i lost my religion

on sunday evening, i took a long drive with my mother, who is an avid back seat driver and a compulsive talker. it was nearly three hours of her going over what she plans to do with all of her flowers and trees this fall, complaining that people charge too much for watermelon in the stores, bragging about some pants that she had found on sale, begging me to pull the car over so that she could take pictures of the moon, and criticizing my driving technique. all the while, i listened, only responding with simple yeses, nos, and okays, and humming along with my new Sam Smith, Adele, and John Legend mix in between (possibly the greatest idea that i have ever had. genius, really). this is all pretty standard stuff with my mother and i. she does most of the talking. i do most of the listening. we don't really have conversations, but, in a bizarre twist of events, we actually had a conversation this sunday evening when she began interrogating me about my religious (dis)beliefs.

it all started when she commented on how great the service was that morning when she attended my sister's church. i said, "okay", and she went on and on about the pastors' wedding anniversary and the celebration that the congregation had thrown, but then she asked me why i didn't go to church with my sister on sunday mornings. i replied simply, "because i don't want to. church makes me uncomfortable." my mother, as she often does, heard something completely different from what i had actually said. she gasped and exclaimed, "the word of God makes you uncomfortable?!", clearly offended by what she thought she had heard. i promptly explained that this is not what i had said. church makes me uncomfortable.

i am an INTJ personality. i am introverted and i am shy, though no one ever believes me when i say this. well, it doesn't matter whether or not other people believe it. the fact still remains that i am a quiet and reserved person who prefers to be alone and will always, always, always choose isolation to social interaction. being around other people actually physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually drains me. i absolutely need time with myself in order to recharge in between the socializing that is necessary for my life: work, school, friends, and family. i need time with myself for my mental health, spiritual peace, and emotional balance. i need time with myself to develop and maintain a positive relationship with my body. i need time with myself to feed my intellectual drive to absorb all of the knowledge that is available to me. this does not mean that i do not love and enjoy the people that are in my life. i need time with them, too. i need my coworkers, classmates, and professors. we laugh together and we learn together. my family and friends give me support and i support them as well. we all keep each other motivated and i appreciate it so much, because i know that my life would not be nearly as fun or interesting without them.

the thing about church is, it feels especially taxing to me. it feels like a chore. growing up, my mother made us go to church, often several times a week, and it became something that i had to do, rather than something that i wanted to do. even when i grew into a woman and went off to college, i continued to go. not because i wanted to do, but because i felt like i had to. i felt obligated, like someone was taking attendance. and the sad fact was that some people actually were taking attendance. if i missed a service or two because i was traveling, or if i skipped an evening bible study because i had to prepare for a test or write a paper, i got the side eye from some and the inquisition from others. people asked me if i was "backsliding" and if i needed to pray about it. when i didn't budge from my seat during the alter call (every. single. sunday), some people would stare at me as if i was out of place. like they just knew that my soul had been set ablaze. i met some of the same people 5+ times and they could never seem to remember my name or the fact that we had already been introduced on several occasions, despite the fact that i knew their name and we were connected on social media. and throughout all of this, i had to fake smile and hug strangers. and when i say that i "had" to do it, i mean that if i didn't fake smile and hug strangers, then people would constantly ask me what was wrong with me and offer to pray over my resting b*tch face. i would leave a place of worship that was supposed to bring me joy feeling anxiety-ridden, and i would have to trek back to my unairconditioned dorm room to spend hours decompressing in order to mentally prepare for my school/work week, and then i would return the next sunday for another unhealthy dose of anxiety and discomfort. i endured this for almost three years before i decided that i just couldn't take it anymore, and once i stopped going, i felt free.

in case you don't know anything about introverted and shy individuals, let me tell you, everything that i describe in the above paragraph is complete and utter torture for me. especially fake smiling and hugging strangers. i shouldn't have to change my facial expression for you, and i dislike it when people invade my personal space. i simply don't like being touched and i honestly don't like being looked at sometimes. all of this is what makes the introverted me uncomfortable, but what makes the feminist me uncomfortable is the hypocrisy, immorality, sexism/misogyny, homophobia, and general intolerance that seems to be present in Christianity and churches. in anticipation of the "not all Christians" and "not all churches" arguments, i will go ahead and say, yes, i know. not all Christians and churches fit this description (and, yes, i tried several churches). i don't doubt that they exist. in fact, i sincerely hope that they exist.

see, the feminist me can't abide those who interpret the bible in strategic ways in order to cater to their personal beliefs and desires. i can't abide Christians insisting that Jesus of Nazareth was a white American or European man, denying his true racial identity to reinforce the value of whiteness. i can't support an institution that actively teaches that infringing upon the basic rights of others is a moral duty. i'm fed up with those who call up "prayer warriors" to combat homosexuality because they think that what other people do with their bodies in their private lives is icky, but stay silent on the atrocities and violences that plague our world, leaving millions of people starving, abused, homeless, imprisoned, enslaved, institutionalized, exploited and/or dead. you picket at funerals and abortion clinics, but are speaking out against police brutality, domestic abuse, rape being used as a tool of control, systemic oppressions, chronic poverty, child marriages/slavery, or human trafficking? 

i can't sit through services where the church leaders scream hateful, judgmental "sermons" at their congregation. i won't embrace a religion that tells me that i am not as important as a male bodied person. i won't give my money to mega churches with pastors who insist that if the working church members simply give more tithes and offering then they can be rich, too, despite the fact that their bible says that it is highly unlikely that a rich man will ever enter the gates of heaven (Mark 10:25, Matthew 19:24). if you ask for more and more money every sunday, but you drive a Mercedes and half of your congregation can barely afford gas and groceries, that's a problem. if you cite Leviticus as the basis for your homophobic argument against marriage equality, but you ignore the verses that condemn some of the things that you do on a regular basis - trimming your beard (19:27), eating shellfish (11:10), and mistreating foreigners/immigrants (19:33-34), etc. - that's a problem. if you tell the women in your church that they can't have leadership positions or speak publicly or wear pants simply because they are women, that's a problem. stop teaching girls and women that displaying power, control, and agency is only for men and boys. stop teaching them that their value as a person is directly tied to their sexual purity. stop telling me that my hunger for knowledge outside of Christianity is sinful. above all, stop demonizing other religions just because you don't believe in them or recognize their value. especially if you've never actually read any of their texts or even bothered to learn about what they truly believe in.

my mother asked me several questions: am i an Atheist, do i believe in Jesus or God, do i read the bible? i told her that i don't read the bible as a literal story, but rather as a cultural and historical text from which we can learn moral lessons. i acknowledge that the bible was written over the course of 1500 years and has over 40 authors, and that our standard bible also does not include all of its original material. i recognize that it has inconsistencies, because most of it is based on eye witness accounts and were written several years after the events are said to have happened. example: there are, in fact, two sets of Ten Commandments. i keep all of these things in mind when reading the bible, especially because there are many different interpretations of the bible and everyone thinks that their interpretation is the right one. also, i explained to her that Atheism is not the antithesis of Christianity, because there are many religions and they do not exist in binaries, but what confused her the most, and perhaps even caused a little cognitive dissonance, were my answers about Jesus and God.

here's the thing: i love Jesus. i'm a huge fan. i wish that there were more people like him. some people tend to forget (or overlook) that he was political, provocative, progressive, and a homeless nomad. the man was an activist. he promoted love above all things, especially loving those who were cast out by society; the poor, the sick, the marginalized. all of these things are hallmarks of feminism, and as a self-identified feminist, i find that i am able to identify with Jesus more and more through feminism and feminist activism.  his legacy is one that should be upheld, especially among those of us who take up the painstaking work of advocating for social justice. Jesus’ message, calling us to use love as the weapon to combat insidious forces and violence in the world, is the most significant part of the bible to me, and i think that it is a message which often gets overlooked and misinterpreted to serve certain interests, political and otherwise. he aspired to a new world, using activism that went beyond words by actively seeking out and embracing the marginalized (as well as the oppressors), showing them unconditional love. in his time, he was unconventional; a man of revolutionary ideas and hungry for change. he led a rebellion to overturn the old order and give visibility and agency to the poor citizens. i find that there have been countless moments in my life when others have attempted to silence me for my ideas and beliefs which some might consider radical, the most fundamental of which is that all bodies and identities have the right to exist free from oppression, abuse, and exploitation. love was Jesus’ only weapon (except for that one time he went freaking berserk and flipped over all the tables in that temple, Matthew 21:12), and it is also mine. Jesus didn't teach Christianity. Jesus taught love.

as for God? well, as i reiterated to my mother several times, i am not saying that God does not exist. i have no authority to say that. however, as a critical thinker, my thought process about God differs from the way that i was taught to think about God in church. maybe our human concept of God is wrong. maybe God doesn't resemble the image that we have created in our imaginations. maybe God is a genderless being, or maybe not a being at all. maybe God is an entity or force which manifests itself in the beauty that we see all around us and the beauty inside of us. maybe God is a presence so immense and unfathomable; an idea so intricate that we cannot even begin to comprehend it's enormity or significance. maybe God and the universe are one in the same, and we are indeed made in its image. we see ourselves in the way that our brain cells resemble the cosmic web, and in the way that the death of a star resembles the birth of a cell, and in the way that some nebulae (star nurseries) amazingly resemble the human eye. 

for me, God is in the stars. we are made up of star dust, after all. we even share DNA with many other species on our pale blue dot. we are all literally connected in this wonderful way. pondering on this simple, but poignant truth ignites in me a deeper and more moving spiritual experience than i have ever had inside of a church. it's an experience which drives me to activism and social justice. it strengthens my commitment to feminism and feminist work. and it is an experience which i will not abandon in order to appease the people around me, even those whom i deeply love.

my mother, and many others, take issue with the fact that i won't claim Christianity. people are actually hurt and offended by this; by the fact that i won't embrace the label. the truth is that there are aspects about Christianity which i embrace. there are also tenets from Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and others with which i identify. all of these teach lessons in compassion, integrity, generosity, understanding, peace, simplicity, connectivity, and many other positive doctrines by which i live my happy life. 

my position is that i shouldn't have to choose just one. i shouldn't have to put a label on my spirituality in order to make people around me feel better. if you are uncomfortable with my spiritual ambiguity, then i invite you to examine why that is. why are you so invested in the titles that i may or may not place on myself? what it comes down to is this: our society is obsessed with categorization, and when you don't know which category to place me in, it bothers you. maybe it even scares you. regardless, it is an issue that you have to work out with yourself, not an issue that i have to resolve for you.