Faith Crisis

I feel like I’m crashing towards a faith crisis and just don’t want to admit it because it’s just one more disaster I’m pretty sure nobody (and I mean nobody) has any desire for me to launch into now.  This alone can cause its own mental health crisis without piling it on top of a pandemic and a late in life coming out process.

For 38 years, I just more or less rolled with the punches and believed more or less what I was told as long as it was within a certain proximity to what I had grown up with.  The Bible had to be the literal and inerrant, perfect truth…not to be altered or meddled with.  There were certain rules about salvation that had to apply.  Large swaths of the Bible are either nebulous or self-contradictory (and we just kind of like to ignore the parts about the genocide, polygamy, massive amounts of inbreeding, and the ban on (looks at notes) shellfish and cotton-poly blend fabrics which are an “abomination”…ours is not to ask why) so some details were negotiable…it’s fine…that’s why we have denominations.

And if I’m being intellectually honest, part of it is superstition. The years I hung on to some faith practice (whether that was church attendance or at this point I’ve always done a “Read the Bible Through in a Year” program every year), things have more or less gone well.  In college I didn’t go to church or do any of that, was actually kind of mad at God for reasons that aren’t likely hard to guess at this point, and everything crumbled.  And there’s a slight thing in the back of my brain that sees the further I go down the gay journey, the more the world is on fire (which I realize is not rational).  But, I came out and my brother got laid off (Christmas before last) and I started dating and my aunt died and covid hit.  The first time I read girl on girl fanfic (3 or 4 years ago) and liked it, my dog I had before my current dog died (granted, she was very old and had struggled with health problems for awhile)).  It’s not rational cause and effect.  I know it’s not rational.  But, it’s there.

Part of it is that believing I had my good buddy, God, with me all these years meant I wasn’t alone all that time.  The years of sitting in houses and apartments with me and a beagle.  The years of making career decisions, picking cities, buying and selling houses.  It made me feel like I had some sort of back up because there wasn’t another person there with an honest vested interest in any of it.  But, I had my good buddy, God.  And as long as I asked Him, I could feel my way through it and feel like I had a second opinion there.  Like someone had a plan even if I was scrambling for one.  Losing that would be pretty crushing.  But it’s also possible that what I had was a comforting imaginary friend to get through the loneliness and feel like I had some backup on major life decisions.  Loneliness that, ironically, I at least partially experienced at the advice of my church because of my sexual orientation.

The other components that I hung my faith on were:

1. I trusted the people who were teaching me my religious beliefs and reinforcing them over the years.
2. I was convinced that all the Christians I knew were good people, and the fact that they were Christians was why they were so good.
3. The emotional highs and lows of different services and experiences. I interpreted those feelings as proof of the Holy Spirit.

Item 1:  The pastor that baptized me is a QAnon grade conspiracy theorist.  We left the church because my parents thought he had mild megalomaniacal tendencies.  My therapist mentioned me trusting my gut as far as reading people.  My gut when I was a child was that he creeped me out and attending that church felt like a hostage situation.  So, that was that church.  Then, there was the church of my older childhood that you’ve heard described in full glorious detail.  Then the church of my young adulthood…for one thing, I knew what neighborhoods the church staff lived in and those didn’t have homes worth less than at LEAST $3-400k.  All of the creative people and teaching pastors.  And then we did very little charity or community service type things (except for one push we would do a year for community service and they made sure it was always on the news).  And then in the 2004 election, they all but just came right out and said for everyone to vote and vote Republican.  Something not far from “I mean, I don’t want want to tell you how to vote.  Not to beat around the Bush.  But, you shouldn’t be hiding in the Bushes on Election Day.  Because, by George, it’s your duty to vote.  Speaking of Bush, what a great band.  Bush for the W.”  I probably don’t have to tell you, it’s illegal for churches to tell people who to vote for because of their tax exemptions.  And then there was the “Marriage Protection“ amendment they told everyone to vote for.  And then there was the class on authentic womanhood that was basically a 50 year old man telling us our job was to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen (not literally, but it’s essentially what he meant)….a particularly helpful lesson for a 27 year old lesbian to hear since he was essentially telling me I had no purpose.  

TLDR:  What do you do when you put your trust in people who weren’t actually trustworthy with your heart?

Item 2: For one thing, as a child that line of thinking (about people are good, therefore God is good) was easier to swing when 99% of the people I knew were Christian (and probably 70% of them were Baptist).  The truth is that some of the kindest people I know have been Hindu, Buddhist, or Atheist.  The most gentle people I have met have been Muslim.  The most genuine friends I’ve had in my life have been college friends and friends where I live now.  None of them are devout Christian.  And they’re all these kind, gentle, generous people.  Meanwhile, the Donald Trump era happened.  81% of evangelicals voted for him gleefully.  And, if I’m being honest, they weren’t tricked.  He’s not an anomaly.  They love him because he’s one of them.  The bigotry, the authoritarianism, the penchant for conspiracy theories.  That’s them.  It’s not new.  It’s in line with what I watched my entire childhood from family and church members.  And it’s not unique to what I personally saw.  https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/racism-among-white-christians-higher-among-nonreligious-s-no-coincidence-ncna1235045.   He just removed the mask.  

TLDR:  What do you do when you partially based your faith on how good a group of people are and you realize goodness isn’t particular to them, plus they weren’t really that good in some fundamental ways?

Item 3:  I was relying on “feelings” to tell me my faith experiences were real.  But, if I’m being intellectually honest, I was in a series of settings where the different teaching and music pastors were essentially using set of formulas to evoke the emotions they wanted me to feel.  The early childhood pastor was screaming and carrying on to try to evoke fear, anger, and shame. He was telling me about sin, death, and hellfire to make me afraid to not be a part of his church.  That feeling of euphoria I had after joining was relief I was no longer in danger of a Dante’s Inferno-like Hell I’d had described to me for years.   In my teen years, they played off a need for social acceptance.  Without going into detail, there were some slightly abusive things that happened there that bring that authenticity into doubt, And then as a young adult, I was on a worship team at a megachurch that did “contemporary” style worship for 7 years and listened to the worship pastors pretty candidly talk about what they were doing.  They were very intentionally sequencing the music to take the congregation through the emotional arc they wanted them to feel that week (depending on what the sermon was to be on).  There’s some fast songs to wake everyone up.  Then a mix of some old and new.  And then some slower ones to bring you back down for the sermon.  Then do the sermon.  Then do highly emotional, soaring song to wrap it all up and send you back into the world.  There was a formula to it all.  This video is a parody, but it nails it.  Even the way the sermon works.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giM04ESUiGw. We were there to help create an experience.  The music pastor would openly talk in rehearsals about what role each song had in sort of executing that arc.  What feeling he was trying to evoke.  To be clear, I don’t think it was meant to be sinister.  But, I do think it was kind of artificial.

TLDR:  What do you do when you based a lot of your belief on feelings and you realize a lot of these feelings were artificially manipulated the same way movies do?  Or is that being too cynical?

And then there’s the Bible itself.  I have been reading it cover to cover every year and not just taking the guided tour and, if I’m honest with myself, there are some observations (given that I was taught that it was meant to be taken literally)

1. The story of Noah was logistically impossible short of God using some sort of Harry Potter grade magic.  It doesn’t make sense how they logistically would’ve built it with the knowledge, equipment, and manpower described.  It doesn’t make sense how they got all the species of the earth on it.  How did they get the penguins, polar bears, Kangaroos, etc back home from the Middle East?  The waste management and stuff makes no sense.  How they kept the carnivores and poisonous animals from being a problem makes no sense.  None if it makes sense.  And that’s ignoring the dinosaurs.  And then there’s no physical evidence of such a flood.
2. The story of Job makes God sound like kind of a jerk.  He basically murdered Job’s whole family and tortured him on a bet with Satan?  To prove how Job would react?  God’s supposed to be all knowing.  Why did he need to prove anything?  And why did he care what Satan thought?  Why was he torturing a guy to impress Satan?
3. Soddom and Gommorah.  God’s all knowing.  It was always heavily emphasized he knows everything you do.  He knows your every thought.  He’s like Santa Clause.  So, why did he need to send angels to see what was going on in the city and why was Abraham negotiating how many good people God needed to find to save the city?  God should’ve known how many good people there were.  That’s the all-knowing part.
4. The Old Testament is just riddled with polygamy and forced marriages (suggested by God) and incest and God-mandated genocide. (Lots and lots of genocide).  The whole reason Israel had to wander through the desert for 40 years was because God was mad they were hesitant to commit genocide to move into Canaan.  And then he complained on the regular that they weren’t thorough enough in murdering off all their new neighbors.
5. God has this odd personality transplant between the Old and New Testaments.  He goes from being this angry, vengeful God who ordered genocides on the regular and would kill you for minor infractions at the drop of a hat in the Old Testament to being more of a loving, albeit perpetually slightly disappointed father figure in the New Testament.  It’s...odd considering he’s supposed to be “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

And then looking into gay theology, even just around that alone…there’s some bullshit around the way different English translations of the Bible evolved.  https://youtu.be/ziCOOdUW8OA  For instance, the word “homosexual” didn’t appear in an English translation of the Bible until 1946 (partly because it wasn’t even a word before then).  They took the word “effeminate” and made it “homosexual”.  The guy that did it later admitted he had been wrong and corrected it later in his translation, but by that point it had been picked up by other English translations and those won’t take it now because American conservative Christians would throw a fit if they did.  Most of of the English translations, they were taking it from the original languages (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic).  But, one English translation (which is the one the Billy Graham Crusade liked to pass out to God knows how many people) was just done by some dude who knew none of those languages and just picked up an English translation and wrote it in simpler language (and threw the word “homosexual” in a few extra times just because).  If there’s that much fuckery and political maneuvering around just that one word (and just in the 20th century), what else is wrong that I just don’t know?

TLDR:  I’m starting to learn there was a lot of politics and bullshit that has gone into how modern English translations of the Bible were even constructed.  In hateful, life ruining ways.  So, that’s disorienting.

So, it’s all kind of screwed up.  I appreciate that this blog entry isn’t particularly coherent or well-written. It’s 3 or more conflicting streams of thought that I haven’t sorted through yet because I haven’t been ready to yet.  And it may never make sense.

And I don’t know if I should just kind of quietly ignore it all because it complicates basically everything.  My shelf hasn’t broken, but it’s bowing under some weight and is kind of held up with duct tape and baling wire at this point.  I don’t know what to do with this.  I know that now is a terrible time to make decisions where every day is a new reminder of how pissed I am at the church between Trump and the coming out process.

Maybe this is just me at least being honest with myself and God.