Zel-kun’s Words

Another chapter that jumps around random points, but it somehow seems appropriate to write this chapter.  Those closest to me don’t really know what my beliefs are, Zai herself has remarked, “I have no idea what (religion) you are.”  So here is a chapter dedicated to the evolution of my beliefs throughout my life.

My earliest encounter with religion that I remember is when I was about eight or nine (1989, 1990).  Before that I was baptized Methodist, but I was an infant, so that barely counts.  I was playing in the backyard (crazy, I know, bear with me) and I saw my neighbor across the fence gardening.  She was an elderly lady with a lush garden of flowers I never seen before.  So I started commenting on the flowers.

We were talking (about what, I could only guess, probably how much work raising a garden like that takes) and she mentioned she was going to head to church.

“Church?” I ask, “What’s that?”  Its true.  At that point in my life, I had never been to church, it wasn’t really part of the Sunday ritual.  We didn’t say grace before meals, nor did we pray before bed.  Religion was an unknown concept to me at that point.

“Its where you go to worship God.”  She replied.  God, I had heard of.  ‘My God’ and ‘God dammit’ were phrases I had heard around the house, and I knew the basics of ‘Good = Heaven’.

Like the curious kid I was, I ask if I can go to church with her, to which she agreed, as long as my parents were okay with it.

As I look back on this event with an adult’s mind, I can only imagine how surreal it must have been.  There’s my mom, come home from a long day at work and cooking up whatever meal, when I, a small child, walk up and ask if I can go to church with our neighbor.

I really don’t remember asking, and I don’t remember what my mom’s reaction was.  But she must have agreed, because there I stood on Sunday morning in the finest clothes I owned, with the shirt tucked in, my hair combed and my fingernails clipped (all things I would never do of my own accord).

Stuart and Connie, my neighbors, were as traditional an elderly couple as you can imagine.  Their home was decorated with antiques, plastic on the furniture, quiet demeanors, and devout churchgoers.  The church they went to was on one of the main roads in Lansing, Illinois, inside a remodled house tucked back from the road a bit.  If it weren’t for the sign in front, you’d never know it was a church.  The service was held in the living room, and Sunday School upstairs.

I was one of a few children there.  The other three being girls.  I can’t remember their names, but the oldest one, about the same age as me, had a mild english accent.  It was fun because we became something of friends.  Sunday School was only half an hour, so we got to play outside while we waited for the main service to be over.  All in all, I would say it was a worthwhile experience.

The Religion: Christian Science.

Those two words don’t normally go together, its almost a paradox to use them.  But in a nutshell, they believe in the power and protection of God above all else, including modern science and medicine.  If you were in danger, if you were sick, God was there.  Medicine was the work of man, and unnacceptable.

I’m sure there are finer nuances to the religion, but this is the knowledge carried over from my childhood.  Along with the typical biblical teachings, I was taught that medicine was bad, and that there was nothing that the power of God could not cure.  It was somewhat ironic, being as I was constantly on medication.  Even while at the church, I had some ritalin in me.

But, as the impressionable child I was, I started taking the teachings to heart.  I questioned my mother everytime she gave me the pill, asking her why I took medicine if God said it was bad.  I’m sure that was more than a mild annoyance.  On the plus side, I also no longer tried to sneak home, hiding from older children who might wish to beat me up.  I felt the power of God would protect me.  Of course, it didn’t, and I still had to defend myself.  But the absence of that fear is important, I feel.  Despite everything, you should live your life.

I think on some level, I still carry that courage with me.

It was only a matter of time before I was no longer allowed to go to that church.  I remember that my mother took my brother and I to a Methodist church a couple times, likely an attempt to give me a taste of our family religion, but I honestly don’t remember a thing.

By the time I was in 8th grade (1995), I was going to church every Sunday, a Methodist church only a few blocks from my mother’s house in Merrillville.  I sat in the congregation, I took communion, I sang the hymns, I prayed every night before bed, and I wore a silver cross around my neck.

Yes, folks, I was religious.

I hope you don’t think less of me.

Then a series of events changed my outlook on life (most between 1996-1997).  Some of these I’ll delve into in another chapter, and there’s one I’ll keep to myself.  People died, people changed, and lifelong family ties were shattered.  In the end, I cast the silver cross aside.

I can remember one of the last times I went to church, and one of the reasons why I stopped going.  I was a sophomore in high school (1997), sitting there on a warm spring morning, when the pastor began talking of recent events, of how another pastor committed the sin of marrying a gay couple.  She went on to say how wrong this was, of how the church should not let such an horrid event repeat.  And I thought to myself, “Why the hell not?  Why is it so wrong?  And why do they see themselves fit to judge others?”

By the time I was a senior (1999), I was a self-described agnostic.  I had stopped praying, stopped looking to the sky for answers, and have not been to church in two years, much to my mother’s disappointment.  It was during this time that I had a discussion with Jeff, still a good friend of mine, about life and the nature of divinity.  Jeff is an atheist, and his views on death in a godless world scared the hell out of me at the time.  More and more I thought of the implausability of religion, and while I couldn’t classify myself as an atheist, I was very close to that.

In my second year of college (2002), I learned about Shinto, which is a Japanese religion.  Being the japophile I was at the time, I ate it up.  There’s deities and mythologies I won’t get into, and many different branches (including Shinto-Christians).  But what piqued my interest was Shinto Animism, which is the belief that ALL life is sacred, that the spirit of divinity is everywhere.

So, for awhile, this is how I labelled myself.  I can’t really say for how long, but maybe a year or two.  I bought a little stone that I carried around engraved with the ‘tree’ symbol, which is commonly worshipped in Shinto. 

This was also the first time I distanced myself from Christianity.  At first, it was semantic, I just wasn’t Christian.  But it didn’t take long for me to hate Christians.  Everytime I saw one, they were preaching to me.  If they found out I wasn’t Christian, they preached harder, and hurled threats of hell at me.

During my work at Wal-Mart, I had been told I was going to hell many times.  Sometimes by co-workers, other times by customers.  And in case you’re wondering why my religion somehow got brought up to a customer, this is how it usually went down:

“I like gospel, but your gospel section isn’t very large,” a customer would say.
“Sorry,” I would reply, not really caring. I was wearing a blue vest and listening to some old lady yammer on about gospel music getting paid six dollars an hour, honestly wasn’t into the whole ‘caring’ scene.
“Do you like gospel?” She would ask.
“Ah… I don’t overly care for it,” I would say, being truthful why attempting to skip past the deadly trap being set up.
“What church do you go to?” She would persist.
“I don’t,” I reply again, knowing that the inevitable is coming.
“You don’t!? Don’t you want to show praise to Jesus?” She demands.
“I’m not Christian.”

And then the fireworks would come.

I guess I began to fall out of it when I began to ask myself if I didn’t believe simply because it was Japanese, or whether I only believed in it because it wasn’t Christianity.

On Christianity:

It took me a long time to stop hating Christians and their holier than thou attitude. I have my good friend Paul to thank for that. I’m pretty sure I mentioned it in a past post, but I’ll say it again so its in this little autobiography. Paul is a devout Christian, and has NEVER, not once, ever preached to me. He has never made me feel like I was somehow beneath him, or destined to go to hell. He is helpful and generous, everything an ideal Christian should be. And again, non-judgmental. Knowing him has let me know that not all Christians are out to preach how much better than me they are.

In the years following that, I picked up a little Bhuddism. I never labelled myself as a Bhuddist, but I loved some of the teachings and took them to heart. For example, the freeing of yourself from want, and the belief that all life deserves the same chance to live.

So where am I now?  Where do my beliefs lie?  Did I go back to being agnostic? Did I got back to Shintoism? Do I worship the Christian God and all His works?

I can say a little of each.

I don’t know whether or not God exists. I like to believe so, there’s a lot of little miracles that we take for granted. I like to believe that a good life follows a good person. I belive in karma, I’ve seen it in action a few times. I believe that there is a bit of spirituality in everything, for better or for worse. I also believe that if Jesus existed, he was a good guy. At worst, he was simply a man who wandered the land preaching peace, acceptance, and understanding to a land that truly needed it, taking his beliefs so far as to die for them. So even at worst, he’s a man worth taking a cue from.

So, I’m not sure what you’d call someone such as me. Can’t say I really belong to any religion, but I’ve always been something of a loner, so perhaps that’s okay. But at the very least, maybe those few who read this and were curious, can get a little bit of insight on the workings of my mind.