The Further I Got From Religion, the Closer I Got to Jesus
I respect the teachings, I question the management
When I was 12-years old I began a spiritual journey. My friends and family were confused because for much of my earlier years I used to hate going to church. I would spend Sunday mornings pouting while being forced to put on a suit and walk the two block distance to Ebeneezer Baptist Church on Wyoming street. Once I arrived, I would go out of my way to ask difficult questions to my Sunday school teacher, and then come up with excuses to leave service early. I was never successful. My antics became famous amongst those who knew me, so when the decision was made that my step sister and I would no longer need to attend church services, no one was expecting me to find my way back to religion on my own.
That “return to Christ” as my step-mother called it, was less about a desire for a closeness to God, it was driven by a deep curiosity. The God that I learned about in Sunday school, the one that my family talked about was the God I was told I should love, but everything I knew about him made me feel the opposite. From what I learned in their stories, this God had given us life, placed Adam and Eve in a Garden, put a plant there that they shouldn’t eat from, and then got mad at them when they ate it. Even at the tender age of 10-years old, I thought that was passive aggressive as fuck. The foundational story in the bible made me suspicious of the entity I was told to worship blindly, and things didn’t get any better from there.
When he wasn’t entrapping his own children, he was urging them to kill their own to prove their love, allowing the devil to bring suffering to his believers in the name of a wager, or drowning entire civilizations because they had angered him. I couldn’t understand how anyone could hear any of this and feel overwhelming love. I feared him, and what he would do if I didn’t worship him, and because his rage felt so arbitrary, I grew to resent him. That resentment was what drove me away from the church, and when I would press my Sunday school teacher, or the pastor, they would always promise that God “mellows out in the new testament” I didn’t believe them, but I wanted to see it for myself, so at 12, I decided I would read the book from cover to cover.
In some ways, my pastor and Sunday School teacher were right, God did mellow out, but that’s mostly because he wasn’t the main character in this book. Jesus was the protagonist of the New Testament, at least from my point of view, and what stuck out to me then, and what still stands out now, was the story of Jesus Christ. A man who was made in the mold of God like no other person before our time, but whose teachings felt so more compassionate, open and loving.
The story of Jesus Christ was one that taught me that men could be tender, we could be loving, and that strong men could show up for others. In fact, strong men should show up for others, especially those who are considered weak, those who are outcasted by society, and those who have fallen short of their best-selves. And despite his role as “son of God” Jesus had a background that I could understand. I was born to immigrant parents who came to the United States for a better life. My mother was deported before I uttered my first words, and my father was working hard to make ends meet. And while I lived in that reality, I got to read Jesus’ story as a homeless refugee whos’ parents fought hard to find a home, and had to do so in a land that was not originally their own.
Jesus functioned under a Government that was at the best of times indifferent to his existence, and in the most extreme cases, outwardly hostile, despite these circumstances, Jesus’ message was crystal clear throughout his life. He instructed his followers to “Love the Lord, and love God with all of your heart, and love your neighbors as yourself.”
Surprisingly, reading the New Testament brought me closer to Jesus, but much further from organized religion. I would attempt to return to the church a couple of times, but I would never again give my full heart to Christianity. It isn’t something that I thought was possible, but here I am. I’m not perfect, but every day I attempt to walk the path of a man who loves his neighbors, stands up for the poor, and pushes back against systems that look to exploit people.
It’s not always easy, but it’s a path worth walking. Along this path, I have discovered that one of my biggest obstacles has been some of the same forces that Jesus challenged. The ultra-wealthy, powerful elected officials, and a willingness to be decisive with violence and destruction. This has felt especially challenging when the people we have trusted to run our government and represent us at the national stage seem to support values that go against Jesus’s teachings. They view the world as theirs alone, giving them the authority to inflict physical, financial and emotional violence whenever they deem it necessary. Their capacity for destruction and pettiness reminds me of God from the Old Testament.
I see the same fickleness, I see the quickness to rage, I see the indiscriminate destruction of entire civilizations, and I hear the weak justifications of it being “God’s will.” But is it? I don’t think It is God’s will that over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by American funded Israeli forces, I don’t think that it is God’s will for our president to hop on social media and threaten “Wiping out an entire civilization.” It can’t be! And if it is God’s will, is that something we would like to support? If the best that God’s will can do is create mass death and suffering, what could he possibly offer in the afterlife? How could it be any better?
This wasn’t where I intended to go when I started this essay, but sometimes the words escape you before your mind can catch up, so where we are. We’re in a moment where people with immense power are using God and religion to justify atrocious things, more people than we can fathom are suffering, and the world feels more unstable than maybe any other time in our modern era, in times like this, I think the only viable solution is to ask yourself, “What would Jesus do.” If you’re not sure, I’ll be happy to tell you. Jesus would fight for the disenfranchised, Jesus would defy those in power, he would chastise the wealthy for hoarding their money, he would love his neighbor. Not because it would get him anything in return, or that it might change something, he would do that because it was the right thing to do. And sometimes, when it feels like we can’t change anything around us, what we can do is the right thing. Choose love.
Congratulations, you made it to the end! Don’t leave just yet, I would love to hear from you as well. Think about answering one of these questions in the comments, or adding your thoughts when you share this post.
Have you ever walked away from an institution but kept the values it taught you? What did that look like for you?
Do you think people in power genuinely act from faith, or do they use faith to justify what they already wanted to do?
What teachings or beliefs from childhood have stayed with you—and which ones did you have to unlearn?
This post really spoke to me. I was born Hindu, but from a young age my father talked to us about caste and how it divides and destroys people. At some point, I learned that different castes were mapped onto the body of God, and that "untouchables" were so low, they were off the fucking map. I don't know that I was ever embedded to the extent that there was anything to walk away FROM, but I will say that it is a constant source of grief and shame to come from centuries old traditions that have defined themselves by their oppression. And for anyone who argues that because something is outlawed in the constitution, or because a nation calls itself democratic, that oppression goes away, I'd invite to you take a trip to India (and not the eat pray love bs, of an ashram and yoga retreat).
There's a book called the Measure of Reality, that discusses how people perceive God(s) and religion relative to their living circumstances. You might like it. I think one of the challenges with how Christianity is perceived is there isn't a lot of discussion about free will in a way that's helpful. It's distilled down to carrot/stick. I also still like the Book of James and the Beatitudes.