thoguhts on christianity.
virginia sent me this questionairre for some project she’s doing. thought i’d post my responses.
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1. How did you start going to church?
had been going to church all of my life because my parents raised us in church.
2. At what age did you really feel you started to know God? If you remember a moment, please feel free to tell a story =)
mmm, it wasn’t until my junior year in high school that i actually started being interested enough in christianity to really sit down and read the bible every night or whatever. i don’t feel like i ever really knew god… i just had a gradual desire to find out more, i suppose, and i think junior year was the height of my taking action to GET to know god. don’t think i ever got there.
3. How involved were you with your church?
hmm, i guess fairly involved? partook in praise nights and church retreats and worship service and plays and all that jazz. i guess you can’t get too much more involved as a high schooler.
4. Were you closer with your church friends or your regular school friends?
church friends, but that’s mostly because my parents (or i should say, my mom) didn’t really like me hanging out with school friends. lol. it wasn’t until senior year in high school that i started making asian friends in high school that they were more okay with me hanging out with them. HA.
5. Did that community have a lot to do with how active you were in your church?
i’d say definitely. need a social life somehow. lol. and church was always just kind of a place to get together with friends to goof off.
6. Did you ever feel a struggle with who you were outside of the church (or inside of the church)?
good question. in some ways. for example, with the whole baptism thing… i was in the group of the last people “my age” to do it, and i would have not done it at all had it not been for that whole ‘peer pressure’ and ‘looking bad’ type of thing. i never felt like i was in a comfortable enough point to get baptized, but i still did it. when i was a senior in high school i started seriously questioning christianity for the first REAL time. and at that point, every time i went to church, i would struggle with the thought of even being there because i simply did not think it was right… i would sit in the sermon every week and all i could seriously think about was how to refute what the pastor was saying because it was illogical. it was seriously torturous.
7. How did you deal with it?
i did get more and more bitter about christianity during that point… i did a LOT of negative writing about christianity and christians at the time… i wrote about what i thought was hypocritical, why i thought it was not the religion for me anymore, etc. again, before whereas i totally goofed off and half listened to sermons anyway, now i listened, but with the full intent of pointing out to myself why they were wrong. it was like something i could not force myself to stop doing… i had just opened my eyes all of a sudden… which was frustrating and enlightening at the same time.
8. Tell me about a time in your life when you felt your belief in God was at it purest. When you had no questions.
i don’t think i ever had no questions… but i guess junior year of high school would be the year when i most believed in it and most sought it out. i can’t really recall details now, sorry. but i do know that my belief in god was largely selfish. it was along the lines of… i would do things like “daily bread” (daily devotional) but
those are all for myself and for my own peace of mind. those are not for god.
9. What do you think about those “Jesus is my Homeboy” t-shirts?
er, i wouldn’t wear them but i can see the appeal. i don’t find them offensive. because jesus IS a homeboy if you believe in him, i reckon.
10. Ever own one?
neg.
11. Now that you’re older and more mature in your relationship with God (for better or worse) - how do you look back on these times?
well in retrospect i think that i never really believed and a lot of it was forced or a part of my own delusion or own desire to find meaning somehow. like i mentioned, i certainly never believed enough to feel comfortable with baptism, and i never really felt all that comfortable taking communion after baptism. it was just all a bunch of hoobah you’re supposed to do and i did it because it was supposed to do it. i do think this fling with christianity was a positive experience in SOME ways. i now know that i will never be christian, yet i know enough about the bible to have intelligent discussion with people about christianity (and know more than some current christians know about the religion). i do like that because of growing up christian i am now so SURE that i am against organized religion (and don’t really care about religion in general) that i don’t question the “meaning of life” anymore. the struggle is pretty foreign to me these days. somehow, funnily enough, finding out that i do not believe in a religion at all helped solidify the outlook that life is what you make of it and whether there’s a meaning or not after death, we’ll never know for sure. so i don’t give a fuck about religion in my own life anymore… i can now go to other churches (and i do) just to study how people conduct religion and not have a fleeting thought about believing in the shit. had i not grown up in church, it’s likely i would still be struggling with this desire for finding meaning.
12. When you see younger Christian kids that are clearly in that period of their lives what do you think? (Think Mandy Moore in “Saved!” and “Jesus Camp”)
i think that they are young and impressionable and generally don’t know themselves yet. i don’t take them seriously or their opinions seriously (particularly like the 12 year old anti-abortion christian kids and shit like that, god). nor do i blame them… but if i have the chance to seriously question their beliefs, i will do it… the problem with kids that age is that people DON’T question enough, because if you do question, people look down on you. i remember questioning a pastor at my church before and he really got quite flustered and frustrated about it and never really answered very well. it’s important to open up dialogue with impressionable christian kids because most likely, no one else will. not that i’m saying to shoot down their entire belief system or anything, but there are some logical questions that they should think about, and there are some things about similarities christianity has with other religions that they should learn before making an educated decision about their own religious beliefs. lol.