Like most good dumps, it can take some time and effort to complete the process, but when finished, we feel lighter, healthier and just better.
It all began in earnest on the day my dad brought a load of crap to my house. He was retired from being a pastor and bishop, and had time to clean out closets and garages and no longer thought he and my mom should have to keep my junk. So he came with a load from my past - high school, college, Peace Corps, graduate school. It was my turn to decide what to do with all the shit.
He left the boxes in my back yard with a question: What of it did I want to keep and what did I want to take to the dump?
Keep or dump, became a central question for my life and decision making: who was I going to choose to be, what would I choose to believe and how was I going to choose to interact and behave in this world.
As good as an individual dumping can be, we do not live in a vacuum. We are part of a larger community and society. Our culture has a collective story that shapes how we think of each other and which dictates laws and policies about how we can treat each other.
We need to take a societal dump.
- We need to let go of the Doctrine of Original Sin
- We need to move beyond the Doctrine of the Atonement and the notion that there is a “heaven” somewhere out there that is better than what we have here. (As opposed to a new $5m study.)
- We need to stop using male centric language to refer to a deity, including “God”.
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