Curse God and Die: Why I Continue to Believe

Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips. –Job 2:9-10 KJV

Some time ago I got a long, convoluted diatribe in the form of an email from someone calling herself simply, “A Real Christian”. At the time, I chose to ignore the email, but for some reason, it has remained on my mind.

Evidently, “A Real Christian” came across this blog some way or another and then read through the archives and managed to find a post or two in which I discussed coming to terms with my Christian faith and/or in which I questioned and/or criticized the so-called Christian church.

And she responded by berating me for questioning Christ and the Church. The closing lines stand out for me:

“It is evident that you are not really committed to Christ. You are a CINO, a Christian in name only. You are one of those spineless wavering Christians who are too scared to make a stand for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Instead you whine and complain about having to follow His word and teachings. You are part of the reason why this nation is in the state it is in now. Why don’t you do yourself and all of us a favor and just curse God and die."

But she misses the whole point. I have never criticized Christ; I am not so arrogant, or even so intrepid, to do such a thing. However, I did level reasoned criticism at the Christian church, and let’s not conflate the two, Christ and Christianity.

For literally centuries, man has hijacked the teachings of Christ to justify a myriad of evils. For literally centuries, Christianity has not been used to comfort or solace or as a prescription for a better life, but as a tool, a bludgeon to be used about the head and shoulders of one’s enemies, political or otherwise, a means to some usually nefarious, sinister end.

I do have a few friends who are either atheists or agnostics who remind me of this on a regular basis. They interrogate my reasons for believing. According to them, I am too intelligent, too rational a person to fall prey to myths and silly superstitions. In their own way, they too are imploring me to curse God and die.

But I explain to them that that is the very essence of faith, a belief in that which is inexplicable, perhaps improbable—“…the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”

Not only that, I worship Christ, and I place my faith in Christ, and not Christianity or the Church. However, I suspect followers like “A Real Christian” are so heavily invested physically and emotionally in the Church that they have forgotten the real reason the Church exists. As I see it, there are two disparate groups of people assembling under the banner of Christianity—church people and true believers in Christ.

And of these two groups, the former greatly outnumbers the latter, but these are the voices, the faces, we hear and see most often purporting to represent the true believers, the real Christians. And these are the voices, the faces, whose motives and methods, whose words and deeds, seem to stray so far from the teachings of Christ.

Even as I compose the last sentence, an image of Pat Robertson looking on at the suffering and anguish of the Haitian people, and then declaring that the Haitian people are in such a state because of some pact made with the devil centuries ago. I am still trying to determine what is Christ-like about such a statement.

But back to “A Real Christian.” I did not miss the irony of her statement, “Curse God and die.” Of course, this phrase comes from the Biblical story of Job, one whose faith in God was absolute. At his lowest moment, at the moment when the world seemed to crashing down around him, and when his faith was being sorely tested, his wife implored him simply, “Curse God and die.” However, Job chose not to. Instead, he held fast to his faith despite having every reason to give in and give up.

So, “A Real Christian,” the impetus to question what one believes does arise. And I would go so far as to say that if one never stops to examine their beliefs, to quantify their faith, they need not simply “Curse God and die”: they are already spiritually dead.

I Have a Church Home (Gimme that old time religion)

Occasionally I have documented my frequent crises in faith here on my blog. As someone who views the world with a critical eye, those glaring contradictions in religious teaching and religious practice seem to stand out even the more and have caused me to shy away from organized religion. But as one raised in the church, as a scion of a family of ministers, the guilt of being out of church, of being outside the circle of fellowship always weighs heavily on my mind.

Yet, I’ve come to terms with this. After going from church to church and being thoroughly dismayed at what I’ve found, after watching the church seemingly change its mission and focus away from the more pressing needs of the community and toward more secular and political ends, after watching Christians seemingly become more critical and condemning of supposed sinners and not the sin, all the while ignoring their own propensity toward hypocrisy, I have chosen to follow Christ and not men; I have chosen to worship God in deed and not rhetoric while all the while praying and reading my Bible and seeking the Truth.

However, I always get tongue tied when faced with that one question: “Just where is your church home?”. That old feeling of guilt returns when I am forced to answer that I don’t have a church home. They become impatient and incredulous and, more often than not, insulted when I attempt to explain why.

But then on last evening during a moment of prayerful contemplation, I had a sudden revelation. My mind traveled back over a span of time to a specific moment in my life. And I realized that I do have a church home and have had one for quite some time.

In 1972, I joined and was baptized into the Cane Creek Road Missionary Baptist Church in the small, rural enclave of Bemis, Tennessee, right outside Jackson, Tennessee. That was the same year that a visiting church caused a scandal when, in the middle of a hymn, they jazzed it out a bit and began to sway in time with the music.

That year Cane Creek Road Missionary Baptist Church was an old turn of the century clapboard building that sat at the end of a long, winding, dusty, unpaved rural road. I don’t remember how the building was heated during the winter, but I do remember that during the summer, the deacons opened the windows in a vain attempt to catch a breeze from the outside while a row of rotating fans hanging from the ceiling did all they could.

But it seemed to never be enough because everyone, all the sisters in the church anyway, always seemed to be fanning themselves with those paddle like fans with advertisements for Stephenson-Shaw Funeral Home one side and a big picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. or John Kennedy on the other. And from my family’s place in the pews, out of the raised window I could see the cemetery adjacent to the church where generations and generations of my family were buried, where my grandfather and grandmother are now buried, where I have instructed my wife to spread my ashes in the event of my demise.

Cane Creek Missionary Baptist Church is the church my grandparents were married in. It is also the church in which my mother and her siblings were raised and baptized in and married in. And it is the church in which my first and most basic concepts of religion and Christianity were formed.

It is where I learned that love and not hate was the most important Christian message, that Christ has no respect of person, of position. It is where I learned the concept of community. It is where I learned to recognize and acknowledge and acknowledge the humanity in every human being.

The service was not aired on the radio or televised; perhaps no one even knew of the church’s existence outside those in the immediate community. But for that handful of people the church did reach, the experience was real. On Sunday morning and throughout the week, the church served God by serving the community from the highest member down to the very lowest member.

Its purpose, its mission, was one of uplift. It was there to provide solace and a place of respite to those trying to make the most out of an already precarious and complicated existence. And if I am not mistaken, despite my time away, despite the distance separating me from the brick and mortar edifice, I am still a member of that church; I have never abdicated my membership.

So, it took me a while to remember, to recall, but I do have a church home.

Right Back Down on My Knees (Dealing with My Own Personal Crisis in Faith)

“There are no atheists in foxholes.” –Ernie Pyle

Stay with me just a moment; I am trying to work through something here.

Sunday has arrived, another Sunday I will not be attending church services. And as has always happened before, I will more than likely spend the rest of the upcoming week riddled with guilt. After a week like I had last week, I always get this strong impetus to go to church. I always get this feeling that I am failing my family, that I am doing my children a grave injustice, because I do not insist that each Sunday morning we all get up and as a family attend church services together. I always feel self conscious when someone asks me about my church home and I cannot answer them.

To understand my deeply seated sense of guilt, you must understand my background. I come from a family of ministers. My father is a minister. His brother is a minister. My mother’s brother is a minister. And I have a host of cousins who are ministers. I think I have told you that sometime before.

When I was growing up, my family spent innumerable hours in church. On Sundays, we spent the entire day in church, from early morning until late evening. Then we were there for Wednesday prayer services and Thursday choir practices and any other miscellaneous services or meetings that came up during the week.

My brothers and sisters detested spending that much time in church; however, I was the child who loved it. I loved the entire ceremony, the pageantry, the spectacle of it all. Those of you who have attended or attend services in a Southern black Baptist, CME, or AME church can testify that black folk take their church seriously. A church service is always much more than a church service; it is a show.

And when I reached adulthood, I entered into study for the ministry. However, I quietly bowed out after a year or so; I began to wonder if “my call” actually came from my heavenly Father or my earthly father, and this seemed like an occupation wherein it was of the utmost importance to be sure.

But I stayed active in the church. Along with the fellowship, there is a history there that I wanted to be a part of. Certainly, the church has longed been used as a tool of subjugation, but as with most mechanisms meant to subjugate us, we transformed them into tools of uplift. And being a part of this history strengthened me, inspired me.

However, as my knowledge increased, as my conscious grew, I began to wonder. More and more I spent less time reading the Bible and more time reading philosophy and theory. I began to concede the probable legitimacy of other religions. I began to view religion more as a utility. Once my father picked up a book I was reading—I think it was by Engels, but it may have been Heidegger—and just shook his head and told me that he hoped my faith was strong.

And then I began to disagree with the direction in which I saw the church going. Instead of moving forward, instead of dealing effectively with the issues arising from a rapidly changing world, the church seemed to be mired in religious provincialism and clinging to a defunct authoriatarianism based in patriarchy.

Additionally, with the advent of the mega-church, the church began to resemble more of a business venture and less of a place of spiritual solace. And the church began to adopt a certain conservatism that resembled the oppressive conservatism of the right.

So, I began to stay home on Sundays. But regardless, I still believe myself to be a good man. I still believe myself to be a righteous man. I am not without my foibles, but I am faithful to my wife and treat her well. I treat my children well and with patient and understanding. I attempt to treat those who I come in contact with just as I would have them treat me, regardless of how they treat me.

I am introspective, and each day I take a hard, honest look at myself as I endeavor to become a better person. And I give generously of my time and money to various causes in an effort to improve the lives of those less fortunate than myself.

But why can’t I shake this sense of guilt? Why do I continue to drawn back to church, back to organized religion? Why can I not worship in private and away from the throngs of people, many of whom are coming to see and be seen, and not to worship and transform their lives.

And why do I continue you to find myself, in times of trial and tribulation, on those days when things are not going so well for me, right back down on my knees?

In This House, On This Morning (Max Returns to the Mourners' Bench)

This morning a call from Pops Reddick woke me up way too early. It seems the Right Reverend Pops Reddick has been tagged to give the key note address at some conference or another, and he wanted me to critique his sermon.

And I listened despite the earliness of the hour. I have finally come to the age when I can admit that my dad is actually a very interesting individual. He is like the mad scientist of the theological community. Currently, he is consumed by his own pseudo science which he calls theosophy, a marriage of theology and philosophy.

But anyway, the conversation turned toward church liturgy for some reason or another, and I informed him that I thought the most powerful part of any church service was the culminating altar call or Mourners’ Bench. So, Pops Reddick proceeded to inform me of the psychology undergirding the Mourners’ Bench. And it’s not all about securing one’s place in heaven.

Sitting on the Mourners’ Bench is tantamount to a public confession. And according to Michel Foucault, the public confession accomplishes two things: the public confession establishes guilt and recognizes power. In the instance of the Mourners’ Bench you confess that you are nothing more than a dirty low down sinner and you recognize and give yourself over to the omnipotency of a higher power.

Please stick with me. I am hurrying toward my main point, but first I just had to establish a few things.

Pops Reddick broke it down further in secular terms. At that moment, you must do a bit of soul-searching (excuse the pun). You must weigh yourself. You must decide just who and what you are and where you stand and just who and what you are and where you wish to be.

And the public spectacle is required so that others might bear witness to your moment of transformation and provide you support as well as hold you accountable.

Let me simplify this for the Facebook and Twitter crowd. It’s just like setting up your spiritual profile. Except you have to be really, really honest or your friends and/or followers might call you out.

So, I’ve been contemplating the knowledge Pops Reddick bestowed upon me. And as I enter middle age, I am trying to get a firm grasp on just who or what I am and where I wish to be. In doing so I realize that I have not achieved many of the goals I set for myself so long ago. I realize I am nowhere near where I wish to be personally or professionally. And I need some spiritual help as well.

And I am returning to the Mourners’ Bench to publically confess my shortcomings, to say publically that at this time in my life, I am not yet who or what I wish to be and additionally, recognize my power to be able to change that. I am the only one person with any real bearing on my future, on my success, and I will not give that power over to others by blaming them for my own personal shortcomings and failures.

The door to the realization of my aims and dreams is right in front of me and all I must do is to compel myself to move forward and reach for the door handle, and once I enter, leave the door slightly ajar for those coming behind me.

And I am confessing it here so that you might bear witness to my confession and provide me support as well as hold me accountable.

Do you need to return to the Mourners’ Bench? Have you taken account lately? Do you really know who and what you are and where you are heading personally and professionally? The doors of the church are open.

GOD HATES FAGS! and Other Fallacies of the Right: An Open Letter to the Christian Church

Dear Christian Church and my fellow Christians,

Certainly you remember me. As a child, I sat in your pews each Sunday, and I heard your message. As a young man, I sang in your choir, and I proselytized for you, and I attempted to represent you as best as humanly possible.

If you do not remember me, perhaps you will recognize me through the works of my father who is one of your ministers, or my two brothers, or a host of my uncles and cousins who are also your ministers.

I know that you have seen me only sporadically for a while; my attendance has been hit or miss for a long time now. And that is partly what this letter is about. Though I still believe in and worship Christ with all my heart, my faith in you, the Church, is faltering. In short, I am fastly becoming disillusioned.

It began in Orlando. Do you remember Orlando and the gay pride march? The gays, who you managed to convince me were evil, marched peaceably down the street, holding hands, singing songs, and holding up signs inscribed with messages of peace and love and tolerance, while your people, my fellow Christians, lined the boulevard red-faced with rage and screamed the vilest epithets they could think of. And the messages on the signs they held up were completely antithetical to the messages of the gays and what I thought to be your message. I saw signs like, GOD HATES FAGS! Or better still, YOU FAGS WILL BURN IN HELL!

Where was the love? Where was the Christian compassion? Where was the message of redemption? I saw only condemnation.

And this past Sunday, a very ill, very deranged individual killed an abortion doctor as he sat in your pews worshipping our God. But because of the shooter’s mental illness, perhaps he can’t fully be held at fault, but the fault can truly be laid at the feet of those who claim to speak for you, those who espouse a message of fire and brimstone and damnation, while completely ignoring your central message which I see as one of reconciliation. They supplied the rhetoric, the impetus, for this already ill individual to act.

I think I can pinpoint where the problem began. I think I can identify the origins.

It began when you let greedy, godless politicians co-opt the Church’s message for their own cynical self-interests. You see, the Christian Church, especially the Christian Church in America, has a history of preoccupations and prejudices that it never fully and adequately dealt with, that it never genuinely confronted. Novelist James Baldwin attempted to point this out to you, but you refused to listen. And then that group of politicians in one of their most desperate moments recognized those preoccupations and prejudices as their very own and then stood to claim affiliation with and representation of all the “true” Christians. And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Do you not realize that your actions actually hurt the Church, the purported body of our dear Christ? Do you not realize that your actions do not draw people to Christ, but turn them away in droves? Just take a look at this Newsweek article, “The End of Christian America.” Or this Washington Post article, “In America, Nonbelievers Find Strength in Numbers.” But you probably won’t read them, or if you do, you probably will not read them with a critical eye. Your excuse, of course, will be it’s just another trick of the mainstream media. Those politicians have really got you snowed. It is regrettable that you have long ceased listening to reason and have come, instead, to value caustic, divisionary rhetoric without weighing its viability or cost.

In closing, I would just like to remind you of just one more thing, our Christ’s last commandment:

“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one to another. By this all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (St. John 13:34,35).

Christ's greatest commandment was to love. It did not involve loving only those who agree with us or only those we like or only those we consider Christians, but included everyone. We should endeavor to recognize and celebrate the humanity in every human being, not just a select few. And we have fallen short in realizing this edict.

Don’t think I have deserted the Church because I have not; I simply have chosen to follow Christ and not politicians. I have chosen to read the Word for myself and not depend on your rhetoric. You may do what you want, but as far as me and my house, we shall serve the Lord. Get right Church, and let’s go home.

Your son and servant,

Maxwell Reddick

A Quick Easter Thought

I’m somewhat of a melancholy mood this morning. Today is Easter. But we are not going to church. My wife and I discussed going. However, it seemed somewhat sacrilegious that we go. After all, we haven’t gone all year. In fact, we haven’t gone for quite a while. So, what’s the use of showing up today?

And the guilt is setting in. I grew up in the church. In fact, I come from a family of preachers. Both my step-father and my father are ministers. I have several uncles who are ministers. I even have several family members who are high in the echelon of the Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) church.

I wonder why I am denying my family the rich experience that I was a part of growing up in the church. I have some ideas. For one, I’d like to blame my reluctance to attend church on Christians. Christians and their actions have given Christianity a bad name. I believe that they have ceased acting like Christ, but have instead become smug and self-righteous, confident of their own infallibility.

Could it be the acquisition of knowledge? Early in grad school I found myself questioning the very existence of a god. My father told me that this is natural. Out of this questioning, my faith would grow even stronger.

There are a number of other reasons (or excuses) I could give, but none seem sufficient.

But a few minutes ago my son told me some joke he heard a comedian make about Easter. It was wholly inappropriate, and I reproved him for even repeating such a thing. However, I really don’t think I have the right to admonish him so severely. After all, he hasn’t been taught to respect the religious experience. He has not been taught the value of spirituality. I have taught him many things, and he has proven himself intellectually gifted; however, I have not served him well spiritually.

So, I guess what has come of this Easter is that I realize I have a responsibility to my family that I have not met. Maybe there is an afternoon service somewhere.