I have five core commitments that inform all of my other beliefs and the way I aspire to live. I see these beliefs as interconnected and mutually reinforcing. But they are also separable and I hold inner commitments more firmly than outer ones. In that sense, they are like castle walls within castle walls that ripple out from a sacred center.
These commitments are as follows:
1) First, I am committed to truth, and to following evidence and experience as the best way to get at truth.
2) Secondly, I’m committed to this world and embodied well-being.
3) Third, I’m committed to an ethic centered on love and justice.
4) Fourth, I’m committed to a God who is primarily loving, gracious, and inclusive and only secondarily wrathful.
5) Fifth, I’m committed to a form of Christianity that is informed by these four prior commitments and, in that context, centered on Jesus.
Now that I have briefly summarized my five core commitments, let me take a little more time to survey what I was trying to accomplish in my posts on each in this series.
1) Evidence and Experience
In this post I discuss my most central commitment: a commitment to truth, and to evidence and experience as the best way of getting at truth.
I start out by explaining why truth is so fundamental to right thinking and action. Then I outline what I mean by “evidence and experience.” As part of that process, I contrast the way of evidence and experience with what I see as its opposite: the way of rigid presumption.
To me, following evidence and experience means valuing my own personal experience (while recognizing my blind spots), listening to my neighbors with an open mind, intentionally seeking out other viewpoints, prioritizing science and expertise, attempting to evaluate all views according to their rational and evidential merits, and recognizing legitimate ambiguity and/or relativity on some matters.
I then delve into positive and negative reasons for following evidence and experience. Positively, I follow evidence and experience because I see them as fundamentally basic, relatively neutral, and reliably guides to truth.
Negatively, I follow evidence and experience because I see that the alternative way of rigid presumption regularly leads to falsehood, grossly unloving and unjust behavior, and (from a religious perspective) literal idolatry.
I reflect a bit on how evidence and experience call for a reasonable faith rather than a blind one, and how my commitment to evidence and experience is not just pragmatic, but deeply ethical and holy.
I conclude by describing how my understanding of evidence and experience relates to the other four core commitments of my worldview.
2) The World
In this post I explain why I am committed to this world and what that means to me. I believe that this world is real and valuable, that our empirical experience generally leads to truth, and that embodied well-being matters.
I give a range of reasons why I believe these things. We all experience a physical world and these experiences are vivid, continuous, and consistent with one another. Science leads to meticulously accurate explanations and predictions. When science and dogma conflict, science has been shown to be right time-and-time again.
Many of the greatest goods and evils seem to have an intractable physical component to them. Many of our mental states and cognitive capabilities tend to correlate with specific physical acts and functions of the brain.
Most worldviews believe this world is real and valuable. Christianity certainly teaches this. Many also recognize that often basic physical needs must be met before we can nurture further moral and spiritual transformation.
Starting out providing equal access to rights and the fulfillment of physical needs is also more open-ended and inclusive than denying people these things for putative moral or spiritual reasons.
Finally, I argue that the overarching Biblical narrative also sees this world and embodied well-being as real and valuable. God’s plan is for our wholistic salvation as he acts to make right all that is wrong in the world.
3) An Ethic Centered on Love and Justice
In this post I write on why I am committed to an ethic centered on love and justice. As I see it, love ascribes worth to others and acts to promote their well-being. I see justice as largely an informed, practical outworking of love on a broader societal scale.
I am committed to an ethic of love because such a norm fits with my own conscience, the ethical norms of most societies and all world religions, our socially adapted nature as humans, the kinds of societies which are most conducive to happiness and well-being, evidence from medicine and social science, and Jesus and the New Testament’s own teachings on love as the decisive standard of morality.
I then go on to define justice as I see it and describe my understanding of social justice. In my view, social justice starts out by recognizing humanity’s shared value, equality and interrelatedness. It then goes on to note our many differences and how these are often related to systems of violence and oppression.
Seeing this disconnect, social justice responds in a few ways: Negatively, it confronts systems of violence and oppression, seeking to overturn them for ones of peace and justice. Positively, it acts to promote human life, liberty, equality, community care, empowerment, and peace. I believe social justice also calls for a special focus on and solidarity with marginalized/oppressed people.
I then spend some time on each of these three major parts of my description of social justice. Stating out with human value, equality, and interrelatedness, I explain that I believe in these things because of my own personal experiences, the teachings of a variety of religions/worldviews, widely accepted norms of human rights, evidential and pragmatic arguments, and the the Bible’s own teaching.
Secondly, I recognize the harm caused by systems of violence and oppression based on the testimony of oppressed people, my study of history and social science, my own observations, the teachings of many religions/worldviews, and those of Jesus and the Bible. I also spend some time illustrating the nature of structural injustice and how the issue is not just one of individual acts or conscious intent, but also oppressive disparities and outcomes.
Third, I go on to survey a variety of actions justice-minded people can take in response to the disconnect between human value, equality, and interrelatedness and the oppressive situations in which many people find themselves. As noted, these include actions that promote human life, liberty, equality, community care, empowerment, and peace. I also explain how action for social justice should be grounded in evidence and experience, be this-worldly focused, recognize the necessity of both conflict and grace, and have a special focus on marginalized people.
Finally, I reflect on why I see an ethic of love and justice as more fundamental than beliefs about spiritual things like God or Jesus. I write about the relationship between love in my ethics and love in my theology. And I note the difference between a theology that prioritizes justice and one that aligns with Empire as a means to maintain comfort or gain power.
4) A Loving God
In this post I write about why I believe that God is primarily loving, gracious, and inclusive and only secondarily wrathful. I present a number of lines of argument that I believe support this kind of God.
I appeal to my own personal experiences. I draw from wider evidence related to religious experience, miracles, moral experience, interfaith consensus, pragmatic considerations, and evidence against many opposing ideas about God. I spend a good deal of time looking at Old and New Testament theologies of God’s love.
I then go on to admit some of the legitimate reasons we might doubt the existence of a loving God. I survey some of the reasons God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness are central to my understanding of God. And finally, I survey some reasons for thinking that God relates to humanity in a salvifically inclusive manner.
5) A Christianity Centered On Jesus
In this post I explain why I hold to a form of Christianity that is informed by my four prior commitments and, in that context, centered on Jesus.
I start out by explaining why it is informed by these four prior commitments. In my view, these commitments are better evidenced than Christianity and we have reasons to question some traditional Christian beliefs.
I then explain what I mean by saying my Christianity is “centered on Jesus.” In my view, Jesus most fully explicates the nature of God, morality, salvation, hermeneutics, and eschatology.
Then I survey a number of reasons I’ve struggled with Christianity. These include perceived problems related to God, the Bible, Jesus, Christian behavior, and personal trauma. Most of these critiques are primarily focused on traditional understandings of Christianity, but I also survey some of my hesitations about progressive forms of Christianity.
Next, I detail the reasons I chose to re-embrace Jesus. These include my own personal draw to Jesus, the convergence of many of my beliefs with his, transformative religious experiences and miracles in a Christian setting, considerations surrounding the resurrection, my perception of Christianity as (still) superior to alternative worldviews, personal/biographical reasons, helpful bounding beliefs I bring with me, and pragmatic considerations.
Finally, I revisit my problems with Christianity listed above and reflect on if and how I’ve come to resolve them.
Post-conservative Orphan of God 