As a small child, church was the ultimate truth. Without the ability to percieve what we're told in life is right or wrong, church was the ultimate right. Who am I to question the authority of "God"? Am omnipotent being capable of making everything in my life wrong or making everything in my life right. I heard from multiple sources how messed up the world can really be, but this is the place to make it all right. A safe place. In a chaotic world, we seek solace and order in anything we can.
There was something strange and comforting about it. It was the end all be all. You had to be on your best behavior. It was a place that was supposed to fee like home, but felt so unfamiliar. It even had an offputting, clean, musty smell. The kind of smell you smell in funeral homes or at your grandparents house that you hardly ever visit. The smell of age and authority that you're not supposed to question.
With age came wisdom. The kind of wisdom that you can't be taught from a public school curriculum designed by a man who hasn't been to class in 50 years. The kind of wisdom that you can't get from spending one hour in Sunday school, with a "lesson" coming from whatever member of church volunteered to read passages nearly in verbatim from the bible. To call them teachers is a joke. They're volunteers trying to do what they think is best for future generations souls' or maybe they're just protectingtheir souls by trying to score brownie points into heaven.
Each church lesson pretty much made it back to the same point. Don't do bad things, even though bad things will happen to you. When they do, trust in Jesus. AFter all, he died for you. I never asked him to. Now I'm suppoed to be forever grateful for something that someone told me happend two thousand years before I was born. Now come and give your life to him for the rest of eternity.
Then came the prayer. We can call it a sermon if we want, but it fits every definition of a lecture. You don't get to say anything. You are not allowed to have an opinion. They talk. You listen. They are the experts. The experts on a book. It all comes down to a book and they've read it more times than you. They've interpreted it the right way. Those others have interpreted it the wrong way. It's a book written in code and there's only one way to interpret it--the right way. In theory you should feel enlightened by the sermon. I always felt bored. For something that is the absolute divine truth, I definitely walked away with more questions than answers. This is the price I pay for being old enough to understand the world for more than was was spoon fed to me. I felt guilt.
Here comes the prayer. I can't. It's not that I refuse. I don't understand how it works. I don't understand why it works. The world is full of pain and misfortune. What makes anything I ask so much more important. God loves me and I was created in his image. Wasn't everyone else? There's 7 billion kids on this planet. That's about all of the attention. We're all just sperm floating around in god's ejaculate.
I close my eyes, make a wish, and good things happen. But we do this in a group. Everyone is told to bow their heads. I'm not refusing. I'm just not. I look around the room. Each time in this situation, there are about 10 of us all looking back at each other. We know each other's dark secret. We're the non-believers. For ten seconds, we're amongst people that understand but we can say aboslutely nothing. Maybe it's out of guilt. Maybe it's fear of how our job, spouse, spouse's family, will judge us. We're judged for essentially being ourselves in a doctrine that preaches non-judgement. During the prayer, a serene calm falls over hte room. It's perfectly quiet other than the voice of a single man who has been chosen to be the prophet for the hour. It's quiet meditation. Everyone is mending thier soul. Mending their bad mistakes. Every bad mistake from what they did when they were 25 years old to what happened this week. God so loves the world to give us whatever we ask for if we come and visit him for an hour a week. We're mending our souls too. Knowing we're not alone. There's an isolation in not understanding and not seeing things the way the others do. We don't belong. We don't know where we belong. We're trying to belong, but ironically half eye contact is the best we're going to do. This is the true fellowship. You know each others secrets and know that there is solidarity in your shame. It's not cathartic. It's tense. It's a private moment. Th emost intimate moment imaginable. You and your so called creator. We all have our most private moments in a crowded room just trying to out pray each other. What I need is more important than what you need. We're all created in his image, but only so many of us can gt what we need. To get you must take away from someone else. Somewhere else. Something else.
No comments:
Post a Comment