are you there God?

A personal essay on guilt, anger, and God

Disclaimer: This essay is not an invitation to convince or convert me, but I welcome your own experience. Your relationship to God is personal and everyone is entitled to freedom to believe or not believe in anything they’d like. This essay is about me and my experience, I ask that you respect my anger and lack of belief just as I would respect the opposite.

Anguish by August Friedrich Schenk (1828 -1901)

As the mother sheep grieves for her lost lamb, I grieve for my innocence and stand over it, protecting it from the monsters waiting to pick off its bones.

I would not say that I grew up religious. I would not say that I was tormented by the threat of impiety or suffered from childhood religious trauma by the hands of my parents. The trauma came from God directly as He continued to stand me up in the darkest moments of my life. Then I watched as He stood everyone else up too. No matter how hard I prayed, He didn’t save those swept up in tragedies on the news or maybe He saved some but not others. Maybe He reveled in picking and choosing the ones He needed most up there with him. I saw hate in Him. Saw Hate in the way he was preached. In the way that tore down my own identity and the identities of my friends and loved ones.

I was introduced to God by one of my closest friends growing up. She invited me to her church, which was already my church, I just didn’t know it. I chose to go on my own since the first taste of atonement from the sins that were already piling onto my eleven year old shoulders. Sins that were never my fault but I bore all of the weight of them anyway.

So I went. I was excited by the thought of community. It washed me of my guilt and bathed me in the light of helping others and spreading words of love. Luckily I showed up after the first pastor was fired for cheating on his wife else I might not have remained so steadfast in the early years of my convictions.

Then I dragged my little brother with me. I made him go, my mom encouraged it as he was in need of a little guidance and good influences. I watched him while he embarrassed me by acting like a kid but everyone was just happy to see us there with no adults forcing us to go. (okay he more than embarrassed me when we gave him a coloring sheet and he blackened out all of the eyes of the people whispering “you will never see Jesus” I was not equipped at at that age to handle whatever that was nor mature enough to realize that was probably a sign to get the hell out of there) I wore that feeling like a badge of honor. Look at how good I am! I am spreading the word of God! Everyone was so goddamned proud. Would they have been as proud if they knew I was going to cleanse my own tortured black soul? What if they knew I went out of obligation after the first few years and not for my actual love or belief of God? I think disappointment is a better word for what they would feel. Maybe they are feeling that now reading this essay.

Our church was filled with mostly good people. We helped in our community. We supported each other. We lifted ourselves up in dark moments. This was the closest I had ever been to truly believing in God.

I saw two pastors there throughout the years. One was a sweet old lady who spoke with conviction. She preached God by acting out scenes from the Bible. Her health failed as she got older and eventually she passed the baton to a younger pastor. I felt renewed again when he came to our church. He opened the doors to everyone including refugees from Congo, despite pushback from some of the members of our congregation. He didn’t believe in the hateful rhetoric other Christians pushed in the name of God. He believed that everyone was worthy of God’s love. I still follow him today despite my own open-ended relationship with God. He preached God in the closest way that I would ever believe in Him.

I went to church for my entire four years of high school. I was ready to move on after that as I felt my guilt creep back up into me. It infects my entire being. It controls me and God nor anyone else could absolve me of it. Somehow I was responsible for every bad thing that happened to me or anyone else.

Then I got Cancer. I have toyed with writing a memoir on that experience titled, Manifesting the Big C. Good right? For as long as I could remember, my hypochondriassm made me believe that cancer was coming my way. Call me clairvoyant or just unlucky as just the thing plagued me when I turned twenty-one. I thought I brewed it inside me. I thought my wickedness metamorphosed into retribution and my day of reckoning had finally come for me.

I cursed God for doing this to me. He is all-knowing right? So he planned that this would be my journey from the start. He plans all hellish and terrible things just as he plans the good ones. Why? Because Eve ate the apple or pomegranate or whatever the fuck? Why is that on us? It’s okay though because his Son died for her sin and for all of ours as well. But not for the Sin of not loving God. Only if you irrefutably profess without any uncertainty your love for him will you be saved and enter into the pearly white gates of Heaven itself and all of your past transgressions no matter how evil or vile will be absolved as long as you say the magical words of “Will you forgive me God?” You could live a life of evil deeds. You could murder. You could rape. You could take God’s name in vain for your own personal endeavors as long you profess your love on your deathbed and ask for forgiveness. But if you live a life of goodness, for the sake of being good and you do not have faith, then be damned to Hell? If you ask yourself how could morality exist without faith in Christ then I think you need to also ask yourself why is the threat of eternal damnation the only thing guiding that morality. I think the reasoning is flawed and I could go into the historical contexts of religion to back these claims but this essay is about me. My own faith and lack thereof.

I have run through all of the possible causes of me getting sick in my mind never finding a clear path as to why. Was is God punishing me? Was it the universe making me pay for the sins of my past lives? My ancestors? It did seem for awhile that my family was prone to tragedy. Maybe we were all paying for something we couldn’t see. Was it the fact that I couldn’t get it out of my head to begin? I manifested it by thinking about my on demise over and over? Internalizing all of the anger and hatred that I couldn’t outwardly express? I wasn’t able to find any semblance of peace until I came to the realization that sometimes bad things happen for no good reason.

I begged for relief. I begged for dignity. I begged for help. I didn't get it and it pisses me off when people attribute my survival to the work of God. He didn’t show up for me. My mom did. My donor did (and he didn’t even know who he was showing up for). Medicine did. I showed up for me. I survived.

God forbid you question. God forbid you demand answers. God forbid.

I want anything more than to believe in God. To have someone tell me exactly what I am meant to do and how I am meant to do it (Fleabag reference). To feel that my guilt could be washed away with a few words. Guilt that is mine and guilt that isn’t. To have love for someone that is so steadfast and unrelenting that I could never love anyone else the same, not even a lover, a friend, a child. Are we really supposed to love God more than our children? Alas I am damned with reason and to live without ignorance though I wish everyday to be ignorant. Despite God having all of the power to make ignorance reality, He still makes me choose between Hell and cruelty.

I don’t normally do musical pairings (Inspired by Bradley Ramsey) but I was specifically touched by Rio Romeo’s song Nothing’s New. While I don’t know her actual inspiration behind the lyrics, it plays like a break-up song and I agree except it was my break up song for God’s ears. Despite myself desperately trying to make things work, He continues to stand me up. Nothing’s New

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