This post was originally published on March 11, 2015.
My greatest regrets aren’t in my addictions, buying into a cult, complying with the abusive manipulation I lived under, or caring more about controlling children’s behavior than about their individuality.
I most regret that I once believed Christianity was the only acceptable and true religion in the world.
The problem was that it made sense. “Christians are the only people who have it right.”
I was presented with a dichotomy: truth or falsehood. Of course I wouldn’t want to believe in what wasn’t true. Then I was given an oversimplified solution: we’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Monopolizing truth is easier than empathizing with people who are different from us.
I’d heard that thing about the blind mice and the elephant – where one mouse describes the elephant’s trunk, another the tail, and another an ear, and then they argue about who is correct, when they’re all seeing a perspective on the whole. When my grandma first told me this parable, I asked, “and what if there’s another mouse describing the corner of the room? Is it just as correct as those mice describing parts of the elephant?”
She couldn’t answer. I rejected that metaphor because it meant anything could be true. There was no way to tell what was truth and what was false. I discussed other religions with the assumption that they were false, and Christianity was the only truth.
I liked the simplicity of the choice between truth and falsehood. The more I studied Christianity, however, the less it lived up to its claim to a monopoly on truth. People claimed to teach the Bible alone, but they disagreed on what parts of the Bible were most important. Nobody could answer my questions about why Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, or why the law said rape victims should be killed, and why the verses about women being silent in church mattered so much. People said Christianity was the right way, but nobody could agree on what Christianity was – we couldn’t get past our arguments about predestination and free will.
It would be so great if there was some book that was totally true, some writing that was infallible and without contradiction, something that got it right. But that book doesn’t exist. Anyone who says they’ve got the answer, the ultimate solution and explanation for Truth itself, is lying.
Life would be easier if it was that simple. So when people insist that they’ve figured it out, I understand why. It’s easier for the mind to accept that something is flawless than to appreciate its complexities, inconsistencies, and incomprehensibilities. That’s just how our brains work. Of course exclusivity sells.
I believe that humans have the ability to sense dimensions beyond what we know now. We have third eyes and crown chakras, and that realm – whether you call it the fifth dimension, higher consciousness, metaphysics, spirituality, the universe, or God – is what we can sense when we pay attention. Myths and symbolism help us describe it; ritual helps us access it.
To say that only one group of humans got it right would be like saying only one group of humans has the ability to use their senses. If we have spiritual sensitivity, so do other people. Religion and spirituality is a way to describe that.
My switch from exclusivity to inclusivity was gradual. I hated it. It stretched my mental capacity to grasp the dissonance of complexity. When I lost my grip on absolute truth, I felt like I’d seen the underside of what I’d always thought was a foundation, and found it spinning in space. I called this sensation the gray area problem, and it literally felt like I’d lost all ability to balance or rest. It broke my pride and it filled me with shame, knowing I’d hurt people with my arrogance.
To center myself in space, I call on the wisdom of humanity from all over time, all over the world. I know now that none of us were correct about everything. I know now that there are threads of similarity across all religions, giving confirmation to the human experience. I know now that I’m free and safe to explore.