Wrestling With Christianity: Diary of a Sinner
Wrestling With Christianity: Diary of a Sinner
Man I've been going through a deep process...
Dear Family,
As you may have noticed, I’ve been deeply “wrestling with Christianity” lately. It’s an intense and challenging (and hopefully ultimately fruitful) process.
To be honest, I’ve been feeling CONFUSED.
Like, really, really confused. I don’t think I’ve felt this much ontological confusion in quite a few years.
My friend Jacob Kishere has a YouTube series called ‘Wrestling with Christianity’ that I’ve contributed to. I recommend it. That’s where I first heard this phrase, “wrestling with Christianity,” and I like the phrase…
Something about Christianity—perhaps the fact that I was born into the religion and so it is imprinted profoundly deeply upon my primordial psyche and therefore difficult to see objectively—seems to make it especially wiry and fierce as a wrestling partner…
In this post I want to share some of my recent process and confusion around Christianity, so let’s dive in.
Who is Jesus Christ?
These words that I wrote about ~25 days ago seem like a fitting starting point to begin excavating the caverns of this current process of mine:
Life is funny man
Just when you feel you’re finding the integral truth beneath all great religions…
Further complications appear and the picture becomes less clear
Who is Jesus Christ?
One among ~several/many avatars of Divinity?
The *only* begotten Son of God?
God Himself?
This question has become a central inquiry of my life at this stage
My experiences of Christ have been among the most impactful of my life. Such a Love has touched my Heart — sometimes as an indescribable Inferno, and other times as the soft, gentle, tender touch of a child — at times accompanied by a simple knowing that Jesus Christ is with me, and at times accompanied by visions of Christ
Experience/intuition/revelation suggests to me that Christ is One with God in Heaven
What does this ultimately mean?
Are there other ‘avatars’ who are equally One with God in Heaven?
Are all our souls One with God in Heaven?
Who are we?
What is our birthright and our destiny?
These questions fascinate me unendingly
I continue to seek, contemplate, pray, question, meditate, inquire
Maybe I will never know the final answers
Maybe I will never know if all paths finally lead to the same place
I can say that I Love Christ
I Love God
I Love Love
I believe in God’s Love
I believe the world is in God’s Hands
And maybe that already is more than enough
Maybe I am greedy to seek further clarifications of ontological nuances
Maybe I am asked to simply hold in my Heart a deep burning Faith
And to share God’s & Christ’s Love as best I can
Re-reading these words now, I like them. They feel sincere and humble. They capture a lot of what I am grappling with.
Are salvation and enlightenment ultimately the same thing?
Are Vedanta and Christianity ultimately pointing toward the same truth?
Do all rivers lead to the Ocean?
These questions are ridiculously alive for me right now. Feels a bit like they’re tearing apart my insides.
I had been reading Yogananda’s The Second Coming of Christ and had been feeling like the text was quite integrative for me. It was leading me toward a feeling that there really is a golden thread connecting all great religious & spiritual traditions & teachings. A feeling that we’re all ultimately headed toward the same place, and that Vedantic yoga is an equally valid way to ‘get there.’ (I still lean toward feeling this way.)
Then I happened to read a couple critiques of Yogananda from a Christian perspective (this one and this one). Those reads kinda threw me back into a bit of an ontological tailspin, which then compelled me to read more of Seraphim Rose’s Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future—which is sorta like a Nietzschean-level defense of Christian orthodoxy and a polemic against all non-Christian religions. Rose’s spicy prose only furthered my confusion.
Then I Got Drunk…
Then I got to the USA the other day for a visit with my wife and daughter…
And pretty quickly proceeded to start indulging vices.
I had just completed a 25-day fast from various vices.
Somebody once told me, “The most important part of a fast is how you end it”…
But I’ve never been particularly good at ending fasts.
I tend to experience a kind of slingshot effect: The fast ends and I get all excited that I can now indulge whatever vices again, so I dive straight back in like Scrooge McDuck diving into a pool of gold coins.
So, sure enough, I indulged some vices in my first couple days back in the good ol’ US of A. I went to a golf tournament to watch my cousins play, and I ended up getting quite drunk on some good ol’ American beer.
Later that day, I was hungover as shit and felt dreadful.
I just started to feel like a straight-up steaming pile of trash.
I started spiraling into a deep moment of reckoning around my behavior, feeling weak and tired of playing out old cycles of reaching for vices. That was about the time that I posted this on Facebook:
“I am a heartbroken sinner on his hands and knees just trying to crawl toward what is Real”
This ‘reckoning’ process felt potent and strengthened my resolve to continue healing and growing and becoming a better man, husband, and father. It connected me more deeply to the healing power of Christianity. It felt genuinely healthy to face the shadow, feel some shame, and recognize that I want to do better.
Strongly resonating with Christianity, I posted this on IG about a day later:
“If you believe you are God then your conception of God is far too small.
We may be entirely made of the Generous Omnipresent Light Which Streams From His Essence…
Yet to say that we are Him implies a sameness, as if we are the embodied totality of His Holy Essence… which then sounds preposterous
A healthier attitude intuits His Infinite Loving Light — Brighter Than A Trillion Suns — and understands that for all of eternity we shall reach toward that Light, partaking of it little by little if we are lucky, becoming increasingly Sanctified & Divinized forevermore
I am not God and I am not enlightened… I am a sinner… trying to be a messenger… Amen.
With Love,
Jordan”
I posted some other Christian-flavored stuff on FB too and got into some interesting discussions.
Some friends on IG reacted pretty strongly to me calling myself a “sinner.” It seems that can be a major red flag for people in a more New-Age-y paradigm. The conversation with them was a fascinating one.
For me admitting that I am a sinner is a medicinal and humbling practice. It doesn’t mean that I am inherently defective or deficient, but rather simply that I am acknowledging my human weaknesses, imperfections, and tendency to make mistakes and miss the mark. I’ve had some profound experiences of God’s Grace and Mercy coming to me when I prayerfully admit I am a sinner and ask for God’s Forgiveness.
Christian Pride
One thing I began to notice—in some of my discussions on FB—was that some of my replies to people came out sounding pretty rigid and dogmatic.
And similarly, a few days ago when I posted my piece on ‘The Cardinal Sin of New Age Spirituality’—which many of you seemed to deeply appreciate—I also received feedback from a couple people on FB saying that my tone ironically sounded prideful and subtly superior—as if I were placing myself ‘above.’
This wasn’t too surprising to hear, as I’ve been aware for a long time that arrogance/pridefulness is one of my biggest shadows—and I’ve never made any claim to be entirely ‘cured’ of this. So I went ahead and admitted that I am an arrogant and prideful person, and this opened up into the most insightful and nourishing dialogue in recent days, with my friend Adi Adama. I really love the heart-full way Adi navigated this dialogue and I felt he brought forth some truly valuable perspectives, feedback, and re-contextualization. You can read the full exchange on Facebook if you like; here are a couple highlights:
This dialogue was helpful for me.
An irony of Christianity is that—even though the tradition is truly insightful regarding the role of humility in spiritual life—many Christians seem quite prideful. Many Christians seem to arrogantly believe they have found the ‘one true path’ to the ‘One True God,’ and they can give off an air of elitism, exclusivity, and looking down on all those poor un-saved non-Christians who haven’t found Jesus yet.
I’ve written previously about the Christian egregore—the (autonomous & highly gravitational) collective thought-form-entity that I believe exists within the group consciousness of institutional Christianity—and I’m reminded of it now. I believe all religious in-groups develop egregores—and even if you take this as a metaphor, the dynamics still apply. Basically, when you deeply engage in any religious tradition (or most any ideological human group), there’s going to be a strong gravity pulling you toward feeling like you’ve “found the truth,” “found the good guys,” and that everybody else doesn’t quite get it. The human psyche seems to feel a deep sense of safety when it can feel like its group is ‘right’ and ‘special’ and ‘chosen.’
I’m not immune to this, and I think my own arrogance and pride can further amplify this human tendency.
My Universalizing Tendency
It’s been this way for years. I always want to feel like I’ve found the ‘finish line’ or the ‘final answer.’
Even when I’m saying I’m a sinner and I’m a million light years away from God and I’m gonna be crawling on my hands and knees for eternity to hopefully partake of one iota of His Majesty…
I’m still ironically feeling proud that I’ve now discovered the ‘real path.’
It’s a universalizing tendency: Whatever happens to be working for ME at any given moment, suddenly becomes the ‘Ultimate Universal Solution®’ that I need to package up and deliver to the entire human race.
And it seems like I really need to be careful with this when it comes to Christianity. Because Christianity is full of other people who will affirm to me, “YES! You HAVE now found the ONE UNIVERSALLY TRUE PATH. We *DO* have a monopoly on Truth and on the One True God. NO ONE comes to the Father except through CHRIST.”
And even though this line of thinking really doesn’t sit right with my more integral intuitions…
Some combination of my own arrogance, my childhood Christian programming, and Christian-egregorical gravity make it really easy for me to start to believe the Christian dogmatists.
To start to believe that, “This is it. I’ve found it now. Christ is the Final Truth. Everything else is a lesser truth or a falsity.”
Noticing Cross-Cultural Missionary Zeal
One thing that helps neutralize Christian pride for me—and something that Adi was pointing out in our dialogue that I referenced above—is to recognize ~all major religions have fundamentalist sects that develop a missionary zeal.
It was interesting for Adi to freshly point this out to me, highlighting the case of Hare Krishnas who pass out copies of the Bhagavad Gita and affirm that Krishna is “the way, the truth, and the life.”
There’s something a little eerie about it—when I stop to consider the large number of dogmatists within every religion who pridefully hold their religion to be the ‘one true path to Divinity.’
It’s like, “Hmmmm, okay, so this tendency toward dogmatism and missionary-ism seems to be an ancient ~universal human-cultural phenomenon. Seems like it feels really comforting for the psyche to believe its group has a monopoly on truth. This tendency probably promoted group-cohesion in the ancient world and helped groups survive. So, what are the odds that MY religion just so HAPPENS to be the lone exception? What are the odds WE are the ones who ACTUALLY found the one truth that NO ONE ELSE found? What are the odds that in our case it’s NOT just another example of this well-documented psychological mind-virus of dogmatism that has often led human groups to violently attack each other?”
When I tabulate it that way, it’s sobering.
When I tabulate it that way, I’m prompted to relinquish dogmatism.
The Elephant and the Giraffe
My wife Tanja offered another frame that was helpful for considering these questions:
You’ve probably heard of that classic parable where several blind men are all feeling different parts of an elephant and clumsily defining what they’ve found:
This is a good metaphor for the exploration of God / Reality.
Different teachings and traditions illuminate different aspects of God—different ways of relating to God—different sides or angles or emanations of the one self-luminous polyhedron of Reality.
When I was speaking with Tanja about my “wrestling with Christianity” process, she brought up this parable of the elephant, and she simply asked…
“What are the chances that Christianity is the only one that ever found the actual elephant, and everyone else has been talking about a giraffe—about something else entirely?”
When she put it that way, it was helpful for me.
Many Christians assert that they have found the One True (Biblical) God, and that all other religions are worshipping false (satanic) gods.
This seems extremely unlikely to me. I feel in my heart that it is not true.
If you look at the lives of people like Thich Nhat Hanh or Sri Anandamayi Ma, you witness a level of saintliness that most Christians can only aspire toward.
Christ himself wisely said, “You will know them by their fruits.” If the trees of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism are able to produce fruit of the quality of a Thich Nhat Hanh or Sri Anandamayi Ma, this alone strongly suggests that they are connected to a pure stream that is of the One Divine (Elephant) Nature.
Contrarily, if a person holds that God’s Love can only be found through Christianity, this forces that person to hold that there have never been any truly God-connected sages or saints in other traditions, or in pre-Christian times. This seems self-evidently absurd.
The Universal Light of Christ
Having illuminated the dangers of my universalizing tendency…
I will now ironically share that…
My current strong feeling is that ultimately…
(Take this with a pinch of salt…)
The Light of Christ is actually universal.
Though that doesn’t mean that Christianity is the ‘one true religion.’
How so?
Well, I feel the Light of Christ is one way of referring to the Absolute Light of the Forever Beyond.
The White Light of Pure Supreme Love at the Heart of Reality.
I believe all the greatest sages, saints, gurus, holy men, yogis, and mystics found this Light.
Naturally, they didn’t all refer to it as the Light of Christ, as they spoke many different languages and came from different cultures, religions, and pre-Christian epochs.
Yet I do strongly sense that, in a profound sense, they were all tapping into the One Wellspring of Light.
“Same water, different wells.”
That’s not to say that all ‘gods’ or deities or words like ‘universe’ or ‘Source’ are always referring to the Absolute Loving Essence of God.
I do believe many people are worshipping false lights, less-true luminosities, and (veiled) energies ‘downstream’ of the Pure Essential Light while believing they are worshipping the Pure Essential Light itself.
“Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
— 2 Corinthians 11:14
In my experience, Jesus Christ and God the Father are Direct Transparent Emanations of Essence. For me, Christ feels more like the Light of Pure Love, while the Father feels closer to the Ultimately Mysterious Loving Essence From Which The Light Flows.
Likely there are other Direct Transparent Personal Emanations of Essence.
I personally intuit that Sri Anandamayi Ma may be another such Emanation—a Direct Transparent Emanation of the Divine Mother. I don’t personally experience her as being on the same ‘level’ as Christ but I have experienced her as a profoundly pure Emanation of Love.
For mysterious (karmic) reasons, I have been strongly guided to a deep personal connection to Jesus Christ—more so than any other Direct Transparent Personal Emanation of Essence.
Others will be guided to other Emanations, and that’s wonderful. Some will connect deeply with other Personal Emanations, while others will naturally commune with Impersonal or Formless Emanations.
Personally I now strongly believe that anyone who is contacting the Absolute Light—in whatever (formless) form—is contacting the Light of Christ, regardless of what they may call it.
Through this lens, we can better understand Christ’s words, “No one comes to the Father except through me”—which can be taken to mean, “You will not find the Absolute Essence without first finding Me, for I am That Universal Light which flows generously forth from the Essence. Light and Essence are One.”
At the end of the day, all religions contain distortions and delusions—including Christianity.
In devout earnestness I seek the Golden Thread that weaves through all the great teachings and traditions. I believe the Luminous Christ Essence—whatever you choose to call it—is that Golden Thread.
Apokatastasis: The Little-Known Christian Idea That Redeems All
I may write a standalone article on this topic at some point but wanted to mention it here.
Many Christians don’t realize that there is an ancient Christian idea—one that was taught by early church fathers and is arguably supported by the Bible—known as “apokatastasis.”
This idea refers to universal salvation—the redemption of all things. It is a belief that there is no permanent hell and that eventually all beings—even satan and the most fallen demons—will return Home to God and be redeemed.
This commenter on an obscure online post provides some fascinating context here:
Apokatastasis resonates deeply with me.
The God I know is One of Pure Love.
(That is not to say that God is not also Just. Creation is structured such that we do “reap what we sew.” Yet permanent hellish torture is simply not a just punishment for any finite mistake. Eternity is a long, long time.)
I would not want to celebrate in Heaven for eternity knowing that millions of my brothers and sisters are burning in an everlasting pit of hellfire. I’d want to go down there and try to help them—including the demons and devils. It is fascinating that I—a puny, sinful mortal—am capable of feeling such compassion. In my experience and as testified by many saints, God’s Love is infinitely greater than our own. As far as I know, certain strains of the Judeo-Christian religions are the only religions that assert that it is possible to be eternally separated from God. I do not buy this; it’s not true in my experience; and it’s not logically consistent with the notion of an omnipotent, omnipresent God of Infinite Love. Not even satan can resist God’s Love forever.
Re-Integrating Christianity
It’s now been a ~week or so since I wrote much of this post.
(The sections on ‘The Universal Light of Christ’ and ‘Apokatastasis’ were also written today.)
I’m feeling a lot better now.
Feel more integrated.
Feeling like the creeping sense of (egregore-induced) dogmatism is gone now.
I feel like “wrestling with Christianity” is inevitable as I seek to deeply re-engage and re-integrate the Catholic tradition into which I was born.
There’s a lot of deep wounding, baggage, and imprints from my childhood that are being dredged up in the process.
Ultimately this process feels vitally important though. I am excited to be voyaging upon these mysteriously alluring waters of ‘wild integral Catholic mysticism’…
I recommend for Westerners to consider reconnecting to their ancestral lineage of Christianity—and healing their relationship to it—whether they choose to re-identify as Christian or not.
~Most/many Westerners have Christian ancestry going back hundreds of years. For those of us raised Christian, it is our ‘native language’ spiritually. And there’s a great deal of humbling wisdom, beauty, healing music, and maps of elder-hood to be found there.
Re-Wilding Christianity & Allowing Various Spiritual Philosophies to Balance One Another
Perhaps Christianity is due for a renaissance, a re-integration, and a re-wilding as we look toward an integral Christianity that is able to embrace and incorporate wisdom from many (indigenous) traditions, (ancestral) wisdom teachings, and direct revelation / mystical experience.
Perhaps Christianity is due for a fresh infusion of embodied ALIVENESS.
Christ is almost never depicted joyfully in Christian art, and this is a fascinating clue.
I’m sure Christ felt much sorrow on Earth as he witnessed the corrupted condition of many souls here. Yet I am sure he also felt much joy and connection to “God’s Green Earth”—the Father’s Gaian Creation. This is one area where (neopagan) New-Age-ism can potentially help balance and revivify Christianity, as New-Age-ism tends to be quite Earth-connected. There are probably (many) other areas where New-Age-ism and Christianity can help to balance one another:
New-Age-ism and Neo-Advaita would also greatly benefit from the humbling medicine that Christianity provides. Many people within these neo-spiritual spheres set the bar of ‘enlightenment’ far too low:
In Sum: Reaching Toward the Highest Divine Love
All right, well, it’s been a journey to write this thing!
Hopefully it’s been an interesting journey to read it.
I hope you have found something of value here.
I believe in open-sourcing my process and intend to continue doing so.
I don’t really know if there’s a way to tie a neat-and-tidy bow on this one.
The inquiry is alive.
The wrestling continues.
It rumbles along in my heart, my loins, my intestines.
I am in the middle of a big (identity-shifting) process.
After 14 years as a ‘spiritual free agent,’ I am now finding out what it is like to have a religion again.
And to plunge into the tradition of my ancestors—the tradition I was raised in—and to navigate everything that comes with that.
To me, the Light of Christ is the Light of God.
The Light of the Father.
The Light of the Forever Beyond.
I recommend to settle for nothing less than the Highest Divine Love.
Do not pray to or work with any energies or entities that are not aligned with the Highest Divine Love.
In my experience, any non-physical entities or energies who do not like the words “Jesus Christ” are not your friends.
I personally believe Christ’s Love and the Highest Divine Love are one and the same.
Ultimately, I guess if I were to boil all this down to some simple recommendations, I’d say:
Open your heart to Love.
And have Faith.
Faith is the simplest path. Though that doesn’t mean it’s the easiest.
If you have full faith in God’s Plan, no other answers are needed.
You simply trust the flow of life, take things one day at a time, and do the best you can.
I believe we are here to love each other and walk each other Home.
And I do believe that all beings will be redeemed and will return Home to God.
In the meantime, we’re off on the wildest adventure imaginable.
Let’s not forget to have fun with it.
Love,
J
P.S. Man, it’s been a couple more days now, and the inquiry and the wrestling are really still alive within me. I keep oscillating back and forth through various angles on this whole thing. Interestingly, I’m feeling pretty good overall—grounded, in my heart, connected to family and friends. This process is not really bogging me down lately, but it is pretty intense. I thank God for my deep faith that is allowing me to hold space for all this. All love to everybody. It’s not so easy to share all this. I’m scared that I’m going to alienate some people. Just trying to be honest about what’s real for me, as I believe in the medicine of realness. Take good care. God bless.
Epilogue: 5 Ways to Apply All This to Your Life
I sometimes write epilogues for paying subscribers, as I wanna give extra value to paying subscribers as a way of saying thanks (it truly means a lot that you support my writing!), and as a way of inviting others to hop aboard and become paying subscribers.
So, paying subscribers, here are 5 ways to apply all this to your life:
1. Open your heart.
Pray. Ask God and Christ to open your heart and clean your heart. Drink cacao. Listen to heart-opening music and do heart-opening meditations. This playlist, this playlist, and this playlist can help—I’ve been curating them for ~years.
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