(Straight from my journal.)
A little context. I am not Christian. Hearing someone talk about “having a relationship with” and “being the bride of” Jesus Christ still gives me an ick if I fail to approach them with compassion and openness. I used to be a real “empirical evidence is the only avenue for truth” bonehead. My understanding of truth has evolved since then.
Maybe a good way to translate the concept to non-Christians is the idea of imagining your “highest self” as a person outside of yourself, someone aspirational in your corner.
“Would my highest self approve of this?” “What would the best version of myself do in this situation?” sounds awfully similar to “What would Jesus do?”
After all, Christians say that “the face of Jesus is reflected in every man” and that “God is in every one of us.”
The way my Christian friends talk about “developing a relationship with Jesus” reminds me of how I envision and consult my “highest self.” But I am still turned off by Christians who seem to put Jesus in a parental role. Does this reflect on their relationship to God or my relationship with my parents? Perhaps both.
My “highest Self” acts with patience, love, compassion, generosity, and in a way that preserves my dignity and the dignity of others.
And it is wonderful, believing in the inherent goodness of each person, perhaps analogous to believing in the redemption of others.
But I am stuck on that word, “redemption.” What do we have to atone for? The inevitable injuries we inflict on one another, perhaps the unavoidable byproduct of being mortal, human, and animalistic.
Inevitably we have moments of selfishness and moments where we fail to preserve the integrity of ourselves and others.
And what of my (lack of) experience with “Catholic guilt”? It seems to be a common phenomenon, feeling like you’re carrying the burden of some grievous sin that you can’t even articulate clearly. The sense that you are somehow “bad” or “irredeemable.” I can sympathize, but I cannot empathize, because I have never felt this way.
There is no failure of character that I have suffered from that I feel is unatonable.
Many questions left to elaborate on at a later time.
- What is truth?
- What is the highest Self?
- What is sin/evil?
- What is the significance of the Christian God having a mortal Son?
- Why do I care to think so extensively about all of this as a non-Christian?. Well, I guess this is an easy one. My husband converted to Catholicism a few years ago and I have to think through all of this to get over my knee-jerk aversion to it.