🌻Gotta Keep the Faith (to Yourself)

Oh, you're really religious? Awkwardddd

Hi fam. I loved hearing from you all last week!! Thanks for the life updates. You’re great, keep them coming.

I’ve been pondering something ever since I hit “send” last week: For once, I actually, publicly, admitted mentioned my involvement in my church. It’s not something I usually let leak onto the internet, not something I post about on social media, and not even typically something I let slip too often to professional colleagues. If we’re being really honest, it actually occurred to me while writing my Groundhog’s Day letter that I might leave that part out. But with how big of a role it plays in my life, it would’ve been dishonest to exclude it… and more importantly, why the heck would I leave it out?? Sounds like something I should be asking my (non-existent) therapist about.

Truth is, if I did mushrooms and met the creator of the universe and my life was cosmically changed from that moment forward, I’d be telling everyone about it. But because it happened in a church, I keep it to myself. Why?

There’s a lot to unpack on this one, buckle up.😅

Growing up, everyone I knew went to church (or synagogue or temple). Looking back, I have no idea if this was actually true, but it certainly was my assumption at the time. It was just a fact of life that kids went with their families to their respective religious establishments. However, no one I knew talked about their actual beliefs. A kid might say to another kid “I go to church on Sundays” (totally normal) but I don’t know if I ever heard a kid — or an adult for that matter — say “I really do believe in God,” or anything else remotely personal about their faith. Religion was a series of events your family chose to participate in, and those events happened, at least for Christians, once a week on Sunday mornings.

Once in a great while, I’d cross paths with someone who was, as I would’ve called them at the time, “really religious.” Now this person would be open about their actual faith. Not that they were talking about it constantly or anything, you just knew who the really religious kids were. And they’d match a pretty consistent stereotype: A little dorky, but perplexingly not insecure about it, and suspiciously kind. I’d find myself wanting to think they were annoying — probably because they weren’t “popular” or “normal” — but against my better judgment, liking them quite a lot. I can count them on one hand. 

They were all Christians. And deep down, I had a bad feeling that they were probably brainwashed.

Now, according to the social rules implanted in my young head, these really religious types were nice to have around as long as they weren’t “Bible bangers.” If you’re not familiar, a Bible banger is an outspoken Christian who is trying to force their religion on you. They’re hitting you over the head with their Bible, so to speak. Bible bangers are bad: It’s socially acceptable to participate in religion so long as you don’t try to force it on other people. Heck, it’s a founding principle of America! Freedom of religion means you can pick your religion and other people can pick theirs. Don’t cross the streams.

Anyway, as we all grew up, fewer and fewer of my peers continued to attend their parents’ religious services. A handful of rebels came out as “atheist,” but the rest just drifted off into nothingness. I’d continue to attend a rare church service here and there throughout college, and certainly still would’ve checked the “Christian” box if polled.

But by the time I was in graduate school, culture had started to shift. Depending on who I was with, I found myself starting to say things like “I was raised Christian” to intentionally distance myself from the present-day Christians in the news. “Evangelical Christian” was becoming a political affiliation — one that was not just unpopular among my peers, but perceived as actively malicious. 

Honestly, I didn’t give my own faith much thought. I certainly wasn’t an atheist, and I certainly wasn’t an evangelical (whatever that meant). I went to the United Methodist church near campus one Easter, by myself, because that felt like the thing to do. Around this time, of all my friends, exactly four were religious of any stripe: two Catholics, one Baha’i, and one protestant Christian. Not that we talked about our personal faith or anything. I started dating the Christian.

Now, this is a good time to pause to reflect on another “truth” that had long been ingrained in my mind: It is a great tragedy when a person converts to another religion “for a guy.” As far as I can recall, I didn’t know anybody that had actually gone through this, but for whatever reason I was always very aware that this is a thing that happens and that it’s a bad thing. Again with the freedom of religion: It’s very uncool, possibly brainwashy, and definitely controlling for a partner to force you to convert to their religion. Major red flag!!

So anyway here I am dating this dreamboat Christian guy — we had had an epic Easter brunch with our mutual Catholic friend earlier that year (my idea) — and things are going well. We talk one day about what we think his parents will think of me, and he casually says, “well I think they’ll mainly just be concerned that you’re not a Christian.” 

Excuse me, what?? Sir, I went (willingly!) to that Easter service by myself that one time. Did I not make you ham and cheesy potatoes? What on Earth do you mean, not a Christian? You think I’m some sort of atheist? No way! You want me to go to church with you? I’ll go to church! See if I care! Atheist, pffft. 

Possibly for the first time in my life, somebody was confronting me about what I actually believed. And let me tell you I was not at all comfortable talking about it. This is the thing we do not speak of! A person’s actual beliefs are a private, personal, mysterious thing not to be mentioned under any circumstances! I could barely utter the G-o-d word to have this and the many conversations that followed. I hated it. There were many tears. 

But I did insist Andy take me to church, if only to prove that I was capable of participating in Christianity. What’s the big deal, it’s only Sunday mornings! Not a Christian, pffft. 

Not long after, it was announced that a Creationist Summit was coming to our university. Creationist as in young Earth, literal Genesis, seven-day-creation Christians. And the Summit picked our school, at least so the rumor was, because of its thriving evolutionary biology program. Which I happened to be a part of.

Suddenly, my peers were absolutely buzzing about creationists, Christians, religion, science, logic, and reasoning — some with grace, others with hostility. There’s a longer story here, but the short version is that it inspired me to ask questions about certain Christian beliefs that I had always been afraid to ask. And to my great surprise, I started to find answers. Actual, satisfying, logical answers. (A good starting place is Biologos if you’re interested in such things.)

Now I must warn you — and also apologize — that I’m going to get a little woo-woo for just a second here. But we do need to hit the climax of this particular storyline in order to get back to the discussion at hand. So bear with me. 

Around that same time, weird stuff started happening. Weird coincidences that individually would’ve been forgettable but together seemed to point in a very specific direction. Then one Sunday, during a sermon at Andy’s church, it became an absolute avalanche. It occurred to me, for what I’d later realize was the first time ever, that God could actually be real. Apparently I had never truly considered it. And all of a sudden, I just knew. This revelation was accompanied by some sort of internal floodgates opening, and I was sure I was going to faint or cry or vomit or explode. Definitely explode. And just like that, I was, for the first time, a Christian. 

Awkwardddd. Was that awkward for you? That was awkward for me. But it happened, so, yeah. Let’s keep going.

So here we are. For the majority of my life, I have held these things to be core truths: that it is socially unacceptable (bordering forbidden) to talk about your personal faith, that really religious people are a little weird and probably brainwashed, that it’s bad to try and convert other people to your religion, and it’s definitely suspicious when someone becomes religious when they start dating someone new. 

And apparently I am still holding onto all these things so tightly that if a co-worker asks what I did over the weekend, and the truth is that I sang at a worship night Friday, spent all day Saturday at a women’s retreat, went to church Sunday morning and then spent a couple hours in the afternoon chilling reading my Bible and it was all incredibly life-giving — I’m totally speechless. You can’t say any of that, they’ll think you’re a wack job! Say something normal! “Um, not much this weekend, pretty chill. You?” Booooo coward!

Then the real kicker is that as an actual believing Christian, I also believe that the most important thing a person can do, not just to change their life on Earth for the better but to ensure their eternal salvation, is believe in Jesus. And that Jesus calls us — which includes me, specifically! — to spread this good news of salvation and to bring people into His goodness. (Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten how cheesy this sounds.) 

But I’m nottttt supposeddddd to talk about itttttttttt! Aaaaauuuuurghhhhh!

There’s this famous quote from Penn Jillette (yes the magician)(who is not a believer):

And I've always said, you know, that I don't respect people that don't proselytize. I don't respect that at all. If you believe that there's a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell — or not getting eternal life, or whatever — and you think that, "Well, it's not really worth tellin' 'em this, because it would make it socially awkward," and atheists who think that people shouldn't proselytize, "Just leave me alone. Keep your religion to yourself"... How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you and you didn't believe it —that truck was bearing down on you — there's a certain point where I tackle you, and this is more important than that.

Idk, man. First I read this quote and think: But the people around me made their decision. Everybody knows the Jesus story, and they already opted out. They signed the waiver.

But then I remember that knowing the Jesus story did nothing for me until the right person insisted it was actually true. It needed to be someone who I fully trusted to be logical and thoughtful — not susceptible to brainwashing — and who cared about me, personally. It took the smartest person I know telling me about their actual personal faith to even begin to crack the surface.

Reader, I won’t try to convert you. And admittedly I also want you to know that I didn’t “convert” “for Andy.” And I don’t want you to think I’m a Bible banger. Or an “evangelical” (whatever that means). Probably I’ll be so mortified that I actually shared this at all that I won’t mention anything remotely religious for some time. Probably you won’t mind. It’s OK, I get it, it’s awkward.

But maybe I am only just now realizing that I don’t actually if you think I’m “really religious”: A little dorky, but perplexingly not insecure about it, and suspiciously kind. Apparently, that’s just the Jesus showing, and I don’t mind that one bit.

✌️