I love the perspectives being expressed here. I too am ex-Christian. I love the things that Jesus teaches about how we treat each other. I’m a follower of the secular Jesus, closer to a Jeffersonian Christian, I suppose.
“Love thy neighbor as you love yourself.”
“Forgive as you are forgiven.”
“Don’t point out your brother’s wet diaper while you have a mess in yours.” (I might be paraphrasing a bit.)
Other than that, I have nothing but contempt for religion. What caused me to leave the faith is how it harms people, chief of those harms being self-harm, and worst of all how everyone is either in denial of that or just accepting that it’s the way it should be… or even that the suffering is “good”. **Cringe**…
The advice about religion encourages fragmentation of yourself into higher and lower aspirations and natures is something I hadn’t heard before, but it makes perfect sense. That’s the best perspective I’ve heard on the subject in a long time. Indeed, be whole and dispense with the artificial dissonance between your body, mind, and soul.
My advice will always be to find yourself outside of religion, to take the qualities that make you a good human being, and let the eternal consequences fall where they will. Your religious support group of family and friends will react negatively, but it’s a reaction without understanding. That’s the only way to be genuine and to live without a fear of punishment to spur your goodness without a scripture constantly reassuring you that this arcane ritual of appeasement is how you define righteousness.
And for those of you who can’t shake the fear of eternal punishment, let me offer you an alternative to the idea of death being the end that’s not couched in comical ideas of cities of gold or lakes of sulfur:
Build an afterlife in the memories of those who know you, and store up treasures there through generosity, support, and authentic love. That’s the only way you can KNOW you will live and love beyond the span of your natural life. As you enrich others and build them up, you will become a part of their story, and they will live on in others, and you in them. Long after your name is forgotten, your essence will continue to join in building to ever greater highs. Only then can you rest truly in peace knowing you left things better than you found them.