The story of my Journey would be woefully incomplete without the Spiritual side. And an account of the Spiritual side would, in turn, be woefully incomplete without a discussion of the topic of Faith, what that word means to me, and how Faith fits into my life.
Faith in a Loving God is central. Faith in the teachings of Jesus, their correctness, is central. Belief that Jesus is the Son of God less so, oddly: That I believe simply because it makes no sense to me not to, given how my Faith is structured, and how my Mind is arranged around it.
At the very centre are those two commandments:
- Love God
- Love Neighbour
The latter one I call 'central', and the former 'great'. The former comes from the Bible, the latter is my term. Love Neighbour is broadly compatible with Buddhism, indeed Buddhism can be seen as, amongst other things, detailed teachings on just how to Love Neighbour. In this way much of Buddhism slots into the Christian framework that is my Faith, much as one can port software from Windows to a mac. So in a sense, the bits of Buddhism relevant to my Journey I 'ported' from Buddhism to Christianity. I do likewise with much of Taiji: softness, sensitivity, hence not resisting what is evil, is broadly compatible with Christian teachings. Thus there is no incompatibility.
People may, naively in my opinion, think there is a conflict between science and Christianity. But this is more due to naivety. To resolve the conflict, we develop the idea of Mental Software. Think of:
- brain as CPU
- Mind as software running on the brain
- beliefs as software
Importantly, just as we judge software by what it does, rather than any kind of intrinsic beauty in the particular sequence of bytes that makes up its machine code, so we judge a Faith by the thoughts, words, and deeds that it generates. If it generates good thoughts, words, deeds, that is, 'the tree bears good fruits', then it is a good Faith. If it generates bad thoughts, words, and deeds, then 'the tree bears bad fruit', and it is a bad Faith. Bad Faith should be uprooted and burned, just as Jesus says in Matt 7. In this way, like uprooting weeds in a garden, beliefs that lead to bad thoughts, words, deeds, must be ruthlessly uprooted. If this means altering how you read the Bible, so be it. Love Neighbour is more important that 'biblically correct'.
Thus, if your mode of biblical interpretation puts you at odds with what is Loving towards Neighbour, then your mode of biblical interpretation is wrong. This includes reading the bible literally, in the hope that by doing so you receive uncoloured instructions from God. Biblical literalism is yet another 'easy road to destruction': following that road may not be easy, but the 'biblical interpretation' bit is what is easy.
Failing to Love Neighbour in the belief that, by doing so, you are in some way Loving God is just nonsense. It is an attempt at excusing oneself from Loving Neighbour by effectively trying to blame God.
So back to science vs Faith conflict: there is no conflict. Science vs religion is a different thing. But religion is not Faith: religion is tradition, and over the years tradition goes wayward. The Jews in Jesus' day had gone wayward, as we read. When a dissenting voice, that of Jesus, spoke against the religious leaders of the day, they try to 'shoot the messenger'. While Jesus' death did more to spread his message than would have happened had he not been executed, we must also learn from the way the leaders of his day reacted to his teachings by deciding to execute him in whatever way they could.
What about God? For me, since belief in a Loving God is central, I just assume God's existence axiomatically, see my life as exploring the consequences of such a belief, and constrain myself to understand the words 'God' and 'exists' so that 'God exists' is certain. At worst, I have just an abstract concept, like a set of numbers with a certain property. If that's all I have, so be it. But the belief needs to be where it is within my Mind for everything to function as it does. So for me, 'God is', by definition. Now the cost of this is that my meaning for 'God' is likely different than yours. That is not my problem. There are many words the meaning of which we will differ. For example technical terms: there is a meaning for the word 'group' which would be alien to those without learning its meaning in the context of abstract algebra. So what the word 'group' brings to my mind will be different than what the word 'group' brings to mind in someone unfamiliar with the mathematical concept. Then the meaning will also be distinct from every other mathematician, in one way or another. There will be broad consensus, but what you and I know about what a 'group' is will differ, and thus the word will bring different thought patterns to mind. My approach to 'God' is simply to exploit this so as to move uncertainty (as to the truth of 'God exists') to somewhere more convenient. It may seem odd, but I'm comfortable doing things this way.
This upside-down thing is also like how things like the second and the metre are defined. Rather than trying to measure the frequency of oscillation of something, as in an atomic clock, we rather define that frequency of oscillation, and use the oscillation to measure how long a second is. Then we fix the numerical value of the speed of light, and use the speed of light, together with the second as defined by an atomic clock, to measure the distance of a metre. All the major units now do this, defining them in terms of physics experiments by demanding that certain physical constants have exact numerical values. In demanding that God Exists, and that Jesus Is The Son Of God, and so on, I am constraining my mental language. In this way it provides a lens through which I see the world and the rest of my life. In this way, it is central to everything, and everything would have to be torn down and rebuilt in order to do things differently.
So with that all said, I have decided on my Faith, I am happy with it. The Christian religion I have many issues with, but not with the Christian Faith that I have per se. The Christian Faith that I have may not be exactly the same as somebody else's, but since God and Christ are central, I consider it Christian.