Christianity
Sep. 29th, 2010 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsExcuse me a moment while I bury the lede here, but I've been meaning to comment on one of those things that I shake my head at in hindsight having gotten to a better level with the politics habit.
Note to liberals: this "Conservative Christians are Hypocrites" thing has no teeth. If it entertains you and riles your base, cool, enjoy yourselves, but stop yammering as though it should turn the Conservative Christian base against anybody.
See, I grew up in an evangelical country church. My parents were always Democrats (not progressives, but certainly not Republicans), and it wasn't really hard-core evangelical flirting-with-tax-exempt-revocation telling you how to vote kind of crap, but trust me, bad enough. And recently I remembered an important---perhaps the important---point of the theology there. Damnation does not result from sin. It would, if not for the Grace of God through the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but that did happen for those who accept it and believe, so ultimately, sin is not damning; failure to accept the said Grace and Sacrifice---ie, incorrigible unbelief---is damning. How some of the churches in question judge whether you believe is all kinds of messed up, to the point that I think it often boils down to "are you one of us?" But if that's the case, "one of us" has God's grace even if they sin, because everyone sins. Those evil liberals, clearly not "one of us," many of them avowed unbelievers, do not have God's grace no matter how well they live, indeed it's hubristic if they suppose that right living will save them without faith---because again, everyone sins. So yeah, all this "Christians behaving badly" stuff, the public that shares that kind of Christianity with the miscreants is never going to side with you over them, not because they're nitwits, but because that's consistent with the logic of their theology.
Now then...
The main thing that's still more difficult but that I wanted to post about is an overdue admission: I am not a Christian.
Maybe left over from that "trust me, bad enough" childhood, I was really resisting just admitting that to myself, but looking back I can see how oddly I was contorting to not admit it. The most progressive Christian church I could find still rubbed me the wrong way doctrinally on a regular basis. I wasn't willing to admit "I'm not a Christian," but I hated it when people assumed that I was one or treated me like one (one of my frustrations with where I'm currently living is that around here, everyone assumes that everyone is a Christian). Even when I see beauty within Christianity, it seems that it becomes beautiful when viewed from the outside, without the investment of faith.
There is the old way of looking at different religions as paths up the same mountain to the same peak. Well, that is the pet peeve of the book I'm currently reading ("God is not One" by Prothero), and I'd agree that that's reductive. But maybe we can say that they're all paths over a mountain range to the sunny side---that there is a shared goal among and beyond religions of "living in the light" in a broad metaphorical sense, although what that means, what it looks like, and how you get there are all different. But I don't think all paths work for all people, and for me, the Christianity path is pretty well caved in.
Details are different and perhaps less extreme (I know I didn't have it as bad as some people), but a lot of what I love about the graphic novel "Blankets" by Craig Thompson is that, in the church-related parts, it was like someone came along and did a better job than I ever could of expressing what my childhood felt like---how it took the things that made me feel most alive (drawing for "Blankets'" protagonist, fantasy more generally for me) and made them feel illegitimate and shameful. I took everything adults told me about what was right and good very seriously, and here they were telling me, nothing should be more important than this, while I just felt trapped and bored and would have rather been at home. I felt guilty every time I managed to get away to watch Star Trek, and now in hindsight I think Star Trek taught me a heck of a lot more about what is beautiful and sacred. And of course, once you've been taught to believe in things like Hell and the Apocalypse, it makes it really scary to get out from under it. I did toss those off a long time ago, but I'll never forget the part they played in, frankly, what my religious upbringing did to me.
And yes, not all Christians are like that, and some of the helping hands to get me this far have been Christians; the liberal Priest who presided from afar over my college flirtation with Catholicism, Bishop Spong's books, Pastor Ellen who I always did (and still do) feel like I could talk to even if Sunday services don't work for me, et al. But as I've been thinking of it lately, in a perhaps overly-self-pitying way, it's like, if you take someone who grew up in a cage, and you try to sell to sell them an apartment with bars on the windows, they're not really to be blamed if their brain is just screaming at them "I'm not going back in the box". That's how I feel in Christian churches---"I am not going back in that box. Not ever." That doesn't mean there's anything intrinsically wrong with the apartment or the church, but it does mean it's a bad fit for that person, and the only reason not to just leave it at that is if there is no viable alternative to bars on the windows, or to Christianity, and I tossed that "only way to salvation" bit off a long time ago, too, though maybe it's only now that I'm accepting the full implications of doing so.
So that's my bit today; I'm not a Christian. I'm also not an atheist (or at least not a strong atheist); currently I think I'm pretty unclassifiable, though I don't think I'm necessarily averse to being something. On occasion recently, I've felt like maybe I could be a Buddhist, and I'm thinking of trying a Unitarian church. Being classifiable doesn't have so much intrinsic value to me either, but I think it would be nice if there was that sense of community in a place that felt spiritually supportive and not spiritually threatening.
Note to liberals: this "Conservative Christians are Hypocrites" thing has no teeth. If it entertains you and riles your base, cool, enjoy yourselves, but stop yammering as though it should turn the Conservative Christian base against anybody.
See, I grew up in an evangelical country church. My parents were always Democrats (not progressives, but certainly not Republicans), and it wasn't really hard-core evangelical flirting-with-tax-exempt-revocation telling you how to vote kind of crap, but trust me, bad enough. And recently I remembered an important---perhaps the important---point of the theology there. Damnation does not result from sin. It would, if not for the Grace of God through the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but that did happen for those who accept it and believe, so ultimately, sin is not damning; failure to accept the said Grace and Sacrifice---ie, incorrigible unbelief---is damning. How some of the churches in question judge whether you believe is all kinds of messed up, to the point that I think it often boils down to "are you one of us?" But if that's the case, "one of us" has God's grace even if they sin, because everyone sins. Those evil liberals, clearly not "one of us," many of them avowed unbelievers, do not have God's grace no matter how well they live, indeed it's hubristic if they suppose that right living will save them without faith---because again, everyone sins. So yeah, all this "Christians behaving badly" stuff, the public that shares that kind of Christianity with the miscreants is never going to side with you over them, not because they're nitwits, but because that's consistent with the logic of their theology.
Now then...
The main thing that's still more difficult but that I wanted to post about is an overdue admission: I am not a Christian.
Maybe left over from that "trust me, bad enough" childhood, I was really resisting just admitting that to myself, but looking back I can see how oddly I was contorting to not admit it. The most progressive Christian church I could find still rubbed me the wrong way doctrinally on a regular basis. I wasn't willing to admit "I'm not a Christian," but I hated it when people assumed that I was one or treated me like one (one of my frustrations with where I'm currently living is that around here, everyone assumes that everyone is a Christian). Even when I see beauty within Christianity, it seems that it becomes beautiful when viewed from the outside, without the investment of faith.
There is the old way of looking at different religions as paths up the same mountain to the same peak. Well, that is the pet peeve of the book I'm currently reading ("God is not One" by Prothero), and I'd agree that that's reductive. But maybe we can say that they're all paths over a mountain range to the sunny side---that there is a shared goal among and beyond religions of "living in the light" in a broad metaphorical sense, although what that means, what it looks like, and how you get there are all different. But I don't think all paths work for all people, and for me, the Christianity path is pretty well caved in.
Details are different and perhaps less extreme (I know I didn't have it as bad as some people), but a lot of what I love about the graphic novel "Blankets" by Craig Thompson is that, in the church-related parts, it was like someone came along and did a better job than I ever could of expressing what my childhood felt like---how it took the things that made me feel most alive (drawing for "Blankets'" protagonist, fantasy more generally for me) and made them feel illegitimate and shameful. I took everything adults told me about what was right and good very seriously, and here they were telling me, nothing should be more important than this, while I just felt trapped and bored and would have rather been at home. I felt guilty every time I managed to get away to watch Star Trek, and now in hindsight I think Star Trek taught me a heck of a lot more about what is beautiful and sacred. And of course, once you've been taught to believe in things like Hell and the Apocalypse, it makes it really scary to get out from under it. I did toss those off a long time ago, but I'll never forget the part they played in, frankly, what my religious upbringing did to me.
And yes, not all Christians are like that, and some of the helping hands to get me this far have been Christians; the liberal Priest who presided from afar over my college flirtation with Catholicism, Bishop Spong's books, Pastor Ellen who I always did (and still do) feel like I could talk to even if Sunday services don't work for me, et al. But as I've been thinking of it lately, in a perhaps overly-self-pitying way, it's like, if you take someone who grew up in a cage, and you try to sell to sell them an apartment with bars on the windows, they're not really to be blamed if their brain is just screaming at them "I'm not going back in the box". That's how I feel in Christian churches---"I am not going back in that box. Not ever." That doesn't mean there's anything intrinsically wrong with the apartment or the church, but it does mean it's a bad fit for that person, and the only reason not to just leave it at that is if there is no viable alternative to bars on the windows, or to Christianity, and I tossed that "only way to salvation" bit off a long time ago, too, though maybe it's only now that I'm accepting the full implications of doing so.
So that's my bit today; I'm not a Christian. I'm also not an atheist (or at least not a strong atheist); currently I think I'm pretty unclassifiable, though I don't think I'm necessarily averse to being something. On occasion recently, I've felt like maybe I could be a Buddhist, and I'm thinking of trying a Unitarian church. Being classifiable doesn't have so much intrinsic value to me either, but I think it would be nice if there was that sense of community in a place that felt spiritually supportive and not spiritually threatening.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-01 02:23 am (UTC)But my brain is exhausted, so I'll try to leave a real comment this weekend, when I've had some time to sleep. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-10-01 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 11:15 pm (UTC)Thanks for the bit of anthropological information. There really are cultural differences among various groups and regions in the US, which isn't really surprising given how large a country we are, but which people tend to forget about because we are one country. I don't think I'd really realized there was a serious mismatch between the worldview I thought conservative Christians had, and what they really have, until Bristol Palin's pregnancy was announced and conservative Christians didn't seem particularly bothered by it. It wasn't until later that I came to understand that conservatives who I thought would be bothered weren't overly bothered because she was Doing The Socially Correct Thing -- carrying to term and marrying the dad. Granted, there were some race and class things going on there, too; if Bristol Palin had been Black, I think that many White Conservative Christians would've been deeply unhappy, and we'd have been hearing nasty racist and classist stuff from their corner.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 05:36 am (UTC)(Whoops, forgot to click post beforeI left the computer, silly me)
Date: 2010-10-24 03:48 am (UTC)I hope that if you decide you want a community, the UU's or a similar group work out for you. My understanding is that UU churches have a lot of variation depending on the local congregation, so I hope the local one is a good fit for you if that's what you look in to. :)
If you get interested in exploring atheism or secular humanism, I can recommend some blogs that are less "all religions suck rah rah rah" and more "okay, how can we improve the public image of atheists, deal with pushy religious relatives, and find common ground with religious folks when it comes to doing good in the world".
Re: (Whoops, forgot to click post beforeI left the computer, silly me)
Date: 2010-10-24 05:29 am (UTC)But thank you for your words of support! ("Triggering"... Oh, yeah, there is a single word for what I spent a few paragraphs on, isn't there...? ^_~; )