6/17/24

Contrary to religious affiliation, and the wishes of most family members aside from my Deacon grandmother, I was baptized. My grandma, the amazingly loving, beautiful, talented woman she is, is also deeply Christian. Growing up Mennonite, a conservative off-branch of your typical Christian with a large Pennsylvania Dutch following, she knows what she was raised to know, consequently resulting in the pressuring of my father to baptize both my Sister and me. To give credit where it's due, my grandmother is also far from a conservative woman and is smart enough to follow what I think is a much more accurate interpretation of what Jesus actually died for; emphasizing love and compassion for everyone and everything. Because of her, I grew up going to Church regularly. Whether it was casual Sunday Schools in which I spoke to absolutely no one, too early morning mass, or essentially every family/friend event being held in the church's rented spaces, I spent more time in Church than I did anywhere else. 

My family was incorporated into the church's DNA, with my grandmother serving as the deacon, my grandfather in charge of music, and both my father and sister momentarily serving in the church's occasional choir and orchestra respectively. However, aside from my Grandmother, most of my family chose a less-than-religious route. Though admittedly feigning intrigue in keeping traditions alive, my family is Ashkenazi Jewish, largely from Poland and Lithuania. Because of this, and other factors I will continue to detail, I was overly aware of religion's existence from a very young age and found myself questioning and curious about its relevance in my life, as well as what was in fact true. My Dad had always been clear on his disassociation from Christianity especially and encouraged me to find my own belief system, or rather, any belief that I felt suited me. 

I was conscious of my abnormality from the get-go. When I was about 6 I asked my parents to stop cutting my hair, and as a result, was mistaken for my sister's sister or my parent's "little girl" for some of the more formative years of my life, and found myself resonating with that sense of femininity quite easily. I was gay before I knew what gay was, but growing up in a predominantly religious environment, I was made well aware of this fact. One of my best friends from 2nd grade to when he got too cool for me was raised in a deeply catholic household, and though his Mom was more than friendly no matter who she was meeting, his Dad was what you'd expect an Irish American catholic father to be. Funny in his own right, he had a way of making a presence around my friend's friends that was just short of intimidating, if not outright threatening, and I remember shitting bricks essentially any time I was forced to make conversation with him. On the closing night of my sister's 7th-grade play, my friend and I convinced our parents to let us have a sleepover at his place, arranging that my Mom would pick me up at 3 the next day when she got off work. As giddy as we were to spend almost 24 uninterrupted hours together, the nerves set in the second I got in his car. "So tell me about your parents Buddha- I mean Jewish- I mean Christian," he said to me as soon as the car was in motion and it was too late for me to change my mind about whose house was better for a sleepover. As a Jewish man named Christian, this joke is far from uncommon, and even further from remotely humorous to me, but while that in itself isn't the worst thing he could've done, after spending the entire next day with me, he did what needed to be done: took me with his family to a Catholic church that they did not attend on a Saturday. I personally can not be convinced that this wasn't done without targeted motivation, but it was that day that I realized Catholics, if not most Christians as a whole, were a group of people who would never truly be a positive element of my life. A lot of my brain after this was crowded by thoughts of a potentionally given purpose. At this, I had already experienced enough that I knew not being Christian automatically made you an outsider, especially in Lancaster. But I had also already began questioning those around me in an attempt to figure out what my place was. My Dad was firm in his atheism, as were my Mother and Sister, most of my friends were Christian until the age of 15, every older person I met loved God more than their spouse, my Dads side of the family was Jewish, and I was just about to get really into Percy Jackson lore. 

My school was a strange one, in that for an instituion that so strongly encouraged individuality, self expression, and alternate methods of education, it was also strangely conservative. While most of my education pertained largely to parts of human history and things of significant cultural significance, there was also a large emphasis on capital G God, and our supposed undying devotion to him. It was never extremely overt, and it took me until around 5th or 6th grade to realize, and slowly but surely our teachings became more adjacent to modern ideals, the songs we sang in Music class garnered an increase in mentions to God, and the issues that kids of my generation cared about were more and more shunned from mention in class. We weren't allowed to talk about movies or today's celebrities, and we especially weren't allowed to discuss politics, something unavoidable towards the 2016 election. I remember one time I and my peer were having a conversation, and the overarching topic of "gay" came up. I need to emphasize we weren't talking about someone, we weren't talking about gayness in our lives, or either of us being gay ourselves, we simply mentioned the word "gay"; my teacher, who was eavesdropping, chimed in, and corrected us, saying we shouldn't use such a dirty word, and instead refer to gay people as "light in the loafers".  Aside from that being an astoundingly outdated, and somewhat offensive, term to use, it also baffled me that he would even say that. We were in 8th grade, two 14-year-olds having a conversation about something other than what the typical 14-year-olds discuss, and the only issue was that we acknowledged gay people exist. It shocked me, of course, but also was a clear signifier that *most* religions and my own lifestyle don't cross over very well. But what was especially strange about the school I went to, is that aside from the music, morals, and teachings, most would assume that, based on the aesthetic of the school alone, they would be an incredibly Christian opposing institution. It was hippie. In every way shape or form, every piece of furniture, every hobby taught, and every room painted, was hippie through thick and thin. We learned about Gnomes and Mother Earth, gems and herbs with powers that superseded those of Western medicine, and the entire school was populated with people who liked like they upheld those ideas. They taught us about appreciating the Earth and having a harmonious relationship with it and us and the animals and plants around us. However, they also taught us extensively about other religions, predominantly mythological or dead, but enough that it had a lasting effect on my brain. 

From 4th through 6th grade, we were taught the history and cultural significance of the Indigenous people of whose land our school was built, we were taught about ancient Egypt, Greek mythology, and then the entirety of the Roman Empire, in that order. However, while I loved each block we went through, and knowing the history of different significant people, what stuck with me most was how much they all blended together. Stories of floods, godly punishment, and goddesses kidnapped by other more evil gods to be their wives for the rest of history are present in almost every ancient and modern system of belief, and the messages of which those who learn about them are equivocal all the same. There are Sun gods and Moon gods, gods that control the sea, gods that guard the underworld, origin stories that all have a heavy emphasis on the Earth, and Cosmos as beings of immense power, rather than a rock materialized by the power of God. To me, it seemed too easy to completely denounce any of them outright, as much as I also believed it served no purpose to think I was made out of clay in ancient Greece. 

For the past few years, there has been a steadily increasing conversation surrounding spirituality, predominantly led by men claiming that the concept in its entirety is stupid. The phrase "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual" has become somewhat of a red flag to a large population of individuals, most likely attributed to the kinds of people typically found saying it. However, I think a lot of that anger is placed more along the lines of misunderstanding what most mean when they say such things. For me, spirituality has always existed as something more than crystals astrology, and herbs. While those elements play a role in some people's versions of such a life, I think spirituality is much more in line with things everyone talks about affecting their lives already, unconscious to the fact that that is spirituality. Growing up, one of the biggest life lessons I continue to utilize in my life is something everyone knows; the golden rule. My Mom had raised me to believe strongly in the effects of karma, and putting a kind of energy out into the world if that is what you would like to receive back. This is something I feel everyone is aware of, yet somehow miss the point in that playing a very large role in what many belief system relies on. 

I don't believe in God. Simple as that. I can say that with such confidence because, as I would encourage most to do, I have experienced enough variety, and been exposed to enough lessons, that I can say no religion I know of would in any way benefit me or fit my life, and I have no desire to change myself for a supposed God and their rules. However, I feel a sense of something bigger than us out there. I think the best way for me to explain it is the universe in itself. I think one of the biggest fallacies in religious texts is the implication that any of the natural world could or would be fabricated by a singular being, especially when taking something that no religion can coexist with; science. The world we live in, and the galaxy it finds itself in has existed long before God created light and man created fire, to me, and whatever force is out there existed even before that. But I don't think it's a singular story, nor that, assuming there is something out there somewhere, they give a single fuck about any of us. I think an actual God is something like time, something like the universe, something that doesn't explain every single aspect of life, but rather fills in the gaps of the more unexplainable parts. 

My entire life has existed in the context of religion. Whether it was the school I went to exposing me both to an Earth-oriented line of thinking and to never question the all-powerful Christian God, my hyper fixation on Greek and Roman history, my early years spent watching veggie tales in a church room that smelled like play-do, celebrating Seder with my entire Jewish family, or the constant one-sided battle between Christians my ability to take dick up the ass, religion has been a thought in the back of my mind for as long as I can remember. Because of this, I felt it was something worth discussing, and will continue discussing in the future. But more than anything, the point of all this was to emphasize the significance of thinking critically about everything, but especially religion. There are near-constant conversations pertaining to Christianity, but also of all religions. Mention your star sign to a Baseball player and they'll probably spit on you. So, even though I didn't go into detail as I intend to in a later post, I wanted to talk about how religion is almost unavoidable, and that everyone should have the opportunity to think about their religion and how religion plays into their lives more than "I grew up in the Church so I'm Christian".