I'll be okay with a little "PATIENCE WITH GOD" by Frank Schaeffer

PATIENCE WITH GOD: 

FAITH FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE RELIGION (OR ATHEISM) 

FRANK SCHAEFFER'S WEBSITE

"The point is not to argue over how we got here but to agree on a better vision of where we want to evolve to now, not just physically but also ethically. That is a project that we believers, and we agnostics and we atheists, can and should agree on. We don’t have to “fit” our ideas about how we perceive things together in order to work together. We can be the same “particle” but exist in two places at once." FS

I read a lot of books on my iPhone.  It really helps to keep track of the portions that resonate with me.  I tend to highlight in three different colours.  Yellow is "I need to read this again", Pink is "This could work in my blog post as a quote"  and Blue "This is profound and needs to go in my blog post because it's a life changer."  

If I put all the quotes that I highlighted in blue in my blog... I wouldn't have room for my own thoughts.  I may as well just recommend that you read the book and leave it at that.   

I read this book, because I must still be looking for someone to give me permission to be okay with my journey.  I still doubt myself and still look for affirmation that I going to be okay.  I guess the ship called "Safe and Sound" has long since sailed.   I just want to be okay.  

"Concentrating on belief rather than on character leads some people—be they atheist or religious—to get stuck on the training rules and miss the whole point of “boot camp.” They never get their “eagle, globe, and anchor” emblem and graduate. It’s as if there were platoons of recruits stuck on Parris Island who had never graduated and who, now as crazy old men, are still marching around yelling cadence, having mistaken the training phase for being Marines. Rifle drill and doing a perfect port arms are seen by this lost platoon of fundamentalist recruits as the end point, not a step along the road." FS

Maybe my search for the ultimate way for me to express my spiritual pathway is over.  Maybe I am okay not having an ultimate way, maybe I'm okay just being on a journey of discovery that doesn't have to look like anything else or necessarily be approved by anyone else.  Maybe I have graduated from "boot camp" and now being out in the world, and loving people and developing character is all there is too it.  Finding a way to be a better person, and stumbling along the way is all there is too it.  

"There is no theological answer as to “why God allows” suffering, some of the worst of which is caused by God’s followers and done in God’s name. There is no answer as to why God seems to be such a lousy parent. All the nonsense about how God permits suffering because of our free will—blah, blah, blah—is just scared religious people making excuses for their mean and/or grossly incompetent God.

What is the source of comfort, if any? It’s not found by making excuses for God or for Nature. It’s found in the reality of living by the light of the gift of love." FS

The days can be over where I have to defend why I think the way I do and why I don't agree with the billions of other human beings that have occupied the same planet in the cosmos as me.  I don't even have to explain why "bad things happen to good people" 

The fear can be over that I will be abandoned for being different or believing different or behaving different.  I think as I read over my blog posts, I am in good company with a lot of people who don't have it all together and who have ruffled feathers of a lot of people.  People, who don't have anything better to do with their time than condemn people to hell, because that seems like a more righteous option than loving them in their differences.  

Here's the thing.... I'm not that well known.  I don't get comments on my blog from people condemning me to hell.  That part is in my imagination.  I think I am a lot more loved than I give most people credit for.  I think there are a lot more people that have appreciated my contribution to this world than are worried for my soul.  I think I need to have a little more faith in people and have a little more faith in the common love that we share.  Love matters... and in that Love that matters... I just might find that I matter just the way I am.  

"Atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, Eastern Orthodox, Hindus, Mormons, Roman Catholics, Protestants, et al. we are all on a journey. That journey is happening to us with or without our approval. It’s called evolution. Some of us say we believe “every word of the Bible” or “every word of the Koran” or “what science says” or whatever other scripture we hold dear, but we’re all slowly learning discernment because we are evolving in spiritual sensibilities as well as physically. This is why today, there are fewer religions that demand blood sacrifices than there used to be. This is why Christianity is less anti-Semitic than it used to be. This is why I believe that in the contest between extremism and moderation, enlightened Muslims will eventually win the hearts and minds of most Muslims, who, like almost everyone, want to love their families in peace.

I think that most people are better than their official theology and/or ideology. There are wars aplenty in the world and hatred abounds, but there is also peace aplenty and love abounds as well. There are extremists in all our camps—religious and secular—who’d kill the rest of us just to prove a point. They have the anger, or worse yet the blind certainty of their correctness, but the rest of us have the numbers. The future belongs to the peacemakers." FS

So thank you, Frank Schaeffer for putting the icing on the cake for me.  For telling me that I am okay just being on my journey.  That evolution isn't a cuss word, but a reality of the change that we all go through in this existence we call life.  

I am still going to read books by authors who get more hate mail than I do for what they write, because I need to support them.  They are the ones out there trying to affect some sort of change in their world.  They are the ones who are trying to tell people like me that "You are okay." And if all this blog is for, is to thank those authors for what they have given me, then I will keep reading and keep blogging and keep thanking those writers who are so much more braver than I am.  

"Okay, about that “fairy-tale” of religion. I discovered from the emails I’ve been inundated with since my memoir was published that there are more of us perplexed former (or currently) religiously inclined or religiously raised folks on a journey from past certainties to points unknown than I’d been aware of. We want to have faith in God in spite of our bad experiences with religion, oppressive family relationships, and/or doubts and questions. We too worry that we’ve been hoodwinked by a fairy tale. I hope that this book will provide a meeting place for those of us who count ourselves among the scattered members of what I’ll call the Church of Hopeful Uncertainty..." FS