Two Ways to Lose Your Faith

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© Copyright 2013 Rev. Dr. Richard E. Kuykendall.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-1907-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-1909-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-1908-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013920223

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This book is dedicated to

Professors Richard Rice and Fritz Guy

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword Rev. Dr. Mark Schindler, J.D.

Introduction

PART I

What I Don’t Believe And Why

Preface

Revelation

God

Christ

Man… And Woman

Salvation

The Church

Last Things

Postscript

PART II

As It Is: A Philosophy Of Life For The 21St Century

Introduction

What Is Truth?

Just As It Is

What Are Miracles?

The Problem Of Suffering

Guilt And Atonement

The Hope In Life After Death

A Postscript On Disappointment

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Part I and II of this book were developed over the course of nearly twenty years. They are the results of my pondering traditional Christian theology and Philosophy of Religion. In the beginning I was a traditionalist but as the years went by I studied my way out of the church. During my seminary years my area of concentration was philosophy and world religions. After diving into the depths of those two disciplines I could no longer say that Christianity was the true religion. For years however I continued to fake it as a minister—it was my livelihood—but finally at the last church I served I came out of the closet in a midweek service I held called Spiritwind. Spiritwind was what I called a study group for spiritual adventurers—here we could explore virtually anything in the realms of spirituality and philosophy.

While I was at that church I shared Part I of this book with my Youth Director, Diane Gilbert. She was so impressed that she had some of her youth group type the manuscript of Part I onto a computer disc to bring me up to date. And I ended up doing a series on both parts at Spiritwind which was my safe haven.

Those who I would like to acknowledge besides Diane Gilbert are my theology professor, Richard Rice, Professor Fritz Guy who nurtured me in the study of philosophy, Matthew Fox who taught me true spirituality and deep ecumenism and my friend Aage Rendalen who I attended seminary with and who has served as my most attuned sounding board. Beyond this I must thank my partner in life and love, Ava who is always there to support me.

FOREWORD

There are two ways to look at Two Ways To Lose Your Faith. The first and most obvious is as a record of a personal journey. What happens when an ordained minister in a Christian denomination starts to suspect that orthodox explanations of core beliefs are no longer compatible with modern discoveries and cannot be supported by the evidence? One possibility, as the title suggests, is to lose one’s faith. Take everything in your Christian heritage, Jesus, the Bible, all of it and toss it in the trash without looking back.

Another possibility is to allow the experience to deepen your understanding and appreciation of our evolutionary journey which allows you to move beyond that which you have outgrown and yet still include that which remains wise, true, good and beautiful. You’ll have to read the book in order to find out which path the author took.

The second way this book can be used is as a personal guide in formulating your own credo which is a Latin word meaning I believe. In my own seminary experience, a major part of the work we did was to write our own credo after engaging in an informed reflection on the same ideas and concepts that are addressed here. This is not a onetime exercise. The true value of a credo is in revisiting it over time to see what is still solid and what needs to be revised as we learn and grow.

Although credo means I believe, the best credo statement is not just a collection of belief statements based on personal opinions, preferences or wishful thinking. Kuykendall shows us how to examine a belief in order to determine if it is consistent with reality by evidence that is available to all.

Kuykendall does an excellent job of presenting the competing ideas and opinions on each topic leaving sufficient room for the reader to make an informed decision as to where they stand while also owning his own position on the issue. He also convincingly demonstrates that this is much more than a mere academic exercise.

Our unconscious and uncritical adherence to a moral code and mythical cosmology from a Bronze Age culture that created a warlord god in their own image has resulted in incessant war, competition and destructive exploitation of the very planet which sustains us. Even if we have moved beyond this level of consciousness, the issues still confront us. We need to be aware of this and be prepared to peacefully and constructively engage those who persist in such beliefs.

You don’t need a degree in theology like the author has in order to become conversant with the theological concepts he presents. They are accessible and easy to understand without being simplistic. It is worth the effort to do so. There is peace of mind and a sense of calm confidence to be gained from being able to clearly articulate our position on the topics we will inevitably run into whether we are spiritual, religious, or none of the above.

Rev. Dr. Mark Schindler, J.D.

INTRODUCTION

I was a Christian minister for nearly thirty years, and besides having a Bachelor’s degree in Religion, and a Master of Divinity degree, I also have a Doctor of Ministry degree. I’m not saying this to brag but rather to say that I have put in my time studying the things that we will be discussing in this book. The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant in the year 1793 wrote a book titled, Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone. And that is what I am trying to do here. I am trying to look at religion within the bounds of reason. I am asking here the question, What can we say with certainty is truth?

In this book I will provide you with two ways to lose your faith. In Part I we will reconsider Christian theology, and in Part II we will look at the Big Questions as they are considered in Philosophy of Religion. Though losing one’s faith sounds like a negative thing, in this book losing one’s faith is a good thing—not in the sense of being faithless, but in the sense of realizing the difference between faith and truth. Both are very different, and how one holds them is critical in the way we relate to each other and to the world in general. In these pages I am not trying to be iconoclastic in a sensational way, but rather I am trying to put religion within the bounds of reason. The world would be a far better place if people were reasonable. The Nazis killed the Jews and many others because of their beliefs. And 9/11 happened because of the beliefs of radical Muslim extremists. Its time that we realize that beliefs are not truths, and that beliefs are not worth killing others for. So I hope that this book will help you to reconsider your beliefs, and will help you to accept the world As It Is.

PART I

What I Don’t Believe and Why

PREFACE

It was just a couple of nights ago (circa 2002), as I was lying in bed that I finally decided to do something that I had wanted to do for quite some time. What it was that I had decided to do was write a systematic theology. But this would not be your typical, run-of-the-mill systematic theology. No, this would be something quite different. But before I tell you how this will be different, let me first ask the question, What is a ‘systematic theology’ anyway?

From a Christian perspective, a systematic theology is a work which attempts to deal with the broad and most basic themes of the Bible. It attempts to summarize for instance, everything that the Bible has to say about God. And it is from this kind of work that doctrines evolve.

Traditionally, systematic theology deals with about seven broad subjects, under which headings almost everything in the Bible can be dealt with. They are as follows:

Revelation

God or Theology

Christ or Christology

Man or Anthropology

Salvation or Soteriology

The Church or Ecclesiology

Last Things or Eschatology

Supposedly, after one has systematically dealt with all of these subjects, one is supposed to know what the Bible teaches on the most basic questions of religious inquiry. The finished products of these ventures become the doctrines of the church. In many denominations these doctrines are held as infallibly true—and thus they serve as the guidelines for determining what is the truth and what is heresy.

For a long time now I have been fascinated with the idea of summarizing the whole of Christian thought under seven broad headings. And that is how the idea of this book came to me the other night as I was lying in bed. You see, how this all happened was a woman in my church gave me a set of tapes to listen to titled, Why I Believe. This woman watches a lot of religious television programs, and it was here that she came upon these tapes which were made by a fundamentalist minister by the name of Dr. D. James Kennedy.

So there I was, listening to the Reverend Dr. Kennedy talking with deep conviction about why he believes in hell. And it was then, as I lay amazed at the absurdity of it all that I decided to break my silence and have my say as to why I do not believe many of the things that he does. But have no fear, in showing you what I don’t believe, does not mean that I am showing you Why I Am Not a Christian as Bertrand Russell once did, because, after all I am a Christian minister.

And here is where the difference that I mentioned earlier comes in. Whereas he and virtually all systematic theologians supposedly prove that what they believe is the truth simply because the Bible says so, or because a hundred other theologians have said so, I will simply and unashamedly show you why I do not believe in many of the things that they claim to