Why I Am No Longer A Christian

This post was going to, originally, be, why I am a liberal.

At one time many years ago I thought and would have told you that I was a Christian, and a Faithful person, in my own way. My way of believing was deeply rooted in growing up in a predominantly Catholic family and in a liberal family. My faith was built around a personal relationship and understanding of God and how he worked in my life. This has eroded over many years to the point that I would say that I now run from atheist to agnostic to a kind of deism. But in all of those things I am not a Christian.

Here are a few of the reasons I am not longer a Christian.

The first step on my journey away from faith was coming out. I came out at a Christian college and it isn't like the moment I came out I lost my faith. What happen is a complex mix of losing the refuge of religion and the anger and homophobia that was directed at me. Before I came out I could hide myself in religion and against the homophobia and anger that a community that professed to love me directed at me and those like me. Instead of being embraced and loved by a religion built on love, I was pushed away and demonized by it. It is hard to keep faith in something that consistently turns it back on you and harms you. So I moved away from my faith and stretched too far it broke.

Another thing that affected my faith is science. I studied biology in school and witnessed many people ignore objective truths about the natural world because religion told them it couldn't be. Over the years things like evolution, and climate change.These are observable facts in and about the world, we ignore them and make ourselves ignorant to science at our own peril. Science will always overtake religious explanations for natural phenomenon.

There is something called Occam's razor, when there is two or more competing explanations the simplest or the one with the least assumptions is probably correct. I am a fan of simplicity, the simplest explanation is the best for me. There are two many assumptions with god and I go with the simplest explanation that there is no god.  

There is beauty in Christianity there is no denying this fact. There is the call to justice and helping others that fits very much with my outlook on life. I believe Jesus called people to look outside themselves and to help the other. To look upon the less fortunate with compassion and to offer a hand out and hand up. There is also a very ugly side to Christianity this I find very hard to deal with. There is a strain that offers no compassion for those less fortunate, that equates faith with money and social status, that puts sin before love, that puts the unborn before the living. That believes in their right to their beliefs trumps others rights to their own beliefs. Love is the story the Bible tells, Love and forgiveness is what Jesus offered and much of mainstream American Christianity offers only a cold shoulder to those in need, they care only for keeping what is theirs, they will not defend or support the living while professing that they protect the unborn, or think that capital punishment is ok.

I am not painting all Christians this way but there are a great many vocal Christians and no vocal ones who align themselves this way. Think about this, if you think it is unfair for all Christians to be painted with this brush, speak up. If your reasoning for not helping others is that it is an affront to your religious beliefs then I think you need to re-evaluate what you believe. If you think that you are not obligated to help others, re-read your Bible. If your religion is defined by who isn't a part of it or in opposition to something you are wrong.

If you are sad for the my loss of faith please don't be, I have a rich spiritual life that does not hinge on believing in a god.

Thank you for reading my, probably, incoherent writing on my faith or lack there of.

How Do You Do It?

I don't know. I have no answers. I want them but I don't know where to look or how to find them. I work and get nothing from it other than a paycheck and I don't know how to make that better. I get beat up over and over for a paycheck that doesn't go increase that hasn't increased in a long while. I watch and have watched people around me move onward and upward, and I stick in the same place.

How do I change who I am?
How do I work the system to my advantage?
Where do I get the skills to move on?

I feel like I am in a box, one partly of my creation, one partly out of my control. I honestly don't know how to break the box. I feel like I annoy my family and friends when I talk about it. I know I sound like a broken record, but I have been stuck for a long time. I work over and over, I try to motivate myself in more ways I can tell people. I try to do a good job. Only to feel like I am stuck in mud or walking up a sand dune, with every step I sink down a little. I try to move forward and go nowhere. I want to be less anxious, less apprehensive. I want to feel successful but I don't and I am worried that I will never feel successful. I try to avoid talking about work now, I try to avoid talking or thinking about what I do. I get told that work doesn't define you, which is not really true, we define ourselves and others by what we do.

I get asked why I don't smile or talk more, why aren't you more friendly. Every time I hear, wow, when you smile you actually look nice, or I/they don't think you like them, or why don't you smile/talk more people may like you then. It is a little hurt, each smile challenge comes with a little pain. Pain that I have to prove somehow through a smile that I have worth, that people don't like me that much, that I don't quite ever fit in. As I have another day in which I am criticized for my very being, that the fact that I try to be a good person means nothing. The only thing that has meaning is the last thing that I failed at. I move forward to be pushed back and reminded of my failures. I am supposed to act normal. How do I do that? How do I take criticism that isn't directed at the quality of my work but at the quality of my being?
How do I break the cycle of who I am?
How do I fit it?

Sorry for the rambling I needed to get these feelings out. I am not looking for answers. I need no platitudes. No pep talks. They don't help. I just need to get out how I feel. I feel unsuccessful and hurt by life right now. (the funny thing I am content with Todd, and I take this out on him?)

You Get What You Ask For?

As I watch the President-Elect appoint a cabinet that looks to be very white, very male, and very conservative (which at this point is not actually conservative any more), I think to myself well the next four years are going to be a shit show of protests, demagoguery, and men not understanding the world around them. I immediately think well this is what Trump voters wanted they are getting what they paid for. Except we are all getting what they paid for. We the other voters who I am sorry for all her flaws, all the trappings of elitism, all the issues with her transparency, voted for the better candidate for our country.

I don't actually care why people voted for Trump, you did and that is all that matters. If you are one issue pro-life voters, the angry, the poor, the rural poor, or the religious conservative who feel as if world has moved beyond them, for the most part all of you have voted against your own values. I say I don't care about the reasons for your Trump vote, not in a dismissive manner, not in the way that I don't understand or care to understand why they are angry, afraid, or disgruntled. I say I don't care because it does not matter, this demagogue, hustler, sell out, and flimflam man is now in power and he will use it and is using it to destabilize and further corrupt our government and country.

Let me talk about fear and anger. I am a middle aged gay man who works a pretty shitty menial job and don't actually get paid to my ability or for what I do. I get anger, fear and anxiety. I am afraid one day I won't have a job or prospects for one, I have a college degree, for all the good that it has done me, which has only saddled me with debt. I don't feel safe in my own community. I get anger. I get fear. I don't get projecting that anger on people who have nothing to do with it.

I get being attached to an issue so much it informs your world view, I don't get voting against the interest of the people in your life that you love and support because of that issue. I don't get stating that you will fight for me if it comes to that. What you did in a voting booth, was to undermine me, and many many other people. You wouldn't have to fight for me if you had made a different choice. If people feel like I am judging them or I am being unfair, I am sorry but there is too much at stake and too many people lives in the balance, and you helped to do this. What ever comes in the next 4 to 8 years is on your heads. I rest it squarely upon your shoulders, I need people to fight for others because it is right, not because I am angry. You turned your back on me with your vote why would I think you will come out to protest for me.

This isn't Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union, but we could look like modern Russia, or Turkey, or China, which can be devastating for people of color, LGBTQ, the urban and rural poor, and religious/non-religious minorities. Donald Trump looks and sounds like like Vladimir Putin or Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he will try to do the same things they do. Attack the press and minorities and blame them for our countries problems, attack the freedoms of Muslims, Black and Hispanic peoples, LGBTQ people. In doing this he undermines the freedoms of everyone. 

I AM AN AMERICAN. I AM ABSOLUTELY ENTITLED TO ALL OF THE FREEDOMS AND RIGHTS OF ANY OTHER AMERICAN. 
My government shall not infringe on my rights. 
Your vote has, I repeat, your vote has, endangered this very simple statement. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Leonard Cohen

We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup. 

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

The birds they sang 
at the break of day 
Start again 
I heard them say 
Don't dwell on what 
has passed away 
or what is yet to be. 
Ah the wars they will 
be fought again 
The holy dove 
She will be caught again 
bought and sold 
and bought again 
the dove is never free. 

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in. 

Anthem

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah


Hallelujah

A New Beginning

I have decided to restart a long dormant blog. I am going to give it a go and post at least once a week.

I am going to use my voice to to speak my truth, what ever that may be. Right now my truth is in flux. We have a new president, and that scares the living hell out of me. He has and will say anything to keep the crowd, and he is dangerous to my very right to exist.

I am angry, sad, scared, and hurt by friends and family who do not know or see the ramifications of their actions. I watch as they hide behind their reasons to vote against my interest. I listen, as they do not listen to me. I am told to walk in their shoes, but there is no expectation for them to walk in mine. I will continue to speak, to rail, to rage against, to shout until my voice fails, until they understand. And if you think that I am whining, I am being ridiculous, a baby, you haven't lived my reality. So here it goes...


My first memories are sitting on the beach, alone, the sun warming my back, digging in the sand. I watched my family play around me in the water and on the sand. To this day I love the beach, the feel of the sun, water and sand. It reminds me of the warmth of a family that loved a boy who was always a little awkward, anxious, and sad. I was young then but I knew or felt that I didn't fit in. I sought out the warmth of my family, Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents, who hugged and kissed and made me feel special. I could wrap myself in them and be safe, be secure, not worry.
Move that boy forward 10 years, he is 16 or 17, in high school. That scared little boy is now a young man who hates going to school. He sits in the bathroom every morning and worries about what his day will bring. Who will throw something at him, who will spit anger on him, or how he will be humiliated that day. He takes solace in the sisters that constantly protect him at school, and the few friends that offer him a refuge. He wants out, he is battered and scarred, he wants to run away from all of it. He comes home to his family, parents trying their best to protect him, sisters who love him but he "knows" see him as a burden, and a brother who he looks up to and wishes (and always will wish) he was a little more like. He leaves school and runs, it hurts but he runs. He runs from a family that he isn't sure will accept him.
That young man will try to commit suicide because of those scars from high school, he will blame it on a lost love but it is because he he hasn't accepted who his is. He will go to counseling, he will take pills to stabilize himself. He will break ties with people, he will remake ties, he will fix himself. He now has a core of friends who sometimes infuriate him but, ultimately, love and support him. He will find a refuge build it and hope that it is stable. He will have his ups and downs, he still struggles with depression and anxiety.
He has, 20 years later found someone to love, he has come to the end of a hard fought battle to accept himself. His family is still a refuge, the offer him love and acceptance. His people have won many hard fought battles. He feels secure.
Then there is an election which most of the time doesn't bother him much, he know usually that both people have the best interest of the country at heart. Then the anger and hatred that comes from some of his family and friends, his refuge has become a unsafe and destructive. The person elected threatens to take his and many others security. People tell him that he is safe they love him but they used their vote bring his whole world to a halt. He tries to tell them that they have begun the destruction of his world, this world he has fought his whole adult life to build. His hard fought battle now gets harder, his safety has already been threatened. He has had things thrown at him, been punched, been spit on, been called a fag, faggot, queer, homo, every name they can throw his way. He thought that was in his past...it may now be in his future again.

Peter and the Right Words

"No one who loves you cares about that"

Thank you Peter

listening

Roll Away Your Stone
Mumford and Sons 

Roll away your stone, I'll roll away mine 
Together we can see what we will find 
Don't leave me alone at this time 
For I'm afraid of what I will discover inside


'Cause you told me that I wouldn't find a home 
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal 
And all the while my character it steals


Darkness is a harsh term, don't you think? 
And yet it dominates the things I see


It seems that all my bridges have been burned 
But you say, "That's exactly how this grace thing works" 
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart 
But the welcome I receive with every start


Darkness is a harsh term, don't you think? 
And yet it dominates the things I see
Darkness is a harsh term, don't you think? 
And yet it dominates the things I see


Stars hide your fires, these here are my desires 
And I won't give them up to you this time around 
And so I'll be found with my stake stuck in this ground 
Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul


Hide your fires, these here are my desires 
And I won't give them up to you this time around 
And so I'll be found with my stake stuck in this ground 
Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul


And you, you've gone too far this time 
You have neither reason nor rhyme 
With which to take this soul That is so rightfully mine