I’m not a very big fan of ‘spiritual’ and ‘self-help’ books. I don’t believe that you can find yourself through someone else’s how-to guide. Instead, 1 am a firm believer in finding yourself through good literature, where you are able to project yourself into the plot. You may ask what the difference between a real person’s experience and a fictional person’s experience is - why believe in the power of the novel (which is written by and from the perspective of a real person) and not the conclusions a real person presents through a self-help guide. That’s just it - the self-help guide has done all the thinking for you. The author is giving you a set of ground rules. A novel gives you the hypothetical situation and allows you to think through the problem yourself without dealing with the repercussions your decisions would have had you actually done what the character had done in the story. 

Anyway, that’s a long-winded tangent off the topic I have in mind today. I’m currently reading “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert in preparation for the movie (it has James Franco in it. I’m sold). I’m only reading it because I hate to watch a movie that’s based on a book before reading the actual book. It feels like I’m cheating when I do. But I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised so far (although I’m only 30-odd pages in). She’s hit a home-run in describing my current stance on religion, which goes something like this:

“Culturally, though not theologically, I’m a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I can’t swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian. Most of the Christians I know accept my feelings on this with grace and open-mindedness. Then again, most of the Christians I know don’t speak very strictly. To those who do speak (and think) strictly, all I can do here is offer my regrets for any hurt feelings and now excuse myself from their business.

“Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed—much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. In every religious tradition on earth, there have always been mystical saints and transcendents who report exactly this experience. Unfortunately many of them have ended up arrested and killed. Still, I think very highly of them.

“In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this—I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God.””

I very much agree with the general gist there (give or take some Anglo-Saxon details). God cannot be a strict doctrine. That goes against the very nature of an all-knowing and all-creating God - He wouldn’t have given humanity the freedom of independent thought if He wanted us to act and think in a very specific way. Yes, I know, the obvious argument there is that His way of differentiating between the ‘righteous’ and the ‘damned’  is by who has ‘faith’ in Him - but does it have to be through Christianity or Buddhism or Zoroastrianism alone? And all others - regardless of piety or inherent goodness - be damned? I doubt it.