On Losing Faith

I?d like to start today off with a picture:

Still with me? Good. I think that image alone is enough to get a knee-jerk response, even if its all in good fun. Of course, that humor is lost on many of those with faith. Or is it?

Honestly, I don?t know. It?s simply hard to make God cool. Perhaps there?s something I?m missing here.

Brian over at Leave It Behind shared this link to a new magazine, and inside it there was an interview with Billy Corgan. It spoke of his new album, The Future Embrace. What?s worse is that I, Mr. Smashing Pumpkins Is My Favorite Band, didn?t even know about it.

But allow me take you back to my adolescence, which is where this story really begins.

Cut to a thirteen year old kid thoroughly sick of his existence. I was probably clinically depressed back then, but with a mother out of work and struggling to provide a living working dead-end low-paying jobs, after having her excellent factory job shipped to Mexico, how could a therapy bill enter the picture?

The Smashing Pumpkins, as the article says, gave a voice to a lot of self-hating teenagers, which I believe today are called Emo kids. I?ll never forget when I passed over into pure Pumpkins adoration. In my room I had a cheap clothes hamper and the lid was covered with cheap, thin plastic over its cardboard innards. I had taken a pocket knife and carved out ZERO and a star from the plastic sheath, not unlike this image. I wanted to be nothing, so I tried to symbolize it on my surroundings. I scrawled his lyrics (and my own disjointed writings) in my notebooks, sure that I could remake myself into something better or simply disappear into the void of myself.

I also read a book which completely changed my mind about religion. Anne Rice?s Memnoch the Devil.

Oh, you think. This is sad. He left his Christian faith because of vampire fiction? Well, not exactly.

The point of that book to me was the differing views. The book details a different devil, one that was misunderstood, the benevolent Fallen Hero. It didn?t matter if it was true or not. It mattered that it was different than the Christian rhetoric that I had been forced to live with my entire life.

When I asked questions of other faiths they were aschewed. When I asked about the sketchy origins of the bible they were dismissed. When I sought comfort in music, Billy Corgan was a different voice.

?God is Empty, Just Like Me.? ? Zero, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

That line has brought Billy a lot of heartache (and endless explanations/defending) but it also showed me that you can rebel against the status quo. Allow me quote here from a Steven Garber interview:

?Billy Corgan speaks to the adolescents of the late twentieth century about his own emptiness, his melancholy and infinite sadness. "God is empty, just like me," he sings. It's amazing to hear them together on this question, to see that they were speaking to the same crisis, a time when a person leaves the world and the worldview of one's parents and begins to confront one's own world and develop one's own worldview.?

At a time when I was pretty damn mallable, the ability to say that ?You know what? I don?t know what?s going on either,? was pretty powerful stuff. It made me feel good that I could venture out into non-church territory, that I could look into other things, darker things, unusual things, that I could experience music that wasn?t drenched in happy-go-lucky christian lyrics.

My dissent was immediately perceived as devil?s work. It was looked down upon and I eventually stopped trying to communicate my feelings on it. I?d rather go without faith than have no one listen or respond.

A lot of what I saw at the time in my local church was politics and power, when all I ever thought was that this Jesus guy wanted what every religion wanted: For you to be good to yourself and others. And that?s how I decided to live my life. I didn?t want to be tied down with schedules (Sunday and Wednesday nights were always taken), by a Bible that was written and edited via committee, by holidays which were a mish-mash of pagan rituals and christian holy symbols mashed into one.

The bible is a good way to live your life. It teaches honesty, giving, and has a lot of good rules to follow. But along with that way of life comes the dogma I?m just not comfortable with any longer. If you wish to dream up an old white guy on a throne controlling everything and listening to your wants and prayers, then I respect that, but I do not share that ideal.

Somewhere, ten years ago, there was a kid who asked questions and was silenced. With that silence came resentment, and with that resentment came the need to understand why I was silenced. After learning things I ?shouldn?t? have learned, I lost my faith in religion and found it in myself. After reaching the bottom of depression, the suicidal thoughts, the raw unhappiness, I decided that it was not God or Jesus or Holy Ghosts that would pull me back up again, it was myself.

Faith is cool. Faith is respectable. But faith is belief in the unbelievable. And I lost that ideal a long time ago.

Can I face tomorrow with you?
Drag me to the hollows and choose?

Tags: Religion Faith Jesus God Prayer Smashing Pumpkins Billy Corgan Anne Rice Memnoch Steven Garber