My friend and racquetball partner John Holden once said to me, “I’m sorry that I won’t see you in the afterlife.” John was a devout church-going Christian, believing in the traditional concepts of heaven and hell. Because he accepted the King James version of the Bible with John’s words, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” he figured we wouldn’t be sitting on the clouds together in the great by and by. Without embracing Jesus as a personal savior death leads either to oblivion or hell. He knew which way he was going. He believed he knew, too, which way I was going.
I was raised by a devout churchgoing mother and an Episcopal minister. I was confirmed in the Episcopal church in my teens. I wrote about it last December.
What my Christian upbringing has brought me are feelings of guilt— guilt that I don’t go to church, guilt that I didn’t raise my children to be devout Christians, guilt that I didn’t tithe, guilt that I have harbored lascivious thoughts, coveted my neighbor’s wife, guilt that I have behaved in less than good Christian ways, guilt that I didn’t turn my other cheek, guilt, guilt, and a bit more guilt.
Some of this guilt has a religious component, some not. I deserve the feelings of guilt when I have behaved in less than honorable ways, when as a kid I stole stuff, when I disrespected others, when I threw raw eggs into an unlocked car on Halloween. This stuff has stayed with me. If I could undo them all I would, not just to expiate the guilt that has followed me all my life, but because it was simply wrong. Youth was the culprit but not the excuse. There is no excuse.
Do I believe in God? A Jewish woman in Gaza came home to find her family murdered by Hamas. She no longer believes in God. We just finished watching the 1961 movie, Judgment at Nuremberg. It incorporates film footage of the Holocaust. Could anyone experiencing the horrors of that time believe in God? The constant parade of injustice that surrounds the news today threatens our belief that some higher power is in charge. Still, I believe that there is a method behind the madness. I don‘t know what it is. I don’t believe John Holden knows either.
I took comfort when I read somewhere that “going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.” My memories growing up centered around attending church, not in learning and practicing compassion, the behaviors that the rabbi described. That came later. It’s still a work in progress. I question myself at the Dorothy Day Center, wondering whether volunteering there is simply satisfying a moral duty, or whether I really feel for the unfortunates that we serve.
When they thank us, when they appreciate that we are just volunteers, that our assistance brings them much-needed food, I feel good. When they’re surly, demanding, angry, or even threatening, I feel bad, indifferent at best to their situation. One of the homeless asked me for a spoon. I replied “There’s one in the box.” He saw the extra spoons and said, “I can be a nice guy or a real prick,” indicating that by not giving him a second spoon I was soon to be the victim of a “real prick.” Hard to forget, hard to forgive, hard to be compassionate.
So tomorrow is Easter Sunday. We won’t go to church. We won’t be celebrating Easter in the traditional sense. We will express gratitude for the many wonderful blessings that have come our way, for our lives, family, friends, good fortune, and each other. All without guilt.