I'm a Christian. It's not something that I arrived at easily, though, and it's something that I continue to struggle with. It's a comfort and a consternation, but rediscovering my faith has helped center me. It's also a very personal thing for me, which makes writing about it a challenge.
I was confirmed into the United Church of Christ when I was 13. I mostly recall church being about the longest hour of the entire week. The Prayer of Confession made me feel bad, mostly because I couldn't understand what I was supposed to feel so bad about. The sermon seemed about four hours long. The hymns were like dirges, going on forever, with the congregation all standing in that stuffy room. Once I got confirmed, my parents told me I could decide for myself whether I wanted to go anymore. I started sleeping until noon.
In college, that glorious time of self-discovery, when everything is new and exciting and laid out just for you, my decisions about faith were made for me as I spent late-night dorm lounge bull sessions listening to Pentecostals from rural Ohio towns and evangelicals from posh Columbus suburbs tell me that Jews were going to Hell. Brother Jed called my girlfriend a slut. I was officially off religion. Throughout my twenties and well into my thirties I told people that on my best days I was an agnostic.
Here's the thing, though. Within the space of less than a year, everything changed. I lost my job. I got a divorce. I moved to a new town, and left most of my friends behind (I suspect many of them weren't too upset about this). I started seeing the woman who would become my new wife. And I was very, very confused. I told myself that there had to be a reason for all of this happening to me at once. If there was a reason, though, there must be someone who knew what that reason is. So I went back to UCC (after a brief audition for the Unitarians, whose services were more like zoning board meetings) and reconnected with my faith.
Still, I carry my past skepticism around with me. I'm embarrassed by the Christian extremists who need to prove that they're right and everyone else is wrong. I'm creeped out by megachurches and their treatment of faith as another form of entertainment and Christianity as some sort of team you root for. And I view my faith as a path to being a better person, not to converting the people around me.
At the same time, I can no longer abide the people who deride anything faith-based. I resent being thought of as weak-minded because I believe that there are larger forces at work in our universe - forces that I recognize as God. God isn't the problem; it's how people use God that screws everything up.
So I am a Christian. Here's what that means to me:
Pat Robertson does not represent me.
Faith and science aren't mutually exclusive.
People of other faiths aren't going to Hell. God isn't running a country club.
Jesus Christ has made me a better person, but there's still a lot of work to do. Recognizing both halves of that sentence is sort of the point.
Can I get an amen?
