Frankly Put: Is this Religion?
I would like to start by offering my gratitude to all those who take the time to read and share in this experience with me. To those who come back here every week and give their feedback and share the stories. It has seemingly become like a service. Like a Wednesday evening service, it’s almost religious. Isn’t that how religions kind of start though?
We create this routine practices coupled with our belief and band together in this ritualistic activity, getting more and more people on board until we have a congregation of followers. Soon some begin to idenify themselves by that very cycle. Some try to break it. Some just don’t follow in that mindset and go on to create their own societies — opposing religion, unbeknownst that they are creating their own religion. It is so interesting a phenomenon how the more we try to not put ourselves in boxes, the more we put ourselves in them too.
Now, this post isn’t really to shoot down the idea of religion. Personally, I am not against it. I have seen what is has done for some people. Some communities. This not being just the overcast religion of Christianity. In itself as a concept it is a beautiful feat of socio-cultural unification. It is the propagaters of the religion and the way they handle it that may be the issue. Now I can only really speak on religion from the Christian background, majorly Catholic because that is what I am. Or more accurately, is what I try to be.
I have to admit that I fall in the category that is neither of the extremes. It isn’t apathy for it, strongly disliking and opposing it. It isn’t drowning and bathing in it every day until it is all I see, preaching to the masses believing it is the only right way to life. The only true form of religion. Much like a lot of people in my age group I questioned it. I questioned Catholicism and what it means to be a Christian. You know, the moments standing in that grandious church and stepping back, looking into the actual practice. Wondering. Asking. Pondering. Dissociating. Week in. Week out. Some times day in, day out. This routine formed habits that almost guilted me into maintaining them without control of what I was doing. The idea of if I didn’t go to church on a Sunday, that day was wasted or untrue. If I didn’t pray, I was leaving God on read.
It wasn’t this shot epiphany, no no. I think it just simmered from my younger days and the little flame grew as I got older, as the situations around me changed.
Starting in primary school, it was the only life I really knew. Sheltered in an Opus Dei — which for those who are not aware is like a greater depth in the cup of Catholicism — school. The routine became so meshed into my life that the thought of any other life didn’t even get the opportunity to whisper in my ear. I thought strongly, “I am a Catholic.” I was so deeply rooted by upbringing but towards the release from primary life ,the questions began to slip in. Do I really need to go to mass everyday? Why should I keep praying and I want to do something else? Why is it no longer comforting to be alone in the church but eerie? Does the guy upstairs even hear when I am speaking? Am I even “speaking” right?
Come secondary, I was out of the school but still under the Catholic school mantle — Again a product of my upbringing. At this point, life was not looking like it used to. I wasn’t spending my Saturdays in an Opus Dei founded boys’ club. I was no longer offered mass in my timetable daily. I was no longer enthused by the idea of being an altar boy or mass server. The number of Catholic faces like mine had immensely reduced (which as I think about it, is really ironic). Still I held on to the thought, “I am a Catholic.” but at this point there was a little tag question, “why?”
The guilt was there though, feeling like I wasn’t even supposed to question these things, you know? “Just believe, these things are not something your human mind can even begin to comprehend.” They said. Which I do not disagree with but shouldn’t I at least understand its basis? The questions got sharper. “What’s the point of all these masses? What would happen if I just didn’t pray? Why am I being forced to do this? Does this prayer have to be through the structured literature written by souls long gone? Is intersession something that actually works? If so, do those who go not care about us because what the hell is this life?
This was also the point I began to understand the concept of denominations. The idea that we are all Christian but they are just a different flavour. Kind of like ice-cream, different people have different tastes. Maybe I wanted a different flavour? But they also had their own extremes. Perhaps my body would react badly and I would break out in aethism or something. For the first time the image of this ethereal light blurred almost completely.
Then came life after secondary school and the freedom was ever fanning the flame threatening to burn the whole house down. Access to the church was limited and depended solely on my will to get there. The pastiche freedom of choosing whether or not to go to church that would slip in now and again. Discussions with friends where the agreement was that the idea of religion was not a must. As well as many other things. I was so removed from the religious environment that the flaws I was blinded to came up. The failed system of enforcement became an enemy and the more it was pushed on me, the more I resented.
I would walk around carrying this spiritual confusion like an invisible bag where I kept the questions. Is God even real? What am I even believing in? I mean people sin and are successful, is there even punishment in sins? Why am I unhappy in this faith where others are so happy and free in not trying to keep the faith? Why am I being forced to practice this religion? Is going to church that important? Would I die if I breathe in this whiff of sin?
At the same time I carried the guilt of betraying that younger me who still believed so strongly in the system not working for me now. The conflict was a hurricane and I didn’t know where to start until one day. As a newly-formed campus student I was stopped as I walked from lunch by a “born-again” gentleman and I thought, “I’ve got a few minutes, why the hell not?” Wearing the smoke and mirrors of Catholicism I entertained discussion and although he didn’t change my mind or make me “saved", he gave me a thought that I had long thrown away “I am a Catholic, why?”
Was I just Catholic because my parents were? Or the schools I went to were? Was that the reason why it was so uncomfortable? I would look to those who threw away the thought and they were happy and realized, maybe it’s because it was their choice. They made their form of religion their own whether it was paganism or aetheism or scientology. Could it be that I need to make my religion something out of my choosing to make me feel relief from it?
I didn’t realize that before, I had unconsciously turned it into a cage of my own undoing. The religion I suffered was to have someone choose it for me instead of me choosing it for me. As I sat in mass this past Ash Wednesday, perhaps I was enjoying that freedom now. Defining my own terms of spirituality and faith.
We institutionalized spituality. We made a prison, repackaged it and called it freedom. Is this religion? Isn’t it supposed to be our own? Just a thought, if only to put it Frankly.
