Catholics: What Century Are You Living In?

-I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful. –Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 4

-Let no one deceive you with shallow arguments. –Ephesisans 5:6

Women can’t be priests? Really? Forgive me for beginning with such an obvious and tired old subject, but really?

Catholics are generally an educated bunch. So why do so many accept such an obviously discriminatory policy? I believe that no Catholic should accept the teachings of their church because it is officially a discriminatory organization. Only years of indoctrination can cause an educated person to overlook this outrageous fact.

I’ve heard some Catholic leaders explain why women can’t be priests. Their reasoning is wildly nonsensical. It should be offensive to anyone with a brain. In fact, I’ll refer to today’s passage from the scripture and encourage readers to take it to heart: “Let no one deceive you with shallow arguments…Learn to judge for yourselves what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:6-10). Each Catholic should judge for himself or herself whether they want to swallow the backwards teachings of a religious group mired in the past, blind to equality and reason. Just google “Why can’t women be priests” and read the insulting games of logic for yourself.

But none of this is actually what church this week was about. It’s just what I thought of as I sat in a crowded, downtown Catholic church waiting for the service to begin. I watched people genuflect before entering the pews. I watched them cross themselves. I listened to songs in Latin. And I began to wonder whether religious people place more value in things just because they have always been done than in their own ability to think.

The priest’s sermon had some really strong points that I agree with, but ultimately led me to ask the same question. What century are they in? He referenced a story from the Gospel of John, in which Jesus heals a blind man. The people asked what the blind man had done to deserve his blindness, and Jesus said nothing—he was blind so that God could reveal his glory by healing him.

OK, so that guy is pretty lucky. Jesus heals him, he can see, dances off down the street, whatever. Everyone’s amazed at God. Excuse me, but what about all the blind saps that Jesus didn’t heal? Why did God make them blind? Couldn’t he just show his power more effectively by miraculously making everyone able to see. No wait—why stop there. He could miraculously make everyone healthy. Oh, and make enough food for everyone to eat. Heck, he could throw in ice cream stands on every street corner in the deserts of Israel. Seems to me there are better ways for God to show his glory.

Ah, but I’m being unfair. The priest wasn’t interested in all these potentialities. He was merely trying to extract from this ancient and probably untrue story a reasonable lesson for today’s listeners. And it is here that I must admit he had some good things to say. He was addressing some real and serious issues that we all think about. Why is there suffering? Why is there illness? How are we to respond to pain? He told a story about a person with Downs Syndrome and how she brought much joy to the lives of people she touched. He suggested that all people have gifts to bring, that all people can make life better for others. He made the beautiful point that we should not measure quality of life by physical ability. The disabled, sick, and elderly are equally human, and we should not as a culture be afraid of physical diminishment. What does it mean to be fully alive?

I’m glad I went to this church and heard this lesson. Indeed, I am better off for hearing and pondering this message.

At the same time, I am deeply angry. He suggests that we should explain away suffering as something that God wants. Suffering as we think of it—well, that’s not actually suffering. If you think that blindness is bad, you’re just not getting it. If you think that a child dying of cancer is bad, well, you’re just missing the point. If you think that someone being born without legs and consequently being forced to beg for pennies next to a trash heap in Nepal is bad, then you’re not realizing God’s true purpose.

If it is for the glory of God that these people suffer, as Jesus suggests in John 9:3, nobody should worship that God. They should reject him.

Thankfully, it is not for the glory of any god that people suffer. If it were, that would be a cosmic cruelty without reason for hope. Rather, suffering has reasons that we can understand and do something about. We might not be able to cure blindness or cancer yet, but perhaps someday. We might not be able to give people legs, but perhaps someday. And until that day, we can organize human civilization in intelligent ways that respect the dignity of all and ease suffering everywhere. Pie in the sky? Unrealistic? Cheesy? Yes, all of the above, but certainly better than worshipping the imaginary being who caused the suffering for his own glorification. We should be beyond that in the 21^st century.

Jesus ends the story of the blind man with this observation: “It is for judgement that I have come into this world—to give sight to the sightless and to make blind those who see…If you were blind you would not be guilty, but because you claim to see, your guilt remains” (John 9:39-41). The Catholic Church would do well to heed Jesus’s words. They claim to see. Jesus himself says that those people who claim to have all the answers are the most ignorant. But wait, churchgoingatheist, wouldn’t that apply to arrogant bloggers like yourself? To anyone? Yes, I suppose it would. Jesus’s words create a paradox, by which nobody can ever speak to anything with authority. Another logical trap, causing people to remain in perpetual ignorance rather than thinking for themselves.

Week 8: Gotta Light?

"God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God"

-The Nicene Creed

“The natural light of reason has as much right as any other kind of knowledge to be called divine.”

 -Spinoza

“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God.” 

-Martin Luther, Works Vol. 12

 

It would probably be tedious for me to list the many ways in which religious belief has interfered with human progress.  So I’ll refrain from an extensive list, and content myself with the a few highlights from religion’s endless battle against intelligent thought: Martin Luther condemned reason, Galileo was accused of heresy, and former congressman Tom Delay blamed the teaching of evolution for the Columbine shootings.  Today, the Religious Right fights against stem cell research that might alleviate real suffering.  Religion is not the light to the world that it claims to be.

But that does not stop religions from making that claim, over and over again, every week.  Everything in today’s service was about light.  Whoever planned the service got a little carried away with the motif.  The prayers talked about light, the scripture readings, the sermon, and the songs, even the children’s lesson.  It was all aimed at stressing upon the parishioners that God/Jesus/religion/they can be the lights in this world of darkness.

The closing hymn at today’s Methodist service said, “Christ is the world’s light, Christ and none other” (lyrics by Fred Pratt Green, d. 2000).  I want to respond with Really?  None other? Obviously Mr. Green doesn’t mean that Jesus is literally the sun.  He means it symbolically.  In fact, everything from today’s service was intended symbolically.  When the children’s minister told them to find the light in themselves, and that light is Jesus, and they could find the light of Jesus in all their friends, even if it is very dim, I think she meant that symbolically. 

Which leads me to my point for this week.  Is it possible to speak with more clarity or exactness about what we mean by “light,” or more broadly, by any of the symbolic terms we kick around when talking about God/Jesus?  What do religious leaders (or lyricists, or ancient texts) mean when they use “light” as a symbol?

Symbols are powerful.  Their power is that of suggestion.  They need not be exact.  If symbols were simple equations, where Symbol A = Actual Thing B, then there would be no need for the symbol.  Rather, symbols bring to mind the deep variety of associations we have with them.  So for example, the most basic symbol of Christianity, the cross, conjures feelings of love, awe, forgiveness, suffering, sacrifice, divinity, salvation, etc.  It does not simplistically represent any one thing, but uses the mind of the viewer to create meaning based on that viewer’s experiences.  For this reason, symbols are dependent upon the viewer.  They carry no meaning outside of the mind of a specific individual.  The cross means nothing to someone who has never heard of Christianity.  To the Romans who crucified Jesus, it symbolized torture and punishment, the absolute power of Roman law.  To many in the Muslim world, it symbolizes the blasphemy, decadence, militarism, and economic power of the West.  These symbols are slippery things.

The church’s use of the word “light” is therefore very powerful, since light is such a basic need for humanity.  The notion that light is good must be very deeply rooted in the human psyche.  It allows us to see clearly; it accompanies warmth; it means safety from predators.  Its symbolic meaning has been extrapolated over time to suggest life, hope, joy, and truth.  For all these reasons, I suspect, fire and candles are used extensively in religious rituals around the world.

But I would suggest that the church’s employment of light as a symbol is a kind of trickery.  Ironically, rather than enlightening and clarifying, its usage obscures truth.  When churches talk of the light over and over, it is a convenient way of avoiding saying anything real or specific.  It feels good to hear about light.  It sounds good to hear about light.  It conjures all those positive associations and leaves it at that, without actually saying anything.

When the children today were told that they have the light of Jesus in them, does that mean they have love and kindness in them?  I think so.  Certainly we can spread love like spreading a flame—there’s plenty to go around. 

But to take it beyond that, to use light as a symbol of the truth of Christianity, is to begin down the slippery slope of meaninglessness.  Why do churches and preachers continually feel the need to remind us that the Bible is truth, that God is truth, that Jesus is “the way, the truth, the life,” that the church is the light of the world?  Most Christians don’t believe the Bible to be literal truth, so the church must mean some kind of spiritual truth, some kind of spiritual light that defies logic.  Sorry folks, but I see all this talk about “light” as sound and fury signifying nothing.  Theology is anti-intellectual, spiritual mumbo-jumbo wrapped up in a beautiful and convincing cloak of symbolism.  Any attempt to remove that cloak of symbolism is met with arguments that are impossible to argue with, like, the truth of God defies logic, or the truth of God is outside of science, or some other empty catchphrase.

To close, allow me to borrow some ideas from atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  There was a time when the influence of the church far outweighed literacy and science.  It was known as the Dark Ages. (Yes, I went there.)  I believe most people recognize that an inquisitive mind is what leads to enlightenment.  Science has been a light to the world, opening doors that the church tries so hard to keep closed.  The inconsistent and bizarre teachings of the Bible pale in comparison to the beauty and grandeur of our natural world.  I have been enlightened by learning about history, chemistry, psychology, math, and astronomy.  I have been enlightened by reading beautiful works of literature.  In our understanding of life, Darwin shone a light—a brilliant beacon of light—that has taken human knowledge to a new plane.  Truly, these are the areas in which light as a symbol makes sense to me.  The church uses the symbol of light only to distract, dissemble, and darken.

Week 6: An Evangelical Christmas Carol

“Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

            -from “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” by Herbert C. Woolston

“Scrooge became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

-from A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Christmas as an atheist is pretty strange.   Seems I can’t go anywhere without nativity scenes and angels reminding me that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”  I now get a small sense of what it must be like to be a Jew or Muslim living in America during Christmastime.  It’s pretty obnoxious.  Still, as an atheist I appreciate the gift-giving, the family time, the traditions, and the spirit of goodwill, all of which can be entirely secular. 

This week’s Churchgoing Atheist destination was an Evangelical church in a blighted urban neighborhood.  I wanted to see something really different from what I’m used to.  The website suggested I could find speaking in tongues—one of my goals for this project—so I went for it.

Well, there was no speaking in tongues, but in most other ways the Evangelicals lived up to my expectations:

• It was packed to overflowing, even in a neighborhood full of boarded up houses.  Clearly, people need hope. 
• There were no Bibles—because why constrain ourselves with, you know, book-learning and such, when you can just feel the spirit?
• The music was energetic and non-traditional.  Electric keyboards and drums, on a stage at the front, accompanied the songs.
• It was multicultural.  Many African Americans, some Spanish speakers, some speaking Asian languages, and many white people as well.  I admire the inclusiveness.
• Everyone seemed ridiculously happy.  If I’m to pursue this Churchgoing Atheist project, this is something I must come to terms with.  How can I defy and criticize institutions that bring such profound joy to people every day?  (Still, it’s a delusion!  Should happiness trump truth?)

I can’t say, however, that my first Evangelical experience was a typical one because the entire service was devoted to an elaborate Christmas play, which was performed by the many children and youth leaders of the church.  I was at first disappointed that the regular service was replaced by this extended children’s lesson, but as it got going, I became increasingly horrified at what I saw.

Horrified is a strong word.  It was a cute play. It was funny.  It was touching. It championed love and kindness.  It gave many little kids a chance to act and sing for a doting audience.  And since this church is so multicultural, it was like a miniature version of “It’s a Small World,” with children of all shades raising voices together in an act of cultural unity that the world doesn’t see enough of. 

Still, horrified. The original script of this play made fun of intellectuals who study the Bible.  It made fun of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by name, because they don’t celebrate Christmas.  But more offensive to me was its message of nonsense.  It featured a girl who “corrected” the belief that the Christmas story begins with the Virgin Mary.  She described how the prophet Isaiah had prophesied the coming of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6).  That prophecy probably had nothing to do with Jesus, but is pretty easy to apply to Jesus retroactively.  Couldn’t Isaiah have told us Jesus’s name?  Oh yeah, he did: “Emmanuel.”  That’s not “Jesus,” but nobody seems to care.  The nonsense got worse. To express how much earlier the Christmas story began, she referred to the famous opening of the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word.  She said that the Christmas story “began in the mind of God.”  How anyone could claim to know the mind of God, I don’t know.  This kind of meaninglessness persisted for some time.

The most memorable part of the play was an abbreviated production of A Christmas Carol.  After this play-within-a-play, the adult actor who played Scrooge had the opportunity to explain to the kids the meaning of the play.  He said that the Holy Spirit had visited Scrooge, and at the end of the play, Scrooge became a good person because he finally found Jesus.

What?  Scrooge found Jesus?  Was I supposed to get that from the ending of A Christmas Carol?

So I thought about this.  It is not outrageous to interpret the story this way.  I could see how Christians might view the spirits that visit Scrooge as the Holy Spirit.  Dickens was a believing Christian, so it’s possible.  And I could see that one might attribute Scrooge’s transformation to a religious conversion of sorts.  Since it takes place at Christmas, perhaps one could make the stretch that he “found Jesus.”  He became a good, charitable person who was filled with the Christmas spirit.  OK. 

But there are some problems with this interpretation.  The first is this: the word Jesus never appears in the book A Christmas Carol.  Not once.  If Dickens intended for us to read Scrooge’s transformation as “finding Jesus,” don’t you think he might have mentioned Jesus?  In order to write a Christmas story without mentioning Jesus, one would have to purposefully try to avoid it.  The absence of any mention of the “savior” is near proof that Dickens was not interested in the religious nature of the holiday.  In fact, “God” is barely mentioned at all—only a handful of times in phrases like “God bless you” and “God knows.”

But perhaps Dickens intended for the message to be implicit?  Doubtful.  Dickens rarely attempted to disguise his message for the reader.  He beats his readers over the head with his social commentary, so that they will make no mistake about the problems Dickens wishes to change.  A Christmas Carol is about kindness, generosity, love, charity, and compassion.  These are virtues that Dickens cherished, and we all should.  Christians have adopted them as “Christian virtues,” but that is an empty phrase.  They are human virtues.  No specific religion—nor even religion in general—has exclusive ownership of these virtues.  Dickens was championing an ethical approach to life (and coupling it with the holiday tradition to sell books), but by omitting Jesus entirely, it seems Dickens was making an attempt to divorce virtuous behavior from Christianity.  Indeed people do not need religion to teach them to be good.

Wait, you ask, wasn’t Dickens a Christian?  I’m no Dickens expert, but I believe he was, as nearly everyone in Victorian England had to be.  But his books are focused on social, political, and moral issues, and there is little sense of any benevolent divinity in them.  Even when he does explicitly refer to religious issues, it is in the context of social justice.  He probably best fits with a religious worldview that understands all religion to have the purpose of social justice.  Many people interpret the Gospels or other religious texts to be valuable primarily because they teach humans how to be good to one another.  For Dickens, salvation was not to be found in heaven, but in the social transformation of this world. 

Consider, for example, the end of Hard Times, when the character with the most Christian virtue, Stephen Blackpool, falls down a mineshaft.  He looks up at the star, and Dickens says it’s like the star that led the wise men to Jesus.  An explicit religious reference.  That star, however, symbolizes no saving Jesus, no merciful God, for Stephen Blackpool dies, and that’s that.  Stephen tells us what that star symbolizes to him: people should be kind to one another.  Stephen’s death illustrates that the heartless capitalist system of Victorian England victimizes good working people, and Dickens uses Stephen’s death to call for compassion and humanity in the industrial world. God is absent from the world of Hard Times, and I believe he is nearly absent from A Christmas Carol as well, or as absent as he can be in a story about Christmas.

I left the Evangelical church and their bizarre Christmas play feeling utterly sorry for those beautiful children.  Their incorrect lesson about Dickens may not matter much in the big picture, but the big picture does matter: churches teach falsehoods.  They present them with confidence and claim that those who don’t buy what they sell are missing something vital.  Churches may have good motives, but those children, all the little children of the world, are being brainwashed.  Why do they need to hear that Jesus loves them?  Why can’t it be enough to say that their parents, family, and friends love them?

 

Week 3: Jesus is Everywhere, Man

“Nowhere man, please listen.”

-The Beatles

“And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.”

-Common phrasing during church communion ceremonies

A few items about my Sunday morning before we get to the church.  I began by lying to my brother.  He was visiting for Thanksgiving, and I have not yet told my friends or family about my little project, so I couldn’t tell him the real reason for my going to church.  He had to leave to drive home, so I knew he wouldn’t want to go along, so I was able to say I’ve been looking around at churches, conveniently leaving out that I was doing so as an atheist researcher-critic-spy.  I’m not exactly “out” as an atheist—not entirely.  When the subject comes up among my co-workers or friends, I’ll express my skepticism, or depending on the company, my outright disbelief.  But the family is a different issue.  Most of them are believing Christians.  I’ll have to confront that down the line.

Second item from Sunday morning: as I was lying to my brother, I was watching Fox News Sunday.  I had the pleasure of listening to former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee talk about health insurance as though he cared about logic and reason.  He will attempt to use logic to fight against the Democratic initiative of providing health care to the poor.  However, he will reject logic if it runs counter to the creation story in Genesis.  I fondly recall the presidential debate in which he said that he didn’t know about evolution because he wasn’t there when God created the heavens and the earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BFEhkIujA). It’s funny and terrifying to me that this kind of thinker is shaping millions of opinions.  But I’m not too worried about another Huckabee presidential run, because a majority of the nation, I trust, realizes it would be a mistake to elect someone who’s an even bigger religious nut than Bush.  Also, coincidentally, at the very time I was watching Huckabee on Fox News, four police officers were being shot in Washington State by a career felon that Huckabee had granted clemency to and released from prison as governor of Arkansas.  This tragedy will stick with him, I suspect.

Third item from Sunday morning: apparently WCMF does “Breakfast with the Beatles” on Sundays, so my stumbling upon the Beatles three weeks in a row is not divine providence.  It’s just a program I was unaware of since only recently have I started doing something on Sunday mornings other than sleep, watch political talk shows, and play video games.  (I did those things for years on Sunday mornings before I became an atheist, so don’t be too quick to blame the atheism for my laziness.)  Today’s show presented me with “Nowhere Man,” and I think the Beatles’ exhortation to “please listen” is apropos for this morning’s trip.

I was hoping to hear some speaking in tongues, frankly.  The website said that the this week’s church (a different Reformed church from last week) has a healing service in the last Sunday of each month, and those who wish can have hands laid upon them for healing.  I wanted to see that in person, because when I see it on TV (Sunday mornings, surfing channels during the commercials) it seems staged and unbelievable.  Unfortunately, nothing remotely like that took place, so I was confused and disappointed.  I intend to seek out and find some faith healers before this project is over.

I was hoping to hear some good Christmas music. I used to genuinely look forward to Advent services; Christmas music really does move the soul.  But for the first Sunday in Advent, this was one lifeless place.  Yes, they sang some hymns and played the organ, but there was no joy.

I was hoping to hear a sermon with a little more substance than last week’s.  So I listened, and determined the truth or falsity of some of the snippets. 

This is what I heard.  “Jesus was one of us.”  True.  This was the theme of the sermon, which the pastor repeated to emphasize Jesus’s humanity. Jesus was indeed human.

I also heard this: “Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit?  Yeah, right.”  My sentiments exactly.  Here, the pastor was conveying the attitudes that must have confronted the young Joseph and Mary when it was discovered the unmarried couple was going to have a child.  He avoided coming right out and saying the virgin birth was true or untrue; I couldn’t tell what he believed about it.  I imagine he wanted it that way, since it is indeed a touchy subject for any liberal-minded religious leader.  Even the Bishop of Oxford admits that it’s not essential for Christians to really believe in the virgin birth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S--X7n3TxI).

I also heard this: To merchants, Christmas is an opportunity to fill their registers.  True.  The pastor took the first Sunday in Advent as an opportunity to remind people of the fact that Jesus is the reason for the season.  I, too, am somewhat turned off by the rampant materialism in our society, and I don’t mind if churches combat this.  Family, fellowship, and a spirit of giving make Christmas a holiday worth keeping.

So there were some parts of the sermon I agreed with.  But…

I also heard this: “Satan said ‘yes’ to death, and God said ‘no’ to death.” False.  I think this was to illustrate that Jesus rose from the dead, but the speaker introduced Satan out of nowhere at the end of a meandering sermon, so I’m really not sure what this was supposed to mean.  Since both are fictional anyway, I’ll move on.

I also heard this: “To many of us, Jesus is a brother and a heartwarming friend.”  Perhaps true in people’s minds, but false in reality.  We should have relationships with real people, find inspiration in learning, and find comfort in truth.

I also heard this: “Jesus is one of us.”  False.  Jesus is nowhere, man.  This was the dramatic climax of the sermon, in which the speaker transitioned from past tense (“was one of us”) to present tense.  His point was to emphasize that Jesus is alive in people’s hearts and minds.  Yes, people may believe in Jesus and that might make him real in a metaphysical way, but it’s wish-thinking, so we should ultimately reject it, even if that belief itself does have some positive results. 

…Or maybe this is true.  Jesus’s molecules may very well be part of us.  Mathematicians have estimated the number of molecules that will be part of a given individual’s body and the likelihood that those atoms might be recycled by the environment and end up as part of us.  I am not a mathematician, and I don’t necessarily trust all the assumptions made in this calculation, but if it’s anywhere in the ball park, then it’s quite likely that we all contain some atoms that once belonged to Jesus.  So I guess Jesus isn’t the nowhere man—more like the everywhere man, though not in the way my church told me when I was little.  And now that I think about it, that bread we eat might actually be Jesus’s body.  (Judge the math for yourself.  It was done for Shakespeare, but the same reasoning would apply to Jesus. http://www.jupiterscientific.org/review/shnecal.html).

Since I was listening so closely, I’ll end with some commentary, not about the substance I heard, but about its presentation.  Why do religious leaders need to speak in such an unnatural way?  OK, I’m fine if they speak slowly.  That’s good practice when speaking publicly.  They want people to really hear and think about their words.  Good.  And I get that they’re impassioned, so emphasizing words and taking dramatic pauses is part of the passion.  There’s an element of entertainment in what they do, and they need to keep people listening. 

But there are aspects of the speech I’ve heard recently that are just obnoxious.  They leave pauses in random places: “This is the (pause) day the Lord (pause) has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad (pause) in it.”  It’s difficult to recreate in text, but anyone who’s been to a church probably knows what I’m talking about.  It’s as though religious speakers need to give additional weight to their words with an affected style of speech.  The quotation at the start of this entry about breaking bread is another example.  The speaker uses the archaic “brake” for the past tense, rather than “broke.”  This is the wording in the King James Bible.  I would not have an issue with this, except that nowhere else in the service did he use a King James translation.  It’s as though the formal sound of the archaic word “brake” somehow adds extra importance to the act.  (Though many people probably thought he was speaking poor English: “He break the bread…”)

I think there’s probably a very logical explanation for the value religious speakers place on an elevated tone. Our brains learn to process language in different tones differently, so a police officer or business executive or salesperson uses a tone suitable for his/her specific purposes.  (Can you imagine if your waiter spoke like your priest?)  Speech about religious material is sacred by nature, and a tone of high reverence has probably always helped to lend the appropriate weight to those words.  I suspect a particular manner of speech has evolved during the thousands of years humans have been telling sacred stories.  The extent to which some speakers take this, however, is ridiculous, such that the manner of speaking obscures rather than enhances the meaning of the words.  It becomes a distraction.  It is a tool by which religious speakers convey that what they say is deep and profound and listeners have been trained to process the tone of voice rather than process the meaning of the words themselves.  Caveat: this is certainly not true for all religious leaders.  I was married by one who gave intelligent, eloquent sermons in speech that was engaging and unpretentious.  But during my first three weeks of the Churchgoing Atheist project, I’ve noticed the affected speech a lot—from the pastors in weeks 2 and 3 and many of the lay people reading prayers or Bible passages.  

Thanks for sticking with me on this entry.  When you really listen, there’s a lot to talk about, and I intend to keep listening.

Week 1: The Uncomfortable Start of a Project

"This is the day the lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

-Common expression to open church services

"Little Darlin', it feels like years since we've been here."

-The Beatles

Waking up on Sunday mornings is pretty alien to me, at least recently. 8:30 seems ungodly early for a weekend. But I am intent upon suffering so for my first trip to church in two years. It would not be church if it didn’t feel like a chore, right? But as I wake up, I get this unusual feeling—I’m looking forward to church. Weird, I know. I begin the drive to church, and it’s a beautiful fall morning. The air is fresh. I see neighbors walking dogs, raking leaves, talking to one another, and they seem happy. The sunlight is coming from a strange direction, lighting the trees into a blaze of orange and yellow. I turn on the radio, and the Beatles are singing “Here Comes the Sun.” The world is conspiring to make me happy about church.

One cannot help being tempted to see God’s hand in this beautiful morning. It’s as though he is thanking me, welcoming me, approving of my decision to attend church again. Or perhaps he just made such a beautiful morning in an attempt to prove his existence to me, an unbeliever.

If there were a God, he would know that I’m attending to church in order to look at it with atheist eyes. He would be offended that I will sit and pretend, sing along, read the prayers, listen to the sermon, and not believe a word of it. But I’m not worried about an imaginary God being offended and striking me down for unbelief. I will pursue my project: I will attend a different church every Sunday and write about it from an atheist’s perspective. Simple as that.

But where to begin? I want to ease into this project—nothing too crazy yet. So I choose a mild and liberal Baptist church near my house, and a church that will probably be similar to the Presbyterian ones I spent so many Sundays at earlier in my life. It will be nice to start with something familiar.

Approaching the church, I begin to worry about the empty parking lot. And where is the front door, anyway? I end up circumnavigating the building looking for a front door, but there are only about 15 cars in the parking lot, and no obvious influx of people. My plan to blend in and observe inconspicuously will not be easy if there are only a few people here. Not finding the front door, and feeling pretty stupid about it, I make my way in through the church office, and find the sanctuary. I must be early.

I'm not early. It's 9:55, and there are still only 10 people in the congregation, and I’m feeling pretty conspicuous, but at this point I’m committed. Five people in the front row. Not wanting to be too rude sitting in the back row, and I take a seat a few rows behind the crowd at the front, thinking I can hide behind them. 9:59. The five in the front row get up and relocate to the choir’s bench, leaving me in the very front of the congregation, right as the music begins. Awesome.

As the service starts, though, I’m oddly relaxed. Who cares if there are 10 blue-hairs wondering about the random guy in the front row? I do a half-turn and get a quick glance at the crowd behind me as the service starts, and I realize I’m attending a dying church. There’s almost nobody here.

It’s a strange mix of emotions I feel. There’s something comfortable, familiar, and almost joyful about being here. I spent so many hours in church growing up that it’s like returning home, or seeing an old friend again after many years. The comfort to be found in church is real. But I’m conflicted because the premise on which it’s all founded is nonsense. I’m angry I spent so many hours praising something that was never there. The people sitting in the rows behind me draw inspiration and guidance from a system that is a lie. So why am I depressed to see so few people here?

But when the pastor speaks, I like him immediately. He’s wearing a bowtie. He begins, “So the hated Yankees have won the world series,” and proceeds into a discussion of sports. Interesting, but it doesn’t seem like a sermon. I look at the bulletin and realize this portion of the service is the children’s lesson, and then it really hits me—there are no children here.

What do I really believe about the church? If I believe there is no god, and I believe religion is an enormous delusion, then should I be happy that there are no children to hear this lesson? Certainly church is not going to disappear anytime soon, if ever, but this one is—that is a near certainty. A church without children is doomed.

Growing up, I never used to listen to the sermon. But this one is good. The pastor touches on one of the best aspects of religious belief: charity. I cannot deny that religion makes people more selfless and compassionate than we are naturally inclined to be. The pastor builds his sermon around the passage from Mark in which a woman pours expensive oil on Jesus, and the bystanders protest that it could have been sold to give money to the poor. The pastor attempts to make sense of this strange action and Jesus’s approval of it. It is a perplexing section, and the pastor weaves it together with stories of charity and transformation from the local Rochester community. He focuses on Foodlink, an organization that provides huge amounts of free food to hungry families all over western New York. He asks the questions: will there always be destitute people? Will it always rain in our lives? Will there always be suffering around us? He answers those questions by saying that there will always be suffering until the kingdom comes and everyone is called back to god again. In the meantime, though, in our lives, god will rain blessings upon us in unexpected ways, as Foodlink does for the Rochester hungry and the woman in the gospel does for Jesus. People can give of their deep passion as expressions of charity, and others can be transformed by that.

A beautiful message, and artfully delivered. I wholeheartedly approve of his message of charity, and I believe the congregation, small though it is, follows through on this message with their actions. But do we need the Bible to inspire this? No. In fact, I do not believe that the gospel passage he analyzes conveys this message of charity. Though it was a passionate sermon, it was based on an illogical interpretation of the passage. If Jesus really believed in charity, he would not have applauded the woman for her kind act of anointment. The bystanders were right; the woman’s action was foolishly wasteful. I’ve been to Foodlink to volunteer*, and they have pallets of food as far as the eye can see, and each day we’d move a different food item. One day I was there, it was bananas. The Foodlink analogy doesn’t work, because the modern day equivalent of the woman’s action would be a Foodlink worker taking a pallet of bananas, turning them into a giant banana milkshake for Jesus, and then pouring it down the drain after he tasted it. Those bananas might be given to Jesus out of her deep passion, it may be a beautiful gesture of appreciation, but it removes food from the destitute who need it. The bystanders were right to protest. As far as I can see, this Bible story doesn’t make any sense in a 21^st-century context, and maybe not in any context. Unfortunately, every Sunday religious leaders must attempt to explain and find relevance in Biblical texts that sometimes defy logic. Jesus was dead wrong here, if we read the story from the perspective of the hungry.

I believe human morality has its basis outside of God and religion. We do not need to play games of logic in order to find moral messages in a biblical text that may contradict what we know to be right. The church's minister, in his message of charity, was right, and Jesus was wrong. But the logical gymnastics are a sad necessity of religious belief, and one that most believers choose to ignore.

As I leave the church, I shake the pastor’s hand and thank him for having me as a guest. I genuinely liked the service, the sermon, and the people. Still, I feel like a liar and a snake, because I’m pretending to be a believer but I’m secretly there to dissect and criticize. Those few people in the congregation will stay to discuss their charity work, and I will go home to type up an arrogant critique and then watch football.

This church is dying, and it does sadden me. Though I am sure belief in god is wrong, I’m surprised that I find myself thinking the world will be slightly worse off if this congregation dissolves. I realize that I should approach this project with a spirit of intellectualism, but also with humility and an open mind. I have much to learn.

*Incidentally, I can’t claim to be a particularly charitable person. Saying I volunteered at Foodlink makes me sound much better than I am. The volunteer work at Foodlink was part of my college fraternity’s charitable work. We figure that a few days of volunteering balances out four years of reckless drunkenness.