Theology is like a muddy pool of water

We have come a long way through scientific discovery, but we are still just like babies when it comes to understanding the universe around us.

Not long ago, the majority of all medicine was more wrong than right; more harmful that beneficial.

Not long ago, nearly all scientific theories have now been proven incorrect... several times over.

In another 100 years, they will probably all be overturned several more times.

But what of theology? What of the theories of the soul?

We have no commonly accepted method to test these theories, as we do with the theories in other fields.

Most logical people examine the pool of ideas and find muddied waters. If they taste it, they often get a mouth full of putrid liquid. The cautious ones spew it out and stay clear of the pool. "It is rancid! Do not drink it!" they may cry. 

And they are right.

Over the centuries, much like medicine and the many fields of scientific study, religion has become full of bias, bizarre traditions, falsehoods, and corruptions. It has had contributions to its mass made by both the delusional and the deceptive. Each religious philosophy across the world throughout time has poured into this collective theological pool of ideas. Religions are like a stream of water and these pools that drain into it. You might conclude that some pools may have been enlightened, if you believe such a thing is possible as I do. Other pools that drain into the streams of religion appear to me as being much less likely to have any trace of enlightenment.

How does one tell the difference between the two pools of water? Between what is filthy and what is pure? I think the ability to discern between the two is impossible without having first tasted from a well of personal experience. In fact, I think that the most logical conclusion to come to about all of theology in general is that it is so contaminated that it is often more wrong that it is right-- much like most all of our sciences and medicines, not long ago. Agnosticism is the only logical religious perspective for anyone who does not have more than what is in this mass of mud and has not tasted pure water at some point in their lifetime.

But for those who have tasted that well of water within themselves, the whole field of theology changes. Its like the first time that Antony Leeuwenhoek (man who discovered bacteria) looked and saw something that wasn't there before. Suddenly the whole world changed, something was there which wasn't there before. Oh, those countless theories about why things decayed and why people were sick why milk changed to cheese. Antony now had something that allowed him to sort the sense from the nonsense with a glance through his lens.

But theology is more labor intensive than looking through a lens. In some ways it is more complex and in other ways it is also more simple. One cannot peer through refracted glass and experience a taste of spiritual enlightenment. All those who have a well within themselves had to make their own lens, much like Antony did. Hours of meditation, prayer, and study. Then they dug. They dug deep, believing-- hoping that there was pure water below. 

Hours, days, weeks, months-- perhaps years. And then it happened. They saw it, they tasted it, they heard it and they felt it. They drank from a glass that runs over with water that was more pure than they ever could have imagined.

They discover others who have also tasted of that water... and others who have not. Some seem to have tasted it so long ago, but they never returned to their well and have now all but forgotten.  Some of them may have even spent some time digging, and never found what they were looking for and eventually gave up hope. Those who have never tasted pure water look at the filthy pool and turn away in disgust, faithless that there is such a thing as pure water and generalizing all water as delusion and deception, just as one in the 1800's might regard all medicine as placebo or poison.

I'm not going to tell you what to believe, or tell you that you are foolish or morally depraved for believing what you do. If I had dug as deep as I had and found no water, you and I would likely be no different in our conclusions. I dug for hours, and days and weeks and months. And that living well I found fills my cup and it runs over with a water that is sweet above all that is sweet and pure above all that is pure.

I can't give you my water to drink. I can't hand you a lens and tell you to look at what I see. You may consign me to delusion, and I understand because I would probably do the same thing to you, were our circumstances reversed. Had I only drank from that muddy pool of ideas, I would have eventually left and looked back in disgust watching people drink that awful filth, horrified that I used to drink beside them. So I understand you. And I wish-- oh I wish so much, that you could understand me.

I wrote more on this subject. Clink on the link:
http://truthprocess.blogspot.com/2017/10/why-religion-can-be-messy.html