If you have been a student of early western civilization, you would have observed that as the Christian religion began to take shape in the third and fourth centuries, it deliberately chose a form of Platonic dualism as its philosophical backbone. The reason was, Platonic dualism asserted that the things unseen (ideals, forms, air/spiritual) took precedence in human life, as contrasted to all the things seen (the physical cosmos, reason, study). Augustine and others thought that Plato’s thinking was a forerunner to the Christian faith, even declaring him a de facto Christian in his book, City of God. I think his bias was because his brand of Christianity had already been greatly influenced by Plato’s ideas. As I’ve mentioned before, this regrettable alliance resulted in the Dark Ages, where curiosity was put to death for the sake of conformity to the power of the Christian religion.

My life has been a microcosm of this grand path. When I was a kid, I had an overwhelming sense of curiosity about the world. While I was still in elementary school, I habitually read through the entire 20+ volume set of Encyclopedias, only to restart with the “A” book after finishing the “Z.” I wanted to know everything I could about the world. My curiosity continued well into high school. I had a science lab in my basement, went on archeological digs with my dad, built rockets, and a sizable telescope and read until my eyes burned out. But then something happened that ended all of that.

As a senior in high school, I met Tom, a fundamentalist Christian who, unknowable, embraced the Platonic form of dualism with a religious fervor. I remember him telling me that the visible world around us was Satan’s domain. That God planned to burn it all up, for sure by 1988. He also told me that my studies at college were superfluous, worldly things, because God would give me passing grades if he wanted. Instead, Tom insisted, I must focus 100% of my attention on the unseen, angels, devils, heaven, and God. I conformed to that society for the next 28 years, locking away my—previously insatiable—curiosity as in a cage.

No, God didn’t burn up the earth in 1988. Some years later, I eventually found myself in a paradox. The religious system around me, who claimed to be the only authentic representative of the creator of the cosmos, also embraced lies about that cosmos. Factual lies and emotional lies. Pretentiousness was the rule. I had no choice but to leave that world behind the looking glass, for the sake of living honestly. If there is a creator of the cosmos—so I figured—his natural habitat must be reality, not hiding in a shady world behind smoke and mirrors. Fake miracles and pretend virtues.

Eventually I discovered this creator of the cosmos for the first time. Unveiled. It has been overwhelming. It is like having a long-distance father for most of your life, then suddenly he comes home.

Rather than awkwardly combining a disdain for the cosmos with a love for the creator of that same cosmos, it became a more rational amalgamation of a wonderful cosmos and the creator who made it. If God was the Willy Wonka, the cosmos is his chocolate factory, made for our enjoyment. While sounding simple, it has profound ramifications in my personal life. My curiosity about this created world was released from its cage. A hungry bird flying free.

While I reached these new conclusions almost thirty years ago, it has taken that long to see them mature. Part of that process was simply distractions by a busy life. Then cancer ambushed that life, ending my career, putting me in solitude, and losing my social life. It was a deeply depressing time, yet within that dark space, God was closer than I ever thought was possible. The marriage of the mortal and immortal. In my desperation, I prayed and cried and prayed day and night for two years. I begged God to deliver me from the curse I was living, either by the pain going away or ending my life here and now because I could no longer bear it. It was an intense time, between God and me as we grappled over my existence. I’ve said before, there is more intimacy on the wrestlers’ mat than in the lovers’ bed.

There is more intimacy on the wrestlers’ mat than in the lovers’ bed.

Now, with my curiosity set free and still living the life of a hermit, I am consumed with learning about the cosmos. I listen to fantastic lectures day and night, literally. There are many nights where I get up at 2 AM or 3 and dial in a university lecture. These are lectures on physics, math, quantum physics, astrophysics, history, biochemistry, anthropology, paleoanthropology, and archeology. Previously, this world of study had been the “other,” worldly endeavors and if I stumbled upon information that was different than what the Christian culture asserted, it would be from Satan, so they claimed. Dangerous. So, religious systems want to pour in dogmas of conformity into your brain and then build a firewall around it so it can never be challenged. Now I challenge everything and the sum of that is this distant God becoming clearer and more personal, like the transition from a mirror to seeing face to face.

While I still carry this awful disease, not a moment that I do not have some level of suffering in my bones, I have never been as content as I am now, never happier. As I said before, I never thought this level of emotional intimacy with the creator was possible. It is far better than the years I spent within religion. I now define such religion as a man-made system for imposing conformity and lifting one’s sense of piety. Nothing else. Both are useless to me now.

But here is the sad part of this story. While I am not evangelistic in my approach to God—I respect those friends of mine who prefer the traditional approach to God via religious rituals or mystical experiences—others dismiss my relationship with God because it doesn’t resemble their approach. While the irrational did not work for me, with thirty years of trying, maybe it works for them. But in my new relationship with God, where I feel his presences best when I observe a James Webb Telescope image, look a complex math, see the results of The Large Hadron Collider, listen to a symphony, study the paintings of a great artist, or take a walk with the mountains, I keep running into Christians who are desperate to tell me my relationship with God isn’t legitimate, not when compared to theirs. Competitive Christianity.

How could something so beautiful, not be of God? Of course, it is of God! But my approach is threatening to those who conform to the historical religion or the most popular new take on spirituality by pop gurus. I just wish they would leave me alone in the same way I leave them alone.

But my new renaissance is a beacon of hope for those like me but are still living in those dark ages. There is still hope.

Mike