Inner Dialogue

A student of mine has been posting very interesting discussions about her Catholic faith on MySpace lately. Yesterday she sent out a message that I decided to respond to.

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Ok, so I've had your message opened and highlighted since yesterday morning, just waiting until I had a spare minute to respond :) I appreciate your well thought out arguments and applaud you for taking on such a deeply personal subject in such a public forum. That takes a lot of courage and I think it is awesome. I am always interested in intelligent discussion about religion so I find your posts very interesting :)

So, you wrote:

"but whether we are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, etc, we always rely on some authority to determine what we believe the truth to be, and we follow the thinking of that authority."

I respectfully disagree. I believe that a relationship with God should be a deeply intimate and personal one. I believe that while it is important to learn from those in authority, what is more important is the concept of "intelligent obedience". God designed us to be thinking, reflective creatures. He doesn't want us to just blindly obey, hence the doctrine of free agency. He could MAKE us do what He wants... but he prefers that we come to Him of our own volition.

I believe that "truth" can be a very subjective thing and that it is often used to advance personal and political agendas in the name of righteousness. God isn't interested in either of those. He is interested that we know him personally, for ourselves. We can know what is truth by asking God directly. While we can respect what those in authority say, we don't have to accept it without a critical analysis of our own. "Following the thinking" of someone in a position of power (or of anyone really) abdicates the responsibility to think for yourself to other people. In the end, your beliefs then belong to someone else. It is a much more powerful testimony of beliefs to have come to your own conclusions about what you think is important. That may confirm or conflict with what you thought you knew, and that is ok. In the end, the relationship is between you and God and there really aren't any intermediaries needed.

Religion is merely a set of rituals designed by men to help them feel closer to God. Never confuse that with spirituality, which is a direct relationship with God Himself :)

{{hugs}}

Debby