"It's Not a Rejection, It's a Realization" Pt. 2---Judgement and Perceptions

This is a tricky topic, so I’d like to start out with a little disclaimer: I am not one of those people who make scathing statements about how all Christians are nothing but judgmental hypocrites. I don’t believe that at all! I do think that Christianity is a world view that lends itself to judgmentalism fairly easily, however there are plenty of Christians who manage to overcome this. In this post I am referring to the ones who, unfortunately, do not.

In part 1 of this blog post I mentioned the tendency of the extreme fundamentalist sort of Christians to assume some pretty ridiculous things about those who do not share their faith. But few people ever really stop and think about how arrogant and offensive these notions actually are. The basic assumptions can be summed up as follows: “There is no way any intelligent person can come to a different conclusion I have come to. Therefore, any intelligent person who believes something other than me must be morally inferior.”

The obnoxious, cocky, Dawkins/Hitchens/Hawking brand of atheists do much the same thing towards Christians. Their version is: “There is no way any intelligent person can come to a different conclusion I have come to. Therefore, any intelligent person who believes something other than me must be emotionally inferior.”

Both of these statements are obviously ridiculous and judgmental, yet a surprising number of people subscribe to these sentiments. Many, however, do so obliquely: When presented with a blunt statement like the ones above, most people are able to see how absurd they sound. Yet they still cling to these assumptions in a subtle, intrinsic way.

No one has ever blurted out something like “I wonder what sort of moral defects are preventing you from believing in the Bible!” but they’ve come pretty close. I find it ironic how people who don’t yet know I am no longer a Christian just go on assuming that I am. They find no change in me. They find no moral lapses. Yet some (not all, thankfully!) who do know about my beliefs tend to view me through a poisoned lense. They actively search for evidence that I “need God in my life.” I often feel like these people are prowling around me, just waiting for me to slip up somehow so they can shout: “Ha! I knew it! See how depraved you have become without Christ?!” In addition, they are scouring through my records and picking out every time I annoyed or hurt them, and every ugly rumor they’ve heard about me so they can file it all away in the “Proof that she was never a True Christian™ anyway” folder.

But if they could really look at my life objectively, they would find that I haven’t changed. I’m no less moral, happy, or satisfied with my life than when I was as a Christian. Christianity does not have a monopoly on these qualities. (Neither does atheism, Buddhism, or any other philosophy or religion for that matter)

“Moral downfalls” are not what prevents me from being a Christian, just like “emotional weaknesses” are not what prevents Christians from becoming atheists. It is simply a matter of what and how we are able to believe. Unless you can come to grips with the fact that some people are “unbelievers” for intellectual reasons alone, then don’t try to tell me you don’t judge. Because, frankly, you do.

-Monica

"It's Not a Rejection, It's a Realization" Pt. 1---The Nature of Belief

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned through losing Christianity, it is this: belief is not a choice.

Try it. Pick something you don’t believe in—it can be anything: Shiva, aliens, Santa Claus...

Now on the count of three, believe it.

1...2...3................

How did it work for you? I assume not so well. Just examine anything you believe in or don’t believe in and you will find out pretty quickly that belief is not a voluntary act. I never chose to believe that my friends and family love me—the overwhelming evidence simply convinced me. I never chose to believe stepping a piece of broken glass would cut my foot, I just realized it from experience. Trying to make myself believe broken glass would not hurt me is an impossible task because the facts all point in the opposite direction.

A belief arises from solid evidence, conviction, and sometimes a bit of emotion. Only in the absence of these three things does belief become a conscious decision.

For example: Some people look at the world around them and come to the automatic conclusion that there must be a god. Some people look at the world around them and conclude the very opposite. As I said in my first point about the existence of God---each side presents a pretty good case, and (for me) the evidence is inconclusive. It is in situations like this where belief becomes subject to an act of the will: I come to no conclusions concerning the existence of God, so in this case I have the ability to choose what to believe.

But though the "existence of God" question is pretty much up in the air for me, the evidence against the God of the Bible strikes me as pretty conclusive. Of course, there are a lot of people out there who could not bring themselves to disbelieve Christianity either. Humans are very diverse: Different facts hit different people in different angles. I don't think my methods of reasoning things out are any superior to those of the rest of the human race; they are simply my methods, the way my mind is wired.

Still, countless Christians have accused me of leaving the faith for one of three reasons:

1. I’m angry at God.

2. I have become too selfish and sinful to want God in my life.

3. I just don’t care.

No matter how ardently I try to assure people that none of these answers are true, they usually don’t get it. My intellectual conclusions are mistaken for selfish motives. It’s frustrating to no end.

(Christians: how would you feel if I accused you of rejecting Allah for one of those three reasons above? You would probably be pretty offended too. My guess is you’re not mad, you’re not selfish, and you’re not apathetic; you simply don’t believe Allah exists. Your conclusion is based on reason alone.)

Now I’m sure some non-Christians don’t believe for precisely the reasons I mentioned. I won’t deny that. But that’s not the way it was for me; I never wanted to leave Christianity—in fact, I waged a battle with my own mind for a while, trying to force myself to believe it. But those attempts failed pretty quickly—I knew I was lying to myself, just as you probably knew you were lying to yourself when I told you believe something on the count of three...

So why in the world did I leave Christianity if I didn’t want to? (Key words here: Did. Not. Want. To.)

The answer is simple: I had to.


-Monica

The Start of Our Explorations: Orthodox Christianity

The air is charged with the scent of incense and the deep murmuring song of the priests. The embroidery flickers on their candle-gold robes as they perform their sacred rituals. The solemn icons observe the liturgy from all corners of the room, the wisdom in their faces intense and palpable.

The atmosphere is ancient, reverent, but never dismally so. The congregation stands, enraptured before the altar of their god, stirring the incense with their fingertips as they mark the sign of the cross over their chests and sink into an easy, lilting bow. Everyone who walks into the room is transfigured by the sacrosanct tranquility of the Orthodox liturgy.

This is what religion should be.

We began our exploration of churches with a visit to St. John of Kronstadt Orthodox Church. We weren’t disappointed. The service was beautiful. As I mentioned in my previous post: it didn’t matter that I didn’t agree with the theology of the church—the chants and rituals were more moving than the evangelical “praise and worship songs” had ever been to me, even as a Christian.

And as I soon discovered, my sister and I fit in perfectly with the members of the congregation—they were our “kindred spirits.” They didn’t meet us with judgment, they met us with love. Here we were valued for who we were, rather than for what we believed.

(I don’t mean to say that the evangelical church is full of judgmental people—that’s not completely true. But it is not entirely free of them either. More to come in a later blog post about this topic!)

So, what sets Orthodoxy apart from other denominations? Let me phrase it this way:

How many Orthodox priests does it take to change a light bulb?

Ha. Change? You must be kidding.

Not only the the liturgy of the early church is preserved by the Orthodox church, but the theology remains the same as well. And I like it that way.

There are many other differences between Evangelicalism and Orthodoxy (and Orthodoxy and Catholicism for that matter) But perhaps the most notable is simply how they treat religion. They are not obsessive-compulsive about dogma and doctrine—instead they value the mystical nature of their relationship with God. It is this that really sets them apart. They don’t try to wrap up their theology in a water-tight box. (Evangelicalism tries to do this, but all they end up with is a pretty misshapen box)

My sister and I now attend St John’s regularly. And even though we don’t believe in the teachings of the Bible, we feel at home in the Orthodox church. Why?

Because the Orthodox understand the art of religion. They understand the art of the unexplained.

(The website for St. John of Kronstadt Church is http://kronstadtchurch.org/ the website for their ancient Christianity coffee shop and bookstore is http://catacomblincoln.com/)


-Monica