Sunday, October 2, 2011

Learning to Translate

Many of the friends I grew up with in church are still very attached to Christianity, but not the kind of fundamentalism many of us were fed. They embrace a Christianity that cares about what people are feeling and experiencing now, that acknowledges social injustice and wants to fix it, and that doesn't just discount this life as a "passing through" where "saving souls" is the only thing that matters. I think this kind of Christianity is healthier than much of what's out there, but I'm still wary. When I hear them talk, some red flags still rise within me. I'm having trouble deciding whether I am overreacting, and whether I should try to put these things in a different perspective to make them feel less threatening to me. Let me try to give a few examples:

When my friend says that he needs to "trust God more," I balk. My immediate thoughts are, "Trust God for what? What is God going to do differently whether you trust him or not? What if one decides not to trust God?" I feel knotted up inside when I remember the pain and guilt I used to feel when I was convinced I wasn't "trusting God" enough. I remember thinking that the reason I wasn't getting the love and validation I needed was because I wasn't trusting God, so God wouldn't let me have what I thought I needed until I had come to understand that "God" was all I needed. I am angry that I was taught to try to shut down my legitimate emotional needs, and that if I couldn't, God would withhold what I needed until I did. That is not a loving God, that is a manipulative sadist.

But then I calm myself down, and try to put myself in my friend's mindset. I don't think he's saying that he needs to deny his humanity or stop doing everything and just let God take over, that God is going to arrange all the circumstances in his life and make it all better if my friend just trusts enough; he understands that we have legitimate human needs and that initiative on our part is often required to meet those needs. What I think he's saying, when I translate it into words and thoughts I would use to express it, is that there are many things in life we cannot completely control. These things happen to us, and there's not much we can do about it except pick ourselves up and keep going. Things have a tendency to work themselves out, and we are remarkable beings with the ability to adapt and inner strength that often completely surprises us. We learn that, when there's nothing else we can do about it, we can handle a lot more difficulty than we thought we could. My friend calls this trusting God; I call it trusting the human resilience with which I've been endowed and finding strength in the relationships I've built. Those red flags that popped up begin to droop, and I feel more connected to my friend. We are more on the same page than my initial reaction led me to believe.

When another friend says that she loves Jesus, that Jesus is the most important thing in her life, that she owes everything to Jesus and that she wants to share that with the world, I fight down the dread that rises in me. I used to say the same things, and try with all my heart to believe them. I tried to shut out everything in my life that was not about Jesus so that I could experience that fulfillment as well. I heard people talk about loving Jesus, and I tried so hard to do it too. But how do I love someone I've never met? Well, obviously I wasn't spending enough time, or the right kind of time, "in the Word." If I was, then I would know Jesus and I would love Jesus. That's what all the Good, Happy Christians did. I tried to manufacture emotions of love for this idea that was Jesus, because that's how all the Christian authors talked about Jesus. I tried to feel loved and valued by Jesus, because I thought he was the only one from whom I was supposed to be seeking it; and if I was looking for love anywhere else, I was being a Bad Christian, or not a Christian at all. I remember the paralyzing fear I felt whenever I talked with a "non-Christian," because I knew that if I didn't do everything in my power to convert them to Christianity, I was being a Bad Christian. I had the truth, and if I didn't share it and "bear fruit," I was a failure. I never allowed myself to establish a human connection with anyone who was a "non-Christian," because what was of first importance was not that we both shared this thing called humanity, but that the other person was going to go to hell if I didn't do something about it—if I didn't share Jesus with them. The pressure was crippling.

But again, I don't think this is really what my friend is saying. What she calls "Jesus" is, I think, something along the lines of what I call hope, or peace, or love; something I go to when I'm depressed, because I know I won't feel like this forever; something that I experience in connection with other people; some divinity I can almost grasp within a genuine human relationship founded on love and mutual respect. When she shares Jesus with people, she shares herself, not some formula. She shares her love of life and hope for the future. So, when I've translated it like this, I feel less threatened; I feel less like my friend is trying to force me back into a cage I've worked so hard to break free of.

It remains, however, to ask whether my translations, my interpretations, are really expressing my friends' feelings fairly. By translating these things out of religious terms, am I somehow robbing them of something important? Am I misrepresenting my friends' communications? Perhaps. My intention is not to make my friends less religious or less spiritual, but to represent their opinions to myself in a way that makes sense within my new worldview. I want to be connected to my friends and share a common understanding of truth, but I refuse to return to the painful confines of the worldview I left; therefore I translate. How else do I balance my relationships with my Christian friends with my non-Christian worldview? I hope I'm not being unfair to my friends, but I must be fair to myself as well. That's what reconciliation is, isn't it? I think my friends would be supportive of that.