the one true god

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**************************BIAS ALERT!*****************

Second-string religions may be noted by their implicit or explicit claims of being "the one true faith" or espousing "the one true God" or exemplifying "the only true way." Such assertions are true, of course, but they are also deeply deluded and false. This is worth noting, but it is not worth criticizing.

Generally, such religions are a mulligan stew of ethical invocation overlaid with imperial and sometimes imperious nod to an ethereal and celestial being. They rely on faith, trust, and belief -- three quite useful characteristics for beginners but hardly a satisfactory outcome for the man or woman who wishes to find a little peace. Such religions manacle their adherents to the fold with statements like, "God cannot be known directly, but He can be known in our works."

The delusional and sometimes quite harmful grounding all this provides may be gauged in the word "true." The "one true faith" relies over and over again on the ability to point out and perhaps excoriate that which is false. The dancing angels of such second-string persuasions are locked in an unending relationship with the music of the devil. Right relies on wrong. Wrong relies on right. True relies on false. False relies on true. To the (wo)man in the street, it all seems to make quite good sense, quite worthy sense, quite holy sense ... right up until the moment s/he finds this ping-pong-ing between two opposing forces can be quite painful and, more than that, quite literally bloody. To define peace as the absence of war is just another way of preparing for the next war. To define truth as the bulwark against falsehood is to build a temple that is bound to collapse ... and where is the peace in that?

Faith, trust and belief are good and perhaps inescapable tools as a starting point in spiritual life. But without empirical experience as a follow-on, they turn from trusty allies into implacable enemies. This is no philosophical nicety. It is no fucking joke. This is the foundation of the loneliness and uncertainty found in the bedroom ceiling at 3 a.m. when the "goodness" of second-string religions runs headlong into questions like, "is goodness good enough?" or "is that all there is?"

Second-string religions answer such questions with insistent and inept and sometimes preening tautologies: "Just keep doing God's work and eventually you'll get it." But the bedroom ceiling at 3 a.m. responds with frustrated and blunt words: "Sez who?!" At which point second-string religions drag their constituencies back to the texts and temples and rituals that have supported faith and trust and belief up until now: "You're going to hell if you don't hew to the one true faith."

But what the hell -- for the honest man or woman who communes with the bedroom ceiling, this already is hell. How much worse could some other hell be? And the answer is, not much. 

This is the jumping off point for second-string religions -- the point at which an adherent has to take a risk and leap a leap. Faith, trust and belief are good as far as they go -- are true as far as they go -- but they simply cannot bring peace to a yearning heart. Heartfelt holiness, perhaps, but not peace. And where the limitations of "the one true God" become apparent and insistent and nagging and painful, it is time to inject some element of experience, some practice that does not rely on war in order to achieve peace, some evil in order to know goodness. Ethics are a smart and sustaining move, but when they rely on what is unethical for their stature ... well, the bedroom ceiling intervenes.

Second-string religions as institutions can be pretty blase. They, after all, have their spires and their treasuries. They have their adherents and they are largely content with hoary tautologies. But second-string religions are not confined to institutions. The hearts and minds of individuals are much the same -- content and soaring with faith, trust and belief. It is a good place -- perhaps the only place -- to begin when seeking out a bit of peace, when searching out the one true god. OK.

But how does this individual make peace with the bedroom ceiling, the one who asks straightforward questions and is no longer deterred by faith and trust and belief? What activity will bring thought, word and deed into alignment, will outstrip the praise and blame of others, will brook no doubt, will allay uncertainty will ... well, will actually work? Altruism is a kindness that posits something else, some other being. What is it that precedes and informs all "others?" 

These are not questions for sissies. They are as daunting as they can be insistent. To leave home and walk into the desert ... whooooeeeee!

I have found that meditation -- in my case the zazen of Zen Buddhism -- is a first class purveyor of experience. I can't speak for anyone else and I certainly wouldn't want to fall into second-class status by promoting it. But I can say that it works in ways that answer the bedroom ceiling ... that provides the kind of experience where true does not rely on false, peace does not rely on war, and certainty does not rely on doubt.

No doubt there are other practices that provide the same experiential meat on the bone. I don't know. What I do know is that without some practice that provides such experience, the one true god, the one true way and the one true faith go begging like urchins in some Pakistani trash heap... and what ethically-astute spiritual adherent would wish such a sorrowful existence on anyone?

Faith, trust, belief and hope -- yes indeed, begin where you are.

But take the next step -- with courage, patience and doubt.

If you can't even answer your own bedroom ceiling, how in heaven's name can you expect to be at peace?

The one true God, the one true faith, the one true way ... get serious!