Episode 2: Forgiving Your Religious Upbringing
In this episode, I peel off the bandage so we can look at the ways religion has hurt us and how we can truly begin to heal. The moment we make the decision to forgive our religious upbringing is the moment we begin to see its gifts. Only then can we work creatively to heal the religions of the world and ourselves in the process.
Duration: 32 min 21 sec
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Excerpt
“Many of us remember quite well how our religious upbringing failed us. The memory of those failures is vivid. If words like God, scripture, heaven, faith, church, prayer leave a bad taste in your mouth or just make you want to tune out—that’s a strong sign that your relationship to religion carries unhappy memories.
And the effects of those memories not only burden us throughout our lives but also block our ability to talk about religion gracefully, to see any meaning or value in it, and especially to work creatively with it.
So when I talk about religion in a positive light or try to share some ideas on how religion can be upgraded with some new words and new ideas and new perspectives, since your teacup is already full of those painful unhappy memories, some of the ideas I’ll be sharing won’t have a chance of getting into your teacup. You’ll block those new ideas or you’ll tune out because on some level you have a deep belief that religion is just out to hurt you and nothing good can come of it.
From my perspective, that I shared with you in the first episode, it doesn’t have to be that way. Religion can become a force for good, but it needs our help. When we remain unforgiving, religion remains unforgiving. When we become forgiving, religion becomes forgiving. We’re linked, you see. So that’s why we want to look at our religious upbringing and start to identify those things that disappointed us or hurt us and we want to start to forgive them. And one way to start the process of forgiving is with an apology.”
This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 1:26 am and is filed under Podcast. Find similar posts by selecting any of the following tags: apology, forgiveness, healing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Mark wrote on March 2, 2008 at 5:28 pm:
Another thing I wanted to share with the thoughtful folks that hang around here. For a long time in my earlier years, I practiced a couple different Christian religions. First Episcopalian and the Catholicism (though this one was forced upon me, rather than a choice I made personally). After being forced into the Catholic religion, when I was older and out on my own I chose to become an atheist. Since then, I’ve decided I don’t know what to believe and am exploring the possibilities. But I can still identify with the following quote and think it has some bearing on what this site is all about:
“I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods you will understand why I dismiss yours.” - Stephen F. Roberts
Louise wrote on March 5, 2008 at 2:22 pm:
Brilliant! Thank you for the re-opening to the wisdom of the Wisdom Traditions.
zabrina liang wrote on March 7, 2008 at 11:49 pm:
Brilliant!! Can I start worshiping you now, please? that would fill the void and uneasiness I have with not going to church!:)
Are you starting a church or becoming a pastor or something? this is so interesting! I love it! My old pastor would find this fascinating and probably use some in his sermon if he heard this! Could I forward this to him? anyway, keep it rockin’
HoCo wrote on April 12, 2008 at 3:45 pm:
I’ve only listened through once, and while I would prefer to go through again to see if there’s anything I missed, I have an…issue. Who are you to apologize for any shortcomings, negativity or painful experiences that are rooted in my religious upbringing. You are not the pastor, priest or rabbi responsible for the teachings and presentation. You are not the teacher or administrator responsible for the setting and manner in which it was taught. I’m not saying I don’t get the point of what it is you’re trying to say, id; however I think that people who were truly harmed by their faith in their early years will find the presentation rings a bit hollow.
Even more so because little if any of this has changed, and many would argue (myself included) that a number of the issues have only worsened in the last generation. There’s greater intolerance now for those with different religious views. Misogyny still exists and is promoted in a number of faiths. This makes the apology seem less relevant. You are not the perpetrator and we can only hope that you, in this undertaking, and others like you can truly bring about an upgrade to religion, a modern understanding of it, its place and what it can mean to each of us.
As for me, I need no apology for my early religious teachings. I would say the worst part of my experience is that was wholly uninspiring, not truly educational at all and ended the day of my Bar Mitzvah. I read from the Torah and I read my prayers and Haftorah in Hebrew without phonetics. But if asked what I was saying, I would not have known. Both linguistically and spiritually, I could not have told you. Because I didn’t actually learn Hebrew, never understood the literal translations of the words I read, and as such could not have begun to discuss them spiritually. And then it was done, the day over, and I felt no need to continue with anything religious.
Keep up the good work, issues aside, I enjoyed both episodes, and religion and my own view of it has been on my mind lately, so I hope to see more. Recipes for soup and pie (cake is a lie) would be good too.