Create Your Own Religion: A How-to

Hey Amanda,

The Twenty-Something Crisis of Faith should be a thing. Because at the time you are completely convinced that you are the only one going through it. You have the uneasy feeling that if a diabolical entitiy exists he is laughing at you. And in the back of your mind is the growing surety that no matter how hard you try, you can never go back to the way things were before.  And you'd be right. You can't.

You can't have the faith you had as a child again. "Jesus said love everyone" won't be enough to guide you through the morally ambiguous world you navigate. The aphorisms aren't always true.  And the elegant simplicity of your childhood religion reveals itself to be a complex balance of opposing mandates and your worried you can't trust it.  But this isn't the time panic. I know you want to. You feel guilty and scared. But don't worry.

Your religious life is about to get awesome.

Because when you were a child, you needed the hand-holding, someone to tell you what God wanted from you. You needed those aphorisms. But not anymore. It's time to draw up the blueprints for your own understanding of God.

Don't worry, I'm not encouraging moral relativity.  I am completely convinced that there are some absolute truths in this world. Nor am I suggesting that organized religion is bad. Or even that orthodoxy is unimportant.

What I'm saying is that within all religions there is a built-in seam allowance, and it can  be tailored to your soul. Because Jesus of Nazareth talked about sparrows with compassion (Matt. 10:29) and He also whipped the sacrilegious (John 2:13-17).  Tender kindness, and fierce devotion. They are both Christian ideals--which one would you emphasize? Which one do you need more of?

Jesus is complicated. WWJD?  Isn't that the question of a lifetime?
Temple Incident by Cosmas Damian Asam

So here's the how to:

1. Read for yourself everything you've been used to getting second-hand. Get your hands on a bible and read it. You don't need anyone to tell you what Jesus taught (or Buddha or Muhammad for that matter). Read it yourself or you'll never know know what it teaches you.

2. Embrace what makes you a better, happier person. And accept that that won't necessarily be the same thing that makes your mom a better, happier person.  Many different fruits have the same vitamins. Just because something inspires you, it doesn't make it inspirational to others. It doesn't make it wrong either, and the inverse is also true. You don't have to worry when something doesn't speak to your soul like it does to someone you care about, because...

3. We are Individual, with Individual Worth. God made all of us, and He made us dissimilar. The variety of godly virtues are  taught by the various passions that drive all of us. Some are more committed to Justice, Compassion, Stewardship, Obedience, or Sacrifice than others, and its the plurality of  living examples that makes us all better people. As we share what God looks like through our eyes, we gain a fuller, more beautiful rendering of who He actually is.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know [Him] even as also I am known. (1 Cor. 13:12)

And just as a reminder to those in the throes of a crisis of faith- sometimes you only have to figure out what you want to believe. Hang in there.

-Stephanie