Paul Vieira

“One sip from the cup she was drinking, went straight to my head with her think. She had me believe I kept needing to come back for more.”

This is a line from a song I wrote about leaving organized religion. I’ve just posted the song at www.paulvieira.ca . It’s called Come my Way.

I’ve been completely out of the church for a few years now and have detoxed from that dependency on religion to dictate how I should think. My thinking has changed quite a bit. I’d like to blog about some of the mental shifts that have taken place for me. I think one of the biggest changes is that I no longer view the world in terms of secular vs. sacred. The Gnostics injected Christianity with this kind of dualism just years after the early church started on it’s way. The believed flesh was evil and spirit was good. This is why they denied the incarnation of Christ. The Gnostics couldn’t accept the idea that God (spirit) could inhabit a human body (flesh).

This way of measuring the activities of life completely devalues anything that is not perceived to be “spiritual” in some way. If you write a song about a horse, Jesus better be riding that horse or you song is considered “secular.” My evangelical background caused me to completely devalue anything that wasn’t linked to church activity, like praying, reading the Bible, or evangelizing.

In my previous life, I gave little to no thought about things like staying fit because my body didn’t matter as much as my spirit. I didn’t care about the environment because this world was going to perish anyway and the world to come is more important. For years, I didn’t listen to any other kind of music than worship and praise music, because writing songs about every day natural life was inferior to making music that openly spoke of God.

So, how have I changed? I’ve learned to see God in the secular. I’ve grown to appreciate the sacredness of nature and the value of living a healthy lifestyle. I now find meaning in the natural world. My head is no longer in the clouds. We even read the Bible with our little bent. Before, I gravitated only to verses that emphasized the eternity and spirit. Now, I see the Bible as a book about people who saw God in every day life. People who were physically fit and strong, artists, poets, politicians, doctors, neighbors, fathers, daughters, and people from all walks of life. Very few were holy men, living in seclusion, disconnected from the real world.

It feels good to join this world. I see God differently in this light. He has become more “secular” to me.