- I think that we're colliding on the "doctrine" side, which is fair. Doctrine's a wide chasm.
That being said, I'm not sure that anyone says "I became a Christian because I like to tithe," and I don't recall the New Testament saying anything explicitly about going to church, who sits in what chair and who talks first. Yes, there's "keep the sabbath holy," but that's vague at best. The other books don't go into that ephemera either, that I recall. I'd point to the more specific "This stuff is good, that stuff is bad" side of things as the fundamental doctrine. The rest is just organizational bylaws.
(I've done my reading, incidentally. Because I got tired of staring blankly at people, I jumped into as many of the books as I could so I could get a cultural grounding.)
- To me, you've got as much religion as the Pope. You both have belief systems that (I assume) involve the numinous interacting with the material world in a substantive way. After all, lots of belief systems are oral traditions, many deal with various deities or forces rather than a single Sky-Daddy (Hinduism), lack a central overarching control structure (Judaism) or heavy moral dogma (Buddhism) and are performed in public rather than in a proscribed location (many sects of Islam.)
It seems that you're abandoning some degree of legitimacy by saying "It's not religion because it doesn't have Christian stuff." Your faith speaks to the part of your soul that cries out for connection with the numinous. The fact that you're not a dues-paying member of a club doesn't make it less real, and doesn't turn them into something that's less real for their believers because they do pay dues.
This is why, in my heart of hearts, I refer to it all as "the supernatural." Catholic Mass, snake handling, cartomancy or Goetic meditation, it's all an effort to touch the hem of the numinous and bring it down to the material world. Makes more sense to me, and results in less hair-splitting.
Re: Hmmm
- I think that we're colliding on the "doctrine" side, which is fair. Doctrine's a wide chasm.
That being said, I'm not sure that anyone says "I became a Christian because I like to tithe," and I don't recall the New Testament saying anything explicitly about going to church, who sits in what chair and who talks first. Yes, there's "keep the sabbath holy," but that's vague at best. The other books don't go into that ephemera either, that I recall. I'd point to the more specific "This stuff is good, that stuff is bad" side of things as the fundamental doctrine. The rest is just organizational bylaws.
(I've done my reading, incidentally. Because I got tired of staring blankly at people, I jumped into as many of the books as I could so I could get a cultural grounding.)
- To me, you've got as much religion as the Pope. You both have belief systems that (I assume) involve the numinous interacting with the material world in a substantive way. After all, lots of belief systems are oral traditions, many deal with various deities or forces rather than a single Sky-Daddy (Hinduism), lack a central overarching control structure (Judaism) or heavy moral dogma (Buddhism) and are performed in public rather than in a proscribed location (many sects of Islam.)
It seems that you're abandoning some degree of legitimacy by saying "It's not religion because it doesn't have Christian stuff." Your faith speaks to the part of your soul that cries out for connection with the numinous. The fact that you're not a dues-paying member of a club doesn't make it less real, and doesn't turn them into something that's less real for their believers because they do pay dues.
This is why, in my heart of hearts, I refer to it all as "the supernatural." Catholic Mass, snake handling, cartomancy or Goetic meditation, it's all an effort to touch the hem of the numinous and bring it down to the material world. Makes more sense to me, and results in less hair-splitting.