but what does it all mean?

This thing of being the friend I want to have seems to bearing fruit already, more than I wold have expected. I've been very lonely for longer than I would like to admit, starved for conversation and affection, and for the longest time I let that build into a self-perpetuating cycle: Nobody was talking to me, so I assumed nobody wanted to hear what I had to say, so I stopped offering my opinions, and consequentially was less interested in listening to others. But this exercise here of throwing my words out into the world via pixels and speedy little electrons seems to have broken the cycle for me. I'm more involved in more people's lives than I've been since that first year I worked in Physics, and my mailbox is full of long conversations on many different topics.

Yesterday I got an unusually long email from Jacob that just made my day. Among other things, he asked me (quite gently) where I stood in my "belief in God (...and Christianity)." I haven't answered this question in a long time, and have for the most part managed to steer conversation away any time it approached this topic. But after swallowing my pride and fighting through my fear I managed to give a fairly lucid, entirely honest response and even managed to send it off without editing out any of the really important bits.

Reading back through it today I got to thinking about how rewarding it's been for me to use this space to be honest with the people I trust to be able to handle my honesty. So, as scary as this is for me, I'm going to copy a big chunk of my reply and paste it here, with a bit of [parenthetical commentary] to compensate for the second-person nature of letters. *deep breath* Here goes...


"I'm going to try to answer your question about God and Christianity, but only with a heavy disclaimer. For the last several years I've adopted a policy of simply not talking about these things except with rare individuals, people who I can assume more or less agree with me. It's not that I need to have my own ideas reinforced, but rather that people get very attached to their particular interpretations and explanations of things, and it leads to fights and bitterness. And I hate that, the sick reversal of trying to share your moral compass with someone only to come off as a cold-hearted bigot. I hate seeing others that way almost as much as I hate being seen that way myself, and I considered refusing you outright because that's never been part of our dynamic and I'm loathe to introduce it now. But I reminded myself who I'm talking to and [some goopy friendship affirmation stuff]. It's still very important to me that I have your respect, but I'd rather that be based on openness and honesty than assumptions.

"You're mostly right; 'agnostic' is an accurate way to describe me, a bit more so than 'atheist,' and while I've used both labels when trying to give a quick, pat answer to this question, neither one is really right. They use the presence, absence, or nature of a god-figure as their defining characteristic, and I've come to see that as a bit of a distraction in terms of making moral and ethical decisions on a day-to-day basis. The term I'm most comfortable with is "secular humanist," though it is a bit awkward and carries a subtle connotation of indifference. I'm still looking for a way to answer this question quickly and honestly; recently I tried out "For me, kindness and generosity are the beginning and end of morality." Unfortunately, that's a little glib and probably best suited to being stitched into a throw pillow or something.

"Sometimes I wonder if it's possible to change certain things about the way one is raised, and religion is something I'm starting to think is really, really tough to deprogram. I was raised with the understanding that 'god' is just an idea, something people talk about because it comforts them. That was laced with alot of bitterness coming from my mom, and as a teenager I knew just enough to reject her bitterness. I was lonely and socially awkward, and really wanted someone to reinforce my idea that being kind and generous is inherently worthwhile. I found that in the church, and I tried very, very hard to conform my thoughts and behaviors to the standard I was presented with there. You know more of my successes and failures with that than probably anyone else..."

[but my wider readership doesn't, so: I made a very awkward youth group kid. I read my bible more consistently than most, because I was excited to have some nice black and white answers to the trickier questions, but ultimately I couldn't accept a lot of those answers. I was outspoken and assertive in a way that didn't jive with the southern baptist idea of what makes a "Godly young lady," and I was told I "lacked the joy of the spirit" enough times that I still can't say those words without bitterness. I was very, very depressed, but I was told in a number of different ways that good Christian girls should smile and defer and help with a glad and cheerful heart. I wanted to be like that, and I learned some good social skills by trying to squeeze myself into a role so different from the one I had been raised to, but I was certain that if anyone saw how miserable I really was that I'd be rejected in a minute. I started my habit of hiding my depression at church, but I kept it long after I left, which is a shame.]

"...I had an unspoken inner conflict all that time that ate me up: I never really believed. Not emotionally, not subconsciously, and I felt like such a dirty little hypocrite for it. I tried very, very hard to internalize the idea that there's a consciousness out there, and it's benevolent and powerful beyond my understanding, and I can relate to it through prayer and it will comfort me. But, you see that "it"? Always caused me some trouble. I was told I was supposed to be thinking "He," but I've got a big, aching psychological wound where my idea of a father figure should be, and it just all got tied up together with my fears of abandonment and discomfort with my own gender. How could I possibly believe I was loved unconditionally when I had never seen anything that even attempted to model that? And so I felt like a failure at Christianity, too. I tried to share that with people, reach out, but either I wasn't good enough at asking for help or I was asking the wrong people, because I never did get it. Self hate and shame won out, and I eventually slunk away from the church to seek community and morality elsewhere. I pretty much gave up on having the big, theological questions answered, because they had never mattered all that much to me anyway. Mostly I wanted assurance that I was good, but I was starting to understand that's something you find exactly as often as you go looking for it, and it means only as much as you let it mean.

"Internally, I tend to think of all religions as systems of symbols, ways of interpreting and understanding a chaotic, unkind world. If a set of symbols helps someone to be responsible, kind and happy, who am I to say that they're wrong or foolish? Conversely, if a particular ideology leads someone to be selfish, violent, or cruel, I don't hesitate to decry that, and too often people allow their religion to become an excuse for bitterness and exclusion. I sometimes think I'd like to find another organized system of symbols to make sense of this world, but I'm certain I don't want to get pulled into another social club built around those ideas. It seems to me that when a diverse group of people get together for the express purpose of discussing what is or isn't good, they mostly end up alienating each other. I've had enough of that. I desperately need inclusion, so I do my best to give it, but I'm not going to lie about what I believe anymore.

"And reading back through that, I'm concerned it's too harsh, too exclusive. I'm very tempted to delete it. It's hard to trust people with personal truths, and hard to trust myself to express them in a way that won't alienate the people I care about."

But, again, that's exactly what this space is for.