My Journey to Apostasy

So, some of my friends are really aware I'm not Christian, but I don't really talk about why. I may as well share. I have often joked I went to Villanova to cope with my Southern Baptist upbringing. Now, my family didn't directly teach me the stuff I had to unlearn; church and sunday school did that. But a few instances stand out for why I left the church. In no particular order, they are:

An Easter sermon in 97 or 98. The pastor was giving the usual message when he told the congregation, "Mohammed isn't risen from the dead! Buddha isn't risen from the dead!" Technically, he is correct because neither religion teaches they are. Mohammed ascended to heaven directly; Buddha broke the cycle of reincarnation. But the dishonest to refute claims not made by the religions so attacked sat wrong with me long before I knew about intellectual dishonesty.

I grew up hearing how divorce leads to both parties being adulterers the rest of their lives, even if they remarry. I then found myself in a divorce and carrying the guilt of knowing I condemned both of us to sinful lives no matter what else happens. It was a lot to carry, too much, in fact, for my rigid faith.

At Cherry Point, in 99 or 00, I went to a Baptist church and sat through the call to repent while congregants left and right went to the pulpit to kneel. I had been saved and baptized around 11, so I didn't have to heed the call, but I had so much guilt I felt all eyes were on my, a stranger, for not heeding the call. I doubt anyone gave my a second thought, but again, the weight of that guilt was immense.

My second stint in comm school there was a super conservative guy in my class. He was so hateful and judgmental. His room in the barracks had a sign, "God hates fags." It was so outrageous that even in the Corps in 2001, he had to take it down. I also never saw a look of hate like i saw him give over another NCO's called cadence during a formation run.

Then there's the heaping of unhealthy theology I learned that needed Dr. Simpson and Villanova to unpack. granted, by Villanova, I knew my apostasy, but had a lot to come to terms with. By the time I could see Christianity wasn't just a haven for self-righteous judgment and hate, I had left the church long behind. I am friends with faithful now, but the church has no home for me.

At Villanova I put to rest a lot of issues; my only remaining gospel beef with Jesus is the teaching on divorce. His presentation in the Apocalypse of John is horrific revenge porn. Paul's letters are often problematic shitshows. The commandment to make disciples of all nations is hugely insulting to others. But what Jesus lived and died as is good; I just don't have the problem with sin Christians seem to.

I will never judge for cherry picking the Bible; it's impossible not to. I can justify damn near any position using that collection of texts, so can anyone else. But Villanova also taught me the metric for judging Biblical passages. The Greatest Commandment says, "Love God; love your neighbor." Matthew (IIRC, it could be Luke) adds, "Upon these the laws and the prophets hang." So a biblical passage teaching against love and kindness is neither law nor prophecy; it is a negative example, something to NOT do.

Jesus hung with sinners; tax collectors, fishers, and whores. He was a radical, revolutionary killed by the same attitude many of his followers now exemplify. If I do not worship him, I find his teachings largely worth living. In fact, as some theological friends and I have agrees, Jesus saying he is the way and the light isn't demanding worship; it calls to emulation, to live like him, caring for the poor and the downtrodden. Modern scribes, chief priests, and Pharisees do more trodding and little to no elevating or caring.

Just as I rolled my eyes at "Buddha isn't risen," I roll my eyes at "get right with God." I know what Jesus wants, and it isn't mindless prayer while mistreating the least of these. You may claim I am hedging by saying there is much to admire in his teaching, but I am apostate; I reject the church. Hell, until Francis, my favorite pope got into a "You're the Anti-Christ" shouting match with a Holy Roman Emperor and the runner up dug up his predecessor's corpse to put on trial. Make of this what you will, but I am closer to a godless communist (really a non-theist socialist), but Acts says the first Jewish communist wasn't Marx, but a carpenter's son.

Personal or Institutional?

So, I know my family isn't personally racist. Nobody even blinked when Octavio started gaming with us in high school. Gary spent numerous holidays with my family when we were stationed at Lejeune. I was raised to never act racist. I remember sitting next to Tim in elementary school plotting our wrestling magazine because we were both huge marks he was black, but it didn't matter to me.

But these riots aren't about a single white person dropping an n-bomb at someone. These riots are about systemic, centuries-long oppression. They are about the fact that every single time a black person dies, they are vilified and the officer excused. They are about the fact that educational and employment opportunities are not the same in a country built with "...all men are created equal..." The violence erupts because that anger has to go somewhere.

Instead we get "all lives matter" which ignores the fact that systemically, institutionally, lives of color do not matter. You can not be racist all you want, but when you uphold a racist society, you don't have to be on a personal level; the system does it for you.

I know politics are touchy, politics affect white people's wallets and feelings get hurt. That is white privilege; for others, it is about their lives not their livelihoods. So I ask, what is more disrespectful, kneeling during the anthem of a country with a violent history of racial oppression or kneeling on a man's neck until he dies.

I was raised to not be racist, but it's taken years to learn that the personal is political and inequality is how America operates. I was raised to be better than this, but it isn't easy; it means facing the fact that I can get pulled over and the worst I get is a big ticket. My friend, Irvin cannot do so without fearing he will die with a cop's knee in his back. Jeremy, a man I served with, has the same problem. It is worse for Irvin, his son is autistic; I know the man lives in dread that his son will fail to process a cop's commands properly and wind up dead.

My personal lack of racism doesn't do a goddamn thing in the face of what they live with. And guess what, they can't turn it off, they can't try not being black. It just doesn't work that way. I, if I chose, could get a haircut and pretend to be Christian, and fit in with America like they never can, all because of the color of their skin.

We can be better than this; we must be better than this. So I ask my family to consider the actual, lived-in experiences of the people of color who are saying racism is real and it doesn't need your participation to continue. All it needs is your silent complicity and personally clean hands and conscience.

Progressive Is Elementary

So, I recently had an epiphany about why I am so pissed off at all the Right's lies and failure to treat everyone as people. The Tea Party made all kinds of noise about a "secret Muslim" President, Confederate flags fly all over my home city, and some folks want me to join a theocracy for a religion I no longer hold. And it dawned on me. I'm pissed at the state of my country because of what I was taught growing up. I said the Pledge every day in elementary school and I realized that "with liberty and justice for all" is an outright lie. Liberty and justice are for those with money. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is allowable only if you can afford it. I also wonder, if life and pursuit of happiness are rights, how can universal healthcare not be the law. Chronic conditions damn sure interfere with one's livelihood and damn sure can make pursuit of happiness impossible. On top of that, poverty and racial injustice help ensure whole swaths of people just don't get a fair chance. So, if you want to know why I'm a progressive, it's because a little kid who said the Pledge grew up to see just how far from reality that little chant is.

The Gospel According to Braaaaiiiiiinnnnssssss

Yes, I am very late to this party. You will live. Or eat someone's brains, preferably not mine. I recently read World War Z over the course of two days in which I accomplished practically nothing else. As you may or not be aware, the book is a fictional collection of oral accounts in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. I have also been listening to the Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature podcast through iTunesU. 

The podcast is enjoyable as it combines one of my loves (scholarship) with one of my interests (zombies). How can I not enjoy it. This podcast contains multiple references to zombie survival plans, often with a comment on how the plans contain real world, practical applications. They also note how some individuals have said they wish for a zombie apocalypse for a chance to be heroes, to stand out from everyday life and do something. I cannot argue either statement, but I found World War Z, in particular among zombie works, to be more than chaos and brain-devouring.

World War Z was a gospel in the sense Dr. Paul Danove defined the gospels in the Bible. The gospels are, "a proclamation of the teachings, actions, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that demands a response." One may argue the elements given are all contained in WWZ save the resurection, which is obscenely parodied by the zombies' refusal to deanimate upon death, the important part here is the reaction. The writing in WWZ felt real, dictated and recorded by real people going through an apocalypse. The real feel coupled with my brain's primal fear mechanism and forced me (and, I posit, others) to contemplate an aztual zombpocalypse (which Google just informed me is a real word Zombies are pervasive little canibals, aren't they).

While the rational part of one's brain can dismiss fires, floods, earthquakes, and volcanoes as natural disasters, zombies are different and may require addressing. A nagging, "yeah, but what if. You don't want to eat your friends, do you" thought that arises from zombies necesitates a response, a zombie survival plan. At least these plans are beneficial, fires and zombies both force survival reactions and escaping a burning building is infinitely more likely than braining one's mother because she won't stay dead.

One may find all manner of scholastic discussion of zombies, but I have yet to see the notion of a zombie gospel addressed. The unnatural elements of undead invasion can force the human brain to address survival in a laughably unlikely scenario precisely because the situation would be horrific in ways mundane disasters cannot be. Natural disasters elicit fear, but do not typically force one to reexamine one's cosmology. A zombie apocalypse surely would. 

Who Needs Jesus

Jesus as the son of God and messiah was a theological response to a combination of problems theological and historical. Between broken covenants, disembodied supreme deities, high standards of sacrifice and a labyrinthine holiness code, the faith of the Israelites had problems addressing their circumstances as a vassal territory within the Roman Empire. While Jesus son of Joseph was not the only prophetic figure from this period, he gained the most lasting notoriety, with John the Baptist a far distant second. The combination of factors led to the need for a figure, a sect in Israelite religion used Jesus to address them all.

            The Davidic monarchy was a distant memory. Since the kingdom fell to Babylon in the sixth century BCE, Israel suffered the rule of the Persians, Greeks, and the Romans. Even with a successful revolt against Hellenistic rule, the monarchy headed by descendants of David was still gone. Isreal’s history of foreign domination predates David’s kingdom and with the subsequent string of invading powers asserting dominance over Jerusalem God’s covenant of an enduring monarchy was obviously and painfully broken. By being of David’s line, Jesus restored the monarchy while also elevating it to the realm of the spiritual and thus greater than any mortal kingdom in the same way God became paramount to Jewish theology following the Babylonian conquest.

            Sacrifice was important in Israelite theology. While Cain and Abel covered other issues of morality, their tale also illustrated the importance of correct ritual sacrifice. For an offering to be acceptable, even pleasing, it had to be of higher quality and importance. Cain’s sacrifice of items he had gathered was displeasing while Abel’s offering of the best he had pleased God. With a shattered covenant between God and his nation, his sacrifice had to be as great to Israel as Abel’s was to God. His failure to sustain the monarchy and expel foreign rule meant a great sacrifice. Some Christians separate Christianity from other religions with the idea that, “religion is man’s attempt to get to God, Christianity is God’s attempt to get to man.” By this metric the only acceptable sacrifice is God’s best, his only child.

            A highly codified set of religious laws made faithful observance difficult for many. The wealthy and the priests adhered to the codes but did so in a legalistic manner, arguing points against each other. Jesus attempted to simplify things by preaching love. The story of Jesus’ response to the query about which commandment is most important to follow simplified a vast and complex set of laws to a pair of imperatives, love God and love your neighbor. In other questions about law, his answers were consistent with an attitude of love and forgiveness. Regarding work on the Sabbath, Jesus taught it one needed to work to survive, it was not a sin. He spared an adulteress from stoning. In the tradition of the prophets, Jesus brought a loving god to those who most needed love and wrathful correction to those not acting out of love.

            The early conceptions of godhood in Canaanite religion were vastly different than the distant, bodiless king of kings of later Israelite theology. El, a contributing figure to the biblical god, had seventy sons and a sometimes vigorous body was an ancient-appearing man. Baal, the rider in the clouds, also saw his title reappropriated as a messianic figure in Daniel. One creation account had God walking among his creation, an active deity with a body. By the Babylonian conquest and exile, the Israelite god had no body and shifted from a tribal god to the lord of all creation. While God’s status was improved, he was less identifiable to his worshippers. Jesus gave god human frailties and experiences and made him more human.

            The combination of history and theological evolution led to a problematic Israelite theology when confronted with the realities or worship under the Roman Empire. A quagmire of spiritual laws from a disembodied, promise-breaking, sacrifice-demanding divinity required address. While one may have addressed these problems piecemeal, the Jesus presented in the gospels corrected them all at some point. Jesus restored God’s body, elevated and restored the Davidic monarchy, replaced a complex set of laws with love, and was the only possible sacrifice to reconcile a god with his people.