I am a born-again Christian

[muck_a_luck]

rhodynne asked me about my thoughts on religion.

As some of you may be aware, I am a born again Christian. When I was about ten, I was witnessed by a little girl who found out I was an atheist. She said, but if you don't believe in God and Christ, you'll go to Hell!

Well, that sounded like a pretty bad proposition, and I've been a Christian ever since.


I've read the King James Bible two and a half times. But I have never been part of an organized sect – mostly attending church with others – Methodists, Presbyterians and Catholics, mostly.

That said, I'm not incredibly comfortable with my faith.

I do truly believe. The witnessing, stupid as it was, stuck. I pray every day, and I believe someone hears those prayers.

But otherwise, I'm a very un-superstitious person. Friday the 13th and other "unlucky" days get a big shrug from me. I love big, huge storms and don't hesitate to wish for them guiltlessly, because just because I like them and wish they would happen more often means nothing. Storms occur because of atmospheric conditions that I can't impact with my brain. I don't believe in supernatural things like ghosts. I don't believe in tarot cards or other types of oracles, beyond the power of such things to bring to order the thoughts we already have about ourselves and the future inside our own minds. I don't believe in karma, or magic, or lucky streaks that can be broken, or unlucky things that I can say that will cause something bad to happen. I honestly don't. Stuff happens. There are physical laws of the universe that we can understand about why they happen. I'm very easy with that.

And yet. I am terrified of the idea of eternal punishment. The thought of a traditional Hell can mentally stop me dead in my tracks. Because I believe it goes hand in hand with God. So.

Hell is a huge risk to the living believer. Because what if you get it wrong. Most of us are born into our faith and assume that we are right because we have been taught we are right by other faithful who also taught us to do basic, fundamental things like eat and use the toilet. I don't have that sort of internal strength of faith, that perfect knowledge of being right.

What about the people in Peru who believe that in order to leave this plane of existence, you must find every hair that you ever lost? My ghost would be wandering here forever.

What about South Park, where God tells everybody, Yes, the Mormons. The answer was, The Mormons, and then He sends everybody else to hell?

Why is my believe and faith more true than those scenarios? I have not good answer for that, and there are times were I am terrified that I will be eternally punished because I got it wrong.

There are other times when I take some comfort in the idea that if I've gotten it wrong, at least there's also an incredibly good chance that there is just nothing beyond this life and body and I will die and go to the peace of nothingness.

So sometimes I feel like Hume. Some days I feel like I am creating a safety net for myself, learning faith by rote, making a habit of my belief so deep that it is real and just in case God is really there, I will have met the technical requirements to get into Heaven and avoid Hell.

But it just seems impossible to me that this all just exists, with no Creator.

And yet, stepping back, why should there be a Creator that exists with no Creator? I feel the irrationality of faith. The total lack of logic. The arrogance of the sentient being who wants to justify her own existence beyond survival and reproduction by giving nature and the universe a sentient Creator.

But that feeling won't go away. So I go with it.

I know there are people who cannot accept a complicated relationship like this to God and faith. These people would say that I am in a crisis of faith that will land me in Hell anyway if I can't get it resolved pronto – usually by embracing whatever theistic view they have to offer.

I'm also sure there are plenty of priests and ministers out there who would say that I suffer from a terrible sin of pride, and all I need to do is surrender my soul and faith truly to one of them so they can tell me how to resolve all these conflicts.

It is fairly easy for me to dismiss those people, though. They are just human, like me. They are not God, though they claim to represent Him. But lots of people would like me to give them the power of God over my self, my body, and my soul, and I'm not real interested in giving that power to other people. I was born outside religious structure, was not trained to it, and now, am too old to learn how to give that kind of power to another person or organization.

I also am a feminist. And I see in religion all the power being brought to bear to control me and subjugate my fertility and manual labor. I am therefore very suspicious of religious power outside myself.

On a practical, life level, Christianity works for me. Christ's message to me seems to be one of love, forgiveness and acceptance. Christ released Gentiles from the strictures of the Old Testament. We can eat cheeseburgers and we can accept good people who happen to be gay. The important thing about believing in Christ is to be a good person and be good to other people. To care for people who are weaker than yourself. I'm no activist and I'm no nun, but I try to be this person in my personal life and in my attitudes towards others. Our charitable giving reflects this, too. Our largest donations go to organizations that help the very poor.

I also find it difficult to believe that the God who gave us His Son would punish other good, faithful people just because they were born to parents that don't believe in Him or in Christ. I believe that God rewards the good and punishes the bad, and yes, I happily apply Western Judeo-Christian values to good and bad and for that I don't feel any need to apologize.

My biggest religious regret, or whatever, is that I am not part of a religious community, though it is also hard to imagine where I would really fit. My Husband is Catholic. Though he has never clearly articulated his religion to me as I'm trying to describe my religious attitudes here, my impression is that his Catholicism is a lot like my born-again-Christianity, fraught with questions about the structure and the basis, and also deeply aware of the conflict between his otherwise fairly logical relationship to the world. At this time, our family does not make a place for worship beyond private prayer. I would like to find a church where I could worship and make that part of my life, but not strongly enough to try to get Husband interested in that, too, nor to try to figure out how to restructure our use of time to make it fit. Though I should say, Husband often goes to Mass on weekday mornings. I'm glad he does, and in the long run, when child rearing and other responsibilities in my life are less, will probably try to find a way to worship in a church somewhere and learn to be a part of a community of the faithful.

My other (related) problem is that my complicated relationship to religion makes me a terrible teacher of it. Husband complicates things by saying he wants the children to be Catholic, but by having many doubts about how much Catholicism he wants to inflict on them. So with AG33, I try to be as honest about my faith as possible, but I'm afraid that he probably things the whole thing is kind of abstract and weird.

Now. Aren't you glad you asked! :)