How I Can Believe

You asked me how I can believe that any good can come out of teaching "human sacrifice" to children... referring to Christmas. Such is the nature of rampant Personal Expression on social media. Personally I don't mind it and 99% of the time find it a helpful new aspect of our collective evolution. Inquiring minds want to know. Critical minds want to criticize. Somewhere in between most all of us surely exist. It's a valid question. Christmas is after all one fucked up if not groovy scene. A buffet table of the best and worst of humanity's confused collected consciousness. All mashed together, one giant mind boggling mass of culture clash and historical inaccuracies. It's no wonder younger generations have no idea what or why Christmas is other than parties and presents. How can anyone believe? That should be the question. Just what the hell are we believing in at this point anyway? Christmas trees, Christmas parties, Christmas songs, Christmas presents, Christmas concerts, Christmas music videos, Christmas Music Channels, bell choirs, White Christmas, angels singing, sleigh bells ringing, Midnight Mass, Santa Claus, the First Noel, Advent, Yule, reindeer,  stockings filled with trinkets hung over whatever you've got, egg nog, fruit cake, the Grinch who stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and his red nose... And then there's Hanukkah. Indeed, Christmas is a mess.

And at the heart of all stands a dead man strung up and hanging on a cross of wood; or an angelic little baby sleeping on a bed full of straw in a barn full of animals and a few kings, or wise men, depending on who you believe. So yeah, I hear you. Loud and clear. Christmas is as fucked as it gets when it comes to human invention. Never mind that Jesus the man wasn't born anywhere near December. That will only make it worse.

How I can believe... That's the only way that I can begin to answer your question. I cannot speak about the abomination of confusing symbolism, hyperbolic materialsm and commercial exploitation that Christmas has turned into in the public eye. But only what this "human sacrifice" angle means to me. But before we venture too far forward, permit me to correct the very heart of your query without dismissing it. Christmas itself, at its core, has nothing to do with the "human sacrifice" element of Pagan-Christianity. That's Easter. Just a fact check. Christmas as it was originally designed, as I am sure you already know, was a celebration of the birth of Jesus the man; put in the place of Yule, the Winter Solstice and several other Roman and Pagan holidays that took place on December 25th. It has nothing to do with his death, or "sacrifice" as you call it.


An intelligent man wouldn't throw a kitten into a den full of wolves (at least not a kind one), as my entry into this public admission will be akin to, but I've never claimed to be as intelligent as I am crazy. So with mild trepidation I am going to answer your question as openly and honestly as I can.

In short, I can offer this as a practicing Christian myself, I've been on all sides of the debate, from agnostic to Hindu to Islam to Jew and everywhere in between. So I know where you are. Human religion and spiritual thought has always fascinated me for some reason. But then again everything fascinates me. In regard to your specific query my friend, I too had the same ruminations early on, which led to my abdication of the Christian title as a teenager (like most). Tried on all sorts of hats and titles. Some search. Some don't. Those who search are obviously looking for something. I was. Clearly. Searching for what we arbitrarily call God, though we could just as easily call it Source or The Force, The Great Spirit, Infinite Intelligence, Awareness of All That is, et al. Something deeper. Try as I might to stay far away from the wickedness which I dubbed the Catholic Church and Christianity in general, God -- the Christian God-- just wouldn't leave me alone.

I was deeply spiritual anyway. There was no escaping that. So after 25 years of absence and abstinence, and a whole lot of public rebelling against the whole lot, I decided to take this Force up on it's numerous offers and invitations. I entered a typical Christian church on a typical corner in Manhattan after hearing a voice in my head or heart whisper an invitation for me to do so and I sat down without expectation. Within a minute or two I had drifted into some kind of altered state, hypnotic, akin to the deeper stages of an LSD trip one could say. I had never felt so good before. Had never felt so loved. So blissed out. I wasn't praying. Nor asking for anything. I thought I was there to see the architecture to be honest.

When I came to a few minutes later I realized I was smiling from ear to ear. Like a silly fool. I felt embarrassed at first. But was feeling too ecstatic from the feeling to care who saw me. I just wanted it to last. I sat perfectly still. Afraid the feeling would leave me too soon for my own liking. "This is God's love Ed," I heard. "What you feel is God's love for you Ed. God loves you so so much..." This went on for ten minutes or so. Who knows. Time in those rare instances of grace... Well, I couldn't deny what I had experienced. Ten years prior I was the most devout Buddhist/Hindu/Krishna devotee a God could ask for; abstinence, chanting, vegetarian, you name it. But I had never experienced anything close to this new experience of spiritual transcendence I'd just had in the church before in my life. I had to admit I was caught by something much bigger than my incredible mind.

As an agnostic, the combination of my intellect and my collected knowledge of all things philosophical and theological made me any religious person's worst nightmare. But this experience had me by the balls. It was beyond my perceived power of intellect or intelligence. I finally discovered what all the fuss was about. And it didn't take waking up at dawn to do yoga and meditate everyday. In fact from what I was hearing on a regular basis from that point forward (yes, voices in the head egads -- hearing/feeling/intuiting if you will) this God force didn't care if I ate meat or had sex or chanted or shaved my head... He was after something much bigger than any of that. There was only one problem. What to do about that Jesus character... That was going to be an issue for me. To be sure. How could I attend this church and commune with these people and continue to take hits off their smoking bowl of ecstasy when I knew damn well that I had a host of problems with the primary figure of the whole foundation of their system? After all wasn't Jesus the guest of honor at these glorious celebrations that I was now regularly participating in?

Well the story is long from my first dip in the pool to my eventual full dive head first. I struggled with it for years. Reading didn't help. (It never does). There was only one thing to do if I were ever going to get to a real stage of complete integration and understanding of what Jesus was all about, if anything at all. Pray. And I don't mean in any specific way according to any prescribed or preconceived manmade methods or rules. For me it was a very personal connecting with the original Source of that love and bliss that I was feeling closer and closer to everyday. And the prayer was simple. "God it's me. If there's anything to know about the Jesus thing please grant me access to that knowledge. I just want to understand. That's all I ask. If there's nothing to it and there's nothing to know then so be it. You've still got me."

I wish I could say I saw lightening followed by an apparition of some type three minutes later. But I didn't. Instead mine was a slow coming to understand. It wasn't of the mind -- for its beyond comprehension in a literal temporal sense of the word. So there's no sense in trying to look for proof of anything remotely related to the life and legends of Jesus' short life on earth. It's a feel thing. You either get it, grace, or you don't. That's why the graceful man never enters into debate regarding "the god delusion illusion". To rally vehemently against it is just as foolhardy as to rally zealously for it. Both paths are un-provable extremes carried out by small minds, even among the most noble among us (Hitch for example). Nope. The paranormal, the miraculous, the transcendent... for now at least, all exceed the mind's ability to understand in concrete linear fundamental terms. They're experienced.

I eventually got the hit, or hits, I was searching for regarding "this Jesus thing". On an Easter Sunday no less. And it was every bit as experientially impossible to relay with words to the mind as it was transcendental and fulfilling. To me it came down to a simple man who tried as hard as he could to wake the world of men up to the fact that they could live in peace, that they are loved beyond measure and unconditionally, that their perceived sins are forgiven by and through this miraculous love, and that they didn't need to live in fear or shame or guilt or envy or selfishness (the root cause of many if not all of our problems here).

When it became apparent that this world of men were more interested in wealth and winning (defeating the Romans), he took a different route, a plan B if you will, a much harder road. He allowed them the honor of believing if for a brief few days that his mission was for naught and that his power was small by showing them the ultimate act of sacrifice and courage: nonviolent pacifism and surrender. No matter what they did to him he did not fight back or attempt to hurt them in return. So the story goes. And this is where we must bid adieu to the thinking mind (and I don't fault any man for not being willing to do this). Jesus knew something the rest of them didn't. That through this divine connection with this Force, that he would transcend death itself, that his death would be short lived. And that very soon they would believe in a way that even they wouldn't be able to fathom.

At that time in history sacrifices were the way of the land. If you wanted to get to God you sacrificed something. Jesus taught these people that these sacrifices were no longer necessary. But being a stubborn bunch they just could not bring themselves to believe him. So as it was predicted in their holy books of old (old testament) He became the sacrifice himself; so not only would they have a better understanding of who he was -- through this culturally normal practice -- and how they might be able to get to their God faster than sacrificing a lamb or goat every few days, perhaps they would also understand that they need not sacrifice at all any longer. It was a brilliant act. Shakespearean. Through his example of non-violence no one could ever again say we need to take up arms and go to war; and through his sacrifice no one would ever need feel so bad about themselves or their misdeeds that they would feel compelled to do themselves or another any harm.

I felt the reality of that notion for the first time that Easter Sunday. Felt it. Not thought it. It was only a few minutes later did I begin to think about it. What a feeling. What a miraculously clean and joyful feeling. To shed all that baggage. To let go of all that asserting my rightness because I felt so buried in all my wrongness. Freedom. The message of his act was a simple one. You are free. You are loved. Enjoy what you have and who you are. God does. And so it was. For me at least. Hope this helps. Now I must sleep.
Peace, Fishy