One thing my Christian friends reassure me of is true, in a sense: Trusting God isn't all that complicated. As a Christian I went to sermons Sunday after Sunday telling me to give more, pray more, serve more. And I gave a little, prayed a little, and served a little, but I always felt guilty, in spite of people saying that I was saved by grace. And eventually I saw the disconnect. If I really believed treasure in heaven was greater than treasure on earth, I would spend that money I was going to spend on eating out and a movie on helping someone in need. If I really believed that prayer was talking to God Almighty, I would rather pray than play Halo for a couple hours. If I really believed that the highest virtue was to serve as Jesus did, I would allow the homeless to stay with me instead of being satisfied with visiting them and eating with them every once in a while. Following the God of Christianity became very uncomplicated in those ways, quite quickly, and when it did I looked at my behavior and I looked at the Bible, and the two didn't match up. At first this led me to embrace a crippling guilt, which led to more guilt, which led to a greater and greater need for acceptance -- which I thought I could only get through grace. Eventually, however, I became so disconcerted and disillusioned that I took some time out and focused on being honest with myself, my motives, my position in the world, and WHY my professed beliefs didn't math up with my actions. No excuses, no dismissal, no sugar-coating. No guilt or embarrassment. Just naked and bare. And I realized that I had severe doubts. Rather than run from them, I examined them, and found they were valid.
Now, when I do or think something, I don't just compare it against a set-in-stone standard of right and wrong. I begin by honestly, freely thinking, "What do I have to believe about the world for me to do or think that way?" In doing this, I've gotten to know myself a lot better -- as not a good person or a bad person, but just me. And I can take myself honestly without guilt (yes, that living without guilt was a surprise) and look carefully at the world to figure out how to most effectively and sincerely express this real me within it. I find it easier to be honest with myself and others, because I also try to understand other people by asking "What do THEY have to believe about the world for THEM to act that way?"
I take the whole package, and suddenly the world makes a whole lot more sense.
People aren't good or bad; they just are.
We all have our desires, our wishes, our dreams.
We are complicated. There are different ways of looking at us.
We can call pride "self-esteem."
We can call selfishness "self-respect."
We can call a sense of entitlement "a sense of one's right to belong."
We can call anger "a sense of justice."
We can call greed "a desire to be part of something greater than yourself."
And so on. It dawned on me that I could choose to see myself and others as evil, or choose to see us as good, or take away the moralizing altogether and simply try to figure out how to allow everyone to live the most satisfying lives they could (when I saw how people often interpreted the Bible to validate the way they wanted to live, I kinda saw this as what people were sorta doing anyway).
I think this is the true source of guilt in Christianity -- it's not the sense that your sins aren't forgiven. Rather, it's the trauma of claiming to believe something, and yet experiencing a debilitating, psychologically crippling block between what you claim to believe and what you do. It's the frustration that produces the guilt -- which leads you back to the church/Christian doctrine, which tells you to reaffirm your faith, which can further reinforce that feeling of guilt, which brings you back to the church...
And while this cycle can produce "good works" to rectify the guilt, as well as bring in more "converts" and make people more entrenched in church, the fact that Christians in the church still suffer from a burden of needless guilt makes the whole scene rather tragic. In the church I was attending on Sunday morning before deconverting, every single Sunday sermon was about dealing with this guilt. It was the norm. Most sermons either try to assuage the guilt or increase it -- both productive methods for encouraging church productivity. But the guilt is never erased altogether -- because the very next week the cycle needs to be repeated.
Christianity tries to split your psyche into two categories, it seems: the sinful nature and the spiritual nature. The sinful nature needs to be silenced, and the spiritual nature needs to be set free. This causes people to be afraid of themselves -- that dark sinful nature within them -- instead of embracing and potentially understanding themselves. Added to this is that the sinful nature is their natural state -- the one they were born into, thanks to original sin -- and they are, at the heart (at the internal level, without external validation), bad, terrible people deserving of eternal torture and hellfire. This fear that Christians have of themselves manifests itself in intense, gut wrenching guilt -- guilt which the church is entrusted with (through confession groups, accountability groups, prayer sessions, and the like), and this guilt is validated by those trusted with judging it, which further separates people from themselves. This dynamic made Christianity, I suspect, an extremely useful ideology for subjugating people. You could take the Native Americans over by force, for example, and then you could teach them Christianity, which taught them to be kind and to turn the other cheek. A similar dynamic could be performed on slaves -- Christianity could be used as a subjugating ideology that separated the less desirable qualities of slaves (like their desire for independence, their self-respect, etc.) from their more desirable qualities (their recognition of their master's position, their ability to be docile, the need for external validation, etc.).
This was all a personal realization for me. I have always been a bit awkward, partly because I was trying so hard to be a Christian -- there were large parts of myself I was holding back. I also tried to ensure others were controlled by the same rules I saw myself as constrained by, which often led to a lot of friction. Now, I'm learning to accept myself. I'm holding less of myself back. And I'm starting to realize that there wasn't as much reason to be afraid of myself as I thought. I realize that I am constrained by less rules -- that the rules are, to a major extent, a choice.
A lot of my life hasn't changed. I don't drink -- not because it's wrong, but because I know my family has a traumatic past with alcohol, and I simply don't want to experience that. I don't do drugs because my mind is very important to me, and I don't want to risk losing it. I don't cuss around my friends because I want to ensure I have a good relationship with them. I study literature because I enjoy it. And so on. I'm realizing more honestly what my desires are, and they aren't as bad -- so far -- as I thought they were. It's been very liberating. I feel much more confident, and I find that I'm much more understanding of other people.
I know that people insist, "Everyone can't do that! Some people are really evil at heart." First, I think part of the reason for crime IS the belief that, at the base, humankind is evil. At least, a similar reasoning has been behind the history of crimes by blacks in history. Second, I think that "evil" is a name we give to behavior we don't understand. That jerk who cut you off in traffic may be "evil" -- until you're in a rush and you have to do the same thing to someone else. I think "evil" is too general. We should look at "murder" as murder. We should look at "stealing" as the taking of property. We should look at actions and be forced to rationalize and explain how they are dangerous to other individuals. We should see these actions as actions someone has a tendency to do, for whatever reason, as opposed to skipping to the conclusion that the person performing those actions is "evil."
Maybe we do this a bit already, although in popular discussion I rarely hear this viewpoint. We should never skip to the conclusion that someone is "rotten to the core." We should look more carefully than that and leave the "core" issue alone, I think. We can get angry and furious at people, sure, because that is our natural reaction and it is a sign that there is something wrong. We can say that some people do things we really, really, really don't want done. But to say that people are evil seems to be a bit of a cop-out...people are almost always more complicated than that. This goes not only for court systems, but for everyday life as well.So I don't think I'm an evil person. I feel my heart, and mind and soul more than I ever have in my life, because I don't have to kiss any of it goodbye. And I take my entire self, without apology, and try to figure out, honestly, what the best choices I can make in the world are. Almost no (if any) guilt is involved. It's deeply freeing and liberating. As more of the guilt drops away, I wonder why I carried so much of it in the first place. It's really not necessary.
I think that many people become Christians because our media is saturated with Christian culture -- the idea that we are deeply evil at heart is something that is prevalent even (especially?) outside of Christian culture, a result, I suspect, of Christian influence. Many villians are "evil."
In addition, those in impoverished countries often become Christian, I think, because they get paid to be, so to speak (some homeless have figured out that professing faith can get them money, as well). Once Christianity is established, it becomes entrenched in the country due to the psychological guilt cycle, which works to control more and more minds and hearts in the country. Or, at least, that's what seems to make sense. Certainly, it is disturbing that many who think that we are a "Christian Nation" seem to believe that physical force is only part the battle -- ideological front lines, some seem to think, will also make the "Christian Nation" of the United States more powerful and influential. Proof of this in action is the prosperity gospel -- the message that belief in God will bring prosperity -- that is shipped to poor countries.
These are among the realizations that came to me slowly. I have said that my deconversion took place on many logical, emotional, and experiential fronts. This was an experiential/logical one. I looked honestly at what I did, and I used that to determine what I believed and who I honestly was, and I went from there. Oddly enough, that process filled a hole in my heart that the God of Christianity never could.
No comments:
Post a Comment