Losing My Religion
I can hear the popular parts of the lyrics to that song, 🎵losing my religion!🎵
It's been playing over and over in my mind as I experience what feels like a peak in my decades of deconstructing and constructing and deconstructing my beliefs. Well, I looked up the song, and it's Losing My Religion by R.E.M., but apparently it's not about religion at all; it's about an obsession and losing one's cool or patience or temper due to the deep reading and rumination involved in obsession. Maybe it still applies in my case, actually. I'm losing my literal religion and my patience and I am done overanalyzing my faith. My two decade search for a true church—and not so much a true God—was like an obsession. And I'm letting it go.
It's been an interesting past year or so.
My dad's funeral in April of 2024 was a beautiful home going that left me feeling light and inspired by how humbly and boldly he lived his deep faith in Jesus (even while not always enjoying his specific church or believing everything that they preached). During my teen years, my dad converted to Mormonism, probably for my mom just like my younger sister and I did, and he also eventually left his alcoholic days behind. After he and my mom left the Mormon church and went to a Pentecostal church, he still missed what he considered to be the reverence and quiet of the Mormon church. In the last decade or so of his life, he read the Bible often, prayed on his knees in the middle of the night, and wore an "I Love Jesus" cap. The day of his funeral, to which he wore a suit and his church usher pin, his pastor spoke and many of his fellow congregants were present. If I'm remembering correctly, my dad was buried with his Bible. His home going was truly blessed. I remember feeling that only a Christian faith could achieve such a light goodbye. And it didn't hurt that my dad died during Holy Week at a hospice named Calvary and there was a solar eclipse hours after he was buried. It all felt so divine!
Less than a month later, I got baptized at a local Baptist church that I had attended for just a few weeks. I felt such a strong call, such a strong faith in Jesus, after my dad's funeral and burial. I have always felt a deep relationship with Jesus, with God, but this felt final. After years and years of going back and forth, this was it. This wasn't my Catholic baptism where I had no clue about the gospel and no memory of the experience because I was a baby. This wasn't my Mormon baptism where I was 13 and could understand the washing away of sins and renewal, but not necessarily the gospel. This was me, as an adult, saying that I believed that God, in love, sent Jesus to live, die, and rise again as the ultimate sacrifice (bye-bye animal sacrifices!) so that all who trust in Him are forgiven, made new, and welcomed into eternal life. And this church of my adult baptism was now my home church. Like my dad, I, too, would have a home church, and a pastor, a church community, and a strong faith.
Pssh! I don't think I lasted more than a couple of months at the church.
And, now, a year after leaving it and after three years of visiting close to 15 churches—let's not even tally the churches I have visited in the two decades since leaving the Mormon church!—I feel like I am finally and literally losing my religion.
This also feels final, like my baptism felt. I tend to feel things in that way, as peaks and finalities and ultimates. And then life continues to happen and, because I'm human, I'm allowed to change my mind. So, I do wonder if this is another one of those experiences. But, maybe not. I’m 41, and I finally feel clear about many things that I believe that aren’t compatible with dogma, religion, or the church communities I once hoped to belong to.
1. Getting to know God and our time on earth is an inner experience.
2. All things are interconnected.
3. I trust my intuition and lived experience over rigid doctrines or clerical hierarchy.
4. All spiritual traditions contain glimpses of truth.
5. The sacred is not confined to specific temples or churches but found in many and also found in the earth, the body, the breath, and everyday life.
6. Beliefs should be open to mystery rather than fixed absolutes.
7. Loving kindness is more important than theological correctness or purity codes.
7. I'm not comfortable with any system that claims to be the only way or the one true church, divides people into “saved” vs “unsaved,” and/or shames differences.
I'm no longer striving for something that continually falls short. I'm not walking away from God, but I am stepping away from manmade expectations of how that connection is "supposed" to look and what I am "supposed" to believe if I identify as this or that. I'm okay with admitting that something no longer fits or is not made for me. I feel like I can’t even honestly call myself a Christian in the modern sense, but I do believe in Jesus and his teachings (and not Paul's teaching after, which is what a bulk of the New Testament is, but that's a deeper conversation for a different day). I’m not sure what all of this makes me, but for once, finally, I don’t care.
I'll never forget what my dad said once when I was young and freshly out of the Mormon church, passionately debating religion and faith with him and my mom, making them feel worried that I would become an atheist. Perhaps having reached a point of exasperation with my pushback or perhaps understanding that life indeed is not and never has been about religion or dogma, my dad said, "Well, you have to believe in something." For the first time ever, I felt like I had permission to not believe conservative, dogmatic religions, so long as I believed in something bigger than myself. And I do.
I remember feeling such freedom in that simple truth in the same way that I feel it now.
Comments
Post a Comment