Religion

I was raised in a social gospel tradition. My understanding was that being a Christian meant acting the faith through good deeds, i.e. treating others with justice and compassion. I'd heard all the other "stuff", the dogma, but thought that it was not central to Christianity, which I viewed as a religion of social justice. I remember, for example, a sermon in which a minister posited that the true miracle was not that Jesus, the founder of the faith, was born to a virgin, but that he was born to a poor, unwed mother, a member of an oppressed people. Furthermore, that the miracle of the fishes and the loaves didn't imply that Jesus could magically reproduce the food, but that the act of compassion of one child who shared one small fish and one small loaf compelled many others to share what they had.

When I was in Norway at age 17, I encountered religious Christians from Lutheran and Mission Covenant backgrounds who saw Christianity very differently, emphasizing faith, i.e. salvation through Christ's sacrifice, rather than social justice and good deeds. Christianity through that frame of reference didn't work for me. If G-d were all-powerful, why would he have allowed humans to partake of knowledge, then caste them from the Garden of Eden, punishing them with misery and suffering throughout eternity? Why would mess up so much that he had to send an emissary (Jesus) to fix it up? What is wrong with seeking knowledge?

For some years, I attended a U.C.C. church that was oriented toward social justice in those days, with little emphasis on creed or profession of faith. When we lived in South America, I again encountered traditional Christians whose core belief centered around salvation through Christ's sacrifice. I started to re-read the New Testament and began to feel that I couldn't ignore that the core message, what was new in the New Testament was indeed, was this very theory of salvation. I felt that identifying myself as a Christian was insincere, since I didn't accept, couldn't belief in the core concept of Christianity - Christ's divinity. The message of social justice - the Golden Rule, etc., was already evident in Judaism.

I began taking Judaism classes in South America and continued when I returned to the U.S. I found Judaism to be, historically, an evolving and growing religion. The emphasis on natural consequences made sense to me. Social justice is key as is the emphasis on ethical action - mitzvot. The prohibition of saying G-d's name also made much sense - because in my view, there is no way to define G-d and to express the ineffable name is inevitably to diminish what G-d is. How can we, with our human capacities, define something which is far beyond our scope?

There is much to Judaism that I don't accept or practice. There is much to other religions, including Christianity, that I respect and admire. There are many ways to wholeness, I chose one, and in its way, it works for me.