"Why is it Good Friday if it's the day Jesus died?" I once asked my mother.
"Because if Jesus hadn't died," she lovingly responded, "we could never go to heaven."
My mom has definite theories about salvation, informed by her Methodist upbringing and later conversion to Seventh-Day Adventism. As a child, I always needed to know the limits of love, or a rule.
Once I questioned, "but what about the people that don't know about Jesus? What about a baby in the middle of a jungle?"
"God has sent angels into the jungle before to tell them of His love and His sacrifice," she responded. Here she was talking about actual angels, who could reach places ordinary missionaries couldn't.
"But what if He didn't?" I pushed. I knew angels had better things to do than reveal themselves to everyone in the world. What if someone died right before the missionary got there? God wouldn't send an angel to every jungle-dweller on his deathbed until the missionary reached her destination.
"Well, God loves them and He won't persecute them if they never got to choose whether or not to believe the Truth."
Knowing that you had to pray to Jesus to ask him to be your personal Lord and Savior, I began to worry about Catholics, whom I found out in church prayed to Mary and confessed sins to a priest. I nervously asked my mom, "What about Catholics? If they never talk to Jesus or confess their sins to God, is God going to keep them out of heaven?"
"If they've lived their lives in good faith, and with good intention, God will take that into consideration. For many of these people, they have been brainwashed by the church, and God wants to show them the truth. He will try, and that's what we're for," she answered, implying that we should take it upon ourselves to convert the Catholics.
When I was younger I went to church at a Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which, you may have inferred from the name, worshipped on Saturday, the "true" Sabbath. I always knew how few people shared my faith. Friends invited me to sleep over on the weekends, but I couldn't on Friday, since that was technically the Sabbath, and I couldn't on Saturday since it was very rare that people wanted to bring a strange child to church with their family (and my mom was never that thrilled with the idea, either). Saturday morning cartoons, to me and to my little brother, were the glorious half hour of cartoons that came on from 8 until 8:30, when we had to get ready for church. Cartoons did not come on network television on Sunday mornings, and my mother has never had cable television.
Once my mom let me spend the night at my best friend's house on a Friday night for her birthday party. The next morning, I laid around like a fattened calf, eating cereal ("please, no sugar," I politely asked), watching all the cartoons I possibly could squeeze in, and enjoying my pajamas, giggling and playing with the other girls. It was like a fairyland.
I became terribly nervous when my dad, who was divorced from my mother, became a Baptist. "Why does Daddy go to church on Sunday now?" I queried.
"The Pope decided a long time ago to worship on Sunday, and said it was because that was the day Jesus rose from the grave. Those denominations still do that, even though that's not the day Jesus wants us to worship."
Seeing the alarm on my face, she assured me that God would take into consideration his good intentions and in conversation she began to acknowledge that people have other ways of worshipping God, and as long as they were worshipping the same God, it should be ok.
My best friend was Catholic and once I went to Vacation Bible School with her for a week. I was amazed that the kids looked like me (except for my friend's glorious bright blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes), and we did the same activities, and the nuns didn't run around singing and swinging their guitars over their heads. I was actually pretty disappointed. Despite its tameness, it was not like our Vacation Bible School. At our classes, we sat around memorizing scripture and talking about Jesus' imminent return (I always felt it was just around the corner). When I got older, I experienced true evangelicalism. As a young teenage member, we would teach Bible school in the neighborhoods surrounding our church. We would be dropped off and go around collecting children from their houses to sit in someone's driveway with felt scenes of missionaries and Jesus on a cross. And we would memorize scripture.
I lived with my dad in high school, who was at this point still a Baptist. I noticed a stark difference. The Seventh-Day Adventists were very strict and ritualized: during communion, men and women separate and wash each others' feet, as Jesus did at the Last Supper, there are dietary restrictions (no meat, no alcohol, etc.), and behavior restrictions (no partying, live simply, honor the Sabbath). Children were expected to attend regular worship service, and we had, as most churches do, a Mothers' Room where mothers could take crying babies to nurse or change, all the while listening to and watching the service. Children were participants, rather than nuisances. As a result of all these restrictions, Seventh Day Adventists were very close (I could give you some cites from sociological articles on this if you are interested). In fact, I found out my grandfather had died suddenly from a woman I didn't even know, who approached to comfort me at church the next day.
Baptists at my dad's church pretty much let you do whatever you wanted. They just told you on Sunday that you were going to hell for it. Every Sunday I would question my salvation. I rededicated my life to Jesus more times than I can count and thought that even as a 15-year-old, I had already sinned too much to be worthy of God's love. It was like a prize to be won, and I always lose contests.
So I gave up being good. I became a feminist. I started smoking. I cursed and yelled and my parents. I lied to them and even drank alcohol a few times. But in the back of my mind I always remembered the messages of love from my Seventh-Day Adventist background: almost a desperate yearning on the part of Jesus to have us back with him in heaven. Seventh-Day Adventists don't preach about hellfire and damnation. My mom once told me, "it would be hell enough to be deprived of Jesus' love for all eternity when we could have had it. If you had to choose between hell and heaven, that's not much of a choice, but choosing between heaven with Jesus and hell without anything? That really is a question of faith, rather than fear."
So when I went to college I fled organized religion. Not knowing who to believe or what to believe or how to believe finally got to be too much. I blame the Baptists. Nothing I ever did was good enough for their God, so eventually I stopped trying. I didn't go to church the whole time I was in college, although I still prayed and read my Bible every so often (I still have the navy one I got for my birthday in 1991). But I couldn't face the judgment of another church.
Then, a few years ago, I rented The Last Temptation of Christ. This movie changed my life. Watching Jesus (Willem Dafoe) live as a man was like the piece of the puzzle I never got from my church upbringing. Watching him make choices because of his beliefs, even when there was no proof, instilled in me a newfound awe and wonder at the preciousness of Jesus. I realized that Jesus as a man made mistakes. He had doubts and concerns. He sought out answers. And in the end he chose to die for what he believed in no matter how terrifying it must have been. I sobbed, literally sobbed.
I called my mom almost immediately. As adults, we could have a conversation about religion that was less cliche and more intellectual. She said that she, too, had been impressed by this movie. We both expressed frustration and disbelief at the censorship efforts and protests it inspired when released. On my part, although I held back telling her this because I didn't want to upset her, it allowed me to believe again, in something i had given up on long ago.
In the book of Matthew, the last words Jesus cried were "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I have since read books about the writing and translation and compilation of the Bible that argue that Jesus never meant to create a church, only to reform Judaism (the original meaning of the word for Messiah in Hebrew implies this). And even in this task, it appears that He had doubts. However, since the Bible has since been translated and rewritten and edited numerous times, it is hard to determine what actually happened historically and what was added (dare I say in the interest of marketing?).
Nevertheless, when you think, "what would Jesus do?", I think it is pretty clear we can make the following arguments: he would question the unquestioned, seek out abuse of authority and take a stand against it, even if it cost him his life, live and die for what he believes in, and do everything in the name of love. So I am proud to say that I love Jesus, possibly even more so than when I was brainwashed and indoctrinated by the Church, and I celebrate Good Friday as the day when a great man who had great love for others and great faith in what he believed to be right sacrificed it all for what regrettably came to be a mass marketed brainwashing program. Because of this, my celebration is tinged with sadness, knowing that few people take the time to consider and truly honor that which they celebrate by questioning it.
"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
(Luke 12:32-34, NIV)
peace and blessings to you all,
and may you all find the truth that you seek,
charity :)
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