Growing

Some years ago I spoke to a group of graduate students at a Catholic university

about Religious Science and what we believe. What puzzled the students the most

was not our concept of God. It was not our inclusiveness. It was not our belief in

the oneness of all. Instead, the students were most perplexed about our lack of a

voice of authority. “What is your rule book?” they asked, in effect. “What keeps you

in line? Without a book of instructions and a Big Boss, don’t you just run amok?”

Many mainstream churches, particularly Christian ones, are founded on the belief

that we are all miscreants – sinners –and that we must have a heavy hand to keep

us firmly in control. Thus we have hierarchies of authority reaching all the way up to

the Big Man in the Sky Himself. I believe this is why churches have always paid

more attention to behavior than to realization.

The students' questions came from ordinary people, not the authorities. This tells

me that ordinary people believe that they need to be controlled, and are willing to

accept “outside” authority to control their own presumably perverse natures. We

grew up with an array of authorities laying down rules, watching our behavior, and

punishing us for our errors. Later, as adults, we perhaps haven’t stopped to realize

that we are accountable for our own lives, and no longer need parents, teachers,

and churches to tell us how to behave. We don’t need the fear of punishment to

manipulate us into leading “good” lives.

More significantly, we have forgotten that our behavior is not the point. When we were children, we needed emphatic guidance on behavior, but all of us, adults and children, need to know that the important thing is who we are, not what we do. As children we may have experienced love that was conditional upon our behavior. We then cast God in the image of Stern Parent who must be appeased, despite the words of Jesus: the

Kingdom of Heaven is within you. The Christ was not concerned with behavior. He didn’t care about pomposity or sacraments. In fact, he tossed out the Ten Commandments themselves and replaced them with the commandments to love

our neighbors as ourselves, and to love God with all of our hearts. (Sounds like an

inside job.)

As long as we see ourselves as needing to be controlled, we will create controllers.

As long as we believe that our worth is “out there,” and that our actions are all that matter, we will trivialize our inner lives and hide behind our behavior, hoping that no one will discover the charade. As long as we believe that behavior is the key, we will continue to cultivate the appearance of goodness and maintain our distance from God.