going full circle, the necessary journey of truth seeking?

Truth seeking is an extremely important part of my live. Jesus has said that first seek the kingdom of God and the rest will be given to you. This phrase has always stuck in my mind. Unfortunately many of us have it backward. They think that it better to first obtain what we lack, and then look for answers to the Big Questions later.

None of us have any control of our innocent minds as we grew into adulthood. First our minds were filled with teachings of authority figures such as our parents, and then there was indoctrination from the public educational system. At the same time, we were all exposed to various cultural and societal programming from bill boards and advertisement, pop culture, talk show, news media, movies, television, and etc…In one side of the globe, I was exposed to various values and beliefs. In the United States, I was exposed to another set of values and beliefs. It just seems as though we don’t really have psychological autonomy, but we were all simply programmed to be a drone to function in a society. I suspect that all the beliefs and values were simply installed in our minds in order to maintain stability and status quo.

The journey of truth seeking has not been easy for me, and I have gone through various stages of spiritual awareness and belief.

The first stage of one's spiritual awareness is "taken-for-granted-credulity". I thought I believed in Jesus when I was in high school, but what does it all mean to really believe in Jesus. Does a person believe in Jesus the same way that a five year old believe in Santa Claus? Much of my belief was culturally indoctrinated driven by fear and motivated by acceptance of peers or authority figures.

The next stage I have gone through is the opposition stage. I wouldn't call it "rejection stage", because I was in opposition but not outright rejection. It should be common for those of us who are capable of critical thinking. There was a lot of anger, cynicism, and skepticism after realizing the contradictions, irrationality, and all the abuses and exploitation in the name of religion in history. More specificially, there were immediate shocks and disbelief upon the realization that our sacred text is neither magically protected throughout history nor is the text quarantined from subjectivity, personal bias, and delusion.

Most people I have known are stuck at the first two stages and trapped by the false dichotomy of complete acceptance or rejection. Unfortunately most people in my school is still stuck in the first stage, and many of my atheist friends have outright rejected religion because they are disillusioned by mainstream organized religions.

The next stage is what Marcus Borg called the "post critical" stage. It is when someone has gone completely 360 back to where the person started with. But this time this person is able to examine all the facts, doctrines, and teachings carefully while armed with the tool of greater logical intuition, heightened spiritual awareness, and BS immunity and is able to dig into the rubble and find the truth underneath centuries of distortion and disinformation.

Original Sin?

Is the Christian doctrine of original sin rational at all? I am surprised that how many people take the doctrine of original Sin at face value even though it is easily the most illogical concept of all Christian thought.

The most extreme case which I heard from my Baptist days is that everyone is inflicted by the original sin which is like a cancer that needs to be removed. And everyone is going to hell by default unless the sin of the person is atoned for.

The Lutheran doctrine of original sin is very similar to Catholicism. Original sin is the root of all sins and is not something that can be removed from this life time, but a person has to be regenerated and saved in order to avoid eternal damnation.

I think the doctrine of original sin is best understood with this parable. Let's suppose that there is someone who makes cars. Unfortunately none of the cars can run properly. Much to the chagrin of the maker, none of the cars can drive in a straight line and breaks don't work much of the time. So instead of blaming the car maker (God), we think that it makes more sense to blame and punish the drivers (people) instead.

I don't actually deny the existence of original sin. In fact almost all religions in the world have some form of original sin in their teachings. But one difference between Buddhist and Christian idea of original sin is that the Buddhists don't label original sin as bad but rather the original sin is simply is. It is there, and we (and God) have to deal with it. Therefore, for the record I have no problem with people saying that Jesus died for our sins. I only have problem with the way the doctrine is formulated.