antifundamentalist vignette

This is from my livejournal; I thought it might find a happy home here too:

Came across a very good looking born-again today… Why do they have to take the cute ones?

The trouble with Christianity is that it speaks to the passions, and the passions speak for it. “Sin” is something you can feel, as deeply as you care to, if you have the spirit for it. These are passions I myself am particularly susceptible to: I know how it feels to be lifted, to be in the holy presence… I know how hard it is to fight against that while still being open to what I feel.

It’s hard-wired in us, to seek fellowship and to see a will active behind every event; it’s a part of what we are to tell ourselves these stories, not because they’re true but because it works. It holds us together and keeps us alive, and we’ve grown to need it in order to keep from tearing ourselves apart with loneliness and doubt. We are spiritual animals.

I understand this, and I understand conscience… I understand having done things for which I don’t think myself fit to live, and I understand feeling as though my life is counterfeit because it took an act of cowardice for me to keep it. I understand that conscience can kill. I also understand conscience as the voice, not of a merciful and loving God, but of need, of uncertainty, of anticipated isolation and impotence. I understand how it keeps the flocks in line- and may impel you to “give your heart to Christ”.

I understand how powerful the expectation is for there to be some kind of teleology in nature, some purpose, some goal to which it all tends, and some designer who has lovingly crafted the world so as to work in that direction. I pay attention to the illogical, even ignorant rhetoric of the spiritual salesmen and I take it seriously because I know that I have something to learn from them, and my reactions to them, about what it means to be human, and I know there’s much more to it than what “reason” can show me.

What’s harder to understand is why I react so violently against the born-agains. A violent reaction against anything tells me that there’s something I’m failing to accept, something I’m holding out against, not because it isn’t true but because I don’t want it to be. Part of it is that there’s no way I can shut them up; there is nothing outside of them that can hurt them, that can reach them, that can make them see anything differently. And yet… What they say does effect me, because I choose to allow it to, because I want to live a spiritual life and be challenged in every available way, and I feel as though I should have answers for anything that they can confront me with, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I just have to deal with the fact that there are some valuable and important beliefs that I hold, about which I cannot convince anyone outside of myself.

Which is fine for now. Sometimes I am dazzled by the special beauty that I have discovered in life and that is enough for me… But I swear some day I’m gonna make a born-again cry. Or hit me. Either one is good.

The thing about the “born-again” fundamentalist-types that bothers me (although there’s a danger of making some sweeping generalizations here…), is that they tend to use their brand of Christianity as a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you’re a believer, you’re “saved”, if you don’t believe, you’re not, even if the believer is a serial killer and you’re the next best thing to Mother Teresa. Their “faith” actually requires very little personal responsibility, which means it’s not really true faith. Plus, anytime you try to talk to them, they just drag you aboard their little hamster treadmill and make you go round and round and round with them. You can’t talk to them. You can only smile, wave and keep moving.

I don’t hate them, or wish them harm - most of them seem like pretty nice people. I just wish they wouldn’t dumb Christianity down the way they do. They tend to be very unaware of the histories of other faiths, as well, and dismiss them automatically. I just spoke to someone who honestly believed neither Buddhism or Hinduism came into existence until after Christ had died and risen again. I mean, how the hell do you talk to people like that? They also weren’t aware that the son-of-God-made-man-died-and-risen scenario not only isn’t exclusive to Christianity, but predates it. And then, of course, they assume you’re making it all up just to give them a hard time. ~shrugs~ But they are very clean-cut and attractive in that all-American way, if you like that sort of thing.