Sick Religion or Healthy Faith? by Ryan Ahlgrim; & Lisa Cressman

Author:Ryan Ahlgrim; & Lisa Cressman [Ahlgrim, Ryan & Cressman, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781498280808
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2016-05-10T07:00:00+00:00

6

The Path to Wholeness

I used to volunteer at a chemical dependency center that operated in a community hospital. People addicted to alcohol or other drugs would go through a four-week residential program that included detoxification, education, individual and group therapy, and working through the first five steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. The first three steps of the famous twelve-step AA program use spiritual language: “1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.”

A new patient was brought into the chemical dependency center and introduced to these first three steps. As an agnostic he objected to the spiritual language and argued with his counselor, “What kind of religious garbage is this? What are you forcing me to believe in?” His counselor responded, “There’s only one thing you have to believe: there is a God, and you ain’t it.”

Perhaps all spiritual growth and healing begins with this discovery. Through it we are enabled to mature, love others as ourselves, seek help from others, nurture deep friendships, connect with the transcendent, and bring needed benefits to the world. It’s also the central truth of the biblical story and the Christian faith: there is a God, and we ain’t it.

From what I have gleaned so far from my readings of other religions, it appears to me that every religion—Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, etc.—believes there is something seriously amiss with humanity, and one of the purposes of religion is to help solve that problem. Human beings do not live unreflective lives as the rest of the animal kingdom seems to do; rather, we are conscious that there is something often “out of whack” with us. What is the problem? The human race has lots of problems: guilt, alienation, anxiety, broken relationships, resentments, perpetual violence, social oppression, extreme poverty, environmental degradation, fear of death, etc. One of the factors that makes religion a universal phenomenon, capable of affecting us in the most profound ways, is that it looks deeply into the human dilemma and seeks to answer our most fundamental needs.

Each religion understands the cause of the human dilemma somewhat differently, and the beliefs and practices of that religion flow out of the way it attempts to solve that dilemma. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam share a common understanding of the essential cause of the human dilemma: we human beings are in a broken relationship with the true God of all reality. Why is that relationship broken? Because we are not God-centered. Instead, we are fear-centered—jerked around by our anxieties and insecurities; and we are self-centered—pursuing our own interests and desires first. The result of this ruptured relationship with God is that we are also in a ruptured relationship with others, nature, and even with ourselves. Our attitudes and actions do harm to the wholeness of others, to the health of the environment, and to our own genuine fulfillment.

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