My Spiritual Journey

So this is a blog a long time in the making.  And it’s one that I’ve thought long and hard about.  There were several reasons for waiting, all of them valid in my eyes.  I was afraid that people would be offended.  I was afraid that people wouldn’t understand.  I was afraid that I would lose friends over my personal beliefs.  I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly how I felt and that above all, I was able to put it into words in a way that was clear both to me, and to whomever might read it.  But...I’ve spent years listening to others weigh in on their personal beliefs, and even if I didn’t personally agree, I respected their beliefs.  I know that none of us have the answers.  And I use that plural intentionally, because I truly believe that there isn’t just one answer.    

Every journey needs a beginning, and here is mine.  I was born and raised in a Catholic household.  I went to catechism classes weekly all the way through my junior year of high school.  I went to church every weekend.  I refrained from eating meat on Fridays, I didn’t eat before church, and I went to confession.  I was a Catholic.  I assumed that I was Christian because the Catholic faith is considered one of the many sects of the Christian faith.  So by default, being Catholic made me a Christian (I’ll expound on this more later).  I didn’t reserve any ill will towards my friends who were Lutherans, Methodists, or Baptists.  I even went to a Baptist Christian camp in the summers following my 7th and 8th grade years.  I thought that Christians were Christians and that since we all believed in essentially the same thing, we were the same.  Unfortunately, not all Christians felt that way.  

I very distinctly remember the first time I experienced anti-Catholic attitudes.  It was during my second summer at the Baptist camp in northern Minnesota.  I had just finished 8th grade and I was so excited to go to camp for the second summer in a row with my best friend Dana.  We were all sitting around and chatting in the cabin with our cabin mates, when one of the girls said, “I hate Catholics.”  Being 14 years old and not yet having filters, I blurted out, “I’m Catholic.”  The room went silent and everyone stared at me.  No one knew what to say.  It was like I was an impostor in their midst, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Seconds ago we were just a bunch of 13 and 14 year-old girls giggling and having fun, and now we were divided by faith.  But we were technically all Christians.  It was very awkward, and I still think about that moment to this day.  At 14 years old, I really don’t think there is any way that a young girl could come to the conclusion on her own that she personally hated Catholics.  I doubt she understood all the facets of her own faith at that point, let alone all the facets of mine.  Someone she knew and respected in her life had undoubtedly made the comment that they hated Catholics, and in solidarity, so did she.  This is the conclusion that I’ve come to.  She and I never discussed it, so I can’t say that I know for sure where she was coming from, but most 14 year-olds I know are not educated in religious theology.  

Over the years I encountered several other people with anti-Catholic leanings.  I even dated one for a good year and a half.  He was Lutheran, which in my experience, really isn’t all that much different from Catholicism.  I’ve been to Lutheran services before, and found that I know most of their prayers; their church service followed pretty much the same outline as my familiar Catholic ones.  In fact, the only discernible difference (to me) was that the Lutherans didn’t kneel.  And throughout my life when I would ask other Christians why they didn’t like Catholics, the kneeling was brought up more often than anything else (followed closely by the length of Catholic weddings).  Okay...so you don’t like kneeling.  Then don’t kneel.  But don’t say you hate my faith because we choose to kneel.  That’s stupid and petty.  And in the broad scheme of things, a complete non-issue...there are far more logical reasons to hate Catholics than for the simple reason that they kneel during the church service.  It’s like these other faiths were looking for reasons to hate Catholics.  And I can honestly say, in all my years of attending Catholic mass, not once did I hear a priest bash another Christian religion.  Not once.  But that has been my experience with my particular priests.  I understand that others have had different experiences.  I tried to find good, solid reasons why other Christians didn’t like Catholics, and they were hard to come by.  It became clear to me that not only did some of these people not know the Catholic faith, they didn’t know their own faith.  But they passed on their religious hatred/superiority simply because they felt they could, or because someone at some point in their life had told them that they should.  

I have a huge issue with the way Christians fight amongst themselves.  To be Christian means that you believe Jesus was the son of the God and that he died on the cross for our sins.  I don’t mean to over simplify, but that’s basically what it is.  Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist...they all believe that.  All their religious rules and doctrine came afterwards.  It doesn’t matter to me what Christian religion a person happens to be.  If all Christians truly believe that Jesus died for our sins and believing in him and his sacrifice means that we’ll get to spend all eternity in heaven with him, what’s left to bicker about?  Kneeling, eating fish on Fridays, length of weddings, and who happens to be “the most” Christian.  That’s what’s left.  It drives me insane.

I also remember quite clearly the progression of distancing myself from the Catholic faith (I call it my “fall from grace”).  The first incident happened when I attended a mass at a church in a neighboring town.  The alter was in the middle of the church (different than what I was used to), the cup that held the wine was made out of glass, the bread that we had was more like a biscuit, they had a full band, and there were people dancing around the alter waving ribbons around.  Oh, and they didn’t kneel.  They didn’t even have kneelers available for those inclined to kneel.  Now, I had been taught in my many years of catechism that the wine should be contained in an unbreakable chalice, meaning a glass that could not be broken.  Glass clearly did not fit that criteria.  It was also taught to me that the bread was to be unleavened, and the bread at this particular church clearly was leavened.  I was so disturbed by it that I didn’t go up to receive it.  I thought these Catholics were bringing a travesty upon our faith with the breakable chalice, their fluffy bread, and their full band (including a drum set) rocking out unfamiliar hymns, not to mention the people ribbon dancing (I will admit, I didn’t mind that we didn’t have to kneel).  I went home from mass that night and couldn’t get that church service out of my head.  What were they thinking?  I was trying to wrap my head around it all.  And then I started thinking about why I was so sure that the way things were done in my church was the “correct” way.  So what if the bread was leavened?  It was still symbolic of Christ’s last meal with his apostles, right?  Wasn’t that the basis behind the ritual of passing out bread during mass in the first place?  So I started thinking.  And thinking.  And thinking.  I thought myself all the way into a literature class in college that was based on the varying styles of prose featured in the bible.  

For the first time in my life, I was reading the bible.  Not just listening to the selected passages that were recited in church every Sunday, but really reading it.  And understanding it.  And I came to the conclusion that the bible was a collection of stories.  It wasn’t a text listing the rules and regulations of the Catholic faith, or any other faith, for that matter.  It was just a bunch of stories.  Like an adult version of Mother Goose.  I’m not trying to trivialize the bible by comparing it to Mother Goose, but I found some very distinct similarities between the Good Book and a book of cautionary children’s tales.  The bible is essentially a collection of (sometimes very violent and awful) cautionary tales, and from those cautionary tales sprouted one of the largest faiths on the planet.  No where in the bible was there mention of a breakable chalice, or of eating fish on Fridays.  It simply isn’t in there.  At least not in any vernacular that I could discern.  And that’s another issue with the bible...it’s been translated into so many different languages, by so many different people, so many different times.  What’s been diluted?  What’s been left out?  What’s been changed?  In my college literature class, we would read a bible passage and discuss as a group what we thought it meant.  The different responses were astounding.  It was crazy to me to think that a small group of 15 people could come up with such differing opinions on what a single paragraph was saying.  And who was right?  Were any of us right?  Broaden that out to millions of people reading one paragraph, and what do you get?  What do you get when those millions of people read not only one paragraph, but entire passages, chapters, and books in the bible?  Add to that the passages that people cling to, and the passages that people choose to ignore.  It’s no wonder that Christians have a hard time finding common ground with each other.

And lets go one step broader, since we are not all Christian in this world.  Muslims have a book.  Jewish people have a book.  Each faith claims that their faith is the correct one because they have documentation of it.  I’ve read a few stories from the Quran and the Torah, and I found some interesting similarities.  They all have similar versions of the Noah’s ark story (amongst others...this is just the example I’ve chosen to use).  I find that interesting, and I try to find meaning in it.  I’m not a religious theologian by any means and I’m not trying to say I know any more than anyone else when it comes to religions, particularly the non-Christian sects, but I find it interesting that three very different religions contain similar stories in their respective defining texts.  Why do they contain similar stories?  Is it coincidence or is it plagiarism?  Is it something else entirely?  Does it mean we all started in the same place and divided when the waters receded?  And then you have to take into account Buddhism, Hinduism, Native Americans, and tribal cultures, who have multiple gods, or believe in reincarnation, the Spirit World, etc.  Are they wrong because they don't have a bible to guide them?  Why are Christians so convinced that everyone else is wrong?  And I have to make this point, because the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.  People rag on Scientologists all the time for basing their religion on the writings of a science fiction author.  How different is that, really, than basing a religion from the Bible?  They are both texts written by human beings.  I admit, the Scientologists are little difficult to understand, even for me, but they believe what they believe and they have the texts to back it up.  Same as Christians.   

I never really thought of myself as a Christian.  I was first a Catholic, and by definition that made me a Christian.  People would ask me if I was Christian, and I would respond with “Yes, I’m Catholic.”  I didn’t even stop to think about what they were asking and what I was saying.  I never had a relationship with Christ.  In fact, I felt like Christ was a bit of an afterthought.  Some Catholics might disagree with me on this, but remember, this is my take and my experience.  Yours may have been different.  Of course Christ was mentioned and we said prayers referencing him and sang songs that glorified him, but I never felt that we were encouraged to have a personal relationship with him, as some religions do.  So when I started to move away from the Catholic church, moving away from Christianity wasn’t really that much of a stretch for me.  And I have moved away.  That might come as a surprise to some of you as I still take part in prayers at mealtimes and I still go to church with my family when I’m home.  Doing those things is comfortable to me, it’s what I had been doing for most of my life, and it’s something I continue to do to this day when I am surrounded by friends and family who are practicing Christians.  Does reciting a prayer to a God that I don't technically believe in make me a hypocrite?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I guess that’s for other people to decide.  I’m perfectly okay with it.    

Not being a Christian doesn‘t make me a bad person.  I know that some people feel they need the overseeing eye of God to keep them from doing bad things, but I disagree.  I think people are good because they want to be, and likewise are bad because they want to be.  I don't think there's anyone orchestrating our behavior from above.  Life, as I see it, comes down to choices.  I don't believe that we are separated into the righteous and the evil.  I don’t believe that not believing in God means that I’m destined to burn in hell for all eternity either.  I don’t believe in hell.  Perhaps I’ll have a rude awakening at the time of my last breath, but at this moment, I don’t think I will.  I don’t know what will happen when I die.  Maybe something, maybe nothing.  I don’t know, and neither does anyone else.  Maybe we just cease to exist.  Maybe there's another plane of existence where our energy continues to reside long after our bodies are gone.  Maybe our energy dies with us and we go back to nature.  People can believe whatever they want to believe, but at the end of the day, no one definitively and without-a-doubt knows.  And people have said to me, “You have to have faith, you just have to believe.”  But I don’t have to do either of those things.  I don’t begrudge people for believing or having faith.  Some people can’t imagine life without it; it gives them comfort, it gives them strength, it rights their moral compass.  Whatever happens at the end of my life happens, and it’s not going to change the way I’m living my life today.

People ask me, “If you’re not Christian, what are you? Atheist?”  The fact of the matter is, I don’t have a label for myself.  I’m not Atheist, I’m not Christian.  I don't believe in a Christian God.  I don't know that I believe in a "god" character at all, but I'm not ruling it out.  I don’t know enough about any of it to be comfortable committing to a label.  I have a very "live and let live" philosophy about life.  I might not agree with other people's choices and beliefs, but they have the right to their choices and beliefs just as I do.  I don't feel that we accomplish anything by shoving our beliefs down other people's throats.  Religious doctrine can be upsetting to some people, myself included.  I don't push my lack of Christian beliefs on anyone.  If you believe in God, great.  If you don't, equally great.  I have a saying that I revert to every now and then, and it goes something like this: "I'm willing to let you go along with these ideas, so long as they're not hurting anyone."  I don’t have all the answers, but I’m not willing to trust something blindly either.  I feel like I'm much too rational of a person to believe in something because someone says it's so.  I’m just me, living my life the best way I know how to live it.  I believe in myself, and I believe in those around me.  I believe in what I see, in what I experience, in what I’ve learned.  I‘m no different than I was yesterday, and I’ll be no different tomorrow.  I’m just here on this earth like everyone else, trying to find my way, trying to be as happy as I can.  I take comfort in my friends and my family, my job, my travels, my dogs, and the random people I come across everyday.  My life is very full of very good things, and I feel lucky for that.  

Some might question the timing of this blog, with it being so close to Christmas and all.  I honestly just realized that this evening as I was typing this out.  It hadn’t even crossed my mind.  What really brought this on was the shooting in Connecticut this past week.  It was horrific.  It was awful.  It left me questioning what is wrong with humanity, and wondering why something like that happened in the first place.  People were quick to take to social media, condemning the shooter, the failure of our government to both tighten gun control laws and to find a solution to the increasing mental health population.  Condolences abounded for all those who lost a child or a loved one.  People were also quick to quote scripture, both as a form of comfort and as an explanation for the tragedy.  Many said that they were sad to hear about what had happened, but that they trusted their faith in the Lord and that through prayer he would protect them and their families.  Others quoted scriptures in which the Lord would protect and keep those who were faithful to him, those who believed, and that through Christ all things are possible.  What I am struggling with is how a Christian, especially one who lost a loved one in that massacre, is able to reconcile their trust in God after something like this happens.  Because I frankly don’t get it.  I don’t cut people in my life any slack for doing bad things to me, and I likewise wouldn’t be able to handle the thought of a deity, a God that I believed in and trusted, allowing something like that to happen to me or my loved ones. I personally would much rather hear that what happened in Connecticut was a tragic accident, a case of too many people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Everything happens for a reason,” “God needed them in heaven more than we needed them here on earth,” “God doesn’t give us any more than he thinks we can handle,” are all meant to be words of comfort.  And to some they probably are.  If someone said anything like that to me after losing someone as violently and as senselessly as those people did, I would rage.  I don’t want to hear that this horrible tragedy was orchestrated by the very God that swore through scripture that he would protect his people, the very same God who people place their trust in every day of their lives, the very same God who sacrificed his own son as payment for our sins so that he wouldn’t have to punish us like this anymore.  God couldn’t find it within his power to spare those innocent children, many of whom probably came from Christian families.  In essence, are we to believe that he allowed the violent death of the very people he was supposed to protect.  How are people rationalizing this?  Are people really under the assumption that the deaths of all those children and teachers is to be interpreted as some sort of atonement for the sins of the rest of the world, the "wicked," if you will?  As the bible would have people believe, all that ended with Jesus on the cross...or am I mistaken?  

I don’t mean to sound like I’m attacking anyone for their faith...I truly am just trying to understand.  I’m a curious person by nature and I just want to understand the world around me, if that’s even possible.  I’m upset about the state of our country just like everyone else.  Some people take comfort in their faith, some people take comfort in alcohol, some people take comfort in their families, some take comfort in just sitting quietly and thinking.  I’m thinking.