Today, for the first time in about 30 years, I talked to a
"Professional Christian" (i.e., pastors a church for a living) about my
experience in an evangelical church and felt neither judged or
proselytized. He seemed genuinely curious about how I interpreted
things like faith healing and speaking in tongues then, and how I think
about them now, and about the continued disgust I have with organized
religion and the continued respect and wonder I have for the teachings
of Jesus. It was a really wonderful conversation.
One thing that
always spoke to me about Born Again Christianity was the idea that you
did not need a pastor or priest or pope to tell you what to think about
God. You read the Bible, and you thought about it, and you had a
direct relationship. That said, it always seemed like the church never
the less had some really hard line ideas about the right and wrong
conclusions to reach, which is where the friction was for me.
I
feel the message of Christ can be found in many places - in other
religions, in other belief systems, in human interactions. It's all
over the place, if you have eyes to see it. I feel like the New
Testament helped me see it, and other people get to these Universal Truths through other religions or life practices. I don't think you're going to Hell if
you don't accept Christ as your savior. I think you're in for a
terrible time (at least on Earth, if not beyond) if you don't get to
those "Universal Truths" somehow - but I chafe against the idea that
there is One Right Way.
The other thing about the church was
that I took what I thought Christ was trying to say very seriously (because it seemed like you were supposed to - we're talking about going to Hell, right?) and I
tried very hard to meet the challenge of finding the way of peace,
turning the other cheek and embracing people on the fringe of "polite
society." And maybe this is adolescent of me, but no one ever seemed to
notice that in the church I went to. I was trying to do what I thought
were the most important things but it turned out there was a lot of
other stuff that was more important to the church. The people who were
held up as examples for the congregation were the rich, the beautiful,
the powerful - but never, ever it seemed - the ones who were honestly
engaged in the god damned struggle. (Pun intended). The church preached to me that I was going to hell unless I was a Christian, but seemed to flaunt the opposite of the teachings I read about in the Bible on a regular basis. Something was very wrong.
I will
never forget the time in high school when I saw one of the teens at my
church verbally and physically intimidate one of my favorite teachers in
the hallway of my high school. I was shocked at the language she used
towards her and the way she yelled and called the teacher a bitch, and
lunged towards her. They were having a dispute about a failing grade, I
gathered. Shortly after I turned the corner, she walked away, but she
saw me and I saw her. That Sunday, the pastor was praying and speaking
in tongues, and he said that Christ had spoken to him and told him to
recognize the young people of God in the church, and he brought that
very same teen girl (the daughter of one of the deacons) up to the front
of the church and put a sash that said "Christian Teen" around her. She smiled and the congregation praised God.
I think the hypocrisy of that moment was probably it, for me. I
believe that Christ speaks to people, but probably not the ones who brag
about it. And I think he says stuff to me all the time - not as a
voice in my head, but just sort of stuff that's there for me to see and
hear if I have the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it that day.
Edgar Cayce, a famous American mystic, once said that an angel had
revealed to him the meaning of life, which was to do whatever you needed
to do to become a worthwhile companion to God. That has always made a
ton of sense to me and I think I do try to do that by finding ways to appreciate what's in front of me (and fail a lot,
but that seems to be how it works).
It wasn't until today that I
was reminded, in talking to Wes, that that ethos I've adopted as an adult actually is very connected to
what I started out to do when I was a teenager sitting in a room of
people whom the Spirit Had Moved wondering if it was really the Holy
Spirit who had stopped by or rather a form of the mass hysteria I'd read
about in my abnormal psych book.
Have I actually been a rather religious person all along? Wes says I'll have to tell him, because I'm the only one who knows.
