Letters to the Editor
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The comments on this piece are so sad
I remember reading once that the one thing that enrages a room full of middle aged-women would be to arrive at a social event, a middle-aged man, with a much, much younger date. If you're a 45 year-old man, and you are dating a woman who's 25, women your own age are just livid.
Why? Because it exposes their own emotional vulnerability. Anger is almost always triggered by feelings of vulnerability, and I think this piece, and the reactions to it, exemplify that.
Christianity -- real, doubt-and-mystery-filled Christianity, not the Bible-thumping-Jesus-is-my-personal-buddy kind speaks directly to the fear and wonder and doubt and questions everyone has. And if you're an urban, overeducated, secular type, who's been very carefully educated to believe that religion is for idiots in trailer parks, and that all religious leaders are child molesters, you often have no framework for addressing those questions. You're not allowed to even think of them. You're in this spiritual straitjacket. And like everyone, you're baffled, you're flawed, and you're hungry for some kind of spiritual connection. Except you're not allowed to admit it. So when someone like Sara shows up, who was part of your group but has now left, the whole issue is thrown into very high relief. And you get angry. Because you're vulnerable.
These same people will climb all over someone who's homophobic, and will, in the first ninety seconds of a conversation, point out that people who hate homosexuals often have some serious issues with their own sexual preferences. Turn that around. If an article like this makes you angry, it often means you feel guilty about your own spiritual yearnings, because the culture in which you were raised and educated indoctrinated you to.
And lamest of all is that "Science Uber Alles" argument. If it can't be proven by objective, measurable, scientific fact, then it doesn't matter. What a load. Can you measure love? Can you measure kindness? Hope? Does it occur to you that logic is a human invention, and that insisting that the entire universe operate according to your own extraordinarily limited logical tools is kind of ridiculous? The most important things in everyone's life, the things that shape them and drive them and make them who they are, have nothing to do with logic. And everything to do with being human -- feeling, fallible, flawed, loving. Which is where Christianity starts. Logic is only one tool of many. Yes, evolution is a fact, and only idiots disagree with it, but science doesn't answer every question. Thinking it should is the height of arrogance, and blindness.
When I'm in church on Sundays (a church, by the way, where most of the clergy are female, where we have several gay couples, where anyone can take Communion), I am often moved to tears during the service. I'm not crazy, and I'm not stupid. I'm in church. And at Communion, the most moving thing is to look at the faces of people returning to their seats afterwards.
Think of the Amish in Pennsylvania last year, after that man kidnapped and murdered their children. They didn't seek revenge, or a slot on Oprah, or a change in our national mental-health policy, or an editorial in the New York Times. They sought to forgive, and to heal. That's what Christianity is all about.
Also, read Annie Lamott's book, "Traveling Mercies". She says all this, way better than I could.
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Radical? Nah. Just Rebellion.
My friends, at the most, read about Buddhism or practiced yoga. They tended to be cynical, hilarious, and overeducated, with years of therapy and contemporary literature behind them...
Sara, you're no radical. You were already predisposed to some sort of spiritualism simply by the nature of your surrounding friends and your "secular" upbringing: this is your teenage rebellion 30 years late. And when you're 46 instead of 16 it feels more thoughtful because of hindsight and because of the nature of any intelligent human being to seek meaning in one's own existence. But you just happen to trip over this religion instead of something else that caught your interest at the time. Aren't coincidences funny things?
Those of us raised on church on Sundays rebelled later and discarded church and god and the other accouterments. It's no longer our hobby or profession or even a comfort. It's a repetitive and tiring exercise in mental masturbation.
The world is significantly beautiful and mysterious enough without having to layer it with a bunch of fantasies about meaning for humanity bestowed upon us from some higher power. Those are fun fantasies to inspire us about hope and direction and meaning, but they are fantasies nevertheless. I find more fun in feeding those fantasies through books and movies and television shows rather than adopting the view that it is the reality of the universe I live in.
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Actually I'm rather astounded at the low quality of letter-writing, overall, here at Salon
Me too! Shove off Chloe.
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Interesting
The Christians who post here seem to believe that there is religious freedom in the U.S. It doesn't exist. What we have is limited religious tolerance - now, that's not altogether a bad thing. No one is killing us atheists, no one is putting us in camps, but it's not religious freedom either. Religion is on the money (yes, that's offensive), it's in the Pledge (even more offensive), it's in our taxes (the property tax exemption for churches forces secular Americans to sudsidize police and fire protection and other services for churches - that's highly offensive), etc.
I am 60 years old, and I've been waiting my entire life for the religious freedom we were promised. Even liberal Christians don't realy much care about the religious freedom issues of atheists. Where our interests coincide - opposition to prayer in schools or intelligent design, for examples - liberal Christians are excellent allies. But liberal Christians are no more willing to give up their subsidies than the religious right.
I was raised as a pacifist, so, when I registered for the draft in 1965, I tried to register as a conscientious objector, but that can only be done after one is drafted. After college, I was drafted, but my conscientious objector was denied. There was no provision in the law for CO status not based on religion. For years, I has worked with Quakers on anti-war and other issues, but they were not interested in supporting my case, because it might jeopardize their status. So, while my Quaker friends were peforming 'alternative service' - honorable activities to be sure - I spent my time in maximum security prison being beaten and raped by the allegedly Christian gentlemen of the Aryan Brotherhood. This was the kind of thing that stays with you. I have worn dentures for 38 years, because they kicked my teeth out, I have 14 scars from stab wounds and 26 little scars from cigarette burns. These are my daily reminders of religious freedom in America. Now, in fairness, the Supremem Court eventually got it right in Griffiths vs U.S., but it came to late for me.
So, now, at age 60, I have given up on religious freedom in America. I am successful, I have a great life, I have a spectacular wife and my life could really not be too much better. BUT, I know, as certain as I know my name is Darrell, that, if push came to shove, you would throw us under the bus in a heartbeat.