My grandmother was a lifelong Episcopalian who read her Bible regularly and never left the house without her pearl necklace and white gloves. She taught me to kneel by my bed at night and recite “The Lord’s Prayer”. She tucked me in, brought her face close to mine, and whispered in my ear, “Now Amy, tomorrow I want you to be a good girl so that you will go to Heaven.” The implication was clear: Good little girls go to Heaven, bad little girls go to Hell, and God makes these decisions. 

Grandma Polly taught me as her family and church leaders taught her, and she meant well. But the impact of her teaching on my young mind was profoundly damaging and followed me well into adulthood, though I had little conscious memory of it. I felt drawn to church as a child but sat still, frozen in fear about my future. 

As I grew up, I tried hard to be good, to follow the rules at church and at home, but failed regularly. Each failure was an unconscious affirmation of my eternal future in Hell, condemned by the angry “God” who banished bad little (and big) girls. No one in church told me that goofing up was part of what humans do. No one assured me that God loved me, no matter what. Instead, I heard repeated affirmations I was born into “original sin.” Telling me that original sin was the fate of all human beings was little comfort. It never occurred to me to question these inner fears and the theological theory that lay behind it: “Be good, or else…”, implying that we need to earn our way into God’s approval.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, Sunday school teachers did not encourage us to “think for ourselves” in matters concerning God, faith, and Jesus. Clergy told us to accept their teachings “on faith.” Christianity, so the teaching went, was the “one true religion” and to be a “Christian” was to be “on the side of Truth”. “Truth” was Jesus, perfectly human and divine, unlike we humans who are born sinners. There was little room for ambiguity about what to believe about God and church, except among theologians who used words like “paradox”. It didn’t occur to most of us to question Christian teaching about original sin, or other “essential Christian teachings”, like the “Nicene Creed,” virgin birth, resurrection, to name a few of my favorites. Yet some form of this teaching is alive and well, sometimes overtly, often implied, not just in my childhood home but in parishes around the world, not to mention images given in the pages of scripture.

I didn’t know that I really had the freedom to question Grandma Polly or to wonder why anyone might trust a God that banished people to the gates of eternal hell. Being told what to think keeps powerful leaders in power, while the people are “kept in line.” What better way to maintain the power structure than threaten the people with “eternal damnation” if they go against traditional teaching? Grandma Polly learned this, believed it, and passed it on to me.

To blindly follow what someone else tells us is true has the impact of numbing ourselves to our own capacity for thoughtful reflection and relieves us from the work needed to come to our own understanding. The cost of this pattern is enormous: we give up our God given freedom to decide for ourselves what we believe, who and what we trust, and the values we choose to live by. We lose the fullness of our humanity and faith remains shallow, driven by fear, not love. 

In his book The Universal Christ, the Franciscan priest and theologian Richard Rohr says:

“(H)uman freedom matters!!… God does not want robots, but lovers who freely choose to love in return for love…Yet so many sermons tell us to never trust ourselves, to only trust God. That is far too dualistic. How can a person who does not trust himself know how to trust at all?” (p. 66)

Decades later, as I gazed in the eyes of my two young children, I felt utterly in awe of Creation. Yes, humans screw up. Yes, humans create unimaginable harm to one another. Yes, humans are sinners. But in the depth of my bones I knew, looking at my children, that our sin is secondary to God’s love. His love comes first, and that means we are good, originally good.

I didn’t know then that I was being called to awaken, to examine the inner workings of my mind, to explore my beliefs, what I really believed was “true”. This was the call of my soul to explore my “inner world,” including thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, and the values I cherish. 

For Westerners, most of our education and training focuses on how to function effectively in the “outer” world. Our parents, caregivers, and teachers teach us “how to behave”. Formal education demands answers to factual questions. Students are trained to think conceptually, to analyze, investigate, and memorize facts and figures in increasing layers of complexity. These are important skills. We are not, however, trained to examine the inner world and its workings, the extraordinary space of our mind. Psychology is, for westerners, one exception which has offered valuable paths to inner examination. While valuable, western psychology is a more limited set of techniques, in part because of western demand for “scientific rigor.”

We in the west are learning from eastern and indigenous cultures who have tended to the inner world for centuries, and have explored it deeply and methodically. For practicing Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, teaching care and understanding for the inner world are basic life skills which are introduced to children and practiced throughout adult life. Eastern spirituality and practices appreciate the inner world as the home of great secrets about how human life flourishes and what inhibits flourishing. For westerners, the discovery and integration of this wisdom, together with how it merges with and diverges from psychological understanding, is nothing less than an enormous step in human evolution!

Discovering Buddhist meditation was like a breath of fresh air. In short, Buddhism helped me to grow up, to think for myself rather than merely accept what others claim as “true.” Buddhist practice helped me explore the deep terror that lived within me from my grandmother’s counsel — that if I did bad things, God would punish me, not just for a day but for eternity! For the first time in my life, I felt free to question, examine, and reflect on my religious faith, how faith penetrates (or does not) any other aspect of my life, including my grandmother’s teaching.

As I practiced Buddhist meditation, I learned to sit compassionately with the inner terror of eternal damnation that haunted me. Slowly, the terror opened, and I discovered how this childhood memory played out throughout my journey, in my relationship with God, to myself, and with others. I came to recognize layers of fear, resentment, unspoken grief, and doubt that fueled my inner pain.

Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chodron writes: 

“… feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.” (Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart)

I investigated questions like, what do I believe? What are my doubts, fears, and concerns? How do these impact of my sense of connection with God, myself and other people? What if I gave up the vision of God who banishes people to hell? Slowly, I released the grip of terror. And in this new found sense of inner freedom and space, a very different faith emerged, a faith based on what I knew inside as true.

Rohr suggests:

“We must reclaim the Christian project, building from the true starting point of Original Goodness. We must reclaim Jesus as an inclusive Savior instead of an exclusionary Judge, as a Christ who holds history together as the cosmic Alpha and Omega. Then, both history and the individual can live inside of a collective safety…” (p. 68)

And it is here, where faith, hope, and love may flourish. This has been my experience.The journey of inner exploration is a journey of revelation, with all that word means for Christians. 

Rachel Naomi Ramen offers this ancient story which she heard from her grandfather, a rabbi and scholar of the Kabbalah, the mystical teachings of Judaism:

“According to the Kabbalah, at some point in the beginning of things, the Holy was broken up into countless sparks, which were scattered throughout the universe. There is a god spark in everyone and in everything, a sort of diaspora of goodness. God’s immanent presence among us is encountered daily in the most simple, humble, and ordinary ways. The Kabbalah teaches the Holy may speak to you from its many hidden places at any time. The world may whisper in your ear, or the spark of God in you may whisper in your heart.” (Rachel Naomi Ramen M.D.,My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging)