do so, but I know that by my actions people can see, regardless of whether they associate it with Christianity or not, the value system by which I abide, the moral fiber and refusal to sink to a level of personal promotion in lieu of others’ well-being.

In other words, I’ve certainly strayed from the popular path.  I haven’t, nor do I ever want to, get caught up in the practice and mysticism of Christianity (or any religion, for that matter)–I’ll stick to the application of it, the lessons that religious figures tried to teach.

There’s a movie, based on a book by Jerome Bixby, called The Man from Earth.  It considers the idea of a man who claims to have lived through eons of human history, while several professors and experts in different fields debate his story.  When asked whether he had known anyone religiously significant during his time alive, the proverbial caveman, later in the movie, claims to have studied with the Buddha for an extended period, and several generations later, realizing the strife and hate present in his new surroundings, tried to reteach the lessons of the Buddha.  The room gradually comes to the realization that that this “caveman” is attempting to portray himself as Jesus, begrudgingly speaking about how people bought into a hype about rising from the dead much more than the actual teachings.  Teachings that were, for the most part, similar to any other religious path.  (I won’t go further into the movie, but needless to say, it’s an excellent watch and highly recommended.)

It’s an interesting concept to think about, and true in many respects.  Beyond their mystic and practice-riddled exteriors, many religions teach the same core values.  I rue how we end up enshrouding our values in such a curtain of dogma that we aren’t able to share them effectively.  I mean, I don’t care if you’re an atheist, an agnostic, any other religious follower, or you just don’t know, but there’s value in learning the lessons of loving one another.  It’s a travesty that we hide it so.  I believe humans have a need for a moral code, a set of virtues.  Whether it’s a tribal agreement not to kill one another, or a Socratic discourse on the virtues of supporting a community over self-aggrandizement, or the same lessons of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, or Christianity, we have a long history of trying to find some sort of moral code.  And regardless of what the “right answer” is, whether we’re supposed to be worshipping one God or kissing idols of another, I think the most important and reasonable thing is to take what we can agree on–a philosophy of love rather than hate, and share that with the world.  Talk about it.  It’s good learning for the non-religious and the religious alike.  And if God wants to send me to hell for caring about others and trying to promote love, then I don’t want to be in heaven.