I became a Christian when I was 12. It was my choice, but I did it mostly because the pastor had me terrified that if I didn’t “ask Jesus into my heart” that I would go to hell when I died. This was at a Baptist church in Oklahoma and they specifically loved asking people “If you died tonight, would you be certain you are going to heaven?” Better safe than sorry, I thought.

For the next five years I followed the words and actions of the Christian leaders around me. Never mind that I always saw discrepancies in what was said and done; I let Grace cover all the confusing areas like a big coat of paint telling myself that there are things we have yet to understand but I must have faith. During those early years the one thing I consistently had trouble with was using the actual name, “Jesus.” I couldn’t pray to Jesus, I couldn’t say out loud that I loved Jesus and I couldn’t wear T-shirts with his name on it. This is no secret to my then youth minister and main spiritual guide, Jeff Payne. We talked about it a few times. Maybe he thought I’d get over it. But I didn’t. Over the years it only got worse.

I left the Baptist church when I was 19 for several reasons, but mostly because I had been visiting a Church of Christ that didn’t waste time clocking my every move and they didn’t seem to be big on trying to convert people to Christianity. I also enrolled at a Christian University where young people who, like myself, claimed to be more freethinking surrounded me and they were brave enough to call bullshit on the No Dancing rule. Still, they also didn’t think I was qualified to lead any male over the age of 12 in a Bible study simply because I am a woman. It was there that I started asking more serious questions and the reaction I received was that of amused or polite dismissal. I wrote a letter to the deacons of my church with my many questions and my dream of a church that accepted EVERYONE without even having to think about it. I talked about AIDS education classes and playing softball with the Catholics. No one called me a bad word and though I was cruising to get kicked out of the university, I wasn’t. They ignored me and that was worse. I left the Church of Christ when I was 23.

I bumped around a lot after that. I went to the coolest, most liberal, happy churches that were within driving distance of wherever I happened to live. I hung out with the Nazarenes, the Presbyterians, the Catholics, the Four square churches, the sanctuary churches and too many more to remember. I went to Bible study after Bible study that promised non-judgmental candor and friendliness to everyone. Most of the time what turned me off was the fact that all of these groups which strived to love the unlovely were simply not succeeding in making the unlovely feel welcome. I would look around and only see other Christians with similar income, jobs and skin color.

Another thing I couldn’t keep from grating my nerves was the language that is consistently used by Christians which alienates those who do not believe as they do. Words like Lost, Non-believer, sinner, tolerance, evangelism all have linked to them the insulting idea that Christians are privy to some great knowledge and feel very sorry for those who won’t say as they say and do as they do. For anyone who is not a Christian, you will often sweetly be “prayed for” by Christians that you will come to know Jesus as they do and therefore possibly have the “peace that passes understanding.” I used to do this. At some point it occurred to me that many of these people that were not Christians seemed to be doing just fine and honestly didn’t need my wringing hands about their relationship with Jesus.

Aside from that, were these Non-Believers to ask me any questions about my proof that Jesus was who he said he was or whether or not I felt the Bible was entirely true and written by God, I would not have much to say. The concept of Faith started to feel like the equivalent of crossing my fingers. I hoped certain things to be true. It would be better if some of this were true. But really, I had no freaking idea. No one had ever shown me any solid proof and the more I studied and talked with those who had spent a great deal of time studying Christianity and the workings of, I started to accept that to the average intellectual even, Christianity looked no more solid than any other religion and no more helpful or hurtful to those who followed it than, say, Judaism.

Some time around 2000 on a road-trip to Savannah with my friends David Tarrant and Crazy Karen I discovered that all the people with my great grandmother’s last name who lived in Georgia were Jewish. After a little more research I concluded that there was a distinct likelihood that her family was Jewish and therefore, by birth, so was I. Though something about this information really hit home with me, I was confused about how much this mattered to me. Even before the trip I had bought myself a star of David charm because I felt a connection with the Jewish history. I attempted to go to Shul a few times both in Oklahoma and Nashville but didn’t want to do so on my own and I was worried they might try to evangelize me too. The draw was there. But I knew I would have to make up my mind about the whole Jesus issue before I spent much time with Jews. They would have the same questions my friends in high school had about Jesus; questions I couldn’t answer. I put Judaism on the list of things to explore…eventually.

I have this friend who I consider to be quite the intellectual. He absorbs books on theology and such. He once told me that even though he cannot prove Christianity to be true, he chose to follow it anyway because, he said, “I need a savior. I need to believe that someone paid for my sins.” And I think, maybe, that’s what I was doing. I needed to believe in Happily Ever After and that is, universally what Christians count on. Even if they disagree with each other on homosexuality, divorce, evangelism and baptism, they are all in agreement that Jesus provided a way to get to heaven.

Obviously, for a long time I needed to believe that there was one way to get to heaven, I had found that way and I was safe. I also needed to believe that I was in the majority who were doing their best to live out Jesus' teachings, that Christianity is widely misunderstood by other religions and overall it really did make the most sense. But through my own personal experiences that are too numerous to write about (because one can only read this jibberish for so long) I reached a point when I had to be honest with myself about what I did and did not believe about God.

I reached this point in 2002 when I was living with my friend Billy in Nashville. Well, what I reached was a state of total anger with God and his apparent inability to communicate with us, his children, in such a way that we can clearly understand him and clear up all these inconsistencies that not only cause us individual strife but other problems, like war, genocide and widespread waste of human energy. I went on a God strike of sorts. Without going into mental questioning detail, I will just say that God did speak up. Not Jesus. Not a big guy behind a podium. No angel appearing on my doorstep. But what happened was something so personal so real and proof-worthy that it is the single moment that enables me to have a peace that all my previous study, prayer and desire to believe in Jesus as my savior did not.

I don’t recommend that those with questions about God ignore him in the hopes of getting him to stop by and say hello. I only know that this the route I took and this is what happened.

The last four years I have been trying to decide what all of this means to me and what direction I would take in my continuing desire know God. I read a lot and got particularly interested in A Grief Observed, by CS Lewis. My favorite quote from the book that hit home at the time is this:
“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God." The real danger, Lewis said, “is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God is really like.' Deceive yourself no longer.”

When I moved to California I had the opportunity to sort through all my experiences and talk honestly about how I felt. The people here did not know me and therefore I didn’t worry so much about how my quest to find my own way affected them. When I got a job working strictly with Rabbis and the Chabad community, it was a great way for me to learn about Judaism from the ground up. Two of my housemates at the time were Christians who were heavily involved in their churches. The other housemate was decidedly not Christian though she had attended a Christian high school and even been voted their homecoming queen. She brought more questions than answers but she did also provide a sort of faithless logic to our conversations.

It was after I left Chabad that my uncertainty about Judaism tipped completely toward letting go of what I obviously never truly believed in about Jesus. That was two years ago. It so happened that Mike was raised Jewish by his Jewish mother and Catholic father. Probably one of the reasons we gelled is that I did not have to explain and re-explain my past confusion and frustrations to him. Mike did not try to save me and yet he takes my relationship to God seriously.

At this point, if you are a Christian, you may be tempted to ask me exactly what I do believe and where my proof is for deciding the Judaism is best for me and my daughter. And here is where I need to tell you that I am not interested in digging any further into these old wounds and memories. I have posted this here because this is the extent of what I am willing to say over this forum and so many of you who have responded were actually NOT the Christians I was thinking of when I wrote that last entry. But obviously I struck a chord.

My friend Melanie came by last Thursday and we talked about all this during our coffee jaunt. She too, said her first thought was to remind me that not all Christians are like the ones I described in my blog. I completely agree. But what I told Melanie and what I meant for you to understand is that in my opinion, you good guys are outnumbered. And on top of that, the language that you are still using to explain your beliefs is easily seen as insulting and elitist to those who have put just as much effort into sorting out their spirituality but have reached different conclusions. You probably don’t mean to come of that way, but you do. That’s why I thought the I Heart Huckabees clip was so funny.

Yes, the same could be said of all religions. Unfortunately, Christianity is the one that is most prominent where I was raised and places around the world where I have lived. Therefore it was the one that affected my life the most. I was a Christian for about 18 years. I know the struggles that Christians face when trying to explain their God and live as He lived. I sympathize, but I have chosen a different path. This one might be full of landmines too. But it is more familiar and frankly, it makes more sense to me.

I don’t feel that my Christian friends are misled or stupid. I don’t feel the need to show you discrepancies or shoot holes in your stories. But I do feel the need to be apart from that without fear of losing your respect or having to endure your sympathy.

I hope that my jokes about Christianity are handled with the same good humor that the popular jokes about Islam or Jews are handled. Like it or not, Christianity is as absurdly funny to an outsider as anything else. To me, anything negative I generalized about you guys was akin to saying, "I will never understand why southern girls take on a fashion 10 years after it’s passed" or why rednecks think putting mint flavor in Skol is going to make any difference to it’s grossness.

What did I expect from all this? I don’t know. I hoped, I guess, that you might just say, “You’re Jewish? Cool.”
(Funny huh? You probably thought I was going to say I was liberal. Well, I’m mostly Libertarian, actually. )
Shana Tova everyone!