Personalized Faith

Here's a question: If I strip down my religion into a customiz-built personalized belief system, does that make me less faithful?

The National Geographic documentary "THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS" has stirred quite a controversy, especially with the recent observance of the Christian Holy Week. It detailed the discovery, verification and interpretation of ancient papyrus texts that allegedly contain a gospel according to the infamous disciple.

Although the documentary left me with more questions than answers, it did impress upon me a lot of learnings on the development of the religion I claim to practice. Like a lot of persons and things in my life, Christianity, or more specifically, Catholicism, and I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love the part of it which makes me a better person, and I hate the part of it that is tainted with human fallibility, weakness and corruption. This part of the development of Christianity is what brings about the controversy on the Gospels in the first place. The documentary tells of the need to edit out a huge number of "gospels" available to early Christians in order to preserve the religion by selecting the more popular gospels with a coherent message. One of these is the Gospel of Judas.

It has to be understood that around and after Christ's death, the communication of his message was done through word of mouth, and in secret, due to Roman persecution. In the transfer of the stories, parables, messages, it is inevitable that details will be added, deleted, embellished and downplayed. Even after the documentation of Jesus' life on paper, reproductions were made by hand, which left a large room for error and editing.

The transference of Jesus's life, works and message through unreliable and unverifiable means would necessarily result into different interpretations of different peoples with different agendas. As are the dangers of interpreting any literary work or the life of one person, there is the danger of fundamentalism on one hand and recklessly individualistic interpretation on the other when it comes to reading the Bible or the Gospels. When you factor in the realization that there is no one true account, that there is no one reliable author, it may diminish your reliance, or at most your faith, in the Scriptures.

This is one reason why many people, especially of my age, may view the Bible as little more than an awesome piece of literature. I admit I subscribe to this view, in an attempt to strip down my faith to the bare bones. I just pick out the stories that I like, the concepts that I agree with, the tenets I believe in. We have been told it's not the way to take the Bible or religion, but that's what we've been reduced to.

Just as how the Bible is a living document weaved by countless faces, Christianity and Catholicism has been built and is built on the acts and decisions of a lot of men, not all of whom are beyond reproach and had the interests of the faithful in mind. Thus we have outdated traditions and world views that are not responsive to the spiritual needs of the people (like birth control!). It does not surprise me that the percentage of Catholics in the world had declined considerably in the last decade. The percentage that do claim to be Catholic do what I do, and follow what they think is right, while ignoring what is inconvenient, irrational, or otherwise what just doesn't feel right. Like the final message of the documentary, one can always choose what he wants to believe.

However, as with the Bible, one cannot just pick out the good parts and the bad parts of one's religion, and choose to follow what he wishes. The first stumbling block would be determining standards by which parts are adjudged as "good" or "bad". But more importantly, religion isn't that way. One can't be part Catholic, or one can't say I just like the Bible's ending. It has to be taken as a whole, interpreted as a whole, contextualized as a whole. This describes an almost academic approach, but that's the only way of understanding and appreciating it.

This is where faith comes in. The Bible will tell you things you don't accept; the Church will dictate things you don't agree with. They always have and always will. You just have to have faith that it's right. Does stripping down my religion into a custom-built personalized belief system make me any less faithful? Yes and no.

If the question is whether I am faithful to the Catholic Church and its leaders and what they teach, then it's a no on a technicality. Some leaders and teachings I like, some I don't, like the whole birth control thing, or the whole divorce thing, or the stem-cell research / cloning thing. That's not full-on faith, so maybe I don't have faith in the Church. If the question is whether I have faith in Christ as I have come to know Him, and experience Him and understand Him, then the answer is yes.

This piece may mark me as not religious, but hey I believe I'm at least spiritual.

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I wonder what grade will I get in my RELIGIO course for this post if I submitted it as a reaction paper 10 years ago? :D

To my readers, bear with my serious side. That's only occasional for me. :D