Christianity: The Musical

  I'm writing this because stuff got me thinking this Easter weekend about another one of those big divides down the center of Christianity: the people who want to sit in a silent, solemn, private kind of reverent worship, and those who want something a bit more like...Glee. Almost impossible for me not to be snarky about the latter style of worshiping, and for this one blog entry at least, I am going to indulge the snark.  My goal is to convey vividly what the grass on that side of the fence smells like from over here.

  There's an online discussion forum I used to be on all the time ( www.shipoffools.com) which was the first place I heard this difference described as "happy, clappy" worship vs. "smells and bells."  My upbringing (moderately Exclusive Plymouth Brethren) was a lot like Quakers and Mennonites and groups like that as to what is now termed "worship style."  (We were supposed to show up each Sunday to the Only Right Church to Attend.  We didn't get to pick which church, based on which one made US happy, and we didn't get to have a worship style).  We were "smells and bells" as to quietness and reverence, but were taking it a step further and not having any actual candles, incense or bells.  Kinda zen, actually.
  There were quiet, reverent, slow, sad songs, a few verses of scripture were read, and the bread and the wine were out every week, because Sunday ("Lord's Day" we were always corrected if we thoughtlessly said something like "We're not allowed to run around outside today because it's Sunday") was the start to your week.  Lord's Day was the heart of your Christian life.  It was about death.  Well, resurrection too, in theory (maybe mentioned at the end of the service) but it was really about death.  Christ had to suffer and die to fix up the problems that we made.  His pain and suffering were our fault, and we were supposed to sit and feel bad and maybe grateful about that.  Both "emblems" (bread, wine) were about the death.  The flesh and blood of Jesus.  We had a life that came from death.  That's what's called "substitutiary atonement." (or "substitutionary atonement")  I only recently found out many Christians don't believe that's what the crucifixion was all about.  (I already knew superatheist Christopher Hitchens had a big problem with that doctrine.)

  I remember being at a youth group function on an 80s Saturday night and starting to play the theme from Chariots of Fire on a piano in a corner of the living room of an older couple who had invited us all to their house to do our "sitting and being lectured by a youth pastor who wasn't called a youth pastor, followed by eating junk food and standing around awkwardly, not swearing or mentioning television, movies, music or anything worldly like that" Saturday night thing.  The old man winced at the rowdy, flamboyant irreverence of this song even though I was playing it very softly and said "Boys, boys...in just a few hours it will be the LORD'S DAY..."
  Rebuked, we retreated to the bowl of Cheezies and got more R.C. Cola. I was the sort of kid who was just as angry as embarrassed about stuff like this, feeling that the old guy was being weird but also feeling just as awkward as if I'd actually done something I truly believed was in any way inappropriate. I felt like when you were judged or corrected, it should matter whether you'd actually done something wrong or not, but I knew that, as to group dynamics, it really, really didn't.  The first person to find something to feel offended about, won.  Every time.  It was a "tender conscience contest."

  Thing is, when worship "worked" for me of a Sunday morning (that is, when I felt like there was a genuine connection between God and me, like He was appreciating what I was doing, and me right back at Him), it was like meditation.  I guess it was meditation.  It was me going to a tranced out, very silent, very inner place and being still in there and feeling harmoniously connected to the Source of All Things, in capital letters, which I believed was only possible because of what Jesus had done on earth.  And as for the teary, sobby readings of scripture by a few earnest, sweatingly obese men, or the dusty, dry as papyrus meandering meditations of quivering old codgers? All of that was going on outside me and didn't do much to help or hinder what I was doing deep in the one part of my heart where I was encouraged to feel things.  The "reverence/shame/gratitude/awe" part.  You know, way over on the other side of the heart far away from the "gleeful/passionate/proud/giddy" side.

  And we were "plain" like Quakers, Amish and Mennonites.  Our clothes were muted and patternless, in many cases (business casual being the most casual we got, with many wearing ill-fitting, out of fashion suits they only wore for church as they were farmers or lawn equipment salesmen or plumbers or furnace repair men during the week).  It was quiet.   There was no stained glass (just frosted or pebbled glass in some of the windows in some "meeting halls.")  There were no musical instruments, not even an organ or piano.  We just had someone start singing the hymn he'd suggested we sing (or a more musical man would help a brotha out) and we'd all join in and sing, badly, slowly and quietly, along with.  There was no pastor.  There was an undefined, unofficial but all-powerful group of older men who quietly ran things.  They also swept the basement floors and cut the grass.  Apart from the ceiling fans, the heating and the telephone, there was nary an electric or electronic thing in the whole building, which was normally a converted house.  In a few cases, it was a plained up church, with all the crosses and stuff removed.  Some people even held church services in their living rooms.  This didn't change things much, although if people actually lived in the house, they suddenly had much more "say" in things like where chairs went and what time things started.

(I'd put a picture here of a Brethren Sunday Morning worship service, but I can't imagine anyone would bring or get out a camera during the service.  If anyone emails me one, I'll put it up.  Seriously.  I just Google image searched and came up empty.  It was even less likely someone would photograph the Sunday proceedings than they would a funeral.   Imagine a room with people in suits, women in dresses and hats, sitting in plain chairs which are all turned inward toward a table in the exact center of the room, with a loaf of unsliced bakery bread on it, and a pitcher of red wine with a glass to pour it into. And then picture big spaces between hymns and bible reading in which you were easily able to hear the clock ticking, shoes squeaking, and the occasional explosive cough.  Like a Buddhist temple when monks are meditating. 'Cause we were.)

  When I went to Catholic weddings or funerals, or various functions held in old-style churches, my Brethren Bigotry Training worked perfectly and kept me from being able to connect to or respect those very different forms of worship which were not as well suited to what I knew I needed in order to get my faith on.  I tut-tutted at all the gold, expensive stained glass and vaulted ceilings of the buildings ("drawing attention to themselves rather than focusing on God)" and spending all of this money so they could worship proudly while people starved a few blocks away.  I wondered about the benefit of a powerful organ, and how anyone thought it could "praise" God in its heart, and what it had to do with anything.   I was self-righteous about the uniformly effeminate men who stood on raised platforms, facing an audience, wearing robes and surrounded by candles and incense, pretending, I thought to myself, that none of this was about them, that this was not the most blatant way a human being could draw attention onto himself, short of actually being Jon Bon Jovi, at a Bon Jovi concert. "Just look at how they've aimed the chairs.  Every eye and mind is to be on him," I'd think. These guys didn't sit with us.  They came in, stage left or right, and took up a superior, elevated place, and then left in the same manner.  It looked like they insisted on being physically, socially and spiritual viewed as above and beyond.

  And then as I grew older I saw, with the advent of the Internet and its YouTube windows into the private worship, family, pet and porn lives of humans everywhere, what "contemporary Christian worship" was like.   I grew biliously greener at what I saw was on the other side of the fence.  I was appalled.  It looked like a bad Amy Grant concert.  It was DisneyGod.  It was McChurch Happy Meals, I felt.  Before Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber, it was all of the things they now are, and once they hit the scene, it actually took inspiration from them.  Worship wasn't inner meditation, it was a loud, garish SHOW.  A concert. It wasn't for God at all anymore; it was for people.  Young people.  For their enjoyment and catharsis and entertainment.  I'd attended church and been lectured on avoiding worldly entertainment.  These guys went to church to get it, and if it wasn't a good show, they'd go elsewhere.  Like customers who didn't like the daily special at a restaurant.  Where we'd been taught we were showing up to "meet God" in the only place He was going to be each Sunday in our town, they seemed to be picking and choosing places where they could enjoy the show.

Just as my response to the elevated guy in the dress with the candles, smoke and polished glass had been to find him extremely witchy, wizardly-in-a-pedophile-way creepy, inevitably my response to the "high school glee club" style of worship with its "teenage love song" hymns was to snicker nastily.  I couldn't help it.  And I didn't feel good about it.  But that's where my heart went, and with time it only got worse.

  I wasn't ready for churches where people talked throughout the service, where kids were running around while worship was going on, where people wore shorts and jeans, where girls wore lots of makeup and jewelry, showing up in yoga pants, displaying valley of the shadow of death plunges of cleavage, where people sat and drank coffee and took innumerable iPhone videos of their "worship team" during the service and put it on YouTube and generally Facebooked, blogged and tweeted about church during church.  Church for them was, as I've said, a concert and multimedia event to be documented.  It also seemed like an infomercial for Jesus, rather than a connection to him.  People sang and listened to pastors talk about us and how we felt about Jesus, instead of singing and praying to and with Jesus.  Like a fan club.  For me, "spiritual" was something you'd not be able to video or post on Facebook.  It happened in the person's spirit, and it was about stillness.
  I thought that if people didn't know about talking to God quietly, in their own heads, in their own rooms, that all their electronic hooha was going to simply show off what big Jesus fans they claimed to be, rather than allow anyone to connect to him without aid of lit-up screens.  In my church, which I didn't like much either because of the cold, ruthless judgment done to me and trained into me, Sunday morning was supposed to be quiet, intimate time spent with God, and there wasn't anything else going on.  You took away everything but you and God, and you dealt with Him, undistracted by your electronics or anything else.  You knew some of the other people there were talking to God too, and you could talk to them about it afterward, but during the service? No, that was private time.  I knew that modern worship apparently really, really worked for some people, they enthusiastically blogged, but it just made me giggle.  Nastily.  And I still couldn't feel good about that.

  The worst thing about it, the deal-breaker in terms of me EVER being able to imagine worshiping in this "new to me" kind of church?  The noise.  The constant, unrelenting noise.  You were lucky if you had twenty seconds to go to a meditative place in your head.  And during that time, people were sipping their pungent coffee confections next to you, laughing(!) at something someone had whispered to them, fiddling with the patch cords of their electric guitars and having their phones go off and apologizing, then still taking the call, heading for a quiet alcove. And they didn't even "do" the bread and wine every week.  Once a month, in many cases.  They seemed to be putting forth a gushingly emotive, painless, deathless, bloodless Life of Christ.  Sanitized sanctity.  Plasticized PowerPoint praise. I couldn't connect.  I couldn't not judge.

  There are lines of distinction that you can choose to draw or not draw, depending upon if you think said distinctions are important and good.  My church drew a line between publicly telling other people about our spirituality (which we were pretty bad at, actually) on the one hand and privately practicing it ourselves., on the other  Worship was as private and special as sex.  Not for spectators.  For the initiated only.  There were other events designed to bring noobs to.  Multimedia churches were all about spectacle, and turned every potential worshiper into a spectator, it seemed to me.  And I've never even been to an American megachurch with escalators, gift shops and Starbucks. Because you know what?  I'd feel pretty much exactly the same there as your average atheist would.  (Except with a more invested and personalized anger at how they were screwing up public understanding of my faith and trivializing and commercializing it)

  So it's Easter.  Facebook is teeming with statuses about how awesome everyone's church's multimedia-focused, amplified, smoke and mirrors mystical Easter stuff is this year.  It sounds to me like this: 

Me, Me MEEE!  *I* love!  

jesus.   

*I* just really, really LOVE!

jesus. 

It defines ME as a person and I'm just so proud to be ME and love!  

jesus

as much *I* do!!! I just LIVE to tell others about how much I love!  

jesus

!!!  
My being a Christian is awesome and is the only interesting thing about me!!
Who was he, you ask?
Someone who loves ME, that's who! Me, Me MEEE! 

  Thing is, I've been reading the bible. And I know that Jesus wasn't cheerful and positive.  I know he wasn't always tactful and kind.  He didn't merely call the Pharisees a bunch of sons of bitches like you or I might, if we weren't too Christian to use language of the kind that Christ used.  He called them the offspring (sons) of vipers.  That's kind of grosser, I think.  And counts as name-calling and insulting their mothers.  I know he was actually controversial and didn't preface his views with things like "The pharisees? Well, I really hate to be negative, but I just really, really think (and I'm wording this as positively as I can, so bear with me) that, and I'm sorry if anyone's offended by this,..."  I know he wasn't an affluent white man, nor a white hippie granola type. I know he wasn't American.  I know he wasn't a Christian.  I know he didn't give seminars on how to raise your kids right for God.  I know he didn't support a political party.  I know he didn't write a book about how to balance the budget in a Christ-centred home.  I know he sang psalms with his friends, but I have trouble imagining Peter opening his guitar case and tuning up, though I know there have been musical instruments as long as there have been people.  (And rocks.)  I'm not used to being seated "face front" with people on stages, or raised platforms, amplified and PowerPointing and multimedia-ing about how much THEY love!
(jesus).
I'm not used to the teenage love song style hymns with the 7-11 lyrics (same seven words sung eleven times), like an indoctrinating genre of sugary, feelgood pop music with chanting and clapping.

  I don't want to show people how awesome my church building is, and have them meet my pastor, whose warm humility is so beautifully at odds with how very much importance we give him, causing us to give him more importance still, just for being so humble about being the center of everything.  I don't want to blast my gooey feelings about being a Christian and loving! 
 (jesus) 
 all over the Internet.

  I'm not saying I'm right.  I'm not claiming to be a role model for anyone.  I'm not saying my attitude is great.  I'm saying exactly how I really feel, though, with no sugar-coating or lies. I'm saying where I am. Like Job, I believe in doing that. Also like Job, I believe that telling people to cheer up and get on with it and stop questioning things can cause them, as he said, to lose their fear (respect, understanding of the true power and position) of God. The path to God is going deep, not being perky and positive, in my one-sided experience.

  People ask me "Why can't you just" (always a suspicious start to any sentence) "get over yourself and just enjoy Jesus with us?  Aren't you a Christian?!  Why can't you just go to church and act like one?!"  (the "justs" are being used, as they often are, as conversational lubricant which hopes to quickly slide completely unexamined concepts straight up your ass before you've had time to ask any questions) And I want to ask them "Are you willing to enjoy Jesus with me in quietness, with extended periods of silence?  Sitting beside me instead of facing me from a raised stage, sitting close enough to whisper to me if you need to interrupt my quiet meditation to tell me something, and not needing a wireless headset mic and P.A.?  Are you willing to worship Jesus without a laptop and lighting rig?  Are you willing to reach for a deep, personal, intimate, quiet experience and then not use every bit of information technology handy to announce how much YOU love! worshiping!
(jesus)?

  What does "loving Jesus" mean?  The imprint of my upbringing and my genetics and my life choices are all over me, and I'm not merely wanting to condemn the Girly Glee "I'm SO high! (on Jesus) right now that I need to tell the whole world!  I'm tripping balls! on Him!" or "Pastor Evan! was SO anointed with the spirit and on fire (for the Lord) this morning during our Extreme Spirit ChristJam, and he's so humble and real also" style of Christianity.  I'm not content to merely judge.  I'm asking, very quietly and seriously and sincerely, "How come when I don't get into what you're doing, you doubt I am even really a Christian and try to question I know God at all?  I don't get what you're doing either.  And I expect you're sincere.  Is that okay?" 

  I am not an exuberant person. I am not a teenage girl.  I am unsentimental about most group-oriented activities, protocols and symbols.  I am picky about lyrics.  I am more of a troubled artist than an appreciative audience and I'm more of a seeker than a believer. Nothing's good enough for me to stop trying to improve upon it.  I'm always searching for something better and deeper.  I still haven't found what I'm looking for either, Bono.
  I look at my Christian past and present with more sobered re-evaluation of it than starry-eyed reminiscence about it.  A church person from my past came onto Facebook yesterday to tell me that, you know what?  What I really needed was to stop being hung up on the past.  I told him that what we all need (those of us with this past, especially) is to stop always trying to fix one another and start accepting each other. Start assuming that growth is happening in people, and that they're on it, and that they don't need us to shoulder our way in and tell them what we think only we can see needs changing immediately. Like not enjoying church.  "We can FIX that!" they want to cry.  Maybe it ain't broke.
  I am not new to church.  I am tired of it.  I am not looking for an awesome new church.  I have been repeatedly screwed over by Christians, regardless of church affiliation.  Lies, slander and the good old "we're pretending you've died" Christian tactic.  I routinely enjoy atheists more.  But I know lots of Christians and I want to know more.  I want to meet all the ones I can connect to in any way.  But, I want them to be willing to talk to me with their own brains and words, and even acknowledge me when they are more than ten yards away from a pastor of some sort.  Like atheists can.  Is that okay? 

  It's gotten to the point where I find myself discussing western Christianity as if it were a religion completely separate from anything I believe.   That religion has cast me out and I feel like it's time for me to disown it as well.  I follow Christ, not Christians.  Obviously, even putting that distinction into words pisses people off.
  I believe Christ came to earth to show us how God wanted human beings to be, like a Father teaching his daughter how to dance by dancing Himself, to the same song.  I believe that we are to be like him, as best as we can, living with the same spirit and attitude that he had, though our job is a bit different than his was in many ways.  I believe we are to be "agents" for him, representatives who do what he probably would have done, say what he probably would have said, in situations where, really, he needs to be present but isn't and we're all there is.

  I'm living a life and figuring out more and more about that stuff each month.  And more and more, Christianity seems to be about itself and not about Christ. More and more I find that acting like Jesus makes Christians act like Pharisees toward one.  (regular folk just act like Romans, who don't really get it, but don't mind it until it causes political complications, in which case they want to start crucifying people).    It's troubling, but all that stuff in the bible which draws a sharp line of distinction between "the world/society/the age" on the one hand and being a Christian who is misunderstood and attacked by said status quo on the other is nowadays really about "the Christian community" being what you're facing down across the battlefield.  The world rejected Jesus Christ back in the day.  Nowadays, many churches and Christians would do the same, if he didn't stay safely white, blue-eyed and framed on the wall, weren't a "fantasy boyfriend" like Elvis or the Beatles, weren't an autographed cardboard cutout their fan club was worshiping, of a person who isn't in any danger of ever showing up or being controversial, in anything like the way John Lennon got.  As long as he was a nice young American lad, they might let Jesus in, but if he started doing that stuff he got crucified for...

  If you want to act like Jesus acted instead of how churches seem to want you to act, you are going to deeply upset any number (perhaps even the majority) of Christians nearby.  My aunt flat-out told me something I have heard from Christian after Christian, when they objected to my attempts to act like Christ instead of acting like Christians do: "You aren't the son of God.  You can't act like him.  You're not supposed to.  You're supposed to act like a Christian, not like Christ.  Go to a good church.  Listen to your pastor. He'll help you act like a Christian is supposed to. That's what being a Christian is all about."
  It's not about Christ anymore.  Christ has been removed as the central figure to emulate in Christian society.  My sister says "N.T. Wright's latest book Simply Jesus outlines how modern Christianity sidelines Jesus and how the opposing group of atheists and agnostics does just the same for different reasons. He goes into a lot about the Jewish mindset at the time of Jesus and how using the actually historical/cultural lens allows us to better understand the significance of what Jesus and God were doing at that time. Most evangelical churches are just doing what they want but not admitting it and leaving the authentic Jesus on the shelf somewhere because he might make them uncomfortable or reflective, heaven forbid. He made a lot of people uncomfortable; they killed him because he threatened the way people wanted to see things. Change is threatening and scary. I just wish Christians would be more honest about it all, that's all. Party away but don't be naive about what you're doing."
  In modern Christianity, it is all well and good to ask "What Would Jesus Do?" and then convince yourself that he'd play football, own handguns, serve his country by killing brown people overseas, vote Republican, publicly denounce gay people, build a giant church and play guitar in its worship team and all the rest of that. But making yourself in his image instead of the other way around? It's not going to make you popular, warm and nice, trying that.  It's not going to make you more charming. It's not one of the seven habits of highly effective douchebags.

  I absolutely feel like an atheist lately when I talk to church Christians.  This is odd because I can really say that I feel I absolutely know Jesus.  I "get" him, as much as anyone in my position can, anyway.  He is the central figure I think I should be emulating.  He's where I go when I'm at a loss.  I think he is involved in my life, in his way.  But I do not believe in McJesus, and I do not go to McChurch.  I have no interest in imitating the lifestyles of modern western (American) Christians and I have no intention of having my life structured by a McPastor with a reasonably-priced Beliefs Package that can be mine for only three easy Sundays a month.  Does this make me a McAtheist?
  I am not of the same religion as church Christian are.  Feels weird because we're called the same thing.  It doesn't seem to be a matter of emphasis, doctrine or semantics.  Seems a matter of agenda and direction.  Seems a matter of central motivation.  They're supposedly nicer than I am. They come on Facebook and announce that, unlike me, they do not waste time judging people, criticizing or arguing. They say "Wow!" and tell me how "sad" it is that I think what I think.  If only I could be as nice as that...

  It's Easter weekend.  I'm going to hang out with my family and my friends, Christian and otherwise.  No doubt we will talk about God and stuff.  I am going to probably read the bible and talk to God and make a point of not telling people how much I enjoyed it if I do enjoy it, because I may be crazy, but I honestly believe Jesus wouldn't like it if I did. I genuinely believe that he spent some time, as recorded in Matthew's gospel, emphasizing being modest and discreet about ones spirituality.
  "But my devotion is REAL, so it's not boasting if I tell people about it!" insisted a pastor I know, online yesterday.  He seemed to feel that announcing ones devotion and love for God isn't boasting if you can claim that it's real.
  Paul writes "God forbid that I should glory (boast) save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."  I said that abstracting that the one step is, I think, enough to ruin the purity of it.  I felt that going from appreciating and pointing to that historical event, to glorying and boasting in our glorying and boasting, was fatal.  I felt that going from saying "Jesus coming here and dying was a pivotal historical point, spiritually" to saying "We're having a huge, awesome shitshow about how much we love! (jesus) and kinda just want to recognize y'know, (his cross and stuff), this Saturday!  Will you agree to come and watch us trip balls! over all of that?" is sufficient to ruin it, I argued.
  "You are like a lingerie model, topless at the supermarket," I told him, "Insisting 'But these are REAL!' when asked to put on a shirt to be modest about her professionally recognized assets." I told him "Jesus wasn't talking about fakery, nor about boasting. He was talking about modesty.  If you have nothing real and good, it's shame you're doing.  If you have something real and good, it's modesty you're doing.  Spirituality is no different.  Jesus was talking, he said himself, about doing what he called 'laying up treasure in heaven.' You are genuinely pious.  Time to be modest about it instead of advertising it to the Internet."
  My friend's response (and he is going for his PhD in Divinity right now, having gotten his Masters, while I am merely self-taught) was "Laying up treasure in heaven is lame."
  As far as I know, anyone who read this exchange on Facebook was angered and troubled by my side of it (how DARE I suggest they give up their toys/central motivation for piety!), if not amused at how little I apparently know about partying to raise Christ Awareness. I didn't see anyone who was annoyed that a thing God came to earth to tell people was discarded so cavalierly as "lame."  Not as cool as OUR Easter plans!  We love! jesus.  What was that?  Oh, that thing he said sounds lame actually.  We're  going back to singing another song about how much we love! him.  Never mind what he said.
  The Facebookers "liked" my pastor friend's posts, and after telling me they thought I'd misunderstood, if not his intent and wording, then perhaps the entire bible, "Wow!"ed and "so sad"ed posts.  I imagine if he and I go out over beer and talk about this more, I'll get more out of him that I can respect than that.  I'm not giving up yet.

   This weekend I plan to sing songs about loss and heartbreak right alongside a couple old ones about dying and going to heaven, in one case with people I like who don't think they really believe anything happens after we die.  We'll use guitars, but we won't be in a church, because I'm not going to go to a church service this year either.  (after the fact: We sang this, it turned out, and this is us singing too.)
 And I'm going to have people "warn" me. Warn me that there is "just no blessing on the path" that I'm taking.  That blogging and facebooking and phoning and meeting up for coffee with people who will casually talk (about life and love and God and life and death) doesn't count as Christian community, and clearly just isn't giving me some precious, undefinable thing that only (their) church can truly give me.  (Annoyance?)
  Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz has a chapter entitled "How To Go To Church Without Getting Mad."  I've read it, but that doesn't work for me. At all.  Still get mad.  And feel like an atheist who believes in Christ but has lost his faith in Christians and church.  That's doing it backwards, say my friends who have fond memories of church upbringing, but don't actually believe in God anymore.
  And the nonChristians are going to be completely fine with what I do, and they are going to perhaps feel that a man who over the decades continues to have dealings with the Almighty, sans church service, is perhaps serious about it, rather than the opposite.  But the Christians are going to judge me and tell me how much I'm missing out, question if I am really a Christian at all, and if I really LOVE! (jesus) as their t-shirts announce to the world that they just really, really do.  Judgers gonna judge.

  It starts really young, too.  One time, at my teaching job, serving "cafeteria duty" (making sure kids don't throw food and leave garbage everywhere), I had two "on fire for Jesus" little grade 9 elves of Christian girls literally stop me in my rounds, and skip/frolic several laps of me, chanting "We love Jesus-We love Jesus-We love Jesus!" in front of three hundred teenagers. They were trying to "out" me.  They'd heard I "had beliefs" and were checking to see if I had the same gleeful exuberance as they were taught to manifest.  I wonder if they have been told that this youthful interest in church statistically tends to wane once teens head off to university in 75% of cases.
  "Jesus loves you.  Isn't that AWEsome!!!?" they demanded angrily, not seeing the sought-after euphoria in my eyes, but rather a kind of awkward, long-suffering annoyance at them harassing me when I was working, in order to make every kid in the room resolve once and for all to have nothing to do with Jesus, ever.  This despite the fact that when troubled kids talk to me, I am candid that some of my advice as to their dark moments is coming from the bible and Christ.  They always express shock that the bible contains anything but enjoinders to hate gay people.
  "I know," I said with a small smile, which is all I have, most days.
  "But isn't that AWEsome!!!?" they demanded, clearly annoyed that I wasn't acting right.
  "Yes.  But after a thirty years or so of it you get kind of...used to it, and it's still cool, but not a new thing that makes you sing and dance so much" I said.  "It's just nice."
  Both fourteen year olds managed to skip stubbornly away, backs stiffened defiantly against my faithless lack of enthusiasm. THEY knew who was more spiritual, and who God was more pleased with... I wonder if they make couples who've been married for fifty years french kiss in the park on demand too.
  Another high school girl disagreed with something or other I said, and told me fiercely that she was a Christian.  This meant, apparently, that she was against abortion and gay people.  Not very far at all into the friendly, warm and casual discussion that I then started to have with her, she said she hadn't read the bible, and didn't think the stuff in it was what she believed at all. She'd heard there was a lot of very weird stuff in it.  She was a CHRISTIAN, after all, not a bible person.  She believed in Jesus, not the bible.  He was just so nice, you know? Did I want to go to her church?  I really should.

  I'll tell you what would outright shock me this weekend: if a single Christian person said that how I'm living (especially my not attending church services) is not only not wrong, but is actually okay with them.  If a single Christian person said "I'm going to take you at your word that you are doing what God wants you to do." I would be shocked.  Shocked, I tell you.  My sister says it's high time I was mature enough not to be nettled by people judging me and being passive aggressive all over me about what I do.  She's right, of course.  Still awaiting that maturity.  It should be along at any time.