My faith.

Nietzsche once wrote, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

The death of God, as it were, is not a physical or metaphysical demise (although some argue otherwise). Rather, the death of God is a conceptual death, whereby man has ‘moved beyond’ the need for God (or a God-figure) to guide morality and justify belief or existence or any of the myriad ‘big questions’ we commonly attribute to the divine.

Moving beyond convention

I feel I have moved beyond the need for conventional Christianity. Let me clarify. God is not ‘dead’ to me. I still believe. I still champion Christian ideals and morality. I still seek to evangelise and to be that light to those who have none.

What then, do I mean? I am not a traditional ‘pray devoutly’, ‘fervent Church-going’, ‘defend the faith’ sort of Christian. I’m not a doctrine fanatic, nor am I a ‘conservative Christian’. I am in a very real sense, a ‘humanist’, a ‘post-modernist’, a ‘liberal Christian’. Some would call me ‘heretic’.

A friend once told me I was going to hell for my unorthodox beliefs, but then again, he did attend City Harvest Church, so what would be know? (Sarcastic irony completely intended)

Living faith

My primary and abiding interest is in administering to the people of God (meaning everyone), through my words and actions. A practical Christianity. I seek to live that ‘gospel life’, administering to people, evangelising through my actions, bringing people closer together, being that light in the darkness. To be, as Paul wrote, “all things to all men”.

I seek to bring people to an understanding of themselves, to a discovery of meaning, and maybe then to a discovery of God. I don’t feel the need to proselytise the masses. I don’t subscribe to ‘if you don’t believe, you won’t be saved’. I reject the fire and brimstone approach to Christianity.

Mother Teresa once said, “when you love until it hurts, there is only more love”.

Prayer and outward signs

Prayer is not a part of my life in that ‘seek guidance, give thanks, pray constantly’ fashion; prayer is my life. I seek to make my life and my actions a living prayer.

Paul wrote that if one did all things “but had not love, [one is] nothing”. And that’s exactly my point. Love is the essence. Love is the key. “For God so loved the world” after all. I feel that the single greatest gift I can give to God is to live my life with love, and let that love show through every word and action.

I’m not saying that traditional ‘overt Christianity’ holds no appeal for me, rather, I say that it is not something that I hold dear to as much as that ‘internal Christianity’. The signs of faith are well and good. For some, holiness is measured by the number of rosaries one says, or the number of masses one attends. Faith is not quantifiable into such simplistic terms.

One thing I have found is that ‘overt faith’ does not indicate an ‘internal faith’. We assume that a priest is ‘necessarily holier’ than the average man. I have no such illusions. I believe in self-actualisation. I believe in faith as an internal journey as opposed to an externally observable one. I don’t seek to be ‘holy’; I seek to ‘live faithfully’ without the trappings of overt holiness which make so many inaccessible.

Conclusion

To that end, I don’t think much about heaven or hell. I just live my life as best I can. Being the best I can be. Doing the maximum good that I can do. I’m not ‘prayerful’ or ‘spiritual’ or ‘holy’ in the traditional sense. I just think of the old maxim ‘what would Jesus do?’ and then go do it.

I don’t feel bad for my beliefs, although conventional Christianity strongly suggests that I should. I know some friends would only be too eager to censure me and force me onto the ‘right path’, as it were. Let me just say, God gave us free will. The freedom to choose. You may disagree, and that’s fine, let’s talk about it. But don’t come after me screaming ‘jihad’ just because you feel I’m wrong.