I went to church

I was jokingly asked the other day, “How many more letters can they squeeze into that LGBTQI acronym?” This ever-expanding umbrella term–the harbinger for all those cast out of labeled normality through the categorization of everything other than straight, white, Judeo-Christian, male–seems to show that the conservative mindset I’d like to only associate with the traditional Christian church, actually has a much more inclusive grip on modern minds, inside the church or not, than I give it credit. Why is diversity so terrifying, and why do the “normal” people (who don’t own a letter in the acronym) find comfort in their alleged exclusive sameness? But it’s partially the fact that I exist more prominently in churches as a letter on an acronym, (than I do say, in an academic environment), that makes my going to church such an awkward experience.

But I miss church. I miss singing worship songs to a supreme security that loves me unconditionally and has a controlled plan that gives order to my chaotic life. It’s nice to feel as though, for a few hours each week, life isn’t quite so overwhelming, and there are actually pews full of like-minded people around me, silently creating a support network that exists based on a common love.

Guatemala mission trip 2001. Friends of shared faith.

But to put a long story into readable length: I sacrificed churgh-going mid-2005 when I realized my involvement with systemized religion was doing more harm than good. It felt as though the fundamentalist ideology that dominated my life had cratered me into an unthinking bog of festering self-loathing. I suddenly saw the church as nothing more than a facilitator of an unhealthy and politically motivated environment wherein mental weakness and unbalanced guilt are disguised as honorable humility, and critical thinking is held at bay in the name of dutiful faith.

Eli

My friend Eli and I were discussing whether we ever would have questioned the church and the Christian belief system had we never realized we needed a letter to symbolize our states of being. If we hadn’t been segregated to the LGBTQI spectrum, would we ever have had a need to question Dr. Dobson’s rule over our world views? In Eli’s blog post about the performance of gender, he said:

Equally frustrating is the assumption that an individual is “straight until proven queer”.  We don’t have stereotypes for heterosexual people because we assume that everyone is heterosexual.  In addition, we assume that they: are preoccupied with looking for love, prefer long-term romantic relationships (where the man is both taller and roughly 2.5 years older), expect sexual monogamy, adhere to traditional male-female dynamics, subscribe to a religious doctrine or belief system, enjoy male-dominated vanilla sex, experience “gender-related” problems with communication, and see each other as foreign “others” that they both love to love and love to hate simultaneously.

This assumption that heterosexuality and a divine gender dichotomy reign supreme within the walls of churches made my “coming out” a problematic source of much infamy among my Christian family members, church elders, and Christian friends. I eventually felt as though the God I worshipped was less mine than theirs, and my shared right to the pew was a simply a gift granted me by them—they who were the well-adjusted, obedient members, mercifully enduring my continued attendance, against their better wishes, in hopes I would (soon) repent of my waywardness.

Tonight, Eli and I were sharing stories of similar religious experiences during our youth, and the scars that remain due to the church’s removal of our right to claim normative Christianity once we began questioning the heterosexual stance the church takes against the world of sexual fluidity, gender neutrality, and uncontrollable irregularity. I told him I was almost embarrassed to admit I’d gone to church Sunday morning. (As much as I wanted to talk to him about my spontaneous return to such a controversial routine, I didn’t want to ‘sour my reputation’ for progressive thinking, because I still can’t realistically imagine a truly by-the-Bible Christian church being both a place for spiritual connection with a loving God, and a platform for open-minded human connection with diverse people groups.)

Because of his religious background, and our similar place in life as it relates to gender performance, he can fully understand how terrifying the idea of returning to church is to me. But not too many others can relate so well. My mother’s been urging me (for about two years) to read Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. I haven’t yet. It gathers dust on the back bookshelf I’ve designated for religious material. She told me she thinks I’m scared to read it, and that’s why I avoid it.

Christianity was the commonality that kept my family connected

A few years ago, maybe even this time last year, I would’ve agreed—fear did play a factor in my not reading it then, but the source of my fear was much different than the fear she thinks I have of it now. She seems to think I fear a rekindling of faith in something I’ve made efforts to deny.

But this wasn’t the type of fear I used to feel, and it’s definitely not a fear I struggle with now.

The fear I had to overcome originally, was a fear of falling prey to the slavery of Christian guilt and its sin-focused cycle of constant behavior modification. What I feared had absolutely nothing to do with an uncomfortable admission that I was “wrong” and the church was “right” (after all), it was instead a fear of returning to an abuser who I’d barely escaped and might not be strong enough to fight off again.

I’m not scared now, though. My avoidance of  Blue Like Jazz is based on the same reasoning for having avoided church these past few years: I’m tired of wasting my time on brain-numbing, psychosomatic nonsense.

How can I willingly return to something that held me back from deeper thinking for so many years, and how can I respect an organization of people who opt to settle for faith in the unsubstantiated, rather than explore the “why” behind the authority?

I have this philosophy professor, Dr. Adriel Trott, who’s been a major influence on multiple aspects of my life since I met her (involuntarily) through (getting stuck taking) her intro class. This unhappily received twist of life events that forced me into crossing paths with her quickly turned into a recognizably good thing. Namely: she’s helping me think about gender differently, and she’s giving me some much needed educational direction in my life. But she (the philosopher) is also the culprit who got me into church on Sunday (as paradoxical as that sounds).

In her intro class we studied Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power as it contrasts with St. Augustine’s On the Free Choice of the Will. My Christian upbringing fell perfectly in line with Augustine’s ontology, which, in brief, relies on the existence of Being– an eternal realm where exists morals, stability, and good that we, as fallen man, can no longer reach on our own power, but is only accessible through reason, and willing ourselves to continuously choose that which exists in Being.

Eli and I both share a history of religious abuse founded on this ontology: Our own goodness, we believed, was so entirely inaccessible, and our non-Being so devastatingly powerful, that a better version of behavior, of thinking, of living, of loving always loomed overhead, if only we could be more dedicated, more humble, more out of touch with the physical world. Weakness enslaved us, as we had to subscribe to the Truth that perfection lay outside ourselves, and our temporal lives should be directed only by a clear understanding that we are, and always will be, hopelessly incapable of being good on our own.

And then Adriel, the afore mentioned paradox, introduced me to Nietzsche, who said that this modern Christian emphasis on meekness was a distortion of the message Jesus had taught through his life on earth, and that Nietzsche urged people to embrace their own inner potential, rather than feeling as though their only hope rested outside of humanity. She used the well-known excerpt from On the Genealogy of Morals [see excerpt #13 of FIRST ESSAY] about the lamb and the bird of prey (and their metaphorical representation of the church’s establishment of “good”), to explain the ressentiment that fueled the creation of ontologies like Augustine’s, ontologies which empower the weak in the name of morals. Nietzsche claims that this skewed interpretation of Jesus’ walk on earth gave rise to the establishment of the systemized church that became, as Marx would popularize the phrase, “the opium of the people,” which doesn’t seem capable of existing alongside analytical thought.

So back to why I avoid Blue Like Jazz, family outings to church, group prayer meetings, or anything else centered upon a full admission that there is an all-knowing God who does have a heaven, and is in control: Isn’t returning to church admitting that there is one right way to believe? Isn’t it a way of publicly announcing that I buy into the idea that the Bible is indeed a true book worthy of more attention and/or adherence than anything else I read? How can Adriel, as a philosopher, sincerely enjoy taking part in something I’ve grown to see as so whimsical?

How can I know the destruction that the church causes; how can I agree so whole-heartedly that church is an opiate used to level the minds of the masses; how can I believe that Nietzsche’s denial of morals is the only relevant explanation I’ve ever encountered regarding the Law the church legislates; how can I so desperately want to escape the lie that there is a common Truth; and how can I allow myself to willingly walk back through the doors of yet another acronym-enforcer who will be sure to remind me I belong among the collection of abnormals.

More strikingly curious, though, is why I want to–why I miss the church community. Is it simply the community I miss? Is it the smooth feeling the drug provided? Or is there actually a God who, as Adriel believes, I have equal “right” to, regardless of the life into which I was born?

The more I write, the more I have to wonder if there is, perhaps, a bit of residual fear left in me. Maybe, along with my disinterest in dedicating any amount of mental activity to a faith-only based collection of ideas, maybe that fear I thought I’d overcome–that the slave master will spot me and force me back into service–still exists, to some degree. Will I be strong enough in my own sense of self-worth to avoid reverting back to abiding by the belief that I have an innate need to access Being in order to find goodness? Is it healthy to go to church weekly and allow myself to be subjected to the inevitable human interpretation of the Bible that demands constant modification of myself until I blend into the herd?

And how ironic that a philosopher, not one of my blindly-believing former associates, is (very subtly) encouraging me (through action, not preaching) to accept that I can belong in church (as I am), that I can believe in God, and that I do have right to his love.

I can’t decide which analogy fits this situation better: That I’m an addict returning to the bar in hopes of sipping cranberry juice without the temptation for anything stronger, or that I’m still an addict, and this will be yet another failed attempt at recovery.

But I’m probably going to give church another go next Sunday.

Here’s a video of Eli discussing his “Transgendered Spirituality.” It’s the first of a two-part series, but I feel like what he discusses in this vlog exemplifies his struggle with the Augustonian ontology that Dr. James Dobson (with Focus on the Family) so strongly promotes:

Below are two vlogs where I answered questions that touched on a lot of what I’ve written here:

So says the Devil…

“I feel sorry for [God] actually. What’s in this for him? If things are going well, people forget about him. They unchain the swings, turn the churches into casinos and mock anybody who still believes in him. He’s a very easy target. And who does he get left with? Fanatics and maniacs of every faith and every persuasion, who want to kill the heretics and blow themselves to pieces in his name. I feel sorry God, I do. I mean, what a thankless fucking job. It must be like running the National Health Service when nobody believes in it any more.”

-the Devil

(The Testament of Gideon Mack)