When I was seven, the things I understood were very limited. I knew how to read, I knew a few songs from kindergarten and my school was integrating, so I was learning that there were different people in the world. This was about the same time a preacher told me I was a sinner and so I got “saved.”
Over the years, I learned about all kinds of things. When we lived in a different neighborhood, I learned that the world was not always safe. In private school. school, I learned more about the Bible, religion, and how to steal candy. I also learned how to be a fundamentalist and to bypass the things that were difficult.
In school I learned about reading, writing, and arithmetic and many other things like literature and scientific thought. In college I deepened my understanding of many things, some of which I don’t even want to tell you about.
I learned about parenting mostly by doing it and failing and trying again. And I went back to school to learn more about theology and how to defend what I already believed in. I learned how to use the organized part of religion to my advantage.
As the world changed around me, I became aware of the greater injustices of the world like racism, bigotry, and abuse of power. I grew to have more compassion for people that were different from me and those that have been marginalized.
Eventually I found enough courage to question my beliefs and began to unravel my faith, and what some call deconstruction. During the process, I faced my trauma and worked hard to heal past hurt, while I was discovering new truth and clarifying old beliefs.
This evolution is a natural part of human life, but also a natural progression of societies and cultures. Just like I can’t live in my 7-year-old understanding of everything, society and the world cannot rely on the understanding that we had 5,000 years ago or 2000 years ago or even 250 years ago. We have to progress, evolve and accept new aspects of truth that we are discovering.
Some want to see things like the Bible or other holy books as the ultimate truth for all time, even though they’re written from a certain time period and past perspective. It is literally like if I discovered my notebook from second grade and determined that that was my understanding for the rest of my life.
There is value to past understanding, but it has to evolve or it can become irrelevant. Here are a few of the things that I think are extremely relevant that we will miss if things like the Bible become idols to us. Just a few examples.
1. Quantum Physics
This new understanding is shedding so much light on how the universe actually works. It raises so many new things to consider like how things communicate and survive and evolve. It even proposes a “god gene” and other things that are so exciting and provocative to consider.
2. The discoveries of Carl Jung
100 years ago we didn’t understand shadow and collective unconscious and other things that Jung proposed. This creates suspicion about ideas like hell and Satan and evil. Could it be that some of those things that were so hard to understand in biblical times, can easily be explained now by our understanding of unprocessed trauma.
3. The rest of the world / Internet
A few decades ago, I went to seminary. I had to check out six or seven books from the library to do a Greek word study of a word in the Bible. About that time, someone developed a book that combined all the other books and made it much easier. A few years later, when the internet started working well, I could do a word study in less than a minute online.
My concordance now props up my laptop in the office. It is totally useless unless I just want to waste time using it. The other thing that happened with the internet is it opened up the world to us. We have access to all the information that gatekeepers of the past kept from us. When we focused on what they wanted us to, we missed many other useful discoveries.
But now, we can study all religions, and we can access any topic at any time no matter where we are. It is one reason that high school students can disprove the inerrancy of the Bible quite easily, and it’s also why religious gatekeepers try to keep us coming to a building, so they can streamline the information that we receive and control our understanding.
Just like I’m glad I don’t only have the understanding I had when I was 7 years old, I also am glad that I grew beyond the understanding I received at seminary. I didn’t just deconstruct–I am evolving. Religion and the world around me is also evolving. At this very moment, women in Iran are revolting against tyrannical male leadership that wants to control even the clothes they wear.
I am glad that organized religion is failing, because it was too long dedicated to its own 7-year-old understanding of things. It needs to evolve as well. That is why we wrote our book, Out into the Desert
I hope you’ll join the conversation. We can’t afford to go backwards or stay where we are, we need to evolve.
Be where you are
Be who you are
Karl Forehand
Photo by Katerina Holmes https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-boy-watching-video-on-laptop-5905700/
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