Sunday, August 14, 2011

Not Perfect

Sometimes it’s hard to be an atheist here. By here, I guess I mean in this country, but more specifically, I mean in my little town, or in my school I work in, or around my Facebook friends who are so Christian, or around my friends and family who are Christian. Aside from dealing with the idea that atheists are “bad” or “untrustworthy”, it’s more of my conflict that stems from being a people pleaser, knowing I am disappointing people. Some of my friends just think that everyone should be Christian, and some really fear for my soul and mourn the fact that I will be spending eternity in hell. I really hate to disappoint people.

I love the lines in Tim Minchin’s Not Perfect, “This is my brain, and I live in it. It’s made of love and bad song lyrics. It’s tucked away behind my eyes where all my fucked up thoughts can hide, cause god forbid I hurt somebody.” I often have to remind myself to not try to take responsibility for other people’s feelings. My job is to be genuine and to be myself. If that makes someone sad, it’s really not something I should worry about.

I do sometimes worry about it though, especially when I care about the people very much, like a couple of my closest friends or family members. My Grandma has Alzheimer’s and she lives with me and I take care of her. She’s a lifelong Catholic and I think it would break her heart to know I’m not even Christian. Luckily, it’s easy to hide my non-belief from her, and if she hears me say something blasphemous, it’s quickly forgotten.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the nature of “belief” lately, and how that relates to my loved ones. Some people say that belief in anything supernatural is delusional, and therefore akin to mental illness. Tim has said as much, in saying he didn’t Christen his children because he doesn’t want the mentally ill handling them, but this could have been purely a joke (or not), I don’t know. I can’t really accept that religious beliefs are a symptom of mental illness though, when I think, again, of those I love.

I had dinner this week with a high school friend I hadn’t seen in many years and his partner. They are Methodist ministers and are gay. They are lovely, god-believing men who are trying to make a difference within their religion regarding how the church treats homosexuals. I think that is admirable. They didn’t seem to care that my beliefs about god were different than theirs. They just wanted to reconnect with me and learn the joys and sorrows of my life, and I felt the same toward them. There’s no way I could view them as mentally deficient in any way. And at night, when I hear my grandma, in the room next to me, talking out loud to her god, starting with “our Father who art in heaven”, and five minutes later ending with “and please bless Mary Sue and thank you for allowing her to take care of me, day and night”, I feel like I would be the mentally ill one if I thought less of her for her devotion.

Maybe, someday, if I get to talk to Tim Minchin again, instead of being a starstruck fangirl, I’ll actually ask him something of importance, like if has people in his life who are religious. People he loves? People he respects? Can he genuinely care for them while disagreeing with them?

I’m glad that in our church we have such a wide variety of belief systems and we are all respected and treated with worth and dignity. I LOVE the words in our hymn, Here We Have Gathered, "May all who seek here find a kindly word. May all who speak here feel they have been heard." I love coming to this place where I am loved and accepted for who I am, and where I love and respect people who I may disagree with. I try to carry that out of the church doors into the rest of my life as well.

If I added a verse to “Not Perfect”, it would be about “My Church”. Lyrics below.



This is my church, and I live in it.
It’s made of stained glass, and people of different faiths.
The weird thing is we don’t see eye to eye,
But we see heart to heart and that is why
We support each others’ search for meaning.
This is my church, and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect, but it’s mine.

6 comments:

  1. "I’m glad that in our church we have such a wide variety of belief systems and we are all respected and treated with worth and dignity."

    That *may* be true of your local Unitarian Universalist church (or not. . .) but it is most certainly NOT true of the larger Unitarian Universalist religious community. Many God believing people are treated with considerable disrespect, to say nothing of outright contempt, by intolerant and abusive "fundamentalist atheist" Humanists in U*U churches. Even worse, some U*U ministers intolerantly and abusively "preach" that "belief in anything supernatural is delusional, and therefore akin to mental illness" (to borrow your words) and such disrespect, and indeed outright anti-religious intolerance and bigotry, has been condoned by top level UUA leaders for over a decade now. . .

    Your testimony about the God believing people in your life is appreciated but the time is long overdue for the UUA to responsibly acknowledge past and ongoing anti-religious intolerance and bigotry on the part of "less than perfect" U*U clergy, properly apologize to all victims of such abuse, and provide some real and tangible restorative justice to those who have been harmed by it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Robin, it sounds like you are very dissatisfied with your relationship with the UUs. To me, Unitarian Universalism is the antithesis of the "anti-religious intolerance and bigotry" you describe. I have never witnessed anything but support and acceptance of each person's free and responsible search for meaning.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think sometimes atheists/agnostics/humanists have been so ill-treated by people who consider themselves Christian in other areas of their lives that when they find themselves in an accepting place (like a UU church) they feel free to express some pretty strong sentiments about god-believing religions. It can start very young; my kids have been told my primary grade classmates that they are going to hell for their beliefs. If you take hell seriously, as I think most Christians do, that's a pretty awful thing to say even if you think it's true: you're going to be tortured for eternity! Also, the Boy Scouts of America paperwork that parents have to sign for their boys to be in Cub Scouts includes a statement that the way to become a moral person is through a belief in God. As if all non-believers are evil and criminal. So folks who opt out of the usual organized religions are swimming in these kinds of negative assumptions every day, everywhere.

    I also think that sometimes people who are Christian (or belong to some other variety of god-believing religion), when they hear people speak of their negative experiences with self-professed Christians (or other etc.) have a hard time not hearing it as a denigration of themselves and their choices personally. In the grand scheme of things and generally speaking, I think there is much more intolerance of atheists/agnostics/humanists than the other way around.

    I'm not saying that what Robin talks about never happens, but I do think that much of the time it's one of those two situations.

    I don't condone intolerance, but I think we all need to remember the golden rule and remember what difficult or painful places other people may be coming from. I appreciate your remark, Mary, about seeing heart to heart if not eye to eye.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love your lyrics! I think Tim would approve, too :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for you comments, Lisa and Jennifer. Lisa, you provided even more examples of the bias I was trying to describe in which non-believers are sometimes characterized as "less" (whether not fit for Boy Scouts , or not fit for Heaven, or whatever). And yes, maybe we speak harshly about it once we find a place to be heard.

    Jennifer, I'm curious to whether Tim would approve. He "gets freaked out by churches". I've heard him say a lot about being atheist/ humanist, and have heard him say he doesn't care what people believe as long as it doesn't impact others, but I still don't know if "church" in any form is something he likes. Someday maybe I'll ask him if he sees any value in interfaith relations, or non-dogmatic church communities.

    ReplyDelete
  6. :Robin, it sounds like you are very dissatisfied with your relationship with the UUs.

    Correct, and I am by no means alone in that dissatisfaction.

    :To me, Unitarian Universalism is the antithesis of the "anti-religious intolerance and bigotry" you describe.

    In terms of what Unitarian Universalism *claims* to be you are quite right. In terms of how some intolerant and abusive U*Us, including U*U clergy and top level UUA leaders, actually behave you are badly mistaken. I and numerous other people have been subjected to anti-religious intolerance and bigotry of one kind or another in the so-called U*U World. Anti-Christian intolerance seems to be quite common but anti-Pagan intolerance, anti-Muslim intolerance and broader anti-religious intolerance and indeed outright bigotry are found throughout the Unitarian Universalist religious community and generally tolerated by the UUA.

    :I have never witnessed anything but support and acceptance of each person's free and responsible search for meaning.

    Lucky you. I can assure you that your experience is very different from my own experience and the experiences of numerous other people who have not only encountered intolerance and bigotry and other injustices and abuses within The U*U Movement. A free and genuinely *responsible* search for the Truth and meaning of my comments here will prove them to be very truthful.

    ReplyDelete