Why, I'm glad you asked.
I'll start things off contextually. I went to church pretty much every Sunday until I was sixteen. After that I got a job, and working Sunday mornings meant I had to get a bit blasphemous on the sabbath. Luckily the church I went to was United, and about as far away from the reigning first impression you get of Christianity, like beautiful Catholic cathedrals, evangelists and Conservatives screaming about how God hates fags, and well, you know . . . the pedophilia. No, my church was much more of a community thing. It was less about God and more about getting out of the house on Sundays. It was about gentle old folks commenting about how they've watched you grow up from a little tyke over the years. It was about getting to see your cousins and some other friends you wouldn't see otherwise. We often had female ministers and never had any crazy clergy limitations. During my confirmation (the official "act" of joining the church community) our minister took us on a weekend trip to a Synogue, a Mosque, a Hindu Temple, and a few other places to show us that religion and spirituality were not limited to one set of beliefs. All-in-all, it was a really positive experience.
And then the other Christians had to go ruin it for the rest of us.
I lost a lot of faith in the institution of religion once I moved away from my humble small town and saw what existed beyond the quaint little community I'd grown up in. The notion of "religion" that I was used to turned out to be very different than the majority of others; in retrospect, I was pretty lucky to have had as good an experience as I did. I lost my faith in the institution of religion when I started seeing people proclaiming that God hated homosexuals. I lost my faith when I heard stories of religious parents insisting that their teen daughter's pregnancy - a result of rape - was God's punishment for her having been raped in the first place. I lost it when I heard protestors at abortion clinics harassing people they had never met out of some misguided sense of moral superiority.
That was not the religion I grew up with, and it was something I struggled with a lot. One of my biggest qualms was (and still is) with the sheer number of absolute morons who proclaim to be devote Christians while outright shunning the most basic tenants of their dogma. Fun Fact Folks: if you're Christian, you should never be muttering the words "God hates . . ." because if you are, you're reading the wrong part of the Bible. For those unfamiliar, the Good Book is broken into two sections: Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament was when God was a bit temperamental and didn't think twice about casual genocide if He was having a bad day. The New Testament, meanwhile, chronicles the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, Superstar. If you're a Christian and you follow any tenants of the Old Testament (like our homophobic friends who are so found of quoting Leviticus) then congratulations, you're doing it wrong. The teachings of Christ were meant to supersede all the Old Testament stuff (sorta puts the "Christ" in "Christianity"). It's what turned "an eye for an eye" into "turn the other cheek." In other words, if you're actually a devote Christian, you should only be following the tenants set forth by Jesus Christ, who never hated on anyone. In fact, he loved everyone and had a soft spot for sinners, so if your version of Christianity involves hating on others, well . . . fail.
That was a bit off topic, but it's a point I'm fond of making because it just goes to show how much of a chasm there is between what is actually decreed and the way people choose to interpret it. My crisis of faith began long before all that though. My mother will attest that when I was younger (somewhere in the eight-to-ten age range) I would literally be kept up at night by the grand philosophical questions. I would talk for what seemed like hours with my mom because I just wanted to understand the biggest questions regarding death, God, and the vastness of the universe. My mother (bless her) did her best to try and qualm my fears. And I say "fears" quite literally, because it was these sorts of questions (in particular, wondering what happens to us when we die) that kept me up at night, scared out of my tiny little mind.
I grew up skeptical, to say the least, and it's a skepticism that has stayed with me my entire life. I could never accept the Biblical representation of God. I could never understand how a being that was supposed to be so utterly incomprehensible could show such strangely human quirks and emotions, like jealousy. Four of the Ten Commandments regard making sure that you respect only the God and no others. Sounds a bit excessive to me. Of course the understanding of this came later in life after studying the old religions, in particular the Greeks and the Romans, who often represented their gods as humans too. The Christian God is no different, just slightly updated for the new era. The simple fact is that God did not fashion mankind in His image, but rather mankind fashioned God (and most deities) in our image, which is why He/they always behave strangely human.
In my opinion, the Bible is not something to ever be taken literally. At best it is a collection of stories that serve as a rudimentary guide to morality, and most of its notions are pretty good: be a good person, love one another . . . these are things you don't have to be religious to get behind. But there's also a lot of really fucked up stuff in the Bible too, so again, it's best to take it all with a grain of salt.
Which is why I would say I'm not religious, but I would say I am spiritual. To me, there is a world of difference. My beliefs and notions of faith do not conform to a set category of dogmatic guidelines. If I did try and categorize my beliefs, it would probably fall somewhere between Agnosticism and Buddhism. I don't necessarily believe in the concept of a God, but I do choose to hope in the possibility of something bigger and more complex existing in the universe. I am fascinated by the possibilities and wonder that might exist beyond the scope of human understanding and comprehension - things like karma, fatalism, hell . . . even aliens. One if my books revolves around the concept that anyone - even the most average of humans - could with time, patience, and discipline (as well as a few fantastical plot elements) achieve a state of divinity that could be considered god-like, because there is the potential and capacity in all of us for both great good and great evil.
Even something like love spurs my imagination. I know there is a chemical composition to love and there is a scientific explanation for how all the cogs in the brain operate to produce it, but to me, it still seems magical. Love can be this overwhelming force capable of reshaping lives, personalities, and destinies. True love can elevate individuals to a level of divine grace. There is the potential for such love and compassion within people that I can't help but romanticize it all a little.
But I've always been skeptical. One of the biggest qualms I (and many other people) have had with the notion of there being a single God is the justification for all the evil that occurs in the world. How could God be responsible for helping me find my keys, as well as be responsible for famine and murder? One of my high school teachers had a very interesting commentary on the matter. His faith died when he became a father, which sounds mighty goddamn depressing/comical, but he made a good point. To some, becoming a parent is the best thing in the world - the sort if thing that would normally affirm one's faith in the divine. But my teacher, he loved his kids so fiercely that the thought of anything ever happening to them was devastating and beyond comprehension. And more to the point, he knew there were people who had suffered through such trauma, and to him, no compassionate God would ever allow such a degree of hurt and sorrow to exist. I once attended a rally meant to raise awareness about missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada, and at the rally was a woman whose teenage daughter had recently been murdered. The absolute agony that she was in - the tears she shed and the guttural wails she made - could only make me think of one thing: "what kind of God would allow this?" There is a certain degree of privilege that comes with being religious; it's easy to remain rigidly devote and utter such phrases like "God has a plan" when you've never suffered a traumatic enough event to truly make you question your faith.
To me, notions of spirituality, religion, and faith are so personal that they should never be considered beyond the individual level. The fundamental truth of human existence is that no one, anywhere, has all the answers; we are such a feeble species that no single person has any right to think or act as if they understand all the complexities of life and the universe. This is a problem that I see cropping up with both the fundamentally religious and the fundamentally atheist. I have several atheist friends, and some of them are the most wonderful people I've ever met, and likewise I have several religious friends who are also wonderful people, but I cannot condone ever trying to force your beliefs about such personal matters onto others. I had a former friend who was staunchly atheist. We would argue and debate a lot about the subject. I was very stubborn, but only because I refused to submit to her ideology. I constantly explained that I had my own interpretation of spirituality that was unique to me and that I was happy with. This did not satisfy her. She spent hours trying to convince me that the belief in anything, whether God or karma or fatalism, was absolutely stupid and foolish, and anyone who believed in such things was automatically an idiot. She argued with a zealotry that I only ever saw evangelists argue with. This is not a condition that's unique to a category of people though; this is just a matter of ego, of people being convinced that their opinion (whether religious or atheist) is right no matter what.
That attitude rings of narcissism and immaturity to me. The only sort of response I will respect to queries about spirituality and faith begin along the lines of "personally, I believe . . ." because no one will ever have all the answers, and matters of faith and spirituality are so personal they should only ever be considered in privacy and quiet contemplation/civil discussions, and not in screaming matches with one side calling the other idiots while the other screams of damnation.
Exploring such fundamental questions of human existence should be fruitful and a healthy part of self-actualization. I would be skeptical of anyone who blindly follows something that they've read or been told. I have seen a disturbing number of atheists hold up the work of Richard Dawkins in the same way that I've seen evangelists hold up the work of religious texts. If you only believe in the best argument you've heard so far, then it's not your belief, it's another person's that you've adopted. Everyone should be willing to think for themselves about such matters instead of blindly accepting what they have been taught growing up or convinced by others. I truly dislike labels like Christian, Agnostic, or Atheist, because there is such a complexity to human interpretation and understanding of these matters. As we've seen, two people can have wildly different interpretations of what it means to be "Christian."
To me, religion/spirituality is both immensely personal and utterly insignificant. If I ever get married and my future wife decides she would like our kids raised a particular faith/non-faith, that's fine by me (so long as it's not rigidly fundamental; I want my kids to be able to think for themselves, not swallow whatever is force-fed to them). And in a perfect world, people would be free to believe whatever they choose and everyone else would respect that.
Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world, so I'll close by saying I personally hope the members of the Westboro Baptist Church burn in hell.
I relate with so much of what you said on many levels, but this post is so dense it's hard for me to specify. I especially liked the line:
ReplyDelete"To me, notions of spirituality, religion, and faith are so personal that they should never be considered beyond the individual level."
Thanks for sharing.