My Battle With Religion

On February 11th, Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation. This is the first resignation of a Pope in over 600 years and I was surprised that my first thought was “what are they hiding”. This led to my next thought, which was “why on earth are you so angry at religion?”

Am I ready to tackle that question? Probably not, but in the interest of personal growth, I think I’ll nibble around the edges a little. Maybe in the process, some of the anger and resentment that has been brewing within me for decades will subside; maybe the irritability that rises up each time I drive by a church (this happens often where I live, as there is a church on nearly every block) will disappear.

Think “hellfire and brimstone”, second cousin to Southern Baptist; that’s the kind of church in which I was raised. I remember listening to back-masked tapes of Led Zeppelin in Sunday school, and the teacher explaining that the mangled and indistinguishable garbled-y-gook we had just heard was ACTUALLY Jimmy Page talking about Satan. I tried, I mean I tried really hard, to hear the words, but I just couldn’t. At the time, I was sure it was because I was a sinner and wasn’t letting the Lord work within me. There’s an entirely different language when you are part of a church like that. Terms like “The Lord”, “we come to you”, and “in Jesus Christ we pray” are as common as your average noun and these words come to mind like Pavlov: when asked to pray, I immediately begin, without even thinking “Dear Lord, we come to you as sinners……”.

At the age of seven I remember lying in bed at night desperately sobbing because my Jewish cousins and their parents were going to burn in hell unless they accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. The church had instilled that it was my responsibility to teach the word of God, and if I failed, my loved ones would spend eternity in excruciating pain, flames licking at their skin, agonizing every moment, every second. You see, that’s what hell is: Pain, Fire, Flames, Heat, for all of Eternity. What child wants to think of people they love burning in hell? Honestly, if the children of Westboro Baptist Church are threatened with this horror then it is no wonder they are willing brokers of hate. The visions I carried in my head of hell were so disturbing that in1976 I finally broke down and witnessed to my seven year old cousin Laura, painting a quite excessive picture of the consequences that awaited her if she didn’t convert. As you can imagine, this didn’t go over well with her parents and it forced my Grandparents to encourage me to let this one family slide, leaving me even more confused.

I remember being terrified of airports because after the back mask obsession ended my Sunday school moved on to cults. Garbeld-y-gook was replaced with pictures of Mooneys and their leader, Sun Myung Moon. I desperately feared that a cult might kidnap and brainwash me. As an elementary school student, it simply didn’t occur to me that we didn’t fly anywhere, nor had there been any local sightings of Mooneys recruiting in Morris County, KS.

When I dared to question the bible, as I did once and only once, it resulted in a private meeting with our Pastor. All I did was ask a question about dinosaurs and why the bible didn’t talk about them. I didn’t realize at the time that such a simple question would result in the big gun being brought in, and, having never been comfortable in his presence, I vowed to never question anything regarding the church again (at least out loud).

My Grandparents were thrilled when James Dobson released his Focus on the Family multi-cassette series. The thing was, they were already doing an amazing job as parents. Every single morning, before the sun came up, they would sit together at the kitchen table quietly sipping coffee and sharing devotion. In my long flowered nightgown, I would sometimes wake and secretly peek at them, not understanding what they were talking about, but finding solace in the quiet ticking of the clock, the smell of coffee brewing, the stillness of the morning, and their quiet whispers as one would read the devotion, the other the daily scripture, and then together their prayers. Even as a young child, I recognized meditation, serenity, and a coming together of two souls and I loved living in that home within this safe cocoon. They loved me deeply and were amazing parents; their only flaw, in my mind, was such blind devotion to a church that believed every single word of the New Testament, verbatim.

Later, when the sermons on the Book of Revelation began, the ultimate splinter between my faith and the Baptist church would begin to fester. I am torn at times, wondering if the experience was really as bad as I remember or if my childhood recall is, in fact, reality. But then I think, does it really matter if that childhood memory was completely accurate? Does it? I witnessed to all of my friends, believe me. My Grandmother even recorded some of it. Sometimes, when the pain of missing her becomes overwhelming, I look for ways to feel her presence and turning to her bible seems to be the most logical move. She jotted notes, mostly biblically related, but at other times, dates and personal notes, almost as if her favorite bible was a small diary. I was surprised to find written, about one of my young friends, “Beth B. was saved today – April 24, 1983”. I’m fairly certain Beth doesn’t recall that event (don’t quote this, I could be wrong), but my grandmother preserved it for history. The church teaches that Beth’s name was written in the Book of Life and that she has a place in heaven for eternity. My dearest and closest childhood friend, Julie, was also saved. In the process, we earned the wrath of her devout Catholic mother, who wanted to know “what the hell they were teaching at that church!” Julie’s conversion came about because she was no dummy. She didn’t want to spend eternity feeling those flames melt her skin any more than I did.

The sermons on Revelation, once started, seemed to reoccur over and over. All of those explicit visions I had of hell turned into apocalyptic nightmares of tattoos on wrists and guillotines located on church property. I began having dreams that I’d wake up and both of my grandparents would be gone, vanished into thin air. I recall coming home from school once and having a panic attack because I couldn’t find my grandmother (she was in the back yard). I was sickened when, years later, I realized that even Hollywood saw the value in perpetuating the tribulation nightmare when they created the “Left Behind” movies. There was an earlier version of these films shown at my church called “A Thief in the Night”. At the end, a woman stands before a bloody guillotine (I really did have ongoing nightmares involving beheadings, go figure) in a plain white smock, in front of a picturesque suburban church, white steeple even, preparing for decapitation because she had refused to get the mark of the beast. Did I mention that the night of this viewing was the night Julie accepted Christ? This is why her mother was so incensed.

You see, it didn’t matter that the church also taught us to love our neighbors, to avoid gossip, to abstain from lying/cheating/stealing….for me, all that mattered was not dying a bloody, horrific death and not spending eternity in excruciating pain and agony.

Which leads me to why I might still be so angry: I think I’m jealous. I’m jealous of the thousands of people in my community who experience such comfort and peace within their church. I’m jealous of those people who have simply embraced their chosen religion (even if it wasn’t really chosen, but granted them upon birth, as in most cases) and never experience a pang of doubt or confusion regarding whether or not their minister’s interpretation is truly the correct one……or, actually, whether or not their Old or New Testaments were even translated accurately over thousands of years. I talk to my beautiful mother-in-law about this, and she admittedly has a simplistic view of her own Catholicism. She loves the beauty of the church, the tradition and ceremony, because it brings her peace when she is there. My sister-in-law, raised Catholic but no longer practicing, has defined mass in her own special way as having been the one time every week where she was forced to sit quietly and reflect upon her life. Other family members have found absolute solace within their chosen religions after experiencing a devastating loss. Jewish family members are part of a cultural family. My aunt, who converted after marrying a Jew and almost getting herself disowned in the process, loves the Jewish faith because, as she says, of its age, beauty and because it is a very personal and private religion, one that doesn’t encourage proselytizing.

When I was asked to run for the Kansas House of Representatives, one of the first things I explained was that I do not attend church and I wasn’t about to start. My biggest emotional hiccup occurred after hearing that a neighbor family wasn’t going to vote for me because I didn’t attend church. I can’t put into the words the anger that I felt or the frustration at not having a way to say “I can spout scripture with the best of them! Want me to pray and make it Billy Graham worthy? You got it! I probably know more about the New Testament than 90% of local mega church members!” See what I mean about the anger? It isn’t healthy, and it isn’t justified. Not anymore.

So after nibbling around those edges, I decided to have a talk with my fraternal grandmother, a lifelong Baptist, who through one of those strange twists of fate I wouldn’t meet until six short years ago, and who knows more about the Bible than just about anyone I’ve ever met. I asked her about THAT book: Revelation. And she laughed….she laughed kindly and gently, with affection and love. She told me that she doesn’t believe any of it literally and that the book is, in all probability, an allegory. She doesn’t believe that one day, out of the blue, millions will just disappear. Plus, and this shocked me, she doesn’t believe that there will be an “anti-Christ”. I jokingly stated “why couldn’t I have attended YOUR church growing up?” She said it wouldn’t have mattered, because many church’s teachings on this subject have evolved over time, just as her own interpretation has evolved. She agreed with me when I talked about the rage I could barely contain when my 2nd grade daughter told me two of her christian friends had told her "Obama kills babies" and echoed my sheer bewilderment and sadness over the intolerant obsession some groups have toward homosexuality.

All of this leads me to where I am today, at this moment in time with regard to my own faith. I’m not comfortable yet sharing the details (suffice it to say I’m not an atheist, by any means), but I’m so very tired of being angry at religion. And I’m tired of labels…...labels that I use far too freely, loosely, and irresponsibly when pondering Christianity and, yet, labels I’m very quick to condemn when they are used to describe religions of which I’m less familiar. Some of you following this will be able to read between the lines regarding this last sentence and, I hope, will comprehend how dangerous those labels are regardless of the religion they describe.

This is the bottom line: I control what I hold onto. Today, as I write this, I have decided to let go. It might take a little practice, but the next time I drive by a church I’m not going to roll my eyes. The next time someone posts something religious on Facebook, I’m going to read it instead of quickly scrolling past. The next time I am somewhere and a person prays, I’m going to use that time to meditate, or at least really listen to what they are saying . And maybe, just maybe, I might attend a service this Sunday. I have a few places in mind and haven’t decided for sure where to go yet, but the point is to try again. So my kids can get a taste of the peace I mentioned earlier and so maybe, just maybe, I can find the quiet solace I missed out on as a child. It’s a start, right?