It's All In The Specific Word

I'm not feeling particularly generous spirited today, nor patient, nor warm (literally).  It's obvious that social suicide is my specialty and I've been vetting myself over the past few years to simply embrace the unchangeable and accept my role in society.  It's a lot of work. Accepting my role makes it look like I actually WANT the role and there are those who think I take pleasure in being the one to say the thing that isn't supposed to be said to the people least likely to take it well.  I suppose that most expect a person to constantly fight the inevitable - just to show they won't accept it.

A chance remark about God being "the best surgeon" has got me thinking a lot about what the fuck that actually means.  In this particular case a person was expressing that they were putting faith in God to heal their very sick (possibly) dying loved one, but it struck me as very strange to say that you are going to put your faith in God (through prayer) because he's the best surgeon when you're also putting your faith in an actual human surgeon.  Looks to me a little like hedging your bets, which, from many angles, doesn't seem particularly Christian.

But my reaction to these words got me thinking about how many different kinds of Christians there are out there.  While some Christians take the bible literally, I take most Christians literally.  I have expectations of Christians that I don't of other people purely based on the fact that they have sung the praises of a set of rules written by man that supposedly came right down through the heavens to all of us pathetic mortals.  But, if we're pathetic, God made us that way.  Why is God always trying to fix us if he never makes mistakes?  Also, if we're so flawed I don't really get how we're supposed to believe what a bunch of men wrote two thousand years ago- how do we know that those men even told the truth?  How can anyone of us flawed people trust other flawed people to translate the word of a higher power correctly?

I don't understand how a person can be literal and also be religious.  What I do recognize is that not all Christians take the bible, or their faith, literally as much as they do metaphorically.  This I understand.  This I find reasonable and logical and honest and true.  To be able to read the bible for inspiration, to believe in a higher power (and call it God- I don't give a rat's ass what name anyone gives higher powers) and see that there can be no literal faith but that faith is something flexible; that the ultimate goal is to become better people and to follow some basic rules that allow us all to live together; and to interpret teachings individually makes sense to me.

If this was how faith really worked then Christianity would seem benign to me instead of creepy and ignorant and constantly contradictory. 

The thing is, many Christians really are literal about their faith.  I would feel comfortable suggesting that millions of Christians have a very literal faith.  They read what the bible says and they apply two thousand year old words to their modern lives.  Even though we are living in North America, peculiarly free of tyrannical Romans.  But that's not the only thing I find so hard to reconcile with thinking human beings- the fact that Christians are different from Jews because they (unlike Jews) believed that Christ was God's messiah and so, supposedly, they think a lot of this Christ guy...

But it is incredibly convenient how so very few of the literal Christians follow Christ's literal teachings.  That whole thing about turning the other cheek is pretty much uniformly neglected in favor of the older more vengeful childish God's teachings that if people displease you you should wage war against them, kill your enemy's children and rape your enemy's wives. 

I'm not even exaggerating for effect.

I don't need any faith to see that man has fought most wars over disagreements of religion, resources, and vengeance.  There has been precious little cheek turning from anyone.

Like I said, I really expect more from Christians because they supposedly have "the word" or "the 'good' book" to guide their actions and prescribe their conduct.  Those of us who choose to be responsible for evaluating our actions and our moral compass on our own, using our own yardsticks for proper conduct- we don't have pat answers to questions of ethics or a priest to advise us on how to treat our neighbors while he secretly molests little boys*.  We are looking to ourselves and our community for cues and answers and developing a conscience devoid of specific dogma.  Sometimes it's a bitch and anyone who knows me knows that I stumble and fall frequently. 

But my crimes are largely of a superficial nature.  I am thoughtless sometimes.  I lash out at people and I have had prejudices (mostly against religious people) but I have constantly sought to enrich my understanding of people who are different from me and I don't steal, cheat, maim, rape, purposely hurt, swindle, or kill.

I do admit that tonight I dearly covet my neighbors their freedom to turn their house heat on.  I am not proud of it and since my toes mostly came un-numb in my warm afternoon shower I am trying to see this as a good thing, being unable to afford much heat this winter. 

I'm going to say something that illustrates my deep distrust of those who claim to base all of their morals on God and what he supposedly says in the bible and there are local people who may read this and just be appalled that I would discuss this out loud...the friend I blew up at a couple of months ago, who I was really mean to, and who was truly just as mean to me in response is a person who is Christian.  She consults the bible for questions of morality and conduct. 

One of the things I could never be comfortable with in being her friend is her belief that being gay is a sin.  I almost dropped to the ground in shock when she confessed this.  I almost stopped being her friend right then and there because such a belief is wholly unsupportable to me.  If you share that belief with her I can promise you that I will respect you from a distance but you will never enter my home as a friend nor have a place in my heart.  I will give you food if I have it when you're hungry because you're human just as I am and hunger comes to everyone, but I cannot trust your moral compass.

I tried to find a way to accept this "quirk" of hers and I told myself that I could be friends with people like her, with Christians, with people who are different than myself because I have had many friends who are wildly different than myself.  I've certainly had religious friends before, though I have come to find out that they were all very liberal and open minded.

When I lashed out at her I accused her of being ungenerous of spirit.  Uncompromising.  Then when she wrote back and gave me my own, (admittedly provoked), I recognized the truth in her words that I had been vicious in my letter to her.  I wrote a sincere apology and I swear by all I hold dear that I did and still do mean that apology.  I then, in reporting this tedious and unhappy event in my life on my blog, admitted publicly to my own culpability in the situation and freely owned up to having behaved in a way that I wasn't proud of and that I was genuinely sorry for.

I expected, because she is a stringent enough Christian to not believe in war because Christ was so clearly against violence, I expected that she would apologize for her own vicious words and that she would,  in telling of our tangle, also admit that she was also mean.  I expected this of her more than I did of myself because she supposedly lives by a code written out for her to follow which makes much of humility, turning the other cheek, and forgiveness.

I kept waiting for her to write a little note saying that she's also sorry for having been so vicious in her response to my letter.  There has been no word. 

What bothers me is how much it bothers me that she has acted in a distinctly unchristian manner while I have amended, apologized, and thought deeply on my own conduct which I felt was truly lacking in any kindness or grace.  I have done what I could to take some of the unwarranted sting away and she has not so much as acknowledged that she behaved in just as nasty a way as I did.  If she has forgiven me she has not let me know it which is ungenerous of her.

Which leads me right back, full circle, to the things I accused her of.  Instead of showing me how mistaken I was in her she actually simply proved herself to be exactly who I accused her of being.  Why should it bother me if she has an ungenerous heart or spirit?  This was one of the biggest reasons I had to stop being friends with her.

I saw her at the grocery store a few weeks ago and we skillfully didn't make eye contact but the thought that ran through my mind was "God sure didn't make her into a better person."


I don't apologize for wrongdoings because God has threatened to send me to a repulsive fictional underworld of pain if I don't, I do it merely because I know how it feels to be hurt and the minute I recognize (or am confronted with) the pain I have caused another I judge myself and I think how I can make it right while being true to myself because I don't like inflicting pain on people.  That's not who I want to be.  That's not the kind of person I want to teach my son to be either.

Doing "the right thing" without promise of rewards or threat of punishment is, to me, much more valuable and true and lasting.  Doing God's will because God says so or you will burn up into bitty ashes is infantile.  I have no respect for doing things based on a reward or punishment basis.  This makes for weak moral strength. 

I didn't apologize to my ex-friend with the expectation that she would return the favor.  I did it because it was the action called for in order to respect myself.  That doesn't mean I didn't hope for her mutual apology.

This wasn't the crux of what I planned to say tonight.  What I planned to say is that comments like "God's will" and "Trusting in God" are empty to me and when I observe the actions of the people saying them I generally see that they don't literally trust God.  If I was a Christian and I was trying to get pregnant and couldn't I would interpret it as "God's will" that I not give birth to a child of my own but perhaps am being called on to adopt a child already born who needs someone just like me to shower my maternal instincts on.  But what many infertile Christian women do is over ride God's will and trust in science to give them what God wouldn't. 

So when a person says that they will trust God to save their loved one who is sick what they really mean is that they need something to do with themselves while they trust the human surgeons and doctors to try and do what God isn't willing to do.  That doesn't look like "faith" to me.  To me that proves that their real faith is in mankind to come up with his own answers and solutions and that God is just a figurehead at which we can hurl our pain and turn to when there's nothing else.

Thinking about this makes me have a surprising new respect for the Christian Scientists who seem to come much closer to practicing what they actually preach.  They really are trusting that when God wants us to die he gives us a lung tumor and it is our duty to let it metastasize until it chews up the last breath in us.  Or that when he wants us to experience a tremendous amount of endless pain and suffering he gives us poverty and rheumatoid arthritis.

But why live life with such dire beliefs?  Why can't spirituality be more flexible and evolve as we do and as we learn more about ourselves, our strengths, our weaknesses, and the world we live in?  There's no limit to the unexplained wonders in the scientific world so there's no limit on our ability to grasp that we can never know everything.

It seems like love to seek to know the world intimately and to understand it, like learning the secrets of our partner and touching every corner and ever bone.  To love a thing is to know it.  To turn one's mind away from knowledge seems like willful negligence of the riches around us.

There is no need for faith when there is an entire world around us that doesn't require us to believe anything without proof or at least really good supporting evidence.

There is no moral superiority in having religious faith.  All that means is that you are a person who is willing and proud to ardently believe in something for which you have absolutely no evidence or proof outside the mind of the person who indoctrinated you.  I can't tell you how much it terrifies me that billions of people are so easily led and it explains a lot of human history and tragedy.

As for me...I will continue to endeavor to learn to live in peace with Christians while being completely happy and comfortable in my own spirituality which needs no special name nor a manual.  I will continue to try to improve myself and learn from my deep reservoir of mistakes and evolve always forward.

I think I have continued to hold myself under stringent accountability for having thrown mean words to my ex friend as though the only way I can release myself is through her absolving me.  What I realize today in writing this black little theological liturgy is that I have done all that I can do and it's time to absolve myself and move on.  If she had proved to be a different kind of person her absolution might have been meaningful.  There is no longer any need to keep saying my crime out loud like a horse whip on the back of my conscience.

I am better than I thought I was and the next time I find myself in a similar situation I expect to handle it with more grace and kindness.

Let that kindness begin with myself.

This is all part of my greater evolution.  Opportunities to find better ways to resolve problems and to treat others more gently even when I feel my spirit thrashing around like a starling trapped in my chest wanting to fight and fly.

What it means today is to stop crying just because I can't afford much heat this winter.  It means I need to toughen up for the fucking rough ride ahead because life isn't looking like it's ever going to get easier and I can and should reflect that this house at 53 degrees is a hell of a lot better than a one bedroom apartment at any temperature.

Perspective will be my constant chore.  I know I'm not missing anything by not turning to God with prayers for deliverance because the overwhelming evidence shows that God lets his faithful followers die every single day of all the horrible things everyone else dies of and God's followers are often the poorest on the planet. 

I will try to become a better version of myself.

My reward is my self respect and the respect of the people I love and care about.




*I realize that this is not how every priest behaves but it's way too common to be ignored either.