embracing agnosticism

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and wrote something for this blog, but very often I get ideas in my mind that I know will eventually see the light of day on here. This one idea has been floating around in my mind for a while, and I think that I’m ready to put these thoughts out there and see if they resonate with anyone. I’ll be honest, there’s a pit in my stomach about the things I’m about to say. That pit is filled with a bittersweetness, because religion has always played a big role in my life, but has harmed me in ways that break my heart to describe. I am also worried that I have lead some astray, or that I am doing that right now by going against something I’ve always been so loyal to. So, before I get in to anything too crazy, I want to explain something that a dear friend expressed to me the other day: It’s really helpful to view agnosticism as more of a philosophy than a religious ideology. I know that agnosticism is categorized mostly as an idea, and I think this is most fitting for my current circumstance. Over the last few months I have been dipping my toes in to the unknown and have sort of surrendered everything I thought I knew. I wanted a fresh start, and honestly, my ultimate goal through challenging my religion was to learn more about it so I could grow in it. My intentions were never to abandon my faith, but a few factors contributed to this somewhat blank void that I’ve been experiencing in regards to my religious ideals. I’m not going to dive in to every part of my religious/spiritual journey, because I am still confused on a lot and only want to speak on things that I can articulate well. I am so grateful for many of the Christians in my life who have witnessed my various transformations within the faith and have been a consistent source of support, no matter how far I go away from their own held beliefs. That is why this is not going to be an anti-Christianity type of post. I just want to explain what I’ve been thinking lately.

It all kind of started to unfold when I began growing close friendships with people who had been hurt by the church. Looking back, it is so telling of the merciful and loving nature of the friendships I have that I am still able to call these friends my friends even after being so deeply involved in an institution that actively and consistently let them down and rejected them. From these friendships, I began doing outside research, watching interview after interview about people who dedicate their lives to navigating faith in a world where religion can be so corrupt. I’ve heard so many stories of women being minimized and objectified in the Church. I’ve heard so many stories of LGBTQA+ folks being ostracized by a faith supposedly founded in love. I’ve heard so many stories of people having to justify why they still call themselves Christians, even though they don’t particularly stand behind some of the Christian doctrines they were taught. And so I thought, “Okay, there are a few bad apples. A lot of the Bible is taken out of context and distorted in ways that seem harmful, but I’m aware of that, and my purpose must be to bring people closer to God and clarify some of the teachings so that people don’t feel rejected by this thing I have always thought was the way, the truth, and the life”. I think a lot of Christians think this way.

Fast forward, summer of 2020. I converted in to Catholicism. I had spent that past year going through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. I contemplated my faith every single day, and I really thought that the feeling of anxiety within me was the Holy Spirit. I should mention I struggle with OCD. For some, OCD can make things like religion and rules and morality feel very life and death all of the time. Catholicism was perfect for my anxious mind, because I felt like even if I were to fall short of the religion I would still land among a meadow of somewhat acceptable morality. The standard for morality in Catholicism is so high, and so I embraced it wanting to be as close to perfect as I could, because I thought that was what God required to enter Heaven, and that there was mercy when I fell short from perfection even if it was coated with shame. I wanted to be separate from sin. I wanted to escape eternal damnation. Really huge goals. Although any Catholic will tell you that the Catholic Church isn’t perfect, there are parts of it that thrive off of suffering. This was really hard for me to understand going in to it. A lot of the saints celebrated by the Church were martyrs, or punished themselves often for falling short of God. Reconciliation was offered for when you sin, so that you could wipe your conscious clean of anything seemingly shameful or immoral. I loved this. Even if I messed up, I could take real steps to becoming close to perfect again. I could stop being so afraid of Hell and living in sin. Looking back, I wish someone would’ve told me that the goal of our existence isn’t to be perfect, but to be loving. Although many Christians will express this sentiment, my mind doesn’t comprehend the irony of striving for separation from inherently human traits in efforts to reach perfection, while also being so human.

Fast forward some more, that same summer. The Black Lives Matter movement seemed to be resurfacing in the mainstream media. I immediately sprung to action. Researching, educating, advocating, protesting, praying. The night I became Catholic, there were riots going on outside. As a Black and Christian woman, my thoughts throughout the Church service were, “I hope that my community will get the justice they deserve. This outcry isn’t one of violence, it’s one of pain”. It seemed as though the Catholic Church saw it from a different perspective. The priest had us pray for law enforcement that night. Not the protestors, not the Black community. The remarks made about the riots pierced my heart. I felt genuinely disconnected from the Church that first day in it. Why aren’t they acknowledging why people are rioting. Why pray for the thing causing the harm, and not pray for the harmed? The idea of putting personal responsibility on the oppressed to deal with the actions of the oppressor was a pattern I’d always ignored in the Church. When my LGBTQA+ friends expressed this idea to me long ago, I didn’t fully get it. It is one thing to be loyal to your beliefs, but it is another to endure pain and gaslighting in the name of righteousness and be shamed for when you don’t quite fit in. I remember looking through Pope Francis’ Instagram, waiting to see what his response to the rioting would be. I was hoping the leader of the Church would understand. He didn’t. He released a statement basically explaining how racism is bad but violence is never the answer. On the surface, it seems like the most righteous response. With a little critical thinking, one can easily tell that this sentiment was misdirected. How could this Church, with a history of conquering and murdering and force converting, suddenly be so anti-protest in regards to something actually progressive? We reference a book full of tales about wars for righteousness led by God, himself. But a Target being looted was where the Church and its members seemed to draw the line. It was so clear that night. That summer I slowly began feeling the exhaust of supporting something that did not support me.

When I got to college, I came with my rosaries and my prayer books and my Bible. I looked for Bible study groups right away, joined the Catholic group on campus. I was determined not to be one of those failed Catholics who got an education and suddenly became too prideful to embrace the traditions of the Church. I’d heard many priests and Catholic adults say that college was pretty much where Catholicism went to die. I even heard one sermon where a priest said that the things they teach you at university make young people turn away from the Church. I didn’t understand why going to school would make someone abandon their faith, in fact, I looked down upon such a sentiment. I was going to graduate college, find a Catholic man, have Catholic children, and live a Catholic life. Well, you read the title of this post. Prior to going to my university, I went to Catholic school from the ages of 4 to 18. I was almost always surrounded by white conservative Catholics. My university is very different from that. Within the first few weeks I’d encountered so many different kinds of people. Although I still held pretty strong Catholic beliefs, my new friends and schoolmates embraced me with open arms. I received a lot of the “Well, you’re Catholic but not that kind of Catholic”. What people would mean by that is that I was religious but oddly progressive. My personal religious beliefs didn’t always match my political ones, and I didn’t really embrace all of the Catholic doctrines I was supposed to believe. I didn’t really play the Catholic woman role as I was supposed to, and I didn’t believe that men were inherently superior and deserved roles of authority just because they are men. I thought gay people deserved to get married and to have families, and that conversion therapy was immoral. I believed that gender expression is a personal and valuable part of someone’s identity, and exists on a spectrum meaning that a book banking on “man and woman” was inherently exlcusive. I believed that the concept of virginity was used to control women and oversexualize them, and that purity culture is apart of rape culture. I didn't think upholding politically conservative values made someone wiser or more religious, and I thought it was odd that the Church seemed to be home to a group of people who didn’t care about the poor or marginalized if it didn’t benefit them in some way. Essentially, I didn’t think tradition always meant truth. And I still don't. Perhaps my “trouble” is that when I hear people speak from their heart about their experiences, I have a hard time responding by speaking from a book that explicitly ostracizes and shames them. Even when we think we are being loving, sometimes our love is conditional. I was brought up to believe that if there is a God, he loves his creations unconditionally. “Love the sinner, hate the sin”, is the perfect example of conditional love, no matter how you twist it. Who are sinners to hate the part of another of which they directly share? During this time I also began unlearning a lot of what I thought to be true. My idea of “sin” wasn’t like everyone else’s anymore. Some of the things I thought were immoral turned out to just be human nature. I was around people who saw the good in me even when I fell short from my perception of perfection. I stopped wanting to evangelize people, because I didn’t want them to ever feel how I had within the Church.

I stopped viewing God through the lens of a man. When I reference God now as a him (as I’ve done strategically throughout this post), I reflect on why I’ve always accepted that my greatest goal in life is to please a theoretical and metaphorical man, when the men on Earth are the way that they are. I started embracing my humanity for all that it is, and stopped trying to mold it in to something it’s not. I love people because they are branches of the same tree as me. To not love others is to not love myself and to not value creation. I believe that the universe is not separate from me. I embrace that I am the universe experiencing itself and individuality. I want to give the universe a free and loving experience. It is my only purpose, to be. I know it is off putting to my Christian friends to hear, but I’ll say it: While there may be a higher power, I trust that it knows my limitations and doesn’t expect anything but existence from me.

So, this is where I’ve landed. Right now, I surrender that I know nothing. I don’t wish damnation on anyone, and the idea that there is a place of metaphorical burning fire that some accept, where people suffer for eternity, is not logical to me. Life is short, and people are dumb. I no longer place the standard of God on anyone, but only the standard of compassion. I can no longer operate on a foundation of constructs that seek to minimize the beauty that is human nature. The only thing that I know is that I do not know. And aren’t we all in the same boat there?