Why I Have Always Avoided Religion

My parents moved over three-thousand miles away from their parents and extended family. Years later, and perhaps for want of community, my parents joined the Unitarian Universalist church sometime in '80s. The First Unitarian Church of Kensington, or FUCK for short. They have since changed the name to First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, FUCB, for some reason, even though it is still located in Kensington.

My father was a member of the choir. I vividly remember pancake breakfasts there. I also remember as everyone stood to sing psalms I would crawl away under the pews faster than my parents could catch my shirt-collar to the large oaken double-doors away from the service. I hated it so much. Even as a child, I would rather go outside and kick dirt clods or play with tree sap than sing psalms in a church service.

I had a rich inner-life that nobody could take away from me, and which I could not wait to get back to. I hated interruptions, but interruptions were constant. I wanted to retreat into a jar where time did not pass and nothing changed.

Some years later, I remember as a young self-styled punk-rocker my first girlfriend. I met her at a multi-day church YRUU conference. YRUU stands for Young Religious Unitarian Universalists. I saw her amongst a creche of other girls. She was at the center of them. They blurred into blurry blobs, but she was in focus. A beautiful, earthy brunette who moved like poetry. I didn't know how I could pop that bubble and get to her. Eventually, I found her alone on a couch in the church basement. I took two steps and lept on to the couch beside her. I asked her if it was okay. She told me it was.

Her name was Jessica Frank. We dated for six months. She lived in San Mateo, and I lived in Kensington. I took public transit to see her at least twice a week. I would take a bus to the BART station, to Cal-Train, then another bus on the San Mateo side. The trip took almost three hours each way.

I thought nothing of it for the chance to hold hands with her, smoke clove cigarettes and listen to Depeche Mode, while red candles burned. That, or sometimes we would go watch a movie. I can't remember a single movie we watched. I think I was just happy to be with her.

My alcoholism was escalating during this time, however. I always found the church liquor stash. The funny thing is, no matter which church was hosting the YRUU conference, they always had one.

At one of the conferences the younger brother of Jessica's best friend gave me a black eye while we were sparring, drunk of course. The next morning I ran out on to the deck, slipped and executed a full Charlie Brown maneuver, a forward-flip. I landed on one foot and sprained my ankle.

Later that day at Jessica's friend's house, her friends decided that I, with my new limp and my black eye was not worthy of her affection. They broke up with me on the spot. No longer in shock, I cried and spun circles on the floor of my father's Econoline van, holding my intensely painful ankle all the way home. It was a long drive for me, and my parents.

That was my first and only intimate relationship during high-school. I was sixteen. I stopped attending YRUU conferences and youth groups soon after that. I was heartbroken and disillusioned, and my drinking habit was taking on a new dimension during that time.

A few years later, after I had moved out of my parents house, there were some incidents involving my younger sister, Laura and the sextant of FUCK. The sextant was in his sixties, and he taught Sunday school. He had no children of his own, and he lived nearby with his mother. My sister was seven or eight years old.

He occasionally followed her around the grounds. One day, the day of the science fair at Kensington Hilltop Elementary School, the sextant of FUCK showed up. He had no children of his own, he did not greet any of the parents. He followed my sister around. He had no reason to be there. I asked Laura about that time recently, she said her memory from that time was blurry.

My parents complained to the ministers of his creepy behavior. They were not the first ones to come forward about the guy. They implored the ministers of FUCK to perform a simple background check on him.

The ministers refused, they said it would be an invasion of his privacy.

My parents justifiably pulled our family from the church. We stopped going to FUCK. It was a huge loss for my parents, they had built up a lively community for over a decade, but it was the right decision.

Laura told me flippantly today, "There are pervs everywhere." I wanted to tell her, "Yes but they seem to have a protected status in religious organizations."

Years later my parents joined the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, First Pres. At fourteen, Laura was told by the pastor of First Pres. that her gay friends would be punished by God. That was the beginning of the end for my sister's attendance of Christian-based churches.

My mother was raised Catholic. She confided to me that she really tried with Catholic church, but the whole shuffling around of pedophiles by the church thing was too much for her in the end. She no longer considers herself religious. I understand. I am impressed by her position considering the conviction of her former faith. In my mind she is a true Christian, one who believes in the core tenets of the teachings of Jesus, as opposed to one who looks for a Jesus in human form, or a translator or channel for Jesus, like a pope for example. She is no longer religious, but maintains her own relationship with God.

I avoid politics. I also avoid religion. I always have. I could go on about all the atrocities committed in the name of religion or broadly, religious violence. "You don't believe in the same invisible man in the sky as I do therefore I'm going to kill you." Others much more qualified than I have cited all that stuff. I don't need to enumerate it here.

Mostly, I believe in peace, hope and reason. These things are incidental and ancillary considerations, at best for religious organizations (especially fundamentalist ones).

I just don't think one needs religion to be of service to fellow human beings. I don't think one needs religion to experience the rewards of that service: humility, gratitude and love. The basis for which is peace and hope. I understand it helps some people achieve these things, but I don't need it. I don't think anyone does.

I don't encounter lot of evangelical mainstream Christians here in the Bay Area, but what I do encounter quite often is a special brand of prescribed spirituality. Evangelists of a different stripe. What I call religious edge-lords.

We can talk about the God of the Gaps, or your Ayahuasca experience in Peru, far from the possibility of actual medical treatment. You can tell me all about your yoga guru in India, or the Est or Gurdjieff workshop you attended. You can tell me about channeling Metatron while wearing white robes and a pyramid on your head on Mount Shasta. You can talk to me about cloud-bursting and Wilhelm Reich.

These are all discussions I have had, with people I have known at various times. I won't tell you you're wrong to subscribe to, and evangelize such things, but please don't be surprised if I look at you with the same aspect as I would an old high school buddy telling me about their most recent LSD trip, or a UFO abductee relating their experience to me. I will nod, my eyes will get wide, but like a flower held over an open flame I am dying inside. My patience with that stuff is shriveling.

Whereas political discussion tends to infuriate me, religion is less onerous, it has a sedative effect. It just puts me to sleep. Speaking of sleep, if you talk to me about Nietzsche or Karl Marx instead I might still don my party-snoozer mask, but you'll hold my attention a little longer than either of the aforementioned topics.

Oh great, this blog has become a list of complaints. Well, that's all I got for now. This one is kind of half-baked, I don't know. I don't claim to know with certainty about the existence of a god or gods. Given everything I do know, I think it's unlikely. I don't look down my nose at people who believe in god, but I've decided it's not for me. A religion that professes to know with certainty about the existence of god is especially not for me. If god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere all-at-once, why is he short of cash? Why are people appointed to speak for god (from Sunday-school teachers to cardinals) frequently so fucked up?

No thank you. I'll pass.