Yes, yes, everyone does. They taught me this in Social Work school. They even taught me how to pick up on a few of my own, maybe things that were flying by under the radar screen of my conscious mind. But it would take someone deaf, dumb and blind with no nose and no hands, someone completely insensate, to miss my latest mass judgement: I don't like Christians.
I suppose it would be more apt to say that I don't like Christianity, but Christians practice Christianity, and since I don't care for the religion, its adherents and all its trappings have seriously started to get on my nerves.
Perhaps it would be prudent to stop here and attempt to evaluate, in writing, precisely why I don't like Christianity, and precisely when I stopped calling myself a Christian. Answer: I don't really know. I know that my upbringing has a lot to do with it -- I'd rather gnaw off my own hand than ever set foot in the church I grew up in ever again, and that is NOT an exaggeration. Give me a choice between one of my hands and South Liberty Church of Christ, and I'll start chewing right now.
But my upbringing can't have everything to do with it, because I've been to some wonderful Christian churches with some wonderful Christian people in the ensuing years: New Bethel, Saint Paul's, Common Place. And without the people in these places, I'd probably be homeless and naked and sleeping in a box -- so why do I bite the hand that has, quite literally, fed me? I've come up with a few reasons:
1.) I am an abuse survivor, and I'm still pissed.
Aside from the fact that when I was a child God was a weapon and Hell was an ever-present threat, God never saved me. I begged and begged; I pleaded and wept. I used to lie in bed and pray to be given wings so that I could fly away. Then I prayed to be allowed to die. Then I prayed for my mother to die. But you know what? Nobody came to my rescue. I suffered. I bled. I lost every shred of humanity I'd ever had along about the time I had to eat spilled food off the floor like a dog. Jesus loves the little children, my ass. That's what my anger says, and I've never been able to cool it. To be completely honest, if I were sitting on the front porch having tea with God, I'd throw it in his face and demand an explanation! Over the years I have tried to rake the ashes over those coals with rationalization after rationalization: God cries when I cry; I went through what I went through so I could help other survivors, blah, blah, blah. None of it stands up under scrutiny. If God cried when I cry, God would still be crying. The nightmares and the constant threat of debilitating depression and the old abuse injuries -- the loose jaw, the crushed knee -- would be giving him a lot of trouble, too. And as for helping other survivors? If you ask me, if God was as merciful as they say, there wouldn't be any other survivors, because a merciful God would never allow children to be subjected to the never-ending horror of abuse in the first place.
So that's reason number one: I'm angry at God, and try as I might, I cannot let go of that anger. I'm like the Hulk: I want to SMASH. Everything.
2.) I'm too smart for my own good.
It's true. I've often maintained that my life would be a whole lot easier if I were as stupid with everything else as I am with math. But I seem to have made up for the fact that simple addition challenges me by being a whiz kid at pretty much anything else. I think in overtime. I analyze, compare, deduce, intuit, learn, re-learn, and think, think, think. Sometimes I even think about the nature of thinking! And then I worry about thinking too much, and I think about the worrying about the thinking! I can't make it stop. I'm driven by some sort of insatiable internal appetite to learn everything. I used to read the encyclopedia for fun. Right now I'm committing the Germanic Pantheon to memory because I want to. And you know what all this thinking does? It makes me critical of people who don't do as much thinking. In spite of all my thinking, I appear to have equated Christian with probably dumb. And here's the deal: I KNOW THAT'S UNFAIR. I know so many Christians who are so smart they'd put me to shame, but I've lumped all Christians together as a bunch of mindless sheep who don't know or care to know the origins of their faith, so long as they can palm it off on other people.
3. I'm jealous.
There's that jealousy again. If it showed on the outside, I'd be as green as Elphaba. In spite of the fact that I'm blazing mad at God, in spite of the fact that I'm critical of Christian evangelists to the nth degree, I've always secretly desired the kind of faith I see in the Christians around me. It makes them happy; I can see it on their faces. It reassures them. But I can't obtain that kind of faith, and my attempts have only frightened me and made me miserable. Every time I set foot in a Christian church, I want to turn heel and run away sobbing. I feel fundamentally different, fundamentally deficient in a way I can't name. Like God doesn't want me. Like I am the chaff dirtying up the wheat.
So I guess it isn't about Christians or Christianity, really. It's about me. I am doing what I despise in others: judging something I don't understand.
It's like this: lately I've been delving into witchcraft again. Being a learned individual, I know the origins of witchcraft; I know what it is and what it isn't. I know that witches ("wise ones," as it translates) don't go around possessing people and worshiping Satan and eating babies as a midnight snack. I know that magick is simply a more elaborate, more intentional form of prayer: prayer with a ritual attached to help focus the energy, the intention, the need. Are there "bad" witches, people who use the Craft to twist and manipulate and cause harm to others? Yes. But there are Christians and Hindus and Muslims and atheists who use their beliefs for the same reasons. And just as it would be unfair for someone to judge me and run away screaming in terror or threaten to burn me alive if I said to them, "I'm a witch," it's unfair of me to curl my lip at someone who says, "I'm a Christian."
And so, having realized that I harbor an extreme prejudice against Christianity, I am trying to change it. I haven't gotten very far yet, considering that this stomach-flopping epiphany just occurred to me this evening. Evaluating it, I have realized that I've been judging Christians for being Christians even while trying to be one myself. How much sense does that make?!
Good grief, I'm tired now. I guess too much revelation in one night can wear a woman out. I do want to say this before I sign off, though:
To my Christian friends: I'm still your friend if you're still mine. I'm sorry that I've most likely lumped you into an unfavorable category based solely on your faith, and I will try my hardest to do better. Judgement is not for me to mete out. Walk with me, and let's be a community of people who hold each other up!
