Man...I was seriously punchy for this ep.

Flex Funding, yo.

Pretty much just get in line.

I was on the Few Good Men commentary, so some of that may have come from me.  I had no real bad experiences with the Church.  I have nothing but affection for religion, from an academic perspective (I majored in film and minored in Religion).  I always talked about being a reluctant atheist and I'll explain why.

I felt, and still feel, a great passion for the message of Christ.  I don't think there's one thing attributed to Jesus that would make anyone go, "That's evil!"  Most people's issue with biblical authority generally comes from the Old Testament, with the exception of the acid trip that is Revelations.  So Jesus' message as depicted in the canonical gospels felt very real to me.  As a child I accepted the supernatural elements as true, because I was so impassioned with the living example he set, that the stuff about virgin births MUST be true then.  Also, the faith makes it very clear that the mythology and the message are a package deal.  Jesus is significant to Christians because of the fully God/fully man, virgin birth, died for your sins and resurrected 3 days later thing.

As I hit adolescence, something wasn't sitting right.  Inconsistencies became too common to ignore, and at 13 I had nothing short of an epic existential crisis.   I would wake up in the middle of the night pondering my place in the universe.  It became clear to me that much of the Bible is written from the limited perspective of it's era.  And once I found out that the Bible was written piecemeal and essentially collated and edited, oh man...that threw me.  I also got heavy into Martial Arts and eastern thought.  Reading the Tao Te Ching at 14 was revelatory.  There's such a purity in it's humble approach.  It was the first religious text I read that assured me it was ok not to have an answer for everything, as long as we keep searching for truth.  In many ways it reminded me of the words attributed to Christ, just without the baggage of the rest of the Bible. 

I still identified as Christian.  But there came a day when I had to be honest with my self.  Christ's message rang true to me.  I accepted the teachings as self evident a fact as the sun rising and waves crashing.  Did I believe in the virgin birth?  No.  Not for a second.  Did I believe that Christ was the literal son of God?  Nope.  Not even the nephew.  Did I believe in the resurrection?  Not a chance.  When it became clear to me those things were necessary to call yourself a Christian, I stopped myself that.  Once I did, it was INCREDIBLY liberating.

By this time I was living in Hawaii and training in Muay Thai with Kru Kham.  He was Buddhist and pretty much made Meditation mandatory.  Sitting Zazen was another lightning bolt moment because it was the intellectual inverse of Christianity.  Whereas I had nothing but fond memories of my times in Church and youth Bible camp, I couldn't help but notice a pattern:  I sat somewhere, and listened to someone talk.  Then I would kneel, close my eyes, and have (let's face it) a one sided conversation with the divine.  Then I would hear someone else talk, and generally tell me how my church or Jesus or God wanted me to live my life.  The only time I talked?  To say good bye on my way out.

My Zen sessions usually go like this: There'd be a 5-10 minute talk, then 30 minutes of sitting Zazen.  Think it's easy to keep your eyes open and remain perfectly still and not think of anything?  Try it.  Roshi Brad Warner likens it to "taking a lid off a boiling pot.  Everything rushes to the surface."  You're essentially forced to deal with yourself without any pretense or bullshit.  And trust me, we ALL bullshit ourselves regularly.  Afterwards, you could ask questions, but largely the work was all on you.  You were forced to just sit there with all this inescapable self, and by the end you couldn't ignore it.  Praying in a Christian church....you're essentially asking for someone to either lighten your load or make you stronger.  You're dependent on God intervening in some way.  That's why, macman, I find the whole idea of miracles, divine intervention, or any way that people claim God acts in your or anyone else's life.....offensive.  Because the Christian idea of God is selective of who it helps.  In Buddhism (not a religion, btw) the work is up to us.  There's no hell, no heaven, we are largely ignorant of any of that stuff.  All that matters is this moment in front of you. 

All of those things rang as true to me as Christ's words of love and tolerance and acceptance.  The magical stuff in the rest of the bible, the plagues, the floods, the angels, was silly in comparison to all the other truth.  SO no, Pastormacman, the "church," never alienated me away from Jesus.  The Bible did.

I'll be recording a special episode soon reviewing the Oscar Doc Shortlist with a special guest pretty soon, if I can catch him before Sundance.

Also, on a different point, as someone married to a Catholic and with a deep respect for people's faiths....there is no way historically you can look to the rise of Christianity and not see the influence of other monotheistic religions in terms of creation myths, moral code, afterlife structure, etc. 

This is going to sound harsher than it is meant to be, but Christianity is akin to a Judaism/Zoroastrinism mashup fan-fic.  Jesus historically existed, and the Pentateuch was in place, but many of the gaps of the old testament were filled in with elements of pre existing concepts.

When I used to self describe as Christian, part of the joy was relishing in the fact that I did NOT know for sure.  That there was doubt, and the distinct possibility I could be wrong.  To me, part of the legitimate beauty of faith is believing in the face of uncertainty.  It was partly for that reason that the schism between my idea of faith and other Christians widened.  Even now, as a semi-practicing Soto Buddhist, I take great comfort in the knowledge that I could be completely wrong.  I feel like many evangelizing Christians are afraid of doubt, and are quick to offer up as much anecdotal evidence as possibly to convince others (and themselves?) that their faith is in fact NOT faith, but the a truth that has yet be fully realized by others.  This saddens me.  I think a dialogue of mutual acknowledgement that no one definitively knows the answer of either our origin or purpose is necessary for a better world.