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based on what I believe to be true and right and not based on a book written thousands of years ago that is, mostly, no longer applicable to contemporary life, and the ability to see myself as a human being who has worth simply because I am alive and part of the universe and whose worth is not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.

Michael Jackson’s Death Has Hijacked the News! (But No One Was Paying Attention to the News to Begin With)

Usually, I hate putting down the media. They seem to get a lot of unnecessary criticism from all sides, and quite a bit of it usually seems too harsh. Overall, I support the various types of news media–television news networks, newspapers, and internet sites, because I believe that it is important that Americans, well, people all over the world, really, keep themselves informed about what’s going on. Our world is shrinking. Once, people never traveled more than fifteen miles away from their hometown, if that. Now, just by logging onto the internet, people can connect with others from all around the globe. A webcam can allow people to speak to other people hundreds of miles away without even leaving their own office. And that’s not to mention all of the overseas travel that is now available. One can go across the world in a matter of hours. We are more connected now than we ever have been, and that has given us the responsibility to know what is happening around the world.

However, the news media also has a responsibility, which is to provide relevant and informative news to its audiences. Most of the time, it does. I was actually quite enthralled by the news last week and earlier this week, as most of the major coverage had to do with the protests in Iran, which is definitely something that Americans need to be informed about. There were also some local stories that weren’t having a major global impact, but they were certainly relevant.

And then Michael Jackson died. Now, I’m not saying that his death was completely unworthy of any news coverage. A famous and controversial pop star dies and people are going to want to know about it. I’m sure that his family and fans are grieving. His contributions to popular culture, music, and dance are certainly worth remembering. (Yes, just like everyone else, I think that the Thriller album was amazing!) But does his death really deserve so much coverage? Tonight, I just watched news anchors spend fifteen minutes (of a half-hour news program) discussing the fact that his autopsy results will not be completed for several weeks. Does that information need fifteen minutes worth of coverage? All they have to tell us is that we won’t know for sure what caused his heart failure for a while and that it might have something to do with some prescription painkillers he was taking. Then they should get back to giving us some real news that actually has some substance. For instance, the House passed a bill that will attempt to cut down America’s use of fossil fuels. I’d think that a story like that would get precedence over a celebrity’s death.

Now, I mean no disrespect to Michael Jackson and his grieving family and fans. I was never a huge fan of his and I thought he was a little strange, but he grew on me a little after a professor in one of my English classes had us analyze his “Thriller” music video. We ended up having a pretty insightful discussion about the portrayal of race in American media. Plus, the song was really catchy. I’m not trying to downplay the impact that he had on popular culture or the right that his fans have to mourn his death and celebrate the positive contributions of his life.

But does every news network have to spend their entire program time doing that? There are people dying all over the world. Many of them are dying because of intolerance or injustice! Shouldn’t the news be enlightening us about their situations instead of talking–and essentially saying nothing because there is nothing definite that can be said at this point–about the fact that they will not know for several weeks what caused Michael Jackson’s heart failure?

I sometimes wonder if this doesn’t have something to do with the internet becoming Americans’ main news source. Because you know Americans: we want what we want, and we want it now, and we want it to be the newest, shiniest, freshest whatever-it-is that’s out there. We feel this way about our news too. We want it now, and because the internet is becoming available nearly everywhere, it’s the most immediate way to find out what’s going on. It can also be updated more quickly than, say, a newspaper.

We Americans are also very specific about what we want. We usually don’t want to hear opinions that differ from ours. We want our own opinions presented as truth. We also don’t want to be bothered with news that doesn’t interest us. (I’m proving my own point by complaining about how much Michael Jackson’s death has been covered.) We only want to hear about what we’re interested in. With television news, we really can’t do that, unless we flip the channel. (I tried that, and I only found that every news station out there was discussing nothing but Michael Jackson’s death.) With newspapers, we can flip to another page. But newspapers’ coverage tends to be kind of bland. Aside from the editorials, journalists present the facts with as little opinion and explanation as possible. This is actually a great way to be unbiased, but Americans tend to prefer reading biased news, provided that bias is in accord with their own.

So Americans are turning to blogs for their news! (That is, if Americans are even paying attention to the news. Only 11% of Americans watch television news. Only 12% of Americans read the newspapers. And the people who are getting their news from the television and the newspapers, and the internet are all the same people! Only about 12% of Americans actually know what’s going on in the world. My statistics are a little out of date, I admit, but, still, that is a scary thought. We are the most powerful country in the world, and none of us know what’s happening in the world. Does anyone else see a problem here?) And we all know what a great source for news blogs are! I sincerely hope that no one is reading this blog and expecting to get accurate, cold, hard data about what is happening across the globe. I’m writing my opinions. That’s all I’ve got to offer. Now, for my own personal integrity, I try to make sure that I have some basis in fact to back up my opinions. I try to research issues as thoroughly as I can before I make up my mind regarding them, but I can make mistakes too. (Typos abound, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.) And in a blog, there is no editor to call me out when I make mistakes. Television news networks and newspapers have such editors. Blogs really don’t have this kind of checking system.

But even if they did, would they still be the best source for news? I’m not sure. When the internet first became available to the public, a lot of people thought that it would bring all sorts of different kinds of people together–that it would encourage dialogue between peoples of different backgrounds and worldviews. And the internet still has an amazing potential to do just that! The problem is, the internet also has the potential to let people filter out whatever ideas they don’t want to hear and surround themselves only with the ideas that they already agree with. And that’s the potential that the internet is living up to. When we get our news from the internet, it’s much easier for us to only read blogs that pander to our tastes. I know this because I do it. There are no blogs that I read regularly that present current events from the conservative Republican point of view. I might stumble across them once in a while, but I don’t read them regularly. The blogs that I read regularly for news present their information from the perspective of liberal Democrats. I shut out the voices that don’t agree with mine. And I’m not alone. In general, most other Americans do the same thing that I do–they ignore what’s out there that they disagree with and they only concern themselves with the information that supports their beliefs.

The problem with living this way is that it breeds intolerance and it does not promote understanding. If you never come into contact with people who are different from you, it becomes easier to marginalize them as the “other.” It becomes easier to see them as stupid or not human or ridiculous. It also doesn’t help you learn how to talk to these people. If you don’t know how and what they think, you certainly won’t know how to start a conversation with them. Even worse, you probably won’t even bother trying to have a conversation with them in the first place.

Like I said, the world is getting smaller. That means that our minds need to be getting bigger. We need to start realizing that the way that we think is not the only way to think and that it is not necessarily the way that other people think. We also need to realize that just because other people do not think exactly the way that we do, that does not make them stupid or ridiculous or less human than we are. This also doesn’t mean that we have to accept every idea that we happen to come into contact with, but we should be willing to consider other viewpoints, even if we don’t adopt them as our own. Instead of avoiding diversity, we should be embracing it.

That being said, I feel like looking up that old “Thriller” music video on YouTube. And I should also probably go read some conservative blogs, so that I can say that I practice what I advocate.

Is Pink a Stupid Girl?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oGBvN3rAi0

I know that the song “Stupid Girls” by Pink is a little old, and I hope you’ll forgive me. I don’t tend to follow mainstream music very closely, so I’m always a little behind the times.

 Despite the fact that it’s a little dated, I still think that “Stupid Girls” is a relevant song. (“What happened to the dream of a girl president?” the song asks, and Hilary Clinton certainly got closer to the presidency than any woman ever has been.) I think we need songs like this! And I’m glad that there are songs with this kind of message in the mainstream.

 But what kind of message is this song sending out? Overall, I think it’s positive. Girls shouldn’t have to adhere to traditional gender stereotypes—if a girl wants to play football with the guys, well, she should! It contrasts Pink’s persona—a free spirited, sharp, independent girl who can take on the guys and think for herself—with the personas of celebrities like Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, and Jessica Simpson (to name a few), who try to make themselves look like cute, perky, bubbly, shallow, ignorant ditzes.

 I especially like the chorus: “Maybe if I act like that/That guy will call me back…I don’t wanna be a stupid girl!” It seems to say that if a girl has to be nougaty to attract men, then being smart is better than having a boyfriend.

 However, there are a few moments in the video where the visuals seem to contradict the message, particularly the cuts to the recording of the woman and man in the bedroom and the woman washing the car. Exactly what is the point of these scenes? Hmmm… Scantily clad females exposing themselves to an anonymous gaze…Looks like modeling for the male gaze to me.

 Sadly, in almost every music video about female empowerment, it seems like there has to be at least one scene where the girl gives the men what they want. Madonna videos were full of these contradictions. Hell, even Ani DiFranco’s “Blood in the Boardroom” video has a scene that could be construed as pandering to the male gaze, where Ani is sceen in a black bra and panties rolling sensuously around on a tarp. Granted, she is also smeared with menstrual blood, but I’m not sure if the thought of a girl getting her period is enough to make that scene a turn-off to every guy out there.

 So, is Pink a stupid girl? Overall, I don’t think so. The positive messages in this video far outweigh the negative ones. And the song itself, which lacks the images of a girl in a bikini top washing the car, is great! There ought to be more pop music like this.

Flying Pink Elephants and the Church of Good Music

So, where I last left my de-conversion story, I explained how learning about other religions made me seriously doubt that Christianity could contain the entire truth. I felt as though religion was culturally constructed and not something that was absolute. At that point in my life, though, I wasn’t ready to give up the idea of God. For a while, I was a universalist. I believed that all religions were just ways of people getting in touch with what was essentially the same deity. This deity went by different names, but I believed that all religions were just human constructs to allow people to have access to the same God.

There are some people who can just stop there. Universalism works fine for them and they are happy believing that all Gods are more or less the same. My problem with universalism was that it is very difficult to put a face on such a transcendent God. Think about it: if all of the gods from an incredibly diverse array of religions are really all just manifestations of the same God, then that God has got to be able to transcend all of the millions (billions?) of religions in the world. This God has also got to be able to transcend pretty much all of human understanding. I didn’t feel like I could grasp that kind of God. How could I pray to such a God? How could I possibly know what such a God was like?

Because knowing this God was so difficult for me, I slowly stopped praying. I went through my days and realized that I could actually get along just fine without God. And this is how I came to be an agnostic. I felt like God was the pink elephant thought experiment I’d done in a philosophy class.

The thought experiment goes like this: Suppose that there is a tiny pink elephant flying in your room. This elephant is invisible. It cannot be detected by the senses in any way. You can’t smell it, see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or measure it. How do you know that the elephant is there? How can you interact with the elephant? You can’t. You really can’t even know that the elephant is there at all. You can’t prove the elephant’s existence, but conversely, you can’t prove its nonexistence. What do you do? Well, the practical thing to do would be to go about your life as if there were no elephant.

This is sort of the way that I feel about a transcendent God. If God transcends all human understanding, then how exactly can we interact with this God? How would we even know that this God exists? We don’t. We can’t prove this God’s existence, but we can’t prove this God’s nonexistence either. However, it seems to me that the practical thing to do is to go about life as if there were no God.

And yet, sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier for my friends and family if I would have stopped at universalism. I probably would have been more open to going to a Unitarian Universalist church, and I feel like my parents would be a bit happier if I were attending some sort of church. I’m also surrounded by a culture that declares that everyone must believe in something, even if that something isn’t the Christian God. I also feel like it would easier to break the news that I’m not a Christian to my friends. I could have told them that I at least believed in God.

I’m also wondering if I missed out on something by giving up on the Christian God and just God in general. I know that it probably has more to do with the fact that I want to make my parents happy than my actually feeling discontented with life as an agnostic. I feel like a girl who has broken up with her boyfriend and now that she’s not with him anymore, she’s remembering all of the good times and forgetting all of the bad times, which were why she broke up with him in the first place. Inevitably, I know that if I started going back to church, I’d end up just as disgusted with Christianity’s intolerance as I was before. Still, I feel like I ought to believe in something.

I was thinking about this in my car today, and I realized that I do believe in something. I am a firm believer that, no matter how bad I feel, if I listen to a good CD while I’m driving and sing along to it, I will feel better. Perhaps I could make a religion out of this belief. It chief deities will be a trinity of my three favorite singers. Since two of those three singers are women, I guess it will be a matriarchal religion. Under these three singers will be a series of lesser gods and goddesses, who are all of the others artists whose music I enjoy. This religion’s canon will be compiled of all of the songs that these artists have written. It will state that the human condition is one of joy, love, frustration, and sadness, and whatever the situation, there is a song by one of these gods or goddesses that will express exactly what the adherent is feeling.

These facetious thoughts cheered me up, but they also reminded me of something that I once wondered about religions. I once had the thought that the reason that there are so many religions might be because each individual person has their own needs and different religions fulfill different needs. Perhaps this is why Christianity works so well for some people, but Buddhism or Islam is a better fit for other people. Perhaps this is why no religion at all suits some people just fine. Just like not everyone will like the same singers that I do, not everyone is going to like the same religions and worldviews that other people share. This is why I think that it’s ridiculous to take an exclusivist view of religion. (Exclusivism is the view that only one religion has the absolute truth and that all other religions are completely false. Only adherents of the one true religion will be rewarded by God in the afterlife, and everyone else, no matter who they are or how they have lived their lives, will suffer eternal punishment.) Considering all of the different kinds of people that there are in this world, all with their individual needs and hopes and desires, there is no way that just one religion can satisfy every single person in the world.

At the same time, however, nonreligious people can’t expect that no religion will be a good fit for everybody. Some people need religion. Some people don’t. And there has to be a way for these different kinds of people to somehow get along with each other. As I said in my last post, I’d like to be part of the force that helps these people get into dialogue with each other. I’m just not sure how to do it, but any suggestions would be welcome.