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

I: Catholic Conscience (revised):

Irish-Catholic adolescent on a Sunday, St. Kenneth Parrish, Plymouth, Michigan

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: Assembly of Assholes (revised):

The sacredness of cognitive dissonance

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: Apathy Ensues (revised):

A classic case of not caring anymore

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: Rebel with a Cause (revised):

Dishing out some Old Testament justice

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: Unfaithful Romance (revised):

Revenge of the systems of control

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 pasts were a wrench, I could tell at the time. Because she would say weird things to me like, “I want my husband to love Jesus.” Or, “I want a good Christian family.” And, “Everything happens for a reason.”

As a cynic with no filter I would counter with the first thing that came to my mind. Such as, “Me and Jesus are taking a break.” Or, “I just don’t like going to church anymore.” And, “I’m not sure I believe in God.”

When I said the last one we were lying in her bed. A classic extra-long twin-size mattress. She went silent and stiff, then rolled to her side. I could not see her face, but could tell she was starting to cry.

“Hey,” I said, “are you okay?”

She crossed her arms and — when I touched one — scrunched her shoulders to her neck. A sniffle, although no response. 

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

“It’s just,” she said, “when I picture our future, I see us praying together, and loving each other through God. I knew that you were having 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, my hand still in her hair, and said, “I’m not sure what I believe, is what I mean. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

She kept her body turned away, but seemed to stop crying.

Silence ensued for a while.

Then she finally turned to me, said, “Okay,” put her hand on my cheek, kissed my lips, and said, “Let me know when you decide.” 

VI: Spiritus Cerebri:

It is a materialistic world, and I am a materialistic boy

About a year into our relationship, Alison and I broke up, then got back together, then “took a break,” then fucked other people, then got back together, then dated other people while together, then she got serious with someone else, and I got serious with bourbon and White Russians and weed. 

Most days post-Alison were mostly the same: wake up half-drunk, take a shit, play Call of Duty Modern Warfare or Grand Theft Auto IV on my roommate’s Playstation 3, watch an episode of “Scrubs” or “South Park,” eat microwaved chicken nuggets or pizza rolls, shower, drive my ’95 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme convertible to work, serve tables for a few hours, drive back, stop by the grocery store down the street from my apartment, buy a bottle of Wild Turkey or vodka and Kahlúa, go home and drink and get angry or sad or both, then black out and pass out with a half-glass of liquor in my hand, wake up at four a.m. to clean up my spilled drink, fall back asleep, and repeat.

Days I didn’t work I would get high with the guys next door then sit out in my car and chain smoke cigarettes while listening to The Mars Volta and feel peaceful. These moments, so few but cherished, allowed me to ignore money (lack thereof), girls (also lacking), and my own ego (damaged, but not destroyed). The music--so complex and strange--when coupled with psychedelic euphoria from the pot, made me feel more spiritual than the Catholic hymns and fundamentalist Christ-songs ever had. 

There was a recent study at the University of Missouri regarding the brain and its link to spirituality. It attempted to scientifically explain the kind of spiritual phenomenon that I felt back then while jamming out to intricate guitar-work and baselines in my green-whale car. In the study, one of the University’s health psychology professors, Brick Johnstone, studied several patients with damage to their right parietal lobe--the area of the brain that focuses on the “self.” He found that subjects with worse injuries to the lobe reported feeling closer to a higher being. The more the subjects relied on their left parietal lobe, wherein language and mathematics are decoded, the more spiritual they felt.

Johnstone concluded, “when the brain focuses less on the self, by decreased activity in the right lobe,”--and instead, perhaps, focuses on the lyrics and harmony of music--“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."

Perhaps this too explains why mathematicians and musicians feel that their work provides the language of the universe--the act of contemplating such things is apparently so closely tied to a feeling of universality and unity. And it wouldn’t be imprudent to argue that my general lack of spirituality, when I would sit in the hard pews at church or kneel on those thinly padded knee-rests and beg God to forgive my sins, came from me being such a damn self-loathing narcissist. Maybe the reason I never felt connected to the others at church, never felt that I had a soul that is inexplicably linked to the whole of humanity, is because I spent most of my time wallowing in the right side of my parietal lobe, rather than accessing the communal and spiritual left.

VII: Quantum Chaos: 

Zeal for entropy v. delusions of order

When we were together, Alison would say to me, almost too often, “Everything happens for a reason,” which she wholeheartedly believed, or that’s what her conscious mind forced her to believe. It gave her a reason live, to not bust out in tears every morning when the bliss of her dreams would wear off and the dread of waking life would take hold. You see, when she sleeps, she sees her father, and she can touch him, hug him, ask him, “How are you here?” and “What is heaven like?” Sometimes he answers, and sometimes he just smiles, but no matter what, she is happy. 

So when she wakes up, and she tells me, “Everything happens for a reason,” I can’t just disagree. Because what she means is, “My father died for a reason. He didn’t wither in that hospital bed as the chemo ate his insides just because. His life, his death—they mean something.”

I could argue with her. I could tell her, “Everything is random.” I could say, “The brain creates meaning.” And I would be right. “Everything exists in a probability field.”

“A ‘probability field?’” she would say, curious, but not really wanting to discuss it. She would look at me, next to her in bed, and give my lips a vacuous gaze.

“Nothing has an exact location,” I could say. “Every object requires an observer to determine its position, its velocity, its direction—things that have meaning. It’s easy to find and define the large objects, but for smaller particles, like electrons, you never know exactly where they are--and if you figure it out, you can’t know where they’ll be next. Fundamental particles are always popping in and out of existence—it’s chaos. And without an observer to figure out where these particles are, they don’t exist in any exact spot. Consciousness creates the position, the velocity--it creates the meaning.”

She wouldn’t get it. She would think that I’m trying to stomp her beliefs, dismiss them as nonsense. “It’s not as complicated as all that,” she would say. “God controls all particles, all objects. He decides what happens.” She would try to touch me, try to conductively transfer her faith with her fingers, but I wouldn’t want to be touched. “It’s all part of the Plan.”

I could get angry. I could think that she’s stupid, or naïve. But I could never believe her. “How can you just dismiss a century’s worth of scientific observations and conclusions like that?” I could say. “How can you know that there’s a ‘Plan?’ How can you know it’s not just probability, just chance? How can you know that ‘everything happens for a reason?’”

“Because,” she would say, “I just know.”

VIII: Pretentious Persecution:

Didn’t Jesus smoke a pipe?

I’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.