Morality Without Religion

Jesus On The Cross

    I grew up in a very Catholic family, and so, naturally I grew up to be a very Catholic person. This was reinforced by my family being so close-knit and comfortable together. We rarely go longer than three weeks without seeing one another and as much as we're together, so our meetings are permeated with religion. Every meal at grandma's house is begun with the familiar family prayer. Someone who is said to be a "friend of the family" is a friend from church. Everyone's house bares weaved Lenten palm fronds and attending mass on holidays is as common as bread rolls at the dinner table. It has always been taken for granted that we were Catholics in the same way we call ourselves German. It is an unstressed but inseparable connection. Those who don't attend mass regularly are no less Catholic for their decision than they would be German if they denounced Germany. Simply belonging to the family is enough to ensure your everlasting place in the Catholic community.
    Community is an apt word for it, because I never just went to church regularly. Being a part of the church was a big portion of my life and I spent a lot of time there. I took classes, volunteered on various projects, went to parties, met friends, taught classes, attended Girl Scouts, listened to lectures on politics, and I even received a scholarship from the church. It was the hub of my life around which all my family, friends, and interests revolved. Most importantly, it was a calm intellectual place where I could think about my life and decide what I want. Peacefulness and comfort radiated from the walls and made me feel safe. I sometimes just spent afternoons lost in my thoughts there.
    And so, I was fascinated with the church, its teachings, and its functions. I listened intently to the father's homilies, making it a point to take notes and ask questions. I involved myself in every aspect of the church in attempts to understand it better. I was entrusted with duties in the service of the church which normally went to much older people. I was even chosen as a delegate to the bishop's first Diocesan Synod for Phoenix, in which we were researching an overhaul of diocesan methodology in order to advise the bishop.
    And so for a few years I spent my time at church casually introspective, until my Confirmation began to loom and I knew I had to get serious. You see, in the Catholic Church there are certain spiritual rites that are said to elevate one's soul. They are a very serious matter and among them are Baptism, Communion, Reconciliation, Confirmation, and Marriage. Now Confirmation is when a young adult, being now an adult, consciously decides to continue as a Catholic. It's a spiritual commitment, blessed by the bishop himself, and is generally preceded by a year of contemplation on the matter. So at this critical crossroads, when I was charged with deciding my spiritual fate, I asked myself the one question I had been avoiding in all my past years of happy ponderings. Do I believe in God? Tricky.
    What I finally did just before my Confirmation is separate from that question two concepts: trusting in a god to guide my life and believing that God exists as an actual entity. And once I had made that simple distinction, the question was suddenly very easy. I don't believe in god, though that doesn't mean he couldn't possibly exist. The second part is irrelevant because nobody can know if god exists, and whether he does or not has minimal bearing on my life. What I really mean by claiming that I don't believe in god is that I don't have faith in him. I don't put my trust in any superior being and I can't remember a time when I ever have. When I'm scared or alone, I look to myself not god.
    Since I made that decision I have considered the church not a place of worship, because I don't worship god, but a place to gather my thoughts and study theology as a philosophy of life. This is a necessary part of anyone's life, one can't think or do anything without knowing why or how. Humans need a cohesive philosophy of how life works so they can fit themselves in it. It's a compass, a moral compass, and with this realization about myself I proudly and happily went through with my Confirmation with every intention of committing to Catholicism, even if I am indifferent to god. So let it be eminently clear that when I finally did break with the church, it was over irreconcilable philosophical differences, and has never had anything to do with god.
    I went to church weekly and participated in my various activities, just as I always had. In fact, I did so with much more vigor and enthusiasm than I had before. I really looked forward to church because now I not only considered what the religion was teaching, I was also deeply concerned with my own ideas and developing those. And I didn't keep my thoughts to myself, I talked with long-time parishioners and the priests, and I wrote letters to higher clergy begging advice and clarification on certain aspects of Catholicism, and sharing with them my own thoughts. Some viewed me as a bit of an eccentric, but mostly I was vibrantly aware of my own mind and I did everything I could to make religion work for me in the way I thought it should. I think a lot of people were able to appreciate that, so rather than receiving a great deal of criticism for my probing, I was encouraged to continue my "inward journey" and was looked upon by most members of the church as oddly mature for my age. So I continued to listen to the Father's preaching, while bearing in mind that Noah didn't really fight the great flood, and Jonah wasn't really swallowed by a whale, and it didn't really matter if god existed. I took what I wanted from the stories and the sermons and the rest - well, that was all very childish, like the Easter Bunny.
    It was then, when I began separating the morals from the myth, that I became interested explicitly in morals for the first time. What was meant by those adventuresome stories, and how did they relate to form a standard for living. One auspicious Sunday I was seated in the cozy pews, listening to a traveling priest recite the story of Abraham who was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac. The story bothered me a little because I couldn't immediately see the moral behind such an obvious absurdity. I thought about it while the familiar narrative was being replayed, then leaned over and whispered to mom, "killing his son on an alter is a symbol of the great devotion it takes to implement god's word [read morals] in your life, right?" She quietly assented. Well, that was fine, I had first hand experience on the kind of conscious effort it takes to consistently apply rules you've decided are good in your life; there are always times when it seems so hard to be good, and so easy to fudge a little. But one can't just acclaim morals to be good and then not follow them, that's hypocritical and ridiculously useless.
    The Father surprised me when he spoke of "sacrifice" and the "betterment of others" in his homily, rather than devotion to your own morals. He called us to "perform our moral duty as Catholics," which he described as working hard to be prosperous so one could provide for our family, our community and our needy. He described personal success and prosperity as the best means to self-sacrifice, that we should work for the poor. Supposedly, a successful man is to be the mule of the failure. I was repulsed by this man's view of brotherly "compassion", that I should bear a yoke in order to feed a demand for my work, sweat and blood for the benefit of the rest of humanity. And he was so very explicit in this manner, there seem to be no way to get past what he was saying. Why, I wondered, in order to be a good Catholic, should I not expect to reap the benefits of my own work, but to work continually for others? Then, he resounded, not only should we work for others, we are also "obligated to love all of our fellow man". Such a command turns love and respect, the highest honours we can give, into stuff as common as clay for any person who might happen to demand it of you. To do so defiles any value one's love and honour could give, because you have placed the unjust on the level of just in your heart. Can you imagine, for someone to say that they love you, not because you're worth being loved, but because you exist? How much lower could you feel? That isn't love, that isn't compassion, that is the systematic destruction of love and compassion. I was very upset by this experience, and didn't know what to think of it.
    During the following week, I tried not to think of it altogether. I did my school work, read books, played computer games, went out with friends, and at all cost did not think about that sermon.
    The next Sunday I dismissed the whole ordeal as the rantings of an insane priest. I figured there must be a few of them around, and I was bound to run into one sooner or later.
    I walked into the warmly lit lobby, greeted by acquaintances, feeling fine again. I performed by usual routine of checking the sign-up sheets, making sure all the lay ministry jobs were taken care of, and chatting with friends before I found a seat with my family. I was sitting in the middle section near the front waiting for the father to begin with the familiar welcoming prayer and as I stood up I noticed the giant statue of Jesus on the cross hanging above the alter in front of me. I had never paid much attention to it because it is such a fundamental part of the church, it's always there, so I guess I never saw it clearly. But that day I noticed Jesus was writhing in agony, his spine twisted and his head bent upward. He had blood, sweat, and tears beading down his chest and his mouth was opened in mock scream. It shocked me how violent and gruesome the figure was compared to the calm of the church, the muffled prayers, and the serene bent faces. For the first time I looked at the cross and I didn't see Jesus and His Amazing Adventures, I saw a man gasping, dying, bleeding, groaning his life out in pain. And I saw everyone around me worshiping it, bowing down to it, begging it to forgive them while they pounded in the stakes. It occurred to me that this is the model of the perfect man to them, and they call for his destruction as a means to save everyone else. We are taught in Sunday School that not only did Jesus die on the cross, it was necessary for him to do so, that to appease our sins one man, the perfect man, must be slaughtered. And this was to be my model? This was how I was to live a virtuous life, continually strive to be great, and toss my greatness as alms to save the poor of wealth and spirit.
     I left the church and declared myself atheist two weeks later, I did so out of sincere moral outrage, and with the fullest awareness of saving my soul.
    The reason the system works is because it's based on hundreds of years of rationalizing. It rests on the thousands of brilliant men and women that tried to make a bad thing work for them in the way they thought it should, without ever considering that they could do so much better without the weight of dogma on their shoulders and with the ability to think for themselves.