Oh this can be a sore subject for many people, including me, depending on how you approach it. I see religion as something people hide behind. The different religions offer structures or rules that those people feel they can’t live without. Now I don’t view them as evil, all horrible with no point. There are good points to everything. Buddhism and passivity and peace. Treat others as you would have them treat you from Christianity. Really, my problem is with Christianity, not Buddhism.
A bit of my background. I was raised in a Lutheran church, until I was 12. Then we, my family and I, quit going to church for a couple of years. I had made a big deal about how there were no girls my age in the church we went to for 6 or so years. I hated it. After a little while we started looking for another one, one that wouldn’t care if my dad worked on Sunday. We went to another one, a huge one. We were used to small churches with maybe 50 people on a full Sunday morning. It was very intimidating. It didn’t last all that long. Then we tried another one when I was 15 or so maybe younger. That one was cool, but small as well. My parents were worried that with a small church there would be ridiculous politics and power struggles again. But after awhile once again we all quit going together. When I was almost 16 I started to go to a Christian youth group, unaffiliated with any specific church. Cool. I also went to another one, the one of the huge church I had gone to before.
Now on to some of the things that bothered me as a child about church. Like I mentioned before my dad worked almost all Sundays. He works for the Washington State Ferries. All staff works weekends, unless you are the most senior of the agents. People forget that children hear everything. I heard my parents talking about how one or two of the married couples at the church acted strangely when Dad left for work or couldn’t come. Snide little remarks that left my mom feeling alienated. I was 10. I would sit quietly “reading”, listening in to adult conversation between my parents and other couples. I could hear it, the guilt, the “I’m better than you” attitude. The women and their husbands always went to church. I was surprised. I learned in Sunday school that you weren’t supposed to judge people and make them feel badly.
Then there was the time when my mom, Ian and I went to a church to try it out. No one talked to us before the service. Then when church was over someone walked up to my mom and asked if she was divorced in the most condescending voice I’d heard in my young life. She was rude. My mom said no, but he(Dad) works. Well, can’t he just change his schedule? No, he cannot. That was the last time we went to that church.
Then when I was older and going to youth group and making new friends I saw that there were a lot of teens that would act like they had never done anything bad ever. I would hear or see later that they were sluts or drank or smoked pot or did something else considered “bad”. Well, this is weird. They lie a lot. I thought you weren’t supposed to lie. Then there was the gossip. I thought gossip was hurtful and Christians were not supposed to do things that were hurtful if there was no other point to those things than pleasure and time killing. Well, I was tired of being lonely so I ignored it.
Years went by, I stopped going to the first youth group and got too old for the other one. Then I decided to do Sunday school, help out in the Four Year-olds room. I signed on for nine months, the school year. I did well for the first few months. Then I wanted to party a bit more. Near the end of the school year I got sick, not a hang over, just the flu. The next Sunday when I went in I felt the judgment. I really had the flu. But everyone, the adults, looked at me like I had sold my soul. The next weekend I was sick with something else, bronchitis. Once again I felt the judgment. With about a month left I quit. I said that I was having health problems and needed to take care of myself. I lied. I really did, to someone in the church. I probably could have finished it.
After summer I went back to church. I partied and went to church on Sunday. I watched some of the more popular people be rude to the person they were sleeping with and then they brought them to and treated them differently. There was so much duplicity. Then I made some gay friends and the “gay issue” issue arose. Gays are sinners I heard. I was done. People have to rewrite their lives, give up everything that makes them happy or pays their bills and go to church or they will go to Hell. I couldn’t in good conscience keep going to church. I couldn’t be a part of something that hurt so many people in the name of God. They were all full of shit.
The big one was after I quit going. When really I gave up on religion, realized that it didn’t work for me. I met Rick. I didn’t care if he didn’t go to church. I asked if he believed in God, he said maybe, but he had some bad experiences with a previous girlfriend. Okay, fine. I didn’t go anyway. Then I fell in love and we both needed roommates so we moved in together. And it all started, the looks, the guilt. I just wanted to scream, “YES! We are sleeping together.”
I heard this a lot, “So when are you going to get married?”, “You don’t know?” Huh. The pressure, the looks. But those looks always came from Christians. These people are supposed to love you and not judge you and accept you for who you are. They don’t.
Also, I tried, all those years to fit in. I didn’t kiss a boy until I was 16, I didn’t have sex until I was 17. I didn’t drink until I was 16, before I kissed a boy. I was good until I saw all the duplicity, until I realized, subconsciously at first, that it didn’t matter. I was on my way out. I was making a way out of that life. I was done trying to fit in with a group of people whom will find a reason to judge you. I was making friends that accepted the fact that my dad always worked and I wasn’t perfect.
Years later I see those people, those churchy people whom say that they don’t lie and do good things, do well by their consciences. I see the fake smiles. I see how they have to keep talking about it rather than just letting it “shine” through as I heard for years. And I hear the guilt. “You don’t go to church? Why? You do want to go to heaven?”
Heaven might exist, but I don’t think that you should have to jump through hoops to get there and deny your true self. If you are gay, you have to give it up and never really be happy again. If you have sex before married you have ruined your life, you gave up something so great and wasted it. There was the mystical “wedding night” with your virginal self and virginal husband. It was supposed to be magical, and special and perfect. So anyone whom had sex before marriage won’t have it and someone whom didn’t have sex until the wedding night won’t know if it any better than sex before that night. Lies, lies made by people whom need to feel superior over others.
Why are there so many right ways to heaven? However, all the different ones say that they are the only right way? It isn’t logical, makes no sense. I won’t waste time feeling guilty, thinking I’m not doing enough. I have too much going on to waste energy on guilt. It’s a whole different kind of peer pressure.
