The Way

/ Jeff Cann

All the “God” I need

My wife Susan and I drove past a church the other day. Out front, a sign read TGIF!

I entered high school in the mid-seventies. At the time, poster sales proliferated record stores, drug stores, and Sears department stores—cute animals from kittens to seals, ugly animals from bulldogs to hippos, often portrayed above large white or bright yellow letters. One of the principal messages on these posters read Thank God It’s Friday. This message could be found in schoolrooms, doctors’ offices and various other places people didn’t really want to be. For the past fifty years, to me, TGIF meant only one thing: Thank God it’s Friday. Today, on that church sign, I learned a new one: Thank God I’m Forgiven!

“So that’s the deal? If I believe in Jesus, I’m automatically forgiven? I still gotta dodge jail, but I’ve got a ticket to heaven? Seems a little implausible.”

Susan hesitated, merging onto a highway, “I think that’s the idea, yes.”

So then conversely, if I live an ethical life, help others, and conduct myself much like a would-be Mother Theresa, but I worship the wrong deity, or no deity at all, I’m sentenced to an eternity of purgatory, or worse? Does this seem skewed to you?

I grew up as a christian, little “c.” No one talked seriously about heaven, hell, being saved or forgiven. We went to church and didn’t cuss. My church had a hippy vibe, we studied a progressive bible titled The Way, and when our pastor brought in an assistant pastor in the mid-seventies, he hired a black woman to tend his lily-white flock. Progressive! Heaven never came up as a topic. It was understood we all would go there.

My neighbors, Steve and Jack Peters and another close friend named Will belonged to Fourth Presbyterian. A charismatic church where popular, good looking college kids led the youth program. As a young teen, I started accompanying Steve, Jack, and Will to youth group activities. Not for the religious aspects but because they were fun.  Fourth Presbyterian was capital “C” Christian all the way.  

Ater the relay races and ping pong tournaments and soccer matches and skits, we met for snacks and serious talk. These cool young adults would save us. They told us we needed to strengthen our relationship with Jesus. They iterated and reiterated the message of Bible verse John 14:6—I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. This was when I learned the meaning of the title of my Bible.

One rainy Sunday afternoon at the end of a weekend-long retreat, the counselors passed out a bolt and a nut to each kid. They told us to screw the hardware together as a symbol of our commitment to Christ. They told us to ask God and Jesus to accept us and to acknowledge Jesus Christ as our savior. I tried to do it. I felt like a fraud. That was my last Fourth Presbyterian activity.

A year later, walking home from school with Will, he blurted out “Jeff, how’s your relationship with the Lord?”

Caught off guard and transported back to the pressure I felt from the counselors at the retreat, I slipped into my best Monty Python voice and said “M’Lord, how are you doing today, m’Lord. Top of the morning m’Lord.”

Angry, Will responded, “Jeff, I asked you a serious question about our Lord. Why are you turning it into a joke?” That was the last time I hung out with Will.

I remained a little “c” Christian for another fifteen or twenty years. Over time, through reading, writing and exposure to other cultural beliefs, my ideas about creators, saviors and afterlife settled into a hodge podge of theories that made the most sense to me.  

I find comfort from my belief in reincarnation and the expectation that I’ll re-encounter those souls from my current life who are most important to me. Conversely, I’m agitated by my surety that our universe is almost certainly a science experiment started by an advanced extraterrestrial, an intelligent designer if you will, who checks in on our progress only every hundred thousand years of so. There is no salvation except what we find in our current life by being our best ethical selves.

Ever since my middle teenage years, I’ve been offended by the absolutism of the one-way-to-salvation ethos of Christianity. None of us knows the true path to a rewarding afterlife, because none of us has been there yet. When it comes to spiritual truth, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and even my own crackpot theories are all on equal footing. Anyone telling you something different, well, that’s just wishful thinking.

19 thoughts on “The Way”

  1. Your post made me stop for a minute to think about my views. Anyhow, I pretty much agree with you. My parents were not atheists, but they were also not “church-goers.” They merely had drifted away from such things. They believed in God but we never really discussed it. As a result, I never attended church growing up (or since), and I was never baptized. Regardless of a person’s religion, I believe if one is a good person (not perfect, just good), they should do okay in the “afterlife.” And I do believe in an afterlife of some type. It is much better than thinking there is nothing after our relatively few years on earth. I could ramble on, but basically, it comes down to what one believes. As you said, no one will know for sure until you cross over.

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    • I agree, Zero afterlife is a pretty bleak prospect. But we’ll be dead, so if that’s what is waiting, I guess it doesn’t matter. I think the idea of heaven where my father is hanging hanging out with my mother and my stepmother like one big happy family seems unrealistic.

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  2. I too grew up in a culture of little “c” Christianity. it provided a backdrop not a cornerstone. Big “C” Christianity has always offended me in that it demands one accept there is only one way: theirs. And that for me is always an anathema.

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  3. Your doubts about The Way seem reasonable to me, Jeff. Even its champions don’t agree on what’s involved. For example, the idea of completely discounting good works has always seemed quite bizarre to me and salvation by grace alone is a tad too capricious for me. And don’t start me on the Trinity.
    ~
    Modifying a verse that I wrote on a similar topic recently:-

    one day
    we become a tree
    that also falls
    ~
    Be well and do good, Jeff.
    As far as I’m concerned,
    that is the way.
    Kind regards,
    DD
    PS
    If that’s not Sophie in the photo, why is my supervisor holidaying with you and Susan?

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    • It was that verse that original verse that got me thinking about writing on this subject. You may recall I asked for permission to use it as my writing prompt. The sign I saw on my way to the airport wound up being more prompting for me as I finally started writing. That is Sophie. She is a wilderness firefighter in Grand Teton National Park which is one of the most beautiful places in the US. We came for a visit. Yes, Do Good. In my mind, that’s all it takes.

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  5. I had an older cousin who was funny, but wicked. Both Catholics, we were taught that if you went to Mass on the first Friday of each month, for nine months consecutively you’d go to heaven. I never managed it, and he for all his sins did. Somewhere inside me I wonder if the real God in the end is the one that honours the ‘Nine First Fridays’ rule. Guess we’ll find out one day.

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  8. Thanks for this. I grew up as a capital CC person, as in Cradle Catholic. I’ve made all of my sacraments but never quite embraced the rest of it. Even my priest at my wedding over three decades ago, commented on how I questioned everything-in his mind to him he knew I had made the right choice in the man I married because of my questioning. He’s a now retired Monsignor, who very much believes in astronomy and even has a smaller planet named after him.

    I digress! I’m happy to no longer conform to any religion, and my altar now consists of maybe sitting in the recliner binging on Brit Box programs. As I’ve told many others-if all other religions are wrong, why is just one ‘right,’ and why?

    Happy Saturday!!

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    • Happy Saturday to you too, BMA. I know this post was offensive to many but you’re right. It makes me want to say “How come the religion “you” believe in is the only right one. Seems awfully convenient, right?”

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  9. If you were in court in front of a judge for your life and that judges son came fourth and said”I will take his sentence upon myself” would not that judge want you to choose to acknowledge his sons sacrifice,that he gave his life for you?

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    • Well no, I’d want that judge to consider the acts of each person rather than accept some sort of quid pro quo arrangement absolving those who make a special deal with the judge’s kin. Of course this misses the whole point of what I wrote which is: we don’t know. We don’t know the nature of god (or my alien) or the possibly random events that got humanity where it is today. Because we don’t know, I have to assume all spiritual beliefs are equally valid. And if there is a creator, I hope they value this critical thinking above blind acceptance of faith that was created by humans and not by a deity.

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