Auf Wiedersehen
This morning was my last Sunday at church. To a certain extent, there's a bit of nostalgia attached to leaving; I've been attending pretty regularly (whether on Sunday or Wednesday) since I was eight years old. I've got friends there, and there are lots of memories attached to the buildings. I haven't been going to Sunday service for nearly a year, though, because it started becoming very detrimental to my faith. I would disagree with what was said and how so strongly that I would start to feel claustrophobic and defiant, uncomfortable with the thought that I was associating myself with this type of religion. It's been a long time since I've felt like anyone there is very much like me. I don't think the way they do, I don't feel the way they do, I don't live the way they do. My disillusionment just kept growing until I no longer felt comfortable in services and would excuse myself to the bathroom or walk outside to cool down and pray. That seemed like a rather counter-productive way of doing church.
If you've read my blog, you're familiar with the process I went through a bit more than a year ago where I rejected the whole of Christianity and jumped back in again in ten days. As traumatizing and stressful as it was, it was also a very healthy exercise for me. I doubt I've ever been closer to God, and I look back on that time as a very purifying and sobering time for me. The crux of that issue was the problem of miracles: I couldn't find a way to accept that Jesus actually performed miracles or rose from the dead because scientific evidence weighs so heavily to the elimination of those ideas as live hypotheses. That crisis resolved when 1) I considered all the evidence to the contrary - huge numbers of witness testimony, the Shroud of Turin, the way all the disciples were totally freaked and unbelieving until they saw the man himself - 2) I realized that so much of what I already knew to be true about the Spirit was revealed outright in the Bible that I have sufficient reason to suspend my disbelief about the veracity of miracles, and 3) I went into further study about how freaking complex the Bible is and how unlikely it would be for Jesus to be as he is and do what he did if something abnormal weren't going on.
And so, padded with a great deal of humility, suspension of disbelief, and reasoned agnosticism, I dove back into the Christian faith. Over the course of the next year, I gradually came to realize that just as it's impossible to know how miracles and the resurrection happened - meaning that at the act's core, no one knows precisely what's being celebrated as miraculous - it's also impossible to know what it means for Jesus to have been God incarnate. I'm not going to say that he was completely human, or completely divine, or not actually flesh but only spirit, or a demi-god, or a special messenger, or a prophet. I'm going to say that what Jesus claimed was that he was sent from God, that he was the fulfillment of prophesies (John 5), that he did not like and disagreed with the religious people of his day, that people could find life through him, and he used the "I AM," indicating that he was in some way one with God. I can't make any judgments about what Jesus actually meant or what his relationship with or to God actually was, because we haven't been given that information, and I haven't experienced what he did. I have no way of understanding him.
This morning in church, the sermon was about everything non-Christians tend to hate about Christians, in line with the research done in the book unChristian. The list of reasons goes something like this:
1) Christians are hypocritical
2) They only care about people because they want to convert/save them
3) They're anti-gay
4) They're sheltered
5) They're too political
6) They're judgmental
I smirked a little sitting there hearing these things, because they're very standard issues, and the whole room seemed a bit burdened by the heads-up. Besides the political bit - I don't really get involved in politics - those are all the reasons I've been uncomfortable with the church myself. The pastor was obviously preaching to a target audience of like-minded people, but I found myself in an awkward position on the other side of the fence. An outsider. Disillusioned, annoyed, restless, waiting for something to be proven. It felt like being a spy in the enemy's debriefing after a lost battle. I felt my stomach sink lower and lower as the sermon went on, struggling not to laugh or let my jaw drop. The responses that came looked something like this:
1) Sure, we're hypocritical sometimes, but everyone is, and we're trying not to be.
2) We don't ONLY care about that part, but sure, saving you is the most important part. Why is that a bad thing? We're trying to save you from eternal torment.
3) We're not just anti-homosexual, we're anti-sin, and that happens to be a sin.
4) Come on, give us a chance. This isn't even such a huge criticism.
5) Some of us are, but not most of us.
6) Everyone judges. We're sorry and we're trying to work on it.
I wish I'd had time to discuss these points with him afterward, because the response to #4 in particular irked me. "It's not such a huge deal for the Church to be sheltered." Does the pursuit of truth mean anything at all? Do we even believe in a God of truth? The whole of academia has been turning against religion because it's come off so anti-truth and pro-shelter. People on the radio dream hopefully of a day when people will be open-minded enough that religion will no longer exist. Christianity is seen, by a huge number of people, as the largest opposition to rationality and mental sobriety in our culture. Of couse this is a big deal. Christian shelteredness is at the root of all these other problems. Without a willingness to be open-minded and consider arguments and evidences objectively, it becomes very easy to lose self-awareness and become hypocritical and judgmental and politically-bigoted. If you have no exposure to other peoples and cultures and ways of thinking, of course you're going to be 30 years behind the times in terms of human psychology and anthropology, and of course you're going to gravitate towards the objectification of non-Christian people. Not a big deal? This is the singularly greatest reason I am so freaking ashamed to identify to myself as "Christian."
I - I, personally, Marie Dippenaar - am completely incapable of sustaining faith in this type of environment. People have told me that at some point I need to stop trying to defend and understand everyone and just say I disagree with them; this is one instance where I can't help but comply. I do believe that once I'm officially standing outside of all of this, I will be able to step back and more kindly appreciate all the good conservative Christianity does and all the ways it does reflect God. I feel a strong sense of responsibility not to hate these people or that church, because I like them and they have every right to believe what they do and a great number of them have such authentic faiths. But I, personally, grow sick and disturbed and judgmental in that place.
I am sick of trying to identify with people that claim that everyone that can't bring themselves to the same conclusions they did in their pursuit of truth will be burning in a pit of infinite torment for eternity after this life. I am sick of constantly being around people that use faith as their justification to condemn others' faiths. I am sick of feeling as though my relationship to God - which remains in its substance very much as it was before I was a Christian, although I've certainly grown and learned - is being condemned every time Christians judge people outside the mainstream Church. I find it so completely ironic that this sermon was intended to respond to criticism - it has most certainly strengthened mine. It feels as though I should offer up an apostrophe of thanks that it was laid out for me so clearly, in six neat points, exactly why I detest this church my last Sunday before leaving.
The dilema I face as I move forward is as follows: there is so much about Christianity that is reflective of the God I know that I can't bring myself to leave. But Jesus himself does not consistently display behavior that people would call "Christlike." Jesus' behavior was not particularly respectful; it was not upbuilding; it was not sustainable. It was revolutionary. I just completed a three week-long intensive study on the way one should handle controversy in religious communities, and Jesus' way of doing it was practically begging for martyrdom. All I see when I read John is a very spiritual man that got very frustrated with contemporary religious authorities for not understanding him that committed a very powerful symbolic act. What does it mean to be "Christlike" when your "Christ" (intentionally?) martyred himself? For me, it means to emulate his sacrifice. To give yourself to people, to donate your body and blood, all your work, all your efforts, your emotion and intellect and talents and strengths, to the promotion of life. To fighting stagnancy. And to fight religion, for heaven's sake - that's what Jesus did. To love like God loves, to try to connect to God as closely as Jesus did.
What does "substitutionary atonement" mean but the abolishment of guilty feelings? I don't live in a rule-based ethical paradigm. I don't care about my salvation and damnation, I've given my life - both now and forever, if "forever" exists - to God. I trust the Spirit of Peace with my fate. The crucifixion means nothing to me if all it is is an Advance To Go pass. Sure, maybe, somehow, by some unimaginable spiritual mechanism I'll never understand, Jesus died to save me from my sins. I don't give a flying fuck. What does that mean for me? The thought that keeps the crucifixion from decaying to crucifiction in my life is the call to eat that bread and drink that wine, remembering him and feeling a genuine desire to lay my own existence down for others in response. Jesus was trying to start something. He didn't mean the story had ended when he said "It is finished." Jesus was progressive. I know God's pushing me to be the same. Jesus loved those at the bottom. I know that in this day and age there is no one that isn't at the bottom by someone's standards. Jesus was not this Church. I do not intend to prolong my stay.
If you've read my blog, you're familiar with the process I went through a bit more than a year ago where I rejected the whole of Christianity and jumped back in again in ten days. As traumatizing and stressful as it was, it was also a very healthy exercise for me. I doubt I've ever been closer to God, and I look back on that time as a very purifying and sobering time for me. The crux of that issue was the problem of miracles: I couldn't find a way to accept that Jesus actually performed miracles or rose from the dead because scientific evidence weighs so heavily to the elimination of those ideas as live hypotheses. That crisis resolved when 1) I considered all the evidence to the contrary - huge numbers of witness testimony, the Shroud of Turin, the way all the disciples were totally freaked and unbelieving until they saw the man himself - 2) I realized that so much of what I already knew to be true about the Spirit was revealed outright in the Bible that I have sufficient reason to suspend my disbelief about the veracity of miracles, and 3) I went into further study about how freaking complex the Bible is and how unlikely it would be for Jesus to be as he is and do what he did if something abnormal weren't going on.
And so, padded with a great deal of humility, suspension of disbelief, and reasoned agnosticism, I dove back into the Christian faith. Over the course of the next year, I gradually came to realize that just as it's impossible to know how miracles and the resurrection happened - meaning that at the act's core, no one knows precisely what's being celebrated as miraculous - it's also impossible to know what it means for Jesus to have been God incarnate. I'm not going to say that he was completely human, or completely divine, or not actually flesh but only spirit, or a demi-god, or a special messenger, or a prophet. I'm going to say that what Jesus claimed was that he was sent from God, that he was the fulfillment of prophesies (John 5), that he did not like and disagreed with the religious people of his day, that people could find life through him, and he used the "I AM," indicating that he was in some way one with God. I can't make any judgments about what Jesus actually meant or what his relationship with or to God actually was, because we haven't been given that information, and I haven't experienced what he did. I have no way of understanding him.
This morning in church, the sermon was about everything non-Christians tend to hate about Christians, in line with the research done in the book unChristian. The list of reasons goes something like this:
1) Christians are hypocritical
2) They only care about people because they want to convert/save them
3) They're anti-gay
4) They're sheltered
5) They're too political
6) They're judgmental
I smirked a little sitting there hearing these things, because they're very standard issues, and the whole room seemed a bit burdened by the heads-up. Besides the political bit - I don't really get involved in politics - those are all the reasons I've been uncomfortable with the church myself. The pastor was obviously preaching to a target audience of like-minded people, but I found myself in an awkward position on the other side of the fence. An outsider. Disillusioned, annoyed, restless, waiting for something to be proven. It felt like being a spy in the enemy's debriefing after a lost battle. I felt my stomach sink lower and lower as the sermon went on, struggling not to laugh or let my jaw drop. The responses that came looked something like this:
1) Sure, we're hypocritical sometimes, but everyone is, and we're trying not to be.
2) We don't ONLY care about that part, but sure, saving you is the most important part. Why is that a bad thing? We're trying to save you from eternal torment.
3) We're not just anti-homosexual, we're anti-sin, and that happens to be a sin.
4) Come on, give us a chance. This isn't even such a huge criticism.
5) Some of us are, but not most of us.
6) Everyone judges. We're sorry and we're trying to work on it.
I wish I'd had time to discuss these points with him afterward, because the response to #4 in particular irked me. "It's not such a huge deal for the Church to be sheltered." Does the pursuit of truth mean anything at all? Do we even believe in a God of truth? The whole of academia has been turning against religion because it's come off so anti-truth and pro-shelter. People on the radio dream hopefully of a day when people will be open-minded enough that religion will no longer exist. Christianity is seen, by a huge number of people, as the largest opposition to rationality and mental sobriety in our culture. Of couse this is a big deal. Christian shelteredness is at the root of all these other problems. Without a willingness to be open-minded and consider arguments and evidences objectively, it becomes very easy to lose self-awareness and become hypocritical and judgmental and politically-bigoted. If you have no exposure to other peoples and cultures and ways of thinking, of course you're going to be 30 years behind the times in terms of human psychology and anthropology, and of course you're going to gravitate towards the objectification of non-Christian people. Not a big deal? This is the singularly greatest reason I am so freaking ashamed to identify to myself as "Christian."
I - I, personally, Marie Dippenaar - am completely incapable of sustaining faith in this type of environment. People have told me that at some point I need to stop trying to defend and understand everyone and just say I disagree with them; this is one instance where I can't help but comply. I do believe that once I'm officially standing outside of all of this, I will be able to step back and more kindly appreciate all the good conservative Christianity does and all the ways it does reflect God. I feel a strong sense of responsibility not to hate these people or that church, because I like them and they have every right to believe what they do and a great number of them have such authentic faiths. But I, personally, grow sick and disturbed and judgmental in that place.
I am sick of trying to identify with people that claim that everyone that can't bring themselves to the same conclusions they did in their pursuit of truth will be burning in a pit of infinite torment for eternity after this life. I am sick of constantly being around people that use faith as their justification to condemn others' faiths. I am sick of feeling as though my relationship to God - which remains in its substance very much as it was before I was a Christian, although I've certainly grown and learned - is being condemned every time Christians judge people outside the mainstream Church. I find it so completely ironic that this sermon was intended to respond to criticism - it has most certainly strengthened mine. It feels as though I should offer up an apostrophe of thanks that it was laid out for me so clearly, in six neat points, exactly why I detest this church my last Sunday before leaving.
The dilema I face as I move forward is as follows: there is so much about Christianity that is reflective of the God I know that I can't bring myself to leave. But Jesus himself does not consistently display behavior that people would call "Christlike." Jesus' behavior was not particularly respectful; it was not upbuilding; it was not sustainable. It was revolutionary. I just completed a three week-long intensive study on the way one should handle controversy in religious communities, and Jesus' way of doing it was practically begging for martyrdom. All I see when I read John is a very spiritual man that got very frustrated with contemporary religious authorities for not understanding him that committed a very powerful symbolic act. What does it mean to be "Christlike" when your "Christ" (intentionally?) martyred himself? For me, it means to emulate his sacrifice. To give yourself to people, to donate your body and blood, all your work, all your efforts, your emotion and intellect and talents and strengths, to the promotion of life. To fighting stagnancy. And to fight religion, for heaven's sake - that's what Jesus did. To love like God loves, to try to connect to God as closely as Jesus did.
What does "substitutionary atonement" mean but the abolishment of guilty feelings? I don't live in a rule-based ethical paradigm. I don't care about my salvation and damnation, I've given my life - both now and forever, if "forever" exists - to God. I trust the Spirit of Peace with my fate. The crucifixion means nothing to me if all it is is an Advance To Go pass. Sure, maybe, somehow, by some unimaginable spiritual mechanism I'll never understand, Jesus died to save me from my sins. I don't give a flying fuck. What does that mean for me? The thought that keeps the crucifixion from decaying to crucifiction in my life is the call to eat that bread and drink that wine, remembering him and feeling a genuine desire to lay my own existence down for others in response. Jesus was trying to start something. He didn't mean the story had ended when he said "It is finished." Jesus was progressive. I know God's pushing me to be the same. Jesus loved those at the bottom. I know that in this day and age there is no one that isn't at the bottom by someone's standards. Jesus was not this Church. I do not intend to prolong my stay.
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