I am Heathen

The other night, my kids participated in a variety show put on by the school they attend. The show was great, the kids were all amazingly talented, cute and enthusiastic. I didn't stay for the entire show; after the kindergartners performed (i.e., the twins), it was already getting late in the evening, so I took Finn and the twins home, while Michael stayed with Lilah to watch the rest of the grades (i.e., Joey) perform. When Michael got home later, he told me that one little girl's solo performance had consisted of singing a very Christian song - I believe it was Here I Am to Worship (I could be wrong, but it was something with that or a very similar title). I was dumbfounded.

This is a public, secular school. At first I was highly irritated because I just don't think stuff like that belongs in a public school setting (even an after-school activity; if it's an activity or event sponsored, hosted, or otherwise the responsibility of the school, I don't believe that religion should play a part). I'm sure the little girl was talented, and I'm sure her performance moved many an audience member, but still. My knee-jerk reaction was "Keep it at church." However, I understand that, despite the constitutional separation of Church and State, there's also the constitutional rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and there's no way the school could have forbidden her from performing that song without committing religious descrimination.

Then I started looking at it from another angle: what if a kid had gotten up there on the stage and recited a poem about there not being any God?

I'll just take a stab in the dark and guess that people would have generally been outraged. The school may have even gone so far as to not permit it, or at least discourage it, because it's just way too inflammatory. I bet parents would have been aghast at the "programming" the poor child had obviously been the victim of; after all, there's no way a kid could have opinions like "there is no God" without some adult feeding that to him or her.

I'm just guessing here. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a performance like that would have been as welcomed as the Christian performance. But I'm betting not.

God and Christianity are socially acceptable, it's as simple as that. Atheism, and even Agnosticism, are not.

I have this underlying feeling of separateness, of disconnect, from a lot of my peers, because I am not on the same page as most of them when it comes to God. I don't believe in God. I'll spare the entire chronology, but there was a time when I did believe in God (mostly because that's what I was told to believe). But gradually over the course of my adulthood, my belief has been replaced with non-belief. And I am completely fine with that. Despite what some people might think, I am not an empty, lost soul.

It seems, in my mind, to be an issue that gets in the way of potential friendships. I can be happily conversing with someone, say, a fellow mom at school, while we wait for our children to be dismissed at the end of the school day. And then the God-bomb drops. References to church, and prayer for this or that, and gifts from God ensue. And then suddenly I deflate, knowing that we can never truly be friends, because God clearly plays such a big part in their life, and I assume (through experience) they would be horrified if I blurted out that I don't go to church, I don't pray, and I don't believe in God.

Here's what I want people to know about me:

• I am a person of very high morals. I believe in honesty and loyalty and kindness to my fellow human beings. Not because I am concerned about where I may end up in the afterlife (I don't believe there is an afterlife), but because it just makes the world a better place to live in. This extends to my belief in equal rights and treatment of all people; everyone, no matter their skin color, sexual orientation, or intellectual ability, deserves dignity, respect, kindness, and the right to marry whom they choose, for crying out loud.
• My rejection of religion and the notion of God was not precipitated by any negative experience I had. I just grew to view it as nonsense over a period of time. And nothing anyone can say or do is going to convince me that there is a God, so don't even try.
• I am pro-choice AND I am pro-life. That is to say, I think it is a dangerous thing to take away a woman's reproductive rights, or power over her own body or destiny. However, I value human life, deeply. And I wish more people made better use of the choices they have.
• I am not raising my children to be Atheist. I am, hopefully, raising them to think for themselves. They know that I don't believe in God. And they know that other people do. The only thing I have emphasized to them is this: "Don't believe anything just because somebody tells you that's what they believe."

I respect that people have their beliefs, that those beliefs may differ from mine, and that faith (or absence thereof) is a very personal matter. At this point in my life, I personally find religion and the notion of God to be ridiculous, and find myself becoming quite offended by some of the manifestations of God in certain people's lives (like crediting God for helping them afford braces for their kid, or for finding a way to get a much-needed new roof on their house, or for making sure little Jimmy got over that pneumonia, or even for being responsible for my husband beating cancer - all while Haiti gets leveled by a catastrophic earthquake and there is massive loss of life; really? Was the God they believe in just snoozing on the job, or does He play favorites?) Nonetheless, believe what you want to believe - whatever gets you through the day and all that. I just get tired of being inundated by it all the time. It's not my bag, baby.

And I wish I felt the same freedom to openly express my views on God and prayer and church and religion - and still be accepted as a good, decent, moral, upstanding person. My close friends know where I stand, and I do tend to cut loose with this stuff in my book club when our discussions center around religion. But out in the world at large? Thrown into conversation with people I've just met or have only a casual acquaintance with? Imagine if I put in my FB status something about my true views about God. Hmmm, maybe I should try that as an experiment.