I was listening to Alachia’s podcast Little Green Dot #80 and it really gave me the urge to write this post. She was talking about her views on organized religion and how it was affecting her family and friends.
I’ve also been thinking about religion and spirituality a lot. There’s a lot of cynicism on my part and I tend to be defensive when talking about it.
I was raised African-American Baptist. The kind where the singing is good and there’s a point in the sermon that the preacher stops teaching and starts preaching. Anybody who’s been to a black Baptist church knows that when the organ comes in, you can shut your Bible because the teaching is done with.
I was raised with the beliefs that I was God’s child and if I prayed he would listen to me. He would help me through all of my problems and even if life was hard, he would be there. I was never taught that other people are going to hell and all of that. There was never any fire and brimstone and threat of hell. I guess I was lucky in that aspect.
But even so, when I was about 12, I started to question. It didn’t sound right. The whole concept I didn’t get. All those miracles that were performed and we don’t see any now? And I mean blatant miracles like the fish and bread feeding all those people and the red sea parting. A miracle to me is something that science can’t every explain, now or in the future. So when I was 12 I began to question. Nobody could answer some of them or they had convenient answers like “It’s not our place to know. It’s God’s plan.” Everything was sooooo convenient. Jesus is coming back one day. We don’t know when, but he is. Isn’t that convenient.
I started questioning what happens to people who aren’t Christians. What happens to the 17 year old girl across the world who’s never heard of Jesus? Does she go to heaven? When I started hearing that she wouldn’t go to heaven, that’s when I started to doubt organized religion. I liked going to church for the positive life lessons and the singing. But I hated that when I didn’t agree with a particular message, I couldn’t just get up and say something to the preacher. I felt I wasn’t being taught, I felt I was being told that I had to believe this one thing and I couldn’t even discuss it.
I stopped going to church regularly when I left to go to college. That gave me time to think about what I wanted. When I finished college and came back home, when I did go to church, I didn’t go to the black Baptist church I grew up with. I started going to a nondenominational church that was mostly white. The singing was nowhere near as good but I thought the messages made more sense. As time went on, even some of the messages that they were giving didn’t make sense.
I stopped going to church. I really thought about what I felt. I thought about things. I looked at how religion was used throughout history and is being used now. I came to my own conclusion that the whole Jesus thing is false. Organized religion is there only to make people feel better and to be a moral guide. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Anything that helps people be a better person is good. But I don’t believe that Jesus was the son of a god. Now the gold thing. I’m not sure if there is a god. This is the part I’m iffy about. I’m not atheist, or a deist. I don’t even think it’s agnostic. I’m not sure what I am. The god thing troubles me. For one, I see things in nature that are so perfect and things in the human body work so perfectly that I think there has to be something guiding it. But then I think, what kind of god would allow the world to be the way it is. So I’m on the fence on that one.
It doesn’t help matters that the rest of my family is still religious. I am glad they don’t push it on me. But I hate that they think that I still love god and Jesus but I still don’t know it. That irritates me and immediately puts me on the defensive. I hate being treated like a child who doesn’t know what they are feeling. So I often wear a coat of armor when religion comes up. I bristle when people immediately put me down because of what I don’t believe in. You want to believe in Jesus and that he’s the son of a god? That’s fine, just leave me out of it.
So that’s how I feel about religion. I’d rather have my own moral compass guide me than some imaginary dude in the sky.
Peanut Butter Spoon 