Over the many years of my life, I have begun to face the reality that I could not continue to accept the many things that I had been taught in the Baptist Church and was now moving toward becoming a doubting Thomas, even though I was probably still more of a believer with lots of uncertainties of just what I held to be possible. I think that I still believed that there was a Universal Power which was the creator of the Universe but I no longer believed that it had human form and that He, who was sitting on high, and watching out for all the billions of people on this earth was also of Human form. I think for the first time, I allowed myself to begin to doubt the faith of my mother.
This was a beginning for me to develop some cynicism about my religious feelings and it continues to grow even unto this date. I did not know who God was and I still do not but, I have begun my journey toward becoming more knowledgeable about my own belief system than I had ever allowed myself to think about before. When Barbara and I were attending the Congregational Church on Alameda street in El Paso in the 70’s , we were helping with the teaching of some Sunday School classes. It was in some of the material, for our teaching preparation, that I read for the first time that the the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament of the Bible were not the inerrant words of God but the result of decisions made by religious people whom many felt were inspired by God. No churches were involved in these selections but denominations have accepted these books as being chosen by believers who were inspired in the choices they made. I remember that some books were rejected when the Synod making the choices believed the stories as being too far out to be accepted.
For so many years, I had thought about events and miracles that I found to be impossible in the Bible but had always been too timorous and reticent to ever mention it to anyone in the family. My family was a family of true believers when it came to the inerrancy of the Bible. I would not want to ever shock them by giving them reason to think that I might have need for the family to think about me needing a Baptist doctrinal intervention to get me back to that old time religion. Let me try to recall some of the things that had been bothering me for so many years of my religious life.
First, I found it difficult to understand how a God had picked up the clay from the earth and made it into man before breathing life into him. I remember hearing one of my friends, Harlan, who coached and taught History at Clint, discuss this idea of Evolution and this planted the seeds of a logical explanation in my mind. This was before I had ever read or had began to understand the evolutionary process discussed by Darwin. Later, I saw that Evolution could very well be the process that God might have chosen for developing living organisms and humans on this earth. I did not see this as being contrary to what the Bible said, even though most Christians did.
If the evolutionary process had brought man into being, it then made sense that I also began to think about the Garden of Eden account as being only an allegorical tale, rather than being a true story. I might have accepted the idea of a ‘talking snake’ but it was hard for me to conceive of Adam and Eve as the first humans on earth, if man had evolved from the sea and primitive forms of animals. I also began to wonder exactly where Cain found his wife and have never heard an explanation that satisfied me. I no longer could accept the simple comments “that you just have to have faith” or “the Bible says it and just have to believe it” as being valid or making sense.
I had long wondered about the great flood which had enough water to cover the earth and all the mountains and could run off in just a short period and things could return to normal. Also, where did all that water go to after it stopped raining. I also did not believe that Noah could have put thousands (or millions) of animals on a small boat with enough feed to survive for the months they spent on it. Most of all, I really doubted how Joshua could have fought the battle of Jericho and how God could have defied the laws of the Solar System and have stopped the rotation of the earth so that Joshua would have time to finish the battle killing Jews in the daylight. I guess I really began to doubt why a God would want to watch over the billions of people on earth and keep records on all good things and the bad things that we did. I always thought that this was the job that Santa Claus was supposed to be doing. When you allow yourself to doubt, it opens up your ability to look at your pragmatic and commonsensical side more clearly.
I never understood the reason for the people wanting to build a tower of Babel thinking they could get to Heaven when they could climb a mountain and be so much higher than the tower they were building. The story of Jonah and the whale was really a big fish story and much of it was like it was must have been for the fish, it was hard to swallow. How could a person spend so much time in the belly of the big fish without being digested, rather than being spit up at Nehemah. The testing of Abraham in which he was asked to sacrifice his own son on the altar was unbelievable to me as I found it made out God to look like a very jealous God who got his kicks by testing his believers. The story ofJob was really way out there for me to believe. I finally began to see that these stories were not to be taken for fact but were told as allegorical explanations for people to see their metaphoric hidden meanings.
There were so many things that went against the nature in which the universe operates, such as a virgin birth or the need for Mary to be a virgin to be the mother of Jesus. I could not see how Jesus could have taken five fish and three loafs of bread and fed 5,000, nor have walked on water and quelled the storm with his outstretched hand. All of these were considered miracles but they stretched one’s ability to believe in events that were not following natural or scientific laws but rather the work of a divine intervention by a God who was looking over every act that was committed on earth.
As I grew and thought about the things I had been indoctrinated with in the Baptist church, I began to think that not only was it puzzling and hard to understand, but it was impossible to conceptualize. This was especially true of the idea of Heaven and Hell. I had been taught that spending eternity in Heaven was one’s reward for acceptance of and following Jesus Christ. Hell and eternal damnation was the price one paid for failure to accept this belief.
I could never wrap my mind around the concept of Heaven for eternity as the idea of spending millions of years in a place of peace and enjoyment which seemed to be a boring thing to do. I think that my thinking so much of these consequences had been presented to me by the preachers and revivalists I had listened to and really was the cause of my giving up in the belief of a Heaven or a Hell. I think that was my reason to try to find out what the best alternative to this was. I began to believe that we could be religious, not for our own selfish gains and other reasons, but for the good of all mankind. We need to live a life that is close to the life that Jesus lived, if we are to be called Christians.