Trapped in dogma
Wrestling with the faith I inherited
I have always struggled with dogma. Not because I do not see its purpose, but because I see clearly how it fails to hold up in the world we live in now.
Religious frameworks made sense when humanity was divided into isolated tribes, when our ancestors didn’t know there were other humans beyond their own villages. These teachings were essential for survival in a world that was harsh, fragmented, and unknown.
But today, we live in a world where borders collapse in real time. We can fly across the planet in under two days. We can speak to someone on the other side of the world in an instant. We exist in a reality where cultures, ideas, and belief systems collide daily, evolving at breakneck speed while the religious frameworks that once shaped human civilization remain frozen in time, struggling to find relevance.
And yet, we are still required to shape our fundamental identities around these frameworks. We are expected to make decisions in 2025 using the rules of those who lived centuries ago in isolated, brutal conditions.
My question was always: why?
But when I asked, I was met with silence. Either that, or something worse: avoidance, rigid defenses, and threats of divine retribution.
Ask too much, and suddenly, the conversation shifts to fear. To punishment. To hell.
But the contradictions were too absurd to ignore. These teachings had been passed down like an ancient game of Chinese whispers; interpretation layered upon interpretation, generation after generation. What we follow today may be nothing like what was originally intended, yet it is most fiercely defended by those who need it as a comfort for their afterlife.
Everytime cracks formed, when the original belief frameworks could no longer contain the complexity of human experience, what happened? They fractured into more frameworks within frameworks.
Catholic, Protestant, Anglican.
Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana.
Sunni, Shia, Sufi.
Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism.
Etc, etc, etc.
Everywhere I looked, it was the same thing. Belief systems splitting, splintering, multiplying, because no single framework could contain the vastness of the Divine.
Do you see it?
…
I don’t mind that they don’t question.
I mind that they mind I question.
But even that, I can live with.
What I cannot live with is how deeply my adult, my mentors, these churches, these temples, these framework defenders — how they fear my questioning so much so that they create yet another prison around me. Another framework, another threat. The ultimatum of a retribution from a god that, deep down, I know agrees with me more.
Because I knew just like we all do: if God is grace, if God is love,
His Word cannot encourage me to hate my enemies.
His Word cannot tell me to close my heart when I see suffering.
His Word cannot demand I defend doctrine more than I defend the vulnerable.
His Word cannot contradict the love He placed within me.
…
In the end, I stepped away from the noise. I let go of the prisons, the frameworks, the contradictions.
I just sat with Jesus.
Because when I let go of everything else, the voice that remained, the one that was always there beneath the layers of dogma, was His.
(Maybe there will be a part 4, this Lent is special after all).