Lots of people struggle with the
concept of religion these days. What with all the news stories of terrorist
attacks happening in places of worship, coupled with revelations of sexual
abuse from those who are most entrusted to further our species’ spiritual
mission in life, the prevailing question has come down to this: Does religion
truly alleviate — or contribute to — the amount of suffering in the
world?
Personally, I find religions stifling.
Whenever we try to take in and understand with our limited minds the
unimaginable splendor and beauty of our universe, we always fall short of being
able to really comprehend it, because we’re marveling at a power greater than
ourselves. In fact, maybe that power is just the culmination of our true selves,
projected from a much better space and time.
Perhaps God is just a singularity, a
solid point of consciousness which comprises all of us, plus everything else,
in every iteration of itself that has ever been expressed. That sounds pretty
cool.
The problems start to happen when we
try to capture that concept in a finite, static world with solid beliefs and
rules. Then we become like kids putting a lightning bug in a jar because we’re
thrilled at its phosphorescence.
We don’t mean to come off as cruel,
but we wish we had the ability to glow like the creature we’ve captured.
However, that bug just wants to be set free. Likewise, every thread of religious
dogma seems to limit God and ourselves along with him, her or them, depending
on how you prefer to look at it.
Perhaps by dropping religion, we will
become less cruel. Then maybe we can truly free ourselves, while letting God
out of that glass jar to which s/he’s been confined.
I tried being ultra-religious when I
was a kid, because I went to a Catholic school where I and the rest of the kids
went to mass about four times a week. But most of the sermons seemed to be
given by a hyperactive priest with a short temper who couldn’t wait to go
chain-smoke in the parking lot.
He thought nothing of scolding the
teenagers who bothered to show up during the ceremony. Then he’d pass the
collection tray around. So I dropped religion pretty early in life. It was then
that I realized how much suffering the church in my hometown was contributing
to.
The problems that my neighbors and I
had with poverty, with spousal abuse, teen pregnancy, harassment, assault and
addiction were impossible to approach the church members for help with, because
the general response would be that we were deserving of our suffering.
That’s how I came to believe that
religion only brought out the devil in people. So it was really weird when I
found myself once again in a church, this time working in it, almost three
decades later.
But it was a different flavor of
religion — Greek Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic — a religion whose members
threw local parties and always seemed to have fun while enjoying each
others’ company. Plus, I really needed the money.
Working for that church gave me a
strange, new perspective. I hadn’t been prepared for the shock of finding out
just how many other people in the world had also become disillusioned by
religion. And not all of them were taking it very well.
In fact, that a lot of them had begun
taking out their feelings of betrayal from these dogmatic systems by
passive-aggressively wrecking church property. And suddenly it was my job to
deal with the fallout, by cleaning up all of their messes.
For instance, there are a lot of
homeless people who congregate around a church. That’s because most of the church
members I worked for were actually good-hearted people who couldn’t turn away
the needy. They were constantly having potlucks to raise money for charity, and
would donate supplies to the local homeless shelter.
But some of the folks who enjoyed the
parishioners’ generosity would pass out drunk in the church’s parking lot
instead of sending thank-you notes.
One homeless guy in particular, who
benefitted from many of the church’s good graces and charity, decided to jump
out of the bushes and menace me while I was walking home one afternoon. He
taught me that the local cops would do nothing if he kept on harassing me and
my coworkers all day, and threatening us with assault.
I also learned where he slept right
out in the open, like nobody had a score to settle with him. I felt pretty
pious whenever I walked by him and refrained from enacting revenge, but smiled
knowing that I could totally do it.
This was the same guy who used to like
to piss and shit all over church property, and it became my job to find the
little treasures he left me on an almost-daily basis. Sometimes there’d be a
discarded lighter, or some trash from a fast food restaurant.
At other times, he’d find a marker and
draw symbols and messages — stuff like Think or Jesus — on the
walkway, which I’m sure he meant facetiously, due to the silk panties thrown on
top of the words for good measure.
Sometimes it made me chuckle to find
his crazy-person messages to me, like when there was a very large,
realistic-looking toy gun shoved into the bushes that I had to call the cops to
retrieve and check out. I also found an empty package that belonged to a
vibrating dildo on the stairway.
Still, I wasn’t about to handle his turds.
But I wasn’t going to let him have the last say, either. That’s why I took to
sprinkling his poop with glitter.
That way, when he came to lie down in
the stairwell the next night, his own poop would still be in his way so that he
could deal with it himself. But the sparkling coat of glitter would let him
know that his message was received and returned, along with a crazy smile and a
cackle.
He may have pissed me off, but he
certainly wasn’t winning this thing. I eventually quit my job because of this
guy, but I still know where he sleeps.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, a local
woman started making regular trips outside the office, and insisted upon having
her dogs shit in the middle of the church’s lawn, right at the top of a hilly
section. Of course, I was supposed to clean that up every time she came by.
So one day, after she left, I tried hucking
a bunch of glitter at the dog shit and ran off cackling. But there were three
errors with this tactic. First, there was a church service in session and the
parishioners, if they were glancing at me through the stained-glass windows, would
know for sure that I was crazy. Second, this woman didn’t notice anything except
her cell phone. Third, I slipped while trying to run away and almost landed
face-first in the dog shit.
For a while after that day, I just hid
from her whenever she and her dogs appeared, because I didn’t want to deal with
the overwhelming desire to smack her upside the head and send the gum that she
was snapping flying out of her mouth. But then those useless cops would
probably arrest me.
However, the more she did it with
impunity, the more I realized that I must answer with the same devil-may-care
attitude. How could I pull that off? I wondered. Then I asked myself: What
do I really want out of this situation?
I want to pet her dogs! was my
mind’s happy response. So the next time I saw her, I excitedly trotted over to
meet her. I introduced myself to her and asked about her dogs. They were happy
to see me and came over, tails wagging. I crouched down and pet them,
sweet-talking them and chatting her up.
I realized that the last thing she
wanted was a conversation, but I didn’t care in the least. Her dogs ended up
shitting by the curb that day. And funny enough, she waves at me now whenever
she sees me.
So perhaps religion really does bring
out the worst in us. However, there’s still some good in us left. How do we
stop the dogmatic institutions we’ve created from taking the rest of it away?
We reach into ourselves to see what we’re truly made of.
We bravely look around and notice
what’s wrong and what needs fixing, and then we get to the task of making
things right with each other again. And whenever we encounter someone’s else’s
shit, perhaps the best response is to just happily sprinkle a little glitter on
it.