Why I Am Not a Christian Anymore

I realized something today with the help of some folks who were questioning my doctrinal purity around the issue of the Trinity. You know the Trinity, that doctrine that has but a very limited and very questionable basis in Scripture - the one that wasn't defined until a few hundred years after the death of Jesus - the one that Jesus himself flat out said was not the case when he said that he was not God? The doctrine that nobody in liturgical circles wants to preach about on Trinity Sunday? Yes, that one. Apparently, for a bunch of folks, the Trinity is the litmus test for Christianity. I'm not complaining about them in particular because for every so-called Christian it is something or other - the trinity, the virgin birth, keeping women/minorities/homosexuals in their place, this or that nonsensical doctrine - that they use to decide who gets to stay in God's club and who must leave.

Do you really think God needs the help? Can you even fit your ego through a door? What WOULD Jesus do, really? I'll tell you - he would slap the shit out of you.

As I have been reflecting on this, and on the God of my experience, and on my experience within Christianity, and on having the great honor of hearing Sharon Salzberg speak in Madison last week, and having reflected for some time on folks like Wayne Teasdale, Bede Griffiths, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, and a host of others; having found God not only in the so-called Christian writers but also in people like Rumi, Kahlil Gibran, Pema Chodron, Sharon Salzberg, Ghandi, His Holiness the Dalai Lama; having found God in documents such as the Tao, the Dhammapada, the Quran, the Gita, and in Buddhist Sutras; and having failed to find very much of God in the current Pope, the religious right (which is all wrong) in Christianity, or fundamentalism in any religion, I have news for the Christian world...

I QUIT!

From now on, I shall be a follower of Jesus. You've heard of him, but you probably have heard of him from the folks of religion. That means you have heard an awfully twisted view of Jesus. I encourage you to pick yourself up a Bible and read what Jesus actually said. That's what I have done, over and over, and each time I do it I find less and less Christianity there. Since it's Jesus I signed up to follow, from now on it's Jesus I will follow. Jesus was never critical of anyone's attempt to draw closer to God, and neither am I. Jesus never talked of hell, although he did mention a garbage dump outside Jerusalem named gehenna and Christianity has been kind enough to twist his words by translating gehenna as hell. What Jesus did do, and therefore what his followers need to do, is love. He loved radically, he loved wastefully - both God and people. All people, all creatures, all of creation - in short, everything - received his love. As followers of Jesus, we are called to follow suit. Notice that nowhere in doing that is there judgment or criticism or ex-communication. We'll leave that to the Christians - after all, they are so damn good at it. In fact, come to think of it, you might say they spend more time worrying about who they feel is going to hell than they seem to spend doing anything else. Fine with me, because I'm not in that club any more!

I'm a follower of Jesus.