Conditions and Provisos
I am largely writing this for myself, because I can, and to crystallise ideas that have been bouncing around my my head for the last few years. This was largely triggered by this article written by Paul Wright many years ago, whose experiences with CICCU (Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union) and StAG (St Andrew the Great, a conservative evangelical church at Cambridge focused on students) mirror my own. I strongly recommend reading that article before this, it covers many of the issues I have with evangelism that are a background to my thoughts here. I am also not writing this to change anyone’s mind - but maybe, just like Paul’s article helped me understand what has changed within me in the last few years, this might help others understand their own experiences and beliefs.
Also, please play Outer Wilds. This game rewrote my thoughts on death, and brought me peace with my own mortality. If you are not a gamer, find someone to play it with you. Or watch one of the many streamed playthroughs on twitch or youtube. Or, as an absolute last final option, watch the Resonant Arc series playing through Outer Wilds, from which I have expanded the ideas of campfires and churches (thanks Casen).
Some History
First, a bit of my history. I grew up in a conservative evangelical church with a very strong community. This gave me a Christian faith, like Paul Wright’s. I believed there was a Christian God, that Jesus died for our sins, that we need to believe in Him to receive salvation after we die. When I came to Cambridge, StAG and CICCU - first the college CU, then the central one - seemed the most similar to what I was used to.
However, I never felt really at home. Not properly. Several things they taught clashed directly with my scientific experience and knowledge, and they were treated as absolute truths by the church. But I stayed, because I felt a part of the community (albeit not a very good part). I had doubts, all the time, and felt like I was missing something. I sometimes felt God’s presence, sometimes felt like he was speaking to me, but, like Paul did, the relationship felt like a pretty one-sided one. But I persevered - maybe it would come, in time.
The Unravelling
But then I moved to my local non-evangelical church to be closer to my local community. And without the constant poking & checking for deviancy by the other evangelical members, doubts were magnified until my brittle faith collapsed. The cause - the problem of consciousness.
Scientists have been slowly homing in on solutions to the problem of consciousness for many years. More recent theories, like Integrated Information Theory, have started to sketch what a solution might look like. And there is no space in those theories for a soul.
If we do have a soul - something of you that exists after death - there needs to be some link between your neural activity that affects and controls your feelings and bodily actions, and your soul to continue your consciousness after death. But there is nowhere that can happen in the prevailing theories. There is no 'other' beyond that which our neurons control. And if we do not have a soul, then nothing exists after death. There is no afterlife, and so there is no God.
This took quite a while to take hold. Once it did, I could no longer say I believed there was a God. I think there is probably not a God, but I would be very happy to have some evidence that there is.
But, I still go to church. I still consider myself a Christian. What’s with that?
Campfires and Churches
There was a time when the first Homo precursor species looked up at the sky and wondered what all those twinkly lights were. They would have gathered round campfires and told stories about what was up there, about the things they saw looking outward from the fire, beyond their own terrestrial experience. There is something about a fire - the dangerous, yet controlled source of light in the unknown incomprehensible darkness - that encourages internal reflection, quiet conversation, and sharing stories.
Over time, these stories would have bounced between people around the campfire - diverging, merging, expanding, exaggerating, standardising. A corpus of stories developed, expanded through the generations until their origins were lost. Over time, these would have been written down; reflecting the community that they came from, how they believed the world was, or how it should be.
Just as people gathered round a central campfire to share stories as a community, so churches (or gatherings of any religion) meet round the stories, the holy words, which originally defined the nascent community and shaped its view of the world, with the scriptures reflecting the views of the community and their leaders - how they believe the world is, and how it should be. This provides the scaffolding around which the church community is built and maintained.
This is where we get to Outer Wilds. Campfires are a key part of the game. You start the game at a campfire, and more campfires are encountered as you explore the world. You meet other people at these campfires - sharing stories with each other, asking questions, who are on a similar journey with you. Marshmallows are eaten. There is music. These fellow travellers are all pleased to see you, and are all looking outward, at the wide world waiting to be explored. You saw what???? THAT IS AWESOME!!!! I saw something like that over this way, maybe you should go there next?
Sometimes you find campfires with no one there, but they are never empty. They always contain pointers to help you. Stay, rest here a while. Eat a marshmallow. When you’re ready, continue your journey this way - always looking outward, at the infinite expanse of the universe.
There is another kind of campfire you find in the DLC, Echoes of the Eye, that are also churches for those who meet there. Rather than looking outward, these all look inward. They are enclosed. They ignore the outside world. They exist only to continue their own existence. You, from the outside world, are not welcome here, and there is no conversation to be had in these places.
Outward and Inward
Just as you find outward-looking and inward-looking campfires in Outer Wilds, so church communities can be outward-looking or inward-looking. As new people come into the church, they get bounced around the community, round the central holy words that reflect the community back to itself. They pick up the ideas of the community, gathering energy, going round and round like a particle accelerator. Finally they are flung outward, back into the world. But to do what?
Outward-looking churches are looking at the world around them. They have ideas about how the world does work, how it should work, and people in the community go out to make that change in the wider world - to make it more how it should be.
These communities don’t even necessarily call themselves churches. I have been privileged to be a part of two groups that weren’t churches per-se, but had the same effect (a choir, and Greenbelt festival). A community of people, gathered round a central scripture, spinning people round and round before flinging them out into the world to change it for the better.
Inward-looking churches only see themselves. People are flung out to the world, but only to gather more into the community. The world as the inward church thinks it should be only exists inside the community itself, and so the world is changed only by gathering more people inwards. Those who are still on the outside are lost, and forgotten.
CICCU, and StAG, looks inwards. They exist only for themselves, pulling in people from the world. An important point to bear in mind, however, is there is a separation between the behaviour of members in a community, and the emergent behaviour of the community as a whole. Individual members of CICCU and conservative evangelical churches are looking to do good in the world, are looking to improve it. I was one of them. But this is largely by converting people to the same specific faith, and so only benefiting the community itself. Outward-looking churches, in contrast, seek to improve the world as a whole, outside the boundaries of the community.
The church I am part of now looks outward to the world. Sometimes, we even gather round a real campfire. My church takes people in, bounces them round, then flings them back outwards to make positive changes to the world. I am proud to be a small part of such a community, supporting and enhancing it in the ways I can. I am part of that Christian church because such story-telling communities are part of being human. They always have, and they always will. The fact that I don't necessarily believe that Jesus died for salvation does not detract from the role I can play in the community. Such communities are reflected by the stories, the words, at the centre, created around those campfires oh so long ago. I am a small part of that interdependence, part of the particle accelerator, and doing a very small part to change the world for the better.
And finally, we will die. But as a part of a community that will celebrate your impact, mourn your absence, and continue to change the world to be more as it should be. Maybe there is a God, maybe not. If we are created in his image, our morals should be pointing in at least the same direction as His. I have done what I could do to change the world for the better, through the campfires I have gathered round, because that is the good and human thing to do. I hope that is what He wants. But even if the only thing that happens after death is non-existence as your neural connections slowly dissolve; whatever comes next, I do not think it is to be feared.
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