My Family's Faith

It has recently become a pressing issue for me to explore my roots in Christianity (more specifically, Catholicism) during this period of time where, though not an unusual dealing for them, my family is trying to cope with a difficult major life event and is at an all time high of flinging preachings around like salty gravy in a bad food fight. This dinner table issue (a metaphor not entirely irrelevant, as you will understand in the last paragraph) is subjectively awful and jading, though it seems that the deeper I delve into my evaluation for this personal distaste and discomfort with my family's faith, religion appears to be revealing itself more so as a rather objectively awful thing.

My findings, in literature by great Atheists and Antitheists alike, have been in one sense ridiculously plain and simple, and in another, completely incomprehensible. I will here diverge to state that I am not freshly escaping my family's faith. I have known for almost a decade now that something about the whole noise didn't resonate comfortably with me, but, like many things, we can only foreshadow more serious convictions when we are children and our critical thinking is not yet finely tuned, and, more importantly, when our most trusted sources begin and end with our immediate relatives.

My disillusion for Christianity did not happen in a big bang (you can have that one for free), but was a drawn out process allowed room to blossom as I was suddenly free from compulsory 'Religious Education' studies in Primary School, and alongside that, I had discovered the internet: a world of new and alternative ideas to those which I had been confined to in my childhood. My youthful ability to see a little more un natural magic in the world (or the super natural sorcery as religion would have a child believe) was beginning to recede and happened gradually alongside my lust for knowledge beyond what was being offered in my classrooms; a lust to forge an independent intellectual paper trail. The two didn't quite exchange at the same rate, and so for a time in my teens I was deeply fascinated by a more Pantheistic world view and was drawn to Buddhism for it's lack of a claim to religious title or a super natural god. To quote Dawkins - "Pantheism is sexed-up atheism". I was smoking too much marijuana and starting to feel that there was some kind of God in every tree and every anthill. But I am now (thankfully) satisfied with being educated in Biology alone and in that, all the awe inspiring wonder that it can offer explanations for; there is nothing bland about the natural world and the scientific explanation.

Antitheist will do for me now - and while, coming into this new period of studying religion, also at a level of actually reading a Christian bible and enrolling in a bible study diploma course,  I was hesitant to label myself anything of the sort, I am now quite confident and in fact proud to wear this badge upon my person. Back to my initial point: when studying religion, the whole thing can so very easily become transparent. A bible, especially the new, more smiley-faced updates, are easily comprehended from the angle of literary analysis, and yet on an intellectual level are  completely incomprehensible, for all their claims to the living dead and resurrections, all the way through to the consistent hypocrisies delivered (and understandably so) by tellings recorded from the hearsay of illiterate Middle Eastern peasants. If you can access one, I highly recommend (whether you are of faith or not, and perhaps especially if you are) to actually read through the bible. No need to cherry pick - I didn't - there's enough nonsense on each and every page to bolster my assertions to any educated individual without further analysis. But for the sake of relating this back to my current inter family issues, I will proceed.

Having found himself in maximum security prison, my sibling has also 'found God', much to the approval and praise of our immediate family. Essentially, they have now been handed a shiny, golden free pass. And so begins the mid-dinner chaos, the slinging of the gravy: dinner here meaning my life, gravy here meaning religious justifications for the error of his ways. This food fight is intermittently continuing with holy grade gravy being flung into my face, burning and unwelcome, at every interaction I have with these people. It has been this way for close to a year now - I have sat and submissively been told not to speak illy or sceptically about my sibling for reasoning involving Jesus' forgiving nature (clearly my family needs to take that previous advice and re-read their Bibles), and the clean slate which a white bearded man in the sky has supposedly granted (or rather, gifted) them with (and I mean God, not Santa Clause, though either would be equally stupefying). My family now goes to church every Sunday, I imagine as a sign of solidarity with my sibling as well as to refuel their gravy reserves for our impending communications. And I can assure you, those reserves are full and overflowing when I sit down with my family these days. Despite my meekly offered rejection of their faith, I am still asked to follow them to Church. I am told of this Church, and all of the cancer God cures within it. I am told of the good deeds they do for the homeless, as if this is all the proof that an omnipresent being has his hand resting upon this expensive establishment. I listen to my Grandparents, who struggle on the wage of their pensions after living a life full of hardship and poverty but always with good intentions, defend their church's request that a donation of 10% of their wages come forth to the collection bowl, despite the church's own exemption from taxes. And I sit and listen to all of this and cast only a fraction of my doubts, knowing how soon after it is that I am to be shut down for doing so.

So, at this point, I have a choice to make. Do I sit silently and vacantly through all of this? Do I allow them to believe in this phantom moral compass my sibling has stumbled upon through their bible study? Do I watch as they indoctrinate my sibling further upon their release, which seems to me taking advantage of, if I may say so with no offence intended, not the brightest of minds, and one who is clearly suffering and struggling immensely at this point in their young lives? And then here comes the igniting flame for my return spoonful of gravy - do I have a right to express my disapproval of the things I was led to believe as a child, in the hopes that they will take very seriously my decision that my own son is, under no circumstances, to be spoon fed an ounce of this hate-inspiring, science-deprived, cultish rubbish. The answer is of course yes, and here I have decided to exercise my right to free inquiry. And with the bravery granted to me only by educating myself thoroughly on the topic, I will risk offending the ideas of these people who by blood I am related but by morals I am more than just relieved of.

Now, it mightn't sound like such an emotion invoking mission I've put myself on unless you have been or perhaps plan to someday be in these very same shoes. But here is what I have concluded must be considered upon creating a strategy for approaching this topic with them - religion is not free from critical analysis, nor does it deserve to be. As Hitchens has stated: 'That which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof", and that initial part of the sentence is the note to take here. I have been raised to believe in a fable which, not unlike Hansel and Gretel, is presented in the form of a bound book, but unlike the latter classic tale, is then asked to be taken as solid evidence for all which it states. It further asks of it's believers to have unwavering faith in each and every verse lest they be cursed for the rest of their days - that alone is too much to ask of a rational person who attended any Secondary School lecture surrounding source analysis. It is also far too much to ask that an individual surrenders their innate moral compass for that of one penned in ink and reprinted billions of times to give, if not permission, then at the very least indifference toward sexual acts on minors, slavery, bigotry, homophobia, a dominant patriarchy and dozens of other themes which in my mildly progressive view are all things we have worked to, or are working towards, abolishing for good, and with superb reason. Let those of faith adopt these inconsistencies as liberally as they are displayed in their good book, and then let them try to claim to be offended when their faith is questioned and scorned. It would not happen in this day and age, and in fact, when it does, we do indeed meet it with intense ridicule. I previously mentioned that religion is hate inspiring - we only need look at the Middle East as it is today, and then, even with no prior historical knowledge, we can see just what religion asks of its believers. Let us not forget that the Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities are all united by an initial holy book. Let us not forget how much they have in common. It is no accident that Christianity has warped and begun to offer rose gardens in recent history, but then it is not a true account of what religion intends. It is hollow and self serving and it deserves to hold no power like it currently does.

It mightn't sound like an emotion invoking journey, no, but as someone who has independently worked to craft a fine (if not mildly conceded) sense of right and wrong, it is absolutely painful to be in the midst of this food fight, where each spoonful encompasses an underlining assertion that no, my own moral compass is of no value until it is dictated by this ridiculous book, or that my own mind is lacking and yearning until I decide to reunite with a faith. I am not commended on my good deeds, no matter the grandeur, with even an ounce of the same enthusiasm that boils over each time they speak of my sibling and all that God will guide them to do; it is not unlike creationists to dismiss the here and now for day dreams of a better tomorrow. I would like to broach these issues which are borne purely of a faith too ignorant for me, so that my family may throw their gravy to the floor and end this ridiculous mess in mortal time, and that I may wipe the residue from my face and have them appreciate and truly value me for what I am and who I will grow to be.

So, if by some ironic miracle I am able to pierce holes in my Anglican born and raised, stiff-upper-lipped English-God-Save-The-Queen Grandfather (who, punchline, is also a retired priest); if I am able to hush the trembling lips of my evangelical Grandmother and reassure her that she still has time to reclaim what she has forfeited in order to serve her God; if I am able to present logical inconsistencies to a Mother who is smarter than she lets on but certainly as stubborn as she seems; and if I am able to give my sibling a fighting chance at redemption and growth as an individual free from divine delusion, and the ensuing pride for a willpower which is entirely their own: then I will be satisfied. I am not embarking on an Antitheistic crusade which bears no direction or possible resolution. The point to be made is a very real and acutely obtainable one. But, until I have sufficient knowledge under my belt to fight a fair war against an outnumbering army, I will continue to awkwardly keep my eyes open and my hands unclenched when grace is said at the dinner tables, and, I will continue to heave around this silver spoon, for all the gravy to come.