Religious Awakening in Retrograde

I’ve been musing (mostly to myself) a lot about religion in the last few months. Before any of you get concerned, I’m not going to give up my lackadaisical attitude to my own atheism. Hell, I’ll probably never stop misspelling it with an “ie” every time I type it. Nor will I give up my (mostly) understanding feeling towards most other religions.

The main reason I’ve been musing to myself is because… well I don’t want to step on too many toes. I have bunches of friends who are religious, to different degrees, and I try to respect that. I hate to talk of “logic” or “truth” because I feel like that would make me sound like mainstream atheist douchebags like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. God forbid [ha ha].

Religion, to me, has always been… odd. I’ve never had a complete understanding of it. I was raised in a Roman Catholic household. Never too strict on most things, but the first problem came when I was 11 or 12 and my mom gave me a copy of “What’s Happening To My Body: Book For Boys.”

In addition to blaming this poorly illustrated book for my confusion about sex when I lost my virginity, I feel fairly comfortable blaming the book for starting me on my way through teenage masturbation. Near the end of the book, one of the FAQs was related to “Onanism.” Having never covered this topic in Sunday School, I asked the teacher after class and… well, let’s just say I never got a clear answer. Reading the Bible passages referenced… I wasn’t much clearer on the subject (thanks to all those “thees” and “thous” no doubt). And there was my first confusion about the Bible. By the time I figured out what the sinful part was… well, it was too late.

About a year later, also in Sunday School, the teacher stated that not everything in the Bible had to be taken literally. According to him, much of it worked better when read as fables with a moral at the end. For someone like me, who tended to be very literally minded at that age, it basically taught me to be incredibly skeptical about much of what I had been hearing for the last eight or so years of my life.

The final straw between me and the Church came a couple of years later when I was at the lowest of low points in my teenage life. I felt like all my friends were abandoning me, my grades were pretty shitty, and I couldn’t stop vomiting and dry heaving in the morning to save my life. A typical Sunday School class at that point would begin with everyone going around table and talk about one thing they were praying for in the week. My response was a very muted, “I don’t think I have enough faith to pray for anything right now.” And what happened next?

If you guessed, “No one said or did anything” I would have to ask you if you grew up in New England, as that’s the typical reaction from most people no matter what you said.

“Hey, I think I’m going to start running cocaine from New York to Springfield”
“That’s nice dear.”

A bit melodramatic, sure, but not far off. There’s a very large disconnect between people in the New England states (I’ve seen it here in Oregon as well, but definitely not to the same extent and depth I discovered it in Massachusetts).

About two weeks later, I was hospitalized for observation after a suicide attempt and spent most of that week inside my own brain considering what had happened and where things were going with my faith. But at that point, I still maintained a small semblance of belief. I took, on faith, that it was a test and that I would be stronger by pulling through it.

And then, a friend of mine was killed in a drunk driving accident. That pretty much broke me of any remaining faith and plunged me into nearly two years of heavy skeptical ambivalence toward religion in general. I felt like it would probably do me some good to have (which I’ve since chalked up to it being such a large part of my mother’s life), but I couldn’t bring myself to do lip-service to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in. It seemed an incredibly disrespectful thing to do, especially with it being a mortal sin to take communion without confession (which is a whole other can of worms).

However, my mother insisted I still go to church and so I acquiesced in order to not stir too much shit at home. After about two years of that, I agreed to go through with my confirmation with the understanding that I would no longer be required to go to Church except on the “Fairweather Fans” days (i.e. Christmas and Easter).

After a surprisingly enjoyable research essay on a Saint whose name I’ve currently forgotten and a mostly uneventful confirmation service, I felt the lazy eye of tragedy scrape over my life again as my grandfather was hit in a crosswalk just outside of the church. For the brief remainder of his life, he had very little memory of any of us and, as I recall, was housed in a care facility until he passed away.

Having carried out the agreement with my mother, I was free to waste my Saturday nights as I saw fit. I have yet to step into a religious service outside of a holiday or funeral and I’ve never felt particularly empty, guilty, or upset about it. And seeing general religious consensus on things like homosexuality hasn’t given me much pause to consider returning to a religion.

I’ve had wonderful discussions with friends about religion though and find that I often agree with some religious beliefs, even if I don’t believe in an inexorable, invisible presence dictated it to be so. I’ve also come to realize that many of these dictates aren’t even particularly religious in nature.

For instance, I don’t believe premarital sex to be at all morally wrong. However, I do believe there are certain emotional effects that young people should consider before just jumping into it for the wrong reasons. I’ve also come to understand that perhaps sexual promiscuity was opposed because it was also a fantastic way to a) spread disease and b) increase population, neither of which are something that ANY society would particularly want to be running out of control.

I’ve also found many religious groups that I have incredible respect for. Not all religious people are Jerry Falwell, just like not all atheists are Christopher Hitchens (Thank God [ha ha]). I still believe that one can live a moral, fulfilled life without the introduction of religion or a deity (or host of deities) pointing a large finger on a heavy hand.

And if Wesley grew up to be religious, I would be ok with it. As long as he doesn’t choose Baptist.