Testimony



WAS BLIND BUT NOW I SEE



A friend of mine once called himself a “lapsed Catholic” and for a long time, I took the description as my own.  I grew up attending Catholic mass every Sunday and every holiday.  Until I was about seven years old, I thought the priest was Jesus and I thought farting in church was one of the seven deadly sins.  For several years beyond that, I thought that every good deed brought me a step closer to heaven and every sin set me a step back.  Abortion and alcohol: Bad.  Prayer and penitence: Good.  Homosexuality was unnatural and sinful.  Sex was a privilege that should be saved for marriage.  I believed in one God, the Father the Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and all that is seen and unseen, etc.  I believed in confession twice a year and communion once a week.  I believed that all evil was a product of the devil and that I should be thankful for all of my blessings.
Then, I started thinking about religion for myself.

*****
After a rebellious freshman year of college, which included dating an atheist and losing my virginity, I needed to repent so I turned back to God.  Living away from home freed me from my mom’s faith-centrism and I decided to try non-Catholic Christian churches and I took part in meetings for Campus Crusade for Christ.  
I’ll be honest; high school had been rough on me.  My pimples and braces and frizzy hair caused insecurities; making friends didn’t come easy.  College was my time to blossom.  The welcoming atmosphere of the Christian groups attracted me and offered an atmosphere conducive to the unfurling of my petals.  I always had friends on a Friday night. 
Good.  Wholesome.  Friends.
Like the ugly duckling, I finally felt I had found others like me.  I felt welcome among the Christians; they were good people.  I immersed myself in the “unconditional” love of this group, finally understanding that the beauty inside me was what really mattered.  We’re all beautiful and popular in the kingdom of heaven.
           I became a Quadruple C: A Cookie Cutter Campus Christian.  Made to order.  Guaranteed to satisfy.  Just feed and water three times a day and she will go to church every Sunday, Campus Crusade every Friday, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) every Wednesday.  She’s a strong-willed virgin (of the born-again variety) who memorizes up to three Bible verses a week, offers advice for misguided souls, doesn’t drink alcohol or take part in rambunctious parties, and she promises to be good and listen for God’s will in her life.
I should have come with a disclaimer: Though rare, some models may begin to think for themselves and may even forget some of the biblical lessons learned.  In rare instances, cursing or doubting the existence of God may occur.  If this happens, you may send your Cookie Cutter Campus Christian back into the throes of the evil, mainstream college life for a full refund.  Not responsible for lost or broken souls.  Bible sold separately.
As a Quadruple C, I went to conferences and started to believe that Christ was the way, the truth and the life and that nobody came to the Father except through Jesus.  I accepted Him into my heart.  I started to capitalize Him every time I referenced God or Jesus.  I listened as a member of Campus Crusade who had recently returned from a mission in India proclaimed that he felt evil as he walked through Hindu temples there.  I listened as group leaders proclaimed that anyone who heard the name Jesus Christ and didn’t repent was doomed to hell.  I believed that Christianity was The Only Way.  I believed that it was my job to lead people to Christ.  I believed I should only date other Christians.  I tried to convert my ex-boyfriend.  I tried to convert my Catholic mother.  
I once responded to the question, “Do you have any new men in your life?” by saying, “Yes, Jesus.”
I listened as FCA members recited the weekly Bible verse from memory and received nylon WWJD bracelets as a reward. 
I had the WWJD bracelet in three different colors: Blue, black, and burgundy.  I changed them according to my outfits.
*****

A few months after I broke up with the atheist, I had been born again.  I felt my duty was to bring the Good News to others, so I tried to maintain a friendship with my heathen ex.  One day, we were on a hike, sitting at the top of a mountain, overlooking a panoramic view of the Colorado Rockies.
“This is my church,” said the devirginizer. 
“But what do you worship?” I asked, confident in my born-again Christian superiority.
“Me.  I worship myself.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.  Who do you think made all this?” I opened my arms in a gesture that encompassed the scope of the mountains and the blue sky and the evergreen trees and the quiet mountain lake below.
“I don’t know.  Science.  Why can’t I just appreciate it without giving credit to something?”
“Because science is too cold, too impersonal to come up with something like this.  Don’t you ever have feelings or thoughts that you can’t explain with science?”  It was an old argument between us, but I was better educated in the rhetoric of Christian faith.
“Everything can be explained by science,” he spoke in his familiar, stubborn tone.
“Well, I don’t think so.  I don’t think love and beauty and coincidence and God can be explained by science.  That’s why I have faith.”  My well-thought-out Christian logic was forgotten.  I turned away from him and thought, and that’s why we didn’t work out and that’s why you’re going to hell.
That’s what I believed, though.  I believed he probably would end up in hell, despite the fact that he was kind, gentle and intelligent.  He didn’t believe, so he didn’t belong with the saved.   I even thought my Catholic mother might need converting.  I wasn’t sure that all the rote prayers and standing up and sitting down had really led her to a personal relationship with God.  I believed this for a good year, maybe two.
*****

I remember the beginning of the end, though:
“Some people believe that it’s okay to pick and choose what part of God’s Word they should follow.”  I sat in a progressive young church called TNL, The Next Level, or affectionately, Tuesday Night Live.   The majority of the congregation was 20 or 30 something, so the place had an energy that the Catholic churches, usually packed full of conservative retirees, never achieved.  Many of these young believers were now mumbling or nodding in agreement with the dynamic 20-something pastor.
He continued. “Some people choose not to murder, but they say premarital sex is fine, cuz hey, it’s natural.”  I immediately thought of George Michael’s I Want Your Sex and couldn’t get the tune out of my head. 
“Some people believe in evolution even though they claim to believe in the God of the Bible, the one true Creator, and his son, Jesus Christ.”  The crowd was catching onto this crescendo, frowning with disapproval.  In my head I was hearing, “Sex is natural, sex is good, not everybody does it, but everybody should.”
“But the Word of God is not just a series of suggestions or recommendations for life!  This is the WORD of GOD!”  He raised the book above his head and shook it.  “God is not imperfect; God doesn’t make mistakes!  This is his complete and perfect law!”  He paused and lowered his hand, pensive, waiting.   “As far as I’m concerned, you can accept it all, or not at all.”  Church members shifted in their seats; some leaned forward.  George Michael faded from my thoughts.
The pastor, who I’ll call Tom, lowered his voice and walked down the two steps from the level of the podium to the level of the ground.  He strolled down the aisles as he continued.
“Because, if you aren’t going to accept one part of the Bible, you might as well forget about this part,” and with that he ripped a section right out of the middle, a perfectly good part of the psalms, and dropped it on the ground.  I looked around for the reactions of others.  One guy toward the back yelled “Yeah!”
My pious peers were watching Tom; they didn’t notice my inattention, but I noticed that they were all dressed alike; non-descript fashion, nothing tight fitting or bright.  They all oozed the peace that passeth understanding.  They all wore WWJD bracelets or cross necklaces.  Such presentable young adults, clean cut, parent-friendly sponges soaking up Tom’s message.
Tom continued ripping sections out of the Bible and scattering them among the audience until at least half of the Good Book lay crumpled on the ground.  The place looked like a Holy War battlefield.  Tom finished the sermon as he started, warning us not to be like those who take a half-assed stance on Christianity. 
I bowed my head for the final prayer and sang along with “Lord I lift your name on high.”  I was unsettled by Tom’s sermon.  I couldn’t pinpoint why until I got home and started looking through the Bible on my own.  So, if what Tom claims is correct, I should sacrifice a female goat every time I sin (Lev 4:27) and I must give God my firstborn son (Exodus 22:29).  Yeah, the Good Book is full of this stuff.  Don’t eat any meat with blood in it (but I love rare steak!).  Men and women should not swap clothing (even my husband’s comfy t-shirt?).  Don’t plant two types of seed in the same field (all of my neighbors are damned).  Adultery is punishable by death.  Don’t wear clothes made from two different types of material.  Don’t clip the edges off your beard. 
While I’m sure that some of these laws were practical in a different historical era, I can’t believe in a God that won’t allow for some modernization.  Furthermore, I’d venture to say that even fundamentalists, (yes, even Tom who I recall as being clean-shaven in his poly-cotton blend), disregard some of these teachings.  Yet they harp on the loosely and controversially translated “do not lie with a man as with a woman.”   They might as well edit one of the most straightforward tenants of the Bible, “Love your neighbor as yourself” to read: “Love your neighbor as yourself, unless of course he or she is gay.  Homosexuals are exempt; go ahead and throw stones.”
It was time to think about religion for myself…again.

 *****
After a year of ignoring the issue of religion altogether, only attending church when visiting my parents, and wavering about whether or not to take the fish off my car, I asked my friend, who I’ll call Laura, if she wanted to try out a Unitarian Church. 
It was the beginning of a great religious joke: A Catholic and an Episcopalian walked into a Unitarian Church…
Laura and I were both hoping to transcend our upbringings and explore our options now that we were college graduates.  We met in front of the church, which flew a rainbow flag of diversity, and we took our seats among a community of strangers.
It looked like a church from the outside: stone and brick and official looking stained-glass windows.  It looked like a church on the inside, too: wooden pews and an altar with an altar cloth.  But it certainly didn’t act like a church.  First of all, the pastor was a pastoress, the first woman church leader I’d encountered.  I didn’t hear the words God or Jesus or Bible once.  The she-pastor talked more about community and diversity and acceptance.  
Does the word open-minded belong in a place of worship? 
I was not ready for Unitarianism and neither was Laura, so I guess the joke was on us.
We left at the break (another church oddity), both a bit shaken by our inability to open our minds to what I now know was the free use of reason in religion and a belief in the worth of every individual.  Apparently, our devout roots and attachment to traditional ceremony ran deeper than we realized.
…and the Catholic and Episcopalian walked right back out, never to return again. 
For a while I became one of those people who my mother (and Tom) looked down on.  I became a Christmas and Easter Believer.  A Christian of Convenience.  I attended only on the most important days, usually with my family.  Just like we used to wonder about the Holiday Holies, I often asked myself, “Why bother?” 
My answer was usually “Fear, Guilt and Habit” though not always in that order.  What if the Catholics are right and holy days are truly prerequisites to heaven?  Maybe each time I go to church will cancel out one time I had sex before I got married.  One hour of sitting in uncomfortable pews, listening to a man in a robe babble about being a good Samaritan or learning to recognize your personal burning bush was a small price to pay for a clear conscience.  Now, I find this logic and this attachment to tradition a bit ridiculous and even embarrassing.  But this is my story and I’ll tell it honestly.  At that point in my life, I made a habit of going to church on the major Christian holidays.  
            I made one such visit with one of my best friends, who I’ll call Bob.  Bob is a homosexual.  We’re great friends because we have so much in common:  both redheads who love men and dancing to 80’s music, both recovering childhood Catholics.  Despite Bob’s sexual preference, he still felt an obligation to the Catholic Church at this point in his life. 
            Bob and I lived about 10 blocks apart.  Our families were not local and we weren’t going home for Easter that year.  So we decided to attend mass with a follow-up brunch.  As we walked up the marble steps and into the massive wooden doors of the old and beautiful church, Bob linked his arm in mine and whispered in my ear, “Here’s where God sends a lightning bolt to strike me down.”
            I snorted out a laugh completely inappropriate for the idyllic solemnity of the congregation and Bob just squeezed my arm and smiled his big, gay smile as we took our seats. 
Catholicism equates to guilt about innate, human desires.  Did God really make us sexual, passionate beings and then expect us to ignore these feelings 99% of the time? Why would God make sex so pleasurable, so intimate, so fun and stimulating?   Just to tease us, to test us, to see if we can control ourselves in the face of passion and attraction?   And what about Bob?  Should Bob pursue an unfulfilling relationship with a woman or a lonely, asexual existence?  Does God expect Bob to ignore his unrelenting instinct to love other men?  Well, I just couldn’t believe in a God like that.  But even with this realization, for a while I continued to look for a god I could believe in.  Without any luck.
            
*****

           My mother died of ovarian cancer (and there will be much more talk about her in my blog).  She was a Catholic until the day she passed and her journals show an increasing reliance on her beliefs during her illness.  I remember her doubled over in the kitchen one day, wanting to make lunch, to complete a task that used to be so easy and normal for her.  But the pain in her abdomen forced her back to bed.  As I tucked her in, she asked me, “Do you think God is punishing me?”
            I cried.  I hated that on top of her physical and emotional pain she had obvious spiritual aches weighing her down.   I told her that I didn’t believe that God worked that way. 
            I find it interesting that my resentment of the church never translated to resentment of my mom.  I suppose there were probably moments that I despised being woken early on a Sunday morning, but I always knew my mom only forced church upon us because she believed so completely in her God.  Religion brought joy and comfort to her being and she wanted that for us.  In a prayer book she kept throughout her illness, she summons God on behalf of my sister and me, praying, “Send your angels to them when they are needed.  Help comfort my girls when they need to cry.”
Her death, though there was not one good thing about it, freed me.  Religion was my mother’s pursuit.  My father converted for her.  My sister had a Catholic wedding (divorced after two and a half years).  Many of my religious explorations were motivated by my mother.  But she did not inflict guilt with any spiteful intent.  She wanted the best for us.  In return, I loved her and I wanted to please her, or rather, I didn’t want to disappoint her.  I cherished that common ground of belief upon which we both stood.
Since she passed (going on 9 years now), any lingering attachment to faith or even the habit of just going through the motions has gone.  Occasionally, as a replacement for the habit of praying I found hard to break, I talk to my mom.  I don’t think she hears me up in any kind of heaven, but it keeps me connected to her memory and a past that allowed me to grow into the freethinker that I am today.
For awhile, I was one of those people who called themselves “spiritual but not religious.”  It took me a long time to accept that I am an atheist.  But I am.  I don’t believe in any kind of god or intelligent force.  And once I accepted this, I felt like a switch was flipped in my head.  I was cleared of all the false logic and excuses I used to make for god whenever I would have doubts.  I feel certain that I am on a one-way street here.  There is no going back to a habit of belief.  I am free of that.
Some may think it odd, but I still think of myself as a spiritual person, but I’m not thinking of the soul or spirit like a believer does.  But that is for a later post.  For now, this is the end of my testimony to atheism.  And yes, I am purposefully taking the Christian use of testimony and using it as an atheist.  This is how I found the truth.  This is how I was saved from illogical thoughts and unfounded judgments.  This is how I got to the place where I can be a free thinking person who is altruistic for altruism’s sake and not for the hope of some sort of reward in some sort of afterlife.  This is the only life I have, and I want to make the best of it. 
Thank you for listening.  Feel free to comment.
           
             






No comments:

Post a Comment