Burned By Religion!

I’ve long lost count of hearing people tell me that they want nothing to do with organized religion. In some cases they’ve concluded that the whole enterprise conflicts with their understanding of scientific knowledge. It’s hard to resolve how they see our universe with the notion of a supreme being. And for many it’s rejecting the premise of how ‘God’ is described by people of belief. Given the tortuous insanity of human life and behavior this is not a difficult decision. But for most of the people I have encountered in this space, it has more to do with their personal experiences growing up in a ‘faith community’ of some form. They have been judged, diminished and even abused by the leaders of their churches. Growing up in the Catholic Church in New York and Long Island I was appalled by the stories of predator priests. They drove many away for good. I have no illusions it was so different in other religious systems and their own grotesque scandals. And these often victimized children! So for many people it’s been good riddance! And yet here I am back in the Christian faith community, and as a minister no less! How did I come back? For me it began with curiosity. With so much experience growing up hearing the stories of my faith, I decided learn, or rather relearn, what the system was intended to become. I devoted time and energy to learn and study the history and traditions of my Christian heritage as an adult. For starters I needed to separate the ‘religion and its traditions’ from the identity and person of the founder, Jesus of Nazareth. The scourge of malevolent religious practice in the name of Jesus had to be reconciled or finally dismissed for me as well. Who really was and is this individual?  The teaching of this humble itinerant Rabbi needed congruence. So I enrolled in Union Theological Seminary, part of Columbia University in New York. I already had a masters and doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in Urban Education. I was eager to immerse myself in the scholarship of the biblical testimony and understandings of the foundation of Christian faith. This place has an amazing history of great scholars and thinkers, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, James Forbes and Paul Tillich. So I enrolled as a full time graduate student for four years. Oh and the whole time I was performing standup every night in the NewYork comedy clubs. It was an exhilarating life for me. And I then plowed on ahead and received a Masters in Social Work at Columbia. And then a Masters in Health Psychology. It was this mixture of theology and psychology that became the special sauce for my reconciliation with Christianity. I  came to understand it for it’s lofty and transcendent purpose. This mixture of these disciplines of helped me come to terms with how religion can function or fail. So here I am in this space, comfortable and challenging for me. And yet I do understand how bad teaching, bad behavior and clumsy literalism have short circuited the mission. I feel led to offer a new doorway into the purity, the humility and the love that is at the core of the Jesus identity still relevant two millennia later. It has become fulfilling my joy and challenging to help people move through and past their disgust and find faith, hope and love. An amazing journey bringing together Jesus and eternal life, theology and physics. Jesus and Einstein all wrapped together. Leave the past behind and take a new look.