Villager and author Jim Royster offered a new way of looking at religion in a presentation Monday at the Savannah Center to The Villages Civil Discourse Club.
Instead of accepting or rejecting conventional religion, Royster said it can be accepted and reinterpreted.
Royster, a former professor who studied theology, is the author of Have This Mind, published in April by Balboa Press. He said the book, which explores these concepts, took him 27 years to write.
“What conventional religion tries to avoid among its members is doubt,” he said. “Doubt leads to expanded truth.”
Royster said he planned to become a minister before his doubts arose. But instead of rejecting religion entirely and becoming an atheist, he chose to embrace it in a new way.
“I continue to look at myself as a Christian despite the fact that I don’t believe a single thing I was taught as a child,” he said. “Most belief is little more than familiarity. Our humanness requires us to be continaully venturing into the unknown.”
Royster lived in India and made several trips there, where he learned about the Asian approach to spirituality. He also lived in Kenya.
He said human consciousness is the underpinning of religion.
“Consciousness is what we are and religion derives from consciousness,” Royster said. “We would not know there is a physical world if it were not for consciousness.”