Tag Archives: church

Thoughts about God, belief, church, and the universe

Posted on by

My belief system has changed over the years in interesting ways. As a child I had no belief system. How could I? I did not know belief systems existed. I was taken to church every Sunday by my Mother, but I never thought anything of it. I was to sit and be as quiet as possible for an hour or so. I had no real idea what was going on or what church was all about.

I remember the first time I had a religious conflict was when I asked the reasoning behind a story the class we were told by a Nun. I was sent to the priest for my indiscretion. As a Teenager, I had a lot of questions, and some answers were missing logic, common sense, or were not bible based. During my teenage years I drifted into something resembling animism. Little pieces of God sprinkled all over my little piece of the world, and across all earth and space.

Of course some people were not too happy with the idea that I could possibly think that God is everywhere, and not at some far off undefined spot watching how I spend my life, adding and removing weights to a scale whose purpose determines where I will spend eternity. My own life was complete though, because if I could see God in weeds growing in the yard, I could certainly imagine a little piece of God living in every human being in my world. That thought did not make some people happy, they felt I must be awful full of myself, to think God resides in each of us.

Slowly in the following years, God retreated from my life and reformed out in some distant undefined place. As this slow retreat happened, so did my dissatisfaction with organized religion which started looking more like a combination of a clique and business. Where belonging meant upholding the party line, and belief system, whatever it was depending on which church. The Church party line changed depending on where I went. This constant changing of ideology did not mesh with me for a church trying to have one unified face.

It certainly started looking once more as if God was in each human, plant, animal, rock, and piece of sand. Perhaps there was more to the idea of God than God hanging out somewhere far away waiting to decide my eternal fate. What if everything I knew or could conceive about my physical and spiritual self was because God had a thought once upon a time and I am a result of that thought? The idea seemed to tie up a lot of loose ends for me. God simply had a thought and everything I know is a result of that thought whenever and wherever it occurred.

I tried to put God on a scale I could comprehend and relate to. Something that was not as magnificent as the creation of the universe and distantly experiencing everything in it. My pets were a fair starting point. I decided yes, I do experience more with them than I could without them. Whenever I am around them I am part of them and they are a part of me as we share almost the same space. I saw them young and happy, I see them sick, I see them as they grow older. In a small way I experience their life as they live it.

I do not stand with a clipboard with a sheet of paper on it and a line drawn down the middle, one side good and one side bad, keeping a running tally of how I perceive them. My pets are, and they do not decide what is good or not. I do not have the trouble of trying to decide whether they are more good than bad, or bad than good. I do not have to consider whether they do something because they are tired, sick, distressed, or just mean and angry.

After I worked my way through this, I decided this must be how the world is from God’s perspective. It is not important whether I think God is in everything in the universe, that God is in some distant place, or whether God lives in me or not. Deciding those ideas is not important, and something that I can not really determine no matter how I try. Once I arrived at this thought, my beliefs became simpler, yet more encompassing.

Other posts of possible interest:

Scientology verses the right to believe what we choose

Basic truth, sharing, and the fundamentals of belief

Share

Donating to Charity is a lot of work

Posted on by

Almost every company I have worked for has had a special charity or organization that they support. Most of us have our own special charities that we support in some fashion. One I supported for a long time tried to help children with medical conditions that had no where else to turn to. Some people I knew referred to what they did as experimental surgery, but when all other avenues are exhausted, medical care from the edge becomes someone’s only possibility no matter how experimental it may be.

I would donate some money to this charity every year at tax refund time, or more often if I could afford it. One day my mind was wandering, and I was thinking about the money I gave to my special charity. I was feeling pretty good about it when the idea occurred to me that I was not even covering the cost of some doctor’s bathroom break at the hospital they worked at!

I knew that my thoughts were noble, but in reality, what I gave to that charity was so little, it probably barely paid for the paper it was tracked on. From there I went to donating money to a local church. That seemed pretty fitting. Give money to a church, and they distribute that money out to those in need.

I am in church one morning listening to the priest talk about going to a city one hundred miles away for some shopping, a steak dinner, and a movie. At this point in my life, I had maybe five dollars free for my whole weekend entertainment. I did some quick calculating in my head, and I determined that it would take a few months of my donations to pay for one trip such as the priest was talking about. I thought about the last of a four day old casserole I had eaten for dinner last night, and somehow my dinner and his did not balance out.

I was trying hard to make an impact, and do the right thing, but it was obvious I was not in even close to the middle of the income level of this church, and it was doubtful my few dollars a Sunday were doing anything for anyone really.

About this time, I started doing volunteer work, and that was gratifying at times. The only problem was it was hard to fit my free time into a groups need. So volunteering became sporadic at best. I found a homeless shelter that needed money and food, and that was pretty rewarding for a few years. I could see I was making a direct impact on peoples lives right where I live, and that made me happy.

A group of gay men and women who wanted to do something charitable for their community started doing car washes, bake sales, and other fund raisers to raise money. When they raised over ten-thousand dollars, they tried to give it away to the homeless shelter I was supporting with my few dollars every few weeks. A funny thing happened though, the founder of the shelter refused the money! He claimed that as a Christian he could not accept money from those people…. I wrote him and told him the money I gave him came from playing poker, and I won my money in part from drug dealers, gang bangers, pimps, and addicts. Certainly my money was no better than the money he refused. I ended making it clear, that my money would be going somewhere else. Thankfully, so did about half of the charitable donators also agree with me, and gave their money elsewhere.

Now I give to a charity that spends the money right where I live, helping people in my city and state, and I feel good about that. I know that my money is going to things I can see, appreciate, and hopefully those being helped do too. I do not my time often as I found in general, donating my time was more painful than it was rewarding which is too bad, I wish it were not so.

If you have little or no money and want to do something, look around your neighborhood. If you pay attention, you will find someone or some group needs your help. If you donate to a charity, make sure it is one that makes you feel good, not just a charity that makes feel like you are fulfilling an obligation.

Share