My visit to Ren Faire reminded me of the biggest way the church taught me to gaslight myself whenever I started to have doubts

My visit to Ren Faire reminded me of the biggest way the church taught me to gaslight myself (and others) whenever I started to have doubts

When I converted to Orthodoxy, I did so for the same reason that anyone does almost anything; I believed it was right. I had become certain in my conviction that the Orthodox Church had the truth that was missing from my Evangelical upbringing. In many ways, I’ve deconstructed my faith twice: first, out of Protestantism and into Orthodoxy and then from Orthodoxy into whatever the fuck I am now. In so many ways, the first attempt was me desperately trying to hold onto Jesus but feeling deeply like I could no longer see him in the church of my youth. I could not reconcile the Jesus I saw in the scriptures with whoever they were talking about from the pulpits each Sunday morning. Jesus said that the poor would always be with us, but everyone at my church seemed pretty well off. I read in the scriptures that we were supposed to love our neighbor and pray for those that persecute us, but after 9/11, everyone at church beat their tambourines into gongs of war. There was an ancientness missing from my faith as we did not have many of the other elements from the scripture, like communion, incense, and altars. When I first stepped into an Orthodox Church, filled with the smell of frankincense and bread, I fell to my knees thinking, “Surely, this is the Son of God.”

As different as my experience was in Orthodoxy from Evangelicalism, something that seemed a universal belief across all denominations is that people were mean and there was nothing we could do about it.

A local priest took a personal interest in my conversation journey, not in a good way. He doubted my sincerity, so he did everything in his power to prevent my chrismation. It was a painful experience to come to the conclusion that you believe something to be the truth, only to be met with gatekeeping. At the time, I did not realize how much suspicion there would be about converts within Orthodoxy. As the tension continued to grow over my desire to become an Orthodox Christian, feelings of doubt began to creep into my mind. Had I missed the mark yet again? Maybe I was making a mistake by converting? In this moment of deep pain, I reached out to my confessor priest and shared with him all of these struggles, fears, and anxieties that were plaguing my soul. He spoke to me calmly and with deep understanding. In many ways, Abbott David was the perfect example of what it meant to be a Christian, so whenever I spoke with him, I understood my choice. Yet, whenever I was outside of his shadow, interacting with others, the doubt would rush right back in.

I was gun-shy like a twice-divorced man, afraid to fall in love again only to find myself abandoned and alone yet another time.

After listening to all my concerns, David made that face he did whenever he was being contemplative about his answer. He took a deep breath inward before saying, “The church would be perfect if it weren’t for the people.” He went on to explain how church is supposed to be a hospital for the sick, and it was full of folks who were broken, sad, and hurting. I needed to learn a little bit more humility by not taking everything so personally. People are going to people, after all. What more could I expect from them than to be flawed human beings who would make mistakes that sometimes cause me to experience brokenness, sadness, and hurt? I had to learn how to forgive. I wasn’t converting to a group of people but a faith.

I had heard all this before in different iterations during my journey with Jesus. Whenever someone fucked up and said something cruel or judgmental causing me to throw my arms up saying, “Maybe this whole church thing is bullshit” someone would come along to explain to me that it wasn’t the Church doing the pain but just human beings. God couldn’t be held to account for any of this; it wasn’t HIS fault that people were self-absorbed assholes. Dig any deeper, like asking how God is not responsible for his own creation, then you would get hit back with that sin entered into the world because we have free will, so it's all out of his hands now. Then again, in our system of justice, we are also told that folks are supposed to be responsible for the things they create. If you design a car that explodes, you are accountable for the harm that flaw in the design caused. Yet, it seems God has no culpability in the fact that they designed a model that doesn’t seem to have empathy as its default.

***

As a teenager, I volunteered to work at a Billy Graham Crusade. I was just sixteen, but to me, he was a shining example of someone who seemingly gave a shit about people. He would be appearing at the Coliseum, home of the Tennessee Titans. The irony of it all seemed rather lost on me in my youth; I was just thrilled to see one of my heroes in person. I attended two weeks of training at my church to be authorized as a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association representative. At the end of the service, there would be an altar call, and thousands of people would rush the stage to confess that they were a sinner and to pray a prayer to accept Jesus into their hearts. I had a sacred duty as one of the hundreds of folks now trained to pray with these individuals and also collect all of their private information so that they could be later solicited for donations.

When the day finally arrived, I had that same feeling of anticipation that one might associate with Christmas Eve. I was going to be saving souls alongside Billy Graham! Yet, when I arrived at the stadium to find my team leader, folks were standing outside with protest signs. They were a group of fundamentalist Christians that believed the good reverend was too easy on sinners, made Jesus too accessible, and he didn’t focus enough on Hell. They stood outside of the venue with their khaki pants and white button-up shirts while holding placards full of hateful messages, and by hateful messages, I mean direct quotes from the Bible that I, and countless others, just chose to ignore, pretending they weren’t there.

Once I made it safely inside, our team leader explained that these Bible thumpers always showed up to dissuade potential converts from coming in to hear about the love of Jesus, “They are focused on the wrath of God. Thankfully, real believers know better.” It was explained to me that these aren’t a genuine representative of the Good News. This would begin a trend that followed me for the remainder of my faith journey. Whenever faced with those who espouse a dogma that is focused on unkindness, this excuse prevailed: they aren’t real Christians.

We can’t judge God, Jesus, the saints, the church, or our pastors against what the congregants are saying and doing. Whenever someone was cruel in the faith, they weren’t a real Christian, but also, if someone fell away from the faith, they, too, were not really a Christian. Whatever flaw you found could be easily excused away with the idea that the perpetrator was not an actual ambassador of the Lord; they were just someone following vainglory.

***

As I struggled with facing, yet again, the same problems within this ancient version of the institution, Abbott David’s words soothed me in the same way that they did that day at the Billy Graham Crusade. Jesus was still in my heart, God in his heaven, and all was well with my soul. I can’t hold God responsible for how people malign his true love message. Jesus wants us to share that love with a broken world, that his dad created, and all he needed to do was be brutalized by the society that his dad crafted before then his public execution for insurrection would cleanse us of all our previous transgressions; you know, for kids.

Then, the institution made a colossal mistake: they educated me.

I got a scholarship to attend an Orthodox seminary and poured myself into my studies. However, the more I learned, the less any of this made any sense at all. Not just the little things like there being an all-powerful God who used to come down from the clouds to commune directly with their people but is now entirely hidden from our view. No, it was in my study of what it means to be the church that began the unrepairable crack in the foundation. The word “church” doesn’t appear in the Bible. That was an Anglicized word used to translate the Greek word ecclesia, which means the body or the people or the assembly of the people. The church has always been the people, the body. After my ordination into the priesthood, that same priest who never wanted to see me convert in the first place remained a constant thorn in my side, I went to the vicar of the diocese about it and his response was, “We are the Body of Christ, that means that some folks are the hands that heal, others are the feet that take us to the poor, but someone as to be the ass.”

Does this exonerate Christianity from any further litigation for its crimes? All of the wars and famines and crusades are just washed away by the simple idea that within the Body of Christ someone is bound to be the flaccid cock?

***

I was doom scrolling on Facebook the other day when a video showed up in my feed showing a clean-cut young man named Bryce having a conversation with a goth person who identified as a Satanist. The Satanist said that they didn’t attend church anymore because of how much hypocrisy they had seen coming from the Christians. The young man quickly responded with, “You were hurt by people claiming to be Christians, so you decided to become a Satanist?” Well, Bryce, that’s kind of what happens when people are sold a product, and it doesn’t work; they stop using it.

Without even knowing it, this young man did the same thing I used to do, having been trained by every pastor, preacher, and priest I ever met; throw the other Christians under the bus and pretend they aren’t real.

This gaslighting technique worked like a charm on me and countless others for so long. The Church didn’t hurt you; you were hurt by folks who claimed to be Christians but weren’t really Christians, and so that indictment can’t be brought against the whole of our faith because we can easily distance ourselves from it. Those Christians weren’t real but I am real and the Jesus they follow isn’t real but the one I follow is real, doesn’t that make sense? You just got tricked into purchasing Suave Jesus, but we have name-brand Jesus. Don’t order your Jesus off of Wish; get him from a department store instead. You fell for a trick, but don’t fret; we’ve got the real thing right over here.

We are the disembodied of Christ.

The problem with this mythos is that it’s never applied evenly. The idea of the flawed Christian who messes up isn’t never used to give grace to anyone the Church doesn’t like; if you are queer or trans or a sex worker or single parent or whatever, then you are not a real Christian but neither is the Bible thumper screaming outside of the Billy Graham Crusade. Basically, no one is a real Christian except for that one Christian standing in front of you right now who is begging you to give your heart to Jesus because apparently that’s what the body is missing: a heart. With enough grit and willpower, we can Frankenstein ourselves together into a religion. Sure, some parts might be rotten, but that’s what happens sometimes, you know? You can’t blame the Good Doctor for that; how can he be held accountable for his creation? Then again, as it turns out, the real monster in that story is the Creator, not the creature.

***

I took my family to the Ren Faire last week. We got turkey legs, obviously, because that’s just what one does when they go to a Ren Faire. After everyone had their snack on the lawn, I walked my ten-year-old son toward a trash can to ensure he put all his rubbish away. Well, some guy dressed as a knight leans over and asks my son if he’d like to trinket trade. For those not in the know, it’s common for folks to bring trinkets to trade at Ren Faire. The knight pulled out a little book to hand to my excited kid. Our children love books, and he couldn’t be more excited. He began to run back towards his mom to show them the cool thing he got while trading.

Right before he left, I look down to see that, instead of giving coins or crystals or any of the other cool shit people typically hand out, it was a Bible tract. Specifically, it was the Gospel of John. Of course, it’s got a little sinners prayer and all that cute “don’t go to Hell” stuff. Very appropriate for a child.

Without missing a beat, I handed the knight an indulgence bookmark and walked away.

After rejoining Tashina and the kids, I realized the knight was motioning to me. When he sees that I’m paying attention, he rips the indulgence in half, chucks it into the trash can next to the turkey bones, and makes the sign of the cross. Naturally, I flip him off. Suddenly, I hear ripping noises from behind me. Turning to investigate the sound, I look to find that my ten-year-old is ripping the Gospel of John up while staring right back at the knight.

“If he’s going to rip up our stuff, I don’t want his stuff,” my son says with a shrug.

If any of y’all are curious why the church is failing, that’s it right there. This dude, with his anger and hatred, exampled that to my kids. I’m sure he felt persecuted or like I’m some terrible parent, but he started it. He’s not a martyr, even if he wants to cosplay as one. More importantly, he is not some isolated incident or the ass of the Body of Christ; he’s just a Christian. This is what Christianity looks like, and there is too much evidence that this is the rule, not the exception. Whether still part of the church or far distanced from it, nearly all of us have far more stories like this than we do of folks handing out food and clothing to the orphans and widows.

Now, my kid is looking up at me, asking what happened, who that guy was, and what book he just ripped up in counter-protest.

This is the part of the story where I am supposed to say, “That is someone who claims to be a Christian, but they aren’t really; let me tell you about the real Jesus.” That isn’t what I said. I no longer have the energy, or the faith, to make justifications for them anymore. It’s why I refuse to call myself a Deconstructionist, any more than I can muster calling myself an Evangelical or Orthodox or any other flavor of Christian. Frankly, my relationship with the Church has for far too long felt like a prolonged case of domestic violence, and I’ve been making excuses for my black eyes and broken bones because, “He loves me, and it's not really his fault, you should see what his Father used to do to him. He’s not really like that. I know that all of his siblings are violent and horrible, but he didn’t mean for me to get hurt. He’s promised me that someday, he will get me a big house and that there will be no more tears.” That’s what I am supposed to say; that is how we have all been taught to gaslight ourselves and others, but this is my son, the one I would never sacrifice so that God would love me. No, I have realized I am a far better father than the Father ever was.

My kid asked me what the book was. I make no excuses as I stand there in my pirate costume at the Ren Faire, the most unserious-looking theologian alive.

“It’s just some fantasy game for really angry grown-ups.”

I may still foolishly believe that somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight, Jesus is thinking of me and loving me tonight, saying a prayer, and that we will find each other in that big somewhere out there. But I can’t teach that myth to my own kids; I have to show them that there is something better than constantly chasing ancient ghosts. Maybe, on their own, someone will approach them and say, “Your father wasn’t a real Christian; let me tell you about the real Jesus, say this prayer with me,” and they will do it, and that will be their own journey. There is nothing I can do about that because they do have free will and can make their own lives. As for me and my house, we shall serve the great unknowing until proven otherwise.

As for this busted lip on my soul? Don’t worry about that, because Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible told me so.