This post was submitted by matt

In light of Easter and Passover, TNG continues its look at religion.

Growing up in the United Methodist Church was certainly good for me. The UMC places a strong emphasis on the social work of the Church, which appeals to the (very) liberal in me. It also places a good deal of emphasis on making your own journey to God, to put things in my terms, which appeals to my independent nature and overly-analytical mind. But the Church has not yet taken the step to accept gays.

I had the fortune of attending a Reconciling Congregation when I came out, and while I was unaware of this until I came out, my congregation welcomed me with what amounted to “ok, so you’re gay, so what.” I’ve never been closer to a Church nor further from organized religion than I was after I came out. And while that probably sounds paridoxical, I never found it to be so.

The act of coming out made me reexamine many aspects of my life, and one of those aspects was religion. Primarily because I had learned what it meant to be a Methodist during my first two years of college, I was unable to blindly reject faith, as many gays do. Instead, I decided to learn more about spirituality and theology. I read up on the subject, including books which looked at where Christian traditions came from. I also continued to support the social work of the Church through volunteering.

But one fundamental thing did change. I decided to take the Inverse of Pascal’s Wager and become agnostic. If God (Yaweh) was arbitrary and vengful and would cast me into Hell merely because I didn’t believe, but otherwise lived a good and just life, then this was not a god I was willing to worship. If, on the other hand, God (Elohim) was kind and forgiving, belief (in God) would not matter were there to be a judgment. Motive is everything. Someone who does good merely out of fear of punishment or hope of reward is not truly honorable. I therefore, reject the idea of punishment or reward after death, and live as honorably as I can anyway. That is how I define the Inverse of Pascal’s Wager.

In that regard I became agnostic, but that word should not be considered to mean apathetic in my case. I stopped thinking of “Christ” and started thinking of “Jesus.” In my opinion, he was an honorable man and historic figure, but he wasn’t the son of God in the traditional sense. Moreover, I saw his social agenda being lost on fundamentalists who were only concerned with his divinity. My feelings are summed up succinctly by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickel and Dimed,” who in her book on low-wage workers, reflects on a revival she visited. “Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.” (Pages 68-69) Or, to put it more simply, take a listen to Jackson Browne’s “The Rebel Jesus,” in which he says of Christmastime, “perhaps we give a little to the poor, if the generosity should sieze us. But if any one of us should interfere in the business of why there are poor, they get the same as the Rebel Jesus.”

Coming out was the best thing that could have happened to me in regard to religion. I don’t know what I’ve become. Whether it be agnostic or humanist; whether it be existentialist or universalist. I reject labels, especially when it comes to religion. What upsets me most about religion today are those who read the Gospel of Luke without knowing what the Great Reversal is. What upsets me is voters who vote on ‘Christian Values’ without knowing what the Jubilee is, and who think that Jesus would have cut taxes on the upper income brackets, would have condemed ‘welfare queens’, would have supported F16 contracts. No, when I hear things like this, I think we must be talking about different Jesuses.

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