If your religion requires you to hate someone, you need a new religion. Various attributions
Religion and spirituality can impact health positively as I mentioned in an earlier blog. However, religion, as we all know, can go way wrong. Instead of promoting life-giving messages of hope, awe, wonder, kindness, gratitude, joy, peace, and especially compassion - love and care for others (which respected scholars say is the foundational backbone of all the major religions), can spew hate, violence, and vitriol which is not good for personal, nor collective health and well-being.

When I was in college during the 60’s, it was during the later phases of the God is Dead movement. I remember the iconic picture which appeared on the cover of Time magazine a month before my 16th birthday. Many thought that theology, religion, and even church was dead too. And here I was getting a major in religious studies at the University of Tennessee. What was I ever going to do with that?
I didn’t know it at the time, but it seems, that the people who were most interested in religion scholars was the state department. I suppose they wanted some insight particularly to what might be happening, not in America, but in the Middle East.
Little did we know that [white] Christian nationalism would be popping up here in the United States, and in our own Wenatchee Valley, with a vengeance in 2024. (BTW, a little aside here. I’m helping at the Cashmere Museum with their Pioneer Days. I was looking at the history of Cashmere in Wikipedia and found that my little Methodist church, which will be lucky to get 20 people in attendance this Sunday, was the meeting place of a newish chapter of the KKK; in 1924 the KKK meeting drew in 400 people! Those were the good ole days, not! In terms of our societal health, I'd rather the church be empty than house 400 KKK members. But I'll give those folks the benefit of the doubt and assume they really had no idea what they were actually getting into.)
Anyway, today God - or God talk, does not seem to be dead at all even here in the Northwest. How we think about God may significantly affect our health and well-being both individually and societally.
And that takes me to a story told by spiritual leader Mark Yaconnelli.
Mark had a friend who ran a transition facility for incarcerated men. That’s where the inmates are preparing for a re-entry into society. The friend asked Mark to offer a class on “the nature of God.”
On the first day of class, eighteen men dressed in orange jump suits sat in a circle of chairs. Mark says it would be an understatement to say their body language was “resistant.” Half of them had their eyes closed and seemed to be hoping for a little nap. Others looked out the window. A few were fidgeting.
As Mark was taking his chair a heavyset man yelled out, “How long is this going to take?” Mark explained that he was told that the class was to be an hour. That pronouncement was met by groans and rolling heads.

Of course, Mark was hurt and frustrated and even surprised. He told the men he understood this was a voluntary situation, they could return to their cellblocks if they chose.
That was met with laughter. The men looked at Mark in disbelief. One man saw Mark’s confusion and asked, “Do you really think we are here voluntarily? We were told we had to give up our recreation time to be here or else suffer consequences. Do you think any of us would give up time outside to listen to a preacher? None of us chose to be here. So just go ahead and preach your sermon while we try to get some sleep.”
At this point Mark is feeling quite awkward and embarrassed as well as frustrated. He apologized for their forced attendance and told them he had not prepared a sermon. What he had hoped was for them to spend their time together sharing their experiences of God.
“Well, then I’m done,” said one young Latino. “I don’t believe in all that God bullshit.” A few others shook their heads in agreement.
Mark responded, “It doesn’t matter if you believe or don’t believe. I’m not here to talk about your belief. I want to hear your experience of God, not your beliefs about God.”
Most ignored that, but one man said, “What counts as an experience of God?”
Mark tried to respond, “Well I guess it is an experience that you would call sacred. A moment when you felt overwhelmed by love, or had a real sense of peace, or felt deeply connected to others.” The best definition of God is love, so I guess an experience of God might be defined as a powerful experience of love.”
Now more of the men were listening. Mark asked the men to reflect on their lives from their earliest memories right up to the present and see if there were experiences that felt sacred to them.
Shockingly most of the men complied. After five minutes, the men began to share. For one moment, his experience of the sacred was when he came home from his last stint in the county jail. All his relatives had gathered to welcome him with live music, home-made tamales, and a part, “At some point in the evening, every one of my relatives hugged me. That was the best day of my life.”
Another man shared that one night he was considering suicide. He had sat all night out on a mountain with a loaded gun. At one point he noticed the orange light of coming sunrise and felt such an overwhelming sense of love that the never again considered taking his life.
Another talked about holding his nephew who gazed up at him with real delight and admiration. A muscled man covered in tattoos talked about his aunt hugging and crying over him when he was sent to prison and said, “I had no idea that anyone loved me that much.” And the stories continued.
Then they came to the last inmate, the man who had kept his back to the group the whole time. He didn’t turn around, but he did have something to say. “Right now. Just listening to you guys talk about the things we never talk about. I call this moment right here sacred.”
Mark says the sharing ended and there was silence for a while. Mark said, “this is the God who is alive and present and known to every human being.”
One young Latino man who had said he didn’t believe in God said, “That’s not the God I grew up with…”
Indeed, that’s not the God that some of us have grown up with. We fight over do you believe this belief or that. But what if we dropped the belief wars and concentrated on noticing and sharing our experiences of the sacred?
What if we regularly took moments to notice and reflect on and share those times when we felt overwhelmed by love, or had a real sense of peace, or felt deeply connected to others, when we had powerful experiences of love? That God is not dead. And that experience of the sacred I’m quite sure is helpful for our health and wellbeing and journeying together to the Good Life.

How might we journey together to The Good Life by noticing and sharing our experiences of the sacred and by dropping our dogmatic religious beliefs wars which keep us angry, fearful and alienated from each other, hurtful, and sick?
And let me add my own quote, "If your religion is making you sick, you need to get a new religion." All the major religions were offered as paths to good lives.
(I'm curious about your experiences of God - of the sacred)

What a beautiful story about Rev. Mark. You are so right, we have more similarities than differences. We all share in the human experience. Thank you for giving me a moment of reflection and immediately bringing me to gratitude. -Kim Martin