Faith: Fight it, [Eff it], Find it

I:

Enter the sanctuary, amble down an aisle, stop at a pew and drop to one knee, gesticulate the cross, glance at the Jesus idol, then stand up again, shimmy into the pew, pull down the padded kneeler, entwine the fingers and pretend to pray, thinking “Hail Mary” in full and an “Our Father” or two, and recount this week’s sins in cringe-inducing detail — a couple of curses, irrational anger, elbowing Brother in the face. Must have hurt!

But why did we do them? No priest will explain. We’re all simply sinners, they tell us. In fact that’s how they get us to keep on showing up. We’re eternally flawed, which works out fine for them, as they siphon our guilt like it’s blood.

And oh, there will be guilt! In fact we’re told it’s God’s will. He wants us to have dirty thoughts about our science teacher, eat until our stomachs feel about to pop, and every Friday drink booze with fat joints on the side, plus some Tylenol Three up the nose. God wants us to blow our one hundred-dollar checks so we feel worse when we can’t afford to tithe. It’s preferred that we sin, so His Church can hold us hostage; there’s only one way to paradise — cuff yourself.

Oh but what if we forgot a sin or a few? It can be embarrassing to confess them. Will they make us walk the afterlife plank for calling our mom “a bitch,” way back in third grade, when some dangerous girl dared us to? It’s almost like the priests can feel it. There must be something more juicy!

Well sure, there’s way more. Like we can’t really trust you. And we’re not completely convinced that your God even really exists. Yet we show up every week, always feeling kind of sick, wondering why the deity will not cure us. If we told you every forbidden thought we’d be kicked out of the club, then have to figure out our problems ourselves. But we don’t have the time to over-self-analyze.

So please. Just give us a cracker and one sip of wine. Then let us get back to our sinning.

II:

Every other Sunday, on my mother’s weekends, my stepfather would drive us to his fundamentalist church. And every time without fail, toward the end of the sermon, the head pastor — wearing a clearly expensive suit, gold cuff links, and rings — would call those seeking to repent to the stage.

Meanwhile the keyboardist would play a contemplative song, people would chant or shout out “Hallelujah,” and a few would bust out some riffed jibberish. Something like, “Hommenah hoomenah, sacti de sancti, oobady doobady doo!”

The pastor would point to the scatters and say, “You hear that, folks? That’s called speaking in tongues. It happens when the Holy Spirit speaks the language of angels through you.”

Then people would moan, as if in ecstasy, raise up their hands, and sigh or say “mmm.” After some years my mom got into it too. And I tried it once or twice, to see if I could feel it, but mostly I just felt a bit silly.

What was I missing? They couldn’t all just be acting. Maybe they were truly hypnotized.

Even Tom, my stepdad, would sometimes let out a “Praise Jesus.” It was strange seeing him, a big burly guy with a police-issued goatee, submitting to a higher power once a week. Maybe as a former Catholic he lived with a secret fear that his bad actions would have consequences. Which probably would explain why one day he was convinced to go up to the front and “give [his] heart to the Lord” (in the parlance of these types of places). 

Although once back at home he’d give the stick to our dog (pretty fitting they call it a “switch”). Not sure what Moose might have done. Likely chewed on something, or shat on the floor. He’d always try to run, but Tom would chase him down (STOMP STOMP STOMP), and “beat his ass” (as he’d say).

“THWAP!”

“YELP!”

“THWAP!”

“YELP!”

My mom would say, “Hey, come on now,” as if he’d ever listen to her pleas.

And though he was nicer to my brother and me, he must have seen us as livestock too. If we weren’t doing housework we weren’t earning our room. We were “lazy” and “spoiled” from eight or nine years old. And Moose was the example of what would happen to us if we didn’t obey all Tom’s rules. If we ever “talk[ed] back” he’d get out of his cushy recliner, STOMP up to us too, and alpha dog us.

So we’d pull weeds and mow the grass, our arms going numb from the motor. He’d watch us from the porch, sipping ice-cold lemonade and critiquing our work, and on occasion wield the weed whacker himself (in the years when we were too young to use it).

One day, I remember, we were in the backyard. I was shoveling dog shit into the compost. Tom shouted some order over the weed whacker’s noise, and somehow THWAPPED his own calf with the cords.

He winced and said, “God DAMN it!” then pulled up his jeans. A red welt glowed across his pale hairy flesh. 

It was hard to feel bad. Really I kind of liked it. And I started to feel that my prayers could be answered.

But he recovered quickly. It wasn’t much of a penance. Though later I guess, while I was outside, he fell down the stairs to the basement. He’d been putting off replacing the handrail for a while, so a sharp metal piece was sticking out from the wall. It sliced open his arm so he went to the ER.

It was nice having the house to myself for a while.

Yet despite God’s efforts Tom never treated any of us nicer. So I prayed that he’d leave without coming back. Then I waited for years, always holding onto the hope it could happen. And the more patient I became the less I believed that the deity even existed.

III:

Before that I would pray for a particular Transformer or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, whichever looked like the best one at the time. I’d pray my braces would stop tearing into the tissue of my cheeks, or that my classmates would stop bullying me. I’d pray for my eyebrows to grow, and for my fat body to shrink, or that I could be someone, anyone but me, someone living in Heaven instead of here in Hell, or at least to just die in my sleep.

I prayed to God, “Why?” so many times different ways. “Just tell me why my life sucks? Why don’t you do something? Why can’t I be a normal kid?”

Later I stopped asking why. Then stopped praying altogether. Stopped feeling guilty and ashamed. Mostly because I stopped caring — if I swore, fornicated, kept the Sabbath day holy, lived in Hell of Heaven, or appeared to be “a good Christian” to others.

Following all the rules never seemed to help. So I figured, whatever. Forget having a faith. I’d just find a way to live on my own.

Around the same time (roughly age seventeen), Tom and my mom set up “a family meeting.” But they’d kicked my brother out, so it was just them lecturing me about how I wasn’t doing twice the work.

It was a symptom, they said, of something called “senioritis” — a disease kids my age often got. I could stop caring about school, they didn’t care a lick, but it was affecting my work ethic at home. The lawn still needed mowing. There was still trash and dishes.

“Don’t forget,” said my mom, “you’re not invincible.” (Which, in retrospect, almost seems like a threat.)

I thought, but didn’t say, “I don’t care either way. When I wanted to die it didn’t happen.”

Thankfully, though, I got a thinner body, somewhat thicker eyebrows, “perfect” teeth, and more toys than I needed. But material things, I would later find out, were not quite as sweet as revenge.

IV:

The door to my bedroom never closed the same after Tom kicked it in to choke me. I must have been five or six at the time. It’s one of my earliest memories.

Some days I would look at the dent his boot left, or touch the cracked wood by the knob. I guess they left it like that, despite the renovation — which turned a third of the room into a new hallway — to remind me of what would happen if I… Hm. Can’t remember what I did to deserve it, but if I did whatever that thing was again.

They assigned me the small version of the old room, whereas my brother got the new larger one. It wasn’t too bad though. Our new doors had locks, which felt almost like freedom. Extra privacy when we’d grown up lacking it.

When brother moved out his room got a couch and TV. For me it was good. My own family room. But for him, looking back, it must have seemed like a message that he should never try to return.

Senior year of high school I spent a lot of time there, playing Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario 64, or re-watching American Psycho and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, then falling asleep on the couch. In the mornings I would jet off to school, often leaving the blanket and pillow where I’d slept.

One day, home alone after school, I tried to open the door but the knob wouldn’t turn. It’s okay, I figured, I’ll just get a key, which was the same for each door — it looked like an Allen wrench — and there was one on each of the frames. Although, when I searched, I couldn’t find one. Someone hid them all for whatever reason.

So I called my mother. “Tom locked it,” she said. “You left the room a mess, and you can use it when you learn to clean up.”

A pillow. A blanket. A DVD case. A “mess.” I guess semantics were not their forte.

But my Xbox was in there. And the Nintendo 64. Plus the only movies that were any good. I pressed myself against the door to be mere inches away from the solace of forgetting my problems. Then I turned back and walked down the hallway, and passed by that familiar dent.

Oh right, I remembered, there’s a simple way to get into doors that one isn’t allowed to enter.

I turned back around, went up to brother’s door, lifted my leg, and extended.

“DOOMP.”

But it didn't work. The door remained closed. So I tried again with more force.

”DOOMP-CRACK.”

The frame split a bit as brother’s door opened up. The wood was left mostly undamaged. Because instead of rage I used mathematics to kick it in just the right spot.

When my mother got home (I think I was watching Blow) she said, “What happened? Did you find a key?”

I told her, “No, no key. I just kicked it in. You know, like Tom did to that one,” and pointed. “I figured if he can do it, then so can I. Door for a door, or whatever.”

V:

I met Alison the second day of the first year of college (though we’d chatted on Facebook before that). We spent the whole day grocery shopping and talking and laughing then ended up making out in her dorm. We kissed for so long my neck started to ache, but it feel somehow weirder to stop. Then we spent almost every day watching movies together and talking about our future ambitions.

But our worldviews seemed to be at odds. I was trying to avoid religion altogether, where she would say things like, “I want my husband to love Jesus,” or, “Everything happens for a reason,” which I suspected had something to do with the death of her father when she was a child.

So I tried to break the news on my crisis of faith to her as gently as a cynic is able. I’d say stuff like, “Jesus and I are taking a break,” or, “Everything seems pretty random.” One day though I said, while lying with her in bed, “I’m not sure I believe in God.”

She went silent and stiff, then rolled to her side. I could not see her face, but could sort of feel her cry.

“Hey,” I said, “are you okay?”

When I touched her arm she moved away and scrunched up, then sniffled as if it were an answer.

“Why are you upset? I’m just saying how I feel.” I brushed her hair to the side to look at her face; mascara was streaming down her cheek.

“It’s just, when I picture our future,” she said, “I see us praying together, and loving each other through God. I knew you were having some doubts. But I thought things would change. I thought you could change. I didn’t know it was so final.”

SIGH. I laid on my back, with my hand in her hair, and said, “I mean I’m not sure what I believe. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

She kept her body turned away, but seemed to lighten up, although she stayed silent for a while. Finally she turned, put a hand on my cheek, and said, “Okay — let me know when you decide.” 

VI:

My decision was that I would rather be single than live my whole life as a liar. Alison, I figured, was not right for me. Instead I turned to liquor and weed.

Most days I’d wake up still half-drunk from the night, waste much of my time watching flickering screens, microwave junk food before heading to work, pick up a new bottle on my way back home, then get blacked out and pass out till I spilled my last drink.

On days I had off I’d get high with the neighbors, then sit in my car, chain smoke cigarettes, and listen to my then-favorite band, The Mars Volta — a ritual I started back in high school.

One weekend, during a particularly powerful high, the band’s complex syntax sent me to another realm. It was the closest I’d felt to a spiritual moment, and I wanted to live in that space. But it wasn’t magic, just a new state of mind that the hymns of my youth couldn’t muster. Later I discovered there was science to transcendence, according to research by Dr. Brick Johnstone.

Apparently patients with damaged right parietal lobes — the brain area responsible for a person’s sense of self — were more likely to report belief in a higher power. The left lobe, which decodes language and mathematics, seemed to make them feel closer to the divine.

Johnstone concluded, “[W]hen the brain focuses less on the self, by decreased activity in the right lobe, it is by definition a moment of self-transcendence and can be understood as being connected to God or Nirvana. It is the sensation of feeling like you are part of a bigger thing."

Of course, by definition, language is beyond the self. It’s the main thing we use to exchange information. Maybe music, like a church, works as a dialect that brings like-minded people together.

VII: 

The guy who would get us the weed was named John. Later we got a place together. One day we bonded over Calvin and Hobbes; he had the same collection of the strip that I read as a kid.

According to John, Bill Watterson named the main characters after two philosophers, John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. Later Google confirmed he was right, and Wikipedia reminded me I knew who they were.

Calvin College was right down the street, and my Uncle Tim would often quote Hobbes: “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.” The former agreed on the basics but called it a divine plan, whereas the latter insisted on strict governance to keep our worst instincts in line. On the other hand I was stuck somewhere in the middle since my doubt in theism began with a guy wearing a police uniform.

But a newer kind of physics, known as chaos theory, balanced the philosophers’ extremes. Randomness wasn’t random. There was just too much data for a human to comprehend. Patterns emerge from initial conditions and the ever-changing environment.

If we could track everything that’s ever happened through time then we’d see how we ended up here. Theoretically God could spark the whole universe then leave us and never return.

VIII:

One night after work John invited me to a party, then passed out before I showed up.

at his girlfriend’s house down the street’m at a party drinking brandy from a flask. I don’t know anyone except for my roommate and his girlfriend and they’re passed out in her upstairs bedroom before I even arrive. Her roommate David tells me, “Stay.” He says, “Have a good time.” It’s mostly girls so I think I might get laid. 

People play pong. I watch. 

Boombox bumps beats. I dance. 

Booze buzzes. I go for a smoke. 

I step back inside.

A girl walks into the front room and says, “It smells like smoke in here.”

“Oh, yeah, well I just had a cigarette,” I say, still standing near the door. “So that explains it.”

“You smoke cigarettes?” she says. “You shouldn’t smoke. Aren’t you a Christian?” She has a gold-plated cross tucked into the cleavage of her small breasts. A symbol of her religion’s obsession with human sacrifice.

“Actually no,” I say. “I was, but now I’m sort of a non-theist.” She crinkles her forehead. “Is that relevant?”

“You mean you don’t believe in God?”

I pause. “No, I guess I don’t.” This girl is borderline belligerent. “Do you?”

Some other girls walk into the room. “Hey you guys,” the first girl says and aims her finger at me. “This guy is an atheist.” 

Thunderclap.

A second girl says, “You don’t believe in God?”

A third girl says, “How can you not believe in God?”

A fourth girl says, “What is wrong with you?”

I shrug.

Then I give up on getting laid.

IX: Duo Deos: 

A creation story for the twenty-(unspecific) century

“We’ve done it,” says Professor Zaius. “The experiment worked.”

Professor Farnsworth hadn’t expected this news so soon. In fact, he hadn’t expected this news at all. “You mean--“

 “Yes, Farnsworth. Come, see for yourself.”

The laboratory is large, enormous some might say--for it contained the world’s most elaborate particle collider. The scientists and engineers travel via electric carts--four tires, a steering wheel, an accelerator and a brake peddle. Farnsworth and Zaius sit in a cart labeled “3” and scoot toward the control room near the center of the collider.

Farnsworth has been to the main control room before. In fact, he’s been there nearly every day for the past fifteen years. So once they enter, Farnsworth walks briskly past the monitors and wave detectors and quantum mainframes, and follows Zaius to the main screen. The screen where he had once witnessed the production of anti-matter, and the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson/field, and the first particles to experimentally transcend the barrier of time, and the taming of a quantum black hole, and then of a wormhole--but nothing had compared to this, not even close. 

The screen magnified the image 100,000x, but slowly zoomed out as the object grew. It was translucent, a dodecahedron, and expanded exponentially. “It’s based on the design of our own universe,” said Zaius, “but time in there moves much more quickly than for us. Before you arrived, it completed its inflationary period, and its state of quantum chaos. Now, as you can see, galaxies are starting to form. Soon, very soon, there will be stars, and planets, and maybe even--“

“Life,” says Farnsworth. He watches as swirling streams of light move quickly across the surface of the tiny universe and wrap around miniature black holes. The object is already almost too complex to comprehend.

“Yes,” says Zaius. “Life. But don’t get too attached. If this thing expands too quickly, we’ll have to shut it down.”

“Shut it down?” says Farnsworth. “Don’t be preposterous! This is our greatest accomplishment--[scoff]--shut it down.”

“Hey, I don’t like it any more than you do. But we’re all answering to a higher power here,” says Zaius.

Farnsworth turns and looks at him, glaring. “Higher power?” he says. “What are you saying?”

“Whoa there, Farnsy, just a joke,” says Zaius. He laughs. “I meant the investors, of course.”

“Of course,” says Farnsworth, relieved. For a moment, he thought his partner had lost it. “You do know, Zai, if there is a higher power,” Farnsworth says, then turns and gazes at the screen, in awe of their creation, “then we’re it.”*

X: Modernity Moves (revised)

Working on perfect self-reflection at Z’s Bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Enter the bar, sit on a stool, ask for a hard cider and a shot of tequila, have a sip from the former then one from the latter, glance at the TV, look down at the plank, and try to remember how we got here.

It’s been ten full years since this story was published, and it turned out we were mostly wrong. Faith isn’t religion, it’s releasing control, and guilt is just a sticky trap. The escape, we said, was the science religion, but they wouldn’t let us into the door. So we took leaps of faith that led us all over the place, yet here are at our old musty hangout. They once all knew our name, and liked our asshole perspective, but it’s natural to grow apart over time.

Since then our mission has changed, from seeking death to new life, and sharing a fresh point of view. Communication is key, although quite complicated, so it’s better to end with questions still in the air.

So we finish our drinks and make our way to the venue with the small kernel of hope we’ve got left. If the musician doesn’t get it then we’ll be the only one who can save us from gathering at our personal Armageddon.

So have faith, dear reader, that we have faith in ourselves. If this version doesn’t work we’ll revise it.