Living the Dream

It’s not often that I feel the desire or the need to talk publicly about my personal beliefs.   I’m not an obsessively private person – I regularly utilize very public communication channels like Facebook, Twitter, and the like – I’m not terribly careful to censor what I post there, and I’m generally not very concerned about who reads it or how it might make them think differently of me.

I might occasionally post an interesting article I come across that deals with religion – and I’m not shy about commenting on posts others make – but by and large I’ve found that religious discussion quickly devolves in to a situation where the person I’m having the discussion with comes to one of three conclusions:

A – I’m a hell bound heathen best left to the demons who are already tormenting me as I walk the earth

B – I would be an awesome jewel in their crown if they could save me/bring me back in the fold; or

C – Because our beliefs in this area diverge, there is no need to attempt to find common ground anywhere else – for it would be unfathomable that people who have beliefs that differ in one area of their lives could continue to have positive interaction in other areas.

So, the best solution I’ve come up with is to try as best I can to refrain from debate unless explicitly asked.   This has had the unfortunate side effect of allowing some friends who I go to church with (and yes, I do still go – more on that later) to draw their own conclusions as to what the “problem” is with me.    A side discussion related to this article made me decide to dedicate a few minutes this evening to discussing where I’m at, what I believe, and the problems I’ve had reconciling my spiritual life with every other part of my life.      Before trying to do this, I wanted to collect my thoughts so I could present them in a coherent and compelling manner – but being tired, and remembering that this is the internet, I decided to just shoot from the hip.    If people want to comment, I welcome it – just try really hard not to digress in to one of the caricatures outlined above.

There are several major issues I have with the version of the Christian faith that I’ve come to know since I was a child.   Now, you may be inclined to argue that I have the facts wrong – am taking the message out of context, or simply don’t have the right frame of reference.   All those may be valid points, but the fact remains that it’s not as if I’ve never been exposed to church, Sunday School, bible study, etc.     For better or worse, these are the lessons I gleaned from those years of cumulative experience.    If I got it wrong, it wasn’t for lack of paying attention or simply misreading a line or two from Jude in a Gideon bible while looking for the room service menu one night.

I spent many, many years trying to reconcile these issues in my own mind – telling myself little lies to make myself feel better about what I believed – and trying to rationalize why I continued to keep coming up against the same walls again and again.    The fact that I was never able to satisfactorily resolve them might be a failure of my own ability or my own desire – but it’s still a failure.

Big problem #1: Christianity, as I came to know and love it, conditions you to not only believe that you start as a failure, but then further, that nothing you do could ever be good enough to redeem you, and therefore, you must choose what’s behind door #1 to get your keys to the kingdom.     This is the celestial guilt trip.    The eternal set up.   You were made to fail, so that you could be redeemed.   I struggled with the nuances of the story for a long time, before coming to the conclusion that I was dealt the hand in life I was dealt.   I don’t remember, as an ethereal spirit, floating up to God and saying “golly gee, I’d really like to be born now!” – so, I’m not going to spend my limited time on this earth apologizing for and feeling guilty for things that the all knowing being who created me supposedly built in to my DNA to make it impossible for me NOT to do.    The absurdity of it is jarring when you step back and take a look.

Big problem #2: One oft repeated argument I’ve heard for the validity of the Christian experience is “look at all the lives that have been changed”.   There’s no denying that there are many people who have powerful, life changing experiences that they attribute to a relationship with Christ.     I’m not telling them they’re wrong.   If you believe that, and feel that your life has been changed or impacted – I am in no position to tell you you’re wrong.   What I will say though, is that if this is one of the arguments you use, you have to also look at the multitude of lives in the church that profess Christianity, yet aren’t really changed at all.   This problem of hypocrisy always bothered me – and I don’t say that to call out Christians in general – I’m including myself in the list.   I was in church for a long, long time – yet there were behaviors I had that the church very strongly viewed as wrong, or undesirable – yet not only were they not impacted/changed – but I never felt any real compulsion to change them.   There were many more that were like me than weren’t.    It creates a confusion, because you start to think “what’s wrong with me, that I’m not having this life altering experience – am I doing “it” wrong?”

The fact of the matter is, when I started to struggle violently with my faith, I can emphatically tell you it was the “friends” of mine who were allegedly “strongest in the faith” who abandoned ship first.   Whether for fear of contact pollution, or fear of exposure of their own feelings of spirituality, it informed me deeply that the bonds you build within the walls of your church are every bit as superficial as any other social bonds you make.    The real friendships – the ones that last – are forged in the times of trouble, when it’s difficult to be a friend.   Anyone can be your friend in good times.

Big Problem #3: One of the other major issues for me is that there are just core stances that the Christian church takes (and a surprisingly good number of them) that I just couldn’t pretend to go along with any longer.    Whenever modern day Christianity starts to have institutional bigotry and hatred exposed, the very first stance that they take is the mealy mouth backpedalling that sounds like this “love the sinner – hate the sin” – ever heard that one?    From the Christian churches stance on homosexuality, science vs. faith, insistence that all paths to God that didn’t go through Christ (and in many cases, their particular version of Christ) were wrong, to the “scoreboard” mentality where more value is placed on who is getting saved and baptized on Sunday morning than the good you’re doing for your community – there were just too many gaps to keep pretending I could fill in.

Some other minor issues continued to drive a wedge for me – but they were all some variance on one of these three major themes.    So – where does that leave me now?   Well, as I said, I still do try to go to church.     Why?   Because there are people there who I genuinely like and enjoy spending time with, and want to continue to see be a part of mine and my children’s lives.   Also because there are opportunities to do good for others through the collective power of the church, and probably – whether I want to admit it to myself or not – because I do hold out hope, no matter how slim, that one day I’ll hear the words I need to hear that will make it all clear in my mind, and bring me back to a point where I can accept the problems because I believe the larger “truth” of it to be correct.

Santa Claus

Right now, though, I will describe where I’m at to you the same way I described it to a very dear friend of mine.     When you are a small child, Santa Claus is a big deal at Christmas time.   You know the story, you believe it with all your heart, and the excitement of that time of year – from waiting for Santa to show up, to leaving out food for the reindeer and cookies for Santa, to watching the sky for the sleigh – it’s all very compelling, very real, and very much a part of the experience of the holiday.    Then one year, the illusion is over, and it’s just not the same.    For a small period of time, for some it’s a single season, for others longer, the confusion and disappointment of that loss of illusion tarnish the holiday.     Finally, ultimately, there comes a time where the holiday means something different to you, and you start to enjoy it again for different, but just as compelling reasons.

Right now, I’m a little kid who just lost Santa Claus at Christmas, and I’m waiting for the holiday to be fun again.