Happy Birthday, Jesus

Seasons greetings to the Savior from an agnostic.

I’ve always been a little standoffish towards religion, and I suspect that’s largely because I feel like I haven’t been exposed to its better face. Though at times I’ve been intellectually in love with the scientific, I’ve never quite been able or willing to abandon the idea that there is a supreme being out there. If anything, I’ve wondered to myself about the possible nature of such a being, mostly because all the religious conceptions of God that I’ve heard sound suspiciously like someone else’s mind control tool. Though I don’t believe that my own theories and apprehension of what He/She is have much title to accuracy or truth, I often find it impossible for me to believe that the Almighty would be so self-absorbed and petty as some of the religious doctrine out there would insist.

If I were to associate myself with any religion at all, it would be Christianity, mostly by upbringing and association. Most Christians wouldn’t consider me Christian because I have too many doubts. Or, to put it another way, I lack “faith.” And honestly, I don’t deny that I experience a lack of faith. If you don’t mind the peculiar comparison, I liken my attitude towards religion to my attitude towards martial arts: I love the art, but I hate the sport. Similarly, I love the spirituality but I despise the institution.

I actually went to a Christmas service last Sunday. I had been hoping to hear a warm, uplifting message about the Savior’s compassion and sacrifice. There’s a lot that I do love about Jesus and what he stands for; unconditional love, the power of loyalty, the willingness for forgive well-meaning but flawed people, his brave and selfless sacrifice… in this holiday season, these are the messages I hope to hear. The tenets of Christianity embrace so many wonderful things.

But what did I hear? An expository on the genealogy of Christ. A declaration that God planned everything from the time of Adam, that the Savior be born unto a very particular bloodline – that if you didn’t know who Christ really was, you’re not revering the real Christ. And about half the time, the pastor was busy lambasting “enemies of the faith” – liberal scholars and the educated class. The hedonistic youth. Anyone with a PhD. I’m serious – he termed the enemies of the faith in such broad terms. He called them sinners. He called them despicable. He said that they sought to tarnish and corrupt the purity of Christ by inquiring into the details of his life, as though the revelation of any detail that admitted that he was a human being was to be unfaithful to his glory. He dismissed the theory of evolution as scientific nonsense. In fact, anything scientific was sinful. There were so many metaphysical inconsistencies in the message that the sermon was downright painful to hear, and I sat in the pew with arms crossed and eyes narrowed, irritated at the preacher’s choice of messages on a day of holy remembrance.

He noted that the message of Christ was delivered first unto the lowest of the low, the uneducated, and not to the priests or scholars or politicians of the time. He said this was to emphasize that the worthiness of a human being as we humans measure it is nothing under the eyes of God. Right, no argument there – why would mere human accomplishments, mere human power mean anything to an omnipotent being? If the message is one of humility, that I appreciate and wholeheartedly believe in. But he takes it too far. Surely human worth as measured in material terms means little in the eyes of God… but engaging in human endeavors is not sinful. It is not sinful to be an academic. It is not sinful to ask scientific questions, or to contribute to the body of knowledge. The pastor’s blanket statements damning all human endeavor were absurd and overbroad. Why should the theory of evolution be inherently corrupt and sinful? If planning the birth of Christ from the days of Adam and Eve is proof of the Lord’s ultimate ability to orchestrate anything flawlessly, why could it not be possible for this omniscient, omnipotent being flawlessly to orchestrate something as complex as evolution? Why couldn’t evolution in all its improbable complexity merely be a divinely engineered coincidence? Shouldn’t it be equally blasphemous to suggest that the coincidence is so impossible, it would be beyond the power of the divine to achieve? And as a staunch conservative, the preacher labeled all liberals as the enemies of Christ as well, as people who seek only to twist and pollute Christ’s image to justify their nefarious and sacrilegious ends (as though standing up for the wretched and the oppressed and the disadvantaged was something of which Christ would categorically disapprove). Conservatives aren’t categorically bigots any more than liberals are categorically immoral, and I don’t like it when people in a position to dispense wisdom distort the world to fit convenient oversimplifications. I think they do it more to convince and comfort themselves of their absolute knowledge of the real “truth” than to bring any real healing to the troubled spirits of our times.

But enough of my dissatisfaction with the details of the preacher’s textualist dogma. Even as an agnostic, what bothered me most was that he chose to deliver this animosity-laden diatribe on a day that even a doubter like me wanted to remember the goodness, selflessness, justice, love, and courage that the Savior stands for. If I believe in a God at all, it is these things that I believe about Him or Her.

Disconcerting sermons aside, a very Happy Birthday to you, Savior. Whatever ideological and doctrinal difference this preacher and I might have should really be pretty irrelevant on this day. On this day, I remember the purity of all the principles you stand for, ignoring all the petty differences of our world’s obscenely warring religions. Joy and happiness to you and the Big Daddy. We down here on earth spend too much time worrying about our own souls and our own politics. We glorify you and fight wars over you because we think you want our loyalty and our faith. Well, as an agnostic, I don’t know about that… but despite the appalling imperfection of my faith, as it were – I offer You my love, and my thanks for making me what I am, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and all.