 ©1999-1999 ICFTP What're you, kidding? |
April 4
"Free at last, they took your life. They could not take your pride."
-- YOU, too, know
"Easter-like Sunday mornin'. . ."
-- The Commodores
"Oh, Jesus, please forgive me for the things I'm about to say."
-- Concrete Blonde
Reflections of a Front-Pew Hypocrite
Have you ever done something stupid for a man? Uh-huh, that's what I thought. Who hasn't, right? But what I did, and its consequences, surely changed the course of my life. You see, it was back in 1993, and I had just met the man I was eventually to marry; and for whom I was to join THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CHURCH!
I remember very well the first time I walked in and sat down in the front pew. I had never been to a Christian service before and didn't know what to expect. There was, I found, very little excitement. (Once when a regular shouted out a good ole hearty AMEN! she was so embarrassed by the shocked and unapproving silence that she didn't come back for months). I remember thinking how hollow the preacher sounded when he dropped to one knee in prayer. The sermon was no better. I heard very little in my two years in the church that actually taught anything of value. Most of the sermons were on "stewardship," instead of being about anything potentially improving, like how to live with Christ-love in your heart in the face of the ugliness and evil that all too often confront us as we go through our daily lives. The collection and the invitational were strange and new. It was also extremely strange to "worship" with an all-white congregation.
My boyfriend was the church piano player, and so I sat in the front row to be near him. I didn't know any of the hymns and didn't particularly want to sing anyway, so I thought that no one would notice that my mouth was shut if I was in front of all of them. Those hopes were dashed as after weeks of my silence forty choir members began to comment to my boyfriend about my peculiarity. (You would think that I had refused to return the "Heil Hitler" or something).
ANYhoo, between brief sexual encounters, my boyfriend kept trying to "bring me to Christ." I was surely ripe for it, since one very kind street evangelist told me once that "I had been ordained before the foundation of the world to do the work of the Lord," and that my name (Christy) was His special mark upon me. I just didn't realize it yet.
What was ironic about my boyfriend's proselytizing was that I had begun to feel (before I met him) that I was finding myself. I didn't feel particularly lost, and yet all of those good-intentioned old people in the church kept telling me that I was, indeed, lost. With these strangers, I just listened politely and tried not to yawn. With my boyfriend, I countered his arguments with those from My Life With the KillJoy Cult, even though I had abandoned those beliefs two years earlier. (I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness).
I had absolutely no intention of ever joining the church, but as the months went by and "my heart refused to be moved," I started coming under heavy pressure from my boyfriend, his mother and his church to just give in. I remember a particularly strange conversation with his mother in which I told her that I didn't believe in their God, that, in fact, I wasn't sure that I believed in any god at all. She looked at me with strangely glowing blue eyes and said, "That doesn't matter. Belief comes after. Join."
So I did.
As I got to know the people in that church, I started to feel really bad for deceiving them. They were all extremely kind to me, although if they had known that my boyfriend and I had sex in their church, they might not have been so nice. They were, in all, a pretty ordinary group of Southern Baptists. A few seemed to be trying to live what they "believed," some, like me, led a double life, and the rest went for social reasons, or out of habit.
There was one saint there, though. I don't mean that she was peculiarly pious, or that she spent her life knitting socks for the heathen. I seemed to be the only one drawn to her, instinctively recognizing in her the vibrant spirituality that was so lacking in the body at large. The woman quietly pulsed power and calm and an assurance so deep as to be mesmerizing. She just glowed, like paintings of Jesus, like the Dali Lama. She was the best argument for humans having an immortal soul that I've ever met. When I learned some of what she had been through in her life, I loved her with an almost reverential awe. You see, she was a native of some little corner of Europe that was conquered by the Nazis.
When she was very young before the War, she met her husband, a handsome young clerk who, no doubt, counted himself extremely lucky to win her, since she must have been a beauty. They were very deeply in love. They were married and had two children, and then he caught the attention of the Gestapo. From what she said, I got the distinct impression that he was doing some sort of underground work against the regime, for when they came for him, they interrogated him for hours, tortured him and killed him before her eyes, leaving the body lying in the floor as they left. Whether that was all they did, she didn't say. I learned this when she explained why she didn't come to my wedding. She was still so in love with her husband that she couldn't go to weddings without missing him. I said to her that she must have seen the worst that humans are capable of in her time in Nazi Europe. She said, "But I have also seen the best, and that's why they couldn't break me."
I haven't seen any of those people in a long time. Predictably, my marriage collapsed, in large part because I tired of toning myself down and wearing roles that were two sizes too small, when my husband gave me so little in return. It was wrong of me to lie about what I believed and who I am. I will never do it again, at least not for a man (a-MEN! sistuh!).
My ex's belief in Christianity evaporated, from around the time he got me to join the church (Christy-anity). The last time that I talked to him, he was miserable. I feel sad that I in any way contributed to the collapse of his belief when he had so little to fall back on. I sometimes wonder if he will ever be happy. He couldn't do as my saint had done and look at life square in the face and pronounce it worth living, despite all of the pain and indignity and confusion.
But it is.
While we're on the subject of religion, check out The Favor, the Watch and the Very Big Fish. It stars Bob Hoskins as a religious artist who ends up doing a strange favor for a sick friend with even stranger consequences. It co-stars the strangely sexy Jeff Goldblum in the unforgettable role of a mentally disturbed ex-con piano player hired to portray Jesus. Then the fun begins.
That's all folks. Let me hear from you.