Escaping Christianity, accidentally

Thirty years ago, as a charismatic, born-again Christian, two philosophies waged a battle for my religious allegiance. I did not realize this at the time, nor did I realize that the “winning” philosophy would push me out of Christianity. That is a danger of allowing yourself to remain open to thought, and one of my hopes for the future of the world: that more and more people will open their minds to thought, rejecting dogmatism and the anti-human actions that result.

I am hoping that, like me, the human race will think its way out of religious slavery.

I became a Christian at 14, a response to the pain, loneliness and emptiness I was suffering as the result of my parents’ divorce and my own self-loathing and the resultant inability to make friends. The youth group at the First United Methodist Church in Billings, Montana, where I grew up, welcomed me in, accepted me wholly, and helped to realize my truest need in life: redemption in Christ.

Except, as it turned out, what I really needed was redemption in me. I hated myself, and being a Christian never fixed that. How could it? As a Christian you are taught that you, as you are born and as you live your human life, are fit for but one thing: Damnation. That’s as good as any human being not named “Jesus Christ” will ever be: demon food. Not a good formula for repairing shattered self-esteem. I eventually gave up on being a Christian, not through a decisive act of self-determination; no, being the self-hater I was, I just slid away and kept sliding. It took years to even begin trying to find another means to “salvation”. What I did find wasn’t the magic formula of being born again; it was just a simple acceptance of life as it is, a Zen realization that what is, is, and however I try to interpret, manipulate or undo that reality, I will fail.

Which doesn’t have a lot to do with the two philosophies of thirty years ago other than to jump to the (current) ending before recounting the beginning.

As a Christian in my early 20s, I read many books. Among these were works by Francis Schaeffer and “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” by Ronald Sider. Schaeffer was an uber-conservative who campaigned fiercely against many modern secular evils; he was most prominent for working with C. Everett Koop to attack abortion rights (Koop later became Reagan’s Surgeon General and was a massive disappointment to those who thought he’d use that office to attack abortion; instead he focused on cigarettes and, being a children’s surgeon, children’s health). Sider was, and is, a liberal evangelical (Schaeffer died in 1984). At the same that Schaeffer was warning me about the dangers of secularism, abortion and other modern aspects of sinfulness, Sider was laying out biblical principles about God’s demand (this wasn’t optional) to care for the poor.

Those were my choice. Fight the evils of the world or reach out to the world with compassion and love. There was no middle ground. In the Christian world, these were mutually exclusive views of evangelicalism, something I know that baffles non-Christians.

At the same time I was unwittingly facing this choice, the Moral Majority and their ilk were dominating news and politics, believing they would be able to guide the country towards becoming a religious state. Chief in the sights of the newly empowered religionists: abortion and the gays. I could understand the former: that’s baby-killing, right? But the latter: I knew the Bible forbid homosexuality but I also knew a gay man, and I simply could not bring myself to think of him as hell-bound. After all, the Bible forbid long hair (it’s in there somewhere; find it and start a cult). But here’s the event that finally turned me, and it had nothing to do with gays, abortion or any of the great issues of the day. It was simply a matter of deciding whether or not I would continue to hate myself forever.

It was 1981; I was still living in England, a year after leaving the Air Force (I spent three-and-a-half years serving on a base in southwest England). I had recently gotten my left ear pierced, a small stud my then-girlfriend talked me into it (and I still have it, these days with a Zen-symbol earring). After church one lovely sunny morning in Bristol, a woman came up to me; she was someone I considered a friend, a very nice and even fun person. I had spent time with her and her family. I trusted and respected her, and her words remain with me to this day:

“You will never be close to the Lord as long as you keep that earring in.”

As it turned out, she was right. Between the American and British “christians” hating on the gays and the fact that, as a Christian, I hated myself as much as ever (and now with extra reason to do so: I was sinful!), I knew Christianity was not salvation but a trap. Because I could never be good enough without Jesus, they would have me forever. But when I realized that even with Jesus I was not good enough, I had no reason to go through the motions of being a good Christian. At that point, addressing my personal issues directly would have been a good choice, but that was the nature of my personal issues: I wasn’t going to address them at all. I was going to let them fester until they destroyed my marriage and left me open enough to accept the hardest truth of all:

I would never be saved. I could only hope to heal and grow. And I was stuck being the person who had to do that. Me, or no one.

After that, it was relatively easy. It’s been almost twenty years since figuring that out, and while I haven’t dealt with a lot of my issues, I no longer hate myself, I’m no longer looking externally for “salvation”, and I am, bit by bit, becoming the person I’d really like to be.

Which brings me back to the two philosophies. Schaeffer’s “logical” arguments based on the Bible (the bits he selected, that is) made sense to my mind. My heart, however, was compelled by Sider’s biblical teachings — and the reality of the world as I found it. A million women in the US might be getting abortions each year, but I never accepted this was the genocide Schaeffer wanted me to believe it was. But the suffering of those who were starving around the world was very real, as was the Christ-ignoring indifference of Western Christians who would rather hate on the gays, who instead of working (and donating) to end suffer as Christ commanded instead chose to believe that the Lord’s “grace” was proved by making their material prosperity. The choice of wealth over love in American Christians, not to mention their backing of a war-mongering racist President, was too much to stomach. I started with Sider’s compassionate Christianity and that led me to reject the whole affair.

The Christians had let me waste ten years of my life hating myself. Even at the age of 24, I was too old for that shit. But now, pushing 54, I feel younger than ever. Ok, my body aches too much and I can’t stay up late like I used to, but I feel awake (the point of Buddhism, after all), aware and like I’m living my own damn life at last. By opening myself to compassion and turning away from dogmatism, I finally found my way from religious bondage to real salvation:

Being a human being, flawed, healing, growing and happy just to be here.