Part III: What This Really Is

Part III. What This Really Is

“F*ck your God.”

Before you get offended and shut me out, allow me to explain the significance of this quote.

I first heard this phrase used in the song “Judith” by A Perfect Circle. I later read an interview with the band’s lead singer, Maynard James Keenan, in a Christian magazine. He was asked, “When you said ‘F*ck your God’, were you speaking of Jesus?” He replied, “When I say ‘F*ck your God’, I don’t mean THE God, I mean YOUR god, or your perception of God.” This intrigued me, because I’d never really understood there to be “perceptions” of God, or different ways to think about who He is and what He does and that sort of thing. He was just a certain way, and the way that I was taught was the correct- and only- way that anyone needed to perceive Him.

I was reminded of this song one evening, a few years later, when one of my floormates at North Central University stood out in the middle of our hallway and screamed this at one of the other guys on our floor, with two middle fingers held firmly up in the air and his face red with anger. “F*ck your God” he said more than once, and guys came at him hard- “Brother, don’t say that!” “In the name of Jesus I rebuke you!” “You don’t mean that, dude!” And to that he said, “Yes, I do. F*ck your God!” And after a physical confrontation with one of our “discipleship leaders”- an upperclassman whose job it was model for us how a proper North Central student should live life- he stormed out of the building and didn’t return for hours. He did apologize for exploding like that, but not for what he had said.

(I’ll add that this guy became one of my good friends and apartment roommate at a later time, and that he is happily married and last I heard was leading worship and very involved in his local ministry.)

That moment, though, has really stuck with me. I had come into North Central the previous fall expecting to find that this successful center for church leadership would be all over the problems I had begun to see within Christianity, and would’ve already had solutions for fixing them. I expected that most people would’ve figured out by now that there was something wrong going on. Well, it turns out that I was the one who was wrong. While there were a few people interested in shaking things up a bit, the majority of people were interested in learning the same old thing, a very specific idea about God and everything revolving around that, and about more effective ways of getting everyone to buy in to the same old thing. A huge premium was placed on “holy living”- no, I won’t call it placing a premium- that IS what it was all about. The university president even had a little catch phrase that he would throw around constantly, and would usually elicit great cheers from students: “North Central students are CLEARLY SUPERIOR.” I’m sure he meant it simply as a feel-good rallying cry for all of us, but the superiority complex was pervasive. Things that North Central touted in its campaign for “clear superiority”: mandatory chapel services every day at 11am, no rated R movies, no dancing, no gambling, no alcohol in any amount, a 1:30am curfew, no one of the opposite sex allowed in any dorm (except for 3 hours every Saturday night), and a strict rule of not allowing any DVD players, VCRs to be possessed or any movies to be viewed in dorms at any time. No one even suggested cable as a possibility. Each and every student had to sign a pledge that they would not do any of these things, or various other activities or behaviors deemed inappropriate by the college. This pledge was called The NCU Way, and it was doctrine. I don’t use that word lightly- if you violated any part of this pledge for any reason, you weren’t simply breaking a rule, you were sinning against God Himself. People defended The NCU Way like they defended The Bible, creationism, and the existence of God. It wasn’t just The NCU Way, it was The Only Way, the way God truly intended for us to live. Anyone who didn’t agree with it should simply remove themselves from North Central, because when it all boiled down, you weren’t superior. They instilled this in the dorms’ resident advisors, and especially so in the discipleship leaders, who basically served as the lifestyle police, and though they could not take direct disciplinary action against you, they would rat on you behind your back if they felt you weren’t in line.

Then there was the political aspect. Being propagators of the gospel of unconditional submission to authority, they were especially fond of a man who seemed to hold very close to that what-I-say-goes model of leadership- the current president, George W. Bush. Though at the time I entered NCU I was a very big fan of Bush, I was very taken aback at the pressure to support him and the Republican Party, and the anger with which people would respond to those who would speak out against them. “George W. Bush is a man of God, and we are to respect those in authority, and God chose him by hand to lead this nation.” And even though at the time I agreed, I was thinking in the back of my head, “You know, I never saw this attitude when Bill Clinton was in office.” In the election of 2002, when we all went to vote at our polling place, the lines were buzzing with tension and pressure to vote straight-ticket Republican. Those who were unsure were mocked, and it was just assumed that they knew better. Later on in the year, around the time the rallying for the invasion of Iraq was becoming louder, it became the “cool” thing to do to go around stealing “Say NO To War With Iraq” signs off of people’s lawns and collect them in the dorms. One of them even got stolen and taped over “NO” with “YES” and was plastered on the wall on our floor as a trophy for all to see. In addition to inviting an anti-Muslim activist to come and speak in chapel about how the spread of Islam was the root of all the problems in the world- on the first anniversary of 9/11- the university, which had banned movies and cable TV from the dorms, began piping in the Fox News Channel to the TVs in all the common areas across campus. It was war all the time, Saddam Hussein this, al Qaeda that, and God was with us and we needed to go to war. The night the war began, I woke up from a nap to a song entitled “Rock Saddam Hussein’s Ass” being blasted down the halls and switched on my TV and watched the explosions on the screen. A few weeks later, it became an issue when a couple of students attended an anti-war rally at the state capitol, and it was widely considered that they should be punished, and possibly kicked out of school for it.

And God was FOR all this. Not only was He for all this, this was just how God worked.

By far the biggest issue at hand, though, was allowing movies to be watched in the dorms. Looking back, it was such a miniscule, dumb issue, but at the time it was so hotly contested that the Student Senate finally held a hearing to discuss and vote on a measure that would overturn the rule. The majority of the student body supported the measure, but our senators had made clear that it would be very difficult to convince them to support it. On the night of the hearing, the room was packed from wall-to-wall and to the rafters with students looking to voice their opinions and hopefully influence their senate representative. A two-hour long discussion broke out, and the premise came down to- will overturning this rule detrimentally affect the culture and values of the community? Person after person got up, explaining how allowing students the adult right to choose their own entertainment and make their own life choices would develop better spiritual habits, or how watching a movie was often a social bonding experience and not the “lonely, closed-door, community-killing” practice that many people believed it to be. Many others got up and explained that it would cause grades to drop, would waste time that we could all be using to do things for other people, or would compromise the strong stands that the university had taken to ensure that their students indeed remained “clearly superior”. The moment of the night came when a young woman got up and, sobbing through tears, expressed that God had shown her that the student body would be subject to the influence of Satan, and that Satan wanted so badly to infiltrate the North Central student body and that allowing DVDs to be possessed was that one little foothold that the devil needed to bring us all down. There were a few other appeals to this end. It was very much about keeping up the appearance of this holy lifestyle and sacred institution. After the discussion had ended, the Student Senate voted right in front of us to uphold the ban. People stormed out of the room, many of us throwing immature hissy fits that eventually were gotten over, but we all kind of felt the same- if this was truly what Christianity was about, holding life at an arm’s length, living in a sanitary bubble devoid of choice, being required to act and believe a certain way, we didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

We all went back to our dorm rooms, angry and embittered, and this is where my friend made his pronouncement: “F*ck your God!”

A lot of the guys on my floor couldn’t understand how he could say such a thing, but I knew exactly where he was coming from, because I was there, too. I explained that he was rejecting the idea that God was contained within this institution that we were attending, these theologies and doctrines we were being taught were the only way to believe, and especially the idea that in order to follow God more closely and be an effective example to the world around us, we had to remove all the things of the world from our lives. We all kind of agreed; we’d had it with being “Clearly Superior”, we’d had it with the elitist attitude of holy living as The Way, and most of all, we’d had it with this God.

Myself, and most of the guys I was closest to, left North Central University completely disillusioned with who God was, and absolutely sick of the whole Christian thing.

After all this, let me make clear that my purpose here is not to complain about how badly I was treated, or how the people at this school are evil, or anything like that. North Central is a great school for a lot of people. I have friends who are still there, who have graduated, or are about to graduate. I met some amazing people there, some of the most enviably disciplined and dedicated individuals one could meet. I think that the intention behind these rules and restrictions and the pressure for “holiness” came from a good heart that wanted to see students reach their full potential, and the school believed that a strict system of discipline was the best way to achieve this. The problem I had was that this system was upheld as the “superior” way, that not living up to these standards somehow made you less of a Christian. But I am not angry anymore. Of course I went through a phase where I would get so angry at North Central and everything it stood for that it might make you uncomfortable. I also did horrific work as a student, passing one class with flying colors (Systematic Theology, ironically) and failed the rest because of skipping too many classes. I often blamed the environment I was in for failing to motivate me to learn at this institution, and numerous other things… except for myself. This was wrong, and I take partial blame for the angry attitude I had toward North Central. I’m over it.

I am not, however, over what my experience at North Central taught me, and the path it set me on. Put quite frankly, I needed to leave God in order to find Him. Now, it could be argued whether or not I actually “left” God, or if He left me, or whatever. What I did do, though, was leave the Christian context, and I have no regrets for doing so.

After North Central, I entered the workforce. I went into working in coffee shops, and living with dudes in various apartments in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We worked our jobs, didn’t go to church, constantly made fun of our Christian upbringing, spent many a night grilling out and drinking too much, and generally had the time of our lives. We took crazy road trips to the South, and to Canada, and in one specific instance, a trip to Winnipeg, Manitoba. We spent 4 days, you guessed it, drinking with Canadians and crashing on couches and standing out in the November cold in our boxers watching the Northern Lights. We learned about what makes a Canadian a Canadian, and I noticed three specific characteristics about these Canadians that were a bit different than most of the Americans that I knew. For one, they were very concerned with the world around them and their effect on it, not just locally, but globally. They were very up on their local and national government, yes, but also on the American government, and global situations. You just got the feeling that they didn’t see themselves as the center of the world. Next, I noticed that they had a very simple way of life. They weren’t concerned with getting ahead or the accumulation of wealth, the big houses, and the fast cars (the person we stayed with didn’t even own a car- she rode the bus! Gasp!) They wanted to go to college for the sake of learning and bettering themselves, and they wanted to work their jobs and pay their rent and spend lots of time being with friends and watching hockey and drinking beer and just enjoying life. The third and most pronounced difference I noticed between Americans and Canadians was the general lightness with which they dealt with the future. They weren’t obsessively worried about what was coming next. This intrigued me because I had come to a point where I had realized you know, this life is all about the anticipation of the next thing. I bounced this off of my Canadian friend, a Buddhist. Here’s an excerpt from the email that I sent to her back in January of 2004:

"…why is it that life revolves around anticipation? Is it a human need for there to always be something next? I know you said that for "some people" there is, but could it be that everyone is like that? I mean... everything about our existence is anticipation... we go to school early in our lives in anticipation of acquiring knowledge... we anticipate going to college after school and acquiring a degree we anticipate will get us a job that we anticipate will make us money. We anticipate meeting someone who we anticipate we will spend our lives with until we come upon the death that we anticipate... Christmas is a multi-billion dollar orgasm of anticipation... heck, even orgasms are built on anticipation! We sleep in anticipation of acquiring more energy for the day that we anticipate will come tomorrow. Religion is completely based around the anticipation of rewards to our eternal soul, in anticipation of the death of our physical selves... think of everything else about life... what would life be without anticipation? As you are experiencing, it's boring and meaningless. When you're not anticipating something, what is there to live for? You can actively live out everything you've been anticipating that you've achieved... but there will still be that want within ourselves, that need for there to be something next, something to work for... not even to be rewarded, but just to work for it and... anticipate. Life IS the anticipation, the journey... the means to an end we anticipate will be the end, but will not in actuality be the end of anticipation, for anticipation is what drives us and keeps us alive, makes us human. It's not about the destination, it's the journey... and that's about all I've figured out so far. Anticipation is a human need... of what, if anything, I'm not sure... maybe we'll never know... but maybe it doesn't matter anyway... it's the anticipation that we thrive on.

And her response:

“…what I have come to decide is that not only is anticipation a human need, it is that which will destroy all chance of eternal happiness- but is also that that gives us the greatest happiness. Human nature is to succeed and excel and learn and grow and become more. I read a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and he speaks of this affliction. The book refers to these type of people, i.e. you and me and ninety percent of the world, as “ego travelers” and the quote reads "He's here but he's not here. All that he sees, all that he wants is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it’s all around him. He longs to be further up the trail but when he gets there he is unhappy............why? Because again, he is here." I believe the key is to strive to achieve and have that anticipation but still always immerse yourself in the beauty that surrounds. The destination does not always have to be the end result, perhaps the journey is the destination for the destination always seems to disappoint.”

In a strange sort of way, I heard the God that I knew, but had felt very distant from, coming from this Buddhist. This went against what I had been taught, that God speaks only through Christians, and only in King James English. Haha, okay, that last part is not true, but you see what I’m saying. You’re taught that even though something may ring so true inside you, if it doesn’t come from a specific type of person or stream of thought, then it can’t be true. It was through this that I began to realize that God does not limit Himself to Christianity, because Christianity is a man-made religion, and God is alive and active regardless of what label we slap on it, or how we think He is. I think my biggest dilemma at the time was that I just could not follow a God who was solely concerned with the ultimate destination of our eternal souls, and as a consequence would throw into the fire everything else. I like this world. I think it’s an awesome place, full of all kinds of natural wonders and possibilities and cool people and cool things. I also know that this world does not live up to how it was meant to be, and that there are some horrific things that occur by the human hand every day and in every place. Does this make the world bad? I don’t think so. But does it need help, and to be saved from the evil things that we are all prone to? Yes, and I think that God loves this place, too, so much so that He sent Jesus into it to provide that help and exemplify that way in which we can help alleviate those evil things. However, humans are not God, and as we have this ability to make decisions by ourselves- free will- we will make wrong decisions, bad decisions, evil decisions, every last one of us. Should this stop us from having hope for better things? Quite the opposite- this should give us the hope- the anticipation- that as imperfect as we are, God is still able to use who we are to bring good into this world. This idea that we are just anticipating the next thing after this life, that it’s all about what’s next, and to hell with everything else, makes us irrelevant and useless, because God placed in us a desire to work for the betterment of ourselves and those around us . I think we have lost sight of what is at hand, and possibly most important, and that is that God IS here and now, inviting us to actively work with Him to improve our condition IN the here and now. When we immerse ourselves in the beauty that surrounds us, we realize that God is here and available to us, wherever and whomever we are. God put in us a sense of anticipation of good things, and this anticipation is meant to drive us while we are alive and in the world, a sense of hope that God can use people to bring about good things in this world, that even when we can’t see clearly what’s happening, and despite the fact that we will screw things up on occasion, we can anticipate that what God is doing is and will be good.

This realization that God likes this world like I do- and definitely much more so- is what kept me from completely walking away from Him. It was wonderful to know that God wasn’t so concerned with the things that North Central, and the churches I had previously been involved with, held as their highest priorities.

But I think the biggest thing that I learned was that God is alive and active outside of the boundaries of Christianity. We were all taught that we had to convert people to a certain way of living FIRST, get them to subscribe to these certain “truths”, and THEN God could start being active in a person’s life. But I would say just from the time that I stepped outside the safety and structure and promises of the church, I saw God alive and well (maybe even more so than I saw IN the church!) in this world that Christians so love to hate, in people who Christians wouldn’t touch with a ten-and-a-half foot pole, and in places where Christians wouldn’t be caught dead going.

The religion of Christianity has hijacked God, and is holding Him hostage and saying to the world, “Say the right words, and do the right things, and you can have Him.” And this defensive attitude is backfiring, because most people are saying, “That’s great. You can keep him” and moving on with their lives, because Christianity is not the sole perpetrator of God’s work; indeed, God alone is the perpetrator of God’s work.

Religion, including that which we call “Christianity”, is really in the end a man-made, fully inadequate structure that tries to quantify and, all too often, DEFINE God to meet our own expectations and purposes. And when God becomes defined, He ceases to be God, and he becomes a god. And as our gods begin to fall apart, we defend them, and as we defend our gods, we lose what it is we were trying to define in the first place.

As history shows, when we offer what we think is a final definition of God, our ideas are quickly shown the door, so that something new can emerge…