This bodes well coming from me, doesn't it?
*Note: This blog concerns my experiences and feelings in regards to religion, God, and faith. Some of what I say/think/feel my offend you, but they are only my opinions. Furthermore, I will tonally be all over the place, and making far more observations than conclusions. You’re welcome.*
This past weekend I took a trip to Texas to attend the Montgomery County Fair and Barbecue Cookoff, and see family and show off my new wife. It was a whirlwind trip, as we flew in Friday at a quarter to four in the afternoon and flew out Sunday at 5pm. We had to pack a lot of experience into a short amount of time, and so I wanted to do something for my mom that would squeeze a lot of emotional impact in such a short trip. A few years ago I asked my mom what she wanted for Christmas and she said she wanted me to go to church; find a suitable church in San Diego and just go one Sunday morning and give my soul a little resuscitation. I agreed but, of course, never did. Life got in the way. So I told my mom that Meredith and I would go to church with her on Sunday morning while we were in Texas, knowing it would be something she’d really appreciate.
Much to my pleasant surprise, my mom started attending a non-denominational church in Montgomery, Texas. I prefer non-denominational churches as they rarely get bogged down in liturgy. We arrived for the 11am service and met the pastor/deacon/preacher, Dale, who was very kind and genuinely interested in us. He kept Meredith and I in conversation for a while, asking us questions about California, where/how we’d met, and how we were enjoying our trip. For a brief second, I was concerned he was gathering information to infuse into his sermon, singling us out and bringing the attention of the entire congregation to the newcomers, which would be awkward, at the least. Growing up in Texas, and being a member of a church for many years, I know the congregation’s impetus to, upon meeting new people, “put the Jesus in ’em.” Luckily, that was not the case. He was just a genuinely nice guy who was actually interested in us.
Can you guess which girl has gas?
The service began with a band taking the stage and singing a song while the lyrics, along with live shots of the band and occasional picturesque images of clouds, fields of grain, and leaves in sunlight, played on a screen behind them. It was Sunday morning Gospel karaoke! Awesome. After the first song was a brief prayer, then another song. There were announcements of events, and we even watched a preview for a documentary that was screening the following weekend at the church with a meet-n-greet, then we rose and sang another song. In all my years of church-going, one of my biggest complaints has always been the constant “stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down” rigmarole the congregation is subjected to, though it really wasn’t all that bad at this particular service. After we rocked the third song, Dale came out and began his sermon, which was the third installment in a series called “Unstuck: Breaking Free From What Holds You Back”.
Here’s something not a lot of people know about me: despite my well-known opposition to religion and “bible-thumping”, I love a good sermon. I am a fan of speech, of a well-thought argument, of a poignant idea or theory presented with intelligence and passion. A good sermon can be as moving and significant as some of our most beloved speeches, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” or Abraham Lincoln’s “The Gettysburg Address”. Dale’s installment of “Unstuck” didn’t quite reach that level of pontificating, but it was quite good. Even as a youth I was always fascinated at the pastor’s ability to take this book that was written so long ago about a world that we can hardly recognize and translate its passages into something that the pager, cell-phone, smart phone generation could relate to.
I was already looking forward to Dale’s sermon thanks to a “playbill” of sorts that we’d been given as we entered the building, replete with a detached worksheet we could fill out ourselves as he went through the steps one could go through to get unstuck. It reminded me that back when Moosejaw was brainstorming its name, my most fervent suggestion was “Stuck”, because so many people in our time feel this way. In relationships, homes, and definitely work, people are petrified to disentangle themselves from unhealthy connections for fear that nothing else is available to them. And that’s exactly what Dale was talking about.
Earlier on in the service, when I was looking at the lyrics on the giant screen as people sang along to the overtly redundant verses, I started thinking about faith. First and foremost, their faith. I was talking to a friend the other day and we were ripping on Scientologists, because that shit is fun, and we couldn’t get over the fact that they were fully aware and unashamed that their religion was based on a book written by a famous Science Fiction Novelist. I said, “Imagine what would happen if it were revealed tomorrow that The Bible was written by H.G. Wells. Christians would lose their minds!” But looking around the room as everyone was singing along to the over-simplified refrains, peaceful, benign looks upon their faces, I thought that maybe these people would shrug and continue to sing. Who cares where the bread comes from as long as it satiates your hunger?
But then my thoughts shifted to the violence and the anger I’ve seen come from people just like these peaceful, benign souls when confronted with the idea that it all may be a happy delusion. They believe. Their faith isn’t a mere distraction from the stresses of the smart phone age; they genuinely believe that a Voice from the Sky used to ring out semi-regularly in Man’s infancy and challenged people to do atrocious things to prove their allegiance to It. They whole-heartedly agreed that a magician from Man’s adolescence turned water into wine, healed the sick, raised the dead, then died and resurrected. David Blaine be damned!
Religion has done wonderful things for the world, but it has also done horrible things. As a cautionary tale to teach morality and ethics, it was instrumental in bringing mankind out of the caves and into homes of their own design. It promoted harmonic communities, bound Man together in their love of something greater, and drew lines to help define evil. But shortly after this it was redrafted as a reason to visit violence upon others, and to this day it is used as a shield to hide hatred and ignorance. But there are still people who use the word of God to promote peace and community, who travel to impoverished areas and provide aid, education, housing, and share their knowledge of a loving Lord that made them into the altruistic people they are.
My friend told me he once dated a girl who was very passionate about her faith, and she witnessed to him regularly throughout their relationship, despite his rather cordial yet repeated denunciations. She explained to him that she would keep trying to minister to him, because if she didn’t, that would mean that she didn’t care. There was something beautiful about that.
I thought of that while I watched the congregation sing. I thought of their belief, their compulsion to write and sing simple songs about it, their desire to inform everyone they met about it. I used to think it was a disturbing symptom, but it suddenly made sense. I’ve done it with so many things that I feel passionately about. If I find a movie I love, say Star Wars, I’m inclined to buy music, books, art, and clothing that also feature that movie. These people love God, so they’re riding the God marketing train, and that’s fine. And when it comes to witnessing, one needn’t look any farther than me: I am a gigantic proponent of Star Wars. I will guffaw and spit and stammer when I meet someone who hasn’t seen The Saga, and I will go out of my way to see that they do. Suddenly, faith didn’t seem so strange to me.
(If further evidence is required, look to Comic-Con, fan fiction, and sci-fi cover bands.)
Dale’s sermon was about anxiety, worrying, and the feeling of being stuck. His solution was simple: trust in God, completely, and His plan for you. Simple enough, except that I don’t believe God has a plan for me, and if He does, it involves me not following His advice. I love Star Wars, but I don’t live by its lessons, and I certainly don’t believe in George Lucas’ plan for me. That said, his sermon was quite good. Relevant scriptures, real world applications, a beginning, a middle, and a conclusive end. I was impressed. At the end, he lead us in prayer, and I remembered a fascinating and long-forgotten oddity of my youth.
"Yes, I've pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del and I'm still getting the error message."
Growing up Baptist, there was a time when I Believed, and at night I would pray before going to sleep. I would lie in bed and before dozing off I would open Hailing Frequencies to God with the salutation “Dear God…” Then I would bombard him with praises and requests for blessing and absolution. There were many nights during this open dialogue with God wherein I would fall asleep. I would wake the next day and go off to school and lead a decidedly secular life, telling off-color jokes with my buddies, learning Science [*gasp*], and watching Karen Blake’s blossoming bosom. At some point I would be struck with the revelation that I’d never finished my prayer from the night previous; I didn’t end the transmission with “Amen”, so the direct conduit between my mouth and God’s ear was still open, and He’d heard and seen everything. It’s like I butt-dialed God and then He heard every awful thing I did every day to try to fit into a world where faith did not help one rack up Cool Points. I would feel awful. Everytime. And I did that all the time. While I bowed my head and tried to stay awake yesterday as everyone else was praying, that memory came flooding back to me.
After Dale’s prayer finished, the band took the stage again and led us in one more tune and released us into the world. All in all, I enjoyed the service, and I didn’t burst into flames. I understood a little more about faith in this world, and I must say, I have a deep level of respect for people who have it. It’s a cynical world, and it’s easy to take the pragmatic view and look at Christians as “stupid morons who use the idea of a God as a crutch”. The thing is, they know that’s how they’re viewed, and yet they still choose their faith over appeasing the nay-sayers. They know you think they’re stupid, but they think they’re right, and they’re sticking to their guns. That’s admirable. I respect that.
(I’ve had a similar realization about racists, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I respect them. Though you have to admit, it takes a lot of guts to be open about being an ignorant racist these days. Almost as much as it took to be against it in the early days of the civil rights movement.) Oh Lord, here come the letters.
"We sincerely hope you enjoy fire, because where you're going the burning will neve cease.
Your Brother in Christ,
Jeffrey"
So, as I said at the beginning, there are no conclusions drawn here; only observations. I went to church, I didn’t hate it, no one attacked me or smelled my cynicism outright, and best of all, I made my mother happy. If you were to ask me where my faith lies, that’s it: In a mother’s love, and a son’s willingness to do whatever he can to make her happy, to prove to her that he appreciates the things she’s done for him, the sacrifices she’s made, the spiritual debt he’s accrued for her that he can never repay.
God knows, I love my momma.
Eric McClanahan 