Losing My Religion

I grew up in the Methodist church, and my family attended in streaks, usually orbiting nearest at the major religious holidays. I loved the Christmas pageants, the Easter egg hunts, the Passion Plays and the candlelight vigils. Sermons, not so much. When my paternal grandfather passed away one autumn, I remember the dark suits, the thin look of the sky. I remember how the congregation spilled out onto the sidewalks and lawn and people spoke in soft voices and lit each others cigarettes. Mothers daubed tissues at scuffed shoes and unruly hair. I felt empty and it stuck.

Sunday afternoons when we didn't attend our own church, I'd watch the church services on television and see the members of the congregations moved to tears, see how they swayed from foot to foot and raise their hands above their heads. When wrestling came on after church, that's when I felt moved. As Jerry Lawler brawled with the Junkyard Dog, I'd leap from the couch to the floor and pin imaginary foes to the canvas. On some level I knew it was fake, but I sensed everyone was in on the joke. With God, there was no knowing wink. I risked more than looking foolish if I didn't believe. What's worse than a body slam gone wrong? Winding up in hell.

The thing is, with hell you had specifics. Fire and brimstone. Pitchforks and a pointed tail. Ask what heaven was like, and you got odd descriptions: the streets were paved with gold, there were no diseases, no sins, no hunger. Everyone played the harp while wearing white robes and they sat at the knee of Jesus. When we had the plays in church and I sat at the knee of Jesus, one of God's little lambs, I squirmed. I fidgeted. I yawned in the face of the Lord. Who went to heaven? Uncle Sy with the faded tattoo and the onion breath. The little bald girl who died in fifth grade. Aunt Tillie who had a thousand marbles she wouldn't let us play with. Heaven sounded like a hospital, a place where nothing could be touched.

"There are no pets in heaven" said the lady with the bunched up hair. "They have no souls," so they don't need to go. Heaven needed a publicist. On television, the news anchor refereed the debate between the pro-pet Christian and the anti-pet Christian. I thought of my Grandmother Ida who rapped the back of my head when I said gosh or golly while watching "The Price is Right." She called black people niggers. She became a Christian because she was once very fat and people laughed at her until she found a home in the church. She made peace with the Lord in her fat heart. Let the people who laughed at her fatness be damned. I decided I believed in God in the same way I believed in trees. It made sense to me, but I kept it to myself.

If someone sent me a copy of the Bible and wanted to publish it, I'd have fallen in love with its chaos, its scope and ambition, its ambiguity, its language. I'd have asked for more clarity. Where are the dinosaurs? Why is there slavery? Why did Abraham have to scare the hell out of Isaac just to prove a point? Did Job really think his new wife somehow made up for the loss of the other? I'd have taken a blue pencil to it and really marked it up. It has been marked up before, but the people who did the editing were like a bunch of crazy uncles.

Now people are sure of the most silly things. Homosexuality is wrong. Abortion is wrong. It's okay to let foreign children starve to death because it is God's will. It's not for us to question what he's up to? His plan is large and it contains multitudes. There's a certainty and arrogance in most believers I find quite alarming. There so sure their singular reading of the Bible is correct, when I can tell from the multitude of faiths it inspires, that the words are open to many interpretations. Their certainty drives a wedge between them and the mysteries of the world. They can't see how their strict and arbitrary clinginess to certain scriptures causes pain to people who mean well. They love Christ with one breath, but in the very next, they show their hollowness, mean-spiritedness, and guile. They hope for technicalities to get them in heaven. For pardons. For do-overs and fine print.

If some of these people get to heaven, will they toss rocks at the stray dogs at the edge of Heaven's fields? Will they tack signs above the water fountains that say "White Only?" Under their robes, will they have secret erections, loaded guns, wooden spoons for the backs of idle hands? When we gather at the knees of Jesus, will he be taking questions?