Beyond Dogma
“Do you believe in God?”
People ask me that a lot, usually expecting a yes or a no. Here’s the honest answer, and it starts somewhere else.
We don’t say that we believe in gravity. We accept it as a force of nature. We don’t say we believe in dinosaurs. We accept that they lived on the earth long ago. So, do I believe in God? I accept that God, spirits, heaven, hell, good, evil, chaos and order are all inseparable parts of the human experience.
That answer frustrates almost everyone, believers and atheists alike. In this essay I want to explain it. I’ll describe what I mean by dogma, why I’ve let go of it, and what I’ve kept. That last part matters most, because I’ve kept a great deal.
What I mean by dogma
By dogma I don’t mean religion, and I don’t mean belief. I mean an explanation that has been made unquestionable.
It usually sounds like a choice between two doors. Either it’s true or it’s false. Either God is real or he isn’t. Either Joseph Smith was a prophet or he wasn’t. Either the Book of Mormon is true or it isn’t. Either I’m in the church or I’m out.
I think that’s a dangerous way of thinking. People are complex, and so is the world. Perhaps God is kind of real. Perhaps the church is kind of true. Perhaps Joseph Smith kind of saw God. I know language like that is offensive and appalling to many members of the church. But it’s often closer to how life actually works than either door.
Dogma also tends to borrow the authority of a feeling. Once an idea has been confirmed by “the Spirit,” it can’t be revised, and no rational argument can move it. (I write about that in The Things We Feel.)
Not anti-God, not anti-religion
Before I go further, let me be clear about what I’m not saying.
I see dangers in religious fundamentalism, and I also see dangers in modern atheistic ideology. I don’t subscribe to the kind of atheism that tries to be the opposite of theism. I’m not anti-God. I think religion and church institutions play crucial roles in modern life, and I don’t want to see them disappear.
The church at its best provides community for children and adults, leadership training and shared values. Those are real goods. Some critics of the church are ready to tear down everything Mormonism built, with no regard for the principles in it that have served people well for a very long time. I’m not interested in that project.
So I’m not asking anyone to give up religion. I’m describing what it looks like to hold it differently.
Metaphorical and conceptual artifacts
Here’s what I kept. God, Jesus, heaven and hell, the Book of Mormon and the many stories in it, and the Bible still mean a great deal to me. I hold them now as metaphorical and conceptual artifacts.
Think about how we outgrow our belief in Santa Claus, but not necessarily the principle of him. The generosity, the wonder, the joy of giving in secret: those survive the discovery that nobody comes down the chimney. Growing up doesn’t mean throwing the story away. It means relating to it in a more mature way.
That’s what I’ve tried to do with scripture. I don’t suspect the Book of Mormon is an ancient record, and I don’t suspect there physically exists a God as the church describes him. But God, Jesus, heaven and hell, the Book of Mormon and the Bible still mean a great deal to me as metaphorical and conceptual artifacts. (I explore some of those patterns in Archetypes.)
I remain a deeply spiritual person even without an anthropomorphic god.
I also try to stay humble in both directions. I absolutely leave open the possibility that there is a supreme being, just as I leave open the possibility of many worlds. But I know of no evidence for either, and for now they’re conjecture as far as I’m concerned. If I died today and woke up in heaven or hell or somewhere else, I would be surprised, but happy.
I hold space in my worldview for realities that are beyond the reach of science today. I just don’t put a doctrine in that space and call it settled.
Spiritual but not religious?
So am I “spiritual but not religious”? That’s the obvious label, and I’m not sure it fits.
There’s a critique of that phrase that has stuck with me. It says that “spiritual but not religious” can mean we’ve never done the work of building a system around our experiences: no philosophy, no reasoning, no account of the whys and wherefores. And spirituality with no reasoning or philosophy behind it tends to degenerate into nothing at all.
So I’ll leave it as an open question, because I haven’t settled it for myself. Perhaps there’s a place for some of us to become religious again, in a new way: one that defines its system and reasoning openly and keeps its stories without turning them into dogma. I don’t know what that looks like yet.
Back to the question
So, do I believe in God?
I accept that God is an inseparable part of the human experience, the same way chaos and order, good and evil are. I don’t know whether there is a being behind the word, and I’ve made my peace with not knowing. What I do know is that the stories, the awe, and the striving to be good didn’t leave when the dogma did.
That’s what “beyond dogma” means to me. Not beyond God, and not beyond religion. Just beyond the need to have it all settled.
If you’d like to see what that looks like in day-to-day spiritual life, read Spirited. And for why I deliberately use the plain word “magic” for supernatural claims, see God Magic.