Eet eet eet

It’s like forgetting
the words to your favorite song.
You can’t believe it;
you were always singing along.
It was so easy
and the words so sweet.
You can’t remember;
you try to feel the beat.
- Regina Spektor, “Eet”

When I think about religion now, it feels as though I’m missing something. I’ve forgotten something, or something once familiar is now foreign to me. I think I’ve let the things I felt most strongly about, when it came to religion, slip into the fog. It’s the fog of another life, I guess. The old Christian me seems like another person now, practically a stranger. Who was that girl? What did she do, again?

I no longer seem to care as much as I did about defending myself from the evangelical/conservative answers. I no longer feel torn up about the idea of telling my mom that I’ve shucked off religion like yesterday’s pants.

I no longer feel driven to clarify the image of God that I do have.

I found myself praying for a miracle, though, the other night. My uncle beat colon cancer last year but found out this year that there was now cancer in his liver. It’s treatable, but not curable; he’ll have to be in chemo for the rest of his life.

Treatable, but not curable. The perfect situation for a miracle, yes?

I prayed to God for a miracle for my uncle. I can do that because I still believe in an all-powerful God who cares, even though I am perfectly aware that I could be wrong; I pray for a miracle, anyway. And I pray not because I want God to prove himself to me–I already believe in him, and even if I didn’t, God would have nothing to prove–but because I told my uncle that I would pray for him, and because there is the chance that I am right, that God exists and is all-powerful and also caring.

Blue Lips

I’m a Regina Spektor fan, so I was really excited when her latest album, “Far,” came out earlier this year. At around that time, she gave an interview and said, “I’m always fascinated with faith, religion, and spirituality, and what those things are to each other, or how they come together or don’t come together.

“When I was done with this record I was like, ‘Whoa, I have a lot of stuff here that’s just about, like, religion.’ Which is amazing. It wasn’t planned, but it’s one of those concepts that my mind is just fascinated with and I’m always mulling over. Sometimes I’m really positive about religion, but, you know, sometimes I’m really sarcastic about it, too. Hey, that’s God, that’s life!”

I finally got my hands on a copy of the album a few weeks ago and have been listening to it non-stop. It’s definitely more reflective upon faith and religion than her previous two albums, and I find it perfect for the phase I’ve entered:

He stumbled into faith, and he thought,
God this is all there is.
The pictures in his mind arose
and began to breed.
And all the gods and all the worlds
began colliding on a backdrop of blue.
Blue lips, blue veins.
…
They started out beneath the knowledge tree,
They chopped it down to make white picket fences,
…
Blue, the color of our planet from far, far away.
Blue, the most human color.
– “Blue Lips”

Then there’s “Laughing With,” which was talked about on d-C.org earlier this year:

But God can be funny
at a cocktail party while listening
to a good God-themed joke, or
or when the crazies say he hates us
and they get so red in the head
you think that they’re about to choke.

God can be funny
when told he’ll give you money
if you just pray the right way
and when presented like a genie
who does magic like Houdini, or
grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket
or Santa Claus.
God can be so hilarious–
Ha-ha. Ha-ha.

Though it also has something to say about today’s consumerist culture, “Machine” is obviously another “religious” song:

I collect my moments
into a correspondence
with a mightier power
who just lacks my perspective
and who lacks my organics
and who covets my defects.
And I’m downloaded daily;
I am part of a composite.

And then there’s “Man With a Thousand Faces:”

He begins his quiet acension,
without anyone’s steady instruction,
to a place with no religion;
he’s found a path to our alikeness.

I’ve left off telling you my own interpretations of these songs because I’d rather you listened to them and decided what they meant for you, yourself.

But there is one song on “Far” that I do want to share some thoughts about. I’ll save that for the next entry.

The Inscrutable Jehovah « de-conversion

The Inscrutable Jehovah « de-conversion.

There’s a post by Phil Stilwell on the d-C blog that lists some of the contradictions that can be found in the Bible. Leopardus seems to have followed his lead with his own lists, beginning with this one.

Personally, I take issue with Stilwell’s complete dismissal of theism at the start of his post, but I suppose it comes from his experience of theism. I believe in God but am also aware that I cannot fully understand him nor hope to describe him. The idea is that God, if he/she/they/it is God, would be too big for any of us on earth to have any real clue about him/her/them/it. Therefore, I can’t accept a religion that claims otherwise. That’s why I became frustrated with conservative Christianity. Aside from claiming to have the gospel truth on God, they base it on a book that has flaws I cannot ignore but they wave aside with the doctrine of inerrancy.

Stillwell touches on that here with the answer that I have also come to expect from the conservative Christians (in italics):

Are there bible contradictions here? No. The bible is inerrant. If it appears to be contradictory, it is simply further evidence of our inability to grasp the mysteries of god.

So, it’s a mystery of God that the very words upon which his followers are to base their way of life don’t add up? I personally say it’s a mystery of what each Biblical writer wanted to say at the time–and that it wasn’t always what God really wanted to say.

If, that is, he had anything to say at all. That’s what’s kind of fun about agnostic theism. You can imagine all kinds of different gods knowing full well that none of them will ever come close to the real deal–if the real deal is there.

Real Live Mormon

Pardon the ignorance, and goggle eyes I’m about to display, but yesterday, for the first time ever, I met a real live Mormon.

It’s silly, but really. I’d seen their churches around the country and even the roving pairs of missionaries (always one local, one foreigner), but no one I’d ever met or worked with ever said that they were Mormon–until yesterday.

As an added bonus, it was also the first time I knew anyone who had grown up a Jehovah’s Witness.

Sorry, but I saw more Muslims than Mormons when I was growing up, so it was a really novel encounter for me. It felt a little like that day in high school when the parents of the school’s only Indian family came into our classroom and talked to us about their culture. This was part of the school’s UN Day celebration. I’d read about Indian culture before and was even a big Gandhi fan, but I’d never met any actual Indians, so my eyes weren’t as open as I though they were.

Wow, I sound so stupid. And it will probably get worse before the end of this entry.

It was lunch hour. Lunchtime discussions about religion are always light and infrequent. If they ever turn to faiths other than Roman Catholic or conservative Christian, they usually go along the lines of, “Aren’t [insert different-religion's practitioners here] against partying/caffeine/pants-wearing?” Rarely does an actual member of that faith speak up to clarify things.

So, while what my colleague shared–a little about tithing, the Book of Mormon, and Mormon wedding ceremonies–was interesting, I have to admit that I was more amazed by his existence than by his practices. The only redeeming factor to making this post, I think, is that I didn’t goggle at him during the conversation.

Yes, WI, you self-proclaimed semi-Christian. The world is bigger than even you think.

What makes the Bible true?

Relevant Magazine has a thoughtful piece on the doctrine of inerrancy called Is the Bible Actually True?; check it out.

The inerrancy + literalism issue is one of the things that turned me off about [that church] and conservative churches in general, because they can’t seem to make up their mind about it. My former boss said that the senior pastor didn’t want to teach certain things about the end times and the Final Judgment because he was open to different interpretations of that part of the Bible. But that same senior pastor ridiculed the theory of evolution one Sunday and said that the Creation account in the Bible was how life on earth really began. What’s open to interpretation, and what’s to be taken literally?

I mean literal in the second sense of the word. The author of the Relevant article cited N.T. Wright for two senses of the word “literal:” as the author intended, and as it is stated. I’m all for interpreting the Bible as the authors intended, but not for taking every word as fact.

The trouble with authors’ intention, though, is that it may deviate from God’s intention. That’s a bigger reason than pastors’ inconsistency for my difficulty taking the Bible at face value. The book was written by humans. Maybe God did speak to them, but I don’t believe that the recording escaped distortion, intentional or unintentional, completely.

Getting back to interpretation, if the whole Bible is open to interpretation, who is to know whose interpretation is the correct one? Is there a singular correct interpretation for all time and culture? If so, I’m not convinced that conservative Christianity has it.

Ideas About God

Maybe God does not exist.

Maybe God exists, but did not create the universe. He is just a spectator, watching something come out of nothing, waiting until it becomes nothing again. Maybe he watches the universe recreate itself many times, and this opening and closing entertains him somehow. Or maybe he isn’t entertained by anything at all, and doesn’t care.

(Maybe he is a she or an it or a they.)

Maybe God created the universe, but he didn’t care what happened after that; he is like someone who started a project and abandoned it when it no longer captured his fancy.

Maybe he is interested in the universe, but not our part of the universe. Maybe he would rather be with some other race of sentient beings (I bet they don’t slaughter each other in his name). Or maybe these days, he’s just more into black hole surfing or the music of the spheres. It’s a pretty big universe, and he can make all the time he wants, to do whatever he wants.

Maybe God is interested in our part of the universe, but not us. Not anymore. Maybe we are just a prototype of the world he really has (had) in mind.

Maybe God is interested in us, but as a spectator. I think of British artist Andy Goldsworthy, who created giant snowballs, froze them for months, and then left them in the middle of urban public places one midsummer. Of course he knew that they were going to melt; he was interested in what the people would do with them while they (the snowballs. Well, maybe the people, too) melted away, revealing a core of branches, twisted metal, ears of wheat and barley, or just red, red paint (which makes the puddle of melted snow look very scary on a cement floor).

Yeah, maybe we are the snowball, and God is watching the angels watching us melt.

Maybe God has a plan for the universe, but it is not for us. He did not create the universe for us, but for his own purposes. Our scientists have found ways to make biomolecular and quantum computers; if you can use DNA and atoms to write programs and do calculations, why can’t God do that with planets? (Hello, Douglas Adams.) Maybe my blogging this is part of a line of code, while the acid molecules in my stomach are part of a line of code, and your putting your coffee mug down on the windowsill is part of a line of code, and Typhoon Lupit is part of a line of code, and how handsome T’s profile looks when he bends over a student’s paper is part of a line of code, and the falling of leaves and the migration of birds are part of a line of code, and the diseases that eat up millions of men, women, and children around the world are part of a line of code, and the American hokey-pokey in Afghanistan is part of a line of code–and the planet’s rotatation on its axis and its revolution around the sun is part of the mechanical and electrical system that keeps this part of God’s big computer working. Maybe we are just a chip or a processor (sorry, computer folks, if I got this wrong), a cog in the clockwork. Maybe God is a scientist or an engineer.

Maybe we are just derivative research.

Maybe God created the universe for us, in the same way that my little brother used to build a dungeon for his Sims to see the many ways that they could die. (Drowning is easiest. Build a few squares of pool, tell the Sim to swim, and then take out the ladder.)

Maybe God created the universe for us just because he can. But then, God is too godly to show off.

Maybe God created the universe for us because he is a loving being who wanted (but if God is God, he wants for nothing) someone to whom he could show his love. It took him six Earth days, spending five of them all on this one planet, while all the other stars and planets and celestial what-have-you took only one. He then began the human race from two people he made from mud and favored just a certain part of the race to be his ancestors for when he came into the world as a human–why? To offer himself up to himself, to pay for the rashness and stupidity (a result, oddly enough, of eating the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil) of his own creation, so that his creation could come home to him, when really, he could have saved himself the trouble by being God, and kept us home in the first place. And lest we forget or future generations never hear of this exercise, he asked the same imperfect humans to write a book about it, when he could have done it himself and avoided the politics of who got to revise and print what.

Maybe God is the father in “La Vita e Bella,” and religions are this elaborate game for us to play so that we don’t really know what’s going on. Follow this prophet, read this holy book, and win heaven. One thousand points, and you win a tank.

And while you’re at it, run this program, my little qubit.

Skipping Church

18 Oct

I have not gone to church in months. I can’t remember the last time I went, either.

I miss church. Even though I worked there, I wasn’t active at [that church]. I’m still part of a Bible study group, though when I think about it, there isn’t really reason for me to stay anymore. But I’ll get back to that later.

To be specific, I miss worship services. Even if I went alone, it was nice to go and sit and listen. And, if it was one of the older churches, I liked singing the hymns.

The trouble was that more and more, the frustration I felt at the end of the service wasn’t worth the feeling of peace and even community that I got at the start. I would be frustrated by the parts of the sermon that didn’t stand up to me, frustrated by the conviction with which the pastor said these flimsier things, frustrated by the idea that most if not all of the people around me in the auditorium/sanctuary would live accordingly and without question, and frustrated with the idea that they might expect me to act and believe the same way.

I would like to be friends with one or two people from my Bible study group, but I don’t think they would like to be friends with me, considering that I’ve hidden my agnosticism from them all this time.

The other week, one of our group leaders asked me if I wanted to lead the next session, and I said no. I said, “I don’t think I’m the right person to lead it.” What I really wanted to say was, “It wouldn’t be right, teaching something I didn’t fully believe in.”

“Just tell us when you’re ready,” she said.

I think I’m ready to go.

But I miss church. On a quiet Sunday like this one, I would really like to go to the Lutheran church I attended last year, when I first started questioning. The people there are the same as the people in my hometown church, and there are the beautiful hymns. The only thing that frustrates me about the Lutheran church is that I’m not there with the others when they go forward and kneel together for Communion.

The trouble is that such a small and homey church will tug at my heart more than [that church] ever did. I will want to be part of it, and for that to happen, I will have to be a Lutheran. And for that to happen, I have to believe again.

On lonely days like this one, I feel weak enough to believe Christianity. It’s not a completely bad kind of weakness. I know it’s not a good idea to believe in something solely because of how you feel. But it’s supposed to be the kind of weakness that opens you up to God. I mean, God, if you’re really there to heal me, embrace me, and tell me I’ll be all right, well, I’m here needing all of that right now.

I miss church, but I don’t think I’ll fit in unless it’s a truly liberal church. It’s funny how my Roman Catholic or traditional Protestant friends think that evangelical churches like [that church] are liberal. Rock music, Powerpoint presentations, and flashy collaterals don’t make you liberal if at the core, the doctrine is pretty much the same conservative stuff. I don’t want to be expected to believe the same conservative stuff. I haven’t yet met anyone from these churches who doesn’t.

I am not looking for people who have the same ideas about God as I do. Although that would be great, what makes it any less exclusive than the other churches I’ve attended? No, I want to be with people who are willing to listen to other ideas about God and will accept you even if your ideas are not like theirs.*

I remember one afternoon at my desk at [that church]. Ironically enough, I was looking at de-conversion. My boss’s wife was leaning over the partition between our department and the next, and she was chatting to the guys there about belief. “Doubt is a sin,” she said. “It’s the very worst sin, because it’s a sin of the will.” (But what sin isn’t?) “Your will is questioning God’s. True Christians cannot doubt.”

Yeah, I thought to myself. I definitely need to get a job somewhere else.

That’s the reason going to church is a pain. It’s not the commute. It’s not getting T to come with me. It’s the church.

–
*What are my ideas about God? I’ll save that for another post.

Ugh.

Was going through my tumblr dashboard when I saw that someone had started stfubelievers.

Looking at it depressed me. One, I don’t like it either when believers post stuff like that. But, two, making fun of them is just mean.

And being jerks only proves certain believers right about unbelievers.

Touch

by L. Lacambra Ypil

“The first sense to ignite, touch is often the last to burn out: long after our eyes betray us, our hands remain faithful to the world.” (Frederich Sachs, “The Sciences”)

Thomas knew this of course
when he asked to touch the Lord
feel where the nails dug deep
where the spear’s tip bit.

He knew that light, this sight of hair,
mouth, eyes would be the first to go
followed by the memory of His words

till all that would be left
would be the faint sensation
of his finger on the lacerated
resurrected flesh.

His friends, though, thought him foolish
for demanding such sacrilegious proof
and named him doubtful

when he was, in truth, the only one
who knew what believing meant
and did not mean.

There were wavelengths
his eyes could never perceive,
frequencies that reached
his inner ear.

And faith, he knew, did not lie
in thinking one could understand
what the eye and ear
could not hear or see.

The hands, they knew
what faith was—
the held object
holding you.

Listening for wings

Written three days ago:

Of all the things I miss about my old Christian faith, I miss most the belief that everything would just fall into place. Despite how difficult the problems were, they always seemed to resolve themselves in the end, and I always had the feeling that God was looking out for me.

I feel inadequate and uncertain right now. I’m not sure of who I am, and I don’t know where my life will go — only that I’ll do all I can to live it with T. I can’t help wondering whether it all really is because I no longer consider myself a Christian.

If God is as they say he is, is this stifling anxiety his way of cursing me for forsaking their teachings? Or, is it just part of doubt, because I am no longer sure of a God with “plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future?” Are these thoughts just a way of lapsing back into my old Christian thinking, because I still don’t know many other ways to think?

Would it really be so bad if I went back? Do my issues with my old faith really outweigh the good things that happened as part of it? Would it really be better if I just ignored the parts of Christianity that bothered me?

But that’s a lot of parts: the downplaying of feminism; the stance against LGBT’s; certain views of sex, marriage, and relationships; Biblical “inerrancy;” Biblical literalism; Jesus’ divinity; presuppositional approaches to apologetics; the tendency to claim that God is personally working in one’s favor when maybe God could care less; the general attitude that they know better; etc.

Can I really ignore that when I am a woman? When I have LGBT friends? When the love of my life is also agnostic? When Gospel authors took writers’ license? When science seems more solid? When it’s fallacious? When I don’t know whether God is there, much less whether he gives a shit? When they seem so pretentious sometimes?

It’s just, I think of how much easier it would be if I believed in God as I used to. To fall back on that kind of faith, would it be the right thing, or a cop-out? I miss believing that I was understood by God, that I had a home with God, that he had a place for me. These days, he seems more and more like a silent confidant.
–

One emo song I do like: “Am I Missing?” by Dashboard Confessional.

It’s a long wait / for an answer / Is there any news? / Is there any word? / Was there trauma / or a struggle? / Am I missing? / Was the body found?//