Giving up Religion for Awareness, or Awareness for Religion. Can it be done?

No, I don't believe the question I've placed in the title of this blog can be answered, nor do I intend to answer it. I only intend to bring up more questions.





This is going to sound fairly typical of me, but I am always amazed when I discover things I didn't know that I really should know about, and I've only read the little snippets, and watched 2-3 minute commercials about these things. What surprises me even more is that now that I know, I have the desire to be willfully ignorant; I know that's wrong, and I can't tell you how many times I've fought the urge; I can't tell you how many times awareness has overcome ignorance, but not without a few well-earned battle scars.

Now, that coming from a Christian like me, is a particularly difficult question, but only because if I act upon my awareness I may not be seen as a Christian anymore.

You might ask, "Is that really such a bad thing?"

Well, yes, it's about as bad as someone no longer seeing me as Asian. It's about as bad someone mistaking the stranger next to me for me. A case of mistaken identity is always a bad thing. I have related to Christianity my entire life, and I am not ready to give that up so easily; but how can that mean I remain willfully ignorant of the things that go on around me? That have gone on, and that will go on around me? That's unfair.

People cannot ask me to pick between Christianity and awareness.

When were the two ever separate?

I have reasoned that this is just my personality. I have reasoned that because I like people I like to be aware of what's going on in their lives, and have a growing desire to help them, but I find that the more I desire this the more 'liberal' I become. The more 'worldly'. All the more 'secular'. Oh, if I ever learned to hate something, it is labels--how was I to know that my curiosity and hunger would merit detriment? How was I to know that my interests bordered on heathenism? (I'm not even sure I know what 'heathenism' means, I do believe I just made that up.)

But how can helping people ever be considered heathenism? How can helping people ever merit detriment?

Frankly, if I may, when God became man incarnate...if that's not the most secular thing a deity can do, I don't know what is. So then, if the God I worship became something he detested, perhaps there is some truth to "Faith without deeds is dead", but you could just as easily say "Deeds without faith is dead"!

I'd learned John 3.16 in Sunday school. It read...it still reads, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' You know, I do believe that we emphasize the latter portion of that verse without acknowledging the former. Who does God love? The world. Who's the world? What a perfectly vague and, yet specific answer that is: 'the world'. The world is everyone who's ever lived, who lives, and who will live. How can it mean anything else? Have Christians ever read what happens after John 3.16?

John 3.17, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Did you read that? He came not to condemn, but to save."
John 3.18, 19, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (19) And this is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil." What bothers me most about this passage are its interpreters. No, I've not read many interpretations, of course, I haven't, but I have observed that Christians, often unknowingly, separate themselves from the 'dark' world because they have accepted the 'Light of the world'. If Christians are so separate from the 'dark' world then we sing 'This Little Light of Mine' in vain. We read the Bible in vain.

We forget that having a light does not make us better than those who have none. In fact, those who have a light are better at seeing their own personal terribleness. I believe the willfully ignoring things that go on around the world also means willfully ignoring the things that go on within yourself.

John 3.20, 21, "For everyone who does wicked things hates the light," (surely you've heard of Christians leaving their faith behind, and sometimes I question if it's not The Light they hate, but those who profess to carry that light.) "and does not come to light, lest his works should be exposed. (21) But whoever does that is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out by God." Who carries out the work? God. Always, always God. 

If to be willfully ignorant of the things in the world is also to be willfully ignorant of the things within yourself, then it is also to be willfully ignorant of the work God wishes to carry through you because in James 2.14-26:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? (15) If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, (16) and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (17) So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (18) But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. (19) You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! (20) Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? (21) Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? (22) You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; (23) and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. (24) You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. (25) And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? (26) For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Written in James 4, the only worldliness James ever writes about are mistreating people. "You desire and do not have, so you murder." Yes, murder might the epitome of mistreating people; James never even suggests torture...

I cannot help but think... God became man incarnate to help people. I have heard time and time again in sermons and lectures, and biblical commentaries that God came to help people who do not deserve it, who still don't deserve it, and who never will earn the right to deserve it. I can't remember a time when I was not a part of this undeserving people. 

If God asks me to be like his Son, Christ, who went around helping people, why am I deterred by so many who thoroughly believe I am enabling or, worse, conspiring with the world. I still live in this world, what else am I supposed to do? 

Even monks who live solitary lives will give aid to any stranger who walks into their sanctuary. If Christ, who never asked for his patients' history (but already knew of it anyway) helped so many, how much more should we (Christian, non-Christian, anti-Christian) help whichever patient comes our way?

Of course this will bring about debate. Hello! This is an imperfect world here, how many dystopias do you need to read and watch before you understand that life this side of death is not going to be perfected, nor is it ever going to be understood. We'll always have age-old questions, dilemmas, and misconceptions. 

Then on I shall struggle. 

Oh, I'm insane. I know, don't remind me.

^^ if you need a song to remember our duty to the world.

Every day! All day?

About a month ago I told someone that I wasn't particularly fond of doing things daily. I'd somehow believed that doing things daily cheapens the thing done daily, the act done daily, but now, a month later, I regret saying that; I don't believe that at all. I don't think I even believed what I'd said when I'd said it! I just said it, hoping not to sound like some ritualistic lunatic. But when did one become a lunatic for rituals? Don't we all, in some sense, have rituals, daily or weekly or monthly or yearly? 

So then, why the rituals?

I don't know why anyone else does rituals, not really at least, but I've taken to rituals because they give me a sense of order amidst all the chaos. Haha, not that my life is very chaotic; things are fairly controlled [: my life isn't going down the toilet anytime soon, but I am aware that other lives are, frankly, going down the toilet. That other lives are chaotic, or misdirected or undirected, either by their own hands or someone else's; my life is nothing like that. 

I have a good life. 

I have no complaints. 

But I think my daily rituals, this sense of order amidst chaos, reminds me to be thankful that I have a good life  without complaints. 

I know that sympathy without action is pity (I don't know that action without sympathy is cold-heartedness), but what's this have to do with my simple, daily rituals? 

Whatever life may have for me or for others, chaotic or controlled, misery or happiness, we are all subject to chaos/control, misery/happiness in varying degrees: one's pain is no less than another's pain. Pain is pain is pain. One's happiness is no more than another's happiness. Happiness is happiness is happiness. 

You're probably wondering what my daily ritual is that suddenly helps me understand another's pain or happiness.

Hmm, I'm reading my Bible every day, relating to its characters whose troubles I hope never to endure, and whose pleasures make me green with envy. 

Reading my Bible daily puts me on edge. Going through the Psalms, the Pentateuch (the five five books of the Old Testament) and the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) put me on edge. Some days I feel so grateful for my life, and other days I wish I were born in another era because in spite of my good life without complaints I find that I am discontent. I am barely brave enough to tell someone I read the Bible every day without being ridiculed. Really? That person's opinion of me will only rock my world if she judges me for reading the Bible daily? And why do I even think she'll judge me?! 

This edge reminds me that I have no idea what's really going on. Whatever sympathy I have is kept in check by fear: what if my acts of blind faith produce negative consequences? What if my acts of thought-out faith produce negative consequences? What if I'm perceived as an arrogant fool? What if-? 

I'm afraid to let my daily habit of reading the Bible affect the rest of my day. 

It's like... When I read my Bible I sneak into a corner where I hide and feel safe. I stay in the corner for as long as I read my Bible and then leave that Bible in the corner when I'm done to go about the rest of my day. Aren't daily rituals, rituals in general, supposed to have a permanent, persuasive, indelible affect on my person? Isn't that why I practice daily rituals?

Isn't that why people exercise daily? So that they go from hiding their troubled spots to showing off their muscles? 

Aren't rituals supposed to be obvious progress?

Yes! Yes! I know! I denied that I enjoyed doing things daily because I was afraid of someone's opinion of me! I know that rituals put my life into perspective: I am taught what it means to be thankful for nothing and wary of Trojan horses. Yes, I read my Bible every day, but I only let it affect me during that hour or so. I hardly let that Bible reading, that perspective, affect the other twenty three hours of my day.

And that is incredibly unfortunate. 

Even outside of religion, it is always incredibly unfortunate when he is ashamed of what has given him everything so that he wants no more. Did not even Socrates' followers openly mourn his death sentence? 

I ashamedly mourn my Savior's death and he resurrected! Christ is not even dead anymore! 

Yet, I keep these things secret. 

What good are rituals if I don't let affect me? 

Psalm 51,17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken spirit and a contrite heart, O God,

you will not despise."

Very few of us have any understanding of the reason why Jesus Christ died. If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there is absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not “a little bit of love,” but major surgery.

When you find yourself face to face with a person who is spiritually lost, remind yourself of Jesus Christ on the cross. If that person can get to God in any other way, then the Cross of Christ is unnecessary. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You must have a right-standing relationship with Him yourself, and pour your life out in helping others in His way— not in a human way that ignores God. The theme of the world’s religion today is to serve in a pleasant, non-confrontational manner.

But our only priority must be to present Jesus Christ crucified— to lift Him up all the time (see 1 Corinthians 2:2). Every belief that is not firmly rooted in the Cross of Christ will lead people astray. If the worker himself believes in Jesus Christ and is trusting in the reality of redemption, his words will be compelling to others. What is extremely important is for the worker’s simple relationship with Jesus Christ to be strong and growing. His usefulness to God depends on that, and that alone.

The calling of a New Testament worker is to expose sin and to reveal Jesus Christ as Savior. Consequently, he cannot always be charming and friendly, but must be willing to be stern to accomplish major surgery. We are sent by God to lift up Jesus Christ, not to give wonderfully beautiful speeches. We must be willing to examine others as deeply as God has examined us. We must also be sharply intent on sensing those Scripture passages that will drive the truth home, and then not be afraid to apply them. -Oswald Chamber's My Utmost For His Highest (December 20th)

If this is my year to be brave, I really need to stop being so afraid of people who might judge me. What a silly fear.

Okay. Moving on.

"So, Justine, how do you feel about doing things daily?"

"Oh! I'm glad you asked because, actually, I-."

Speaking of which, there is a man, Cesar Kuriyama, who records one second of every day of his life. Maybe I should do that too: a great reminder that every day is incredibly important.