AWOL

So…I haven’t blogged in a really, really, really long time.

Most of that is because I’ve been busy with school work. On top of writing papers and tutoring, I’ve also been unofficially given an editor position for one 0f my school’s English department publications. (I will officially have the title of editor next year, but they’re kind of phasing me in this quarter, so I’ve had to take on a lot more responsibility.) Add that to my leadership positions in extracirriculars plus the fact that I’m trying to get ready to apply for grad school next year and apply for internships this summer…I’ve had a lot going on and this blog has fallen by the wayside.

I also haven’t been blogging regularly because, well, I’ve been rethinking this blog. I started it out as a way to vent my feelings about my de-conversion and to talk about fat acceptance, two movements that I joined more or less at the same time. And now, I feel like I need to vent less about de-conversion. It’s become a part of me, and it’s a part that most of the people around me have accepted. It’s also something that I’ve accepted about myself. As for fat acceptance, I think I need a break from writing about it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still great, but after having written a huge academic paper about it and now preparing to present that paper, I need a break.

What I do find myself wanting to write about, however, is English. This is probably because I’ve been researching grad schools so much. I’ve found myself wanting to blog about pop culture and books from the perspectives of various critical theories. I’ve also found myself wanting to blog about how to look for a grad school in English and what the process of applying to that school is. I also really want to defend my field from the philistines that I’ve encountered lately who see no point in examining texts or don’t understand things like postmodernism and deconstruction but then feel the need to bash them anyway. I also want to examine the connections between sociology and literature, because there are many.

So, I may be starting a new blog that deals with English studies more and less with de-conversion and fat acceptance and feminism, though I’m sure those things will indeed come up in the new blog. And I probably won’t be starting it until I have some free time, which will probably be closer to the summer. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to post here as well. I’m sure I will, but I expect that my posts will tend to be far between. 

I’ve had a good run with this blog. It’s given me a chance to explore new aspects of my identity and learn new things about the world around me. It’s been a place to explore and vent. I’m just starting to feel like I’ve outgrown it.

Does Meaning Equal God?

For some reason, I usually feel guilty when I try to write a post that argues against certain Christian ideas. This is for several reason. One, we live in a society that is very tolerant of religion, and saying anything bad about it is ingrained in our upbringing. Two, lately, I’ve found myself preferring de-con sites that don’t put down Christianity so much as they bring up their own new belief systems. In other words, they spend more time talking about tolerance, understanding, and acceptance between people of different ideas than they do putting down religious ideas. Or, they talk about the benifts of an agnostic/atheistic worldview without demeaning religious worldviews.

But, I realized that my de-conversion posts were becoming few and far between, so I thought I should add some variety and write one. Plus, I’ve heard from some people that the argument I’m going to try to argue against seems to leave some non-theists speechless, and it really shouldn’t. So, here goes:

You’ve probably heard Christians, at some point, use the argument that no atheists really exist, because everyone has something that gets them through the day or that they live for or that gives meaning to their lives. The Christians then conclude that whatever this thing is for someone, that is their god. Therefore, everyone believes in God.

There are several problems with this argument. I will grant that everyone has something that gives meaning to their lives. However, this thing can be remarkably different from the Christian conception of God. Some non-theists might derive meaning for their life from their careers, others from their families. Some might have some sort of cause, like scientific discovery or political activism, that gives their lives meaning. Some might derive meaning in their lives from philosophical concepts like secular humanism or existentialism. However, none of things are God in the Christian sense of the term. None of these things are all-powerful, all-knowing, or all-present. None of these things are thought of as omnibenevolent. Many of these things, like political activism or humanism, are abstract concepts, which are nothing like the Christian God, which is said to be personal and quite human-like in the fact that Christians often conceptualize him as a father who wants a relationship with his children.

Instead of calling these things that give meaning to our lives “God,” I would call them ideologies. Just because something gives meaning to someone’s life, does not automatically make it their God. Well, it would, if that were the only criteria for defining God. However, the term “God” also carries with it many of the traits that I listed above–omipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Ideologies, however, can give meaning to one’s life without having any of these traits. One can also turn to ideologies as a source of comfort or certainty in times of sturggle or chaos. That does not make them God. Just because you structure your life around ideologies–and we all do this–does not mean that an ideology is the same thing as a god.

In fact, there is one big difference between relying on an ideology and relying on God–ideologies can change! When you call something an ideology, you are admitting that it is made by human beings, who are flawed, and therefore tend to create flawed ideologies. You’re giving your worldview flexibility and adaptibility. When you derive your life’s meaning from God, well, you can’t really change God. God is an absolute. God cannot be changed. God is something that is (supposedly) outside of human control and understanding.

Personally, I would argue that God is just another ideology, but I’m not going to go there right now. What I am saying is that just because someone has something that gives meaning to their life does not mean that that person believes in God. What gives meaning to an individual’s life is called an ideology, not a god. They are not the same thing. Yes, everyone has something that gives their life meaning. No, just because this thing gives their life meaning does not make that thing God.

Church and Agnosticism Revisited

So, I’ve been to church twice this week, once on Christmas eve and again today, and it’s the first time I’ve been since…wow, I can’t remember. Probably sometime in June?

Both experiences were rather tedious. There was nothing that motivated me to return a theistic worldview but there was also nothing that made me incredibly outraged. It was kind of ridiculous in the pastor’s Christmas eve sermon when he spent the first five minutes of the sermon telling us that no one could possibly know what the end of the world was going to be like and then spent the next five minutes of the sermon explaining exactly what the end of the world was going to be like. (I wondered if anyone else in the congregation picked up on that little inconsistency?) I was also a little bit annoyed by a video that he showed during the Christmas eve service. The video was montage of people answering questions about what Christmas meant to them. The implication was that the poor, ignorant souls who gave less spiritual answers like, “Christmas means being together with the family,” or “Christmas means being generous to those around you” were worse off than the righteous souls who gave answers like, “It’s about Jesus’ birth.” Really, what’s wrong with getting meaning out taking time to be with your family or being generous? If that’s all the meaning that some people need to get out of the holiday, what’s wrong with that? That’s certainly all the meaning I got out of it this year, and I must say, it was very fulfilling. It was much more fulfilling than past Christmases, which were often guilt-filled affiars in which everyone around me seemed to be deeply contemplating and appreciating the great sacrifice that God made to come down to earth as a baby. Meanwhile, I felt guilty for not having the happy-fuzzy faith feelings that everyone around me seemed to be getting. Also, the pastor at my church liked to draw parallels between Advent and the end of the world, so Sunday sermons often didn’t focus on the cute image of the coming Nativity scene so much as they were warnings about the end of the world. (Because I used to be a Lutheran, these warnings of the end of the world weren’t nearly as terrifying as the fire-and-brimestone apocalyses that awaited those left behind after the rapture that you hear about in fundementalist churches, but to me, who already spent a good portion of my time worrying about sin and damnation and whether or not Iwas a good person, these warnings about the end of the world really weren’t what I needed to hear.)

The service today also wasn’t spectacular. The sermon was something about trusting God to be compassionate, and this was somehow related to God’s killing of the first born in Egypt so that the Hebrew people could be free from slavery. (Killing an entire nation’s firstborn sons is compassionate?) Obviously, I didn’t pay much attention. I did, however, like the excuse to sing Christmas carols. Even though I don’t believe in their message anymore, I’m so used to hearing them at Christmas time that it just wouldn’t be Christmas without them. I also liked the chance to see people that I’d grown up with, since my family has been attending this church since before I was born. I also enjoyed seeing relatives again. Even if I don’t miss the worldview or the theology, I do sometimes miss the community of church.

Going to church also showed me how much I’ve changed since coming out as a nonChristian this summer. For a while, even though I knew that logically there probably is no God and if there is then this God would not be so petty as to need my eternal devotion to feed his ego, I still felt guilty whenever I went to church (or watched my parents getting ready for church while I stayed at home and read PostSecret on Sunday mornings). I wondered if maybe there was something wrong with me because I’d left the church. I wondered if maybe there was something I wasn’t getting. I felt guilty for hurting my mom for not going to church. I felt guilty for being there and not believing what everyone else there believed. Now, I don’t really care. I went. I sat in a pew. I stood up. I sat down again. I said some words. It didn’t mean much to me, but it was excuse to spend time with my family and that’s what really matters.

I also just realized that it was about a year ago that I became an agnostic. Ironically, it was reading Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion that pushed me from a vague sort of Universalism to agnosticism, even though Dawkins claims that his book is supposed to convince agnostics to become atheists. I guess I just wasn’t ready for atheism. But this year, I wonder if I might be. Lately, I’ve started thinking of myself as atheist instead of agnostic. Which makes me wonder, where do you draw the line? Where does agnosticism end and atheism begin?

If someone asked me, Is there a god? I’d answer, Probably not. I certainly don’t feel like I need God. I see no evidence to believe in God. Sure, there might be a God, and if I had to guess the nature of this God, I might say that God is comprised of the Universe and Universal laws. But that would be a very materialistic God that’s nothing like the spiritual overlord that so many people see God as. If there is a God, I might also say that it’s something like the Tao, as I understand it, in that it’s not something you can explain but in some ways, it’s better left alone because it’s going to do it’s own thing, so you might as well do yours.

So, where does this answer put me? Am I an atheist or an agnostic? I feel like right now I exist in some sort of grey area between the two, but increasingly, I’ve been feeling as though the label “atheist” is closer to what I am than the label “agnostic.”

A Nonreligious Hymn for Materialists!

One of the things that I miss about Christianity (or just being religious in general) is the symbolism and ritual. I miss looking at a cross and getting that warm fuzzy feeling. I miss going to church and feeling connected to everyone in the congregation as we all recited the same liturgy, even though when the service was over, I really had no deep emotional or mental meaningful connections to the majority of the people in the congregation. I miss the comfort that cames with the recitation of prayers, even if I didn’t always feel like someone was listening to those prayers. I miss the little reminders everyday that seemed special and made me think about the “deeper” meanings of life (which really weren’t all that deep, in retrospect, but they seemed deep and meaningful at the time). I miss the reminders that I was a special person with a Big Daddy and Big Brother up in heaven looking down on me. While I feel that by giving those things up, I have gained so much more–the ability to see the world as it really is and shape my worldviews accordingly, the freedom to choose my own morality based on what I believe to be true and right and not based on a book written thousands of years ago that is, mostly, no longer applicable to contemporary life, and the ability to see myself as a human being who has worth simply because I am alive and part of the universe and whose worth is not dependent on the whims of a petty diety–there are still times when I miss the simplicity and connection that Christianity gave me.

One of the things that I miss are the hymns. I was never terribly crazy about a lot of the old hymns or the contemporary worship songs that sounded like mediocre pop love songs written to Jesus, but there were a few songs that really grabbed me. Music has always been something that gets me through the day. It can completely transform my mood with just a few chords. It can alter my perspective on bad situations and make me reconsider things that I would never rethink otherwise. It can encourage me to continue overcoming my struggles. It can build my self-esteem and remind me to love myself, even when I don’t feel so loveable. There were a few hymns and worship songs that did that for me, and though the meaning behind them was significant to me, the act of singing them was even more significant. I’ve found that simply singing, of feeling the emotions in a song in my diaphragm, lungs, and vocal chords, can allow me to release or change my emotions. It’s quite a powerful experience. And I also like songs because they let me know that I am not the only one who has felt these emotions and struggled with them. So, I liked singing in church. I liked singing Christian songs even when I wasn’t in church. I liked replaying their lyrics and chords and melodies in my mind when I needed them.

And for the most part, now, those songs just don’t have the same meanings to me and they don’t have the same emotional effects. I listen to them, and instead of being overcome by their beauty or meaning, I just think about how I don’t agree with their worldview and why I don’t agree with their worldview. Instead of being a part of them, I argue with them. I don’t mean to think this way about them, but I do. And I have yet to find a nonreligious counterpart to hymns and worship songs that I can connect to in the same way that I used to connect to Christian music. There are a few songs that sort of fill the gap, like Sting’s “All This Time” and  Ani DiFranco’s “What if No One’s Watching?” but those songs don’t seem to be quite the same.

However, last night at a Philosophy Club meeting, I heard a song  that sounds like the sort of thing I’ve been looking for. It’s called “We Are All Connected,” and it electronically turns scientists’ marvelings about the universe into a song. It’s quite beautiful, and you can check it out here. They also has the upperhand on “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” or “God of Grace and God of Glory” in that they have a good beat and you can probably dance to them. Listening to this song last night gave me the warm and yet wonderous feeling that I used to get in church while singing with the congregation and listening to the organ.

Really, I think atheists, agnostics, and de-converts need some sort of system of ritual and symbolism. Unfortunately, when most of us think “ritual” and “symbolism,” we think organized religion and all of the problems that come with it. But a little ritual and symbolism, as long as it is never seen an unchangeable and absolute, isn’t a bad thing. And while personal rituals and sign systems can be fulfilling, personally, I like feeling connected to other people through shared beliefs, understandings, and actions. Knowing that someone out there put together a song that reflects a worldview that most of us share is comforting and encouraging.

PS I’ve updated my Book List, if you care to check it out!

Singing Down the Walls: My Experience with a Gay, Christian Music Group

I thought that I would never again set foot in my campus’s chapel, but last night showed that I was wrong. I went there to a concert for a Christian pop duo, Jason and deMarco. The reason why I went? Jason and deMarco are a gay, married couple.

I’ve said before that there are more Christians who are open to homosexuality and the idea that two people loving each other is not a sin just because they happen to be the same gender. However, what Jason and deMarco are doing is still rare, even in the secular community and even moreso in the Christian community. And, honestly, I think it’s great. I think that they are the type of people that this world needs. They came out and said, “Hey, we’re gay, we’re in love, and we’re also Christians.” It’s complicated. It seems contradictory. It forces people to reevaluate what they think about homosexuality, religion, faith, and the neat little categories and stereotypes that we like to force people into.

This is what it means to be out. This is why people need to come out of their own personal little closets. These closets can hide sexuality, they can hide religious beliefs, they can hide personal preferences about what makes other people attractive, they can hide political or philosophical beliefs. Whatever people are, they need to come out of their closets. They need to show the world that human beings are complex, often contradictory individuals and that our tidy little categories cannot possibly contain the vast spectrum of beliefs, attitudes, preferences, and sexualities that can reside in one unique individual. The people who are out challenge us to think, and if we rise to that challenge, we often embrace the ambiguity of the world and become more accepting. Jason and deMarco are two people who are helping others rise to that challenge simply by being who they are.

On a more personal note, I wonder what I would have thought of Jason and deMarco about two or three years ago. I still would have been a Christian, and one of the issues I would have been wrestling with was how I could reconcile my understanding of the Bible with facts about homosexuality. (Those facts being that homosexuality was not a choice, that gays were not child molesters or bad people, and that gays can have romantic relationships that are loving, caring, and understanding.) I probably would have felt a mixture of relief and joy at discovering a group like Jason and deMarco. “Finally!” I probably would have thought, “Here are people who get it! I’m not alone in the way that I think!” To me, they would have been an affirmation that I was not crazy, that God really could love and accept gays, and that Christianity could change and was changing. During the concert, Jason quoted Galatians 3: 28 (“There is no Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, nor male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”–NIV) and concluded that we make issues like discrimination and acceptance more complicated than they have to be–all we really need to do is be open to accepting different kinds of people, if they are all one in Jesus Christ.

From a liberal Christian standpoint, it really is that simple. Unfortunately, the Christian community that I was in didn’t make it that simple. When I was a Christian, I wanted very badly to believe that God accepted and approved of homosexual love. However, the Christian community that I was in had a tradition of looking down on homosexuality as a lustful perversion, as something unholy and unnatural. I had to constantly defend what I thought against traditional beliefs about homosexuality, and the only way that I could do this legitimately was to defend what I thought with Scripture. This can be done, but the logical pretzels involved are incredibly complicated, and even then I felt as though there was still something wrong with what I thought, simply because it went against what the vast majority of people around me thought. When I finally left Christianity, in some ways, I felt very relieved. I no longer had to try to bend and twist Scripture without breaking it to reinforce what I knew was right. I could believe things simply because they were right and I didn’t have to try to used Scripture to defend what I already knew was true.

This is not to say that Jason and deMarco should stop being Christians. Obviously, they’ve reconciled Christianity with being openly gay, and they’d done so by emphasizing the love and compassion of Christian teachings. I think it’s great that they can do this, and the type of Christianity that they are promoting is the type of Christianity that I think our world needs. I also think that they are more likely to create change in the Christian community than I am. (Christians aren’t too keen on listening to people who’ve left the religion, but they might listen to people who still follow the religion, even if those people don’t follow the religion in quite the same way that they do.) So, for that reason, I applaud them.

I also applaud them for making nonChristians see Christianity in a new way. Really, I hate to say this but it’s true: since leaving Christianity–heck, even before I left Christianity–I tend to stereotype Christians, and my stereotypes are mostly negative.  I don’t want to see them that way, but that’s what my initial reaction tends to be. Fortunately, lately I’ve met some Christians who don’t fit those stereotypes, and Jason and deMarco don’t fit those stereotypes either. I might have been even more encouraged to disregard some of my stereotypes if more of the audience had been comprised of Christian students on campus instead of members of the nearby city’s PFLAG chapter and student members of the campus’s gay-straight alliance. Still, I guess the fact that my campus is even having a group like Jason and deMarco perform on campus shows that Christians can take small steps in the right direction.

As to their music itself, I wish I could have heard more of it during the concert. Mostly, they did covers of other songs, and I would have rather heard music that they’ve written. I’m also not terribly excited by pop music to begin with, so I thought that the music itself was good. Not great, but good. Their chemistry on stage, however, was pretty good. They bantered like…well, like a married couple. It was very sweet. They also came off as very genuine, and they seemed more interested in promoting their message by just being themselves and being honest than by engaging in debate or being confrontational. The way that they are promoting themselves is refreshingly far from the heated rhetoric and name-calling that usually accompanies these kinds of issues.

While the music didn’t knock me over and take my breath away in the same manner that some artists’ music has, I certianly support that message that their music conveys. If you would like to do the same, you can visit their website here.

The Beauty of Serenity

Even though I’ve just completed my first day of classes for this year and have a lot of homework that I could be working on, I chose to write. I’ve also just started an ESL tutoring job, and as I was waiting in the library for students to show up (if they feel the need to, and I doubted that they would on the first day of classes), I was overcome by the silence of it. Usually this silence makes me melancholy, but tonight it seems peaceful. I found myself writing about it in a creative and all-consuming way that I haven’t experienced for a while. I’m not sure if the silence helped me do that or the fact that I feel like I have enough distance on some things to be honest about them now. Anyway, I felt like posting what I came up with:

The Beauty of Serenity

There’s something about being alone in a library. Nothing rivals the total silence of it. It puts one in mind of graveyards and catacombs. It’s a sad silence. The sort of silence that lets you know that there is no one else there except the dusty books, some of which have not been checked out in decades and have become prey to the silverfish and dust mites. But it’s a peaceful silence too. While it’s infinitely sad, it’s also infinitely peaceful. There is nothing that needs to be done. One can be totally alone and absorbed in one’s thoughts or one can absorb one’s self in the thoughts of some of history’s greatest thinkers.

I have connections with this library that I never imagined, and yet the memories rush back to me as I sit here. I remember wandering the floors and shelves as a freshman, just because I wanted to get to know this place—get lost in it. I didn’t want to have someone show me where everything was or look up the books on the computer’s catalogue. I wanted to discover them! By the time my freshman orientation class took a tour of the library, I already knew it.

 And now it knows me, too. It knows my past.  The room diagonal from the one in which I now sit is where R___ and J___ and I worked on our modern poetry project. I remember discovering the feminist theory section upstairs and reveling in it. I remember feeling lost and heartbroken this time last year as I wandered the humor section and hoped to find something that would make me laugh myself to sleep instead of cry. I remember searching the shelves desperately for anything that would help me with my medieval literature project. I checked out over a dozen books, hoping that at least one of them would help me create a thesis. I remember A__ teaching C___, S____, and I how to do somersaults up on the third floor. I remember when I broke my laptop and the computer lab became my haven. And even when I got a new laptop, my printer still didn’t work, so I rushed to the lab at least once every week, before classes started, so I could print out my religion seminar papers.

 I remember slogging through a project on Shaw with E____ and N___ and L____ and I can’t remember who else. I remember desperately wanting to leave, to be done. I thought Shaw was sort of nuts, but he was crazy in a way that occasionally made sense. I remember a quote from Major Barbara, “You have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion that doesn’t fit the facts. Well scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit.” That quote terrified me when I heard it because I knew that it was true. The deepest part of my being knew that my religion was a lie, and yet my mind trembled at the thought of a life without Christ. On these library shelves, in the theology section, I searched in vain for a book that would reveal a goddess in Christianity for me, a book that would redeem Christianity for me. I found nothing. Later, when I was no longer afraid, I found answers in the atheist section, right next to the books on theology. This was the library that gave me Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, which I devoured at the expense of homework and sleep.

 This is the library that gave me a reason to hold my head up high. It gave me the works of Naomi Wolf, whose writing seemed to justify my existence. Her books made me feel human and explained the world to me in a way that I had never dared imagine. The Beauty Myth made me feel vindicated in my own skin. Promiscuity validated my sexuality.

It was here that I also found entertainment—The Forty Year Old Virgin, Superbad, on DVD and free for the taking. It was here that I made my boyfriend swear to watch Lord of the Rings for the first time with me. He never kept that promise, and sitting here, remembering his arm around my waist that night, I know that it was right that he never kept that promise. I am not the same girl who asked him to make that promise. I am at peace, as peaceful as the stillness that surrounds me now in the silence of the library.

 The gentle chirping of cicadas and other night insects is only a background humming in tune with my computer and the clicking of the keyboard. There is an emptiness here. I feel as though the walls are longing to vibrate with a silent echo. Ever since my freshman year, I have vowed, on the last day of my senior year, to run through the halls of this building as I scream like a woman running from the reaper. When my mind is full of worries, the silence suffocates me. It forces me to be alone with myself, when I most need the connection, the comfort, of another human voice.

 And yet tonight, the silence is exquisite. It is a rare gem that has always lain at my feet, yet this is the first time I have paused to examine it. It is beautiful, so beautiful that it makes me sad, yes, but sadness is a gentle one. Soon it will pass. Soon I will be outside again, with the buzzing cicadas and the shouts and laughter of friends around a bonfire. Then, I will relish the crackling branches and rumble of voices. But right now, I will sit in the quiet. Alone and content, I will contemplate the beauty of serenity.

Religion and Criticism: How Much Is Too Much?

Right now, I should be getting ready to go back to school. I’m leaving tomorrow and yet I still have not packed everything that I’m going to need. I have chores to do before I go back. If nothing else, I could be studying for the GRE. But I have other things on my mind…

How much is too much? This is a question that I’ve been asking myself a lot lately in regards to criticism of religion, particularly Christianity. I started asking myself this question after I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel. At the time that I read it, my interest in de-conversion was mild. It’s something I’ll probably always be interested in. It will always be a significant part of my life, but my interest in it waxes and wanes periodically. But reading the book sparked my interest again. Also, in preparing for a class I’m going to start soon, I was reading some essays on religion by Emile Durkheim. My interest flared up even more.

One of the things that Hirsi Ali and Durkheim have both been criticized for, in their times, is for saying too much about religion. The thing is that what they both say is so glaringly obvious that people tend to overlook it, but when an astute observer points it out, it can’t be ignored. It’s true and it’s there and it’s not going away. And a lot of people don’t like the fact that somebody brought it to everyone else’s attention. A lot of people get offended, even though people like Hirsi Ali and Durkheim usually don’t mean to offend. They’re just honestly asking some questions and honestly describing the world as they see it. They say what they mean with no hidden motive and no malice. It’s just that this kind of truthfulness offends some people, usually the people who would like to pretend that these kinds of truths don’t exist.

And yet these kinds of truths do exist and there’s a lot that I’d like to say about them, but I don’t know how to say it. I want to discuss things in a way that promotes dialogue between opposing sides. I’d like to discuss things in a way that can bring people together, not separate them. I’d like to discuss things in a mature and open way that brings out the best in people. I certainly don’t want to engage in name-calling or stereotyping. I don’t want to engage in what I call “pointing-and-laughing.” (You’ve seen these types of blogs or heard these kinds of discussions. They usually begin with, “Hey? Have you heard what this group who disagrees with us is saying now? Ha ha! It’s that just ridiculous? How could they think that way? Ha ha!” I do this sometimes, but I don’t want to blog like this. These kinds of discussions really aren’t discussions. They involve no explanation or criticism. There’s no attempt to understand the other side’s thinking or clearly define why someone thinks it’s wrong. It’s lazy and appeals only to those who already agree with the writer although it doesn’t even benefit those agree because it doesn’t help them reach a deeper understanding of their position. We all do it sometimes, but at the end of the day, it gets us nowhere.)

Of course, at the same time, I realize that what I want to say is probably going to offend somebody somewhere simply because some people can’t take anything objectively. Extremists and fundementalists aren’t going to like my opinions, and nothing that I say will probably change their opinions. That’s fine. But at the same time, I don’t want to come off as being opposed to all religions in all degrees. Really, as long as religious doctrines do not supercede compassion and empathy and common sense or one’s sense of self and dignity, I have no problem with religion. I am perfectly okay with religious moderates, liberals, and pluralists. I don’t want to join them, but they do not offend me, and I don’t wish to offend them.

But at the same time, I don’t want to censor myself, which is what I’ve found myself doing lately. There are some things about religion that I’ve been wanting to say, some good (The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America finally decided to ordain homosexuals! Yay!), some bad (Okay religious right, the way that you have been treating President Obama is just totally unfair), some might be offensive to some people (all evidence seems to point to the Bible being the work of men and not of divine inspiration), and some is just personal (Look, Mom and Dad, I love you very much, but…). And I mean none of this to be disrespectful. I’m not angry. I don’t have some hidden agenda. I don’t hate religious people and I don’t wish that they would shut up. I just want to say what I think without anyone, myself included, censoring what I have to say.

I just had to get that off my chest. Pretty much, what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to talk about religion and my thoughts about it more. However, I want to keep what I have to say rational, respectful, open-minded, and moderate. And above all, I don’t want to categorize people or judge people purely based on their religious affiliations. I really don’t like criticizing things. I’d rather mention the good of a postmodern existential existence than constantly gripe about the problems of religion. At the same time, though, there’s some stuff that I want to say, and I don’t want to stop myself from saying it, and if I get out of line, that’s why I have a blog. So somebody can leave me a comment and tell me why they think I’ve gone too far.

Okay, now that I’ve said that, I really need to go pack. Have a wonderful day, everyone!

Looking Back…

It’s been roughly a year since I de-converted and it’s about half a year since I’ve become an agnostic, and I’ve been thinking about some of the changes that have taken place in my life.

I’m much happier now than I was a year ago. Part of this is because I’m happier now having to bend my observations of the world to fit into the box of Christian/religious thinking, but I’m also happier because I’m no longer mad at the church.

For a while, especially in my questioning stage, I was very angry at the church. I felt that I was being lied to and that there were so many important issues that the church was turning a blind eye to. I felt as though whenever I brought up a topic like gay clergy or misogyny, I was told that those topics weren’t nearly as important as the love of God and if I just kept quiet like everyone else, my indignation about those topics would go away. I felt as though I was being kept in the cage of the Christian worldview and that other worldviews, like existentialism and pluralism, were purposefully kept from me.

And for a long while, I was angry about that. I felt as though I’d been hurt by the church, and I was anticipating that the church would continue to hurt me as I came out as a de-convert. For a while, even though I saw life in an array of colors that was much more beautiful than the narrow blacks and whites of my Christian thinking, I continued to see people in terms of black and white. I assumed that all atheists, agnostics, deists and freethinkers were the good guys out to intellectually liberate the world and all Christians were the bad guys out to keep us afraid that God might at any moment strike us down if we didn’t obey His Holy Church.

But as time has gone by, especially this summer, I’m beginning to see that people aren’t black or white, either. Yes, there are plenty of atheists, agnostics, deists, and freethinkers out there who are wonderful people, but there are some who are jerks. There are Christians out there who spout out Bible verses like they’ve been brainwashed, but there are other Christians who are thoughtful and intelligent. There are people out there, some religious and some nonreligious, who actually don’t care too much about religion and are willing to judge someone based on what kind of person they are and not on what they label themselves as. In the past year, I’ve met some people who disagree with my decision to de-convert and I’ve met some people who agree with that decision. Even better, I’ve met some people who don’t care what I call myself because they are more concerned with getting to know me as a person.

And I’m starting to try to become someone in the last type of category. I don’t want to be the sort of person who judges other people purely on labels. I want to be the kind of person who gets to know people for who they are and judges them for what they are like, not what they call themselves. I think it’s time for me to put my hurt and prejudices aside and start getting to know people as people instead of trying to fit them into narrow biases that exist in my mind but not in real life.

I’ve learned that I can be a good person without being a Christian. I’ve learned that I can love and be loved without being a Christian. I’ve learned that I can get through my daily life and plan for my future without an all-powerful God by my side. I’ve learned that believing in the goodness of human nature, believing in the Golden Rule, believing in education, and believing in myself are much stronger and much surer than believing in any particular religious dogma. Now, I think I need to learn how to see people as they really are, without the convenient boxes and categories that I’ve always relied on.

For this reason, I’ve found myself spending less and less time reading de-conversion blogs. I’m beginning to find that the ones that I still read regularly are the ones that acknowledge the complexities and ambiguities of humanity, regardless of its ideological persuasions. There’s only so many times that I can read, “Ha! Ha! The idea of a God dying to appease himself about a rule that he invented is illogical and Christians haven’t figured that out! Tee hee hee!” Now, when I think about some of the things that some Christians believe, I don’t feel indignant or disgusted. I don’t feel the need to point out exactly why they were wrong. I actually feel kind of indifferent. I mean, if challenged, I can defend my ideas, I can say why I left Christianity and why I’m much happier not being a Christian. But I don’t feel the need to point this out immediately to every Christian that I meet. Some Christians aren’t bothering anyone with their religion, so I won’t bother them. And I have no desire to ridicule their faith. Instead, I’m more interested in getting to know people on an individual level, in letting them be who they are as Christians and as just people.

This isn’t to say that I’ve totally stopped caring about religion. I’m still interested in religion. I’m still interested in the impacts that it has on the world. I’m still interested in how my religious past continues to affect my life now. But I’m no longer interested in judging people purely on the basis of their religion. I want to grow beyond my stereotypes of, “Freethinkers are kind and enlightened, Christians are rude and ignorant” because it’s not true. I want to get to know all kinds of people and I don’t want their religious beliefs to stop me from getting to know them. I’m not angry at the church anymore. I’ve seen the good it can do and the bad it can do, much like most institutions. I’m not angry at Christians anymore. They’re individual people who deserve to be judged on an individual level and not swept away in generalizations.

And I think that the reason that I’ve come to this point is because I’m happy and comfortable with my worldview as it is. I don’t feel the need to convince other people and myself that it works. I’ve seen throughout the past year that it works for me. That’s all I need to know and that’s all I need to worry about. And now that I’m more comfortable with who I am, I can reach out to other people and be comfortable with them.

What’s God Got to Do With It?

“What’s love got to do/Got to do with it?/What’s love, but a second-hand emotion?/What’s love got to do/Got to do with it?”—Tina Turner, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”

When I was going through the de-conversion process, one of the things that made me hesitant to leave Christianity was my fear that without God in my life, I would be unable to love. I thought that I would never be able to have a successful romantic relationship, because without the Holy Spirit to put love into my heart, I would never be able to truly love my partner. If I ever had children, I thought that it would be impossible for me to be good to them unless I had the love of Jesus in my heart. Whenever I had to do something that involved my giving up a lot of myself, my time, my patience, and my sanity to other people, I thought that only with God’s help and love could I do it.

Now, I know without a doubt that I was wrong. I’m not a Christian, and yet I love every one of the Sakae students. Sometimes they do stress me out or frustrate me, but more often my stress and frustration has more to do with the nature of the program than with the students themselves. Sometimes, what with lack of sleep and a never-ending To-Do list, it is hard for me to be kind to them, to be patient with them, to listen to them, but I still can, and I still do, and I still love every minute that I spend with them, even when I feel like I’m going to go insane. If this job costs me my sanity, and I really don’t think that it will, it will be well-worth it.

(If anything, I’ll be saner once this job is over. What I’ve learned about Japanese culture, American culture, the individual students themselves, and myself from this experience have been some of the most enriching and rewarding lessons that I have ever undergone, and I’m still trying to process everything that’s happened to me in the past few weeks. I’m more culturally aware than I ever have been before. I’ve confronted my own racism and learned that cultural and language barriers are something that people can work around. I’ve learned more about Japanese culture than any world religions or world cultures class ever taught me. I’ve become more open-minded, and I’ve learned to see America the way that a foreigner or minority might. I’ve learned to see people as people, and not as their race or nationality. I’ve learned about my own confidence and my ability to accomplish tasks—from reassembling metal bed frames to teaching an impromptu ESL reading class—that I never expected to be confronted with. My self-assurance has grown exponentially since the start of this program. My job here was to teach Japanese students about American culture, but in the end, I feel as though they’ve taught me more than I’ve taught them.)

The students have also taught me a lot about love. We’ve all become a family in the short time that we’ve spend together. And only a couple of the students are religious. (The Japanese view religion very differently from Americans. To them, religion is more of a series of rituals that you tote out for important life milestones such as funerals or marriages. The rest of the time, they’re indifferent to religion, and they certainly don’t prosthelytize or argue about whose religion is more true. Americans could learn a lot from them.) And yet they all care about each other, even though none of them are being lead by the Holy Spirit. When two of the students were missing, the rest of them were instantly willing to start a search party around the campus looking for them, no questions asked. They look out for each other, they help each other. Like brothers and sisters, they don’t always get along, but most of the time they do, and when they really need each other, they support each other.

And I can’t imagine anyone telling these students that they do not genuinely love each other, just because they are not Christians. I can’t imagine anyone telling me that I do not genuinely care for these students just because I am not a Christian. Anyone that would say such a thing should come and spend a day with the program. Afterwards, I don’t think that they would be able to make that statement in good confidence. The other Program Assistants (PAs) and I joke about being the students’ parents, but in those jokes, there is an element of seriousness—the affection that I feel for these students is probably the closest I’ve ever come to feeling parental love for other people.

And I’ve concluded that God has nothing to do with love. I don’t need God to love these students. I can love them through my own power, just like they love each other through their own power. When I was a Christian, I saw my ability to love as an aberration of my sinful nature—I was incapable of love, and anytime I behaved in a loving way towards someone, I attributed my behavior to God and not to myself. Now, I think that the ability to love is human nature. Thinking that human nature is sinful and incapable of love without God is the aberration. People can be mean and nasty to each other. Trust me, I’ve also seen some of the worst parts of human nature in my time in this program, but that doesn’t mean that human beings are entirely bad. Given the chance, I think that we will be good and kind to each other. Having an open mind and a willingness to learn will probably help us love each other more than praying ever will. Treating each other with politeness and respect (something that the Japanese excel at) creates a better environment for love to flourish than does telling people that they are spiritually incapable of experiencing or giving real love without God.

As a Christian, I believed that people needed God in order for love to be special and powerful. Now, I think that love is just the emotional response of certain neurotransmitters’ connection to synapses in the brain. It is an evolutionary benefit that connects us as to another group of people and helps us survive. It makes sure that we pass on our genes. It makes sure that we nurture out young until they are able to fend for themselves. Guess what? That doesn’t make love any less special or powerful. If that’s all that love is, then love is pretty amazing, and it doesn’t need a God to make it any more wonderful or life-changing than it already is. People have given their lives for love. Even more awe-inspiring is that people have lived for love. People have changed because of love. And they do this because this is the way that people are, not because of God. Love doesn’t need God.

Maybe some people need God in order to love each other. If they need God for that, that’s fine. However, they shouldn’t tell other people that they are incapable of loving unless they have the power of God in them. Saying so is just offensive, not to mention unrealistic. I’ve known many loving Christian people. I’ve also known many loving nonChristian people. I’ve also known many Christians who are not loving, just as I’ve known many nonChristians who are not loving. What I have concluded from this is that love has nothing to do with God and everything to do with people.

Love is Blind…Until He Mentions Religion

Why is it than whenever I meet a guy who seems intelligent, funny, sarcastic, and nerdy, (and thereby fulfilling my initial qualifications as attractive) he turns out to be a Christian? This has happened to me several times since de-converting, and while I think that a relationship between a religious and non-religious person can work, I don’t think that I’m ready to get into a relationship with a Christian or any religious person at this point in my life.

I’ve also wondered if that makes me prejudiced. Suppose I meet a nice guy, we get along, we could potentially take things further, and then as soon as he mentions his church or his role in a worship team or something he read in the Bible the other day, I write him off. Am I being superficial? Just because he is a Christian does not mean that he is also conservative, misogynistic, and Republican. (For that matter, am I being prejudiced by not wanting to date Republicans?)

I’ve tried examining the issue from the point of view of race. For instance, if I said that I would not date someone purely based on his race, would I be prejudiced? I  think so. However, religion and race are two different issues. A person’s race does not necessarily determine his/her beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews. (Because race is a social construct and we treat people differently based on their race, whether we want to admit to it or not, race can affect a person’s beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews, but this has to do with the fact that race is socially constructed and has nothing to do with race itself.) Race is also not a choice (except in the fact that we as a society choose to buy into the social construct of race and see it as a cold hard absolute when really the perception of race varies from culture to culture. But this is a tangent that I will have to explain another time.). One cannot change one’s race. Religion is, to some extent, a choice. We choose to buy into the worldviews and beliefs that a religion holds. If we don’t like them, we can change them. Some of us might have had religion forced upon us from a very young age, but we can still decide for ourselves, once we are older, if we will continue to accept this religion or reject it. If one accepts a religious faith, then one accepts the worldview of that faith. I disagree with some (okay, the vast majority) of the views of Christianity, so I would prefer not to date someone who held those views. However, there is no worldview inherent to a particular race, which is why I really don’t care what race a guy is when I’m viewing him as a potential partner.

But, do these differences in religion and race make me prejudiced if I won’t date a Christian? I’d guess that they do, because, while there is nothing about race itself that makes two people inherently incompatible, there could be things about Christians and nonChristians that makes a relationship between them…difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. They could end up arguing about their ideologies and topics like, When as the Bible written? or Does the Problem of Evil rule out the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent deity?

These seem like petty things that shouldn’t get in the way of a relationship, but religion or lack thereof, is more than just a list of beliefs that a person holds. Religion or agnosticism/atheism can make up a person’s identity. When you attack someone’s religion or nonreligion, you are not just attacking an ideology, you are attacking who they are and what they base their understanding of the world on. This is why it can be so hard to talk to some people about religion or agnosticism/atheism. They are not just trying to protect a list of rules that they can revise. They are trying to protect something that gives order to their entire world. If this thing falls apart, they are left utterly confused and lost. This is also why you should be gentle and open-minded when you bring up topics concerning religion. However, sometimes being gentle and open-minded is not easy, which is why I think that relationships between Christians and nonChristians can take a lot of work.

And maybe I don’t want to try to be in a relationship with a Christian right now because I don’t want to put that much work into a romantic relationship. If I ever even decide to get married, it won’t be until after I’ve completed grad school and lived completely on my own for a while. This process will probably take several years. Any relationships that I have in the meantime will probably not last that long. So why should I put that much work into something that has a high probability of not lasting?

I also would hope that I’m not prejudiced because even though I don’t want to date Christians, I have a lot of Christian friends and am open to making more. I’m even willing to sit down with Christians and listen to them talk about what they believe and why they believe it. I’m willing to talk to them. I think they and every other religious and nonreligious group out there, has the right to freedom of speech. I might not agree with what some of them have to say, but I would defend to the death their right to say it (paraphrased from Voltaire).

Ironically, when I was a Christian, I would never have considered dating a nonChristian, and I never even would have thought of this preference as prejudiced. My reasoning was that only a Christian who had a relationship with Jesus Christ could truly love me because he had the love of God in his heart and that our relationship could never work out well unless it was based on Jesus Christ. (Thought what it means to have a relationship based on Jesus Christ I never did understand and still don’t. I’m not sure if it means to have a relationship based on Christian vaules or traditional gender roles or the idea that sex before marriage is wrong. Maybe it just means that Christians are only supposed to date other people who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I’m still not sure what it means.) Now, I think that relationships are better off when they are based on mutual respect and trust. Values like humility and selflessness are also important, and while Christianity emphasizes these values, many other worldviews also hold them in high importance as well. Of course, when I was a Christian, I thought that only Christians could possess these qualities. Now, I believe that all people have these virtues or can be taught them, regardless of their religion. I now believe that nonChristians are just as capable of being loving as Christians can be.

Anyone else have any thoughts? Can relationships between people of different religions work? Can relationships between a nonreligious and a religious person work? Is dismissing someone as a potential partner because of religion the same as being prejudiced?