No Hate Like Christian Love
Both my parents were brought up in devote Christian environments, particularly at school – my mother attended a convent school and my father was sent to a catholic boarding school for boys run by priests and monks. This was in the 1940s and 50s, at a time when discipline was favoured over nurturing and students who struggled academically were punished rather than helped. My mother recalled being frequently picked on by the nuns who called her stupid when she made mistakes, and smacked her knuckles with a wooden ruler when she struggled to pay attention.
My father who was orphaned at seven, received far greater abuse from the monks at his school who didn’t recognise or understand that he was autistic and beat him black and blue because he struggled to sit still in class and saw his unruly behaviour as misbehaving and undisciplined. My father didn’t go into detail about what happened to him at that school and I wonder if there was more to it than that. Being that this was at a time when molestation of boys by priests was happening unchecked, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been a victim of this too.
The hypocrisy that their carers and teachers – those who were meant to be setting an example of God’s love and kindness – were their abusers, was what killed any belief or attachment they had to Christianity and as soon as they left school and were able to live independently, they turned their backs on the church and never went back. So, I grew up atheist and my only exposure to Christian beliefs was during compulsory scripture lessons in school. I found the whole concept silly and nonsensical; I couldn’t understand how people could believe the stories in the Bible actually happened and refused to question anything about their faith. I had a friend who was Christian and I would often debate the subject with him, and we agreed to disagree on many points and we’ve continued to do that to this day.
However, that has not always been my experience. I had another group of friends in high school that I was really close with. There was three girls and three guys and we were the nerds of the school. We were very into science and literature, and were members of the science and writing clubs. We had great times together and I remember those times with great fondness. But then towards the end of high school the three guys attended some kind of church camp and they came back completely brainwashed. They went from supporting the big bang and evolution to adamantly believing that the earth was created in six days. Not only that, but suddenly fun was a sin. Not that we had wild alcohol-fueled parties, but now our parties weren’t food, games and laughter, they were bible reading and sermons. One of the guys was my best friend’s boyfriend and he started criticising the way she dressed and how she behaved. He had a birthday party and said we were going to watch a movie. It turned out to be a very graphic video on abortion and how the Bible says it’s a sin. My friend broke up with him soon afterwards. Not long after that she was killed in a car accident and I was disgusted by his behaviour at her funeral. He arrived late, he dressed in casual jeans and a sweater and made awful comments about how she probably wasn’t going to go to heaven. He showed no sadness or loss. It was like he didn’t care at all.
Recently I contacted him about that episode of his life and though he didn’t want to do into details about what pulled him into it, he did say that he believed for two years before he started to pull away and now no longer follows it at all, and is in fact now the complete opposite and is anti-Christianity and anti-religion.
Whatever that church group was, I feel anger and resentment towards it. It ruined my friendship circle and it broke my best friend’s heart. Before her boyfriend went to that camp, he was the best boyfriend she had had, they were a perfect match. After he changed and they broke up she had a string of useless boyfriends who messed her up. She started drinking and hanging out with some college friends which led to her being in the car accident that ended her life. If he hadn’t been ‘saved by Jesus’, I believe she’d still be alive today.
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I moved to New Zealand twenty-five years ago where the church-going population is much smaller than it is in South Africa. The topic of my beliefs hasn’t come up often and when it has, it’s usually been by other ex-South Africans and I’ve been cautious to state my views. But for the most part I’ve been able to live my life believing or not believing what I do without judgement, and most of the people I’ve met have done the same. However, an incident in November of last year is what prompted me to start this blog.
I was having coffee with a small social group I belong to at a local coffee shop when they started talking about their respective churches. I remained respectfully quiet, drinking my coffee and eating my cake. Then one of the women who is not a friend of mine turned to me and asked if I go to church. I replied that I don’t, that my beliefs are not mainstream, hoping that she would drop the subject. When she pushed me, I said that I hold a spiritual rather than a religious view and that to me all religions are just different interpretations of the same divinity, like Vir Das puts it, “I do not believe in religion, because I believe in God”.
She immediately got offended and proclaimed the usual ‘Christ is the only way’ and told me that unless I accept Jesus I will go to hell. I laughed and told her that that is what she believed, and added that I know exactly where I’m going that I will return to the universe – I’ve already seen it in my dreams and in every image of space – and that in fact, I’m looking forward to it. She started getting more flustered and claimed that my experience of the world is inferior, that the world is more beautiful when you have Jesus in your heart. I countered that my life is already incredibly beautiful: I love that I will pause to listen to a bird sing while walking in the middle of a city street, that I can see God in the beautiful complexity of a flower, I feel beauty in kindness and compassion, beautiful music can move me to tears. She started to lose her cool and exclaimed that I would never have a spiritual experience then. I laughed again and recounted the many spiritual experiences I’ve had, including the one that even helped me save someone’s life. She was so incredulous and fuming that eventually my friends cut her off and ushered me away saying it was time to leave. They apologised for her offensive behaviour and bullying of me, at which point I burst into tears.
Perhaps it was because I was bullied as a child that she triggered me. I was called names, laughed at, physically assaulted every single day of my school life because I was quiet, different. Back then I lacked the confidence to fight back, but now I will stand my ground.
Unfortunately, some of the worst bullies are those who have a bible clutched in one hand. They say their behaviour is out of love and concern to share the ‘good news’, yet somehow seem incapable of sharing that ‘good news’ without being judgemental, critical, patronising and often downright abusive.
When my father was dying of leukaemia we were inundated with emails, some full sermons urging him to repent and accept Christ, from family members we hadn’t heard from for some time. One aunt overseas even managed to find a local chapter of her church and organised for a priest to visit my father who came knocking of my parents’ door without invitation. After he passed – crickets. No one cared anymore.
I found it all incredibly offensive, disrespectful and insulting to my father. They were all such hypocrites! Where was the concern and love for my father while he was alive? His family showed more interested in 'saving his soul' than they ever did through all the years he was abused at school by the very priests meant to 'save him'. It sickens me and I will never forgive any of them or the church they represent for their despicable behavior.
I had a lot of pent-up anger and pain, which the woman at the café triggered and I wasn’t going to just sit there and be polite. If she was going to attack my beliefs then she needed to be prepared for what she got in return. That my friends felt they had to apologise for her behaviour shows how nasty she was being. As the non-Christian in the group, I feared they might take her side, but instead they took mine and said that they were surprised to hear my beliefs because I was ‘more Christian’ than that woman and most people they know.
It took me several weeks to put the encounter out of my mind, and then in January of this year I had a heart attack and realised I needed to get my affairs in order if anything should happen to me since I don’t have an immediate next of kin. After I spoke to my half-brother about this, he then asked if I was ‘right with god'. Again, when I said my beliefs are non-religious he started with the evangelising and it quickly escalated to arguing as I defended my position. However, once he realised that I actually do know what I’m talking about he backed down and we have agreed to disagree.
It is this attitude, that if you’re not religious you must be simply uninformed, which particularly annoys me. Even those Christians I consider friends and who respect my beliefs continue to subtly press the issue by saying things like, ‘I hope you keep an open mind’, ‘you might change your mind in the future’, ‘I know you don’t believe, but I’ll pray for you all the same’ etc.
It’s like they thing that if you don’t belong to a specific religion then you must somehow be undecided, unsure of your own mind or feeble-minded. It’s patronising, disrespectful and offensive. Yet, the minute one retaliates with questions and criticisms about their faith they are quick to cry persecution.
My half-brother and I have smoothed things over and he actually encouraged me to share my insights about religion, spirituality and consciousness in a book, which is the ultimate aim of this blog.
Following our discussions I joined a Christian vs Atheists debate group on Facebook, in a bid to better understand the gift of salvation through Jesus, which is a concept I struggled to understand and honestly still makes no logical sense to me.
I had only been in the group for a few weeks before I had to pull back. The avalanche of vitriol and insults from the Christian side every time I asked a question or raised a point they struggled to explain, was overwhelming. It literally made me sick and caused my stress-related eczema to flare up. I lashed out myself with some sarcastic comments for which I’m not particularly proud, and the fact that being in this group, in a search for what it is to be Christian, brought out my ugly side, says a lot. If I was ever going to be persuaded to convert to Christianity the answers and behaviour of Christians in the group should have done it. Instead, I'm more resolutely anti-Christian than I have ever been and more convinced than ever that religion has no place in the modern world.
