Current mood:	thoughtful
Current music:	Jeff Buckley- "Hallelujah"

almost two years lapsed
Okay. Religious post. Strap in; you'll be thankful i used the cuts when you see the length.

I'll recap for those of you who came in in the middle. I was raised basically agnostic; didn't go to church until i was... actually, i have no idea how old i was, i'd say nine. Anyway, that was only two or three times, to a Unitarian Universalist church, where Sunday School was mostly playing Pik-Up Stix. Don't get me wrong, it was the coolest Stix set i've ever seen; sort of a hard white plastic, that felt almost like ivory, and individual designs of pitchforks and other long thin mostly gardening implements that looked carved. Great fun. But not exactly shaping my religious beliefs. And since most times we went the Sunday School it was just me, my brother, and the teacher, there wasn't any peer influence either. Dad only went for the fellowship, Mom didn't go (which makes me think i may have been 11 or 12- post divorce). It was okay, but the Stix game is my strongest memory. And sunlight shafts through dusty air. And losing a fingernail. But those are memories of the building, not religion.

So i didn't get home shaping of religious beliefs. Dad read Bible stories at night when we were little, but those were for moral lessons. I remember distinctly the Tower of Babel, the hand writing on the wall, and Daniel in the Lion's Den (a favorite of my brother, for reasons entirely unrelated to anything about the story). I didn't really think about religion, or God, much. I remember when i first began believing in God- bus ride home from school, hail storm pinging on the roof of the bus, to my (eight year old? seven? nine?) eyes looking like it's half inch balls of ice, although i'd bet they were BBs. I was looking forward to a half mile walk down the driveway from bus stop to house through a hailstorm with my little brother, and i prayed. I'd never thought about it, but i prayed instinctively.

The hail stopped. ON CUE.

Well, now God exists for me. Some sentient, creative, controlling force that cared that i not get hit by ice hunks. Not exactly Papa Yahweh, but very real to me.

So age seventeen. High school nerd, fairly popular, mildly picked on for unathleticism and good grades but really not very badly at all. High school in VA beat middle school in innerish-city Pittsburgh by leagues. I've got a loose circle of friends, a car, a half-dream of acting. Some friends invite me to church. Southern Baptist, contemporary service at 8:30, casual dress. I figure, why not, sounds fun, seeing people outside of school. Never really attended church. I get up at seven on a Sunday and drive down.

This goes on. A few months. I join the church, get baptised, attend Sunday School (topics: religion discussion, not board games) regularly, call in and attend via speakerphone if i oversleep. I accept Jesus as Savior. I say that, anyway.

I never felt... fully in. I was totally accepted, met a lot of cool people, all that. But i never felt fully comfortable. Maybe because i learned that the reason Mom never went to the Unitarian church (divorced by then or not) was that she was rabidly anti-religion. Extremely. The kind of anti- that must exist because of some scarring experience, although i've never had the guts to ask. We had some very not-fun religion arguments. I remember, when i first told her i'd be going that first Sunday, she said i'd made a mistake letting them know i was going- now the preacher would direct his whole sermon towards me. I wonder if maybe she joined a cult when she was that age, or something. The closest i got to knowing a reason was when she mentioned that an uncle of mine (her sister's husband; a man i don't think i've ever met, not in memory anyway, whose name i forget half the time) was a huge religious hypocrite who cheated on my aunt and used religion as an excuse of some kind.

My dad was fine with my choice. We had real talks, not very deep and involved, but he'd ask what the sermon had been about that week and was really curious about my answer. He's still searching for his truth too, i know, although he's definitely on the side of science and morals for morals' sake. He does believe in a God, but more of a stereotypical Great Spirit than commandment-giving burning bush. Which is fun, because apparently my aunt (his only sibling) is a HUGE hippie.

I called myself Christian for four years. A lot of turmoil in those years. A lot of fun. It was a great church to attend; laid back people, really great pastor, terrific songs. Shooting goofy movies all Sunday afternoon. Hanging out with friends all that day. Sundays were the best day of the week.

College changed a lot, of course. People started asking me to actually explain my faith, and i found just how inadequate i understood it. I could spout the catchphrases; "We're all sinners, we need God's salvation," etc. But i couldn't really move beyond the surface of the phrases. It took years to finally accept the reason why; i didn't really believe. Hard as i was trying, i didn't feel like a wretched sinner cleansed by God's own blood. I felt like a confused guy, too scared of what others back home would think if i gave it up.

I read the Bible, cover to cover, junior year. It helped that i went abroad and couldn't bring more than two books; Bible and Complete Shakespeare. I finished the first and about half of the second in four months. I still called myself Christian, wore a small, tasteful gold cross around my neck, but i was getting to the point where i could read the Bible objectively. Keep an eye open for phrases actually condemning homosexuality, abortion, masturbation, etc. See if any of them were actually spoken by Jesus. I'll get to that all later.

So summer after junior year, i finally said "You know what? No. I'm not." Read the entry linked for more info there. I sent out a blanket e-mail to everyone in my address book, except family members and the friend who'd already said "Fuck off" because she thought i proselytized too much. I felt freer. It wasn't that i'd rejected Jesus- i still thought, still do think, that he was amazing. Smart, right, wise. I just don't know if he's a He. I'll get more into that in a bit, too.

There's a Bible verse i rather like, i'll make it this entry's quote (at the end). I didn't reject Jesus. But i realized i'd never accepted him, REALLY accepted him, the way Christians should. As God. And it's better to reject God than pretend to yourself that you accept Him. At least you won't be lying to the world.

Since i've accepted myself, a little bit more, it's been easier to admit stuff. I'd identified as bisexual for over a year, but i no longer felt that twinge of guilt of my religion and friends saying same-sex attraction was wrong. I'd NEVER felt real guilt over it- the instinctive, parent-instructed, possibly God-commanded guilt of doing something actually wrong. Like... other things. I was still abstinent, but now it was because i was waiting for the right person/time, not because of an external 'marriage' goal. Really, my life barely changed, except i felt more uncomfortable in church when i went (do they know? some do, i know some do, but the adults?). I never really 'came out' as Lapsed back home, like i never really came out as bi. I'm not secret, not ashamed, but not publicized either.

Neither have i come out, either way, to my parents. I mean, my brother must know (i'm on his freaking friends list, and i never post filtered or private entries), but that's different. He's a person to me. My parents... I've been saying that i'll come out as bi when and if i'm involved seriously with a man. Until then, it hardly seems worth the effort and crap coming out involves. I definitely prefer women, will probably end up marrying one. And there's some... unpleasentness... a cousin came out as bi, then shortly did a very horrible (unrelated) thing, and i'm a bit afraid there might be some unfortunate associations. As for Lapsing... i may have told my father. I actually forget. Yes, i think i did. He'd be cool with it, with both actually, i know. Dad's cool like that. Mom... she'd be fine with the bisexuality, but the Lapsing... i'm worried she'd be so damned superior about it. "I told you so" sort of superior. Her damn arguments, forwarding me secular humanist e-mails... sometimes i wonder if i didn't become Christian half to spite her; my unique twist on teenage rebellion. There's still some anger there, so for now (assuming she hasn't guess how far my faith waned from when i went to church every Sunday to now hardly ever) i'm not giving her the satisfaction.

There. All caught up.

I keep thinking about Jesus, though. He was, undeniably, cool. The best description i heard of him was Douglas Adams- "Meanwhile, in Kensington, about two thousand years after a man was nailed to a tree for suggesting we all try and be nice to each other..." The mantra (how's THAT for mixed religious metaphors?) i heard most often in church was that Jesus came back and, among other things, simplified the commandments. He boiled all the hundreds and hundreds of Old Testament laws down to two. First, Love God more than anything else. Second, the Golden Rule, Love thy enemy as thyself. That was why Christians didn't keep kosher, or celebrate Passover, why it wasn't damning to answer the phone on whatever Sabbath you used. Keep to those two laws, and everything else will fall into place. Accept Jesus as Savior, and you're all aces in God's eyes.

As for accepting Jesus, there was a pretty good metaphor. Stay with me, i'm about to explain Christianity (or at least my Baptist church) in thirty seconds. We all have sin. It's like a canyon, God on one side, every human ever on the other side. The canyon is sin... no, you know what? I'm changing the metaphor. Sin is GRAVITY. We're all affected by gravity. Gravity keeps us from handily jumping the canyon and being directly with God. We all fall into the canyon (Hell), because no matter how good we are, we've all looked at someone with lust, or envy, or been mad enough to punch someone. And whether we followed through or not, that was sin. And God has a zero tolerance rule about sin. Any sin, any at all, you go to Hell. So since this didn't work, God sent Jesus. Jesus is a bridge. If we accept Jesus, let him take our sin, stop trying to beat gravity, and just walk over the bridge... easy peasy japanesy. Done deal.

So said my church, anyway. It never quite jived with me. Mostly because of how Jesus was explained- he WAS God, bit for bit, omniscience and omnipotence, only temporarily not omnipresent. Perfect, sinless, thus his death was so clean that it washes away all the sin you ask it to. Never clicked with me. I prefer a Jesus that was God, but NOT all-powerful, all-knowing. More powerful than any human, than Satan (if he exists- i'm totally undecided), but not infinite.

See, the bridge metaphor still works in my slight alteration, but the bridge wasn't designed to help out our side. It was because the problem was on God's end. Imagine, if you will, a very very smart God, but not ALL-knowing. He can still be surprised, still make mistakes. This is a God i can begin to understand. Another Douglas Adams reference- when Slartibartfast and Arthur Dent enter the sphere where worlds are built, and Arthur gets a better idea of infinity looking at something very big than the actual infinity of the stars. A slightly flawed God gives me a better idea of a being that could create the universe from utter nothing than a being of pure perfection.

So this slightly less than infinite God creates everything. Creationism or evolution, it gets to having intelligent, sentient beings, with souls and everything. He gives them rules to follow to make life better. They fail. Over and over, until it gets ridiculous (Reading Genesis and Exodus is like going over a lot of speedbumps very quickly- worship a calf, beg for forgiveness, worship a calf, bed for forgiveness, worship a calf, ad nauseum). God can't quite get why no one is following all the rules. Some are TRYING, very hard. Some aren't, but hey, that's free will for you. But even the ones who care are failing. He sends prophet after prophet, no good, so He tries something new. He becomes a man. Walks a few miles of Galilee in someone else's feet. He limits Himself further, becomes as powerful as a man and only a bit more all-knowing, but still has all God's wisdom. He does this TO LEARN WHAT BEING A HUMAN IS LIKE. He didn't know; he was God. Nigh-perfect. He expected nigh-perfection, and got bupkiss. So he tried it from our perspective, and learned just how hard it is for us horny bleeding hunks of earth to be divine.

Jesus is still the bridge. But not because the problem was on our side. Now we can get to God, because God realized we need to find our own path but some things are beyond us. Like me and the hailstones. I haven't won the lottery here, partly because i don't play, but mostly because i need to succeed on my own merits, not the easy out. But there's a difference between fighting to succeed and telling the tide not to come in. God stopped the hailstones because they might have hurt me and there was nothing i could have done to avoid it. Oh, addendum to that story- a next door neighbor was waiting at the bus stop with his car, so we wouldn't have had to walk home in hail anyway, but as Jules Winnfield said, it doesn't matter if God stopped the bullets or changed Coke into Pepsi or found my fucking car keys, the point is i felt the touch of God. God is reaching out to us, because being Jesus taught him how much we really need the help.

Or at least that's my latest thought. Maybe i like it just because it makes the best story.

Those are my religious standpoints. Now some minor diatribes on important issues, worthy of note.

Jack Chick. I've read all the tracts in the archive, all the Father Alberto comics available online, and many of the FAQs. For a while there, reading his stuff back to back, he seems reasonable, even if i disagree. He thinks all who don't accept Jesus are damned. That there's a Satan among us, actively trying to keep us away from Jesus. I don't believe this, either of them, but i accept that others do. And most of his tracts are variations on this theme. I was unfair to believe that he'd gotten more bitter with time, that he was spiraling into cynicism. I did count his fictional character salvation rate; it's a steady 3:1 saved to damned. And, judging from the copyright dates as was suggested to me, his work has gotten better and better as time went on. He started out doing weakly illustrated retellings of Bible storys, with ham-fisted segues into how that's like Jesus saving us. Now, he's telling personal stories, with many unrealistic characters (find me an adult born in America who's never heard, not even HEARD, of Jesus- i dare you), but many of them have real dramatic merit. The first few panels of The Man in Black were actually pretty chilling.

That said, he's out of his mind with conspiracy theories, and quite possibly really dangerous. See, 90% of his stuff sums up to "You're damned!" "I am?" "Yes!" "What can I do?" "Accept Jesus!" "Okay! Wow, I'm clean!"/"No! Arg, I'm burning!" Some is goofier than the rest, but it's basically tolerable as a belief system.

But the other 10%... ESPECIALLY the Father Alberto stuff... Okay. To sum up. The Vatican is the Great Whore of Revelations, every Pope an Antichrist with the last Pope being THE Antichrist. Communion is a worship of Egyptian gods (Osiris, Isis, Horus, Seb), the Virgin Mary is a reworking of Semiramis/Venus/Isis/Diana, and... strap in, here's where it gets insane. The early Popes (Peter was never Pope, by the by) created Islam to destroy the Jews and capture Jerusalem. That's right, Mohommed was a knowing and willing tool of the Vatican. When the Muslims captured Jerusalem but refused to give it to the Pope as promised, the Crusades resulted. The famed Children's Crusade was baptised children sold to Muslim slave traders; this was in hope they'd grow up to become a resistance, and Fifth Column fighting Islam from within for the Pope. Much later, the Vatican funded and created the Communist movement to strike at Russian Orthodox churches, and because the Czar had just discovered Noah's Ark and this knowledge had to be suppressed. So Communism destroyed Russia and burned churches, but like Islam it rebelled against the Vatican. Meanwhile, the Vatican had caused World War One to strike at the French and British Protestant Republics from Catholic Germany. When that failed, the Vatican got revenge by causing the Great Depression. So, to strike back at the rebellious Communists and still Protestant France and England, the Vatican created the Nazis. Hitler was a good Catholic, after all. The Holocaust was a new Inquisition designed to destroy the Jews once and for all. This all failed, but they're still working. The Vatican faked the Fatima prophecies to draw Muslims into the fold, then had a Muslim shoot Pope John Paul II to cause the Islamic world guilt; the Pope's forgiving of his shooter caused great Muslim relief and brought the Vatican another step closer to controlling them. What else... oh, they wrote the Protocols of Zion, founded the KKK, backed Fidel Castro, and killed Abe Lincoln. Most of this is done by the Jesuits, strong arm of Catholicism, with true allegiance to the real power in the Vatican- the Black Pope. The Jesuits are infested with accepted, even encouraged, homosexuality, and are slowly infiltrating Protestant churches throughout the world to destroy them from within by seducing good preachers and ruining their good names. The Jesuits also have ties to the Illuminati (financial arm of the Vatican) and the Freemasons (worshipers of Baal, Allah, AND Lucifer). Mormons are pawns of Freemasons. Jehovah's Witnesses are pawns of the Jesuits. Dungeons and Dragons is a tool of the Temple of Diana. Harry Potter books contain real spells of how to summon up a demon helper. Christian Rock is Satan's distortion of God's true music. And any English text not the King James translation is a Satanic manipulation of the Vatican that will lead you to damnation.

I HAVE NOT MADE UP ANY OF THAT. CHICK BELIEVES IT. THIS MAN IS OUT OF HIS GOURD.

Jesus. Really, that's more than enough about Chick.

Masturbation. Like i said, i read the Bible. I found the passage the Catholic anti-masturbation squad totes out. This guy spilled his seed on the ground, God got mad at him for wasting it. Actually seems pretty clear-cut. Until you read the context. He wasn't masturbating. God told him to have sex with this woman and impregnate her. So he had sex with her, but at the last second he deliberately pulled out and spilled his seed on the ground. God didn't care that he spilled on the ground- it's that he defied a specific command God gave him, back in the days when God did that sort of thing regularly. So shut up, Catholics. Use condoms.

Homosexuality. I REALLY kept an eye out for this one. I wanted to know, for certain, just what the Bible actually said. And it says, specifically, that homosexuals are damned. It says it about six times. Now here's the thing; two of the times are in Leviticus, and the other four are apostles QUOTING Leviticus. So let's focus on Leviticus, shall we? The argument i'm going to make you've heard. Say it with me. Leviticus also says you shouldn't eat pigs, lobster, rabbits, camels, owls, bats, mice, chameleons, and any flying insect with four legs. Anything or anyone that touches a woman within seven days of her menstruation is unclean for the rest of the day. No sex with your own gender, with a menstruating woman, or with your mother. Anyone who sleeps with a menstruating woman, both are to be banished. Fortune tellers and spirit mediums are to be stoned to death. Anyone who touches a corpse should wash their hands before they eat anything. Every seventh year you should let your field lie fallow. If you sell your house in town, you have one year to buy it back. A man between the ages of 20 and 60 who is sold to the church with worth fifty shekels. When you harvest you field, leave the corners unharvested for the poor to come and take. No wearing mixed fabrics. No sowing mixed grains. No tattoos. No selling your daughter into prostitution. No eating blood.

Now, a lot of that is good advice. I mean, sleeping with your mom is still sort of frowned upon. But we ignore a lot of that stuff. I know a lot of people who have tattoos of crosses, for crying out loud. So there must be a tie-breaker. Oh wait, how about Jesus? But Jesus didn't say one word, not one quoted word, on the subject one way or the other. Unless you count "love everybody as yourself". Which i do. So that's that.

Gay marriage. I shouldn't even have to mention this. Bush is a bastard for trying to force his religious beliefs on millions of people. Yeah, millions- the most conservative estimate of homosexuality is about 2% of a population, which makes over five million Americans. Many don't want to get married, many don't have a partner to marry, but they should legally have the option. The mayors of San Fransisco, Nyack and New Paltz, are my new political heroes. They will probably be criminally tried for violating their state laws. But every batch of newly married homosexual couples i see includes a pair of sixty year old women (two for two batches, thus far). These women, and all the other gay people lining up, will not have heterosexual marriages if they have no other choice. They will adopt children, married or not. There are two kinds of marriage- legal and moral/spiritual. Gay people cannot get the moral/spiritual marriage, whether it be legally recognized or not, unless they find a willing and acceptable holy figure to perform it. And they can do that TODAY, if they want. No one will force Catholic priests to marry same-sex couples. No one should. But gay people have been getting spiritually married for a long, long time. They just want the same legal recognition and rights that straight married people get. And these rights are long overdue. 'Civil unions' are a form of segregation, unless straight people can get them too. I'm all for that- straight civil unions. For people who want to share health insurance and file taxes jointly, but don't care about a church wedding. We need to get EQUALITY going. Although, i should stress, if the "protection" of marriage amendment somehow gets passed, it won't last long. Nothing creates a just law quite like passing an unjust law.

Incidentally. I liked Orson Scott Card. His books were very enjoyable, and he wrote a great article about file-sharing a while back. But then he wrote an article that said all homosexuals can get married today. Just not to each other. I'll echo Tom here and allow a bit of cursing into a religious post. Fuck you, Orson Scott Card.

Abortion. Okay, here's where i get yelled at. I'm against abortion. But not because of religion, or even the Bible. Far as i could see, there wasn't anything really said on the subject in the whole books. I'm against abortion because i believe a fetus is a baby. A human being, or at least potential human being. So i don't think a baby should be killed, under any circumstances. I understand that undergoing a pregnancy is traumatic and hard, especially for a teenager (anyone still in school) or a victim of rape or incest. But undesired pregnancies are hardly the worst result of rape and incest. They're horrible things, fetus or no. But i think a fetus is alive, a human, and so it shouldn't be killed. Simple and complicated as that. Fact is, adoption is always an option. There are a lot more couples out there looking to adopt than there are babies up for adoption. It would be incredibly difficult to bear a child you don't want, then give up a child you bore, but unfortunately i don't believe in a choice. A fetus is a baby to me.

I haven't decided how i stand on legal abortion. If my belief is religious in nature, abortion should be legal- my religious beliefs shouldn't shape another person's legal rights. That would be pretty hypocritical of me, considering my stance on gay marriage. But if it isn't a religious belief, if it's a belief that fetus=baby is a biological fact, abortion should be stopped. I don't want to stand outside picketing with the small-minded zealots and murdering hypocrites, but if a female friend asked me for advice, i think no matter what the situation i would advise against abortion. Feel free to argue with me, i welcome other views, but know that the following argument will not work and actually pisses me off a bit- "A woman's right to choose what to do with her body." I am 100% for women, and men, choosing exactly what to do with their bodies. But as i said, i don't think of a fetus as a part of a woman's body. It's a baby's body, that happens to be in the difficult situation of existing inside someone else. If a woman wants to get a hysterectomy on her 18th birthday... well that's an odd celebration, but if you're sure, go for it. Once it's a baby, for better or worse, there it is.

Damn. Okay, that's everything. Consider this my essay on life. I didn't intend it to be this much, but i'm glad i wrote it. Now that i know where i stand, i can move on.

Also. I talked a lot about my past, but i didn't mention my present. Right now, i'm calling myself a Zen Deist. Partly because i like the almost rhyme, but it's got a lot of truth for me.

God be with all of us.

--BWJ
"So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth."