A Post-Insider Looks Back: Visiting Church as an Ex-Member
A couple weekends ago, I attended church with a friend of mine for the first time in nearly two years. Having grown up in a "Christian home" - whatever that means - and having attended church regularly for most of my life, being in a church building, even after so much time, felt familiar. Familiar in the way that your stuffy old relative's house is familiar. You don't really want to be there, but you go occasionally out of respect for those you care about. This particular friend has been feeling disillusioned by the rigidity and often harshly judgmental attitude of the conservative fundamentalist congregation at her church, and wanted to try out a more "liberal" church in the same denomination in a nearby town. Having been a member of that same denomination for nearly nine years myself, I had attended the other church on occasion and knew quite a few of the people there. I offered to go with her to help her feel more comfortable and introduce her to some of the members. Thus I ended up sitting in a church pew, feeling like a knowledgeable outsider.
You see, I used to be an insider. I was a church board member, deaconess, song service leader, and held various other offices over the years. Whenever there was an evangelistic effort, I was there to support it and lead out in any way asked of me. I gave numerous Bible studies, sometimes staying out late at night discussing the issues of eternity with troubled, searching souls. I once had a knife pull on me and the young woman I was studying with and my Bible destroyed, yet my determination was unwavering. I did my best to order my life according to the Bible and anything else I felt the Lord asked of me. Any misfortune in my life was due either to God wanting to further "refine" and "purify" me for the coming Kingdom, or due to some cherished sin in my life, however small and seemingly trivial. Every problem had a cause, and I overthought it to the maximum. One of my kids was sick? It must have been because I gave in and let them have a small cup of root beer at family gathering. Don't have enough money to pay bills and buy food? It must be because we rented a movie at the video store last month. Being the diligent and productive person that I am, I embarked on a quest to remove every item in my life that might offend God, so that my family would experience His blessing. I served a whole food, plant-based diet that I prepared from items purchased in bulk to save money. I eliminated all (read: most - I had my "secret sins" like Star Trek and the Office that I just couldn't give up) secular media from my home. I tried to be a submissive Christian housewife, letting my ex-husband control the checkbook until I got a letter from the bank stating we were overdrawn by over $500 the day I was packing up our house that was entering foreclosure.
It wasn't all about works for me, if that's the image you're getting. I knew I couldn’t earn my salvation with works. So, I prayed throughout the day, read my Bible and other spiritually uplifting and challenging books, tried to see God's hand in everything in the world, and taught my children lessons from nature that corresponded to a characteristic of a holy life. I prayed daily with my children and for them, read them Bible stories, and taught them scripture songs.
Eventually, I looked around, took inventory, and was like, "What the fuck? Where are God's promised blessings? Why am I so miserable? Why is my marriage so empty and meaningless? Why is my oldest son out of control? Why can't I pay the bills, even though I'm giving tithes and offerings with 30 percent of our income?" (Yes, I did learn simple arithmetic in school - God doesn't play by the rules of math though, or so people are told - "packed down, shaken, and overflowing" His blessings are promised to be). These questions I had asked individually before, and always I had told myself that I wasn't close enough to God, I had something I was harboring away in my heart that was preventing God from blessing me. It was always my fault. Of course it was, as God is perfect and does no wrong, right? He just wants the best for us, doesn't He?
After a couple years of trying to reconcile the discrepancies in my mind, I allowed myself to entertain the thought that maybe the promises weren't being fulfilled in my life because it was all bullshit. I had been sold a bill of lies in my childhood, and I had carried that faithfully into adulthood, only to find myself holding a fake. It wasn't valid, because the issuer wasn't real. It was a forgery. I had ordered my life meticulously around a fucking forgery, and I was embarrassed. I am an intelligent person. How could I have not seen through this completely illogical charade sooner? It took me some time to completely come to terms with this new revelation, but I finally cut all ties with religion, began forging my own path through life, and haven't looked back since.
So, why did I go then, if I had such a negative experience with religion, especially that brand of it, in the not-so-distant past? Because although I no longer personally subscribe to religion, I can understand the important role it still plays in the life of my friend, and any move away from fundamentalism is a good one that should be supported. In my view, I might not be able to convince her to leave religion and its trappings behind altogether, but I can at least help her find a kinder, less restrictive version of it. As I sat in the church service however, I failed to see my earlier logic. There I was, confronted by people who had known me, known how service-minded I was, how enthusiastic for evangelism, known me as a leader in many ways. And they asked where my family was. "We're actually divorced now." This always seemed to come out more curtly than I intended it, but I felt that the fact that I was there alone might should have a clue to be a little subtler about prying into my personal life. Their 'I'm so sorry's and 'I had no idea's, laced with varying degrees of sadness and judgement, reminded me too much of how I would have reacted to the same news from a former church member a few years ago. It disgusted me and shamed me at once. I had avoided divorce for nearly a decade because the Bible forbade it. Yet, here I stood, divorced and much happier and in a much better place, but knowing that these people wouldn't be able to see that. They see my situation through holiness-tinted glasses, and my new existence outside of their religious construct is dripping black with the mire of iniquity.
The song service was lacking energy, despite being led by an extremely talented, if not awkward, young man. I could have had a little fun if more upbeat and familiar hymns had been chosen, as they were all on the slow side. I know, I know, we don't go to church for fun. Lord only knows. But I have fun while singing, and even when I was a Christian I saw no harm in having fun whilst singing spirited old hymns. I even still play the tunes on the piano occasionally, because the melodies and harmonies are still beautiful, even if the lyrics can't always retain their edifying quality.
The children's story, a long-standing tradition in many Adventist churches, was probably the most disturbing part, and made me glad my children were not there. The woman telling the story was giving a demonstration with popsicle sticks in bundles of varying sizes representing habits in their different stages of development, and that the longer we allow a bad habit to continue, the harder it is to break. This is a sound observation, and I had no problem with that. It was what followed that left me reeling. She continued on to say that we can do well on our own for a while, but that we'll always slip up and fall back into out bad habits. The only hope to break this cycle, she suggested, was to ask and allow Jesus to help us. She then quoted Philipians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." I said it in my head along with them, as I had memorized that verse many years ago. Then the unsettling meaning of her words dawned on me. What a damaging teaching! I thought in dismay to myself, looking at a friend's beautiful, open-minded, kind-spirited daughter up there, absorbing it like a sponge. I wanted to run up there and yell, "No! You and you alone have the power to change yourself and your habits!" But that would have looked crazy, and I already project enough as it is, so I remained seated.
The pastor was a well-meaning, seasoned looking man with a generally friendly demeanor. He even managed to sound friendly when he called out the "normal atheist arguments" as tired and ridiculous, although he did not lay these arguments out nor did he define them in any way. I kind of wanted to hear what they were, to see just how tired and refuted they might be. He emphasized more than once how it was a great time to be a Christian, and a terrible time to be an atheist, in light of where we are in the prophetic timeline. And here I thought we atheists were doing great with our domination of the political sphere, our cultural influence as the majority, and our billions of dollars of donated funds. Oh, wait.
Riding in the car on the way back, we talked about her boyfriend, or rather former boyfriend since they aren't officially together anymore, but they are - sort of. He is otherwise perfect in her view, except he doesn't believe in the Sabbath. "I hate to see you throw away a relationship with the perfect guy because of a day of worship," I said carefully, realizing that this would have no effect whatsoever, so vaccinated are many Adventists to attacks upon the Sabbath, or any other of the 28 Fundamental Beliefs. I felt totally powerless against the bill of lies she was holding, despite its manifest fragility and my intimate familiarity with it. The topic then turned to my long-distance boyfriend and his recent visit. She inquired about his beliefs and how he was raised, and I told her of his Muslim upbringing, but that he was an atheist now. I'm sure she thinks he somehow lured me away from religion with his demonic charm. Her worries aren't completely unfounded. He is devilishly charming.
I was glad to finally arrive at home. I always found church exciting as a believer, but now I felt the weight of its oppressive dreariness. I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the people gathered there, adults come together to talk about, sing about, worship, and ponder the words of a collective imaginary friend. It was like watching overgrown children, still unhealthily carrying on an innocent playground game that increased in intricacy over time. So involved had they become in the imagination that they eventually forgot it was a game. It was like something out of a suspense or horror novel. I had never looked it this way, and the when the thought fully impacted my mind, I was simply stunned at the arrant bizarreness of it all.
But I suppose if you think about it, humanity as a whole is still in its childhood. If I were to guess, I'd say we're probably in our angsty, hormonal years where we're starting to understand how to be an adult, but we're still very much children, with many childish attitudes, ideas, and habits yet to shrug off. And as is with populations of humans of the same age, collectively we are all evolving at different rates, some much faster than others. Others will necessarily go extinct, because their traits are not suited for the environment of the future. Which group is which is yet to be decided, however. We, as a race, can still choose the direction of our evolution. This is a benefit wrought by our impressive albeit dangerous intellect as a species. Unfortunately, many members of our species continue to choose willful ignorance over knowledge. Many more lack the resources to access pertinent information that would enable them to patently raise their quality of life, often because their leaders and ancestors feared the steady drumbeat of progress, and silenced the drummers.
Today, the drumbeats of enlightened progress can be heard on every side. One can also hear the war cries of primal man, yelling in the throes of death as he struggles to prevent the environment from becoming one that no longer favors his dominance. Religion is one of the most sensitive areas in the anatomy of primitive man. It is the last vestigial construct that people still allow, even though if it were viewed from the perspective of an outsider looks not much different from ancestral worship, pagan pantheons, and literary mythologies. If we could look back in history to ancient civilizations and witness their human sacrifices, their offerings to various gods, their oppressive religious requirements, we would be aghast that people would do such things for something so silly as a sun god or a fertility goddess. How do you think the advanced humans of the future will look back upon us, right now, in this day and age? Can be proud of what we have done? Or would they look upon us aghast that we would use so much of our time and resources, be so irrationally hateful toward each other, and even kill each other, all over whose imaginary friend around which our playground games should be centered?
Drummers… play on.
