Christian Liberals & Progressive People of Faith

The denial of God is really a denial of our very essence.

My religious journey started about two years ago...at least me being conscious that it was a religious journey started at that time or somewhere around there. It's actually been a life-long journey. I called myself an agnostic up until then for most of my life. I actually subscribed to the atheist point of view of materialism, but I left the door open for other possibilities. It's a big universe after all.

My inquiry into theology greatly intensified with a vision of hell that I had this past Thanksgiving. It wasn't the fire and brimstone kind of deal. It was the naked experience of my reality. The truth of my existence stripped bare of delusion. My wife has been a Christian her entire life and we know a few priests who have become good friends of the family. I consulted with them. One of them told me that he thought of hell as simply the absence of God, and he referred me to the theologian Paul Tillich who, writing in the 1940s, subscribed to a similar view. Tillich thought of sin as being a state in which one is separated from God and grace as being the union with God.

I also read authors and philosophers of other faiths, and I have run across those same ideas numerous times- that is, hell is separation and heaven is connection. I admire the Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg and she wrote an entire book on this subject called Real Love. She describes real love as connection. Not only with our families, but as something that starts with the acceptance of our true being within and with work radiates outward to encompass all of humankind. The Bible says that God is Love and I think it is the most important lesson to be learned from Jesus who loved all of humanity to the point of the ultimate self-sacrifice.

So, in my view, those who believe in love as something other than just another evolutionary survival tactic are on the right track even if they don't subscribe to any religion. By simple math, if one believes in the transformative power of love then one believes in God even if they don't think so.

In America, we are a society of people who are largely in hell despite all of our wealth because we are cut off from each other. The disunion is so extreme that most of us are cut off from the reality of our true Selves which reside in love and compassion for ourselves and our fellow human beings. I've been reading Thomas Merton lately and he says that to dwell in God we have to address our own feelings of unworthiness for ourselves. Once one truly realizes that God loves us no matter who we are, and we put our trust in that, the transformation begins. The heart starts to open and we begin to heal.

That is the story of me beginning to awaken. I've got a lot more work to do, but I'm happy to be doing it now that I have had a glimpse of grace. All of this struggle I've been going through is not meaningless and hasn't been for nothing.

I know I'm preaching to the choir when I speak to you about such things, guillaumeb. I'm putting this post here for anyone who might come across it. And seeing as how I'm kind of new, at this point, on DU when it comes to speaking of spiritual matters.