I’m Praying for YOU! (Part II)
I’ve had a difficult relationship with religion, mainly with fundamentalists, for a very long time. I grew up in a nasty neighborhood. It still makes the news from time to time for shootings, stabbings, or homemade chemical bombs tossed on neighborhood porches. It also has a high incidence of cancer, most likely due to years of illegal dumping by the various industries. I like to call it Brownfield, USA, although that’s not what it’s usually called.
It was a tight-knit neighborhood. With commercial properties intermixed with residential, everything you needed was within walking distance, including a variety of churches. Some Sundays I would attend noon Mass at St. Mary the Whore Roman Catholic Church, and I was compelled to attend CCD on Tuesday evenings at the Whore’s namesake school until Confirmation at 8th grade, where I got to choose a new name. I went the conservative route and chose Matthew, but that’s for part III, if I write it.
After 8th grade, I attended an all-boys’ College Preparatory school; my mother KNEW that only successful men came out of there, and I was bound for Catholic-induced success, so there was obvious chemistry. It lasted but a year before hormones overtook common sense and I needed to be around the opposite sex, but looking back I learned a lot of lessons.
Aside from the “getting away with shit” lessons learned (and I was a very poor student on that subject - I can’t even think about lying without breaking into a cold sweat) and “how to avoid getting the shit kicked out of me on a daily basis without resorting to paying off bullies” seminars (they were, in fact, very useful, getting into only two physical altercations in my life), I did learn much that was not readily useful. It’s not readily useful now, either, but I can at least SEE how it could be.
1. Not all religious people are spiritual, and not all spiritual people are religious.
Every Wednesday morning we were required to go to Mass, and every Wednesday nine-tenths of the students would simply go through the motions of attending. Some of the quietest about their spirituality were the ones who scoffed at the traditions and muscle memory of the kneel-sit-stand olympics. In fact, with the quadfecta of Latin, Religion, Biology, and World History, we learned to have and form our own faith and beliefs, not based on what we were told to believe, but what we could make and take from it.
In Religion class, especially, we were educated that Catholics were never to take the Bible literally, even the New Testament. (Well, the letters and such sure, but parables and the Old testament and even the Gospels were meant as figurative stories, allegorical works illustrating points of faith). In Biology, we learned a healthy respect for Charles Darwin, even down to marrying his sickly cousin. We also learned what it meant to take scientific inquiry seriously, running down a hypothesis with the Scientific Method until you could sufficiently narrow it based on observation and critical thinking. World History taught us that cultures from the dawn of time needed reasons for all things and invented gods to do the ’splainin’ for them. Latin. . . Latin taught us about the rigidity of conforming to authority, which has EVERYTHING to do with religion
The teachers of each subject showed themselves as religious in following their beliefs while displaying varying degrees of spirituality. The Bio teacher was an atheist, and told us several times. The Latin teacher was a no-nonsense, old-school Catholic from Atlantic City. The History teacher never showed his colors, I think he was happy to have a job. (He also taught us stuff about the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam that none of us would have been exposed to until the internet arrived as a mainstream tool.) The Religion teacher was also the Latin teacher. This experience prepared me a little for my dealings with my family of fundamentalist literal translating biblical thugs.
2. Being different and acting differently are two, um, different things.
Very important lesson. It was okay if you were different, as long as you put on an outward show of normalcy and conformance. I learned to be a conformist to any group I needed to talk with. It came in handy in avoiding ass-kickery. I’ve lost the art, however. Now, I’d rather not conform, and I’ll just tell you to eat shit. The real world doesn’t like that. The real world needs to put you in a box, labeled neatly, categorized for other people’s ease and enjoyment. Religion is one hell of a category.
3. Respect the faith of others, no matter how stupid (unless it’s dangerous).
Immediately, the word “Christian” evokes images and behaviors that might either be saintly or devilishly hypocritical. It all depends on the person hearing the word. To me, it’s just another meaningless label that a fair amount of people use to fit in with society. If I were to categorize myself, I’d probably say I’m not a non-Christian American Anglican, but to Catholics, that would be redundant.
Allow me to explain - I go to church on a majority of Sunday mornings, and watch as every one else takes part in the ritual and ceremony of following along and repeating words, words, words. I take part in two things during the service: the wishing of peace on each other (I only wish for love and peace), and sometimes singing along with a hymn if I know and like it - it’s a rarity. However, I cannot blindly recite the Nicene creed. I cannot profess faith in a bunch of shit I think to be false. I do not believe in the supernatural mumbo-jumbo that goes along with “being a Christian.”
That being said, I don’t find myself very often claiming to be a Christian, to have found Christ (he was behind the couch playing chess with Siddhartha), or to have any sort of religiosity. I am not an atheist but I am far from a true believer. I tend to follow a more Jeffersonian Deism, yet I tend to slide further towards a non-belief than any belief. I try not to be militant in my agnostic view, but in fighting against militant fundamentalism (which is an affront to humanity), I do feel myself put on the defensive when dealing with the religious types.
One example, in particular, still stricks with me. In January of 2004, four months before receiving a stem cell rescue and a month after being diagnosed with recurrent cancer, my wife and I attended dinner with my sister and her (now ex) husband. They have both been very active in a mini-super-church, which preaches a very fundamentalist way - no snake handling or speaking in tongues, but they believe in a literal translation of the bible. I’ll call the guy Jim, for anonymity’s sake, and I’ll call my sister Lynn, just for shits and giggles.
Jim took me for coffee and on our way back to the house, he popped the question: “Have you found Christ? Do you have a personal relationship with Christ? What’s your relationship with God?”
I smiled at him, and instead of giving my usual response - “Oh my God? How long has he been missing? Did you call the Police?” - I simply stated that I had a fine relationship with God. I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but he pressed on. “Have you accepted Christ as your savior. As all our saviors? Do you believe in the bible?”
I felt a little anger rise within me, but out of respect for him and his beliefs I pushed it down, and responded in the most gentle way possible that I respected the bible as literature but that was it. I told him it was full of some good stories.
This didn’t sit well with him. He said it was the word of God, written through Man by divine inspiration. To me, it seemed that he held the book in higher esteem than fellow man. To him, it was a source of power and a shield against his own stupidity. (He didn’t realize that he held it as an idol, as a totem, which I think might be verboten.) He asked me what I didn’t like about the whole thing. That was easy. The first thing that flitted from my mouth was the hypocrisy of the church, to which he glibly responded “Oh, the Catholic church. Yeah, yeah.”
“No, every church I’ve attended. Every hallelujah Christian who dons their Sunday best and stretches out their arms for the glory of God in the highest, then commits a million little atrocities during the week. Every self-proclaimed Christian who doesn’t walk in the light of Christ. If you are going to live the life of Christ, live the life of Christ, Goddammit.”
Okay, I admit I didn’t say that, but it was welling on my lips. Instead, I replied that every church displayed the hypocrisy I hated. He then lectured me that there are two types of Christians, those who think they can do it on their own, without the loving power of our savior Jesus Christ, and those that think they need to be redeemed and forgiven before going to church. I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but I tend to see things from different sides - more than two an many occasions.
I shut down and nodded and let him pray for me, pray to have my cancer cured, sitting in that truck on the cold January evening. I asked if he was done and exited the truck, thanking him for the coffee, and went into the house to shake off the creepy feeling I had. It was some sort of spiritual abuse, I think, that I underwent that night.
I was a coward that evening. I’ve always been a coward when confronting the so-called faithful. I respect their faiths, their beliefs and their convictions, and I don’t want to convert them to anything but what they have. I do wish for a little reciprocation of respect, instead of getting scoffed at for my quiet belief. It’s convenient to pray and claim that God did this or that when good happens, just as it is equally convenient to blame the victim for not believing enough when the prayer fails. It then becomes God’s plan.
I may be a coward for not speaking up as much as I should have, but I believe it is an act of greater cowardice to not acknowledge the randomness of the Universe. Sometimes shit happens, and a supernatural man with good teeth and a great complexion (as well as fantastic lighting) had not a fucking thing to do with it.
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