JG and I were chatting and he prompted me to do some deep questioning. I found myself asking why I felt the need to share and write about my experiences. I am no celebrity or great creator with a fascinating past. Why should I be putting this pieces together? After a bit of soul searching I came to a conclusion. At my most primal, I feel the pressing need to be understood and at times I feel that my motivations and patterns of reasoning are not clear. My background is a little unconventional or perhaps even odd. I was raised rurally in a small, insular community that was micromanaged by an obscure religious devotion. While I am no longer religious, tenets of that system and life have always stuck with me. I find, especially in detailed or abstracted conversations, that I pull examples from my religious background to illustrate points or ideas and I feel the need to have the wider world understand what I mean.

Not many people are familiar and under my particular background, Reformed Calvinist Christianity (RCC,) and how stark and cheerless it can be compared to all the other myriad of forms of religious devotion. I am going to attempt to spell out some of the central elements, specifically as they would be viewed from the outside. I include the caveat that things tend to look different when they are your viewpoints being reviewed, as opposed to someone else’s. I don’t doubt my family might object to my characterization of their system of belief. The last time I talked to my mother in person, I used the term “religious system” with regards to her church and its doctrinal standard. She responded by hissing, “Stop calling it that! It’s the truth!” Things look very different from the inside and what might seem silly to neutral parties might in fact be sacrosanct to others. Fair warning, out of necessity, I also simplify things a great deal for the sake of brevity.

RCC is first and foremost a mental, pre-frontal cortex belief system. It digs deeply into the logical and the mental processing of religion. I was raised to distrust those who sought a charismatic religious experience that involved the body or feeling. One did not cry out or cheer in church, but rather kept silent and reflective. RCC focuses on creating a body of knowledge. We were told to “know” that God is real logically and that “knowing” the differing attributes and nuances of God supported this. Feeling that you love God, Jesus, etc. and that you are loved back was not enough. Grasping the existence of an Omniscient deity is a difficult task, so it is spelled out in terrific detail and ground into their children from an early age.

This is fairly abstract for those who may not have any experience in conservative, Protestant Christianity, so I will try to illustrate in broad terms. Below is something of what two other Christian groups believe you need to do to kick off a relationship with God (I realize I am generalizing quite a bit, but I am trying to make a comparison in short form of vast differences, so bear with me.)

Evangelical– There is a pretty wide range here between conservative and liberal groups. More conservative views say that God offers salvation to all sinners (and everyone is considered a sinner) and the sinner needs to “accept” Jesus and his sacrifice to be considered saved while other more liberal groups downplay the “accept” part. The idea of free will is at very much at play here, as is the idea of proselytizing and preaching to the masses.

Roman Catholic– Jesus died for all sinners (again, everyone fits in this category) and to get good with God, you must be baptized and confess your sins before death, preferably regularly. The individual chooses to participate as free will is at work, Catholics are invited to seriously consider wanting to make these sacrifices for salvation before their baptism is confirmed in adolescence.

RCC – Jesus’ sacrifice was only for certain people, not everyone in the world. God knows precisely who is “saved” and who is intrinsically unworthy , or “damned” even though the individuals do not necessarily know which they are. There is no free will to choose to accept and participate or not, but rather those who are destined to be saved from their sin would naturally want to participate and thus set themselves apart as different and better. The only assurance that these select individuals have that they were picked or not picked is based on their “knowing” as nothing is ever “offered” and accepted by them. Those who are not worthy can not be saved and all their good deeds and selflessness means nothing. Adherents must have a confidence in their position as saved as any doubt of their salvation might mean they are not actually saved. Confidence in knowing and investment in the system is what lifts one above the fray. This focus on intellectual investment is what drives adherents to require a higher level of esoteric knowledge of the machinations of God, salvation, etc.

Being raised RCC, I was started off young in the Bible and continued in dogmatic education until I was 18. My church-mates and I always scored highest in religious classes at our community Christian school. Other churches had far less focus on the minutia of Biblical and dogmatic text, but for us, it was the only way to live. As long as one stuck with the coldest, most logical interpretation of the dogma, much of the RCC viewpoint made sense. For example, consider the death of Jesus. It is biblically explained as being horrific and thoroughly painful and it was done for the sake of all sinners, head for head. RCC folk believe that that would be a waste considering most people will never “accept” the sacrifice and become Christian. It made more sense from their standpoint that it only be done for those who would make the most of it. Thus, Jesus dies only for the worthy and no part of his suffering or the “grace” is wasted on the unworthy. Jesus would never suffer for even a moment for those who were not worthy of his suffering or would not accept it. Since God knows all, he just parses out the ameliorative effects of Jesus’ suffering to those he picked before time began.

At heart, it is a very capitalist way of dispensing salvation. The product is only marketed to those that will buy. To those who God knows won’t be interested, it will never be offered. If someone comes along and buys into the system, then God brought them there because it was meant to be. If someone leaves the church, they were never the target audience. In this system, God is the best marketer that has ever existed. This also removes any real need to help other people or be active in improving the world around you. If it was meant to be, it would happen. A world filled with the suffering of others can pass by and you need not lift a finger to assist as God will connect you with his people and to try otherwise will be to compromise your own soul by contact with the irredeemable other.

As with most things, the true impact comes with lived experience when the wheels finally hit the road. The lived experience of RCC is without real comfort. Adherents need to continue their learning and cognitive embrace of the dogmatic nuance of God and meaning. My mother warned me when I left for college that I needed to be careful. She said that if I was not careful, the things I learned would “unlearn my salvation.” She meant that learning the wrong types of things, ostensibly those things that challenged church values, would undo my knowledge of God and my eternal standing would not be so certain. She also informed me that if I was not actively pursuing confirmatory knowledge of God and salvation, my salvation would atrophy and wither away. Unless I am reminded how exclusive and ephemeral the love of God is, I am not going to be loved by God anymore, or worse, I will be informed that he never really loved me in the first place. His love would melt away like sand in my hands.

Again, I am not religious in any real, cohesive way. I know that I don’t see religious devotion in the same light as those who live it. I live under the impression that faith, regardless of the religious system, should provide a sense of purpose, value or hope in a world that can seem so chaotic or cold. Faith should grant some token or answer to the struggles of life. I walked away from my parents’ church years ago since I did not feel those things existed there. That church only provided me uncertainty and shame. I was taught that the world at large is a place of darkness and fear and I am discouraged from helping anyone because God does not love them. More so, to help them would be to risk my own salvation through contact with sinners who could never, ever be worthy of God’s love. I cannot find it in my heart to look out at a planet bursting with lives and say to nearly every single one “You aren’t good enough.God doesn’t love you and therefore you don’t matter to me.”

p.