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Is Religion A Failed Experiment?

Some days I’m afraid that I may be losing faith in Faith.

I look around at the damage done in the name of God and the grief just comes like a flood.

Lately I find that I almost defiantly live and pray and believe, all the while pushing back the nagging questions always nipping at my heels of my belief:

Isn’t God supposed to be a balm for humanity?

Isn’t God supposed to be that beautiful, invisible force that compels us to bring healing and hope and light?

Shouldn’t religion if it’s worth having, make things better?

Shouldn’t faith leave in its wake a trail of goodness and peace and hope for this hate-weary world?

Shouldn’t it yield equality and decency and unity and justice for everyone?

Shouldn’t something truly of God, leave people more whole than when it found them?

Because that doesn’t seem to be happening with great regularity.

I’m not so sure religion as an experiment is working here on this planet.

At best the results are decidedly mixed for those who claim faith.

As often as we are the peacemakers, we are the war mongers.

As many times as we bind up the wounded, we inflict the wounds.

As often as we have led the way out of bigotry and injustice throughout history, we have dug in our heels to perpetuate them.

We who claim Christ either have extreme operator error here or the whole blasted system is faulty—and most Christians (not surprisingly) tell me it’s the former.

Many people of my tradition will say that Sin is the reason for the brokenness and dysfunction and sickness in the world; that this is why we can claim faith and still be terrible people. We are inherently sin-flawed, and so we follow Jesus but we will still do all kinds of reckless, vile, and hateful things in the process.

I’ll be honest, that answer doesn’t cut it for me anymore.

It feels like sanctified buck passing and cheap spiritual scapegoating.

And even if sin is the answer, I guess I want a better one.

I want a God that is bigger than any broken system, bigger than the flawed people inhabiting it, bigger than my own personal awfulness.

I want a God whose perfect love actually infects His imperfect people, until they become violently allergic to contempt for others.

I want the people of Jesus to be hopelessly hate-intolerant.

Ultimately I’m praying for a religion that does no harm in the world, and the fact that I can’t have it bothers me in the depths of my spirit. It shifts the tectonic plates on which my soul wants to stand. 

And trying to stay steady on something shaky is exhausting—and I guess I’m just pretty tired.

I’m tired of trying to pitch Christianity to people, while simultaneously helping repair the damage done to them by professed Christians.

I’m weary of watching Jesus being sold and prostituted and politicized to sell t-shirts and fill stadiums and elect candidates.

I’m tired of always feeling like this faith thing isn’t working like it should be; in me, in my country, in the world.

And you’d think that this would all be enough for me to wash my hands of the whole thing and walk away, but somehow it isn’t.

Despite all my frustration and mourning and anger at what faith doesn’t seem to be doing in people of faith, I still look up expectantly.

In fact, I find in that very unrest within me, the evidence of what right now is only aspirational; that better thing that I believe is still possible, for me, for my homeland, for the world.

Maybe one day I will be swallowed too deeply in doubt to resurface, but right now my soul still desperately reaches for what could be, and I find some strange solace in the reaching.

Jesus said that if one has faith the size of a mustard seed, they can move mountains.

Despite everything then, I may have just enough left to do something bold and miraculous…

… but just barely.

 

 

 

 

 

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