Here is your nonreligious blessing for the week.
Stop giving away your freedom
to be,
to wonder,
to explore,
to play,
to experiment.
Stop sitting in the bathwater of religion desperately searching for a baby. There is no baby.
Draw your own bath.
I’m dead serious.
Live your life. Be free.
The bathwater of Christianity (and Judaism and Islam and Hinduism and on and on) is filthy. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but we have to be serious now. It’s filthy, but for some notable exceptions. But those exceptions do not prove the rule. They’re just exceptions.
Jesus is worth a look, no doubt. You can learn from his teachings.
But you can also ignore them entirely, if you want. Honestly. You don’t have to follow or admire or study or love Jesus of Nazareth to live a life rich in love, joy, connection, pain, grief, loss.
You never have to think about god, Jesus, the prophets, the Psalms, Paul (may I never, ever care about this man and his teachings ever again), Revelation (the idea of taking this book seriously is inconceivable), Noah’s Ark (people are seriously trying to find it, like wtf1 do you even mean), the holy spirit, any of it, ever again. If you want.
You might just be better for it.
No politician, no pastor, no influencer, no podcaster, no streamer, no singer, no professor, no religion, no ideology, no god, nothing, not a single thing in this whole meaningless universe gets to tell you how to live your life. You must accept that burden, that freedom.2
I know it sounds scary, maybe reckless, to embrace the fact that you can live whatever life that you want. But you owe it to yourself, and to all of us, to try.
We need as many free spirits and rebels as we can find.
wtf = what the fuck
Freedom is one of humanity’s existential fears, along with isolation, meaninglessness, and death.
Wow. This is an interesting post.
When we went to Israel in 2018, we were just "new" to anything to do with the church, religion, Christianity. We were attending First Presbyterian Church in Holland because we were told it was the most "liberal" church in town. I liked the pastor there at the time, very much. She retired soom after we left and moved to California. Living in southern California now, we have found an extremely liberal church in Irvine, a UCC church, and have been attending there now for seven years. I was raised with NO religious teachings at all. However, that doesn't mean that the doctrines of Christianity didn't come into my life. Our neighbors were either Catholic or Christian Reformed (having grown up in west Michigan). Neither god nor Jesus were ever part of my life. Then I had a crisis of faith in my early thirties and railed against a god I didn't even believe in. Mostly because the Christianity that permeated everything and the Christians representing it, said so many things I didn't and couldn't believe. Things that were hypocritical. Things that were hurtful. As time passed, then we moved from living for thirty years in northern California, Sonoma County, one of the most liberal places in the country. We moved to Holland. Where I was, once again, surrounded by Christians. And, reconnected with an old friend who was a fundamentalist, evangelical believer. Eventually, our relationship devolved when she started pushing her beliefs on me and then telling me, at least twice, that I was going to hell because "I didn't accept god as my lord and savior." She was right, I didn't accept that. And, I really had no feelings about heaven, hell, the afterlife. I began to question how Christianity could go on so long with, as you said, the many ways it seemed screwed up. So, I went to FPC. Mostly to learn about Christianity. I knew nothing and finally wanted some kind of education in religion and the bible. My years at FPC were what I would call "fine." I tried to put more into it than I really felt. But I kept going. Then we got the chance to go to Israel with your tour group. This was an amazing trip that Al and I will never forget. We love all of it. Except for any of the "religious" moments. We were lost during the bible readings, any god or Jesus talk. But we kept up a charade of being believers and Christian. The truth is, I wasn't a "believer" then and I'm not now.
I go occasioally to our UCC church for the service because I like the peace it instills in me. I help once a month collecting the offering and setting up the church for the 2 services. I go to the bible study because the leader of it is amazing. He has more information in his head than seems possible. He covers the history, the literature part, he is a down to earth speaker and good man. (Plus, he graduated from Michigan State!) I go to the adult ed class because our friends who lead it have presentations by Marcus Borg, Dominic Crossan, Dan McClellan, Diane Butler Bass, Tripp Fuller. And, so many more. The past month, the topic has been the mystics of medieval times in Europe--Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, St. Clare of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila and more. Also, talking about the Beguines. I go to a book club consisting of 8 women and we read every kind of book from The Book of Longings, to We the Women, Yesteryear, The Tortilla Curtain, James, This is How it Always Is, to Canticle, to Kissing Girls on Shabatt. Of the 8 of us, all were raised with a church backgroud--Catholic, Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian. Four of us are still married, two are lesbian whose wives just died within the past 5 years, two are divorced. Four of us have lost children from ages 6 to 50. One has an adult disabled child. One was kicked out of Moody Bible School when she was 20 because they found out she was gay. It took her thirty years to come back to the church and she found this place, this UCC church. The first pastor of it, Fred Plummer, was the first pastor in Orange County to allow gays to attend and this was at the height of the AIDS epidemic and first to allow gays to marry in this church, The second pastor was gay and married his partner in the church. The third one is now a woman.
I love everything to do with learning about religion. However, this hasn't changed my mostly atheist viewpoint. At this present time,the church is experiencing dissension. The pastor now is not "beloved" like the first two were. So, it's not feeling as community like as it was. She is an huge activist person. But not a pastoral type one. And this has some people not happy with her. She also has put the church in a precarious financial position so that the future of it is in quesstion. And, the phrase I have heard thrown about is the one you just wrote about: "Before you consider leaving the church, think about this: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."
I really never thought I would read a post like you did here. I never thought that you had this deep and serious thoughts about your faith. Either I got a hugely wrong impression of you in 2018, or your questions have brought you to a new thinking place. I'm not sure which it is. I really have always felt like something was wrong with me becaue I have never been able to come to be a "believer." It's only after "going to church" for some years now that I can come to feel okay about my atheist self. That I don't need an intermediary between me and my "spiritual" feeling and way of being. I'm just okay with it and that's enough.
I've also come to love people like Kristin DuMez who wrote Jesus and John Wayne and her most recent, Live, Laugh, Love. I sped read that one and underlined nearly all of it. What I detest most about white Christianity? The misogynistic, patriarchal, piece of it. This piece that DuMez tackles so well in this newest book of hers. To go on--I love Rachel Held Evans, Barbara Brown Taylor, Sarah Bessey, Beth Allison Barr. Oh, and Jen Hatmaker.
Anyway, your post stirred up some things in me, obviously.
Thanks for listening to my random and disjointed thoughts.
Hope you and your family are well.
Linda Avery