Lifted from the Introduction of the book "The Gypsy Soul and Other Essays".
I came across this phrase "Believe in God, but lock your car" in a blog of Masterwordsmith. The phrase strikes me because it capsulized the idea that religion should be practical - one that we can apply to our daily lives. I can't relate to preachers who dish out memorized phrases like the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Calvary has "washed our sins with His blood" without giving it any practical application. I am not saying that it is wrong, but it isn't just within the grasp of human reason.
As a former atheist who have reembraced the Faith, I believe that religion should be practiced within the bounds of reason and human experience. We cannot simply tell people that if we have faith we can command a mountain to be "lifted and be thrown into the sea." Although it's written in the Bible (Matthew 21: 21-22), I just can't find myself interpreting Jesus Christ literally. I know that faith can move mountains if it is taken in the context that we can do a Herculean task or what others think is impossible if we put our heart into what we want to do.
This is a dictum that I'm sure many of us have proven. I have experienced it myself when I left Romblon, a remote province in the heart of the Philippines, to pursue my dream of getting a college education after graduating from high school. Without any support from my uncle's family with whom my sister and I had lived after our father's death when I was 13, I went ahead with just "a little prayer in my pocket", as a song goes, and P75 (about $2) that I hid in my sock. Though the odds were great, I became a journalist, way beyond my expectation.
Many people lose their faith in God because many preachers send wrong messages that do not jibe with human experience. I remember a Christian preacher who, during an Abu Sayyaf hostage crisis in the Southern Philippines, boasted publicly that he would go to Basilan Island not only to convince the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers to free the hostages but also to convert them from Islam to Christianity. His invocation of Faith backfired; he suffered a stroke when he himself was held hostage. Luckily, he was released unharmed.
This kind of preaching as well as those of a group of Christians from the United States who went to the Philippines last May to warn people of doomsday on a particularly day of that month often stigmatize religion. Demonstrating the Faith in such ways makes many people think that religion is for the clowns and not for people who use their brains. This is one reason why some people disassociate themselves from religion and opt to describe themselves as spiritual.
Religion is not a badge to let people know that we are righteous. It we look at religion that way, we may end up self-righteous which is not in keeping with the religious teaching - the teaching of Christ in particular - about humility. I consider religion as a guide in our life's journey to warn us against the perils of worldly ways - untamed obsessions for the flesh, material riches, power and fame, in particular.
People have different world views, particularly on religion. Even among Christians, we have different ways of looking at the Bible. Some Christians insist that the Bible should be taken literally, which I don't think is possible. I could not imagine reading Revelations without any interpretation. And if I read the Bible literally, I will find many contradictions in it. These contradictions sowed the seeds that later undermined my Faith and drove me to abandon God when I was exposed to Darwin's theory of evolution.
Though many Christians may disagree with me, I have learned to read the Bible by themes. For instance, in the story of Adam and Eve I don't focus on sin or indulge on the debate on free will. I look at such debates as useless polemics that serve no purpose at all but feed our egoistic cravings to showcase our intelligence. Which is what I see as the theme of the story: human pride. Eve disobeyed God because she succumbed to the temptation that she could be greater than God if she would eat the fruit of knowledge.
I think this theme sounds familiar to many - if not all - of us. I leave it to your imagination.
The Bible is replete with themes that we live by day to day - themes about love, pride, charity, humility, forgiveness and so on. The Biblical story that I often remember is the "Parable of the Sower"(Matthew 13; 1-23) because it is about the worldly temptations - symbolized by the weeds - in our lives that often makes us abandon the spiritual side of our existence.
The themes serve as my guide in life's journey. I have no quarrel with the Christian teaching that the blood of Christ has cleansed our sins. I take it as a church dogma that I do not have to question in the same way that Darwinists consider "natural selection" as a given in the evolutionary process. Living with the themes in the Bible makes me feel more human with a practical view of my Faith.
Yes, I believe in God but I would certainly lock my car when I park because I am aware that there might be other people who have thrown their religion into life's garbage bin.
Please read my other blog "Fun in Life" link salt-funstories.blogspot.com
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