Churchianity @ MindSay

Of all the places on earth to meet a best friend, I met Liz in Bible College.  Once when I told someone that I used to go to bible college, she said, "You did!?  Cosi, that seems completely out of character for you!"  I said, "Oh, uh, thanks." (me all articulate-like and whatever)

So, yes, yes, I did give my life to Jesus, and apparently he gave it back.  Didn't want it.  Already had enough cute Irish smartmouths in his collection.

Or maybe on the road to Damascus, I had a blowout, and the car flipped over.

After I tell you the whole story, you can decide what you want to believe.

Anyway... being raised in the cat-lick church, you get brainwashed that it's the only show in town.  They lean heavily on the place were Jesus says, "You are Peter and upon this rock, etc."  When you hear it from your infancy it gets lodged in your soul and it just seems irrefutible.  I was finally able to shake it off when I was a teenager/early twenties, realizing that if Jesus really was trying to set up the crazy hierarchy and institution that we see today, he would have been a little more explicit, a little clearer.  If it was really important, he wouldn't have just thrown it off like that, "Oh, yeah, Petey, I want you to be the pope someday, and after you there'll be another one, and another one..."  Even if Peter was so cosmically important, there's no indication that Jesus wanted some other old guy to take his place.  In fact, Jesus was pretty clear that he was coming back during the lifetime of the people he used to hang around with.  He said, echoing Schwarzenegger, "I'm coming back," and he didn't mean thousands of years later.  So the whole pope business?  Invented later.

Whatever Jesus was up to when he was alive, one thing he was absolutely in no way doing, was setting up a church.  There is nothing in the Bible to show that Jesus wanted any such thing.

Anyway, growing up with constant religious instruction... of course, one of the main ideas to most religions is that everything interesting happened ages ago.  So we'd hear about miracles, healing, raising the dead... all things that would be very convenient to have around.  So, little me raises my hand, asks nuns and priests, "How come there aren't any miracles nowadays?"  Most would say, "The age of miracles is past."  Others would say, "Well, they do happen... there's this guy in Italy..."  But it was of course never here, never where it could do good to anyone you know... nothing to help indicate that there actually is a man with a long beard sitting in the sky, counting the hairs on your head.

So, being a thorough girl, I looked into it, read Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous when I was 12 (because that title was exactly what I was doing!), looked into the strange, the occult... whatever a suburban preteen could possibly find.  My father always said that you could find the answer to anything in the library... and by god, just because the nuns and priests didn't have a clue as to why miracles had stopped, that didn't mean that I couldn't find out.

I started reading Edgar Cayce... it seemed pretty interesting, and read his Story of Jesus.  That led to my reading the Bible.  By this time I was 18, living on my own, had dropped out of college and was working in a hospital.  I liked my life a lot right then.  I didn't have a boyfriend, had a lot of time on my hands, was making good money, and lived in a house with a lot of crazy, good ppl.  Lots of other even nuttier ppl would drop by each night, and there I was reading the Bible.

It suddenly occurred to me that the family of a girl I knew went to "Bible studies".  Without thinking, I called her up and asked if I could come too.  Instead they took to me some evangelical church, and the pastor actually gave a good sermon (now I realize that that is a miracle!), and I ended up going down to the altar to give my life to Jesus.  Each step made sense at the time... I can hardly believe as I'm writing this that it happened to me... I mean, why in the world did I do it?  I know why:  I was looking for answers.  I wanted to know what life was about.  Maybe there was an answer in religion.  I had to do whatever I had to do to find out.  If it meant becoming pope, I would have been the second woman pope.  Luckily, it didn't go that way.

Anyway... that's how I ended up going to Bible College, where I met Liz, who was on a similar seeker-of-truth track to mine.  After we discovered our similarity, we started getting in trouble together, and though I got many frowns and stern talkings-to, she almost got kicked out for a silly reason.

But we didn't get in trouble for what you might think...

I don't go to church. Am not a christian.  But this morning I went with my friend Liz and her husband to see this evangelical nondenominational church, because they use this multi-media system that is related to Liz's husband's business.  Don't worry if that's not clear... it doesn't matter.

I didn't mind going.  The only thing I was dreading was being asked whether I was "saved."  Liz's husband Bob said, "Just say yes," but I felt that was chickening out.  So I tried to come up with a snappy, yet nonoffensive reply, but didn't get anywhere...  In the end, I decided to Just Say No, as Nancy Reagan advised.

But nobody asked me.  It turns out they have this "seeker sensitive" approach, which means that when somebody new drops in, they don't go beyond "hi".  No buttonholing.  I guess the idea is, if visitors feel they can get out, they're more likely to come back.  So nobody popped the question.

In the end, I didn't like it.  It wasn't them, though, it was me.  The whole Jesus/Bible/Praise-The-Lord package just does not go down.  No offense.  It just doesn't register, doesn't click, doesn't speak to me.  It's another culture, one that I see in my rear-view mirror.  I don't know whether any religion has a future.  They all look back, don't they?  Everything cool happened in the past, or is hidden in the pie in the sky (which comes by and by).  The present, the earth, the people we know, don't count in the reckoning.  Church is all about remembering and expecting.

They did have this pretty slick multimedia setup, and as the preacher rambled through his overlong, untrimmed sermon, stuff popped up on the screen.  Pictures, text, even movie clips... I have to admit it was pretty cool, although it didn't turn the crappy presentation into gold.

Oh, also, they had a coffee bar, so you could get donuts, coffee, bagels, etc. and sit there munching and sipping throughout the whole service.  Very civilized.  A great step forward.  I should have gotten a BIG cup of coffee, though, because 45 minutes into the sermon (no lie) I began to yawn.  I couldn't help it.  I didn't let the big guy see me, but I yawned all through the second 45 minutes.  I couldn't help it.  The Lord may love a long boring sermon, and Jesus may have bled and died so that pastors can take their time and work out their sermons on their feet (so to speak), but being an unbeliever (more or less) I just had my industrial-strength attention span put to the test.  And I'm proud to say, it passed.  As boring as that sermon was, I actually listened, I didn't space out.  There wasn't much to it, but I was able to stay conscious for the whole 90 minutes, even after the half hour of "worship."

It turns out, I discovered later, that there are many churches that are trying hard (like this one does) to not suck.  Specifically, they try to get away from the ancient, hidebound, uncomfortable, and useless aspects of church.  It's certainly a good idea, although it's not going to get me back.  I mean, one reason the sermon was so bad was that it was based on the belief or feeling that the Bible is a magic book, and that just talking about it is spiritual in itself. It's an attitude that excuses sloppiness and disorganization.  Things that pass for explanations or exegesis are really a painstaking trips through the underbrush, looking for something that's sitting in plain sight.

Anyway, an interesting trip.  Here I'd thought that the church world was standing still or sliding backward (into the past), but some of them are actually trying to contact planet Earth.