I have mixed feelings about the Christian faith I grew up in–wow, that’s an understatement!
Does the Christian god (or any god) exist? I don’t know.
Yet, when a previously-Christian friend said she was losing her faith and asked me how I did without it–I felt the same guilt you might imagine if you had stolen a hundred-dollar bill from a good friend to meet some need of your own. (In my case, the need to be a smart-alec.)
OTOH, I despise the rantings of the religious right. I was a Christian for long enough to know that
literal-minded followers of Jesus Christ should be up in arms against tax-evading rich folks, not “gay marriage.”
Today, or maybe yesterday, was Good Friday. What a relief! Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christians and non-Christians draw close together.
Christians imaginatively share the doubt and fear of the early apostles, who had seen their leader tortured and crucified. We ex-Christians have that same feeling of doubt 365 days a year.
On Sunday morning, our paths diverge again. Believers celebrate the risen Christ. Unbelievers like me hide jelly beans for our children, and then get on with the confusing business of trying to be a good person with nobody up in heaven who’s keeping score.
A year ago today, I blogged about Aesop’s lamb-and-wolf fable.
Notice that, if there is a God keeping score, the innocent trusting lamb would triumph in heaven over the wicked wolf. If there is no God, the wolf wins and the lamb is simply…lunch.
My position, of course, is intermediate. I caution my readers against a lamblike innocence–and I assume you share my revulsion against the wolf.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Anonymous // Apr 10, 2004 at 7:42 pm
“…and then get on with the confusing business of trying to be a good person with nobody up in heaven who’s keeping score.”
Isn’t that kind of an Atheist/Jewish take? I too, grew up in a Pentacostal (say: Apocalyptic or “horribly terrifying”) faith, which I left at age 16, to go in search of another religion in which I might feel more comfortable. I did not find any one — but several — from which I chose to draw, molding fresh clay I cleaved from the Earth with my own hands, into my own spirituality: from the Seventh-Day-Adventists, I took honesty, hard-work, Pacifism (and a semi-vegetarian/vegan philosopy uh, most of the times); from the Jewish, I took a life-long obsessional thirst for knowledge and trying to be the best I could possibly be; I took from Native and Buddhist and … well, you get the idea.
I am still an Athiest, though. So that last line made me chuckle. You are so cute.
Happy Easter, dear Betsy Devine!
2 Elaine of Kalilily // Apr 13, 2004 at 6:46 pm
Yes, that’s why I celebrate Eostre, the Vernal Equinox, and hiding jelly beans. Life is really such a crapshoot. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. I can understand why so many people need to feel that there’s some higher purpose/reason to all of this. As I hear my mother pray to die, I wonder how she can keep believing. Me? I just try to follow the Golden Rule. At least most of the time. Well, a lot of the time.
Kate and Betsy! I love you two!!