Religion Again?

Yes that title reflects how I feel.  I am so sick of thinking and talking and writing about religion, but now that I have removed myself from "religious" life, I am bombarded daily with the hypocrisy and hate of it all. 

Disclaimer:  I still believe in God, still pretty sure about Jesus, still reading and exploring and praying and deciding.  So I have not become an atheist.

But  oy vey, I am fed up to my eyeballs with do-gooder, self righteous Christians who think their way is the only way.  

I never considered myself to be an overly intellectual person.  I think I am smart, I think I can figure things out, I have a brain and I know how to use it.   But I didn't go to college and get a fancy degree.  Most of the stuff I know, I know because I sought the knowledge.  So it always makes me curious how so many people can fall hook, line and sinker for half the stuff told to them in church.  I can admit, I did fall hook and line for a while.  But I always held a little doubt (sinker) in my head.  Sometimes things felt fishy, sometimes they felt wrong.  Sometimes they didn't make sense.  So I didn't just close my mind and believe.  Well, sometimes I tried to, but I always had the nagging doubt that something didn't add up.  Which I suppose is why in the end it made it easy to leave church. God gave me a brain, and I use it. 

My eldest daughter recently joined a club at school called The Gay-Straight Alliance.  It's purpose is to foster friendship and understanding between gay and straight students.  It is supposed to be a safe place for the gay students to go and feel like they can be themselves.  It is not a club about sex or a place for gay students to sway their straight peers (as many would like to believe).  It's actually just a social club, a place for the kids to hang out together and organize community service events.  Recently the club helped out at the schools showing of The Laramie Project.  It was during a question and answer after the play that the audience was made aware of the fact that the school will not allow the club to advertise itself in school.  Seems the word "gay" is off limits.  So I wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper. (It's the comments to the letter and some other comments heard by people that have set me off.) 

What is it about gay people that brings such hatred out of Christians?  What makes them so afraid?  Do they think it's contagious?  Do they think gay people eat small children and kittens?  Why can't Christians just live out their own lives and let other people live theirs?

Isn't anyone other than me tired of Christians constantly butting into everyone else's lives?  They are not the only people on this planet.  I know they'd like to be, I know they think they have a mandate from God to make sure they are, but newsflash, there are plenty of other people who believe just as strongly in what their God says, or believe they have no God to tell them what to do and don't they deserve to just live their life in peace?  Believe me, there is no one in America who has never heard of God, so since they have all heard the "good news" isn't it time to leave them the hell alone?  

I am all for freedom of religion, I am all for anyone going to whatever church they like and worshiping however they like and living their life and raising their kids in whatever holy way they'd like.  What I am entirely sick of is people trying force other people to live their way of life. 

We are all here for such a really short time.  We all are just muddling through, trying to find our place, our purpose.  No one knows anyone else's story.  No one else EVER has the right to judge another's path, and certainly no one has the right to get into someones face and tell them their path is wrong.  If all the religious zealots were really following their religions, they would know the greatest commandment is to love.  Come on people, let's just love on each other.  

"The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of Love.  And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." ~ Teilhard de Chardin

Christians and "Christians"

Man is a Religious Animal.  He is the only Religious Animal.  He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them.  He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.  He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.  

~Mark Twain~

 

A little background:  I grew up Catholic.  Born, baptised, reconciled, communed, confirmed, Catholic.  Cradle Catholic as many like to call us.  Back then, Catholics didn't read the bible, they didn't do much other than show up for church on Sunday.  So by the time I was 16 or so, I was done with Catholicism and most religion.  I went through the motions when my girls were born, had them baptised Catholic, to save their souls and all that.  But around 1999, I started hanging with "Christians".  

Catholics like to call themselves Christians, but over time I have come to see that there are Christians and there are "Christians" and never the twain shall meet.  They are just two different animals.  I have decided that Christians are the normal, everyday folk, who believe in God, believe in Jesus, go to church on Sunday, but live in and with the rest of the world.  "Christians" on the other hand, are those who go to church as many days during the weeks as possible, go to every church retreat, every church event, and try to mingle with "others" as little as possible.  People outside the church are "scary", threatening, not like them.     

When I started hanging out with "Christians" I got sucked into all things "Christian".  I decided to homeschool my girls to save them from the evil public schoolers (actually, homeschooling become unschooling which became a "good thing" but I digress).  I became obsessed with shielding my children from all the "worldly" things that might harm them.  TV, music, who their friends were all had to be carefully evaluated to make sure it was what God would want for my children.   I even made them skip Halloween for a few years.  Something my children never let me forget. 

In recent years we've been involved in a Christian homeschooling cooperative.   The hypocrisy I have seen there has been amazing.  These people, who profess love in their hearts for all, have really shown themselves to be the most judgmental people I have even known.  I never saw judgment much until I became a "Christian".  It's one thing as a Christian to believe Christianity is the way, quite another to think your own version of "Christianity" is the only way.  Who knew there was so much division just among "Christians"?  It isn't enough to be a believer, one must believe a certain way.  Every denomination seems to think they have the lock on the "truth". They also believe they get to judge how our children dress, how much make-up they wear and whether or not they should be allowed to date or (gasp) have a boyfriend!   

I've grown tired of it.  I've grown tired of trying to see where I fit into the puzzle that is Christianity.  When we as a family were actually going to church, a "Christian" church, we didn't necessarily believe everything being taught.  When we spoke to some other members about this dilemma, we were told that most people don't believe everything taught in a specific church, one was supposed to take the good and discard the bad.  We were told we'd never find a "perfect" church.  HUH?  At the time I didn't think much about that statement, but looking back, I think why go somewhere if you don't agree with what is being taught? 

Since leaving our former church, I have considered going back to the Catholic church.  But I can't.  The patriarchal attitude is more than I can take, and I don't want my girls growing up under patriarchy.  And the more I research other churches, the more I realize I just don't think I will fit in anywhere.  I just have too many disagreements with what they believe, and I don't want to go to a church and have to pick and choose, again, what I believe in. 

Anne Rice, the author, recently announced she was quitting Christianity.  She just can't reconcile what she believes (and she believes in God, Jesus and the Bible) and what the churches teach.  So she's given up on church.  I think I need to give up on church too.  I haven't given up on God, or Jesus.  But I am giving up on church.  There is too much falsehood, too much hypocrisy, too much judgement, too many cliques, too much prying into my life at church.  I have been happier since leaving church, surprisingly enough.  Since I stopped my quest of feeling like I "have" to go to church, that I "have" to be in community, blah, blah, blah, I feel less stressed, more free to be me.  And I think God is ok with it too.  

Not all religion is to be found in the church, any more than all knowledge is found in the classroom.  

~Author Unknown~

Everyday people are straying away from the church and going back to God.  

~Lennie Bruce~