Gold Stars
"Did you ever go through a religious phase?"
My husband posed this question while we were on an after dinner walk around a friend's tidy suburban neighborhood, trying hard not to eavesdrop on the televisions being watched just inside the rows of bay windows. Maybe at twenty years we will have wearied of familiarity, of finishing our spouce's stories at parties, but intimate knowledge of each other’s history seems to have been fleshed out all of a sudden between us. The comfort I get from being known well is still a novelty. More and more rarely, one of us stumbles upon a face of the other which we have not yet seen. I should savor those discoveries; in ten years I will miss them. To be honest, sometimes I already do, but my response this weekend was surprise without a thrill at how new we still are.
"Yeah, I was way into God for a few years there. It funny I havn’t gotten around to telling you."
"Really? Weird. I had no idea. How old were you? What happened?"
"Well, okay, it was maybe fourth grade... I was into, you know, saving the earth in fifty ways and stopping war by writing letters and ah, being nice on a global scale. God was part of that. I was praying every night, reading the Bible on my own, More than that, though... I was having Serious Conversations With God.”
“You read the whole Bible?”
“Well, most of it, I think. Not Revelations.”
“Dude, that’s the best part.”
"Well, my parents are Lutheran, which is a pretty mellow denomination. They don't get all exited about Revelations. They aren’t even convincingly anti-abortion. But I was into going to church; I liked the ritual of it, how fancy everything was. And I liked listening to a grownup talk about serious stuff. Our pastors we’re pretty good speakers, I guess. I also started going to my aunt’s church, she’s Brethren, and that was very different but I liked it, too. They get baptized in a real moving creek, outside, how cool is that?”
“Pretty cool, I guess, but aren’t Brethrens really fire and brimstone?”
“I think they are sometimes, but the Sunday school classes I took there were not. My aunt is just one of those glowing beatific people who radiates love. She’s very spiritual, but I’ve never gotten the hateful vibe from her that religious people can sometimes give off. I think it was partly my adoration of her and her large family on a farm life that made their church attractive. Also, their church was a very vibrant community, in the way rural churches are. At some point, though, I started getting really scared of the devil.”
“Did someone tell you you were going to hell?”
“Not that I can remember. That’s what was weird about it- it wasn’t an intellectual fear, it wasn’t about what might or might not happen in the future. It was alligators under the bed visceral terror.”
“You thought the devil was going to get you?”
“Yeah. I guess now that I think about it, there were these questions going around in my head at the time. My dog had just died, and I was mourning that heavily. Someone told me, no, I think I overheard, that heaven was just for people. That was a big deal.”
“Right. Because its not heaven if my dog’s not there.”
“Exactly. And then my best friend was Jewish, and of course Jews don’t go to heaven, no matter how good they are. That sent my head spinning a bit, too. I’d always been not into grades or team spirit, and it was just demoralizing that God might be. So getting into heaven is just about stroking the deity’s ego? One wants the supernatural realm to be organized on different principles than those which govern the fifth grade.”
“So you were questioning god and that freaked you out. Makes sence.”
“Maybe. But it wasn’t that conscious. And I wasn’t really asking those questions, just getting ready to, just chaffing at some things that seemed not to make sense, but still feeling this intense emotional connection. Anyway, so, I’d be laying in bed and I’d get this feeling that something bad was in the room. It was very real. So I remember that my mom had told me when I got scared of weird things the way kids do-“
“Alligators under the bed?”
“Yes.”
“Why couldn’t you be scared of monsters in the closet like normal kids?” “My mom was a media fascist- we watched a lot of PBS nature documentaries.”
“Nerd.”
“Dude. Alligators under the bed are scary.”
“Not as scary as late night Skinimax.”
“I think we both know that nothing on television is as frightening as convincing yourself that the devil is coming to get you.”
“Well, yeah, but nothing is as nuts as that, either. You are insane.”
“Oh yes, officially. At any rate, my mom had told me to tell the alligators they weren’t real, and that worked. As soon as I remembered that, and pondered using is on Satan, I was gripped with this other fear; it was almost like hearing a voice: If I’m not real, than neither is God.”
“Why couldn’t you just decide to believe in God but not the devil?”
“It never felt like I was deciding. It was very outside of me. I wrestled with it for a couple of nights and then I got pissed off at both of them and told Satan to get the fuck out because he was a figment of my imagination. He took God with him. Just like he said he would. I was sort of hoping it was a test of my faith; that God would love me more than ever for renouncing the devil, but he treated me like I had renounced a part of him. It’s not easy to get the silent treatment from God.”
“Were you sad?”
“Yeah, but not for long. I guess I thought if God and Satan were a package deal, I was better off without them. Also, I appreciated being free to let my intellect roam without having to worry about hurting God's feelings. When I did, I came up with lots of other reasons not to believe in him. Mostly, it was the heaven/hell thing. The more I thought about the afterlife, the more asinine and human designed it sounded. I’m just not interested in a god who is handing out gold stars for good behavior.”
"I’m not interested in a god who is handing out gold stars for good behavior."
That pretty much sums it up for a lot of people. *nod*
Thanks for the visit today~
mg
ps: Yo. I'm mean. Truly.
Posted by: mean_girl | August 16, 2005 at 03:08 PM
What a great post. Loved it.
Hi from Michele's today!
Posted by: True Jersey Girl | August 16, 2005 at 04:16 PM
Hi, Michele sent me today. Loved reading your post!
Posted by: Michelle | August 17, 2005 at 11:43 AM
I don't think God really cares what people believe. As long as we're all thinking and behaving and treating each other nicely. Well so much for that! :)
Thanks for visiting today!
Posted by: Dave Diamond | August 17, 2005 at 11:31 PM
Very interesting post. :) Here via Michelle's today.
Posted by: trusty getto | August 18, 2005 at 05:13 PM
“Right. Because its not heaven if my dog’s not there.”
YES! I completely agree. Plus I don't why any god would bother to be petty...
Here via the lovely Michele today...
Posted by: Cin | August 19, 2005 at 03:03 PM
Amen to that. Guilt as the basis of religion just totally turns me off.
Here from Michele's again. I like this habit!
Posted by: Carmi | August 20, 2005 at 08:49 AM
Guilt turns me off too; we are what we are -like it or lump it. We can, however, practice being kind, compassionate, moral, ethical and aware of a Supreme Being who made us all without having to buy into the Satan thing. Evil exists, but we don't have to anthropomorphize it.
Michele sent me.
Posted by: kenju | August 20, 2005 at 11:46 AM
In grade 4 I had my reconversion to the faith after "falling away". I was still riding that roller coaster until university. It was a similar can't compute that did in the faith.The kindest people I knew were agnostic or atheist or another religion. The nastiest, most broken, messed up, deeply cruel people were Christian. That didn't add up. The doctrine of Man above all creatures that were weaker and incomplete creations to dominate couldn't jibe with my gut.
Hard to say whether you missed anything by bowing out that soon. But as Star trek teaches, you can't mess with the timeless. Change one tiny thing and chain reactions change the face of the known universe.
Posted by: Pearl | August 20, 2005 at 09:04 PM