I realised the world wasn't black and white

from here

Friends and I would sometimes joke that the take-home message from almost every sermon was “read your Bible and pray.” Bible-reading and praying were our homework between church services; the aim was to make time each day for both. We were also encouraged to tithe (give a tenth of our income to the church), and to serve the church regularly, by bringing supper or helping to usher people into their seats. We’d sing songs about how much we loved God and were thankful He’d killed Jesus instead of us. We sent money to missionaries who were working to “save” people (convince them to become Christians so they wouldn’t go to hell) in various parts of the world, and attended training to become more effective at “walk-up evangelism” (the practice of approaching folks innocently going about their day and asking them if they had 5 minutes for you to argue that they were fundamentally sucky and desperately in need of a saviour, and that they now had to choose one of two ways to live: their way [end result: burning forever in a fiery pit] or God’s way [end result: spending eternity singing and banqueting in heaven].) (It may surprise you to learn that, during my time in this world, I managed to convert precisely zero people using this approach). 

We also went to classes to learn how to argue people into our way of thinking. We listened to “non-Christians” in order to catch them out, looking for gaps in which to insert our clever arguments wherever possible. Everything and everyone had a label that could be attached – “amillennial,” “postmodernist,” “Catholic” – and each label came with a list of points to use when fighting against them. We were obsessed with whatever followed death; peoples’ heres-and-nows were less concerning to us than their eternal destination. We’d do our best to feed the hungry and clothe the poor, but only if we were able to preach at them too. This was their admission fee: listening to us privileged, very-young people telling them about our all-powerful-but-prolly-not-planning-to-intervene-in-your-homeless-state-anytime-soon-soz God. None of our care or compassion came agenda-free.

As well as our homework of reading the Bible and praying, our time was spent preparing for and then going to church or Bible study (where we prayed and read the Bible more), attending Christian conferences (more Bible, more praying), trying to convince people to become Christians, and also learning how to become better at trying to convince people to become Christians. Whatever study or work we did in our spare time was secondary to our church-related activities; these were usually seen as opportunities to share what we were learning with the non-Christians in our lives. We were taught how to introduce our faith to our non-believing friends and workmates in non-weird ways (“If someone asks what you did on the weekend, casually mention that you went to church!” etc.); the challenge in every one of these conversations was to slip in the fact that you were a Christian and then (non-weirdly) invite them to visit church with you. Sometimes we’d do this with believing people, too, if we deemed their particular church a bit suss (i.e. Hillsong).

We’d use our annual leave for conferences and mission trips. After Christmas each year, thousands of us Christians would spread out across the state to camp at various caravan parks and popular family spots, setting up fun-looking holiday programs that kids would want to attend (and parents, craving a break during their summer holidays, would allow their kids to attend), designed to persuade children that they were bad, which made God sad and mad. I led at such camps for at least 4 years. This fact embarrasses me now.   

My point is, we focussed a lot of energy on either working on our own faith or on attempting to change others’, and very little energy simply caring for others because we were kind, compassionate people who worshipped a kind, compassionate God (we worked hard to let others know how scary our God was so they could save themselves from Him – by following Him – before it was too late).

Outside of church and Bible study, our job was to teach, not to learn; what could we possibly learn from those who disagreed with our theology? It was a black and white world, where everything could be easily categorised as either right or wrong. 20-something-year-old me found it comforting and empowering to know that I’d joined the team who had all the answers. I’d felt young and confused and lost for so long, it was nice to finally belong somewhere solid and sure.

from here

The internet played a huge role in introducing greys into my life, although I’m struggling to pin my shifting views to a particular writer or website. After years surviving with no internet at home, Alan and I finally upgraded to a laughably small amount of monthly data, which, compared with all the internet we’d failed to have in our lives up to that point, felt like more than enough. I mainly used these precious megabytes to read others’ blogs and to post on my own (watching a video went waaaay beyond our dongle’s data capacity, so we were limited to text).

I remember the day, back in 2011, when I discovered that I was racist. I’d thoroughly enjoyed reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and turned to the internet to find like-minded peeps with whom to rave about it, only to discover reviews that showed me – in a blazingly eye-opening, holy-shirtballs-has-this-been-the-world-all-along?! kind of way – that I’d been able to completely overlook the racial stereotypes it perpetuated because I was white and had therefore benefited repeatedly from such prejudice throughout my life. My racism explained how I’d managed not to notice my own skin colour nor think too deeply about anyone else’s until that point. 

Thinking further, I realised I’d never had to think much about my sexuality; falling for a man had meant I’d never had to answer for my choices or worry about holding hands with my partner while out. (I’d heard Christians say, “I just don’t define myself by my gender/sexuality/whatever, because my primary identity’s in Christ!”, failing to acknowledge the fact that this statement said far more about their privilege than their piety.) It struck me that I was able to ignore such problematic race and sexuality stuff in the same way that most of the men in my life were able to ignore problematic gender stuff.

Once I began to acknowledge these layers and intersections of my own privilege, the black vs. white, good vs. evil worldview I’d held up to that point suddenly seemed inadequate to deal with the complexity of human stories and hierarchies and social constructs and, like, everythings. For instance, was Christianity a major religion in Australia because it was true and right and good, or was Christianity a major religion in Australia because it was brought here by white people who felt entitled to take whatever land they “found” and do everything they could to wipe out the culture (and/or lives) of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People they encountered (by, among other things, teaching them the Bible)? 

Given the clear examples of how history had been misrepresented when it came to the colonisation of Australia (“White people made Australia better for the Indigenous people who were totes struggling before we arrived to rescue them! It could only be pure luck that allowed them to peacefully thrive for millennia before we turned up! Oldest civilisation in the what now? Yayyy for white people!!!”), wasn’t it then very possible that, in a similar way, the various writers of the Bible had their own biases which heavily influenced how they imagined and documented God? Did God really command the Israelites to pay the Midianites back by killing all the men, as well as the women who weren’t virgins (the Israelites were “allowed” to keep the virgins for themselves), as recorded in Numbers 31:7-20? Or was that just the way a particular group of people justified their atrocities so they could sleep at night (“God told us to!”)? Neither was a great option. (If you’ve skipped ahead, I talk more about dilemmas like this in my last post.)

For years, Alan and I had been planning to eventually become missionaries, looking forward to setting out into the world to try to convert whatever group we were “called” to and turn them into good, evangelical Christians, just like us. More and more, though, this sounded to me like the same attitude that propelled colonisation; who was I to say that my ways were superior to anyone else’s? That my God was superior to anyone else’s? How very dare I interrupt a person’s quiet lunchbreak to tell them my concerns about their afterlife! (We were sometimes told that it was an act of real love to try to convert people; after all, if we didn’t give it a go, how much did we actually care about them?! Having had numerous conversations about my eternal destiny since “deconverting,” however, it seems that others’ desires to convert me are based on them, their feelings of fear or duty, rather than a concern for me. I’ve noticed that such people don’t see or hear me anymore; I tell them, “I’m happy! I feel a level of authenticity and freedom I’ve never experienced before!” Instead of joy and relief, they respond with sadness. I say, “We have a great community! We’re surrounded with people who love us and our kids!” They say, “I feel sorry for you that you haven’t found a good church.” I’ve given up trying to help them to understand who I am; my story doesn’t fit their narrative and therefore can’t be accepted. I try not to hold this against them; I, too, used to ignore obvious things because they didn’t make sense within my Christian framework. I get it, but it frustrates me still. It certainly doesn’t feel like love.)

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At this point in my thinking and learning about power and privilege, the idea of “sin” made less and less sense to me; were sins equal, or was there a hierarchy of badness? Neither answer satisfied me; it couldn’t possibly be true that God would be just as upset by me buying a drink in a plastic cup with two plastic straws (!!) from the Sunday markets, for example, as He would be about the Prime Minister playing politics with the lives of suicidal men on Manus Island, or the 60-odd men who murdered their current/ex-partner last year. If all sins were equal, God was profoundly unfair.

The hierarchy approach to sin was no better, though: it seemed that the worst possible sins (judging by the number of times the church spoke up about them: sex outside of marriage, gay sex, and abortion) were chosen simply for the fact that they were the ones the straight married men who told us the rules didn’t have to think about for themselves. I’m not sure how many sermons I heard in church about purity and submission, but I heard none – not a single one – about domestic violence. Was this a coincidence, or did power play a role in what counted as sinful behaviour? (I suspected the latter.) If there was a hierarchy, it, too, was profoundly unfair. If I was living in poverty, would I be more likely to steal stuff? 100%! Would I therefore be classified as more sinful than a rich person who’d never stolen anything because they had no need to? Well, not exactly, the argument would go; no one’s better because we’re all sinners in need of redemption! (Let’s now circle back to the all-sin-is-equal paragraph and start this dance again! Oh!)

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Before, in black-and-white world, I’d been sure of everything, safe and secure in the knowledge that I had all the answers, and keen to bring others into my comfortable bubble where there was no confusion, no icky-feeling greyness. Now, I was sure of nothing. The arrogance that had once brought me comfort and empowerment now made me feel squirmy and uncomfortable. I no longer wanted to preach and change others, I wanted to listen and be changed. I wanted to learn the stories that my privilege had allowed me to ignore, tapping into empathy I’d gained through having my own voice ignored in the church as a result of my gender. (I also wanted to work hard to become someone who found it easy to empathise with others even in cases where I couldn’t read my own story into theirs.) Where uncertainty used to fill me with anxiety, now, admitting that I didn’t have the answers felt honest, authentic, like I didn’t need to pretend anymore.

I wanted to be more accepting, more peaceful, more open to mystery. I wanted genuine connections with others. No agenda. Pure curiosity.

I found that I was more free to do this without Christianity in my life.

With My Own Two Hands by Jack Johnson and Ben Harper