I find it very hard to say I'm not a Christian. There is an undercurrent of fear in those words for me, even if they are essentially true. I'm not a Christian, at least not in the sense of the religion I was raised in. Which is not to say I have no faith or that I reject Jesus. I do have a faith and I don't reject Jesus exactly. But what my parents want me to believe? What the church I was raised in tried to pound into me? No. I don't believe that way anymore.
It's fair to say I never really felt comfortable in my family's church. It always made me uneasy, always made me feel bad and guilty. I was guilty for being alive, for being myself, for not being who I was told I should be. Even as a child, maybe especially as a child, I couldn't shake the sense of judgement. I couldn't shake the sense of being measured and found drastically wanting. Even as a child, it just didn't make sense. If Jesus was the shepherd, like in the picture on our Sunday school wall, and he loved everyone, why would he send anyone to Hell? It never made any sense to me when they said the Jesus didn't send anyone to Hell, that people sent themselves there. That was stupid. No one would willing go somewhere where they would be on fire forever. That's just dumb. No one would chose that and yet I was being told that there were people going there. LOTS of people, as it turned out, since Christianity is a relatively recent invention. All those people before? Hell. All those people today who never got to hear the gospel? Hell. All those people raised in other religions, who believed as deeply and truly in their god as my family believed in Jesus? Hell. All those people who did hear and who tried to believe, but just couldn't? Hell.
But more than that, all those people who thought they were Christians, who thought the believed and who followed Jesus as best they could but didn't do it more or less exactly the way my church did? They went to Hell too. Especially the Catholics. They were ALL going to Hell, really. Except the ones who decided to convert to the Southern Baptist Cult. (Yes, it's a cult. A fucking huge one, but a cult nonetheless.) If they decided to join us, they could go to Heaven too.
Some other people could get to Heaven, too. Mostly the Southern Baptists, but maybe some Methodists and Pentacostals. Probably not the Episcopalians or Lutherans. Although, sometimes the Lutherans got it right, so there might be one or two of them. But definately no Unitarians or Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. They called the Unitarians a cult. Seriously. Unitarians? No centralized dogma, do everything by committee Unitarians? A cult? Of course, they didn't KNOW any real Unitarians. The closest Unitarian Church was about 3 hours away and they weren't gonna make that kind of drive to check them out. Anyway, their Sunday School literature said they were a cult, so that was that.
God did love the Jews though. He had a special place in his heart for them, so they were his Chosen People. But . . . unless they converted, they were still going to Hell. How does that make any sense? God loves the Jews more than anyone else, but he's still going to send them to Hell because they missed Jesus? Huh?
And think about Hell for a minute. What sort of God would send people, who he claims to love and calls his children, into a pit of fire where they burn. Forever. They don't die. They are immortal. And they are tortured, unspeakably tortured for eternity because they didn't think Jesus was the Messiah. What sort of God is that? If a person did that, we'd call him a monster and send him to the electric chair, but if God does it? Well, that's just God and his mysterious ways. Why should we hold God to a lower standard than we hold each other? Isn't God supposed to be BETTER than us?
And the rules. Dear Lord, there were SO MANY rules! There was no way to follow them all, and they kept changing. More rules kept being added and I could never keep straight what I could do and what I couldn't do. Some things were clear: No drinking, no drugs, no sex, no swearing, no thinking bad thoughts, no being selfish. . .But other things? I'm not supposed to lie, but what if I have to to protect someone? Like, what if some crazed gunman came into the room, looking for my best friend. Do I admit I know where she is so he can go kill her or do I lie? Clearly, lying is a sin, but so is letting someone kill another person if you can stop them, right?
The hypocracy. Oh gods, but all these people saying they were so good and so Christian and I knew they were cheating on their spouses or getting drunk on the weekends and driving or they were sleeping around and swearing and smoking and drinking and being well, normal non-Southern Baptist people. But they wouldnt' admit that! They would keep going on about those Gays or those women who get Abortions or parents who let their kids watch Dirty Dancing or whatever was the topic today. Always it was stuff they didn't do. You know, so they were so much better than everyone else, even though they kept saying that they weren't any better, you could tell they totally believed they were. Otherwise, why the hate? If you really believe you're the same as anyone else, why the hate-on for queer people? Why the lack of compassion for AIDS victims? Why the tsktsk I-told-you-so when the Catholic child abuse scandal broke? (Ok, now I know why. Because they're just people and subject to all the flaws of people, but at the time, they were holding themselves up as BETTER than that.)
Mostly, that's what did me in. The sheer hypocracy and cruelty of so many so-called Christians. I read what Jesus said and taught and I think, these people haven't read this, have they? They don't seem to be immulating the guy who hung out with society's outcasts and repeatedly stressed caring for the poor and destitute, while telling the religious authorities to go fuck themselves. Because you know, they sound a hell of a lot like those authorities instead of Jesus. They have the rules, but lost the spirit.
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