Hi Jim,

I just finished reading Divinity and… admittedly I’m a little confused. In your disclaimer, you make it very clear that you’re a catholic, though you acknowledge the misdeeds of your own church. Then you go onto make the Pope a villain and most angels in the story mistrusting, corrupt, or extremely arrogant. Reading your story… one might think you were agnostic. I was wondering how you reconcile your beliefs with what you wrote.

Thanks,
Wendy

Hi Wendy,

I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long for that question to come up. Well for the record, I’ve always believed that blind faith and a moral authority viewed as beyond questioning, are extremely dangerous notions. When it comes to ideology, philosophy, and religion, everything should be questioned.

Consider for a second, the books that have caused the most pain and death in the world are the Bible, Mein Kampf, the Quran, the Communist Manifesto, and so on. All religious and/or philosophical texts, dealing with how people should live and what rules they should live by.

People who practice religion need to question the why’s. Keep in mind, the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, etc. are all written by man, not God. Most people would argue that these books were inspired by God, but in some cases, I’m hard-pressed to believe that. The new testament by itself is evidence of this, as the accounts of Jesus’s life were all written by people who were not witness to it, and were written for political reasons. Either they were written to convert Jews, written as a reference to the Romans, or written as encouragement for Christians that were being persecuted at the time.

On the flip-side, agnostics and atheists should question the why as well. In too many cases, anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen too many atheists who have a rather arrogant or demeaning view of people who believe in God. Again, this is anecdotal, but throughout my life, I’ve seen religious people preach and post messages of hope and love, while on the other side, the atheists who claim to be the more enlightened people are preaching some horribly derogatory things about religious people. I’ve also noted that many of them have specific problems with the denominations that they grew up and place all believers into the same bucket.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge anyone their beliefs. However, you can’t claim the moral or intellectual high ground as an atheist, agnostic, or a believer, when you’ve blindly adopted a philosophy that has been fed to you by someone else without question. It simply doesn’t work that way.

I remember back in college, I suffered a crisis of faith and… well pretty much turned my back on my religion for a few years. I found myself attending services at a Buddhist center near where I was going to college. It’s something I recommend everyone experience at least once in their lives. I don’t really consider it a religion as much as a way of life. I spent a great many hours… I’m ashamed to admit, interrogating the local Bhikkhu. I have to say, that man had a level of tolerance I’ve never seen before. He welcomed the questions and actually spent a lot of time helping me find my way.

Once I felt confident enough, I went back to my church and basically did the same thing with the priest… and to my surprise, he also welcomed the questions.

I know that there are many spiritual leaders out there that do not want to be questioned and won’t react well if you try, they should really be avoided. So to answer your question as effectively as I can… I am somewhere between a deist and a theist who practices Catholic tradition.

I believe in God, but I do not believe that any organization or group that lives in some ivory tower somewhere, can dictate who/what God is or what he wants. Why? Because there is literally no way you can know, especially not if you want to apply ancient logic to modern situations.

Anyway, I hope that answers your question!

Readers,

Do you have a question about writing, publishing, my stories, etc? Please feel free to post a comment or email me.

jimthewritingwizard@gmail.com

I’ll use those comments to select my next blog post.

I have been writing for several years, have 4 published works, experience with publishing and independent work, so I can hopefully be of assistance.

Please note, I only do one of these a day and will do my best to respond to everyone, but it may take some time.

Also, feel free to check out my works of Fantasy and Historical Fiction, Available on Amazon and where ever books are sold. See the link below:

http://www.amazon.com/James-Harrington/e/B00P7FBXTU

Note:
If you have read my books, PLEASE log into Amazon and post a review. I really love to hear everyone’s thoughts and constructive criticisms. Reviews help get my book attention and word of mouth is everything in this business!

Thanks friends!

Catch you on the flip side!

-Jim