Broken Friendships

In the twists and turns of the journey of life, many people have been my friends along the way.  At the least, friends share common interests; they are supporters, allies, chosen family.

As far as word meanings go, a friend is a lover, literally.  The definition and word history of ‘friend’ is:

Latin: amicus (friend) and amo (I love)

Greek: philos (friend) and phileo (I love)

Old English: freond (friend) and freon (love)

The wounds from a friend then, can be harsh because you have let them into your life as a trusted one, as a ‘lover’ in that sense.  Betrayal isn’t expected.

The closer you feel to a friend, the more wrenching the sense of betrayal.

The most devastating betrayals in my life have been those by ‘christian’ friends.  These friends presented themselves as special, as family; as trustworthy, implying permanence in the relationship. The sense was that of a special, deeper, more real relationship, fully worthy of trust, one in which betrayal was not even considered.

Why then, did these ‘christian’ friends reject the relationship?  Cool the communication?  Break the bond?

None of them has ever said why, though I’ve asked.  Response has been vague, noncommittal, unexplained. 

Which makes it even harder.

So here’s my attempt at answering my own question:

You are fearful that my own search for truth might expose the deception you live in.  It’s a wonderful deception that gives you comfort and hope, but it’s not explainable because it’s not real.  You’re fearful that my questioning might somehow infect your own belief with doubt.  Your beliefs aren’t based in evidence but in wish and hope and what someone wrote in letters long, long ago.  

Maybe you try to convince me of your sense of danger in or discomfort with my questioning, but you can’t communicate.  It seems like we’re speaking two different languages.  So without words to explain your fear, words that are yours and not simply parroted from ‘holy writings’, words that can be understood as simple, logical, factual, you simply turn away and turn off.  

Why are christians so afraid of what’s real?  Why do they need to hide behind belief?

The definition of belief is ‘an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof’.  Especially without proof.  Something that has evidence for it doesn’t require belief. If you live your life on evidence, that’s quite different from living your life on ‘belief’. There’s a sense of grounding, of connectedness, of reality in evidence that is missing in belief.

To live on evidence is hard.  It’s gritty, it’s messy, and it’s often painful.  It’s no accident that many people in the world hold to one belief system or another. Real life is pretty raw.

Christians in particular seem to travel through life guarding their hope of belief for another life to come, one in which they will be surrounded by people who think as they do, one in which all their ‘enemies’ will have been destroyed, one in which all their dreams will come true.  That’s a big hope to defend.  What happens if they lose it, if their mindset changes to one that’s no longer satisfied with belief, but seeks truth? It’s a big fall from such a place. 

I don’t blame my beloved friends for protecting themselves, for holding onto their dream.  I just wish they didn’t have to hurt me so much while doing it.

Truth, Reason, Doubt and Faith - Part 3 of 3

Belief: if I accept and hold to a religious mindset, then after death I’ll be rewarded with heaven.  If I reject this mindset, I’ll be punished forever in hell.                                                 

Truth: this life is truth.  The opportunity to do what either benefits or harms creation and humanity is truth. The opportunity to live in gratitude for what has been received is truth.  Once someone dies, that person no longer remains a member of humanity, and isn’t seen again, that too is truth.  Life therefore, is incredibly precious; it’s an opportunity without equal.  Life is precious for everyone, not just a select few. 

We don’t know how we got here…we don’t know what happens after we die.  This too is truth.  It’s a really big truth, and somewhat uncomfortable not to know.  If I surround myself with more comforting ‘beliefs’ that insulate me from others, from the state of the world, and from making a real difference here and now, then I have walled myself into that prison or fortress.

If I face my fear, acknowledge that I don’t know how I got here, nor where I go after, and then get about the business of paying attention to what I have to work with, and applying reason, compassion, logic, and love to whatever situation I find myself in…wouldn’t I be doing something positive and wouldn’t that be a grateful response to the opportunity of life that I’ve received?

Nobody within humanity has ever claimed to have created the world and itself.  There is, at least to date, more evidence that something outside of this creation put everything together, than there is for some sort of cosmic accident being the origin of what we see all around us.  Therefore there is at least the appearance of some concrete evidence for a Creator, even if some of that evidence is the lack of anything against it. 

We have the evidence of creation itself as testimony to the character of a Creator.  We see that creation is provided for; we see an interconnectedness, and interdependency between remarkably different creatures.  We see that mankind is somehow different.  Creation doesn’t need mankind; it can manage on its own.  Mankind is unique, with tremendous capacity to cultivate great good or to inflict great evil.  What is mankind's purpose?

To paraphrase Ecclesiastes 12:13...perhaps the whole point of life is this:  be grateful for being here, with honour and thankfulness, and employing reason and thoughtfulness, both enjoy and care for what you have been entrusted with, leave it as you found it, ready for the next person to enjoy, for this is the whole duty of man.