Christmas, Confusion, and Casino Cremation
Christmas finds me wondering. I've been hearing pieces of the nativity story relayed through the mass marketing of Christmas by stores, churches, and news outlets, and for some reason this year it's sounding more and more like telling kids about Santa Claus to me. I've been on a slippery slope to agnosticism for a while, if I haven't already rolled to the bottom of the hill. I'll spare you the play by play of how I got here for now, but I'll give you a wide angle shot of the process.
When you've been behind the scenes preparing for the magic show and you've rehearsed it so many times you can do it in your sleep, when the big day comes it doesn't have the same flare for you as it does for the audience seeing it for the first time. It's sort of like the mystery entree at your favorite restaurant. You know you like it, just don't ask what's in it. Professional Christianity is a dangerous thing for those on stage. After a while, in fact during the whole presentation, you're asking yourself if you believe what you're selling. Here is the beginning of my post.
I've been reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Leaving Church, in which she compares her decision to leave the priesthood to a couple's decision to dissolve a marriage. You have to determine if it's the spouse you can't live with or the whole institution of marriage in general. Well, for me, it's just the whole institution of church I can't buy into anymore. It seems like a racket to me. Understand my sentiments are tempered by a couple years of post-ministry reflection, and I readily admit my current state of cynicism.
Being on the front lines close to the action was more than enough to put doubts in my mind as to the purpose and effectiveness of what we were doing in the church. Since leaving I have allowed everything I thought I believed to be vulnerable to suspicion and testing. I'm not going to cling to something for the rest of my life just because I was raised on it. It's got to go deeper than that for me, or I'm jumping ship and finding something else that I'm willing to live for.
I've tried to throw out everything I knew about church tradition and program and isolate a basic set of operational values by which I could live by. The more I widdled down the pulpit I didn't end up with anything resembling the church I knew. I understand more how we got in this mess and created this monster, but I don't have a clue as to how we are going to collectively get back to the original design.
My fasicination with astro-physics, origin and development of the universe and stellar systems, has led me into some deep theological waters. It is beyond amazing how much scientists and theorists have learned about where we come from and how this all got started. They readily admit they haven't unlocked the "mind of God" yet, but they are pretty dang close. So now the doubts that lingered in the back of my mind for years in the church have come forefront with scientific evidence that completely contradicts the conservative, literalist interpretation of the Bible, which I always had a problem with but didn't want to discuss.
I watched an amazing documentary on the History Channel the other night on the true history of Christmas, which traced its development from a "pagan" winter solstice celebration through its hijacking by the Church and ongoing battle between secular and religious observances. It was absolutely amazing. I'd known about many of the secular traditions that predated the religous traditions, but when strung together piece by piece it's so much easier to see how embellished the nativity story is. That just as Zionists in the time of David and the prophets hijacked local pagan mythology and adapted it to fit their Zionist tradition, so did the early oral tradition in the church pick up and adapt local mythology into the story of the birth of Jesus, as the Church would also intermingle the observation of the birth of Christ with ongoing pagan celebrations of Christmas.
I don't know if I'm going to throw the baby out with the bath water or what. I don't know what I believe anymore. I don't know if I'm going to believe again or not, but if I do, I will come back to the faith on entirely different foundations that those I was planted on.
I was asked by a close relative to assist with a funeral for a distant relative this Christmas weekend. I gave up weddings early this year. I've had enough of them. I quit. I think this may just end up being my last funeral. I haven't preached in a while. Been turning down invitations. I can't stand up in front of people and lie, and I'm pretty sure they're not ready to hear what I really think at this point. I haven't even been to church in months. I've enjoyed not going and really could care less about when and where I go back, although I have to lie and tell my church-going friends that I've visited a few places here and there, so they'll feel better and won't be burdened to witness to me. If I were to be honest about how I feel and what I think, it would seriously screw up the theology and self-confidence of a lot of people I know who are perfectly content being plugged into the Matrix. If they want to go down the rabbit hole one day, that's great, but I'm not pulling their plug until I know just where the hell this thing is going.
So after I got suckered into agreeing to "assist" with this guy's funeral, who I don't know, I found out it's a memorial service because he's going to be cremated. Ok, fine, whatever. Doesn't bother me none. Then I find out from family members that he was quite the "hell raiser" in his day. Never darkened the door of the church and was quite a jerk to most who knew him. He's been in nursing home for a while, lost a battle with cancer at 58. Kicker to the whole story I learn tonight is that when the memorial service is over his wife is spreading his ashes on the front lawn of the local casino, his favorite place in the whole world. So, here I am, a drop out preacher, on the verge of losing faith if not my mind, going to speak at this guy's funeral tomorrow who apparently didn't believe in anything except finding a machine that's hot. I got to admit, if God is real, He's got one hell of a sense of humor.