I feel as if my faith, which itself was hard to come by, is being tested unlike ever before. None of my friends and family are religious, and most are hostile towards religion because of past abuses, intolerance, and current attitudes of discrimination. Mainstream religion has a way of wrapping violence and bigotry and discrimination with a blanket of patriotism and morality that seemingly flies in the face of religion's heart. Comparing the words and actions of Jesus, for example, with that of present day Christians, one has to wonder what the connection even is.
Jesus went out of his way to spend time with the lower classes and those who his parent religion shunned as being sinful and unclean, showing compassion and mercy and an open heart, while constantly taking the religious authorities to task for their hypocrisy. Jesus had nothing but the clothes on his back, and encouraged his disciples to give what they had to the poor and follow his example of ministering to the people of his community regardless of their social status or lifestyle, going so far as to include people his community considered unclean or outright enemies. Jesus listened. Jesus fed. Jesus healed. Jesus sat and ate with those who the religious leaders of the day thought were the most sinful, unclean, and unworthy, going so far as to cross the street in order to avoid them, even if they were in need of help. Jesus and his followers transgressed religious laws out of love and in the service of healing others. Jesus preached a radical form of love and forgiveness while being a harsh critic of people in positions of power who excluded and harmed members of the community, including the occupying forces who inflicted violence onto that community. Yet today's followers seem intent on judging and excluding anyone who falls outside of their rigid orthodoxy.
Today, many seek to exclude women from positions of power and authority, prevent non-cis and non-hetero-normative people from having a family, and force people who are pregnant to give birth even against their will. They cover up church abuses and live in opulence as they scoff at the poor on the streets asking for change, all the while professing faith in the life and teachings of Jesus. And I just don't understand how. What Jesus are they following? What religion are they practicing? Do they not see the harm they are doing, or how this is contrary to everything Jesus said and did?
Looking back, it's interesting and rather kind of amazing that I end up being a follower of Christ. I made my way into the Church through a very long and roundabout way. I started out extremely hostile of everything Christian, and the Catholic Church in particular. It was authoritarian, judgmental, hypocritical. Popes lived in palaces and wore gold and silk while people went hungry. It placed women in subservient positions. It treated gay people and those of different faiths with contempt and often violence. It stifled progress and condemned scientific advances and philosophical innovations. It was nothing but an outdated way of thinking that brainwashed people into accepting it as the sole authority regardless of the harm it did in the name of God.
But then I saw it from a different perspective. I saw its long history and beautiful traditions and rituals. I saw its monastic and contemplative traditions and the deep wisdom they contained. I saw people guided by the example of Jesus to go out and suffer with the poor and marginalized and stand with them against their oppressors. I was welcomed into many of their communities even though I was not Christian and held decidedly heterodox views from Catholic orthodoxy. I discovered people who lived close to the way Jesus did, open and welcoming and willing to bring everyone into the community while being critical of those who actively tried to keep them out because they weren't pure enough. I discovered the works of Thomas Merton and visited a Trappist monastery. I was introduced by providence to the Paulists and a community that truly welcomed all. I made acquaintances with people who accepted me for who and where I was, a Buddhist, a socialist, and an agnostic skeptic and cynic who was nevertheless inexplicably drawn towards God.
And as my experience with and understanding of this faith grew, I found others who took that experience and understanding to the next level, people who I saw as truly understanding the heart of religion and of the life and teachings of Jesus, combining both its deeply contemplative and unitive heart and its active expression of love and compassion in the world, people like Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Paul Knitter, Marcus Borg, Thomas Keating, Richard Rohr, Paul Tillich, and Martin Luther King, Jr. I began to see all the things that I'd previously missed, all the things that drew me consciously and unconsciously towards spirituality and religion despite my reservations and misgivings, all the things that inspired Marx to call religion "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions." And I fell in love with it despite my past antagonisms and the negative effects it's had on the world.
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