- February 22nd, 2021, 5:52 pm
#378675
Hi, baker!
Thank you for questions.
I am not Catholic, neither born nor raised. I am not personally religious at all, in that I generally don't believe in anything supernatural or paranormal.
With that said, I strongly agree with many of Jesus's teachings as quoted in the Christian Bible, and find that many of those teachings have corresponding teachings in other religions such as in Buddhism (originating from India) or Taoism (originating from China). Overall, I am a fan of most religions, even though I personally ignore the supernatural parts or interpret them metaphorically.
My attitude on that matter is as follows: When truth is spoken, it is always spoken in solidarity with all truth-speakers across all of time and space, and even beyond that. Absolute truth is eternal.
And I believe that kind of truth has no gatekeepers.
I've read Jesus's words as quoted in the Bible just the same as I have read the full Tao Te Ching and the full Dhammapada, and all three to me convey a message that helps the reader transcend shame, greed, bodily urges, fear, and spiritual suffering (e.g. the feeling of being a prisoner in one's own body). In the case of fear specifically, that transcendence is called bravery or courage, which is not the absence of fear but the transcendence of it (i..e to be brave when afraid rather than enslaved by fear and thus spiritually imprisoned by cowardice). It is as unfortunately ironic as it is unsurprising that humans could pervert those teachings to cultivate fear, shame, and guilt in other humans thereby further enslaving and imprisoning those other humans to their cowardice, egoic identification, and false idol worship. I would argue that the bodily comfort of sitting on an expensive couch eating cake and drinking whiskey is a false idol, even when compared not only to the discomfort of physical exercise on a treadmill but also to the physical pain of having one's body literally burned by fire.
I wouldn't be surprised by the study you mention regarding Catholicism being the hardest religion to overcome, especially insofar as one is taught the religion from those who excessively push a threatening concept of literal supernatural hell in the after-life or who otherwise culturally use shame, fear and guilt to control other humans, which by extension cultivates anxiety and cowardice in the believer, which I would refer to as spiritual slavery or imprisonment, the opposite of spiritual liberation and transcendence. Where spiritual slavery would be associated with discontentment and feeling like a prisoner in one's own body, the opposite would be associated with the invincible contentment of inner peace.
But if we look for pendulums we often find them; Many times those who are pushed furthest from grace are then thereby pushed most to it. Those who are trapped most by fear, cowardice, or addiction are often later the most freed. When it comes to escaping the comfort zone, comfort and moderation can be counter-productive. If one is not so tormented by the idea of hell, one might not be so inclined to come to the likes of a Philosophy Forum and seek truth for themselves as a free thinker.
I believe the saving grace in Jesus's words make it so one could walk through not only the valley of the shadow of death without fear, but also walk through and burn within a literal hell and still fear no evil.
With enough inner peace, even a literal external hell is revealed as heaven. For such a person carries salvation with them wherever they go.
That's what I hear when I read Jesus's words about unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness, the commonness of humankind, non-judgementalism, the peaceful refusal to cast stones, the casting away of Martha's anxiety, and so on and so forth.
From those kinds of ideas, I not only get to a spiritual place where I fear no evil, but also that I see no true evil. And then even the so-called "problem of evil" vanishes, and the whole of reality is revealed as inexorably perfect, eternally so.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.