Born secular
My green St. Christopher medal went missing for a little while today. I was boiling oats for my breakfast when I heard a faint metallic clink on our concrete floor, but I didn’t think anything of it. Later I felt for it, as I sometimes do absentmindedly, realized it wasn’t there, and immediately set about looking for it. I was somewhat surprised at my reaction. My gut feeling was that I had to find this medal, that I couldn’t go anywhere until it was located and back on the chain around my neck, that losing it was somehow a bad omen. But why? I haven’t seriously believed in any religious being for many years now. Although it’s only been within the last eight that I’ve admitted to myself and others that I don’t believe in God, I have never truly felt connected to a higher power in the universe. I feel strongly about many things, I have a pretty strict moral code (I’m a feminist vegan social worker, of course, and I always say “yes ma’am”), I have no plans to cover up the religious symbol tattooed on my wrist, and many of my closest friends are Christians. But I have never experienced the kind of spiritual sentiment that most people describe when they “have faith”.
I was raised in a very fundamentalist, evangelical Christian household in a region of the country where religion—specifically, Christianity—colors everyday life, from the benign (billboards along the interstate that say “JESUS”—nothing, else, just “JESUS”) to the extreme (reproductive rights are routinely squelched in the name of “JESUS”). A lot of people who were raised in similarly strict, black-and-white homes tend toward the extremes, growing up towing the party line or becoming a Vigorous Anti-Theist With Duck Fat. I don’t have a quarrel with religion. In fact, I think it’s been an important part of the human experience throughout history, and to disregard or dismiss its impact on people’s lives, as a lot of academics tend to do from time to time, is naïve and short-sighted. I admire my friends who have faith but can see the ways that religion is used to oppress people and work against such practices. I know and have worked with a lot of people for whom faith in a creator keeps them sober, for example. My parents’ faith is very important to them, and while I would argue that family ties are more important than religious ones, there are many who would disagree with me. Their faith is deep and I can respect that. My mother gets up at five every morning, as she has ever since I was in diapers, to read her Bible and pray. Her connection to this spiritual realm is very, very real.
Obviously, it was important for my parents to pass along the connection to this spiritual realm to my siblings and me. Yet for some reason that I have never been able to put my finger on, it didn’t stick with me. From an early age I was somewhat frightened by the notion of God, of “eternal life”, and Armageddon, despite the fact that Christians supposedly have nothing to worry about. I even asked my dad once if there was a third option, because I certainly didn’t want to go to Hell, but Heaven didn’t sound so great either. “Can’t I just stay on earth?” I remember asking. My dad told me that earth as we knew it would be gone, a wasteland of natural disasters, murder, vice, flesh-eating viruses, dead kittens, and so forth—all the sinners left over before getting doomed to Hell with Satan—and that I wouldn’t want to stay on earth. “Besides, there will be no one left here on earth,” my father continued. “Your mom and me will be there. And your brother, too.” It was at this point that I decided I should probably go ahead and do something that my parents had been talking to me about since I could understand English, which was “get saved”. So, when I was five, I decided to get saved in order to avoid eternal damnation. I thought I would feel different afterward. My mom had always said that a huge weight had been lifted away from her when she asked Jesus into her heart. But that didn’t happen for me, so I worried for several years after that I’d done something wrong, that I wasn’t actually saved, that I might be going to hell after all. To remedy this I would routinely ask Jesus into my heart, most nights before falling asleep.
I went through periods of trying to conform to some kind of Christian lifestyle, mostly trying to feel something like other Christians felt—something so powerful and seemingly wonderful that it had the ability to transform lives. It never came, and as I grew older I came to resent the dogma, the rules, with which evangelicals tend to brace the religion. My parents and probably most people would chalk these misgivings with their faith up to teenage rebellion, but my beef was valid. I wouldn’t say I was a particularly enlightened, intelligent or self-aware teenager. I was angsty and I did a lot of drugs. But Christianity in general and evangelicalism in particular never really sat right with me, no matter how hard I tried to make it that way, no matter how many times I would silently apologize to God for lying, for stealing from my parents, for having sex outside of marriage. I guess most of all, I was just afraid to admit to myself that I was born secular, without the capacity for faith or with the clear-headedness to see through religious bullshit at an early age.
The St. Christopher medal and necklace was given to me by one of my closest friends. She has a blue one, another friend has a red one, and mine is green. I’ve worn it off and on, mainly because I like the way it looks. Green is my favorite color. But it’s the only piece of jewelry I intentionally brought with me to Guatemala (earrings and toe rings don’t count, I don’t think I could get them off if I tried), and when I thought it was lost I only didn’t panic because I was purposefully performing a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy on myself that basically amounted to acknowledging that I was being ridiculous while allowing myself to be ridiculous at the same time. It wasn’t that I was sad at losing a piece of jewelry a friend had given me—that would have sucked, of course, but I’m sure she would probably buy me another if I told her what happened. I was mostly afraid that losing my St. Christopher medal would mean losing what he stands for, protection, something I’ve needed since I’ve been here and something that has been given to me during my travels. Thank…God.
I don’t know what I will do with my St. Christopher medal when I leave
*To my Christian friends: I know there is a huge difference between religion and spirituality. I would never call any of you religious. 
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January 31st, 2010 at 1:21 pm
My friend, I love reading your words.