Finding God Within, Sort Of

When the Gallup Organization began polling Americans religious practices and preferences, data used to produce George Gallup and Jim Castelli's The People's Religion, ⁽¹⁾ it found most people in America are religious to some degree. In 1987, 85 percent of people identified themselves as Protestant or Catholic while only 9 percent described themselves as having no formal religious affiliation. This might show America is overwhelmingly a Christian nation although I tend to think most of America is a mix of "fundamentalists," religious liberals, and "cafeteria" ⁽²⁾ Christians. It seems most people have some awareness of God or a need for some god and their behavior tends to mirror their feelings toward it.

When those who believe in a god are hurt by what behavior has emerged from some religions, they naturally stray from formal religions but continue to develop their desire for some god, whether transcendent and eternal or personal and contemporary with one's psyche. George Bockl's God Beyond Religion is meant to fill the void created in the hearts of those who have been hurt by religion but still seek a personal god of their own. On the way to describing what this sort of spirituality would be, he pummels fundamentalists and humanists alike - supposedly. His type of pap appeals to those who aren't ready to look at these issues as scholars and philosophers would. Rather, the desire to have something of value no matter how shoddy, like replacing meat and potatoes with junk food, appeals to his type of disciples.

His book opens with an explanation why we need a new type of spirituality. "Our civilization is at a new crossroad - secular politics is eroding durable values, and resurgent fundamentalism is igniting new religious divisions," he says. "It's a combustible mix." He continues to plead, "Dogmatic, separative religions have had their evolutionary cycle. It's time we began freeing ourselves from their domination." Bockl contrasts spirituality with "religiosity," the former something that brings us closer to God because the latter includes "religious petitionings, elaborate ceremonies, showy fanaticism, claims of special covenants, and charismatic leaders" which only get between God and man. Obviously Bockl feels the way to God is to experience him, or it, outside concrete rules and regulations and leaders who would ask you to give money to church or to recruit others to the faith much like the Jehovah's Witnesses. "Religiosity leads to an outer God. Spirituality penetrates to the God within us," he says. Obviously an inner experience is what we ought to seek.

Given Bockl's religious claims, it's no surprise he speaks in pantheistic terms. "If we dream," he says, "let it be a noble dream, one that links us to a universal organism - a vast and mighty one without bounds." Only when we do this do we awaken the awareness that we are part of "this universal life-consciousness." His retreat to pantheism is understandable because one who finds it bothersome to believe in a god "out there" or one in the stars, finds belief in a pantheistic god at least more intimate and less strange. Yet, his pantheism most likely suffers from the same problems as Joseph Campbell's. I've found that the further one drifts toward pantheism, the more vague one gets trying to explain one's theology - understandable since one is trying to combine thoughts of the personal and impersonal, transcendent and immanent.

Bockl's caricatures interest me because of what they say about his opinion of those who don't share his beliefs. For instance, Bockl tells of Esther who came from an orthodox Jewish home. She is exploring Theosophy and Bockl is obviously interested in it after Esther tells her story. "I feel more at peace with the theosophical God than the vague one you've got in your religion," Esther tells her parents when her mother immediately retorts "as long as you're a member of this family, our religion is your religion." That's rather rude, and close-minded, and Esther's mother collapses under the weight of providing a rebuttal to Esther. Abraham, Esther's father, is more up to the challenge, but also collapses under the weight of Esther's details of the god of Theosophy that "explains God, makes Him more vibrant and believable." Then come the generalizations. "Today," Esther says, "thinking people no longer believe in an anthropomorphic God, that the world was created in six days, in the literal translation of the Bible." Of course not all people believe in an anthropomorphic God, or that the world was created in six days, or in a literal translation of the Bible. But the separation between those that believe or don't believe these tenets is not based on those who think or don't think, based on Esther's definition of thinking people. Esther is most disingenuous when it comes to her parents and probably has never heard a serious philosophical, historical, or scientific argument against what she claims is not a religion but "a body of spiritual truths that form the basis of all religions." Actually there are those who believe in a personal, conscious god and the literal truth of the Bible and it is not for unknown or unreasonable reasons, and it is not non-thinking people who do this.

More caricatures pop up later. For instance, when Bockl meets Al, a Christian fundamentalist, Al realizes that Bockl is a religious man and laments, "My religion is more important to me than my business. It's no accident that my three daughters are nuns." When Bockl offers Al the typical New Age complaint about outdated religions creating holy wars, Al can only come back with tales of how he "knew" God and a bland statement to Bockl that if he [Bockl] doesn't stand for something, he stands for nothing except his vague universalism. Bockl in turn goes one better, asking Al if he believes in a 6,000-year-old earth and the literal truth of the Bible, as if it was beyond dispute such beliefs were false. Of course, Esther and Bockl both trumpet their modern scientific findings with Esther maintaining evolution is a fact, something that plays a part in reincarnation. Yet, modern science has as much negative to say about reincarnation as it does evolution and evolution has little to do with reincarnation since your spiritual status after a reincarnation is based on your moral standing while under atheistic Darwinism, your ability to survive and produce offspring has little to do with how moral you are. Al's closing statements aren't any more convincing than his previous offerings.

George, let me end this conversation on a personal note. You're restless. . . . You may judge me as a man of blind faith, but I judge myself differently - a man committed to God, without any of your restless searchings. I believe in the old and enduring. You're fiddling with the temporal and unreliable.

Later when having lunch with several friends, retold in the midst of a discussion of humanism, Bockl says "it's easier to reason with humanists, especially nice guys [like his friends] than with blind-faith fundamentalists." We're told by Bockl later "the majority who attend church services do so more out of habit and respectability than out of any fervent conviction that they're linked to God." It's certainly true that some attend church out of mere habit than proximity to God, spiritually speaking, but I haven't found a majority of "fundamentalists" are like this. The same thing, in my opinion, applies to the issue of having good faith or blind faith; some of those who Bockl criticizes have blind faith and some have good faith.

Those of faith can seek consolation in the fact Bockl is as hard on humanists as theists. Artists, he says, have little interest in religion. Their work is their God. Scientists, most of them humanists, are too worried about the physical and don't care about the metaphysical, he says. So they care more about possessions, like gaining real estate and pooling their possessions to corner the market. That may be true, to a point, but Bockl certainly, while worrying about the metaphysical, can't address any discussions of the metaphysical issues surrounding his faith. He doesn't even mention any professional philosophers, theistic or atheistic, so far as I can see. His objections to views outside his own are indeed shallow.

Actually the type of reasoning that Bockl and his favorites deal in can be explored and it has holes in it that would fill a computer data bank. For instance:

premise: religions that cause holy wars and strife are false

premise: Christianity, Islam, and "traditional" religions have caused holy wars and strife

conclusion: these religions are false

The problem is that premise #1 is not true and premise #2 has not been proven. It is entirely possible for a religion that creates strife to be true and there are no contradictions inherent in a religion such as this to make it impossible. It is entirely possible for there to be a god that demands pain and suffering and punishes you if you do not obey him and cause more suffering. I wouldn't want to believe in such a god, but it is not true that a religion that causes wars is automatically false. Of course, Bockl et. al. may actually know this and would rather believe in New Age tenets as an emotional crutch, but I get the feeling they advocate their New Age beliefs because they believe them to be true. Of course, Esther hides behind the distinction between a "religion" and a "body of truths" - as if one can be proven or disproven while the other is simply true because of its appeal - but this distinction cannot hold at all and we have a religion whose premises may be false and hence a religion that may be false.

Bockl's religion has as its tenet that you can have a true religion by taking the best of other religions (those that fit your personal preferences, of course). You can't necessarily do this, especially if there are contradictory truth claims between religions. You might try to find another religion by taking beliefs from other religions that please you, but it's not automatically true you'll find truth. More likely than not you'll find a hodgepodge of half-truths. I sense New Agers know this and that is why people like Esther hide behind false distinctions between religion and "body of spiritual truths," as if a conglomeration of beliefs is automatically true without a test for truth. All world view systems of thought have to be examined for their truth value which means Bockl and Esther should test their world views seriously instead of assuming that taking the best of all religions is the path to the perfect faith.

Throughout the major parts of the book I read, one thing is clear: Bockl and the people he interviewed never heard or read the likes of philosophers like Peter Kreeft, William Lane Craig, Carl Sagan, James Sire, Robert Basil, Paul Kurtz, and others. It's true there are horrible laymen philosophers of the type Bockl criticizes in every religion. The path to truth is through those who criticize your world view and are the best at it, not through those who can't put up a fair fight.

Skylight Path's God Within is like George Bockl's God Beyond Religion in the sense it is a collection of numerous people's experiences with alternative religious thought, although God Within contains essays by the subjects of the book, rather than recollections of them by another party. There are a number of religions represented therein from Buddhism to Christianity to Wicca. These traditional religions are offered up for us as fodder for scathing rebuke and so this book's contributor's invent new approaches to the old. What is new is the approach of loosening one from the moorings of religions tenets and floating in a sea of pure feeling - love for one's neighbor with no empirical backbone.

The introduction asserts that traditional religions have lost their hold on mankind. Such thoughts have been alive for many years as writers have predicted a falling away from Christianity. The introduction obviously leaves one with little doubt as to the publisher's opinion of established religion and mirrors Bockl's approach.

[T]he collapse of organized religion as the dominant, normative spiritual force in people's lives is not the sole reason why we have such a variety of spiritual expression today. As you read this book, you will discover that to come to such a conclusion gives religion both too much, and too little, credit. For today's new adults, "organized religion" is simply one treatment for the same sickness we all have shared from time to time throughout ages. The spiritual emptiness that ails each of us . . . does not find a simple cure in organized religion today any more than it did yesterday. The difference is: Today, we are more free to admit it and find alternatives, correctives, and additives. For this reason, the contributors to God Within often express the antithesis of spiritual emptiness - almost a spiritual overflow.

Has organized religion collapsed? Clearly - at least where I live - organized religion flourishes and probably always will. The editors seem to, on one hand, portray this collapse as a new event while disenchantment with religions has always been with us. Actually, these authors are succumbing to a bit of historical revisionism. This is necessary. If their new religious thought were to be seen as a rather old phenomenon that hasn't caught on yet, perhaps because it cannot satisfy, then it might become suspect. The authors need to portray the movement as a new somewhat repressed and untested religious feeling that hasn't quite been given the chance to flourish. What you see in this book is the confusion of several adults who obviously have been put to the spiritual test and found their experience wanting. That is their experience, though, and should not be taken as a sign traditional religions have failed, as some New Agers seem to feel.

One can't blame the contributors for their attempted escape into the unknown. Take, for instance, Ian Giatti who describes his father, a Catholic, as detached from his religion. Ian would often ask his father about the difference between Catholicism and Christianity, only to run into an intellectual brick wall. "They're just more fanatic about their Jesus," his Dad would say, in as unintellectual an answer one could give. Ian hated churches and his father only spoke of Jesus once in a letter that was not meant for Ian's eye. In the letter, his father recounted a dream in which he was walking around a majestic waterfall fountain. There were people around, all completely naked, and completely happy. His father took some of the water in hand and splashed it on his face and then heard a voice: "There is no Jesus Christ." He fell to his knees, sobbing, because this was something he knew all along. Ian concludes his story of the letter with the succinct, painful phrase, "So much for Catholicism."

Pamela Dawn DeForest grew up in a house divided by spiritual beliefs. Her mother was a Christian Scientist while her father abandoned his spirituality because of internal hatred only to become a Nazi. Her home was in constant turmoil because of these religious differences which gave Pamela no peace of mind nor any religious backbone. As a result, she could not accept any beliefs of her mother and could not believe anything her father did. Pamela's religious confusion was hastened by her unbelief in a wrathful God, her confusion over the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, and her knowledge of what she called "hypocrites" in Christianity. Like Ian, she was faced with many questions and few answers and left the formal church as a result.

These youngsters weren't stupid when they asked the questions they asked about religion. In fact, they were some of the smartest individuals on this Earth. What these individuals want is clarity and a religion that makes sense. Yet, when they escape into their alternative religions, they abandon their desire for clarity and abandon their intellectual capacities.

Pamela, for instance, believes in a feminine deity because such a deity makes her feel "comfortable and strong." She believes the world "was created by, and is a part of, a beautiful and strong feminine force that shaped all things that exist out of Herself." Pamela also believes in reincarnation and Magic and is careful to use Magic cautiously. Everyone's personal beliefs are sacred, she tells us, and whatever you believe is what you need to survive. A hodgepodge is how one might characterize her religion, and bowing to a religion that would make Oprah Winfrey proud, she quotes a guru as saying "all religions are paths up the same mountain."

Now, imagine one using the same skepticism toward Pamela's beliefs that she uses as a knockout punch on Christianity. Why is a world dominated by animals hunting other animals a symbol of the feminine divine working? If there are so many paths up the same mountain, why do the paths seem to lead in different directions? Would a man find her idea of the feminine divine a repressive and sexist idea? Why is what you need to survive a worthy criteria for determining what religion is truthful?

Upon reading this book, questions multiply like rabbits. This is not to say the spiritual search of these contributors is not genuine. Rather, it seems they firmly desire a religious experience based on a warm feeling of doing good to others and feeling good oneself. These desires ought to be quenched, of course, but not basing such desires on something deeper is dangerous. For those willing to look at the suggestions of these contributors, few truly scholarly answers are forthcoming.

Notes

1. George Gallup and Jim Castelli, The People's Religion: American Faith in the 90's, 1989, Macmillan, New York: NY, 1989

2. A common term, by now. It refers to those Christians who only believe, accept, or obey those Christian tenets they find useful. One might also refer to such Christians as modernists or religious liberals.