Until Now...

When we first discovered that we were expecting, it was a tremendous surprise. C took 5 pregnancy tests in 2 days-- such was our state of shock. We shouldn't really have been surprised. We had been "not-not-trying" to get pregnant for almost a year when we finally succeeded. Very few things have the capacity to alter your outlook on life like discovering that you're going to be a parent.

Very few things, that is, except for actually becoming a parent. Our pregnancy seemed to go by at a frenetic pace. There were prenatal appointments, birthing classes, showers, and the domestic preparations (painting, repainting, re-repainting, etc). During this time, we still devoted a great amount of effort and thought to our religious views. Foremost in our minds were questions about how we would raise our daughter. We quickly ran out of time, and on the last day of July 2008, our lovely daughter, Rose, was born. It is an astounding and deeply moving thing to look into the eyes of your child, just moments after her birth. Whatever the outcome of my spiritual journey, I know that the memory of the first time I held my daughter will be one of the most profound moment in my life.

Having a new child is exhausting. For several months after we brought R home, I was happy and content to ignore the looming religious questions. Our pediatrician advised us to avoid toddlers (or, as he referred to them, bioterrorists) for several months, to shield R's immune system from undue stress. C and I interpreted this as carte blanche to avoid church. By avoiding church, we avoided the drives and the talks which had been common before R.

After six or eight months, we reemerged, visiting several churches, including the one which I attended during high school. Not surprisingly, I felt the same way that I had before we had R. I no longer had the emotional connection to worship that I think I once had. The teaching seemed vapid, or vacuous, or blatantly self-evident ("common sense sermons"). I felt nothing. Church was an uncomfortable exercise, where people around me felt enraptured by something I could not connect with.

The fellowship I once felt evaporated. We met some genuinely good people who we enjoyed spending time with, but our human interactions were often constrained. This constraint was the self-righteousness, smugness, faux-superiority that so many "good christians" exhibit toward unbelievers. It was also the hypocrisy--the transparent smile worn by greeters, the woman reading the magazine during the sermon, the teens gossiping, and the middle aged man sending emails on his blackberry. (I should note here that I do not put all Christians who attend church into these narrow categories; many of you are good people who I'd like to know better). Overall, the constraint was principally that church was not for sinners. There was an unacknowledged pressure to be "good" people in church. No one didn't smile, no one intimated that they were unhappy in their marriage, no one let themselves seem stressed about their finances. It all seemed unbearably fake.

Looking back, I think this is the point where I lost "faith" (here borrowing the Sunday school definition of "belief in something you can't see"), though I am not certain how I would have phrased it then.

My progression from religious certainty to where I am now has been gradual, but there have been several points where there were critical changes to my beliefs. When my daughter arrived, it became evident that permanently waffling between some type of liberal Christianity and a lazy agnosticism was not a viable option for me or my family. I doubt that I will ever attain the same unquestioning belief I held for so many years, but over the course of the past 10 months, I've committed to making a decision.

Sincerely,

Scott