Religion: Discovery or Invention?

"I grew up believing what my parents and what the church taught me, and that is that God created human beings. But now that I've been exposed to lots of other data, I've concluded that it's the other way around. It's human beings who have created God....I think people dig down into their own needs and into their desires, and they make up their wishes, and they project that onto the screen of religious belief. I don't think there's anything objectively real when a person says, 'I believe'."

With this, the young college student requests that her name be removed from membership in the church, saying that she can no longer consider herself a Christian. The minister, John Claypool, asks, "Where did you encounter this charge against the validity of religious experience?"

Her answer? "It's everywhere in the academic community where I'm living." Among several examples, she quotes the playwright Eugene O'Neill she's studied in a drama course: "Religion is the chloroform mask into which the weak and the fearful stick their faces."

Reverend Claypool responds: "Because I believe you're honest and you're seeking, I invite you to do three things before coming to a final judgement about this very, very momentous question."

He offers three tasks to the young thinker. He asks her to

• Read the Gospel of Mark at one sitting. "I want you to ask one question as you read the Book of Mark: Is this Jesus a weak coward making up something, or is He in touch with something that made extraordinary demands of Him?"

• Look at the story of Saul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus in the Book of Acts. Does Saul's discovery on that road represent wishful thinking? "Was it what he most wanted to be true...was he making it up out of his needfulness?...The truth revealed to him that day was the very opposite of what he had built toward his whole life."

• Write out in your own words the the kind of religious vision that you would most like to be true. "Make up a religion that suits you exactly and precisely." Isn't it true that there is much in Christianity that is not what is easiest for selfish people to embrace: loving your enemies, taking up a cross and denying myself, judgement, forgiving 70 times seven?

John Claypool says, "Before you come to a final conclusion that there is nothing to the religious enterprise except selfishness and needfulness projected on a screen outside ourselves, I'd like you to look at the life of Jesus, the experience of Saul of Tarsus and then examine your own needs, your own wants, and compare this to the canon" of Christianity.

In his sermon, Claypool goes on to discuss faith as an avenue of knowing, an authentic way of discovering genuine truth. His insights are an encouragement to those of us who are open, who are seeking, and who are willing to say, "I want to know the truth and I want to know it whatever shape it takes."

Read on by clicking this link:
Word ClaypoolWord.doc or pdf Claypoolpdf.pdf
or Listen to the audio Claypoolaudio.ram

Join the conversation by posting your comments below.

• What has been your own experience of religion in the intellectual world?
• Would Claypool's "three things" engage you-- or a skeptical friend?
• What do you think of the ideas in Claypool's sermon?
  

A PRAYER FOR SEEKERS

"Father in heaven! We know indeed that seeking is never without its promise, how then could we fail to seek You, the author of all promises and the giver of all good gifts! We know well that the seeker does not always have to wander far afield since the more sacred the object of his search, the nearer it is to him; and if he seeks You, O God, You are all of things most near!"
--Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (1813-1855)