Weight-bearing

The word "Christmas" comes from the Christ Mass, a liturgical service in celebration of the birth of Jesus. In science, "mass" is the measure of how much of something there is. Here on earth, the mass of something is essentially equal to its weight, or the pull of gravity upon it. There is only so much weight anything or anyone can bear before being crushed. This crushing weight may be physical or a more metaphorical emotional burden. Sitting on my bed today, considering the connections between these concepts, I glanced out the window at a tree and the fence line across my front yard, thinking back to another time I found myself in this same place, looking out over the same landscape. 

I'd spent the previous year trying to come to terms with the fact that I had accepted abuse from my husband because I'd been groomed by my family and church communities not even to recognize their behavior as abuse. That knowledge was, to use an old cliché, the straw that broke the camel's back. Piled up beneath were decades of questions I'd been told not to ask, deaths I'd been instructed to accept as healings, and hateful rhetoric touted as holy. If so much I had believed in, so much that I had been taught from childhood was demonstrably untrue, could I believe anything proclaimed from the pulpit? The idea had been nagging at me for months. What I'd believed to be the very words of God had destroyed my ability to trust myself, and I'd been trained to call that good. I had been focusing on the part that was my belief, what I'd understood, those things I'd learned poorly, trying to separate the perfect Person of God from the imperfect people of God. That afternoon, I recognized the fear I had always felt. I hadn't chosen to become a Christian because of the love. 

Truthfully, I hadn't chosen to become a Christian in the first place. I grew up in a family that went to church, prayed to God, and believed in Jesus. At some point around age two, I'd parroted a prayer my mother offered, asking Jesus to live in my heart, whatever that meant. Through my childhood in Sunday School, my teen years in youth group, my college days in campus ministries, and all the while after in prayer circles and Bible studies and community groups, I prayed again and again that God would forgive my sins and reign in my life. But that day, facing the fence and the tree, I prayed something different.

I can't do this anymore, I began. I thought I knew you. I believed I had heard from you. In those dark, painful moments when I couldn't understand anything that was happening, I thought you were there with me, holding me close. But now, all I can see are the lies spread to unsuspecting children who learned to behave under threat of eternal damnation. So, God, if you're there, if you're real, if you have any actual desire for a relationship with me, I'm listening.

And there was silence.

It's been almost three years since I prayed that prayer. Three years since I let go the label Christian and chose to be counted as agnostic. I am still grieving the loss of my childhood beliefs. I was comforted by the idea that God was with me, even when I was alone. I was honored that God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life. I'd held fast to the idea that, even when my world made no sense to me, God's thoughts were higher than my thoughts. I was insulated by these notions. I didn't have to reach out to others for genuine relationships, because God was my best friend. I never had to make difficult decisions, only let myself be led by the Spirit to follow God's will. I never had to question the injustice in the world, because God would sort it all out in the end. Maybe.

In conversation with an atheist friend once, we talked about the possible existence of God. The idea of deities exists because it is common among humans to have weird experiences that they're not very good at explaining, he told me. What we perceive as "mind" or "self" is not magic or divine, but the human brain is essentially a machine—one where a bunch of complexity in the proper patterns becomes love or beauty or forgiveness. Does that mean there is no God? Could be. 

I began to notice last year I have a problem with Christmas. Christmas is a struggle as an agnostic brought up to believe Jesus is the reason for the season. If the God I thought I knew doesn't exist, what purpose is there in celebrating the notion that God came near? If I never had need of a sacred savior to protect me from God's wrath, why celebrate his birth? I know there are people who have worked these things out for themselves. There are many Christians who deconstructed their faith and still believe in God, still celebrate Jesus, and that works for them. I wish that worked for me. I wish I could be excited by the idea that there really is a God who really wants to be with me. I can't. I see too much Santa Claus in God—a mythical figure who sees me when I'm sleeping; knows when I'm awake; knows if I've been bad or good, and blesses accordingly. I hear too much hypocrisy in the church—those disciples who are meant to be known for their love, yet are infamous for their self-aggrandizing judgment. I know too much scholarship of biblical history—there was never one original inerrant text, and millennia after its inception, there is still no single agreed upon canon. 

For years, decades now, I've considered the substance of God. What is God? I've looked at the metaphors and wondered, is God really light, and everywhere that light touches, God is? Or perhaps God is truly love, existing in all the love we show to one another as we gather together? Does God exist out there, apart from me, or is God in me and through me and existing as the lifeblood of every creature who lives and moves and has their being? Does God make us, or did we make up God? 

Back when I still called myself Christian, I would have said, "Yes." Yes to all of it. God is everywhere. God is in everything. We are in God and God is in us and God made us in the divine image and ever since, we've been returning the favor. And, perhaps, all of that is true. It might be that what I have lost is not so much my faith as the certainty of my origin story.  In this loss, I'm left with the difficulty of singing songs I used to love about falling on your knees and hearing angel voices ... because whatever else is true or false, I don't believe Jesus was born of a virgin, an angelic birth announcement was delivered to shepherds, and wise guys from the east followed a moving star to drop off gifts of expensive metal, fungicide, and incense. But I do believe in light casting out darkness. I believe in love overwhelming hate. I believe in the power of two or three gathered together. I'm just not quite sure where that leaves me on this holiday.

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