No More Religion, The Sequel

So I quit going to church, but I was still very much Christian. I was bolstered by exotic new ideas about the non-deity of Jesus (supplied by that friend I mentioned); that he was just a man infused with God's exotic spirit. This was exciting, and I took my time believing it. What if I was wrong? See, that's the primary concern of Christianity: being right. Despite the fact that Jesus never said that believing the correct cereal box back is what made you a good person, rather that bit about neighbors and love, Christianity is mainly concerned with making sure you have the right belief reduced to a mantra bullion. And man did I have the ammunition to prove them wrong.

Another formational book was Pagan Christianity, which confirmed what I had long suspected: that the church traditions I had participated in were actually the result of vestigial pagan practices woven in through Catholicism, administered IV drip style down through Orthodox and the infinitude of Protestant religions.

About this time I helped start a small house church. For those guys and gals I will be perpetually thankful, though I don't see most of them anymore. That period of church was probably the purest and most invigorating of all my church experiences. I don't really have a bad thing I could say about that time. But all good times must come to an end. The guy who hosted it left for college, and the rest of us couldn't seem to organize well enough to keep it alive. Que sera.

I became without church, but kept reading. I was sad that house church was gone, but I certainly wanted no part in Church more so than I had. I went back to college myself and began to read in earnest things about astronomy, evolution, the history of religion and things on paganism. One book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, rendered certain irrevocable changes within me. It discussed evolution in ways I'd never heard (the only ways I heard were the horribly retarded and inaccurate methods devised by American Christianity), and it made a lot of sense. It really seemed to explain in greater detail things that religion only chalked up to “fallen nature.” Mainly Daniel Quinn's books introduced the idea that a majority of the things we chalk up to Fallen Nature is simply man living in ways that don't compliment man's nature. It made so much sense. It was like a gong in the heart.

Around this time I also read History of God by Margaret Armstrong, who is one of the most gifted spiritual/theological writers I've ever read. Mainly it introduced with historical proof the notion that the Jews got God from El, the grand patriarch of the Syrian hierarchy, and gradually they became monotheistic. Having read that book and reading the traditions of Sufism and Kaballah, and even Gnosticism, I knew that my progressively more tenuous connection to Christianity was slipping. But I didn't go easy. I struggled, and boy howdy.

It became harder to know what was inevitably coming, and I didn't feel happy. Finally, one night I couldn't sleep, and I wrestled the last vestiges of Christianity, at least fundamental Christianity, out of me. I still feel essentially Christian, but I certainly don't follow any particular dogmatic. If anything, I've worked to become more centered and see things from as many angles as I can. I certainly think that man is living out of balance (Naqoyqatsi to steal from a movie and Hopi word), and I'm not sure what it' take to bring that balance back. But I do so hate stories that obsess over balances of whatever inane Disney concept we're throwing around.

I don't really live any less morally than I did before. I definitely feel better about things, and I feel like the world makes more sense without Dogma shouting in my ear. I feel way more comfortable as a sexual being now. Sometimes Wife feels unsettled by the directionless our new life brings, but I have never felt more excited. I'm an explorer charting the secret Jungian world. I don't have to qualify my thoughts anymore: this is what I think, but because I'm a Christian, this is what I have to think.

I do have a few admissions however. The first is that there are a few things I am unsure of. I definitely used to believe in a magical world, especially in that space where Jesus quit being God, and I learned that El was simply one of many gods. Now I'm not sure. Was it just a totally unique human mind back then? Something alien and unknowable by my standards now? A metaphorical way of viewing the world without dividing spirit and science? Were things different back then, and the things we think of as scientific constants are actually variable? There's evidence for all of that. I definitely don't believe that ancient humans writing profound texts were liars, making shit up because they needed an explanation. I think they were far more honest than that, and when they write something, it means that thing or something like it happened, whether it's really magic or a difference of looking at the world. Again, if magic really exist(s)ed.

I also had certain experiences that I feel are undeniable. Times when I knew things that I had no way of knowing at different times. Times when a small depression would be followed by strange dreams, knowledge, and incite. I can't really say if I experience those still or not. I've always had strange and inciteful dreams that tell me things about myself and my surroundings, things that I don't think I would have learned any other way. But nevertheless, some of these experiences I don't know how to qualify. Were they God? Is there some other process at work? Is there simply more capability in the brain than I think, and sometimes I touch that? It's hard to know.

I suppose that's the story. Few things irritate me more than people who are bitter and angry about religion because they themselves are no longer religious. I try not to be one of those people. Of course, if there's something worth being mad at – like the fact that four years after I simply left church I have yet to receive one phone call or one email, even from friends, about why – I'll be mad. But bitterness for bitterness' sake isn't a way to make friends.

This Post: 40 Total: 130/60,000 Minutes

No More Religion

I can't seem to write today. It's irritating. I have an idea I'm working on, and I worked on it yesterday and the day before and felt generally happy with it. It felt a little clunky, but I was going to work through that and finish it up. Sometimes I feel like ideas, creativity, inspiration are really outside of me and if I'm not fortunate enough to be sitting in the right space when they fly by, I'll be totally incapacitated. I think it's a good idea. Starts out more like fantasy, but ends up being kind of hard SciFi. I'll try to tackle it again tomorrow. Hopefully today's just an off day.

My friend over at Abraxas started his blog off with an explanation of his spiritual/religious evolution. I've wanted to do the same for awhile. It's been a big part of my life, and probably something I'll talk about on more than one occasion.

To start with, my family started going to a Christian church when I was ten. Before that, however, I had an assumed notion that there was a god of some kind. Contrast that with Ricky Gervais who says that he was an atheist by the time he was five years old. Do keep in mind, however, that Gervais has a lot of undeserved popularity and is generally a one hit one wonder kind of guy. The point is that what a person thinks in their earliest stages doesn't always mean much of anything, or really what anyone thinks at any point.

My relationship with church was always tenuous and inconsistent. God almighty is it boring. If God wants to learn me something, he couldn't do it in a more stimulating way? I always found reasons to miss church, whether it was helping to watch little kids, or finding some reason to just wander around. I would often find some (crappy) book in the church's (crappy) library and read that as some kind of distraction. As I got older I got more into church, at least the heady intellectual bits. I would always try to be interested during the sermons, but I always felt like I would get more out of it and enjoy it more if I were reading it. And sitting somewhere comfortable.

Church was always this double edged sword that swayed wildly from side to side. On one end there are friends and acceptance. And when that side was up, I tended to really enjoy church. At least the part that had to do with friends. So really, I just enjoyed friends, and in these instances they happened to be at church. For awhile I played bass for church, and I really enjoyed that (though the music did suck) because the piano player was amazing and a covert smartass. She showed me a lot about music (which I'm sure I've forgotten in more recent years). Overall though, it gave me something to do that felt like it actually mattered, even though I always hated worship. People always told that heaven was sitting around worshipping God for eternity and I'd think, “Fuck! My choices are eternal pain or eternal boredom?”

When that blade was down, which was more frequent as I got older, chuch meant frustration, self hate, boredom, and inadequacy. I was always being reminded about how much of a fuck up I was. The two that seemed to come up most were “impure thoughts,” and worship (fucking worship!). The first one seems ridiculous in retrospect, but is it ever a big deal in the church. Here I am, a guy in my teens, and I've made it my life's mission to see boobs. As dumb as it is, that's the nature of teens. All of them. Not just guys, but girls are just as fascinated by sex although various sources will try to convince you otherwise. But goddamn could I not think of anything else. Sometimes it would get irritating that I felt incapacitated by it, but more irritating is the church's reaction. You're vilified for something that is hormonally natural. It's disgusting, immoral, unnatural, and perverse that you, a 14/15/16/17/18 year old man would want to have sex. What's wrong with you? That was an awful self-loathing spiral. One that has only been remedied by an absence of church.

But I can understand why they try to vilify it so much: it's so hard to handle, and sex really is more dangerous than we're inclined to think. It's in the interest of protection. I truly believe that. The problem is when the best advice you can muster is to simply ignore it. Applying a standard to address a problem without ever fixing it.

The second thing was worship. A lot of religion is so keyed into emotional reaction. If you're not having an emotional reaction, you're doing it wrong. I hated worship, and I would always argue against it for a variety of reasons: the music is too simple (I've always loved complexity); the lyrics are insipid, insubstantial, and infantile; it doesn't provoke a reaction within me; there are other ways to worship (something I still believe); I feel like I'm honoring God more with the use of my intellect or skill; I can have a worship reaction to secular music, so doesn't that invalidate this church crap? They would always get shot down. My two favorites: “Well, the music has to be simple to appeal to the greatest number of people,” and, “Worship is about supplying those feelings even when you don't have them to show your earnestness to God.” God likes simpletons and liars best. If honesty and complexity are your bag, sorry. No dice.

But at least I did worship so that I felt like I was actually doing something as opposed to simply sitting in a congregation trying to have a God orgasm through music. Even then, they started to harp on me for trying to do too much. Which I probably was. Afterall, it is simple music.

Around this time, I started reading things written by people of the church, but that started to move me in some very unchurch ways. One book called Why Men Hate Church kept hitting me right in that sweet spot that I couldn't believe it. This guy was so on. But inevitably, when you showed it to women, their reactions were almost always something like, “I could never trust a guy that was this mercurial,” or, “These guys just need to grow up.” Essentially, the book said that women derived the most comfort from the church setup while guys felt stifled or brow beaten by it. Women didn't like me trying to take their house apart.

For so long I was afraid I'd have to marry a boring inane church girl.

I had been going to church something like four or more times a week. Not every time was for something churchy exactly. It was between two different churches, and sometimes it'd be a game night where we'd play card/board/video games and watch movies. Again: friends. Around this time, however, the friends thing began to falter. I had one really good friend who was Christian, but decidedly outside of church (the coward has since moved back into that ridiculous fold), the rest who I'd known for a decade or more in some instances began floating away from me. Secret girlfriends, secret rendezvous, secret housemates, secret everything. The final straw is when they did the camping thing without me, despite the fact that I'd been in on all the planning. I woke up one morning to get to church early for bass practice, and thought, “Fuck it. Everything I've done for church, and all I get to feel is exhausted and lonely.” And with that I quit going to church. And I felt great. And I've never felt quite as awful as when I was going to church all those times. A week.

This Post: 40 Total: 90/60,000 Minutes