Old Time Religion
February 11, 2010 4 Comments
I grew up in a religious household and while not the strictest, there were a few things that were very clear to me early on. I needed be sorry for my sins and accept Jesus into my heart if I didn’t want to end up in fiery pits of hell at the end of my life. Salvation was never a sure thing; sometimes re-commitment of one’s life to Christ was required. I was re-committing on an almost yearly basis by the age of ten. Lying, stealing, swearing, cheating and masturbation were wrong. At the very least, you shouldn’t get caught doing them. Drunkenness, drug use, pre- and extra-marital sex were exceptionally wrong. Violence was only a big deal outside of the house and no one was going to call you out on anger. But we could dance.
When I was fifteen my parents became missionaries and I went off to this missionary run boarding school in Kenya. The school catered to many different Protestant denominations of Christianity and the code of conduct for the students was at the more conservative end of the spectrum. I believe that it was in 11th grade that dating couples were finally allowed to hold hands—nothing more. And the discovery of sexual activity was enough to get you expelled when I attended. Passing Bible class was mandatory if you wanted to graduate with what was called a “college prep” diploma. I’m not even sure what the other kind of diploma would do to your life. Were you doomed to vocational schools? I have no idea—I passed Bible with flying colours.
After times like Spiritual Emphasis Week (a week of extra sermons and altar calls and whatnot), there would be open talk in the dorms about what we were going to do differently after our latest epiphanies. I remember having a conversation with one girl about how wrong masturbation was; I’d always felt like it had to be wrong but there was never any compelling Biblical evidence. Somehow this conversation cleared it all up—full stop, no more of that.
At this school, there was no dancing.
A week and a month after graduation, I moved to Toronto and was consumed with the goal of finding a church. And boy, did I ever. I’m going to leave the inflammatory language out of this, but let’s just say the environment was less than healthy. While we paid lip service to the idea of grace, it was all about the works. How many people have you invited to church; how many people are you doing Bible studies with; is everyone in your family group having their time in the morning with the Jesus; is everyone in your group giving as much money as they can; and on and on. It was like being a low level administrator in a puny dictatorship.
It was during this time that my ideas about Christians and non-Christians really crystallized. We didn’t swear, didn’t cheat, and didn’t lie (even when telling the truth was cruel, unusual and pointless); we didn’t get drunk, we didn’t masturbate, we didn’t have sex until we were married, we shared our faith constantly and we were always about the business of getting people saved. And we danced.
And non-Christians—well they were the opposite, but they danced too.
Now I’m agnostic and I am pretty much the opposite of what I thought a Christian to be. I cuss like a sailor, I lie if I think it’s the best thing to do (read: when I need to cover my ass), I masturbate when feeling led, I have sex if I want to, I get drunk sometimes, I have no faith to share and I don’t think anyone is going to hell. I don’t really cheat though—I’m pathological about fairness. And I dance.
In my continuing journey on the path of not-sure-about-godness, I’ve met or reconnected with a lot of really wonderful people who are Christians. But their lives probably more closely resemble my life now than my life before. And it confuses the hell out of me. I met a Muslim fellow recently who won’t drink or smoke or do pot anymore, but he was happy to sleep with me. He confuses me too. I know this used to make perfect sense to me—that you picked and chose what parts of your holy book, be it the Quran or the Bible, you would adhere to. And there was this feeling that you were picking and choosing exactly how God wanted you to—so that you really weren’t picking at all. But now it just seems like such a ludicrous idea.
What people take and leave is the product of their upbringing, their own faults and weaknesses, their social group and that seems so subjective to me as to make it pointless to try to label this as a religion. With all that being brought to bear on one’s beliefs, the Bible seems almost incidental. It’s like this rule book you have around to keep you from doing something really bad that you weren’t going to do anyway.
On a certain level I kind of respect the fundamentalist behaviour of Orthodox Jews or really traditional Christian sects in which woman still wear long skirts and cover their heads. There’s something sort of refreshingly ‘out there’ about faith that is so…out there; this faith that doesn’t allow them to blend into the main stream. There’s an intensity to it that just demands respect. I am reminded of Revelation 3:15-16: I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. I used to live in mortal fear of being lukewarm (though I suspect I must have been since I was miserable). I have to say that most Christianity to me, as practiced, appears pretty lukewarm.
I read a Facebook post recently by someone I used to know from high school. In it she made some pretty ‘out there’ comments about women and their role as per the Bible and how the world was working against that. Do I want to have coffee with her? No. Do I have to give her props for kind of not giving a shit about what anyone might think of her beliefs, no matter how far afield of the centre? Yes. On the other hand, do I want anyone who thinks like her having any say in the law of the land as it pertains to my body and specifically my womb? Balls, no. On a political level, at least, I see the argument for not espousing extremism; or at least keeping church and state an ocean apart.
I have no great desire to see all my Christian friends turn into holy rollers. I don’t think we’d be friends much longer. As it is, they accept me for who I am, with my beliefs and confusion and anger about religion and what it seems to do to people, and I’m grateful for that. Maybe I just wish they’d take credit for being good people all on their own.
Is~ While I look back and consider you to be one of my favorite people at the boarding school we attended together, I don’t think I ever spent enough time getting to know you. I could apologize.. but that sounds trite to me. So, I’ll say, if you have time now, I’ll just rectify it with actions instead of words.
I still believe in God, although He doesn’t look like what I thought He did when I was younger.
I think you summed up many of today’s churches perfectly with, “It was like being a low level administrator in a puny dictatorship.” Its sad to me that all too often that is how things are run. Also, I admire your courage and willingness to call it what it is, in your experience.
Thats all for now.. I’ll get my head around the rest of my thoughts…
Hey Chandra,
This response is only 3 months late but better late than never right! There is zero need to apologize for not having been my BFF in high school–I think the really funny and amazing thing about the entity that is Facebook is the opportunity it provides to really, truly discover people for the first time–even though you’ve known of them for years. It’s been super neat to get to know some of the folks I wasn’t close to back in the religious boarding school years, including yourself. So of course there’s time for us to be friends now; I’d say I’m much cooler now anyway!
Your comment seemed to make a clear distinction between God and church and those are actually two very difficult things for me to separate. I think that for a long time I was part of something in which it was the intent to collapse those two concepts and so now it’s really hard for me to pull them apart and believe in God without having to deal with church and the Bible for that matter. I feel like it would be dishonest–like I was cheating somehow–taking all the warm, fuzzy creator stuff without the bad, horrible, church and Bible stuff. But it does give me food for thought.
Thanks for your comment!
Is,
I don’t know how much cooler I am now, but I am definitely more interesting because in the last *cough*15.5*cough* years, I have learned a lot about myself.
So I guess that is cooler than being a confused high school kid.
I’m glad to give you things to think about. That’s the only way to ever learn anything or see things from a different perspective, and sometimes, there is no greater gift.
The fact is, as He intended it, God and the church should be one and the same. The vision for His church was the be all the warm fuzzies delivered in His love and covered by His protection. However, we, as humans, are so far from perfect, there is no hope that His church will ever be what we’re meant to be, fully, until the second coming kicks all of our butts. So, for now, separating God with what the church shows itself to be is pretty important. You have to get to know one and then decide which of the others you can find Him in the most frequently.
The Bible, on its own, is inerrant because it is God’s Word and everything written therein came from His mouth, through a man. The interpretations, versions, perversions, etc.. aren’t His.
There’s a lot and I’m in a Theology class that has taught me more than anything I’ve ever experienced because I have had to face my own shortcomings as part of the church. Your original post and some sermons I heard worked together with God’s voice and I got slapped. It wasn’t fun, but I’ve thought about and learned a lot, which, see above comment, is awesome. I am still so far from perfect, its laughable that God would keep at it or even consider me His. That’s fine.. I learned never to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll take His mercy and grace and be thankful they are everlasting because we all know I can push the limits of anyone’s patience.
Some things never change.
I will still pray for you everyday. And it isn’t the type you’re used to, I’m sure. I won’t pray that you’ll see the error of your agnostic ways or that I will be the tool that God uses to somehow show you what you don’t see.
I will pray that you find Love and Peace and the all-important contentment. And, I will pray that I get to see you sooner rather than later and give you a hug.
Okay even if I ever come around to a belief in anything like God again, I really can’t see myself placing that sort of belief in the Bible as inerrant scripture or in the church as anything but a place of potentially positive community. I just don’t get how an omniscient being can create us, and then, knowing exactly what we’re like, hope such fallible beings will be able to follow this incredibly convoluted text as a means of living out love for him. The whole premise makes zero sense to me and I just think that if the premise doesn’t make sense when normal levels of brain power are applied to it, then maybe it really doesn’t make sense at all. It seems much more likely to me that the Bible is a mish mash of people’s attempts to explain their own experience.
My theory these days is that without the kind of emotional connection to religion that comes from long term belief or positive (or sometimes negative but redeeming) personal experiences, no one would believe in anything.
The funny thing about theology as a study is that I find it tends to galvanize belief for people of belief and galvanize disbelief for those feel that way! I took a fantastic course a few years ago about the beginnings of Christianity and that was exactly the effect in the class. It was fascinating.
But I appreciate your response and that you aren’t praying for me to see the error of my ways, but instead, for the universe to stop kicking me in the nads!