In the movie Jeff who lives at Home, the character of Jeff, played by Jason Segel, is pretty much how I feel about God. I believe in signs. I believe in hope. I believe in "more".
What I don't believe in is the darkness associated with the word religion.
God is the light at the end of the tunnel, not the darkness that urges to guilt and name call ("sinners", "wretched"). Exalting Jesus life vs glorifying his death is how I choose to look at my tradition of Catholicism/Christianity. I do pray "to a man in the sky" (as George Carlin would say as well), but its because that is the tradition that I was raised with and feel comfortable with.
The following quote spoke to me in a way that made me believe again that there may be people out there who don't wear the Cloth simply to have an air of supremacy, or as a cloak of armor to hide the true shame of their lives (people living in the closet, people cheating on their spouses, people greedily ciphering church funds or all of the infamous Catholic claims). Right after I received my First Communion in our Catholic Church back home, the church sent my grandparents a bill. ( A BILL!) The bill was not anything related to my First Communion, or my Catechism, or anything of that nature. It was simply letting my grandfather know that he wasn't giving enough of his paycheck to the church. My grandparents were rightly horrified. They were on a fixed budget and raising me, with the help of my dad's social security, and though we did okay, it was a tight household. My grandparents gave what they could afford, and we attended church, and gave to the church basket every single weekend. I think that was the first time that I ever saw the church in the light of a money making business, and it changed the way that I thought about God. It was around that time that I started losing my focus in life, the comforting warmth of my God in heaven was tainted with a human greed that I couldn't rectify.
Years later, in meeting my Orthodox Jewish father-in-law, I learned of certain "laws" that I thought were akin to a psychotic Dr. Seuss book. No cheese with meat. Use different cook wear for dairy foods and meat foods. No pork. No crab or lobster. No keeping your son's penis in tact. You must cut and make your baby son bleed in front of people for no other reason than the enjoyment of a party and for the title of being "Jewish". You must give Thousands of dollars a year to the temple, and if you want to belong to their Community Center, then you must give Thousands more. You must now look at Christmas lights as "white trash", and Christmas as a blasphemy to your soul.
Born-Again Christians wanted me to turn my husband Christian and have my husband renounce his tradition of faith for the sake of...? I don't know. To maybe look more favorable to their church? I'm not sure.
I took my husband to a couple of church services and found myself hiding my head in shame as the pastor felt the need to throw fire and brimstone at "The Jews" in the sermons. I was horrified. I went to church to find comfort and maybe a positive, uplifting message for the week, and then left in the middle of the service, more embarrassed than anything else. My husband was not nearly as upset as I was - because I was the one who brought him to the place to hear such prejudiced bile be spewed from an ignorant person's mouth.
We've also had prejudice thrown in our direction from my father-in-law's temple. My husband and I had joined a charity organization, hoping to do good in the community, and dropped out after a couple of meetings after my father in law's Cantor abruptly came up to me what I was doing there, asked me how old I was (for the record, I'm 4 years older than my husband), how old my husband was, what religion I was, and why I was with my husband. I should point out that this organization was a multiple faith organization and that multiple faiths were represented in the meetings. There were Catholics, born again Christians, Buddhists, Protestants, etc. Luckily, as I was seeing red and about to flip out on the Dbag Cantor, a protestant priest walked over, led me away, and calmed me down. The Protestant Priest reassured me that I was there to try to do a good thing for the community, and be a good person, and that the Cantor was being highly inappropriate and unnecessarily cruel. I agreed. I also decided to find another charity organization and remove myself from a situation that made me uncomfortable. My father-in-law took the side of the Cantor.
My husband and I decided to go to the local Folsom ice skating rink one Hanukkah season, where they were having potato pancakes and little booths open to the public for crafts and information on the local Temple. It was certainly an icy environment, but not from the ice rink. We had people turn their backs to us, give me dirty looks, give my husband sneers. Very unwelcoming. Very odd. Ironically, that was the one and only time that Folsom held a public event of that nature. Maybe my husband and I weren't the only ones treated like lepers. Maybe people complained. Can't say that I would blame them. This was a PUBLIC event, and not only for people belonging to the Temple.
I've experienced prejudice and closed minds from different perspectives, but the perspective that I choose to live with is that God is not prejudiced. PEOPLE are prejudiced. God is warmth and open arms. God encourages you to do better, to be better, not to judge and be judged. Sure, I judge those who have judged me, but only to say that it hurt my feelings, and that I choose not to show my son that easy of life. I choose to raise my son (and future TBD child in my tummy) with the love of God and that there is more to life than waking up, cleaning the bathroom, being stuck in traffic, etc. of the daily grind. I heard something once that always stayed with me. How did 1 come out of Zero? Why do we start our numbers from Zero? Zero is round and is infinite...and I believe, as strange as it sounds, is the beginning of the mystery of where God lies. God always was and always will be. And that's all I think I know. The rest...is a mystery. I will raise my children with both sides of my husband's and my traditions from growing up. I will not convert. He will not convert. Converting is about lying about who you are and I don't agree with that. I don't agree with the symbolic shutting off of a part of myself for the sake of my husband, nor would he ever want me to. I love him for that. We are a multicultural household because we are a multicultural world. I am Swedish, Puerto Rican, Irish, English, and French. My husband is Russian, Eastern European, and Irish. I was raised Catholic, and my husband was raised Jewish. Neither of us agree solely with all of the traditions and prejudices of our past traditions. We celebrate Passover, and we celebrate Christmas. We celebrate each other, and we celebrate being true to ourselves.
This quote sums up my Agnostic beliefs beautifully:
"Religion is always in the control business. The church doesn't like for people to grow up, because you can't control grown ups. That's why we talk about being 'born again'. When you're 'born again', you're still a child. People don't need to be born again, they need to grow up. They need to accept responsibility for themselves in the world. EVERY church claims that 'we are the true church'. The idea that the truth of God can be bound in any human system, by any human creed, by any human book, is almost beyond imagination for me. God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems, which human beings have created to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I think it only points me to God. You and I are emerging people, not fallen people. Our problem is not that we are born in sin. Our problem is that we do not yet know how to achieve being fully human. The function of the Christ is not to rescue the sinners...but to empower you, and to call you...to be more deeply, and fully human, than you've ever realized was in the potential within you to be. Maybe salvation needs to be conveyed in terms of enhancing your humanity...rather that rescuing you from it. Life is a startling and wondrous experience, and eventually I think we're going to discover that God is enfolding through the life of our consciousness, and is not a parent figure up in the sky."
( - Bishop John Selby Spong)
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