You are born, you live, and you die in the middle. Certainty is hard to come by and even harder to hold on to. You come from the deep south; morality is black and white: if you claim to be a Christian (and who doesn’t, down here?) then your life will look a certain way. You won’t drink—alcohol is verboten. Boys are only after one thing and as a girl, you can’t give in. If you do, you’re a slut and your partner gets a firm admonishment… and a wink and a smack on the butt in the locker room. And if you get pregnant? There’s a place for people like you: alternative school. Cursing is another no-no. Homosexuality is wrong, a sin of the worst order, and if you think you might be gay? Then prepare yourself for the life of an outsider. Only bad people do drugs—but if you made some mistakes in high school, then we’ll be prepared to forgive you as long as you don’t mind parading your dirty laundry in front of younger kids as a warning against following your path. Only bad people do drugs—and if you’re still doing them now then there will be no grace. You’re a Republican, of course. Those Democrats believe in killing babies and they might even be communists.
And theology is equally black and white. You’re a Christian, because you’re a Republican. You believe in the separation of church and state (as long as everyone acknowledges that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and that the founding fathers were Christians just like you). The biggest debate in your life is creationism versus evolution. You scoff at global warming. The Bible is a literal, historical document, the infallible word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. You might play at being a liberal Christian. You might read books to annoy your parents like Is It Okay to Call God Mother? and Theology in a New Key: Responding to Liberation Themes and maybe you even incorporate some of what they say into your walk with God.
But then you go to college and make friends with a man who has a husband and a hobby of cross-dressing. You start befriending people who exercise their right to drink lots of alcohol. Your professors admit to believing in a non-literal creation story. You find yourself crushing on a man who confides to you his history with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. And who freely admits to his experimentation with the full gamut of illegal substances with little to no remorse. You room with a girl who is probablymostlikely sleeping with her boyfriend and who has no shame about it. Another girl on your hall says, “Yeah, I’m having sex with him but we’re married in God’s eyes so it’s all right, okay?” And you’re flirting with your personal favorite addiction again.
And you attend a Bible college.
You sit with him in Bible classes and listen to your professor read the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world.”
You laugh with her in the caf and in the coffeehouse.
You cry with her in private and share the hurts of your heart with her and you listen to hers.
You sit with him in chapel.
You worship next to him, you take communion with her, and you love them.
You are born, you live, and you die in the middle, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You live in a world of shades, a world where black and white fade into unnameable hues. You try to contain this awful gray within what you know about God. “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” You lose yourself in the middle ground. You lose yourself in between what you’ve always thought to be right and what your experiences teach you. You lose yourself in between your cut and dry morality and the murky gray you live in.
People are simple, says your friend, and you want to believe him, but you can’t see the simplicity for all these hellish contradictions.
No comments:
Post a Comment