Growing · Up · Godly

Despite all my goings-on about the downside of faith, and the everlasting mental confusion and trauma it can saddle you with (especially when you get involved in it before you fully understand what it means to get involved), sometimes I miss it. Not faith itself, but the outward display of faith. I'm not sure exactly what it is that I miss, though, when I think about it. Do I miss the goodness? Or do I just miss the illusion of goodness? I'm fairly sure that I think the same way. My mind hasn't changed. But somehow I went from being a paragon of righteousness and unshakeable faith to just another confused kid caught up in the world. I was always the confused kid, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure that everybody saw that. I believed in something, and belief gives you some sort of credibility.

Do I miss the rules? The rules that I never really completely believed in? A part of me does. Not because I felt or feel that they're right, but because they were something to live by. Without them I don't know what to do. "Do good," of course, but what's good anymore? I think I know what good is, but it's hard sometimes to be sure. Before I had a strict list of Rules for Goodness, and if I followed them to the letter it was a one-stop shop straight to the Pearly Gates. Now I'm afraid of dabbling in the Badness enough to push me down into Hell forever. I'm terrified of Hell.

I'm afraid sometimes that by thinking about it instead of just accepting it I'm essentially sending myself to Hell. That by questioning I'm condemning myself, and that ignorance is bliss. That if I just follow the rules like a good little girl I'll make it in no problem, but by thinking about the rules and realizing that I don't believe in them I could be messing up the whole thing. It's irrational, I know, but I can't help it. I've been afraid of Hell since I figured out what it was.

I think in the end that what I miss most is the Belonging. Sure, we're were mixed-up group full of various issues with just about everything, ever, but we were still a group. Now I'm not part of the group anymore, and even if nobody notices I feel like they do. Like they all know that I'm not really Pentecostal anymore, I just go to church to satisfy my parents until I can get up the courage to leave it and find a place that suits my beliefs. I miss feeling, however wrongly, that it was all going to be okay because I went to church four times a week and was smart enough for everybody to be impressed with me. I miss having somebody there to tell me they wished they could be like me. I miss people telling me that I had a gift.

They did tell me that, you know. That I was anointed, that I had a gift. That God had given me something special. Of course, everybody has gifts from God, but people told me that I was going to do great things. Now I'm just another college student trying to make my way through youth without losing myself, and there's really nothing special about that, is there?

There was a time, I think, when I really believed all the hoopla, or at least most of it. There are specific instances that stand out in my mind as times when I really began to question, but I can't be sure of the exact time frame in which my ideology truly shifted. All I know is that even in the times when I really, really thought that I believed in all of it... something about everything I did seemed fake to me. Maybe that's what made it possible for me to eventually break away from it - mentally, anyway.

I'd be praying, right, 'cause that's what you do - you pray and you shout and you dance. I'd be really looking around at everyone and thinking, "yeah, this is great, people's lives are changing." But then I'd think about my own life and what it had all done for me. Was I better person because I prayed and believed, or was I a better person because I was afraid of being less than that? Because I was afraid of what people would say, or what people would think, or how my family and church friends would feel if I didn't play the part?

I prayed, yeah, and I did my fair amount of shouting and dancing, too. Praying I liked and praying felt real, when it was just me and when it wasn't just the repeating of some formulaic feel-good prayer, but the shouting and the dancing part... I think I mostly just did it because I was supposed to. Because if you didn't, you could be sure that some pastor or youth pastor or ambitious churchgoer would come over and "lay hands" on you to infuse you with the great joy of JE-sus; the kind that makes you want to lose all your hairpins and become an instrument of bodily harm to those around you.

In the end, I wasn't any more clear on what it all meant, or what the "plan" was, no matter what I did. Because there's always a plan, you know. They always tell you there's a plan. And you, lucky you, you're part of it. Unfortunately, you'll never actually get to know what the plan is, because "God moves in mysterious ways." Nobody seems to know what they are, and we're all just faking it - whatever we're told we'll do. Faking goodness, faking confidence in our goodness. Going through the motions, the preordained steps, laid down by years and years of fakers before us. And we hope, just hope, that it's the right thing. That it'll get us into Heaven.

Everybody fakes it.

I can distinctly recall one of the moments where I really began to question my faith and the people involved in it. It was at church camp, as so many of these moments were in the twilight years of my attendance, and was in one of the night services. For those of you unaccustomed to camp night services or really, Pentecostals at all, these are some of the rowdiest things you can imagine. It's a bit like a televangelist show, though likely with a lot more good intention and a lot less scam than the stuff you see on local TV on Sunday nights.

The night service pastor was one of the usual stock - loud, energetic, and REA-dy for JE-sus! After a few minutes of Christian cheerleading ("What has Jesus done for you? Has Jesus heeeeeealed you?! Has Jesus freeeeed you?! Are you thankful for your Lord Jesus Christ tonight? I said, are you thankful for your Lord Jesus Christ tonight?? He's the AL-pha and the o-ME-ga! Sing it with the choir tonight!") everyone was whipped up into a suitably zealous froth and the preaching was ready to begin.

After a few unsuccessful attempts to get everyone seated and paying attention (no matter - within but a few short moments we'd all be standing again, then sitting, then standing, then sitting, then standing again - until eventually we gave up, took off our high heels, and stood in our bare feet on the dirty carpet for the remainder of service), there'd be the sound of a thousand Bibles being rifled through and then silence (for once) for the Reading of the Word. Then the festivities really began.

Once the foundations are laid, most preachers go off on a variety of different tangents before eventually circling back around to The Point, though by then most of the congregation has lost any recollection of the Original Thought. In the end, it's really the cheerleading element that gets to people. The most intelligent of sermons are usually only grasped by a few, while the vast majority prefer the kind of I'm-gonna-dance-dance-dance-all-night kind of service that leaves you with a good feeling if not any greater understanding. This was one such service - I couldn't remember what the point of it all was if you asked me at gunpoint (I'd make what I hoped was a convincing guess, of course, but nothing more than that) - and by the end of it it has spiraled downward into some kind of statement against "worldy ways."

Worldly ways, for Pentecostals, are a variety of things. Though, really, we all live in the world, so all our ways are pretty much worldy ways. Right? I don't know. The whole concept is a bit beyond my grasp, I'll admit. In this case, worldy ways were (as they pretty much perpetually are to Pentecostals and the like) "holiness standards" for women. Namely, makeup and dress code. I'm sure they would've mentioned men, but men don't actually have any "holiness standards" that pertain to appearance so the ladies get all the flak.

This guy was barking on about the evils of Jezebel when he produced some makeup and threw it down on the platform with a decisive thump, renouncing Satan and Mary Kay and all those allied with their evil empire. This should've been enough to make me really consider what these people were thinking - the fact that anyone could actually act as if some powder or eyeshadow had evil power over our immortal souls - but it was what happened next that really had me questioning the sanity and mob mentality of my particular religious affiliation.

At least three (if not more) girls bum-rushed the platform and began to stomp on the makeup. And it wasn't just that they were stomping on it - you'd think the Serpent himself had rolled on in to church and they were taking him out by the quickest and most brutal of means. It was embarrassing and appalling and I just wanted to flee the building and hide behind the bushes until the whole thing had blown over and nobody could ever associate Pentecostals with cosmetics-stomping crazies again.

It was one of those moments of bone-deep humiliation that you know immediately that you'll never really forget, despite the fact that you weren't directly involved. Being among people who thought this was perfectly acceptable behavior while I thought it was absolutely ridiculous was one of the first indicators to me that maybe I didn't really belong here after all, despite all my justifications otherwise. If it's difficult not-belonging in general society, it's so much more difficult not-belonging in the group that doesn't belong in the first place. You don't quite fit into either group, so you're the ulimate outcast.

Ever since I can remember, every World History class that I've ever taken has always had the same thing to say about the Middle Ages - that The Church was the cultural center of life. My own life was much like that, only perhaps without the plague and the serfs and the disregard for bathing. I was, in a way, a humble vassal doing my best to please my Lord, in return for which I'd be protected and generally looked out for. Most people wouldn't like to be compared to a servant, but Christians really dig that analogy so I suppose it works well enough.

This wasn't so bad a life to me, at least for awhile. I did what I was told, even the pointless little things I didn't believe in, and those closest to me were happy. At that time, my happiness depended on their happiness. In a way, it still does. I don't have the nerve to admit to them that my beliefs aren't quite the same as theirs are (though "aren't quite" is something of an understatement, really) beyond little things such as appearance and dress code.

It's a vicious cycle, religion, and eventually the peasants rise up and rail at the heavens and rend their cloaks and generally have a bad time of it until things get figured out; and then they return to their humble little lives serving the Lord, or they run for the hills and try to rough it on their own. You'd think - hey, well at least as a servant you get fed, even if it isn't the best of stuff, so why would you go off on your own? Sometimes I wonder about that myself.

It's a difficult thing to get away from, is what I'm trying to say, especially when it was such a central part of your existence for so long. If you've only ever been a serf, it's not as easy as you might think to make it as something else. Though admittedly, the analogy breaks down here, as in medieval times you'd pretty much be stuck as a serf no matter what you did. Or perhaps it doesn't break down at all, and in some little part of you you're always the serf, no matter how far you might travel in the opposite direction.


Hopefully this serves as some kind of introduction. Growing up Godly - the glitz, the glamor, the grief of it all. Get your Jesus freak on and get ready for the ride.