(The following is the second half of the introduction to my book, The Triple Path; you can download a current PDF draft of the whole book at TriplePath.org/download, part one of this post is here)

The Triple Path Approach

If the previous approaches do not work, then how can we preserve, honor, and practice the valuable traditions, morals, and stories of our culture? The problem is that the symbolic and archetypal value of our religious traditions and stories are tied too closely to their cosmology. The discredited cosmology pulls down everything else, like concrete shoes dragging someone underwater.

Much of what was once in the realm of superstition is now understood. This has caused ever-greater divergences between many traditional religious teachings and our understanding of reality. We need a fresh start to reset these divergences, using the good things from the past to build a new religion unburdened by the discredited ideas. We need something that can integrate our modern understanding of the universe into the traditions and morals of the past—something conservative and traditional, but that is able, when needed, to change in response to new discoveries.

With a new theological foundation not reliant on legendary and mythological stories, we can maintain the useful traditions and morals of the past, and also more successfully apply the symbolic approach to continue cherishing and learning from the legendary and mythological stories of our culture.

There isn’t anything out there that does this, so I created it. It is called the Triple Path.

Until now, the only main alternative to traditional religious practice was to integrate into the new, coalescing religion of secularism. The Triple Path offers a different option, rejecting neither traditional nor modernity.

The Triple Path is a new monotheistic religion. At its most basic, its creed is to seek wisdom, practice virtue, and labor with hope.

Seeking wisdom means searching for the truth—not just to learn it, but also to figure out how to learn it. It means having the humility to acknowledge human limitations and to accept truth wherever you find it. It means developing good judgment and character. It means developing a calm and still mind, unmoved by the distractions of life and opinion. And it means doing everything you can to improve your ability to understand God.

Practicing virtue means living morally, doing good, desiring to do good, and doing it for the right reasons.

Laboring with hope is an extension of practicing virtue; it means actively working (even in desperate times) to make things better, starting first with yourself and your family.

A longer creed for the Triple Path is set out starting on page 397. Or, even better, you can take an afternoon to read the rest of this book and get an even better understanding of the Triple Path and the rituals and Church organization it establishes. Its moral and ethical foundations are built on the wisdom of Stoicism and Christianity, seasoned with modern insights from psychology and other schools of Classical thought, and with some added bits from Buddhism, Taoism, and other world philosophical and religious traditions. It is a religion focused less on supernatural beliefs and more on developing moral character and wisdom. Its cosmological foundations are in harmony with modern science, and adaptable to future discoveries. Its theology is theistic rationalism. Its rituals are based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and western traditional practices, with influences also from Mormonism. Its ecclesiastical and congregational structure is relatively decentralized and is a combination of elements from the Anglican, Methodist, and Mormon churches. All clergy and leadership are made up of lay-members chosen through sortition and serving temporary terms of service. And it is unapologetically traditional, supporting time-honored morals and gender roles.

Like all religions, the Triple Path has rules for anyone wanting to be a member. A thriving religion must make demands of its adherents. There are several reasons for this: to give adherents a sense of meaning and belonging; to generate a feeling of group identity; to make the religion a valued part of daily life (we do not value things that are easy or free); to learn the importance of sacrifice through lived experience; and to provide a signaling mechanism within the community adherents can use to de­mon­strate to others their devotion to the religion’s principles, and to evaluate others’ devotion.

Religions develop their own unique rituals, traditions, and norms that set them apart from other groups. Some of these rituals, traditions, and norms do not have a strong moral component, but instead help ensure conformity with community standards and create a feeling of unity and us-ness. These “norms of cohesion” are rules or expectations that are based less on fundamental principles of morality and more on behavior rules that help members of a community establish their separate identity. These practices serve an important unifying purpose—because these norms of cohesion impose costs in time and foregone benefits, following them provides a way to signal to other group members one’s commitment to the group and to its moral principles. They act as powerful, concentrated symbols for the entire set of beliefs and practices of the religion. They serve as outward symbols of adherents’ level of commitment to God and their coreligionists. It is important never to confuse the symbol with the thing that it is representing, but even so, the outward symbol and practice are still important in themselves.

Such outward signals of commitment make it easier for group members to spot potential freeriders (who, not being committed to the group or to its moral teachings, will be less willing to follow norms of cohesion that impose costs) and to judge who is worthy of trust and inclusion in the group. The evidence shows that having demanding norms of cohesion strengthen a group, and thus also strengthen cooperation and relationships between members of the group. For example, religious communes that have more demanding norms of cohesion last longer than those that do not.1

You are not committed to something unless you are willing to sacrifice for it,2 and no religion can thrive—or even survive—without committed followers. Who would want to be a member of a religion full of lackadaisical and lukewarm followers?

Even more importantly, we come into life with an ethical burden to justify our own existence. The purpose of life is not to maximize our ratio of personal happiness or pleasure to suffering, but to take on honorable, worthwhile challenges and to sacrifice to overcome them. Such challenges, voluntarily undertaken, mold and shape us. They bring nobility of soul and allow us to accomplish great things.3 Practicing self-denial and sacrifice in the context of religious practice helps develop this mature, courageous character. That is why all great religions demand sacrifices.

The purpose of religion is not just to make you feel good or inspired. It is also to demand that you change for the better, and to show you the path to making those changes.

Most of the demands the Triple Path makes of its adherents are standard moral rules you find in most religions, but it also has some unique rules that have the specific intent of setting adherents apart, just as in many other strong, cohesive religions (such as the Jewish prohibition on Pork, the Mormon prohibition on alcohol and coffee, and the Catholic prohibition of meat on Fridays4). Because the Triple Path’s demands for supernatural beliefs are light (the only requirement is that practitioners believe in God, however they choose to define Him), its demands for lifestyle changes are a bit heavier. Number 10 through 13 of the Creed (found on page 398), list the practices, Rites, and Feasts that adherents are expected to follow.

Religious rules fall along a spectrum between serving a moral purpose and a cohesion purpose. The most cohesion-targeted rule listed in the Creed is a prohibition on eating gluten. Its purpose is only for signaling and group cohesion. The rule is easy enough that anyone determined to follow it can do so without much disruption, but hard enough that few people will follow it unless they have a real commitment to the religion.

Other major, specific rules are more obviously moral, the best examples being the requirements to love others and follow the Golden Rule, and for celibacy before marriage and fidelity afterwards. Other rules listed in the Creed fall somewhere between the two poles of strictly moral- and strictly cohesion-based rules. Some of these rules are maintaining Sunday as a day of rest, spiritual focus, and family, free from work and spending of money; completely abstaining from tobacco; drinking alcohol only in moderation; eating in a healthy and moderate manner and exercising to keep our bodies fit and strong; avoiding excessive consumption of caffeine and refined sugar; and participating in the religion’s Rites and Feasts (which are set out starting on page 401).

The conservative approach inherent in the Triple Path—of creating a new religion that also preserves as much of the West’s religious traditions as possible—is because it can be hard to discern right away which parts of a religion are valuable. Often, traditions, rules, practices, and beliefs develop and last, even though no one would have consciously created them, because they confer some benefit that is not readily ascertainable. If a common, traditional, Western religious practice is not demonstrably untrue or harmful, then we should be very slow to discard it, even if it appears to serve no purpose. It may have value or serve a purpose that is not immediately discernible. The Triple Path most assiduously tries to follow this when it comes to morals, practices, Rites, and rules, and less so with cosmological and supernatural claims (for reasons we have talked about earlier in this chapter).

The Triple Path worries less about unanswerable metaphysical questions like the nature of the soul, our fate after death, or future eternal rewards or punishments. In Matthew, Jesus says, “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”5 Triple Path adherents take Jesus at his word. We care more about the here and now than we do about abstract, indistinct, and indiscernible futures. We begin our approach to morality by seeking to do what is right because it is right, not because of some expected reward.

Some people might claim that good behavior is not enough, that you have to be baptized as a Christian or accept Jesus into your heart or adhere to some particular religion’s rites and beliefs. That may be true, but how can we prove it? Even if we could, how can we know which religion’s practices are right? The potential salvific value of most religions’ practices and sacred rites are usually claimed to be exclusive—you have to practice that religion, and only that religion, to be saved. If only the rituals of a certain religion provide salvation, then we are faced with the nearly impossible task of trying to sort through an almost endless number of religions and churches to figure out which one is right. It is far more sensible to focus on moral living and seeking a direct connection to God. If salvific rites, membership in a certain religion, or having the right beliefs were what God really required of us to receive salvation, I cannot help wondering if he would have made it clearer and easier to figure out which were the right ones. It makes far more sense that all of these are inventions of men helping us in our quest to draw closer to God and understand our place in the universe.

The Triple Path teaches that we should be humble about what we know, or what we think we know. We should retain as much as we can of our traditions, but we should also never be afraid to change our beliefs in the face of new evidence, proven discoveries, and better information.

At the same time, even in our modern age, we need not limit religion to being just an empirically-based, scientific undertaking. Finding beauty and meaning in life are important too. Some of the most important parts of religion are how it helps us cultivate a sense of wonder and peace; an understanding of our human frailties and imperfections; resilience and meaning in the face of tragedy and suffering; and a respect for the mysteries of the universe.

Human reason and rationality are responsible for the amazing advances in our culture, knowledge, and standards of living. But our brains are finite and surprisingly predisposed to irrationality. What this means is that all of us—even the most intelligent and rational among us—have hidden biases and predispositions that we cannot perceive. This human trait affects the brains of both religious believers and non-believers alike.

Following the Triple Path means trying to clarify your thinking and act more rationally, but also means having humility about your conclusions and beliefs, not losing sight of the importance of feelings and human relationships, and showing ultimate respect and reverence for the divine.

The Codex

In the Creeds, Rites, and Practices section of this book, you will find occasional references to something called the Codex, which is another book that will be a companion volume to this one. The Codex will apply the symbolic approach to continue cherishing and learning from the legendary and mythological stories of our culture (without necessarily believing any of those stories to be literally true) by collecting them into one place—stories from the Bible, Greco-Roman and Germanic myths, and medieval legends. The Codex is still only in very rough draft form. You can find the latest draft at TriplePath.org/Codex.

Theism

If the Triple Path rejects failed ancient cosmologies, then why still believe in God?

Current scientific models give us tremendous insight into how the universe began and how it works, and into the origins of mankind. These models, however, also have significant gaps and cannot explain the root cause of many scientific observations. Why did the Big Bang happen? How and why do the fundamental forces work? How and why do the elementary particles exist? How did consciousness evolve? What is consciousness? We at best have only incomplete answers to these questions.

These gaps and unanswered questions leave room for belief in things that exist beyond the material world we perceive. The unanswered questions of science are “known unknowns”—they are things that we know that we do not know. These known unknowns already leave room open for the possibility of belief.

But it would be wise to have the epistemological humility to also recognize the possibility of “unknown unknowns”—things that we do not even know that we do not know. The inherent limitations of our senses, our scientific instruments, and our brains leave open the possibility that there are realities beyond what we can perceive and measure—things we are incapable of even understanding. Indeed, it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God as He is often described in the monotheistic faiths: an invisible, all-powerful, all-knowing being who is present everywhere.

Having this epistemological humility leaves still greater room, even for the most rationally minded person, to believe in the existence of God.

With that room left open for belief, though, the question still remains, why believe? Many people do so after their own personal encounter with the divine. We will talk more about that in a moment, but there are other reasons for believing in God as well. Like William James, you can root it in pragmatic concerns. Just as there is a relationship between well-being and religiosity, there is also a relationship between belief in God and well-being, both physical and mental. People who believe in God are healthier, happier, live longer, and act more morally. As with the research on religiosity, the evidence is compelling. Once again, if you have any doubt, please turn right now to the next chapter on page 29, for a longer discussion (including many references to peer-reviewed academic journals).

Based on what we can measure about belief in God, deciding on theism makes sense. If the question of God’s existence is fundamentally unprovable, but belief in Him brings such positive results, then the rational response is to believe in God.

Yet, the world’s major religions often teach very different things about God. Looking more granularly, conceptions and definitions of God are almost as varied as the number of individuals holding them. How can we meaningfully discuss the question of God’s existence and His characteristics if we do not even have a coherent definition of what He is? Indeed, people with mutually contradictory belief systems claim the same sorts of spiritual, divine feelings as confirmation of the truth of their beliefs about God.

So what does this mean? It might mean that there is one true religion and all the rest are false (and thus that the spiritual experiences of those religions’ members are false). Or, it might mean that there is no God. The Triple Path favors a different explanation.

Its explanation is twofold: first, that we human beings are not very good at hearing God and understanding Him. As Paul says in the Bible, “we see through a glass, darkly”.6 Second, we believe that God wants us to figure many things out for ourselves.

We believe that it is impossible to fully define God with words. Each person must experience God for themself—this is each person’s right, and solemn responsibility. It is your right and responsibility. It is less important to define God with much precision than it is to personally encounter Him and thus come to a greater understanding of Him for yourself.

The Triple Path’s conception of God is best described as Theistic Rationalism. We believe that rationalism and religion can be compatible—we can commune and communicate with God, but He puts us in control of our actions, and thus also responsible for their consequences.

We pray to God to express our gratitude, goals, and desires. Maybe we even pray for miracles, but we believe that the outcomes of our life are usually the result of our actions, natural laws, random chance, and the choices of others. We thus believe that bad things happen for the same reasons.

Our simple belief in God leaves open many questions about life, existence, and the supernatural. Those questions are important, but no one appears to have found any good, definitive answers to them yet. The lack of those certain answers is not a reason to reject the good that comes from believing in God and practicing religion. A parable from Buddhist scripture helps explains why. This is my adaption of it:

A man was shot with a poisoned arrow. As he lay injured, his family and friends brought a doctor to him to remove the arrow and administer an antidote for the poison.

The man stopped the doctor, saying, “I will not have this arrow removed until I know the surgical technique to be used; until I know whether he who wounded me was wealthy or poor, well-liked or unpopular, sane or crazy, powerful or impotent. I will not have it removed until I know the name of he who wounded me; until I know whether he was tall or short, dark or pale, blond or brunette; until I know whether his eyes were blue, brown, green, or gray; until I know his city, state, and country; until I know the language he speaks; until I know whether the bow firing the arrow that wounded me was a long bow or a crossbow; until I know whether the bowstring was made of natural or artificial fibers; until I know whether the arrow’s shaft was wood, bamboo, reed, aluminum, or carbon fiber.”

His family begged him to at least receive an injection of the antidote.

He said, “I will not receive an antidote to the poison until I know whether the poison is natural or synthetic; until I know whether it is acid or base; until I know whether it is neurotoxic, carcinogenic, or radioactive; until I know how much poison has entered my bloodstream; until I know the lethal dosage of the poison; until I know the chemical formula of the antidote; and until I know the amount to be administered to me.”

The man died and all those things about which he had questioned still remained unknown to him. Indeed, for those around him with the tools to save him—his family, friends, and doctor—the answers to many of his questions were as much mysteries to them as they were to him. And even for the answers they did have, there was not enough time to explain them before the arrow and poison killed him.7

Rationalism, empiricism, and pragmatic concerns are important, but so are the subjective and emotional side of things. Religion, God, and tradition add color and meaning to life. They can bring happiness and a feeling of connection to something greater than yourself.

Our time on this earth is limited. Even if we do not understand what they mean or how they work, it makes little sense to reject religion, God, and the traditions of our forefathers if they can help us be better, do better, and find meaning. Do not worry so much about getting the answers to all of life’s questions right away—there are more important things to focus on first. Instead, worry about removing the poisoned arrows of selfishness, hypocrisy, ignorance, foolishness, evil, and lazy despair from your life. The evidence shows that religion and God can help you do that. And that is good enough.

So, read on and learn about the Triple Path. Try following it. Test its fruits for yourself. Come back to religion and God.

Footnotes

1. Richard Sosis and Candace Alcorta, “Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: the evolution of religious behavior”, Evolutionary Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 6, Nov. 2003, pp. 266-68.

2. See Hope 3:17 on page 274 (paraphrased from Jordan Peterson).

3. See Hope 3:2 on page 273 (paraphrased from Jordan Peterson).

4. Adherents of each of these religions would probably say they follow these rules because God commanded it, not because of some purpose related to signaling or group identity, but most adherents to these religions would probably also acknowledge that these rules are not universal moral laws binding on people outside their faith. For example, Mormons who own food service businesses often serve coffee and alcohol, including in the City Creek Center mall in downtown Salt Lake City, which is directly owned by the Mormon Church. This is a strong sign that the rules’ principle roles are not moral, but have something to do with group identity and membership itself.

5. Matthew 6:34 (NRSV).

6. 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).

7. See Parable 4, The Poisoned Arrow, on page 307, paraphrased from Cula Malunkyovada Sutta, The Shorter Instructions to Malun­kya.