Who Says? The Dawg's religious autobiography

When I was very young my family did not attend church, even for traditional religious holidays. We observed them as many suburban Americans do, with a visit to a parent’s family home and prayers of thanks at dinner. While growing up, I remember this was the only time such prayers were spoken. Attendance at church did not begin until I began to attend a parochial (Lutheran) elementary and secondary school. That was after the death of my young friend Eric and I do not know why my parents decided to send me, and subsequently my siblings, to the school Eric had attended. Perhaps my parents were touched by the experience of his death. Perhaps they wished for a better or religious education for their children. Perhaps they feared for our mortal souls because we were not getting any religious education at home. I have never regretted the experience of going to that school or the Christian high school I later attended.
Once my mother asked me if I believed in God. I remember I was very young, perhaps just after I began to attend the parochial school. I was probably only seven years old. I told her yes. She asked no further
questions to see if I knew what I was talking about. I did not have any idea what believing in God meant. Stepping into the new school was like stepping onto another planet. There were miracles and angels, a God of love and mercy.
My elementary and high school years the schools provided all the education I had received in matters of Christian faith. We attended chapel every Wednesday and had Bible classes on the other days. I remember periodic attempts by my mother to take us to church on Sundays. My father was not very supportive in that he would not attend. I liked his outlook and I remember complaining that I received my fill during the week in school. Our Sunday attendance, therefore, was sporadic at best. I think it was difficult for my mother to round up five children and get us all to church on time. Except for these times of church attendance, the only references to God by my parents were in profanity. There was no discussion in the home about practices of living with God in our lives. It was as if there were two parallel universes. The universe at home, with its plainly non-Christian deeds, and the universe at school.
The closest my father ever got to discussing religion with me was his appreciation for nature. I remember him telling me once on a camping trip, after hiking to a remote mountain lake, that this was a picture of God. He could feel God in the outside. God did not need worship in a building filled with dressed-up people.
During my elementary and secondary school days, we were polled every Monday if we attended church or Sunday school over the weekend. I was usually the only one to answer “no” to either, and rarely answered “yes” to church. It was embarrassing. I remember thinking, “Why do I have to go? Why is going to church so important when I get the Bible classes here every day?”
Through school I had become well versed in things the organization of the religion wanted me to know. There were incompatible issues such as the unbaptized were damned and dancing was bad, yet God was forgiving and loving. Even though I was not a mature or philosophical thinker, the inconsistencies bothered me and they bother me still. I began to ask, “Who says?”
I found that in school when I asked teachers these questions to certain doctrine, such as a woman’s subservience to man, there was no logical explanation. For me to hear “because it says so in (insert Biblical reference)” begs the question “Who says so?” The answer that the Bible was written by men inspired by God confirms to me it was written by men and is self-serving at worse, chauvinistic at best. The “inspired by God” part, once again begs the question “Who says so?”
I asked the same questions for many things, such as how can this loving and merciful God damn the unbaptized? What of the innocents born who perish immediately? Why are they damned? I think the answers given to me are unacceptable. I am an imperfect human, certainly not nearly as merciful or loving as this God is supposed to be and I would have enough compassion in me to take back to my bosom any unbaptized innocent. As my knowledge of the planet expanded, we learned of the “heathens” who occupied rain forests. They had never seen, much less had opportunity to “learn” about, the Christian faith. Why were generations of them doomed? I do not accept these harsh doctrines. When I was young, I was embarrassed in class for having asked these questions. I was the only one to present this question. It seems to me this God judged too cruelly the children he made. In this case, not who says but why would he do that?
The elementary Lutheran education I received gave me the sense these things just were, it was mere fact. The high school, predominantly Baptist, kept us students on a guilt-trip. We were responsible to get the word out, to bear witness. This is a crusade, we the soldiers, doing our duty to tell others. I tried to fit in by participating in student witnessing and outreach to the public high school peers, but I could not sustain this because I had fundamental problems with the teachings as I understood them. How could I begin to answer the questions I had about why dancing is bad and promotes impure thoughts when I did not believe it myself? How could I begin to explain that anyone unbaptized would not be admitted to heaven no matter what if I did not believe this myself?
I had a few transcendental conversion moments experienced through evangelically charged rallies a couple of times during those young years. But, there was no after, no meat to sink my teeth into. I carried with me these dilemmas and I am sure my teachers tried to provide me with guidance, but I felt they were blind to my concerns or there were no answers. I simply stopped accepting what they taught.
I saw a hard life in my family, meanness, and evil in the world. I began to think the gods must be crazy, or asleep, or truly and totally without a feeling for us either way. As if the Earth had been a science project for a junior god to show how life can generate from the primordial soup and left to run its course in the god’s garage, forgotten in an old shoebox in the corner.
I finished high school going through the motions, attending my baccalaureate ceremony for my mother’s sake. These things were of little meaning for me. I accept the natural disasters; these happen regardless of who or how you are. The rain falls on the just and unjust and the sun shines on the good and the evil (Matthew 5:45). The more I saw of the goings on in the world, the great and terrible way people behave towards each other, I began to believe that perhaps there is no God. At least not one I wanted to be associated with. Perhaps, I thought, I am agnostic.
I have maintained this opinion for many years that there is no God or it is uncaring, asleep or dead or even crazy. I have supported this position with other people who care to engage me in discussion about what I believe. I have explained my position that the Bible was a book written by men by virtue of their being the physically strong ones and dominant in our world and that I doubt the divine inspiration of their writings. That is why women are subservient. I still maintain that position and others, which put me at opposition to many fundamental religious movements in this and other countries where there is a suppressed group. There are groups who want to suppress freedoms. Just to name one as an example, freedom from and of religion, such as insisting on school prayer, or practicing a different religion that is not that of the majority.
In the meantime, I have not used this idea to give me permission to run rampant in my own personal behavior. The teachings of doing the right thing that I learned from the parochial schools, along with being the eldest in my family and having to set a good example, have made me behave ethically and morally. I believe I behave morally, although being a lesbian puts me at odds with many morality rules. But I ask, who says? As I have stated, I do not accept the Bible as an absolute authority on many issues. Many moral laws and societal mores, in the Western world, are based on this book’s teachings. What does that mean when I do not accept the absoluteness of those teachings? Society has the right to legislate for its general protection, but for individual matters, it has no rights to tell me I am immoral, or to suppress me in any way.
This has become a maxim for me. As I have difficulty with those who wish to impose their moral beliefs on me, I have difficulty with those who wish to impose the same on our society. A prime example: The organizations that wish to limit a woman’s right to have say over her body act on Biblical authority, yet discount the free will of the woman. I do not like abortion as birth control. But that is exactly what it is, birth control. Why not use contraception? Ah, but I forget, many of the same anti-abortion people advocate there be no education in contraception or distribution of contraceptives. Such irony and paradox. How do they live with themselves? It is easy for me to remember that there are those out there who wish to suppress others with these, and other, contemporary examples.
One of my most rewarding exchanges of ideas has been with a friend, Robert, who attends seminary in Oakland. He told me he felt I was not the agnostic I was claiming to be. I was merely active in my doubts. I explained to him how I very much dislike the idea of blindly following. If there is no thought put into what you believe, how can you be cognizant enough to grasp what you really believe? I take the position that to proclaim belief without doubt is not faith. It is laziness. If religion does not make you question it, its values are suspect. This is like getting sucked into a cult, only instead of being so controlled you don’t have time to think, you do have time to think and are merely lazy. I found in the syllabus a saying that sums this up for me:
Life is doubt,
And faith without doubt is nothing but death.”
- Miguel de Unamuno
Any doctrine can be twisted to meet the authoritarian need of any person or group. Although I have doubted the absolutes presented to me in the teachings of organized Christianity as I experienced it, I have also learned from those teachings. I know having ethical and moral behavior is the correct path that we should all follow. Charity and compassion and tolerance were also taught and I embrace these behaviors as well. My early Christian education did give me a belief system that we, all of us, are in this together. This belief system is not specific to Christian faith. It is universal. We have a duty to each other to take care of each other. What keeps me behaving in a way I feel is the right thing to do is personal integrity, not a fear of an omniscient supreme being. I diminish myself if I privately do something I publicly would be ashamed of. To only behave justly out of fear is disingenuous. I can be a skeptic and cynical at times because I see humans act their worse, but I still expect better from them and myself. I think a positive outlook and expectation brings those very things to you.
I believe in a mixture of evolution and the presence of God on Earth in the form of Jesus. I believe, too, that the Bible is one of many histories, as is the Koran and the Torah. There are wisdoms of other religions that I am comfortable with. Perhaps we are destined to repeat our lives until we learn lessons, although the possibilities of just doesn’t seem possible in a random universe. There have been and continue to be many wise people of all cultures and beliefs who offer inspiration and ideology that fit with ethical, moral, charitable behavior. Who says they aren’t inspired? Who says this word is better than that word?
I no longer believe I am agnostic but I still have doubts about how active a part the supreme being(s) play in our world. Perhaps there is a “force” which joins all things and there exists harmony or disruption but all governed by the chaos of randomness. I don’t know. Who is to say the clouds do not exist to remind me of God? The sky is so flat without the clouds and sometimes I imagine our souls are flat without God in them. Who knows? Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). This explanation is now enough for me.