When You Can't Find The Words

I've read somewhere that a writer should never stop writing, even when the product is mediocre at best (or perhaps shitty at worst?) So, although I don't really have anything much to write about, here I find myself on the Blogger app at a quarter past eleven on an early spring night. Spotify is on random - so far I've been accompanied by Patty Griffin, Bing Crosby, and The Beach Boys.

Sometimes I look back at where I was 10 years ago and at what I was writing on this blog. There were a lot of posts regarding religion, and just as many about "not giving up on your dreams." Ah yes, I used to be a big dreamer. I also used to be involved in quite a lot more than I currently am. I'm thinking primarily of my time as LGBTQ Rep for Kitchener Centre's NDP, and then there was the It's My Turn movement, whose goal was to destigmatize mental illness. I appeared on local radio and tv and met with mayors and members of provincial and federal parliaments. Those were the days. Maybe you knew me back then, maybe not.

But let's go back to the dreamer. I would say that one of my biggest problems now, 10 years on, isn't so much that I've given up on my dreams so much as it is that I have pretty much no ideas what those dreams are. It's a conundrum for sure. There are shelves full of books about how to pursue your dreams, not so many about figuring out what your dreams actually are. 

I guess one thing I would say to spur myself on a bit is: Get involved, and be part of a community or communities. Don't isolate. Now, this is kinda tricky with the ongoing pandemic, which has changed me more than I like to think. To this end, I took initiative to lead a book club at my new church (we read Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans), and I felt mostly comfortable attending said church in person for the first time on Good Friday. They seem like good people there, and I'll likely get more involved with time as I settle in. 

We weren't meant to be all alone. Again, the pandemic has been a real bitch in that we've had to self-isolate and be cautious about being around anyone. 

But still I wonder, as Rhiannon Giddens beautiful rendition of Forever Young plays through my earbuds, what are my dreams? I don't have answers to that big question tonight, except that I feel a little closer by just asking the question. Self-expression, using your voice however brittle may be a key to solving this quandary. Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga agree with me just now.

Goodnight.

Thoughts on God, Atheism, & My Current Wanderings

Greetings friends, 

Inspired by the blogpost of a dear friend I have gratefully reconnected with, fueled by Beau's Lugtread Lagered Ale, and with the music of Canadian duo Whitehorse in the background, I thought I would attempt writing a blogpost of my own for the first time in a year.

Last night as I waited outside my new church for someone to arrive with keys, it struck me that I've been on quite a religious and spiritual journey. How did I come to call a Mennonite church home, of all places?!

I left Christianity twenty years ago now, opting to throw the baby out with the bathwater as it were, not knowing that there were other ways to be Christian than conservative evangelicalism. As some of you reading this can attest to, I went through several years of being rather angry and bitter towards my past beliefs and some people who still held them. Facebook was a place for me to vent, and in doing so in my thirties in particular, I alienated several friends and even a couple family members. 

I am very grateful to have stumbled upon the local Unitarian congregation some time around 15 years ago. It gave me a community to call home, and it was (is) a place with a social conscience. It looked similar to Christian churches that I had been part of. On Sunday mornings there was music, children's time, offerings, and a sermon. I was privileged to deliver sermons on three occasions (a couple of which can be found on YouTube). It gave me a place to grow and to question and to not have to come up with the "right" answers. Also, most importantly, I met one of my best friends there. I long for the day when he and I can once again share a bottle of red while singing together.

Fast forward to today. Just prior to coming here to write this, I saw this Rich Mullins quote on Facebook:

"I am sure that God is good, that God is real, and that God is love... that life is a gift and an adventure and we all do the best we can. We're all in this together and we're all weirdly alone too. Be thankful. That I guess is about all I can think of to say." (September 1995, two years before the Christian songwriter and artist would tragically die in an auto accident.)

Me with my bent glasses last night. :)

Last night as I stood outside of the church on a cold early spring evening, and then inside at book club (we're reading Rachel Held Evans' last book Wholehearted Faith), I reflected on where I currently am with my religious beliefs. 

I may be the "anti-Mullins" as I write this. I am not sure that God is good, or even that God is real. To be truthful - and in blogposts one always has to be truthful! - I would say that 75% of the time I don't believe that God even exists. 

Why on earth then would I start calling myself a Christian again, as I did two years ago come this May? Why in heaven's name would I find myself attending a Christian church?

You see, it's because I can get behind the teachings of Jesus and how revolutionary and counter-cultural they were and are. What's more, I long for a spiritual path that I can attempt to follow. And attending a church again provides community. This church that I have only attended online since the pandemic began is heavily focused on peace and social justice and reconciliation, actually making a difference in their community and world. Also, they've went through the affirming process and welcome LGBTQ+ folks into the community (something that is essential to me). 

However, talk of God as if its reality is as sure as air or water is still quite foreign to me, almost as if someone is speaking another language when they refer to God Almighty as their best friend. I just see very little evidence especially of an interventionist God, someone who doles out blessings and dishes out trials and tribulations. It baffles me when people are quick to praise God for the former, yet let him off the hook for the latter. Heartache and loneliness and mental as well as physical illnesses tell me that there is no such interventionist deity. What's more, there are countless atheists who exemplify "Christian" values more than said God-believing Christians do.

So, all this to say that I am fairly happy to be in the place where I am spiritually and religiously at the moment. Finding community with other people who want to have a positive impact on the community while following the way of Jesus, in a place where there is a lot of room for doubts, even of the existence of God.

Thanks for following along. I'll try not to wait another year before posting again.

Mark-Andrew

What Day Is It Again? Another Week In Isolation

At the beginning of this very unusual time of COVID-19 isolation and social distancing, I was pretty damn happy with myself. What's this? I'd have to spend time alone? Hell, I can do that! 41 years of being (for the most part) single had prepared me well. Filling my days wouldn't be difficult at all. And for about 2 weeks, maybe 3, I was correct. I was pretty pleased with myself, deftly including a little journaling here, a little reading there. I was perhaps most impressed with how quickly I seemed to pick up a dedicated mindfulness meditation practice. "This shit's not that hard at all!" I thought to myself. Just call me the next Thich Nhat Hanh or Jon Kabat-Zinn. As far as keeping in touch with people, I was on that, too! I quickly switched my counseling appointments to online visits, and I became a self-anointed master of Zoom.

There's just one problem. By week 4, all of it had begun to wear thin. It's true that a rather big part of me is an introvert, but this is starting to get ridiculous. You see, I'm a person who likes being alone - but while around other people! This means taking trips to local cafe's or movie theaters by myself, settling into a crowd, knowing that while I am by myself, I have the comfort of knowing I'm not alone. This means attending a faith community on Sundays, getting my people-y fix during coffee hour, knowing that I can hop on a bus when I've had enough. It also means getting together with my core group of friends and being able to give and receive hugs when needed.

I realize that I don't have a whole lot to boo-hoo about when compared with health workers or others on the front lines, or grocery store workers or Beer Store employees who have to handle the spit-covered cans and bottles that are returned to them, but my reality is still my reality, and I think it's okay to bitch and to sometimes mourn the loss of our normal way of life.

One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, I'll be back to giving my long hugs to friends and family (and watch out, I might not let go!) For now, though, having a routine is quite important, as tedious as it may be to journal/read/meditate/go for walks every day. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I hope that you're managing as best as you can through all of this. I am just a phone or video call away.

mark-andrew

The Stories That We Tell Ourselves

What are the well-worn stories that you've been holding onto,
like a horse that's going nowhere?

What is your story? Perhaps you have many of them to tell. I know that I do. Stories can be wonderful things, like if you're a new Grandpa holding your grandchild on your knee, or if you're out for a beer and you exaggerate the size of the trout you caught up north last weekend.

But what if our stories are getting in the way of our ability to move forward and live our lives?

Some of you who are reading this will know portions, if not large portions of my background; I've written about it many, many times now. My story has been this: I grew up in a dysfunctional household and was emotionally and verbally abused by my father, when I wasn't being neglected. My story continues: Largely as a result of this abuse and neglect, I developed severe depression and anxiety issues and something called complex PTSD. This became my story for, well, pretty much my entire life up until now. I was a mental health advocate several years ago, running a website along with YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages to promote it. I spoke fairly regularly about my depression and anxiety, gaining lots of kudos in the process for being so open.

I also have an old, time-worn story about my experience with what I call religious abuse within a fundamentalist context. I used to write and talk about this almost as much as I would tell my story about living with depression and anxiety.

The sad thing about good stories is that they always have to come to an end, no matter how gripping or captivating the book or magazine article is. We either enjoy them greatly or they're such well-worn traditions that we keep them on our bookshelves and we may or may not pick them up a couple times a year.

However, the good thing about sad stories is that they also can come to an end, no matter how gripping or horrible they are. Now, the last thing that I'm saying here is that we should poo-poo our awful experiences and not take a good long look at them. The road to healing from our nightmarish stories often goes through facing and talking about whatever we've been through. Often this involves a therapist or a trusted friend or perhaps a minister of some kind. But there comes a time when our stories are no longer just stories - they become almost our complete life narrative. "I have dealt with depression, anxiety and other illnesses as well as religious abuse" so easily becomes "I am depressed, anxious, and abused." This can go on, and in my case has gone on for years.

No matter how awful our stories can be, we keep reading and re-reading from the same old book, often because it has become comfortable like our favourite pair of holey jeans or a comfy but tattered sweater. Or perhaps our favourite blankie from when we were children. Another reason that we hold onto our stories and keep repeating them is because we don't know anything else, and we're kinda scared shitless to move forward into the unknown. This is where I currently am. This can also be where a therapist or good friend can come into play.

No matter how comfortable or familiar our stories that we tell ourselves become, the trade-off for holding onto them is that we don't live into what could be another, much grander and more fulfilling story or stories.

"I'm too fat, not talented enough, don't have enough money, I'm not social enough, I don't have what a partner might be looking for," and it goes on and on and on.

We may not know how to pick up another book and tell a whole new story, but it may be high time that we retire the one we've been holding onto for years, if not our whole lives.

Personally, I'm done with my depressed, anxious, abused narrative. It's not easy, it's not flicking a light switch, it doesn't mean tossing my meds in the trash bin, but I think it'll be worth it.

Mark Andrew

Re-Thinking Prayer: Swimming Within God

As I wrote in my last post, I am currently taking another look at God, Jesus, and all things Christianity after many years of not wanting much to do with any of them. Tonight I'm thinking about prayer. What is it? Do I believe in it at all?

Growing up as a fundamentalist Christian, I was taught that God was a literal being in Heaven (although somehow he was also present with me) and that He - always a He - wanted me to pray to Him. For me there were mainly two kinds of prayer. Firstly, there were prayers of thanksgiving and praise, which I was taught God also coveted. These could be prayers that were thankful for a family member getting a new job, or myself receiving a good grade on my latest exam, or a church member receiving healing from a serious physical condition.

Mostly, though, prayer was petitionary in nature - it meant asking God for things. These were the laundry list prayers. Prayers for employment or good grades or healing. They also included prayers pleading God for forgiveness, something I found myself doing often. I was told that of course God was listening to me, although probably 95 per cent or more of my prayers either went unanswered or resulted in God supposedly telling me "No."

Fast forward to today. What does prayer mean, if anything, if I do not believe that God is a literal person in the sky? What does prayer mean if I don't believe there is a being who answers prayers, or who says "No" to them?

Prayer has become very problematic for me. As a child and as a teenager, I found myself on my knees literally hundreds of times, most often asking for things, primarily forgiveness, thinking that I had to be in God's good books. It was as if God was a divine Santa and He kept a naughty and nice list. Only the stakes were much higher, because at the end of life if you found yourself on the naughty list, you would face eternal damnation. At best, if you weren't in God's good graces, he wouldn't answer your prayers or bless you with things. During those years I prayed for my friends and family who were dealing with illness. The vast majority of the time they remained sick. I pleaded with God to take away the personal guilt that I felt after supposedly committing a sin. The vast majority of the time I remained in a pit of overwhelming guilt. I prayed time and time again that God would take me out of the abusive situation that I was living in within my family of origin. God was either deaf or wasn't willing to act on my behalf. All of this puzzled me after reading scriptures that said things like "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matthew 7: 7-8)

So it was that, just as I was "losing my religion" near the end of my time at Bible college, that I also eventually ditched my belief in a person-type God, and in the efficacy of prayer.

This all leaves me wondering what to make of prayer today as I re-examine the faith.

Firstly, if I don't believe that God is a supernatural type person in the sky, a Santa on steroids if you will, who or what do I believe God to be? My personal answer to this is that rather than believing in supernatural theism today, I look at God through the lens of panentheism, or "everything-in-God." It's a term that the late Jesus scholar Marcus Borg was fond of using. Rather than God being a supernatural man in the sky, God is the Ultimate Reality of love which infuses everyone and everything in creation, and in which everything in creation resides. God is the Spirit in which we "live and move and have our being." I think of God in this respect today. I am a fish in a vast ocean of water. God is the water in which I swim, just as I am made primarily of water, or the God-stuff. Another image that I like is that of a swimmer floating on the water, or being carried by God. The following beautiful poem comes to mind:

The Avowal

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.

~ Denise Levertov

Today I tend to believe that, while God is not a literal person, God is still personal, as that great reality in which I live and move and have my being. God is most clearly seen in acts of love.

Because I see God in this way, rather than prayer being a laundry list of petitions, perhaps prayer occurs when I am most attuned with Love. This could be having coffee with a distraught friend, shoveling an elderly neighbour's sidewalk, or visiting a church member in the hospital. Prayer could also mean those meditative times when I stop and slow down and appreciate creation, such as when I walk slowly through the woods and listen to the birds and the wind blowing through the leaves. The apostle Paul's idea of "praying without ceasing" is much more attainable if I view prayer this way. It's not about being on my knees 24/7, it's about being attuned to Love. Also of importance is that if I believe God is within me and not just around me, I must listen to my own inner voice, my own inner promptings, rather than dismissing myself.

What about you? Has prayer meant something to you in the past? Does it currently mean something to you? What does that look like?

Peace to you,

Mark-Andrew

Shift Happens: My Reluctant But Intriguing Second Look At God

Lately I've been feeling the desire to get back to God. Now now now, let me unwrap that statement. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am feeling the desire to explore God, religion, and spirituality once more. Specifically, I am taking another look at the life and meaning of the person Jesus. This may come as a surprise to many. Let me explain for those who don't know me very well.

I grew up in a small southwestern Ontario village of about 1,000 people. Each Sunday morning my family and I would drive the twenty minutes to our small fundamentalist evangelical Christian church in order to attend Sunday school and church service. Then as I moved into my early teens I would attend Youth Bible Study on Wednesday night, as well as a youth group activity night on Fridays. Of key importance when I was growing up, and throughout my time within fundamentalist evangelicalism, was the need to "accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour." On Sunday mornings we were taught that because of the sin of Adam and Eve, each human being since then was tagged with original sin. Without accepting Jesus, they said, we were destined to spend eternity in a damning Hell. Let me say here, looking back at 41 years of age, that the emphasis was on "right belief," as in correct theological beliefs, as well as a heavy emphasis on the afterlife. Occasionally my family would attend special evangelistic rallies, often called crusades. It was at one of these crusades in April of 1986, when I was 7 years old, that I responded to an altar call by the evangelist and repented of my sin (I'm not sure which sin I was in need of repenting of at 7 years of age), and I prayed to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour. Perhaps most clearly from that night I remember a Christian counselor asking me backstage after the event was over what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I responded by saying I wanted to be a fireman. Probably a good idea with all the messages of hell that I was receiving!

During high school I was heavily involved in singing on church worship teams and was also involved in the Christian students club at my high school. I was a rather serious teenager at times. While others were involved in sports or music clubs, I would find myself hunkered down at my local coffee shop with my journal and inevitably a book on Christian theology. It was during this time of my life that the heavy presence of guilt came into play and would wreak havoc on me until I was approximately 21 years old. You see, I was taught and believed that not only did I have to accept the package deal - that I was a sinner who needed to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour - but also that I needed to live a good enough Christian life. This meant, among other things, reading my Bible enough, praying regularly, and evangelizing my non-Christian friends. As a teenage boy, however, I became obsessed with the need for absolute sexual purity. I was taught that not only was sex before marriage a "big sin," but lusting after someone in my mind was also pretty much an abomination. Try telling a 15 year old boy who is beginning to have sexual feelings to basically shut those feelings and thoughts off; it was impossible. Still, I thought something was gravely wrong with me, and that despite having accepted Jesus at age 7, I was still on my way to Hell if I didn't immediately and continually confess my sin to God. So it was that, as young boys do, I would sneak into my parents room when they weren't around and gaze at the beautiful women in the Sears catalogue swimsuit section (as time went on and the internet became all the rage, I would eventually find more tawdry images to view.) And so it became that I would find myself "sinning" and then getting on my knees to ask for forgiveness from God on hundreds if not thousands of occasions. This played into my growing struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder as well, which I might touch on a bit later.

After high school I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, so I took a year off. After that, I moved to a large central Ontario city to attend a small fundamentalist evangelical Bible college. My goal for most of my three years there was to become a missionary - that is, to travel either somewhere within Canada or elsewhere to bring the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ to the unsaved. Meanwhile, the weight of guilt that I had felt in high school only grew, to the point where I had convinced myself that God had kicked me out of his family and I was no longer saved from Hell. This was during my third year of college and I was in disastrous psychological and emotional shape as a result. Somehow, someway, after several weeks of this guilt I decided I couldn't live with the weight of it anymore and I decided that I would jettison the guilt and despair as best as I could, no matter what that meant for me spiritually. It was around the same time that, perhaps for the first time in my life, I allowed myself to begin to doubt the major beliefs or tenets of fundamentalist Christianity. I asked myself several questions: Was Jesus Christ the only way to get in God's good books? Was there really a Hell that God condemned everyone who didn't believe in Jesus to? Were gays and lesbians really sinning by simply loving one another? After much thought and wrestling, my answer to all of these questions was a resounding "No." This was a problem for someone attening a fundamentalist evangelical Bible college, so I told myself I would "take a year off" and think about such things and then return to my program. I never returned.

After leaving the college I remained in the same city and worked as a bartender and server in a hotel, and while I still called myself a Christian in name for a few years, by approximately 2004 or 2005 I jettisoned that word as well. I then entered what I call my teenage rebellion years, only I was in my early to mid twenties now. I didn't want to hear anything about God or Jesus or the Bible, probably due to the amount of guilt that I had experienced within Christianity for my whole life up til then. I began to drink too much as well.

It was after a few years that, while I still didn't want much to do with the Christianity I had grown up with, I began to miss the community aspect that belonging to a church had provided. So it was that one Sunday I made my way into a more liberal, mainline Christian church. The minister and people there were very nice, but the service still, naturally, continued to use a lot of "Jesus-y" language. I knew that this church wasn't for me. The next Sunday I stumbled out of bed and walked the 15 minutes or so to the Unitarian Universalist congregation. I had probably only heard of them through a World (read: false) Religions course at the Bible college. However, within 15 minutes or so of being there, I knew I had found my new religious home. It fascinated me that people of various faiths, or in some cases no faith at all could come together each Sunday and form a caring, loving community. I have called this congregation my religious home from that time til now, occasionally involving myself in classes, singing or speaking in Sunday services or our annual coffeehouse, and briefly on a Social Action committee. I made a slight detour for a couple of years to the local positive-thinking Unity congregation (which differs quite a lot from Unitarian Universalism), but I always came back to the UU congregation.

Over the years I have kept up my interest in the Christian religion, though from an outsiders view. I admittedly have troubled and even alienated certain members of my family and some old friends who remain in the fundamentalist evangelical Christian faith. This has been due to the fact that I have often been highly critical, even angry toward the faith that I grew up with.

All of this brings me to today. Over the last several years I have been made increasingly aware of something called progressive Christianity, which is considerably more liberal than fundamentalist evangelicalism. I hesitate to call progressive Christianity "new" however, because if one digs a little deeper into it, many of its doctrines and ideas point to a way of following Jesus that has been around since the days that Christ walked on earth. There are several elements of progressive Christianity that intrigue and fascinate me, including:

• Within progressive Christianity there is more of an emphasis on a way of life that follows Jesus, rather than "believing the right things about Jesus and God." 
• There doesn't seem to be the strong emphasis on "selling the whole package" of sin and salvation to people who don't believe the same things as fundamentalist Christians do. I think that many progressive Christians would rather that people be attracted by the counter-cultural way they are living their faith, rather than having to "save" anyone. 
• There is a respect for people of other religions or no religion at all. Another group that highly interests me are the Quakers, whose theology asserts that everyone, no matter which faith or no faith, has the light of God within them.
• Following Jesus is about this life, here and now on earth, as opposed to an emphasis on an after-life. Something else that scared me out of my wits growing up was the emphasis on the "end times" and something called the Rapture, an idea which states that at some point in time, God would raise all of his true believers up into the sky with him. Being terrified that I wasn't a true believer because of my sin, I would tiptoe down the hall to my parents bedroom at night and make sure that they were still there and that I hadn't missed being called to Heaven by God. Of what I know, many progressive Christians are content not to know what happens after we die. The emphasis is on living justly and with love, mercy, and kindness now, just for goodness sake. Concentrating on living and loving in this present world rather than focusing on an afterlife is very refreshing for me. Growing up, I was suspicious of this world, even holding an animosity towards this world. As a teenager I listened almost solely to evangelical Christian music. One song by the Christian rock band Petra was simply called "Not Of This World." It stated that we are "aliens and strangers" to this earth. An early album by the Christian singer Larry Norman was titled "Only Visiting This Planet," as if we are merely passing through. Indeed, the emphasis on Heaven was palpable and forefront when I was growing up. On the weekends we would visit my maternal grandparents and watch southern gospel music videos, where the singers would sing about a place where "We'll Never Grow Old." A place where we would be with our loved ones who had died and where we would find out all the answers to our difficult earthly questions. Whether such a place exists is beyond me, and I would argue beyond anyone, but the thought was comforting. 

Currently I am becoming interested again in this progressive, more liberal Christianity. In the last decade or more there have been many authors writing about such a faith. The pioneer may very well be the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, John Shelby Spong, whose books include "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" and "A New Christianity For A New World." Other authors and scholars come to mind, such as the late Marcus Borg and Rachel Held Evans, the Lutheran minister Nadia Bolz Weber, and Quaker author Philip Gulley.

At this point of my life, I am hesitant to think I will ever use the word "Christian" to describe myself again, because the word tends to have certain fundamentalist connotations to it. In some circles the word Christian means that you are suspicious or even condemning of people of other faiths or no faith at all. It can also mean taking certain stands such as "standing up against" homosexuals and transgender people. In this regard, I know of several family members and friends who refuse to use the term Christian to describe themselves. Instead they say that they are a Jesus-follower. I think I could get behind this wording a lot easier than identifying as a Christian again. As I begin this exploration again, I am reading books by the above-mentioned authors, and I have stumbled back into the same liberal, mainline church that I visited back in the mid 2000's. This past Sunday there was no mention of the atonement theology that I grew up with (that it was only by Jesus blood that we are saved from sin). Instead the focus was on the various ministries of the church such as a soup kitchen, a group for people with dementia, and alcoholics anonymous. All things that I'm pretty sure that Jesus himself could give his stamp of approval to. I also plan on revisiting the local Quaker meeting, which holds "unplanned" meetings. This is to say that there is no set pastor of the group, and the entire hour-long service is spent sitting in complete silence, waiting on God's Spirit to speak to those in attendance. There is something innately lovely about such an experience.

I don't believe that Jesus' mission was ever to start a new religion based on himself. I do not believe that Jesus ever intended to die a bloody death simply to appease a God who needed payment for sin. The atonement theory including the blood of Jesus frankly has no place if you don't believe that every human since Adam and Eve are originally sinful or fallen. There is no reconciling to God that needs to happen. Instead I have come to believe that we are originally blessed. The mission of Jesus and the meaning of his life instead have everything to do with a new, radical way of living, including humility, service, forgiveness, and amazing love. It was this way of life and the appeal that it had to so many in Jesus' day that led to his murder - it wasn't our sin.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey and my current exploration. Life is for exploring and evolving and growing, not for making sure we can check off all the "right" boxes of what we theologically believe.

With love,
Mark-Andrew

Is It Possible To Overdose On God?

Good Evening. The music is loud, and I'm tempted to line dance, but I'll refrain.

Sunday School and services on Sunday mornings, Bible studies on Wednesday nights, youth group activities on Friday nights. Christian student clubs at elementary and secondary schools, and three years of Bible college to boot. And that's not counting the thousands of hours spent reading religious books, watching Christian movies, and listening to Christian music, as well as having countless conversations about God/religion/faith

Is it possible to overdose on God? I say that it is. I have a hard time reading posts about God or Christianity when they come across my Facebook feed. They're everywhere, and I get that because many of my FB friends are Christians. There are prayers, prophesies, declarations, and of course the worst ever - the posts that say "share this or you're denying God."

There was a meme or post that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago that simply asked, "What food from your childhood were you forced to eat that you just can't stomach today?" For some it was creamed corn (eww), for others it might be porridge or liver and onions.

You can see where I'm going with this. "Were you forced during your childhood to believe in Jesus/God?" Let me say this. I believe that my parents were doing what they truly thought best for me by having Christianity be such a huge part of my life. It was what they had been taught, and what their parents and grandparents had been taught. However, let's think about this for a moment. When you're faced with a belief system that basically says, "Believe in Jesus/God or else you're going to a place of eternal torment called Hell," doesn't that sound like a forced decision to have to make?

Almost everything was God this, Jesus that when I was growing up. There was no explanation of other faith systems so that I could explore them for myself and decide whether I believed in one of them or not. It was all Jesus all the time. So much so that it's hard for me to stomach these days. And it's too bad, because the person of Jesus sounds like a pretty kick-ass, turning tables, revolutionary kind of guy.

I also believe that, for some - not all - religious belief can be a mental illness, or that mental illness can be exacerbated by religion. For instance, incessant prayer over perceived sins or shortcomings can not only reach the border of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, it can jump over the line. It's called religious scrupulosity.

Common Scrupulosity OCD obsessions include:

Fear of living a life of sin or one that God wouldn’t approve of.
Fear of doing something that doesn’t align with your moral or ethical standards.
Constantly wondering if you’re praying enough or the right way.

Common Scrupulosity Compulsions include:


Excessive prayer.
Saying the same prayer over and over again until a state of certainty has been achieved. You feel as if God would approve of the amount.

Reassurance.
Seeking constant reassurance from God.

Excessive reflection.
Making sure that you haven’t said something God would blasphemous.

Going to church or temple.
Constant visits to places of worship.

Confession.
Excessive confessions to a priest, rabbi, other clergy or even a significant other.

Thoughts of unholiness.
Having natural associations that you think are unholy and offensive to God.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I suffered from religious scrupulosity for about 21 years or so. I already struggled with OCD in other areas of my life, like checking and washing rituals, and this constant God-talk provided me with something else to be obsessed with and utterly consumed with. It's awful to live under the threat of "believe this or else." Some would say that if I had just trusted God's grace that I wouldn't have such problems, but the thing about being a fundamentalist Christian, I found, was that not only were you supposed to say the magic words ("I confess I am a sinner and I accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.") but that you then had to make sure to be a good Christian, whatever that meant. It was my duty to pray regularly, read Scripture daily, and adhere to a list of do's and don't's that was seemingly endless.

Is it possible that religious belief is toxic for some people like myself?

Is it possible to overdose on God?

What do you think?