This particular post has been rolling around in my head for a while, and now seems as good a time as any to write it down. We shall see how it turns out.
I grew up Catholic. I come from a long line of Catholics, so that is hardly surprising. I had a typical Catholic upbringing, and in due course was baptised, had my first confession, first communion and confirmation, as well as attending various Catholic schools for my education. My family went to church every Sunday, and my mother was even in charge of Children's Liturgy (roughly a Sunday School) for many years. I loved God, and quite equally feared him and his wrath if I sinned. Oh, how I feared sinning. I would spend time feeling endlessly guilty about things I perceived as sins, and pray at night that God would forgive me. I felt confused as to why God said he loved all his children, but was so horrible to them, and confused as to why God in the Old Testament was so mean, but the God of the New Testament was nice. I was told not to worry myself too much about the Old Testament God, as the world was young, and God was still putting all the rules in place. As a child who was always a tad obsessive about rules, this made sense to me, so I was able to quiet that train of though somewhat.
So I went along with my life trying to be a good Catholic girl, and abide by the rules God and others set out for me. I suppose, if I am honest, I was quite smug about being in the 'right' religion, and quite afraid for the souls of those people who attended the other churches in my town. But then again, they chose the wrong religion right? If they chose the right one, then they could go to heaven like I hoped I would. As I got to be an older teenager, religion slipped a bit in my conscience, though I still went to church every Sunday. Then I was seventeen, and a friend of mine invited me to go with her on a Antioch weekend (a youth group for people aged 16-21). I agreed, especially after I found out that another one of my friends was promising to go as well. He ended up not going, but I went along anyway. I think it surprised my parents that I wanted to go on the weekend, as they had clearly seen I had become less enthusiastic about our religion.
You know what? I loved it. I had the best time and sang my little heart out to all the songs I learnt over the weekend. I felt on top of the world. I was not a member of a close knit group who had helped me rediscover my faith. My life had meaning and I felt the heavy depression I had been feeling lift. I hung out for the weekly meeting that would happen after 6pm mass. It was awesome.
But then, after a month or so, things began to change. I was sitting in the weekly prayer sharing circle at the meeting, listening to the prayers the other members of the group were offering, and suddenly the realisation hit me that they believed in God in a completely different way to I did. While I had gained back my faith in God and Jesus, I still had not gained back my faith in the bible. My vision of God was still a very personal one, where I believed in a God that was kind of separate to the one that was talked about in the bible. I gradually started pulling away from the group, under the pretence that Sunday night was the night we went to visit my grandmother in her nursing home. It wasn't a total lie, we did visit her on Sundays; just not at night.
I went back to just having my personal faith in God. I still felt religious, but I felt like what was right for me at the time was to just to have a one-to-one relationship with God. The realisation that Antioch was not the solution to my problems was a bitterly hard one, and if anything, it made me fall back into my depressive state. However, a few months after I left, my friend who was still in the group asked me to do the introduction for her personal talk to the group. I agreed, and crafted a thoughtful introduction, which went down well on the night.
So there I was, back at Antioch. The people were all very welcoming and told me that they had missed me and so on. It kind of felt nice to be back, and I was starting to consider coming back on a regular basis. We broke up into small discussion groups and began discussing the topic of the week. At some point my group started having a discussion about how many times the bible has been translated from it's original language, including how many times it was translated before it was translated into English. We all agreed that you couldn't say it was directly the word of God any more, because how did we know that every word had been translated accurately? Small group time finished, and we went back downstairs, continuing our discussion as we walked into the kitchen for tea and biscuits. Another girl from the group came over and asked what we were discussing, so we told her, and she immediately and angrily said, "Of course it's the word of God directly. You can't ever question that. Don't be so stupid". At that point others came over, and joined in, and soon I was watching the people who had previously had an open and free discussion being convinced that they were wrong, and them backing down quickly.
That was the moment I knew I would never be returning to Antioch. After that, I gradually started mentally distancing myself from the church, while still having a vague notion of my own personal vision of God. Then, at the end of that year, coincidently my last year of school, I had an earth shattering realisation.
A slight (but I assure you, relevant) diversion from the story. One of the texts we were studying for the HSC in English was Brave New World. I won't bore you with a plot summary, but if you haven't read it, here is the Wiki link about it. Basically, the novel is set in the distant future where babies are decanted from bottles rather than born from parents, and children and adults are sleep taught helpful phrases like, 'Ending is better than mending', 'A gramme is better than a damn' and 'Everyone is happy now'. It is much better and much more complex than that shady explanation and it is pretty much one of my favourite books, but this is the part relevant to my realisation.
I was sitting next to my friend during the final, end of year mass for Year 12s that Catholic schools like to put on, which for some reason was in the basketball stadium down the road. My friend had only been to church once in his life, as he was not Catholic, despite attending a Catholic school, so he was sitting back looking quite bored. All of a sudden, I was seeing the mass that was occurring before us from an outsider's perspective. It was frightening. It got more frightening when the priest said 'We give thanks to the Lord', then all the people in the stadium replied 'It is right to give him thanks and praise'. I had heard this response every mass I had attended my entire life, yet all of a sudden, within the context of a brain crammed with analysis of Brave New World, I realised how much it sounded like a sleep taught phrase, imprinted on every Catholic's mind for the purpose of obedience. Or in plainer terms, I suddenly saw Christianity as a cult, and a dangerous one at that.
I don't think it is possible to put into words how utterly soul crushing that realisation was. It was probably the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to me, up until that point. Every word from then on that the priest said seemed to be further proof of what I had discovered. The realisation that everything I had believed in my life was possibly a lie, as my life had been pretty much based around Christianity. School, home, friends, acquaintances, all were pretty much based around the Roman Catholic church. How could I make sense of my life from that point on? I couldn't figure it out.
The next few years were a muddled time religion wise for me. I still didn't want to entirely let go of religion, and at times threw myself into trying to make my way back to Christianity. The first thing I remember doing was endlessly thumbing through the Bible, trying to find something that I could use to get me back to the way things always were. All I found was things that were so upsetting to the idea I had of the Bible. I had grown up with people teaching me lessons from it, but somehow they failed to mention some of the more wiggedy wack ideas presented in the Old Testament. Such as, it is okay to get your father blind drunk and rape him, then do the same thing again the next night, so your sister can have a turn, because you are the only three people living in a cave. Quite frankly, I found it's views on women to be so maddening, I wanted to throw the Bible at the wall. Of course, I didn't. That book had a hard cover, and would probably do more damage to the innocent wall, than to the book that was making me angry.
So I came to the definite conclusion that the teaching dictated in the Bible were not for me. Apart, of course from the message to be good to others. That is a given.
I was still determined not to give up the idea of God though. One day, I was chatting with my best friend, and we somehow got into a deep and meaningful conversation about religion, and found that she was in a fairly similar place to me. She offered to lend me books which she said had really helped her, and I excitedly accepted her offer. One of those books (whose name escapes me) was a fairly run of the mill meditations about what faith means, and how God shapes lives. It was very positive, and very gentle to read, but didn't really leave me with any useful information. Kinda the same ol', same ol' I had been hearing for years.
The other book had far more of an impact on me. It was called 'Spiritual Journeys - How Faith Has Influenced 12 Music Icons', and included stories from Bono, Johnny Cash, Beyonce and even Moby. I liked this book a lot better, because these were people who I could identify with, talking about how their faith has shaped their lives and their music. Moby's story particularly impacted on me, because at the time I was really getting into his music, and in fact, through reading that, and his blog on his website, I began to feel more clarity about religion. Strangely enough, Moby's blog helped me to see that it is far more important to be a good person, than to be a good person who is doing something for the sake of impressing God. I say strangely enough, because Moby does have a strong belief in Christ, but I did (and still do) like that he says it is a very personal thing, which is not his to impose on others. He may be slightly to harsh in some of his other beliefs, but I do greatly appreciate his view on personal religion. As well as his music of course.
So now I was beginning to see God and religion more as a personal feeling, rather than an organised, regimented, going to church, reading the Bible, kind of thing. At this point, although I would not admit it for years, something amazing happened. I was lying in bed pondering how I felt about religion and spirituality, as you do, thinking about how spirituality for me was more along the lines of hippy thinking (you know, the interconnectedness of all things and all that jazz), when a realisation hit me.
I didn't believe in God any more.
My first reaction was to say "Oh no! Sorry, sorry, sorry!", and wait for the bolt to hit me. When it didn't, I actually relaxed, and then I felt the best I had felt in a long time. Suddenly the very Catholic guilt I had for my life up until that point pretty much disappeared. I am not saying it went away all together, as even to this day I get very occasional twinges of it. The habit of a lifetime of thinking a certain way is hard to throw off, funnily enough. But from that day on, I didn't believe in God, and I was okay with that.
I guess after that realisation, I kind of cruised along having a lack of belief, and not really moved on to the step of working out what it meant. In fact, it is only in the last few years that I have mental leaps to think about religion, and especially Catholicism in depth.
But that is another blog for another day.
I grew up Catholic. I come from a long line of Catholics, so that is hardly surprising. I had a typical Catholic upbringing, and in due course was baptised, had my first confession, first communion and confirmation, as well as attending various Catholic schools for my education. My family went to church every Sunday, and my mother was even in charge of Children's Liturgy (roughly a Sunday School) for many years. I loved God, and quite equally feared him and his wrath if I sinned. Oh, how I feared sinning. I would spend time feeling endlessly guilty about things I perceived as sins, and pray at night that God would forgive me. I felt confused as to why God said he loved all his children, but was so horrible to them, and confused as to why God in the Old Testament was so mean, but the God of the New Testament was nice. I was told not to worry myself too much about the Old Testament God, as the world was young, and God was still putting all the rules in place. As a child who was always a tad obsessive about rules, this made sense to me, so I was able to quiet that train of though somewhat.So I went along with my life trying to be a good Catholic girl, and abide by the rules God and others set out for me. I suppose, if I am honest, I was quite smug about being in the 'right' religion, and quite afraid for the souls of those people who attended the other churches in my town. But then again, they chose the wrong religion right? If they chose the right one, then they could go to heaven like I hoped I would. As I got to be an older teenager, religion slipped a bit in my conscience, though I still went to church every Sunday. Then I was seventeen, and a friend of mine invited me to go with her on a Antioch weekend (a youth group for people aged 16-21). I agreed, especially after I found out that another one of my friends was promising to go as well. He ended up not going, but I went along anyway. I think it surprised my parents that I wanted to go on the weekend, as they had clearly seen I had become less enthusiastic about our religion.
You know what? I loved it. I had the best time and sang my little heart out to all the songs I learnt over the weekend. I felt on top of the world. I was not a member of a close knit group who had helped me rediscover my faith. My life had meaning and I felt the heavy depression I had been feeling lift. I hung out for the weekly meeting that would happen after 6pm mass. It was awesome.But then, after a month or so, things began to change. I was sitting in the weekly prayer sharing circle at the meeting, listening to the prayers the other members of the group were offering, and suddenly the realisation hit me that they believed in God in a completely different way to I did. While I had gained back my faith in God and Jesus, I still had not gained back my faith in the bible. My vision of God was still a very personal one, where I believed in a God that was kind of separate to the one that was talked about in the bible. I gradually started pulling away from the group, under the pretence that Sunday night was the night we went to visit my grandmother in her nursing home. It wasn't a total lie, we did visit her on Sundays; just not at night.
I went back to just having my personal faith in God. I still felt religious, but I felt like what was right for me at the time was to just to have a one-to-one relationship with God. The realisation that Antioch was not the solution to my problems was a bitterly hard one, and if anything, it made me fall back into my depressive state. However, a few months after I left, my friend who was still in the group asked me to do the introduction for her personal talk to the group. I agreed, and crafted a thoughtful introduction, which went down well on the night.
So there I was, back at Antioch. The people were all very welcoming and told me that they had missed me and so on. It kind of felt nice to be back, and I was starting to consider coming back on a regular basis. We broke up into small discussion groups and began discussing the topic of the week. At some point my group started having a discussion about how many times the bible has been translated from it's original language, including how many times it was translated before it was translated into English. We all agreed that you couldn't say it was directly the word of God any more, because how did we know that every word had been translated accurately? Small group time finished, and we went back downstairs, continuing our discussion as we walked into the kitchen for tea and biscuits. Another girl from the group came over and asked what we were discussing, so we told her, and she immediately and angrily said, "Of course it's the word of God directly. You can't ever question that. Don't be so stupid". At that point others came over, and joined in, and soon I was watching the people who had previously had an open and free discussion being convinced that they were wrong, and them backing down quickly.That was the moment I knew I would never be returning to Antioch. After that, I gradually started mentally distancing myself from the church, while still having a vague notion of my own personal vision of God. Then, at the end of that year, coincidently my last year of school, I had an earth shattering realisation.
A slight (but I assure you, relevant) diversion from the story. One of the texts we were studying for the HSC in English was Brave New World. I won't bore you with a plot summary, but if you haven't read it, here is the Wiki link about it. Basically, the novel is set in the distant future where babies are decanted from bottles rather than born from parents, and children and adults are sleep taught helpful phrases like, 'Ending is better than mending', 'A gramme is better than a damn' and 'Everyone is happy now'. It is much better and much more complex than that shady explanation and it is pretty much one of my favourite books, but this is the part relevant to my realisation.I was sitting next to my friend during the final, end of year mass for Year 12s that Catholic schools like to put on, which for some reason was in the basketball stadium down the road. My friend had only been to church once in his life, as he was not Catholic, despite attending a Catholic school, so he was sitting back looking quite bored. All of a sudden, I was seeing the mass that was occurring before us from an outsider's perspective. It was frightening. It got more frightening when the priest said 'We give thanks to the Lord', then all the people in the stadium replied 'It is right to give him thanks and praise'. I had heard this response every mass I had attended my entire life, yet all of a sudden, within the context of a brain crammed with analysis of Brave New World, I realised how much it sounded like a sleep taught phrase, imprinted on every Catholic's mind for the purpose of obedience. Or in plainer terms, I suddenly saw Christianity as a cult, and a dangerous one at that.
I don't think it is possible to put into words how utterly soul crushing that realisation was. It was probably the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to me, up until that point. Every word from then on that the priest said seemed to be further proof of what I had discovered. The realisation that everything I had believed in my life was possibly a lie, as my life had been pretty much based around Christianity. School, home, friends, acquaintances, all were pretty much based around the Roman Catholic church. How could I make sense of my life from that point on? I couldn't figure it out.
The next few years were a muddled time religion wise for me. I still didn't want to entirely let go of religion, and at times threw myself into trying to make my way back to Christianity. The first thing I remember doing was endlessly thumbing through the Bible, trying to find something that I could use to get me back to the way things always were. All I found was things that were so upsetting to the idea I had of the Bible. I had grown up with people teaching me lessons from it, but somehow they failed to mention some of the more wiggedy wack ideas presented in the Old Testament. Such as, it is okay to get your father blind drunk and rape him, then do the same thing again the next night, so your sister can have a turn, because you are the only three people living in a cave. Quite frankly, I found it's views on women to be so maddening, I wanted to throw the Bible at the wall. Of course, I didn't. That book had a hard cover, and would probably do more damage to the innocent wall, than to the book that was making me angry.So I came to the definite conclusion that the teaching dictated in the Bible were not for me. Apart, of course from the message to be good to others. That is a given.
I was still determined not to give up the idea of God though. One day, I was chatting with my best friend, and we somehow got into a deep and meaningful conversation about religion, and found that she was in a fairly similar place to me. She offered to lend me books which she said had really helped her, and I excitedly accepted her offer. One of those books (whose name escapes me) was a fairly run of the mill meditations about what faith means, and how God shapes lives. It was very positive, and very gentle to read, but didn't really leave me with any useful information. Kinda the same ol', same ol' I had been hearing for years.
The other book had far more of an impact on me. It was called 'Spiritual Journeys - How Faith Has Influenced 12 Music Icons', and included stories from Bono, Johnny Cash, Beyonce and even Moby. I liked this book a lot better, because these were people who I could identify with, talking about how their faith has shaped their lives and their music. Moby's story particularly impacted on me, because at the time I was really getting into his music, and in fact, through reading that, and his blog on his website, I began to feel more clarity about religion. Strangely enough, Moby's blog helped me to see that it is far more important to be a good person, than to be a good person who is doing something for the sake of impressing God. I say strangely enough, because Moby does have a strong belief in Christ, but I did (and still do) like that he says it is a very personal thing, which is not his to impose on others. He may be slightly to harsh in some of his other beliefs, but I do greatly appreciate his view on personal religion. As well as his music of course.So now I was beginning to see God and religion more as a personal feeling, rather than an organised, regimented, going to church, reading the Bible, kind of thing. At this point, although I would not admit it for years, something amazing happened. I was lying in bed pondering how I felt about religion and spirituality, as you do, thinking about how spirituality for me was more along the lines of hippy thinking (you know, the interconnectedness of all things and all that jazz), when a realisation hit me.
I didn't believe in God any more.
My first reaction was to say "Oh no! Sorry, sorry, sorry!", and wait for the bolt to hit me. When it didn't, I actually relaxed, and then I felt the best I had felt in a long time. Suddenly the very Catholic guilt I had for my life up until that point pretty much disappeared. I am not saying it went away all together, as even to this day I get very occasional twinges of it. The habit of a lifetime of thinking a certain way is hard to throw off, funnily enough. But from that day on, I didn't believe in God, and I was okay with that.I guess after that realisation, I kind of cruised along having a lack of belief, and not really moved on to the step of working out what it meant. In fact, it is only in the last few years that I have mental leaps to think about religion, and especially Catholicism in depth.
But that is another blog for another day.
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