From the Bottom of a Deep Well by Jeff Price

 

I was a regular church attendee, a trustee, and even youth pastor for a short time. My wife, Patricia, taught Sunday school for several years. I did not find God there; nor did I find any redeeming value aside from a collection of good and well-intended people. I would categorize my faith as a well-researched humanist who enjoys debating Christian pastors as they ask for money with which they will likely remodel their suburban kitchens. 

Faith is my favorite subject, and despite incredible effort to be someone who has something of substance to contribute to such conversations, I cannot offer much intellectual debate on the existence or nonexistence of a creator, for I begin with a simple acceptance: given infinite time and all information, humankind likely does not have the capacity to truly comprehend the universe. It is akin to asking our beloved dog not merely to recite poetry, but to craft it—for there are thresholds of understanding that may always lie beyond us.

I have attempted to study many faith traditions, candidly hoping to find meaning there. What struck me most was not their differences, but their echoes. Each tradition seems to claim originality, yet the recurrence suggests either the shared longings of human consciousness or perhaps the repeated whisper of something beyond ourselves, trying to be heard.

Consider, for example, the story of Jesus: a miraculous birth under a star, a herald of peace, a teacher of compassion, who suffers and is ultimately sacrificed. Yet, this story is not wholly unique. Across the world’s myths and religions, one finds strikingly similar figures: divine children born under signs in the heavens, teachers who embody virtue, and martyrs who suffer for the sake of humanity.  Such parallels may point to common borrowing, or they may signal the deep archetypes that human beings have always reached for when trying to tell the story of goodness, redemption, and hope.

One could argue this repetition reveals the fraud in all of them—that religions simply borrow from one another. But one could just as readily argue those overlaps point toward a reality so undeniable that it surfaces in every human attempt to name it.

I find myself caught between those poles and capable of arguing either side compellingly, but believing neither. I am convinced faith is an explanation for some facet of the physical universe that is in harmony with science, but which we are unable to comprehend. While humankind arrogantly claims mastery of science, we look at the sky from the bottom of a deep well. 

I have also come to believe that organized religion, in its institutional form, is too often an overt fraud—an apparatus of control, a tool to make good people feel bad. The Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Dunn captured it well with, "we knew what art was up, what ancient craft."

And yet, if one chooses carefully among its texts, there are fragments of wisdom, like pages of a scattered owner’s manual for life. There is self-help there, guidance for the bewildered, consolation for the grieving. Certain ideals—compassion, justice, sacrifice, mutual reverence—appear across cultures, across centuries, and across sacred texts.

For example, the historical record clearly establishes Jesus of Nazareth as a real figure, attested not only in Christian texts but also in the writings of fastidious Roman historians such as Josephus and Tacitus—leaders of a movement so disruptive it threatened Roman authority and culminated in his execution under Pontius Pilate. The real question is this: is it more extraordinary that he was merely a man whose life and words reshaped civilization, or that he was deemed the Son of God? 

I would argue that he was a mortal, a revolutionary whose parabolic teachings about love, mercy, and justice unsettled both empire and orthodoxy. He suggested that individuals could have their own relationship with the divine, absent the dictates of an organized church and free from the control of the state.

He was a laborer from a remote province, bearing the most common male name of his time, could articulate a vision of love and unity that still resonates across the world is remarkable indeed. The tragedy is that his message, which once invited freedom and solidarity, has too often been recast as a tool of control and division.

His message was one of unity across classes, calling rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, man and woman alike into a common humanity. It is not difficult to see why such an idea was dangerous to the Roman Empire. If he were the Son of God, it would be no surprise that we are still speaking of him today.  

Religious Texts

Much of what’s quoted as ‘anti-gay’ scripture is a translation error, either innocently or to support bigotry. The overwhelming proportion of Christians seem to intuitively recognize this without having factual knowledge. 

The Hebrew Qedeshim—often rendered ‘sodomites’—refers to male temple prostitution and coerces under certain power dynamics (Deut 23:17; 1 Kgs 14:24; etc.), not the people of Sodom or a sexual orientation. Genesis 19 and its parallel in Judges 19 condemn violent domination (gang rape), while Ezekiel 16 names Sodom’s sins as pride, cruelty, and neglect of the poor.

In the New Testament, Malakoi and Arsenokoitai likely target exploitative systems common in the Greco-Roman world—pederasty and sex with slaves—rather than consenting adult same-sex relationships. Read in context, these texts confront sexual coercion and commerce, not same-sex interactions among consenting adults. This is merely one of many modern perversions. 

In exploring these texts, I have found much that is lost in translation. There are also clear examples of hate, violence, slavery, and indefensible evil which are rampant in historical culture.

To study the New Testament in Greek, the Torah and Talmud in Hebrew, the Qur’an in Arabic, or the Upanishads in Sanskrit is to encounter shades of meaning that our modern languages only dimly render. I have read even further afield—the I Ching, the Sutrakritanga, the Pavitra [Hindi] Bible, and countless others—sometimes wrestling with nuanced translations in languages I barely understand. 

The deeper I studied the religions of humankind, the more I realize how little we truly know. Language itself becomes both a window and a wall, describing thought while also bounding it. I still routinely refer to churches as the place where good people are meant to feel bad. The curse of humans developing language is that we cannot process what we cannot shape into words, and so our inquiry into the divine is hobbled before it even begins.

The more I researched, the more religion revealed itself as a mechanism to control populations, to manipulate behavior, and to provide comfort in the face of the unexplainable. And yet, alongside these institutional flaws, the texts also point to something undeniable: that human existence cannot be fully explained.

I have come to believe that one need not be a person of faith to study religious texts and find value in them. Indeed, it is beautiful across time, language, culture, philosophy, and tradition where we find certain universal truths echo with near-perfect resonance.

There is beauty in religious texts, where surviving positive lessons consistently reemerges. I believe there are traits imprinted on humankind and on nature itself, laws written deeper than statute or creed. When we live in harmony with them, we flourish. Some call this ‘the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.’ I hear more of Thoreau in it, though: the transcendentalist’s belief that truth reveals itself when we strip away the noise of society and walk quietly into the woods.

The “Golden Rule” is perhaps the clearest example: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ (Matthew 7:12, Christianity); ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor’ (Talmud Shabbat 31a, Judaism); ‘A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated’ (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33, Jainism). Whether attributed to God, Confucius, Muhammad, Jesus, or the Buddha, the concept and even the words are nearly identical.

I tend to believe there is something beyond what we know, and that life is but one state of existence like gas, liquid, or solid, a phase in a continuum we cannot yet measure. Perhaps this is an overly idealistic hope, but it persists in me nonetheless. I concluded as a young man, that effort has executed so much hope I had.

Consider the phrase “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence reflects a long intellectual tradition stretching from ancient philosophy to the Enlightenment. Moreover, the Stoics, especially Cicero, argued that natural law was universal, eternal, and discoverable by reason: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature.” Medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas linked this to divine order, teaching that natural law was humanity’s rational participation in God’s eternal law.

Enlightenment writers, especially John Locke, reframed natural law into natural rights—life, liberty, and property—arguing that governments exist to protect these rights and may be justly overthrown if they fail. William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, widely read by the founders, reinforced that natural law was, “dictated by God himself,” and was superior to any human law and invalidated contrary statutes.

When Jefferson and his peers declared independence, they drew on their lineage to justify their cause not as rebellion but as an appeal to a higher law, binding on all nations and rulers, where reason (“Nature”) and divine authority (“Nature’s God”) together affirmed the colonies’ right to be free. This was clever as Blackstone was the King of England's legal counsel. They were revolutionaries that were also heading against treasonous trials in England. 

While I do not see God, at least in the traditional sense of a personified supreme deity, as the source of natural law, I do see it. When I read the works of historical thought leaders like Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Aquinas, Locke, Jesus of Nazareth, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Blackstone, I hear a recurring theme—that there exists a moral order higher than any government, a law written into nature and discernible by reason, which insists on the dignity of human beings and the duty to live justly in accordance with a naturally instilled code. For that reason, I am not a believer in absolute moral relativism.

While culture should indeed evolve, absolute relativism permits devolution, as it denies the anchoring principles that prevent society from sliding backward. Slavery, for example, must never be tolerated again, nor should practices like genocide, systemic oppression, or the subjugation of women—wrongs that some cultures once accepted as normal but which violate the deeper moral law that binds us all.

The single greatest lesson I have taken from twenty-five years of exploring these traditions is remarkably simple: kindness to others is a gift you ultimately give to yourself. It sustains, heals, and deepens our shared humanity.

-Jeff Price