{"id":1104,"date":"2015-01-09T08:16:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T16:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2015-05-07T08:24:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T16:24:54","slug":"religion-is-the-politics-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/09\/religion-is-the-politics-of-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion Is The Politics Of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Postaday for January 9th: In Good Faith<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>Describe a memory or encounter in which you considered your faith, religion, spirituality \u2014 or lack of \u2014 for the first time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you have a belief, such as: you believe that one of your two local grocery stores has those new \u201cOrchards\u201d style Skittles, and the other one doesn\u2019t. \u201cOrchards\u201d come in forest-free package and out of all the Skittles styles you\u2019ve ever eaten, these are the very best.<\/p>\n

Now you could call the store and confirm your belief, and even call the other store to see if you’re right about their not having any. But what if the person you talk to is wrong? Or what if they lie? Or what if they don\u2019t know what you mean? What if no one even answers the phone?<\/p>\n

The belief\u2019s not the thing, really. You just want those Skittles. So you decided to go there yourself.<\/p>\n

You grab your keys and you step outside and realize, wow, it\u2019s a really nice day. It would be a shame to drive one lousy mile in such nice weather. And it\u2019s not like you have anything else to do\u2014 why not walk?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you why not\u2014 what if you\u2019re wrong about the store having your Skittles?<\/p>\n

You decided to walk anyway. And you decided that, surely, putting in the effort of walking to the store means the Skittles MUST be there.<\/p>\n

Now the belief IS the thing. Because when you get to the store, the point is not whether or not they have the Skittles, the point is your belief got you to walk a few miles in the sunshine. And your reward might be the Skittles, OR, it might be learning a little humility when you get there and discover you were wrong. OR, it might be not getting indigestion like you always do when you eat too many Skittles.<\/p>\n

Religion is the story you tell yourself once you get to the store. It\u2019s the compromises you make, in your heart, to convince yourself that going for a walk to get a bag of Skittles has value.<\/p>\n

Religion is the walk back. I was 22 when I first saw Nikolai Ge\u2019s painting Golgotha, hanging in the Musee D\u2019Orsay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Postaday for January 9th: In Good Faith.\u00a0Describe a memory or encounter in which you considered your faith, religion, spirituality \u2014 or lack of \u2014 for the first time. Let\u2019s say you have a belief, such as: you believe that one of your two local grocery stores has those new \u201cOrchards\u201d style Skittles, and the other … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Religion Is The Politics Of Faith”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[93,92],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-postaday","tag-art","tag-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-hO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}