Religion

My Way!

I formed my opinion about art, music, religion and politics by paying close attention to happenings around me during my long life. Those impressions gave me a solid foundation on which to stand. I don’t know if anybody who reads my writing will ever agree with me, no matter , I am comfortable with them.
Let’s start with religion.
I was born and raised as Roman Catholic. Our family attended church services regularly and for years my brother and I were altar boys. We took religion very casually perhaps because we were mixed family. My mother was Catholic, father Protestant. This went even deeper. Mother’s father was Protestant and her mother Catholic. Religion never played a dominant role in our lives, we never even had a bible in our house. I attended Catholic elementary school and graduated from Catholic high school. Our religion instructors, usually priests explained to us that it isn’t necessary not even advisable to have a bible in the house. The church will teach us all we have to know about religion. The study of the bible by unqualified people, people without thorough theological education would only lead to misconceptions and perhaps even to a split of the church. Martin Luther was a well educated monk. His well justified protest about the abuse of authority by the pope and some of his cardinals did not aim to split the church just to cease the abuse.
Almost as if sensing blood in water, encouraged laymen rushed to study the bible. We all know the rest. Everybody interpreted the bible his way which led to more and more splits. Today God knows how many Protestant denominations are in existence.
In our religion classes we were repeatedly instructed that we have a heavenly father, the creator of the universe who is keeping track of everything happening down here. We have to pray to him for guidance and follow the teaching of the church and model our lives after his only begotten son Jesus Christ. We always have to keep in mind that salvation can be conveyed to us only through the Catholic church. We were discouraged to attend church services in different churches. We were made to understand by inferences that the Latin language was the preferred instrument to gain God’s attention. I have to admit that as the consequence of WWII. as I was drifting through Europe from one country to another and wherever I found a Catholic church I was comforted by the familiar voice of the Latin rights ritual.
I did not know much about what the Protestants did stand for. After my father’s retirement we relocated to the place of his birth It was an obscure little all Protestant village. Out of curiosity once or twice I attended Sunday church services in the local church, called the Reformed church. It was a simple brick all white building with a detached wooden bell tower. The Reformed church was leaning close the Calvinists. The interior reflected it faithfully. White walls without pictures or statues. A couple of rows of simple benches faced an elevated platform supporting the pulpit. Previously I befriended the preacher. He was a very likable person. Contrary to many other Protestant churches, the Reformed church ordains only college educated theologians. The graduates can read the bible besides the native language in Greek and Latin as well. What a waste of education for the pour guy who ended up in our village. The reverend Sipos addressed the congregation consisting mainly of elderly people in their Sunday’s best in a simple language enlarging upon a chapter of the bible. The population of the village consisted mainly of subsistence farmers who laboring on small family plots had trouble making a living. The preacher could not help preaching over their head. Religion started losing meaning for them. It was a fertile ground for the communists who took over the place during the following years.
I learned a great deal more about religions after I took up residence in the USA. I spent my early years in the northern states such as New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I did not add much to my religious education during that chapter of my life. Things changed after my retirement when I relocated to North Carolina. I married a local lady and acquired a new family and new friends in the area. During my travel in the area I became aware of many immense church buildings and upon a closer look I learned that most were Baptist churches. Baptists come in various shades and my new family members were associated with several branches of them. I joined my wife to attend services at her church a few times. Listening to TV evangelists , reading the local papers and talking to friends and relatives truly rounded out my religious education. There are many mega churches in the south presided over by preachers who I call “Ayatollahs“. There is a big difference between the Baptists and the other Protestants. There are striking similarities between them and the churches in the Muslim world. The world of Islam has two main branches which are the Sonnies and the Shiites. For spiritual guidance both branches rely on the Koran but with an important difference. The Sonnies read the Koran and try to follow it’s teachings to the best of their abilities. The Shiites respect the Koran just as well but rely more of it’s interpretation by their high priests the Ayatollahs. The Ayatollah’ dictum is the law.
Today the dividing line between church and state isn’t as clearly defined in the south as it was at the beginning of our republic. The line is burled by mighty opposing forces in the arena. The winning forces are led by rock-star like church leaders, the Christian Ayatollahs. Most of them started small with just a handful of parishioners. Many of them did not even have a formal education, but they all had the gift of gab and good business instinct. With their winning personalities they attracted more and more members and eventually ended up with a congregation numbering in the thousands. There is no hierarchy in the Baptist churches. They are completely independent and the “Ayatollah” rules over them like a king. Their influence over the membership is overwhelming. They dominate the members’ daily lives, tell them how to live what to do an by inference how to vote. A nod from them to a political candidate can make them, a thumbs down can end a political career. The bench mark for them is Jimmy Carter. Any candidate who doesn’t measure up to him, has to go down the drain. One rock-star evangelist declared, “God wants us to be prosperous”. He probably meant himself. They all have fabulous life styles, drive expensive cars, and live in penthouse apartments or in suburban mansions.
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The leading philosophy of most of the churches is Determinism. The belief called Determinism is teaching that the laws of nature decreed immutable causes and effects, and that God did not play the dice to find out the end of an event. God doesn’t allow any events to be random and undetermined. Einstein embraced that concept from Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) of an amorphous God reflected in the awe-inspiring beauty, rationality, and unity of nature’s laws. Einstein did not believe in a personal God who rewarded and punished and intervened in our daily lives.
For Einstein, and indeed most classical physicists, the idea of fundamental randomness in the universe-that events could just happen without a cause- was not only a discomfort, it undermined the entire program of physics. Most of the Christian churches fully endorse the teachings of determinism but the Baptists put a special emphasis on it.
In the Protestant churches the service consists of preaching and singing and all that is taking place within the allocated hour or hour and a half. The congregation sits on well padded benches to be able to endure the time but they have to stand once while. Kneeling isn’t part of the ritual. The preacher has to use his allocated time to his best advantage. He knows how to grab and hold the congregation’s attention and they hang mesmerized on every word he says. He might refer to a chapter in the bible but he is mainly zeroing in on his core belief of determinism. God is keeping track of our thinking and doing. He knows when a sparrow falls and the hairs on our heads are numbered. He is often asking the rhetorical question “ What did God do today in your lives.? God is in charge of everything and everything that happens is in God’s will.
One Sunday I listened to a sermon given by the leading Ayatollah in an Atlanta church. With a very satisfied smile on his face he walked to the center of the pulpit and announced that as a testimonial he is pleased to present a guest. It turned out that his guest was a navy man who served during WWII in the Pacific arena. His ship was torpedoed and the survivors were trying to hang on to life by grabbing on to the floating remains of the sunken ship. A few lucky ones could pull themselves entirely out of water, others just were holding on to the pieces, but most of them just had to swim in circles desperately waiting for rescuers. As feared, very soon the sharks appeared smelling blood in the water and grabbed one swimmer after another. After many horrifying hours the rescue ship arrived. Our guest was among the few who were rescued.. The Ayatollah announced, as a clincher, with raised voice that it was in God’s will that the guest was saved. He did not follow up in explaining that it was in God’s will as well that the others were eaten alive. We have to ask as well if it was in God’s will that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps or it was in His will that the Titanic run into an ice berg. What an outrageous idea. How dare we making God responsible for our bloody deeds. God gave us a blue print about how to lead a happy life. It is anchored down in detail in the Holy Bible. To be able to comprehend, He gave us an advanced computer mounted between our two ears-- our brain. He gave us last but not least, a free will.
He told us “You have a choice. You may follow my commandments or you can go your own way”.
In reading one of C.S. Lewis’ book “The Problem of Pain”, I was surprised that he ran into a problem which neither he nor I could understand.. The problem of unanswered prayers.
Lewis, a Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge was for many years an atheist., and described his conversion in Surprised by Joy: In the Trinity Term of 1929 he said, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God and was the most dejected and reluctant convert in England”. His writings are known to millions of people all over the world in translation. He died on 22nd November 1963, at his home in Oxford.
Christ said to the apostles “ Anything you ask of my Father in my name will be given to you”. The bible gives no further qualifications. C.S. Lewis concluded maybe “ So to speak” should be added to it. Lewis married later in life to a lady who had a son from a previous marriage. The three of them formed a loving family. After a couple of years into their marriage, his wife developed cancer. Lewis was devastated by the news and prayed day and night asking God for mercy and intervention on behalf of his wife. Nothing helped, his wife passed away.
The six million Jews in the Nazi death camps certainly must have prayed incessantly asking God for intersession for they were after all, the chosen people. Their prayers remained unanswered. We have to conclude in unison with Spinoza and Einstein that we don’t have a personal God who rewards and punishes and intervenes in our daily lives.
In the early twentieth century the world experienced a disruption of societal certainties and moral absolutes in a modernist atmosphere For Einstein, and indeed most classical physicists, the idea the universe could have a fundamental randomness. He believed that events just happen without a cause. It was not only a cause of discomfort but undermined the entire program of physics..
Meanwhile, another approach to quantum mechanics was developed in the summer of 1925 by a bright-faced 23 year old hiking enthusiast, Werner Heisenberg, who was a student of Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and then of Max Born in Gottingen. Heisenberg famous and disruptive contribution came two years later, the uncertainty principle.
It is impossible to know Heisenberg declared, the precise position of a particle, such as a moving electron, and it’s precise momentum at the same instant.
This is a feature of our universe, he said, not merely some defect in our observing and measuring abilities.
The uncertainty principle, so simple yet so startling, was a stake in the heart of classical physics. It asserts that there is no objective reality- not even an objective position of a particle- outside of our observation. Chance, indeterminacy, and probability took the place of certainty.

O.K. Where does all that leave us simple mortals? We have to resign to the fact that we are the masters of our destiny. We have to use our God given talents and make the best of it. God is a benevolent observer above but we cannot expect any Divine intervention. Life isn’t a determined action, but a random action.