I'm going to hell, aren't I?

As you may recall from my religion post (all the way back on week one), I struggled a lot with Christianity and how it related to the Bible. Basically, I decided that if the holy book of Christianity was the Bible, then I was going to follow everything in it to the best of my ability. The problem lay in the fact that I couldn't believe what the Bible told me to. I couldn't believe that Jesus was the only way to get to heaven. I believed (and still believe in) a lot of the moral teachings Jesus preached about loving your neighbor and not casting the first stone and removing planks from your own eye before the sawdust from your brother's (Jesus was a cool dude), but I couldn't just take the Bible at face value, even taking into account what may be metaphor. Because of this, I looked at various religions and eventually decided my answer was "none of the above."

That about sums up my last post on religion (it was very, very long, so if you haven't read it, I'm trying to make it so you don't have to). Of course, this seems to be fundamentally based on the idea that being a Christian requires believing everything in the Bible, and that's significantly because that is what I believe. This week's topic is traditionalism versus modernism in religion and I have to say I fall squarely into the traditionalism category. I believe if that something as important as a religion, something that wants to be the center of your life and values and judgments, is malleable, can change with interpretation and from person to person, then what does it mean? It's a very closed-minded view of things, I understand, but just...what's the point of having a holy book with teachings and beliefs if they aren't meant to be followed and...believed? Obviously, we can't know what God thinks about the Internet and that's something that would have to be interpreted, but as far as things that are explicitly in the Bible...I don't see how you can not believe it and then call yourself a Christian.

I just don't understand how the word has any value if it isn't consistent. I don't mind people that have views that differ from the Bible and still call themselves Christians but I just don't actually...I don't know. I can't consider you as such unless you are evangelizing the hell out of me, and if you are, then I probably won't want to talk to you.

I guess I just believe that if your religion is something you think is personal and between you and God, then that's fine. If you want to call that relationship Christianity, then I expect you to have certain beliefs that, frankly, most people don't have. If you think the only way to get to heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ, then you, as a Christian, should be perpetually terrified about all of the people in your life that are going to hell. I don't know anyone that can live life that way. I know I couldn't.

This post ended up being full of things that came off very offensively. Please understand that I do respect and love most of the people in my life that identify as Christian. I just have very strong opinions on religion that I don't like speaking about because I don't like offending people. I also know that this week's topic was on religion in general, but my perspective is limited mostly by my experiences with Christianity. In general, I believe that if you subscribe to a religion, then you have all of the beliefs that that religion entails. I don't believe in reinterpreting things to fit with today's moral values, because if the religion doesn't fit with today's moral values then maybe that's a problem with the religion. I don't believe you should have to fumble around awkwardly ignoring parts of your holy text just to make you feel comfortable like I did.

Cognitive Dissonance

When I was younger, religion was a huge part of my life. Church every Sunday, rain, shine, sick, well, whatever. It was the hardest thing because I wasn't allowed to play Pokemon in church. And I had to get up early. Why did I have to get up early on a day of rest?

But that aside, it actually was an important factor in my life. When I was maybe in 4th grade, we were learning about the solar system, and I was terrified that the sun was going to spontaneously turn into a black hole and we'd all be dead. I lost a lot of sleep over this and I remember praying to God to keep me and my family safe. I remember the immense amount of comfort I got from that, knowing there was a god that loved and cared about us, that listened to our prayers.

In fact, at the age of 12 or so, it was one of 6 adjectives I used to describe myself: Religious. As I got older, I loved being part of mission projects, and most importantly, choir. Choir every Sunday morning and choir tour every summer were the best parts of my religious life. We went to a contemporary Methodist service and the songs were fun. The sermons were boring, but the songs were fun.

To be honest, I don't remember when it started to change, really. I think it might've been when the church installed a new $10,000 electronic sign outside, but I remember not really liking how the church was run. I didn't like how the Bible said that non-Christians went to hell. What about all of the people in India who just never had a chance to choose Christianity? What about children who weren't baptized? What about my Muslim friends? My Jewish friends?

I quietly revised my definition of what it meant to be a Christian and moved on, but that didn't sit well with me. Why would the Bible say that? Why would the Bible say that the only way to get to heaven is through Jesus? Especially if it weren't? What if you're a fantastically good person who's dedicated your life to helping people? Why would that person go to hell? The Bible says it's because we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God but...why isn't really trying (and repenting when you fail) enough?

So I started skipping Sunday School after the service. I started meeting my friend in the stairwells and reading the Bible ourselves.

Well, in theory, anyway. It never worked out that way, but I always tried to read it at home. First, I started with Genesis but that was all family trees and boring crap. Then I started with the gospels but...I don't know. I got bored? Went back to Genesis and got up through Leviticus, I think. There are some fun stories in there. Sodom and Gomorrah is a riot and that whole bit about Abraham saying Sarah was his sister? Hilarious.

But anyway, it was at that point I decided to start trying to follow the rules in the Bible. They were right there, in the holy book, so I was going to follow them. It didn't make sense for them to be part of the Bible if we were going to ignore it, right? So I went kosher, which wasn't a big deal for me except I had to give up Pizza Rolls (which was the hardest decision of my life). I honestly didn't know much but I tried to follow what I could. I tried not to pick and choose what was convenient. I tried to actually live by what the Bible said but...that whole bit about sending good people to hell still didn't sit right with me. Eventually, I went through confirmation and I remember that being such a peaceful weekend. I was constantly surrounded by people saying "No, don't worry, this is how it is. You don't need to think too hard about it, just believe and that's enough." It was calming. It made it easy to just go along with it. It wasn't until after confirmation, when that nagging feeling came back that I felt I had to do something about it. I looked into other religions. Judaism was closest to what I was practicing: Be a good person, follow the rules. I was dating (sort of?) a Muslim at the time, so I looked into Islam too. Interesting religion, that. Honestly though, the thing that really kept me from converting was the services. The contemporary service, the songs, that all felt comfortable to me. It felt fun and welcoming.

And then I thought, "Am I really a Christian because I like the songs?"

That disturbed me, but I tried to put it out of my head. I tried to figure out what I believed. At one point, I tried a mix-and-match thing, picking out the beliefs I liked and rejecting the ones I didn't, but that always felt fake to me. If the Bible said that Jews go to hell and Christianity follows the Bible, then how am I a Christian if I don't believe that?

Then in 2008, Cute Is What We Aim For released their album Rotation. Track 4 was a simple song called Loser. The first verse (and bridge) went like this:

I've read of a man up in a room 
Who can control everything I do 
But what do I know? 
What do I know? 
And if the story of the man isn't true 
Then tell me what I should do 
Should I take off the blindfold? 
Or do what I'm told? 


But we'll never know about the life I chose 
I won't believe I won't be so naive until I go 
Yeah we'll never know 'til these eyes close

And it sounds superficial, but that song gave me the idea: What if there isn't a god? It was a simple idea and one I'd never thought of before, but as soon as I gave it a chance, all of the pieces fell into place. I'd figured out that there was so much nagging at me I didn't even know about.

I thought about how prayer never made sense to me. If God were omniscient...then shouldn't he know every argument you could possibly have against him? Shouldn't he have it all under consideration? And if he had a plan for all of us, then...why were we praying about Susie's cancer? If logic can't change his plan then...what? Do we need to get as many people to pray as possible because there's a quota you need to meet? 100 people and Susie's cancer goes into remission, any less and it metastasizes? I never understood what made prayer matter if God knew us before we were born, who we would be and what we would become. If he were going to help us, wouldn't he just do so?

And why was God so active in Biblical times, talking to people, burning bushes, causing floods, but not at all now? Why didn't he pick a prophet every hundred years or so to guide his flock? Why didn't he make it easy to believe and make the challenge to be a good person?

And there's been religion throughout all of history and we've consistently looked back and said "Ha ha, those guys were idiots. Thinking a guy in a chariot pulled the sun across the sky, what silly people," and then held our own religious beliefs...wasn't it kind of...proud? To think that people wouldn't look back in a thousand years and do the same thing to us?

And this is big, why is there no proof? Why is there no statistical proof that prayer helps aside from the general help that having a loving, supporting family provides? Why can't you find anything other than anecdotal evidence about Christians having miracles happen to them? If God is affecting our world, there should be proof. We can study everything in this world, but does God just refuse to participate in science? It seems rather unsportsmanlike, like he thinks we're cheating. I never understood why faith had to be so hard, why there wasn't any proof on our side.

But thinking he didn't exist (or at least not the active, involved God the Bible describes), that made sense. The nagging feeling went away. Everything fell into place and started to make sense. We had enough science to explain how people came to be. With the sheer size of the universe, it makes sense that somewhere, conditions would be right for life to evolve like this. Given infinite chances, things of all probabilities are possible. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that I didn't need a god to make sense of the world. Sure, I didn't understand where the first matter or energy came from, but I didn't understand where God came from either, so it seemed like a fair trade. There weren't any holes in my understanding of the world that needed a god to be filled, and trying to shoehorn him in where he wasn't necessary caused so much stress.

Of course, I never had anything against the deist theory of God as a master clockmaker who set the universe in motion and then went off to...make other clocks, I guess, but it seemed like an unnecessary complication. If God exists, it should be provable. He could just make a loud pronouncement from the heavens and let us know "Yo, guys, still here. You might want to clean up your act a bit." I think he'd be really pleased with the results. But you can't prove that he doesn't exist any more than you can prove there isn't an invisible pink unicorn somewhere in space. If you can prove something but can't disprove it, then I don't understand why I should give equal weight to each idea, not if there is literally no way to discredit your idea.

But this wasn't a decision I made lightly. I didn't go "Aha! You silly peons still believe this while I see the truth!" To be honest, I don't like talking about my opinions on religion because I don't want to come off that way (And believe me, I talk about everything, at length). It's hard to say "I believe differently than you and here are my reasons why" without it coming off as "And you're stupid for disagreeing," especially with things like this. I didn't really talk about it when it happened and I think this is the first time I've really told anyone the full story (so enjoy, internet). The fact is that it pained me because there were so many things that were so comforting about religion that I wanted back. I wanted to believe in an afterlife. I wanted to believe that somewhere, Biscuit was still happy and healthy. I wanted to believe that I'd be reunited with my loved ones in a place of eternal happiness, but I just...can't. Religion nagged and nagged at me until I realized it wasn't something I could be a part of anymore. To be honest, when my cat died in 11th grade, I didn't think I'd ever stop crying. I didn't know how to deal with the fact that he was just...gone. Never coming back. Never see him again. That was it. Gone. Dead. Forever.

And I don't know how I'm going to be able to deal with that if someone close to me dies. Them not being there anymore. Not ever. I don't...I really don't know how to deal with it. I'm not saying this to ask for pity but just...I never hated religion.

Well, except for that one time it made me feel immensely guilty for my magic spell book (that was pink revolved around rose petals and fingernail polish). To be honest, I still feel resentment for that. Stupid Christianity and it's stupid rules about witchcraft.

But seriously, I never hated religion and I still don't. It was an important part of my childhood and a really positive influence, for the most part. I don't blame people for believing differently than I do and I just ask that people not judge me for not being able to believe what they do. Believe me, I tried, but after years of discomfort and confusion, I finally found what made sense to me, what I was comfortable with, and I feel better for it.

That said, I really don't like people who talk about "atheism," like it's a religion. I don't believe god exists, but I don't have any dogmatic attachment to the idea. I believe in science, in evolution, that the earth was once a ridiculously hot singular land mass with no atmospheric oxygen and that life evolved from prokaryotic cells. My beliefs don't include a god but neither are they about not having one. I consider myself an atheist if you want to talk about religious beliefs, but it's really more that I don't have any than that mine revolve around denying god's existence. I'm an atheist, but I'm not a "follower of atheism," because that doesn't make any sense. If there were proof of god, I'd be all for it, but in the absence of such things, I don't see any reason to include him in my views of the world.

Though just in case there is a god, I fully believe that if he's a god worth worshipping, he should accept me by the good life I've tried to live, rather than by strict adherence to whatever holy book is most prominent in my area, so I think I've got all my bases covered.

Why I Don't Go To Church

- Or In Which Emily Rambles About Religion and May Not Make Sense -

Religion is a difficult topic for me at the moment, because…well I haven’t been to church in roughly 2 ½ years. I still believe in the doctrines of what I was raised in, I just don’t agree with the politics. But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

I am a Christian Scientist. No, that is not the nice way of saying ‘scientology.’ Now that we’ve gotten that out of way…

God has always been something I’ve just believed in. There was no specific moment where I sat down and said, “Well, golly, God must be real,” because he/she was always a real part of my life.  My religion is the reason I’m still really uncomfortable with the use of medication in my life, as up until 2 ½ years ago, I had never really used medications for anything (with the exception of getting my wisdom teeth removed). I relied on prayer for healing, which you can judge in whatever way you want to. All I know is that it worked and still works, even though I don’t rely on it as much anymore.

So why don’t I? Why did I stop going to church? My church is tiny, and shrinking. The board doesn’t handle its politics well. That’s the short answer.

The long answer is this: way before I stopped going to church, my brother got diagnosed with Anxiety. It was a huge ordeal, because, at the same time, my dad was working on his anger management issues. Life in my house was extremely tense. My brother and my father were both working through a Christian Science Practitioner (basically, a teacher who can help direct your prayer and recommend sections of the Bible/Science and Health* to read), but my brother wasn’t getting any better. In fact, he was sort of getting worse.

No, let me be clear here – this was not some sort of crisis of faith for me. In fact, the entire situation just sort of morphed into my existing beliefs and, on the whole, I was fine with that.

The is a little not in the manual (set of basic rule and beliefs upheld by my church) that says, roughly, ‘If prayer is not helping you, do what you can to stay healthy.’ The only thing about that is you cannot continue treatment through prayer if you decide to use medication – which, my parents decided would be best for my brother.

Now, the process of getting a child into a psychiatrist in NOVA is immensely complicated, namely, because there are so few of them. The fact that my brother got into one at all is rather miraculous, and I was accepting of the entire process. My essential belief here is this: if you are not in a mental place to work out something through prayer, God will lead you to something that will help you get better, whether that method is through medication, a doctor’s visit, or otherwise.

Unfortunately, this is not how my church thinks, and though everyone at my particular branch was supportive, Christian Scientists that my dad knew and was friend with began to judge his decision to put my brother on medication. The old people (and by this, I mean the ‘conservative’ 10% of my church) control the direction of my church, and have instilled a sort of gross bias against members who have to rely on some sort of daily medication. It’s the sort of superiority complex I despise, and so when my dad stopped going to church, so did I.

I’m still spiritual, I still believe in God and the basic principles of the Christian Science Church. And Above all, I miss it. I miss going to church and having an outlet – I miss it enough to try going to church on my own for a while over the summer. I still try to read the bible lesson every Sunday.

My religion used to be a huge part of who I am, and I wish the people in charge would change their politics, so I don’t feel like I’m betraying my brother going to a place where he felt outcast. I guess if there was any point to this rather rambling blog post is the following:

-                     My crisis of faith is a crisis between what I believe and my family. They aren’t preventing me from perusing my faith, but I feel as though I’m betraying them by going.

-                     My church is shrinking at such a rate that I don’t think it will be in existence by the time I have children.

But more than that, it’s because my faith is more amorphous than the organized church really allows for, even in an apolitical church like mine. So, I continue to identify as a Christian Scientist, and I continue to not have a place or outlet to share my ideas on that faith. I continue to miss it.

Not Exactly Clear Cut

Morning everybody! So, as Kelsey said this weeks topic is Religious History. Here we go.

So, okay, I wouldn’t exactly say religion has always played a major role in my life, but it has kind of always been there in the background. My mother is Methodist, my father is... undecided on the whole affair. I was raised Methodist, and I really still consider myself as a Methodist, even though I don’t really know where I stand.

I haven’t been to church regularly in about three or four years, nor was I ever really explained what Methodism entailed. Basically, what I gathered of Methodism is that they are all really chill and laid back and that seemed attractive when it came to a church. I went to the same church with the same people for so long I guess I thought I just didn’t need to know the details because none of them expected me to. I kind of wish now I knew more, because if I say I’m a part of something, I’d like to know what it is. But, alas, I do not. Yet.

So, I guess, Methodist isn’t a good title for me. I guess I would say: I believe in God, in Christianity. (As well as Judaism and Islam) I believe He’s there but I don’t know what I believe after that. I guess I would say I’m a Christian, what specific section, I don’t know.

Here’s kind of how my adventure with religion has gone up to this point:

Like I said, I grew up going to the same church regularly with my mother, who taught Sunday school, for about twelve years. We stopped going around the time my parents split up, which makes sense because my mom was stressed, not everybody always wanted to go, and it just made sense that we put it aside of all things.

Now, don’t take me not going to church as me not keeping my religion a part of my life. I didn’t really focus on it, but it was still there. The past three years, since our first move my seventh grade year, I’ve been keeping my religion in my life as best I could on my own without putting the people around me at an inconvenience. I didn’t talk about it, I didn’t ask to go to church every weekend, I didn’t even pray in front of people just because it didn’t seem like the kind of thing people needed to be bothered with. It was just something I was doing for me. It was just something I wanted to do because I felt like it.

A couple of months ago, though, two friends asked me to join them at the local church, which was also Methodist, for a “contemporary” service. It was, essentially, a lot of really awesome music and a video of a pastor from I’m not sure where giving a sermon. I really liked it and it reminded me how much I missed just the idea of a church and other people who shared your beliefs and would stand with you for an hour or two just to remember that.

Since then, I’ve really wanted to just get back into things that are religious and to get involved and be a part of it more. But, I haven’t been, maybe I will in the future, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep praying at night and reading sermons on the internet because that’s what I’m comfortable with.

And, the things is, I’m okay just being comfortable with the situation. Because for me, religion is something you do for you. If I really feel like I need to go to a church to keep my faith, I will. Right now, I don’t have that need.

So, that’s pretty much how things have been for me in the past. Now onto my opinions and such on how people perceive my religion.

People always talk about “the invisible man in the sky” and how that’s ridiculous. (And that’s something that’s done across the board. I won’t deny that, every set of beliefs are screwed over in the stereotype department.) That was always something that bothered me because I never viewed God as that person. That destiny maker, the game changer, the big guy in charge, I just didn’t. He was just there. He was just someone that I could confine in and trust and ask for help from. And that’s still how I view Him.

I still see religion as something that you do if you feel like you need it. If you need faith, if you need something to believe in, then religion is a really easy way to do that. I feel like I need my faith to keep balanced in my life and so I keep it in my life. If someone is comfortable with their life without a religion or with a different one, who am I to say that’s wrong? Honestly, it’s really hard to prove anything in a world we know so little about and fighting over it just seems a little pointless to me.

The stereotype that all Christians are against anything that isn’t heteronormative is quite annoying. Because, most of the people I’ve come across in my own religion aren’t like that. I’m not. You do with your life what you want. Who in the hell am I to say what you can and can’t do? Who am I to say who you are? Or who you love? Or what you believe?

Honestly, it just seems kind of contradictory to me to be Christian and hate or judge someone else for how the way they live their life. I mean, isn’t that the whole point? That God is going to be the one to make the big judgment? Like, I don’t know what you’ve learned, but that’s really how it came across to me. Acceptance is something that is supported, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to love everybody or something like that? It just never made sense to me.

Two other things that people assume about me solely because of my religion: I’m pro-life and that I’m against contraception. Like, seriously? Firstly, this goes back to the whole, your life is none of my business thing. I shouldn’t judge you for choices you make. I also shouldn’t try to make those choices for you. And neither should the government. And we all know this. These are just topics people bring up during elections to make people uncomfortable and to hit them at home. My views on both of those things are plain and simple: your life, your choice. I support contraception, but I also support those who do not want to use it, because that’s their choice. I support abortion as a real option, that doesn’t mean you can’t have kids.

I think that’s something people confuse with religion too much. They think that by believing something, it means you automatically want everyone else to believe it to. No, I don’t want that. I think you should do what you want. If you live a miserable life believing things you don’t want to and being forced to do things you don’t want to, then you are going to regret everything. If you are basically being told how to live, then it’s not really living. Is it?

I feel like I have rambled quite enough for this topic. I think I’ve hit everything I wanted to and I hope everybody the best for their week. Can't wait to read what Kathleen has to say tomorrow. 

Happy Monday!